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An incredibly important speech on education by Diane Ravitch

July 8th, 2010

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.”

Thanks for reading.

Please pass on the link for her speech.

Peace.

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Learning On Other People’s Kids – an important book on Teach for America

June 19th, 2010

I wondered, “Whose America is Teach For America really teaching for? Why is it tolerable for education to be less-thanfor other people’s kids? And, what are we, as a nation, really prepared to do about it?

Those are the concluding words of Barbara Torre Veltri in her book Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach For America Teacher

In just over two two decades since Wendy Kopp founded Teach For America as a result of her senior thesis at Princeton, the organization has become an influential player in education and politics in the United States. According to its website, for the past school year it had 7,300 corps members teaching 450,000 students. It regularly gets glowing press coverage from general media. Admission to its corps from selective colleges has become increasingly competitive. Yet what Teach For America is and does has been poorly understood.

Barbara Torre Veltri provides what may be the single most important examination of TFA I have encountered, and I hope you will continue reading as I explore the book and explain why I make that statement.

Veltri is herself a long-term educator, now a university-based educator of teachers. She began her own teaching career under emergency certification: like the members of TFA corps, that means she was NOT a fully certified teacher at the time she entered her classroom. Further, in her capacity as a university based trainer of teachers, she had a multiple year association with Teach For America: she was associated with one of the universities that serves as a site for the 5 week Institutes that represent the entirety of the training of Corp members before they get their own classroom, and she served as a resource for Corps members and TFA staff as the participants continued to learn how to teach even as they were already class-room based. The book is thus enriched not only with her insight into the experiences with which she was associated, but she had access to a large number of current and former Corps members and the people in school districts in which she was placed. Veltri is also a thorough researcher, having examined and absorbed much of the relevant literature.

As should be clear from how I began, Veltri now raises serious questions about our reliance upon Teach For America. That does not mean she is necessarily opposed to alternative programs to recruit and train teachers for hard to staff schools in inner cities and rural areas: in her Acknowledgments she refers to Jumpstart of Manhattanville College, whose model “includes 6 months of coursework, practicum, and mentoring, prior to placement of career-changers into New York Schools.” By comparison, TFA Corp members get a 5 week institute. The difference can perhaps be reflected best in retention statistics – as of the writing of the book, 85% of those who completed Jumpstart remained in the classroom (these are 9 year figures(, whereas the vast majority of TFA leave the classroom upon completion of their two year commitments, taking advantage of the benefits offered by graduate and professional schools towards former TFAers, and includes a stipend from AmeriCorps equal to $5,000/year for use against any past or future educational expense. Remember (1) this is paid for by our taxes, and (2) TFAers qualify for this regardless of any financial need.

And while I am on the financial aspects about which you will learn in this book, let me also note the following. TFA requires that their Corp members be paid the same as would certified teachers in the same positions EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE NOT THEMSELVES CERTIFIED. Further, the contracts with school districts require a payment to TFA of several thousand dollars additional for each Corps Members, thus effectively making a TFA placement MORE EXPENSIVE than hiring others to teach, whether fully certified or – like TFAers – provisionally certified.

And there are the costs associated with the constant turnover of teaching faculty. On p. 168 Veltri cites a study that says the costs of teachers leaving the classroom range from $4,366 and $17,872 for each teacher leaving this classroom. There is further non-financial impact in the negative effect upon learning that is clearly documented across the professional literature in schools lacking a constant teaching faculty.

The real value of the book comes less from the statistics and studies which Veltri cites, but from the words and experiences of those who themselves were participants in TFA, with whom Veltri built a sufficient relationship of trust that they were willing to be quite candid with her. While most had little intention of staying the classroom permanently, they were drawn to this service because they wanted to make a difference, even if they were also drawn by the long-term benefits they believed would accrue to them after completing their two years. Many felt unprepared for what they were encountering in the classroom. They desperately needed experienced mentors, but TFA’s support was largely limited to former TFAers, and they were on their own in finding support within their schools. They acknowledged their lack of relevant background on which to draw, and how overburdened they felt. Let me offer a few examples to illustrate this:

I tend to go over my lesson plan time. How do you fix that? (Cortina)

“My students need experienced teachers who know what works and can implement it effectively. Instead, they have me, and though I am learning quickly, I am still learning on them, experimenting on them, working on their time.” (Marguerite)

I mean, in a lot of was, how I am teaching right now is what I remember doing in high school. It’s what makes sense to me. It’s a kind of … prior knowledge. I guess it is just that. (Ali)

… And, part of the problem is, I just never know exactly if I am doing what I am supposed to be doing and that creates a lot of stress. (Kyle)

That stress is increased by the requirement of completing 15 credit hours during their rookie year, because of their emergency certification status:

What does TFA want me to do? Attend UPenn classes four nights in a row, grade my student papers, and prepare for teaching, or listen to them? I’m done with it! (Curtis)

Let me comment briefly on the requirement for 15 credit hours. When I began my doctoral studies while in my 2nd year at my current school, I needed special permission to take 9 credit hours, because our system believes taking on anything more than 6 credit hours at time jeopardizes one’ effectiveness as a teacher. I already had 4 years of teaching experience, one of which was in the school with the same preps as I would have while attending graduate school. I have seen beginning teachers with emergency or provisional credentials struggle to balance the demands of the classes they teach and those they attend, even with 6 hours and MORE PREPARATION than the 5 weeks offered in TFA institutes.

Another key value of the Veltri book is that she explores serious questions. If I may quote from her website, the book is organized around key questions:

Previously unanswered questions are addressed: Why do intelligent college graduates apply to Teach For America? How are they recruited, trained, and hired? How do they learn the culture(s) of the community, schools, grade level, and curriculum? Is there a “culture” of the TFA organization? Do TFAers see themselves as effective teachers? What recommendations do corps members offer to TFA, its’ donors, policy-makers, future corps members and the public?

It has three main parts, of which the final, as Veltri puts it,

presents TFAers’ views on their corps teaching experience, analyzes the “master narrative” as it relates to the education of poor children, and raises questions for readers to contemplate.

