Pythagorus (& the cognitive unconscious)

I've just come across this post by Gary Rubenstein: You-reeka-math.

Here's a question.

For 8th grade students, Rubenstein prefers a visual proof of the Pythagorean Theorem to the algebra-based proof in Eureka Math/engage^ny math.

I follow the engage^ny math proof, but I can't make head or tails of the visual proof Rubenstein argues is more appropriate.

Am I missing something?

Is the visual proof easier for the teacher to explain, but harder for me to explain to myself?

Related: I've been meaning to read Rubinstein's Reluctant Disciplinarian forever.

I remember a fabulous passage (which I don't have time to fact-check at the moment, so if I'm remembering some other book, I'll have to come back and revise): something to do with novice teachers (Rubinstein) asking the old hands how they dealt with things like spitballs and talking out of turn and the like.

The old hands' advice: "I don't put up with that."

"I don't put up with that" is a classic example of experts having no idea how they do what they do.

Filed under: cognitive unconscious.

The cognitive unconscious is a sadly neglected concept in K-12.

K-12 education: way too much thinking, way too little knowing.

On the Singaporean and American classroom environments

I am not entirely happy with the Singaporean education system, for various social, economic and political reasons. Intellectual dissent on the education system in Singapore, I suppose, is like intellectual dissent anywhere -- restricted to discussions in coffeeshops, blogs and online mailing lists, present in environments not unlike this blog. Yet, Americans seem to have the leg up sometimes. For one, Americans have a tradition of organised dissent actually accomplishing something. To Singaporeans, public dissent might evoke a general reaction like, "Ayah, you just sour grapes complaining lah," given our tradition of making public hullaballoos over small things like when a vendor rips us off for two dollars. the "underground" vibe seems more energetic

A "cynical" approach to things taught about National Education

Yet, Singapore's system does have its merits. I am not happy with the American education system either

*****

With all the talk about Singapore Math, tracking/differentiated instruction, group work and classroom rigour, I just thought I'd chip in from the perspective of a student who used to study in the Singaporean education system, before comparing what I perceive to be the American classroom environment, having experienced both the elementary school classroom and the high school classroom in America.

Firstly, a few caveats. My examples of course will be very anecdotal, and there will be things that would be specific to the schools I attended, the socioeconomic background of the student bodies, and hardly least of all, my opinion of my peers, and so forth. I expect this to colour my accounts. But I also think there are biases and hidden variables worth talking about often glossed over by the "adults" when they talk about the educational strategies of both systems. (A small digression: despite being an 18-year-old first-year college student, I still don't regard myself as an adult.) Having also been to other schools and having friends in other schools in each stage of life, etc., and since a few things universal to each system become apparent through popular culture and national gossip, official procedures that everyone goes through, national competitions and the like, I still think it's valid to make some extrapolations.

After all, when reporters, teachers on exchange programmes, educational certification inspectors, researchers, et al. visit schools and classrooms, I think it's safe to say you often don't get an exactly candid picture of what actually goes on. And while we ridicule at the type of learning that occurs in group work, and discuss in haughty academic reports the statistical p-value probability that "effective group work" occurred purely by random, how does one objectively discuss the impacts of things that resist quantification and are hard to detect from test scores, like "school culture", "peer support", "friendship", or "chilling effect"?

Now, I am neither content with Singapore or the United States' education systems

My primary school math curriculum in Singapore also employed group work, etc. I believe with the abolishment of the EM3 system (and I believe the entire EM system as a whole), math tracking doesn't exist anymore in Singapore as it once did. I am happy with this development. Essentially the majority of the pupils at each level will study the same curriculum with more or less the same pace.

