Teaching like a Champion

**Sorry this is such a long post. I am really processing this topic.**

Every day we have a 60-90 minute session called "Teacher Moves." In these sessions, we learn some techniques that are practiced by excellent teachers. So far, we have been focusing on classroom management.

Most of our teacher moves come from Doug Lemov, who did a lot of work with Uncommon Schools, a network of charter schools in New York and New Jersey that works with low-income students and has achieved impressive gains in test scores. Lemov has just published a book of these strategies, titled "Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College."

Some of these methods have really resonated with me, and others have given me pause. For example, one of the biggest components of the culture in Uncommon Schools is something called SLANT, which was first implemented in KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program, another national network of charter schools). Slant is designed to "maximize students' ability to pay attention." It stands for:

Sit up.
Listen.
Ask and answer questions.
Nod your head.
Track the speaker. [This means follow the person speaking with your eyes.]

Sounds good, right? In the videos that accompany the book, we see teachers constantly reminding kids to "show me SLANT" or to "track." And here's where I get uncomfortable. Because in some of these videos, the classrooms start to look like a barracks. The desks are in perfect rows, the students sit perfectly straight on command, they all turn (in unison!) and look at the student who is speaking on command. This bothers me. I am a complete believer in establishing classroom routines. But I'm not so sure that they need to be classroom regimens.

I was talking to one of my friends before I began this year about my desire to be a teacher. He told me that he was really interested in it, but that he didn't want to be part of the system that keeps the working and lower classes in place. This is something that I take very seriously. In one of our classes recently, we staged a debate. One side argued: "American schools have improved social equity." The other side argued: "American schools have served to reproduce inequality." It was a tie--the history supports both sides.

When we think that we are teaching low-income students "how to do school," then, I think we need to be very careful about how we acculturate them to school. Yes, we want to be efficient; yes, we want to maximize instructional time so that we can "close the achievement gap." But when we implement these strict regimens, are we perpetuating differences between these students and middle class students who are not taught the same way? I'm really not sure.

We've read a couple of perspectives on disciplining children here that are instructive. Annette Lareau writes in "Unequal Childhoods" (2003) that children from low-income families tend to be disciplined with commands and occasionally also corporal punishment. Children from middle-class families, on the other hand, tend to be raised with "scientific motherhood" styles in which children are often allowed (too much) to negotiate punishments, and obedience is deemphasized. At the same time, children from working and lower-class backgrounds tend to have more unstructured time and therefore develop their creative faculties better than students from middle-class backgrounds, whose lives are so structured that they often feel at a loss when they are asked to be spontaneous. At the same time, however, Lareau's research suggests that the discipline structures of lower-class families can cause children to lag in their language development, which translates into deficiencies in cognitive development. For this reason organizations like the Harlem Children's Zone hold a class called "Baby College" in which they try to teach expectant mothers to use "scientific motherhood" techniques.

Given these backgrounds, Lisa Delpit's book "Other People's Children" (1996) makes the case that children from working and lower-class backgrounds understand power in terms of direct commands rather than circuitous requests that are secretly also commands--"Please sit down," and not "Would you mind sitting down?" According to Delpit, lower-class children might not understand the latter as a command (even though it is one); when the student views sitting down as a choice and chooses not to sit down, he is labeled a behavior problem. Delpit argues that (white) middle-class teachers need to understand that, like it or not, they are the authority figures in the room, and they need to be explicit and consistent when exercising that authority. In other words, you think you're being the nice white lady, but you're actually just betraying your students' trust by being inconsistent.

Both Lareau and Delpit's arguments suggest that the students at "reform"-minded schools--and, indeed, probably all students--do benefit from clear directions and expectations that are consistently enforced. But nowhere does it say that these expectations need to be militaristic. And when I'm trying to teach my students to be critical thinkers and good democratic citizens, the top-down thing starts to freak me out. And I'd like to think that I'm not being naive here--idealistic, yes, but not naive. I believe that you can "create the perception of order at all times" without turning your students into good little robots.

