If you sat through my feature length film, you already know that I went to MAMLE last week. I went up with my assistant principal and a fellow teacher. It was AWESOME! It was so wonderful to be in a place filled with educators that were all interested in learning more about education and teaching. I hate to sound negative again but, this is just all too rare of a thing in my life. I was so excited to hear people buzzing about making learning more meaningful and engaging more kids. I'm sure there were skeptics in the crowd, I had my own questions about some of what I heard, but overall, people were psyched to discuss middle level education.
I was really most excited about all of Mike Muir's presentations. Mike gave the keynote speech to start things off and I went to three of his presentations during the conference. A lot of what he said is stuff that we all know, but it was stuff that I don't necessarily practice. The best part of what he was saying though, was that he made us promise not to be stressed out about all of that; the stuff we know we should be doing but aren't doing 100% perfectly. He mentioned Mark Springer's Soundings program, which I have been a fan of and used as a guide for a lot of what I do. He reminded us that it took him 20+ years to perfect what he ended up with in Soundings. He is in the process of developing/piloting a program now called Virtual Schools. He said something like "I would never write a book on the project the way it exists now." (Sorry for the horrible misquote!) I liked that a lot because I sure as heck wouldn't write a book on anything that I am doing but, I think I am on the right track and maybe I'll have my book in another 15 years :)
For more about Mike Muir and the Meaningful Engaged Learning work that he is doing, follow the link here:
http://www.mcmel.org/web/Home.html
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Leadership
Our contract mandates that each school in the district have a leadership team comprised of administrators and representatives of assorted groups at the school. I think the goal is that teachers and ed techs have a say in some of the decisions that impact our workplace. In the past, at our school anyway, team leaders have had various levels of success in meeting this goal for a number of reasons; none of which I am going to get in to here. The point is, that our team exists and as of last year, I have been a part of it as the 7th grade rep. Twice a year, our district requires that all of the schools' team leaders get together to discuss a shared reading and leadership in general. At the our last few meetings, we discussed the role of leadership teams in schools and especially in shaping school culture. The discussion our team had began around questions of how a team can shape culture in a school but quickly went to questions of should a team be responsible for shaping culture and even went so far as to begin to question if a team should exist at all. This was a really important discussion that didn't necessarily reflect where we thought we needed to go but, was an important philosophical discussion nonetheless. And although I feel pretty strongly that a leadership team should exist, I do agree that our team, like most I imagine, could use work.
Before I go any further, I want the readers to know that I am not airing any dirt laundry here. Our discussion did address our school but, we also talked about schools and teams in general and that's where this is all coming from.
Anyway, the whole point of writing about leadership is that I think , especially at the middle level where we encourage student decision making and choice, that teacher decision making and choice is vital. Like our students, when teachers have a say in what happens at their school, it creates a situation where ownership is shared with administrators. Who better to change climate than those who are affected on a day to day basis by the climate of the workplace. The students for whom we work tirelessly day in and day out have a stake in their schools, we know this. But schools should be great places for the adults in the building too, especially since for most of us, this is the place we spend the majority of time during our day and for a lot of us, it's where much of our attention is focused even when we aren't in the school building.
To make a teacher led leadership team to be effective takes a lot of work. Work that I can't define. But, just like we strive to make our classrooms student centered, I think that leadership teams can help to make certain parts of our schools less administratively centered and more teacher centered (and of course along the way, these teams will help to make a better place for students too).
Before I go any further, I want the readers to know that I am not airing any dirt laundry here. Our discussion did address our school but, we also talked about schools and teams in general and that's where this is all coming from.
Anyway, the whole point of writing about leadership is that I think , especially at the middle level where we encourage student decision making and choice, that teacher decision making and choice is vital. Like our students, when teachers have a say in what happens at their school, it creates a situation where ownership is shared with administrators. Who better to change climate than those who are affected on a day to day basis by the climate of the workplace. The students for whom we work tirelessly day in and day out have a stake in their schools, we know this. But schools should be great places for the adults in the building too, especially since for most of us, this is the place we spend the majority of time during our day and for a lot of us, it's where much of our attention is focused even when we aren't in the school building.
To make a teacher led leadership team to be effective takes a lot of work. Work that I can't define. But, just like we strive to make our classrooms student centered, I think that leadership teams can help to make certain parts of our schools less administratively centered and more teacher centered (and of course along the way, these teams will help to make a better place for students too).
Sunday, October 3, 2010
And it's NECAP time again!
