lethalwarner’s Neighborhood

No, it doesn’t have to. No matter how constrained a teacher is, I’ve determined that school does not have to be a creativity killer. To apply some ancient, wise words (2 Corinthians 4:8-9): “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; … struck down, but not destroyed.” In other words, NCLB and the obsessive, accountability-driven administrative directives it begets cannot single-handedly kill creativity in the classroom. Sure, state tests “stigmatize failure,” as Ken Robinson states. Teachers, though, do not have to stigmatize failure.

Take a measure as simple as rewarding students for non-academic feats, for instance. Awarding Student of the Month to the most spirit-lifting comedian in the classroom validates him as much as a good grade. Teacher-initiated rewards address and negate Robinson’s contention that school only the intellectual successes at school are the winners. He contends that “the whole purpose of public education …is to produce university professors. … We shouldn’t hold them up as the highest form of achievement…they live in their heads.” Nay! The purpose of school is to make something productive out of young peoples minds and hours. Sure, there are ugly class wars circling around how those minds and hours are spent. But ideally, school is for producing more productive (emotionally, spiritually, vocationally --- not merely intellectually) members of society. School is where students have training wheels for how to function as adults. It’s a mini-society. I think Robinson would be a huge fan to Rousseau’s anti-social, child-centered vision of education. Unfortunately, as pastoral and sweet as this vision is, it falls short of what humans were created for: to serve and better each other.

No, schools do not “squander” the innate creativity in children wholesale, as Robinson overconfidently asserts. Schools are the environment in which time is set aside for creativity to be required. Without the structure of school, creativity wilts. Robinson is right to point out the paradoxical nature of creativity, such as that we do not mature into creativity, but rather we outgrow it, but he misses this important paradox about it: creativity needs structure just like fire needs oxygen. Without the push and the constraint to fuel creativity, or the probing questions of the teacher, or the small encouraging remarks along the way to the final creative product, a child’s creativity will be stifled. Also, in a school functioning properly, in which reading aloud and extolling reading should be a daily activity, the imagination will find no lack.

As to Robinson’s allusion to Picasso’s quote that we grow out of creativity, neither do I fully agree with this. Older children (teens) can use colors, tweak words, arrange sounds, plan projects and papers and speak more eloquently and purposefully than their younger counterparts. Who has the authority to say that creativity with more direction and eruditeness is somehow weaker than the innocent creativity that streams from a little mind? Classifying creativity in an hierarchy (eerily akin to what NCLB test standards do—classify schools and student achievement) and judging creativity as “the production of something both original and useful” (paraphrase) is rather utilitarian itself. Robinson defines creativity to uptightly, I’m afraid. 

The Tunica River Park affords a host of opportunities for people who are seeking to understand the historical importance of the Mississippi River's usage from its beginnings with the Native Americans and conquistadors up through it's present-day significance as a major channel for transporting goods and individuals through the American midwest. In an ideal world my students would be able to visit the park and take advantage of the plethora of exhibits and time periods featured at the museum. However, structuring this time to maximize my students' learning must be undertaken carefully so that my students get the full effect of the academic experience of the Tunica River Park and do not simply view the excursion as pointless field trip.

Some of the before school activities that I could have my students complete are:
            1) Completing a KWL chart to document students' knowledge prior to visiting the Tunic River Park
            2) Researching the history of the Mississippi River and how it has been used in the past by disparate groups
            3) Visiting a local river (i.e. the Yazoo River) and having students read about its historic regional significance

Some of the activities I could have my students complete while they are at the Tunic River Park are:
             1) Creating a timeline to document the settling of the area around the Mississippi River
             2) Describing the work of major figures who settles or worked along the Mississippi River
             3) Formulating a schedule for other groups of students to complete a walking tour of the park on their own visit

Some of the activities I could have my students complete after their visit to the Tunica River Park include:
             1) Finishing their KWL chart by filling in five things they learned from their visit to the Tunica River Park
             2) Developing a community service project to spread the word throughout the Delta about the river's import
             3) Writing a persuasive letter to a member of Congress urging them to allot money for sharing the river's history

When teaching in the districts that MTC places us in, tangible success is often hard to come by. Failure seems to be what is constantly in our face as we think of all the things that our students are doing besides learning, all the places that our students will likely end up besides college, and all the classroom management issues we face that make us want to roll over and call out sick. Every. Single. Day. Still, it's in the little things that teachers anywhere but especially in "critical needs" districts must focus on to maintain drive and focus and continue doing what too many others have deemed highly improbable or flatly impossible for centuries: educating poor Blacks.

