teaching science reality show

As with many great ideas, this one arose during an offsite meal during regular conference hours. In brief, I was talking with a former grad student now assistant professor about how to help preservice teachers learn to generate great lesson plans in short order. If my memory is accurate, I was probably lamenting (another common precursor to brilliant advances) how in the spring after I taught them science teaching methods in summer, many of my science teaching candidates forget all that they learned. This all comes to a head when one of them is invited to teach a lesson as part of the job interview process. They panic and send me drafts of their lesson. These are so bad, that I have used them as counter-examples in subsequent courses.

I suspect future teachers come to their preparation program with preconceived notions about teaching-as-performance. What else would explain why a middle school candidate, when told to do a lesson on magnets, included in her plan a video of a frog suspended in a magnetic field. Luckily, even via email, I was successful with having my former student recognize the folly of her plan. And in sharing this story, my crepe-munching companion suggested that I should train them to prepare lessons as if they were on the Amazing Race. If you aren't familiar, the signature moment is when the competitors tear open an envelope to learn their next challenge. What if instead of rushing off to eat live octopus or find objects in a rat-filled building, the competitors had to develop a winning lesson plan?!

Many of my teaching strategies are designed to help manage my own petty frustrations. For example, I thought it unfair that a student could earn all the points in a class to earn an A and have poor attendance. Rather than become perturbed, I created a policy whereby I would calculate a final grade based upon the lower of two percentages: points earned or attendance rate. No-shows didn't trouble me at all because it had the potential for influence their GPA. I also felt as if that policy reduced absences. Fast forward to 2011 where I'm irritable that all the best instructional strategies we discuss and rehearse are put in a box and shoved under the bed once a teaching interview arises. This summer, I have been emphasized the Grand Unified Lesson Plan (GULP) as the lesson framework:

Step 0. Identify topic and Translate into Big Idea

Step 1. Pre-assess Every Student

Step 2. Engage: Build Public Representation

Step 3. Explore: Small group activity

Step 4. Explain: Combing Findings with Teacher Input

Step 5. Access Scientific Information: Quick Read

Step 6. Extend: Application Discussion

Step 7. Evaluate: Closure / Exit Slips

In an effort to reinforce this framework and the associated expectation, on a whim I proposed that this was much like "Iron Chef." You know in advance that you have to prepare a multi-course meal. You must have the necessary preparatory and plating skills along with some creativity. It isn't until the secret ingredient is revealed ("Frozen PEAS!!") that you are able to channel your skills and expertise toward a product. Several students nominated this analogy as valuable in their weekly electronic reflections. And so the trap has been set for the last class session.

On that morning, students will be divided into four person teams representing a cross-section of science certification areas. After a few preliminary bits of foolishness (e.g., "what element is sung immediately before and which is sung immediately after the element whose symbol is Sn?") the troops will receive the topic that is to be the focus of their lesson plan. They are to create an entire GULP format lesson based upon this supplied term. They are to also employ accommodations for English language learners and make sensible use of an educational technology. Actually, we may have to scratch the latter because it feels unrealistic. But in many ways it simulates what should transpire in the days and hours leading up to delivering a sample lesson to a roomful of strangers. Furthermore, it forces the participants to engage in debates about instructional design. Ideally, it will also induce them to engage in the spirit of collaboration that we believe is so central to the profession yet rarely demonstrated -- let alone practiced.

And that is our plan for now. Otherwise, I'm working on concepts that would be useful whether a person has allegiance to biology, chemistry or physics and have some evidence of a variety of student misconceptions. Currently, those topics are Oxygen, Energy Transformations and Conservation of Mass. Admittedly, it's not as clever as turning sheep fuzz into footwear. But at least I won't have to imagine how it all comes together.

WTR: WTF in ATL?