One real issue for many beginning teachers is managing the classroom, for if students are not on task learning is less likely to occur. Allow me to quote what Veltri says on this topic, on p. 111:

Classroom management proved to be one of the top three needs of first year TFAers over seven consecutive cohorts whose classrooms I visited in both the middle Atlantic and Sothwest regions.

One question some often ask is if the TFA approach is effective. The organization likes to claim that its members are more effective teachers (as measured by test scores) than others in the same setting. Perhaps in this regard it is worth noting a new policy brief, Teach For America: A False Promise, produced by the Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado and the Education Policy
Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University with funding from the
Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. The subtitle is Alternative teacher training program yields costly turnover while doing little to improve student achievement. Allow me to quote two paragraphs to illustrate why the TFA claims, while somewhat accurate, are deceptive:

Studies show that TFA teachers perform fairly well when compared with one segment of the teaching population: other teachers in the same hard-to-staff schools, who are less likely to be certified or traditionally prepared. Compared with that specific group of teachers, TFA teachers “perform comparably in raising reading scores and a bit better in raising math scores,” the brief’s authors write.

Conversely, studies which compare TFA teachers with credentialed non-TFA
teachers find that “the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well in reading and mathematics than those of credentialed beginning teachers,” Heilig and Jez write. And in a large-scale Houston study, in which the researchers controlled for experience and teachers’ certification status, standard certified teachers consistently outperformed uncertified TFA teachers of comparable experience levels in similar settings.

The study goes on to note that the majority of TFAers leave at the end of two years, with over 80% being out of the classroom after three. Some of the claims for evidence of better performance are based on the less than 1 in five who stay, who have become fully certified.

I entered teaching through a traditional Master of Arts in Teaching program. I had 16 weeks of practice teaching under the supervision of experienced teachers, 8 each in middle and high school. I had received formal training in pedagogy, both general and related to my content area (social studies). Before my student teaching I had multiple occasions in which I observed experienced teachers in a variety of settings. I was trained in the legal requirements of special education students. I was given training and education in teaching students whose culture and background might be very different than my own. I was an honors graduate of an elite college (Haverford), in other words, the kind of candidate sought by Teach For America. I had previous teaching experience to adults in business, and years before in a private secondary school. And when I got my own classroom in 1995 I was 49 years old. Still, it was not an easy task, although now having completed my 15th year I am generally considered an excellent and effective teacher.

I have a certain antipathy towards the TFA approach, because I believe it is unfair to the students and schools in which TFAers serve. I refuse to accept the framing that implies a TFA teacher is better than currently available alternatives. The correct answer to the need is to provide properly trained teachers who are committed to students and the profession. I do not think we do our students justice when they are viewed as a part of getting one’s ticket stamped for something else in life, and the opportunity to have claimed to have been of service.

I also think the resources dedicated to Teach for America might be better spent on preparing regular teachers. Veltri provides a table using data from TFA, showing that in 2006-06 the 4,700 corps members were served with an operating budget of $39,500,000, while for 2009-10 the projected figures were 7,300 corps members with an operating budget of $160,000,000. Let’s put those numbers on a per capita basis. In 2005-06 the cost per corps member was 8,400, while in 2009-10 it had ballooned to $21,917, or more than half what most teachers in this country make in their first year. I question whether that is money well spent.

Veltri raises other pertinent questions as well. She notes that to be a cosmetologist requires 9 months of training for licensure in her state, and wonders why those to whom we entrust the education of our young people should have only a 5 week institute that does not connect with the real world of the classrooms to which the TFAers will go. As Veltri writes on p. 196

When teacher training is compressed like a microwaveable meal and field experience is deemed unnecessary or a waste of time by those in public policy positions, a message is sent that “other people’s kids” are able to withstand someone learning how to teach on them.

Teach For America and its alumni are highly visible. It serves as a 501c3 organization favored by corporations. Its graduates are highly sought after in business and law schools. It garners glowing media coverage. It is now expanding its reach to other nations around the world.

And yet, the question should remain: does Teach For America truly serve the needs of those it claims it is helping? Does it even fairly serve the needs of its Corp members while they participate in TFA? I would argue that it does not. And had I any doubt before, what I read in Veltri’s book would have convinced me.

If you care about education policy, I strongly urge you to read and digest this book. It will provide you with information relevant to those who are considering associating with TFA as a source of obtaining teaching staff.

Please note – I fully understand the desire to be of service, even if only temporarily. After all, that is the motivation for the many who have entered the Peace Corps, an organization I admire in many ways and for which I was selected but was unable to accept the offer. I am not necessarily criticizing those who apply, although I think they are misguided.

Perhaps you are not yet convinced. I suggest that if you read Veltri you will be.

Which is why I again urge you to read her book.

Peace.

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Be the Change. Listen. Follow-up

June 7th, 2010

“We need effective, high quality, meaningful professional development,” I wrote in a recent blog post. “Otherwise we do a disservice to hard-working professionals and deserve the bruises their opinions inflict on our egos.”

While leading the best possible professional development session for every teacher in the room is unlikely to ever happen, there are some ways we can help avoid professional development being a “waste of time.”

1. Be the change. Leaders of professional development seem to forget that they’re actually teaching, and that part of teaching is modeling the activity you hope to see adopted. A session devoted to equipping teachers to implement more collaborative learning that is presented via “death by PowerPoint” is an oxymoron, a term originating from a Greek word appropriately meaning “pointedly foolish.” As one teacher recently expressed it, “Why does the worst teaching often happen in sessions on how to improve teaching?” Why, indeed?

Modeling is a powerful teaching technique. In addition to communicating that the suggested new approach promotes learning, demonstration taps into some of the brain’s natural learning systems:

This may be because demonstration actually encourages the brain to engage. Specialized neurons known as mirror neurons make practicing “in the head” possible…When a teacher repeatedly performs a sequence of steps, her students’ mirror neurons may enable their own preliminary practice of the same steps. In other words, as a teacher demonstrates a skill, students mentally rehearse it.1

Leading professional development sessions that utilize the instructional techniques and approaches being recommended is more than a courtesy. It increases the likelihood that teachers will appreciate and understand the concepts being shared.

