Incredible or Idiotic? You be the Judge

Imagine letting students do whatever they want in your classroom. Imagine the chaos, the pandemonium, the accidents waiting to happen. Can you imagine anything more irresponsible?

Well, that is precisely what I’m doing this year with my Accelerated Freshman English students.  I’m giving them complete ownership of 20% of their class time.*

What’s my deal? Stupidity? Masochism? A penchant for being fired?

I will attempt to explain.

It’s difficult to take in a day’s news without running across a story of our failing educational system, without hearing how public education is draining every ounce of creativity, individuality, autonomy from its students. Sir Ken Robinson is perhaps the most salient voice in this camp as evidenced by the 19 million hits on his Do Schools Kill Creativity TED Talk.

Robinson asserts that creativity is as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. He contends that students must follow their passions. They must try and fail, and learn from that failure: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never be able to come up with something original.” He says that our educational system succeeds at producing two extremes: point mongers and drop outs while it fails produce self-motivated, creative thinkers passionate about their learning.

I agree with Robinson’s assessment, and as an educator, I must bear some complicity.

Enter, “Genius Hour” based on Google and 3M’s 20% time. These mammoth conglomerates maintain policies seem counter-productive at face value. They require their workers to spend 80% of their time on company projects, but then allow them to spend 20% of their time (1 day per week) exploring leads, ideas, curiosities. Time to be creative.

This policy has proved worthy as Google’s Gmail, the #1 email provider in the world, is the result of 20% time as is the invention of 3M’s Post-it note (without which I personally would be at least 20% less efficient). It seems that time to play, time to be creative, time to dabble pays off both in innovation and profit.

So when I read about Kevin Brookhauser’s experience with 20% time in his classroom, I knew this was something I had to try. It was not a capricious decision on my part. Class time is golden. With the increasing demands on test scores and Common Core implementation, it seems there’s less time than ever for implementing innovative ideas in the classroom.

However, since educational relevance (or lack thereof) is something that keeps me up at night (as regular readers of my blog will testify), I felt not only justified but obliged to try 20% in my classroom this year.

I started with a fairly lengthy parent letter, explaining the what and why of this unconventional undertaking. I shared it with my principal, who was excited: “I expect we’ll get a lot of calls about this (dramatic pause to convey perceived anxiety) This is the kind of thing we need to be doing.”

Parents notified, it was now time to hook the kids. I showed them Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” and asked them to blog their reactions. Here are a few representative quote:

• “If you are unprepared to be wrong, you will never be able to think of original ideas, and even if  you do, you won’t have the confidence to share your ideas with others.”
• “Creativity allows the chains on the mind to be released for a while. The real issue here is that parents and teachers have to decide what is more important; a child’s happiness, or molding their children into what THEY want for their future.”
• “School teaches us to focus on memorizing facts and that coming up with anything original is unimportant to our future. This is a terrible problem because the world needs creativity for that new invention that saves our earth, for that new book that starts a revolution, for that one vaccine that everyone needs. Yes, science and math is important for this as well, but creativity is also key.”
• “If schools want to have brilliant students that can change the world, they should make creativity just as important as social studies, science, math, and all the other ‘intelligent’  subjects.”

Clearly, my students were all singing the same song with Sir Ken Robinson as their conductor. Some were a bit skeptical about how to change the system, but not one questioned if it should be changed.  Student 20% “buy in” was mounting.

Next, I had them “Google” 20% project and react to their findings on a shared electronic bulletin board: I read their reactions aloud as they typed.

One wrote, “I wish w e could do this at school.”  “You know what?” I responded aloud, “We are!” It was at that moment that Travis (a student I had been warned about, a student who was reluctantly placed in Accelerated Freshman English) fell out of his chair in disbelief.

“Really? he asked, brushing his hair out of his eyes, “Seriously?”

“Really,” I said.  10 years of public education had left him incredulous.

“I can decide what I want to learn 1 day a week?” he asked from the floor.

“Yes!”

I was feeling pretty good about this. So were they. I was a bit surprised then upon receiving a heated email from a parent who “disapproves” of the project, asserting that her daughter can be “creative” and have “fun” outside of school when all of her work is done. She was concerned that this project would be “wasting” 20% of her daughter’s time and would not prepare her for the competitive world she will face upon graduation.

