What Happened to my Good Intentions?

I recently watched a fascinating Ted Talk  by science writer Ed Yong, about parasites that specialize in "subverting and overriding the wills of their hosts." For example, there is the case of a suicidal cricket, who swallows a larvae of a Gordian worm, that grows to an adult within the cricket. When the worm needs to mate, it needs water. So the worm releases proteins that makes the cricket jump into water, committing suicide by drowning. The worm wiggles out of the cricket carcass and continues its life cycle. 

I think this is an apt metaphor for what happened to my good intentions. I was taken over by the Gordian worm of pressure to perform well on the "test." 

 

I have realized, after working on third quarter report cards, that I have not been the teacher I want to be. I do not have enough grades to justify a grade in science for the third quarter. That is a humiliating confession to make, but I'm sure others can relate. 

This will change in the fourth quarter, for sure. On the one hand, when testing is over, real teaching and learning begins. On the other hand, maybe I should just, as much as possible, without being limited by preparing for the "test," do learning activities that engage students and know that there will be learning, even if it is not necessarily test prep. 

I would love to be that radical. And that is the whole purpose of this blog, to be the teacher I want to be. Baby steps. Last week, I was determined to get science in at least once. We are studying the human body, system by system. For each system, I plan some kind of inquiry lesson. For the skeletal system, we made cylinders and rectangular prisms (geometry - integration ! ) from index cards and tested to see which could hold the most books. This was a very simple inquiry, but the joy of learning was evident. Students asked questions and proposed ideas of why the cylinder held more books. They made connections to why the cylindrical bone shape makes sense. 

It was a refreshing change of pace from the angst of fractions, even if it is with licorice whips (Oh, yeah, that was a good lesson too.) And I did pi Day with Ritz crackers and bits. So, I have not been totally manipulated by the worm. 

I'm still alive.  

Fractions and Other Monsters

So life in Ms. Aoki's class has been a bit chaotic. We are doing fractions, and it is a continuation of what they were supposed to learn last year. Everyone seems to need help (except for a couple of good math students). Everybody needs to use the manipulatives, everybody needs to be directed to find equivalent fractions in order to get common denominators. Many are escape artists and find creative ways to avoid going through the process. They say, "It's hard!" Because I can only help a few at one time, and only very few can be peer tutors, and my adult tutor has been absent, there is a lot of room for shenanigans, pretend work, and attempts to do anything else but fractions. 

So, I am reflecting on my approach. I realize that I can't go on with this approach of self-directed (Montessori-style) discovery learning with manipulatives. I need to entice them into the joy of fractions, so I went shopping looking for a food item that I can use to divide into fractions. Soft chocolate chip cookies? Too small and crumbly. Tortillas for quesadillas? Too much trouble. Bread? Not even on all sides. Red vines? Yes! So I will try red vines, and less independence, and see if I can decrease the frustration for both them and me. 

How about this for a song? (Mulberry Bush) 

This is way we add fractions

With unlike

Denominators.

We need to find equivalent fractions

So that they both have 

Common denominators. 

Find common multiples

And use the 

Least of them.

You can use the Identity property

To multiply

The fraction in question.

Two over two, three over three

Whatever you need

To get common denominators.

Add only the numerators,

The denominator stays the same.

Don't forget simplest form

Divide with common factors

Number over number

How do you know it's simplest form? 

When the greatest common factor 

Is one. 

(A draft)

Can I Just Be Eeyore? Melding Positivity and Awareness

I do believe. I do believe. I do believe in a positive attitude. But I am conflicted because I also believe in knowing the truth about the world, and it can be downright depressing. Do I stop learning about the world? Climate change? Fracking? GMOs? Unending wars? Poverty? Evils of education reform? 

I just read about how Michelle Rhee pays Bangladeshi click farms to"like" her Students First Facebook page. Oh, and don't get me started on the New York charter school tantrums, and Bill Gates' egocentric efforts, and Common Core and the founder's bad attitude, and the inherent profit motives therein. It's just one outrageous thing after another. Does it matter? Does it matter out here in the middle of the Pacific? Is my island state insulated from all this madness? Well ... 

We are a Race to the Top state, which means we had to adopt the Common Core and teacher evaluation tied to student achievement. Our contract talks hinged on a successful negotiation regarding this evaluation. As a member of the board of the union at the time, I had to sell this to members, that this was a good thing, that we negotiated a joint committee to assure that this system would be fair, reliable, based on research.  It's because of an insistence that our evaluation not be solely based on standardized testing, as it is in some states, that we have these multiple measures. The unintended consequence of multiple measures is an increased work load and  stress load. We stress about the Tripod student Survey, we stress about the Danielson observations, we stress about the testing, we stress about Core professionalism.  So, yes, education "reform"  is here too, breaking our backs and our spirits. This is a trial year for the new evaluation system, but it is getting harder and harder to believe that it will be any different next year. Yet, we hope our feedback and survey responses will make a difference. Our energy should be going into the classroom, not into these superfluous matters.

