One of the characters with whom I attended Glebe Collegiate Institute from 1984 - 1989 was named Andrew Potter. I remember Andrew as a bit of a rogue element in class, particularly Grade 11 English. When we started reading Othello, we read scene 1 in which secondary characters give the back story of Othello and Desdemona's courtship and marriage. Our teacher then asked us what character we were most interested in meeting, clearly expecting the answer to be "Othello". Andrew's immediate and excited answer, based on the descriptions of her beauty? "Desdemona!"
Another time I was giving a presentation in that same English class, I forget what the topic was, and the teacher angrily woke Andrew up from his happy sleep on the desk. Andrew was not too fazed by the teacher's anger but was a good enough guy to apologize to me after the class.
I think it is fair to say that our Grade 11 English teacher would have been convinced that Andrew was never going to amount to anything in the field of writing or literature. Today it was announced that Andrew Potter is the new Editor-in-chief of the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. Also today, Kate Heartfield reposted on her blog a column Andrew wrote in 2001 about Nelson Mandela and citizenship. It is a deep column, full of terrific ideas. Since high school, Andrew has also worked as a university professor, written a book, and co-written another. Not bad for someone who would fall asleep in English class.
My point here is that as teachers we often think we know how things will go after school for our students. We are positive that the bright, hard-working students will go on to have successful lives and careers and we are pretty sure that sure that the lazy, annoying students won't go very far at all. The example of Andrew Potter should serve to remind us that people change and that the student is not the future adult.
In my time as a teacher I have heard so many stories from adults along the lines of "this teacher told me I would never amount to anything". Hearing those stories always makes me a bit sad because it means that some teachers, who should have been supporting and helping their students, were wasting everyone's time making negative judgments that most likely were not even correct.
If you are a teacher, please do not tell any student anything that can be construed as "you won't amount to anything". No matter how lazy, wasteful, annoying, or rude you think they are right now, you never know how they will turn out.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Some serious people think education needs serious changes
This past week, a conference was held in Waterloo called the Equinox Learning 2030 Summit. The goal of the conference was to look at how education in 2030 (the Grade 12 year for students born this year) can and should change from the way it is today. The Communique summarizing their findings is interesting reading. If you do not want to read all six pages of the communique, this blog post from the conference summarizes the summary.
In this post I want to address the statement from the blog post that "portfolio work could replace letter-grades as the primary criteria for evaluation". That one statement resonated the most with me, although I also like the other main ideas of changing teacher roles and changing student groupings away from age-grouped classes to more ability-grouped classes. My last post (quite a while back, I had a busy semester 2) discussed how giving grades takes parental and teacher focus away from student learning. Watching The Agenda on TV last night (October 4, 2013) made me think about what we, as a society, are doing with the grades teachers give.
The answer I came up with is that grades provide some limited feedback for parents but otherwise the only organizations that use grades are Colleges and Universities for the purposes of student admission. No employer looks at grades. If an employer feels that a prospective employee needs to have a certain skill then the employer uses the interview process and/or the training process to make sure the employee has that skill. Why can't post-secondary institutions do the same? I would estimate that teachers spend 15-20% of their time and get 50% or more of their stress from creating evaluations (tests, projects, etc.), marking evaluations, and defending the evaluation process. Yet all that time, effort, energy, and stress is only in aid of providing a free service to post-secondary institutions, some of which are private, profit-making organizations!
A student's final grade is supposed to represent that student's overall achievement in terms of mastering the curriculum expectations. Yet courses at high school typically have 10 - 15 overall objectives on which the students are supposed to demonstrate their ability. How does it make any sense to turn 10 - 15 different skill/knowledge sets into one single grade? Current changes towards strand-based evaluation in high schools will mean that teachers will have the information necessary to report on every single one of the 10 - 15 overall objectives for any course. It is foolish to create a situation where the teacher has all that detailed information but is then forced to lose all those details by turning that information into one single grade.
I hope that provincial education bureaucrats and school board higher-ups are paying attention to the Learning 2030 Summit's conclusions. Those conclusions look like a path towards an improved education system for the children being born right now.
In this post I want to address the statement from the blog post that "portfolio work could replace letter-grades as the primary criteria for evaluation". That one statement resonated the most with me, although I also like the other main ideas of changing teacher roles and changing student groupings away from age-grouped classes to more ability-grouped classes. My last post (quite a while back, I had a busy semester 2) discussed how giving grades takes parental and teacher focus away from student learning. Watching The Agenda on TV last night (October 4, 2013) made me think about what we, as a society, are doing with the grades teachers give.
The answer I came up with is that grades provide some limited feedback for parents but otherwise the only organizations that use grades are Colleges and Universities for the purposes of student admission. No employer looks at grades. If an employer feels that a prospective employee needs to have a certain skill then the employer uses the interview process and/or the training process to make sure the employee has that skill. Why can't post-secondary institutions do the same? I would estimate that teachers spend 15-20% of their time and get 50% or more of their stress from creating evaluations (tests, projects, etc.), marking evaluations, and defending the evaluation process. Yet all that time, effort, energy, and stress is only in aid of providing a free service to post-secondary institutions, some of which are private, profit-making organizations!
A student's final grade is supposed to represent that student's overall achievement in terms of mastering the curriculum expectations. Yet courses at high school typically have 10 - 15 overall objectives on which the students are supposed to demonstrate their ability. How does it make any sense to turn 10 - 15 different skill/knowledge sets into one single grade? Current changes towards strand-based evaluation in high schools will mean that teachers will have the information necessary to report on every single one of the 10 - 15 overall objectives for any course. It is foolish to create a situation where the teacher has all that detailed information but is then forced to lose all those details by turning that information into one single grade.
I hope that provincial education bureaucrats and school board higher-ups are paying attention to the Learning 2030 Summit's conclusions. Those conclusions look like a path towards an improved education system for the children being born right now.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
What Education Could Learn from Soccer
In the February 16 Ottawa Citizen I was quite interested to read Richard Starnes' "Beautiful Game" column about changes to soccer for children in Canada. In the column he talks about how children in under 9, under 10, and under 11 year old leagues will not be competing for titles. Rather than focusing on winning games and trying to be first in the league the focus is meant to be on improving skills.
Starnes mentions that many parents and coaches will be unhappy about the changes but points out that this is a selfish reaction from the adults. He does not say this directly but, the way I see it, those adults want to make themselves feel good by saying "my team/my kid's team won the league championship this year". It is not about motivating the players, or rewarding the team that improves the most, it is about making adults feel good on the backs of children.
My mind immediately jumped to some conversations that I have had recently with other teachers about marks and marking. In particular, talking to teachers who have children in the school system I get a sense of what parents are thinking when it comes to their children's marks. Even for teachers, who ought to know better, the focus is about the mark, the number or the letter, rather than the mark as an indicator of learning. Our whole culture, from kindergarten to university seems fixated on marks to what I view as an unhealthy degree.
Here is where the connection to soccer comes in. I think that marks are only really serving parents. If a child gets all As, the parent gets to be proud and tell everyone. It is like winning the league championship. If a child has Bs or Cs or Ds you can talk about illnesses or injuries and how he or she will do better next year just like a sports team undergoing a "rebuilding year". But none of that is about how much the child learned, whether he or she will retain that learning, whether he or she developed skills and habits to assist future learning. And yet those items are what really matters in the long run.
I wish that education would take a cue from soccer and get rid of marks in elementary school. It is well understood that almost all children will be moved up through the grades based on their age anyway, so marks really serve no purpose. Instead of counting As and Bs on the report card, maybe parents will take time to read the comments instead. Those comments take dozens of hours for elementary teachers to write yet my impression is that only a tiny minority of parents read them because all they want to know is "A, B, C, or D?"
It is great to see soccer putting the focus on learning and improvement for its young participants. I wonder how long it will take the education system to do the same?
Starnes mentions that many parents and coaches will be unhappy about the changes but points out that this is a selfish reaction from the adults. He does not say this directly but, the way I see it, those adults want to make themselves feel good by saying "my team/my kid's team won the league championship this year". It is not about motivating the players, or rewarding the team that improves the most, it is about making adults feel good on the backs of children.
My mind immediately jumped to some conversations that I have had recently with other teachers about marks and marking. In particular, talking to teachers who have children in the school system I get a sense of what parents are thinking when it comes to their children's marks. Even for teachers, who ought to know better, the focus is about the mark, the number or the letter, rather than the mark as an indicator of learning. Our whole culture, from kindergarten to university seems fixated on marks to what I view as an unhealthy degree.