2. Listen. I have a tendency to get preoccupied with my preparation and forget that I’ll actually have people in the professional development session. Not just people but colleagues!

A few years ago, I was asked by another organization to lead a day of professional development for a large school district in the Northeast. I arrived early and began to prepare the room and my materials. The teacher whose classroom was being used as the meeting site was there when I arrived. She shared with me what had been going on at the school. Contract negotiations were underway and not going well; a strike was likely. She informed me that I would have representatives from both the union and administration sitting in for the day and that either or both may speak up at any time to contest any ideas I presented. After thinking of possible escape scenarios, I left the room and found a quiet place to think. I needed to redirect the focus of the group—at least as much as possible—or the day would be a waste.

As the teachers and union/administration reps came into the classroom, I asked them to think back to when they decided to become an educator and to jot down the most influential reasons for their choice. I opened the session sharing a brief account of my decision to become a teacher. I then had them do the same in small groups. As they recounted their original motivations for becoming educators, I could sense the atmosphere change. I mentally collected comments I overheard from the conversations and used them to summarize why we were now coming together to explore how we could do what we wanted to do even better. Surprisingly, there were no objections from either rep during the day. While it wasn’t an ideal day of professional development, it became more beneficial because I listened and had enough flexibility to adapt to the needs of my colleagues.

Though we’ve been invited to lead professional development, we do not have all the answers. Professional development involves merging new research findings with current personnel—i.e., bringing ideas and people together. One way I’ve tried to do more of this recently is to ask teachers if any of them have tried something similar to a new approach I’ve explained. If any have, I invite them to share their experience. This invites elaboration, a critical cognitive process for constructing understanding. If the teacher’s experience was positive, we discuss why the approach was successful. If the teacher’s experience was frustrating, we often find together the reason for it and develop a plan for structuring it better the next time. This give-and-take values everyone, respects the experience present in the session, and allows the leader to be a colleague rather than an aloof expert.

3. Follow up. I’ve written previously about the importance of coaching and the characteristics of an effective coach. A one-time information flood is ineffective, no matter how engaging the session’s leader may be. Teachers need support as they begin to implement new ideas, methods, and approaches. Note that support, not judgement, is needed. Showing up with an evaluation form is a certain way to kill any benefit professional development might yield. Teachers are learners, and we need the time and space to try, to reflect, to try again, to get helpful feedback, and to truly master implementation. We need the opportunity to learn. Coaching provides this opportunity, along with the encouragement and feedback necessary for success.

Let’s not dismiss professional development as useless because of a few bad experiences. Rather, let’s structure professional development so that it truly invests in teachers, providing them with new and effective means of investing in our students.

Authentic learning for both is what we’re chasing. Catching it requires professional development of the highest quality.

References

  1. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 68.

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Professional Development: A Defense

May 26th, 2010

Teacher conversations about professional development often include the terms worthless andwaste of time, and a general disdain for typical approaches is often evident. The back-and-forth can be a bruising arena for those who actually provide professional development, and I’ve been feeling a bit bruised recently. Don’t worry. The bruises have only been blows to my ego. (The only actual bruise I have came compliments of a concrete planter on the corner of New Jersey & M Streets in Washington, D.C., and that’s not a tale I care to retell.)

I must confess that my own experience supports such derogatory comments. I once spent an entire morning of “professional development” brainstorming alternate ways to earn a living. Though I’m sure the administration’s intent and the presenter’s goals were worthwhile, the session was so poorly designed that worthless and waste of time accurately described the result.

Why, then, do the current perspectives of professional development seem bruising? A few years ago I began an organization committed to “investing in teachers,” a “school’s most valuable asset.” And, yes, professional development is a significant component of what we do. So, allow me to provide a brief defense of professional development based on what it can do when it’s effectively designed.

Professional development can contribute to increased student learning. As we learn more about teaching and related topics, such as findings from neuro- and cognitive science, we discover principles that can improve our teaching. As our teaching becomes more effective, our students understand more. Our growth in teaching influences their depth of learning.

Many times, our growth in teaching relates to our instructional design—an element that directly influences student learning:  “Many breakdowns in student learning may be a function of poor classroom curriculum design,” suggests Robert J. Marzano. “…the expert teacher has acquired a wide array of instructional strategies along with the knowledge of when these strategies might be the most useful.”1 Professional development can equip us with additional strategies for fostering learning.

Professional development can provide a common language for teachers to talk to teachers about teaching. This increases the possibility of collaboration, a practice known to improve practice:

Surgeon and author Dr. Atul Gawande details conclusions of a Harvard Business School study on the learning curve surgeons experience when learning new surgical techniques. Practice in itself proved an unreliable predictor of learning rate and success, but how surgeons practiced made a significant difference. A surgeon leading one of the quickest-learning teams picked “team members with whom he had worked well before” and kept “them together through the first fifteen cases before allowing any new members. He had the team go through a dry run the day before the first case, then deliberately scheduled six operations in the first week, so little would be forgotten in between. He convened the team before each case to discuss it in detail and afterward to debrief.” In contrast, a surgeon who had significantly more experience led one of the slowest-learning teams. He involved different personnel in each surgery, “which is to say that it was no team at all,” and led no pre- or post-operation discussions. Increased collaboration quickened learning rate and improved performance. Most important, patients benefitted from the surgeon’s collaborative approach.2

Educational research reaches a similar conclusion: collaboration improves teacher performance. Unfortunately our learning institutions often impede professional growth by inhibiting collaboration. As a result, we can actually hinder student learning by failing to sharpen one another through collaboration.3 Common professional development can provide a basis and means for such collaboration.

Professional development can provide new research that equips teachers to be more intentional. New research often illuminates why what we already know to be successful teaching is effective. This recognition helps us become more intentional in our use of various methods and approaches. When we understand why something works, we know better how to optimize its effectiveness. A consistently good teacher is an intentional teacher, and the more we understand about teaching and learning, the more intentional we can become.