Then there's the classroom. I have a student who has figured out, consciously or not, if he makes enough of a disruption in class, he'll get kicked out, and so he doesn't have to do any work. That's just one of my challenges. There's the challenge of not just teaching students how to solve problems but to explain their reasoning. There are the challenges of emerging hormones, note-passing, spitball-playing, bullying, teasing, arguing and disruption-denying. There's the challenge that the content is pretty darn difficult and though I try, I just can't make it fun and games all the time. Sometimes, you just have to watch me do this division problem using zeroes to extend the dividend! And then you have to do it. Because that's what you learn in fifth grade. 

Positive? I thought celebrating pi day was a positive plan, a diversion from the curriculum. But that's me being a math nerd. My habitual disruptor didn't come to school, so I don't know if this would have passed his test for "not boring." I realized as I was teaching, maybe they don't think it's as cool as I think it is. Oh well. I can only do so much. 

My point?  I believe in quality public education that encourages creativity, compassion, and critical thinking and I I don't believe in the Common Core. Though I believe in accountability, I don't believe in putting teachers under more scrutiny than necessary. Though I believe in knowing where kids are in their educational needs, I don't believe in high stakes standardized testing. Though I believe in engaging kids in order to teach them, I don't believe that I need to entertain kids all the time.  These are some of the conflicting forces that I deal with on a daily basis. 

I keep seeing memes on Facebook that have to do with having a positive attitude in some way or another. Though sometimes, I do feel like woe-is-me Eeyore, I really am the eternal optimist, never do I even entertain the possibility of hopelessness. I don't think I can ever be a Tigger, but I can try to be more even-keeled and balanced, more Pooh-ish maybe. On the other hand, if this quote encapsulates Eeyore, I'm Eeyore and proud.

Why I Don't Get Rah-Rah Over Standardized Testing

Had a conversation with someone who shall remain nameless about motivating students to do better on the HSA (Hawaii State Assesments, which will be replaced next year by the Common Core Smarter Balanced test.)  This person prefaced our conversation by saying that she also hates standardized testing and what its emphasis has done to our schools. Yet she says, but I do make a big deal out of it and I have had 90% of my students, some of whom were special education students, either pass or improve on their HSA. 

Perhaps this correlation can be made - I don't make a big deal of the HSA: My students do not score well on them. (We just took the first round of two). Therefore, If I were to become a cheerleader for the HSA, my students would score better. Why would I do this? Let me play devil's advocate to myself.  If getting a proficiency score on the HSA meant that the student would come away with the experience a better person, a more confident person, believing that if they can get 300, they can do anything, wouldn't I want to gift them with this nugget of self-worth? Wouldn't I sacrifice my own personal beliefs about the fallacies of standardized testing so that students would receive this oh so valuable gift? If I don't, and can't make that sacrifice, am I being selfish, egocentric, disingenuous, a charlatan? 

I guess I have this thing about meaning. I abhor meaninglessness. I don't believe the HSA is meaningful because there is no way for us to know if what we are teaching is really matched to the test. We have to assume. We have to trust, without ability to verify.  In this transition year to the Common Core, we were told that there was a different "Bridge Assessment" and that if we focused on these identified Common Core standards, this is what would be in the bridge. So, like good soldiers, we made these standards the focus of our instruction, and the objectives in our SLOs. (Hawaii teachers know this as the bane of our year). Come to find out, it looks like the same HSA test as before. This was confirmed by a DOE talking head who told us that it would have been better for us to focus on the old standards rather than the Common Core. 

And then we were given, during our duty-free lunch period (never again!), these color copies that are supposed to show student growth over time based on the HSA. Our evaluation is going to be based on how their scores improved or did not from year to year. Oh, the outrage. Generally, what most of us on my grade level see, is a decrease from third to fifth grade. Can this be because we are all terrible teachers? Is that the only variable? We only know that some of the high scores do not reflect the students that we know. But there is no way to validate. When we agreed to the new Educator Evaluation System, we agreed to fair, reliable, valid means of evaluation. This way of showing student growth is totally junk science, and our union had better make this clear to the DOE. Getting rah-rah about something that is so pernicious is like being forced to campaign for someone I don't believe in, is like marrying someone I don't love, like drinking whiskey that I don't like the taste of just because I've been told it's good stuff.  I will keep looking for apt similes. 

