Merit Pay

If you thought merit pay was a good idea, or that test scores are a good indicator of who the good and bad teachers are, think again. Dan Willingham takes you through this 5 minute video showing you how test scores are anything but easy to read.

Spelling Implications

There is a good chance you've seen this graphic. If you have, stay with me, I may have a different take on this than you might expect. If you haven't seen this yet, enjoy!

If you are like most people, you could still read almost every single word without much hesitation.

The message was not lost.

Communication did in fact prevail!

So what can we learn from this?

Firstly, spelling may not be as important as my grade 8 Grammar-Nazi teacher might have thought it was. Because the first and last letters must be in proper place, I can't say spelling is entirely unimportant - but I think we can agree that if communication is our purpose, then a closer examination of the history of writing rubrics may indicate that spelling has received an inflated stature of importance.

Why?

Spelling is a very tangible skill. We can see it. We can measure it. We can count it.

If you are teaching writing, and you feel the need to quantify something, would you rather measure spelling or creativity?

However, before we throw spelling on the discard pile, let's try and figure out why spelling may still be something worth teaching.

If my blog maintained its quality content but was asblutely rdidled whit msitekas, would anything change?

As nice as you may be, I have a feeling you might make some serious judgments on my intelligence (or lack of) and it is entirely plausible that my inability to spell might annoy you to the point that you wouldn't return. However, I am a full time teacher, and I only blog when I have time to and so I know every post has mistakes - and yet, I know I have returning readers. Interesting!

Resumes written with this kind of spelling might still get the content across, but may be responsible for having it fall off the table and into a waste basket.

However, people do not become good spellers by being bullied or scared into being so.

Students must be provided with an opportunity to play with language. They must feel comfortable with spelling words wrong, and we, the teacher, are responsible for providing them with a learning environment that allows kids to see school as an opportunity to figure things out - to make mistakes and bump up against their limits. Perseverance in the face of failure may be one of the most important attributes a successful learner can adopt.

If we pursue our student's spelling skills with such dictatorial fervor as my grade 8, Grammar-Nazi teacher, we risk sabatoging the enitre learning operation.

Here's what I mean.

Which would you prefer a student to write:

OR

At what cost are we willing to gain ultimate precision in spelling?

If the point of school is to show how good you are, why would you waste your time taking risks that might show how good you're not?

Alfie Kohn illustrates an even grander concern in his book The Schools Our Children Deserve:

Invented spelling is based on the finding that young children who write more tend to read better. Not surprisingly, as we saw with Patty, kids are inclined to write more, to take risks, when they don't have to worry quite yet about spelling words perfectly - which, at that age, is unrealistic in any case. The question is what we're willing to have them sacrifice for technical accuracy... (Of course, for very young children, the choice may be even more stark; either we let them use invented spelling or we don't let them write at all.)

Albert Einstein provides us with a bit of a wake up call:

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Inflating the importance of something easily counted like spelling can almost entirely nullify something that is not tailored towards being counted, like creativity.

Teachers must be mindful of this counting trap.

Next time you want to focus on spelling, keep in mind that if you make spelling count for too much, you might get what you ask for. Kids will spell words correctly at the cost of using words that sacrifice the intangibles such as creativity.

Catching Kids

I think most of us can agree how utterly ridiculous it is to say to students:

Don't let me catch you doing that again!

Some kids might understand this as a warning to stop whatever it was that elicited the comment, but how many will really think to themselves:

Okay, I won't let you catch me next time!

Just like it's not what we teach but rather what they learn that matters most, how kids perceive our words and actions is infinitely more important than how we perceive our intentions. If you say something that you intend to be information for kids to think of in order to learn a lesson, but they perceive it is a punishment - then it's a punishment. Whether we like it or not, their perception is our reality.

We may be able to agree that threatening or punishing children to encourage "good" behaviour is not something we should be doing; however, coming to a consensus on the idea that we shouldn't reward them either, is an entirely different challenge.

Many teachers and parents subscribe to the "catch-them-being-good" strategy. Let's consider this stategy for a moment.

Alfie Kohn provides this description of rewards and punishments:

Rewards and punishments are not opposites - rather they are two sides of the same coin - and it doesn't buy us very much.

There are two themes to the coin analogy. Firstly, rewards and punishments are devices from a behaviourist's tool box. Remember B.F Skinner?  Secondly, too many people see rewards or punishments as the only two choices - this is a false dichotomy.

We should be thankful there are other choices because, as Alfie Kohn explains, there are serious problems with rewarding children to get them to learn, share or even be caring kids.

In general terms, what the evidence suggests is this: the more we reward people for doing something, the more likely they are to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. Extrinsic motivation, in other words, is not only quite different from intrinsic motivation but actually tends to erode it.[3] This effect has been demonstrated under many different circumstances and with respect to many different attitudes and behaviors. Most relevant to character education is a series of studies showing that individuals who have been rewarded for doing something nice become less likely to think of themselves as caring or helpful people and more likely to attribute their behavior to the reward.

