They Can't Cheat On This One

On the next test you give, have your students do the following:

1. Answer the questions as usual, using whatever resources you normally allow.

2. Analyze each question to determine its level on Bloom's.

3. Defend their choice for each question. 

Be sure to let them use any resources they want for steps 2 and 3--especially their cell phones.

Grade all three pieces for quality.

When you return the graded test, have students collaborate to revise some of the test items to raise their Bloom's level and present/defend their product.

Image source:

http://ww2.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm

Just Ask A Teacher's Spouse

I receive daily Kansas education news updates from Tony White, Uniserv Director for Kansas National Education Association. Today, he shared this piece posted by Vic DeSantis on Facebook. I felt strongly that this should be passed on. In terms of who reads this blog, this article "preaches to the choir," but maybe some of us can pass it along to the less enlightened....

My Wife is a Teacher
Vic DeSantis

I am a guy who lives for summers. I wasn’t always like this but I’m pretty sure I can pinpoint the exact time in my life where the months of June, July, and August became such an integral part of my happiness.

... You might be inclined to deduce that my yearning for these warmer times is related to a sports season or a passion for outdoor activities; perhaps even slower times at work. In some regards you might be correct but not exactly for the any one of the three multiple choice answers provided. 

You see, my wife is a teacher.

When I met my wife she was not a teacher - she was a student. When we married she was finishing her degree and starting out on her own professional career. To say that I knew nothing about the educational system at that point would be an enormous understatement. In the nearly 20 years that followed I have learned everything that a parent, student, citizen, and spouse should know about the challenges that every teacher faces. Armed with those insights it is difficult to reconcile the carefully framed messages of politicians and privatized education proponents with the realities of life in the classroom.

My wife is a teacher. I’ve never once, in the history of our life together, seen her trading derivatives, speculate in real estate, engage in subprime lending practices, or make exorbitant demands on her employer for an outrageous salary. It is perplexing to me that over the past few years she and her colleagues have, at least in the eyes of many, become public enemy number one. I suspect that a good portion of this misguided angst is directly related to the economic environment; something that she had absolutely no part in creating. Is she without fault? Absolutely not. I have over the years thought that she would have been much better off taking her well-earned college degree and her intelligence into the private sector and guiltlessly accumulated as much wealth and material possessions as possible. Sometimes you just can’t talk sense into these folks.

My wife is a teacher. Instead of making money she decided to make a difference. 

My wife is a teacher. For nearly 2 years she worked diligently to achieve the prestigious designation as a nationally board certified teacher – a designation that came with a small annual bonus. After meeting her end of the bargain, the state pulled the funding.

My wife is a teacher. She has worked for a decade and a half for far less money than her counterparts who are not public employees. She did this satisfied with the proposition that the pay was steady, a small retirement income certain, and the intangible satisfaction of steering the lives of children.

My wife is a teacher. Her income is now in decline. As a reward for her faithful years of service our state has decided that she should give back 3% of her salary towards her retirement. After all they say “this is what folks in the private sector do.” Tack-on another 2% reduction for the expired payroll tax holiday and the hits just keep on coming.

My wife is a teacher. Despite continuous assaults on her take-home pay, she shells out thousands of her own dollars for classroom supplies. She is impervious to the yearly barrage of administrative mandates established by politicians and so-called “educational experts” – she soldiers on.

My wife is a teacher. She is reviled by certain segments of our society who labor under the belief that she is underworked and overpaid. One would think that after fifteen plus years in a professional where a four-year college degree is a minimum entry requirement that most would not begrudge her a $40,000 a year salary. And for those less inclined to the truth, her salary is adjusted to smaller twice-a-month paychecks to cover the summer months when school is not in session.

My wife is a teacher. She is tasked with the enormous responsibility for the care and safety of your children. I’ll dispense with the lengthy analysis on this topic. Two words suffice – Newtown and Oklahoma. Someone please let me know the next time Lebron James throws his body between a child and the working end of an assault rifle and I will hold professional athletes in the same reverence I do teachers.

My wife is a teacher. For nine months of every year our family lives in the metronomic cycle of early morning wake-ups and late evening lesson-planning. We revel in the plethora of candies and candles, gift-cards and gadgets that herald the arrival of the “Christmas Break,” and I observe with interest the emotion that a hand-written note from a 1st grader can bring at the end of a school year.

My wife is a teacher. From August to May she had dedicated herself to the interests of her kids and her school. She has prepared and toiled, laughed and cried – and shared one hundred stories about the amazing kids that walk through her door each morning. She has left me wondering in awe how she does so much with - and for - so little. 

