the letter-to-the-editor effect

Rick Posner alerted me to Thomas Friedman's article in the Nov 21 NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/opinion/21friedman.html It's a mixed bag. On the one hand he quotes Tony Wagner, the Harvard-based education expert and author of “The Global Achievement Gap,” saying "...the three basic skills that students need if they want to thrive in a knowledge economy: the ability to do critical thinking and problem-solving; the ability to communicate effectively; and the ability to collaborate." and he note that parents need to be part of the solution. But then he agrees with Arne Duncan that "...using student achievement data in calculating salaries, ...increasing competition through innovation and charters — is not anti-teacher. It’s taking the profession much more seriously and elevating it to where it should be." Hmm...critical thinking that is measured exactly HOW from the data garnered from standardized tests?



What is most interesting to me is that a week later the Nov 28 Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/l28friedman.html printed an assortment of letters all of which addressed concerns I had when reading his piece, and not a single letter expressing confidence that Duncan was on the right track. The letters were written by a former teacher (Connecticut parent of two teens), the principal and assistant principal of NYC's East Side Middle School, an associate professor of English at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, and a professor emeritus from the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education (Stephen Krashen, the only name I knew): a nice range of backgrounds and experiences.



Whether anyone in positions of power is listening or not, more voices are joining the Stephen Krashens, Alfie Kohns and Deb Meiers of the world. We need to keep our eye out each time there is an article about so called "reform" in a major news source, so that the names attached to the letters are varied, and the depth of the dissatisfaction with the current assembly-line solutions can be seen. Even if just the 340 folks who like AUGUST TO JUNE's Facebook page agreed to write one letter every 6 months we could have an effect. What do you think?

thinking talking thinking doing

We have had such a full piece of time. The Coalition of Essential Schools had a conference in SF this past weekend. While we were unable to attend the conference, we did go to San Francisco on Friday evening for a free talk given by Rick Posner and the staff of IDEA, and brushed up against some other exciting educators.

I met Rick through my meanderings online googling things like "open classroom" and "holistic education." His book "Lives of Passion, School of Hope" about the Jefferson County Open School in Colorado, and the repercussions it has had in the lives of the graduates, is fascinating reading. Some of those graduates were at the gathering, and we got to talk to several. I had wondered how the school was able to do all the complex trips to places like the Middle East and New Orleans, and now I know. Colorado gives all its high schools a good amount of money to fund sports programs. The open School uses the $50,000 it gets for travel instead, and their students who want to play sports either play at other schools or informally at Open. They still have to raise money for the trips, but the costs are not insurmountable.

If you haven't looked at IDEA yet, I think you will find it uplifting. With so many of the progressive educators I meet at retirement age, it fills my heart to find a younger generation ready to take the torch. Scott Nine, who leads the group, is dynamic and thoughtful. I loved their presentation...and of course afterward the networking was dizzying! My favorite conversation was with a young IDEA intern named David Loitz,who was full of...ideas!

The next day Rick, and his former student Corinne, who is now a video journalist, came out by ferry to meet some parents and teachers for an informal chat at my favorite local cafe. The concerns and ideas were flying every which way! Two parents who are also teachers talked about their dismay at how easily parents seemed to willingly accept a more traditional mindset when they left our open elementary school for middle school--tied in again to grades and standardized testing. A high school teacher who teaches in a very interesting 9-10 program talked about her wishes to go further. She feels encouraged by how successful the program has become, but its very success has led to the school becoming more fixated on high tests scores! When Rick talked about his high school not ever having given grades, Mary expressed her wish that she could make that change, while others at the table were skeptical it could happen where she teaches, as there are so many parents fixated on getting their kids into Harvard.

On Sunday I went to a Move-On meeting that will probably lead to a stronger progressive political presence in our community! This just gives you a taste, but you can see how stimulating things have been beyond the film work, and the film work continues in high gear! I made a to-do list today that will take me a Looong time to accomplish. But I head into it feeling great about our finances as a result of the latest round of fundraisers. We may not have buckets of cash, but we have enough.

John Merrow puts us on the map!

It's so interesting how networking works. Early on in the life of this project I contacted some of the educators whose writings I respected and asked if they would look at a 45 minute compilation meant to span all the areas we could possibly develop in the film. Alfie Kohn and Deb Meier were among those who responded, giving important initial feedback. Deb also sent information about us to a number of her colleagues. As a result Brenda Engel was among those who helped us define our direction. A year later, with a much more developed work, I asked another of Deb's and Alfie's contacts, Monty Neill to help us screen the first rough cut. He suggested that Brenda Engel might invite Jay and Helen Featherstone.

