A Definition of Insanity (#SOL15, Day 20)

I.

Imagine what you might be valuing if you required an employee to halt progress because he or she had accomplished the end goal more quickly than the other employees. This employee has produced more completed work than the others simply because he or she has been present more often and therefore worked more often.  Because you mistake sameness for quality, you require all of the employees to be no more than one day ahead or behind your schedule with regard to production.

But stuff happens that corrupts your schedule.

1. An employee's mother becomes ill and the employee takes a two-week leave.
2. The flu hits a family causing an employee to miss a series of work days, totaling 7 across three weeks.
3. The production is derailed by an unforeseen internal situation and the goal accomplishment is delayed by three weeks.
4. An employee determines a better product can be made and makes those adjustments which adds several days.
5. And so on.

As  result of these delays, you do not abandon your scheme, but rather readjust the schedule adding another two weeks in order for the 'team' to meet the end goal together. Now, what do you do with the employee who has already met the production goals you established?

Halt the employee from moving onto the next set of goals until everyone catches up.
(And we thought Samuel Beckett's Godot was absurdest theatre.)

II.

Most would see this scenario as idiotic, counter productive. But would you see this as amoral if we weren't talking about the product of widgets, but rather were speaking about the education of children?

I recently was listening to middle school ELA teachers discuss how one with near perfect attendance was told she could not move on to teach the next curriculum unit as her fellow teachers at her grade level had not completed the current unit because of absenteeism and lesson adjustment. The administrators require teachers to keep the same pace (within one day) so that everyone is teaching the same lesson or teaching an adjacent lesson in the Expeditionary Learning Module du jour.

Sameness is more important than actually learning.

There's so much wrong with this scenario from a human point of view that I hardly no where to begin.  Prizing sameness over quality has no place in public education. Stripping teachers of agency and reducing them to nothing more than script enactors who act as programmed regardless of who is learning and not is a recipe for failure. Mandating the use of a singular curricular product like Expeditionary Learning that was developed rapidly and whose units could not have been researched using the DOE's gold standard of randomized controlled trials.  Nonetheless these modules have been mandated by states and districts in what is like a modern day version of the emperor's new clothes. Only the brave say this product has limited teeth.

These problems emanate from shoddy leadership--leadership that has been wrought via the new education reformers. You know, the people with little practical knowledge as they quickly skipped or in some cases fully avoided actually teaching and were promoted into key leadership roles in schools and districts by external forces like governors, mayors, and the like.

Sigh.

I hope you want more for your children.
I hope you'll say so out loud.

Writing Well Begins With Critical Reading: Talking Back to Scripted Programs

Pandora Story Map Based on Kimmell Version of the Myth

I. Greek Mythology Unit Designed by Teachers

For the last few weeks I have been working with a group of fourth grade teachers.  We co-designed a unit of study focusing on Greek Mythology that embedded reading, writing, speaking-listening, and language standards throughout the unit. Students had the opportunity and responsibility to listen to, read and view Greek myths--and to respond to those texts through discussion and writing. 

Through interactive read aloud with an emphasis on critically retelling and vocabulary development, and through guided reading that privileged comprehension conversations students read deeply.  They also engaged in shared, guided, and independent writing. Students were able to demonstrate a keen understanding of what they heard, read, and viewed through their whole class, small group and partner discussions and their writings.  Students heard, read and viewed multiple versions of each myth (print, visual arts, and video). This allowed them to compare versions and to complicate their understanding. This critical reading work represented the foundation that students' writings rested upon.


II. Anchoring What Is Heard/Viewed/Read

In order to anchor what was heard, viewed, and read--students created different types of story maps in response to the read aloud texts, such as the two Pandora story maps pictured here.  To analyze the myths, students first needed to be able to retell the story accurately.  It is impossible to analyze a text well if literal understanding is absent or faulty. Therefore, students with the help of their teachers, created a story map for each text. Teachers began this process by having students retell the myth. A deep retelling included:

Pandora Story Map Based on Burleigh/Colon Version of the Myth

1. Retell what happened.
2. Why it happened
3. The effect on the characters’ mental state
4. Be able to emphasize connections between earlier and later parts in the story.
5. Retell with emphasis on character insight, touching on genre-specific elements and attempting to use the vocabulary or figurative language used in the text.