Here is where the connection to soccer comes in. I think that marks are only really serving parents. If a child gets all As, the parent gets to be proud and tell everyone. It is like winning the league championship. If a child has Bs or Cs or Ds you can talk about illnesses or injuries and how he or she will do better next year just like a sports team undergoing a "rebuilding year". But none of that is about how much the child learned, whether he or she will retain that learning, whether he or she developed skills and habits to assist future learning. And yet those items are what really matters in the long run.
I wish that education would take a cue from soccer and get rid of marks in elementary school. It is well understood that almost all children will be moved up through the grades based on their age anyway, so marks really serve no purpose. Instead of counting As and Bs on the report card, maybe parents will take time to read the comments instead. Those comments take dozens of hours for elementary teachers to write yet my impression is that only a tiny minority of parents read them because all they want to know is "A, B, C, or D?"
It is great to see soccer putting the focus on learning and improvement for its young participants. I wonder how long it will take the education system to do the same?
Saturday, February 2, 2013
More stuff about Bill 115
I have just been watching "The Teachers' Agenda" episode of TVO's Agenda program. Looking at some of the comments posted as well as some of Steve Paikin's devil's advocate comments I wanted to raise a few issues.
1. The issue of the banked sick days. The provisions around those days were negotiated in previous contracts. That means that the school boards and province typically had to pay less money in wages and benefits because the teachers were willing to make concessions in return for keeping the sick day banking and gratuities. So taxpayers, school boards, and the province have already received value for those banked days and gratuity provisions. It is hardly fair for the government to take from teachers something that teachers have already paid for.
2. The issue that the private sector has had a tough time over the last few years but that the public sector has not and that is why the government has to apply Bill 115. True, the private sector has had a tough time recently. But previously the private sector was doing really well (late 90s, early 2000s) while the public sector was being hammered by Mike Harris and his "Common Sense Revolution". The private and public sectors tend to go in opposite cycles. This is the nature of the beast. The workers in the public sector do not expect 5% and 10% yearly wage increases when the economy is booming, even though that may be happening in the private sector. It is not reasonable to pull the public sector down when the private sector is doing badly if the reverse (pulling the public sector up when the private sector is doing well) is not on the table.
3. Extra-curricular activities. This seems to be the current lightning rod because Bill 115 has not allowed teachers any other method for expressing their displeasure. Extracurricular clubs, groups, and teams are run almost entirely on the goodwill and volunteer time of teachers. Teachers are not given any compensation of any kind for their efforts and, in my experience, are rarely even thanked by the students and/or the parents. Yet many parents and media commentators are currently talking regularly about how critical and important extracurricular activities are for students. I would be more sympathetic if the current pronunciations matched behaviours that occur when teachers are putting in all the voluntary time.
4. Teacher salaries + benefits + vacations versus the private sector. Back in 2000 I left a permanent teaching job and worked at Mitel Networks Corporation for about three years. When I started at Mitel I got a significant yearly pay raise (roughly from $46,000 to $60,000). Based on a ten month teaching year I was making about $4,600 a month teaching versus $5,000 a month at Mitel. At Mitel I had various medical and insurance benefits, including sick days and the option of long-term disability, that were very similar to what I got as a teacher. I also got vacation days that I could take at any time (unlike my time as a teacher). Mitel also offered a pension benefit of 5% per year. Finally, I was able to be promoted and earn raises based on my performance, which worked out to about a 10% raise after my first year, in comparison to the 2 - 3% raise (starting from the lower yearly salary) I would have earned as a teacher. So my experience in the private sector was that compared to teaching I was able to earn more money, get similar benefits, and get two weeks of vacation that I could take any time.
5. Hourly salaries. This issue came up in the comments. Every once in a while some commentator takes an experienced teacher's salary (about $90,000), divides by five hours of work a day (the absolute minimum that a full time teacher can work) and roughly 200 work days a year and gets a value of around $90 an hour. I don't have statistics for all teachers but I know that my wife, who does not yet make $90,000 a year typically works 50 hours a week, not including any volunteer activities, when she is teaching full time. Based on working about 40 weeks a year, that means that she works right around 2000 hours a year, the same as anyone working forty hours a week for fifty weeks. So my wife is making less than $45 an hour, unlike the $90/hr that biased commentators like to invoke.
My point with this post is to try and provide some information about teachers and their working conditions that are based in reality in contrast to the ideas and numbers being thrown around by teacher-hating commentators. I hope it helped.
1. The issue of the banked sick days. The provisions around those days were negotiated in previous contracts. That means that the school boards and province typically had to pay less money in wages and benefits because the teachers were willing to make concessions in return for keeping the sick day banking and gratuities. So taxpayers, school boards, and the province have already received value for those banked days and gratuity provisions. It is hardly fair for the government to take from teachers something that teachers have already paid for.
2. The issue that the private sector has had a tough time over the last few years but that the public sector has not and that is why the government has to apply Bill 115. True, the private sector has had a tough time recently. But previously the private sector was doing really well (late 90s, early 2000s) while the public sector was being hammered by Mike Harris and his "Common Sense Revolution". The private and public sectors tend to go in opposite cycles. This is the nature of the beast. The workers in the public sector do not expect 5% and 10% yearly wage increases when the economy is booming, even though that may be happening in the private sector. It is not reasonable to pull the public sector down when the private sector is doing badly if the reverse (pulling the public sector up when the private sector is doing well) is not on the table.
3. Extra-curricular activities. This seems to be the current lightning rod because Bill 115 has not allowed teachers any other method for expressing their displeasure. Extracurricular clubs, groups, and teams are run almost entirely on the goodwill and volunteer time of teachers. Teachers are not given any compensation of any kind for their efforts and, in my experience, are rarely even thanked by the students and/or the parents. Yet many parents and media commentators are currently talking regularly about how critical and important extracurricular activities are for students. I would be more sympathetic if the current pronunciations matched behaviours that occur when teachers are putting in all the voluntary time.
4. Teacher salaries + benefits + vacations versus the private sector. Back in 2000 I left a permanent teaching job and worked at Mitel Networks Corporation for about three years. When I started at Mitel I got a significant yearly pay raise (roughly from $46,000 to $60,000). Based on a ten month teaching year I was making about $4,600 a month teaching versus $5,000 a month at Mitel. At Mitel I had various medical and insurance benefits, including sick days and the option of long-term disability, that were very similar to what I got as a teacher. I also got vacation days that I could take at any time (unlike my time as a teacher). Mitel also offered a pension benefit of 5% per year. Finally, I was able to be promoted and earn raises based on my performance, which worked out to about a 10% raise after my first year, in comparison to the 2 - 3% raise (starting from the lower yearly salary) I would have earned as a teacher. So my experience in the private sector was that compared to teaching I was able to earn more money, get similar benefits, and get two weeks of vacation that I could take any time.
5. Hourly salaries. This issue came up in the comments. Every once in a while some commentator takes an experienced teacher's salary (about $90,000), divides by five hours of work a day (the absolute minimum that a full time teacher can work) and roughly 200 work days a year and gets a value of around $90 an hour. I don't have statistics for all teachers but I know that my wife, who does not yet make $90,000 a year typically works 50 hours a week, not including any volunteer activities, when she is teaching full time. Based on working about 40 weeks a year, that means that she works right around 2000 hours a year, the same as anyone working forty hours a week for fifty weeks. So my wife is making less than $45 an hour, unlike the $90/hr that biased commentators like to invoke.
My point with this post is to try and provide some information about teachers and their working conditions that are based in reality in contrast to the ideas and numbers being thrown around by teacher-hating commentators. I hope it helped.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Student Evaluation, Another Analogy
Two of my previous three posts have been about some of the still controversial, among both teachers and the public, pushes for reform of how student marks are calculated. One post was about not assigning zeroes for work that was not done and the other was about not using averages to calculate student grades.
Today I thought that I would try to combine the ideas of those two posts using an analogy that I hope all Canadians will understand, hockey.
Determining a student's final grade is a little bit like the General Manager of an NHL hockey team trying to decide how good a player is. If the GM is looking at a player who has scored 25 goals in each of the last four seasons, then the GM can be pretty confident that he is signing a player who will score around 25 goals next year. In the same way If I see a student whose marks are 65, 65, 65, 65 I can be confident in assigning a mark of 65.
The difficulty arrives with players and students who are not so consistent. What about a player with scoring stats of 20, 20, 25, 30? I think most of us would guess that player should be scoring goals in the high-20, low-30 range next year. My point is that we are not looking at his average of goals, which is 23.75, but rather at the trend of his performance, and expecting that he actually rates better than his average. As a teacher I am trying to do the same thing for students. A student with marks of 60, 60, 65, 70 should probably be rated in the high 60s even though the average is 63.75.
