"stop teaching"

from the Learning Cultures Journal, a poem by teacher Emily Jarrell:

Dear Ms. X,

I watched you last week.
I sat in your classroom
and I watched
your kids
I have some things
I need to tell you

I’m not quite sure how
to say all of this,
but here I go

I know
you go home each night
and plan for hours.

I know you search
the Internet for the newest
the coolest lesson plans.
You want to help
your students grow.

[snip]

I know that you look at the tests
and you think about all that you will need
to “teach”
to get your students to do well.
You make lists
genres to cover
strategies to teach.
You create practice sheets
that look like the test
so your students will be
familiar.

[snip]

I watched you plan a unit,
imagining that this unit would be the one
that might get your kids writing,
and loving it.

Here’s where this gets hard.
I know you.
I know you all too well.
I watch you
every day.

And,
I was you.

[snip]

What makes this hard is
that I have to tell you something
you probably don’t want to hear:

I have to tell you,
your time, your precious, precious time,
is being wasted.

You are
wasting
your time.

You have to stop teaching.

Simply,
your students are never going to achieve
at the levels you dream
and hope for when
you are the one doing all the work.

You have to stop teaching.

Your students need to
start doing
and struggling
and pondering.

Stop planning
those lessons
and activities and hoping
you will lead your students to new understandings.

Just stop

Have them do it.

Have them read.
Every day.

Have them write.
Every day.

Make them talk.
To each other.

Make them share.
With each other.

Watch them.
Listen to them.

Document what you see.
Fuel the flames of their intentions,
curiosities,
perplexities.

Stop teaching
for just enough time
for them to start
learning.

Think about it, Ms. X.
I know you’re scared.
But,
just dare.

Sincerely,
A Teacher, Colleague, Coach, and Mother.

1. Is the Learning Cultures Journal actually a journal? Does it have an editorial board? A peer review process? Funding?
2. Emily Jarrell
3. A Masters degree from NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development  costs many thousands of dollars.
4. Has the Urban Assembly Board of Directors read this poem?
5. Meet the parents.
6. Stop the multiverse, I want to get off.

AND SEE:
Has Constructivism Increased Special Education Enrollment in Public Schools? By Nakonia (Niki) Hayes
Mathematics Education: Outwitted by Stupidity by Barry Garelick
Growth of Special Education Spending and Enrollment in New York since 2000-01

"unison reading": the video

transcript
around 4:09

TEACHER SPEAKING:

So it’s a really powerful way to get at small group reading instruction that’s directed by the kids because they’re choosing the texts that they want to use as leaders; they’re choosing the texts that they want to be a part of for that week.

It’s an exciting opportunity for them because they get to bring their confusions to the table.

It is not by any means at all teacher-directed. It is absolutely student-directed and the teacher is sitting amongst the students acting as facilitator.

So let’s say there is something that is really confusing and they can’t figure it out, the teacher can do what we call follow-in. The teacher can follow-in to the kids and help them, you know, figure the thing out that they’re confused by.

[snip]

You can use [unison readings] for science, you can use them for social studies, you can use them for math! They’re such an important format.

[snip]

[Y]ou need access to texts. So maybe they’re printing out internet resources, maybe they’re choosing magazine articles, textbook entries -- whatever they need to read or whatever they’re choosing to read.

[snip]

You have the unison reading record, and you keep a record of what the conversational moves are because your job is to track what the students are doing and then you use that material for your lessons or for your conferences.

It’s an exciting opportunity for them because they get to bring their confusions to the table.

More evidence that reality as we know it came to an end in 1985.

AND SEE:
stop the multiverse, I want to get off: ALL POSTS
Learning Cultures - transcript

Has Constructivism Increased Special Education Enrollment in Public Schools? By Nakonia (Niki) Hayes
Mathematics Education: Outwitted by Stupidity by Barry Garelick
Growth of Special Education Spending and Enrollment in New York since 2000-01

Vicky on video

A couple of months ago, I exchanged emails with Vicky on the subject of Khan Academy and the flipped classroom:

We are not wired to sit down and watch [instructional videos] instead of all the other things we do at home. When you encounter a youtube video (on something that you're interested in!) that's over 6-7 minutes long, do you watch it? I usually don't, too long, maybe later, maybe never.

People just aren't wired to do the passive lecture thing at home.

And really, a lecture (in person) is NOT passive, even if the lecturer doesn't ask for feedback once. I've been to a lot of CLEs where you have your choice, live or taped. Live, you have to pay attention--everyone else is. Taped, you get up, go to the bathroom, check your mail, pull out a magazine...

What the "Learning Cultures" people have right, I think, is that learning is (often) a highly social activity.

What they have wrong is that the "social" part of the activity isn't sitting in a small group of novices trying to figure out what it is you're supposed to be learning.

The 'social' part of learning is about imitation: you do what the other people around you are doing, and learn what they are learning.

I think Albert Bandura was the person who pointed out that stimulus-response theory had its limitations.

To wit: If a baby antelope has to learn about lions through direct, stimulus-response contact with a lion, there won't be many baby antelopes.

Baby antelopes learn about lions by watching how their parents act around lions. They imitate.