I wrote her back with assurance that the other 80% of the week would be spent in intensive language arts study: reading, analyzing, writing. I also explained that while the 20% day would likely be “fun” and “creative” it would also involve higher order thinking and would require students to authentically apply language arts skills: speaking, researching, writing while following their  interests and leveraging their creativity and passion for meaningful learning. I assured her that her daughter would be mentored through the process (by me and by a community member) and would be required to generate a product and reflect on her learning at the conclusion of the project.

Her response: “I figured that relaying (my) opinion would not change this project. So we are perfectly clear, we still disagree with this project.” Interestingly, I while I was fully prepared to offer her daughter alternative use of the 20% time, I quickly discovered that she was (and is) through-the-roof excited about her 20% time.

I received only one other email from a parent. This one from the mother of Travis (fall-out-of-his-desk-in-disbelief Travis): “Sounds like an incredible experience. Thanks for your outside-the-box teaching! Can’t wait to see what comes of this!”

And so, we’ve started 20% time, and here are some of their projects:

•  Two word lovers are creating their own language (researching the grammatical and syntactical components of a language and then creating one anew).
•  Two athletes are creating a low-cost, highly effective sports drink (research, trial, error, and publishing the results).
•  An equestrienne is creating a website which houses a series of show patterns (video, voice, and diagram) to help other riders train and show their horses.
•  One student is examining her dream career: Pediatric Nursing: reading and researching and archiving everything she can find on it.
•  Three students are researching lucid dreaming and creating a documentary on what it is, its usefulness, and the controversies surrounding it.
•  A student who is a childhood cancer survivor is making and distributing hope bracelets for children with cancer.
•  A pianist is recording and publicizing her songs online.
•  Two students interested in 3D modeling are creating a model for a high-tech interactive residential house.
•  A superhero fan is writing and illustrating an original comic book in which Marvel superheroes battle DC comic superheroes.
•  A fishing fanatic is testing, creating and blogging the “how to’s” for making your own low-cost fishing lures.
• An aspiring artist is trying out a new artistic genre each week, taking pictures of each step and sharing it on a website.
• Two students are doing heavy duty ferret research, creating an online insider’s owners manual for ferrets.
• Two students are writing a multimedia ABC book about Female Basketball players.
• One student is making tennis racket dampeners (new to me) out of various household materials and sharing the “how to” instructions online.
• Two students have started a Club at school (Club 365) focused on celebrating every day and interacting with those around them  (Shake a Stranger’s Hand Day, Random Act of Kindness Day, etc.)

So time will tell.  We’ll see which parent was right: we’ll see if 20% time turns out to be “wasted time” or “an incredible experience.”

I’ll keep you posted.

* Note: How can you give someone something that’s already theirs? Isn’t time at school THEIR time? The question itself is comic and tragic. We consider students to be OURS when they’re in OUR classrooms. It’s OUR time. They are OUR captive audience. 20% is then an attempt to allow them to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

Let's flip the pay scale too while we're at it

Seems everyone's flipping their classrooms these days, so why not flip the pay scale too while we're at it?

School district financing is an increasingly tricky business and perhaps no area is trickier or more in flux than teacher salaries.

I was giving this some serious thought the other day: How can we create a more equitable compensation system for educators?

And it hit me. What should the single biggest factor in deciding what someone in the field of education makes? How many kids he/she interacts with on a daily basis.

Pay those on the front line; pay those with the kids; pay those most directly responsible for student learning and student growth. Studies tell us time and again that the single biggest factor in student learning is the teacher in a given classroom. So pay them accordingly.

Professional football players make gobs more money than their coaches because without sufficient talent on the field, the touchdowns aren't 

Without sufficient talent in front of the classrooms, the learning isn't going to happen.

And before you smell "self-serving teacher propaganda" in this ideal, let me disclose that as a half-time classroom teacher / half-time technology integration specialist, under this plan, I'd make less than teachers who spend every day, all day in the classroom.  As should be.

