Of recent I have come to appreciate the iPhone camera as much as my first Canon 35 mm SLR camera. That Canon was a precious possession because of the investment of some of my first year teacher’s salary in a tool I had coveted throughout college. I still have trays of slides secreted in the attic from my early teaching days – a sampler of “herptiles” from the Everglades, middle schoolers scrambling up Seneca Rocks, scenes from canoeing the Rapidan River, and hawk migration along the Blue Ridge. My preferred camera tool changed dramatically a year ago, but my viewfinder still aims towards the immature black rat snake near Humpback Rocks, the tiger swallowtail perched on thistle, and the learners at work and play in the schools I visit as superintendent.
When I contrast the two image-capturing tools that define the range of cameras in my life, I think about the ease with which I now can post an image in the virtual world; no wait time to share either video or still photos with family, friends or colleagues. There’s no sense of anticipating the return of snail-mail envelopes laden with photos, either (Yes, millennials -we used to send film away to get it developed.) Instead, I experience the instant gratification of photo-shopping right on the iPhone and sharing images almost real-time. The world changes around me. The tools change in my hands. My preferred camera today is a phone, not my Canon SLR. But, interestingly, the images of classrooms today in many ways mirror those of the past.
I’m convinced that we administrative leaders have an obligation to initiate new learning, become skillful in the use of new tools that accelerate and advance our learning work, and share with others what we are learning. It has not been that long ago since I wandered with some fear into the social media world, a parallel universe to the natural environment that I love. I’ve come to realize that I don’t need to choose between these two worlds since the mobile device in my pocket untethers me from the computer on my desk or the laptop I used to lug around. My phone lets me take photos, make notes, email, take and make phone calls, check the weather, obtain driving directions, monitor school-level data, listen to recorded books, record classroom learning walks, text- message, micro-blog, and make reservations. I can, within reason, access and even produce information anywhere, at any time. Our young people have figured all this out, but we adults in some cases are choosing to be left behind. Mobile devices may be the most powerful learning tool that we educators have the potential to develop and use to sustain engagement, move students to high levels of Bloom’s, keep kids connected with learning when they are away from school, and communicate with them in multiple ways. Currently, such devices are the least used in our teaching and learning tool belt.
This year, we are taking a page from @colonelb, superintendent of Godfrey-Lee Public Schools in Michigan. We are going one step further into the 21st century by opening our local network to students with personal devices just as Godfrey-Lee has done. We will be challenged. Our kids and adults may make some mistakes. We will need to invest more time in educating our educators, parents and community about the why, what, and how of opening up access. Some of our educators will want to continue a position of technology avoidance, minimizing the uncertainty of problems that might emerge as we bring more technology on line for learning. However, I am convinced if we don’t learn to lead and work from a position of amplified uncertainty (Wortham), the hyper-changes of the second decade of the 21st century will outpace our capability to educate our young people with the skills they need for community life, the workforce, or college.
We educators need to develop integrated expertise in content, pedagogy, and technology applications. The intersection of these knowledge domains, TPCK, illustrates the difference between a 20th century-style teacher who doesn’t use web 2.0 and other tech tools and a 21st century, tech-competent teacher who does. We need to look for those differences when we visit classrooms. The ISTE mobile app is available at any time as a reference for what we should expect administrators, teachers and students to know, understand and do to use technology in powerful ways as learning tools. All administrative leaders are issued iPhones in the district where I work. In August, they’ll all load the ISTE app during a back-to-school modified version of an “ed-camp” and work with teacher leaders and colleagues to deepen understanding about technology accelerators of learning and communication.
Becoming an educator with the contemporary knowledge and skills to influence and teach others is as essential an expectation of administrative leaders as it is for teachers. Our kids don’t wait around on someone to tell them to learn a new technology and neither should we. It’s why I push myself to use tools that are alien in my hands today. With time, these tools become more comfortable and accessible to me just as English becomes natural to our English language learners. In taking on the use of technology for learning purposes, I allow myself the privilege of expecting the same from educators with whom I work, including baby-boomers of my generation
We mostly all began our careers as teachers. As administrative leaders we should “keep our feet in the trenches” and demonstrate that we are first lifelong learners, second teachers, and third administrators. After all, why would we expect more from teacher-colleagues and young learners than from ourselves?
That is a brief clip of Diane Ravitch addressing the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association on July 6, where she was receiving an award as the 2010 “Friend of Education.”
Please keep reading.
The complete text of Diane’s speech can be read here. She has given me permission to quote as much as I deem appropriate, including the whole speech if necessary.
I won’t do that. You can follow the link to read the entire text if so inclined.
Let me offer some selections to at least whet your appetite, as well as offer a bit of commentary of my own.
… in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.
I remind readers that the Representative Assembly passed a resolution of no confidence in Race to the Top.
And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?
Newt Gingrich – now there’s a great ally for a supposedly progressive administration, eh? And during the campaign, Obama railed against NCLB, yet too much of the administration policy continues to rely on the failed policies of that approach.
