Category / School Stuff

by nflanagan

 Learning to Read in Middle School

I am fascinated by the increasing politicization—no other word for it—of reading instruction. How to best teach reading has always been contentious in the United States, from the 1950s look-say method featuring Dick and Jane, accused of letting Ivan slip ahead of us in the space race, right up until last week, when Moms for Liberty jumped into the Faux Science of Reading (FSoR) fray.

It’s unclear why Moms for Liberty has aligned itself with the phonics-forward FSoR movement. I get that white parents, accustomed to being first in line for educational goodies, feel threatened when they’re told that other children may be having their needs met first. I know racism is a thread that has run through the entire history of public education in America. I also know that many ordinary citizens feel bewildered and angered by rapidly changing social beliefs and customs around acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.

A friend of my says you can measure social progress by observing who can be beat up on Saturday night without consequences—Wives and girlfriends? Ethnic minorities? Gentle souls like Matthew Shepherd and Elijah McLain?  I hate living in a country where threats align with archaic ideas about who’s in charge of our customs and institutions, including public schools. I hate it, but I understand why it happens.

What I do NOT understand is why a far-right, power-grabbing, deep-pocket-funded group of purported “concerned moms” are choosing to endorse One Right Way to learn the skill of reading.

Surely some of their children learned to read using cuing systems or word walls or balanced literacy. Surely some of their children picked up reading quickly and easily reading stories on grandma’s lap. Surely some of their children had caring and creative teachers who employed multiple strategies to nurture genuine literacy.

Which makes me think that a lot of the enmity around learning to read stems from free-floating hostility toward public education and schoolteachers in general, greatly exacerbated by recent events: a pandemic, a child-care crisis, growing and dangerous inequities, and terrible political leadership that plays to the worst in human nature.

John Spencer, an especially smart edu-buddy, recently posted a long, thoughtful tweet about what he called the phonics-centric Science of Reading approach for older students— middle school kids, for example, who theoretically should already be ‘reading to learn.’ He muses about encouraging reading for pleasure, and to build endurance, more than discrete skills. He notes that a one-size approach to decoding words is inappropriate for young teenagers. His last two points were key: most of the people advocating for the so-called “Science” of reading hadn’t read or didn’t understand the research, and that there are multiple assistive tools (audio readers, for ex) that can help kids learn to love reading.

What followed was a long discussion thread, mostly probing and expanding John’s well-considered ideas. But a couple of hours later, he posted this:

I wrote a long tweet about my concerns in using Science of Reading approaches with middle school students. Not a critique. Just a set of concerns. Getting some angry responses in my DMs. Each one fails to address my 5 points. All of them resort to personal attacks. Most of them somehow frame this as a partisan political issue. Wild.

And… there it is. Again. Politicizing the very heart of teachers’—TEACHERS’– professional work. Why is that happening?

I have written several published pieces about learning to read. Like John, I have received angry responses, mostly centered on the fact that I am not a reading teacher, and therefore, have no expertise.

The fact is: I have taught approximately 4000 children, over 32 years, to read music, in order to play a band instrument. Most of them were 5th and 6th grade beginners, aged 10-12. They may have had earlier experiences—piano lessons, say, or the church choir—in reading music (similar to first graders who come to school with dozens of sight-words already mastered), but most were not musically literate at all when they came to me.

They learned in large, mixed-instrument groups, using method books in which everyone necessarily goes at a glacial pace. In addition to understanding a completely new set of symbols designating pitch, duration, silence, articulations and tempo, they have to struggle with making pleasant and consistent sounds on a complex device.

It’s incredibly difficult. The interesting thing is that some kids who excel at traditional school tasks—including reading and math, the skills we value most—find learning to play an instrument very frustrating, especially when other students, academic lesser lights, quickly pick up tunes via watching, listening and repetition.

Good instrumental music teachers quickly learn that slogging through the method book, day in and day out, one new note at a time, will kill off the rabid enthusiasm for playing in the band that your average fifth grader displays on the night he gets his new trumpet.

These teachers turn to ideas similar to what John Spencer references: Playing by ear for pleasure or long tone contests to build endurance. Multiple modalities of playing (watching, repeating, chord-building) besides straight-up note-reading. Playing with CDs. Bringing in older students who demonstrate what fun it is to play music in groups. Encouraging students to make up songs, or pick out a popular tune.

The key is the first performance where everyone (including the kids who don’t yet know correct note names or how to interpret a key signature) plays that six-note version of Jingle Bells, and families go home happy. A huge part of being a beginning band teacher is herding all the kids forward, even though they’re learning different things at wildly different rates, and making the whole process joyful.

There are, of course, instrumental music teachers who insist that there is only one way to teach kids to read music and play an instrument. How can you play music if you don’t know that the third space treble clef is a C, and a dotted note gets one and a half times the value of the original note? Start at the beginning, and don’t move ahead until everyone gets it. The method book as ‘settled science.’

The truth is that breaking down music-reading skills into discrete bits—like phonics, in reading– is only one of a palate of options; the motivated student can always cycle back to pick up new knowledge or techniques once curiosity and love are established.

Good teachers at all levels and subjects set kids free, tapping their natural abilities and making things joyful. The Faux Science of Reading wants every child to learn in the same way, just like the Moms for Liberty want children to read the same books and believe the same things about who has power in this country.

by nflanagan

The Blessings of Liberty Still Exist– But for How Long?

