Living in Dialogue

A New York Times article this week describes the challenge Florida science teachers face in teaching evolution to their students. Evolution is the central organizing principle that guides our understanding of living things on Earth, so it is very important. You might think Oakland, California, would be a place that would welcome the teaching of evolution in the science classroom, and for the most part, you would be right. But I learned the hard way that not everyone here is in agreement. Oakland has its share of students who attend fundamentalist churches of one sort or another. When I first introduced evolution to my classes, I was surprised to find many skeptics. They asked “Are you saying we came from monkeys?” Some had even heard that Darwin was a racist, who believed in the superiority of whites.

It took me a while to sort out how to confront their beliefs. The first few times I debated the facts with students I kept running into dead ends. Ultimately, they believed as they did because it was the word of God, as revealed by the Holy Bible. They had trouble understanding why I did not consider this “evidence.”

Then one day I saw an episode of the PBS show, NOVA, that gave me an angle. Retired magician James Randi had helped create a 1993 documentary entitled “Secrets of the Psychics” that revealed how things that seemed somehow scientific, like astrology, palm reading and mind reading, were actually unlikely to be accurate. (Unfortunately this NOVA episode is no longer available.) He did this by duplicating the feats of the psychics, and in some cases devising experiments to test their validity. In one remarkable sequence, he exposes that the faith healer Peter Popoff is using a radio transmitter to receive information from his wife in the wings, as he roams the audience providing miraculous cures. In another, he travels to Russia, where he devises a careful experiment to test the telepathic powers of a supposed psychic.

Here’s the process I’ve developed, drawing on the Randi documentary. At the start of the year, before evolution had even comes up, I show them this video and asked the students to watch for the scientific method. What was the hypothesis being put forward by the astrologer or psychic? What was an experiment to test that hypothesis? What can we use as solid evidence to decide if it is true?

We discover that there are “magical” explanations that rely on some form of supernatural intervention, and there are explanations based on hard evidence. The rules of science are that we work with the evidence we get by experimenting and observing. If someone makes a claim, there must be a way to test it before we can accept it as scientific fact. Of course we also rely on what others have learned before us, but those findings are always subject to challenge and revision by new generations of scientists.

I leave that lesson simmering. Then, a month or two later, when I begin to teach about evolution, students begin to raise questions. “What about Adam and Eve?” “According to the Bible, all the animals went on the ark with Noah.” My response is to remind them about our lesson from a month or two before. What are the rules of science? We base our conclusions on evidence: what we can actually observe occurring, or what direct evidence can we gather of what has occurred in the past? What are the rules in church? There, everything is based on faith. You do not go up to the preacher and demand that he prove that God exists, do you? You have faith. That means you believe it without demanding evidence. I promise them I will not go into church and demand the preacher prove the existence of God. I accept that those are the rules in his place of worship. But we are in a science classroom, and the rules here are different. Here, we look for evidence, and just because something is written in a book -- even a science book -- does not mean it is evidence. That is why scientists constantly challenge one another, and why, in my class, we do as many experiments as possible, to find things out for ourselves.

As the teacher featured in the New York Times, Mr. Campbell, points out, there are questions that are clearly outside of the domain of science. Questions such as “does God exist,” and many more. We happily leave those questions aside when we enter the science classroom. That does not mean we discredit anyone’s religious beliefs. I make it very clear that I respect my students’ beliefs, and my goal is not to deny them. But I do want them to understand there are different ways to look at the world, and science is one of the most useful ways we have.

Then our study of evolution actually begins, as we look into evidence of past life on Earth, studying the fossil record. We examine fossils of ancient animals now extinct, such as the trilobite, and learn they once swarmed in the seas. We discover how scientists make inferences about the social lives of dinosaurs by looking at fossilized footprints and nest sites. We explore genetics and begin to see the evidence used to group animals together with common ancestors. Science is all about evidence, and the evidence of evolution is so vivid and real that students become intrigued in this story of life, even if it is different from those stories they have heard before.

In the end, the lesson of the science teacher is that we have strong evidence that living creatures have gone through an evolutionary process. How that fits into one’s personal beliefs about God, spirituality and religion is still up to each of us as individual learners.

What has been your experience teaching evolution? Do you have ideas on how to respond to the controversy science teachers face in this area?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

Every once in a while we get a chance to see the greatness in our fellow teachers. Last week I was with 18 of my fellow science teachers from Oakland, who took the last week of their precious summer to take on a huge task. They have agreed to build a team of mentors for the many new science teachers in our district, a project we are calling TeamScience. We will be working together to support new teachers through one-on-one support, team meetings, and in online forums. We spent the past week in Santa Cruz working with our partners from the New Teacher Center, Kevin Drinkard and Sarah Young, learning some excellent techniques for mentoring, and this week we will hold our first workshop where we will begin to share what we have learned. Our team comes from middle and high schools across the District. Some are relatively new themselves, with only a few years of experience. We also have some real vets, including one who has taught at her school for the past 35 years. One of them is even a former middle school student of mine! Together, we hope to show our new colleagues that teaching is a rewarding, sustainable profession, especially when we work together with our colleagues.

