Recently I was at a workshop with many adults who work in schools. Several high school kids who went to school in the district were also participating as assistant facilitators. We completed a "continuum" activity. You've probably done one of these before. One side of the room is labeled strongly disagree and the other is labeled strongly agree. The facilitator posts statements, and you move to the side of the room (or the middle) depending upon whether you agree or disagree with the statement. One of the statements was: "Our school system is racist, classist, sexist, heterosexist and xenophobic." I moved over to the strongly agree side, along with one other adult (not coincidentally, she worked with kids who've been removed from traditional school settings due to behavior.) Almost all the kids moved to strongly agree as well. This left most of the adults on the disagree side. One of the students said to the group: "We're the kids. We're the ones living it and that's how we see it." However, the adults didn't see themselves as racist, classist, sexist... and so they didn't see the system they were part of as being those things. Research tells us that the kids are right. Most folks in education know that Black boys are 3 times more likely to be suspended than White boys, but fewer know that the disparity is even greater for Black girls -- they are SIX times more likely to be suspended. Even well-meaning adults often believe that these facts are due to something in the children -- that because they are poor, or hungry, or living with trauma they act out more, hence they are suspended more often. These people don't believe the situation is right, but they also don't see themselves in the equation (or if they do, they see themselves as benign helpers.) New research, however, shows us that it's not the kids. It's how we see the kids. (The research is new, but I think it will result in a big DUH from a lot of people). The study published in Psychological Science, showed that teachers rated hypothetical students' behavior as more troubling if the imaginary kid had a typically Black name versus a typically White name. The behaviors were exactly the same. This echoes similar research related to grading, professional experiences, etc. And we can see links to today's current climate of police brutality toward Black men; it suggests that unconscious bias causes us to view behavior by Black people as more serious and dangerous than that of White people, despite evidence to the contrary. Again, this is a big DUH to a lot of people, including those kids I met at the workshop who are living with that bias every day.
Source: mathybeagle.com
There are no easy answers, but I think that we owe it to these kids to start admitting that the system is biased and that we are contributing to it. Our current cultural norms make it taboo to admit that we have biases of any kind. Calling out others' biases is similarly taboo. I've been lucky to work in a place where we are able to talk openly about race, racism, classism ... anything you can put an -ism on. It can feel hurtful and shameful when we admit that we aren't the people we think we are. The kids have already seen behind the curtain, though. And they are ready for us to come out.
Lately, there have been a lot - A LOT -- of thoughts about standardized testing in my Facebook and Twitter feeds. I get a couple of education briefing emails daily, and they are also chock-full of talk about testing. Most of the talk is dichotomized: Tests = good. Tests = bad. I reject the notion that I have to be unequivocally for or against standardized testing. As an education advocate and teacher coach, I believe that intellectual complexity, while not part of the American political discourse, should be something that we strive for. This means that if we are to find the best path for our kids, we have to be able to hold complicated ideas in our minds (as someone who is most familiar with people in education reform, I find that most of them actually do hold these sort of nuanced positions, but are mischaracterized by the opposing side, and I'm sure it goes the opposite way as well.) We can believe that testing, as currently practiced, is biased WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY believing that right now, it is an important tool for equity. If you look into the history of intelligence testing, you will find that it is deeply linked to the eugenics movement, to attempts at sorting people into those who deserve power and those who don't. We know that many standardized tests are biased - I recently read an SAT question in which the test taker was asked to edit a passage about skiing, which was really challenging if you couldn't picture what was happening in the passage. I mean, how many of us have the means or opportunity to go skiing regularly? Standardized test questions are often raced and classed to focus on background knowledge that is more commonly held by White, middle class kids (or even upper middle class - per the skiing example). However, such tests are currently an important tool for uncovering the faults in our education system. In the state of Texas, where I work, the tests are minimum standards tests, which means that they test a fairly basic set of reading and math skills. If most kids are not passing them, it means that we are not doing our basic job as educators, and if there are gaps by race, class, language status, that means that we are failing children based upon those factors. Do the tests need to be improved? Yes. But do they give us important information about the continued racism and classism in our school systems? Yes. We can believe that poverty needs to be addressed in our society WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY believing in the abilities of all children to succeed in school. One of the most specious arguments leveled against ed reformers is that they don't take poverty into account when asserting that children from low-income neighborhoods can be successful. Anti-reformers charge that until poverty is solved and children are food secure, have medical care, etc. we can't expect kids to do well. This is just false. I know it is because I've been in the classrooms where kids from low-income families are excelling (I estimate that I've been in several hundred classrooms by this point in my career). These classrooms are taught by a range of teachers - new in the profession, years in the profession. Traditionally trained and alternatively certified. They have been in schools that have huge numbers of resources, and schools that have very few. The common denominator is that they believe their kids can do it - more than