My favorite The Master Teacher pamphlet is purple: Volume 37, Number 17, entitled “Five Questioning Techniques to Strengthen Your Teaching.” What’s that? Not familiar with the homespun flyers that change ink color but not layout each week, and are stuffed into teachers’ mailboxes at many schools in lieu of actual face-to-face professional development? They come from Leadership Lane in the heart of Kansas, according to the publisher's address, and what I like about them is that the ideas and strategies are guaranteed to work, as certified by a seal, depicted complete with rivets, on the front cover. Also the “Points to Ponder...” can be pondered “privately... or with colleagues.” Sometimes I do it by myself.

True professional development requires more than the passive transmission of homilies into mail slots by a checklist-oriented administrator. That’s what makes board certification worth doing, to me. It requires substantive, sustained observation of and reflection about my practice, and strongly encourages collaboration along the way. As I promised last post, and following the advice of the Master Teacher (“[An application question] asks students to solve a lifelike problem that requires the identification of the issue and the selection and use of appropriate information and skills...”), I will now ask, W.W.A.T.? That’s “What Would Alfie (Kohn) Think?” In other words, what might the modern-day Deweyian have to say about NBPTS?

1. Standards are bad. Alfie's stump speech, as reported in my last post, established that. And there are, no getting around it, twelve of them involved in the NBPTS certification process. That the word itself would raise his hackles is not speculation. I cornered Alfie before his speech and asked him what he thought about the process. When I used the word "standards" in explaining it, he cringed. If he were to read these standards, however, I don't think he'd find much to object to. They are somehow both axiomatic and vague in a way that insulates them from a progressive attack. (An editorial assault might be another matter.)

2. 275 is bad. The "magic number" that testees must achieve, through a combined score of the portfolio and the assessment center performance, would probably bother Alfie. Is there really a qualitative difference between the teacher who gets a 274 and one who gets a 276, he might reasonably ask? Like all grading systems that attempt to quantify complex and largely subjective endeavors, this one is open to the charge of being arbitrary. And in fact, a woman who sat near me at the conference, new to FCPS but not a new teacher (in fact, already board-certified), told me about a former colleague of hers who dropped out of the board certification process but was, she thought, one of the best teachers she'd ever met.

3. Portfolios are good. Alfie likes deep thought. He also values, it's safe to say, meaningful self-reflection. In a gradeless or near-gradeless class, kids learn because they're engaged, stimulated and challenged. When a teacher is scrutinizing his practice in the way that portfolio entries require, he is also engaged, stimulated and challenged. The portfolio isn’t “gradeless,” per se, but the grade is a distant and not an immediate goal. What occupies the practitioner on a day to day basis is the teaching itself, a “task” that is wonderfully nuanced and worthy of study. Alfie encourages richly complex, open-ended tasks for students as opposed to bubble-test, seek and destroy missions centered on the rote mastery of unrelated factoids. There is nothing bubble-testy about critiquing a slice of classroom life.

4. Do-overs are good. This is not a zero sum game. If you win, I don't necessarily lose. We both have to reach the magic number, it's true, but if we don't, we have three years to do so. While some teachers are understandably disheartened when they don't pass the first time (and this sort of official withholding of approval would definitely be on Alfie's bad list), if they can somehow pick themselves, brush themselves off, and resubmit or retest all over again, they can pass the next time. In fact, they only need to redo the parts they missed; credit is retained, for example, for satisfactory portfolio entries, even if the test center results don’t meet muster. The second-timer has a good chance to succeed by focusing only on what they missed, particularly if they seek feedback from experienced colleagues. So, while "being board-certified" smacks undeniably of gold stars and the sort of extrinsic motivation that Alfie abhors, nevertheless the process fosters genuine collaboration among professionals.

Overall, I think Alfie would probably not put his riveted seal of approval on the quest for NBPTS gold, but neither would he condemn every aspect of it. He would certainly recognize the process is better than what exists in test-stressed schools where the passing out of pamphlets masquerades as professional development. Remarkably, at the end of the day there is one thing on which The Master Teacher, Alfie Kohn and I can all agree: teachers talking about their teaching is a good thing.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 5:29 PM | Permalink | 7 Comments | Recommend

Alfie Kohn is mad about tests. And I don’t mean he likes them.