Who would make even less than me?
School nurses, social workers, psychologists, learning coaches, counselors.

Who'd make even less?
Principals, Vice Principals, Deans of Students.

Even less?
Business Managers and Superintendents.

Topic for another blog: (back to that football analogy) if the administrators and support staff are the coaches, and the classroom teachers are the football players, that would make the students in today's educational climate....the football.  

Monkey Business: The Gamification of AP English

Monkeys: whimsical, goofy, playful stuff.

Business: goals, achievement, bottom line stuff.

Why can't school be both?

That’s what I’m attempting to do this year:  Monkey Business, specifically “Battle of the APES,” the gamification of my Advanced Placement English class.

So what is gamification? According to the Oxford online dictionary, gamification is the "application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity...to encourage engagement with a product or a service.” It's an attempt to make "the hard stuff in life fun.” Shouldn't that be the goal of every educator, possibly the goal of every human being: to make the hard stuff in life fun?

When playing Minecraft, my 11-year-old is wholly engaged, he is collaborating with friends, he is receiving immediate feedback, he is laser-focused on problem-solving, strategizing, learning whatever it is he has to learn to get to the next level.

Engagement? Collaboration? Immediate Feedback? Problem-Solving? Talk about educational buzz words. It’s little surprise then that gamification has become a national trend in education: from online educational games to classroom curriculum designed with challenges, quests, levels, experience points, and badges.

Now, I will be the first to admit I smell the perfume of hypocrisy here...on my very own wrists. If you've read my posts in the past, you may recall that I'm a big proponent of the Alfie Kohn camp of intrinsic motivation. I am generally not a fan of stickers, tickets, candy, movie passes to get students (or teachers) to perform well.

However, I am a proponent of making learning fun, of wholly engaging students, of providing specific and timely feedback. And so, I'm admittedly walking a fine line here. I'm attempting to gamify my classroom, to use XP points (experience points), badges and leaderboards to remind students of their progress, to nudge students extend a skill, to energize their learning, but I am not using candy and stickers to coax them into behaving or completing a task. A fine line, I know.

My other challenge (beside possible hypocrisy) is my lack of experience. I don’t even qualify as a newbie gamer. The last time I gamed was was about 25 years ago in front of a Ms Pac-Man console at a video arcade. Yeash.  I don’t even play Farmville or Candy Crush on Facebook.

I do have one secret weapon, however: my son Eliot; I can plug into my students’ generation within the comfort of my own home.

And so, this summer, Eliot and I sat down to gamify.

First, the concept. That was easy.  I have been using the term “APES” (Advanced Placement English Scholars) forever: “Battle of the APES,” then, was the logical choice for my game concept (and the availability of campy 70’s images from the Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes movies was an added bonus).

Then, the fun part: apes research. I learned that a group of apes is called a shrewdness. Cool,  since I’ll be asking them to be shrewd in their analysis; in essence, tracking their “shrewdness.” I learned the essential differences between monkeys and apes. I learned about their habits, intellects, predilections. I learned there are five main branches in the ape family: humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons (with many subdivisions). I learned that unlike monkeys (but like humans) apes have broad chests and do not have tails. I imagine we’ll have fun all year alluding to our other parallels with our fellow primates. “Battle of the APES” is proving to be a chunky metaphor.

The game itself?  Eliot asked me what the end goal of the game would be. I had to think about the most important outcome for AP English: the ability to write a substantial literary analysis essay. Then we broke it down into badges or skills. That, too, was pretty easy:

1. Answering the prompt: directly and fully addressing the prompt throughout their essay.
2. Commentary: providing convincing support and analysis.
3. Embedded Quotes: embedding short, key quotes into their commentary.
4. Vocabulary: seamlessly using the language of literary analysis within their essay.
5. Conclusion: building up to a greater idea, a larger human truth or question.

We agreed that these will make worthy badges. Aside from the traditional grade, mastery of each of these skills (within their timed writings) will earn students a badge (a sticker I created containing an ape and the skill demonstrated) which they’ll stick on their binders.

     “What will earning all 5 badges get them?” Eliot asked me.