that, that they believe students from low-income communities are uniquely positioned to be the leaders of tomorrow. All of these teachers who are leading kids to excel would love it if a range of social supports were put in place for their students. In particular, in my community, mental health care is the hardest to find. However, this doesn't stop these teachers from finding ways to reach their students, to communicate care, and to teach rigorous curriculum. We can see the negatives of a "testing culture" WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY recognizing that people create the culture, not tests. People, it's real that teachers and kids are feeling way too much pressure around testing. As a teacher coach, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to help teachers navigate relationships with administrators who want to see test prep, test prep, and more test prep. These administrators are feeling pressure from their bosses. Through all of this, I coach teachers to find a way to do what is best for kids, which is to teach a rich, rigorous curriculum that goes way beyond test strategies. Often, teachers who are committed to this idea find themselves practicing what Martin Luther King, Jr. defined as creative maladjustment. This means that they find ways to do what they know is right for kids, while doing it in ways that, honestly, keep them out of trouble in this testing culture. They do this because they believe in kids and families, and they know that keeping their jobs is the best way to be there for those kids and families. It's these classrooms where kids excel, not the ones where kids are just learning testing strategies. Anyone who argues that "the test made me do it" in regard to teaching a low-rigor curriculum is just wrong. It's how we approach the tests in our schools that results in the crazy culture, not the tests (but since tests can't talk back, they make good scapegoats.) We can believe in the power and wisdom of parents. I'm not going to qualify that one. We need to listen to parents, and not all parents have the same interests. Unfortunately, the parents who are heard most often are not people of color or people from low-income communities. While many White, upper middle class parents talk about opting their kiddos out of standardized assessments (which I totally understand), we have to realize that being able to make that choice comes from a place of privilege. If you can opt your child out of an exam, you aren't counting on a scholarship or a magnet school acceptance that results from a test score. You aren't worried that one act of opting out could hurt your child's entire future. Most of the parents I work with want their kids to do well in exams because they know that these are door openers for their kiddos. Is it fair that so much rides on these tests? No. But it does. Parents want us in the education field to do better for their children, and that includes helping them to excel on these types of standardized tests. As a teacher, I hated testing. I won't lie about that. My students did well AND I taught them a curriculum that involved social studies simulations of the Oregon Trail, class-written plays, writing digital books, reading Narnia books. You might say: hey, you must have had a ton of resources. Nope. When I started teaching I had a case of phonics readers from the 70's and a box full of dittos and silverfish that my predecessor left behind. I created almost everything we had, or slowly acquired it over time (this was before Donors Choose allowed teachers to easily get donations). My students were almost all English language learners and many came in several years behind -- most of the classrooms I currently coach have similar demographics. I would have loved it if I didn't have to worry about a standardized test, that my students didn't have to sit for days, bubbling in answer books with their No. 2 pencils. However, I knew that it was critical both to their futures and to my ability to gauge whether I was doing right by them. When their parents showed up at the classroom door, asking: "Did she pass?" I had to be able to say yes. And if the answer wasn't yes, I had to tell them what I was going to do to change my practice and help their kiddo succeed in order to go to the next grade prepared. Until we find a better way of determining whether we are doing right by kids in our schools, such tests are going to be necessary. I'm worried that current anti-testing movements are going to turn back the clock to a time when we pretended that everything was OK in our schools. Yet, I still want to find that better way. It's complicated.
The new school year is almost upon us. This year, I think it's time to start a revolution. We need to resurrect said.
See that ghost rising from the grave? That's Said. We're bringing him back.
In classrooms all over America, teachers create posters, decorated with gravestones, memorializing the word said. "Said is dead," they say, and urge kiddos to use other words as dialogue tags. Writing teachers plan lessons dedicated to the idea that "good writers use more interesting words than said to let us know how characters are speaking." They have funerals for said and ban the word from their classrooms. The problem is that this is wrong. Said is dead has become such conventional wisdom that teachers actually get upset when I've tried to suggest otherwise. Google "said is dead" and you'll get hundreds of hits for posters, lesson plans, and charts you can use in your classroom. For a long time I figured that this was a battle that wasn't worth fighting. Teachers I respect and admire tell their students that said is dead. As someone who writes teacher trainings, I've found that this constantly crops up in lessons, but it's hardly the biggest fish to fry when it comes to writing instruction. This morning I was scrolling through Pinterest and saw an example poster that a teacher might use in class, listing other words that could be used instead of said. "Great poster!" was written in the comments. I was filled with a white-hot rage. I decided it was time to speak out. The Case For Said Contemporary authors rarely use dialogue tags other than said or asked. It's OK if you don't believe me. Go to your bookshelf and open to random pages in some of your favorite books. Likely, you will see that almost all of the dialogue tags are said or asked (or variants thereof). I just did so, and opened up To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Atonement, and Faithful Place, by Tana French. Out of thirty or so dialogue tags, two were anything other than "said" or "asked". One was "boomed" and the other was "called."