As it just so happens, amid the nation's most heated debate in (as Ed Brazee says) maybe the last 40 years, schools across Maine are about to engage in our State's most important educational assessment of the whole year: the New England Common Assessments Program (NECAPs for us "in the know")! This (as our principal and many others proclaim) is our Superbowl! The NECAPs dutifully test our 3rd through 8th graders in all that is important in education in a modern, democratic, society: discrete reading and math skills. Oh, and basic essay style writing skills if you're a 5th or 8th grader. I am sure you have caught on to my sarcasm by now and, in an effort not to be a total cynic, I think that standardized tests can have a place in our educational structure. Tests like the NWEAs and even the NECAPs can give us, as teachers, a lot of information about skills our students may be struggling with or excelling at. When looked at as a small slice of the total profile of a student, a standardized test can allow us to truly help students. But, as we all know, far too much emphasis is placed on these assessments.
There are so many reasons for this and so many things wrong with this. I loved the blog discussing "Waiting for Superman" by Valerie Straus (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html) that pointed to a few of the problems with the movie including its ridiculous assumption that standardized testing was, in fact, a valid way to compare students, especially students from impoverished families. Or that standardized tests actually tested student knowledge or perhaps intelligence even though the tests in Maine and other states test nothing but a few sets of (as I already lamented about) discrete skills.
The other piece that I struggle with is the fact that these tests are testing our kids on knowledge that they learned in the previous academic year. They test our students on this knowledge after an entire summer away from school (and tests) and after a month in a different educational setting (for some, a whole new school). To me, this is so counter-intuitive on so many different levels. I firmly believe that standardized test taking is its own discrete skill set that some have a stronger grasp of than others. We can teach these skills, but that takes time and is not the center piece (for good reason) of most of our curricula. Now, we could take a page out of New York's public schools and directly teach to these tests for the majority of the year, but if that was the case, we would only be teaching math and reading for 175 days of the year. Oh, and some writing to 4th and 7th graders. I'm also so skeptical how realistic it is to expect our kids to know these skills, and how to use them, after summer break. My students, even the highest achieving amongst them, struggle with capitalization for most of September. Eliminating incorrect multiple choice answers and remembering how to turn a fraction into a decimal and showing all of their work, in the first week of October, seems like a bit of a stretch to me.
But, then again, it's all about comparing our kids to others and if they're all doing these tests at the same time, then I guess it's fair. Not to the kids we are comparing, and not to the teachers and parents that worked so hard to create a successful educational experience for them, but it's a level playing field.
This is a little disconnected, and a little negative, I apologize. I swear that next week, I am going to write a beautifully positive blog. And I am going to give my kids candy tomorrow while they take their NECAPs!!
There are so many reasons for this and so many things wrong with this. I loved the blog discussing "Waiting for Superman" by Valerie Straus (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html) that pointed to a few of the problems with the movie including its ridiculous assumption that standardized testing was, in fact, a valid way to compare students, especially students from impoverished families. Or that standardized tests actually tested student knowledge or perhaps intelligence even though the tests in Maine and other states test nothing but a few sets of (as I already lamented about) discrete skills.
The other piece that I struggle with is the fact that these tests are testing our kids on knowledge that they learned in the previous academic year. They test our students on this knowledge after an entire summer away from school (and tests) and after a month in a different educational setting (for some, a whole new school). To me, this is so counter-intuitive on so many different levels. I firmly believe that standardized test taking is its own discrete skill set that some have a stronger grasp of than others. We can teach these skills, but that takes time and is not the center piece (for good reason) of most of our curricula. Now, we could take a page out of New York's public schools and directly teach to these tests for the majority of the year, but if that was the case, we would only be teaching math and reading for 175 days of the year. Oh, and some writing to 4th and 7th graders. I'm also so skeptical how realistic it is to expect our kids to know these skills, and how to use them, after summer break. My students, even the highest achieving amongst them, struggle with capitalization for most of September. Eliminating incorrect multiple choice answers and remembering how to turn a fraction into a decimal and showing all of their work, in the first week of October, seems like a bit of a stretch to me.
But, then again, it's all about comparing our kids to others and if they're all doing these tests at the same time, then I guess it's fair. Not to the kids we are comparing, and not to the teachers and parents that worked so hard to create a successful educational experience for them, but it's a level playing field.
This is a little disconnected, and a little negative, I apologize. I swear that next week, I am going to write a beautifully positive blog. And I am going to give my kids candy tomorrow while they take their NECAPs!!
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