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Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clappingFebruary 6, 2008The other night in St. Louis, during the METC conference, I had dinner with Steve Dembo and David Jakes, fellow bloggers, fellow educators. The casual dinner talk suddenly turned serious. Over the course of the day, we'd spoken to a few too many educators who responded to our ideas for new learning strategies, in fact to any new ideas, with all too familiar "yeah, but . . ." answers. Our dinner conversation turned to those issues that frustrate the hell out of us, arbitrary filtering of sites and tools, and then, specifically the national focus on AYP that moves so many educators away from what we know, and what experts and researchers tell us, good teaching looks like. ISTE's new NETS standards and AASL's new Standards for the 21st Century Learner, as well as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, focus our attentions beyond teaching basic skills. They ask us to spend our energies on problem solving, information fluency, collaboration, communication, and creativity. The huge disconnect looms like an 800 lb. gorilla in our classrooms. The research we read and the standards we adopt are not valued beyond our educational organizations and our conferences. At some point in that dinner conversation, David proposed something akin to this: given our current political situation, and educational infrastructures, it would be near impossible for us to see change in our lifetime. And David contended that significant change cannot occur outside of a crisis. Is this a crisis? For too many of us, the intense obsession with NCLB has changed what school looks like. It has significantly narrowed curriculum and options for learners. Many of us are forced to put alll other learning on the back burners and spend weeks/months of class time reviewing and drilling for upcoming two-subject state tests. Many of us abandon authentic and creative performance assessments because state tests do not value them, because our administrators arethemselves judged by whether or not their schools continue meet increasingly rising standards for AYP. As a result, administrators fear that their decent and good schools will be labeled as failures by a metric that ignores much of the good their schools and learners really do achieve. Despite all the creativity and energy they have for their chosen profession, for their grades and their content areas, teachers are encouraged to focus exclusively on drilling the items measured on high stakes assessments. While some students have been caught up by our focus on NCLB, so many others, who may not need catching up, have been, in fact, held back. Somewhere along the line, many schools have lost faith. We've lost faith that if we teach well and creatively, if we ask students to read and write and analyze across the content areas we teach, our students will improve their reading and math scores. So many of our schools now focus most of their energies on what we call “the bubble kids”--learners just above and just below the proficient line on the state assessment. In many schools, this may be a very small group. In many schools, other learners have other needs. What we are now doing to and for students who have no issues with passing the state assessments is akin to neglect. (If you haven't already read it, please take a look at No Dentist Left Behind, a now-classic tongue-in-cheeck essay on one-size-fits-all assessements written by John Taylor, retired superintendent of Lancaster County Schools.) My neighbors' children lost a music teacher. I've seen art programs decimated. (My own daughter did the rest of school, predominantly because doing the rest of school allowed her to do art.) Elementary teachers now spend far less time teaching the social studies concepts critical for global citizenship and other concepts not formally measured. Many schools teach two subjects only. Although it was never the intention of the NCLB program, local leaders and local consequences encourgage schools to let untested programs go. Interesting evidence of this shift--vendor representation on educational conference exhibit floors is overwhelmingly more about assessment than creativity and invention. Assessment is a booming industry. I do no know a single educator who is delighted with the improvements brought about by NCLB. And so . . . When I read the news about the Facebook anti-FARC mobilization last week, it occurred to me that as educators, we could learn a lot from young people and how they are beginning to use technology to mobilize. It occurred to me that far too many of us are speaking far too quietly in our faculty rooms and at conference dinners. It occurred to me, that my fierce little community of bloggers is not blogging or networking as effectively as our students. We are not harnessing the power of the technology we ourselves use and live on to inspire change. We could, we should, begin to focus our blogs ala Howard Rheingold's SmartMobs. At that dinner with Steve and David, I moved the conversation to Peter Pan. "Every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies,' somewhere there is a fairy that falls down dead."(James Barrie.) In the play, Peter was an activist--at least enough of an activist to step out of his story and address his audience directly, passionately. Like Peter in the play, like Rheingold in SmartMobs, it may be the right time in this crisis to turn to our audience, to turn to the multiple audiences we have so quickly generated through our blogs. Do we still believe in creativity and imagination? Do we still believe that curiosity and problem solving have a place in learning? Do we still believe in art and music and history and theater? Do we believe in fairies? Can we save Tink before it is too late? Can we clap loud enough to save what we know works in our schools? We’ve got to save our schools for the many curious and creative learners we now leave behind. Is NCLB our FARC? Can our new social networking abilities make any real difference? David doubted me when I suggested that teachers gathering together online might develop a voice for change, that we could clap loud enough. But I believe we CAN clap loud enough, that we can BLOG loud enough. I believe we can blog loud enough for the candidates and our leaders to hear us and help us truly reform education for learners. Posted by Joyce Valenza Ph.D on February 6, 2008 | Comments (8)
February 8, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping Howard Pitler commented: Joyce, you are rignt on the money here. We have allowed IT staff to dictate curriculum dicisions. I recently did a technology audit of a district and asked the superintendent who was in charge of curriculum in the district. He gave me a name and I told him that, at least as far as technology was concerned, he was wrong. It was his IT director. I then asked him what curriculum or even teaching credentials that person had, and of course, it was none. That was at least one clap for Tinkerbell.
