Category / School Stuff

by nflanagan

The Grinch Who Stole Teacher Appreciation Week

I’ve always been of the opinion that teachers get so few routine perks in their professional lives they deserve every random treat or award that meanders their way–from sticky little misspelled mash notes to free use of a leased SUV.

After all, there aren’t many workplaces where professionals end up providing their own materials, cleaning services and professional development. There aren’t many college-educated specialists who gladly share their expertise for free–or attend a weekend conference on their own dime, then arrive at work on Monday morning, without a thought for “comp time.” Because if they didn’t show up, someone would have to pay. And it shouldn’t be the teacher next door, or their students.

For these reasons, and a hundred more, nobody begrudges teachers the tokens of appreciation that come their way this week, from the handmade construction-paper cards to the potluck lunch from the PTA. I love it when teachers invite their former students to check in on Facebook–or when they post their stats (years of experience, states/countries/schools, degrees, subjects and so on). It’s good to see colleagues reclaim their honor or share a few points of pride.

But it’s time we asked ourselves just who gets ‘appreciated’ once a year–and whose work is considered vital, essential, and fully professional year-round, with no need for annual symbolic gestures. There’s something about Teacher Appreciation Week that smacks of a pat on the head for being willing to go the distance without adequate compensation or support. We’re supposed to persist and excel ‘for the kids’–a phrase that teachers rightfully perceive as specious and manipulative.

It doesn’t help that National Charter Schools Week is scheduled right after Teacher Appreciation Week (not an accident, folks). The Center for Education Reform, an organization that promotes charter schools, posted the following about Teacher Appreciation week:

‘Rather than evolve and adapt to changes in the 180-year-old factory model system of education, rather than create a new path for teachers that supports their growth over mandating uniformity and lock step acceptance of rules, [teacher associations] have dug in their heels and decided character assassination and anti-charter propaganda is best.’

So much for boosting the spirits and self-respect of teachers during their special week, eh?

Actually, I don’t know a single teacher who isn’t interested in growth–or doing a little rule-breaking, evolving and adapting. In fact, the current walk-outs, anti-voucher campaigns and eloquent education blogs are evidence that teachers are no longer satisfied with flowery sentiments or coffee mugs.

Teachers are telling their communities and state leaders that they’re sick of being underpaid do-gooders and want not only adequate salaries but control over their professional work. They want the resources necessary to succeed—but also a measure of autonomy, acknowledgment of their acquired expertise.

Perhaps teachers are tired of waiting for policymakers to speak to the fact that their working conditions and public respect–measured by classroom authority, as well as wages and benefits–are diminishing every year. Maybe teachers are ready to demand what they need and deserve, rather than hang around hoping to be ‘appreciated’ every May.

Is this a lasting change? Will exasperated teachers not rest until they’ve transformed public education?

Here’s a few crucial but often forgotten facts: In number, teachers are the largest profession in the United States. And collectively, they have the power to demand and win changes to funding and salaries. It’s a stark reminder in our post-Pandemic revival of labor influence.

Policymakers have long relied on teachers’ hearts growing three sizes through the magic of watching children light up with the joy of learning, yada yada. But as the Grinch himself might say–magic doesn’t pay the rent.

by nflanagan

Ten Questions that Felt Worth Answering

Cleaning out some files, I came across these questions (in a file creatively labeled Ten Questions). I have no clue where/when they originated. It was either answer them or plunk myself in front of, you know, the Trial, on TV.

Grande Soy Green Tea Frappuccino with Extra Whip or House Blend Black?

(Sing to the tune of “Holy, Holy, Holy”):

Coffee, coffee, coffee. Praise the strength of coffee. Early in the morn we rise, with thoughts of only thee.

If you were going to write a book, what would its title be?

“The Genuinely Professional Teacher: Way Overdue”

Rate graphic novels on a scale of 1-10, with 1 representing “useless” and 10 representing “simply amazing.”

Two or three. Just not worth the effort to scale down the words in favor of stylized art. I realize this is not a popular opinion and the fault may lie with me, as geriatric reader.


What member of your digital network has had the greatest impact on your professional growth?

There are an awful lot of people I see only online who have made me a better thinker, writer and activist, and their impact has waxed and waned (and sometimes waxed again) over time. Blogging for Ed Week where I had a good editor helped tighten and tone down my writing, and helped me understand the difference between well-supported opinion and simply venting. When it comes to education blogs, Jan Ressenger’s writing is what I aspire to, if I had to name someone.


How do you feel about the holidays?

Which holidays? Oh—those holidays. It’s the most wonderful time of the year?
What is the best gift that you’ve ever gotten?

A piccolo. Completely unexpected. And an item I would prefer to pick out myself. But–in one of those rare, grace-filled moments–I got the perfectly chosen present that I didn’t even know I wanted.

If you had an extra $100 to give away to charity, who would you give it to?

The World Central Kitchen.

What are you the proudest of?

Choosing to follow my principles rather than a paycheck, on a couple of memorable occasions.


What was the worst trouble that you ever got into as a child?

My parents bought me a two-wheeler for my 6th birthday, and I was afraid to ride it without training wheels. My mother told me if I didn’t work up the courage to ride it, they’d take it away. So I got up on the bike, went forward about 25 feet, then had to turn, to stay on the sidewalk. The bike wobbled, tipped, and I fell, hitting my head on a large rock placed at the corner of the sidewalk and driveway, giving myself a concussion. In my first grade school photo, you can see the bruising—and the shiner.

