All The Rage

Skateboards are in this year.

I think it’s easy for mature adults to forget what “in” is. The all-consuming power of the fad is something many of us, certainly the sophisticated and wise literati who read this blog, are now immune to. But, those in my generation, I ask you to harken back to the world of the fad with two words: snap bracelets.

When I was in 3rd grade, snap bracelets were The Thing. Reputations were won and lost, prestige earned and disgrace heaped, by the pizazz and beauty of one’s snap bracelet. Even among boys, snap bracelets were to be proudly displayed. I was, as you might expect, late to the party. I acquired my snap bracelet only through some general distribution when they became marketing tools, six-months into the trend. It was red and green and lost its snap all too quickly.

But I digress.

This year, like never before, it’s skateboards. My goodness. It is a fad in my class like nothing I’ve ever seen.

No! No! Some reader is doubtlessly crying out: skateboarding is a hobby, a sport, nay even a life-style, it can’t be classified as simply a fad.

Allow me to explain: I am not writing of skateboarding, which is a gerund verb implying use, but simply skateboards, a noun. Most of my kids don’t actually ride the boards, they just carry them about, like celebrities and small dogs. In fact, I’ve taken to calling them a “fashion accessory.” They carry them on the way to school. They park them in the back of my room. They pick them up at the end of the day. They carry them on the way home from school. That’s all.

On the first day of school, there was one and the next day, two. Those boys actually ride them, I think. Three weeks later, we were up to six. Now, just after week eight, the majority of the boys in my class showed up with a board, bringing the total to nine.

Ever responsive, I’ve created a new job in my class: Skateboard Valet. He is in charge of parking them correctly so they don’t create a safety risk.

Even more amusing, there are sufficient numbers to have spawned a sub-culture: the scooter team. The boys who don’t feel cool enough to not-ride a skateboard are coming to school with a scooter. They proudly line up with the skateboard non-riders, jostling their scooters into the morning car-show-esque skateboard extravaganza that is the front of my morning line. Then, just as the non-skateboarders do, they make a big scene of parking their scooters and holding up the line until I hurry them on.

Best of all, however, is the multiplication. What’s better than one skateboard? Two! No one can ride two skateboards, of course, so bringing a second would just be silly. But you can bring a mini-skateboard. So a few school days ago, R---, the originator of the craze, appeared with his usual ride and a two-inch long plastic skateboard. By the end of the week, D--- a child who cannot be bothered to bring his homework, remembers to show up with two mini-skateboards. Last, V--- a girl trying to be part of action, brought her six-inch mini-skateboard to school All the boys wanted to know what kind it was.

“World Industries,” she proudly proclaimed.

“Awww, sick!” D--- cried, “I’ve read about them.”

I’ve read about them? He reads? He connects what he’s hearing to what he’s reading? I wanted to celebrate such a statement, but I knew that D--- was not looking for me to affirm the value of skateboard magazine reading. Quite the opposite. I let it go, but yet for the chance to hear that one sentence, I’ll deal with thirty skateboards in the back of my class.

Weighing The Cow

Someone in my first year of teaching recalled the adage, "Weighing the cow does not make it any heavier. " It was their way of saying: Testing the students doesn't make them smarter. Someone needs to remind my district of that.

I just finished my weekly planner. Here's the lineup for the hardworking kids in Mr. AB's fifth grade:

Tuesday – Students take the reading portion of the CELDT test, an assessment that gets progressively more difficult as students to proceed. By the end of the test, most students will be reading passages they are expected to fail.

Wednesday – Students take the written portion of the CELDT test. As most of them don’t speak English fluently, they don’t like writing in it. Not being idiots, they recognize that their writing is not as good as it should be and usually come away from writing tasks feeling like failures.

Thursday – Students take the written portion of the district-mandated Reading Lions unit test. They are expected to “Reflect on a time they changed,” in a narrative form. Even assuming they can cognitively handle the task, which is rather abstract for a ten year old, only a handful of them can competently write characters and dialogue, an expectation here. They will, most likely, fail.

Friday – Students take the reading portion of the Reading Lions unit test. As the bulk of the test is disconnected from any sort of educational reality, I don’t waste our precious instructional time preparing for it. Of course I tell my students as much and I tell them not to worry and simply to speed through the irrelevant sections. But I also teach them, every day, to take pride in whatever they do and they will nonetheless find themselves clueless on whole sections and feel like failures.

Fortunately, we all have plenty to look forward to…

Next Monday – Students take a three-hour test, based on all the fifth grade standards. It is supposed to be harder than our state tests in May. They will, by design, completely fail, but we’re told that the question or two that they get right will reflect what we’ve teaching we've already.

I’m trying to imagine it…

In the midst of failing this test, and after a week of failing tests, my students will come to the odd question that we have covered in the first sixth of the school year. They will stop and pause, saying to themselves, “Take heed, young scholar! You know this one. Do your best. No matter that you have already failed four tests in the last week. Pay no mind to the fact that you have already missed a few hundred problems and that it looks like you are going to miss another hundred more before recess. Do this long division problem. Read this boring and irrelevant passage. It will bring honor to your family name.”