Professional development can do these things, which also means it can fail to do them, and this is a source of teacher frustration and justifiably bruising comments:

Unfortunately, schools provide little help. Most professional development programs for teachers, claims Richard Paul, are “episodic, intellectually unchallenging, and fragmented” with “very little discussion on or about serious educational issues, and when there is such discussion it is often simplistic.”4

Those leading professional development session have a critical responsibility. In the next post I’ll explore some principles that should be considered when designing and leading professional development. We need effective, high quality, meaningful professional development.

Otherwise we do a disservice to hard-working professionals and deserve the bruises their opinions inflict on our egos.

References

  1. Marzano, R.J., What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003), 106, 78.
  2. Gawande, A., Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 230.
  3. Sergiovanni, T.J., Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), 88.
  4. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 191.
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    Problem X: eXploring and eXposing Problems In Education Reform

    April 22nd, 2010

    Albert Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

    When it comes to the problems of education reform, there has been a lot of great thinking done by a lot of great people. Ask a thousand educators, students, parents, researchers, business people, or politicians what the problems of education are in America today and you are bound to get a thousand different answers. Ask these same people how to solve these problems and you will get a thousand different solutions.

    The problem of education in America today is not just a simple problem, or even a complex problem, but a wicked problem. But it’s more than a wicked problem… it is an X-problem.

    Adam Richardson of frog design coined the term X-problem in his new book Innovation X.

    Adam explains that most organizations or systems face 4 types of problems.

    Simple Problems: These are problems for which both the problem and solution are easily defined.

    Which budget should be used to purchase supplemental materials? Which grade level will require an additional teacher next year? Who is going to teach the new section of Latin? Which classrooms need instructional aides?

    Complex Problems: Here the problem is known, but the solution is not.

    How can we get students to complete their homework? Which technology is best to introduce into an elementary classroom? Which curriculum will best meet the needs of our students who are two years below grade level? How do we create a system that allows for student input? What is the most effective assessment of reading comprehension for English Learners? How can we increase teacher collaboration and trust?

    Wicked Problems: The challenge here is that neither the problem nor the solution is known. How can you define a good solution when cannot even state what the problem is?

    The wicked problem was a term coined in the 1960′s by mathematician and planner Horst Rittel. He described them as messy, confounding, and aggressive. In 1968, C. West Churchman detailed the issue of wicked problems in an issue of Management Science.

    Churchman describes wicked problems as, ” a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.”

    There is no definitive statement of the problem, and each solution reveals new aspects of the problem.

    How do we fix public education? What is the problem? Which part is broken?

    Take the issue of technology. Is technology essential in education? Do we need more technology in school? How much technology is enough in school? Which technology should we focus on? Who decides? How do we measure it? How do we pay for it?

    Or take the issue of creativity. Do we attempt to teach creativity or let students use their own creativity? Can creativity be taught? If so, who should teach it? How do we measure it? Is there good creativity and bad creativity? Is creativity in school even a problem?

    Or how about the questions of making students go to school longer. They do they go more days or should they go longer each day? What about breaks? Should they go to school on Saturday? How long is too long? Do we pay teachers more for the longer day or just for more days?

    Each one of the problems opens us another can of worms as you dive deeper into it. There are so many factors involved with each. What does the research say? What do the parents think? What is best for the brain? How will it impact the budget? Who makes the final decisions? Who is in charge? What is best for our society? Which will ensure success in the future? Is it scalable? Who should be involved in crafting the solution?

    As you try to answer these questions more questions arise. It really gets…wicked.

    None of these “problems” can be explicitly stated as a problem statement, because, they may or may not even be problems. It all depends on your perspective.

    Since there is no definitive problem, there is no definitive solution.

    Can’t fix it if we can’t point out exactly what is we need to fix.

    Each wicked problem is risky because it is unique, and it’s hard to test or simulate solutions ahead of time.

    There is no way to simulate a new public education system in America, without actually building a new public education system in America. Simulating a school model here or there does not provide solutions or the same experience as a new system of public education. The scale is simply not comparable.

    There are many stakeholders with different perspectives on the problem and how to resolve it.

    Teacher, parent, student, administrator, union official, county official, state official, federal official, education researcher, business person, school board member, elected city, county, state, and federal politician, statistician, economist, sociologist, technologist, etc. They all have a different definition of the problem and a different solution.

    But there is a problem even more difficult to grapple with than the wicked problem.

    It’s called the X-problem. Why X-problems? Adam shares his thinking on why X represents another level of problem.

    X is extreme: X-problems are extreme in risk and complexity.

    Educating an entire country’s population and building a system that does it in the most effective way is a risky proposition. You can’t build the wrong system. You can’t make a mistake.

    X is mysterious: Every X-problem revolves around questions that have never been asked before, or challenges that are unprecedented.

    Solving the “problems” of education and doing so in a way that meets all the needs of all the stakeholders now and in the future is going to create some questions that we have never encountered of thought of.

    X is a crossroad: A crossroads is a place where things converge together—and diverge outward. At a crossroads one must make a choice among paths, each of which could entail risk or opportunity.

    Do we take the road of creativity, technology, brain research, etc? Saying yes to certain solutions requires that we say no to others. Which do we choose?

    X means opportunity: X marks the spot for treasure—the winnings that come from finding the problem and capitalizing on it before others can.

    In the global competition for knowledgeable, creative, innovative, caring, informed, collaborative, cooperative, and intelligent populace, the country that can figure out which problems to solve and which solutions to choose will have an advantage in the future.

    See what I mean? This is not easy. It’s not a simple, complex, or even a wicked problem. Education reform is an X-problem.

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    Posted in Edreform, Rob Jacobs, Uncategorized, educational reform

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    Creative Thinking in the Classroom, Part 2

    April 12th, 2010

    Time. Is there a greater challenge for educators? It seems like instructional time is often the target of well-meaning but time-devouring programs. Assemblies, pep rallies, fund-raising motivational events, and those intercom announcements eat precious minutes, and these are on top of an already bloated curriculum. As a result, we tend to eliminate anything that has a whiff of being extraneous.