I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.
We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.
I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.
Some of us have worried about this trend for years – I remember a group of elementary school art teachers asking their state for a test on art so their classes would not be eliminated. As it happens, my course is one in which there is a test that has high stakes – students in theory must not only pass a government course but also a state test in government in order to graduate from high school (although the latter requirement has some loopholes). Let me say that for too many students their course in government gets reduced, especially in the Spring as the test approaches, to drill and kill, practice for the test. For a subject that should excite them, because it has direct affect on their lives, they get bored and frustrated.
In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.
Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.
Bifurcated – even worse than what we have by geography, where wealthy communities have excellent public schools rich in resources and the students have access to all kinds of elective courses, and poor communities, whether in inner cities, inner rings of suburbs or the hinterlands, lacking equipment, with decaying buildings, and overwhelmed with students arriving st school with less background and current problems.
democratic society – if we really believe in it, economics would not be the sole basis on which we make arguments about our schools.
Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.
Unfortunately, the general media coverage of the Mathematica report was badly flawed, focused on the schools that did ‘better’ while not including any of the caveats about even these schools. Charters COULD be used to offer alternative ways of teaching/learning to specific groups of students. Diane’s next two paragraphs are very important:
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.
Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.
NAEP is the national report card on education. It is considered the gold standard of educational evaluation. It does not show that charters do better. One reason why some “reformers” like charters is that in many states they are a way around unions, and their teachers can be fired at will.
Let me skip down a bit:
And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.
Reread that please. Yes, you will read stories that supposedly focus on “high-performing” schools dealing with such students. In some cases the claims for high performance are based on selective use of data. In most cases the schools on which such focus is made get more resources (as do many charters), have longer days, etc. The “success” is claimed on the basis of test scores. What is not yet offered is any evidence that there are long-term gains in learning: that the students are developing skills and knowledge that they can apply outside of the test environment. Meanwhile we reconstitute schools. We use one of the four models approved by this administration, even though NONE has any research to demonstrate that they improve education.
There are passages about the right to unionize, which Diane supports, but which “reformers” oppose. Read this paragraph, and perhaps you will understand two things, (1) why teachers are reacting so positively towards Diane; and (2) why we feel unfairly besieged, that the playing field is tilted:
I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.
Teachers, and those who support them, ARE being demonized. By constrast, Hedge Fund managers (who are making major investments in things like charter schools for tax benefits) and Wall Street Firms (who came close to destroying the economy of this nation and the international community) get bailed out with our tax dollars, continue to pay bonuses, and spend millions to prevent appropriate oversight and regulation. Then they want to have a voice telling us how we should teach, how our schools should be run.
There is so much of value in the speech. By now I hope I have at least convinced you to take the time to read the entire thing.
Let me offer only a few more snippets, skipping over some very important material:
Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.
One argument against Teach for America, for example. Now if those in that program actually stayed in teaching, people like Ravitch and me would have far fewer objections. The constant turnover in the schools in which they serve is unfair to those kids. The program benefits many in the TFA corps, and it certainly benefits TFA. It is not clear that the students are getting all that much benefit, and the model is not something that can really address the needs of the millions of students in inner city and rural schools.
The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen.
The consequences of letting these “reforms” go forward unchallenged will be great damages far beyond the arena of public education. It will be further destruction of what is left of the union movement in this country. It will be increased privatization of what is left of the commons in this country/ It will be a narrowing of opportunity for too many of our young people. It will diminish us as a people as our young people receive narrower and narrower educations.
Diane urges those listening to her to be politically active, to remind people that there are millions of teachers, we vote, and so do our families, to not support anyone who is an opponent of public education.
Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.
Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas.” Thank you.
Diane Ravitch received a rousing ovation for this speech. As a teacher, as a UNIONIZED teacher in a public school, I understand why.
I thought it important that as many people as possible encounter HER words, not just cursory news accounts. I think it important that voices that speak for teachers and for public schools be given as much of an audience as those who have described themselves as ‘reformers’ and seek to suppress or denigrate any opposing point of view.
That is why I asked Diane, a friend, if I could quote extensively. That is why Diane told me “You are free to cite or quote whatever you wish.”
July 5. 2010. It is the day after Independence Day. I am reminded of the film starring Will Smith in which aliens fly monster spaceships over major cities to colonize Earth. I would not have even thought of the movie if I hadn’t been thinking that our nation’s notion of Independence Day seems to be more about what we do to entertain rather than educate ourselves.
July 4. 2010. 6:00 p.m. I go to a hometown celebration of Independence Day with the simple goal of connecting with family and community members from a long time past. Some might say this annual celebration has the makings of the best of current day America’s annual birthday party – country music, beach music, gospel music, civic booths with every 4th of July “fast food” delicacy that a heart can desire or ill afford, and spontaneous line dancing by friends, relatives and acquaintances from all sides of the tracks. The crowd on the baseball field settles into lawn chairs, bracing their backs with umbrellas against the languor of a Deep South settling sun. A toddler in her sundress of red, white, and blue twirls in front of the stage, mirroring what appeared to be requisite clothing of the senior citizens, tee-shirted, capped, and swathed in red, white, and blue. Nearby, folks of different hues stand and chat about the weather, the gosh-awful oil mess in the Gulf, and the cost of fireworks that are expected to last longer than ever before- despite the tough economy of one of the poorest counties in the state.
