Tag / learning

by nflanagan

In Praise of Social Studies

In my long and checkered career as a classroom teacher, I taught instrumental and vocal music, mathematics, ESL and the occasional oddball middle school class necessitated by the fact that, as a (qualified) music teacher, my music classes could contractually be huge—so I could be assigned a class of kids left over in the scheduling process by putting 75 students in one beginning band class.

I learned a great deal while teaching things I wasn’t technically qualified to teach. But I never got to teach my favorite non-music subject: Social Studies. (Notice that I didn’t call this subject History or Economics, two narrowly defined class titles that are approved by the anti-public school mafia.)

I think that poor, maligned Social Studies, the last outpost of mostly-untested subjects, is probably the most critical academic field for K-12 students to explore, if we want them to become good neighbors and engaged citizens. It’s where they learn (theoretically), what it means to be an American.

But ask any third grade teacher what gets short shrift in their daily lessons. Or ask which secondary curricula is the most scrutinized by people who haven’t been in a classroom in decades.

When you hear people talk about how we need more Civics education in this nation, what they want is a range of social knowledge: history, of course, but also government, geography, sociology, political science and early-elementary trips to the fire house and the public library.

What it means to be an American. How we got to where we are—arguably, the most powerful nation on earth. What values we claim to embrace. How physical and historical features, and population migrations, shaped our culture.

Isn’t that critical, essential stuff? Not to mention engaging—when taught with the mindset that this is the content that one needs to know, to become a fully functional adult in the United States?

Today, which used to be the day we honored Christopher Columbus for a bunch of shady reasons, might be a good time to ask some questions about social studies, and their current place in the school curriculum.

My fear is that Social Studies, an incredibly rich and applicable field of interrelated content, will be further squeezed out of the curriculum, or become a dry, testable, bunch-of-facts sequence, none of which bears relevance to the diverse, often catastrophic world our students live in. What Hess calls catastrophism might just describe how passion has always shaped our politics.

And politics, civil or not, is just the means to get the world we want.

A couple of years ago, the Michigan Democrats posted a statement on their Facebook page:

The purpose of public education in a public school is not to teach students what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public.”

The statement was quickly criticized—Parents’ Rights!—and walked back, but I think there’s some truth there. Parents want their children to be literate, and numerate, for sure. But when it comes to understanding what science tells us about climate change, or encouraging 18-year olds to become informed voters, should a subset of parents be able to shut that whole thing down?

Here’s a toast to social studies teachers everywhere, as we approach November 5. You go.

by nflanagan

Nine Reasons Why Standardized Tests and Grades Shouldn’t Necessarily Match Up

Headline from a recent piece in Education Week: Grades and Standardized Test Scores Aren’t Matching Up. Here’s Why.

Let me give you the gist: Grades are unreliable, whereas standardized test scores scientifically measure real content knowledge. Grades are given by teachers. Therefore, teachers’ grades are not to be trusted, and teachers should receive additional training on how to accurately measure what students know. There’s also a jab at grade inflation, post- pandemic. Who is quoted in the article? That’s right, the College Board and the ACT folks.

From my point of view: a) Sure, additional training for preservice teachers on the art and purpose of assessment would be very useful. b) Also useful: a common understanding of what a grade means. Is it a representation of a student’s progress—or an evaluation of how well they’re meeting pre-set standards—or an educated guess about how the student will do in college?

I don’t think teachers’ grades and standardized tests should, necessarily, measure the same things. Furthermore, standardized tests don’t have relationships with students, or know what the student brought to the table, when starting the course. 

I have written lots about grades as assessment, including the piece I’m including, below, about the Soft Bigotry of Low Grades. It begins with an essay on “low expectations” then morphs into nine points about grading that teachers understand (and argue about).

Whoever wrote the phrase ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ back in the early days of the Bush (W) administration, was a genius. In one nifty sound bite, the blame for the so-called achievement gap was placed squarely on the shoulders of educators, those barrel-bottom, unimaginative civil servants slogging along in low-paying careers.

Not only were veteran teachers unable to conceive of their students’ success (presumably, getting into a competitive-admissions college)—they were also bigots, kind of. Perhaps they hadn’t read 25 books on racism, been hooked on The Wire, or stayed for two grueling years in a no-excuses charter before heading off to Goldman Sachs. They were just stuck in those dead-end teaching jobs.