It is the summer now – my happy time comprised of the few short weeks that I do not have to share her. My wife is a teacher – she is also my hero. I promise to return her in August.

The BIG Secret to Eradicating "Cheating" As We Know It

Are you tired of all the cheating going on in your classroom every time you give a test? Are your students writing the answers on their hands? Ever-so-slyly looking at their neighbor's paper? Texting the next period's students the answers? Copying and pasting paragraphs from the internet?

Oh good grief, the cheating! What can we possibly do to stop the incessant cheating?!?!?

Well, here it is: Stop giving tests.

That's it. Simple as that. Thank you, and have a nice day.

Huh? You say there is something more to say about it? How about this: In school, we need to quit giving students knowledge and then testing their memory of it. If that's all we're testing, then.....well, we might as well just STOP! Testing, as we all know it (those of us who grew up in the 20th century) has outlived its usefulness.

What we really need to know is, "What do our students have the ability to do with knowledge?" To that I say: How can we possibly know if we just test their memory and comprehension of a set of knowledge and then move on to another set?!?

We need to orchestrate real situations that cause students to develop questions, identify problems, discover challenges. This is what the Common Core State Standards and the National Education Technology Standards are telling us.

AND -- now here is the radical part -- we MUST NOT give them the knowledge.

Instead, we need to give them free, unfettered access to any and all knowledge in the world--access to people (including each other), places, and things. Then, we need to stand back, watch, answer questions with questions, and let them WORK TOGETHER to figure out what they need to know in order to address the questions they develop, solve the problems they identify, and meet the challenges they discover.

And we need to make this happen on a regular, required basis during class, not just at the end of the semester or for extra credit or as an option or as a reward for finishing the worksheet early.

Done effectively, it's intentional, strategical, and orchestrated; and it is standards-based, differentiated, and assessed -- in such an integral way that it's ingenious if not downright devious.

In terms of effort for the teacher, it's front-loaded -- before class starts. It is NOT less work. It is a LOT of work, especially while it's "the new way" -- desirable change requires a lot of work.

It's richly deep, deeply rich, relevant in the eyes of the students, (therefore) engaging, rewarding, memorable.

Assess that.

Down with Either-Or!

"We should not do what THEY'RE proposing -- we should do what WE'RE proposing!"

I doubt it.

Republicans vs. Democrats, legislators vs. boards of education, education professionals vs. parents, teachers vs. administrators, politicians vs. professionals, this paradigm vs. that paradigm....

We probably should think VERY carefully before ever choosing EITHER this OR that.

I am fairly sure of the former as a global statement, but right now I am applying it to all discussions related to education.

Whether the discussion is curriculum, instruction, teacher evaluation, testing, funding, or discipline (Phooey on zero-tolerance policies!), we should be ever-so-leery of any entity that tries to force an either-or choice. There are too many variables within our world and within our student population to boil any issue down to A or B.

Why? Well, if we choose A, then those who would benefit from B suffer, and vice versa. We are involved in an enterprise that fails if collateral damage results from our action or inaction.

We are supposed to do what is best for every individual child. Generalities do not apply in education. We have failed the student who drops out. We have failed the student who graduates high school and cannot read at an adult level (exceptionalities aside). We have failed the student who leaves us having no idea what his strengths and aptitudes are--what he "brings to the table." We have failed the student who goes out into the world without the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful no matter what post-secondary path is chosen.

ANY discussions related to education must begin and end with flexibility, customizability. One size WILL NOT fit all.

What is Eduthusiasm?

Along with technology integration, I also do school PR. My favorite part of school PR is the promotion. I love to promote -- it is an inherently positive task, and I am a congenitally positive person. My current position as Director of Communications for the school district of my alma mater, Augusta USD 402 in Augusta, Kansas, allows me to show the local community and the world how proud I am of my home community and its school system. It's an easy job because I believe in the quality of both the community and the school district. I cannot help but be highly enthusiastic about both -- just ask anyone who knows me.

I have decided, however, that I am not going to stop there. I am going to use this blog to promote education -- primarily public education in Kansas -- because I am as proud of my state and my primary chosen career field as I am of my community and school district. My enthusiasm about Kansas education is boundless.

That's what Eduthusiasm is – enthusiasm about education -- and we cannot have enough of it. There are so many great things going on in education in Kansas and SO MANY awesome people coming forward to make these great things happen. Of course we have the best teachers, administrators, and support staff that any state could ask for, but we also have individuals, groups, businesses, and organizations that go out of their way to make a positive impact on schools and school children.

