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?
Showing posts with label parents and the school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parents and the school. Show all posts
Sunday, February 17, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Time to get past the reputations of high schools.
The Ottawa Citizen printed an editorial about a week ago that I felt pandered to the prejudices of parents in terms of high school choice.
The Citizen seems to have chosen not to print my letter to the editor disagreeing with the editorial, so I will do so here:
I would like to comment on the “Transferring Blame” editorial of November 18. The editorial talked about how the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is planning to make it more difficult for students to transfer from one school to another. The article's main point rests on two ideas, first that “ there is in this city a perception that some public high schools are better than others”, and secondly that “It's important to be honest, and admit that parents' perceptions are often true.”
I must disagree forcefully with the second statement. The reputations of schools as good vs bad and smart vs tough are all out of proportion to the actual teaching and learning being accomplished at local high schools. Recent research shows that individual teachers affect student results far more than any effect that can be attributed to the school or the school environment. Students will have great educational experiences when they are in the classes of great teachers.
Some would suggest based on my previous statements that Lisgar's superior test results, for example, must come from superior teaching. Again, I must forcefully disagree. I taught at Lisgar several years ago and I worked with many excellent teachers. But the three best I worked with at Lisgar also all taught at Rideau at some point in their careers. My colleagues at Lisgar have worked at many other high schools including Brookfield, Glebe, Rideau, Ridgemont, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and West Carleton, just to name a few. Recently, as a supply teacher I have worked at eleven OCDSB High Schools and I have found excellent, innovative, creative, caring, and passionate teachers at every one.
There are fantastic teachers who can give Ottawa's students great learning experiences at every high school in the city. We need to get past the reputations and prejudices that exist and let students learn together at their local high schools.
The Citizen seems to have chosen not to print my letter to the editor disagreeing with the editorial, so I will do so here:
I would like to comment on the “Transferring Blame” editorial of November 18. The editorial talked about how the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is planning to make it more difficult for students to transfer from one school to another. The article's main point rests on two ideas, first that “ there is in this city a perception that some public high schools are better than others”, and secondly that “It's important to be honest, and admit that parents' perceptions are often true.”
I must disagree forcefully with the second statement. The reputations of schools as good vs bad and smart vs tough are all out of proportion to the actual teaching and learning being accomplished at local high schools. Recent research shows that individual teachers affect student results far more than any effect that can be attributed to the school or the school environment. Students will have great educational experiences when they are in the classes of great teachers.
Some would suggest based on my previous statements that Lisgar's superior test results, for example, must come from superior teaching. Again, I must forcefully disagree. I taught at Lisgar several years ago and I worked with many excellent teachers. But the three best I worked with at Lisgar also all taught at Rideau at some point in their careers. My colleagues at Lisgar have worked at many other high schools including Brookfield, Glebe, Rideau, Ridgemont, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and West Carleton, just to name a few. Recently, as a supply teacher I have worked at eleven OCDSB High Schools and I have found excellent, innovative, creative, caring, and passionate teachers at every one.
There are fantastic teachers who can give Ottawa's students great learning experiences at every high school in the city. We need to get past the reputations and prejudices that exist and let students learn together at their local high schools.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The issue of homework
Well, last night my wife and I ran into our first piece of "homework from Hell". Our seven-year-old daughter who has just started Grade 2 in the regular, English stream brought home a review sheet about patterns. The sheet was double sided and contained approximately ten questions where the students were asked to work with patterns. Each question required the student to do more than one thing, for example in one question the students had to identify the pattern as increasing or decreasing, fill in the next two numbers, and write down the pattern rule. Each individual question was very reasonable but with all the questions and all the parts, this was a lot of work.
The upshot of all this is that after 40 minutes of work supervised by either me or my wife (we switched off twice because of how hard this was for us) the sheet was only about 2/3 finished. As my daughter asked plaintively if she could stop, I agreed. I wrote a little note to the teacher in my daughter's agenda about how long she had worked and how much got done. We will see how the teacher responds, if at all.
Now, the big deal about this is not the piece of homework and how long it took. I suspect that this will be an isolated incident. However, if we repeatedly get pieces like this, my wife and I will deal with it.
The big issue that I recognized is that my wife and I are both teachers. Not only do we have a good sense about how much homework is too much or too hard (most parents do, in my opinion) but we have the confidence and the means to express our opinions and make sure that they are heard by the teacher and the school. Just for starters, my wife and I are both on the school board email system so it is dead easy for us to fire off an email to the teacher.
But I started thinking about parents who do not have as many links and insights into the school system. What happens with them and their children if the teacher starts sending home too much homework, or work that is too hard? And I suspect that the answer is not good. I am willing to bet that when parents do not have the knowledge and/or the confidence to talk and negotiate with the teacher and the school about homework their children get buried under the mound of work they are told to do.
All this reminds me that, as a teacher, I need to be really careful and thoughtful about homework. There is a lot of debate in educational circles about the value of reducing homework. In my Honours Specialist upgrade course we had to do some research on the pros and cons of homework. Not every student benefits from homework while at the same time some students definitely do. If we want our students to get the maximum value out of their education we teachers need to find a way to build in some flexibility.
I am working on an idea to offer students choice in homework while still making sure that the homework is helping them. That however, is a topic for a future post.
The upshot of all this is that after 40 minutes of work supervised by either me or my wife (we switched off twice because of how hard this was for us) the sheet was only about 2/3 finished. As my daughter asked plaintively if she could stop, I agreed. I wrote a little note to the teacher in my daughter's agenda about how long she had worked and how much got done. We will see how the teacher responds, if at all.
Now, the big deal about this is not the piece of homework and how long it took. I suspect that this will be an isolated incident. However, if we repeatedly get pieces like this, my wife and I will deal with it.
The big issue that I recognized is that my wife and I are both teachers. Not only do we have a good sense about how much homework is too much or too hard (most parents do, in my opinion) but we have the confidence and the means to express our opinions and make sure that they are heard by the teacher and the school. Just for starters, my wife and I are both on the school board email system so it is dead easy for us to fire off an email to the teacher.
But I started thinking about parents who do not have as many links and insights into the school system. What happens with them and their children if the teacher starts sending home too much homework, or work that is too hard? And I suspect that the answer is not good. I am willing to bet that when parents do not have the knowledge and/or the confidence to talk and negotiate with the teacher and the school about homework their children get buried under the mound of work they are told to do.
All this reminds me that, as a teacher, I need to be really careful and thoughtful about homework. There is a lot of debate in educational circles about the value of reducing homework. In my Honours Specialist upgrade course we had to do some research on the pros and cons of homework. Not every student benefits from homework while at the same time some students definitely do. If we want our students to get the maximum value out of their education we teachers need to find a way to build in some flexibility.
I am working on an idea to offer students choice in homework while still making sure that the homework is helping them. That however, is a topic for a future post.
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