     “A 4 or 5 on the AP Exam, a successful college career, and the life-long ability to read critically and write...” (he cut me off)

     “No, what will they GET? In a game, it has to build up to something. They have to GET something at the end.”

Hmmm, I thought. This is where my philosophy wavered and hypocrisy reared its head: I don’t believe in bribes, in freebies, in stickers and candy.  Yet, for gamification to work, Eliot insisted, earning all the badges has to add up to something tangible. After some soul searching and internet scouring, I found a golden ape (a small gorilla pin they can put on their letter jacket or elsewhere).

In my mind, I made peace with the golden ape in the following way: Each student is competing with him/herself to achieve the requisite AP analysis writing skills which will lead them to perform well on the AP exam and more importantly bring those skills with them to college and beyond. The golden ape will remind them of their intellectual ability and their intellectual growth. I’m ordering the pins, and that’s where I’m currently hanging my ethical hat.

Next, the team component. Eliot insisted that “all the best games” have a team component. This is where healthy competition comes into play. Each team of APES (orangutans, bonobos, etc) will compete in classroom challenges which can earn xp for their team.

Teams (shrewdnesses) will earn xp if an individual ape earns a badge and when the group completes / excels on a classroom challenge: deciphering a poem, analyzing an essay, creating a metaphor, reenacting a scene, etc. A shared google spreadsheet will keep track of team xp, and the leaderboard will be magnetic apes (one per shrewdness) climbing up my magnetic whiteboard.

The team prize? At the end of each quarter, the winning shrewdness will determine how we spend one class period ( they can go “ape-wild” for one class period: subject to school rules, my approval, and relevance to APE-worthy skills).

No, I’m not altogether sure about this.

Yes, I’m feeling anxious about it.

Yes, I’m excited about it.

Yes, I’ll keep you posted on the state of my Monkey Business.

The Best Conference I Didn't Attend

By Claudia Felske

Personalized learning, virtual learning, MOOCs, flipped classroom, blended learning, differentiation, gamification, adaptive learning, digital storytelling, asynchronous learning.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the terms above, consider yourself uninformed on important issues in education today, unready for knowledgeable educational discussions, ill-equipped for a job interview in the field of education.

The Solution? The best conference I didn’t attend.

Rather bizarre to write a blogpost about a conference I didn’t attend. But at least I’m better off than I was last year. This time last year, I spent the week pining for ISTE 2012, wishing I were in San Diego with 18,000 other edtech enthusiasts.

This year I spent the week pining for ISTE 2013, wishing I were in San Antonio while kind of being there. Thanks to Twitter, I was able to follow those lucky enough to be there, gathering their thoughts, insights, resources, virtually hanging out in their back pockets.

So what’s the big deal? What is ISTE? The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is a worldwide network of educators engaged in “innovative learning and effective uses of technology in PK-12 and teacher education” (ISTE website).  It’s also the creator of NETS—the globally accepted edtech standards for digital age learning, teaching and school leadership.

But the really good stuff? Their outside-the-box, innovative yet practical annual conference which attracting 18,000+ (yes, 18,000) edtech leaders and learners from around the world and offers world-class keynotes, hundreds of sessions in a variety of formats, and a massive exhibit hall. (just take a peek at their sessions).

Next year, with any luck, I’ll be one of the lucky ones in Atlanta, immersing myself in educational technology ideas while tweeting out the wealth with people like the former me, who glean the scraps virtually.

So what can bring you up to speed on the terms listed earlier? What can put you on the cutting edge of educational technologies?

Here are the scraps I was able to hoard this year as a non-participant.

ISTE 2013 Pinterest Page

ISTE 2013 Youtube Playlist

ISTE Archived Webinars

And the very best way to be at “The Best Conference (You) Didn’t Attend”? If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter hashtags, it’s a way to crowdsource resources and ideas collected by those attending ISTE 2013. Typing “ISTE13” into the search bar at the top of Twitter will allow you to read the buzz of ISTE 2013 participants and collect their linked resources and take-aways from the conference, or use the 1-Stop Shop Webilogger to see all 50,000 archived ISTE 2013 Tweets in one full swoop.

Bon Edtech Appetit!

