Dollars and Sense: R & D in Education

So, my cohorts and I have finished our Learning Strategies graduate course recently and today is the first day of spring break. I enjoyed learning about a variety of learning theories and paradigms and exploring how they dovetail and interweave in my teaching. Indeed, I have gained a retrospective view of how I have been teaching and gained insights on how and why certain approaches I use are successful. Such has afforded me a "rear-view mirror" of where my teaching was and where it has led to over my fourteen-year career. More importantly, my knowledge and understanding of learning theory has made me more cognizant of fine-tuning my lessons to make them even more powerful, impacting, and effective. With that said, it's a sunny and beautiful day on this first day of spring vacation. And I need it.
Recently I watched a speech by Professor Roland Fryer, an economist professor at Harvard University and found a number of the points he made in his speech compelling. So, why have I included Fryer in this post? Simple. It's because Professor Fryer is endeavoring to use his understanding of economics and statistics to improve education. As the youngest black professor to earn tenure at Harvard University, Professor Fryer is trying to give back and make an impact on improving education. As Fryer says, "Facts are our friends. We need more facts and less politics if we're ever going to really change educational reform." Fryer is trying to gather educational data and statistics to discover effective teaching strategies. One of the ideas he mentions in one speech includes paying students in poor performing schools to take the tests and increasing the payments based upon their performance on the test. This simple idea, it seems, is showing evidence of being not only effective but also cost effective. That is, the money required to pay students for their effort and achievement works out to be less than the thousands spent with little or no effect. So where did this idea come from? Again, simply enough, from Fryer spending a summer talking with the kids themselves. From those conversations, Fryer discovered that the students found no reason for education, and when Fryer told them that they could make a ten percent return on their education, this idea had no meaning for these kids. They couldn't see that far down the road. However, paying these students gave them a tangible incentive to read and to learn. And the program seems to be working.
Several years ago, I attended a seminar on improving students' reading skills, and one of the ideas offered was the Drop Everything And Read (DEAR)program, where time is allotted each school day for EVERYONE to read. And by that, it means EVERYONE -- teachers, students, secretaries, even janitors. I brought my idea back to my school with the suggestion of trimming away two minutes from each of our eight periods to create the block of time to implement DEAR in our school. Unfortunately, teachers decided against the idea, citing their need for the instructional time in class. So I approached my team's teachers, and we created the time within our team's core content classes. After implementing the program within our team, our students showed marked improvement on their Gates reading tests and on the GEPA state testing, so much so that the administration decided to change Study Hall to Literacy. Now students use a twenty minute block of time simply to read, and reading skills have improved as a result. The lesson and point: we need to keep an open mind to new ideas and approaches to improving education.
In closing, Fryer remarks how companies invest far more capital in research and development than we do in education. As our country and the State of New Jersey looks to make dramatic changes to curriculum, testing, tenure, and more, perhaps we need to take a more serious look at what works and what may not. The age-old wisdom of the adage, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!" seems all too fitting here.
It's nice out. I've gotta go now.

Rush to Get in Line?

At my last department meeting, I met with my colleagues to discuss curriculum. This seems to be a never-ending discussion, as it seems we are perpetually redoing the curriculum. In any case, one colleague attended a Principals' Conference where one of the speakers mentioned the direction education may be heading in our state. Apparently, the idea was espoused to standardize the curriculum. How much? So much so that the curriculum would pretty much dictate what is taught and when. Moreover, in lieu of the state testing that takes place once a year, several quarterly assessments will be given to measure the progress of learning that has occured. The logic, I'm guessing, is that if teachers are going to be evaluated, they better be evenly evaluated on a level playing field...which seems to sound all good. Maybe. Or maybe not. I am concerned that such a move would constrict teachers and limit their creativity in finding novel teaching methods. If we are all doing the same thing, the same way, and at the same time, how, then, will there be any difference? If you want to identify your better teachers, then allow them the freedom and creativity to teach their students most effectively. The intent of such changes, I believe, is to try to make the teaching conditions equal. Sadly, I believe such changes may have the effect lowering the effectiveness of some teachers, especially your more creative ones. A look at history, more specifically our American Revolution, points out the stupidity of standing in a line wearing red coats while others are shooting at you. We won our independence by being creative and fighting in unconventional ways. Such has served us well historically, I might add. With New Jersey posting scores much higher than other states in the union, I'm left wondering, are we trying to change too much too quickly. And what the consequences be...

