This Week's Reading

As I was hunting around the resources this week, I spend some time on the Learning First website, Public School Insights. I stumbled across the article on the International Summit in Education, and found it very interesting. While we are talking about the influence of various organizations on education, this article highlighted some differences between education in the United States and education in countries that perform well on tests such as PISA. I am persuaded that these factors highly influence the quality of education in as significant a way as unions, boards, and other groups! The article says:

"It’s been more than a week since the U.S. Department of Education sponsored International Summit on the Teaching Profession took place in New York City. For those of us who were observers, the conversation was valuable but the extended time spent sitting and listening challenged our ability to absorb all that was being exchanged. However, a few themes kept resurfacing:

* In countries with high performing students as measured by the PISA tests, the teaching profession is held in high esteem and attracts the strongest students to its preparation programs.
* Conversely, those same countries support a highly selective process for identifying potential teachers and accepting them into teacher preparation programs.
* Once on the job, teachers in high performing countries are given an average of 15 hours/week to confer with colleagues, observe others’ classrooms, and participate in professional learning activities.
* In countries where students score well on international tests, teachers’ salaries are on par with engineers, doctors, and other professionals.
* In all the countries that participated in the summit, teachers are unionized.

In countries where student achievement is high, teachers are given a great deal of autonomy to deliver instruction in ways that reach students with a variety of learning styles. Further, this autonomy is important to teachers and a mark of their professionalism. Even in countries with strong central education departments and national goals and standards, schools and teachers are free to craft the instructional support in ways that fit their individual teaching styles while meeting the needs of the students with whom they work.

The following countries sent representatives to participate in the conversation with US educators and policymakers:

Finland, Norway, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, Estonia, Slovenia, Sweden, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan

While simultaneous translation was provided for Brazil, China, and Japan, the other education ministers delivered their reports and remarks in near perfect English….humbling to those of us who aren’t multi-lingual. The real test of impact from this summit (a proposal was made by U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, that it become an annual event held around the world), will be the extent to which we act on what we heard. This will require a collaborative effort from all those present and the educators they represent and a commitment to respectful dialogue to determine the difficult but necessary changes the U.S. education system needs to make to reach the ranks of “high performing” countries."


To me this is a list not just of factors that make education effective in these countries, but also a list of all the ways we could work to make public education work better here. What if teachers were paid more? More people would teach! This also might lead to a higher caliber of teacher, as many good teachers leave the profession due to a lack of professional recognition and compensation. Imagine if teachers were held in the same esteem, and paid the same salary range, as engineers and doctors? More people would want to teach, so enter the highly selective teacher preparation programs. Additionally, I cannot imagine what teaching would be like if I had 15 hours of collaboration time each week! This is a phenomenal amount of time dedicated to continued development and improvement in instruction, whereas I often feel that if I desire to do that kind of work, it must happen on my own time, such as giving up prep periods or spending vacation time working on training and professional development.

This was an enlightening read, and highlighted some of the key differences that I've been feeling for some time now. I hope we can take some lessons from these successful countries.

Toes in the Water

After reading Bill Ferriter's "Taking the Digital Plunge" I had the opportunity to reflect on my own immersion in the digital world. I have a Facebook account. I have two blogs - this, and a half-hearted one on my half-hearted experience with being a vegetarian. I own a laptop, desktop, iPod, iPad, cell phone, XBox, and Wii. I use a digital projector, almost daily. I grade online, email students, parents, and co-workers, and search for images and ideas on a daily basis. I check the weather online, see news updates, and have replaced my stacks of books on my nightstand with a slimmer, neater, digital library. I have gone digital, but am I plunging? Or am I sitting in the shallow end of the pool dunking my toes?

While I have all the tools and use them frequently, I am not entirely sure that I have plunged into the digital world. Granted, ten years ago, much of what I do would be foreign to think about. Grading online? Instant access to my gradebook by parents and students? Downloading texts, movies, music, and shows? These are all very new, and very useful technologies. What Bill Ferriter got me thinking about is something we have been discussing since the first week - though I am using this new digital world, I am still largely doing old things in new ways.