What was the last blog entry that you left a comment on? What motivated you to leave a comment on that entry?

Peter Greene’s Curmudgucation– he’s written 5000 blogs, a ridiculous number, especially considering he wrote most of them while teaching full time (and parenting twins). And his blogs have only gotten sharper (and funnier). He’s an excellent role model for teachers who want to write about what happens every day in their classroom—and why public education is worth saving. Peter also serves as Curator in Chief for Ed-Blog World, at the Network for Public Education. If you want to read a selection of great education writers, check out NPE’s Blog Post of the Day.

Feel free to share your own answers—all ten or selected queries.

by nflanagan

The Return of the Tradteacher

Been reading about the tradwife lately? Although explicit definitions vary, the general gist is returning to a post-war conception of a stay-at-home wife, most likely with children (or planning for children), in relationships where men make all the family decisions, and control the finances. Reinforcing patriarchal norms and glorifying the satisfying and ‘natural’ role of housewife.

If you’re hearing a touch of cynicism there, well—I lived through a time when the tradwife, even if she was working, could not get a credit card or substantial business loan. While I certainly defend any woman’s right to stay home and support her children and spouse in places other than an outside workplace, the whole “tradwife” schtick (especially combined with the rollback of Roe) makes me itchy.

It also strikes me that tradwives are just another glitzy, social media-driven facet of a larger wave of backlash against a whole lot of un-trad trends in American society: Full-blown reproductive freedom. The continued shrinkage of mainline religions. Honoring personal sex/gender choices. Women running for office and corner offices–and winning. And so on.

I also see lots of pushback against untraditional teaching, curriculum and school organization models. The whole “Science of Reading” battle rings very familiar to those of us who started teaching in the 1970s, when teachers were pushing back against the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” –because teachers theoretically weren’t teaching phonics–crusade in the late 50s.

Nearly all of the folks who taught me were tradteachers, using trad methods, and when I entered the classroom, many of my teaching colleagues were 100% traditional-minded as well: Straight rows, direct instruction, textbook-based, daily homework, and off to the principal should you disobey orders. And some of those folks were effective teachers.

But lots of the opinion writing I see from Moms4Liberty, NYT columnists, conservative politicians and ed-bloggers focuses on how different education looks and feels from the classrooms they remember, decades ago—classrooms that may have been racially and economically monolithic, and headed by a series of teachers who did things in the same way.

Peter Greene recently had a good piece about Gloria Jean Merriex, a Florida teacher who broke out of her traditional mold and had some great success. A couple of lines jumped out at me:

Once she had her degree, she chose to teach at Duval Elementary, where for about twenty-five years she was a middle-of-the-road, competent-but-not-exceptional teacher.

Then came No Child Left Behind, and with it, high stakes testing. In Florida, that meant the FCAT, used to give each school a grade, with rewards for A schools and punitive “interventions” for F schools. In 2002, Duval was rated F.

Merriex was troubled. She concluded that if the school was going to be transformed, she would have to transform herself. She dumped the state pacing guides and teaching materials. When she got caught, she begged Duval principal Lee McNealy for a chance to give her methods a try, and McNealy had the guts and trust to give it to her.  Merriex developed materials and approaches of her own, and for the early 2000s, her choices were unconventional. She wrote raps and dances to do with her students for learning math vocabulary and basic processes. She used call and response, movement and arts in the math and reading classroom. If some of her techniques seem less radical twenty years later, that is in part because of her influence.

For many, perhaps most, teachers, their first years in the classroom might look very much like the way those newbies themselves were taught. It was certainly that way for me, wanting to be the World’s Greatest Band Director and following the exact procedures and ideas I had experienced in bands and at music camp in high school. For many years, I too was a competent-but-not-exceptional teacher, like Ms. Merriex.

I also broke out of the traditional mold, and while not all of the things I tried were big successes, I was able to redefine what I wanted students to take away, for the rest of their lives, from being in my classroom. I accomplished many of those goals. I read social media for music teachers now, and I see great changes in thinking about the Big Ideas—from competition to creativity—in music ed.

Traditional teaching—and like tradwives, the definitions are murky—is not always or even often the best bet. Especially if that teacher’s goal is to move every student under her watch forward.

Stanford Professor Jo Boaler is something of an iconoclast in non-traditional math education, and recently–no surprise–there’s been yet another dustup over Boaler’s ideas.

She advocates for ending tracking by ability in math classes, getting rid of timed tests and starting with conceptual understanding before introducing procedures. Most importantly, she wants to elevate the work that students tackle in math classes with more interesting questions that spark genuine curiosity and encourage students to think and wonder. Her goal is to expose students to the beauty of mathematical thinking.

Right there in the first sentence, there are three uber-traditional practices—tracking, timed tests, and doing a series of problems to iron in an algorithm, to get the right answers rather than seeking to understand the concepts underlying the calculation. And who’s out to get Boaler? Well, men who have been the beneficiaries of understanding and excelling at traditional mathematics.

It’s an enormously complex endeavor, teaching. Sticking to the habitual, and ignoring students who check out, only works for awhile. BUT—listen to legislators and parents talk about schooling, and a lot of what you’re hearing is somewhere between nostalgia and flat-out misinformation. The book-banning, faux CRT, Tik-tok blaming, skeptical-of-teachers crowd hasn’t got a clue about what it’s like to teach kids in 2024, beginning with some clarity about the purpose of public education.

