teachers

Teacher Leaders Wanted

Eduflack accountability, Achievement gap, Students, Teacher Education, teachers

All students deserve highly skilled, well-prepared teachers. In order to build the teaching profession that students deserve, maximize recruitment, increase diversity, and raise the bar for quality preparation, the front end of a coherent teaching pipeline must begin in secondary education.

Make sense? Agree that the current pipelines for teacher recruitment are insufficient? Believe that we need to do a better job to show today’s high school kids that teaching should be a desired career? Then you might just believe in Educators Rising.

If you don’t agree with the above statement, or aren’t sure if you do, you need to take a closer look at the stats. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of new teachers report that they graduated from their preparation programs unprepared. One-third of teachers leave the profession in their first three years. And teacher turnover is highest — and student achievement is lowest — at schools with high levels of poverty. At the same time, projections say we will need to hire 1.5 million new teachers by 2020 (that’s almost half the teaching workforce, for those keeping count).

Dear ol’ Eduflack is proud to be a part of Educators Rising, a new initiative powered by PDK. Educators Rising offers a few simple, yet audacious goals:

  • Offer rigorous, hands-on opportunities for students to explore the teaching profession
  • Build a national, virtually connected community of rising educators
  • Offer a self-sustaining teacher development model that empowers local teacher leaders

To work toward these goals, Educators Rising is creating a standards committee to help determine what teacher preparation looks like for students in secondary school. Or more simply, what should high school kids know and be able to do if they want to be on the path of becoming effective educators?

PDK is now soliciting applications to serve on that Educators Rising Standards Committee. The application, along with additional details, can be found at: 

For those educators who want to improve the profession, for those educators who want to see more young people aspire to be teachers, for those educators who want to do something about the negative narrative surrounding teachers and teaching, Educators Rising and this committee can be a very specific answer to an important problem.

So I ask Eduflack readers to share the application with any educators you think could contribute to the discussion and the creation of meaningful standards. The only way to have strong, effective standards is to have strong, effective teachers involved.

 

Respecting the “Modern” Family

Eduflack changemakers, Parents, race, Students, teachers, Uncategorized

In today’s age of blended families, alternative families, and just play different families, it is hard to believe some still see the good ol’ nuclear family as the norm in the United States. It is even harder to believe that an school teacher would hold such a view.

But over at Medium, I write about how a teacher’s failure to recognize the 21st century construct of the American family can do real damage to the children in her classroom. In my latest contribution to Ashoka’s Changemakers in Education series, I write:

We worry about how testing is affecting kids today. We wring our hands over how standards or higher expectations are impacting our children. We fret over whether students are expressing enough grit or enough skills to succeed in the future. Maybe, just maybe, we should also realize that there is no one cookie cutter to define today’s kids. There is no one way to describe their abilities, their interests, learning achievements, or even their family structures or backgrounds.

Give it a read. I promise it’ll be worth it.

 

Gaming and the #CommonCore

Eduflack 21CS, BAM, CCSS, teachers, technology, Uncategorized

As the urban legend goes, educators are provided little flexibility when it comes to teaching the Common Core State Standards. Those who don’t quite understand what the standards are assume it comes with a proscribed curriculum, one that teachers must follow to the very letter.

But in classrooms across the country, we see educators empowered with the flexibility to do what makes sense in teaching the Common Core to their students. With learning as the ultimate goal, how one gets there isn’t as important as the final destination.

On Common Core Radio this week, LFA’s Cheryl Scott Williams and I speak with Rebecca Rufo-Tepper of the Institute of Play. In this segment, Dr. Rufo-Tepper discusses how educators are using gaming to help students learn the key tenets of Common Core, and do so successfully.

It’s definitely worth the listen. We are seeing more and more how gaming can be a tremendously effective tool in 21st century teaching. Using it to relay Common Core lessons to students is no different.

 

 

 

Excellent Teachers, Equitable Distribution, Real Results

Eduflack STEM, Teacher Education, teachers, Woodrow Wilson

Last week, the New York Times’ Eduardo Porter had an interesting commentary looking at whether educators are really the ones who should be tasked with fixing all that ails our society. In tackling the discussion of whether American students are really lagging or whether, when we adjust for all sorts of outside factors, they are doing just fine, Porter concludes by noting, “Teachers are paid poorly, compared to those working in other occupations. And the best of them are not deployed to the most challenging schools.”

That last point, one of how we get our best teachers in front of the classrooms and the kids who need them the most, is one of the most pressing issues facing public education today. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education requested a report from each of the state departments of education, explaining how they were addressing the equitable distribution of effective teachers. But those reports still doing get exemplary teachers where they are most needed.

