Conner's Corner

A recent Education Week article (“Concern Abounds Over Teachers’ Preparedness for Standards” April 23, 2012) calls into question our nation’s preparedness to take on the common core standards.  As somewhat of a novice in the area myself, I find no fault with the notion that this may be true, and I have no difficulty with a periodical focused on our profession pointing that out.  Some of the suggestions in the article – okay, most of them — are, however, downright offensive.  To wit:

“Added to those factors are concerns that the standards are pitched at a level that may require teachers themselves to function on a higher cognitive plane.  When standards are more challenging for the students, ‘then you also raise the possibility that the content is more challenging for the teacher,’ said Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville.   ‘Of course, it’s going to interact with what support teachers receive.’”

Did someone just call us dumb?  It continues:

“Many teachers,” Mr. Wu contends, “will themselves need more mathematics-content preparation. But training focused at least initially on content could be especially difficult for classroom veterans to accept,” he concedes. “After 26 years of doing things only one way, the common core comes along and says, ‘Let’s try to do a little bit better at this,’” Mr. Wu said. “Well, suppose you’ve been smoking for that long, and someone says, ‘Just stop raising a cigarette to your mouth.’ It’s difficult—it’s 26 years of habit.”

“Some teacher educators believe that conversation will need to begin at the preservice level, especially for elementary teachers, who tend to enter with a weaker initial grasp of mathematics,” said Jonathan N. Thomas, an assistant professor of mathematics education at Northern Kentucky University, in Highland Heights, Ky. “It’s a great opportunity to say, ‘Let’s just take some time to think about the mathematics and set the teaching strategies aside for a moment,’ ” Mr. Thomas said. “It’s imperative we don’t send people out the door with just strategies, tips, and tricks to teach fractions. We have to make sure they understand fractions deeply.”

Yup, they just called us dumb.  Seems fair game to say that we need to change our curricular focus.  A suggestion to concentrate as much on the “whys” of math as on the “how tos” would have been appropriate here.  My own math education consisted way too much on solving problems as opposed to thoroughly explaining why problems solved the way they do.  Math was rarely in context, and, while we could plug and chug with the best of them, we didn’t always know why we were doing it.  Math instruction has made some headway in this regard over the years, yet there is significant room for improvement.  It angers me, however, that calls for instructional improvement don’t seem to be enough — we have to attack the intellect of educators along the way (and in this case, it’s not the politicians or media — it’s coming from within the profession!).  “Understand fractions deeply”?  To borrow freely from an often used exclamation on ESPN, “C’mon, man!”

So what should the message about the transition to common core standards be?  I have a few suggestions:

1. Focus on higher order thinking.  This should not be specific to the common core standards, but common core assessments will certainly hold educators accountable for doing what we all have known we should be doing all along.  Many argue that “learning the facts” is important and therefore continue to create assessments that focus solely on the knowledge level.  Teachers in this category fail to realize that learning the facts and synthesizing, analyzing, applying, and comparing/contrasting are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, one cannot perform those activities without first understanding “the facts.” 
2. Transition from fiction to non-fiction text.  I have a master’s degree in literature.  I understand and appreciate its value.  I also think that our reading instruction is done almost exclusively with fictional text.  This is an error that simply must be corrected, and the common core standards will set us in this direction.
3. Require students to make an argument and support it.  This one is directly connected to #1.  Whether working with fiction or non-fiction text, students should be called upon to create arguments rather than recall answers.  These arguments must then be supported by the students with text.  Who is the most influential president, Jefferson or Lincoln?  Whom should Katniss choose, Peeta or Gale?  There is no correct answer, just correct ways to give one.  Students should be required to think for themselves, and to defend those thoughts.
4. Writing is not just for language arts class.  Self-expression is a critical skill.  It is not something relegated to one subject area, and should pervade every content area.  Just as non-fiction reading should gain status in our instruction, so too should the writing of non-fictional text.  It is no longer okay for other content area teachers to claim they are not teachers of writing.  All students should think of themselves as writers, and all educators should consider themselves teachers thereof.
5.  Less is more.  The common core standards should allow educators to move from a “mile wide and an inch deep” curriculum to one which allows them to focus on deep skill building within the content area.  This will be a welcome change.  In fact, many of the problems teachers find themselves accused of emanate from a curriculum that is simply too expansive, and state accountability measures that hold them to covering it all.

Every one of the suggestion enumerated above are ones that I would give irrespective of the common core standards.  These are not new thoughts.  They are, in my opinion, topics that every teacher preparation program should endorse and likely already have.

So what are your thoughts on the common core standards?  Are teachers ill-prepared?  Is expansive professional development necessary?  Have teachers been accurately portrayed?  I look forward to reading your reaction.

Those of us in the education world understand that all it takes is a good hook to pull in an audience.  So it was that I sat with bated breath in anticipation at the AMLE conference for the session entitled “Let Them Read Trash: The Power of Marginalized Texts to Promote Imagination, Satisfaction and Social Action.”  I had no idea that Jeffrey Wilhelm was an accomplished English professor at Boise State University, nor did I know he was an accomplished author of books including Engaging Readers and Writers With Inquiry, You Gotta Be the Book, and Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys.  What I did know was that this was a provocative title, and I was curious about the premise.

The session did not disappoint.  I found Wilhelm to be a gifted speaker with a compelling message, all backed up by research, his experience with his own eighth grade class, and statements from his students about their experience.  Early in the session Wilhelm asked attendees to rank the following reasons for reading literature:

___ 1. To help young people explore their own feelings about literature

___ 2. To help young people explore their own feelings and understandings about their personal experiences

___ 3. To introduce students to great literary treasures

___ 4. To introduce students to other cultures, especially those distant from their experience

___ 5. To provide a meaningful context for learning to read

___ 6. To develop students’ aesthetic sensibilities

___ 7. To develop critical thinking and writing skills

___ 8. To learn to “read the world” from a critical perspective

___ 9. To discuss and come to deeper understandings of timeless themes such as love, loss, identity, heroism, etc.

___ 10. To create an opportunity to discuss contemporary issues

___ 11. To help students think for themselves, and to create their own philosophies of life and living

___ 12. To help students to “live through” experiences that are distant from them in time, place and experience, therefore widening and deepening their experience.