Next year (fingers crossed everyone) maybe I’ll be share with you my first-hand resources from ISTE 2014 in Atlanta, and with even more luck, I’ll see you there!

Confessions of a Cell Phone Terrorist

The Monster in the Mirror

Ever experience a disconnect between you and what you see in the mirror?

Ever run across an old photo of yourself, and seriously wonderWho IS that?!

I did. Just the other day. But it was a verbal photograph, handed to me by my husband.

He recalled (with great detail) a Claudia six years my younger, who at the time was seriously obsessed with acquiring a cell phone jammer to block her student’s cell phone use in class. She had just returned from scoring AP English essays exams in Louisville, where she had audaciously pledged, along with several of her AP Reader colleagues, to get a cell phone jammer in their classrooms in order to ensure the integrity of their profession.

She spending the better part of a week researching cell phone jammers: how they work, how much they cost, where to get them. (Note her intentional use of the third person, distancing herself from her former self). Though research quickly revealed that cell phone blockers were illegal in the Unites States (still are), that users were prosecuted for theft (of cell phone service) and endangerment (preventing life-pending communication), that fines of $11,000 were issued upon first violation, her determination remained unflapped.

The safety issue, however, did concern her: she’d have to find a blocker that would stay within the confines of her classroom, ensuring administrators and others could receive cell phone reception in the halls outside her room. It would be a tricky endeavor, but after dedicating 14 years of her life to her craft, she could hardly sit by idly while students used their cell phones to text each other answers, photograph her tests, and troll online while they were supposed to be learning.

Her professional integrity was endangered, and so the risk of using an illegal device to save her livelihood was an easy choice. Besides, if she got caught, the righteousness of her mission would be self-evident. Waving to the courthouse camera in a tailored suit with matching sensible heels, she’d become a media darling, representing the very founding principles of public education.

Umm, not quite…and enough third person already.

Long story short: I was never able to find a jammer precise enough to reliably stay within my classroom. And so, the digital age and I had a face off; happily, it won.

Funny now to be reminded of my former self. While nothing else about me has radically changed in the past 6 years, the person hell-bent on installing a cell phone scrambler in her classroom and my current self could not stand in greater opposition.

My current students are encouraged to bring their phones to class. They can zap a QR code upon entry to my room to access my syllabus and today’s agenda. They can backchannel on their phones during class, adding to the class discussion by typing on a group chat without waiting to be called on, they can collaborate on each other’s google docs, collect running data on their progress, engage in research and extension activities—all on the device that I wanted to block.

Perhaps most interesting to me upon visiting my recent former self is realizing that I felt as serious and justified in my jammer acquisition as I do about my BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy today.

So why the change? How did I go from cell phone terrorist to BYOB enthusiast?

I think what happened is that I paid attention to the world around me. I go to conferences, I read journals, I discuss and collaborate on listserves and electronic discussion boards. I hear about what’s new, what’s working, what’s effective in the classroom, and I change, modify, and integrate accordingly.

When I started teaching, we didn’t have email or electronic gradebooks; Ten years ago, we didn’t have SMART Boards or smart phones; Five years ago, we didn’t have iPads or  netbooks, two years ago, we didn’t have MOOCs,  gamification, flipped classrooms and hardly a word  was spoken about “Personalized Learning.” Now we have  them all, and next year, more likely next month, they’ll be  more. And while none of these are the panacea for the  challenges faced in education today, none of them mark the  fall and decline of education as we know it.

We need to be a part of our students’ world, not apart from our students’ world.

My husband (science teacher) also reminded me that dinosaurs didn’t become extinct because of a great meteor strike, they became extinct because they couldn’t adapt to their changing environment.  So while I can laugh now at my anti-cell phone self of yesteryear, I can also be kind of proud to realize that unlike the dinosaurs, I’ve evolved.

How ’bout you?

A Tale of Two Scholars (actually three)

One Youtube video + one email + one Facebook post = A Tale of Two Scholars (actually three).

Let me explain.

Suli Breaks, Spoken Word Artist from England, posted a video “Why I Hate School but Love Education” that quickly went viral, nearing the 3 million hits and showing no signs of slowing.