Of course, after they graduate primary school, they'll be sorted into the Special / Express streams (differs only by whether you take a more advanced second language or not), Normal (Academic), Normal (Technical) streams, etc. Of course, secondary schools no longer have the GEP either, though they have the new Integrated Programme for those who get into IP schools and fulfill the entry requirements. (IP programmes, including implementations of the International Baccalaureat, often don't work out exactly as was planned on paper. I still have a major problem with the IP programmes' detection/admission of otherwise qualified students, and the fact that a mugging (exam-focussed) culture predominates over any intellectual one.

But of course, back to the primary school classroom first.

Caveat: I went to a fairly comfortable primary school [for P5 and P6; I was brought up in American elementary school in the American equivalent of Singapore K2 to P5). That is, my school fees were basically were 30 SGD (20 USD) every 3 months, while the government subsidised the rest, my classmates were mainly lower middle to mid-upper middle class (at one extreme), etc. I've heard stories happen in the "neighbourhood schools" with regard to work ethic, behaviour and so forth. I'm curious to know if our neighbourhood schools also have successful educational strategies on an international level, just that they enjoy less prestige and dare I say it, performance, than higher-ranked schools. I believe that if you make an analogy between primary school rankings to American college rankings, if Raffles Institution is the equivalent of Harvard, my primary school would have been like Penn State or something. The neighbourhood schools would of course be the local unis and stuff.

BUT anyway, after all these caveats, we didn't really differentiate kids based on academic ability into different classrooms that much, and I would say we enjoyed a fairly rigourous math curriculum. Of course, you always had the discussions over which class was the "best class", often determined by what kind of kids were in them. 6F / 5A

Perplex this!

I'm thick in the middle of things, but in my travels today I came across this passage (two seconds ago, actually) and I had to post.

Dan Meyer, 31, is in the process of becoming a celebrity math teacher (hey, it’s a small group). Much of his rapid trajectory upward can be explained by his message, which involves a digital curriculum that will (he says) instantly engage and perplex kids and thus resolve all classroom management issues (more on this later), a message tailor-made to appeal to both techies, since it implicitly attacks all teachers, and progressive educators, since it is inherently constructivist.

Dan Meyer and the Gatekeepers
educationrealist

He had me at "instantly engage and perplex kids and thus resolve all classroom management issues."

Speaking of Scarsdale (warning: bad language)

Recording Of Angry Chaperone On Edgemont Bat Mitzvah Bus Hits YouTube

Here's the tape: https://soundcloud.com/scarsdale10583/barmitzvahrant

This reminds me of Mary Damer telling me that the single biggest challenge for a new teacher is classroom management, and that includes a teacher just coming out of the Marines.

leafy suburbs, part 2

re: the leafy suburbs, Jen asks:

I have to be a bit of a devil's advocate here. Why is it that teachers are expected to do what parents here are saying they can't do?

That is, parents can't get one or two children to, say, do homework and study at home for a bit, whereas a teacher who has them for 45-50 minutes a day (or twice that every other day if block scheduled) is not only supposed to teach but also supposed to motivate them enough to do the homework and studying?

I actually have an answer to this question!

A few of them.

FIRST: Kids are often much more cooperative with other adults than with their own parents. That's why so many parents I know, parents who were trying to reteach content at home, finally gave up and hired tutors.

C. is your classic cooperative kid, and when he was in 8th grade, as I recall, we reached the point where I was shouting so much something had to give. That was when I discovered Karen Pryor's work. I remember, going into Christmas break, devouring Pryor, having a major heart to heart with myself, and vowing to do a 180 as soon as the new semester began, which I more or less did. The household was pretty close to being in crisis, and C. is a mild-mannered kid! (If Susan S is around, she'll vouch for me on that one - )

I used to think: what would be happening around here if C. weren't a mild-mannered kid?

Meanwhile, C. was having precisely zero problems at school. I think he had one - no, two - detentions in his entire 3 years at middle school, and one of the 2 was a group detention most of his math class (math again) served for being disrespectful to a substitute teacher.