February 8, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping Dean Shareski commented: Joyce,
February 8, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping Joe Brennan commented: Joyce, glad to see somebody was keeping an eye on Dembo and Jakes ;-) And, yes, we need to raise the volume level and get the word out beyond the faculty lounge. Standardized testing doesn't teach anything nor does it create lifelong learners.
February 9, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping joyce valenza commented: It was a trip keeping an eye on Dembo and Jakes. Thanks for the sympathy, Joe! Dean, I see the trend you describe. Though quality should win out, I worry for the learners who have to wait for that more engaged, more authentic, "fatter" model to return. While I also work in a happier ET/IT space, what I hear as I travel is so disturbing. I'd love to see your presentation! Call home when it's ready!
February 9, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping Barb commented: This hits home so hard! Last week I had another librarian send a request to unblock Google Notebooks. She received a very timely response from the clerk - gatekeeper who is charged with forwarding requests to the Web Content team (of which I am a member) for review. The site never gor to the committee for review. The requester was told to view the guidelines as this was a categorized as a forum/message board. I had told the LMS to specify that it was neither of those things. What bothers me more than anything is that the gatekeeper has no educational credentials. She is a classified employee who is good at her job. But if the web content committee never gets to review sites how can we ever convince the filtering folks that these are appropriate. I immediately got on the phone and the Coordinator has been working on this, but it is so frustrating! I am teaching a class in electronic publishing using Web 2.0 tools and it is full of people eager to learn and take these skills back to their classrooms. I am continuing to fight but I feel like David vs. Goliath...
February 10, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping Laura Serra commented: I teach grade one in a project based classroom. This year we are pulled two mornings monthly to go over practice bubble tests. My students loose 4 hours each month not to mention the time misspent on looking over spread shhets that are meaningless to my teaching. When I was hired it appeared that our administration valued high level thinking and retention of knowledge that comes from that type of learning. Now it appears that it is a war of the principals. (Who can score the highest)despite the extremes in demographics in our district. I have watched master teachers become deflated and this saddens me. I teach a very balanced reading program, using a intense phonics program by Fry for children who need this sort of thing. We also use high level vocabulary instruction. Children can memorize anything and will become complacent to fill out bubble after bubble. I do not have any students of the many who e-mail me year after year mentioning the bubbles. They do however, always tell me how glad they are that they learned so many interesting things and great big words. They tell me it is know helping them in upper grades. If we do not allow our children to problem solve with teacher direction they are going to become mindless robots staring forward at their in car movie screens and never learning to read for the pure love of reading. They will never learn that we use corn to make diapers, or how magnetism is all around us. Will they understand how to solve a complicated math problem like their peers in foreign countries. I have not given in yet to the nonsense of this over testing. But I am afraid many of my peers have.
February 15, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping Steve Dembo commented: I believe in faeries, and I believe in the power of the people. I think the one place that you and I seemed to disagree slightly about is that I believe we need to do more than talk loudly.
February 17, 2008
In response to: Saving Tinkerbell! On the importance of clapping joycevalenza commented: Steve, any movement has to start with a little shouting. With a little standing up. With a little singing. Remember Alice's Restaurant?
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