A different kind of place

My new school is a world apart from last year's school. Of course, teaching will probably always involve more work than one can actually quite complete, always absorb all available time and attention. And we always have a share of students who arrive well below grade level and need catching up or have problems. Still - this is just so different!

The administrators are not only law-abiding and sane (which would have been quite enough this year), but also reasonable, professional, competent, kind and thoughtful. Decisions made make sense in educational terms. Teachers are treated with respect. Students are spoken about with compassion and hope. When I see my principal, VP or math department head in the halls my first impulse is, weirdly, to run over and hug them (which, of course, I never do). Such strange reactions may seem less odd given how everyone in the building used to react to the voice or presence of my principal of last year: students would scamper off, disappearing around corners, hiding out in bathrooms or classrooms. Teachers would tighten up, set up blank faces and walk away as rapidly as would seem safe for avoiding attention... When I meet my current VP in the halls in the evenings or during weekends she'll tell me to go home and make sure I don't work too hard. Last year's principal would barge into classrooms and reprimand teachers in front of all the students for not having completed impossible tasks. My current school has as a stated goal of the year to improve in the area of helping struggling students to succeed. Last year's principal told the teachers explicitly that the lower-track students were there "to pay the bills" and advised us not to spend too much energy on them. And so forth. I love my new administration.

Student behavior is also incomparably different. I can identify with Ben Chun's amazed reaction to the fact that his students arrived in class equipped with pencils and paper, and that they would without further ado proceed to use these items to produce writing when asked to do so. That really boggles your mind after you've spent so much energy through a whole year on failing to get students to do this. Other strange behaviors include a homework completion rate of above 90%, an ability to stay more or less on task for 85 minutes straight, and the fact that they will actually allow you several sentences worth of time to explain the rationale for a policy they have objections to - and then accept the policy as a result of the explanation. That feeling you have when you brace yourself to lift something heavy, and then end up recoiling and practically losing your balance because it isn't? I've had that so many times this semester.

Not that things are perfect. I still have occasional classes going off track, and the Friday freshman group from 1:30-3:00 is a challenge. But overall classes are going well, and it's not because I have magically become a better teacher over the summer. That is, I am teaching better, but not due to any dramatic improvements in personality or capacity or wisdom over the break. Rather, the students arrive with fewer issues, fewer inner distractions and distress, less reason to be angry. And if they do have a bad day, we have two counselors - both wonderful people - that they can speak with. A student who appears troubled can get a pass from a teacher to visit a counselor, and the kid generally arrives back in class much more collected and calm 15 minutes later. At my previous school kids could have had a shooting in the family over the weekend and there would be no help for them at school. Small wonder their minds were not on their math classes.

Another strange thing: There are two music teachers and one arts teacher here. So in the teacher lunch room you can actually hear discussions about arts pedagogy and music instruction. That's new and different and wonderful, too.

My new Math Department is fantastic. The tiny PreAlgebra group is taught by a Religion teacher that I haven't talked much with yet. The two other full-time Math teachers - wow. They both have actual degrees in math, and have taught for more than 7 years apiece. They're naturally excited about math in all forms, love upper division math and can do great things with graphing calculators. They also are very interested in and knowledgable about pedagogy and learning theory. And they're deeply committed to helping struggling students through their courses, putting in at least 5 hours of tutoring per week (I'm sure one of them may do close to 10 hours many weeks). I recently observed these two women run into each other in the staff room after 4 pm on a Thursday and start talking about one student who had failed Geometry last year but was doing so much better this year. Then they got completely absorbed in a discussion about just why students tended to display a particular misconception when doing a certain kind of Calculus problem. I don't teach Calculus and just listened, enjoying the idea that I get to work with people like this.

Anecdotal comparisons between this school and last year's school could continue, and the contrast is interesting in a way. But as the positive shock is wearing off, thinking about math instruction is taking the place of reacting to the constant ringing of the moral alarm system (Beep! Beep! This is wrong! This can't be happening! Beep! That's lying! That's unfair! That will positively hurt the students! But...! Beep! How can anyone possibly be getting away with this?! Beep!) Without this noise, the topics I want to discuss are different. In accordance with this shift in attention and focus, I'm planning to pretty much abandon this blog for Coffee and Graph Paper. To those of you who have been reading until now - and to Dan in particular - thanks for listening :) Your kind interest was encouraging.