Apparently the miraculous improvements in Atlanta Public Schools can be explained by cheating. There are many reasons this is disturbing. One is that it undermines the possibility that Americans might be coming closer to the belief that all children can learn. This trend was something that occurred to me when I finally watched Waiting for Superman. While many claims in the film were left unsubstantiated, including the statement that schools of the 1950s were doing a great job but lost their way in the 1970s. It is convenient imagery but not the truth. Regardless, what I most appreciated was that this film makes it much harder for mainstream citizens to hold onto the belief that inner city parents don’t care about their children's education. The other myth eroded by this film was that it is impossible to overcome the burden of poverty when it comes to educating a child. That these entrenched falsehoods are slightly undone by this film was my reason for hope. Perhaps the public would change its perspective about the value of educating all children. That the Atlanta Public Schools were a success was another piece of evidence -- until the curtain was pulled back and cheating was discovered.

By examining student answer sheets, officials can identify unusual response patterns. One metric they use is WTR: the number of erasures changing a Wrong answer to the Right choice. The first indication that cheating might be taking place was when some schools in Atlanta had an average of 14 WTRs on a 40 question multiple choice test. A startling statistic but circumstantial — except that after an investigation of schools with high WTRs in 2009 showed a dramatic drop in erasures for 2010. Sadly, those were accompanied by plummeting scores in some schools. A subsequent investigation (think: "mixed methods") involved interviews of hundreds of people. Many, many individuals confessed to cheating. Sometimes a teacher would tell individual students to change their answers. In certain schools, the principal made it clear that changing student responses was a desirable strategy. There were also reports of “changing parties” in which groups of adults systematically corrected mistakes.

As expected, many see this as evidence that standardized tests are inherently evil and the pressure to raise scores provoke such behaviors. If this is true then the solution would be to simply stop using standardized tests. Somehow I can’t believe that this is sufficient. After all, at some level adults were aware that their dishonest actions were harmful to children. Many who would have received educational intervention services because of low performance were not identified. And yet they and their parents were never alerted to their academic struggles. What puzzles and intrigues me is more than how widespread the problem is but rather that it is proving to be systemic. Evidence is mounting that coercion and intimidation trickled all the way down from the then-superintendent's office and to individual classrooms throughout Atlanta.

A common refrain about reform is the difficulties of making change systemic. The Atlanta situation proves otherwise albeit in an insidious way. Rather than praise the superintendent for influencing an amazing number of people to do things they might not have otherwise done, one wonders whether there is any hope for a similar transformation that is more honorable. Could we realistically imagine energy being invested throughout a large school system that would produce genuine learning gains rather than artificially inflated scores? Or is this an example where a simple solution took hold and spread whereas the more honest approach is so fraught with difficulties that it is naive to expect anything different? I would like to believe that there are leadership lessons to be learned from Atlanta that that would resonate across a school system but by drawing upon the goodness in educators and parents rather than draw out the scheming and self-interested aspects of far too many people.

image © NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/
2011/07/22/opinion/22letters-art.html

parlay view

English has been my language for quite some time. I tend to be in places where it, or some variant, is what everyone is using. The longest time I have spent outside of the USA was during my father’s Australian sabbatical when I was in eighth grade. My Midwestern/Southern ear failed on only a few occasions. It was several months before we realized that the little guy next door, who we and his family called Tiny, was actually christened “Tony.” Similarly, a trip to Ireland was made all that much easier because knowing how to translate in order to ask for the toilet or a beer was not a necessary prelude to using or abusing either one. For the most part, my travels have not been impinged upon by language differences.

The two-week China adoption trek (already five years ago!) was so tightly managed that I never even contemplated trying to acquire any Mandarin. In my role as support staff (aka "the Manny") I would only ever be on the receiving end of messages. It was clearly brazen when I traveled to Colombia with nary a sentence nor even a phrase book. We were confident our host and hostess would translate anytime it was necessary. The flaw in this plan revealed itself when our flight departing from Colombia was cancelled. Nothing like being frustrated and anxious AND mute. My upcoming trip to France promises to offer some linguistic challenges since Lyon is best known for its gastronomy and the associated displeasure with those who attempt to speak only in English.