As Jess Piper says, in a wonderful column called You Don’t Like It? Move!:

None of us is safe so long as there are folks living in states that are unsafe. They will roll over us first, and you next. The billionaires are using my state AG and other regressive state AGs to file suit to dismantle public schools. They sue to ban abortion and the medicine for self-managed abortions. They sue to stop college loan forgiveness. They sue to overturn civil rights and anti-discrimination policies.

As Piper says—hey, we can’t all move, or teach in a private school where we can craft our own processes, research and convictions. But returning to traditional methods isn’t the policy answer. You have to move forward. It’s the way of the world.  

by nflanagan

The 18th of April…

 Does “the 18th of April” ring any bells for you?

Years ago, in a graduate seminar in education leadership (full of would-be superintendents working on PhDs at my well-respected university), our professor entered the room, struck a dramatic pose and said…

“On the 18th of April” (long pause, class attentive)

“In seventy-five” (long pause, dead silence)

“What?” (gray-haired Prof scans the room)

In a small voice, I say,

“Hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and year.”

(another pause, Professor smiling, nodding)
I clear my throat and say…

“It’s the one that begins ‘Listen my children…’”

(blank faces)

“and you shall hear…”

(still nada)

“of the midnight ride…”

(a couple of people are getting it now)

“of…?”

(muttered) “umm, Paul Revere?”

Prof points to me and says “Don’t answer!” Then he asks: “Who’s the poet?”

When nobody–not one of the 20-odd people in the room– could answer, or would even try, he lets me tell the class. Longfellow.

“When did you learn that?” he asks.
Fifth grade. And I only know an abridged version. But still.

I learned “O Captain, My Captain” (speaking of anniversaries) in 8th grade.

And the prologue to “Romeo and Juliet” in high school. Still with me, along with memorized King James scripture, lots of Cummings, Dickinson and Frost and an embarrassingly large cache of song lyrics.

Why aren’t we using poetry to teach history?

Well, two roads diverged in a yellow wood…

And we chose easily measured standardized test questions.

by nflanagan

Trust (Pandemic, Day #1475)

One of the essential truths in getting a message across is repeat, repeat, repeat. Like the mothers of toddlers, teachers are well aware of this fundamental veracity. No matter how the message is delivered—Pay attention! I’m only going to say this once!—well, no. You’re not.

You’re going to say it as many times as it takes to sink in, and even then, compliance and understanding are iffy.

Here’s my essential truth: It’s been close to 1500 days since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. And we still haven’t perceived just how transformative it was, dealing with a global threat while trying to keep the things we value most safe. Those things being our health and well-being, our children and families, our communities and livelihoods.

Transformative is a neutral word for all the changes wrought by living through a crisis that killed an estimated seven million people, around the globe. Well over a million of those deaths have happened in the United States, making us the nation with the most COVID-19 deaths, world-wide.

That simple fact, alone—the United States, the place where we brag about having the “best” health care on the planet, was unable to suppress transmission. Once a vaccine was available—lightning fast!—getting folks to embrace medical science and stay on top of protection that might save their lives has been thoroughly politicized and divisive. Those things, on their own, were enough to make one realize that maybe our all-American political thinking was out of whack.

So I repeat: The pandemic has really done a number on us. On our economy. On our family gatherings. On what we expect from our employees, as well as our employers. On health care. On the way we feel about government. The things we value most–including our schools.

Call it The Great Re-ordering of Priorities.

It’s become a habit of mine, when reading stories about education: running the topic or issue through the filter of how they may have been impacted by the pandemic. Here’s one: absenteeism.

Student absences from school rose precipitously during the pandemic, peaking in 2021-22. Attendance rates are improving, overall, but are still higher than 2019.

What’s interesting is that schools with dismal, not-getting-better attendance rates aren’t always the ones you’d expect—absenteeism seems to be impacted by local conditions and initiatives, kids and parents re-ordering their priorities. Not up for school today? Go ahead—take a mental health day. Or five.

Schools struggling with attendance after a world-shaking event? Go figure. It’s going to take some time to fix that, and misinformation about how “unions” “closed” schools, abandoning kids to Zoom, doesn’t help.  From an article on school absences, in the NY Times:

School leaders, counselors, researchers and parents…offered many reasons for the absences: illness, mental health, transportation problems. But underlying it all is a fundamental shift in the value that families place on school, and in the culture of education during the pandemic.

Re-ordering the priorities. And not in a good way.

In her excellent blog, Jess Piper talks about the decline in civility at local school board meetings, among other things, triggered by a pandemic:

Recently, I saw this bad behavior up close and personal when I attended a BOE meeting at a school district outside of St Louis. Though I had an awful interaction with a parent or two in my tenure, I hadn’t witnessed the decline in civility and the outright disrespect shown in public. The lack of couth wasn’t just reserved for teachers, but was also aimed at administrators, board members, audience members, and community members.

One of the first to speak was a woman who brought her daughter to stand next to her while mom called the Superintendent names and defamed teachers. I was upset that the young girl had to stand there while her mother went over her time, refused to stop speaking when told her time was up, and still spoke, even raising her voice, when her microphone was eventually muted. She just kept going.