Classroom Decorations

A large number of my classroom decorations this year were simply snagged from other blogs. Neil Winton and Paul Williams kindly gave permission to use their photos for classroom posters, and here's what that ended up looking like (through the MacBook camera lens, so the image quality is what it is).

I'm teaching at a Catholic school this year, and Neil's beautiful images fit underneath a crucifix stuck to my back classroom wall that I felt a little awkward about. The series of photos, with the reflections of cathedral windows in the child's eyes in the last slide, did nicely - and I've no idea what else could have gone up there. The white background to the photos also fits well with the brown and black of the surroundings, making the white function more like an actual color rather than as blank space, if that makes any sense. In the morning, sunlight enters from a window just to the right of this wall.



Finding a background for Paul's images was tricky. I thought black would be the only good choice, except for the fact that this classroom has blackboard (yes - real, old-style black blackboard with chalk!) on three walls, so that there is already a lot of black in there. The arts teacher recommended this mint green, however, and that worked. Still think I'll change this wall somehow when I get time, which won't be any time soon, but for now this is what it looks like.


The third wall has a fast and dirty version of Dan Greene's idea. One student studying the poster thought "get rich" should be included as a separate item, without any qualifying additions, so that is chalked in to the right.



The text on green and yellow paper are the objectives for Algebra, with the pink arrow indicating where we are now. The row runs along the whole wall. The purpose was mainly to put some color up there to contrast with the ubiquitous brown and black. I do like the historical feel to the classroom deriving from the dark wood, tan walls, brown floor, and old-style blackboards and windows with irregular glass - but it is a little drab for a high school room.

I guess it would be good to have more actual math on the walls. But one of the humanities teachers who wandered in expressed that this was the most "human" math classroom she'd seen (whatever that means), and I'm happy enough with it for now.

Anyway, great thanks to all these bloggers who contributed ideas for decorating a blank classroom in just a few days!


Update: Would be nice if Blogger's preview looked just a little like the published version!

Four slides

Here's my entry to Dan's challenge of selling yourself in four slides. I'm in it for the participation points.

Thankfully, by now one other blogger has submitted without using full name. So I won't be the first one. The readers who would like to produce sarcastic commentary about such practices can go ahead and do so - over on their own blogs, please.

I made the slides in Keynote - my first attempt at using that tool, and that alone would justify the time spent on it. I found the end result to be a little pretentious, but figure at this point I'll learn more from critical comments than from spending more time on trying to fix it. In any case there's no time left for that - and I'll need to add photo credits a few hours later. Got to run.






Photo Credits

• Planet Earth borrowed from Poederbach
  
• Banana plugs in a cake, used with permission from Njaal Gulbrandsen (thanks!)
  
• Electric Discharge borrowed from thenerdsangle
  
• Fist with "M-A-T-H" inked onto fingers: My photo, inspired by this poster, which I bought for my classroom this winter. NACME still sells it.

...and a word of appreciation for Creative Commons and for those who make their photos available for use by others.

Copyright question

Would using this picture, the purpose of which would be to invoke the campaign that this poster was a part of, amount to an infringement of copyright?

No road that is right entirely

Much of the summer has been overshadowed by the shutting down of my school of last year, after some colleagues and I blew the whistle about all kinds of irregularities there. It had to be done, and almost certainly a great deal of harm to future students will be avoided because of it.

However, there is little or no sense of closure or relief now that it is - for me, at least - over. Many students are also hurt by the disruption to their schooling that this is causing, and some are resentful about it. For a 15 year old, the loss of classmates and friends weighs more heavily than that laws be followed and that standards-based instruction be available to all students.