I can see getting rah-rah about doing well in school, about paying attention in class, and participating to learn. About learning. About increasing knowledge and skills. About thinking. About communicating. About problem-solving. About getting along with each other. About celebrating and developing your strengths and strengthening your weaknesses. This is what is meaningful to me as a teacher. This is why I teach. But I do not teach to be validated by my students' standardized test scores. 

I am not done with this topic. I have not answered the question posed by my devil's advocate in my second paragraph. To be continued. 

Testing and all the other evaluation stuff is what I thought about when I saw this. 

Write it! Sing it!

I have written songs  for teaching in the past, but after attending GLAD training, I am affirmed that this is a good thing to do, and helps students to learn material better. So I have gone to town with this, and I have written a lot of songs for math since the training.  (Answer words for operations, partial quotients for division, use multiplication to solve division, estimation, rounding, subtraction with regrouping) One thing that I haven't done yet, is upload them to the GLAD site. It's on my to-do list, but I never seem to get to it. 

I am a bit disappointed that they are not magic spells. Students still need to put some energy and effort out to learn the material even if it is packaged in the form of a song or a chant. Case on point: I wrote about estimation to the tune of Hallelujah, that you round the 2- digit divisor to the nearest ten to start with, (Estimation/Two-Digit/Divisor/Round to tens.... ) and I still see students who forget to try that and are stumped because they are trying to estimate with a divisor of 27, when they could more easily estimate with 30. 

To be fair to me- many more students are better at estimation than when I first tried to teach them. I don't know if it's because of the songs or just practice, or having the expectation that this is part of the assignment. 

No matter, I realized that writing songs and chants sustains me. When I have had a down day, frustrated over students' progress, wondering how else I can present a concept so that they can learn it better, I write a song or chant. I don't go on a search on the internet or the GLAD website. I am inclined to write it myself. I enjoy it. I am rejuvenated by it. 

(The image here is a beautiful testament to music, and I think what I do is like a little fingernail of what it should be, but at least it's a little fingernail. ) 

Testing Week: Fraud and Quiet

      Standardized testing week is a mixed bag. Here's the up side. My load is easier because I don't teach during the week, and I give very little homework. Because I don't have stacks of papers to grade, I have more time to plan, which is the part of teaching that I enjoy. Only a few of my students are stressed out by testing, because I don't make it a big deal. Only the ones who put pressure on themselves or pick up the pressure from other sources, stress out. I give them snacks. It is quiet for a change. Aw, peace and quiet. Afterwards, when everyone is done they had free time on the computers. There is still a sense of optimism because they know there is another chance in May. And if they improve, which most do, we are happy, even if they don't make that magic 300.

Now, the down side, aside from connectivity issues.

        We are not supposed to look at the questions. We are not supposed to read them the questions because there is, in math, a text-to-speech feature to do that, even if many students don't use it (it sounds weird, it sounds fuzzy, it sounds like a robot, I hate that voice). I am not supposed to tell them to use the text-to-speech even if I notice that they are not using it, I know they are poor readers, or there is a lot of difficult text. I am not supposed to remind them to use the formula chart if they forget what volume or area is. I am not supposed to tell them to go back and check their work even though I know they rushed, and know they randomly clicked clicked through it. All I am supposed to do is teach them what I can beforehand, teach them the tools that are there beforehand, set up the test, get my session ID, approve them to get them started, and log out when the session is done.

Standardized testing, whether online or bubble tests, have always troubled me as a teacher. I don't really remember them when I was a student. Oh yeah, that's because they didn't overrun the school year. I remember PSATs, ACTs and SATs, but that wasn't a school thing, only for those of us planning to go to college. But my memories of school (public school in Guam) were the projects I did, the songs I sang, the friends I hung out with, the games I played, the reports I wrote, the classes and teachers I had, my little (multiplication tables) and big (school spelling bee champ, student council, honor society) victories. Oh, and the bomb scares in high school. 

As an adult, I took the GREs and the PRAXIS teaching test, which I studied for using the commercial study guides. These were very helpful. You could do well on the test because you knew what was going to be on the test, and you could study for it. 

But, our computerized HSA is not like that. There is no way to know if the questions are aligned to the standards, to know if what you are teaching is what is being tested.  When it was a bubble test, you could read the questions, and once in a while you found one that was ridiculous, not a match to standard, or confusing, even to a teacher. You were able to send your concerns to the testing office and usually get a response. One year, a testing company was fired because of so many complaints and errors.  But now, you can't do that because if you do, you are revealing that you "looked," you broke protocol - broke the rules! 