Mr. Ferriter talked about his use of technology. He has students use VoiceThread to have conversations online about course content. He links to educators in countries all over the world, and encourages his students to link to students in other countries to get use to the idea of working with someone half a world away. He follows blogs and shares with his students and co-workers what he learns from them. Bill has indeed plunged.

I think, however, it is a learning process. Crawling comes before walking. Doggie-paddling comes before swimming the backstroke. You have to get in the pool before you can even attempt to swim. At this point, I am happy to be in the pool and thinking about taking the first strokes of a swim. Maybe I'll flounder a bit, maybe my students will flounder around with me, but I don't think we'll go under, and I am pretty confident that through floundering we will grow more comfortable in the digital depths and eventually find ourselves swimming with confidence.

Al Gore, Meet Heidi Hayes Jacobs...

This week's reading united two of my true loves - sustainability and education. As a high school science teacher, sustainability is one of my major emphases, no matter the content area I am working in. Life science, physical, earth, or chemistry - sustainability of our planet and of ecosystems is a critical, overarching idea that can be and should be incorporated as much as possible.

So, in reading this week's assignment I was thrilled to see it included in a discussion of education as well! I see many parallels between the world of education and the study of natural resources, and it is refreshing to know I am not the only one. They can be analogous to each other, and can also assist in understanding one or the other. Hopefully we can learn solutions about both soon...

So, in the spirit of David Letterman (or Johnny Carson, really) here are my top five reasons why the planet's peril is similar to education today:

1) We are relying on old technology, or using new technology to do old things. Al Gore said it in "Inconvenient Truth" - old technology + old methods = predictable consequences. New technology + old methods = unforseen consequences. We can't keep doing the same old thing in the same old way, and we also can't try to do the same old thing but just do it with new tools. To really move ahead, we need to have new methods that correlate with our new tools.

2) There are things that we KNOW will work (solar, geothermal, year-long school, changing the daily schedule to meet kids' developmental needs, the metric system) but they cost so much so switch over to, we haven't done so. Our decision needs to be less of a quick-fix situation (keep doing what we're doing, just tweak it to make it work) and more of a long-term solution (pay now for what we know will pay off later).

3) The kids know it. Students know that school doesn't work the way it should - we've all seen motivation flag, they know that old-fashioned teaching doesn't prepare them for the world they live in now, never mind tomorrow. They know that giving them the new tools but only allowing them to do old-fashioned types of work doesn't really teach them what they need to know. They also know the global sustainability piece - that we've done major damage, perhaps irreparable although I certainly hope not, and something major must be done to try to maintain a sustainable planet for the future.

4) The frog example from Al Gore is perfect for either scenario. In the frog example, he explains that if you put a frog in normal temperature water, and then slowly crank it to boil, the frog won't jump out - it will boil to death. However, if you put it in boiling water, it will immediately jump out. People are the same way - we recognize a bad situation if we are first confronted with it. However, if things start out fine and slowly degrade, we are slow to recognize the danger. We won't jump out - we'll just sit there and cook ourselves. As Al Gore states, it's "important to rescue the frog!"

5) If you've seen the movie, there is a small cartoon clip about global warming. In the clip, the government's solution is to drop a giant ice cube in the ocean every so often to cool things off temporarily. Don't we have the same sort of educational ice cubes? Whether you think NCLB, Common Core, State Assessment Systems, Title I... there are government-designed fixes for problems without true examination of solving the problem. Throwing more money at something, or holding a very large stick and a nice little carrot are temporary fixes for a situation that needs a true solution.

Analogies aside, I am a major proponent for sustainability in global resources, and feel guilt when I accidentally throw away a paperclip, or take the less gas-conserving vehicle all the way to Bangor from Ellsworth. Applying this to education, I think sustainability should also be a focus - how can we conserve resources? How can we preserve students? How can we use better technology, better methods, and better systems to re-design a sustainable educational system? After all, someone has to rescue the frog!

