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Six For 2006
(Released to the web October 1, 2006) We are a month into the 2006-2007 school year, and most of us are settling into our respective grooves. The buses are on time and kids have memorized their locker combinations. Our teachers have figured out their schedules and our new administrators have learned most of the teacher’s names. Parents are finding how much time they have in the morning to pack lunches and put on two socks of the same color. So, what next? In the past two years the Readington School District has been through an astonishing and unsettling reformation. Almost the entire staff of administrators is new to the district. More than half of the teaching staff is new to the district. Even the school board is comprised of recently elected members. There are third graders in Readington with more time in district than a majority of our staff. For those who have followed, or encouraged, or just cringed at this reformation the question now is: where do we go from here? Some stakeholders shout for action, some fear change, some stay seated—still shellshocked from two years of upheaval. Readingtonparents.org proposes six areas of focus which could make a significant difference in the educational experience of our children and which will help build a culture of authentic learning. Some of these six areas have been covered on this website before. They are not obstacles which are insurmountable or even difficult to jump. Since some parents and students will be spending their last year in this district—having put up with years of turmoil—these areas are chosen because they can be implemented in time to benefit everyone quickly. In no particular order: Scripted Learning Scripted learning is a reference to the mediocrity which results from teachers who slavishly follow textbook lessons and students who quickly come to embrace minimum expectations. Scripted learning is the antithesis of creative, relevant lessons, of the belief in the intrinsic value of education, and of engaging classrooms. Scripted learning is workbook pages, not unpredictable experiments. It is history as dates and names, not a heated argument over the meaning of the American experiment. It is reading as a necessary evil, not a reason to laugh or wipe away a tear. It is mathematics as a series of memorization exercises, not as a means to discover. Scripted learning means that teachers lay out minimum expectations based on official programs and students deliver just what they are asked. Some argue that eradicating the practices which make up scripted learning it is easier said than done. Some argue that not all teachers are like________ (fill in the blank), nor are they cut out for such creative teaching. Bunk. Even for teachers who have difficulty connecting with students or who are tapped out on ideas, the amount of lessons available from the internet, from professional journals and from colleagues—all free for the taking—is so great that “endless” is not too strong a word. Add to that mentoring from master teachers in the district (not to mention our new “instructional coach”) and third party programs for staff development and we have the start of a revolution. If there are teachers who still cannot cope—is it not the role of principals to address that problem? The revolution begins, quite simply, with a direct statement from administrators that teachers will be expected and encouraged to diverge from textbook and programmatic lessons whenever they can find a means to engage students in something deeper and more meaningful. That does not mean abandoning the subject matter or moving away from the intent of the curriculum, but merely to create an environment of higher expectations and authentic learning. Administrators need to back this up with mentoring programs, staff development, and time made available for teachers to communicate with each other. Employees who are now gone from Readington had argued that we need scripted programs so that all the children are learning the same thing and that there is uniformity of experience. But, there is no such thing as uniformity of experience in human endeavor. In our schools we choose between reading the script to a dull play, or allowing our children and teachers to write their own play—based on the same curricular goals. There is no reason to wait any longer to start work on this area, unless we have decided that we are more concerned about politically motivated test scores, about risking our reputations on others, or about giving up control to teachers and students. Homework A recent article on readingtonparents.org examined the role of homework in the lives of students and touched on some of the concerns from educators and parents. In Readington we have wildly different levels of quantity and quality coming home each night, even in the same grade. The school board, apparently thinking it had attended to this concern, pointed to a policy adopted in January of 2006. Yet, that policy said nothing about expectations of time, or about the significance of family time versus schoolwork. The value judgment belongs in the lap of the school board. What is more, there has been no overarching administrative directive to teachers about homework quality or quantity. Principals have simply made differing attempts to quantify parameters when the subject has come up. Meanwhile, teachers continue to send home committee-written workbooks and inane busywork in the absence of direction. Without any central coordination, some students receive hours of homework each night, while others in the same grade receive just a few minutes. Some young children break down in tears at the kitchen table, while others excitedly run around their house collecting data for a fun class project. As in the area of scripted learning, homework needs to correspond with curriculum, but it must also be limited to a reasonable period of time each night and be intrinsically motivating. What does it take to fix this problem? Not much. The school board can revise its policy in a matter of a few weeks to specify a time recommendation—perhaps the ten minutes per night per grade that they thought they had already approved. [Editor's Note: since this article was published, it has come to light that the school board has already approved time limits for homework.] Then our administrative team can get the word out to teachers and provide a means for teachers to communicate with their peers about assignments. With email, voicemail and common planning time available, this can’t be too difficult. Finally, administrators can begin to work on the quality of homework in the same way they need to eradicate scripted learning. Reading In the name of encouraging reading, students in our district are asked to perform some incredibly short-sighted tasks. For example, some students are given reading quotas. Their grade in class depends in part on the amount of pages they read each week. More pages equal a better grade. Just like the quota systems used by telemarketers and other dim-witted corporate fools, the reading quota leads to predictable results: quality goes down in the hunt for short term gain. Students quickly realize that the content of their reading isn’t important and that they have limited time to read in a day. So, they face a stark choice: either choose simplistic reading material for a high page count, or read something denser and suffer a poor grade. Another option is to simply lie about the number of pages one has read. That and undemanding reading material are the most popular choices. Other examples abound. Some classrooms have reading