Early in the ‘reform’ days—a couple decades ago—Disruptor types were prone to proclaiming that high expectations for all students were, in fact, a positive disruption to what they assumed was the low and unimaginative level of teaching practice endemic in public education. Especially in schools filled with kids who took home backpacks full of peanut butter and whole wheat crackers every Friday.

If only teachers had faith in their students, cracking the academic whip and believing they could someday rise above their circumstances and excel—well, then things would be different. What we needed was new—high and rigorous—standards, better aligned curricula, more sorting-out data. We needed ‘choice’ to remove kids from low-expectations government schools.

And of course, better teachers, teachers who embodied these great expectations and were willing to rip up unacceptable assignments. Even if it made kids cry.

The ‘low expectations’ trope became a thing. The 74 was still printing pieces about it, 18 years later, using phrases like ‘complacency is also still alive and well’ and ‘having teachers who were confident that their students would complete college made a real difference in their college attainment.’

The 74’s suggestions for improvement? You won’t be surprised: higher standards, more testing and raising the cutoff scores, rigorous curriculum—and better teachers, the kind who expected more. Nary a mention of better health care, better jobs with higher wages, better childcare options, better support networks for people in poverty. Or less racism.

When I read that Fordham was releasing a new report entitled Great Expectations: The Impact of Rigorous Grading Practices on Student Achievement, I assumed it would be more of the same: a screed against ‘grade inflation’ that urged teachers to use the threat of bad grades as ‘motivator’ in getting kids to Learn More (and score better on high-stakes tests, quantitative ‘proof’ of learning).

Turns out I was right.  Here’s the first paragraph of the summary:
We know from previous survey research that teachers who hold high expectations for all of their students significantly increase the odds that those young people will go on to complete high school and college. One indicator of teachers’ expectations is their approach to grading—specifically, whether they subject students to more or less rigorous grading practices. Unfortunately, “grade inflation” is pervasive in U.S. high schools, as evidenced by rising GPAs even as SAT scores and other measures of academic performance have held stable or fallen. The result is that a “good” grade is no longer a clear marker of knowledge and skills.

Here’s how my 30-odd years’ worth of grading some 5000 students (at least 35K individual grades) squares with the statement above:

  • High expectations are a good thing, all right—but they are not commensurate with giving more unsatisfactory marks. In fact, being a ‘tough grader’ often means that the teacher is not meeting a substantial chunk of kids where they are, then moving them forward. The easiest thing in the world is giving a low or failing grade and blaming it on the student. The hard thing is figuring out how to help that child achieve at the level he’s capable of.
  • The longer I taught, the higher my expectations were, as I learned what students at different developmental levels were able to do—but that was not reflected in the grades I gave. I assumed it was because I had become a better teacher and was getting better results as my teacher tool bag filled. I could see with my own eyes that I had underestimated what my students could learn and apply, if they chose to work at it.
  • I seriously doubt that teachers’ expectations—as defined here by more rigorous grading– have much, if any, impact on kids’ completing college, or even high school. A teacher who encourages a student to think big, to push herself, to reach for the stars and so on, may indeed have a long-term positive effect on a student, especially one with self-doubts. Setting students on a path to higher education and life success is a long-term, K-12 project, one that can’t be accomplished by teachers alone and certainly not by dropping the grading scale a few points to teach them a lesson.
  • Grades aren’t real, although the argument can be made that they’re more real than a standardized test score (which the report also uses to make the claim that ‘raising the bar’ has a salutary effect on student outcomes). No matter how schools try to standardize grading, the human judgment factor creeps in. As it should. Students see their grades as something ‘given’ by the teacher, no matter how many times teachers insist that grades are ‘earned’ and can be accurately, precisely, mathematically granted.*
  • Grade inflation isn’t real either. I am always amused by disgruntled edu-grouches who insist that Harvard, say, is awash in grade inflation. When an institution turns away 94.6% of the students who have the temerity to apply, why are we shocked when the crème de la crème who are admitted get all A’s?
  • If we were doing our jobs better, by Fordham’s metrics—following rigorous standards, choosing engaging and challenging curricula, assessing frequently—wouldn’t the desired outcome be better grades?
  • The worst kind of grading practice is the bell curve. Curving grades has gone out of fashion, but you still see its aftereffects in reports like this that bemoan the overly high percentage of students whose work is deemed good or superior. If you’ve ever had a class filled with go-getters (and I’ve had many), you’ll know it’s possible to teach to the highest standards and have every child in the class performing at a high level. Someone does NOT have to fail. What the researchers here seem to be endorsing is a curve where students in high-poverty schools are not compared with their peers, but with kids in advantaged schools—then taking the top-scoring kids down a peg or two, for their own good.
  • Bad grades don’t motivate most kids to try harder, although this seems to be the sweeping conclusion of the report, which studied 8th and 9th Algebra students in North Carolina. The researchers noted that students in advantaged schools were more likely to make gains when receiving a lower grade. There are lots of charts and graphs showing how teachers who give lower grades initially cause an uptick in standardized assessment scores eventually. This is more likely to happen if that teacher went to a ‘selective’ college or is an experienced veteran teacher, by the way. As for the poor students who go to rural or urban schools—well, they get good grades that don’t reflect what they’ve really learned. Therefore, maybe we should give them lower grades, too, as an early reality check.
  • I repeat: bad grades don’t usually motivate kids, unless there’s someone at home checking up on them, they plan on going to college and care about their GPA. In that case, a lower grade may serve as a heads-up that more effort may be necessary. Do 8th grade Algebra students and students in advantaged schools where most kids are college bound fit into that category? Yes.