"Extrinsic incentives can, by undermining self-perceived altruism, decrease intrinsic motivation to help others," one group of researchers concluded on the basis of several studies. "A person's kindness, it seems, cannot be bought."[4] The same applies to a person's sense of responsibility, fairness, perseverance, and so on. The lesson a child learns from Skinnerian tactics is that the point of being good is to get rewards. No wonder researchers have found that children who are frequently rewarded -- or, in another study, children who receive positive reinforcement for caring, sharing, and helping -- are less likely than other children to keep doing those things.[5]

In short, it makes no sense to dangle goodies in front of children for being virtuous. But even worse than rewards are awards -- certificates, plaques, trophies, and other tokens of recognition whose numbers have been artificially limited so only a few can get them. When some children are singled out as "winners," the central message that every child learns is this: "Other people are potential obstacles to my success."[6] Thus the likely result of making students beat out their peers for the distinction of being the most virtuous is not only less intrinsic commitment to virtue but also a disruption of relationships and, ironically, of the experience of community that is so vital to the development of children's character.

We could learn a lot from people like Jerome Bruner who once said:

Students should experience their successes and failure not as reward and punishment but as information.

When we trigger the reward or the punishment, it is awfully hard for our students or our children to see us as a caring ally who is on their team - rather, it is more likely that they will start to rationalize the relationship as 'us' and 'them'. They see us as a judge in-waiting who holds the carrot in one hand and the stick in the other. All this completely contradicts Jerome Bruner's wisdom.

There is a big difference between working with children and doing things to them, and Coaches like John Wooden offer us an alternative to the behaviourist's coin. Wooden's athletes didn't need his judgement; rather, they needed his support - his guidance - his wisdom.

No longer are we bound to simply manipulating children's behavior.

If we are truly interested in something more than short-term compliance, then we need to seriously rethink whether we should be catching kids doing anything.

Math is a dangerous subject to teach

Math is a dangerous subject to teach in today's high-stakes testing accountability environment. It's dangerous because it is the kind of subject that can be used to create right and wrong, black and white kinds of assessment tools. I'm talking specifically about multiple choice exams.

The best math teachers are those who resist the pressures to reduce mathematics to such a narrow dichotomous thinking. The art of mathematics is not found in being 'right' or 'wrong' but in the thinking and problem solving. Because of this, it can be said with confidence that these kinds of high-stakes multiple choice tests actually end up measuring what matters least.

It is important to never again brag about high scores or to become saddened by low scores, and that we must resist the temptation to allow these poor tests to encourage poor teaching.

Here's what I mean:

I still remember being taught how to divide fractions in junior high. I was told to flip the second fraction and then multiply. It was a trick that enabled me to test out correctly on the multiple choice tests. Heck, I could even get the right answer on the short answer tests.

Here's the problem.

To this day, I have absolutely no idea why I flip the second fraction and multiply. I have no idea what the mathematical reasoning is. So I can get the right answer on the test, but there is nothing mathematical about my (lack of) understanding for dividing fractions.

Another problem with testing mathematics is that questions may look elaborate or challenging, but they may be superficial.

In his book The Case Against Standardized Testing, Alfie Kohn illustrates how a seemingly difficult question can be testing rather shallow skills. He cites from Al Cuoco and Faye Ruopp's Math Exam Rationale Doesn't Add up from the Boston Globe (1998):

1 2 3 4 5 6

tn 3 5

The first two terms of a sequence, t1 and t2, are shown above as 3 and 5. Using the rule:

tn = tn-1 + t n-2, where n is greater than or equal to 3, complete the table.

Kohn writes, "This is actually just asking the test taker to add 3 and 5 to get 8, then add 5 and 8 to get 13, then add 8 to 13 to get 21, and so on."

Cuoco and Ruopp conclude:

 

The problem simply requires the ability to follow a rule; there is no mathematics in it at all. And many tenth-grade students will get it wrong, not because they lack the mathematical thinking necessary to fill in the table, but simply because they haven't had experience with the notation. Next year, however, teachers will prep students on how to use formulas like tn =tn-1 + tn-2, more students will get it right, and state education officials will tell us that we are increasing mathematical literacy.

These examples go to show that too often math tests lack validity - meaning the results of these tests don't tell us what we would want them to tell us. It is far too easy to make tests that don't provide us with valid data on students' mathematical skills.

 All this means that we must be very careful placing too much, if any, emphasis or importance on these tests.

Alberta axes written portion of PATs

The province of Alberta announced that they are cutting the written portions for the upcoming Grades 6 and 9 Social Studies and Grades 3, 6 and 9 Mathematics provincial achievement tests.

Alberta Learning provided two reasons for their removal:

1. During the Inspiring Education: A Dialogue with Albertans, the government was quite explicitly told by the people of Alberta to seriously rethink the province's current testing culture

2. Economic recession has demanded the province save money where they can.

Pedagogically, they removed the wrong exam - the multiple choice exams are wholly and entirely inferior measurements of learning - however, if an economic recession is what precipitates Alberta Learning's 'high-stakes standardized testing house of cards' to fall, then so be it.