See. This sounds silly. None of these are necessary.
Why is this so? The purpose of dialogue tags is to let readers know who is speaking when the situation might be ambiguous. In these cases, So-and-so said is all that's required. Our brains usually register the name of the character, but don't linger on the word said. Many teachers tell students that we shouldn't use said because it's boring, but it's not boring because our brain doesn't really notice it. It's more like punctuation. If periods and commas aren't boring, neither is said. When we use other dialogue tags, we create sort of a hitch in the smooth reading that we want our readers to be doing. By telling students not to use said, we're forcing them to conform to rules that actually make them sound like amateur hacks. The Case Against Exclaimed, Snuffled, Chortled, Screamed The secondary purpose of dialogue tags is to tell readers how the words are being said. Ha-ha! you might be thinking. That's when we use our other, interesting dialogue tags!
Yes, true. There's a caveat here. These should only be used if the way the character is saying the words contradicts the emphasis or meaning the reader would infer. Otherwise, most "interesting" dialogue tags are redundant or silly. Let's look at some examples. "Let her go," he commanded. Commanded is redundant, because "Let her go" is already a command. "It's my birthday!" Grace exclaimed. Again, redundant. The exclamation point implies exclaiming. "It was all part of my plan," he snickered. Can you really "snicker" words? Go ahead. Try it. This just sounds silly. To snicker means to "give a half-suppressed laugh." You can't snicker words. Likewise, you cannot sneer, laugh, or chuckle words. "You stole my baby," she whispered. Now, here's a case where you might actually use this dialogue tag. If someone's baby was stolen, you might infer that she would be wailing or screaming or crying. But she's whispering. This provides a more complete picture of what's happening in the scene, and the dialogue tag is necessary because most of us wouldn't imagine her speaking in that way.
Double whammy! Using a redundant dialogue tag with a redundant adverb.
What we should teach instead: If said isn't dead, what do we teach kids about dialogue instead? I think we should be teaching them three considerations: 1) When you write dialogue, choose meaningful words that tell the reader something important. Choose punctuation carefully as well. If you choose your words and punctuation carefully, the reader should be able to hear how the character is speaking. 2) Use a dialogue tag to show the reader who is speaking. It's only necessary if the reader might be confused about who is speaking. Use said almost exclusively. 3) If the character is speaking in a way that is unexpected, then you might use a tag other than said. Why this matters: This might seem like something trivial to blog about at length. However, there are a few reasons why I think this is important: First, and most importantly, we should strive to teach children things that are correct and true. It doesn't matter that funerals for the word said are fun, if we're encouraging students to write in ways that are not skillful. (Trust me, there are lots of overused words that deserve funerals.) Truth matters. It's easy to forget that in teaching, but we should all be vigilant that our kids are learning things that are critical and truthful. Second, we undermine our credibility when we teach students things that are obviously untrue. Any child who reads a lot is going to realize that "good writers" use the word said all the time. I did by the time I was in high school. When I asked my teachers about it, they fumbled for answers and couldn't explain. I didn't see them as trustworthy anymore, and so I didn't accept feedback on my writing from them that might have actually been valid. Third, teaching kids not to use said is indicative of a larger problem with writing instruction in general: we tell kids that we are teaching them what "good writers" do, but we are actually teaching them what "good writing students" do. We default to conventional wisdom about writing because we're not writing or reading enough ourselves. To be good writing teachers, we have to truly understand what real authors do. We have to read, write, and think if we want our students to do so. We can't just look on the internet for cute lessons, or follow a curriculum that gives "rules" for writing that are based on conventional wisdom. If we write, we'll help our students to be better writers. Last, we just don't want this to happen: When I was a kid, I was a zealous reader. I mean, I read a ton. I loved old-fashioned books like The Five Little Peppers, Little Women, and Little House on the Prairie. Apparently, I would read anything with "little" in the title. Of course, my teachers taught me that said was dead, and I tried to find other, clever dialogue tags in the books I was reading. One day, I found an unusual one that I knew was going to make my teacher proud. I added it to my writing and showed my mom my homework. She blanched. "What's wrong?" I said. "Honey, you just can't say that." "Why not? It was in the book I was reading." "Honey, we don't use the word ejaculate to mean exclaim anymore. It means something else now." Lesson learned.