    One major casualty: creative thinking. However, as I discussed in Part 1, for the brain creative thinking is not just the predecessor to producing art. It is a means of deepening understanding. In other words, creative thinking is a cognitive gateway to deeper, more meaningful learning. Let’s examine how learning can spark creative thinking, which can lead to deeper learning.

    Learning involves four “core processes,” two of which are comprehension and elaboration. If learning proceeds in a straightforward fashion—experience→comprehension→elaboration→application—it can bypass opportunities for creative thinking. This is unfortunate because learning can spark creative thinking:

    The resulting understanding prompts a creative curve. The mind says, “Wait a minute! Let’s explore that again, but this time from a different perspective, or with a different reference point, or in multiple dimensions, or by combining it with _____.” Neuroscientist and writer Gregory Berns describes this as “reverse perception.” Creative thinking, claims Berns, “comes from using the same neural circuits used to perceive natural objects,” but in reverse. Instead of perceiving what is and acting on it, the mind seeks what else could be. The individual re-explores the new data, returning to comprehension to disorganize, relabel, and re-sort the data in a different way. This difference may be in perspective, in scale, in dimension, or in any ways that alter initial thinking about the data. For example, the creative individual may engage a creative tool (e.g., drawing an analogy) or explore representational variety (e.g., a multiple intelligences approach, such as representing verbal data in a musical or spatial form).1

    This figure shows the “creative curve.”

    When given the opportunity to re-explore understandings, the brain often engages in re-comprehension, the sorting of critical details, and re-elaboration, the recognition of new patterns. These new patterns may be new, unique, creative. As the individual examines these new patterns, methods of expressing them may come to mind. These possible expressions are then examined for potential, and if deemed effective, the individual may proceed to producing a creative product. At this point the individual’s skills in the chosen medium come into play—i.e., an experienced and capable painter will likely produce work of a higher quality than the novice. However, both beginner and master benefit from the thinking preceding the expression because it’s the thinking that deepens understanding of the original topic.

    Note that learning and creative thinking are actually overlapping processes. Both engage
    (re-)comprehension and (re-)elaboration, and as a result, both have the potential to deepen understanding. If deep learning of subject matter is the goal, creative thinking can help achieve it.

    Also note that creative thinking requires time and space. If learning proceeds too efficiently, opportunities for creative thinking are lost. Challenging students to revisit subject matter, reorganize its details in different schemes, and explore those reorganizations for new patterns can initiate creative insights. Those insights contribute to deeper learning.

    When creative thinking leads to creative products, another opportunity for deepening learning is generated:

    …creative works can deepen learning in the classroom. For example, Erica, a middle school teacher, has her students develop a series of symbols to summarize a work of literature. For example, one student summarizes Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in a series of three symbols: a tightly clenched hand, that same hand with three different colored streaks of light surrounding it and a large timepiece in the background, and finally an open hand extending forward. The results become new data for the other students. As they examine the symbols, the students reprocess the details of the literature, consider the connection between the story and the symbol, and make a decision regarding the symbol’s effectiveness. This reprocessing—interacting with the symbols as if they were ‘another person’—mirrors learning’s core processes, engaging recall and thought about the original stimulus. This rethinking fosters deeper learning of the subject matter.2

    There are also implications for our teaching. Want to be creative in your instructional design? Your brain needs the time and space to explore the subject matter—to reorganize it, search for new patterns, and apply the resulting insights to teaching plans. Unfortunately this time and space is probably the biggest challenge to our teaching more creatively. One way I deal with this is to look ahead and identify the major upcoming instructional units. This look ahead creates a space between what I’m currently teaching and what I will be teaching and gives my mind time to explore the subject matter in ways that enable creative thinking.

    Getting away from my normal work space seems to help. Many of my creative ideas find me during morning runs. Actually, research suggests such a change of scenery increases the likelihood of creative thinking:

    Sometimes a simple change of environment is enough to jog the perceptual system out of familiar categories. This may be one reason why restaurants figure so prominently as sites of perceptual breakthroughs…When confronted with places never seen before, the brain must create new categories. It is in this process that the brain jumbles around old ideas with new images to create new syntheses.3

    Creative thinking and learning are complementary processes. Learning enables creative thinking, and creative thinking deepens learning. This is why my target-based organization of thinking does not include a separate ring devoted to creative thinking. I see creative thinking as a type of learning. As such, teaching students to think creatively is critical if we seek to develop self-directed learners. Add skill in expression, such as the methods and approaches taught via the arts, and we’ll be graduating creative thinkers with the skills to engage the world through art—or at least bring artful expression to their lives and work.

    Sources

    1. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 231-232.
    2. Ibid., 234-235.
    3. Berns, G., Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008), 33.

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    Teachers’ Voices Fall on Deaf Ears

    April 6th, 2010


    Last night (April 5th) I attended the 8 hour Florida House Education Council Committee meeting on House Bill 7189 (HB7189), which is the companion to Senate Bill 6 (SB 6). While I never had a chance to testify, I left feeling both more inflamed by this legislation and more proud to be a member of this profession that I’ve been in a long time.

    Over 120 people came to speak out against this bill (which passed the committee and goes to the House floor this week). Most were teachers, but there were also parents, principals, superintendents, and representatives from PTA, School Board Association, and Civic Concern in attendance. There was bipartisan opposition with only partisan support among representatives.

    Hour after hour I listened to teachers speak truth to power about schools, learning, and the reality of teaching in Florida. Teachers who have been teaching for 20, 30, and nearly 40 years offered their thoughts and insights, all of them speaking eloquently and passionately. They truly represented the best of our profession.

    Common theme in many of their testimonies: Education in Florida is over-mandated and underfunded.

    The question every representative supporting this draconian bill should have been asking them was this: How do we get more teachers like you in our state’s classrooms, and then what’s it going to take to get them to stay?

    The main proponents speaking on behalf of the bill: Chamber of Commerce representatives, a spokesperson from Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future, and Florida’s Secretary of Education, Eric J. Smith.

    I wondered why the Chamber of Commerce was so dedicated to this bill.