They also created character analysis anchor charts focusing on explicating indirect methods of characterization by naming and then analyzing what a character does, thinks, and says and then asking what might be inferred.  For example, when studying the Pandora myth, the class created an anchor chart. They named Pandora's actions, thoughts and speech and then analyzed what might be inferred. What did Pandora's actions, thoughts, and speech reveal about her character? This work allowed them to later step into the character in response to a writing task (see below).

III. Writing Rests on Reading

After studying two or more versions of the Pandora story (read aloud and guided reading), students responded to the prompt pictured below by writing a narrative that continues the story.

First major writing task in the mythology unit.

Attempting to enter into the myth at the point depicted in the visual art required students to read the painting, to consider the two or more versions of the story they had read, and to think about the inferences they had made in order to craft a believable text. I want to emphasize that no graphic organizers were used or needed during the writing because students deeply understood the myth.  Instead of some formula to guide their writing, students rested their work on what they had read and analyzed. By critically reading, discussing and writing they had already walked in Pandora's shoes. Because students had so closely studied different versions of the myth and had analyzed the characters--their responses were well grounded.

Standard W.4.9a asks students "to draw evidence from literary texts to support analysis, reflection, and research." Specifically, students are asked to "[a]pply grade 4 Reading standards to literature (e.g., “Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text [e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions].”).  To do this well, students needed to use their knowledge of Pandora through the analyses they had done, drawing on specific details from one or more versions of the myth in order to extend the story.  Let's look closely at how one student did this.

IV. Studying One Student's Writing

Below is an example of one student's response (Catherine Esteves) from Jacqueline Peguero's fourth grade classroom in Newark, NJ.   Notice how the details Catherine crafts fits with the tone of the myth and re-establishes a credible setting ("Darkness circled around me..."). Notice how Catherine uses story language ("Then I sank into a deep sleep.") to forward the narrative. Notice her diction ("bat-like creatures hurrying," "ropes loosened") and the blend of narration and dialogue to forward the plot.  In Catherine's guided reading work she read Nathaniel Hawthorne's story, The Paradise of Children, and we can see how she borrows from Hawthorne's retelling of Pandora by having Epimetheus assume some of the blame for releasing evil into the world, as well. She also draws from the painting by Gerhartz by referencing the flowers. Yet she doesn't merely mimic what she has read or viewed for in Catherine's version she couples together the goodness of the world by having Love, Kindness, Grace and Caring (to name but a few) join Hope--thereby resettling the world. As Catherine has learned through reading, she closes her version of the myth with a statement to her reader: Remember, good will always be stronger and have more power than bad. We sense the author behind the work.

Page 1 from Catherine's writing.

Page 2 from Catherine's writing.

Through diction and character action, Catherine crafts a believable and controlled piece of writing that helps us to understand the painting and the written myths more fully. 

V. When Teachers Author

I have had the pleasure of working as an external consultant with Jackie and her colleagues (Waleska Burgos and John Feinstein) for the last few years.  In a conversation with Jackie a week ago she mentioned that her students' parents were commenting on how much their children were enjoying the mythology unit.  Jackie said that what surprised her the most was that parents had nothing to say during the Expeditionary Learning module they had done earlier in the year and that made her wonder how well that work had been received. 

When teachers author academic studies they can better respond to what emerges as well as build from one portion of the year to the next and from year to year. We had decided to write our own unit in order to replace an Expeditionary Learning (EL) module as the teachers and I thought that the EL work was not sturdy enough academically (especially with regard to writing and deep analysis), nor could a unit made by another in an earlier time and place be responsive to emerging academic and social needs and strengths we saw occurring with the children. We also wanted to ensure that students continued to explore mythology. 