I played my flute in a patriotic-themed outdoor concert last Fourth of July, with the Northport Community Band–as cooling breezes blew across Grand Traverse Bay and firecrackers popped in the distance. There were at least 400 people seated in lawn chairs, clapping along to You’re a Grand Old Flag, The National Emblem and The Stars and Stripes Forever. We played a service medley, as we always do, asking veterans to stand when the tune representing their branch of the service was played. This is standard for our summer concerts–and I usually think of this as hokey, the musical equivalent of a ‘Support Our Troops!’ bumper sticker.

But last year, in our first post(ish)-pandemic outdoor concert, instead of zoning out during the rests, I watched the crowd– the old men struggling to get to their feet or simply waving from their wheelchairs as the crowd clapped and cheered for them. And I thought of all the major sacrifices–not just lives of young, innocent men and women, determined to serve their country, but the endless struggles for civil rights and equity and justice. I reflected on the striving, loss and pain incurred in the ongoing process of trying to make this nation a true democracy (or republic–take your choice).

The people who tartly point out that we have never been a just and fair nation are correct. But I don’t remember a Fourth of July where I’ve felt more discouraged about the home of the brave, land of the not-really free. I’ve been thinking this for years, but the recent Supreme Court decisions have steamrollered any optimism about having a competent president, or political leadership.

I also still feel a deep commitment, an obligation, to the relevant principles, even as they’re chipped away and made meaningless: Liberty. Opportunity. Equity. Justice. Peace. Persistence.

I found myself, unexpectedly, in tears while reading about the SCOTUS decisions. So much has been lost, damaged, soiled or destroyed. Evil is rising. You can’t deny it. Just watch the news.

Were all the sacrifices in vain–going all the way back to the ragtag Colonial armies, losing their lives over taxation and the conviction that somehow this was their land, that they were entitled, by their Creator, to defend their homesteads and the fruits of their labor? What about the terrible price paid to end the scourge of slavery? To build and invest in becoming a world-class power? All the people who steadfastly developed the American dream– is it just the way of the world that their sacrifices were meaningless in the face of greed and corruption?

The etymological root of the word sacrifice is to ‘make sacred.’ I think I was experiencing the sacred last year, watching the 90-something Navy man sing ‘Anchors Aweigh’ in the front row–and the grandfathers who served in Vietnam shyly nod to each other across the crowd.

I also thought about where and how those men and women were educated. Where did they absorb the idea that citizenship is both blessing and duty? Who taught them to read and calculate, who nurtured their talents and their dreams?

The county where I live–one of the most beautiful spots in the nation, according to Good Morning, America–– was originally settled by Native Americans, who still have a large and active presence here, and whose children attend public schools. The abundant fresh waters that drew them here centuries ago are now threatened by a crumbling oil pipeline that lies under a major shipping lane.  Should a public education include factual information about protecting our greatest environmental asset? Is that not also a sacred American principle?

In this holiday week, I am choosing to still believe in the things that genuinely have made America great, those blessings of liberty that include a free, high-quality, fully public education for every child.

by nflanagan

What Feeds Bias in Education World?

One of the most genuinely enlightening experiences of my professional career was the multi-day bias training offered (at that time) by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, required of teachers who were training to score portfolio entries of candidates seeking National Board Certification. The first thing we learned was that bias was inevitable in human judgment—and could be positive as well as negative.

That’s important to remember. Bias is often reflexively construed as harmful. Prejudice, a synonym for bias, is not a word we associate with healthy human interaction. All people, however, bring a basket of predispositions into every aspect of work and life, and it’s hard to extinguish those, even when we’re paying attention. Still, some of those characteristics can be constructive.

The trick is recognizing your own biases, as they emerge, and figuring out where those inherent preferences, dislikes and false beliefs are leading your responses. Not easy to do. But important. As Patricia Devine, a psychology professor and director of the Prejudice Lab at the University of Wisconsin in Madison says:

“There are a lot of people who are very sincere in their renunciation of prejudice. Yet they are vulnerable to habits of mind. Intentions aren’t good enough.”

Worth repeating: Intentions aren’t good enough.

It strikes me that much of what we see in mainstream media about schools, teaching and student achievement is fed by widely held biases. Things like:

Public schools aren’t as good as private schools (because you get what you pay for).

Teachers in high-poverty schools aren’t as skilled as teachers in the well-heeled suburbs.

Getting into a selective college should be every HS graduate’s goal.

Most teachers come from the bottom of the academic barrel, and would have chosen another occupation, if they could.

The “learning loss” children have experienced due to a global pandemic is a crisis and must be fixed immediately; test scores will tell us when all is well again.

I could go on, pretty much ad nauseum. If an education journalist attended a pricey private high school and university, growing up with financial security and a well-fed ego, nurtured in school, it would be natural to carry those biases into reporting on education, making assumptions about the people and institutions who are most responsible for educating the nation’s children. Assumptions, that is, based on nothing more than ground-in thinking, and lack of personal time spent in schools where everyone’s on free and reduced lunch and the textbooks are 25 years old.

And yes—I realize that my own biases about why mainstream reporting on schools and teachers is so often inaccurate are glaringly obvious here.

