School makes me...

Scott McLeod's blog Dangerously Irrelevant is a profoundly progressive read. Scott tweeted me a link to his post that featured this picture:

Try it. Go to Google and type in "school makes me" and see what autocomplete choices come up. When I did it, I got school makes me:

• sad
• feel stupid
• fat

So why does this matter?

Perhaps you are not aware how Google's autocomplete works. Google explains:

As you type, autocomplete predicts and displays queries to choose from. The search queries that you see as part of autocomplete are a reflection of the search activity of all web users and the content of web pages indexed by Google.

Several hundred million searches are made with Google every single day and this is a reflection of the search activity students are conducting. Are we paying attention to this? Are we prepared to take this seriously?

I am a staunch supporter of public education but I also understand why Sir Ken Robinson asks "Do Schools Kill Creativity, John Taylor Gatto writes about Weapons of Mass Instruction and Kirsten Olsen writes about people who are Wounded by School. 

The way forward is not to build schools that are a better version of yesterday. Before school can improve -- school has to change. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic ain't going to cut it anymore.

Here are three quick suggestions for how I think school needs to change:

1. Curriculum is not something created and laminated by distant authorities and mailed to the schools. While there can be a skeletal framework created by provincial, state or federal departments of education, curriculum is something that must be negotiated between teachers and students at the school. Here's an example of what real learning looks like.
2. Assessment is not a spreadsheet, it's a conversation. We need to stop demanding that students show what they have learned by doing things they hate. Anything worth learning is worth doing in a context and for a purpose. Students should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information.
3. Accountability is really about providing the public with information regarding their schools.
   Unlike standardized tests which are notorious for their inability to provide anything more than a limited and incomplete snapshot of a student on a single day, a collection of performance assessments assembled in a learning portfolio can inform the teaching and learning process in a timely fashion while simultaneously assuring the public that students are receiving a high quality education. Ultimately, the best evidence parents can receive about their children's learning is to see their children learning.

Here are all of my posts on six broad topics that we need to rethink so that we can reframe the realities of school.

Abolishing Grading

Abolishing Homework

Rethinking Standardization

Rethinking Lesson Planning

Rethinking Discipline

Rethink Accountability

I also suggest you look at some of the work being done by the Alberta Teachers' Association and their research report titled A Great School for All: Transforming Education in Alberta.

Letter about teachers goes viral

This was written by Jennifer Marcotte. It is an open letter to the Alberta Government. This post first appeared here.

by Jennifer Marcotte

Dear Government of Alberta,

Every single day, I drop my children off at school, and put them in the hands of someone else for the next seven hours of their days. Truth be told, these people spend more time with my children in waking hours than I do. These people have chosen to spend their days educating our future leaders. They have devoted their lives to the betterment of knowledge, of learning, and of teaching. These people give their time as mentors, as coaches, and as friends. These people go to work early, they come home late. They work weekends. They put expense out of their own pockets in the best interest of other people's children. Their days are never their own, their thoughts are always with a child in some form.

These are the people that stand infront of ill mannered children, failing in their up bringing and reach out instead of drawing back. These people take back talk, they take abuse. They take heckling and taunting, and dig deep within themselves to love instead, and make better people.

These people wrap themselves around children, coaxing them to grow, to move forward, to excel, to achieve, and to be.

Everyday.

My child.

Your child.

Their children.

These people are our teachers. They are teachers by choice. They are parents by heart.

I have heard many times, "you get what you pay for". When it comes to our teachers, dear Government, I ask you to tread lightly. Who else will teach our children in what we have failed to? Ask every parent what their appreciation for a teacher is in monetary value, and you will see it is popular opinion they are grossly underpaid for their amount of work. Do your homework, government, and ask the common working folk to work the hours a teacher does for the same pay. Ask of the general blue collar Joe what you expect of our teachers. When you are laughed at, look again to to our teachers who shrug and say "okay, as long as it's for the kids".

My kid.

Your kid.

Their kids.

These people are our teachers. Where would you be without them? Where would your child be without them?

Respect. You learned it. A teacher, most likely, taught you how to spell it, what it meant, and how to have some.

My regards, in all disgust to parliament,

A tax paying citizen of Alberta.

The Butterfly Project

Because I work in a children's psychiatric assessment unit, I often have students who self-harm. Self-harm can come in different flavours. Some children verbally abuse themselves by talking to themselves in hurtful ways. Some physically abuse themselves by cutting or hitting themselves. Some abuse substances like drugs and alcohol.

Here's a project I introduce to children who cut themselves.

