Blocks & Constructs = True Story

What does Constructivist Theory look like in practice? 

Well, I'll tell you a little story of what happened just before bedtime last night in our house.

Right before we read stories, I practice a little number sense with my girls.  I asked my four year old, "If I have three blocks, you have three blocks and kid #2 has 3 blocks, how many blocks do we all have?"

She took her blocks and made three seperate piles of three, assigning a color to each set. (This was all her doing.)  She answered nine.

Then, she did something that surprised me. She configured them into a square. (Luckily, I had my phone nearby.)  We talked about how three and three and three (in rows like addition) make 9 and how 3 by 3 is nine.

I told her 9 is a square number.  She just proved it.

So I went with this and asked her, "If I have 4 blocks, you have 4 blocks, kid #2 has 4 blocks and Daddy has four blocks, how many would we have all together?"

So, back to work. She figured out 16, and built the square with no prompting. She declared 16 a square number as well.

I was so proud I could barely stand it, and then she took it even further. With no blocks and no prompting. She shouted, 4 is a square number!

"No way. I said. Show me."

And she did. She built her square of 2x2.

And then she went on to build what she declared rectangle numbers. I'd say she's on to something with rectangle numbers.

Since Kid #2 fell asleep early last night and missed all the fun, I'll have my four year old share her discovery before bed tonight.

Michael Josefowicz @toughloveforx synthesized this conclusion at the end of a Twitter conversation.

"Authentic Connections Inspire instead of Expect."

Rubbish Piles of #Blueberries and #EdReform Efforts

Thomas Jefferson had a pretty clear reason for establishing public education. Take a moment to read Raking Geniuses from the Rubbish by Bhaskar Krishnamachari.  For real reform to happen, we must do many things differently. Some of us who have been flirting with this idea, how it may look, what the environment may look like for learning to flourish.  

• Is Jefferson's vision what we continue to see as necessary in our country for our public schools? 
• Or, do we want a democracy of productive, peaceful, well-educated people? 

Really, think about it for a while. If you're not sure, find a school age child, yours or another, and ask him/her the purpose of school. 


If you lean toward the later question, we must implement a system where students are honored and learning is honored.  

And we must  challenge the current purpose for public education  established by Jefferson.

• Do you want a system designed to encourage innovation, creativity and beyond?
• Is our current system acceptable for a society going into the 21st century?

I can promise you this.  The greatest potential innovators are not necessarily the students who are easily identifying as gifted, who receive A's for breakfast, lunch and dinner, who are labeling proficient or advanced by a publishing company or who have badges electronically pinned to their lapels. We are sending a generation of great innovators onto the streets. They are dropping out of high school, running the streets.  And for those who are currently running Wall Street, they aren't doing any better.  


Our current system of public schools ranks and sorts students, throwing some out into the rubbish pile, like #blueberries.  I've been collecting blueberry stories.  If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, read Jamie Vollmer's ah-ha moment. Also, read Steve Denning's article identifying the biggest problem reform faces, the Root Cause: Factory Model of Management . I agree with his conclusion but I will take it a step further and say our schools have a Factory Model of Production, in Jeffersonian tradition, plumping up the "best blueberries" and discarding the rest.