Dan Pink and Drive

What I really enjoyed about Drive was how it was applicable on so many levels to so much more than simply education. First off, I am a mother, and with my three-year-old, I will say I am a mother who resorts to extrinsic rewards too often to get the desired behavior. From sticker charts to cookies, I try to reinforce positive behavior with rewards. While it works sometimes, this is a short term solution. Internally I knew this, but reading Drive helped me to see some of the deeper reasons for lessening the rewards and instead focusing on how to create an intrinsic desire for behaving in my child. Now, if I ever figure that out I will write my own book and retire wealthy, but in the meantime, it is an attempt worth making.

I also enjoyed the book because of the many parallels to science. For example, the analogy of how the x behavior is like coal, and type I is like the sun. Type x, the traditional view of behavior, is old. We've gotten our use, it's no longer very effective, and it pollutes the system. Just like coal. Type I on the other hand has been around since day one. We have simple forgotten how to harness its energy and utilize it, but if we remember, it could change everything. Cleaner, more efficient, renewable. Type I behavior is to solar as type x is to coal.

Drive, in so many ways hit home with current issues in education. We talk in circles about how to motivate students. We ask ourselves how we can get them to do better. We want to meet standards, make AYP, cover more, teach better, and do it all yesterday. What I got from Drive is that these aren't new questions. We are approaching old problems in old ways and getting the same results we always have, then scrsrchg our heads and asking why. If we are truly going to have education reform, we need to think in new and creative ways, and ask new questions. How can we treat students as more than cogs, and carry this over to teachers as well? How can we make behavior and success rewards in themselves? How can we educate today for the world of tomorrow, without knowing what it holds? It's not impossible, some schools have found a way. They went scared to innovate and think outside the box, and as a result have programs and curriculum that are meaningful and rich. It takes some bold moves to try new things, but if we don't we are going to run out of fuel. Coal is a
Limited resource.

An Extra Post about a Really Cool School!

As I was watching a PBS video about green design with my AP students last week, we discovered a very interesting school in New Jersey called the Willow School. A pre-k to 8th grade day school, the building itself emphasizes so many elements of the curriculum design I wrote about for class. The building itself teaches, and so many lessons are linked to the thought process that went into the green design and thoughtful environmental development of the school itself! I decided to explore a bit further, and discovered the school website (http://www.willowschool.org/index.htm) give many more details about the philosophy and mission of the school.

While stuck embracing traditional scheduling and a typical school-year calendar, in many other ways this school struck home with me. The school looks at creativity, interdisciplinary learning, the joy of learning, academic excellence, and mastery of the English language as its primary goals. How nice that a school wants students to be desirous of knowledge! One of the focal points is an understanding of place, and the school works to foster natural curiosity as a cornerstone to learning. As a science geek, I relished that of the three emphasized curriculum focal points, ecology was one! I honestly couldn't stop reading.

As we work on looking at innovative schools and ways to make curriculum more relevant, authentic, and lasting, I really think this is one great model of how it can be done. I only wish I lived closer, both for myself and for my daughter!

Running Curriculum Questions

The question I am choosing to investigate this week is one that I have often wondered about - who has decided what information should be included in the standards or MLRs? When looking at various standards, such as my favorite science standard, that all students should be able to measure interstellar distances, I often wonder, who wrote this? Who really thinks that measuring interstellar distances, or being able to identify taxonomic levels of an organism from domain to species, is an essential science skill? If I were in charge.... (so many statements begin this way!) ...things would be more straightforward!

So... where did these MLR's come from? Here's what I discovered. In 1984, the Education Reform Act took place, and Maine decided to address the reform by defining Maine's Common Core of Learning , published in 1990. This was intended to be a vision of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that Maine students should develop. In 1993 the State Board of Ed developed a Task Force on learning results, and it was this task force that developed the 1997 Learning Results.

So, who was on the task force? After quite a bit of investigation, I have found out that the task force was quite large. It included individuals from the Great Maine Schools project, school superintendents, CEOs, university trustees, university professors, business owners, and school leaders including principals. Once the Learning Results were developed, it them went to a Critical Review Committee, that included many groups. The Maine Parent Teacher Association, MPA, Maine Children's Alliance, Maine Math and Science Alliance, MAMLE, Maine Teacher of the Year Association, Maine Association of School Health Coordinators, Maine Educators, Champion Paper, UNUM, and the UMaine Board of Trustees are some of the many groups charged with review and revision of the Learning Results.