This summer, my grandmother passed away. It's likely that she would disagree with a lot of what I'm about to say, but she's a big reason that I write it.
My grandmother in her family passport picture, taken before the family moved to Guatemala.
My grandmother's mother was Russian and her father was of Spanish heritage; his family lived in Guatemala. When my grandmother was small, her parents took the entire family to Guatemala to live with her father's family. My great-grandmother had a gift for languages, and though Russian was her native language, she spoke English and Spanish. Of course, in Guatemala, the whole family spoke Spanish. I thought of my grandmother today as I was reading a short article a friend posted on Facebook, about how English language learners in Texas are segregated in some of the poorest schools. Silly me, I scanned down and read the comments. I should never, ever read the comments. Instead of interpreting the article as a story of the injustice of segregation, many saw it as an opportunity to comment on the existence of bilingual education. The comments went like this: "Kids need to learn English. This is America." "Bilingual education holds kids back. It doesn't prepare kids for success in America." "Did you know that kids in bilingual education only learn a little bit of English at first? They should be immersed in it!" "When I was a kid, I was punished for speaking Spanish. I turned out fine."
You can practically hear the huffs of outrage coming through the computer. And I thought of my grandmother because she often said these same sorts of things. "I learned English!" she would exclaim. "Why can't they [usually she was referring to recent immigrants in her California town] learn English?" She would then equate not learning English to all kinds of ills: drunk driving, the welfare state, etc. One time she shook her finger at me and almost shouted: "The problem with you liberals is that you just don't think!" Probably, the problem with us liberals is that we think too much and believe that facts will win the day. So of course, I want to respond to those internet comments. Myth #1: "Kids need to learn English. This is America." Umm... OK... There's an assumption that English is somehow the official language of America. But America has no official language. If we wanted to go with the native language, we would have to choose an indigenous language, but many of them have been lost, or nearly so - due largely to the systematic destruction of those languages through English-only schooling. Myth #2: "Bilingual education holds kids back. It doesn't prepare kids for success in America." The argument here is that if kids are educated in Spanish - the most common language of bilingual programs -- they are being prepared for low-wage careers of the type we usually associate with recent immigrants. There's so much wrong with this, it's hard to know where to begin. A) this assumes that the only possible use of Spanish is in low-wage jobs. However, Spanish is one of the most-spoken languages in the world, as is English. Being bilingual in two of the world's most commonly-spoken languages can only add to one's earning power. B) It also assumes that one will somehow be less successful in school if they are taught in their first language. But there's plenty of research that shows when children learn in their first language, they ultimately do better in school. Why? Well... "When we use the first language to teach subject matter, we give children knowledge, and this knowledge helps make the English children hear and read more comprehensible. A limited-English proficient child who knows her math, for example, thanks to math instruction in her primary language, will understand more in an English-language medium math class than a child without a good background in math. This results in better achievement in math and more English language development." - Stephen Krashen C) Bilingual education is actually desired by many high-income parents, because they know we live in a global - not simply national - society. They put their children in programs to learn Mandarin, French, and, yes, Spanish, because educated parents know that being bilingual is a benefit in many ways. Myth #3: "Did you know that kids in bilingual education only learn a little bit of English at first? They should be immersed in it!" There are many models of bilingual education, and they involve learning different amounts of the target language at different times. However, due to point (B) above, many of them develop knowledge in the child's native language at first. I will say, the quality of bilingual program varies. If the program isn't strong, then the transition to English is often rocky. If a school isn't high-quality, however, it's likely that being immersed in English would also cause problems due to the general quality of the school itself. Myth #5 "When I was a kid, I was punished for speaking Spanish. I turned out fine." It's likely that my grandmother would have said (or did say) something like this. But I really wonder -- can losing your language and taking on another leave one unscarred? Can you really be "fine"? My grandmother was about 5 when she left Guatemala and came back to the U.S. Because her father did not come with the family when they returned to the U.S., she and her sister were temporarily placed in an orphanage while her mother got back on her feet. The sisters punished them if they spoke Spanish to each other. In that situation, wouldn't you bury some of the pain, try to adapt as quickly as possible? Wouldn't you convince yourself that it was better to learn English, when everyone around you was telling you that the language of your family was wrong, was punishable? And while most children may not be punished for using their first language today, they are told in hundreds of tiny ways that their language is not good enough. As an adult, as I've learned more about my family history, I've tried to reclaim some of what was lost - trying (badly) to learn Spanish, to ensure that the children I work with understand the beauty and advantage of being bilingual. I don't want any child to feel like she can't talk to her sister, to feel that she has to lose her language to gain a new one. We have to do better in our bilingual programs - there are plenty that aren't great. But we can't let myths dictate how our children experience their language. School can be a place where children grow, or a place where they lose - language, identity, history. We have a long way to go before every child can truly flourish in our schools, but respecting language and identity - and their place in learning - is a good place to start.