We also need to reflect negative trends. A hockey player with 30, 30, 25, 20 has averaged 26.25 goals per season but I doubt the GM should pay him like a 25+ goal player. Similarly a student with 70, 70, 65, 60 has an average of 66.75 but probably should be evaluated in the low 60s.
What about flukey results? Imagine a hockey player with 20, 20, 40, 20 over the last four seasons. His average is 25 goals a season but that 40 goal season looks like it was more of a fluke than anything else. As a GM I would probably pay the player like a 20 goal guy. The issue is the same for a student with only a few good results. A student with marks of 60, 60, 100, 60 has an average of 70 but probably should only be given a mark in the low 60s since that one 100 does not seem at all to be representative of his ability.
Let us also look at zeroes. Imagine a hockey player who scored 30 goals a year for three seasons then was suspended for all of his fourth year for drug infractions. His goals are 30,30,30,0 and he is averaging 22.5 goals a season. Some people might say "well, it is the players fault he got suspended and scored no goals, he should have to face the consequences" and suggest he be paid like a low-20s goal scorer. However, I bet most NHL GMs would be willing to pay that player based on him scoring almost 30 goals in the following season. That is because the previous consistency is very strong evidence of the player's underlying ability. Also, does anyone really think the player would have scored no goals if he had played last year? So if I look at a student whose marks are 70, 70, 70, 0 (did not hand in the project) the average is 52.5. But the initial consistency suggests that this student's learning is near 70. So we should give a mark in the high 60s that reflects our best estimate of the student's learning, not an average that suggests the student is barely passing.
I hope this analogy has helped you understand that teachers who are trying to follow current best practices are trying to estimate underlying learning based on consistency and trends, rather like we might try to evaluate hockey players.
Today I thought that I would try to combine the ideas of those two posts using an analogy that I hope all Canadians will understand, hockey.
Determining a student's final grade is a little bit like the General Manager of an NHL hockey team trying to decide how good a player is. If the GM is looking at a player who has scored 25 goals in each of the last four seasons, then the GM can be pretty confident that he is signing a player who will score around 25 goals next year. In the same way If I see a student whose marks are 65, 65, 65, 65 I can be confident in assigning a mark of 65.
The difficulty arrives with players and students who are not so consistent. What about a player with scoring stats of 20, 20, 25, 30? I think most of us would guess that player should be scoring goals in the high-20, low-30 range next year. My point is that we are not looking at his average of goals, which is 23.75, but rather at the trend of his performance, and expecting that he actually rates better than his average. As a teacher I am trying to do the same thing for students. A student with marks of 60, 60, 65, 70 should probably be rated in the high 60s even though the average is 63.75.
We also need to reflect negative trends. A hockey player with 30, 30, 25, 20 has averaged 26.25 goals per season but I doubt the GM should pay him like a 25+ goal player. Similarly a student with 70, 70, 65, 60 has an average of 66.75 but probably should be evaluated in the low 60s.
What about flukey results? Imagine a hockey player with 20, 20, 40, 20 over the last four seasons. His average is 25 goals a season but that 40 goal season looks like it was more of a fluke than anything else. As a GM I would probably pay the player like a 20 goal guy. The issue is the same for a student with only a few good results. A student with marks of 60, 60, 100, 60 has an average of 70 but probably should only be given a mark in the low 60s since that one 100 does not seem at all to be representative of his ability.
Let us also look at zeroes. Imagine a hockey player who scored 30 goals a year for three seasons then was suspended for all of his fourth year for drug infractions. His goals are 30,30,30,0 and he is averaging 22.5 goals a season. Some people might say "well, it is the players fault he got suspended and scored no goals, he should have to face the consequences" and suggest he be paid like a low-20s goal scorer. However, I bet most NHL GMs would be willing to pay that player based on him scoring almost 30 goals in the following season. That is because the previous consistency is very strong evidence of the player's underlying ability. Also, does anyone really think the player would have scored no goals if he had played last year? So if I look at a student whose marks are 70, 70, 70, 0 (did not hand in the project) the average is 52.5. But the initial consistency suggests that this student's learning is near 70. So we should give a mark in the high 60s that reflects our best estimate of the student's learning, not an average that suggests the student is barely passing.
I hope this analogy has helped you understand that teachers who are trying to follow current best practices are trying to estimate underlying learning based on consistency and trends, rather like we might try to evaluate hockey players.
Friday, December 21, 2012
A school board trustee hits the nail on the head.
Today's Ottawa Citizen published a very well-informed op-ed piece today about the issues around bill 115. The piece, written by public school board trustee Pam Fitzgerald makes some excellent points that the real issues of Bill 115 are not really about money or democratic rights but about the educational initiatives that have been launched over Dalton McGuinty's time in office.
Ms. Fitzgerald talks about how changes to processes involving student responsibility (plagiarism, incomplete work), increases to teacher responsibilities (testing, record-keeping, report cards), and the addition of many at-risk and special needs students to the classroom without sufficient support have greatly affected the role and workload of teachers.
Here are three insightful paragraphs from the article.
"Many of these initiatives appear to be laudable but they are frequently implemented with undue haste and perhaps with a sense of political expediency. There is little say on the viability, and the process of implementation and collaboration is frequently lacking.
New initiatives with unforeseen consequences for students, teachers and school administrators often simply serve to stretch teachers to the limit at the expense of time, creativity, and flexibility in the classroom. (my italics)
While it’s recognized that differentiated instruction and a little student autonomy improve learning, teaching itself has become more standardized.(again, my italics) Unlike other professions where a standardized approach might improve the product and despite some improvements in test scores, standardization in education has led to frustration for students and teachers alike. As the world-renowned and well-respected educator Sir Ken Robinson might say, we are using the 19th-century factory model to teach 21st-century minds."
Later on in the article Ms. Fitzgerald makes the point that that the government continues to use a "do as I say, not as I do approach". Any teacher can easily name a half-dozen policies, programs, or initiatives that fit that mold. We are to try to provide individualized instruction to our students but the principal wants all teachers teaching the same lessons. Or we are forced to attend professional development about the value of giving students choices. We are told that, despite our experience and judgement that some students cannot handle it, we must give all students more responsibility around assignment due dates and then also put in the time and effort to deal with lapses but our marks had better be in by 9am Monday even if exams were only written on Friday.
Ms. Fitzgerald talks about how changes to processes involving student responsibility (plagiarism, incomplete work), increases to teacher responsibilities (testing, record-keeping, report cards), and the addition of many at-risk and special needs students to the classroom without sufficient support have greatly affected the role and workload of teachers.
Here are three insightful paragraphs from the article.
"Many of these initiatives appear to be laudable but they are frequently implemented with undue haste and perhaps with a sense of political expediency. There is little say on the viability, and the process of implementation and collaboration is frequently lacking.
New initiatives with unforeseen consequences for students, teachers and school administrators often simply serve to stretch teachers to the limit at the expense of time, creativity, and flexibility in the classroom. (my italics)
While it’s recognized that differentiated instruction and a little student autonomy improve learning, teaching itself has become more standardized.(again, my italics) Unlike other professions where a standardized approach might improve the product and despite some improvements in test scores, standardization in education has led to frustration for students and teachers alike. As the world-renowned and well-respected educator Sir Ken Robinson might say, we are using the 19th-century factory model to teach 21st-century minds."
Later on in the article Ms. Fitzgerald makes the point that that the government continues to use a "do as I say, not as I do approach". Any teacher can easily name a half-dozen policies, programs, or initiatives that fit that mold. We are to try to provide individualized instruction to our students but the principal wants all teachers teaching the same lessons. Or we are forced to attend professional development about the value of giving students choices. We are told that, despite our experience and judgement that some students cannot handle it, we must give all students more responsibility around assignment due dates and then also put in the time and effort to deal with lapses but our marks had better be in by 9am Monday even if exams were only written on Friday.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Why a No Zeroes policy is good for learning
Recently in Alberta there has been a large to-do over the suspension and subsequent dismissal of high school teacher Lynden Dorval. The main issue involved in the disciplining of Dorval was his refusal to follow his school's No Zero policy for student assignments that did not get handed in. Many people are referring to Dorval as a "hero" for standing up to what they view as watered-down, permissive education.
Ken O'Connor, an internationally recognized expert on evaluation and grading wrote a good defence of No Zero policies in the Edmonton Journal in June. I want to explain and expand on some of the issues he raised.