This Saturday at the 2006 Language and Learning Conference at George Mason University sponsored by the Northern Virginia Writing Project, I had the guilty pleasure of hearing the iconoclastic progressive firebrand assault the paradigm under which all of us who teach today in public schools or who buy into any notion of “accountability” (read pols and the public) are complicit. Equal parts Woody Allen, Clarence Darrow, and John Dewey, Kohn waxed eloquent and often hilarious for four hours without notes or powerpoint on the evil effects of a system that valorizes standardized tests, grades and what he called “verbal doggy biscuits” (ever scribble ‘Good job!’ in the margin of a kid’s paper?) above actual learning.

Here are five problematic effects of an achievement-focused culture, as Kohn sees it.
1. Kids lose interest. Learning becomes a chore, not a way of approaching the world: “If you’re using the right glasses,” said Kohn, “you can see learning evaporate” in environments where kids are taught that its point is not to figure stuff out but only to get better. Don’t blame the grade-grubbers for their behavior, exhorts Kohn. Ask what are the structural aspects of schools and classrooms that promulgate the “toxic message of competition.” For starters, try tests, grades, and honor rolls (and don’t get him started on the bumper stickers).
2. Kids stop trying. Behaviorism, rants Kohn, has taken over not only education but parenting. When we focus only on what we can see and measure, we lose sight of the whole child, who comes complete with a messy but rich interior world in which decision-making is driven by values and thoughts that are not readily measured by star-charts or bubble-sheets. Whether kids succeed or fail, they can explain the results in four ways: effort, luck, ability, or task difficulty. Both the kid who gets a 100% and the one who gets an F tend to infer that the results are due to fixed ability and not effort in a carrot/stick world. Not putting in effort that won’t be rewarded is the rational conclusion.
3. Kids don’t challenge themselves. Citing a mid-20th century management guru, Kohn argues that compliance with a results-driven system again fosters its own “rational” behavior. Actors quickly come to realize that risk-taking is not rewarded, but playing it safe is. When the teacher says to choose any book for a free-choice reading unit (my example), why choose one that’s challenging or difficult when it’s easier-- and you’ll get a better grade-- if you choose one that’s simple, or, better yet, that you’ve already read back in middle school.
4. Kids are thrown by failure. Instead of resilience in the face of an uncharacteristic B+, the child used to getting 100s on quizzes responds with vague panic. Our well intentioned teacherly platitudes only serve to reinforce the zero-sum game, scolds Kohn. “92 is still a good grade,” or, “You’ll do better next time,” both underscore the notion that numerically evaluated performance is a worthwhile end in itself, and, even more damaging, an end that earns the ultimate reward: teacher approval. This as opposed to extending our approval unconditionally. To avoid psychic violence and ultimately create kids who learn for its own sake, the subtext from teachers and parents should properly be, “I validate you as a learner and a person regardless of your performance on any task or test.”
5. Kids do worse. The quality of thinking declines under the tyranny of a results-oriented, bottom line system. “Stupid standardized tests,” a term Kohn quips is redundant, may measure some improvement in so-called achievement when kids are forced on a long march to the endless drumbeat of “Raise those scores,” but ultimately, smarter indices show that quality suffers. Citing study after study, Kohn shows that kids are, for example, less likely to ask for help in a system where you’re supposed to be smart. And they’re less likely to make deep connections, take risks, and unify knowledge across disciplines under conditions that are typical in test-driven schools.

Kohn’s five points are a grim indictment of our NCLB times, but also an inspirational jolt for real world teachers, many of whom may recognize their best practice as striving towards Kohn’s ideals. Tune in next week for more of my brain on Alfie, including an attempt to say how he’d view the quest for NBPTS gold. Until then, as Kohn closed: Respond to the outrageous... with outrage!

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 12:57 PM | Permalink | 13 Comments | Recommend

What does being a super cool secret agent preventing terrorists from releasing poison gas and being a candidate for National Board Certification have in common? Both involve tense situations with a little timer running on the screen as you make do or die decisions. Except instead of 24 hours, the amount of time super spy Jack Bauer has to save the world on the hit show shot in real time, “24”, the NBPTS candidate only has four hours at the assessment center to answer six essay questions covering content and pedagogy. Candidates are advised to complete their portfolios before going for the online test, which is what I plan to do. That means it’s nearly a year away. But, during the last meeting of our five-session Fairfax County introductory class, our instructors decided to give us a taste of writing under pressure with timed writing to an in class prompt.