SECOND: Parents really, truly don't have the training we need to deal with a lot of the stuff we deal with. Not that parents should have to have training! I'm not suggesting anything of the kind. I'm just saying that, for instance, using the principles of positive reinforcement to deal with a challenging autistic child (or a completely non challenging nonautistic child you're trying to reteach math to) does not come naturally to anyone, as far as I can tell.

Of course, teachers don't get a lot of training in behavior management, either, but schools do seem to have school psychologists these days, and at least some of them have had some real training and experience.

Good teachers do acquire an extremely impressive set of skills where classroom management is concerned, something I'm still working on. A behaviorist I know told me that classroom discipline is THE issue every new teacher faces, and that includes a new teacher who has just served a tour of duty as a Marine.

THIRD: Even if the parent is highly skilled at maintaining law and order inside the home, the parent is not inside the classroom. I can't tell you how often I've heard about school personnel assuming that parents can magically, from miles away, directly influence their children's behavior inside the classroom.

My own funniest story on this score concerns Andrew, who, a few years ago, was being very difficult on the bus. Now Andrew, as I think a fair number of you know, is autistic and nonverbal. He doesn't talk. We can talk to him, but it's not clear how much he understands.

(Andrew is also weirdly smart - this is something the teachers and aides say, btw, not just a parent fantasy .... Andrew is sui generis. I need to say that out of loyalty and also out of honesty. btw, Susan can probably attest to that one, too. Susan watched Andrew during my mother's funeral, and afterwards said to me, "I think he ordered something from Amazon.")

Anyway, Andrew was being difficult on the bus, and the head of transportation called to discuss the situation. He wanted me to make Andrew stop. Somehow I, as the parent, was supposed to be able to change my autistic child's autistic behavior on a bus. When I expressed skepticism that I would be able to influence Andrew's behavior from afar, the transportation director asked me: Can you have a talk with Andrew?

I said: Andrew doesn't talk.

The thing is: the transportation director knew Andrew doesn't talk. And yet he was on the phone asking  me to 'have a talk' with my nonverbal son.

That's an extreme example, but I've seen the same thing with ADHD kids: I've seen school personnel assume that a parent can affect an ADHD child's behavior without being present to do so.

That's not how ADHD works. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite of how ADHD works. I know a family that has done a fantastic job with their very ADHD son: meds, therapy, very strong behavioral boundaries, lots of love, authoritative parenting --- a fantastic job. Their son is a very good kid.

Nevertheless, as far as I know he was quite disruptive in classrooms through all of through middle school (not sure about high school). The classroom disruption problem in his case was really, truly a "school problem" in the sense that it was taking place inside the school. His parents had his behavior  well under control at home; I saw it. They had also taught him terrific manners; I saw those, too. But  keeping his classroom behavior under control inside a classroom without being inside the classroom themselves was not possible.

With disorders like autism and ADHD, if the school doesn't deal with the problem, it doesn't get dealt with.

FOURTH: This brings me to my final answer, which is that when a teacher can't manage a student in his or her classroom, other arrangements need to be made by the school.

This isn't just my personal opinion; it's pretty much the law. By law, a student who can't function inside a regular classroom must be evaluated, must be given an IEP (if that's what's called for), and must be educated -- by the school.

That said, I know this is an area where schools often miss the boat. The horror stories I've heard .... I think the phrase "radical inclusion" (not my term) captures it. When school administrators decide that full inclusion (what is it called now - collaborative classrooms?) is the way of the world come what may, when full inclusion collaborative classrooms include a child the teacher absolutely cannot control no matter how much special training and support s/he is given, that is wrong for all concerned. It's wrong for the child, it's wrong for the teacher, and it's wrong for the other children.

Also: full inclusion for all is a decision the school has made, not the parents. The school has a responsibility to provide a calm and safe learning environment for all children.

That is my opinion; general education children have no entitlement to nondisrupted classrooms, sad to say.