I encountered his video a few days ago when Justin, a high school junior and a former student of mine, emailed to me, explaining: “This describes exactly how I feel about my education.”

The video left me speechless with its heart-heavy indictment of public education. I replied to Justin, coaxing him to explain, which resulted in a lengthy response (“probably the most [I've] ever written,” he reminded me, with a smirk, in the hallway at school).

I then posted the video on my AP English Facebook page with Justin’s tagline: “This is exactly how I feel about my education,” asking my AP English Students (current and former) if they felt the same, which inspired a lengthy Facebook post from Domonic, another former student of mine, currently a college freshman.

Therein lies the genesis of this blogpost: “The Tale of Two Scholars.” Having received their permission to post,  I will now get out of the way, posting their full responses and allowing  students (the most important, most authentic, and least heard critics of education) to speak:

Justin  (High School Junior)

When I was in Waldorf all I wanted was to get out and go to a public high school, but once I started in a public school I hated it and knew that I would be better off in a Waldorf high school. As I look back on my Waldorf education, it was so hands-on and let individuals grow in their own, creative way. In the Waldorf school I was Justin… I was a character… people knew my for who I truly was. In high school I feel more like a number, a letter, a score on a piece of paper that classifies who I am, what classes I can take, and where my future path leads.

 School has been nowhere near what it should have been. If you ask me what I learned today I would most likely tell you something that I learned from one of my peers or read online…not something I learned from my teachers. I am so uninterested in what they are teaching because all I focus on is that I need to pass my next test so I get good grades and can go somewhere with my life in the future. And that’s not what I want my future to be based upon. I am more than that test grade I get at the end of the semester. School should challenge you in ways you want to be challenged; it should still teach you a little of everything but in a way that you can relate to and benefit from.

The solution is that the world needs to wake up and realize that we are the next generation, it is up to them to pass on their life lessons. Also much smaller classes with a much more hands on learning environment. They need to teach us that we are individuals, not just numbers or grades. They need to let us be us without trying to influence our ways. They need to teach us to excel to the greatest WE can be not to the class average. 

Domonic  (College Freshman)

I had a job interview the other day for a summer legal research position. The attorney was telling me about how other attorneys frequently come to him when they’re stuck on a case because he truly believes that there is a way to win every case. For this reason, he told me, he hated specialization and considered it a limitation because someone “may be very good in one area, but if [he’s] in the courtroom with them, [he] will be able to, at some point, out flank them in an area that’s not” their specialty, but still relevant case law.”

I truly believe that all knowledge is power; trivial historical facts may one day help me win a legal case. The Pythagorean Theorem may assist me to…build a garden in my backyard. So to say that students shouldn’t need to learn the details of the Great Compromise or the proper interactions of sine, cosine and tangent, is never something that I’ve personally thought or believed in. Who knows what purpose that knowledge will one day serve in their professional or private lives?  But, at the same time, that’s not to say that knowledge that isn’t taught won’t also serve them well. Certainly the educational system can and should improve in areas that are perhaps more relevant to today’s youth, but I don’t believe that should come at the expense of other basic knowledge. And while I acknowledge I am biased, because I never have believed in memorizing things for a test simply to forget them (because I do believe “it” could one day help me).

I truly, truly, truly, truly believe the key to fixing this educational “gap” is so much more complex than just the educational system itself (which could also use some work). Why aren’t American students as inspired…no, as driven to succeed as they once were? Why aren’t they going home at night and studying what they’re passionate about, like students in other countries who are academically surpassing us? Even if it’s just reading Wikipedia pages on history or science or law or engineering or journalism, this is gaining vast amounts of knowledge.

So, three things we need to do:

1. Get American youth reading again (not tweets, rather books, or even Wikipedia articles if they must)
2. Re-instill the desire to succeed through their own passion for personal interests outside of school (or in school through EXTRA-CURRICULARS, Problem Based Learning, Independent Study, etc.)
3. Bring those basic facts that will serve them in God knows what capacity in the future, to the point where they’re not cramming them in, but learning them for life. Use things like increased PBL (FrankenTrial anyone?) (also applicable in #2), a redevelopment of the testing system with broader exams on wider amounts of course material, and real world applications (design your dream home using these geometric principles, defend a high profile supreme court case with precedents from historic cases) with the understanding that it may not help them/us be a graphic artist, electrician, engineer, accountant, etc., but it’ll sure help you be a better one, and a better, more rounded person.