    If they were in this for the best interest of students and the work force they would be citing the latest brain research, talking about creating innovative and engaging learning environments, and encouraging legislators to enact policies that provide students with meaningful learning experiences in which students apply skills in relevant contexts.

    Their mantras would be:

    1. Let’s focus on job ready skills for helping Florida compete in a globalized world.
    2. Lets give these kids skills that can’t be shipped overseas.

    Then, I found this clue in the evaluation of Florida’s Race to the Top application that shed light on the Chamber of Commerce’s intense interest:

    A substantial amount of the resources requested are target(ed) to external vendors and contracted services as opposed to a systemic integration of the work into key functional units of the state department of education as well as other state agencies.

    So . . . money will be pilfered from our schools and go to corporations . . .

    How much money?

    Well, turns out, while this bill does not begin the testing portion until the 2013-2014 school year. However, during the next three years districts are required to allocate 5% of their budgets for development of the measures used to assess teachers in order to reward them.

    Code: Development of standardized tests.

    This 5% amounts to $900 million dollars per year siphoned from our already cash strapped districts and funneled to private companies. Over the 3 year development period, that amounts to 2.7 billion dollars!

    Let me repeat that: $2.7 billion from our schools — our classrooms — handed to the testing industry.

    At a time when districts are forced to eliminate programs and services due to budget cuts, teachers are paying for supplies out of pocket, and students are forced to share textbooks because there are not enough for everyone, the legislature is mining schools to help companies profit.

    There is a gross warping of education policy going on in Florida.

    The Hillsborough Example

    One irony in this dark comedy is that we have in our state an example of unions and policy makers working together to create a merit/performance pay plan that everyone can agree on.

    Hillsborough County applied (and won) a $100 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create and implement a collaborative plan for differentiating teacher pay and measuring student growth.

    In order to not negate the grant, legislators amended SB6 so that Hillsborough county would be exempt during the period of their grant.

    Even so, numerous teachers from Hillsborough testified against HB7189 offering their district as an example of what can be accomplished when lawmakers and teachers work together. As a principal remarked to the committee, “Rather than exempting them, we ought to be following their leadership.”

    Teachers are not against using standardized testing to measure growth. They aren’t against merit/performance pay.

    What they are against:

    1. Being left out of major reform that does not include their input.
    2. State mandates that pillage from local districts’s limited funds to pay private companies.
    3. Reforms that do not promote meaningful learning.
    4. Deaf legislators.

    It is time for Florida leadership to see the writing on the wall. This railroading of the bill disrespects the professionalism of educators. And when teachers and districts do not support or stand behind these reform measures recruitment efforts to attract and keep the best and the brightest to our classrooms will be severely undermined.

    Image: Bluejayway67

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    An Easter Monday Proclamation of Liberation

    April 6th, 2010

    cross-posted at SpeEdChange

    The General Post Office, O'Connell Street, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

    On Easter Monday, 1916, a group of Irish patriots seized Dublin’s General Post Office and other key, symbolic points in the city, and proclaimed the independence of the Irish Republic.

    The Easter Rising Éirí Amach na Cásca lasted seven days and ended with the British Empire murdering the greatest leaders of a generation in Ireland in a yard at Kilmainham Gaol. But those events began not just Ireland’s liberation from Britain but the entire 20th Century of Liberation which would sweep across Africa and Asia for the next 60 years. Tiny Ireland became not just a symbol, but a literal exporter of revolution to the globe -- the leaders of national liberation movements -- from the Jews of Palestine to the Vietnamese, from Indians to Kenyans, came to learn  how to free themselves from their oppressors from Michael Collins -- the Easter Rising survivor who led Ireland to victory in the Anglo-Irish War -- and his lieutenants.

    This is not about Irish history, though, this is about education.

    On the night of Easter Sunday 2010 a few of us gathered electronically to battle with the Governor of New Jersey, Christopher Christie, an extremely wealthy ex-federal prosecutor elected as a Republican in 2009. The Governor, allowing his $60,000-per-year paid twitterer to spend the holiday with his family, was on Twitter himself, explaining why his first mission as governor is to cut teacher pay and funding for education in his state. (see the conversations, with @mritzius, with @lgesin, with me, and the Gov himself)

    The Governor, not unexpectedly, comes across as a series of Fox News talking points, constantly demanding “shared sacrifice” -- though the sharing extends neither to himself nor his class of taxpayers, who typically live in New Jersey to avoid the actual tax bills they’d receive in New York or Pennsylvania, and insisting that New Jersey needs a solution to its extraordinarily high property taxes while refusing to consider any actual solution to that (an increased sales tax or VAT, a rise in the top marginal rates for New Jersey’s income tax). In fact, he is simply bullying the teachers, the group charged with developing New Jersey’s future, because he knows that their commitment to their students makes them unlikely to strike or otherwise really resist.

    When “reformers” in America today talk about education, they are, of course, not discussing students or children or learning or development -- they are talking about political economics. They are interested in “efficiencies” not to make schools better, but to make government smaller. They are too often interested in Charter Schools not as innovative examples which lead to new thinking, but as a way to bust some of the last remaining American unions. They are interested in “choice” not for opportunity, but to continue the vicious racial and class divides in the United States. Yes Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, Joel Klein, Mike Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Paul Vallas, Chris Christie -- I am talking about you.

    On the same evening, Pam Moran, a Virginia school superintendent, posted a wonderful statement on the always fascinating Edurati Review on why we need to move our conversations about true educational re-design to the “front channel.” For, in our backchannels, on Twitter and elsewhere, we spend our time discussing re-design, how to make education work for the most kids in the most places, how to move beyond a system designed to fail kids to one which moves kids forward, how to inspire and support teachers to be their best, how to bring parents in -- in all the best ways. And these conversations are great and powerful, but they are hidden, as Pam says, from the “mainstream media” and the current political conversation, and that is a recipe for disaster.