Peter Meyer's palm card for educational excellence

... I’m not so sure we don’t know what works and doesn’t work in education — or, for that matter,  in education reform. Perhaps I am a rube about this, but when I walk into a school — I took the same tour as Brill and it is as startling as he describes it — I know within a few minutes whether the place is working for the kids or not. (It’s a little like the Supreme Court rule on pornography: you know when you see it.) I will soon be trademarking Pete’s Palm Card for Education Excellence: Order. Consistency. Content.

Proof Positive in Harlem

Here is Peter again on the subject of school quality and P.E. ----

warm/strict

from Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College:

We're socialized to believe that warmth and strictness are opposites: if you're more of one, it means being less of the other. I don't know where this false conception comes from, but if you choose to believe in it, it will undercut your teaching. The fact is that the degree to which you are warm has no bearing on the degree to which you are strict, and vice versa. Just as you can be neither warm nor strict (you may teach the children of parents who are this way and see for yourself the cost), you can also be warm and strict. In fact, as this Warm/Strict technique shows, you must be both: caring, funny, warm, concerned, and nurturing -- and also strict, by the book, relentless, and sometimes inflexible. It's not, "I care about you, but you still must serve the consequence for being late," but, "Because I care about you, you must serve the consequence for being late."

...Not only should you seek to be both: you should often seek to be both at exactly the same time. When you are clear, consistent, firm, and unrelenting and at the same time positive, enthusiastic, caring, and thoughtful, you start to send the message to students that having high expectations is part of caring for and respecting someone. This is a very powerful message.

page 213

Doug Lemov is describing the approach used by authoritative parents, whose children fare better academically and socially than those of permissive, authoritarian, and neglectful parents.

A good teacher is like a good parent.

palisadesk on Fred Jones

Fred Jones ... had imbibed the “born teacher” myth and had a rude awakening when he was called upon to do some consulting at a school for incarcerated teens. The principal directed him to a classroom, where he entered to find students standing on tables, throwing things, climbing on windowsills, some huddled under tables, all kinds of ruckus, and the teacher yelling ineffectively at the front. Well, they were juvenile delinquents after all.

He went to some other classrooms and a period or two later noticed something. He was in a class of students who could have been from Groton or Phillips Exeter. They were seated, attentive, raising hands to answer, deeply engaged – in algebra, no less. It was a few moments before he realized that these were the exact same students as he had seen in the first classroom. Only the teacher was different.

That set him on the path to learn what it was that made one teacher highly successful with these (unlikely) students, while another was not. He learned over time that there are identifiable skills, behaviors and practices that teachers can learn that will make them much more effective, regardless of their baseline at the start. Those who are “natural born teachers” just do more of these things without being taught – but others can learn.

I took a week-long course from Fred Jones a few summers ago in Maine. It was worth every penny. His book, Positive Classroom Instruction, is now out of print (but available on secondhand book sites) and an excellent one on instructional issues, while Positive Classroom Discipline has some extremely good ideas and practical ones for managing student behavior not only in a positive way but in an instruction-friendly way. – so that more time is spent on effective learning.

His book Tools for Teachers is an excellent handbook for any new teacher (or one changing assignments, grade levels, etc). I refer to my copy frequently.

His website has lots of good articles and resources.

This is the point that is so difficult to get across to administrators and school boards.

Students are better or worse, depending on the environment.

So are parents.

In our middle school, I was a PITA and then some.

At Hogwarts, I barely know what's going on. As a matter of fact, it's entirely possible I don't know the last names of all of C's teachers.

That's because they're doing the teaching.

micromanagement

I've been dipping into literature on management & I love the Corner Office series in the Times. Here is Cristóbal Conde on micromanagement:

Q. Besides the endless travel of that year [during which Conde ran his company as a top-down, command-and-control organization], was there something else that made you shift styles?

A. Yes, it was a huge disagreement with somebody who worked for me directly, and he ended up quitting shortly thereafter. And it wasn’t that the decision that we disagreed on was so big. It was more that, to him, it just wasn’t as much fun anymore. He felt he could do more, and I was in his way. I was chasing away somebody extremely valuable, and that is when I realized I never would have put up with that myself. If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave.