The situation is worse in state legislatures, where “information” about “policies that work” is sponsored by deep-pockets funders with even deeper biases about the children who most need high-quality instruction, curriculum and resources in the classroom.

And we haven’t even started to talk about racial bias.

Is school the place to start chipping away at biases? Could we—and by “we,” I mean our racist American society—make a dent, a difference, a change in embedded biases by deliberating structuring anti-bias activities and mandating them in public education? Not if a host of Republican hopefuls have their way.

I’m not naïve enough to think that schools could turn hearts and minds in a K-12 generation. But could they do significant good, given the right tools and incentives?

Research doesn’t give us a lot of hope around this question. A study found that pre-school teachers expect bad behavior from black children, especially black boys—and the data indicate that black children are 3.6 times more likely than white children to be suspended. The bias begins in pre-school and plays itself out, endlessly and increasingly as children get older, a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s hard to see just how bias training could turn this around. But maybe it’s worth a shot.

The most surprising part of the study:

Teachers [were given] a one-paragraph vignette to read, describing a child disrupting a class; there’s hitting, scratching, even toy-throwing. The child in the vignette was randomly assigned what researchers considered a stereotypical name (DeShawn, Latoya, Jake, Emily), and subjects were asked to rate the severity of the behavior on a scale of one to five. White teachers consistently held black students to a lower standard, rating their behavior as less severe than the same behavior of white students. Black teachers, on the other hand, did the opposite, holding black students to a higher standard and rating their behavior as consistently more severe than that of white students.

In the bias training for National Board Certified Teachers, there was a vignette describing a first grade classroom with straight rows and silent, head-down children receiving explicit direct instruction from the teacher: Put your finger on the X. Circle the X. Put your pencil down. All the children receiving direction are black—and the teacher is white.


Invariably, when asked about the quality of the pedagogical strategies, white teachers in the training (all of whom were experienced and interested in improving their practice) responded negatively to the rigid, low-level instruction:

Those poor kids! There’s no warmth or creativity! It’s clear that the teacher has low expectations for these kids.

When the training was held in Prince George’s County, Maryland, however, most of the teachers in the room were black–perhaps 80%. When they read the vignette, they thought the teacher must be doing something right, because all the children were quietly focused. When probed–Isn’t the teaching insultingly simple? —they agreed that yes, this lesson left little room for individual thinking or joy.

They were clear, however, that all children need to be taught to behave respectfully in a classroom, to follow conventions—for their own benefit and safety. They’re black children in a public school where their next teacher may give up on making demands on them all too quickly, teachers said. Plenty of time for creativity and laughing, down the line, but these children don’t seem threatened, simply willing to follow the teacher’s guidance. If you genuinely care about children, you’ll insist that they behave properly.

It was probably the most important thing I learned in bias training—good teachers don’t all see things the same way. What seems obvious to one teacher isn’t clear at all to another, equally committed and skilled, but working with a different set of biases—positive, this time.

Applying that principle of positive bias—let’s let this teacher decide what works best for these kids—is the fundamental building block of teacher professionalism. I may be biased, but I’m always going to cheerlead for teacher judgment and autonomy.

by nflanagan

Holding Kids Back

When Michigan passed a mandated retention law for third graders who were not testing at grade level, back in 2016, I thought it was a terrible idea. I wrote about it, in several venues—the idea that children who wanted to master reading, but had been unable to, for whatever reason, would be socially identified as “behind” by being retained. When they were eight years old.

I still think mandatory retention laws, no matter how they’re structured, are a punitive response to children who don’t deserve to be penalized. What surprised me most in writing those columns, however, was the number of people who shared what they considered positive stories about retention—how it was just the ticket for one of their children, a grandchild, a student with limited English, a student who had transferred from another school and used the shift to repeat a grade, etc.

Nearly all the stories had the same elements: The retention happened very early in the child’s school career. The child in question was either among the youngest children in the class, or simply immature—or had mitigating characteristics (like learning the language, or a physical disability). The parents, teacher and school leaders had all agreed that another year of, say, kindergarten would be beneficial.

Michigan has just excised the mandated third-grade retention policy from the School Code, keeping the language around supporting early literacy in public schools. This is excellent news, given the mainstream media’s obsession with the Faux Science of Reading and how Mississippi raised its fourth grade reading scores by flunking third graders who were struggling the previous year.

From a Chalkbeat article, yesterday: Should struggling students be held back a grade? Why researchers don’t have a clear answer. Despite decades of research, there’s no clear answer on whether grade retention in early grades is a good idea. Existing data is open to competing interpretations, and big questions about the policy remain unanswered.

The long-run effects of early grade retention are not clear. Perhaps the more important question about holding students back is how it affects them in the long run. 

For later grades, the research is fairly clear. Multiple studies have found that holding back middle schoolers increases their odds of dropping out of high school.

As a long-time middle school teacher, I sat numerous times with parents around a table in the office, after it became clear that their seventh grader would be failing three or four classes. Nearly always, the outcome was the same: every possible strategy, from tutoring to summer school to what might politely be called “incentives” (read: bribes), would be employed so that Jason would be entering the eighth grade, come fall.