So here's where Lemov can be slightly more comforting. He places a lot of emphasis on positive framing--giving students positive instruction and interacting more with students who are on task and behaving according to expectations rather than the ones who are not. He also has a section called "Warm/Strict" in which he makes a compelling case that these two features of good teachers are not contradictory: "When you are clear, consistent, firm, and unrelenting and at the same time positive, enthusiastic, caring, and thoughtful, you start to send the message to students that having high expectations is part of caring for and respecting someone" (213). This is something I can get behind. One other idea that someone told me is to have students contribute when creating classroom expectations.

In "The Trouble with Black Boys" (2008) Pedro Noguera asked students to list "characteristics of a school where you would be excited to learn." Noguera provides a more compelling rationale for many of the teacher moves than maximizing time on task. The students from his survey said that "teachers should be firm and not allow students to get away with preventing other students from learning" (p. 65). When put this way, I can see the behavior management policies as demonstrating care for all students. Caring for all students and ensuring that they learn is certainly a higher priority for me than inculcating "good" behavior--or obedience--for its own sake. It is reassuring to know that students want to see the teacher be in control of the classroom.

Even though I recognize that students don’t always know what is best for them, I think we as teachers are much more vulnerable to erring on the side of caution, of believing that we have to make our students take their medicine. If our strategies and actions as teachers are motivated by what the students tell us will help them learn, then those strategies feel more authentically motivated than if they are in response to abstract ideas of "respect" or "time on task."

time to think

Even though the long weekend was incredibly relaxing, I went right back to feeling overwhelmed yesterday. The two new posts below are ones I started awhile ago but I felt like I needed to clear my plate.

I wish I had more time to think, write, and process. I have a lot more to say about both the Baggs piece and the Nice White Lady. But maybe there will be more time later...

Nice White Lady

We had a guest speaker today.* He was enthusiastic, charming, and inspiring, and the best part was that he is still incredibly passionate about the cause of education even after some 50 years as an nationally known activist and educator.

He told us about this skit, which is hilarious (I can't embed, but I encourage you to watch).

He brought up this skit because we asked him about how new teachers can maintain their idealism. He made a very important point--that there is a difference between naivete and idealism, and he encouraged us to deliberately articulate our ideals and strive to maintain our integrity with regard to them.

I had more to say on this subject but I don't have time! I'm just going to put this post out there so I can remember to think about it.

Updated 11/17/12: It was Bill Ayers.

on thought and language

Today in my education research class we watched Amanda Baggs's video piece "In My Language." If anyone is reading, definitely watch the video for your own reactions before you read mine:





Baggs is a woman who has been diagnosed with low-functioning autism. What I find so fascinating about this video is the process of gauging my initial reactions to it and having them completely confirmed and deconstructed by the second half of the video, the half that is in my language. As I watched the video, my instant reaction was that it resembled a contemporary video art installation. This reaction very obviously arises from my own personal experiences and biases, but even when I tried to describe her actions to myself in what I thought of as more neutral language--for example, she is feeling household items (not she "likes" to)--even those descriptions ascribed intentionality and purpose from my language to actions that she herself describes (in my language) as "having no purpose" or as "reacting to her environment."

Our research prof asked us this question: How do I enable myself to be open to other ways of knowing? As someone who considers myself a progressive, I think that I am often complacent, even in my diligence, to do exactly this. What the Baggs video shows me is how difficult it is to know in ways other than your ways. I was not able to "describe" or even *perceive* Baggs's actions outside my own language. This is an instructive lesson when we're thinking so much about being "culturally responsive teachers," about which more later.

Frowny face, or, turnarounds by the numbers

Today in my special education class we talked about particular needs of high school students with disabilities, and we looked at some numbers for students in high schools that we will be working in.