The first thing that Dorval's supporters do not realize is that teachers following best practices do not use averages to calculate final grades. When you don't use averages, then giving a zero or not becomes irrelevant. A student who has done work to demonstrate the learning demanded by the course curriculum deserves to be recognized for that learning even if he or she has not done all the work. A student whose missed work means that he or she has not met all course expectation should not be granted the credit, even if an average of his/her marks would give a grade above 50%.
Secondly, allowing a teacher to give zeros allows both teachers and students to avoid responsibility. A student can choose to not do work and "take a zero", avoiding his/her responsibility to do school work. A teacher can give a zero to that student and avoid the responsibility that I feel a teacher should have to follow up when a student has a problem so significant that work does not get completed. I ask parents out there, if your child did not do a school assignment, would you want the teacher to give a zero and forget about it or instead follow up with the student (and maybe you too) about what the problem was and how it can be fixed?
The third point that Dorval's proponents seem to be missing is the idea that grades and marks should try to accurately reflect student learning. If a student does not produce work, assigning any mark to it actually makes no sense. It would be a little bit like a meteorologist saying "On Thursday it rained most places in the city but because of a technical problem I did not get a rainfall reading so I will treat Thursday's rainfall as zero". Assuming that a measurement should be zero because you were unable to take the measurement is going to skew your data.
Now that you have read this post (and Ken O'Connors piece as well, I hope) you should have a better understanding that No Zero policies are not about watering down education or being permissive with students. No Zero policies are about trying to provide the best educational and learning opportunities possible to our young people based on what we know right now. If you are looking for more information on current best practices in assessment and evaluation, checking out Ken O'Connors books is a great place to start.
Ken O'Connor, an internationally recognized expert on evaluation and grading wrote a good defence of No Zero policies in the Edmonton Journal in June. I want to explain and expand on some of the issues he raised.
The first thing that Dorval's supporters do not realize is that teachers following best practices do not use averages to calculate final grades. When you don't use averages, then giving a zero or not becomes irrelevant. A student who has done work to demonstrate the learning demanded by the course curriculum deserves to be recognized for that learning even if he or she has not done all the work. A student whose missed work means that he or she has not met all course expectation should not be granted the credit, even if an average of his/her marks would give a grade above 50%.
Secondly, allowing a teacher to give zeros allows both teachers and students to avoid responsibility. A student can choose to not do work and "take a zero", avoiding his/her responsibility to do school work. A teacher can give a zero to that student and avoid the responsibility that I feel a teacher should have to follow up when a student has a problem so significant that work does not get completed. I ask parents out there, if your child did not do a school assignment, would you want the teacher to give a zero and forget about it or instead follow up with the student (and maybe you too) about what the problem was and how it can be fixed?
The third point that Dorval's proponents seem to be missing is the idea that grades and marks should try to accurately reflect student learning. If a student does not produce work, assigning any mark to it actually makes no sense. It would be a little bit like a meteorologist saying "On Thursday it rained most places in the city but because of a technical problem I did not get a rainfall reading so I will treat Thursday's rainfall as zero". Assuming that a measurement should be zero because you were unable to take the measurement is going to skew your data.
Now that you have read this post (and Ken O'Connors piece as well, I hope) you should have a better understanding that No Zero policies are not about watering down education or being permissive with students. No Zero policies are about trying to provide the best educational and learning opportunities possible to our young people based on what we know right now. If you are looking for more information on current best practices in assessment and evaluation, checking out Ken O'Connors books is a great place to start.
Why I don't average student marks
A short while ago Janice Kennedy of the Ottawa Citizen wrote a piece about teachers ignoring what she called "educational kookiness". Reading that piece, I realized that she was looking at the process of determining marks for students as if it had not changed since she was a teacher. In particular, she is assuming the teachers determine a student's final grade by averaging all the marks that student has earned. This prompted me to come up with an example of why current best practices recommend against using averages to determine student grades.
Imagine that two students have written the same series of tests in a course. Each test reflects the cumulative knowledge of the student for the whole course at that point. Student A scores 80% on the first test, 70% on the second test, then 60%, 50%, 40%. Student B scores 40% on the first test, then 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%. If we determine final grades based on averages, then both students get the same grade, 60%. But clearly student B is improving his/her learning while it looks like student A is understanding less and less. There are more statistically sophisticated methods than simple averages that can be used to try and capture the trend being shown, but they are tricky and have potential flaws. The reality is that any given statistical method for calculating final grade will have weaknesses, so Ken O'Connor, a recognized expert in student evaluation, offers this as Guideline #6 in his book How to Grade for Learning K - 12: "Crunch numbers carefully, if at all."
So instead of crunching student results into an average, best practices call for teachers to use their judgement based on the most consistent student results, with the emphasis on the most recent. In the example above, the lack of consistency would mean that a teacher should focus on the most recent results which are 50% and 40% for student A and 70% and 80% for student B. These most recent results suggest that student A may not have learned enough to pass the course while student B's learning can fairly be evaluated as being in the low 70s. That is a big difference from giving both 60%.
Imagine that two students have written the same series of tests in a course. Each test reflects the cumulative knowledge of the student for the whole course at that point. Student A scores 80% on the first test, 70% on the second test, then 60%, 50%, 40%. Student B scores 40% on the first test, then 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%. If we determine final grades based on averages, then both students get the same grade, 60%. But clearly student B is improving his/her learning while it looks like student A is understanding less and less. There are more statistically sophisticated methods than simple averages that can be used to try and capture the trend being shown, but they are tricky and have potential flaws. The reality is that any given statistical method for calculating final grade will have weaknesses, so Ken O'Connor, a recognized expert in student evaluation, offers this as Guideline #6 in his book How to Grade for Learning K - 12: "Crunch numbers carefully, if at all."
So instead of crunching student results into an average, best practices call for teachers to use their judgement based on the most consistent student results, with the emphasis on the most recent. In the example above, the lack of consistency would mean that a teacher should focus on the most recent results which are 50% and 40% for student A and 70% and 80% for student B. These most recent results suggest that student A may not have learned enough to pass the course while student B's learning can fairly be evaluated as being in the low 70s. That is a big difference from giving both 60%.
Monday, September 24, 2012
No voluntary activities, now what?
For those of you reading this in "real time" you may know that as a result of the Ontario Provincial Liberal Government's Bill 115 (supported by the Conservative Party) all teachers in Ontario have lost the right to bargain contracts or go on strike. My response to my MPP about Bill 115 is posted on this blog. This left "withdrawal of voluntary services", not doing activities or events that are not in our contract or the Education Act, as the only method of protest for teachers. The union has only recommended that teachers not participate in voluntary activities as the union is not allowed to order such job action without a strike vote. As a side note, the strike votes are happening pretty much as I type. However, for the moment the decision to withdraw voluntary services is being made teacher-by-teacher or sometimes school-by-school. This means that some schools in the Ottawa public board (Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, OCDSB) are offering all sports and clubs, some schools are offering none and some schools are offering a partial selection.
This has made students unhappy as some of them have been more affected than others and many are annoyed about being "pawns" in a teacher-government dispute. However, teachers are also unhappy. First of course, we are unhappy about losing bargaining rights. But many teachers are unhappy about how losing extracurricular activities means losing opportunities to connect positively with students and opportunities to help students who may be having difficulties at school or at home.
As I was thinking about this problem, an idea came to me. It will not work for every teacher but if it works for any, it is better than nothing. The idea is this: take some of the time and energy that would ordinarily be devoted to extracurricular activities and devote it to helping a student or students in a different way. Maybe find some more time to offer extra help. Maybe find a way to offer extra, extra help for someone who really needs it. Maybe make an extra phone call to a parent every day just to stay in touch and keep lines of communication open. Maybe help a colleague with their prep or their marking so that they have more energy for their students. Anything you can do with that "extracurricular" time will be some small improvement in someone's life. And if you are anything like me as a teacher, then that is why you are in the profession.
This has made students unhappy as some of them have been more affected than others and many are annoyed about being "pawns" in a teacher-government dispute. However, teachers are also unhappy. First of course, we are unhappy about losing bargaining rights. But many teachers are unhappy about how losing extracurricular activities means losing opportunities to connect positively with students and opportunities to help students who may be having difficulties at school or at home.
As I was thinking about this problem, an idea came to me. It will not work for every teacher but if it works for any, it is better than nothing. The idea is this: take some of the time and energy that would ordinarily be devoted to extracurricular activities and devote it to helping a student or students in a different way. Maybe find some more time to offer extra help. Maybe find a way to offer extra, extra help for someone who really needs it. Maybe make an extra phone call to a parent every day just to stay in touch and keep lines of communication open. Maybe help a colleague with their prep or their marking so that they have more energy for their students. Anything you can do with that "extracurricular" time will be some small improvement in someone's life. And if you are anything like me as a teacher, then that is why you are in the profession.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
My email to my MPP
The government of Ontario passed Bill 115 yesterday called "The Putting Students First Act". This followed several months of spin by the government that depicted teachers as overpaid and did its best to tap into the idea that teachers don't work that hard and should be grateful for all the great perks and benefits they get.