How did this young girl learn to treat her teachers? She learned disrespect and inappropriate behavior will be rewarded with a slew of applause.

Bingo. All the footage of parents pushing into buildings, upset about masking or sports or vaccinations hasn’t been conducive re-building respect and trust. And trust is a core resource in successful public schools.

Lucian Truscott has a great piece (link here) on realizing, in the grocery  store, that his fellow shoppers  weren’t masked—that he himself, in fact, had stopped routinely masking. He acknowledged that he trusted himself and his neighbors to take responsibility for protecting themselves from COVID.

 It was a nice moment for him, thinking about the word trust—how long it takes to re-build simple neighborly trust, especially when it’s been shattered by transformative events. Expecting our public institutions to remain unchanged or “bounce back” is happy talk. We’re in the midst of some pretty significant shifts.

After the pandemic of 1918:

The Spanish Flu greatly affected the world economy, wiping out large numbers of healthy 18- to 40-year-olds. In Britain, during the Summer of 1918, in a single day 80 out of the 400 workers of a spinning factory perished. In many countries which had seen their male population decimated by the war, the pandemic left even fewer young men to run the farms and factories.

The resulting labor shortage enabled workers to demand better living and working conditions, public health care, as well as better wages. These became major demands of workers not only in Europe and the United States but in many other countries around the world. 

Once again: We are underestimating the impact on the nation, and especially our children. of living through a global catastrophe Let’s put our focus on the right priorities. In spite of all the challenges to public education, it’s still the best bang for your tax buck, in perpetuity. Good schools make for good communities.

Trust is a cornerstone. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

by nflanagan

Racing, Striving, Accelerating, Winning. And Reading.

I wrote the core of this piece a decade ago, but it feels evergreen. Back then, we were trying to improve reading scores by offering kids rewards. Including pizza. Have we left competitive reading behind—or are ‘supplementary’ programs to raise scores, like Accelerated Reader, now being supplanted by the Faux Science of Reading?

When my kids–now adults–were in elementary grades, their school participated in Pizza Hut’s Book It program. The idea was to promote reading by giving kids coupons for free individual pizzas if they read a specific number of books or were the “top” readers in their classes. Whole classes got pizza parties for reading the greatest number of books. Teachers and principal were solidly behind the program, promising public recognition for kids who read the most, silly adult stunts (from head-shaving to roof sitting) and assemblies if all classes achieved certain goals.

My daughter was immediately down with the Book It concept, strategically selecting and plowing through books to stay a volume or two ahead her classroom competitors. Soon, I was signing off on a dozen or more books per day–easy, short books–to keep her in the running for “best” reader. The free pizza coupons were piling up on the counter. It never was about the pizza, however. It was about the chart on the wall, where students tallied up their reading “scores.”

My son, on the other hand, was not a competitor. Both my kids–thank goodness–were early, fluent readers. He was reading a lot, at home, including car magazines and nonfiction books written for adults. But the Book It chart on the wall, the kids lining up every morning, excited to fill in the squares? Nope. He didn’t want to play.

He pointed out that his sister had taken to raiding the boxes of outgrown picture books in the basement, essentially juking her stats. Some of his buddies had only a couple of books listed on the chart (and they weren’t dumb). It was only suck-ups who were geeked about the long line of filled-in squares after their names. Another stupid contest.

After thinking about it for a few days, we agreed. I sent identical notes to teachers, saying that as a family we’d decided not to participate in competitive reading. Since I was also a teacher in the district, and not looking to make cranky-waves at my children’s school, I added some gently worded “I understand why you’re doing this–but no thanks!” language.

And that was that. Until I picked my son up one day and saw The Chart, with his name blacked out, and “Mom doesn’t believe in competition” carefully spaced out over all the empty boxes after the black mark. I asked the teacher why she wrote that–and she said she was trying to emphasize to the other 3rd graders that Alex wasn’t a poor reader or insubordinate. It was his mother who was responsible for Alex not being part of their rah-rah Book It team.

Whereas, of course, the kids with lots of empty boxes were incapable or defiant– not team players. You could tell, simply by looking at The Chart.

In the great scheme of reading instruction, Book It (which has changed its program in the meantime) is relatively benign compared to other reading-for-points programs. It’s just a cheesy (sorry) pizza-for-reading reward scam that gets “free” coupons with the Pizza Hut brand into homes and schools. It pushes kids to read for points and prizes, rather than pleasure and information. It emphasizes quantity over quality reading experiences, data over delight. It attaches a tangible (high fat) reward to an act that should be inherently exciting and deeply rewarding. And it slaps a big chart on the classroom wall so kids can readily identify winners and losers. It uses social pressure and food to force children to read competitively.

But other than that, no problem.

At least Book It (which is still being offered) doesn’t pretend to be a full-blown reading program. Nor is it offering cash for reading books, an experiment to see if paying kids for reading raises test scores.

The official competitive reading program du jour at my kids’ school was Accelerated Reader, and  ultimately, research on Accelerated Reader was not encouraging. Stephen Krashen provided even more chilling findings on competitive reading programs:

Substantial research shows that rewarding an intrinsically pleasant activity sends the message that the activity is not pleasant, and that nobody would do it without a bribe. AR might be convincing children that reading is not pleasant.