Beyond plans to tote a French phrase book, I bought an introductory language CD that contains eight, thirty minute lessons. I had to re-listen to Lesson 1 four times before I could follow the introductory conversation. In general, I can mimic phrases with close to the right intonation. However, the stereotype of the nasally Frenchman struck me as far too comical for me to authentically copy. In Spanish while the r’s are rolled, in French there is a preponderance of throat-clearing. My goal was to produce sensible words in a French restaurant, not a sample of slime from far back in my mouth. So I was conflicted: how to sound French without making myself laugh at my own voice.

Having mastered the exchange in Lesson 1, I girded myself for Lesson 2. It turned out to be basically a review and only introduced a couple extra word variations. This was a great distraction since at the time I was driving on an essentially deserted stretch of interstate. I was bored, it was blazing hot outside, and there was no shame in talking to my digitized tutor. In trying to speak loud enough to hear myself over the air conditioner fan, I began to find my voice. Simultaneously, I was realizing there was not a lot of French I was going to master over the next month. The combination of my loud voice and the recognition that I wasn’t on pace to become conversant turned into an increasingly pitiful call-and-response:

CD: Say: “I don’t understand.”
Me: Je ne comprends pas. Je ne comprends pas!
CD: Say: “I don’t understand French.”
Me: Je ne comprends pas le français. Je ne comprends pas le français! Je ne comprends pas le français!

As the volume grew, I was startled by the urgency in my voice. What might have been amusing in my pronunciation was overwhelmed by the earnestness. I believe you would have felt badly for me even if you could not understand my words. The meaning was clear and I felt it to my core. I imagined being at the train station ticket counter, money and schedule in hand, unable to make a purchase to get from Paris to Lyon. I continued repeating the phrase, beating my fist and becoming louder and more plaintive. I envisioned myself rising from my table at a nice bistro, first addressing the waiter and then appealing to the other patrons to take pity on me. Hungry, thirsty, tired, far from home: I don’t understand French!

meeting the new principal

Three or so years ago, in what seemed like a doomed search for schools to pilot test an urban ecology curriculum, I chanced upon an assistant principal at a local magnet school. She had worked in biology labs at Harvard and actually knew E.O. Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould. Somewhere along the way she discovered that urban schools were where she wanted to spend the balance of her career. In the time since I met her, she has completed her doctorate at a Hartford university and also served a one year internship with the superintendent of Hartford Public Schools. This spring, she hit the jackpot: a former preK-6 elementary school is being transformed into a middle school with an expeditionary learning theme. And she has been appointed the principal. She has a muralist updating office walls, a moving company taking out the tiny chairs, her custodians are vigorously emptying the closets, and she is rehiring just 5 of the existing staff while bringing in an additional 30 people. Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to tour her school and witness her interactions with a couple of her staff. The most amazing scene occurred when she suggested we make a candy run before I departed.

We walked across the street and into a classic bodega, the kind most of us have only experienced by watching movies. Just inside the door was the counter on the right, framed by plexiglass. Two local kids were laboring over the candy choices displayed on either side of the cashier’s window and below. Surprisingly there were also fresh vegetables and locally baked bread available to purchase. My friend had been here before and knew where the plain M&Ms and Sour Patch sticks could be found. Understandably, she wants to become known in the neighborhood. While I would have been content to simply observe the confectionery conversations, Stacy asked the taller boy what grade he was in: “Eighth” he answered brightly. His buddy was going into sixth. When Stacy uncovered that they were going to the “new” school across the street, she offered her hand and introduced herself as their principal.

The delight on the boys' faces as they left the store to get on their bikes was something to witness. It was more than the glow of having met a celebrity. Their faces suggested an unexpected eagerness about the next school year. The regular neighborhood school they had attended just a month earlier was being transformed over the summer. It was going to be a new place. And now they had met the lady who was going to be running the place. Excitement, anticipation and hope. Stacy has an incredible amount of work to do between now and the first day of school. Over sandwiches she and a couple of her team members were trying to figure out how to rotate three grade levels through a tiny cafeteria. And then there is the matter of who will supervise the children as they eat. But even with the countless tasks required to physically whip the place into shape, I envy Stacy and am proud that she also noticed the glow that her handshake pumped into her future students. Things are going to be different, things are going to be better, and if I am wise then I’ll find ways to contribute and reap benefits.