We will give the tests again in January, where our students are once again, expected to fail. But hopefully they will fail less completely, showing us the progress we’ve made. Then we will give these tests again in March, but despite having failed them twice before, they will summon the strength to do their little darnedests and only fail by a little bit. Then we will finish teaching them what they need to know to have passed the tests in the first place.

After a year of this, our students will arrive at the state tests in May. Ready or not, they will have been thoroughly weighed.

An Ode to Accelerated Math

I despise the idea of being a salesman, with my bread and butter depending on convincing people to buy things they don’t need, but I have to say that there is one product I could sell wholeheartedly: Renaissance Learning’s Accelerated Math. This program puts the power of computers into educator’s hands like nothing else. I’ve worked with Accelerated Math intensely for two years now and I’m a believer. It should be in every math classroom, second grade and higher. It does not matter the curriculum or the instructional philosophy, if you teach math, I believe Accelerated Math can improve what you’re doing. Many, if not most, educational applications are conveniences, enabling us to do our work better or faster. Accelerated Math is a revolution on a CD, enabling me to do something that would be otherwise utterly impossible.

Accelerated Math is the ultimate robot T.A.: it produces and grades every assignment, tracking each student’s progress on each of the 150 discrete objectives we need to learn this year. Combining the power of databases and spreadsheets, A.M. takes differentiation to the ultimate level: individualization. Yes, that’s right, a different and individually tailored problem set for each of my 34 math students. Every homework assignment is produced according to what new objectives the student needs to work on and what old objectives he or she needs to review.

At the end of a week, students take a weekly AM quiz. When they pass an objective on that test, they only see it occasionally for review; when they fail it, it appears frequently on their ensuing homework for practice. If they pass five similar problems in a row, they take a daily quiz in class to prove they can do it independently and see it only for review; if they miss five in a row, they don’t see it again until I signal that I’ve given them some extra help. While other kids are working on their daily quiz, I glance at the spreadsheet and can immediately know which five kids to pull and what, precisely, to work on.

What a dream! Top students don’t have to do the same problems ad nauseum, and can move faster than the class, while struggling students avoid absolute frustration and are quickly and specifically flagged for my attention. All the problems sets and quizzes are individualized, making copying a thing of the past, and further assuring that each problem set meets each kid's real needs.

The accountability, for me as well as them, that this computer-driven system offers is intense and powerful. Students know that every assignment is carefully graded and that every problem counts, fostering effort on every problem. The immediate feedback offered by computer grading means they stay invested day after day. For me, the pressure is even greater: I inescapably know how every student is doing on every objective and how they perform on every assignment. I can see instantly what percent of the class has mastered each concept I’ve taught, a constant and forceful reminder that the gap between teaching and learning is mine to bridge. Worst, or best, of all, the program’s symbolic spreadsheet paints student success and struggle in red, greens, golds and blues that cannot be ignored.

Yet I think what I love most about Accelerated Math is that it does not teach my students anything. As far as the students know, all it does is generate and grade their worksheets, spitting out reports on how they did. That is how I like it. I don’t want a computer program that shows my kids a video on fractions and then gives them three practice problems. Good teaching is a deeply interactive activity, with dialogue and discussion that address the multitude of misconceptions and questions that arise in my students’ unique minds. Accelerated Math doesn’t even pretend to supplant my teaching; it only does what a computer can do best: the monotonous task of tracking student achievement objective by objective and the monstrous job of producing individualized worksheets. In doing this, though, it frees me to focus on what I do best, which is not grading and recording or copying worksheets, but teaching, purely teaching.

Free Science Camp! (If you can let go...)

We just got back from our four days at Science Camp. I’m excited to have shared this experience with my students early in the year, and look forward to making use of all the bonding and learning for the next seven months.

Going to Science Camp is one of the highlights of attending our school, an experience students learn about and look forward to for years in advance. These four days are defining moments in our year, not only vital catalysts/culminations for our science curriculum, but for our whole development of a community together. Yet every year, a handful of parents, despite the school’s willingness to pay the entirety of the expense for every student, deny their child the chance to go. Every year, the Man fights with these parents until they relent and allow their kids to go, or until they hang up on him and tell him to stop calling. We’ve gotten it down to a bare handful, but that’s still too many. For me, our trip to science camp is book-ended by heart-breaking disconnection as the non-attending students are sent off to other classes when we leave and heart-breaking awkwardness as they are reintroduced when we return. While it’s one of my favorite weeks, I’m always haunted by the memories of the kids who didn’t get to go. To me, the various decisions reflect the tremendous complexity of my students’ lives. These are compiled from the past four years.

A---‘s older brother G--- wasn’t allowed to go because Mom had gone to a camp when she was a similar age and had a horrifying trauma. She didn’t even begin to consider letting G--- go. Two years later, however, she had come to realize that the issue was hers and not her children’s or the camp’s. She agreed to let A--- go. Shortly thereafter, however, she called to say that she was so distraught and unhappy about letting A--- go that her husband said he didn’t want to deal with it and the child stayed.