If you think Accelerated Reader has had limited impact on reading programs in this country, check out this Pinterest page. Evidently, it’s not OK to simply read and enjoy a book anymore. You need a balloon to pop, a paper car to race, or public recognition for your Jedi reader status. You might also be asking questions about whether Accelerated Reader  aligns with the Science of Reading, the new kid in town, reading-wise. Answer: not so much.

What to do, what to do? Contrary to popular opinion, how to teach reading is not “settled science.”

My friend Claudia Swisher, English teacher extraordinaire from Norman, Oklahoma taught a high school course called Reading for Pleasure. It was the antithesis of reading for points, pizza and pecuniary rewards. Claudia rejoiced when reluctant readers found enjoyment in reading and acted as book whisperer in helping them select engaging material. She talked with them about the books they read. She modeled reading herself, in every class. There were no tests. But her data showed that students grew, in measurable and immeasurable ways, from this experience.

Why aren’t all students reading for pleasure, every day?

by nflanagan

Do Public Schools Suck?

Some years ago, John Dubie, then a high school senior in Vermont, posted a very personal, autobiographical blog entitled “Big Picture Saved My Life.” John meant that statement literally—the Big Picture curriculum and program at South Burlington HS was the thing that kept him going when he was thinking about checking himself out.

I was stunned by the aftermath of the piece, which was picked up, reprinted and dissected in a number of other blogs. I was especially surprised by those commentaries that suggested John’s life was saved by leaving traditional public school.

The irony? Dubie spent much of the blog describing the first eight years of his education in a Catholic school, where he was generally seen as a disruptive loser by the faculty. And– the Big Picture Learning program he credits with making all the difference was housed in a traditional public school, in Burlington, Vermont,

Because I was the person who suggested John tell his story in public, this re-interpretation of his autobiography made me see red. I said as much, in the comments, noting that his generosity shouldn’t become a cheap excuse to slam public education again. I said: What I’m worried about here is protecting a young man who graciously shared a deeply personal reflection having his story–and his face– used to promote the idea that public education sucks.

The response I got: Seriously? Of course public education sucks.

Do public schools suck? Is that the conventional wisdom, the reflexive, global response these days? Do we have to start with the conviction that public education has failed, before we can transform or improve, regenerate or revitalize a fully public system?

I say no. In fact, the best time to change public education is now, while its strengths, resources and merits still exist.

What questions should we be asking about public education, before reflexively tearing it down? What facts shape the argument that public education, as a concept, is well worth saving?

  • All governance models–public, chartered, independent, parochial—have produced exciting schools and disastrous schools. There are plenty of students who thrive under direct-instruction, highly structured, traditional content-delivery models. And others who learn best through self-directed exploration of ideas and subjects that interest them. There is no one best way to learn.
  • Public education remains the Big Kahuna of governance models in the U.S. Why would you tear down the considerable and historic infrastructure of a system that has educated–however imperfectly–generations of (successful) Americans, instead of updating it, repairing its cracks and flaws and outright malfunctions? Other nations have retrofitted their public systems, using both research and imagination. Why wouldn’t we?
  • When and where public education is not meeting the needs of students, why is that so? Public education has been radically re-shaped in the last two decades, driven by “reform” policies and experiments that clearly aren’t yielding the expected results (and that’s a very sanguine assessment). If public schools suck, we certainly haven’t found the magic formula to fix them. Probably because the answers involve hard work, multiple strategies and serious investment.
  • Public education is the only “choice” when other options are exhausted, so public schools are filled with our poorest children, those whose parents cannot provide transportation or uniforms or help with algebra homework. Some of those schools are creatively addressing problems, building communities and family relationships, persisting even if testing data remains low. Do they suck?
  • Who’s saying that public education sucks–and why are they saying it? For some parents, the fact that their child doesn’t get a custom-tailored learning experience or enough attention is reason enough to believe that all public education is substandard. For others, there is a knee-jerk assumption that the only good education is a series of competitive-admission, high-ticket private schools. Much of the anti-public education drumbeat springs from a politicized, media-fed conviction that public schools have failed, based on testing data alone. You have to ask: What’s in it for the most vocal and persistent public school critics?
  • You don’t really know what a particular school or classroom is like until you’re there. We’ve all read the polling data that shows parents generally think the schools in their community are pretty good; it’s the schools in other places–scary urban places, or maybe just the next district over, or public schools across the nation–that are terrible. I’ve been in plenty of classrooms in Detroit Community Schools where there was order, curiosity, learning–and joy (and usually, about twice as many kids as there should be). In the middle of poverty, there are pockets of triumphant accomplishment.

Shouldn’t we be shoring up public education, as America’s best idea? Shouldn’t we be investing in repair, enhancement, innovation? Let’s stop with the facile pronouncements on the failure of public education–they reveal failure of imagination and democracy.

by nflanagan

Ever Had a Student Like Taylor Swift?

Ever had a student like Taylor Swift?

The question I’m asking is not “Did you ever have a student who turned out like Taylor Swift after they were a full-grown adult—unbelievably well-known and well-off?”

It’s this: Did you ever have a student you felt was full of promise? A kid for whom you could foresee a big future—in any number of arenas, from business to politics to entertainment?

A kid who looked and acted like Taylor Swift in this video, when she was 16 and a sophomore at Hendersonville High School? You can see the talent, drive and ambition from a mile off, and you think the student will end up doing something remarkable with their one wild and precious life.