Oakland schools, like those in many cities, suffer from a high turnover rate among teachers. This problem is especially acute for secondary science teachers. Last year, about 40% of our middle and high school science teachers were in their first or second year. This has bad consequences for our students. When I started teaching, I relied heavily on the experienced science teachers down the hall for ideas and support. They shared curriculum resources, management ideas, and listened when I had a rough day. In many of our schools now, there are few experienced teachers left, and new teachers lack this vital support. Furthermore, almost all of our first-year teachers are interns who have had, at most, a short summer training course and a few weeks of practice teaching summer school. They will be handed the keys to their classrooms in a few days, and few will be prepared for what awaits them.

Some rare individuals take to teaching like ducks to water. Most of us, however, struggle to find our sea legs in the classroom. There are so many things to learn! When we were students we did not absorb the many skills an accomplished teacher was bringing to bear. A good teacher figures out where her students are before teaching a subject, and builds on their interests and prior knowledge. She knows how the set clear rules and consequences, when it is ok to let something slide – and when she must be firm and forceful. Science teachers, in addition to knowing their content, must also know how to organize cooperative groups for hands-on activities. That means a whole level of classroom management that takes practice to master.

TeamScience mentors will do their best to close this gap. We have several goals. The first and foremost is to make these new teachers as effective as possible, as quickly as possible. That means we will be providing them with a packet of resources geared to getting their classrooms launched well from day one. These will include organizational tools and model letters home, ideas for class rules, and a sequence of engaging first-week activities. We have smaller teams working on resources for each grade level of middle school science, and for several high school science courses. We will be holding monthly workshops open to all science teachers in the district, but especially geared towards the novices. We will continue to share curricular resources aligned with the standards and our District timeline as the year unfolds. We will also be using online tools to communicate and share resources.

Our second goal is to increase retention for all science teachers in Oakland. Research shows that one of the leading causes of staff turnover is a lack of collegiality. We hope to build a strong community feeling – starting with our team of mentors and extending to all science teachers in the district. We intend to do this by working together to meet the needs of our fellow teachers, and by sharing a sense of purpose and accomplishment as we do so. Lastly, we intend to strengthen our team of mentors, and give them opportunities to develop as leaders. They are the most precious resource, for their own students and for their fellow teachers as well, and we want to not only retain them, but give them the recognition and opportunities for leadership they deserve.

The great thing about being part of a team like this is the way everyone pitches in and gets the work done. We are fortunate to have in Caleb Cheung an extraordinary program manager who is completely engaged and hands-on. Caleb and I have worked together on projects of this sort for the past decade, and so this project is an extension of our efforts. We have also received support from a parcel tax fund within the school district, and from our head of Instructional Services, Mary Buttler. Another key element of our team are the dedicated leaders in Oakland’s New Teacher Support and Development program, who have been helping us build our web of support.

By the end of the school year, we hope we will have made a real difference in the lives of Oakland’s science teachers and their students. We will feel most successful when our novices gradually become our experienced team members, and can offer their support to the next generation of science teachers. Meanwhile, I will post on this project periodically to let you know how things are going.

What do you think of TeamScience? Do you have any advice or experience with mentoring to share?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

When I began teaching middle school science, I thought it was going to be great. I wasn’t going to be one of those boring teachers making students memorize facts out of a book. I was going to give them hands-on activities! I knew they would love to investigate things for themselves, so I spent my own money on materials, and wrote up a lab sheet for an investigation. I was not prepared for what was about to happen. I spent fifteen minutes explaining what the steps they were supposed to follow. Then I allowed them to come and get their materials. The result was chaos. Thirty-plus students roaming around the room, retrieving materials, fooling around, getting in one another’s way, taking more than they needed, and otherwise wasting time. They had not listened very closely to my instructions, so once they had their materials, they started “experimenting.” I had to yell over the din to get their attention, to tell them to be sure to measure their materials and record their results carefully. By this time the period was almost over. Fortunately I had a conference period after this one, because when the students left, their materials were all over the room. Whew! The students enjoyed the experience, but I did not! They had not done the experiment carefully, and half the groups had not even recorded their results. There was a colossal mess left behind, and I had very little to show for all my effort gathering the materials. I began to understand why some teachers chose bookwork over hands-on activities.