Kindergarten children at these schools are listening to folk tales through read alouds and beginning in first grade students begin reading traditional literature in guided reading. These reading efforts are supported through read aloud units in grades 1, 2, and 3. In first grade, children are introduced to cautionary tales (Red Riding Hood versions), fables and tall tales in grade 2, and in grade 3 they study mythology generated by indigenous people. These earlier works set the stage for the work being conducted in grade 4. Alongside this work, teachers in earlier grades are able to help students respond to text through whole class shared writing and through guided practice during guided reading.  For example, in Suzanne Capuano's second grade I taught a small group of struggling reader last week. I taught the group in response to a concern Suzanne raised about the children's reading. She said that she noticed that the children were having difficulty remembering what they were reading during retelling. By identifying a learning challenge, Suzanne set the stage for us to problem solve.

During guided reading, I asked the students to respond to a Red Riding Hood story by charting the actions of the wolf or Red Riding Hood. The children read the text first and then during a rereading of the text, they partnered and completed the chart with guidance (see below). 

One of the teachers (grades 1, 2 an 3 teachers viewed) observing the lesson said that what was most notable was that the children's confidence increased  as did the lateral discussion that happened as the children worked through the text. The children knew they were successful, no gold star was necessary. 

Children in this class learned to think about what a character does and says during earlier read aloud units when their teacher created anchor charts that helped students to think about what a character says and does and what we infer based on those actions and speech. I built on that knowledge. Students also have daily opportunities to interpret what characters say as is evidence below in a second grader's response to a read aloud about Sonia Sotomayor.

Christopher's response to a quote from Jonah Winter's book about Sonia Sotomayor.

Christopher interprets through writing and drawing the quote: "Success comes to those who make the most of the chances they are offered in life."   He wisely tells us: "When you get chances that can change your life take risks. If you can't take (a) chance you might not succeed."

VI. Risk Taking

The weave among read aloud, guided and independent reading, and writing is critical and needs to be designed and organized by teachers who are working with children in the here and now--not by corporations who mass produce units of study and distributed them like cheap pens. We all ought to worry when we see teachers being confined to enacting scripted programs, not simply because the programs may or may not be lacking, but more importantly authoring is a critical and necessary practice for teaching and learning. At the schools where Jackie, Waleska, John and Suzanne work they are provided with the professional respect by their leadership to think, design, and redesign. Excellence does not come by handing teachers already completed units of study and limiting them to merely enacting them. This is a grave error.  We need to follow Christopher's advice and take risks.  'Fool' proofing curriculum is an epic failure. 

Why Teacher and Learner Agency Matter: We Are Harming Kids

I. An EL Lesson

Last week I was observing an Expeditionary Learning lesson being taught to third graders and what I saw gave me pause.  I suspect it might have you pausing too.

There's a fair amount of rhetoric being voiced and revoiced by some state and district administrators, ed pundits and reformers, and some teachers too that says something to the effect that we do not need to worry about children reading texts too difficult for them.  These worries have been for naught.  All we need to do is give them "complex texts" and for those who struggle we should "chunk" the text and then all of the children will be able to read and comprehend.

So I was thinking about this line of talk as I interacted with a group of third graders who had been assigned to read a section from My Librarian is a Camel (Lexile Level 980). The children I interacted with were given two pages that discussed how children in Thailand receive library books.

Below is the two-page spread.

from here.

Second page, from here

I watched as the children attempted to complete their "first close read" in which their teacher had told them to circle unknown words. (In fairness to EL, this was not part of their lesson plan.) As the three children I was sitting near worked it became obvious that the text was significantly difficult for them. One child was trying to read the text softly to herself.  Another had her lips moving as she read.  I interrupted and asked how she was doing with the text and she told me she didn't know what she was reading cause she doesn't know a lot of the words. Nor did she know about Thailand (that it was a country) or where it was located.  She was unable to make meaning from most sentences, such as: "A number of these villages can only be reached by foot."  We worked together and I scaffolded her reading, apparently a faux pas on my part, as the struggle is supposed to be good for her.