The Butterfly Project:

1. When you feel like you want to cut, take a marker, pen or sharpies and draw a butterfly on your arm or hand.
2. Name the butterfly after a loved one, or someone that really wants you to get better.
3. You must let the butterfly fade naturally. No scrubbing it off.
4. If you cut before the butterfly is gone, you've killed it. If you don't cut, it lives.
5. If you have more than one butterfly, cutting kills all of them.
6. Another person may draw them on you. These butterflies are extra special. Take good care of them.
7. Even if you don't cut, feel free to draw a butterfly anyways, to show your support. If you do this, name it after someone you know that cuts or is suffering right now, and tell them.

While this project is not perfect and may not be right for some people, I do like it because for some people who cut and self-harm, it might help them replace the razor or knife with a person.

Hitting the target, but missing the point

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

Lance Armstrong is a cheater.

If I had written that a few months ago, I’d have had the pants sued off me. But since Armstrong admitted to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the chances of a lawsuit have greatly diminished.

Armstrong doesn’t believe that he is a cheater. He explained to ­Winfrey that the definition of cheating is to gain an advantage over a rival and he didn’t view his actions that way—he viewed it as a part of a level playing field. Armstrong attributes his actions to a ruthless desire to win at all costs; a desire that served him well on a bike but ultimately caused his unceremonious downfall.

Cheating is common in a world that focuses on winning. For ­example, in 2000, in the U.K., Tony Blair’s government allocated money to the British public service based on agreed-upon targets. Inquiries into this so-called “target world” found examples of “creative compliance.” In its 2002 report, the UK Commission for Health ­Improvement related the case of one particularly creative hospital, in which too many patients were waiting too long in emergency wards and, conseque-ntly, the hospital was in danger of missing its target for finding beds for patients in a timely manner. The hospital met its target by turning gurneys into beds by removing their wheels. A senior civil servant characterized this incident of cheating as “hitting the target, but missing the point.”

In another case, in 2010, Georgia’s State Department of Education ­suspected rampant cheating after it analyzed erasure marks on test bubble sheets and found that changes from incorrect to correct ­answers were inexplicably high in some schools; the state ordered an investigation.

Of the worst offenders, 21 of the 27 were from the Atlanta Public School District, where in four schools 80 per cent of classes were flagged for cheating. Could the $2,000 cash bonuses (aka merit pay) given to teachers at schools that met improvement targets have had anything to do with this?

Daniel Pink, a renowned academic on motivation and the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, says that traditional if–then rewards tend to produce the opposite of what they were meant to achieve. A rewards system extinguishes intrinsic motivation, diminishes performance, crushes creativity, fosters ­short-term thinking and encourages cheating.

The more a system is based on rewards and winning, the more people will cheat. Armstrong didn’t feel bad about cheating because he saw it as part of the system—part of a popular culture that ­worships winners.

Cultural values are incredibly powerful, so we need to be very ­careful about the types of cultures that develop in our schools. ­Cultures based on ruthless competition divide people into winners and losers. Some will win by cheating, and people who lose in the system can become disenchanted and quit. Such a culture damages the core task of public education—preparing all learners for life.

Although some welcome increased competition in education, ­teachers must focus on collaboration and reject a culture of competition and the bad ideas, like merit pay, that come with it.

De-testing and De-grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardization

I am excited to announce a very cool book. It's being printed now. I'll let you know when it's available for purchase.

PURCHASE IT HERE

De-Testing and De-Grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardization
Joe Bower and P. L. Thomas, editors

Introduction and chapter by Alfie Kohn

Peter Lang USA
Counterpoints Series

From the back cover:

A century of education and education reform along with the last three decades of high-stakes testing and accountability reveals a disturbing paradox: Education has a steadfast commitment to testing and grading despite decades of research, theory and philosophy that reveal the corrosive consequences of both testing and grading within an education system designed to support human agency and democratic principles.

This edited volume brings together a collection of essays that confront the failure of testing and grading and then offers practical and detailed examinations of implementing, at the macro and micro levels of education, teaching and learning free of the weight of testing and grading. The book explores the historical failure of testing and grading; the theoretical and philosophical arguments against testing and grading; the negative influence of testing and grading on social justice, race, class, and gender; and the role of testing and grading in perpetuating a deficit perspective of children, learning, race, and class.

The chapters fall under two borad sections: Part I: "Degrading Learning, Detesting Education: The Failure of High-Stakes Accountability in Education" includes essays on the historical, theoretical, and philosophical arguments against testing and grading; Part II: "De-Grading and De-Testing in a Time of High-Stakes Education Reform" presents practical experiments in de-testing and de-grading classrooms for authentic learning experiences.