The group of a dozen or so people who watched the film in Louis Kruger's Northeastern classroom all sparked our energy with wonderful comments, and the Featherstones began corresponding with us. When Jay asked what he could do to help us, I asked if he knew anyone in media--for example John Merrow, long time education reporter on PBS.

It turns out Jay was one of John's thesis advisors at Harvard! He wrote a wonderful letter suggesting John view the film. To our great pleasure John also found value in our work. This led to a phone interview, which led to John's blog about us at http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/

That review has multiplied our network by many factors!! Requests to screen the film, ranging from a teacher's union in Des Moines to Stanford's Governor's Corner Office of Residential Education, arrive each time I open my email. My "outreach learning curve" is being challenged, and I'm paddling hard to be up to speed with their requests, but we couldn't be more delighted with the opportunities that are arising. When 60 Minutes called, I nearly fell off my chair! Fingers crossed that when they see the film they will find it calls to them as strongly as it did to the thread that led them to us: Deb and Alfie to Monty and Brenda to Jay and Helen to John.

It seems to me that no matter what 60 Minutes decides, the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction. As parents join the mix, it won't be long before the voices for meaningful education are louder than the voices of the test pushers.

Fast and Furious

Responses to Waiting for Superman are all over the media world. Some of them drive me crazy, as they accept his assumption that we have figured out how to measure "good schools" and "good teachers" with standardized tests, and could give every child a "good education" if we just made more spots available in charters. Many echo my own response to the film: I'm glad that people are talking about what needs to be changed in our schools, but: Whoa Nelly! Take a closer look before thinking that galloping down the charter school path in and of itself is the answer!

Here are a couple of articles I particularly appreciated:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-galinsky/fixing-education-lessons_b_739367.html
http://www.fairtest.org/real-facts-about-waiting-superman
This youtube video: (some of whose information could have been very useful to balance Guggenheim's questionable factoids) http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/

So then here we come, trotting behind a well-financed and publicized film like Waiting for You Know Who. By showing that learning is not like that dreadful animation of a teacher pouring knowledge into the open heads of students, can we make use of the momentum Guggenheim has created to "initiate a gigantic, messy, national conversation that would take place in every neighborhood, every barrio, every ghetto of every city and every town, to raise the questions: "What knowledge and experiences are most valuable? What makes someone an educated person? How do we make that knowledge and experience accessible to all students?" (Bill Ayers words from a recent Truthout article)? That is our challenge.

Every day I find new allies online. Some are voices that have been there for a long time, but that I hadn't run across, but also there are teachers and parents who are just now ready to speak out.

A few months ago we were told (in so many words) by the Fledgling Foundation that they couldn't fund us although they loved our film. They felt the education community was so divided that the time wasn't at hand where a film could have much impact. I think I will write to them now and see if they still feel the same way.

guess how many hours the credits took

Well, I can't actually tell you how many hours the credits took, but I can tell you it was MANY MANY MANY more than I would have imagined. First of all there was making sure we had the names of everyone who we needed to thank--days and weeks on that, checking spelling, locating who to credit for songs, and getting their website addresses. Then there was our first attempt at designing a nice way to show them on the screen. There are certain traditions: some categories get a screen of their own, some get larger type than others. There are still a lot of possible variations. We wanted to thank everyone who gave us any kind of help (up to the cut-off date of when we had to have the credits finished). Oh gee, I hope we got them all! We also wanted to work with two pieces of music, and be done with the credits when the music finished. That meant some names were going to be pretty small. Work, rework, work, rework: days. It was looking pretty good when I remembered a song we hadn't credited! Last minute email to Doug Goodkin, phone call to Ashley Bryan in Maine (87 years old: such a nice man!!) rework again. Show it to Kim Aubry at ZAP who tells us we are out of broadcast framing for our most tightly packed page. AGH! Back to the drawing board, come up with a new design. Kim writes back that we might want to do it differently because of interlacing. Interlacing is a video issue that didn't cross our minds because Tom works on digital screens. Interlacing sometimes makes small words bouncy and blurry. Kim suggests we consider rolling credits. We spend hours looking at all the videos in our possession to see how other people have done it. No consensus. Some are way worse than ours, some better but done so differently it is hard to apply them to our situation. Tom decides he has to actually create rolling credits so we can compare. This involves using a new program that he doesn't know well (this means several trips past GO without collecting $200). We look at the new version...and there are pros and cons. Different screens give us different impressions. Are they easier to read? Size-wise yes, but they go by too fast. Tom's program doesn't seem to allow them to go slower.