If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement. Eventually, they get chased away, and then you’ve got to invest in a whole apparatus of micromanagement. Pretty soon, you’re running a police state. So micromanagement doesn’t scale because it spirals down, and you end up with below-average employees in terms of motivation and ability.

Here he is on feedback:

Q. What is some of the best feedback you’ve received?

A. A boss once told me: “Cris, you’re a smart guy, but that doesn’t mean that people can absorb a list of 18 things to do. Focus on a handful of things.” Very constructive criticism, and the way I’ve translated that is, when I do reviews, everything is threes.

So, “Look, Charlie, these are the three things that are going well. These are the three things that are not going well.” Now, that’s very important because then people know that everybody’s going to get three positives and three things they should do differently. Then they don’t take it personally. I’ve found that to be an incredibly valuable tool.

Structure? The Flatter, the Better
Corner Office - New York Times
January 16, 2010

I love that.

One thing I've noticed, reading the columns: nearly all of the CEOs interviewed describe dramatically changing their approach to management at some point, often in response to criticism and/or setbacks. They talk about these moments frankly, without defensiveness.

I've come to prize the quality of not being defensive. At this point, I'd probably put it right up there with courage, generosity, clear thinking, and a good sense of humor.

a math class of 41 pupils

Ms. Sherry Tai, my young Singapore primary school math teacher (I think she was in her mid-20s) formed a personal bond with each one of us 41 students. 40+ students is a pretty typical class size at the primary and secondary school level. She was also our science teacher, our form teacher and our PE teacher, though plenty of other teachers taught our same class.

I remember her well because I was a "problem student" (partially because of my harebrained personality, partially because I had come from American middle school...) and she frequently confronted me about my performance.

What was her math class like? Ah, I remember sometimes she would be marking workbooks (and we'd be doing some other work, like practice problem sets), and she'd call people up individually about their work.

Being the problem student, I would be frequently called up of course. Being called up was annoying and sometimes intimidating because she'd be like, "why did you do this problem wrong?!" and you'd be like, "huh? I don't see what I did wrong?!" but then you'd be hushed with her explanation and sent back to your seat to redo the problem.

I'd feel sort of smug when the prefects and class monitor and monitress (and other model students) would get called up, and I wouldn't. Ahh, incentive for doing good work! As I got the hang of Singapore Math, I found myself being called up less and less. The dreaded 5-point word problems became less like monsters and more like delightful challenges I tackled with confidence. One thing that didn't seem to go away however, was my tendency to forget to bring some little thing to school (like say, a worksheet, an arts and crafts item required for that day, sometimes stationery, like correction pens...). A problem I suffered in American elementary school. A problem also suffered in college.

And oh yeah, correction pens. Let me tell you about those. In Singapore, stuff is often done with three sorts of pens. You need to bring a blue/black pen, a red pen, and a green pen to school. This colour requirement caused me endless grief initially (after moving from America) because I would have a knack of losing pens, or just not bringing all of them. But why this colour scheme?

Well, let's say you're doing a math workbook. You do the problem in blue/black ink. Your teacher (or your classmate) marks it in red ink. Sometimes, you do the marking for others, so you also need a red pen. If you get a problem wrong and receive it back, you're supposed to do the correction in green pen. (This scheme also readily applies to science and language work...) You do this for workbooks, worksheets, mock exams, real exams (after you get them back). You even do it for group work (dun dun dun). The colour scheme helps you keep track (and organise) about what you did wrong, and what you did right.

When I moved from America of course, I was not used to this system, so often I'd return marked workbooks without doing all of the required corrections, or I'd do the green pen corrections wrong, which usually resulted in a sharp call for "John Soong! Up here please!" every math class for the first few weeks. Yes, the corrections are supposed to include your working. (Didn't know that at first.) Yes, doing corrections in green ink for a 5-point problem you got 4 points off of was tedious.