In many of these districts MTC teachers teach in standardized tests are seen as foreboding signs of eminent doom and embarrassment. In these places, teaching "to the test" is often resorted to as the means through which educational salvation is reached. Teaching to the test is one thing but when you're in a school environment where, from day one, what's communicated to teachers is that teaching to the test is the ONLY thing, well then you're at KIPP. On some level this is understandable as testing determines so much at charter schools like KIPP from our enrollment to our ability to woo private funders to the very renewal of our charter with the state of Arkansas. However, I cannot help but shake my philosophical belief that I have more important life skills to teach my students than finding equivalent fractions and answering multiple choice items using process of elimination.

In any event, our big state test in Arkansas is called the ACTAAP or the Benchmark Exam. KIPP Delta in Helena has some of the highest test scores in the state at the middle school and high school levels. Last year, 94% of our 7th graders at KIPP Delta scored proficient or advanced on the mathematics Benchmark Exam compared to 66% of 7th graders statewide and only 33% of students in Helena-West Helena's regular public school system. What makes this even more remarkable to many is that our school is 99% Black, 99% free/reduced lunch, and in the heart of dilapidated downtown Helena close by local housing projects, gang territory, drugs, and prostitution. Last year's 7th grade math teacher who got these results was so successful that she has been given the green light to found her own school which will be opening in Blytheville, Arkansas in the fall of 2010 as a new KIPP middle school. She's only a year older than me. The venerable 7th grade math slot was thus available when I applied to KIPP this past spring and who teaches this course with the districtwide spotlight on it now?: me. The Black, hood guy from Harvard with two years of (social studies) teaching experience who's a few credits away from a master's degree in education.

Anyway, to my success story. In preparation for the end-of-the-year Benchmark Exam we take practice Benchmark Exams every month. We chart the progress of our students and use the practice Benchmark Exams to target particular students and skills for remediation and re-teaching. Results are scrutinized for hours on end at the individual, school, and district levels. It is highly nerve-wrecking to see where your students are at month-by-month and to know that the results will be known almost immediately by your peers and superiors and reflect your quality as a teacher. Lovely. In any event, the first practice Benchmark Exam we took was in late September. We took a second one two weeks ago in late October and although the success or failure of my students on the September exam could largely be attributed to what my students came into 7th grade knowing, my school director was clear in communicating that the October exam's results would be all my own.

Much to my surprise and the surprise of many a colleague, I'm sure, not only did my students' scores increase from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam but these were the only scores that increased in any grade level, in any subject area at the entire school. Fifth, sixth, and eighth grade math scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade literacy scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight grade reading scores went down. Fifth and seventh grade science scores went down (we don't do sixth and eighth grade science testing). ONLY 7TH GRADE MATH SCORES WENT UP!!! I was elated when I saw the numbers displayed on the dry erase board at our faculty meeting the night we stayed at school until 10 p.m. grading exams and inputting results on our district network for more scrutiny. When looking at the individual students and their performances from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam, I also noticed that most of the students whose scores increased were taught by me and not by the more experienced and better respected 8th grade math teacher who takes 15 of my 7th graders into his algebra class each day.

That's wassup. Right? 

I was very excited to find this post. I’ve been meaning to read Khon’s “Homework Myth” ever since my 6^th grade teacher, with whom I am still in touch and who now teaches high school math, mentioned it to me. She agrees with his thesis.

I, on the other hand, can’t help but believe that homework is helpful for the college-bound. Without the gradual build-up of homework, how will a student know how to handle the outside-of-class investment that is expected at that level? I guess the question that remains is, is homework worth it for the non-college-bound?

Using the rationale that kids hate homework and put it off as long as possible is not reason to believe that homework is unbeneficial. Many things that are popularly hated, such as exercise and financial prudence, are good for us. As for the argument that homework does not develop a work ethic, I disagree. With time to do whatever they please, my students will not be kindling their innate curiosity by reading a book of choice. They will be watching TV. For the argument that rigorous amounts of homework in middle school is not correlated with higher high school achievement, I suppose the counter argument would be, has any research shown that not doing or not assigning homework raises achievement? I think there is some spurious intervening variable that is making the research appear to suggest that homework is impotent as yielding great educational gains, when really home/neighborhood environment or family dysfunction/stress may be accountable for educational outcomes, not the assigning of homework.

Regarding Christine Hendricks’ letter to parents explaining her school’s experiment with no homework for a semester, I think this innovation would work well so long as there is reason to believe that families will support their children with the five responsibilities she bulleted in the letter. It would be more accurate for Hendricks to say, “we are implementing a ‘new’ homework this year: intense parental involvement.” This is not a truly no-homework policy! There are still things for the kids to do at home; parents are the new facilitators. In areas without this assurance of reinforcement from home, schools ought to lengthen the school day, so that all of that gets done in caretakers’ hands before reporting home at 6 p.m.