-------BLUEBERRIES
Kid O Talks Back, Eventually "One of the ongoing problems and frustrations that I have faced in advocating for Kid O, has been in getting her an effective and more portable communication device. For years all she had was a two panel talker. A choice between Choice One and Choice Two. I was there at School Number Two when they came to re-evaluate her. They were again recommending a two panel talker."
------
Ms. Katie marched for students turned away from a turnaround school in Chicago. 
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"Right now, in Detroit Public Schools class sizes are bulging at the seams. This is the situation at our DPS school: A____ now has 52 fifth grade students in her class. They are crammed wall to wall. B____ has 45 fourth graders, and there are 30 kindergartners in each class. All our other classes are at the limit or 5-10 kids over. The 7th and 8th grade classes are at 50 each." -revealed in an article by Nancy Flanagan
------
"When talk-show host Oprah Winfrey handed a $1 million check last September to the principal of New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, 200 students watched the broadcast from a church and celebrated with a brass band.
Lawrence Melrose, a ninth-grader with learning and emotional disabilities, sat next door in a school office. The staff was concerned his fighting and cursing could be an embarrassment..."- from Oprah-Backed Charter School Denying Disabled Collides With Law
------
"It should be noted—and Guggenheim didn’t note it—that Canada (Waiting for Superman) kicked out his entire first class of middle school students when they didn’t get good enough test scores to satisfy his board of trustees. This sad event was documented by Paul Tough in his laudatory account of Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, Whatever It Takes (2009)." -Diane Ravitch
------BLUEBERRIES
If you run across a blueberry story, a story of students unjustly sorted or tossed out of our public schools, send it my way @dellaccs. I'll include it here.

When is enough, enough?

Who is picking and sorting the blueberries? Due to standards-based reform efforts, big business is picking and sorting our students, our blueberries. Standards-based reform efforts are slowly but surely removing assessment from the hands of teachers and placing reporting power into the hands of publishers.    What does this result in? High stakes assessments scored in 60 seconds! 


I ask  MacGraw Hill and Pearson...

• What happens if reform efforts are not profitable for  your shareholders? 
• Are you willing to support a vision of our country, our world, being a better place for all students? 
• Are your shareholders willing to delay gratification of immediate profits in exchange for authentic students learning, growing into a nation of productivity? 

Will we allow money and politicians who have no educational training grounding them in learning theory, continue reform efforts down this very dismal road?  We are holding students accountable, teachers accountable. Why is no one holding these publishers and politicians accountable for the consequences of these dire reform efforts?


"Let’s pose a question.  If you wanted to “sell” something that a number of people did not need, how would you do it?  You might try setting up a contest where everyone competes for a significant financial prize.  After all, Americans love to compete, especially when money goes to the winner." - taken from Let's Get off the National Standards Train


"I have become increasingly concerned with the trend in education of privatizing services and for-profit companies entering education with the sole purpose of making a profit. Profits by themselves are not bad, but often the goal of the company or organization is to maximize profits rather than to do what is best for the “customer”–in this case, students, parents, teachers, and administrators."Dr. Fuller explains further his concerns in an opinion piece concerns regarding the trend of privatization. 


If we want to work our way up Bloom's Taxonomy (updated for the 21st century) in the area of education reform, let's start with understanding.  Pay attention to each new method a school is using to rank and sort students. We are a nation positively obsessed with contests races, winning and losing.

Currently, my awareness is quite high as the #dmlbadges competition is under way and Common Core Standards are being adopted by most of the nation.  I appreciate Justen Eason's blog We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges on this topic.  Also, a few excellent resources on the topic are Punished by Rewards? and the video on the Science of Motivation. 


Be aware that we have invested $330 million into assessments while we have an epidemic of children in poverty!  Why don't you #askarne why!? Better yet, ask your representative, your governor, President Obama. 

Peace Place

'What do I have to do for people to listen?' Boy, 14, who took his own life after gay taunts and he thanked Lady Gaga in his final post


Jamey Rodemeyer  I am listening. 


Many schools are implementing Bully Proofing Programs, Anti Bullying Programs, etc. 


I read The Secret. It's kinda out there. I'm not as far out as it is, and I don't believe the secret is supposed to bring you lots and lots of money. But the one thing that resonated with me is that the universe doesn't hear you in the negative. When you are yelling "NO BULLYING" The universe is hearing BULLYING. And that is what you are going to get more of. It's true too.  I've done the yelling in similar situations.

When I taught, we had some exceptional social workers. One brought two great programs to the school. One was Peace Place. The other was Peer Mediation.

Peace Place came first.

There was a Peace Place  in every classroom, the lunch room, on the playground, etc. When children had a conflict, they used the Peace Place. It took kids some time to get familiar with it.