Now, I actually have little idea what "rapid formative assessment" is supposed to mean rigourously. We had plenty of "assessment books" though, and as the PSLE approached, she made us buy additional assessment books on top of what the syllabus required, just so she could have the enjoyment of marking more of our work. Oh, and she would schedule remedial classes afterschool. For all 41 of us. ("Unless you had a 100 on your CA2 [no one did], you have to attend.") And by now, I'd faithfully do the problems, the working, the corrections (which became fewer) ... but forget things like the $2.50 I was supposed to bring to pay for the extra book, some parent's signature required for the remedial or the Edusave form. I think in one term (about two and a half months) I'd generally accumulate ten infractions.

None of the classwork was really graded. I can't remember the exact breakdown, but I think it's like the 2 CA exams account for like 30% of your grade and the two SA exams account for 70%. And the infractions ... well, other than being embarrassing, they aren't really life-changing. (What happened is that the group with the least amount of collective infractions at the end of the term won some sort of reward.) So I guess all those workbook problems were "formative assessments", sort of? Sometimes even one of the major exams (the CA1) does not have an impact on grade or has very low weighting (like 5%).

Does Singapore education have a cultural component? Prolly. But it's actually rather simple:

a) The work isn't graded. But teachers will nag you about it if you don't do it correctly. Incessantly. Even if you're only one out of 41 students.
b) It doesn't matter that the CA1 doesn't impact your final grade that much. It's just something you don't want to do badly on. Not only will the teachers nag you about bad results, so will your parents. And it goes on your report book. In fact your end-of-year grades don't affect your GPA, because GPA doesn't exist in primary and secondary school.

If you have a "bad home environment", your parents might not nag you about your performance, but there's still plenty of reprimand to face at school. In fact, my single mother almost never made me do my homework. My teachers did.

Paul Chance at Amazon dot com

Have I mentioned that I collect Listmanias?

Well, I do.

Paul Chance's list of "Reviews Written by Paul Chance" is so good I may have to start collecting reader review lists, too.^*

Here he is on Fred Jones Tools for Teaching:

The discussion of incentives is very good, but while incentives are important, I think B. F. Skinner's comment is worth remembering: Skinner said that we have to get the student to the point where he does things because of the satisfaction gained from doing them because the teacher is not going to follow the student around forever handing out smily faces. (I'm paraphrasing Skinner, but that's the idea. See his The Technology of Teaching for the exact quote.) I think part of the solution is to see to it that the student's efforts are successful most of the time. (As I say in my own book, success is the great motivator.)

The idea of building motivation through reinforcement makes sense to me.

The idea of putting kids in groups, handing them an open-ended project to do, and assuming they are now motivated because they're active learners not passive vessels makes no sense at all.


^* He has a Listmania, too!

Paul H on the toxic stew

more tales from the font:

Constructivism, as practiced by CMP is actually an amalgam of discovery learning, clothed in multiculturalism, with a dash of politically correct, story vignettes to 'connect' the child to real world problems. It's not that these things, in and of themselves are inappropriate, it's just that the program throws so much into a one day lesson, the math gets hijacked.

It's not atypical for one of these vignettes to have a dark skinned blue eyed child, named Ming lee, sitting in a wheel chair, talking in Spanish to her friend Sascha from Russia. Put that in front of a child who is reading at a third grade level as an introduction to a seventh grade lesson on solving proportions, and you have the makings of a nightmare. It's very hard at times to get by the intro.

Then when you get into the lesson's problem sets it is very often the case that the problems serve up a hodge-podge;fill out a table, look for a pattern, find equivalent fractions, make a graph, and on and on. It makes my head explode sometimes and I've been doing math forever.

I understand the need to make connections and provide spaced repetition but it should never get in the way of base understanding in the topic at hand. When it does, and the paradigm is discovery/group learning, the results are not pretty.