B--- has an older brother you might remember from the story, Different. His mother didn’t want him to go and we didn’t argue the case. It was our first year going to science camp and we weren’t certain we could assure her of her son’s safety from bullying. B---, however, is a vastly different child and we are vastly more knowledgeable and capable of controlling the experience. At first his mother wasn’t going to let him go, simply because it wasn’t fair to the older brother. She relented, however, but had done such a job convincing B--- that he wouldn’t like it and didn’t want to go that he was afraid to join us.

G---‘s mother believes that the “end of a family’s structure” comes “when the oldest daughter is allowed to spend a night outside of the home.” She told us that she “would not allow us to ruin her family for the sake of a field trip.” All discussion ended there. Every year, there are two or three hard-working, successful and mature girls who are denied the opportunity for this essential reason. While I recognize that part of their academic success comes from their parents’ restrictiveness, I wonder about the price.

The greatest heartbreaker came with K---, who was told she was going to go up until the day we were to leave. Then, half-an-hour before departure, she comes sobbing to her teacher. On the cell phone is her mother, saying that her daughter no longer wants to go. Her daughter protests and mother admits that she needs her 10-year-old at home for childcare in the morning and evening. Mother breaks down and says she just can’t manage the household without her eldest daughter. (Side note: Another child who did attend science camp referred to it to me as “vacation.” Not he said, from school or homework, but from taking care of his little brothers.)

It’s worth noting that not all such cases go against the kids… after a gut-wrenching decision, one family decided to allow their daughter to go.

M---‘s brother has leukemia and has been fighting it for three years. We didn’t find out until Science Camp that she goes to visit him in the hospital every day after school. According to the family, these hours with his sister are the highpoint of his life. Her family wanted her to be there with her brother but they also wanted her to be able to live a life of her own. She was worried about not being there if his condition deteriorated, but wanted to be a part of the tremendous experience. We, of course, stopped pressuring the family but, in the end, they decided to let her go. While I’m sure she thought of her brother constantly, she was clearly able to enjoy herself.

When The Tests Fail

Our writing prompt, on today's district writing test,

"Compose a letter to the editor, addressing some issue or concern you would like to see changed in your school or community."

You know, just the other day one of my ten-year-olds was published in the Mercury News reflecting on the decline of the U.S. credit market and castigating the paper for their abandonment of the moral hazard principles so core to the free market.

Get Real!

I'm trying to imagine what the good folks at Curriculum and Instruction imagined our students would produce, in their dream world where children opine to editors on the issues that frustrate them. Cue the dreamy music...

Scene 1: An office at the District HQ. While no children set foot in the building, signs in childish fonts abound. Two professionally dressed administrators huddle around a computer screen. One finishes typing and they look up.


Administrator 1, Chuck: What might they write about?
Administrator 2, Martha: Perhaps the over-testing of students?
Chuck: Oh the irony!

Both laugh, falsely.

Martha: What about NCLB II's teacher merit-pay provisions?
Chuck: Or the impact of street crime on their families?
Martha: Immigration issues? The SSN mismatch letters and court case?
Chuck: Or more funding for schools?
Martha: Don't get carried away. Besides, it's 3:00, let's go home.

They leave, smiling at the thought of children nibbling their erasers and preparing for their active citizenship in the USA.

Certainly, the kids have lots to say about schools, but if we're going to test on that, just put it into a context they might possibly understand. Why intentionally confuse them? Why pretend they know something so absolutely arcane? This is not the first time, or even the fourth, time CNI has done this and so I think I'm going to model some persuasive writing.

---

Dear Curriculum and Instruction,

I am a 5th grade teacher at ---- Elementary School. I was glad to see that once again, we are taking the time to assess our students’ writing in the beginning of the year. Building a writing portfolio that tracks students’ progress across many years is very helpful in improving their ability and refining our curriculum.

I am disappointed and frustrated, however, to see that we composed a prompt so obtuse to our students as to make the assessment essentially invalid. None of my students were at all familiar with letters to the editor and found the prompt all but unapproachable. Struggling to compose anything in the absence of a well-understood purpose, the diagnostic assessment became reflective only of their lack of understanding of the prompt, rather than their writing skills.

Most distressing, however, is that we teachers have given our students a test where they had no chance to pass, and falsely labeled them failures both to themselves and others. We demand that our students take many tests and that they take these tests with the utmost seriousness. We cannot earnestly expect, however, that their confidence in their abilities and their willingness to try their hardest will be maintained by tests where they are clearly set up to fail.

Persuasive writing is a focus in fifth grade and a strong place to make our diagnostic assessment. There are many similar prompts, e.g. a letter to the principal about uniform policy, which would have been universally approachable. I implore you to consider selecting such a prompt next time. More importantly, I urge you to assure that we stop giving tests on which our students cannot succeed.


Thank you for your time,