    Education is a colonial project -- oh, not always as obviously or viciously as Teach for America or the KIPP schools -- but it is a colonial project. The idea is to take our children and convert them to the uses of our society. And how our schools do that literally determines our collective future. We live in an American society right now in which everyone from the President on down denigrates teachers as somehow greedy, lazy, badly trained, irresponsible people. We send our children off to schools after the President has applauded firing their teachers, after Governors call teachers greedy. We defer maintenance in schools, we close schools, we refuse to equip schools with the technologies used everywhere else on the planet, we reduce education to filling in multiple choice bubbles on standardized tests -- and then we are shocked -- “shocked,” as Casablanca‘s police chief said, that kids don’t care and don’t do well during their school day.

    So, today, Easter Monday 2010 we need a new Proclamation of Educational Liberation.

    Today we must say that we will stand up for our children and our future. We will do it aggressively and publicly. Today we must say we will challenge our “leaders” -- Governor Christie, why do lawyers in New Jersey outearn teachers? Isn’t teaching, isn’t bringing up our children, the most important thing we as a society do? Governor Christie, shouldn’t you and Bill O’Reilly pay a bit more of your income in taxes so teachers can earn a decent living, kids can go to great schools, and middle class families can afford property taxes? President Obama, can you please stop calling education a “race” -- races have winners and losers, and we want all of our kids to succeed. Texas “Education” Leaders, please stop using schools for indoctrination and use them to help children grow in to critical thinkers. Mr. Duncan, please stop equating test scores with learning.

    We need to raise these questions and challenges every day, to every leader, to demand that they break from their talking points and explain what they mean and why they mean it. We need to engage them on Twitter, on blogs, in letters to the newspaper, in phone calls to radio stations, in letters to reporters and editors and TV anchors demanding better conversations. We must bring this all to that “front channel.”

    But we have to do more than that. Padraig Pearse played to the grand stage in the Easter Rising and set the spark, but Michael Collins took to the hills and won the war, and we must do the same. Stop being circumspect. Talk to your neighbors, your friends, your families. Speak up at church or synagogue or your yoga retreat. We must change the national conversation not just from the top down but from the bottom up. We must explain our visions of education, and our passion for education, to all who we can get to listen. Because this really, really matters.

    Americans have always been conflicted about education and educated people. This might be the only place in the world where we might think someone “too smart” to lead us, the only place where “I’d like to have a beer with him” trumps “how smart he/she is” in electing a president. And without the history of clergy/teachers that Europe and other continents have, Americans have always had minimal respect for teachers. Back in the mid-19th Century Henry Barnard wanted women as teachers because he could pay them less and listen to them less -- and that was a bad start. The other “professions,” lawyers, doctors, architects -- almost entirely male around 1900 -- raised their statuses and their salaries through exclusive organizations, teachers -- mostly female -- were left scrambling to create industrial-style unions to meet their role in industrialized education. So teachers, who have more education behind them than lawyers, work longer hours than lawyers, and are far more essential to the general society than lawyers, get less respect and much less income. And we often build schools as concrete block bunkers because it is cheap, while our restaurants are far more engagingly designed -- thus we are fat and stupid.

    So, if there is to be another “American Century” we must be better. We must make education desired, respected, and fundamentally understood. And if we don’t do it, who will?

    “We will loft education anew when we generate an ever-increasing ratio of educators who believe in a mission to create spaces of inspiration for learners and learning.  It will take more than 1 or 10 percent of us speaking the poetic and political voices of passion, joy, and drive to create those spaces in which young people and educators can thrive in these contemporary days. Our vision must become a vision of lift, influence, and power that creates a front channel for our voices, shifting us out of the backchannel.  We need our best educational technologists, our courageous leaders, our creative geniuses to create the front channel we must become. It’s our job, and our time, to increase the inspiration ratio in every community in this nation.” -- Pam Moran

    Padraig Pearse and his compatriots were shot to death for their efforts. I’m not asking for that -- just for a bit of time, a bit of discomfort, a bit of effort.

    This is something we must do.

    - Ira Socol

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    The Pendulum or the Butterfly?

    April 4th, 2010

    What compels us? Pulls us? Catalyzes us? Connects us? Who are we and what are we doing in this profession? In this public sector? In this institution we call school? Why do some of us keep coming back, day after day, year after year, decade after decade until we look back and realize that we accomplished something called a career; even as we watched others go silently into the night across those years? Why do some of us keep pulling ourselves up and off the floor of the ring to continue on to the next round, in spite of our bruises and the blood we spill?

    What binds – us – together?

    Recent blog posts, twitter conversations, and #edchat discussions center the language of educators who attempt to answer these questions.  Some capture the cadence of our conversation with the sometimes painful, sometimes achingly beautiful words and images of a poet. Others of us debate with impassioned, but crisp, political analysis and question whether we must return to another swing of our own perverse Newtonian pendulum. Or, is it possible, this time, we become the quantum butterfly whose beating wings shift air currents across this nation, creating a learning world that we could never have envisioned in isolation of each other?

    Backchanneling as friends and peers, I fear we watch from the outside as the next sentence is being written in the his/herstory of American Education.  We know well the drafting, revision, and editing processes in which our communities, our states, and nation now engage. We understand how mainstream media, political positions, new policy, new legislation, budget deliberations, and public hearings give voice to those who attempt to define the some, the all, of us. In parallel universes, two conversations exist. Ours, a backchannel voice exploring the meaning of words like passion, joy, drive, inspiration, learning, democracy. Theirs, a public voice of market share, votes, rules, money, incentives, brand placement, status quo rhetoric.

    The intersection of these voices juxtaposes the pendulum and the butterfly. Both objects of motion- one coldly inanimate, the other joyfully alive. One defined by the freedom to move at will, the other by external control. One mechanized. The other, part of the ecosystem. In most ways, the current story of public education represents our commitment to Newtonian physics, the classical mechanization of the industrial school pendulum that many of us and our public hold dear. But, in the backchannel, our quantum butterfly wings unfold; with each pump of fluid we weigh our potential to take flight.  So, what will give lift to our backchannel voices? Will it be new legislation, policy, funding, political voices? I think not.

