These ways of controlling a classroom are fine, and basically what you’re saying is to find an effective way to nip bad behavior in the bud; however if the principal and board don’t back the teacher up, children catch on that teachers are powerless, and will most likely act up regardless—rendering cute sign language ineffective.  In the real world problems must be addressed in proper order, in other words, go after the boards who leave teachers rudderless.

Including yesterday’s post, the absence of discussion on the education/teacher blogs on the book Practice Perfect. However, on the business, management and other related organizations, lots of talk about it, and most of it is praise.

“Having trained salespeople for twenty years, I?d like to think I know a thing or two about effective training. But having read Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better, by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway and Katie Yezzi, I also realize that I can further help my students and my clients by taking some of my training sessions up to a whole new level.”
http://jackmalcolm.com/blog/tag/doug-lemov/

The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204530504578078602307104168.html

On the few education blogs - Jay Matthews
” Why teacher training fails our teachers”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/why-teacher-training-fails-our-teachers/2012/10/03/f88d470a-0c56-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_blog.html

Reading the comments on the above link, the common themes, is that PD days are a waste of time. initial teaching training provides it, and practice for teachers are good, but not good for the students using drills and rote memorization.

Apparently, the book Practice Perfect, is being rejected by the very teachers for various reasons based on belief values and philosophies.

Practice is useless, if it does not bring improvement and change. “But feedback is meaningless if it does not change practice. In an exclusive excerpt from ?Practice Perfect? in the Community section today, Lemov outlines ways to make feedback more useful.”
http://gothamschools.org/2012/10/09/a-leading-teacher-of-teachers-says-feedback-should-be-used-fast/

The comments in the above post, are priceless. It shows the culture and values of the public education model in full display. The negative bias towards others who do not share the same values held by educators working in public schools.

The authors of Practice Perfect, are being rejected because - “That?s the theory behind ?Practice Perfect,? the new e-book by Doug Lemov, managing director of the Uncommon Schools network of charter schools and author of ?Teach Like a Champion,? a 2010 book with 49 concrete strategies for improving student engagement and classroom management. (GothamSchools? Elizabeth Green wrote about Lemov and his approach in a 2010 New York Times Magazine story.)”

The Uncommon Schools site
http://www.uncommonschools.org/

“By researching the latest in brain and behavioral science and in their work training teachers with Uncommon Schools, the authors found that what you do in practice matters as much if not more than how much you practice. There is a right way and a wrong way to practice. The right way involves breaking through assumptions, modeling excellent practice, using feedback, creating a culture of practice, making new skills stick and hiring for practice. Practice Perfect breaks down effective practice into 42 clear rules.”
http://josseybasseducation.com/teaching-learning/doug-lemov-introduces-practice-perfect/

A video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh228Cbbpo4

Practice does indeed makes permanent. However, as a parent trying to help and advocate for my child at the school level - Apparently it did not applied for my child, and denial of extra practice sheets supplied by the school. Oh yes, as I did discovered on my own, it has to be practice that effects a change, hopefully upward in mastery and achievement. Drill sheets, was in heavy use in my home between the 3 Rs, to carve out new cognitive pathways that led to mastery that led to critical thinking skills, and creativity.

The payoff for students is reap for years and years in body, mind and academics. ” Practice lets us execute a task while using less and less active brain processing. It makes things automatic. When performers master one aspect of their work, they free their minds to think about another aspect. This may be why many of us have our most creative thoughts while driving or brushing our teeth. Rote learning and conceptual thinking often feed synergistically on each other, freeing our brain capacity for those tasks that require the maximum amount of attention and creativity.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204530504578078602307104168.html

Interesting read, Nancy.  It’s too bad that teachers are turning their backs on effective teaching methods.  As Mr. Khan from the Khan Academy says in his talk:  in the maths and sciences, children who appear at first to be struggling and feeling hopeless, after ‘drill and kill’ (my words) repetition become these stellar performers—these geniuses!  Why do these educrats who are in front of children every day prefer to blame the children for their dismal failures rather than themselves and their superiors?  So unfair to children who are programmed to believe that they are to blame for doing poorly and carry a life sentence of believing that they can’t learn to read, nor do math, nor write.  :-(

I believe, the practices and developers hailing from the cognitive and learning fields, are rejected simply on the basis of not emerging from the education philosophies.

A good example is the practices that are developed by those within the LD field. To which, I think Lemov has read up on, because they fit in nicely with practice and feedback. A child struggling with learning issues, learns must practice more than the average child. However how many times?  The better the lesson and practice content, mastery comes quickly. I stuck it out, even if it meant 1000 times going over the same thing. During the process, I discover it matter how I taught it to my child, as well as my own knowledge base. I became smarter in how to address my child’s mastery problems, to where my child had no more issues in practicing. She discovered she was learning with far less effort, and the payoff was rewarded in higher achievement and steady progress. But the real jackpot for her, paid off starting in grade 10. All the work paid off, where she was working independently and all the methods of practice and strategies were now firmly incorporated in my child’s academic work.

One other thing I have observed, is that the practices and education policies often relied on students to have no issues with their memory processes. My oldest child, virtually never studied until grade 11. She had high grades only due to her excellent memory processes, along with no issues in the 3 Rs. Practice improves memory processes, and it is something my oldest child had to learn in grade 11. Late in starting, and it is another indictment on the culture of the public education system, who thinks it is okay to have one and all struggling and stress out at the senior high school level.