A couple of times, however, parents dads wanted to retain kids who were passing all their classes with Bs and Cs, in order to give their child another year of physical growth so they could be more competitive in high school sports. Think about that—have there been studies on using retention to ensure that your child was beefier than other physically diverse freshmen?

Or this case: a fifth grade teacher I met in Louisiana, where the district mandated retention, had a fifth grader who turned 14 and was eligible for drivers training. He also had a mustache. The other 5th graders were afraid of him.

I’m with the Chalkbeat article: Existing data is open to competing interpretations.

What I do think: We have pushed all our typical benchmarks and expected yardsticks for intellectual growth and academic capacities down, and have accepted standardized testing data as Truth, when describing students and thinking about the best ways to educate them.

Just because some children can read at age four, or perform abstract algebraic calculations in sixth grade doesn’t mean that we should reorganize the curriculum to encourage more pushing down. Conversely, just because a child isn’t reading at grade level (whatever that is, and however it’s measured) doesn’t mean that repeating a grade will do anything for the child personally, even if failing a cluster of children artificially raises collective test scores.

It’s become a cliché—but note that Finland doesn’t start formal reading instruction until students are seven years of age, a year before we have decided that some of them need to be “held back.”

Even the language matters—isn’t it ironic, as we strive to leave no child behind, that we hold some of them back?

My school, twenty years ago, had a four-option plan for students entering the district as kindergartners:

  • Developmental kindergarten— a half-day “young fives” program for kids who may not be ready for regular kindergarten work, ascertained through Gesell screening for every child
  • Regular kindergarten—2 ½ days per week, in various schedules
  • Jr. First Grade—for students whose kindergarten teachers identified them as not yet ready for first grade work
  • First Grade

The majority of kids went to kindergarten and first grade. But students could utilize any two or three options, depending on their rate of development. It was an exit ramp off the sequential school conveyor belt without anyone being “held back”—an extra year to grow, with other kids who also needed that time. All placement decisions were made cooperatively by parents, teachers and school leaders.

It was an expensive program (as are all mandated retention programs, it should be noted—requiring an extra year of third grade is costly). And because of that, the bottom line, it was eliminated.

If kids can’t read by third grade, we can always retain them then, right?

by nflanagan

Things that Make Teachers Go Hmmm

For flat-out exhausted teachers, finishing a school year filled with unjust accusations and pointless restrictions, the headline must seem ludicrous: Want to Make $100,000 a Year? Here’s Where You Should Apply.

Turns out it’s a charter school in Detroit, and the spiel initially sounds like they’re seeking the best and brightest teachers (at least 18 of them, anyway) with “strong criteria” to “meet student needs.” The strong criteria? They need to be licensed and certified to teach in Michigan, have five years of experience, and have been rated “highly effective” twice.

It also turns out that only 35 percent of the current staff at the Hundred Grand School is, in fact, certified to teach in Michigan. The charter is essentially soliciting, or perhaps poaching is the more accurate term, a more experienced staff by offering them huge salary increases. Because two-thirds of their professional staff is uncertified. No word on whether any of the current teachers would be considered for the $100K.

My first thought? Where are they getting the money?

Closely followed by imagining a scenario where 18 teachers, identified on Day One by their much-fatter paychecks, are parachuted into an existing staff. And– if you think esprit de corps isn’t really a factor in teaching, you would be wrong.

The tight market for high-quality teachers even seems to be leading Teach for America to a rebranding. A few months ago, TFA was shrinking–Oh No!– but now they’re (get this) focused on training new teachers. Really! I’m serious. Twenty years of asserting that in-depth teacher preparation wasn’t really necessary if the person was smart and well-meaning, and now they’re experts in professional preparation?

The organization said it aims to recruit, retain and develop about 700 teachers in Michigan over the next five years. The announcement comes as Michigan, like other states, struggles to retain qualified teachers, particularly in high-poverty schools, and as far fewer college students choose education as a profession. 

Teach for America was always good at recruiting and marketing. But retaining teachers? And professional development?

The chief complaint about TFA has always been that it was most often a two-years (or less) then-out prospect. Something to burnish the resume’ when you seek a grown-up job in a few years. And TFA teachers had to learn on the job. None of this coursework or field experience nonsense. You’re smart—you’ll figure it out. Catch up.

None of the things Teach for America says it can do in this project—which amount to professionalizing teaching—is in Teach for America’s wheelhouse/origin story. Their job (and they’ve been spectacularly good at getting money and good PR to keep this initiative going) has always been promoting a small group of recent graduates who want to do something different (and, presumably, useful). Save our schools, yada yada, by bringing in some elite temps.

But there has never been a critical mass of practicing TFA teachers in the profession to use their hard-won experience to push for necessary policy change. They take other jobs (easier, better-paying jobs) in education because they can. Or they go to law school. Or work at Morgan Chase.

Teach for America has never been a positive force for change in the teaching profession.  What makes them think teachers will turn to them now?

Hmm. Maybe it’s the $35K bonus teachers earn for being part of Teach for American’s new professional development and teacher leadership programs.

I know all about businesses needing to be nimble and pivot quickly when people stop signing up for your prestigious product, but real professional growth for teachers takes time and experience. You can’t manufacture excellence or buy it. It comes from persistence and dedication. That esprit des corps thing matters, too.

