A Place at the Table

I am trying to wrap my head around our current fiscal crisis. Not only am I having a hard time trying to grasp the implications of the still-developing disaster or the proposed interventions, I'm having a hard time just trying to really get a fix on what $700 billion dollars is. This is what it looks like:

$700,000,000,000.00

That’s a lot of zeros. I trolled the internet to get some perspective on what $700 billion really amounts to.

If the federal government siphoned off Florida's gross domestic product, we could cover the bailout. Invading the Netherlands might be advisable—that nation's GDP was $768.7 billion last year.

In terms of individuals' net worth, $700 billion is equal to 11 Warren Buffets, 12 Bill Gates, 280 Oprah Winfreys -- or 14 million average-earning American households.

“Cost” per citizen: $3,324 -- the equivalent of
one long living-large weekend at the Wynn in Las Vegas) Hmm, somebody’s living a lot larger than I am. Because to me that $3.3 grand looks like a semester of in-state tuition our local University of Mary Washington.

Of course this is an optimistic estimate of the bailout cost. Some pundits predict that this is only the beginning. We are told the longer we wait the worse it will get. I don't know about you, but I’m feeling a little sick now.

How did we get ourselves into this mess? Well, the Republicans blame the Democrats and the Democrats blame the Republicans. Main Street blames Wall Street for being greedy and Wall Street blames Main Street for not reading the fine print. The one thing that they all agree on: It's somebody else's fault. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for all of them to turn to public education and say, “No one understands the numbers! They can't do the math! We told you education people that we were a Nation At Risk and now look what has happened! We're beginning to think that IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!”

Well, let it be noted that this whole thing might have been avoided if Wall Street read Teacher Magazine. My Teacher Leaders Network colleague Anthony Cody wrote on July 28th:

At the same time we have boosted the amount of higher math our students are required to take, we seem to have lost the most elemental common sense math from our schools – and our society. The past decade has seen people encouraged to borrow against the equity in their homes to make consumer purchases. This practice was sometimes even justified as “good debt,” because the interest is deductible.

Teaching our students the codification of mathematics focused on how to do math problems without addressing how to use math to solve life problems is a misunderstanding of the discipline and a disservice to our children. Suggesting that they take advanced mathematics courses because "they will help you get into college" without providing an explanation of how they will "help you get on with life" is form without substance.

We are indeed a Nation At Risk and it will fall to the children in our classrooms to rescue us. To our great shame, we are about to saddle these young people with a crushing amount of debt while simultaneously pricing them out of higher education. It is probable that they will spend their lives paying for our lack of self restraint in economics and public policy. Unfortunately, fellow educators, we’ll have to figure out how to prepare the next generation for this glum future on the cheap, since we have overcharged our national credit card and we are likely to hear that there's just no money for school supplies in the budget.

Sometimes I wonder if the economists on Wall Street really understand that they aren't playing Risk with play money, but gambling with our businesses, our homes, and our retirement funds.

Sometimes I wonder if the policymakers in Washington grasp that this isn't a debating society, and that their "good shots" to the opposition don't score points, they imperil the stability of our nation.

Sometimes I wonder, when the grownups get through, will there be anything left on the table to address the needs of our children?

Posted by Susan Graham at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My TLN colleague Laura Reasoner Jones addressed gender equity last week in her Teaching Secrets: Bridging the Gender Gap essay here. I understood her point to be that each child is unique and that we need to be thoughtful in responding to them as individuals. It was really interesting to me that the responses her article solicited clearly demonstrate that the same information can be perceived differently by various readers. In fact, some of the responses were pretty inflamed, and I went back to see what was so controversial. Do you know what re-reading the piece and the comments caused me to take away from this article?

Wait Time.

Now I'm a big advocate of Wait Time and, even though it’s sometimes painful, I work hard at practicing it in my classroom. But Laura gave me a new insight about waiting. I’ve taught myself and encouraged others to wait for student response. But it occurs to me that I seldom employ Wait Time BEFORE questioning or AFTER student responses.

In the last few days, I’ve been thinking: If taking Wait Time while my students think before they speak is important, then maybe it’s equally important for me to take Wait Time of my own to process what my students say. To do otherwise implies that while their action of responding has value, the content of the response they offer probably doesn't impact my thinking. It also means that I don't give the rest of the class a chance to process that answer either. If I’m not taking the time to think about the student response, can other students be getting much out of this interchange?

Today I was participating in Santa Cruz Mentor Training and I experienced a different kind of Wait Time. One of the strategies used was Silent Sharing—a brainstorming process where no one gets to say a word. A group gets one piece of paper and one marker that is passed around the table. No one speaks and no one adds an idea until the paper comes back around to them again. It was enlightening. One could literally see thinking, evaluating and responding on the faces at the table.

It occurs to me that teaching, learning, professional growth, education policy, politics, religion, parenting, and a lot of other conversations could benefit from some Silent Sharing too. I’ve noticed that public discourse is mostly coarse, far too public, and there’s way too much of it. I’m going to be using Silent Sharing in my classroom and also in my work with teachers, but while the TV has a "mute" button, the world doesn't, so Silent Sharing for all probably isn’t feasible. As a compromise, may I suggest a little more Wait Time?