Bill 115 takes away teachers' ability to negotiate pay or working conditions and removes benefits like sick leave and retirement gratuities that had been freely negotiated between school boards and teachers. You may feel that those benefits are unreasonable since most other professions don't get them but please remember that those benefits come from negotiated agreements. If teachers received those benefits, it means they gave up something else, maybe salary, maybe some other benefit. So taking away those benefits is a unilateral removal of money from teachers. I can't see how unilaterally taking money away from people who negotiated in good faith is ever going to be fair.
All this is to set the stage for the email I wrote to my MPP, Bob Chiarelli. I am going to post it here because I think it does a decent job of saying what I feel about this situation.
Bill 115 takes away teachers' ability to negotiate pay or working conditions and removes benefits like sick leave and retirement gratuities that had been freely negotiated between school boards and teachers. You may feel that those benefits are unreasonable since most other professions don't get them but please remember that those benefits come from negotiated agreements. If teachers received those benefits, it means they gave up something else, maybe salary, maybe some other benefit. So taking away those benefits is a unilateral removal of money from teachers. I can't see how unilaterally taking money away from people who negotiated in good faith is ever going to be fair.
All this is to set the stage for the email I wrote to my MPP, Bob Chiarelli. I am going to post it here because I think it does a decent job of saying what I feel about this situation.
Hello Mr. Chiarelli,
I am a High School teacher for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. My home is in your riding and I voted for you last election. I would like to tell you a bit of my story as it is representative of the difficulties faced by teachers.
I graduated from Engineering Physics at Queen's University (with first class honours) in 1993. In 1994 - 95 I attended the Faculty of Education at Queen's. When I graduated I did some supply teaching and other teaching-related work and I became a contract (permanent) teacher with the OCDSB in 1998. The frustrations of teaching, partly compounded by the government of the time, led me to move into high technology as a Software Designer with Mitel in 2000. However, I eventually realized that software design did not give me the feeling of helping that I got when I was teaching.
In 2007 I returned to teaching and I am now in my sixth year of trying to get a permanent job. This is the reality that faces all new and returning teachers at this time. It takes years of hard work followed by some good luck to land a job that does not go away at the end of June every year. The teachers who persevere through these difficulties are committed, caring professionals who put students first every day. Teachers like me are not in this for the money, not in this for the bankable sick days, not in this for the summers off. By the way, at Mitel I could have taken a two month unpaid leave in the summer and still made more than I would have as a teacher.
Teachers like me are in this because we love teaching, we love the students, and we love trying to help build a better society one student at a time. I don't know why your government has chosen to attack us. I don't know why your government has chosen to act like we are lazy, greedy, and selfish. I don't know why your government has chosen to take away our ability to have any control over our working conditions.
I do know that your government has treated all my hard work and efforts, and those of my colleagues, as unimportant and of low value. If I ever treated a student the way your government has treated me and my fellow teachers I would be ashamed. I hope you will hear and understand some of the pain and difficulty your government has caused me. I hope that you will lobby and act within your caucus and the Cabinet to mitigate what your government is doing to us.
Because if an election was held right now I would be voting for the NDP because you voted to take away my rights and they voted to uphold my rights.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Behavioural struggles
Again and again as I talk to other teachers about students' (problem) behaviours, one idea is never too far from the surface. Give any conversation 5 to 10 minutes and you'll hear "There are no consequences any more. No wonder the students don't behave." And this sounds pretty reasonable. After all, of of the reasons most of us usually behave in the way that society expects is because we do not like the consequences of behaving outside society's expectations.
But the problem with this idea is that it assumes that all students are capable, right now, right this instant, no matter what is going on in their lives, of behaving the way we expect them to. We are assuming that the reason they are not behaving in the expected fashion is because they can behave properly but they are not making the effort, presumably because they lack the motivation of consequences. Apply consequences, the thinking goes, and those behaviours will clear up like that.
But what if they cannot, actually mentally, emotionally cannot, behave the way we want them to? I would like to get you thinking about the fact that behaviours can be hard to control, no matter how old and/or experienced you may be, let alone if you are a teenager.
My tough behaviour is eating. I love eating. I love the taste of food. When I am tired, or stressed, or unhappy eating good food makes me feel better. And there are consequences to this. I am six foot 2 (around 187 cm) and at one point I weighed 280 pounds. Now, I wasn't a candidate for the Biggest Loser but at age 37 my doctor started me on large doses of Niacin, a B vitamin that helps reduce cholesterol. I understand the consequences of love of eating. Extra weight damages joints, my cholesterol level, combined with my family history, puts me at greater risk of a heart attack, of dying young. Extra weight saps my endurance, making it harder to do physical activity with my family. I know all this. I am motivated. What could be more motivating that the risk of death?
Yet motivation is not enough to help me control my eating. My eating behaviours have been put in place over 42 years of my life. I cannot motivate them away. I have to try and be smart about them, figure out when and why and what I eat and figure out ways to reduce my calorie intake while still being happy. I have to find ways to get more physical activity into my life. Making these changes requires "skillpower, not willpower", as an anti-smoking expert once told me.
Do you have any behaviours that are negative but you have trouble controlling? If not, then you are one lucky SOB. But if you do, then please take a minute to think that at least some of the student behaviours that bother you come from a lack of "skillpower" rather than a lack of motivation. Please take the time and energy to work with them on their behaviour management skills so that they can behave the way that we want them to.
If you are looking for tools to help students improve their "skillpower", have a look at the Collaborative Problem Solving ideas of Dr. Ross Greene. I have found those tools to be tremendously helpful in dealing with all kinds of students. You can get more information at the Lives in the Balance web site.
But the problem with this idea is that it assumes that all students are capable, right now, right this instant, no matter what is going on in their lives, of behaving the way we expect them to. We are assuming that the reason they are not behaving in the expected fashion is because they can behave properly but they are not making the effort, presumably because they lack the motivation of consequences. Apply consequences, the thinking goes, and those behaviours will clear up like that.
But what if they cannot, actually mentally, emotionally cannot, behave the way we want them to? I would like to get you thinking about the fact that behaviours can be hard to control, no matter how old and/or experienced you may be, let alone if you are a teenager.
My tough behaviour is eating. I love eating. I love the taste of food. When I am tired, or stressed, or unhappy eating good food makes me feel better. And there are consequences to this. I am six foot 2 (around 187 cm) and at one point I weighed 280 pounds. Now, I wasn't a candidate for the Biggest Loser but at age 37 my doctor started me on large doses of Niacin, a B vitamin that helps reduce cholesterol. I understand the consequences of love of eating. Extra weight damages joints, my cholesterol level, combined with my family history, puts me at greater risk of a heart attack, of dying young. Extra weight saps my endurance, making it harder to do physical activity with my family. I know all this. I am motivated. What could be more motivating that the risk of death?
Yet motivation is not enough to help me control my eating. My eating behaviours have been put in place over 42 years of my life. I cannot motivate them away. I have to try and be smart about them, figure out when and why and what I eat and figure out ways to reduce my calorie intake while still being happy. I have to find ways to get more physical activity into my life. Making these changes requires "skillpower, not willpower", as an anti-smoking expert once told me.
Do you have any behaviours that are negative but you have trouble controlling? If not, then you are one lucky SOB. But if you do, then please take a minute to think that at least some of the student behaviours that bother you come from a lack of "skillpower" rather than a lack of motivation. Please take the time and energy to work with them on their behaviour management skills so that they can behave the way that we want them to.
If you are looking for tools to help students improve their "skillpower", have a look at the Collaborative Problem Solving ideas of Dr. Ross Greene. I have found those tools to be tremendously helpful in dealing with all kinds of students. You can get more information at the Lives in the Balance web site.
Should learning be fun?
Note: I started this post about a year ago. Here I am finally getting around to finishing it. I hope the links still work.
A few days ago I saw an email from a Math teacher with whom I have previously worked. She was pointing her colleagues to an article about the riots in Vancouver after Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. The article, by Naomi Lakritz (one of my least favourite newspaper columnists), is critical of how teachers and society deal with children and teenagers. The author of the article is critical of, among other things, the idea that learning should be fun. She makes fun of an article by Larry Williams where he puts forward some good ideas about the value of fun in creating motivation and the value of motivation to help people learn.