If you haven't read Part 1, you might want to start there or this might not make much sense. One of my favorite quotes is a simple two words, repeated. "We rise... we rise." It's said as a kind of prayer by Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's gorgeous film, The New World. To me, those words encapsulate what the work of social justice is all about: we rise. Not "I rise." Without others, we cannot lift ourselves from our mistakes and tragedies. These words echoed in my head as I spent the day, a couple of weeks ago, with the men of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (a.k.a. PEP). It came at the end of that terrible week - the bombings in Boston, the explosion in West, the death of the gun control bill in Congress. I think many of us who were there that day were feeling lost. Inside the walls of the PEP classroom, though, joy was overflowing. The word "love" was thrown around freely. Men - big, tattooed, incarcerated men - danced. It was like nothing I had ever seen. In my work, we say that the highest level of classroom culture is "passionate, urgent, joyful and caring." I've been in very few classrooms that exemplified this kind of culture, but PEP certainly did. As I spoke with the men, they talked of who they were when they entered the program: reclusive, closed off, selfish. They had gone through character assessments from the other men, had been charged with transforming themselves and held accountable by their fellow participants. Not one man that I met could be described as reclusive. They greeted us with cheers, smiles, handshakes. I realize this all sounds naive, as if I'm ascribing some magic to what I saw, or forgetting what these men did. I assure you, forgetting was impossible; they were totally honest about the actions that had led them to prison. They talked about the families back home, not knowing if they would be welcomed back. One man spoke of his deepest desire: to have a paying job - any job. He had never had one before. I had a lot of swirling thoughts and realizations that day, but the one I keep coming back to is this: transformation happens in community. Most people in society would consider prisoners to be untrustworthy, dangerous, sick. Many of the men I talked to admitted that they had been those things before. But because of the community they had formed, the love of others, the love of the volunteers, they were rising together. Not everyone would make it to the summit. A few would re-offend, end up behind bars again... but more would not. That seems like everything we want as a society - for the broken to feel whole, for the lost to be found, for the sick to be well. Now that I have seen PEP, my work in education has a new urgency. Because, as I mentioned, most of the schools I visit are more like traditional prisons than they are like PEP. But if the men of PEP can rise together, then we have no excuse for not lifting our children - no matter how poor, no matter the color of their skin, no matter what country they came from - to heights that are unimaginable. And I, as a college-educated, privileged White person, cannot rise if anyone - be she prisoner or child, immigrant or homeless -- doesn't rise with me. We rise... We rise.
"What's going to happen next that will totally transform the way I think about the world?" asked my friend Melissa, turning to me. "I have no idea," I said. I imagine that I was grinning ear to ear. We were sitting in a large classroom in a prison north of Houston, as guests of a remarkable group called the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (a.k.a. PEP). As Melissa said, over the course of a few hours, we had been changed by what we had experienced. The past couple of years, I've been listening to my father's stories of his visits to see my stepbrother, who is currently incarcerated. My family is proof that any family can be impacted by our country's criminal justice system, but the facts are: you're much more likely to be impacted if you are a) a person of color; b) poor; c) under-educated; d) all of the above (or mentally ill, addicted to drugs... any weakness that might have brought you favor in the eyes of Christ brings you to a cellblock in America). In our schizophrenic "Christian" nation, we espouse the belief that people can change and that redemption is possible, while at the same time refusing to spend money on justice that restores people who have committed crimes. As I've listened to my father's descriptions of his visits to prison, I've become more and more uncomfortable. You see, education is "my" issue. While I care about most progressive causes, I devote my life to educational justice. What I began to realize, as I listened to my father, is that schools that serve poor children function much more like prisons than they do like the colleges or businesses in which we hope our kids will find a place. Our schools, it seems, are often training children for prison. I'll give an example: the "bubble in the mouth." You may not be familiar with this term unless you teach young children in primarily low-income neighborhoods. In many schools, children as young as four are expected to walk silently down the halls of their school. Because this is difficult for exuberant kiddos to maintain, they are told to hold a "bubble in their mouth." They puff out their cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie, seal their lips tight, and go. Try it. It's uncomfortable. It's hard to pull off for more than thirty seconds or so. If upper-middle-class, White children were asked to hold a bubble in their mouths, many parents would call b.s. at best; abuse at worst. Yet this is common practice in many preschools that serve low-income children. I thought of this the day I visited the prison with Melissa and some of the teachers