    We will loft education anew when we generate an ever-increasing ratio of educators who believe in a mission to create spaces of inspiration for learners and learning.  It will take more than 1 or 10 percent of us speaking the poetic and political voices of passion, joy, and drive to create those spaces in which young people and educators can thrive in these contemporary days. Our vision must become a vision of lift, influence, and power that creates a front channel for our voices, shifting us out of the backchannel.  We need our best educational technologists, our courageous leaders, our creative geniuses to create the front channel we must become. It’s our job, and our time, to increase the inspiration ratio in every community in this nation. Otherwise, we must accept again the next push of the educational pendulum and forget the potential of the butterfly.

    “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Governor George Romney to the Michigan Legislature (9/20/63)

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    Creative Thinking in the Classroom, Part 1

    April 1st, 2010

    Sirens seize our attention. They scream, “Crisis!” and we scan the horizon or media streams to secure the details.

    Despite their obvious function, sirens do little to actually address the emergencies they signal. After awareness is achieved, sirens fall silent while those charged with solving problems shift into high gear. The perp is pursued, the fire is fought, the EMTs and ambulance crew care for the injured. It’s these individuals on the ground who address whatever triggered the siren’s screech across the airwaves.

    Creativity has become the target of many sirens, pundits who find purpose in critiquing current educational practices. Some, such as Sir Ken Robinson, go so far as accusing education of killing students’ creativity. (By the way, this is not a criticism of Mr. Robinson. I appreciate his thinking, share his talks with others, and have read all of his books!) These sirens have served a purpose: educators are aware of and talking about the need to develop students’ creative capacities. However, many of us are not shifting into high gear to address this problem because we have not been equipped to do so. Returning to the analogy, if I am the first on an accident scene I’ll do what I can while praying for the EMTs to arrive soon. I’m simply not equipped to deal with serious injuries. And with all due respect, suggesting that more dance or drama be added to the curriculum does little to help the people “on the ground,” classroom teachers, foster creative thinking in students.

    To explore creative thinking in the classroom we must first recognize that creativity is broader than the arts. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a HUGE supporter of arts in the schools. Music, drama, writing, architecture, and literature are major contributors to my life, and I’m learning to appreciate the arts not included in that list. I believe strongly that young people should receive regular experiences and instruction in the arts.

    However, creative thinking is a valued process in nearly every field. The Root-Bernsteins realized this when they launched their ground-breaking research on creative thinking. From their penetrating study, the Root-Bernsteins identify “thinking tools” employed by creative individuals.1 These tools cross disciplines, showing creative breakthroughs in multiple professional fields. For example, a practicing biologist is just as likely to gain insight from analogizing as a sculptor of abstract artwork. The Root-Bernsteins show us that creative thinking possesses value beyond the stage and easel. Unfortunately findings from the study “Are They Really Ready to Work?” reveal that only 21 percent of American corporate leaders reported excellence in this area among recent college graduates seeking employment with their companies.”2 Nearly ⅘ of the corporate world is dissatisfied with the creativity new hires bring to the workplace. Creative thinking needs to be an emphasis in all of education, not just students’ training in the arts.

    To integrate creative thinking into our teaching, we need answers to a few questions: 1) What do we know about creative thinking?, 2) Is there any relationship between creative thinking and learning?, and if so 3) How can we engage students in creative thinking while continuing to teach our required curriculum?

    While much of what sparks creativity and the neurological processes that enable it remains a mystery, evidence suggests creativity includes a period of disorganization prior to creation. In the landmark book The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius, Dr. Nancy C. Andreasen hypothesizes:

    …that during the creative process the brain begins by disorganizing, making links between shadowy forms of objects or symbols or words or remembered experiences that have not been previously linked. Out of this disorganization, self-organization eventually emerges and takes over in the brain. The result is a completely new and original thing: a mathematical function, a symphony, or a poem.3

    My favorite description of this disorganization-reorganization process comes from architect Steven Holl, who writes:

    In each project, we begin with information and disorder, confusion of purpose, program ambiguity, an infinity of materials and forms. All of these elements, like obfuscating smoke, swirl in a nervous atmosphere. Architecture is the result of acting on this indeterminacy.4

    Perhaps the presence of “obfuscating smoke” is what prevents us from knowing more about creativity. However, it appears that a period of disorganization gives way to a period of defining and organizing, which is followed by a period of associating data with known concepts through which patterns begin to emerge.

    If true, creativity shares some cognitive processes with learning. In fact, since learning involves the transformation of data into meaning, some researchers describe learning itself as a creative act. It is possible that these shared processes result, in part, from shared brain geography. As Science writer Greg Miller explains, researchers at University College London found that the hippocampus, a brain structure critical for forming new memories, is also essential for imagining scenes. Such findings “provide experimental evidence that memory and imagination may share neural circuitry.”5

    These findings hold potential implications for us as educators.

    First, if creative thinking promotes personal and professional success, it is something we should be addressing in schools. Sir Ken Robinson is right: “Creativity is possible in science, in technology, in management, in business, in music, in any activity that engages human intelligence.”6 As such, creative thinking should be one of the portals through which we engage students in our subject matter.

    Second, if creativity and learning aren’t completely different languages—if, in fact, they share cognitive processes—then integrating creative thinking into learning should be possible. We should be able to design instruction that engages creative thinking that not only fosters its own development but also deepens the learning of our original subject matter.

    We need to find ways to welcome the “obfuscating smoke” into our classrooms! We’ll explore some how-to ideas in the second post on this topic. Perhaps then we can silence, or at least dampen, some of the sirens.

    By the way, these ideas are explored in depth Chapter 8 of The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain. Copies are available directly from Clerestory Press or through Amazon.com.

    Sources

    1. Root-Bernstein, R. & Root-Bernstein, M., Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People (Boston: Mariner Books, 2001), 118.
    2. Rappaport, J., Arts Skills are Life Skills. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/06/12/arts_skills_are_life_skills/.
    3. Andreasen, N.C., The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), 77-78.
    4. Holl, S., Phenomena and Idea. http://www.stevenholl.com/writings/phenomena.html.
    5. Miller, G., A Surprising Connection Between Memory and Imagination, Science, 315, (2007), 312.
    6. Robinson, K., Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative (Oxford, UK: Capstone Publishing, 2001), 10.

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