Posters guided their language to frame their feelings so that another with heated feelings could hear them. It used I messages and helped free words that might have otherwise become a punch or a wound. 

Peer Mediation came second.

Then, he trained peer mediators who wore vests on the playground. If kids could not resolve a problem themselves. Peer mediators stepped in.

I  believe there are some students with great leadership skills who would make wonderful peer mediators, including students who have made poor choices by bullying.

"I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there."
Mother Teresa

Peace Place Steps

1.    Ground Rules

·      Agree to solve the problem

·      Take turns talking

·      No put downs

·      Tell the truth

2.  I Message

·      I feel__________when you ____________ because_________________.

3.   Need Message

·      I need you to _____________________________.

4.  Win-Win Solution

·      Maybe next time we could ________________________.

Shake hands and thank the person for working it out.

The Imagination Ball

Let's have an Imagination Ball. (age 4) 

What's imagination? (age 30 +4 something)

Ideas and inventions (age 4)

Yes, let's. (True story)

Constructivist theory  IS Neural plasticity. We have proof? Is it so?

We have PROOF, scientific proof of learning? Of how understanding is constructed? Discuss it. Debate it. Chew it. Is it? 

But TIME, it's of the essence.

THEY will win.

but children are being left behind, shareholders are taking all their resources, gobbling them up

Standards-based reform is TOP down

no

student up, not bottom up

Let students drive instruction, not data

Let them drive us to places unexpected, beyond the expectations of our limited minds

But the distance must be MEASURED, SHOW GROWTH, COLLECT DATA, LONGITUDINAL, DISAGGREGATE, DRIVE INSTRUCTION, RANK, SORT

RACE to the TOP, to the finish.

What happens at the top? We finish learning? That's silly

START the clock.

ON your marks

Take your data. Connect my dots. Can you see my face? Do you see my life? Do you know my possibilities? 

NO, 

you don't.

You can't. You never will. 

Big man in the chair, at a desk, looking down. You will never connect my dots with a birds-eye view. 

Take a seat, listen and learn. I'll connect my own dots.

But I need your help. 

Could you...

 buy me some books?

let me explore?

grant me an art lesson? 

expose me to ballet?

Allow me to bloom.  

Please.

College and Career Ready

I was watching David Coleman speak proudly about all of the work that has been done developing Common Core Standards and it led me to think about the different paths to college my husband and I had.

I was raised in a middle-class home. I went to private school for most of my years although I begged to go to public school every year. Finally, when I was a junior, my parents let me attend public school. College was an expectation. It was never something I ever even debated. I had to figure out which college I was going to attend, apply and to see if I could get in. I had no restrictions except who would accept me. Ivy league was out. I wasn't a strong test taker. My SAT and ACT scores weren't anything special although my grades were good.  I ended up studying as an undergraduate at Bradley University and went there because I was going to be a business major. They had a strong business school. Little did I know that I would read Jonathon Kozol's Savage Inequalities in a sociology class and become a teacher.  At that point, learning became interesting to me. School was no longer a chore to get me to the next level. Education became a passion.

My husband had a very different path to college. He was not raised with the comforts I took for granted. He learned to sew as a child since there were 13 children and they had to make their own clothes. (I can't operate a sewing machine.  He can mend our daughter's dresses.) College was never on the radar in his home. His mother became a single  mother when my husband was 8.  They were poor.  He was the only of his siblings to attend college. What was his path? His path was through a vocational program in his high school. It was also in the vocational program that he had the opportunity to work with engineers designing aircraft interior. He learned to draft drawings and had a moment. He can tell you the moment he chose to become educated. It happened working along side an engineer in a vocational program in high school. His journey took longer than mine. No college fund had been established like I had. He joined the Air Force and served our country. Then, he went to Cal Poly and became a mechanical engineer. Today, he works in the business field.  He is brilliant. I tell him often that I married a genius. He says, "I know." It makes me smile.