with whom we work. I saw men walking silently down a cinder block hall that had been divided by a tape line. It looked just like some of the schools where I coach teachers. The path from classroom to courtroom seemed clear. Inside the walls of the PEP classroom, though, things were different. There was joy, there was community... there was love. The idea of PEP is simple: men from Texas prisons who are within three years of release apply to the program, and those who are accepted are taught business skills. The program culminates in writing a business plan - the day we visited, we were giving feedback on the draft plans. The program is wildly successful. Men who go through the program have a dramatically lower recidivism rate than the general prison population. Sure... you're saying to yourself. I bet they pick the guys who are least likely to re-offend. I bet guys who will fill out an application are probably less likely to re-offend anyway. Maybe. But when we were at PEP, more than one guy said he applied for reasons other than wanting to be an entrepreneur. Air conditioning was a big theme in the reasons why the men wanted to do PEP. Yet a few months into the program, they were fully bought in, part of the PEP community. It didn't seem like there was anything truly different about the men of PEP... until there was. All of this is preamble. This is here to set up the post I've been trying to write for a couple of weeks, the post that describes what I learned that "transformed everything I know about the world." I know that nothing I write will really represent the experience I had. Yet this is what we try to do, we idiots who call ourselves writers. We try to describe the indescribable. Coming up... Part 2.
Please check out Let It Rain... Close the Gap, especially my friends in Washington. It's a new blog (with a few kinks to work out, admittedly) meant to counter the current anti-reform climate in Seattle schools. We've all got to take part in a civil and thoughtful debate about these issues, rather than simply berating one another. Even though reformers and anti-reformers get very nasty with one another, in the end, we're all trying to make a better world for kids.
I am sitting here in the Pocket House ("an urban cabin in Portland's back yard" - more on that definitely to come) and probably just have a few moments before being inundated with babies who are starting to wake at this moment.
This weekend in Washington D.C. is the Save Our Schools March, a march by teachers and parents who want to turn back the tide of trends in education reform (accountability, school choice, etc.). I'm not going to explain why I think they are off base, because that's a much longer rant than I have time for. However, yesterday on the plane I was thinking about how one problem - the problem of teachers being laid off due to the recession - might be somewhat mitigated.
I was sitting next to a first-grade teacher from Minnesota who was also very environmentally-minded. She teaches in a small school district where they had retro-fitted their schools to produce less trash and use less energy. One of the main steps they took was regulating the temperature in the schools. And in one quarter, they saved $60,000! For their little district of around 6 schools, that could be three teachers' salaries.
For years I've been saying that in my school district, if they turned the temp up a few degrees, they could save a LOT of money. They kept the school so cold during Houston's spring and fall, and during summer school, that students wore jackets inside. So just think, a few of the teachers they laid off this year might have been saved - and they would have been helping the environment.
I don't think this is the solution to the economic problems in school districts, but I do think that leveraging environmental solutions could make a big difference throughout the government. Not only that, but JOBS would be created. No, we won't solve our economic crisis simply through the green sector, but we have to start thinking past our current mindsets if we're going to get out of this mess.
I know when I started this blog I promised to keep the tone light and fun. And I know that just recently I wrote about some heavy stuff. But we're at a critical time in American history, and I just had to address it. I will try to address it with a calm and even-handed demeanor. No gnashing of teeth. No throwing crockery.
Catfish, you may be wondering, what critical time in history? The critical bedbug situation in New York city, clearly the epicenter of the universe, considering the number of times bedbugs have been mentioned in the national media? The critical possibility that Delaware will elect a government official who dabbled in witchcraft?!? The season premier of Grey's Anatomy?
Yes, those are all important. But I'm talking about the critical opportunity we have to address education inequity.
Ed reform is hot right now. Oprah spent TWO shows this week talking about it. Waiting For Superman is poised to be the hottest documentary since An Inconvenient Truth made PowerPoint sexy. The Washington D.C. mayoral election was heavily-influenced by education issues (although anti-reform backlash seems to have won the day).
We have the chance to seize this opportunity and harness our outrage for good. Or we can make excuses and maintain the status quo.
I don't talk a lot about ed reform on this blog, because I spend about 80% of my time thinking about it, and this blog is meant to be an outlet from that. My daily work, my friendships, my thoughts when my head hits the pillow at night -- they all revolve around the central question of: How can we make good on the audacious promise our country has made, that every child will get an education that will enrich their lives and make democracy work?
