Category Archives: Big Picture

Inquiry To Action Groups in Philadelphia.

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How do you get your professional development in Philadelphia?

I’m not talking about the stuff that your school provides — maybe that is excellent, but in many cases it’s a bore. Hopefully you attend EduCon, and participate in your discipline’s #edchat, and follow the news. But are you registered for an Inquiry to Action Group?

In case you need a reminder from Paolo Freire via the Cooperative Catalyst, teachers must be activists. And educators do this best in networked groups, exploring issues on their own, and making plans for positive change, no matter how big or small.

Anybody can participate, and the programs are free. Last year, I participated in an ItAG called “Context for Change,” which connected me with a dozen motivated educators I had never met before, and it helped me figure out what I was doing with this blog.

The topics this year are Democratic Teacher Evaluation, Linguistic Bias Against Students of Color, Online Activism for Education, Social Justice Math, and Social Justice Unionism.

Oh yeah — and Project Based Learning, which I will be facilitating with help from everybody at SLA.

The kick off is Thursday, February 7th. Sign up here.

From Chicago to Philadelphia?

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I was one of four members of the SLA Community who had the pleasure of presenting at this year’s Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum at The Met School in Providence, RI. I have more ideas swirling around in my head than can reasonably be summarized in this post, but I’m going to attempt a couple of them here.

First off, it was really eye-opening to visit another school that embodies many of the same principals as SLA. We didn’t have a chance to see classes in session, but just exploring the physical building gave us lots of clues about what’s going on and what we could steal. From what I explored, the schools rely more heavily on the advisory system than SLA, and have whole rooms devoted specifically to advisory groups, complete with their own names and cubby systems and tons of individualized support notes on the white boards. The place felt like home.

The sessions that really got me thinking, though, were all about Chicago.

I am a card-carrying member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and on the whole I’m grateful for the work that they do. However, I don’t feel particularly connected to my union. And I don’t think that’s my fault — they don’t work to connect teachers around Philadelphia, beyond the occasional rally. Though I appreciate their protecting my benefits, I also crave networking. What are the other people out there doing? What are their needs, their struggles, their skills and triumphs?

This is a part of what was so interesting about the story of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, shared so eloquently by Xian Barrett at the conference.

Their movement, he said, started with an interested group of twelve people — folks who knew each other from the blogging world, or ran into each other at the annual conference hosted by Teaching For Social Justice, the progressive teacher organization in Chicago.

Over four years, they went from this seed of a group to nearly sweeping all elected positions in the Chicago Teachers Union. Their caucus also continues to organize and publicize as an organization independent of the CTU, and therefore free of some of the gag rules that are enforced around contract negotiations.

How did they do it?

First by listening, he said. Going to every possibly community meeting about educating, asking people what they needed, and acknowledging those needs.

(How did they find the time for this? By working a somewhat inhuman number of hours, including taking personal days and no-pay days to fit it all in.)

Then they found union members — we’re talking actual teachers — who were willing to run for the elected positions within the CTU. Virtually all of them running on the CORE slate were elected.

These folks recognized that they were disenfranchised from a massive behemoth of a system, and they took it over from the inside. Now, of course, they’re struggling with trying not to become the establishment they unseated. Still, they did it.

Could such a thing happen in Philadelphia?

I don’t know. But for the first time, I am seriously asking the question. I hope you will ask it with me.

Ed Note: If you’re in Philadelphia, you should definitely be at next Saturday’s Chicago Teachers Union Panel Discussion. Check it out on the Teacher Action Group website or RSVP via Facebook.

What to do when iPhones are the dominant narrative.

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When I was in seventh grade, I had a teacher that many of us adored, but many of us also thought was kind of crazy. Everybody knew he rode his bike to work every day (turns out he owned a car, but never drove it). Eventually we learned that he didn’t own a television, or a microwave.

These might sound like common choices for people who are trying to live sustainably, but in the affluent suburb I grew up in, this stuff was unheard of. What was really interesting was that he really seemed to like living this way. He seemed, you know, pretty happy.

I thought of this teacher the other day when I pulled out my flip phone during class and got a few surprised looks.

“Wow, I haven’t seen one of those in a while,” one student quipped.