The last time I observed and experience a school environment that involves practice, was the pre-school that my youngest attended, and in the Ontario portion of JK and SK. My youngest was showing learning difficulties in rhymes, and the usual symptoms that indicate dyslexia problems. Starting off with nursery school, the head director and I came off with a plan, where practice at home using the old forms of felt pieces, other material, and the easel became a centerpiece in the dining room. On opposites, rhymes, and other things that the nursery and kindergarten teachers noted. Nipped it in the bud, and move on. Within three years, I had quite the collection where my child continue to practice at home, in playtime. In fact it was all brought with us to NL, and we continued to use the homemade material, in the early years. If anything, my child is an expert in rhyming. A master in playing with words to make puns.

I did not know what I was doing back then, but back then I went with my instinct, and the free to low cost services offered by the school board. I needed someone to cut out the felt pieces.I am not that handy. What I have observed, is practice is not being used as the means for homework. In fact, I believe if schools wants parents to become more involved, have homework where parents can actually help their children. Instead of what is being called homework these days. A lot of busy work, that leads to no mastery for any student. The kind that described above for my child, are what should be happening with the younger set, and for the older set, practice perfect sheets that results in learning progress and achievement. 

Nothing more satisfying than to see the grin from ear to ear of your children, acing homework. Knowing that is came with practice, and not just a fluke as what most educators stated in the beginning when my child was acing her tests and assignments. I even heard comments, that practicing gives an unfair advantage over other students. It came my way, when my child was beating the high achievers and my child became serious academic competition, to the high achievers academic status. Than the ones that came next, my child did not have dyslexia or my child was pretending to have dyslexia.

For teachers, to take Lemov’s work seriously - they would be facing the same issues as I did dealing with a school and a school board, that was not supportive nor inclined to improve my child’s learning problems to improve academic grades. I really like what I saw on the Uncommon Schools site. I have a feeling, my child would have blossom in a school like that.

So, Nancy from your experience, if a child who’s practised is acing work then the teachers say that they have an unfair advantage because they’ve been drilled?  These are the same teachers who say ‘drill and kill’ because they vehemently oppose drilling?  When they’ve witnessed such success, why not incorporate into their classrooms?  Oftentimes their actions do not tell me that they are interested in successfully educating children at all!  They don’t want to do much more than babysit.  Too bad for the children.

It starts in the education faculties, whose tentacles spreads out to all points lateral and vertically, up and down throughout the education system. Networks within networks, always capable of defending the education philosophies and theories from being infected with such methods as practice, drills, memorization rote, and other such methods that brings on mastery to deep knowledge to working in more creative innovative thinking styles.

Anti-education advocates, is a term that could be coin for those who dwells within the ivory towers of the public education system, the professionals - the experts. I read enough literature over the years, where the authors bill themselves as the expert, the top dog describing achievement that requires mysterious complicated processes that only the education expert can comprehend.

Lemov himself is rejected, because he is part of a charter school network, and his work is rejected because it is a script. The how-tos, to get kids settled and learning.  Just like I told my youngest child the how-tos, the sequential steps to arrived at the correct answer, the rules, the laws in math and science, and the knowledge that is no longer in the curriculum, but essential to know to advance learning.

Children don’t learn through what parents have described as osmosis. Neither do teachers, or for that matter adults. Nor will all the belief systems of magical thinking, will change the outcomes for people, into positive outcomes. If the processes, methods and practices do not change, achievement and progress for students will not change. How can they be change, when the underlying belief systems of magical thinking and spells are intact?

It is magical thinking to tell a parent, that the reading difficulties will go away. It is magical thinking for a teacher, if she works a little harder presenting the grade 3 multiplication lessons, all the students will somehow be eager to learn, the complicated methods that are unkind to the developing, cognitive minds of children.

All made worse, when the education gurus decided drills and practice were of no value to the students and their minds. Lemov and his work is ignore. Paul Tough’s book is attacked from within the public education system, with the educators taking sides ayes or nays. Paul Tough does not have an education degree, but Lemov and the other authors of his book Practice Perfect are former teachers.

Lemov is in good company. Just like the Physics teacher in Alberta who got fired for handing out zeroes. Or the many teachers who have been transferred for teaching practices that taught the how-tos to the students, that resulted in a positive changes for students’ achievement and cognitive pathways.

Practice makes permanent, I know it as a truth. It was the main key to open up the cognitive pathways of my youngest child’s brain. Practice and more practice set up the conditions, to where my child in the senior years of high school, is sitting in the advance math classes. A far cry, from the statements of the so-called education experts from the school board, handing her a life-time sentence, if she works really hard, she can obtain a 60 average.

Practice makes permanent, is a truth, that the education gurus have declared a myth. The public education pedagogy, education theories, philosophies   and the underlying belief systems are anti-education because they believe in myths, rather than dealing with the truths.

There is no reason in 2012, given the advances and new knowledge in the sciences of learning, that the majority of students by the end of grade 10, are well-versed and proficient in the subjects of math, science and English, that provides the foundation for the advance learning in grades 11 and 12, and opens up the future doors without the need to take remediation and upgrading. Instead, students are handed out sentences starting in the primary grades, on their future worth on ability and the future doors are being slammed shut. And the education system, its culture, calling themselves professionals? 

Witnessing success of children who were previously doomed to what will be a lifetime of low achievement, becomes the exceptions within the education system, to be ignored or secretly hidden away in the wall of shame among the other causalities of low achievement. because of the methods, practices and policies of the education systems. Within the wall of shame, it represents the lost potential to society, after 12 years of schooling. One current example in the data streams, the shortage of domestic skilled trades labour. There would be no shortage, if the students entering trades schools, had a solid foundation in math, the sciences, and the 3 Rs. And no need to bring in foreign workers….....