Yes they can, thankyouverymuch. And here's the evidence.

If you believe the notion of equal air time, give these two student essays a read—and remember them when you hear about our “broken public schools.”

Tired of reading articles and hearing commentary about how far behind our students are, how they can’t read or write, I feel compelled to share two papers I just corrected from my Freshman English class here at  East Troy High School.

That’s right, FRESHMEN in the PUBLIC school system. 

After reading Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, students were asked to explore a question or theory they had about the play. I was humbled by the results. Here are just two of them, unedited, with names removed.

No doubt you’ve heard the “failing schools” bullhorn booming from all directions lately. If you believe in the notion of equal air time, give these two student essays a read—and remember them when you hear about our “broken public schools.” 

Shakespeare’s Observation: The Battle of the Alpha and Omega

A Shrew or a Modern Woman?  A Shakespearean Identity Quandary

 That is all. 

Top Teachers in America are Bipolar

 Okay, I’ll admit it. My attention  getter is  a bit on the tawdry and  dramatic side,  but according to  the 2013  Perspective  of   Irreplaceable Teachers: What    America’s Best Teachers Think  about  Teaching, America’s top  teachers have a  love-hate relationship with their  profession: loving the act of  teaching  children while loathing the teaching conditions that surround  them.

 Worse yet, 75% of top teachers plan on leaving their positions in  the next 5 years, a most troubling exodus. Exactly what education  cannot afford.

The survey, conducted by the nonprofit The New Teacher Project founded by controversial educational reformer Michelle Rea, surveyed 117 of America’s top teachers representing 36 states and all 10 of the nation’s largest school districts, collectively having won almost the nation’s major teaching awards including National Board certification, state “Teacher of the Year” honors, Milken Educator Awards, TNTP, NEA and KIPP.

The survey provides a glimpse into the minds of our country’s most successful teachers, and the view is of critical concern. The survey focussed on three areas: 1) How successful teaching should be measured  2) How teaching can be improved  3) How teachers perceive their profession.

How to measure good teaching

Top educators agree that successful teaching is multi-dimensional. It must be measured not only by student test performance, but also long-term student success, quality of student engagement, and evaluative feedback from students, peers, and administrators as opposed to a laser focus on standardized test results.

In fact, half of the teachers surveyed believe standardized tests do more harm than good. While acknowledging that measuring student learning is important, they believe standardized tests narrow our definition of what learning is, make educators focus on less rigorous thinking “because deeper thinking is harder to assess,” and take away valuable teaching time in the interest of test prep.

What contributes to successful teaching

First, what factors are least likely to foster good teaching. Teachers respond in unison:  formal education programs and staff professional development. Teachers cite lack of rigor in the teacher prep programs and lack of relevance of their professional development to actual classroom experiences.

This is astounding since these are the two dominant paths for teacher development, and both are ineffective in the minds of top teachers. It suggests that the millions spent by the government, universities and other institutions have a largely negligible effect on the quality of teaching.

What would most contribute to improved teaching?  Teachers crave the opportunity to master new methods and practices over a sustained period with structured feedback from their peers. In other words, time and support to incorporate best practices in their own classrooms.

How educators feel about their profession

Here’s the loving/hating part. America’s top teachers unabashedly love teaching, but in the same breath, they increasingly loathe the profession. They cite challenges including low pay, excessive bureaucracy, poor working conditions and ineffective leaders and colleagues.

Teaching is great; being a teacher not so much. Their long-term plans are telling: 75% of this distinguished group of educators plan on leaving their current position within 5 years, 60% plan on leaving the teaching profession altogether within that timeframe. This compares with a 2011 figure 43%.

In a field that needs more than ever to attract and retain outstanding educators, these statistics warrant serious soul searching for our system of public education. Loving teaching, but the  field, not so much: here’s a sampling of this dichotomy, in their own words:

“I love being with kids every day and hearing them say, “I get it now, miss.” I enjoy figuring out and applying strategies that will help my kids think and learn.”

“Almost every moment of the week, I feel that I am either sacrificing my students’ learning or my own health and personal satisfaction. I am constantly deciding to cut corners for students in order to prioritize my own life, or to prioritize my students and put my personal life second."

“With teaching, every day is different. You are constantly in motion, engaged and working toward something that is more important than yourself. Your work is critical, life-changing, and ultimately the most empowering gift you can give to your students.”

“I am particularly frustrated with how much of my time is demanded for things that do not help my students in any way. Bureaucracy, a lack of policy dedicated  to students, and top-down governance are destroying the profession.”

The study concludes that education today offers teachers “tremendous personal rewards but also exacts a great personal cost.” In an educational conversation which currently centers on finger pointing and reform-of-the-day, perhaps we need to take a step back and listen to the cries or our top teachers before they’re no longer around to be heard.

I'm Still Grateful

Yes, it’s Thanksgiving; Yes, I’m a teacher in Wisconsin; Yes, I’m still grateful.

Why?

1. I get to teach kids. Ten more dubious initiatives can come down from DPI, twenty more from the Dept. of Ed, but every morning, I still get to walk into my room and teach kids.

2. I’m still growing. I just returned from the National Conference for English Teachers.  I presented with colleagues, learned from educators across the country, experienced the great city of Boston, AND got a huge hug from a student when I came back.

3. I have purpose. Some people make widgets. Some people sell widgets. Some people make laws about widgets, sue over widgets, find loopholes in widgets. But, as Christa McAuliffe said, “I touch the future, I teach.”

4. I’m never bored. I get to spend my days with dynamic, unpredictable, brilliant, quirky, moody, creative, wonderful kids. No two days are ever the same. I am never bored. How many people can say the same?

5. I am ageless. Teenagers, natural Botox for the soul.


Yes, I'm still grateful, very.

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!