While he was in the high school vocational program, he learned how to work with acrylic plastics.  When he had the idea for an invention to enhance the sound of a smartphone, he knew how to make the prototype.  He had the skills from hands-on experience in high school. Since he was an engineer, he knew how to do the technical drawings for our pending patent and for sourcing our work in the U.S.A.

Everyone's life path is not the same. 


Everyone's smarts are not the same.

It's time to embrace our different strengths and rethink standards. 

Essential Questions for Standards-Based #Edreform

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Albert Einstein


I have a few essential questions before going further any further in the name of standards-based reform.


1) Are standards expectations?
2) Are standards limitations?
3) Should the practice of standardizing performance and quality in the business world be translated into assessing children in the world of education?
4) Is standards-based reform what is best for kids?

Constructivist Theory is the heartbeat of learning and was the foundation of my teaching.  As teachers, we guide, support and lead all of the frameworks of understanding together to unleash each child's genius. The conceptual frameworks of many people active in the field of educational policy are simply not understandings based in learning theory. Take for example Margaret Spelling and Arne Duncan, two Secretaries of Education who have never taught in a public school.


Rewind...

When we were told  that if our school did not meet AYP for three years, we would become a charter school, I was concerned.  During the summer of *2005, I read, highlighted and tried to understand NCLB. I didn’t make it all the way through but I made it far enough to have questions about it. So I made appointments.  I met with people from the Education Commission of the States. I spoke with charter school advocates to try to understand why it was better.  There was no evidence for this direction written into the legislation, but it was tough to argue with. I met with our district's superintendent, and one of our state legislators. I wasn't shy about requesting appointments.


As my husband says, "Those who have never been in the trenches sure know how to dig the ditches."

What? You don’t think your school will meet AYP. Then you must have the soft bigotry of low expectations. This used to really bother me. Well, it kind of still does, but I realize this whole standards-based reform effort and assessment obsession that followed are the result of putting untrained educators in charge of educational policy. They were building off of very different constructs than those of a teacher and they did not bring teachers in to the conversation.  The constructs that started these efforts were policymakers who (I assume) tend to have MBA-style thinking. 


There is a major amount of confusion as well.  (I'll sum it up this confusion by saying a bubble test is a norm-referenced test, not a standards-based assessment and I'll leave it at that.) Entering the business world, I’ve been pulling from what I know and understand from my days as a teacher.  I make appointments with SCORE and use MBA-types as mentors. So why wouldn't those interested in education reform ask the experts in the field? Well, who's an expert? I say an expert MUST have classroom teaching experience.  My professor of education policy  was a teacher quality expert. He had never taught. Two of the three people I met from the Education Commission of the States had never taught.  I actually had a moment of connection to Michelle Rhee thinking she has taught, and then realized she was not a trained educator but went into a classroom anyway. Read From Actuary to Teacher to understand why teacher preparation is important. Whenever I read of an education reformer who is in the public's eye, this is always my first question, so I go to read their bio.   

Now, you should know, I only studied at the doctoral level for a year. While I was there, two things were of particular interest to me.


1) What happened to my grade book? I saw this as the essential question in standards-based reform which I was a huge proponent of and thought we just needed a nice product for managing assessment. (There was the flaw in my thinking. Authentic assessment is not a product. It is a process.) 
and
2) The Reauthorization of NCLB


"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein


Standards-based reform efforts have been going on for quite a while. They began officially under President H.W.Bush and were  "led by the Tucker and Codding (1998) note that in the United States, a defining moment for such policies was the first national summit on education, held in 1989, when President George Bush invited state governors to a meeting at which they agreed on a set of ambitious national education goals to be achieved by the year 2000."


Today, Common Core Standards are the result of  "a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)."


For No Child Left Behind, legislation was "sold" to legislators in the name of minimal student expecations what we should all have and no shareholder at MacGraw Hill or Pearson has been left behind.


For Race to the Top, legislation is being passed penalizing teachers who are not viewed as meeting these expectations using a flawed assessment method. This will determine 50% of a teacher's salary in Florida.