Create the hunger.  Feed the hunger.  Fuel the hunger.

Final Thoughts:

I hold Justin and Domonic in high regard. Both are good-natured, intelligent, dynamic young men. And while their thoughts about the education they have received from the same community and same school district differ greatly, they represent points on the spectrum of the diverse student body all educators serve.  As such we must acknowledge the integrity with which they speak, the voices they represent, the songs they sing, the deficiencies they decry.

For the Sulis, the Justins, the Dominics, we have much work to do.

3 Things We Must Admit (and Do) If We're Serious About Improving Teacher Quality

What prompted such self-indulgent reflection?

What led me to actually create a pie chart about myself!?

The other day, I read a tweet asking for input on accreditation of Teacher Education programs. In it’s “commitment to transparency and public accountability,” the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) is “seeking public comment” on their standards for teacher education programs.

“Okay,” I thought, “I have a few things to say about this.”

I took the bait, clicked on their link, and after spending 30 minutes on a labyrinth of online questioning, I had the desire to chuck the shackles of the survey and go rogue, putting in my own words my own thoughts on this topic, an open letter to theCAEP, so here it is:

3 Things We Must Admit (and Do) if we’re Serious about Improving Teacher Quality:

1. We have to admit the Intangibles: Measuring the quality of new teachers based on their Teacher Ed program is fraudulent. (See my self-indulgent pie chart above.) Basing this conclusion on no one else but me (in my defense, I’m the most honest case study available to me), I attempted to quantify  the factors that constitute who I am as an educator.

In good conscience, I can only track about 5% of my expertise to my Teacher Preparation classes. Another 20% to my formal education in general k-12, B.A. M.A.+.  Most of who I am as an educator comes from intangibles: 50% goes to my upbringing, Mom and Dad. It was being raised with high expectations, curiosity, desire to succeed, and an intolerance for mediocrity. I’ll attribute the last 25% to my passion for my subject area (language arts) and my desire to see students succeed. What I realize is that my highly-unscientific self examination undermines the premise of the CAEP Teacher Education Evaluation process. Judging teacher quality based on teacher preparation classes measures 5% of the educator and ignores the other 95%, the all-important intangibles.

2.  We have to attract the Intangibles: If you accept my premise that the most important teacher qualities are the intangibles, then our priority becomes clear: to somehow attract those intangibles into the field of education. To get excellent educators, start with the best ingredients.

We need to attract those with a crush on excellence, an unflappable determination to make a difference, a curiosity bent on incessant improvement. In other words, seek and retain top-notch candidates – the ones that are also highly sought by industry and business. And to compete, we need to pay them an attractive salary (college debt forgiveness makes great sense here too). We need to respect educators, giving them the dignity that befits those who are nurturing the next generation. We need to treat teaching as an art that requires years of practice to achieve an ever-changing “mastery.” A high art, a higher calling, a life well spent.

3. We need to nurture the Intangibles. Once we attract the best and brightest, we need to help them evolve into master educators with an authentic apprenticeship program. We need to identify master teachers currently in the field (National Board Certified teachers, for starters), and then leverage their expertise in an intensive mentor role, allowing new teachers to incrementally evolve into their practice over the course of 2-3 sustained years of intense training under the tutelage of a master teacher.

If we were serious about creating a critical mass of master teachers and making serious improvements in teaching and learning, we’d invest in and insist on such a structure.

• Admit the intangibles.
• Attract the intangibles.
• Nurture the intangibles.

These are not easy concepts to quantify, these are not easy steps to take, but the conclusion of this self-indulgent, case-study-of-one teacher/researcher is that acknowledging and nurturing “the intangibles” would be a far more authentic and productive path to sustained teacher improvement than what’s currently being discussed.

And until such steps are taken, aren’t we all kind of fibbing here? Pretending that we can fatten the pig by weighing it?