School segregation, ca. 1953. In large part, segregation still exists although it is no longer the law. Just ask my seven-year-old students, who noticed it whenever we went somewhere with kids from other schools.
Because this is so important to me, this might be one of the most personal (and longest -- sorry about that, but I promise to try to be entertaining if you read it all!) posts I've written. That being said, I know that not all of you will agree with me. That's OK. If you don't agree, just know that this is definitely based on lots of thinking and research, and I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings or disparage the work of great teachers. I think that there is a systems problem that is much larger than the individuals involved, and that in many ways all of us who work with schools are caught in that system. Most of us agree that the system isn't great, we just don't agree on the solutions.
Almost every time a suggestion is made to change the status quo, excuses are made about why things just can't change. (In case you're wondering how bad the status quo really is, its creating huge gaps in achievement between students of different races, ethnicities, and social classes. I'm not going to go into the details here. If you want to know more, click here for an overview of the achievement gap and here for an eye-opening discussion of the economic impact of the achievement gap). Read any education article on the web that proposes that things aren't OK right now, scroll down to the comments, and you'll find comment after comment filled with excuses about why it would be nice to do better, but we just can't right now, and its offensive to suggest otherwise.
(I mean, let's just ignore the fact that it's offensive that fourth graders in low-income communities are 2-3 years behind their higher-income peers, which means they are basically learning a half-year's worth of material every year ... wait, I was going to try to remain calm).
A White school, ca. 1953. Looks a little more pleasant than the photo above, huh? You often see the same disparities in school resources today. The best teachers make a difference even without those resources.
Many of my colleagues in ed reform use the phrase "no excuses" to spur kids to excellence. Well, if fifth graders can go about their business without making excuses, then I think we adults can. So I wanted to just lay out what some of the excuses are, and what the research, and my experience as a teacher in low-income communities, have taught me.
First, a quick outline of the pro-ed-reform stance, as represented on Oprah and by reformers like the divisive Michelle Rhee.
1. Quality teaching matters more than almost any other factor in whether students learn or not. Therefore, our current system, in which low-quality teaching is allowed to continue, is untenable. The quality of teaching must be improved.
2. Teachers’ unions are currently protecting a status quo in which bad teachers are allowed to retain their jobs for years, potentially harming generations of kids.
Ed reformers want one simple (ha ha ha) thing: a good teacher in every classroom. OK. This is a grindingly complex issue. It will be difficult no matter what. But there is a large group of folks, a lot of them teachers and politicians, who have a list of excuses why we can't do it -- even though in many places, in both traditional public and charter schools, we are doing it. The excuses are holding us back, and we don't need that because IT'S ALREADY GOING TO BE HARD.
So here are the excuses I've heard most often about why educational inequity just can't change right now. This list of excuses is based on my very unscientific reading of the responses that pop up in the media. There are lots more, but these seem to be the big kahunas -- the things that get repeated over and over.
The Excuses (and a few thoughts in response)
Excuse: I can’t teach these kids if their parents don’t care or take responsibility. Parents in this (insert: neighborhood, generation, school, ethnic group) just don't care.
Response: I always wonder if teachers and politicians who make this excuse talk to a lot of parents. I taught in a neighborhood in Houston that, if you didn't look below the surface, would probably fit a lot of your stereotypes of a low-income neighborhood. That's if you didn't look further. If you actually talked to the parents -- they all wanted their kids to do well, to go to college, to do their homework. Desperately, most of them wanted their kids to do well enough to go to the "unacceptable"-rated middle school other than the one down the street, and by the hard work of our fifth grade teachers, a lot of kids ended up going to magnets, charters, and private schools on scholarship. Without the effort of those teachers, many these parents who cared would have been stymied by a system that was byzantine for someone who might not be educated or speak English. But don't take my little anecdote as evidence: research shows that even more parents of African-American and Hispanic children view college as essential to their children's success than White parents do. As teachers, particularly if we work in low-income communities, we need to find ways to form relationships in partnership with parents to help kids achieve. Are there some parents who are really, really difficult to work with? Yes, of course. Just like there are some teachers who are. But that isn't the norm.
Excuse:I can’t teach these kids if they don’t care themselves.
