SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Without Teacher Certification

Continuing the theme of outside-the-box thinking regarding schools, this Wall Street Journal article discusses Teach For America (TFA), an alternate route to teaching that bypasses the problematic faculties of education. Teach for America “this fall will send 4500 of the best college students in the country to 100 of the lowest performing urban and rural school districts”. These new teachers, many of whom are Ivy League graduates, receive stellar teacher training before they enter their schools and then get support and more training as they go along. And, no surprise, TFA teachers get significantly better results than certified teachers.

In Ontario, the educational establishment (faculties of education, teachers’ unions, Ontario College of Teachers, etc.) have managed to convince the public that teacher certification is advantageous, such that even private schools hesitate to hire non-certified teachers. Yet the Teach for America story proves that teacher certification means very little and that we should be open to alternative ways to prepare and recruit teachers.

Without Principals

We are all so accustomed to the current concept of public schools - school boards, huge buildings, principals, buses, etc. - that it’s hard to think about other ways that education might be delivered. This article describes a new Detroit school that will depart from the notion that a public school has to have a principal. Although this notion is unfamiliar in North America, it is in fact the norm in Switzerland, as this article from our archives attests (mainly the middle column). The author, Stefan Achermann, describes the school where he was teaching in Bremgarten, Aargau, Switzerland. 

When I was in Switzerland about ten years ago, I was able to visit Stefan’s school and sit in on one of his classes. Afterwards, he showed me around the school, and I could readily see that everything he had written in the article was factual. Because there was no principal, the teachers divided up the various duties among themselves, democratically. Stefan’s special responsibility was the procurement, maintenance, and storage of the school’s scientific equipment, and he showed me the storage room set aside for it. It was very impressive! I can’t remember any of the details, but the room was of a respectable size and filled with a large quantity of neatly-labeled and, to my eye, quite advanced, scientific equipment. 

I came away quite convinced that there is no need for principals whatsoever and that in fact schools might well work a lot better without them. 

How High Schools Are Setting Their Students Up for Disappointment

This article in Macleans Magazine discusses the problem of “grade drop” experienced by first-year university students. It seems that the average student can expect his grades to drop by about 10 points - and many are surprised and dismayed to find out that their seemingly-stellar performance in high school does not mean they will do well in university. About 15 years ago, the University of Western Ontario compared the marks of their first-year students with their high school grades and found the same thing - about a 10-point grade drop. Western then went on to tabulate the students’ results in terms of which high school they had attended - looking to see the average grade drop by high school - and then sent a letter to each high school informing them of their aggregate grade drop. The variation among high schools was quite significant. I have a copy of the Western report (it is not available on-line) and would be happy to mail a copy to anyone who would be interested.

Of course, few if any of the high schools changed their grading policies in light of Western’s letter. The only solution is to reinstate province-wide high school exit exams. This would be fairer to the students (who would at least know where they stood) and fairer to the universities (which could make admission decisions on the basis of more reliable information). 

All That Glitters is Not Gold

In light of the belief that it's important to give kids access to computers, this Duke University study may convey important information. The researchers compared the academic achievement of North Carolina public school students with their access to home computers. Screening out socio-economic differences, they found that "home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores".

While this study doesn't look at the effect of school computers on student achievement, it is suggestive. Given the obvious disadvantages of hi-tech school installations (the cost of the hardware, the software and the retrofitting; the continuing need for tech support; the rapid obsolescence; the disruption to classes and the opportunities computers give students to view porn and chat with their on-line friends; and the fact that many teachers don't have the training to use computers to good advantage), perhaps it's time to slow the mad rush to mass computerization in schools.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

From the director of An Inconvenient Truth is a soon to be released new documentary, Waiting for Superman. It is scheduled to hit theatres this fall. 

You can view the trailer here or click on the YouTube link in this posting.

The paranoia has already begun before the film has even opened.   According to Intercepts' Mike Antonucci, reporting from the NEA's annual convention, big union money will be targeted against the film and other similar pro-school choice documentaries.  What Antonucci points out, as usual, is the glaring hypocrisy:

      "The debate over NBI 91, which called for a $3.5 million media campaign against "anti-teacher union documentaries ‘Teached,' ‘The Cartel,' ‘The Lottery' and ‘Waiting for Superman,'" turned farcical rather quickly. Delegate Dan Moran of California began by reading Roger Ebert's positive review of the latter film, which probably wasn't the best way to stir people against it.

      "He went on at length about how these documentaries distort the truth - an argument I didn't hear at the 2004 NEA convention when the union hosted a special screening of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

       "The debate got extra entertaining when a delegate from New Jersey offered an amendment directing NEA to film its own $25 million documentary about the evils of charter schools. The delegates quickly defeated both the amendment and the original motion.

       "However, NBIs 93 and 99 both passed without debate - the former calling on NEA to "expose and educate the media and the public about allegedly grassroots pro-charter ‘parent groups'" and the latter directing NEA and its affiliates to counter the "misleading impressions" created by charter school lotteries."

 Get out the popcorn.