Students who do well in school also know how to study effectively– or seek extra help when something is difficult for them. They’re not as likely to think that the tough-grading Algebra teacher doesn’t like them, or that they’ve finally found a subject they can’t successfully master. Lots of previous successes have given them the confidence to pursue a challenging subject.

What struck me about the report was the facile conclusion that a subset of (higher-achieving) students was motivated by a lower-than-expected grade into learning more.

Extrapolating that into a declaration that tougher grading would lead to higher achievement is giving way to much credence to a cranky-pants theory, the one where a kick in the pants is what kids these days really need.

*In my 30+ year career, I taught math for two years. Prior to that, I collected various data to develop and tweak a defensible grading process for teaching instrumental and vocal music. Music is a challenging discipline in which to assess using hard numbers, trust me; I envied my math teacher friends whose grades were always clean, clear percentages. Then I taught math and discovered—eh, you can juke the stats in math, too, through assignment weighting, partner quizzes (recommended by our math series), late assignment policies, re-takes, homework evaluation policies—and so much more. Grading—in any subject or level– is not science. Never has been.

by nflanagan

Are You an Instruction Geek?

I generally don’t pay much attention, anymore, to the rightwing young guns who dominate edu-social media. Mostly this is because they’re not providing any new content about what you might call school improvement—genuinely interesting or useful ideas for making lessons interesting, building curriculum that makes sense in 2024, figuring out better ways to assess student work and encouraging students to get excited about learning.

You know, the things that support the people actually doing the work of teaching in the public schools—where 82% of our K-12 students are educated. Instruction.

In the five decades since I started teaching, reading and writing about all aspects of schooling and education policy, there have been hundreds of such new ideas. Some were genius, some fizzled out, some—annual standardized testing springs to mind—are now part of what everyone thinks is normal, maybe even essential. Even though these ideas may have harmed many children.

The yappy bow-ties posting on the regular about how public education is a big fat failure aren’t offering us genius ideas. They’re focused on vandalizing one of America’s great strengths: a free, high-quality public education for every child, no matter what they bring to the table.

Prime example: Daniel Buck, whose X-label is “Instruction Geek.”

Buck actually did teach for a few years, shifting from public education to private, three schools in what looks like six years. Then he wrote a book and informed his following that he was, sadly, leaving the classroom to put his intellect to better use, writing blogs—as a ‘policy and editorial associate’ for a conservative non-profit.

For a guy who pretends to have cool, juicy ideas about instruction, lots of his posts seem pretty rigidly political and not about teachers’ professional work at all.  A sampling:

  • Conservatives need to start thinking about, building, and regaining control of our education institutions after school choice becomes the law of the land. Won’t do much good if all charter and private schools are stocked with teachers, curriculum, and policies out of ed schools.
  • Teachers, stop voting for Democrats. Their education policies sound nice but again and again just make our schools worse.
  • Once again, I repeat: MORE MONEY WILL NOT FIX AMERICAN SCHOOLS.
  • Students should be expected to obey their teachers. Seems pretty common sense to me but sadly, a statement that must be made.

The last one made me think that perhaps Mr. Buck’s former students had ideas of their own about, umm, instruction, but maybe I’m reading too much into his little outburst.