Meanwhile: A bill introduced in the state Senate last month would remove provisions in the Revised School Code that say all teachers and staff in the Detroit Public Schools Community District hired after September 2019 must have their compensation based primarily on job performance, rather than seniority or educational credentials. 

Worth noting: Only teachers in Detroit—not in other districts around the state— were subject to this provision. A financial thumb, pressing down on Detroit public educators, tying them and only them to student test scores, built into the school code.

The common link in all these examples? Money.

Money as teacher lure, money paid to an organization founded on undercutting teacher training and preparation, money for improved testing data, but only if you teach in Detroit.

Hmmm. Maybe we should significantly raise teacher pay across the board. Or recruit candidates by promising better working conditions and sweeping investment in public education. One can dream.

In the meantime, a hearty thank-you to teachers everywhere, winding down.

by nflanagan

Memorial Day 2023– Thanks, Band Directors

I’m not much of a flag waver, really. I always thought that author James Baldwin captured my feelings precisely in Notes of a Native Son when he wrote:

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

These days, perpetual criticism is essential. We are headed into dark times, I think, redefining the meaning of patriotism and sacrifice. It’s easy to lose faith in our government and the grand experiment—all men created equal—that founded this nation. It’s easy to let hope die when our rights have been systematically eroded by power-hungry politicians. When our children are not able to read certain books or study our actual national history, we’re in trouble.

I still believe, however, heart and soul, in the shining but imperfect ideals of a democratic education –equality under the law, the American common school, a free, high-quality education for all children, simply because they deserve it. Thirty years of teaching school have given me a hard crust of cynicism about many things related to education and America. But I never lost my enthusiasm for the Memorial Day parade.

For 25 years, my middle school band students marched through the small town where I taught and lived, in the Memorial Day Parade. There was a whole set of traditions around this event, which grew larger and more complicated every year: the aural passing down of our special drum cadences from the self-appointed 8th grade drumline leaders, mending the color guard flags originally purchased through a pizza sale back in ’88, and patching up hand-me-down snares and sousaphones scrounged from the high school.

There was never a budget for this–middle schools don’t typically have marching bands–but somehow there were always T-shirts, and cold drinks at the end of the parade route. We had a stunning handmade banner that two moms whipped up with lots of lamé and sequins. In my last year, we marched nearly 300 students, on a morning when the sky was a sapphire blue and Air Force jets flew overhead as we rounded the corner by the cemetery.

This took up a fair amount of teaching time. I would get on my knees and beg colleagues for 20 minutes on the Friday before the parade, to assemble five bands into a single marching unit and take a few spins around the parking lot. One year, as I was trying to get the back of the band to master pinwheel corners, the front rank (rambunctious 8th grade trombones) marched right up the sidewalk, opened the front doors, and led the band, playing America the Beautiful at top volume, through the school hallways. By the time I sprinted up to the head of the band (and the principal popped, red-faced, out of his office), marching through the school was a done deal–and became yet another annual tradition.

I was always clear with my students about the meaning and purpose of Memorial Day. They would occasionally whine about how boring America the Beautiful was–Mr. Holland’s band played Louie, Louie, right? I explained that they were old enough to dedicate a morning to thanking local patriots and acknowledging the sacrifices made by Americans over centuries. Older people, watching them march by, would be pleased to hear traditional music. It was about respect.

We do this, I told them, to remember and honor those who made it possible for you to live in this beautiful little town, in this safe world. People like my Uncle Don, who died in February 1945, part of the Fourth Marine Division which stormed Iwo Jima. Or Ray Shineldecker and Joey Hoeker, two high school classmates who lost their lives in Viet Nam. I had lots of funny stories to tell about Joey, who lived around the corner in my old neighborhood–a big, goofy kid who was what guidance counselors in the 1960s called “not college material.”

On our last band trip to Washington D.C., after performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I was loading tympani onto the buses as my students toured the Mall. A few girls came running up, calling “Mrs. Flanagan! We found him!” Found who, I asked.

Joey Hoeker, of course–on the Wall. And I lost it, right in front of all those kids.

I thank those who served and sacrificed so I can love my country, and criticize it, too. A hat tip to all the band teachers and student musicians who help make Memorial Day meaningful this weekend. And to hero teachers and band directors everywhere– donating yet another weekend to the community –please keep teaching, in spite of everything.

And another hat tip to community bands, providing the same service. I’ll be in Northport, Michigan on Memorial Day–playing Taps from the porch of another flutist, then settling in the cemetery, to play the National Anthem, Sousa marches–and a tribute to the Armed Services. Join us at 10:30 a.m. You won’t be sorry.

by nflanagan

Would You Recognize a Good Lesson If You Saw It?

Here’s a scary headline: Michigan Democrats Look to Change Teacher Evaluation System.

Not so much the “Democrats” part—although I’d argue that not having a clue about evaluating teachers is common in both parties—but the implication that way fewer than 99% of public school teachers are doing acceptable work:

Consider: During the 2021-2022 school year, 99 percent of Michigan teachers were ranked either highly effective or effective on evaluations.

State Rep. Matt Koleszar, D-Plymouth, chair of the House Education Committee, told Bridge Michigan the state’s teacher evaluation system often leads to school administrators “checking a box” as they monitor teachers rather than using the process to help struggling teachers improve.