July 4. 2010. 9:15 p.m. I wait with this former community of mine, along with Americans across the country, in big cities and small towns, farm fields and parklands. Twilight slips into night, and we all anticipate the first burst of flaring color to wrap us in a patriotic moment in time. The explosives begin to the accompaniment of America’s music- “1812 Overture”, “the Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “America the Beautiful”, “This Land is Your Land”, “God Bless the USA”, “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Generations gather together to honor an assembly of radical thinkers who believed it was the colonies’ time to declare for freedom from tyranny, from unjust rule, from a king who believed he ruled because of divine power, rather than rule derived from the will of the people. But, there’s one problem. The boom of fireworks and the cheers that accompany each spray of color drown out the words of the Declaration, the words of the music.
I sit in my lounge chair and watch the faces and cameras upturned to capture the fireworks moment. I wonder about the question I asked my son two years ago as part of a July 4 post, “After all the years of learning U.S. history-the textbooks you’ve read, the lectures you’ve heard, the six state-required multiple choice tests on Virginia history, U.S, History I and II, Civics, AP History, and U.S. Government, what’s freedom really mean to you?” His reply? “Actually, it became most real last semester in Spain-you know, you can’t even publish a cartoon critical of the monarchy there. Insulting the king is illegal.”
July 5.2010.9:15 p.m. Despite our teaching generations about how “We the People” came to be, I wonder the degree to which we suffer from the phenomenon of “I taught it, but they didn’t learn it.” How many of the people sitting here tonight actually understand why the Boston Tea Party occurred and how that first Tea Party differs from the tea party movement in the news today? Why did Texas legislators miss the intense and brilliant philosophical debates of our founding fathers that set the stage for Thomas Jefferson to craft the Declaration of Independence and espouse religious liberty as one of many freedoms? Why did Jefferson espouse freedom from “kings, nobles, and priests”? (Jefferson, 1786, August 13 to George Wythe) Why can’t generations of citizens identify Great Britain (Curriculum Matters, EdWeek) as the nation from whom we declared our independence? How did we become disconnected from the idea that the United States of America was created by immigrants and the children of immigrants; many of whom came here voluntarily as well as some who did not? Why did knowledge that successive waves of people from all walks of life journeyed to our shores, seeking freedom and fortune, get lost in the resentments of nativists such as those who once resented nineteenth century Irish immigrants (NYC Tenement Museum)?
Jefferson understood the power of an educated populace. I suspect he would welcome our young women and children of color into our schools today despite his unfortunate and limiting prejudices of the time. I imagine he would advocate for new learning technologies while asserting the importance of knowledge in all disciplines, including languages, science, history, mathematics, literature and the arts. I believe he would be appalled to think that the general populace could not describe the basic tenets of freedom outlined by the founding fathers who received the main credit for conceiving our independence in conjunction with a few founding mothers who did not.
Images of the dancing toddler and friends and neighbors chatting capture the best of communities gathered to celebrate with each other; a ritual that began with the earliest of tribes. However, I also am left with a sense that the occasion of this nation’s birthday gets lost amidst beach vacations, July 4th sales events, and our beloved fireworks displays. How many of us take the time each year to read or listen to ourDeclaration of Independence – and reflect deeply upon the self evident truths and ‘unalienable’ rights which we oft take for granted.
I have learned in life that that to go to school is not the same as to be educated. Mr. Jefferson knew that a foundation of public education was essential to our continued independence and freedom. Freedom is an expression of the concept of ‘unalienable’ rights and Independence Day is not a movie full of aliens.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
A portmanteau, derived from edu(cation) and (lit)erati, 'Edurati' refers to the new wave of educators, thinkers, entrepreneurs, and activists driving catalytic innovation in public education.
The Edurati Review is a collaborative blog providing diverse commentary, independent analyses of public education policy issues, and innovative pedagogical concepts. We encourage your thoughts and comments to keep the coversation moving forward.
ve come to appreciate the iPhone camera as much as my first Canon 35 mm SLR camera. That Canon was a precious possession because of the investment of some of my first year teacher’s salary in a tool I had coveted throughout college. I still have trays of slides secreted in the attic from my early teaching days – a sampler of “herptiles” from the Everglades, middle schoolers scrambling up Seneca Rocks, scenes from canoeing the Rapidan River, and hawk migration along the Blue Ridge. My preferred camera tool changed dramatically a year ago, but my viewfinder still aims towards the immature black rat snake near Humpback Rocks, the tiger swallowtail perched on thistle, and the learners at work and play in the schools I visit as superintendent.