Just today I was pleased to be part of the South Central Chapter of KanSPRA and its recognition brunch for the region's recipients of the Friends of Education Award given by the Confidence in Kansas Public Education Task Force. Goddard USD 265 hosted the event, and over 100 people came from 10 different area school districts to recognize the priceless contributions that people are making to public education in Kansas.

The recipients in the KanSPRA South Central region make up an interestingly varied group. There was a man and his service dog, a school resource police officer, a hair stylist/shop owner, an organization that promotes the appreciation and pursuit of music excellence, an organization that promotes the dairy industry, a fire chief and his department, a Vietnamese-war-era immigrant who devotes endless hours to the children in his community, a dentist’s office, a few churches, a medical center, an entrepreneur whose handicapped daughter inspired her to raise tens of thousands of dollars for accessible playgrounds in their community....

The list goes on, and this is just the list of recipients from our region who were able to attend the brunch.

I plan to discuss these people’s contributions to our state’s children and its eduthusiasm over the next several days, as well as “dig up” some more stories as time goes on to illustrate what this blog is about -- @eduthusiasm!

Open the Can of Worms!

"We don't want to open that can of worms! If we do [whatever] for this child, we will have to do it for every child."

DISAGREE.

If we are going to help each child learn and flourish, we MUST open the can. We have to pour it out. We have to examine each individual worm to find out what it has, what it needs, and how best to provide those needs.

One worm might need more moisture. Another might need less. A third worm might previously have lived in peat moss that wasn't properly rinsed and therefore need some special care before growth can occur. Oh, and this one over here was left in the light too long before you received it. That one responds to a cooler environment--say, 55º, while those four over there do better if it's a bit warmer -- about 65º.

If I treat all my worms exactly the same, some of them will die!

I am not a scientist, and I really don't have any interest in worms, but isn't this a great analogy?

Do what is best for each individual child. "Equal" and "fair" are not synonyms.

3 Ways to Support Educational Leaders in the New Pedagogy

Teaching is no longer simply imparting information and asking students to regurgitate, employing special techniques to help students remember information. Teaching is -- well -- no longer teaching. It is facilitating. It is designing rigorous, relevant experiences that cause students to need the knowledge and skills we want them to learn, as they work together to create something (solution, product, concept, change) measurable and meaningful to their world.

Am I preaching to the choir? Maybe.

But how many educational leaders (former classroom teachers) could, right now, today, develop, implement, and sustain a TRUE project-based approach in an English, math, science, or social studies classroom? How many could take over for a teacher tomorrow and turn that classroom into a 21st-century exemplar? Where, even, to begin that process? How many of us know how to "put it all together" to achieve a classroom based on the NETS and focused on the CCSS? How many of us can even simply discuss how to START building this type of learning environment?

As with a large number of current teachers, most of us administrators are products of a 20th-century K-12 education paradigm and a centuries-old university education paradigm. Through no fault of our own, we are conditioned to learn by sitting, and we are trained to teach by imparting knowledge--with lecturing to whole-class groups being the most efficient way to do so. We can discuss standards, objectives, strategies and techniques--define them, explain them, give examples of them, refer to articles about them; and if you'll just tell us the steps involved in accomplishing a new task, we're all over it.

Education Week (@educationweek) played right into my hands today by Tweeting its article calling for more support of principals. Many education discussions and programs center around the critical need to develop teachers' (especially veteran teachers') grasp of the 21st-century learning paradigm and its accompanying shift in educational practice. While I recognize this challenge, I am also deeply concerned about educational leaders on this issue.

Here are three very basic ways to support educational leaders during this time:

Educational leaders need to have continual, in-depth teacher training (as opposed to an administrative overview) in the new pedagogy.
For starters, districts should require educational leaders (building- and district-level) to study available resources on facilitating the CCSS and NETS in the classroom. I recommend the free online Intel Teach Elements courses. Maybe your district's administrators could do this together over the next year in place of a book study -- online using a blog to discuss when they can't get together face-to-face.

Educational leaders should be expected to belong to and participate in a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for educators. Online social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ all allow people to tailor their experiences to specific purposes such as professional learning. Educational leaders need to immerse themselves in the topic of educational pedagogy.

Educational leaders need time to study, explore, observe, mentor, and...LEAD.
We all need this; teachers need this; and, as the front-line educational leaders, principals specifically need more time -- to be unburdened by all of the other areas of responsibility that they traditionally handle. Principals are too heavily weighed down by managerial tasks when they should be enabled to focus solely on educational leadership -- learning, mentoring, observing, collaborating, developing excellent teachers and ensuring deep, long-lasting learning for students.

Is my head in the clouds? Probably. But that's better than having my head in the sand.