A couple of days ago, Mr. Geek Buck posted something that’s actually about instruction:

Sorry but one teacher cannot differentiate every lesson for 27 different kids whose reading level ranges from 1st to 11th and account for 6 different IEPS. The inclusion/no-tracking push is simply unworkable.

There were a few affirming responses—because clearly, classroom teaching is impossible; the only way to give each individual child precisely what they need is one-to-one tutoring. And, by the way, that doesn’t work so well either.

I started thinking about differentiation in my own classroom. My typical class size hovered around 65 middle school students. Their reading levels ran the K-12 gamut, and I frequently had a dozen or more special education students (with varying disabilities and strengths) in a class. Some students were inclined to disobedience, things that couldn’t be remedied by mere expectations. Oh—and they were all holding expensive noisemakers.

My job was teaching them to make pleasant and accurate musical sounds, then combine those sounds, using an entirely new symbolic language, into music, with regular performances for their parents, their peers and the community. I also had to weave some cultural and historical information into the instructional mix—things that would help them see the beauty and value and joy of what they were (inexpertly) crafting.

Everyone was included. Nobody was tracked (beyond being in the band with their grade-mates). Some of my band-teacher colleagues had auditions and sorted their students into a top ensemble, and lesser-light bands. The drawback to painstakingly dividing groups by “ability” is that ability is really hard to measure, and students who are deemed sub-par often drop out. Students also learn at different rates. The kid who’s way behind in September may be caught up in January and at the top of the class at the end of the year.

I’m fully willing to admit that there are many ways to teach kids important content, but I never met anybody who made 27 lesson plans for a single class. Most differentiation happens across the instructional cycle—presenting new material multiple times in multiple ways, offering different forms of an assignment, assessing work based on what you know about that student. Student choice can be a big part of differentiation.

And sometimes, of course, they all take the same 10-question quiz, so you can get a handle on who’s got it reasonably well, and whose understanding just isn’t there. That’s OK, too. You don’t have to divide them into tracks. They already know who’s smart and who is struggling.

I love nothing more than talking about instruction. Pedagogy is my jam. And I resent people self-appointing as instructional leaders and experts, when all they’re doing is using public schools for target practice.

Here’s one more from the iGeek:

Advocates are trying to retrofit schools to do all that families should / used to — from feeding three meals a day to teaching basic behavioral norms. They are failing at doing so. No public institution can correct for the breakdown of the family.

Be wary of the word “should”—always—but take a look at what teachers are accused of here: teaching good behavior and feeding kids. Maybe no public institution can truly fix the breakdown of families. But don’t schools get credit for at least trying?

by nflanagan

What Schools SHOULD Be Teaching

…that isn’t in the regular, designated curriculum.

So many things, right?

You’ve undoubtedly seen the memes: Why aren’t schools teaching personal finance, including credit cards and taxes? What about home and car repairs? Insurance? First aid? Time management? Study skills? Stress relief? How to find a job, feed yourself and do your laundry?

Frequently, the post will draw supportive comments, ranging from unwarranted criticisms of what schools actually DO attempt to teach, to nostalgic memories of the days when all the boys had to take woodshop in 9th grade. There was never a shortage of handcrafted birdhouses in those days, by golly.

And—dipping into fantasy here—wouldn’t it be great if schools picked up responsibility for teaching all the life skills one needs to be a fully functioning adult? In addition to math, languages, history, sciences and literature, of course.

The ones that really get to me are the folks begging schools to teach good interpersonal communication and conflict resolution, with maybe a dash of leadership thrown in, but then picket the school board because Mrs. Jones has launched a social-emotional learning through mindfulness (SEL) program for 4th graders, and you know what that means.

A friend just posted a meme reminding us that 100 years ago, students were learning Latin and Greek in high school, and now, high school graduates are taking remedial English in college.

There are multiple responses to that one, beginning with an accurate explanation of just who went to high school in the 1920s—and what percentage of students go to college today.

The utility of studying Latin and Greek (or Logic and Rhetoric) in 2024—as opposed to, say, Spanish or robotics—is debatable, as well, but everyone understands the underlying purpose of such a meme: Schools today are failing. Tsk, tsk. Discuss.

If you’re a long-time educator, you learn to take these comments in stride. Just more evidence that everyone’s been to school, and thus believes they understand what schools and teachers should be doing. It’s an evergreen cliché that happens to be largely true.