A quote from Lakritz: "But learning cannot always be fun; it often requires long hours of mental effort, perseverance and hard slogging. Insisting that learning must be fun teaches children to expect that everything in life must be fun, that they are always entitled to fun, and that if something isn’t fun, they don’t need to bother with it."
I think Lakritz is missing the point about learning. For example, she is a writer and learning to be a good writer (I dislike Ms. Lakritz's opinions, but I can find no fault with the technical aspects of her writing) can certainly involve "long hours of mental effort, perserverance and hard slogging". But I would be willing to bet any amount of money that writing for Lakritz involves elements of joy and/or satisfaction. I am sure that she felt happy and satisfied that her column about the Vancouver riots was picked up as a guest column for the Sports section of canada.com. It would have been positive feelings like those that sustained her though all the "hard slogging" of many years of learning the technical skills of a good writer.
And the fun/excitement/joy satisfaction of doing something well is what motivates anyone to keep working and learning at a skill. As an example, every year, thousands of amateur athletes make massive sacrifices of time, money and energy to compete in sports that our nation pays attention to only at Olympic time. Do those athletes do it to get rich, to be famous? No, they do it because they love their sports and they love doing those sports and they love the challenge of trying to be the best in the world. In other words, they have fun and they enjoy what they are doing. I doubt they enjoy every minute of what they are doing. Working at being a world-class athlete demands a level of "hard slogging" that most of us cannot even contemplate, let alone do.
But the fun, the joy is there. Clara Hughes has been one of Canada's most successful Olympic athletes ever. I remember her winning medals at the Atlanta Summer games in cycling. Then she won multiples medals in long distance speed skating. She has been through more hard slogging so far than the vast majority of humans. But here are some of Clara's comments about it all. From August 21, 2007 "With all of this fun, it’s easy to forget the pain and work that this job entails." From March 2005 "...it was so beautiful to go and skate ‘just for the fun of it’." How about this one from June 21, 2011? "...why the heck I am still doing this sport thing. I realized the reason is exactly that. Joy. The potential as a human being to experience the sensation of joy has been possible for me because of sport. Because of competing. It is my form of self-expression and beyond any satisfaction, any success, well beyond those moments of winning or perfecting performance…the emotion that has lifted me up and urged me time and again to return to the arena of competition is joy."
So, maybe if students found learning as fun as Clara Hughes finds distance cycling and skating, then maybe learning wouldn't be such hard slogging after all.
A few days ago I saw an email from a Math teacher with whom I have previously worked. She was pointing her colleagues to an article about the riots in Vancouver after Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. The article, by Naomi Lakritz (one of my least favourite newspaper columnists), is critical of how teachers and society deal with children and teenagers. The author of the article is critical of, among other things, the idea that learning should be fun. She makes fun of an article by Larry Williams where he puts forward some good ideas about the value of fun in creating motivation and the value of motivation to help people learn.
A quote from Lakritz: "But learning cannot always be fun; it often requires long hours of mental effort, perseverance and hard slogging. Insisting that learning must be fun teaches children to expect that everything in life must be fun, that they are always entitled to fun, and that if something isn’t fun, they don’t need to bother with it."
I think Lakritz is missing the point about learning. For example, she is a writer and learning to be a good writer (I dislike Ms. Lakritz's opinions, but I can find no fault with the technical aspects of her writing) can certainly involve "long hours of mental effort, perserverance and hard slogging". But I would be willing to bet any amount of money that writing for Lakritz involves elements of joy and/or satisfaction. I am sure that she felt happy and satisfied that her column about the Vancouver riots was picked up as a guest column for the Sports section of canada.com. It would have been positive feelings like those that sustained her though all the "hard slogging" of many years of learning the technical skills of a good writer.
And the fun/excitement/joy satisfaction of doing something well is what motivates anyone to keep working and learning at a skill. As an example, every year, thousands of amateur athletes make massive sacrifices of time, money and energy to compete in sports that our nation pays attention to only at Olympic time. Do those athletes do it to get rich, to be famous? No, they do it because they love their sports and they love doing those sports and they love the challenge of trying to be the best in the world. In other words, they have fun and they enjoy what they are doing. I doubt they enjoy every minute of what they are doing. Working at being a world-class athlete demands a level of "hard slogging" that most of us cannot even contemplate, let alone do.
But the fun, the joy is there. Clara Hughes has been one of Canada's most successful Olympic athletes ever. I remember her winning medals at the Atlanta Summer games in cycling. Then she won multiples medals in long distance speed skating. She has been through more hard slogging so far than the vast majority of humans. But here are some of Clara's comments about it all. From August 21, 2007 "With all of this fun, it’s easy to forget the pain and work that this job entails." From March 2005 "...it was so beautiful to go and skate ‘just for the fun of it’." How about this one from June 21, 2011? "...why the heck I am still doing this sport thing. I realized the reason is exactly that. Joy. The potential as a human being to experience the sensation of joy has been possible for me because of sport. Because of competing. It is my form of self-expression and beyond any satisfaction, any success, well beyond those moments of winning or perfecting performance…the emotion that has lifted me up and urged me time and again to return to the arena of competition is joy."
So, maybe if students found learning as fun as Clara Hughes finds distance cycling and skating, then maybe learning wouldn't be such hard slogging after all.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
The wood stove model of teaching
About a week ago I read an article by Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail talking about how liberals and conservatives operate on two different moral systems. The article is based on ideas from Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind (Globe and Mail review), where Mr. Haidt says that liberal thinkers are concerned with care, harm, and fairness but conservative thinkers are concerned with loyalty, authority, and sanctity.
This struck a chord with me recently. On Friday I was at a Professional Development day activity looking at restorative practices. One part of the presentation was comparing restorative practices to traditional school discipline. The traditional discipline practices were really about authority, and sanctity, with maybe a bit around loyalty. Roughly speaking, in traditional discipline, if a student does not show respect for authority and those things authority sanctifies, then the student is punished. A classic example: student swears at a teacher. The student has shown a lack of respect for authority and the teacher's role, so we suspend the student. After the suspension the student comes back to class, usually angry about the suspension, while the teacher is still angry at the student for the disrespect shown that has not been addressed. There is a good chance another incident will occur.
The restorative practices are focused around care, harm, and fairness. The main thrust is that if a problem occurs then at least one person has been harmed and the fair response is to try to fix the harm as much as possible and restore a working community. In restorative practices, if a student swears at a teacher then there is recognition that the teacher has been hurt by that. However, if the student can be helped to understand that he/she has hurt another person and then the student can make honest amends through an apology and/or other actions, then the student can be accepted back into the classroom with no hard feelings and possibly with both student and teacher having a better sense of how to work together in the future.
I feel that I can say fairly that in my experience, discipline that is more restorative around fixing a problem works better than traditional discipline. If you are treated fairly, cared for, and protected from harm it is quite easy to develop loyalty and respect for authority and sanctity. But if you are harmed, not cared for, and not treated fairly, it is almost impossible to develop the traits valued by conservatives.
I think an analogy that I heard many years ago fits this situation. The analogy was the idea of a person telling his/her wood stove "I will give you some wood as soon as you give me some heat". We all know that a wood stove will not give any heat until we put some wood in. In the same way, young students will not show respect and loyalty until they have been cared for, treated fairly and protected from harm.
So teachers, the next time you are looking for "heat" from a student think about whether your best choice might be to stoke the stove by offering some caring and fairness first.
This struck a chord with me recently. On Friday I was at a Professional Development day activity looking at restorative practices. One part of the presentation was comparing restorative practices to traditional school discipline. The traditional discipline practices were really about authority, and sanctity, with maybe a bit around loyalty. Roughly speaking, in traditional discipline, if a student does not show respect for authority and those things authority sanctifies, then the student is punished. A classic example: student swears at a teacher. The student has shown a lack of respect for authority and the teacher's role, so we suspend the student. After the suspension the student comes back to class, usually angry about the suspension, while the teacher is still angry at the student for the disrespect shown that has not been addressed. There is a good chance another incident will occur.
The restorative practices are focused around care, harm, and fairness. The main thrust is that if a problem occurs then at least one person has been harmed and the fair response is to try to fix the harm as much as possible and restore a working community. In restorative practices, if a student swears at a teacher then there is recognition that the teacher has been hurt by that. However, if the student can be helped to understand that he/she has hurt another person and then the student can make honest amends through an apology and/or other actions, then the student can be accepted back into the classroom with no hard feelings and possibly with both student and teacher having a better sense of how to work together in the future.