But giving up on these engaging activities shortchanges our students for our own shortcomings, because they can work well if we get organized, and realize we have to teach them how to learn in new ways. Many of our students, especially in the era of test-driven instruction, arrive at middle and even high school with very few hands-on experiences. For science instruction, there are some special skills and procedures. Here are some key things to teach:

Working in cooperative groups: For most hands-on activities, a class of 32 can be broken into 8 groups of four. Groups work best if there are assigned roles, such as one person in charge of materials, another in charge of reviewing the directions and making sure they are followed, a third responsible for recording data, and a fourth who serves as a facilitator, and monitors how the group is working together and makes sure everyone is on task. Here is a web site with more details.

You can allow groups to assign these roles themselves, or you can assign them as the teacher – but make sure each group has the roles clearly defined.

Getting materials: My favorite strategy was to get ten gray restaurant bus trays (available for about $5 each at a restaurant supply store). To set up for class, I load up each team’s materials in the bus tray, and then the materials person can get the whole batch all at once. Before they start, have the group take a close look at the materials. Since I usually have another class coming in on their heels, I need those materials in the same condition at the end of the period.

Following Directions: I begin by reviewing the directions on the lab handout. We have a limited amount of time. It takes about fifteen minutes to get started, and ten minutes to clean up – that only leaves us about twenty minutes for the actual experiment. We do not have time for playing around. The data the students gather will not have any value if they do not follow the directions.

Collecting data: Even if you have a designated Recorder responsible for data collection, everyone in the group must be observing the experiment and recording the data. The data has to be collected carefully. If there is a new piece of equipment involved, have a separate lesson on how to use it. Do not have students’ first exposure to a triple beam balance be a challenging lab activity.

Cleaning up: Have a signal, like a small gong, to let students know it is clean-up time. Make sure you set aside at least ten minutes for students to clean up and get their materials organized for the next class. Make it clear who in the group should be taking things to the sink. Avoid having 32 students moving in different directions. This is where your assignment of roles pays off.

Take time to teach the procedures! Set up a simple experiment with easy data collection and quick clean-up as a practice. Have students compare their data so they can see if they are being accurate. If they are off, have them write about the sources of error.

You can also provide some active feedback to the groups as they are working. One strategy is to circulate and listen to the discussions at each table. Then you can write on the overhead some notes reflecting these discussions – both on-task and off-task. This lets everyone know you are paying attention. They are working autonomously, but you are providing clear guidance.

When the activity is finished, have them reflect on how their group functioned. Give them a rubric on group functioning, and have them reflect on how they worked together in different ways. Keep track of their group-work score and challenge them to improve next time.

If the class has not met your expectations, make it clear that they must improve if they want to do hands-on experiments in the future.

When students have a chance to investigate science concepts for themselves, through first-hand experiences, I believe they learn things in a much deeper way. Furthermore, we want our students to be able to work well with others and to take responsibility for their own learning. When the students are well-prepared and we are well-organized, these activities can become a smoothly running part of the curriculum.

Do you have any other tips for success with hands-on science? Any advice for other subject areas?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

For the past six years, Nebraska educators, led by Commissioner Doug Christensen, have waged a lonely battle to preserve the integrity of assessment in their schools. Their system survived challenge after challenge, but now, even as NCLB may be on the ropes, Nebraska is implementing standardized tests. As a result, Christensen has resigned his post as state Commissioner of Education. He recently responded to a series of questions I posed to him, and as you will see, he has some potent lessons for us as we weigh the alternatives facing us related to teacher empowerment, the Federal role in education and No Child Left Behind.

Question: What were the important accomplishments of the STAR system (Student-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System) in Nebraska?

STARS created a system of education where the classroom was the center of the system not the bottom of a hierarchy. It centered the work of the system on what happens in the classroom and clarified that the work of the system was teaching and learning. It placed students at the center of what schools do and placed the work of teachers in a leadership role.

Under STARS, teachers became instructional leaders, principals became leaders of learning, superintendents became "chief education officers," and local boards became policy leaders. All of the roles are leadership roles and all designed to support the work of teaching and learning and the classroom.

STARS put the tools in place to cause instruction and teaching to improve and put the responsibility for making changes in instruction and teaching in the hands of teachers and their principals. It put the data in the hands of teachers and principals so that changes could be made as learning occurred, or did not occur, rather than waiting until the results from an end of the year test are returned and students have moved on in the curriculum.

Question: What difference does it make what role teachers play in designing assessments?

Without a system like STARS, the sequence of strategies is something like standards---assessment----curriculum----accountability. A STARS-like system requires that assessment comes out of instruction that is aligned to standards (but not limited by the standards) and the only professionals that can bring assessment out of instruction and teaching are the teachers. Without every teacher having a role in designing assessments for their own classroom, teachers really cannot effectively teach. They need to have a clear notion of what the learning they are after looks like and that means what they are going to assess and how they are going to assess it.