One thing I’ve thought about is whether homework is worth assigning when half of students do not do it, and it becomes a nuisance to teachers who cannot let more than half their kids fail due to excessive zeros produced by MIA homework. I’ve decided that it is worth assigning, as it will pull the borderline students who will do their homework up to proficient level on the state test. In other words, assigning homework is likely to help improve those kids who will do it; and if the teacher makes homework worth only a marginal amount, then for those who don’t do it, no excessive harm is done. So long as the teacher completes the independent practice during class time, and homework serves only as a reinforcement of skills learned, then homework is appropriate and will only strengthen the stronger students. They are not psychologically bothered by homework; in essence, homework is a “NR” for them (science shorthand for No Reaction). 

For honors kids, however, those who are definitely college-bound, the teacher’s assigning of and close monitoring of/feedback on homework is very important. These students especially cannot afford anything that will set them behind other students at their level who attend competitive private schools or suburban schools where the majority of the student body is vigilant about homework. I do not foresee these types of schools of privilege backing down off homework any time soon, and so for cricital needs schools to do so would be a mistake, giving the others yet another upper-hand in being prepared to succeed in college.

I think the real concern here is what is assigned for homework. If it is busy work, or over students' heads, or not sufficiently explained, or students do not have resources (parental, material, technological, or time) to do it, then yes, homework is terribly ineffective and even harmful. If a teacher gives homework as a good doctor proscribes the right antidote, however, homework remains a worthwhile component of schooling.

I really enjoyed the product of this assignment -- even if the process wasn't enjoyable. Isn't that the way research is? View a pdf of the document here.

To be honest, after a second perusal of Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty I'm not sure how I feel about it. Two years ago when I first blogged about the book I had this to say. Oh, the days when I was a fiery leftist blogger.... I still feel Payne overly generalizes a very large, exploited population whose absent voice in a book such as this speaks volumes. I still feel it is inherently absurd to think you can understand poverty, the lifestyles of many people in poverty, or other such deeply complex and malleable concepts by reading a book. I still feel that the myriad holes in Payne's argument makes it as useful as a two-dollar bill in the vending machines on the first floor of Guyton. However, I do hear more of what Payne was trying to get across after having taught for two years in one of the poorest places in the nation.

The research article that I read was "The 'Building Tasks' of Critical History: Structuring Social Studies for Social Justice" by Wayne Au. It was published in Social Studies Research and Practice in July of this year. In the article, Au looks at two case study lesson plans by social studies teachers who actively seek to raise the consciousness of their students around social justice issues. The author utilizes discourse analysis where people "use language to operationalize certain 'building tasks' in order to express meaning, ideology, values, and other aspects of our identities in a given situation." Au concluded that these lesson plans were quality classroom pedagogical devices due to their service as vehicles for students to critically question social relations historically and in the present-day context. In doing so, he dismissed the claims of some that lesson plans stifle the true learning process by assuming that the planning and executing instruction occurs in some sort of linear fashion to a "predetermined endpoint."

Social studies is the academic revelaing of people and their interactions near and far, throughout time and space, from minute households to expansive continents. It encompasses a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, history, and geography to name but a few. Social studies is a primary means of cultural diffusion and is perhaps the most controversial of any major academic subject areas in the U.S. or abroad today. Its ability to profoundly influence not only individuals and their perceptions of self and other but groups' perceptions as well makes it invaluable to nations, academic institutions, corporations, and other large bodies in their constant pursuit of training and re-training citizens for their specific purposes.

Very often, social studies courses from the elementary to the secondary levels of education are thought of simply as history courses. This is understandable, to an extent, as the history of economics or political science or anthropology can reflect the interactions of people and groups of people both over time and at specific moments in time. However, this intransigent understanding of social studies can be highly misleading to individuals who would like to look at human interactions over time through the lens of the distribution of goods and services or the mental processes and permutations that influence human action every minute of each day. Thus, a broader definition of social studies allows us to pursue these other angles of studying people and their interactions how individuals best see fit for themselves.

In ze classroom

I've been thinking about blogging a lot, but haven't gotten around to it until now.  Only four weeks have gone by since the first day of school, and only three weeks have gone by with the kids, but some much has happened!  Or maybe not that much has happened, but I have some many differing responses.

Today a student described me as "calm."

It caught me a little off guard, then made me feel great.