Here are some simple Wait Time Guidelines.

Before you get to questioning: Take Wait Time to consider how what you are saying and how the questions you are planning to ask might be perceived. Will the listener hear a need for information? An expression of concern? A perceived doubt? An inappropriate meddling?

Before you ask your question: Take Wait Time to consider exactly what it is that you want to find out. That they are listening? That they can/will repeat what you told them? That they agree with you? That they are developing their own understanding or forming their own opinion?

After you ask your question: Take Wait Time to allow the listener to process the question and formulate an answer. Oh good, we already knew this part!

After the listener responds: Take Wait Time to process the response. Does the answer tell you what is known? What was thought? What was felt? What was misunderstood?

Before moving on: Take Wait Time to inform the next step. What does the answer tell you about your own communication skills? What does it tell you about the respondent? How does the answer to your question impact what you do next?

I know what you are thinking—I’m too busy to do this much waiting! The reality is that we don’t much like Wait Time. Minutes are precious and waiting seems inefficient because, you know, it just takes a lot of time! So in the classroom we “keep up the pace” and “move on” and “maintain momentum” because, while we like getting answers to our own questions and giving the right answers to the questions of others, when the questions are hard and when it comes to listening as well as talking—hmm, not so much.

Questions can seek information, but they can also do harm when we question without listening, listen without really hearing, and respond without thinking. The response may be defensive avoidance or aggressive verbal swatting. Communication may shut down or escalate to hostility.

So let’s take a little Wait Time and count to 10 before we question, after we question, and before we respond. Let’s listen to the sound of silence, because sometimes it speaks volumes.

Posted by Susan Graham at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the last two weeks, I’ve been hearing a lot about change. It seems that everyone is in favor of it. Me too!

My poor old laptop was retired from active duty and replaced a new machine with more stamina, but less weight.

My virtual teaching community moved on from a listserv to a slick new platform.

My 54 year old house finally got the dream kitchen that I have been planning for 22 years.

My 58 year old body got brand new legs in the form of titanium knees.

And this week, after 20 years of teaching middle school Family and Consumer Science at Gayle Middle School, I got to start all over again with a new school year.

It occurs to me that I am probably an advocate of change because with each of my changes I had the good fortune of retaining the best of the old while reaping the benefits of the new. But change entails a certain amount of loss. It requires letting go of the safe and familiar. And change can exact varying levels of pain in the transition. New laptop and new platform--not so much. New kitchen and new knees---much.

Since the macro vision of change has already been pretty much covered, I thought I might offer some micro observations on the process of change:

Most of us have a love/hate relationship with change.

Change often results in unanticipated consequences, both positive and negative.

Policymakers often talk about change in terms of reinventing education. It sounds visionary, almost always involves dramatic overhauls and new technology, and is often very expensive. But promoting the reinvention implies public education was, and is, bad by design. I would argue that it is one of America’s finest accomplishments and that in many situations, it continues to work well and does not need to be “fixed.” Even in those settings where reinvention is need, the logistics of implementing major design changes in school is not unlike attempting to redesign an airplane while in flight. It's daunting and dangerous and there are children on the worksite who are, at least to someone, not expendable.

At the other end of the policy spectrum are those who frame the discussion in terms of reforming education. But doesn’t that sort of imply that teachers, students and education in general have gone buck wild and need a firm hand to impose a lot more supervision and discipline? In a culture that thrives on incentives and is willing to overlook personal and policy failure in business and government it seems unrealistic to attempt to motivate through threats and to hold children and their teachers to a higher level of accountability than adults in position of authority. I humbly suggest that reform might be more effective if it trickled down from the boardroom to the classroom.

Somewhere in the middle are those who say they want to restore quality to our public schools. This more moderate group often suffers from nostalgia. They long for classrooms where women in apple jewelry and men in V neck sweaters write neatly across the chalkboard as students sit compliantly soaking up knowledge. These stakeholders often remember their or their children’s school experience through the soft focus lens of time. But we can’t turn back the clock and, no matter how good those schools were then, they won’t serve the needs of today.

So, may I offer my own back-to-school platform for education policy? I don’t believe we need to reinvent, or reform, or restore America’s public schools. I believe we need to renew our schools. Let’s honor and build on the sturdy framework that has served us in the past, but let us also have the discipline to clean out the education closet and get rid of what is no longer functional or no longer fits. Let’s just say "NO" to “But we’ve always done it this way.” But let’s also listen attentively when teachers explain, “This is why I do it this way,” because -- when research tells us that a good teacher is the most important factor in student achievement -- it makes sense to pay attention to what good teachers know and are able to do.

So there's my personal message of change, and there's my bold vision for the future. As either a student, a parent, or a teacher, I have now gone back to school for the 50th time. Last Tuesday was my Golden Anniversary First Day of School and I'm celebrating the journey!

Posted by Susan Graham at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)