Also, for quite a number, anger is fueled by fear, by the prospect of having academic deficits exposed now that a protective fabric of lies spun by the school has been torn open. On the one hand, all students are entitled to realistic, honest assessment of where they are, and withholding such information from them amounts to lack of respect, to patronization. On the other hand, providing such information without simultaneously offering tools, means, hope for improvement is cruel. You can not bring years of educational negligence down on children's heads and then expect them to enthusiastically tackle the gaps in their learning. Some will give up and go under, learning even less. Most of these students will not receive the kind of remediation and support they would need in order to reach levels that the school pretended they had already achieved.

Of course, such considerations about possible damages resulting from reporting the school were on our minds before we took these steps. It is distressing to be in a situation where no matter what you do - and including the scenario where you do nothing - harm will be done to many, and where the phrase "doing the right thing" does not seem to refer to any option in the real world. One could draw parallels to decisions about going to war under the realization that you'll be killing god-knows-how-many babies before ever achieving whatever "just" goal you're hoping to achieve. But, yeah, this is getting overly melodramatic, I see, I see. No-one was killed in the drama I'm preoccupied with. And with that it's about time - in fact, far overdue - to leave a nightmarish year behind and focus on issues that actually lend themselves to constructive efforts.

“Because it meets an abiding human need” - Last entry on Haberman's book

Yesterday I spent quite some time poking around in a large university library, enjoying the fact that I could find again books I'd read in high school and college at another time, in another place. The rows upon rows of books, many in worn cloth binding, the titles upon titles about matters of which I know nothing, in languages that I do not understand, the characteristic scent of old paper, and leather, and print, the hush of the place – it's electrifying.

While I was a high school junior I discovered that my school's library would allow us to order books from libraries in other cities if we needed them for projects. One book I ordered turned out to be from a university's Biology library. The very idea – that there could be an entire library devoted to just one subject! A Biology library! That implied that there might be entire libraries devoted to other areas too. There might be a Mathematics library. A History library. A Philosophy library! That blew my mind.

Another memory, from freshman year in college, is of picking up a book ordered from a distant library (Popper and Eccles' The Self and its Brain, for the curious), and realizing that my heart rate was increasing and my palms sweating as I checked out the item. There were other books like that, books that commanded full attention and emotional involvement, and that changed my ways of thinking.

I'm wondering about how such a disposition can be taught, or kindled, or inspired, or instilled, or fostered, in my students. The string of metaphors is there because I don't know which description would most accurate. I am also wondering whether this even is an appropriate goal. It seems very old-fashioned.

These past two years I have kept my math- and science related books, and also a number of books on educational politics, civil rights matters, history, some science fiction, in the classroom – and until I got used to it I was bemused by the students' complete lack of curiosity about the bookshelf. A couple of the brightest kids inspected the shelf the first year. During the second year, in a school with much more low-performing students, no-one did - with the exception that my dictionary, which was for communal use, disappeared. My English teacher colleague thought I should consider that loss a positive thing.

We should not, I guess, equate curiosity and a love of learning with bibliophilia, because so much learning can happen without books. Maybe it even must happen without books, just because reliance on weak reading skills would severely limit access for many students. This past year such a large fraction of my students were unable to read comfortably. They could decode text if they had too, but it seemed a deliberate and laborious task, not much like that immediate and unconscious process whereby meaning springs from the page to a fluent reader, where the very presence of text triggers comprehension of the message before the words have even consciously been read.

However, even without conflating indifference to books with indifference to learning – and at the risk of simply demonstrating lack of insight and understanding about my students – I'd assert that they displayed remarkably little intellectual curiosity, and further that it would be better – for them – if they did have more. Again at the risk of merely demonstrating prejudice and patronization, I am wondering how they can be 'taught' (for want of a better word, and certainly not intending to imply that such 'teaching' is anything other than nurturing an existing disposition) to take more interest in more aspects of the world.


Teaching learning by modeling it

Pitting “Learning” versus “Job Training,” Haberman introduces the chapter titled “What Stars Think They're Doing” by holding that

Star teachers conceive that their primary goal is turning kids on to learning – i.e., engaging them in becoming independent learners. This doesn't mean that they don't care about student learning, but that they use learning as an opportunity to create this higher goal of engagement. On the other hand, some teachers see the achievement of specific learning objectives, connected with future employment, as their major purpose. The difference is not that one group values learning more than the other, but that stars see learning as a much broader goal. (p. 15)

As with other chapters of Haberman's book, I find myself alternately musing that his views are beautiful but overly romantic – and compelled by how closely his descriptions of low-income kids and their schooling experiences seems to fit what I saw this part year.