We finally decide we like the original design with static pages better. We tell Kim. The next day Tom has second thoughts. OY!

To find out what we ended up with you'll have to wait til the end of the film :)

On the same page with the Dalai Lama

I noticed in the SF Chronicle that the Dalai Lama is giving $50,000 to the University of Wisconsin's Center for Investigating Healthy Minds. They will use it to see if positive emotions such as kindness and compassion help a person's brain be more resilient to life's hard knocks. While the Dalai Lama is thinking about meditation, and its effects on well being, I immediately thought of the more active work that can be done in school to foster kindness and compassion. There are so many times in a day when opportunities arise, from taking care of a school pet, to looking at a conflict from the other person's perspective. One of the parts of being in a school where all the ages have daily interactions that I love is how it allows older children to be involved in the lives of younger ones. On our playground one often sees a younger child turning to an older one for help. When younger ones join a mixed age game, more often than not the older students are encouraging and tone the game down to work for the younger ones. And when that doesn't happen, or a younger child feels unfairly treated, it can very quickly come to the attention of an adult who knows the older child, and can bring the parties together--taking the time to build understanding, and compassion. This requires Time: when children are playing and talking with each other, involved in activities together. Unstructured time is an important part of the mix, as well as a common understanding that working with "feelings' is part of what happens at school. i understand the Dalai Lama's focus on meditation, but I hope the folks in Wisconsin also study other pieces of what makes for healthy children's minds. I'd like that to include the difference that creative outlets make and the presence of situations where children can learn how to be kind and compassionate.

Turning around "reorganizing"

I "attended" a Teachers Letters to Obama web roundtable called Turn Around This Policy,a few days ago. First of all I am still pretty amazed by how these technologies bring people together. 42 of us from all across the country were listening to speakers, seeing their slides, and exchanging our reactions at the same time. The "discussion space" could have held 100, but if the speed that the comments of 42 is any indication, I would never have caught the comments if a hundred had been typing their thoughts. So while I would wish more people had been present, it was a good number for interacting.

The four speakers each had been affected by school "reorganization' in one way or another. Chuck Olnyck from LA's Fremont High, a school with 4,600 students(the first mistake) was labeled failing and teachers made to reapply for their jobs. Chuck refused, and now is looking in from the outside at what the results have been. As far as he can see it's mainly disruption of some promising small schools within this monster that were making the kinds of changes most likely to turn the school around. There will be more first time teachers. Some might view that as a positive, but without good support those new teachers may join the large ranks of those who quit after 3 years.

Nikki Barnes teaches at a KIPP middle school charter that has a very high rate of college acceptance for its students. She has been there 12 years, but many of the teachers around her have only stayed for their 2 year Teach For America contract. They put their all out for those two years, but Nikki questions this strategy of burning through young idealistic teachers, as well as wondering about the definition of success in KIPP and other schools. High results on standardized tests are seen as basic. More is demanded than that, but still schooling sounds very limited to what will look good on a college resume. Some of the practices she described dismayed me, but I was impressed by Nikki's objectivity. She does not dismiss KIPP, and will continue to teach there, but see the faults. Is there a way to incorporate some of the positive student-centered KIPP practices into other settings?

Sabrina Stevens Shupe has a blog called Failing Schools. Her explanation of how labeling a school as failing increases the likelihood it will get worse, was very persuasive. I hope she is reaching policy makers!

The last speakers were three teachers from Detroit who are starting a teacher led elementary school. The school is a three year experiment, which all who commented felt was too short a period. Perhaps they can negotiate a longer trial, and broader measurements of success. Right now it is limited to the rate that they raise test scores. Whatever the shortcomings, the fact that teachers are taking (and sharing) leadership is big. They are getting some of the support they will need in the form of planning time. I hope we can get updates as to how they are doing, and if I do, I will report about it.

This roundtable was just one more reminder of how much is going on in education right now--positive and negative. Helping to "unleash the positive" is my goal!