The math gets lost in a blizzard of roadblocks around; the weird names, and how come we saw that guy in the wheel chair last year, and are trees really alive, and why is the Chinese guy speaking Spanish to a Russian, do I really have to make a table, and on and on.

You mix this altogether and it's a toxic stew for behavior because each child is hung up on a different facet of the jewel. If you can't put all these fires out fast, really fast, the third of your class that is ADHD gets going with the third of the class that is laughing at the goofy names, while the last third passes notes about the day's scoop.

The math is lost. Instead of providing a structure to hang the practice and spaced reps upon, CMP rips the structure into tiny little pieces in the arcane hope that the kids will put it all together again.

C. and I used to laugh about the many and multi-splendored names of the children populating Saxon's word problems. The one I remember best was: Monifa.

Monifa?

Who in the world is named Monifa? (Apart from a pygmy hippo in Australia, that is.)

Of course today I wonder whether the choice of "Monifa" was John Saxon's little in-joke on multi-culturalism in math books.

Niki Hayes on classroom discipline

I sent the Mary Damer/Elaine McEwan passage to Niki Hayes -----

Research supports the underlying thesis of our problem-solving process: the heart of successful behavior management is good instruction. Effective teaching becomes an even more essential variable for managing student behavior when one or more of the following conditions is present: (a) a student has a particularly chaotic home environment, (b) a student’s learning problems are extensive and complex, or (c) a student’s behavior is especially impulsive.

Here's Niki:

Yep. In one of the few prof development sessions that I attended that was worth my time, the speaker asked, "Which comes first, behavior or academics?" We all said, of course, "behavior."

"Wrong," she said. "If you want to change student behavior, change the academics. Academics drive student behavior." What she meant was, primarily, the curriculum and, secondarily, the pedagogy. She was a special ed trainer.

Speaking of good curricula, Niki is writing a book about John Saxon!

are we having fun yet? discipline in a constructivist classroom

Mary Damer & Elaine McEwan on the other problem with constructivism:

Research supports the underlying thesis of our problem-solving process: the heart of successful behavior management is good instruction. Effective teaching becomes an even more essential variable for managing student behavior when one or more of the following conditions is present: (a) a student has a particularly chaotic home environment, (b) a student’s learning problems are extensive and complex, or (c) a student’s behavior is especially impulsive.

If Carla, the fourth grader who was constantly in your office last year poses no problem in fifth grade, chances are that her teacher this year is more skillful. If you observe Carla, you are likely to see her current teacher employing teaching methods that reflect the most valid research practices. Whenever you have a teacher on your staff who is complaining that a student who posed no problems last year is now a noncompliant rule-breaker, take a close look at that teacher’s instructional methods. You may find important clues to the student’s sudden misbehavior in the quality of the teacher’s instruction.

Instructional practices derived from specific curriculum designs can also directly affect student behavior. Many of the constructivist curricular innovations of the past 10 years that were created to develop hands-on cooperative learning, and student-centered environments often produced unintended results for children who are distractible, impulsive, or less motivated toward school.

Consider the following observation notes based on a classroom observation of two sixth graders in a math class. [NOTE: the two 6th graders she mentions here are the two children having behavior problems, and for whom the behaviorists have been called in]

The students are seated five to a table. They are manipulating small blocks into patterns in order to invent a method of multiplying fractions. Only two students in the class appear to have understood the concept. Other students in the class seem confused and frustrated. The teacher is unable to assist the students who are having difficulty and still monitor the other students. The instant she pauses to provide assistance to one table of students, a craps game begins on the other side of the room with several students exchanging pennies for the blocks they are now flicking across a finish line. One of the two referred students is walking around the classroom, seemingly to avoid the assigned task; the other unmanageable student has lined up his blocks like a train.

The frustration and lack of structure engendered by this activity have created multiple, predictable triggers to unmanageable behavior. No behavior intervention plan will succeed in a classroom where the assigned task is as frustrating as this one is, and the activities are as unstructured as these activities are.