She was the best reader of this text in the group.

Seated to her right was a boy who was copying letters from the text in his attempt to locate words he did not know.  For the entire time I had worked with the other two children, he was painstakingly copying. He did not copy whole words. Rather he was reduced to copying letter by letter. When I asked him how he was managing the text, he told me quietly that he could not read any of the words.

"I can't read anything. I have to pick some words and write them," he said, showing me a post it note where he had recorded two words: Onkoi (Omkoi), regon (region).

"How about I help you understand the text you've been assigned to read?"

He nods okay.

When I ask him to try the opening, he tells me the words he can read:  In, a, on for of, the and then stops.  I tell him a little bit about the text explaining that he will be learning how children in the mountainous region or area of northern Thailand and one of its cities, Bangkok get library books to read.  We talk about how he lives in the northern region of his city.  We make our way through the text, with me reading it aloud and the two of us discussing what I have read at the close of each paragraph. We make use of the photographs at key times and it becomes evident that although he had great difficulty reading, he thinks well.  He was surprised there were homeless kids in Bangkok. He had thought homelessness was something limited to his city.

This is a child who can learn to read.

Below is an example of a text he can mostly read, although words like, where and said, might still stop him. He might need some support (decode by analogy for example) to help him problem solve words such as nest and lost.  

Text level 7/8 from here.

Again, this is a boy I know can learn to read.

Unfortunately, this child attends school in a district where the teachers have been banned from conducting guided reading by the district leadership (not school administrators). This is the new edict making its way among the uninformed. There's that belief again that if the teachers would only teach well using the scripts they've been given, and adhering to the pacing guide the district created, then the children will all learn.

II. Guiding Learning

Guiding learning, in this case, comprehension is critical.  Walter Kintsch describes the importance of guided practice well when he writes:

Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer (1993) have shown that practice requires proper guidance. To become an expert skier it is not sufficient just to ski a lot; you need someone to guide your practice, make you work on just the right things that will make possible long-term progress. We recently observed that just having 6th grade students write a lot of summaries of texts they had read does not make them better summary writers. Indeed, it may just ingrain bad habits. They need someone or something that tells them what about their writing was good and what was not good—only with such feedback to guide them does practice make perfect.  (From here)

Guided instruction is guided practice.  This child, like many of his peers, are placed in jeopardy unless that leadership reassesses its edicts that are not informed by any juried research. Dismiss guided practice and the children are banned from consistent high quality, reading instruction that is necessary on a daily basis. Rather, this boy and many of his peers spend their days, circling unknown words and copying letters onto post-its that they lose as quickly as it took you to finish this sentence.

After the children leave, the teacher and I discuss the children in the class who are severely struggling to read.  She confesses that if she deviates from the script and someone from "downtown" shows up (which has happened) she can be marked unsatisfactory for not being in the correct place on the pacing guide. She works in an atmosphere of fear given the tenuousness of tenure and the widespread closing of schools. Years ago, I had been invited by the Philadelphia school system to review their ELA program for K-5.  They too had a created a pacing chart for ELA that they were intending to mandate for all of the schools. Every minute of every school week for the entire school year was accounted.

Have you ever taught anywhere where unexpected interruptions did not occur?

My feedback was perhaps less diplomatic than it might have been.  Pacing charts given to 200 schools for teachers to enact without deviation will harm learners. Agency must matter for teachers and learners.

III. Scripts and Outcomes

Teaching scripts are shorthand for:

We do not trust teachers to teach yet we pay them to enact scripts that other people at other times who may or may not have ever taught, who may or may not have any actual experience or content knowledge, who do not and cannot know the actual children, but who did receive a ton of money which must mean that the work they produced has to be great, has to be the answer we've been seeking, our bit of manna straight from Heaven. 