Arab Spring in Africa?

I received an email from a former student who is now a freshman. In the email, she mentioned how she is inspired to promote the message about "Kony 2012," a movement to capture the man who is ranked the number one criminal of the world. And how? Through the use of technology to make him "famous" and to curtail his ability to avoid being arrested. The idea is to use technology -- You Tube and other social networking mediums -- to spread the word of his criminal abuse and exploitation of children, ranging from abducting boys as young as seven or eight and forcing them to serve in his army as well as the raping of young girls. Why has he not been caught already? The best reason is that he is not newsworthy enough, though, as the creator of the movement mentions, had one child in the United States been treated in this manner, it would have become headline news. So how is the movement gaining momentum? So far, several celebrities have joined the cause, hoping to bring an equivalent notoriety to Kony, and the upshot is that a once disinterested United States congress has dispatched over one-hundred advisors to Uganda to aid in Kony's capture. Additionally, the movement plans a "Kony 2012" day on April 20th to make his notoriety known worldwide, which brings me to my former student. She asked, as I mentioned, for me to try to organize the movement in the middle school. However, I noted immediately the red flag of mixing politics and education directly. With that said, I was going to post the link to "Kony 2012" on Edmodo for my students' own interest (and did so, briefly) until I received an email from our school principal not to allow students to hang any posters about Kony. She added that the topic would be addressed in social studies. The video begins with the phrase, "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come," and I believe the seed of this idea originated in the powerful and sweeping changes in the "Arab Spring" which relied upon technology to bring down long-enduring strong-armed dictators. I must say that I have mixed feelings about my principal's decision, and, in fairness to her, have not been able to talk to her about the reasons for proceeding this way. Of course, I am mindful of the ages of the students I teach and of the disturbing nature of Kony's actions. However, technology is shrinking both the time and space of our world -- the tragedies of 9-11 are evidence of that -- and, as educators, we must prepare our children for the realities of the world they are growing into, which, in this case, is a rather harsh one.

Pardon My French!

Today I read and learned about Cognitive Load, and one of the concepts behind this theory is that the working memory is capable of handling a certain number of items at one time. And that magic number, it turns out, is about seven. Hence, phone numbers are of this length to provide the maximum number of phone numbers but still be capable of retained in memory (though, truth be told, with cell phones today most everyone would be lost in the dark of important numbers if they were to lose their phone, as these no longer have to be dialed but simply summoned through a contacts list. Yikes! It occurs to me that I can recall rotory dial phones and how frustrating it was to misdial a number if it were the sixth or seventh number. I'm getting old, I guess!). Anyway, one lesson I teach my students in English underscores the importance of visualization and background knowledge. I provide students with two passages -- one in English about Australian cricket, the other in French about the geography of mountains and rivers in France (see pictures below). Naturally, one would expect to comprehend and retain the passage written in English. However, since the passage is about cricket, with which most students are totally unfamiliar, students tend to have extremely poor comprehension and recall of the text. The French text is accompanied with an illustration and, while written in French, enough of the nouns are Latinate to make them resemble the English ones and, combined with the illustration, the students' comprehension surpasses that of the passage about cricket. Seems schema and illustrations do matter with comprehension, retention, and learning. Something to think about -- Penzez vous!