charts showing the number of books read by each student—again, divorced from the quality of content. This competition leads to students choosing simplistic books in order to “win”. A program from a corporate sponsor provides Readington students with food for spending a certain amount of time reading—at least it isn’t based on page count, but it is still about competition and not the joy of reading. Another facet of this problem is a focus by some teachers on particular genres of literature or on fiction. Recent research suggests that boys, in particular, do not connect at certain ages with some genres of fiction or with fiction at all. Rather than allowing or encouraging a wider interpretation of what is appropriate for assignments, teachers may turn off boys to reading altogether. In the end, it is widely agreed that our objective is to encourage reading for the sake of reading and to graduate students who have the skills to decode books and other materials that are substantial and meaningful. Quotas and similar strategies merely kill off the intrinsic value of reading and sacrifice deeper understanding on the alter of short term gain. Solving this problem is a longer term objective, but administrators can start by nixing the quotas and competitions. Recess Okay, it is a dead horse—but, let’s beat it a little more anyway. Some school board members have made it clear that they see no value in recess that can’t be found in PE. They feel that socialization time, an opportunity to blow off steam, and the freedom to play a game of their own choice is not as critical for children as more time for “core” subjects. As a result, there is no debate inside the district about recess being reduced to 15 minutes and ending as a practice in fifth grade. Outside the school, there is a debate. Some parents cannot understand how a young child is supposed to get on a bus at seven in the morning, sit quietly all day in school, sit at assigned seats during lunch, take a long bus ride home, and then sit down again for an hour or two of homework without taking a little break somewhere along the way. Indeed, a single fifteen minute break would not be enough to satisfy the legal requirements of many adult workplaces over the course of a day, never mind the “overtime” of homework. Fortunately, children are not expected to act like adults in second or third grade—or, are they? Readington is not alone in this practice. School districts across the nation are wrestling with the idea of recess, mostly because the time is supposedly needed, instead, to concentrate on propping kids up with test-taking skills. The hidden meaning behind a focus on “core” subjects is really an obsession with bringing up test scores. The testing, after all, concentrates on math and reading. No child left untested. With the schedule already made and the die set for this year, parents can probably do nothing but grumble. There seems to be little or no support from the school board. However, when school board elections come again, parents will have an opportunity to speak with a vote. Token Economies This subject has been discussed to a great degree on readingtonparents.org. Rather than rehash the issue here, suffice to say that token economies are more entrenched than ever in Readington classrooms, and many teachers spend far more time dreaming up creative reward systems than creative lessons. Extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation are two different things with two different consequences for human action. Do we want kids who learn in an authentic fashion because it is fascinating and engaging, or do we want kids who memorize and behave nicely because they really want that prize? This is an issue for our superintendent and principals, who have so far been silent on the subject. There are parents and teachers who fail to see the significance of the problem. Still, many of our other issues, such as scripted learning and reading, are tied up with token economies. We take on all of the problems, or we fail to fix any of them. High Horses Like any public school district, we have some educators with a bit of an attitude. It includes staff members who feel that parents have their job at home, educators have their job at school, and nowhere should the two meet. Parents may confide in a teacher about a student’s difficulty with a particular subject or skill only to be told that they are “coddling” their child at home or that the child is immature. Translation: the child must fit my classroom, not the other way around. Some educators evade their responsibility to communicate with parents, leaving emails and voicemails unanswered for days or weeks. Some badmouth parents to colleagues or disclose certain information to illustrate that a parent is “one of those”. Some educators also use sarcasm and other public power plays to control students in their classroom or to intimidate parents. Another example of destructive attitudes involves teachers of higher grade levels blaming those in the lower grade levels for not preparing students properly. Typically the higher grade level teachers bemoan the lack of a certain skill set in students and leave culpability with the previous teachers instead of taking responsibility to teach the skill set themselves or communicate the need for teaching it to the educators in the previous grade. This occurs at all levels, and the blame is often cast out in the open during parent-teacher conferences. To be sure, there are also many wonderful examples of Readington educators who go out of their way to include parents, to communicate, and to be personally accountable. All of our educators should recognize that parents have the ultimate responsibility for raising their children. Parents may be wrong, but they are still the supreme rulers. When a child reaches adulthood, it isn’t the sixth grade teacher who will be paying for college or bailing out a drunken failure from a DUI arrest. Classrooms must adapt and teachers must differentiate. Demanding that all children fit a pre-determined classroom mold admits a failure to actually teach, as does leaning on other colleagues to handle their “problem” children. Blaming parents or children for not fitting into a mold admits an ignorance of human development. Blaming teachers in previous grades is unprofessional and counterproductive. Only by partnering with parents, with children and with each other can teachers and administrators really advance the cause of education. Our administration must drive this point home by requiring prompt and frequent communication with parents, by requiring all possible differentiation within a classroom, and by providing the means for teachers of different grade levels and schools to exchange ideas and information. That makes six for 2006. The count could be higher or it could be different, but we must start somewhere and start now. With such a high percentage of new employees in our district there should be no shortage of people eager to plow ahead. Parents and children have put up with two years of heavy unrest and we have seen a lot of good people leave the district. We owe the people who are left a sense of progress and a new record of achievement. While everyone understands that educators new to the district need time to become oriented, many also believe too much wasted time has slipped by. In this period of instability, some students have had the misfortune of enduring the regretful effects of all six of these areas. That should never have happened, and it should not continue to happen. We need to make a conspicuous difference this school year.
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