This is insanity and it's our tax dollars footing the bill. (Did I mention that the finest teachers I've known are running for the exits?  They are seeking not other schools where they might work, but rather other careers, early retirement.)

There are no short cuts to high quality public education.
Repeat that.

There are no programs, no scripts, no technologies, no secret formulas, no better tomorrows on the horizon that can be used to educate your child or mine in the absence of the teacher.

Teachers are often the product of their workplace. The culture in which they work shapes them.

High quality public education requires that we privilege teachers--that their agency, like that of the learners, is ensured.

Anything less ensures servitude.

Using Advanced Organizers with 4th Graders

An example of an Advanced Organizer for chapter 5.

At one site where I work, students are having difficulty comprehending the text, The Iroquois: The Six Nations Confederacy (Mary Engler). In addition to a density of facts, the text is not well written and I suspect one might argue does not represent the complexity of the Iroquois people very well. The text is included in the Grade 4 module from Expeditionary Learning.  

In order to help facilitate comprehension, I introduced teachers to the use of advanced organizers. An explanation of advanced organizers, along with organizers for each of the chapters (2 - 5) is included in the slideshare below.  Please use freely.

Advanced Organizers for The Iroquois from Mary Ann Reilly / Blueprints for Learning, Inc.

Expeditionary Learning ELA Modules: A Critique

Grade 3 students answering questions posed by Expeditionary Learning.

I've spent the last year working with teachers in grades 3 through 8 who are using the ELA modules created by Expeditionary Learning. I've appreciated much of the design of the modules, the thinking behind some of the lessons, and the attempt to ensure active learning through the use of collaborative techniques such as jigsaw; Praise, Question, Suggest; interactive word wall and others.

But if asked to recommend these to clients after spending a year with the materials, I would not do so. The modules are flawed in ways that must be corrected, especially as these modules have been situated as being a model curriculum that is CCSS-aligned.  Keep in mind that NYCDOE endorsed these modules for their schools in February 2013 before writing had been completed.

EL states:

EL is at the forefront of creating classroom-ready Common Core curricular materials. New York State chose EL to create Common Core-aligned English language arts and literacy curriculum for grades 3-5 and deliver Common Core professional development to representatives from districts across the state. EL is also working with the authors of the Common Core State Standards to develop model secondary curriculum aligned to the standards. (from here)

Although there are several concerns I have with the EL curriculum, two represent the greatest concerns:

1. The absence of instruction that scaffolds and requires students to generate and frame questions of inquiry to answer.
2. No one present in the classroom authors the work at hand.

Additional Concerns:

• The absence of comprehensive writing instruction that moves beyond writing in response to text.
• The absence of  systematic vocabulary instruction that doesn't rely on directing students to "use context clues" (which aren't always present) or guess.  
• The amount of time allotted for students to respond to tasks is woefully underestimated.
• Situating literary texts as something to be used is problematic. There is an absence of an aesthetic appreciation of literary works. Rather literature is situated as efferent (Rosenblatt, 1978).
• Wait, where's the expedition? The translation of these modules, sans expedition, is simply wrong.  The experiential opportunities are missing.

In this post I want to focus on the first two concerns as these speak to issues of servitude and colonialism.

1. What Career Is EL Getting Your Children Ready To Do?

3rd grader answering a question.

A main challenge I see with  EL's 'model' curriculum is that it undervalues students being active problem framers and instead locates them as responders to already determined questions. Throughout thousands and thousands of pages of curriculum, students are situated in the role of responders to already determined questions and their teachers are located as mimers whose main task is to parrot those already determined questions. Learners are not asked to generate and then frame their own questions to solve. Rather, they are asked repeatedly to merely pen responses to questions that the EL curriculum writers have written, including essay questions.  

Now slide under that instruction for a minute and ask yourself what that set of practices might be developing.  Remember the CCSS is all about making sure our children are college and career ready.