Things We Mean to Teach and Some We Don't

One of the questions we responded to during our consideration of Behavioral Theory was how punishment may be "archaic," that is, outdated and unnecessary in education. Of course, a clearer understanding of what "punishment" is, exactly, matters greatly here, as punishment has a wide range of extremes. The fact of the matter is that negative attention or consequences are a fact of life in the real world. You speed, for example, you ought not be surprised to get pulled over and issued a speeding summons. If we are to posit, as I do, that education is to prepare students for life in the real world, then not including punishment in some way might be leaving students somewhat unprepared for the real world. In a perfect world, all students would learn and be attentive and work to their ability all the time, everyday of the school year. Alas, our world isn't perfect. So I keep the options of punishment available.
With that said, I haven't written a referral or sent a student out of my classroom in years (literally), and one student I did send out of my class in my second year of teaching for chewing gum (and defying me) ending up getting arrested some thirty minutes later (literally -- it's one of my principal's favorite stories to tell). I teach middle schoolers, and I have discovered that if you are honest with them -- tell them what they have to do and why they should do it and so on -- most often most of them "buy in." I happen to think that there are few "bad kids," just kids behaving badly, often times because they find themselves in bad situations beyond their control. There, the teacher can play a pivotal guiding role to help steer these kids away from poor choices and bad decisions. In my first year of teaching, I taught an entire class of retained 7th graders and another of retained 8th graders. I say with some sincerity that I learned more from them than they did from me, though, truth be told, I also like to think that I helped to put them on a better path in life.
Last year I was teaching a book called Speak, in which a young teen girl is raped at a summer party. One of the issues of the book deals with "Learned Helplessness," a concept in which one learns not to do anything when, in fact, one can. The girl fails to speak up and get help. Why she doesn't seems puzzling? The answer is Learned Helplessness. This concept helps to explain the behavior of prisoners in concentration camps during the Holocaust. In any case, I have included an interesting link to show just how powerful and subtly influential Learned Helplessness can be. If students can be influenced so easily so quickly, it makes me pause to reflect on all that I may be teaching my students entirely unaware. Something to think about.

We've Soared in 50 Years!

Fifty years ago on this day, John Glenn rocketed into space on the Mercury space flight aboard Friendship 7. His five-hour flight took him around the world three times before returning safely back to earth. Fifty years seems a long time ago, but considering that Glenn had no computers on board for that first trip into space, and the ubiquity of computers and cell phones and so on today -- it may seem even longer. That trip was a sorely needed confidence booster for our country, which seemed to suffer a loss of self-confidence when the Soviets sent up Sputnik to take an early lead in the space race. I watched Glenn deliver a speech in 2002 in which he recalled the preparations for and flight of Friendship 7, and in his closing remarks he mentioned how essential research is to human progress. He mentioned Alexander Fleming, whose curiosity with mold led to his discovery of penicillin -- and our world and industry has been forever changed. He also mentioned a visit he made to Wernher von Braun, noted developer of rockets, and was surprised at the books he found in von Braun's study. He expected to find books on mathematics and engineering; however, he found more books on religion and philosophy. Glenn concluded that most of our great thinkers and innovators shared one quality: an intense curiosity.
Last week I delivered my first virtual lesson on the learning theory Synectics. I was fortunate to be able to work with Angela and Sue -- between the three of us, we managed to work out an effective presentation of Synectics along with a good lesson, too. I watched another NASA legend, Gene Kranz, who related the trials and tribulations of trying to get the astronauts of Apollo 13 safely back to earth after an explosion disabled the spacecraft. As Kranz related the process he and the others at NASA used to find solutions to the myriad problems to surmount, I realized the process he employed was Synectics. These problems were, like space travel itself, unfamiliar and strange, and to discover the solutions to problems -- one of which was finding a way to take a square filter and retrofit it for a round hole -- those at NASA followed the steps almost identical to find those solutions that ultimately resulted in three lives saved.
At a time when Americans may be feeling a loss of self-confidence -- with a sluggish economy, a massive, looming national debt, and other problems -- maybe we need to look back at how far we've come in just fifty years. Glenn, who became a senator from Ohio after his concluding his career as an astronaut pioneer, concluded his speech by mentioning how great a doctrine the Constitution is and the need for Americans to be active and involved in our government. While we live in problem-laden times, we also live in times of great opportunity. Like Synectics, maybe we need to just look at it a different way!

Synthesizing Synectics...Virtually!

Today is showtime -- the day we present our lesson on Synectics to our colleagues. As I have learned a great deal about the Synectics approach to problem-solving and generating interesting and "fresh" ideas, I feel comfortable with delivering the content of our lesson with, I think, an interesting "hands on" lesson. My nervousness centers around delivering this lesson "virtually" using Wimba (and, hopefully, only having to use Wimba). Reflecting back upon the mere year I have been in the MAITS program, my experiences with technology, as well as many of my colleagues', I might add, gives me reason to pause...and perhaps tremble. You never know -- and cannot control -- when the lights will go out (as they did for our final presentations last year)and the technology stumbles and falls. My experience working with Angela and Sue has been a good and rewarding one. Each of us, I feel, carried our share of the load in preparing for this lesson, and, with a little bit of luck, it should go well! It's a good thing this is a virtual lesson -- you won't see my rabbit's foot and horseshoe and four-lear clover on my computer. Good luck to all the presenters!