There are a lot of boring, innocuous reasons that I’ve got an old “dumb” phone. I’ve never been an early adopter. I typically hold on to my phones until they die, sometimes years after I’m eligible for an upgrade. I’m not anti-smartphone, I just like my phone bill at its current price.

But a small piece of me clings to my phone in protest of the consumer culture that engulfs my students (and my peers), with iPhones as one of the top status symbols. If you’ve got the money for one, why haven’t you gotten one yet? And if you don’t have the money, then you definitely need one to make it look like you do.

I know this situation is not unique to SLA. (In fact, I suspect that handing the students identical free laptops cuts down on some of the gadget envy.) And I have no desire to tell students or their families what to do with their money. If you get judgmental on a personal level, this gets nasty real quick.

But I do want students to see that these products are designed to separate you from your cash by any means necessary. And that you don’t have to play that game if you don’t want to. Like so many things that society expects you to do, if you can recognize the system, then you have the power to opt out. It might be worth it to you. Sound like a good critical thinking lesson yet?

I know that eventually I’ll cave and get a smartphone. But I still plan on poking holes in our consumerist culture in front of my students. (Because when I grew up, I realized that life without a car or a television was actually pretty sweet.)

If I don’t know theory, I’m just a cog in the education machine.

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When I was in graduate school for teaching, a common gripe from some students in my program was that our coursework was too theoretical, that it didn’t give us enough practical info or concrete methods for working in the classroom.

I thought of those folks as I read Doug Lemov’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal. His description of a new teaching school stood out:

My colleague Norman Atkins, founder of the Relay Graduate School of Education in New York, likes to invoke the example of Michael Jordan, whose demanding methods of practice “reset” the habits of the Chicago Bulls and improved the team. Mr. Atkins adds, “Once you have good teachers who as a matter of course like to practice and rehearse and think, it’s the most professional thing you can do. It will raise the expectations of teams in their field as well.”

So his graduate school, in contrast to more theory-heavy programs, preps teachers for what they will do all day on the job. And he finds that they love it.

Back in my year of graduate school, when I was in my field placement all day and going to classes at night, there are moments I would have loved practicing my methods all day. But when people complained that our program was “too theoretical,” it made my skin crawl. These were the same folks who thought reading “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” was a waste of time. Even scarier was how they weren’t interested in encouraging any critical thinking on the part of their students. The kids were too behind on basic skills, they would argue. No time for literary analysis or theory.

And if we had studied at Relay? Here’s what we would have gotten, according to the Washington Post:

Degrees are earned by online video and reading modules, attending discussion groups and by the uncertified teacher’s students’ test scores. If the test scores are not up to snuff, the teacher does not earn her degree. There are no classes in educational theory or history, nor any indication that the candidate must complete a masters thesis requiring research and reflection. It is cookie-cutter training grounded in one vision of instruction — the charter school vision. Each candidate’s pail is filled with the same techniques.

Just think, if I had been educated at Relay, I would be such a great team player. I would be an expert and enacting every new method and initiative handed down by my district or my administration, and I would never ask “why” or have the tools to explore what was behind it.  My students would never get riled up, because I would never incite them to question their world. I wouldn’t even know the phrase “critical pedagogy.” I would never have gotten hired at a place like SLA, joined Teacher Action Group, or started this blog.

If we don’t teach our students to look at the bigger picture, then we condemn them to live with all of the systemic problems that they can’t see. Same goes for teachers.

School Solution: Student Assistant Teachers

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Lehmann has written about SLA’s Student Assistant Teacher program before, but as we just had our first meeting for the program today, I thought I would give you a window in — hopefully to convince you and your high school to give it a try.

In brief, the SAT program brings seniors into underclass courses as, well, a teaching assistant. They attend that course full time, and they work with the teacher to provide learning support as fits the class needs, and also their personal interests and inclinations.

Here are just a few examples of what my SATs have been up to since the start of the school year:

  • Observing group dynamics and making seating charts.
  • Giving feedback to student ideas for thesis statements online.
  • Floating around the room and checking in with small groups as they work.
  • Picking out relevant quotes from a text to share while we’re having an all-class discussion.
  • Sharing their own experiences or advice for a particular assignment (they’ve all had me as a teacher before.)
  • Building personal relationships with students who would rather go to this “expert student” for help before they ask me.
  • Cluing me in when there’s some confusion about a task, or a group that’s having trouble getting along, or… really anything else I didn’t notice.