I feel that I can say fairly that in my experience, discipline that is more restorative around fixing a problem works better than traditional discipline. If you are treated fairly, cared for, and protected from harm it is quite easy to develop loyalty and respect for authority and sanctity. But if you are harmed, not cared for, and not treated fairly, it is almost impossible to develop the traits valued by conservatives.
I think an analogy that I heard many years ago fits this situation. The analogy was the idea of a person telling his/her wood stove "I will give you some wood as soon as you give me some heat". We all know that a wood stove will not give any heat until we put some wood in. In the same way, young students will not show respect and loyalty until they have been cared for, treated fairly and protected from harm.
So teachers, the next time you are looking for "heat" from a student think about whether your best choice might be to stoke the stove by offering some caring and fairness first.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Teaching Works of Art
Many years ago when I was a student at Queen's University, I was fortunate to take four courses with Peter Taylor, a terrific Math professor. Dr. Taylor is a terrific mathematician but he also has side interests in Biology (I did not know theoretical biology existed until I heard him talk about it) and education.
Earlier this year, I was able to attend his "Last Lecture" entitled "God is a Mathematician", and speaking to him briefly afterward I heard about his web site. When I find time, I look through his web site to see what gems I can find, because he has so many fantastic ideas and makes so many neat connections. Yesterday, I found this Dialogue (it deserves the capital D) which sparked fireworks in my brain about some of the difficulties I have seen while teaching.
Dr. Taylor's point in the Dialogue is that if you look at the content of an English course, it is normally full of works of art. There are poems, novels, plays, short stories and more that all have been found to have value, a connection to life, by many people. So, an English course by nature contains subject matter that is intrinsically interesting. I think that we all understand that not every student is going to be impressed by these works of art, but it gives the course a starting point rooted in reality, the reality that there is merit to these pieces.
In Mathematics, we typically focus on the building of technical skills, mostly revolving around addition, subtraction, multiplication, division of different mathematical elements. First, we work with natural numbers, then we work with fractions, then we work with variables, then we work with algebraic expressions. In a sense it is the same stuff over and over again, and so there is little wonder that students get bored. The questions/problems/challenges that have an interesting connection to the students' curiousities and lives are often put in the "extra", "challenge", or "extension" portion of the textbook and are rarely assigned by the teacher, usually because they seem too hard. Dr. Taylor's point is that these problems are hard, the same way that writing or reading a good poem is hard, but we still find the time to do that in our English courses, so why not do it in Math?
As I said above, these ideas ignited some fireworks in my brain. I have made a first attempt to put together a mathematical challenge to students that is, in its small way, a work of art. If you are interested in having a look, it is called the "One Shot Challenge". It is intended for Grade 10 Applied Math (Quadratics strand) and you can find it here on my wiki.
I welcome any thoughts and comments on my "work of art" as well as other ideas from this post, or any other.
Earlier this year, I was able to attend his "Last Lecture" entitled "God is a Mathematician", and speaking to him briefly afterward I heard about his web site. When I find time, I look through his web site to see what gems I can find, because he has so many fantastic ideas and makes so many neat connections. Yesterday, I found this Dialogue (it deserves the capital D) which sparked fireworks in my brain about some of the difficulties I have seen while teaching.
Dr. Taylor's point in the Dialogue is that if you look at the content of an English course, it is normally full of works of art. There are poems, novels, plays, short stories and more that all have been found to have value, a connection to life, by many people. So, an English course by nature contains subject matter that is intrinsically interesting. I think that we all understand that not every student is going to be impressed by these works of art, but it gives the course a starting point rooted in reality, the reality that there is merit to these pieces.
In Mathematics, we typically focus on the building of technical skills, mostly revolving around addition, subtraction, multiplication, division of different mathematical elements. First, we work with natural numbers, then we work with fractions, then we work with variables, then we work with algebraic expressions. In a sense it is the same stuff over and over again, and so there is little wonder that students get bored. The questions/problems/challenges that have an interesting connection to the students' curiousities and lives are often put in the "extra", "challenge", or "extension" portion of the textbook and are rarely assigned by the teacher, usually because they seem too hard. Dr. Taylor's point is that these problems are hard, the same way that writing or reading a good poem is hard, but we still find the time to do that in our English courses, so why not do it in Math?
As I said above, these ideas ignited some fireworks in my brain. I have made a first attempt to put together a mathematical challenge to students that is, in its small way, a work of art. If you are interested in having a look, it is called the "One Shot Challenge". It is intended for Grade 10 Applied Math (Quadratics strand) and you can find it here on my wiki.
I welcome any thoughts and comments on my "work of art" as well as other ideas from this post, or any other.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
New Ways of Paying Teachers
The edReformer blog today had an interesting article entitled How to Pay Teachers. The article describes how teachers are evaluated and paid at Summit Prep school in California. The upshot is that teachers gather evidence to demonstrate their competence in seven teaching areas. The seven areas are Assessment, Content, Curriculum, Instruction, Knowing Learners and Learning, Leadership, and Mentoring.
What I found so interesting about the article is how much control and influence teachers have over the information that is determining their evaluations as teachers. If a teacher thinks she is terrific in Mentoring, then she would be responsible for gathering documentation to show the value of mentoring, perhaps a series of lesson plans from a "mentee" showing progress over the year.
First off, I think that giving teachers control and influence over their evaluations just makes sense from a perspective of fairness. It also makes sense from the perspective of motivation. Workers who feel that they have control over important aspects of their work tend to feel more motivated. Finally, the Summit Prep system gets teachers thinking about what is being expected of them and how to show that they are doing it well. In my opinion, it is the last benefit that is going to pay the biggest dividends. One major aspect of teaching that I feel is weak for most teachers is reflection about the quality and nature of the teaching they do. Teachers at Summit Prep who do not reflect on their teaching will find themselves at the bottom of the pay scale for years at which time an administrator is likely to notice the teacher's lack of progress and fire him or her.
My only question, which does not seem to be addressed in the post, is whether spending time to gather all the information teachers need to be evaluated gets in the way of teaching. Other than that, this seems like a great system for evaluating teacher performance.
What I found so interesting about the article is how much control and influence teachers have over the information that is determining their evaluations as teachers. If a teacher thinks she is terrific in Mentoring, then she would be responsible for gathering documentation to show the value of mentoring, perhaps a series of lesson plans from a "mentee" showing progress over the year.
First off, I think that giving teachers control and influence over their evaluations just makes sense from a perspective of fairness. It also makes sense from the perspective of motivation. Workers who feel that they have control over important aspects of their work tend to feel more motivated. Finally, the Summit Prep system gets teachers thinking about what is being expected of them and how to show that they are doing it well. In my opinion, it is the last benefit that is going to pay the biggest dividends. One major aspect of teaching that I feel is weak for most teachers is reflection about the quality and nature of the teaching they do. Teachers at Summit Prep who do not reflect on their teaching will find themselves at the bottom of the pay scale for years at which time an administrator is likely to notice the teacher's lack of progress and fire him or her.
My only question, which does not seem to be addressed in the post, is whether spending time to gather all the information teachers need to be evaluated gets in the way of teaching. Other than that, this seems like a great system for evaluating teacher performance.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The power of new teaching methods
I just found an article entitled Lectures obsolete, says Nobel winner in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. The article talks about how new, interactive teaching methods were able to teach more physics to a group of students than an experienced, charismatic professor at UBC. This feels like a personal victory to me since back in January 2009 the Citizen ran an editorial ridiculing the types of methods that proved to be so effective in the current article. The Citizen's January 23, 2009 editorial, entitled "Learning Difficulties", concluded "A lecture from a charismatic professor, given to a group of students who want to be there, will always be worth more than clickers in the hands of a colourless professor and disengaged students."
I wrote two letters to the editor on the topic of lectures versus new teaching methods, defending the value of new teaching methods. Portions of the two letters were combined and printed in the Letters page on February 5, 2009, along with my picture. That was a small victory, although the Citizen highlighted my recognition of the fact that lectures work for some students over my defense of new teaching methods.
Now, however, comes today's article showing that good teaching methods, including the much-maligned clickers, actually blow away a charismatic professor. Students learning from the professor scored 18% better than random guessing while students learning from the new methods scored 51 percent higher than random guessing.
I am curious to see whether the UBC results will merit an editorial comment. If it does, I will be sure to respond. :)
I wrote two letters to the editor on the topic of lectures versus new teaching methods, defending the value of new teaching methods. Portions of the two letters were combined and printed in the Letters page on February 5, 2009, along with my picture. That was a small victory, although the Citizen highlighted my recognition of the fact that lectures work for some students over my defense of new teaching methods.