As a former college professor I can assure you that not developing children's capacity to generate and then frame questions of worth is a method to ensure that students are not college ready. College ready at least ought to include students who have done the challenging work of framing problems, not merely answering an authority's questions. Questioning involves speculating about possibilities.

K Mart Greeter.  Image from here. 

But what about career ready?  What is the career trajectory for people who have been trained to answer questions, rather than generate and frame questions?

Yes, it isn't a pretty outcome for millions of children.

Recently when I asked a group of teachers this question we came up with the following jobs: phone operator, K-Mart greeter, customer service representative.  The absence of question generation and framing leaves the EL curriculum to be more a model of servitude than a model curriculum.

2. Authoring.

“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."  (Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2003)”  ― Edward W. Said

The EL curriculum is scripted. No one in the actual classroom gets to author--neither teacher nor student.  The curriculum is written to direct teachers to the specific materials to gather (including independent books for student reading), what to say, what to write, what to show, and allocates the number of minutes that each task needs to be completed.  It also includes anecdotes teachers can say (I guess in case teachers have none of their own?) when teaching vocabulary for example.  The curriculum is so bloated with commentary and directions that it is not unusual for each module to be comprised of 500+ pages.

With all of those pages there is little room for anyone actually present in the classroom to create curriculum: authentic and complicated conversations between students and teachers. The construct is epic, not novel.

Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) described epic as “ a poem about the past” (p.13), “an utterly finished thing” (p. 17) and novel as being unfinalizable and speculative about the unknown.  A similar difference can be said to exist between the institutionally controlled structures such as curriculum, and teachers' more idiosyncratic pedagogical and content practices. The epic world of Expeditionary Learning curriculum is unified, completed, “beyond the sphere of possible contact with the developing, incomplete, and therefore re-thinking and revaluating present” (p.17).  One can think of this epic world as being unalterable. The EL curriculum is an epic construct. It is untouchable. Dead. Beyond the influence of now.

Further, EL situates teaching as being complicated, not complex. Brent Davies' and Dennis Sumara's observe that “teaching has been cast as a complicated rather than a complex phenomenon—one that can be understood by analyzing its component parts and one that, for all intents and purposes, does not vary across time, setting, and persons” (“Cognition, Complexity, and Teacher Education,” 1997, p. 121, emphasis in original).   It doesn't matter who you are and are not. Who the children are and are not. Teaching and learning does not vary across time, setting, and persons. At 10:05 on Tuesday, all 3rd grade teachers should...

Such a belief sucks the energy and creativity from people: teachers and children alike.

In The Dialectic of Freedom, Maxine Greene writes about the difficulty teachers face with burgeoning demands and bureaucratic prescriptions that the public at large demands from educators. She writes:

“We do not know how many educators see present demands and prescriptions as obstacles to their own development, or how many find it difficult to breathe. There may be thousands who, in the absence of support systems, have elected to be silent. Thousands of others (sometimes without explanation) are leaving the schools” (p. 14). 

I've witnessed this leaving--the exiting of excellent teachers who simply can no longer allow themselves to be puppets of corporate enactments of learning. The struggle to continue to teach in light of model curriculum like EL is a formidable task as the mandated use of such curriculum restricts what is allowed to be taught and whose voice, value, and ideas are honored, ignored, and discouraged. 

Citing Evidence When Talking - High School ELA Class

In this video we get a glimpse of a high school ELA classroom where the students are citing evidence in order to deepen their conversation. Further, the students are using multiple texts to do so.

Grade 10 ELA.

Students Cite Evidence from Informational and Literary Text - Common Core Literacy from Expeditionary Learning on Vimeo.

Close Reading via Expeditionary Learning

Interesting look at close reading and the protocols that support active learning in a fifth grade.

Grappling with Complex Informational Text through Close Reading - Common Core Literacy from Expeditionary Learning on Vimeo.