In response to Porter’s piece, Stephanie Hull, EVP and COO of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, offered some valuable insights. On the pages of the NYT, Dr. Hull wrote:

Getting excellent teachers into all classrooms is a national imperative. To meet this challenge, we must also improve teacher education, producing more and better prepared teachers, especially in shortage areas like STEM and special education. This is the only way to ensure a strong pipeline of teachers who know how to meet the needs of all students.

In states like Georgia, Indiana and New Jersey, we are seeing how programs specifically intended to recruit, prepare and support exemplary teachers for high-need classrooms can have a positive effect on the community and on the student.

She knows of what she writes. The work she mentions in places like GA, IN, and NJ is exactly what she is doing through the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship. And when you find a way to recruit, prepare, and support exemplary beginning educators to teach STEM in high-need schools, and you get those teachers to stay in those schools and classrooms well beyond their obligations, you must be doing something right.

Is Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship THE answer to the equity problem? Of course not. There is no one way to solve the issue or to improve access to great teachers for all kids. But programs like WWTF are definitely a part of the solution. It’s one of the reasons I’m so committed to helping that program, and others like it to succeed. Instead of just talking about what it can do or making promises of what is possible, programs like Teaching Fellowship are actually building pipelines of STEM teachers committed to careers in the schools that need them the most. How novel …

Breaking News: Principals Can, Do Make #CommonCore Work

Eduflack BAM, CCSS, teachers

In what Eduflack is sure is a huge surprise to many, the Common Core can actually be implemented effectively. And it can be done in schools, with strong principal leadership and respect for and involvement of teachers. This isn’t just an urban legend, we are actually seeing it.

Case in point, Florida’s West Port High School and the efforts of Jayne Ellspermann and the entire staff at the school. On our most recent edition of Common Core Radio over at BAM, the Learning First Alliance’s Cheryl Williams and I talk to Ellspermann about her experiences and what good implementation looks like in her school.

Give it a listen. You might be surprised to hear that Common Core implementation doesn’t have to be contentious or anti-teacher or the sixth horseman of the apocalypse. In fact, it can be a huge benefit for kids and educators alike.

“I’d Like to Give the World a Phone …”

Eduflack Dadprovement, Students, teachers, technology

Loyal readers of Eduflack know two things. First, I am passionate about education technology and its ability to transform the learning process for students. Second, I am a proud adoptive father, and never miss the opportunity to talk about (or write, as one can read in my book, Dadprovement) our family’s experiences bringing our children home from Guatemala.

For most who have no idea, last month Guatemala elected a new president, as elections were coming up and the previously elected president is currently sitting in a jail cell. I won’t go into the politics of the nation, the military, non-military rule that is prevalent, or any other such things. Let’s just say a new president was elected. His previous career was as an actor. And his famous role was playing a moron who gets elected president (yes, you can’t make this up).

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales earned more than two-thirds of the vote in an October runoff. He now sits in the big chair in Guatemala City. And one of his first official actions was to make some new education policy.

As background, Guatemala is an incredibly poor country (so much so that citizens sneak into Mexico illegally to do the unwanted jobs there). Education is not compulsory. Far too many of the nation’s citizens receive no formal education, whether it be because of access or finances or cultural prioritization.

So how do we address this? One could start with strong early childhood education programs. There are countless other ways to begin, most of which cost money. So President Morales decided he would think outside the box?

His plan? Free cell phones for all students. He’d pay for it by letting all of the cellphone companies paint their logos on school walls, assuming they donate the phones to the kids in question.

To summarize. We have schools ill-equipped to integrate phones into classes that already have 60 or 70 students in them. We haven’t prepared teachers for how to make use of these phones. And we are sending little kids out into communities where their new piece of technology makes them prime targets for robbery. All under a belief that if you give a kid a phone, she will learn (or for the cynic, that a phone can replace actual teaching.)

Don’t worry, teachers, President Morales has a plan for you too. While attending public school isn’t required, the Morales administration is convinced that attendance and teacher absenteeism is a big issue. So future plans include tagging teachers with GPS trackers to ensure they are showing up for their jobs.

This is why so many people think policymaking should be left in the hands of real professionals.

On the phones, I don’t doubt Morales’ sincerity in thinking if he can get kids tech, it will improve their learning. But delivering the hardware is the last step in a solid edtech plan, not the first thing out of the shoot. And as you are asking teachers to change their instructional practice, insulting them by demanding they be tracked doesn’t seem to be the wisest of strategies.

And yes, I realize some will suggest this is just another example of how the anti-teacher, corporatization of public education model of reform in the United States is being exported around the globe. Before you do, let’s not. I don’t think American education reformers are setting their sights on the Guatemalan education market. Heck, even the cellphone companies that may be painting their logos on school walls soon are largely local (it isn’t Verizon and AT&T you see much down there).