The outright removal of the grade 3, 6 and 9 provincial achievement tests would continue to save money while, more importantly, aligning itself with the kind of better learning that Albertans are demanding.

Minister of Education Dave Hancock has openly said that this will be the final year for the grade 3 provincial achievement tests.

Teachers, students and parents will need to continue their push for progressive educational change in Alberta to ensure that all grade 3, 6 and 9 provincial achievement tests are rightfully removed.

Teaching Social Networking: Finger Dipping

In their book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks adn How they Shape Our Lives, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler offer a powerful reason why we owe it to our children to teach them about social networking:

Our connectedness carries with it radical implications for the way we understand the human condition. Social networks have value precisely because they can help us to achieve what we could not achieve on our own. In the next few chapters, we will show how networks influence the spread of joy, the search for sexual partners, the maintenance of health, the functioning of markets and the struggle for democracy. Yet, social-network effects are not always positive. Depression, obesity, sexually transmitted diseases, financial panic, violence, and even suicide also spread. Social networks, it turns out, tend to magnify whatever they are seeded with.

Partly for this reason, social networks are creative. And what these networks create does not belong to any one individual - it is shared by all those in the network. In this way, a social network is like a commonly owned forest: we all stand to benefit from it, but we also must work together to ensure it remains healthy and productive. This means that social networks are fundamentally and distinctively human, and ubiquitous, they should not be taken for granted.

Social network is not some recent discovery that came with the creation of Facebook or Twitter. Social networking is less about technology and more about people. Technologies like Facebook or Twitter are merely the mediums in which our connectedness can be amplified. If Twitter shut down tomorrow, our connectivity would likely not.

It is important to not become distracted by the medium - the technology - and to focus on the network itself- that is the people who are connected. Christakis and Fowler point out an essential truth and that is our networks grow what we seed into them. If we seed racism, hatred and pornography, we will grow racism, hatred and pornography. But if we seed tolerance, understanding and wisdom, we will grow tolerance, understanding and wisdom.

Like a finger being dipped into a pond of water, the ripples that spread through our networks will reflect what we place into them. We must take great care in selecting which fingers we choose to dip.

This is what we must teach our children.

The lizard brain, ninjas and pedagogy

Change is never easy.

One of the scariest things that comes with change is rationalizing the past. Everyone has an ego, and quite often we have to reason with our ego, so we don't crumble.

Here's what I mean.

If you've done something like teach or parent in a certain way for a very long time, it may be a very difficult thing to admit that perhaps you've been doing things wrong - or at least not as good as you thought you were. For every year of experience, your ego will take this more and more personally.

Inevitably, many of us then become defensive. Like a wounded animal whose been cornered by a fierce predator, we bunker down and resolve ourselves to a kind of pre-historic, fight or flight mentality.

Some like Seth Godin call this the lizard brain while others still like Steven Pressfield call it the resistance.

Godin explains:

The resistance is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise... The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive...the lizard hates change and achievement and risk...The amygdala isn't going away. Your lizard brain is here to stay, and your job is to figure out how to quiet it and ignore it.

When we are challenged by others to change something we do or believe in, the lizard brain barks. And if that something is near and dear to us, like our parenting practices or teaching pedagogy - the resistance can be fierce.

Don't get me wrong, the lizard brain brain's fight or flight mentality can sometimes be a very good thing. In his book Confessions of a Public Speaker, Scott Berkun writes:

Even if you could completely shut off these fear-response systems.. it would be a bad idea for two reasons. First, having the old parts of our brains in control of our fear responses is a good thing. If a legion of escaped half-lion, half-ninja warriors were to fall through the ceiling and surround you - with the sole mission of converting your fine flesh into thin sandwich-ready slices - do you want the burden of consciously deciding how fast to increase your heart, or which muscles to fire first to get your legs moving so you can run away? Your conscious mind cannot work fast enough to do these things in the small amount of time you'd have to survive. It's good that fear responses are controlled by the subconscious parts of your minds, since those are the only parts with fast enough wires to do anything useful when real danger happens.

The lizard brain serves a purpose when we are in big-time trouble; however, for the most part, our lives are pretty darn safe, and quite often, the lizard brain ends up holding us back.

Rather than seeing change as an indictment on what you've done in the past, see change as an opportunity to do today what others won't, so tomorrow you can accomplish what others can't.

As a parent or teacher, my ego takes pride in the fact that I am always doing my best with the information I have today. If I gain some kind of new information that rattles my cage, and throws my parenting or pedagogy for a loop, then I have to ask myself, Am I ignoring this information at my own peril? at my daughter's peril? at my students' peril?

Look, not all change is good. Change for the sake of change is no better than tradition for the sake of tradition. Change may seem scary. But blindly following the status quo that has no relationship with reality may be even scarier.

Always be mindful of change and tradition. And if the lizard brain barks, be conscious of it - unless there are ninjas threatening your very existence, it's presence needs to be tamed.