In the video, however, we see Taylor pledging allegiance, solving a math problem and sort-of mouthing off to her mom. Her comments on camera reveal an atypical mountain of 16-year-old self-confidence, something that can be annoying in a classroom. As it happens, the video was shot near the end of her time actually attending high school, as her career took off, and she finished high school via homeschooling. A practical solution. And, I have to say (quoting Paul Simon), her lack of education hasn’t hurt her none.

My follow-up question: What happened to your student like Taylor Swift—the ultimate prize-winning science geek, the creative senior whose novel you expected to buy in the future, the talented trumpeter headed off to Julliard? Did they rise to greatness? Fizzle? Run into a roadblock and blow all that talent and potential?

Speaking only for myself, I would say that of course some students show enormous promise, but nobody’s future is guaranteed—or even predictable. I have had many former students end up in positions of leadership and acclaim, even fame, in varying fields—just as their teachers expected. And others who made a wrong turn someplace, sometimes disastrously.

What’s more interesting to me is those students of whom little was predicted, who leapfrogged over a lackluster secondary school presence into a successful adulthood. I had a student in my 7th grade math class whose homework was perennially missing, and whose test scores were abysmal. We had tons of meetings around this kid with his beleaguered parents—how to get him to focus on schoolwork, benefit from extra tutoring, knuckle down and pass the seventh grade, etc. etc.

You know what’s next, right? By the time he was 21, Mr. Anti-math was a million-dollar real estate salesman, back when selling a million dollars’ worth of real estate meant something. His little headshot, with its cool haircut, appeared in every edition of the local news. Presumably, he had someone else doing his taxes, and drawing up contracts.

I also know that many of my middle school students’ future goals were centered on riches and fame. You don’t often meet a pre-teen who hopes to live their life humbly, in service to others. Self-effacement and altruism are difficult when you’re not really sure of who you are, to begin with. Besides, aiming high will please your parents and your teachers.

Celebrity, however, is not all that it’s cracked up to be:

When a celebrity is that prominent, they are always in danger of becoming the figurehead of cultural and societal frustrations. Which is one of the many reasons celebrities periodically recede from the public eye: no matter how many people love you, there comes a point when the structure of a star image cannot shoulder the weight of the star’s meaning and import. The history of celebrity is filled with examples of people who did not or could not protect themselves from this scenario — because of their youth, because of addiction, because of others’ greed, including our own as consumers and fans — and careers and lives that imploded because of it.

Taylor Swift’s ‘meaning and import,’ in 2024, have made her the target of a whole segment of American society:

She’s doing too much, except when she’s not doing enough, and she’s always doing it wrong… a pretty blonde dating a handsome football player should, at least for white people of a certain age, evoke all the simpler bygone vibes (Friday-night lights, milkshakes with two straws, letterman jackets) that conservatives could want. Except — oops! — the pretty blonde endorses Democrats. And Travis Kelce, the football hero, appears in commercials for vaccines (bad) and Bud Light (somehow worse).

And why does she hog the spotlight at his games? She’s Yoko Ono-ing him and jinxing his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, except when she misses a game — and is still, somehow, jinxing the team, which made it to the Super Bowl anyway, proof right there, somehow, of a vast left-wing conspiracy.

Taylor even gets people like the execrable Jesse Waters claiming she is a left-wing asset.  And worse.

Here’s the thing about Taylor Swift: she is a genuine talent, who writes her own material. As a life-long musician and music teacher, that fact alone elevates her above many, if not most, popular music superstars, to me. Of all the amazing things she’s accomplished, I most admire her reclaiming her own music by re-recording albums released when she was younger, and under the thumbs of record producers whose goals centered on promotion more than artistry and message.

That makes her a role model for all girls who want to speak with their own, authentic voice.

And that’s a goal that teachers can get behind, with all their students. Wealth and glory are often fleeting, but knowing who you are and what you stand for can be accomplished by all students.

The picture below was shot at the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale, AZ, one of my favorite places on the planet, eight years ago this month. If you go on a weekday, you are likely to run into a field trip in progress. And even though there were Chinese drums to pound, and John Lennon’s Steinway (on which he composed “Imagine”) to reverently view, where were the students clustered? In front of Taylor Swift’s sparkly dress and banjo, mouthing the words to her songs.

Those kids are probably 20-something now. Let’s hope they’re claiming their own voices.

by nflanagan

The Mental Energy of Teaching

Interesting tweet from @EdFuller_PSU:

The one thing non-teachers simply do not and cannot grasp is how MENTALLY EXHAUSTING IT IS TO TEACH ALL DAY. There are very, very few jobs that require the constant mental attention that teaching does. I’d love to see all the people criticizing teachers to teach for a week. (Caps are Fuller’s.)

There are over 750 responses, running about 30 to one some form of confirmation, most of which are from teachers or parents. The odd pushback (i.e., @Angrydocsx: Surgery, nursing, working on an oil rig, construction, being a lineman, etc… Teachers are great but get over yourself.) are either from people who feel their jobs are equally taxing, or your garden-variety anti-teacher/anti-union/you-suck-so-shut-up tweets.

Side note: I think surgery and nursing are also incredibly demanding and find @Angrydoc’s immediate shift to oil rigs and linemen in cherry pickers—dangerous, outdoor male-dominated jobs—telling.