“I think when you have a better evaluation system and you’re supporting someone who needs that help and needs (those) resources, that ultimately is going to (filter down) to the student.”

I am decidedly NOT a fan of basing any percentage of a teacher’s evaluation on standardized test scores (it’s 40% in Michigan, under our current, Republican-developed system). And I am a true believer in the statement that teacher practice can be improved—and a good evaluation system (plus—key point—the time, trained personnel and resources to implement such a system) could help.

With so many moving parts, and the current handwringing (and bogus data) around low test scores in students emerging from a global pandemic, re-doing teacher evaluations which might be in place for decades seems precarious at the moment.

The questions, really, are: What are we looking for, in a teacher? What skills and qualities do good teachers exhibit—and are they measurable, with the tools we currently use? What outcomes are most critical for students—and what (easily measured) outcomes disappear quickly?

When the legislature can agree on answers to these questions—with input from the education community and invested parents, of course—let me know. Cynicism aside, how do we streamline teacher evaluation in ways that make it easy to capture and share expertise, help promising teachers build their practice, and excise the folks who shouldn’t be there?

There is, by the way, no shortage of ideas and research around teacher improvement; our international counterparts are already doing a better job of this. Anyone who’s looked at Japanese Lesson Study models, or meta-analyses on building effective learning environments knows this—but investing in viable teacher evaluation systems that also build capacity will not come about with a new written tool or protocol. It will take a new mindset.

Because I spent many years looking at videos of music teachers, while serving as a developer for the National Board’s music assessment, I also understand that there are limitations in evaluating teachers by observing their lessons.

For example: You have to know what the teacher’s learning goals were, going into the lesson, and have some context around who’s in the room. The core competency for nearly all teaching is knowing the students in front of you. You can’t build effective lessons without that knowledge. And that’s hard to evaluate.

I used to teach with a man who didn’t bother to learn the students’ names, because the classes were large—60 or more. His rationale was that learning names was time that could be better spent delivering content. He delivered a whole lot of content, all right, but never got great results, because there was no human relationship glue inspiring students to use that content.

Try to put that into an evaluation tool.

Dr. Mary Kennedy, one of my grad school professors, had a video library of teachers teaching. She would usually show two videos, and then ask us to compare and contrast—and roughly evaluate.  One pair of videos (and discussion) that I remember:

  • A man in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts and flip-flops is facilitating a hands-on science experiment with a half-dozen groups of middle school students, clustered around lab tables. The room is noisy as students manipulate equipment and fill out lab reports, but the teacher is wearing a mic that picks up his comments and students’ questions as he moves from table to table. Several times, when students ask a direct question, he turns it back to them—What do YOU think? Why? Once, he claps his hands and asks the entire class to re-examine the stated purpose of the experiment. There is a beat of quiet, and then students are back to talking and writing. The video picks up students who appear to be off-task, as well, looking at the camera or talking to someone at another table.
  • A young woman is teaching a HS literature class. She is well-dressed and very articulate. The video begins with a Q & A exchange about the assigned reading, with a young man wearing a navy blazer and tie. The questions probe facts from the text—Who is the real victim in this chapter? Does this take place before or after the barn-raising scene and why is that important to the narrative? —and the young man has clearly done the reading, as his answers are all correct. The camera moves back and we see there are about eight teenaged boys in the class, all in blazers. She cold-calls the students, in turn, and they all answer her questions correctly. Other than the questions and short answers, the class is silent.

After watching the two videos, Dr. Kennedy asked: Which was the best lesson? Who was the best teacher? The class was vehemently divided—and remember, these were all graduate students in education. Imagine showing two similar videos to a legislator or one of the Moms 4 Liberty— then asking them to pick out the “best” teacher.

Ironically, the current quest to limit controversy and hot topics in public school classrooms makes it even more difficult to evaluate teacher practice. The best lessons—the ones that stick—are often messy and hard-won. And our best teachers—articulate, student-focused and creative—are being shut down by the very people designing their evaluation procedures.

We used to laugh at the inadequate teacher evaluation checklists—Is the teacher dressed neatly and well-groomed?—prevalent in the 1970s. But we haven’t solved the problem of how to evaluate all teachers fairly and productively. Yet.

by nflanagan

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and my Middle School Band

With the passing of Gordon Lightfoot, I have been surprised and touched by the number of folks posting Lightfoot lyrics and links. They’re not all aging folkies, either—lots of them are in their 30s and 40s, and some are my former students.

That’s gratifying. One of my best memories about teaching comes from a Gordon Lightfoot song—“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

It’s worth mentioning that the saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald is very much a Michigan story. When you grow up surrounded by the Great Lakes, you’ve probably spent a vacation or two watching freighters go through locks, or traverse the sightlines in front of your rented cottage. The sinking of the freighter—when the witch of November comes stealin’—has just the right combination of tragedy and seaborne terror to capture the imagination of schoolchildren.

But it is Lightfoot’s ballad, which was released in 1976, exactly one year after the vessel sank, that has kept the tale in memory. Lightfoot considered the song his masterpiece, and I agree. He captures the terrifying scene and the details of the voyage pretty accurately, while giving us lines like:

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Listening to the song gives me chills, even today.