But it does speak to the danger of reform for reform’s sake. If one truly wants to improve education in a country like Guatemala, is it more valuable to have books or cell phones? Is there more benefit to content-based professional development of teacher GPS tracking? And is it more valuable to think through plans rather than announce the first thing that pops into your head when asked about education?

No matter how well meaning, we can’t close achievement and opportunity gaps by simply providing a child a cell phone that they may not have a month into the term.

Sometimes, Halloween Is Just About the Costumes and Candy

Eduflack Students, teachers

As a kid, my parents encouraged us to make our own Halloween costumes, and rarely would allow the store-bought plastic ones. The only store costume I ever had was a Darth Vader costume. Otherwise, I was a race car driver and a wizard and all sorts of things. My favorite was probably the year I was an old-school radio, wearing a huge box decorated with wood-grained shelf paper. It made for a long evening, but it was worth it.

I remember the Halloween parades at elementary and middle school. I also remember the one year we were all forbidden from trick or treating because of the Tylenol scare. And I remember the year my own kids had their Halloween delayed a week because of the damage from Hurricane Sandy.

I get that the world is growing more and more politically correct. I get that schools are having to make tough decisions about what can and should be part of the instructional day. I get that candy and sugary parties are no longer welcome in our schools. And I realize that Halloween doesn’t rank up there on the school priority list these days. So I can understand, as the New Haven Register reports, that some schools are looking to do away entirely with celebrating Halloween and having those beloved costume parades of my childhood.

But to ban because it discriminates against low-income students? To ban because of fear of nut allergies? Or to ban because a secular holiday has “religious overtones?” Seriously?

Perhaps my favorite, or most disheartening, quote from the New Haven Register story is that one school district in Washington State did away with Halloween celebrations “because children dressed in costumes might often real witches.”

The spokeswoman from Puyallup, Washington even went so far as to say, “Witches with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion and so we want to be respectful of that.”

How can we lament our kids losing their childhoods because we are so focused on testing and student achievement in the schools, while at the same time stripping kids of the joys of something as simple as Halloween, fearing it may be offensive to the Wiccan religion? Would it be acceptable to dress as Glenda the Good Witch, rather than the Wicked Witch?

Eduflack can look at Halloween costumes and see priest costumes and Pope costumes and even “sexy nun” costumes, and not feel that my Catholic religion is threatened. While I may wonder why someone would want to dress as a sexy nun, doing so isn’t an affront to my religion. It is Halloween.

We need to let kids be kids. On October 31st, the Eduflack household will be handing out full-sized candy bars to any kid who shows up at our door in costume. Extra treats go to those have a particularly creative, homemade costume. The day before, I will be at the edu-daughter’s elementary school to see their costume parade. And I will do it with a smile on my face, and a few fun-sized Snickers in my pocket.

Yes, sometimes Halloween is really just about the costumes and the candy. It doesn’t have to be more than that.

Is Anyone Getting #CommonCore Right These Days?

Eduflack accountability, BAM, CCSS, teachers

Over at Politico this week, Kimberly Hefling has a terrific piece on how Common Core has “quietly won the war,” noting a thrust that seems to get lost in all of the heated rhetoric and vitriol about standards. That fact is that four out of every five school-aged kids in the United States, more than 40 million learners all together, are currently being instructed under a Common Core frame.

Granted, there is disagreement on what that means, with most Common Core haters focusing on their ire on those dreaded tests. And while they are connected along a continuum, we cannot forget that standards are not curriculum. They are not instructional materials. They are not professional development for educators. And no, standards themselves are not the tests.

Dear ol’ Eduflack has been trying to make that point since 2008, when it looked like we were jumping right from needed Common Core standards (which I remain a steadfast supporter of) directly to the assessment, without worrying about all that has to happen in the middle to get from a standard to an effective measure of whether the standard has been learned and can be demonstrated.

Over at Common Core Radio this month, we are fortunate to speak with one of those education leaders who understands that point and did just incredible work to make it a reality in his state. Kentucky was one of the earliest adopters of Common Core. And today it stands as one of the best examples of how we can get Common Core implementation right.

In this episode, Cheryl Scott Williams, the executive director of the Learning First Alliance, and I speak with Terry Holliday, the recently retired education commissioner for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. In this segment, we explore why Common Core is working in Kentucky, and what others can learn from it.

For those looking for the shortcut, the secret is educator involvement. Teachers involved in unpacking the standards to relate it to the actual teaching in the classroom. Teachers involved in identifying needed PD. And teachers actually part of the process to construct a state assessment that works for schools, for teachers, and for the students themselves.

Yes, we can get Common Core right. And we need to get it right. Commissioner Holliday provides some needed common sense and practical experience to help us all see how to get there.  Give it a listen.