Fuller (who, not coincidentally, was a HS teacher before moving into higher education) puts his finger on the thing that makes teaching exhausting—you’re on all the time, making decisions on the fly and—if you’re doing the job right—taking sincere responsibility for teaching…something, to students who may not particularly want to be taught.

He did not say teaching was the most mentally exhausting job in the world—there are others where you can’t take a break or turn your back—only that the need to constantly pay attention and adapt were factors that many folks did not perceive, when they thought about teaching. A number of the tweeted responses, in fact, were from people who thought they’d give teaching a try, but concluded that it wasn’t the job they thought it would be.

Larry Cuban recently compared teachers’ decision-making to playing jazz and rebounding in basketball—two complex skills that depend on prior learning and practice for automaticity. He includes two footnotes about the number of decisions teachers typically make:

*Researchers Hilda Borko and Richard Shavelson summarized studies that reported .7 decisions per minute during interactive teaching.

*Researcher Philip Jackson said that elementary teachers have 200 to 300 exchanges with students every hour (between 1200-1500 a day), most of which are unplanned and unpredictable calling for teacher decisions, if not judgments.

Cuban notes that those studies are older, and invites readers to share any newer research—but those figures ring absolutely true to me. Interactions, decisions, re-direction, pop-up questions, wait time, modeling, judgments. On and on and on. Teaching is all about an on-your-feet response to whatever crops up. It’s the essence of unpredictability, and every day is exhausting.

What Fuller’s tweet and the plethora of responses clearly illustrates: There is no such thing as successful scripted teaching or “effective” fidelity to pre-constructed lessons. Also: the more you teach, if you’re paying attention, the more fluid the decision-making becomes, and the more tools in your mental (and emotional) tool bag. Experience matters. Perception matters. Judgment matters.

When I had been teaching for more than 25 years, I took a two-year sabbatical to work at a national education non-profit. There was an opportunity to pursue an alternate career in our contract language, but even though I knew I could return to teaching, I was certain that this new job was my off-ramp.

At first, it was great. I had my own cubicle, with a computer and a phone and–get this–a secretary. We took an hour for lunch, occasionally going out to a restaurant (and, also occasionally, having a glass of wine). We could use the bathroom as often as we liked. I could pop into someone else’s office and have a long chat about some issue that had arisen. I could leave early to go to the dentist. We were doing a lot of conferences and workshops—on weekends, because our clients were educators—and if we were in another city for the weekend, we didn’t return to work until Wednesday or Thursday: comp time!

I found the workload easy and the pace relaxed. I liked the people I worked with. But after the first year, I started thinking about going back to teaching. It took a long time to work through the reasons. Teaching offered less money, less prestige and way more what might be called mandatory time on task.

What I finally concluded was this: When I left the school building at night, and walked across the parking lot, I could describe the good I had done that day, things students had learned, progress made. I didn’t get that daily confirmation at the non-profit (which was much-admired). Lots of days were focused on strengthening the business end of the non-profit’s work. I didn’t get to hang out with kids, either.

I taught a lot of subjects and varied grade levels during my career, speaking of mental exhaustion. I taught large middle school and high school band classes (65+ students), and 7th grade math in the first year of a new, “connected” curriculum that the old math teachers loathed. I taught vocal and instrumental music in every grade from pre-K to 12. By far the most mentally challenging class I ever taught was general music to a group of 12 Pre-K children, mostly four years old, in my last year in the classroom.

These kiddos were all over the place, maturity-wise. My biggest challenge at first was getting them all to sit, not sprawl or run around, on the circular rug in my classroom. I had them for 50 minutes, twice a week (yup—too long, I know, but that’s the way the schedule was set up), so the first time they came to my room, I prepared a lesson plan with seven different activities, from listening to marching. Seven!

They ran through that plan in about 20 minutes. I remember thinking: I’m supposed to be good at this! I hope nobody makes an unscheduled visit to my room.

Although I got much better at teaching very young children, thanks to the generous suggestions of my colleagues, it was a mental attention marathon, day in and day out. Did they understand that word? Why aren’t his hands coming together when he claps? How much time is left? Wait— is she actually spitting?

When we speak of teacher professionalism, we think of content knowledge, instructional expertise, being a respected contributor to a school learning community. But a big part of professionalism is accepting responsibility for what happens in your worksite, for expending the continuous mental energy to create a successful and skilled practice.

The last word about the way the public sees teacher professionalism, from Jose Vilson:

Over the last few decades, pundits and policymakers have derided the professionalism of teachers because “accountability” or whatever. No matter how many degrees and certificates they get, how many years of experience they accumulate, or student commendations they collect, American society looks at teachers and says “Oh, that’s nice!” but also, “How do you do it? Couldn’t be me!” “You and your union make the job easy, right?” and my personal favorite, “I couldn’t stand me when I was a child. How does that work out with 30 of them?!” In other words, even though many people think only a special set of people can do the job, they also think anyone can do it.

by nflanagan

“My Research is Better than Your Research” Wars

When I retired from teaching (after 32+ years), I enrolled in a doctoral program in Education Policy. (Spoiler: I didn’t finish, although I completed the coursework.) In the first year, I took a required, doctoral-level course in Educational Research.