Same deal with CLEs on tape versus live. If you're sitting in a room with a lot of other people who are paying attention, you pay attention, too.

With whole-class, teacher-led instruction, you have 20 peers or more to imitate and learn from.

With small group self-teaching, you have 4 other people who are just as confused as you are. In fact, confusion is a "Learning Cultures" selling point: "[unison reading] is an exciting opportunity for [students] because they get to bring their confusions to the table." [video]

If the Big Idea behind unison reading is that students 'get to bring their confusions to the table,' what are students in unison reading groups going to be imitating?

They're going to be imitating other students' confusions, not other students' learning.

transcript

“Giving Voice to Learning” by Noreen O’Donnell
The Daily
Monday, June 11, 2012
Video by Jackson Loo and Devon Puglia
transcript

PRINCIPAL: The mentality in education right now in America is that teachers are responsible for everything. If someone is successful, it’s because of the teacher. If someone fails, it’s because of the teacher.

NARRATOR [enthusiastic]: So what if students became their own teachers? That’s what’s happening at 10 schools across New York City under a radical new pilot curriculum called Learning Cultures.

NYU EDUCATION SCHOOL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR CYNTHIA MCCALLISTER: The core of Learning Cultures is the idea that social practices are critical to learning in human beings. Social practices and social interactions are really what make us learn.

NARRATOR: The Daily visited the High School of Language and Innovation in the Bronx, where the students are learning English as a second language.

PRINCIPAL: On the surface, it might look the same. So you might walk into a class and say “Oh look. The kids are working in groups.” Or, “Oh look. In this part, the kids are paying attention to a lesson.” This is completely different.

NARRATOR: After a 15 minute mini-lesson from the teacher, students spend most of their time doing group or independent work on the subject, with educators in a supporting role.

YAN WENG (H.S. MATH TEACHER): They definitely can learn more from their classmates than learning from me, so it’s not from top down.

PRINCIPAL: It’s a huge paradigm shift for educators, to turn over responsibility to students. Good teaching is really about what the students are doing. It’s learning through interaction.

NARRATOR: It’s learning through interaction.

[Shot of students at a table reading a book out loud together]

NARRATOR: This exercise is called unison reading. The children read aloud in synch. [students read a few words, and then a boy at the table calls halt] When they come across an unknown word or concept, they stop, discuss it, and try to determine the answer.

MCCALLISTER: They’re taught to resolve their confusions independently of the teacher.

NARRATOR: Some use iPads as translators, but most turn to each other. The method is applied across all grade levels and subjects.

YAN WENG (H.S. MATH TEACHER): Amazingly students tend to actually take feedback from their peers a lot more than taking feedback from teachers.

NARRATOR: But it doesn’t always work. This student chose a book beyond her skill level because she liked the cover. [book: The Throwaway Piece]

ENGLISH TEACHER: The summary is too difficult to understand, it means that the book is probably going to be too difficult to understand. [student nods]

NARRATOR: Traditionalists might wonder if this is just some wacky ultra-progressive teaching trend.

MCCALLISTER: It’s a pretty different way of approaching academic work, school work.

PRINCIPAL: I never really thought of it as progressive. I just thought this makes a lot of sense, and this actually helps me to accomplish all the standards and all the goals that we’re supposed to be accomplishing in this day and age.

MCCALLISTER: Schools are dysfunctional. You know they’re made for not only a different time, but I think that they were created without acknowledging the things that in our society we fundamentally value, and that is, you know, our freedoms. Until you change the nature of the curriculum so that kids have the space to own their learning—take initiative—they’re not going to learn.

What was it Reid Lyon said about education schools?

AND SEE:
unison reading: the video

Has Constructivism Increased Special Education Enrollment in Public Schools? By Nakonia (Niki) Hayes
Mathematics Education: Outwitted by Stupidity by Barry Garelick
Growth of Special Education Spending and Enrollment in New York since 2000-01

something new and different

The first two lines of narration in a video on "Learning Cultures" by Jackson Loo and Devon Puglia:

PRINCIPAL: The mentality in education right now in America is that teachers are responsible for everything. If someone is successful, it’s because of the teacher. If someone fails, it’s because of the teacher.

NARRATOR (with enthusiasm): So what if students became their own teachers? That’s what’s happening at 10 schools across New York City under a radical new pilot curriculum called Learning Cultures.

“Giving Voice to Learning” by Noreen O’Donnell
The Daily | Monday, June 11, 2012

You have to wonder what was going on in Loo and Puglia's unconscious minds when they chose this hook for the video: that the reason to have constructivist classrooms is to relieve teachers of responsibility.

AND SEE:
Has Constructivism Increased Special Education Enrollment in Public Schools? By Nakonia (Niki) Hayes
Mathematics Education: Outwitted by Stupidity by Barry Garelick
Growth of Special Education Spending and Enrollment in New York since 2000-01

worse than you think

I've mentioned several times our family mottoes:

It's always worse than you think.

and

No common sense-y. (No common sense-y is less apropos now that Jimmy is living in a group home and Chris has graduated high school.)

Under the category of worse than you think: "I'm not writing, I'm drawing."