 When the song was released, I was teaching in Hartland (I was pretty much always teaching in Hartland…), and the students wanted to play it. I knew what was likely to happen, but when a band arrangement was eventually released—which often occurs years after the song was popular– I bought it.

The beauty of the song (and it IS beautiful) lies in the words. There are only four measures of thematic melodic material (in 12/8 time). There are some slight melodic variations in the intro and interlude, but it’s the same four measures, the same five-chord sequence, through the whole song. Musically speaking, it’s static (that’s a polite word). Lightfoot (and pop/rock artists everywhere) take these music fragments and make them come expressively alive with lyrics and production tricks—wailing guitar improvisations, synthesized backgrounds, strings. But mostly—people are listening to the words.

When the musical palette is “middle school band,” however, there’s not much you can do to vary what becomes the same short tune over and over and over. The kids, after learning the song (which didn’t take long), recognized that: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was repetitive and (here comes that word) boring. A whole lot of long notes.  

But–here’s the Lightfoot magic–we turned that band arrangement into a different lesson, around the two questions:

  • Why is the Gordon Lightfoot song so cool and moving, and the band arrangement so…static?
  • What could we add to or change in the band arrangement to make it more interesting, more like the GL song?

It was a great, inspired, discussion– resulting in percussion mallets on brake drums to add noises that sounded like ship’s gear. Someone brought in a ship’s bell, which we added to the intro and final measures. We improvised vocal noises like roaring wind. We fussed with the dynamics–to try to tell a powerful story without words, just moody chords and phrase shaping. We even put bits of the lyrics in the program, and two students read a verse to introduce the song to the audience. (It’s a long song.)

It was also a chance to learn about ballads, and music as storytelling. It turned into the most memorable piece on the concert, judging by parent and student feedback.

Rest well, Gordon Lightfoot. Michigan thanks you.

by nflanagan

Are Schools Responsible for the Racist Behaviors of Students?

In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all… Paul Simon, My Little Town

I spent the bulk of my teaching career—over 30 years—in a single small town in southeastern Michigan. When I started teaching there, the district was distinctly rural. There were several farmers on the school board, including one who came to board meetings in overalls. When I was hired, my principal described the district as the far edge of white flight.

Over time, a lot of that farmland was carved up into new subdivisions and a 600-lot mobile home park—folks moving out of the inner suburban ring around Detroit, looking for good schools and politically conservative neighbors. I thought about my principal’s remark all the time: white flight.

There was racism, all right. I experienced it in my own family. But I was never afraid to talk openly to my students about diversity and equity. Teaching music, I was determined to open their minds to the roots of the music they were marinating in.

I liked my students—and I liked the teachers I worked with. We probably didn’t talk about discrimination and intolerance as much as we might have; some of my former students, now adults, have shared their resentment at how relentlessly white and narrow-minded their classmates and neighbors were.

And it’s gotten worse, I believe, although I no longer live there. The elected school board has grown more conservative—and more vocal about issues du jour, including racism, sexual preferences, to mask or not to mask–and dealing with student discipline.  These days, there is a local incarnation of Moms 4 Banning Stuff, and packed, heated board meetings.

Now, the district is being sued over claims of racial harassment:

A former Hartland High School student is suing the school district and three district administrators, over what she claims was a relentless and cruel pattern of racism directed at her and other Black students while she attended the school.

Tatayana Vanderlaan, now 20, filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District that claims Hartland Consolidated School District and administrators were negligent in failing to stop racist attacks that included students saying Vanderlaan “should get lynched.”

The suit describes repeated racism directed at Vanderlaan from the time she first entered Hartland High in 2019. Vanderlaan says white schoolmates directed racial slurs at her, including the N-word, and that administrators did not address the behavior, even as it escalated.

Vanderlaan says she’s seeking “accountability,” a word that strikes me as rather perfect—isn’t accountability the holy grail of all the school reforms we’ve been chasing for decades? And furthermore, just who is to blame for vile and racist behaviors in students? Are they being held accountable?

The behaviors are vile and racist—confederate flags, the N-word, lynching threats, references to the plantation and hurtful ridicule referencing personal appearance. The taunts happened at school, but also on social media. Administrators are named in the suit, and teachers painted as dismissive.

The U.S. Attorney’s office also opened an investigation, after Vanderlaan filed a complaint. I am not surprised that former students and those still attending this school described other racist incidents to investigators. Some things, I suppose, never change.

But who’s responsible?

I want to believe that teachers would interrupt these behaviors, that at least some students would stand up for what is right. But in another little Michigan town,  two brothers wore ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirts to school. They were ordered by teachers and an assistant principal to remove them, because they were vulgar and profane—and for that seemingly appropriate action, the school has been sued by the boys’ mother, for suppressing their First Amendment rights:

The slogan…has become a popular form of political commentary, appearing on T-shirts and bumper stickers and is chanted at right-leaning rallies, the lawsuit says. Even members of Congress have used the phrase during speeches on the House floor, the suit states, yet no one has been censored or punished.

So—if Congressional reps are making vile and/or racist remarks, it’s now OK in middle schools?

It would be nice to think that the courts would support public school educators in their quest to keep schools from being overrun by ugly “free speech” that disrupts the learning process—and trust me, vulgar and racist speech have the capacity to do just that. Big time.