In every class, we read one to three pieces of research, then discussed the work’s validity and utility, usually in small, mixed groups. It was a big class, with two professors and candidates from all the doctoral programs in education—ed leadership, teacher education, administration, quantitative measurement and ed policy. Once people got over being intimidated, there was a lot of lively disagreement.

There were two HS math teachers in the class; both were enrolled in the graduate program in Administration—wannabe principals or superintendents. They brought in a paper they wrote for an earlier, masters-level class summarizing some action research they’d done in their school, using their own students, comparing two methods of teaching a particular concept.

The design was simple. They planned a unit, using two very different sets of learning activities and strategies (A and B) to be taught over the same amount of time. Each of them taught the A method to one class and the B method to another—four classes in all, two taught the A way and two the B way. All four classes were the same course (Geometry I) and the same general grade level. They gave the students identical pre- and post-tests, and recorded a lot of observed data.

There was a great deal of “teacher talk” in the summary of their results (i.e., factors that couldn’t be controlled—an often-disrupted last hour class, or a particularly talkative group—but also important variables like the kinds of questions students asked and misconceptions revealed in homework). Both teachers admitted that the research results surprised them—one method got significantly better post-test results and would be utilized in re-organizing the class for next year. They encouraged other teachers to do similar experiments.

These were experienced teachers, presenting what they found useful in a low-key research design. And the comments from their fellow students were brutal. For starters, the  teachers used the term ‘action research’ which set off the quantitative measurement folks, who called such work unsupportable, unreliable and worse.

There were questions about their sample pool, their “fidelity” in teaching methods, the fact that their numbers were small, and the results were not generalizable. Several people said that their findings were useless, and the work they did was not research. I was embarrassed for the teachers—many of the students in the course had never been teachers, and their criticisms were harsh and even arrogant.

At that point, I had read dozens of research reports, hundreds of pages filled with incomprehensible (to me) equations and complex theoretical frameworks. I had served as a research assistant doing data analysis on a multi-year grant designed to figure out which pre-packaged curriculum model yielded the best test results. I sat in endless policy seminars where researchers explicated wide-scale “gold standard” studies, wherein the only thing people found convincing were standardized test scores. Bringing up Daniel Koretz or Alfie Kohn or any of the other credible voices who found standardized testing data at least questionable would draw a sneer.

In our small groups, the prevailing opinion was that action research wasn’t really research, and the two teachers’ work was biased garbage. It was the first time I ever argued in my small group that a research study had validity and utility, at least to the researchers, and ought to be given consideration.

In the end, it came down to the fact that small, highly targeted research studies seldom got grants. And grants were the lifeblood of research (and notoriety of the good kind for universities and organizations that depend on grant funding). And we were there to learn how to do the kind of research that generated grants and recognition.

(For an excellent, easy-reading synopsis of “evidence-based” research, see this new piece from Peter Greene.)

I’ve never been a fan of Rick Hess’s RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, speaking of long, convoluted equations. It’s because of these mashed-up “influence” rankings that people who aren’t educators get spotlights (and money).

So I was surprised to see Hess proclaim that scholars aren’t studying the right research questions:

There are heated debates around gender, race, and politicized curricula. These tend to turn on a crucial empirical claim: Right-wingers insist that classrooms are rife with progressive politicking and left-wingers that such claims are nonsense. Who’s correct? We don’t know, and there’s no research to help sort fact from fiction. Again, I get the challenges. Obtaining access to schools for this kind of research is really difficult, and actually conducting it is even more daunting. Absent such information, though, the debate roars dumbly on, with all parties sure they’re right.

I could tell similar tales about reading instruction, school discipline, chronic absenteeism, and much more. In each case, policymakers or district leaders have repeatedly told me that researchers just aren’t providing them with much that’s helpful. Many in the research community are prone to lament that policymakers and practitioners don’t heed their expertise. But I’ve found that those in and around K–12 schools are hungry for practical insight into what’s actually happening and what to do about it. In other words, there’s a hearty appetite for wisdom, descriptive data, and applied knowledge.

The problem? That’s not the path to success in education research today. The academy tends to reward esoteric econometrics and critical-theory jeremiads. 

Bingo. Esoteric econometrics get grants.

Simple theoretical questions—like “which method produces greater student understanding of decomposing geometric shapes?”—have limited utility. They’re not sexy, and don’t get funding. Maybe what we need to do is stop ranking the most influential researchers in the country, and teach educators how to run small, valid and reliable studies to address important questions in their own practice, and to think more about the theoretical frameworks underlying their work in the classroom.

As Jose Vilson recently wrote:

Teachers ought to name what theories mobilize their work into practice, because more of the world needs to hear what goes into teaching. Treating teachers as automatons easily replaced by artificial intelligence belies the heart of the work. The best teachers I know may not have the words right now to explain why they do what they do, but they most certainly have more clarity about their actions and how they move about the classroom.

In case you were wondering why I became a PhD dropout, it had to do with my dissertation proposal. I had theories and questions around teachers who wanted to lead but didn’t want to leave the classroom. I was in possession of a large survey database from over 2000 self-identified teacher leaders (and permission to use the data).

None of the professors in Ed Policy thought this dissertation was a useful idea, however. The data was qualitative, and as one well-respected professor said– “Ya gotta have numbers!” There were no esoteric econometrics involved—only what teachers said about their efforts to lead–say, doing some action research to inform their own instruction–being shut down.

And so it goes.