Haberman claims that Star teachers "recognize that children can and will be naturally 'turned on' to learning - not because it is always fun, but because it meets an abiding human need (p. 33)" and that their strategy is to convince the students of this approach by modeling it. In particular, these teachers do not attempt to justify students daily lessons in terms of their utility for future employment:

The elementary teacher who tries to motivate children by telling them, “You will need to know this someday to fill out an application form to get a job” or “You need this to make change at the grocery” is dead in the water as a generator of interest. ... Young children – and even adolescents – are not turned on to learning by the notion of future employment. ... How can a job be used to rationalize learning something about Andrew Jackson, the rivers of California, or the distinction in the usage of that and which in the fourth grade? Exhortation by elementary teachers who seek to make learning relevant to children's future occupational lives will not work because it cannot be done. (p. 32) (emphasis added)

A common sentiment is that the relevance of schooling and hence student motivation can be improved by offering more vocational classes, and Haberman is very skeptical to this approach, almost fiercely so. While I am personally puzzled by the low status frequently accorded to vocational education, and feel that the notion that offering vocational education reflects “low expectations” reveals more about the snobbery of upper classes than it does about the actual level of skill and knowledge required to perform these jobs well, Haberman does offer a strong case that high-poverty children in particular should be exposed to a broad liberal education and to a culture where learning is valued because “it feels good, it is right, it is natural, it can be enjoyable, and it is what we do here (p. 18)."

Children in poverty, Haberman explains, are unlikely to have "out-of-school models who are practicing chemists, language interpreters, writers, or others who can serve as models of knowledgeable people who derive great well-being as lifelong students," people who need no extrinsic reward to be driven to learn more about their field. “Children in poverty rarely, if ever, see such people, even on television.” And what are they missing out on?

... the joys of learning, learning for the sake of learning, the pursuit of a subject in depth because one has become addicted to it, the well-being that is unique to the knowledgeable learner, the sense of accomplishment that comes from hard study and application to a field, and most of all, the endless questions that pursue and tempt the individual who was learned enough to ask. (p. 31)

Only very knowledgeable and intellectually curious persons can become star teachers, first because they impart these dispositions by modeling them: “Star teachers get children to believe in the intrinsic value of learning because they believe in it themselves and are lifelong learners of various subjects, skills, and fields of study (p. 18),” and second because their project of tailoring assignments that students will become engrossed in requires a broad knowledge base: “children's learning can be made relevant to their present lives, but that takes teachers who know sufficient subject matter to connect it with children's daily lives and real problems (p. 32).”

Reading these passages leaves me wondering how they would apply to an Algebra classroom, as Haberman barely mentions either math or high school. I'll take the risk of getting an earful for suggesting that early high school math may not be interesting enough alone to be a great vehicle for teaching the love of learning - I think working up too much enthusiasm for the math can make the teacher appear a blinkered alien rather than a role model in curiosity. Interestingly, mrc and Dan both write about bringing extraneous interests into the math classroom, whether for journaling prompts or for a regularly scheduled show-and-tell session or in any other contexts that allow for it. And this is done deliberately to model eclectic interest and generalized love of learning, presumably under the assumption that the time lost in not working directly on math is nevertheless wisely invested this way.


Learning for lifers

Graduation at San Quentin was last week, and this event is a high point for students and teachers alike. Seven of the graduates were from the college program and earned AA degrees, the remaining 40 or so mostly earned GEDs or vocational certification. Keynote speaker Joe Loya congratulated the students on their achievement, and told them that in seeking an education,

You've moved closer to the world. And at this moment, the world has moved closer to you.