Teach Like a Champion

The latest addition to our library - Teach Like a Champion: 49 techniques that put students on the path to college - made me see red. The book names and codifies effective teaching practices (the excerpt below illustrates one of dozens of fantastic and proven things teachers can do to increase how much their students learn). Without the knowledge of these techniques, no teacher can be effective. As the author points out, "artists, athletes, musicians, surgeons, and performers of a thousand other varieties achieve greatness only by their attention to the details of their technique".

So why did the book make me mad? It made me remember my first year of teaching and how much I struggled, especially with controlling my classroom, because I had not been taught even one of these techniques during my year at a teachers' college. It is safe to say that reading this book would be far more valuable to prospective teachers than an entire year at most faculties of education.

Here's an excerpt from the technique called "Name the Steps" (p. 78).

"One of my soccer coaches had been an all-world superstar as a player. As coach, he'd stand on the sidelines and shout, 'Defense, you guys! Defense!!' We were pretty aware that we were on defense, though, and also pretty aware we weren't playing it especially well. He coached by offering points 'like Don't tackle there, Doug!' When I started to play for another coach I realized how a coach might also be a teacher. The other coach broke defense down into a series of steps: First, position yourself increasingly closer to your man as he gets closer to the player with the ball. Second, deny the ball if and only if you are certain you can intercept. Third, prevent your man from turning if he is facing away from the goal. Fourth, steer your man toward the sidelines if he has the ball and has turned. Fifth, tackle if you must. Sixth, otherwise keep position between him and the goal.

"He focused his coaching (before the game rather than during!) on reminding us what step came next. If my man got the ball, he would gently remind me 'Don't let him turn.' If I let him turn (I usually did), he would say, 'Take him wide'. If, as was often the case, I found myself unsuccessful, he would say, 'If you must....', a reminder that keeping my position between the player and the goal was more important than winning the ball. For years after I stopped playing for him I'd recall his steps ('If you must') while I played. Once I asked the second coach how he thought to teach the way he did. His reply was revealing: 'That was the only way I could learn it.'

"If you are teaching in your area of skill and passion, you likely have more intuition (natural or learned) than your students do, and you can help them succeed by subdividing complex skills into component tasks and building knowledge up systematically. Champion teachers name the steps by habit (knowing how to do this is perhaps their superstar intuition). They traffic in recipes: the five steps to combining sentences with the same subject, the four steps to regrouping, the six parts of a great literary response. Their students learn the steps, refer to the map they provide as they are developing competence, and then leave the steps behind when they are familiar enough with the recipe to forget they are following it. Perhaps they even add their own variations and flourishes. For most, this is the path to becoming a virtuoso."

A Word to the Not-So-Wise

A new study published by Harvard's Kennedy School found that "traditional lecture style teaching is associated with significantly higher student achievement" of grade 8 students. The study is quite sophisticated, adjusting for many factors that may affect student and teacher performance, and is not easily dismissed. 

And, if I may, ahem, I'd like to suggest that it is possible that certain of our commenters could benefit from the knowledge that one learns more by listening than by talking.

Things Are Seldom What They Seem, Skim Milk Masquerades As Cream

There was an interesting article in today's Toronto Star concerning the Toronto 18 (the group of young Muslim Canadians who plotted to detonate a number of bombs in downtown Toronto). If you start reading from "The Brothers of Meadowvale", you will learn that every one of the young men had attended an Ontario public high school. Several were actually converts to Islam. The article paints a picture of troubled young men who desperately wanted to belong to a group and find meaning in their lives. This is a far cry from the popular concept of Islamic private schools that are breeding grounds for Muslim extremism. In fact, both here in Canada and internationally, I have never heard a whisper of anything at all amiss in Islamic private schools. Could it be that children who feel grounded in terms of faith and/or family and/or community don't feel the need to blow things up? Might we be better off with more religious schools? I'm just asking...........

Not Bully For You

For those of us who no longer have kids in school, it's hard to believe how much of a concern bullying has become recently. But the evidence is unmistakable. Moira MacDonald's recent column gives some astonishing statistics on the incidence of bullying and, when we surveyed the parents who had transferred their kids from public to private schools, bullying was one of the top reasons given. There are several excellent articles in our newsletter archives (scroll down to "Bullying") on how to combat bullying. I look forward to a vigorous exchange of comments on this topic, particularly your speculation on what has caused the recent surge in the incidence of bullying.

No More Fulminating Against Parents

Educhatter's June 17 Blog posting reports on the ever more frantic pace of most Canadian parents' lives, such that they have precious little time left over for their kids. This has obvious implications for schools. For example, even fewer parents are going to be able to find the time or energy to read to their young kids, help them with homework, and engage in other activities that will support their schooling. This is very unfortunate, of course, but educators need to come to grips with the new reality. There is little point fulminating against parents for being derelict in their duty and unduly penalizing their kids. It's nobody's fault - it just is what it is  - and so it's high time educators accepted that it's pretty much totally up to them to teach their students the curriculum. Nobody says it's easy, but it can be done - if educators are prepared to modify their teaching and adopt the proven methods that are working well in certain schools.