It would also be nice to think that policymakers could have an impact on hate speech and resulting violence. But making laws is one thing—getting people to believe they are fair and useful, and willingly follow them, is another.

The small town where I used to live and teach is in Livingston County—which has just declared itself a “Constitutional County” (spoiler: there’s no such thing). According to the Sheriff, a Constitutional County’s policing personnel do not have to enforce laws they find “unconstitutional”—specifically, a package of gun safety laws recently passed by the State Legislature. So there’s that.

Something has changed in this country, all right. Respect for the rule of law, respect for civic order and civil speech, respect for all our fellow citizens.

Just who are we going to hold accountable?

In my little town
I never meant nothing, I was just my father’s son.
Saving my money
Dreamin’ of glory
Twitching like a finger on a trigger of a gun

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town

by nflanagan

Teaching 101: Lesson Planning in TX

Here’s a truism that educators repeat endlessly (and, apparently, fruitlessly): Just because you went to school, doesn’t mean that you understand how schools work.

It applies to all the logistical and philosophical details about schooling, from busing to teacher prep to grading. Just because you had three recesses per day in elementary school doesn’t mean that kids in 2023 have that essential play built into their days. Just because you took Algebra I in ninth grade doesn’t mean that your seventh grader won’t have single-variable equations in their homework packet. Just because teaching seemed easy (or dreadful) to you, as a child or teenager, doesn’t mean that anybody can do it.

And so on. You don’t know what’s going on in schools—or why—unless you’re there all the time and have deep knowledge of education policy and practice.

In a wonderful piece in his eponymously named blog, Tom Ultican writes about a deal going down in Texas:

 Under this new legislation, the state of Texas is contracting with Amplify to write the curriculum according to TEA guidelines. Amplify will also provide daily lesson plans for all teachers. The idea is to educate all Texas children using digital devices and scripted lesson plans while teachers are tasked with monitoring student progress.

This, of course, is not new at all. Education publishers and nonprofits have been hawking standards / curricula / benchmarks / instructional materials / “innovative” reforms—all of them ‘aligned’—for decades, ramping up this effort post-NCLB, and culminating in the Great National Project to Standardize Everything, the Common Core.

Tom does a superb job of deconstructing the fallacy of one-size-fits-all lesson plans, as well as giving his readers a heads-up about Who Not to Trust in Ed World and what they really want.

I was struck by this quote from the so-called Coalition for Education Excellence (“Reducing teacher workloads with State support”):

“Many teachers in Texas are currently working two jobs—designing lessons and teaching them—which is contributing to their exhaustion and teacher shortages. Access to high-quality instructional material can reduce teacher workloads and play a critical role in delivering quality education.”

I have no doubt that many Texas teacher are actually working two jobs, given that the minimum salary for 5th-year TX teachers (who have certainly created lots of lesson plans at the point) is less than $40K. I imagine asking that 5th year teacher if he would rather have more money or free (mandated) lesson plans, courtesy of Texas, which has already spent more than $50 million on the pre-designed, screen-ready lessons from Amplify.

Here’s where the lack of insider knowledge—”just because you went to school…”—comes in, at the intersection of curriculum and instruction. I guess that free (mandated) lesson plans might sound like a good idea to someone whose conception of instruction was formed by the conveyor belt of students with flip-top heads featured in “Waiting for Superman,” another artifact of the roiling education reform dialogue.

No amount of marketing pomposity can change the fact that teachers, in order to be effective, need some control over their professional work. Effective teaching goes like this:

  • Get to know the students you’re responsible for—their strengths, their shortcomings, their quirks. Let them know you care about them, and intend to teach them something worthwhile.
  • Using that knowledge, design and teach lessons to move them forward. Persist, when your first attempts fail or produce mediocre results. Check on their learning frequently, but let them know that you’re checking in order to choose the right thing to do next—not to punish, or label them. Re-design lessons using another learning mode, accelerate, cycle back to review, pull out stragglers for another crack at core content, challenge those who have mastered the content and skill with enrichment activities—and do all of this simultaneously, every hour of the school day.

In other words, designing lessons and teaching them cannot be separated, if you’re hoping to create a coherent curriculum or motivated learners. They’re entirely dependent on the students in front of you. Removing one of the two from the equation makes it harder, and more time-consuming, if the goal is crafting a learning classroom.

One of the phony reasons for adopting the Amplify curriculum TX state legislators have been fed is that students were being taught “below grade-level content.” 

It would be easy for those without experience as educators to assume that kids in Texas were being short-changed, left behind, by feckless teachers lazily spoon-feeding them easy subject matter.

There might be actual reasons for this: some curricula is best understood and applied when taught sequentially. A sharp teacher, getting to know her students, can identify gaps and address those before moving to the next stage—a far better and more efficacious plan than starting with whatever the state has designated as “grade-level.”

The grade-level curricula may be inappropriate for some kids (special education students spring to mind here). It may have been set by people who haven’t been in a classroom in decades, or don’t understand what the pandemic—or poverty—have done to students in any given state or town.

Lesson planning and its partner, effective instruction, are things that teachers get better at, year after year. They are a central part of what it means to be a good teacher. Taking lesson planning away from an entire statewide public school system is not an act designed to make teachers’ lives easier.

It’s about control over what gets taught.