The numbers were pretty disheartening. At the school where I will be tutoring this summer (and where I have a 50-50 chance of being placed for the school year), the reported truancy rate is 53%. The mobility rate, which measures how often students move in and out of the district, is almost 40%. It's pretty hard to teach students when you don't know who is going to show up from one day to the next, or from one year to the next. In addition to that, more than 75% of students entering 9th grade at this school are reading at 6th grade level or lower. Only a handful are reading at grade level. About 15% are reading at 2nd grade or lower (including not at all).

So I was wrong to worry about seeing 150 students a day. On a really good day, I may see 90 or 100 of them.

Our job is to close the achievement gap, and at this school, that means preparing these kids to take the ACT. So these are pretty scary numbers. It's not that I wasn't aware of these problems before--far from it--but somehow they seem much more stark to me today. As our teacher said, "often you have a year or less to do as much as you can for these students" before they change schools or leave school altogether.

Our teacher had passed out "response cards" with a variety of responses (multiple choice, true false), including a smiley face and a frowny face. When she asked us how we felt after this review of the numbers, there was a clear majority of frowny faces. But one woman in my class showed her happy face. She said that she feels inspired to help these students and that she has hope and a drive for them to improve. And she's right--the numbers should not depress me, even though they do. They also make me feel the intense urgency of these students' need. So thanks, friend, for reminding me to hope and know that we can do better--that's why I'm here.

ADDENDUM: I learned today that the 53% truancy rate is actually a reduction from more than 60%, one year after getting turned around. Who knew that 53% would be an encouraging number?

What exactly am I doing? Nuts and bolts

Here's my schedule:

now-Aug 3: course work, as well as introduction to a core of teaching strategies, from 8am-4:30pm, M-F. We are taking 18 credit hours (5 classes) in 7 weeks.

Aug 3-Sep 1: coursework switches to Fridays only

Sep 1-June: begin working with mentor teacher in an actual classroom Monday-Thursday, classes continue on Friday

June: receive MAT, state certificate to teach, job, happiness

drinking the kool-aid: thoughts on this blog's title and my opening days

I've decided to start a blog to keep a record of my experiences and reactions to my time in this program. I really feel like I've been thrown in the deep end with course work--just tons and tons of reading and assignments--so I haven't had much time to sit down and reflect, but I did have some reactions to our orientation days that I wanted to get down.

During the two days of our orientation, we had a lot of different members of the organization's leadership speak to us. Several of them repeatedly made remarks that made my ears prick up, and one especially stood out: "there are those that would wish to see us fail." I will have more to say at a later date on school turnarounds, I'm sure, but my initial impression was to feel depressed at how embattled they seem to feel.

After all, even though many people think that turnarounds are not a good model for school reform, can there possibly be people who care about education who WANT those school turnarounds to "fail," that is, to fail to serve their students? I doubt that this is the case. But the feeling of embattledness, the position that educators are not united in wanting students to succeed, permeates and poisons the education reform debate. This was evident in Steve Brill's caustic New York Times article about Race to the Top, and in many comment threads you read on the education blogs. Anyway, when the US Education Secretary, the President, the city government, and the heads of the district are all on your side (not to mention lots of private $$), then you probably don't have to worry too much about your naysayers.

We had an amazing panel of parents from a network school speak to us about their experiences. I think it was hard for a lot of us to be uncynical about how these parents were selected--they all had very positive things to say and they seemed to be some of the most active parents in the school. To be sure, some of them professed initial skepticism about the turnaround. But even though they weren't given any input before the school's "turnaround" (closure) was announced, they all agreed that now there is a lot of community input about goings on at the school. What they had to say about the changes that they've seen in their students and in the school community was truly moving and inspiring.

Over the next months and year I want to enter into this process with a pragmatic and open mind. I have some (informed) prejudices, but I want to be prepared to see what works and what doesn't, to feel like we all want students who have been underserved to succeed. If that is our mission, then no one will want us to fail.