Common Core Standards - Currently, the two publishing giants, MacGraw hill and Pearson endorse Common Core Plus, $330 million dollars has been invested in developing an assessment for Common Core. I see a monopoly coming if something does not happen. ( I say NO HIGH-STAKES TESTING period!)


"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein


As my mentor Mrs. Ellerbroch said my first year teaching, "Everyone has been to school so everyone thinks they're an expert in the field." I may be paraphrasing her, but what she told me has never been more true.  But because I am a Constructivist, I do believe we have something to learn from one another. There are three people who are  helping  connect important conversations about education policy together.   They are Steve Denning, Diane Ravitch and Jamie Vollmert. None have ever taught, but I appreciate the fact that they are listening to teachers and educators to build understanding for all of us. I'd say Steve Denning and Jamie Vollmert have good constructs for MBA-style thinkers and Diane Ravitch has lots of great information on education's history and is now a voice for teachers.

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein

And so I conclude...


1) Standards are for #blueberries which can be counted and sorted and thrown out. Standards are not for children. 


2) Standards are limitations to true educational progress.


"Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world."
Maria Montessori

It's time to do things differently. So, how do we start?

Pick up something by Jonathan Kozol for some inspiration. He was my inspiration to become a teacher. In case you're wondering, I am not an enemy of assessment. If I had to pick one great thing standards-based education brought our profession, I'd say it's the rubric as a tool for teachers to use in thier classroom.  No assessment should be used in any high-stakes matter. *I had the incorrect year here originally.

Plays for Sudan

Many fond memories still remain from my time in the classroom.  I did not walk into a rose garden every day, but I did remember to smell the roses.

My seventh year teaching, I taught an experimental 3rd, 4th and 5th grade gifted and talented classroom in a Title 1 School. We had so much fun in that class, and I learned how to differentiate instruction in a powerful way.  One of the shared reading resources I used was Time for Kids.  This particular issue had an article about Sudan and the genocide occurring in Darfur.  It talked about the Janjaweed (Devils on Horseback) as the people called them.  It was a pretty heavy article and I wonder if I would have chosen to use it now that I'm a mother...  I'm glad I did, though, because a beautiful thing happened.

I remember who it started with and he said, "We have to do something." Well, okay, I can't argue with that. What can we do? We started a brainstrorm on the board and settled on three great ideas: write and perform plays for the public, have an art gallery and write letters to the president.  I had no idea this was coming and certainly didn't have it in my plan book.

And so this fluid teachable moment began to flow.  Kids formed small groups and composed plays.  The plays had nothing to do with Sudan.  I have a playbill somewhere. Their imaginations came alive. There was a play in a jungle, one with Zombie Hippies, and one with a president turning into a chicken I think.  They were all over the place but everyone was involved. Everyone had a part. We put together a Powerpoint to go over with the crowd why we were doing this. Each scene's set changed using pictures placed in a Powerpoint presentation projected behind the actors.

They also made artwork we hung on gymnasium mats and stood up to display.  I'm not sure anyone left that play without purchasing an item or two.  I wasn't sure what to expect for attendance, but we had a great turnout at our evening performance.  I invited friends, including the man who is now my husband.  He gave them a $20 at the door and told them to keep the change. (The suggested donation was $2.00.)  I still remember them telling me about it. My students invited their immediate and extended family.

Each group also wrote letters to the president.  I know I suggested writing to the First Lady (Laura Bush) at the time. Experience in the classroom told me that they were more likely to get a response from a First Lady than the president. Our letters told them about what we were doing and why.  We invited them to the play, but I think they were busy.

Everything was a success.  We had a goal of raising $300 and in the end raised just over that amount.  We sent it to whatever group was mentioned in the article who was trying to help.  As a friend of mine who came to see the play said, "The best part is the element of service they are learning from this." I totally agree and I can't claim responsibility.  It was all them. I just went with it.

The scripted nature of instruction happening in many schools right now would not allow this kind of learning. I'm sure I assessed it all somehow.  We probably made a rubric together to score the plays and letters. I don't remember.  I just remember the learning.