Yet, starting this year, thanks to our new Educator Evaluation System, 25% of our rating will be determined by student test scores. Some would say that is nothing to be worried about because if you get effective ratings on the other 75%, you're still good. However, how can we held accountable for test scores if we have no way to verify that it is a valid test? Are the questions well-written? Are they a match to standards? Is it really a test for the standard, or is it more a test for computer skills, or reading skills? Or test-taking skills? 

          And then there's the Common Core. We were told that only certain Common Core standards would be on what they called the "bridge" assessment. We have a new Common Core curriculum, (GoMath) and so we are dealing with not only the implementation of a new curriculum and new standards, but supposedly a different "bridge" assessment. We were told to focus on only a few CC standards that would be on the HSA, which we did. Here is where I confess that I looked at the test. In my criminal "looking", I did not see any of these bridge standards, but it pretty much looked like the usual online HSA. However, there is really no way to verify my hunch or not, because I wasn't supposed to be "looking." But here we were, being good little boys and girls (us teachers) teaching what we thought we had to be accountable for, and then, oh, never mind. Rug pulled out. Ouch. 

Today, on the Badass Teachers Facebook page, a question was asked: "Should we start petitions in every state demanding that all standardized tests be returned to teachers and parents for their review, so they can use them to help students?" Resounding yes to that. This is the ONLY use I can see from standardized tests. Unless I see specifically how my students answered on these tests, I won't know what I need to help them with, or if it is even worth spending time on. As it is, it is meaningless. Oh yes, like I said in the first paragraph, there are a few selfish perks to it, but still meaningless educationally and a waste of time and resources. 

       Anti-testing activists (I consider myself one) claim our current climate of standardized testing is child abuse. It doesn't appear that way if you observe my classes. The crime is not child abuse. The crime is fraud. 

Addressing Gender Gaps - Under-Achieving Boys

In Hawaii, all public schools are supposed to go through a stakeholder-involved process to adopt their academic and financial plans for the following year. Most people look forward to this process like doing taxes, or serving on juries, or getting a root canal.  This year, our energetic vice principal led the process with sincerity and enthusiasm, and it was, for the most part, a positive endeavor. Speaking for myself, if I can come away with even one piece of insight that I didn't have before, I am satisfied. And I did. 

One of the last things we had to do was look at the academic "data" -  aw that dreaded four-letter word. This one piece stood out for me, and for many. We have a significant gender gap in achievement in which the girls out-perform the boys in ALL areas. I normally take test data with many grains of salt, but when I saw this one, it resonated. At the risk of being considered sexist for making generalizations about boys vs girls, I think the data, and especially my gut resonance to the data, needed to be taken seriously. 

I know it's the boys who frustrate me because it's the boys who "fool around" too much, who don't focus, who get into fights, who don't control their impulses, who take pens apart to make spitball cannons, who swear, who get sent to the office for referrals, who defy authority. These are generalizations, but it is generally the truth. I love them for their energy, but the shadow part of this energy is frustration. Not to say that all girls are angels, but they generally don't have the negative behaviors that disrupt the classroom environment, as I set it up. 

I didn't have to reflect too long to realize what I needed to do. It's what I've been saying I needed to do for a long time, but that I have a hard time doing in a significant way. I need to do more science, which I love anyway, and in math, I need to do more games. As for the classroom learning environment, I need to be more tolerant of noise, although that is a fine line because many of the girls complain when it is too noisy, and I need to consider their needs too. I noticed that if the learning is happening through hands-on games, no one notices the noise. In the games, I need to use competition as a motivator, balancing the goal of cooperation as well. That is also a fine line. 

Now, I know that the "data" inspired me to make some conscious choices to have a more boy-friendly environment. It is enough for me, to have all my students engaged and enjoying learning. Ironically, even though I came to this resolve via test score data, I don't really care about the test score results. I think when I start making the test results the goal, I make behavioral control the issue, which becomes like herding wild goats with the boys. I believe that the obsession with standards and test scores is the problem. I lie if I say I don't care about the test results. It is hard not to let it affect you. That is also a fine line, to care enough and not to care too much about something that may or may not be connected to actual student learning. But focusing on meeting the needs of the students, boys and girls, is more valuable to me. It is what I try to make my credo. 

This is a boy - girl team who made a robot out of recycled materials and also were successful at making the snowflake "flower" seen in the foreground.