What follows is what I wrote in thirty minutes in response to that practice prompt, with comments in italics that represent some of my thoughts at the time. The prompt itself was generic:
1. Describe a teaching strategy/activity that I do to meet the needs of my students.
2. Why did I choose this strategy?
3. What is the impact of this strategy on student learning?
4. How do I intend to use this strategy in the future?

RESPONSE

A teaching activity that I do to meet the needs of my students involves posting columns on a listserv. Seniors in my AP Lang class are currently writing columns. The course has had a journalistic focus all year: in first quarter we did personal journals (leading to college essays), in second quarter we did profiles, and now in third quarter we are doing weekly columns. God, it’s the first paragraph and I’m already digressing. Listen to all these people pecking away-- it sounds like a rain shower of perfectly scripted pedagogy, and here I am rehashing the year’s syllabus.

After reading some samples and discussing features like voice, being timely, and using rhetorical modes (compare/contrast, anecdotes, examples) to accomplish rhetorical goals (persuade, entertain, enlighten), kids were ready to design their own column. They wrote proposals and five sample column ideas, which I reviewed. Last Sunday at 6 pm, their first post was due. Hey-- I didn’t write an outline, though the instructors suggested we might want to. Did anyone else? We usually tell kids to write one. Is it really the best use of time, or is just writing towards the answer a better approach?

The procedure for posting is that each writer sends a piece to a list, which sends it out to all the other writers. A computer-savvy kid at our school who is a junior network administrator helped me set it up. I was nervous at first but he was very helpful and it didn’t require much technical know-how by me. I can’t believe it-- people are actually getting up and walking over to the snack table during this. They did say that at the testing center not everyone will be on the same schedule. I’m sure I’ll end up next to someone watching TOEFL videos...

I asked all the kids to read the pieces by Monday’s class, which was a little quick for turnaround but we had something planned for Tuesday. Fortunately, the pieces were not only quick reads, but wildly popular with the kids. For Monday’s class, I made a reading quiz by pulling a memorable sentence from each article, and then listing the author’s names. No one who had done the reading missed more than two matches. The subjects and voices really stuck with the readers.

Also on the “quiz,” I asked kids to write two paragraphs. First they had to respond to a piece they strongly agreed or disagreed with. This led to hearty discussion later as we talked about Bode Miller, the use of alternative fuel vehicles, and whether eating Chipotle burritos instead of Taco Bell is food snobbery. I think that’s how you spell Chipotle, even though the computer has underlined it with a red squiggle. They said that assessors are trained to overlook spelling errors that don’t impede meaning. As long as they like carryout, I should be fine...

The second quiz paragraph was to discuss a column that had some aspect of writing they liked or would try to use in their own piece. We didn’t talk through these yet, but I intend to return comments to the original writer. A Greek student who wrote about the decline of the Olympics ideal with the inclusion of curling and halfpipe got the most comments for his provocative opinions. You can use bullets, the instructors said, in “appropriate situations," like prescribing strategies for an ADHD learner. I’ll stick with narrative-- interesting narrative, I hope, including specific examples and a dash of humor. Banking that: a) assessors might be a bit bored and want some flavor, and b) good writing is good writing.

Today, one senior told me that he didn’t like the listserv format because he couldn’t post comments, and because it clogged his email box with 22 emails all of a sudden. He suggested I could do the same thing on Blackboard without sending out all the emails. I don’t plan on changing the system midstream, but I’ve taken his advice in part by setting up a discussion board on Blackboard for the next round of columns. I’ve never used this feature, but I think it will go well based on their written comments on the quiz, and I’m certain the kids will appreciate the chance to give and get feedback quickly. It’s time-- be Jack Bauer! Surgical, emotionless. Get to the heart of the matter.

The overall impact of this on student learning is to fuel their excitement to write timely and interesting columns, and to foster discussion of their writing choices. In class I intend to draw out further how they are using rhetorical strategies and making choices about voice and style in regards to their audience and purpose. This sort of analysis will help them become versatile writers and also relates directly to the upcoming AP exam where they will have to look at these qualities in excerpts of previously published writing.