But there are a couple of points worth making:

  • The required curriculum is overstuffed already. Way overstuffed, in fact. Michigan—which has a tightly prescribed “merit curriculum” for HS students– just added a requirement that all students take a semester-long course in personal finance. This can take the place of a math course—or a fine arts course, or a world languages course. Every time a requirement is added via legislation, students who want to take four years of a foreign language, or play in the orchestra for four years, have to juggle their schedules and make unpleasant choices.

There simply isn’t enough time in the day to cover everything—and it’s maddening to have someone at the state Capitol directing your path by limiting your choices.There are lots of important things to know about adulting, and you only get so much time to go to school for free, in the U.S. Expecting schools to teach things that used to fall squarely into the purview of parent responsibilities, without providing additional time and resources, is unfair.

  • This is educators’ professional work. Let’s take Mrs. Jones, the 4th grade teacher who decided to incorporate an SEL program into the daily life of her class. She’s doing that for a reason, I can assure you. Either these techniques have worked in the past to create a happier classroom atmosphere, or this class is particularly conflict-prone. She’s trying to make it possible for students to learn the other (required) things, by focusing first on communication and techniques that calm students, helping them focus.

Do educators sometimes get students’ curricular and personal needs wrong? Sure. But they are the first line of defense, and best positioned to incorporate non-disciplinary work (like time management, stress relief and how to properly thank someone) into the classroom. And all of them appreciate these things being reinforced at home.

  • You can’t get away from teaching things that fall into the wider scope of how to be a successful adult and citizen, as a schoolteacher. You’re always, always modeling, correcting, observing and suggesting behaviors, whether your students need help getting into their snowsuits or help in getting over a failed romance. Even if you’re teaching AP Calc, there will be inadvertent lessons in addressing challenges, persistence and the value of studying something so abstract and elegant.

There is a prevailing belief, especially in the past couple of decades, that the only way Americans can compete in the global economy, maintaining our preeminent position, is to “raise the bar.” This usually translates to harder coursework, required earlier in a student’s academic career, monitored by increased testing. More top-down control. More competition.

When you drill down far enough, what’s missing is a clear objective for public education. Are we, indeed, trying to help every child reach their full potential (in which case, bring on the handcrafted birdhouses and mindfulness)—or are we trying to strengthen the economy by creating skilled and compliant workers?

by nflanagan

Man with Sixteen College Degrees Can’t Read

I mostly stay out of the Reading Wars. Not because I don’t have opinions on reading instruction. I emphatically do.  I avoid the controversy because—as a lifelong music teacher—expressing that opinion inevitably leads to a pack of Science of Reading enthusiasts pointing out that I am not a reading teacher, and therefore what do I know?

This is deeply ironic, as those same SOR fans also spend lots of time criticizing experienced reading specialists. Also–I have taught in the neighborhood of 4000-5000 kids, over 30+ years, to read music, relying on a wide array of pedagogical techniques.  But that form of reading instruction evidently carries no water with the SOR bullies.

I was intrigued today by a story in NY Times Magazine about Benjamin Bolger:

Benjamin B. Bolger has been to Harvard and Stanford and Yale. He has been to Columbia and Dartmouth and Oxford, and Cambridge, Brandeis and Brown. Overall, Bolger has 14 advanced degrees, plus an associate’s and a bachelor’s.

Bolger, who is now 48, got off to a rough start, with a disastrous car accident when he was two years old that seemed to trigger the breakup of his parents’ marriage.

Bolger’s mother spent much of her money in the ensuing custody battle, and her stress was worsened by her son’s severe dyslexia. In third grade, when Bolger still couldn’t read, his teachers said he wouldn’t graduate from high school. Recognizing that her boy was bright, just different, his mother resolved to home-school him — though “home” is perhaps not the right word: The two spent endless hours driving, to science museums, to the elite Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit for drawing lessons, even to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington. At night she read to him: epic works of literature like “War and Peace” but also choose-your-own-adventure books and “Star Wars” novelizations.

It would be easy to project the next part of the story—he somehow “learned to read” and then caught up to his classmates. But that’s not what happened.

At 11, he began taking classes at Muskegon Community College. Still reading below a third-grade level, Bolger needed his mother to read his assigned texts out loud; he dictated papers back to her. At 16, he enrolled at the University of Michigan, moving with her into an off-campus apartment. He recorded his lectures so he could listen to them at home; his mother still read to him. Majoring in sociology, he graduated with a 4.0. He was 19.