Managing Unmanageable Students: Practical Solutions for Administrators
by Elaine K. McEwan & Mary Damer
p 13-14

note: "the last 10 years"

The book was published in 2000.

Twenty years of hands-on collaborative group learning.

A friend of mine was saying the other day that the hottest major in the college where she teaches is Communications.

I wonder if those two facts are related in any way.


CNN: 10 most popular majors
Niki Hayes on classroom discipline

Around the Edublogosphere: Homework #1, Homework #2, Classroom Management

Homework #1--How Mrs. Bluebird gets her students to do homework

Mrs Bluebird teaches middle school in a low SES school. A couple of years ago, she attended a national conference for middle school teachers, and came away with this gem.

One of the workshops that Mrs. Eagle and I attended was on increasing student motivation. As anyone who has ever taught middle school knows, these kids can be slugs. We had a lot of problems with kids turning in work, especially homework, and were looking at some innovative ways to motivate them. (I wish I could remember who the presenter was, but alas, I don't.) The presenter put forth a lot of good ideas, but the one that resonated with us was something we call the Homework Helper. He said that the number one reason kids don't do homework is because they don't understand it.

His solution is to give the kids the answers to the homework.

Okay, I know what you're thinking because you could have heard a pin drop in that room as we all looked at each other and went, "What????" Homework is, after all, practice. If a kid doesn't get it, and does the homework wrong (if he does it at all), then he's repeating the wrong thing. He's learning and remembering something that is wrong. However, if you give the kid a key to check the work, then they're doing it correctly, and learning it correctly.

Wouldn't it be great if all teachers were as insightful as Mrs. Bluebird?

Homework #2--Dana Huff wades into the studies on homework and achievement

It all started with a discussion over at The Teachers' Lounge on homework (Homework Myth? Kids Need a Break, Ban Bad Homework, Alfie Kohn Weighs In , Drudgery or the Pursuit of Knowledge, Spotlight on the Home, The Dichotomy of Homework, and a Final Word from Grant Wiggins).

Dana Huff (who teaches high-school English at a private school) carried on with digging into the research on the value of homework. She and I share two frustrations:

1. What counts as homework? There doesn’t seem to be much rigor in the definition.

2. Does the age of the student affect the results? In other words, is homework equally effective in first grade and tenth grade?

The Blogger Formerly Known as RdKd, now blogging as Catching Sparrows, sums up the classroom management discussion

I do, in fact, stand at the door between each period, but what is so illuminating about what Mr. K says is that I do often feel as if I’m establishing a contract with students in which certain behaviors will not be indulged in my classroom, and I know the other effective teachers out there do the same. Over at Joanne Jacobs, I commented about the gray areas between “show ‘em who’s boss” management styles and the fallacy that its only alternative is some sort of “let’s all gather and hold hands” soft approach.

It’s a social contract, with the heavier responsibilities and behavior restrictions actually lying (rightfully so) on the teacher’s shoulders. In return for the students’ agreement to behave civilly and responsibly, to communicate their needs and dissatisfaction in an appropriate manner, and to reject inappropriate behavior within the classroom walls, the teacher’s portion of my personal, internal contract (the one I relay to them through my actions throughout the year) reads something like this:

You will have to go read her post to get her list of behavior expectations--for herself.

I have been observing a 4th grade student for one of my gradschool classes. In second grade, this young man had a host of behavior issues. Miss C., his teacher this year, is brilliant in several dimensions, not the least of which is classroom management. I don't know if Miss C. has a contract with her students similar to Catching Sparrow's, but she behaves as if she does. Miss C's classroom is a calm, orderly, respectful place. My young student is thriving and learning. Miss C's approach lets him stay out of frustration and fear, which means many, many fewer behavioral problems. Fewer behavioral problems means the student is experiencing academic success, which again contributes to better behavior.