Obviously they didn’t do all of this from day one. However, I’d like to point out that we’re only around day 30, and they already do a lot. Part of this is the general culture of transparency at SLA — we like to talk about teaching and learning, so kids are paying attention to our methods even before they choose to become an SAT. But it’s not automatic.

I have had SATs in my classes for three years now, and at first I struggled to help them find their place. (Turns out saying “do whatever you want!” isn’t very instructive.) Each year they become a richer, more authentic resource in my classroom. With 30+ students in each class, that makes a huge difference.

That’s not the only benefit, though. Their very presence helps me, in a way I didn’t expect at first.

One of the things I really didn’t know about teaching until I was in the thick of is how lonely it can be. You’re surrounded by students all the time, but in many ways you’re totally on your own in your classroom. While our SATs are not professionals — and I would never ask that level of commitment or responsibility of them — they come to inhabit the same mental space as I do. When something kicks butt, they notice. When a lesson flops, or doesn’t make sense, we can figure out why. When something absurd happens, we can laugh about it later. More than once I have told an SAT, “I was glad you were there for that.”

All of this is swirling in my brain after our first general SAT meeting, facilitated by the wonderful Alexa Dunn and Josh Block (who run the program). This meeting is no joke — it involves over half of the senior class, and most of the teachers in the school.

Part of the meeting involved a quick check-in with all of my SATs together. I see the value of the program for them all the time, but today’s meeting really confirmed it. They already know their strengths and weaknesses as students (reflection is one of our core values, after all) but this work allows them to feel out their skills in a real setting. They take pride in growing their own abilities, and are delighted when the students in their class see them as a resource.

So, have I convinced you to bring this to your school yet?

I can’t grant write my way out of systemic inequality.

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The other day, I read a provocative response on At The Chalk Face to the “character-building” programs developed by KIPP Charter and touted by Paul Tough in his new book. To quote:

Tough begins his book talking about how poverty creates obstacles in children’s lives, but never allows himself to say that we should combat that poverty directly.  He toys around the edges, citing programs that do the work of anti-poverty programs, but then still ends on teaching “grit” in no-excuses charters as the ultimate answer.

Personally, I like the language behind character development that Tough describes (I’ve read the NYTimes excerpt; I need to order the book.) But I wholeheartedly agree that the program should not be treated as all it takes to solve a massive systemic problem — that if disadvantaged individuals were just given a few key tools and work hard enough, they would be able to overcome every hardship.

My mind came back to this when a colleague asked me whether I would be attending this week’s PhilaSoup, a monthly micro grant fundraiser for classroom teachers. Attendees pay $10 to attend, which pays for their dinner and helps fund the grant. Teachers propose projects during the meal, and at the end, the audience votes on one to win. The typical grant is a couple hundred bucks.

I appreciate this idea, but what kills me is that these grants pay projects that schools would happily fund themselves if they had the money. The proposals are not personal, absurd larks. They are for books and art materials and uniforms — things that many wealthier districts pay for without a second thought, and that many city schools also subsidized when the coffers were fuller (or existed at all). Without activities funds or parents who can afford it, teachers are left to hustle for the funding on a level that goes way beyond phone calls and bake sales.

Let me make it clear that I don’t fault or criticize groups like PhilaSoup themselves one bit — they have an innovative, individual-driven solution to a very real problem. But, just like with the KIPP character development, why do these programs so often get lauded as the solution for a problem that exists on systemic level? What would happen if all of the positive press about “teacher grant-writers” and “doing more with less” turned around and looked at the causes of these shortages? What if, instead of lending their personalities to a Donors Choose promo video, Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey went after the lawmakers whose policies allow educational inequality to occur? What if everybody who donated on that site did the same?

I know the rationale: It is easier to champion one person than to take on the system. That’s how these programs get traction. Photos of kids on field trips are cuter are cuter than charts of statistics — and teachers are the new rugged individualists.

The thing is, I don’t need you to cheer me on as I craft the language for yet another grant proposal for my school. I need you to vote, and write, and speak up for more funding in my district, so that someday I can give that time I spend fundraising back to my students.

At the very least, I need everybody to acknowledge that this problem exists.