Now, however, comes today's article showing that good teaching methods, including the much-maligned clickers, actually blow away a charismatic professor. Students learning from the professor scored 18% better than random guessing while students learning from the new methods scored 51 percent higher than random guessing.
I am curious to see whether the UBC results will merit an editorial comment. If it does, I will be sure to respond. :)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Students, Parents, Privacy, and the Social Media World
My wife has started a blog and put up a really good post about privacy and social media. Then, my wife invited her students to comment on the issues in the post. There were many good comments and thoughts but the ones that struck me were about the role of parents in educating young people about issues of privacy and protection while using social media.
Student thoughts included the idea that this material should NOT be the subject of a new, compulsory course, that workshops and presentations in school could inform students about the dangers and solutions, and that parents could teach their children how to be safe on the Internet. One particularly good point was that, while schools could try and teach Internet safety, young students might not understand the importance and so would not follow the advice they had been given. This puts the onus back on the parents to be monitoring their children's Internet and social media use. However, I think it is safe to say that only a small percentage of parents are truly savvy about the Internet and social media. For example, I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I don't have a Facebook account so my understanding of the dangers and the solutions is only second-hand at best.
So perhaps the solution is to teach the parents, as one student suggested. The question is, how do we teach the parents? Maybe one way is to have Town Hall type meetings like the one at my wife's school that prompted her post. But Town Hall meetings will not reach every parent, so what else can be done? At the moment, I am not sure. Any thoughts, suggestions, or comments would be appreciated.
Student thoughts included the idea that this material should NOT be the subject of a new, compulsory course, that workshops and presentations in school could inform students about the dangers and solutions, and that parents could teach their children how to be safe on the Internet. One particularly good point was that, while schools could try and teach Internet safety, young students might not understand the importance and so would not follow the advice they had been given. This puts the onus back on the parents to be monitoring their children's Internet and social media use. However, I think it is safe to say that only a small percentage of parents are truly savvy about the Internet and social media. For example, I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I don't have a Facebook account so my understanding of the dangers and the solutions is only second-hand at best.
So perhaps the solution is to teach the parents, as one student suggested. The question is, how do we teach the parents? Maybe one way is to have Town Hall type meetings like the one at my wife's school that prompted her post. But Town Hall meetings will not reach every parent, so what else can be done? At the moment, I am not sure. Any thoughts, suggestions, or comments would be appreciated.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
School Connections of the future
Back in September 2009 I wrote a post about the difficulties of getting enough computer access for students. Since then, the continuing rise of the smartphone has made me wonder whether a solution is possible if we focus on portable connectivity rather than desktop computers.
Most initiatives in schools come down to money. If there is funding for it, it happens. No funding, dead initiative. So I started thinking about where money could come from for devices that provide network and internet connectivity as well as the computational power to run applications. The first idea I had was textbooks. Every year there is money being put into the school system to buy, repair, or replace textbooks. At some point, I bet it will become cheaper for the school boards or the Ministry of Education to just give a student a device and a license for the textbooks rather than buying, maintaining, and storing thousands of textbooks.
Already some universities are experimenting with devices like iPads. Clearly, there are still issues, but given the amount of money being spent on textbooks ($539.2 million in 2000-2001 according to StatsCan and probably 10 times that in the United States), I am sure that textbook publishers and device manufacturers will both be trying to get as much of the textbook market as possible.
There are so many advantages to etextbooks and the disadvantages that currently exist can be reduced or eliminated by changing the software and hardware being used to read the electronic versions. I imagine that it is only a matter of time before the use of paper textbooks becomes much diminished.
Most initiatives in schools come down to money. If there is funding for it, it happens. No funding, dead initiative. So I started thinking about where money could come from for devices that provide network and internet connectivity as well as the computational power to run applications. The first idea I had was textbooks. Every year there is money being put into the school system to buy, repair, or replace textbooks. At some point, I bet it will become cheaper for the school boards or the Ministry of Education to just give a student a device and a license for the textbooks rather than buying, maintaining, and storing thousands of textbooks.
Already some universities are experimenting with devices like iPads. Clearly, there are still issues, but given the amount of money being spent on textbooks ($539.2 million in 2000-2001 according to StatsCan and probably 10 times that in the United States), I am sure that textbook publishers and device manufacturers will both be trying to get as much of the textbook market as possible.
There are so many advantages to etextbooks and the disadvantages that currently exist can be reduced or eliminated by changing the software and hardware being used to read the electronic versions. I imagine that it is only a matter of time before the use of paper textbooks becomes much diminished.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Thinking like a ....
Various educational learning that I have done in the past suggested that as teachers we want to teach our students to think like experts. This sounds great when you are in the middle of an upgrade course in Math or Science, but an article that I read a few months ago twigged me to the problems.
First, most of the students in any given class are not going to become experts in that field. So, is it really of any value to the students to "think like an expert" in a field they will not enter? The second problem is that if EVERY course is trying to teach students to think like experts then students will be likely overwhelmed by the fact that we are trying to get them to think like scientists, mathematicians, historians, writers, etc. all at the same time.
So maybe we do not want to try and teach all of our students to think like experts. Obviously we should leave the path to expertise open for students who are interested, but what should we do with/about the students who are less interested?
I am going to suggest that we try to teach students to "think like citizens". In our technological and democratic society, citizens need to have at least a basic understanding of fields of expertise such as math, science, history, writing to be able to make good decisions on policy that involves those fields. An excellent example was this summer's controversy over the proposed changes to the long-form census. To make a reasonable decision on the question, citizens needed a basic understanding of statistics and sampling. There was no need for them to be experts, just to know enough to see whether the government was making a sound decision. Similarly in the evolution/creation debate, there is no need for citizens to be steeped in the evidence and arguments for both sides. A sound knowledge of the scientific method and the way in which science works will allow people to decide whether the fact that evolution is "just a theory" means that it is uncertain.
As teachers, if we want to do right by our students, I think that we need to make sure that those students are getting good solid grounding in the basic principles that underlie our disciplines. And by principles I don't mean basic skills like multiplication in mathematics or spelling for writers, I mean the underlying attitudes and methods that allow us to say things like how likely a scientific theory is to be true (evolution, global warming) or whether a new idea will produce an accurate census. Part of those attitudes is the habit of being informed and up to date. New ideas, evidence, technologies, thoughts and theories are always occurring in all areas of knowledge. No one can stay on top of everything, but it is possible to be aware of any big changes in a wide range of fields, especially with the prevalence and ease of access of information on the Internet.
If our students can stay informed about important developments in various fields and then make good judgements about policy, our country will do just fine, no matter what the challenges. As a teacher, I really want to help make that happen.
First, most of the students in any given class are not going to become experts in that field. So, is it really of any value to the students to "think like an expert" in a field they will not enter? The second problem is that if EVERY course is trying to teach students to think like experts then students will be likely overwhelmed by the fact that we are trying to get them to think like scientists, mathematicians, historians, writers, etc. all at the same time.
So maybe we do not want to try and teach all of our students to think like experts. Obviously we should leave the path to expertise open for students who are interested, but what should we do with/about the students who are less interested?
I am going to suggest that we try to teach students to "think like citizens". In our technological and democratic society, citizens need to have at least a basic understanding of fields of expertise such as math, science, history, writing to be able to make good decisions on policy that involves those fields. An excellent example was this summer's controversy over the proposed changes to the long-form census. To make a reasonable decision on the question, citizens needed a basic understanding of statistics and sampling. There was no need for them to be experts, just to know enough to see whether the government was making a sound decision. Similarly in the evolution/creation debate, there is no need for citizens to be steeped in the evidence and arguments for both sides. A sound knowledge of the scientific method and the way in which science works will allow people to decide whether the fact that evolution is "just a theory" means that it is uncertain.
As teachers, if we want to do right by our students, I think that we need to make sure that those students are getting good solid grounding in the basic principles that underlie our disciplines. And by principles I don't mean basic skills like multiplication in mathematics or spelling for writers, I mean the underlying attitudes and methods that allow us to say things like how likely a scientific theory is to be true (evolution, global warming) or whether a new idea will produce an accurate census. Part of those attitudes is the habit of being informed and up to date. New ideas, evidence, technologies, thoughts and theories are always occurring in all areas of knowledge. No one can stay on top of everything, but it is possible to be aware of any big changes in a wide range of fields, especially with the prevalence and ease of access of information on the Internet.
If our students can stay informed about important developments in various fields and then make good judgements about policy, our country will do just fine, no matter what the challenges. As a teacher, I really want to help make that happen.
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