There were some failures (as we traditionally define failure). Bolger dropped out of law school at Yale due to the heavy reading load. But then, of course, he got back up on the academic horse, and pursued other degrees—including a PhD from Harvard, successfully completed. He also married and has two rather beautiful children, for whom he’s designed an experience-intensive home-schooling program.

What’s interesting to me is that the NYTimes Magazine article doesn’t dwell on Bolger’s inability to read well (whatever that means). Only on the fact that he has more degrees than only one other person in the nation (who’s also from Michigan, for whatever that’s worth).

Given the laser focus, in 2024, on determining which reading program yields the best test scores, I am surprised that a long-form article in a major publication does not explore the question of how one gets a master’s in the Politics of Education from Columbia, for example, without being an expert at deciphering complex texts, close reading.

But the “does he read or doesn’t he?” question—the one where we now expect to see evidence or data—never gets raised again. The article does say he has multiple master’s degrees in writing, obtained after his dissertation was completed.

Things that ARE apparent in this article:

  • Third grade is WAY too early to label ANY child a non-reader (or punish them by retaining them). It’s too early for labels, period.
  • When it comes to effective learning (the kind that sticks, and can be applied), experiences trump worksheets.
  • Continuously reading to your children, even when they are supposedly “reading to learn” at age eight, is absolutely the right thing to do.
  • Visual interpretation of text symbols is not more efficient or of higher value than hearing that text read aloud.
  • Many, many children are “bright but different.”

This is where we morph into wondering why every child in America doesn’t get the hothouse treatment Bolger did, with his own personal learning coach/secretary/guidance counselor/mom. Worth noting: Bolger’s mother, at the time of the accident, was a schoolteacher.

I would be the first to say that such an individualized education is far beyond what any public school could be expected to provide for a bright-but-different child. Given the ongoing strenuous campaign to strip resources from public education, we’re not likely to see public schools turn their limited energies and resources to meeting individual needs in whatever ways parents demand.

Nor is this a pitch for home-schooling. Most kids are educated in public schools, and if the hundreds of pictures on my social media feeds are any indication, kids in 2024 are graduating, going to college, working at summer jobs or finishing the fourth grade a little taller and smarter. Bolger, in other words, just got lucky.

This is a pitch for not writing students off, at any point in their academic career.

You may be wondering what Benjamin Bolger does for a living. He’s a full-time private college-admissions consultant, charging clients $100K for four years’ of services, which I was surprised to learn is kind of cheap in Admissions Consultant World.

I find Bolger’s story rather amazing, an exploration of what it means to be intelligent, and well-educated. Many historical figures bypassed traditional education models and found their way to greatness and influence via their natural smarts and leadership. Bolger embraced the traditional path to success— degrees from prestigious colleges—but got there without the benefit of the K-12 college rat race. Or the ability to read at “grade level.”

There should be a lesson for the SOR devotees in there somewhere.

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

Quote of the Day

Sometimes, Facebook bubbles up a worthy glimpse of the past. This awesome quote– from 12 years ago– appeared on my page this morning, causing me to reflect on how much we’ve lost in the past decade. Wood is reflecting here on a remarkably different era– where Michelle Rhee was on the cover of TIME magazine, brooming out “ineffective” teachers, and Teach for America was growing, not shrinking and re-branding. His school was building on the reforms of the 1990s, with student-focused programming and the valuing of teacher expertise. If nothing else, it rebuts the tired cliche’ that “factory model” schools have not changed in the past century– schools have changed radically in just a dozen years. George Wood’s school was in Ohio, where “reformers” see their #1 goal as expanding private school vouchers.

“For the past 18 years, I have worked as a HS/MS school principal alongside a dedicated staff and a committed community to improve a school. In that time, we have increased graduation and college-going rates, engaged our students in more internships and college courses, created an advisory system that keeps tabs on all of our students, and developed the highest graduation standards in the state (including a Senior Project and Graduation Portfolio).

But reading the popular press and listening to the chatter from Washington, I have just found out that we are not part of the movement to ‘reform’ schools. You see, we did not do all the stuff that the new ‘reformers’ think is vital to improve our schools. We did not fire the staff, eliminate tenure, or go to pay based on test scores. We did not become a charter school. We did not take away control from a locally elected school board and give it to a mayor. We did not bring in a bunch of two-year short-term teachers.

Nope, we did not do any of these things. Because we knew they would not work.”

George Wood

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

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.