For #SmartParents, It’s About Getting Smart

Eduflack Dadprovement, Parents, teachers

I’ll admit it. I get into far too many Twitter fights where someone asks me what right I have being involved in education policy or even talking education and classroom instruction, having never been a teacher myself. Sure, I can offer the resume, detailing two decades of experience in education policy and education research. I can cite my tenure as a school board chairman, school volunteer, and advocate. But more often than not, my immediate response is, “I’m a parent.”

During my time in the education trenches, I have seen too many parents who seem to abdicate responsibility for educating their children. The common line is that it is the school, and more important, the teacher, who is responsible for instruction. That what happens behind the schoolhouse doors or between the hours of 8 am and 3 pm is the responsibility of the educator, and not the parent. But we all know that just isn’t true.

The most successful of schools are those where educators and parents work in partnership. It isn’t the adversarial relationship, where parents come in when there is a perceived problem with the teacher or the student. It isn’t the absentee relationships, where parents don’t come in at all. And it isn’t the “Facebook” relationship, where parents pretend they are active parts of the school community to impress their friends, but in reality could never find their way from the office to their child’s classroom without a guide.

No, the success comes from parents and teachers working together. It comes from parents being smarter about how school work, what is expected of teachers, what is expected of students, and how parents can support all of the above. It is about parents understanding what teaching and learning really means. And yes, it is about a keen understanding of assessment and how good tests should be used (and how to determine when a lousy or unnecessary test is presenting itself).

I’m proud of my role as a parent. One of the reasons I wrote my book, Dadprovement, was to issue a call to arms to have fathers more involved in their children’s lives. That means more than just putting down the iPhone during the weekend soccer game or asking “so how was your day, sport?” on one of the few evenings when the family is actually having dinner together. Real involvement means knowing your kids’ interests and friends and teachers and classroom lessons and general progress in the learning process.

Earlier this year, I was part of an important project from Getting Smart called #SmartParents. It was developed, with the support of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, to provide both guidance and personal stories from parents to parents about how we can be more active and positively involved in our kids’ learning process. The final product of that effort is a new book, Smart Parents: Parenting for Powerful Learning.

I am incredibly honored to be a contributing author to this book, offering an essay based on my SXSWEdu talk earlier this year on parental engagement. But I’m even more excited by the total product and the inspiration, the guidance, the support, and the sense that we are not alone that it provides to parents, all parents of school-aged children. It serves as a true unifier for those parents who understand the power of public education, for those who know how important a positive experience in the classroom and with the teacher is, and who are committed to being a part of that learning process.

As I recently said about Smart Parents:

There is nothing more powerful than an engaged, informed parent. Smart Parents: Parenting for Powerful Learning provides all families – regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or zip code — the tools and resources they need to be effective advocates and inspiring teachers for their kids. Successful learners need smart parents supporting and encouraging them.

Check out the book. You won’t be disappointed. And I guarantee you will see your own family in at least one of the stories told. If you don’t, I’ll personally buy the book back from you.

Happy reading!

History Can Be Fun and Games

Eduflack civics, Teacher Education, teachers, technology

While we may look to the history books to see the chronicling of the past, we don’t have to limit how we teach history (or civics or social studies, or any subject, for that matter) to those same books. New technologies, new instructional approaches, and even the embrace of the old role-playing styles, have opened up new doors when it comes to how we teach — and learn — history.

Over at Medium this week, I write on how history instruction can be transformed through a gaming approach to teaching. USA Today reporter Greg Toppo has literally written the book on the topic, with his The Game Believes In You telling some incredible stories of how educators are using games to better reach their students.

In my piece, I look at some of the specific efforts to use gaming to bring social studies instruction alive, everything from iCivics to the teacher-focused simulations at Ted Kennedy Institute to the new Woodrow Wilson HistoryQuest Fellowship program.

As I write:

Simply put, we cannot expect 21st-century students to truly learn from history — and civics and social studies in general — in the same way and through the same approaches that may have worked for Santayana, Winston Churchill, and others concerned about repeating history. The methods of old, those with experienced educators lecturing in front of a class of students all sitting at desks in straight rows, is quickly becoming a thing of the past. If the students of tomorrow are to truly “learn from history,” they require instructional approaches that better reflect their own interests, learning styles, and experiences.

And as I conclude:

And that is the role gaming now plays in my kids’ classroom. I want a teacher who has been part of the HistoryQuest program to make social studies come alive for my kids in a way a paper-and-ink textbook simply can’t. I want a music teacher that is channeling my son’s love of Minecraft to help him appreciate his grandfather’s love of opera. And I want an educator who can use the simulations of the Kennedy Institute to help my daughter better understand what I did all those years when I worked on Capitol Hill.

Give the piece a read. Think of it like a game …