Response: As someone who coaches teachers, I've probably walked into hundreds of classrooms by now, almost all of them in classes filled with low-income, minority students. I'm a White lady in high heels. I imagine, to most of the kids in these classes, I look like an outsider. And yet, I've never gone into a class and seen kids who didn't want to learn. I have walked into classes where kids weren't learning, either because the lesson was confusing or boring or too hard. In that case, kids sometimes act up (just like adults do when they are bored and frustrated). But most of the time, they are fighting to understand. Big high school boys who have never met me before will ask this outsider, "Can you explain this? I don't understand." That takes a lot of humility for a teenager (remember being a teenager? You don't want to ask an adult anything much less admit that you don't understand something). This shows me that these kids care enough to put their pride aside and grasp at their own learning. But often, when we're the teacher at the front of the room (I know because I've been there) we fail to see this because we know the kids so well and are so wrapped up in the lesson plans we've created or the things the administration is asking us to do, we miss the moments of grace that happen when kids are seeking their own learning. Again, you don't just have to believe my little anecdote. Check out the LA Times' controversial series on teacher quality (I'm pretty sure that it's controversial because people haven't actually read the well-reasoned and moderate articles) in which they found that teachers teaching down the hall from one another - kids in the same grade, from the same community -- had vastly different results. Teacher quality, not the kids, made the difference.
Let's hear it for teachers, like this one, who obviously care about their students. Just like most parents and kids care, most teachers do too -- but the system makes it hard for all parties to flourish.
Excuse: If my class was smaller, I would do better.
Response: Research on class size is mixed. One significant study in Tennessee showed that class size does make a difference in student achievement, but many others, including a study of Florida's class size reduction act, show that class size matters very little if a quality teacher is at the front of the room. From a teacher's perspective, it is certainly nicer to have a smaller class, but a good teacher makes more of a difference. And for those of you yearn for the good ol' days -- class size has actually decreased since the middle of the last century, while achievement stagnated or fell.
Not exactly a small class ... how did those kids even get into those desks?
Excuse: The outrageous behavior problems of a few students in my class make teaching impossible.
Response: I actually have a lot of sympathy with this argument, because I lived it. There were days when I rose above and days when I failed. I spent a lot of energy fighting to find help for students who had deeper issues than I knew how to deal with, that I knew were impacting their lives in negative ways, and making it hard for other children to learn. And I just couldn't manage to find the help these kids needed. I did my best, but I agree with the teacher's unions who say that education reform will work better when there is a better social safety net for kids. That's why I love the idea of the Harlem Children's Zone, which addresses the whole child and community. But do I think ed reform is impossible without that extended safety net? Definitely not. And research suggests that broader social reform, while having lots of benefits in a variety of ways, isn't necessary to improve achievement. (But that doesn't mean we shouldn't go for the gold ring and try to do both!)
Excuse:Standardized tests don't show what kids are really learning.
Response: Yep. Standardized tests are blunt instruments. Yep. Some teachers and schools get rewarded for cheating. Yep. Some teachers teach to the test. But before accountability measures were in place we had no idea how students were doing. I certainly don't think teachers should be responsible for a single year's worth of data on a single test, particularly if the students' starting point isn't taken into account. We have to remember, though, that state standardized tests are minimum standard tests. With a few exceptions, they are not of a high rigor. If our kids can't pass even these tests, we aren't doing our jobs as educators. The LA Times article found that the best teachers, as measured by standardized tests, weren't the ones who were teaching to the tests. They were doing the things that test foes argue for: teaching critical thinking and pushing kids to meet high expectations. When you do those things, passing a standardized test is a cakewalk.
Excuse: Unions might protect bad teachers, but we have to have the unions to fight for us, because we’re being targeted by parents and the media.
Response: I'm an old school liberal and I believe in unions. Teacher need protection, since they are at the whim of politicians and because kids and parents are media-savvy these days. However, I think that if teachers want to be treated like professionals, we need to act like it and have a professional association rather than a union. Professional associations, like the Bar Association and American Medical Association, both protect members and set the quality standard for their members (I know, I know, they do it to varying degrees of success, but that's the idea). I think that teachers would be better served by an organization that didn't make excuses, but upheld a quality standard that kept teachers from being such targets in the first place. I don't think firing teachers en masse is the answer. I do think that having real evaluations of teachers, combining observations, student work samples, and test data; and then helping teachers improve when they don't meet the bar of excellence (and letting those people go who don't improve over time); can improve the field as a whole and help take some of the heat off teachers.
So. That's my rant of the day. If you've read to this point, you are awesome. If you have thoughts, please share in a nice respectful way. I know some of you are international readers, and I'd love to know about your school system. And if you feel moved to act, you can visit the Waiting For Supermansite for ideas on how to make a change. Or, you know, find out how you can become a teacher, run for school board, or volunteer at a local school. Because after we stop making excuses, we're all going to have to get our hands dirty.
Movie trailer courtesy of Paramount Vantage/Participant Media.
Photos courtesy of Life/Google archive and licensed only for non-commercial use.