Why do inmates want, or need, an education? In a comment to my previous entry, Marco Polo asks about the students' incentive for working hard, and there are of course layers and varieties of motivation. An AA degree on your parole application looks good, chances of employment after release are significantly higher, and your freedom of movement within the prison can be increased as a result of your demonstrating positive attitudes and activities.

But there is more to it than that. Quite a number of the students are serving life sentences, and they seem no less diligent about their studies. But then, why would they be? In the words of Jody Lewen, who is director of the program,

Why would a person who might be in prison for a long time or even forever, why would that person need an education? I mean, I can't imagine that that person wouldn't need an education. What I guess it shows you, really, is the way we're programmed culturally to think about education, which is basically job training in the most sterile sense. In an educational sense, often they arrive starving...
(my lame transcription, with somewhat random punctuation, from the multimedia presentation on the front page of the Prison University Project's site.)

What happens when students do, for whatever reason, enroll in these college classes is that they - often for the first time - get exposed to an environment for intellectual inquiry, for expanding vocabulary, drawing distinctions, debating, writing. They thrive in it, often to their own surprise. Instructors whose day jobs include teaching free college students on the UC campus often remark on how much greater interest the San Quentin students display in their courses, how much more intensely they get involved.

But then, why wouldn't they be engaged? We should not ask for explanations for this fact, but rather wonder at the expectation that they would not. Most candidates for incarceration are severely undereducated, and learning meets an abiding human need.

Teaching Math at San Quentin

Any mention of teaching behind bars tends to elicit a degree of interest and even respect that is quite disproportionate to the task performed. In response to questions, here's an account of a typical evening of teaching inmates. Be warned, though, that this will be quite prosaic. Adrenaline-charged teaching happens in urban high schools. Teaching in prison is relatively uneventful.

There are, of course, a lot of security measures. Instructors sign in and show ID cards three times on their way to the classrooms, and on your first trip the clanging gates and metal detectors do make a bit of an impression. Soon all of this recedes into the background, however, and your mind focuses on the "teacher lounge" chatter as you wait in line after line. You discuss the evening's lesson, your plans for the weekend, the weather. The cs geeks wrap themselves in an incomprehensible exchange about some arcane programming issue and you laugh at them or ignore them (all the instructors are volunteers, and most are grad students at nearby colleges, and many are friends from the same research departments). The most exciting thing that ever happens is that some newbie gets caught for having absentmindedly brought in his or her cell phone and has to return to the car with it and go through each gate over again.

Once all security checkpoints are passed the Corrections Officer (CO) who supervises the building unlocks the classrooms. You pick up the box of materials for your class from the locker, take out the sign-in sheet, and start writing the agenda on the board. Students trickle in, and go about doing what they're supposed to do: they sign in, sharpen their pencils, take out their materials, and take notes or do practice problems or take quizzes. You lecture or tutor, as the case might be, and give students feedback on their work. The students ask questions and hand you answer as best you can. After about an hour there is a break, and the "close custody" students leave. You have about an hour after that for more teaching, but out of consideration for the students that must leave early you avoid covering new material.

When class is over you pack your materials back into the boxes, put the boxes into the locker, and troop to the first of three checkpoints to sign out. The discussions among the instructors on the way home are often similarly mundane: Why are fractions so hard for the students? What's a better way of explaining the Ruler Postulate? Is the pacing of the course appropriate? How can we improve communication among instructors who teach on different evenings? And do we want Mexican or Thai food for dinner?

You read all the way to the end? I told you it wouldn't be terribly exciting. You get on with teaching math and afterward you go home and sleep. Actually, I'm lying a bit: the instructor team, predominantly made up of Ph.D. students in Math or Science, is a pretty agreeable bunch to hang out with. I mean, if you're a public school teacher you've got to love a group of remarkably bright people whose strongest interests include Math or Science and equitable access to education. The dinner discussions after class can be really entertaining, and on one occasion we built a fire on the beach and toasted marshmallows under a starry sky before going home. So there's that. As far as level of pedagogical and interpersonal challenges go, however, it does not compare with high school teaching at all. In fact, the students' level of focus, interest in the material and general politeness make this teaching a pleasant and relaxed summer vacation activity.