And, without leadership and control over assessment, teachers will never be regarded as professionals. Professionals, in every field including education, are those workers who have control over the "metrics of determining good practice" and control over the "metrics of what determines successful work." Imagine for a moment, auditors, lawyers, medical professionals and even morticians allowing someone other that those that are "trained" in the field to determine what is good practice and to decide what will be used as the measure of the work.

Question: How did the STARS system impact student learning?

Using our state writing assessment as a benchmark, our proficiencies in reading, mathematics and writing were all an average of 86% for grades 4, 8, and 11. Using ACT scores as a benchmark, STARS supported the continuing increases in our statewide averages for ACT scores. Using our standardized test scores as a benchmark, STARS supported the increase in the statewide averages.

Question: What do you think the appropriate role is for standardized tests?

I do not think there is any appropriate role for standardized tests. We used them as benchmarks only because we had to have something that people could look to to make sense of the proficiencies and determine if our STARS scores were "for real." In a perfect world, the only way to build an assessment system for measuring student achievement and having additional measures to validate the results is to begin building the assessments from the classroom up with the assessments given in the classroom to be the major assessments and the comprehensive assessments which are then "validated" with assessments at the school/district and state levels that are samples of the assessments given at the level below.

Question: How do you respond when people suggest the schools and teachers are dodging accountability if they do not embrace standardized test scores as a valid measurement of their success?

How can one be dodging accountability when standardized measures do not align to standards? When they do not align to intellectual skills like problem solving, thinking skills, application skills, .........creativity, analysis, synthesis.......?

Standardized tests are based on metrics of getting the same score if given over and over again. The only way to get such reliability scores is to test the lowest levels of knowledge for which there is one and only one right answer. Is the knowledge that we value most the kind for which there is only one response? Is the selection of a response from a list of responses a representation of learning the content of the question, being able to read, being able to discriminate, guessing, all of the above, none of the above?

Question: What do you think of the idea that the problem with NCLB was that there were not national standards, so we lacked a "level playing field"?

National standards are not the answer to anything. If national standards are the answer, as is being proposed by many, what is the real question? If the real question is "what do we want our students to know and be able to do," let us realize once and for all that there is no universal answer to this question. The only answer is the one that considers each student, each context, each set of goals and aptitudes.....

Because national standards will "standardize" the system when assessments are tied to them, we will reduce what is taught and what students learn to what can be captured in the statements of the standards and what can be measured in the design of the assessments. What we need is more variation in the ways schools are run and variation in the ways teachers teach, not making the process "teacher proof."

If the question is "can we trust teachers/educators to do the right things and to push students to the highest levels of learning" and if the answer to the question is "no," then national standards and standardized assessments is the answer. However, I do not accept that this is the right question and I certainly do not accept that the answer is that educators can not be trusted. We should try a system that trusts educators before we decide that we cannot (trust them).

Questions: How do you see the landscape shifting as we anticipate a change in administration?

I see the landscape shifting in ways that will open doors to other kinds of assessments. I hope the landscape will change so that we articulate the issues and questions more clearly so that whatever we construct addresses a common understanding of our issues, our goals, and the work to be done. I hope the landscape embraces a "theory of action" that is more focused on local leadership, building capacity at the local level, finding "common" measures of learning (not same measures), builds accountability from the inside out not the outside in and builds the accountability on improvement in results, not status, and I hope that we begin to describe what we want in terms of results from schools to be more than academic achievement such as engagement, meaningful relationships, etc.

Nothing new in NCLB will happen until we recognize that we need to re-build not re-authorize. Nothing will happen to change federal education policy until there is a "space" for conversation and engagement and a change in administration could create the "space" needed to engage a national conversation about education, about education policy and practice and about accountability.

Question: What has brought about your decision to leave your position as Commissioner of Education for the state of Nebraska?

I had notified the State Board over a year ago that I was nearing the time that I would step down and was given the opportunity by the Board of setting my own timetable and afforded the opportunity to stay as long as I wanted to stay. In January, I indicated to the Board that I felt that the end of this calendar year would be the time for me to (1) move on to the next phase of my life, (2) give time back to my family that they sacrificed for me to do this work, (3) write the book that I believe is in me, (4) spoil my grandchildren and (5) teach students who are entering the leadership dimension of their careers, e.g. principals and superintendents.

Then, in April, the Legislature passed legislation that called for transition to a state test in 09-10. My values of what I believe is right for students and for teachers will not allow me to lead our state into a state test. I believe that state testing is wrong and is not in the best interests of students, teachers and other educators, and schools. I cannot uphold the constitutional responsibility of being a Commissioner who is to uphold the "law of the land" and put in place something that I believe is so dreadfully wrong as education policy and so destructive as public policy about education.

So readers, what do you think about what Doug Christensen has shared? Should we seek variation rather than standardization? Can teachers be trusted in the ways Christensen suggests?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)