I like the overall strategy of listserv and Blackboard chat, and intend to use it more in the future to have students share their work. For example, I’ve got a poetry unit coming up with ninth graders. And by the end of it, every kid will be a published poet. I guarantee it.
That actually makes sense! Remember it, along with the other three cardinal rules of testing:
1. Hydrate (water out and in before and during the test).
2. Directions (know how to get there so you’re not late on test day, and know how the test works before you start, in our case by using the online simulation).
3. And the classic, EAGB. (I wonder: What does Jack Bauer eat for breakfast?)

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 7:56 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Maybe I’m making this whole thing out to be harder than it is. Let’s begin at the beginning...
Although there are nearly 30 different fields of certification over four different age groups, common to all of them are Five Core Propositions. For you, dear reader, as much as for my own sake, let me attempt to set them out. Maybe here, early on in the process, we can decide whether this program’s heart is in the right place. In bold below I will quote directly NBPTS verbiage, and offer my own comments after each.

1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning. We who pee at 10:23 and lug home manila folders that sit in our brief cases like a guilty conscience until Sunday afternoon hold this truth to be self-evident. Why else would we do this job? A devil’s advocate might say: Ego. To pontificate, to bully others with what we know. Brilliant college professors aside, I think natural selection weeds the show-offs out. Teachers who aren’t fair, adaptable, and respectful towards their students tend to be the ones grumbling in the lounge about how dishonest, unaccommodating and rude kids are.

2. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students. A two part equation. You can be great at math, but not a great math teacher. Or, as I sometimes tell skeptical students: I’ve never had a teacher. What I mean is, everything I know I learned myself, by struggling with material or problems that a teacher, or life, placed before me. Of course, I also like to tell them when we’re reading a play in class, This is not a play. What I mean is that drama has to be performed, and viewed, to come alive. Contrarian as I can sometimes be, I cannot argue with proposition two.

3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning. Yeah, sort of. I think the onus is on the student to be engaged, interested, and energetic. There’s a right time-right place side to learning that I don’t think even the best teachers can deny. Put another way, “responsible for” is different than “responsible to.” That said, I can’t argue with the verb choice: we “manage” by constructing the challenges and guiding the trip, i.e. designing assignments and selecting or guiding the selection of texts; and we “monitor” with assessments of various kinds to make sure they’re getting it as we go along (or, to see what it is they are getting, in my frequently constructivist practice).

4. Teachers think systematically about their process and learn from experience. Systematic may be an overstatement for all those “do next time” thoughts scribbled in my teacher’s notebook next to lesson plans. But the premise that we are always learning ourselves is irrefutable. That’s why I find exposing our thoughts-- as we read a poem aloud with students or work through a chemistry problem on the overhead-- is one of the best things we can do as teachers. In talking through it, we not only model the lingo and patterns of our discipline, we reveal ourselves as learners, too. We aren’t answer machines, we’re practitioners like we want our kids to be, albeit with a lot more practice. On a metacognitive level, talking through our teaching does the same thing: it shows we know our stuff but at the same time we’re always trying to improve.

5. Teachers are members of learning communities. There have been years when I found the best defense against asinine administration and ludicrous laws was to shut my classroom door and just teach. Me and the kids against the world. Thank goodness there were other years when I was thrown into workshops and collaborative activities that reminded me that there is more to be gained through connection than isolation. Becoming a teacher/consultant with The Northern Virginia Writing Project after a five-week summer immersion is still something I point to as a turning point in my career. This year, in a new school with a dynamic faculty, the collaboration has once again reinvigorated me. I even had the chance to do a unit with my own 10th grade English teacher!

6. You are not alone. Okay, so I made this one up. NBPTS lists only five propositions. But I added this because I was so surprised and gratified by the responses I have received to my blog thus far. A couple dozen readers from around the country have taken the time to write supportive and encouraging emails. One that was typical said, “Holding oneself to a higher standard is what drives any profession. You are not working in isolation, you are giving to all of us! You are not nuts, you know inside that there is more to our profession. Working for excellence raises us all! Go Man Go!” Thanks to these teachers, and the ones I work with every day that further inspire me. And while I’m at it, thanks to all those teachers I never had. I think I may have learned something after all. Now I just have to prove it to the board.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 10:58 AM | Permalink | 11 Comments | Recommend