___ 13. Other?:

 After that excercise, Wilhelm contended that unless #3 was a high priority, it did not matter whether teachers used the classics as a vehicle vs. any other literature that students would read.  He went on to claim that many students who are gamers in their free time speak of game characters in much the same way as one might discuss literary characters.  (This seems like quite a stretch to me, and seems contrary to the goal of getting kids to read, but I do see how games could be used to discuss contemporary issues, etc.)

The discussion reminded me of my own guilty pleasures (or in Willhelm’s jargon, my own meaningful trash): an episode of Two and a Half Men.  In the episode, Jake, the slacker son who both dislikes and is not good at school, is supposed to be doing a book report on Lord of the Flies.  His father not only can’t get Jake to read the book, he can’t even bring him to read the Cliff’s Notes.  At the same time, Jake’s Uncle Charlie is writing the theme song to one of Jake’s favorite graphic novels, Oshikuru – Demon Samurai.  He gives Charlie a stinging critique of his jingle: “Did you even read the comic?  It’s about a teenage boy in a futuristic society, who’s possessed by the tortured soul of a feudal Japanese warrior condemned to walk the earth fighting the evil that he once embodied.  He lives in dark world.  He battles the spirits of the damned.  Your theme doesn’t capture the mood at all.  It just blows.”  Jake and his critique would be easy to dismiss as the rantings of a fictional character, except I have heard kids talk like this — deeply, and emotionally –on a number of occasions about things that they care about.  And I have frequently seen those same kids frustrated about the “stupid book” that they “have to read” in class.  It is obvious that Jake is willing to apply the same skills required to analyze high-brow literature, he just doesn’t want to do so with The Lord of the Flies.  At some point the question becomes: Which is more important, applying the skills of analysis, or reading that particular book?

To me, the whole point is that we need a way to set the hook.  Whether that is finding a way to make classics appealingly and meaningfully relatable to our students, or allowing them to develop important skills and conceive critical thoughts through different vehicles, is really immaterial.  Regardless, we must bring the horse to the water AND make him drink.  I can’t imagine not reading Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, et al, and yet it seems that a balance can be struck allowing choice and multiple genres to be part of the menu.  Then, in the immortal words of Charlie Sheen, we’ll all be “Winning!”

So, I’m curious…which of Wilhelm’s 13 reasons for teaching literature is your number one?  Can reading trash accomplish the same thing, or is this idea headed for the sanitation station?

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say that’s the end of the best 20 minutes of the day.”  Thus ended the SSR session I attended yesterday in one of our classrooms.

It’s a bold statement, yet one that was met without argument.  In fact, teachers report that students enter some form of stupor from which it’s difficult to roust them, so it should be no surprise that there was no protest to the claim.  It’s funny, really.  These digital natives and the rest of their generation are frequently accused of entering a transe-like state when playing video games — rightfully so, I should say — and it is frequently suggested that the result of their multi-media immersion is a short attention span.  It seems to me, however, that these same children, when allowed to read from books of their own choosing in a supportive environment, become just as engrossed.  Is attention span the real culprit? 

But if calling 20 minutes of uninterrupted reading the best part of a child’s (or teacher’s) day is bold, it is also humble.  It takes humility to admit that the number of activities and programming that a faculty plans for students on any given day may be less enticing than curling up with a good book.  It takes humility to be willing to give up 20 minutes a day of quality instruction under the notion that students will be better off in the long run.  It truly takes an enlightened and confident individual to admit that.

Research continues to indicate that individuals who read academically outperform those who do not in every way measurable.  While I’m happy that this research exists, it strikes me much as research that indicates people who eat less and exercise more tend to lose weight and be physically fit.  Well, duuuuh!  What is surprising, however, is that it does not seem to matter what people read, it just matters that people read.  Recognizing that school is often cited as the reason people stop reading, and developing strategies to not only avoid having students stop, but to truly embrace and encourage reading through modeling and making it a priority is critical.  After all, schools across the land claim the mission of creating lifelong learners.  If there is a shred of truth that we hold that mission dear, then setting aside time to read in our day is the least we can do.  And if, along the way, we can convince our students that it is the best 20 minutes of their day, we will have really accomplished something.  Except if we do it correctly, students will prove us wrong by making reading the best 40, 60 or 80 minutes of their day!

It wasn’t the first time, and probably won’t be the last, but I failed as a dad last night.  My older son excitedly brought his spiral notebook into the room exclaiming that he wanted me to read the second paragraph of his essay.  This is a left-brained leaning boy, one who rarely, if ever, talks about writing, so I was a bit surprised and eager to read what he wanted to show me. 

I took the notebook in my post-Open House, supine position and began to read aloud.  Well, sort of.  My son’s words flowed from my lips as smoothly as a fifteen year-old drives a stick shift for the first time.  In the mountains.  The poor boy has his dad’s handwriting skills, and the scrawl was simply illegible.  I sounded like an emergent reader pausing every few words, waiting for someone to help me sound it out.

My next challenge was to decipher meaning amidst the randomly placed commas in one of his more developed sentences.  After clarifying what he meant to say, I next directed him to rewrite that particular sentence and to remove some commas while adding others elsewhere.  Unfortunately, because it was handwritten, there was no room for an extended edit.

I asked him why he had written it in his notebook as opposed to using his laptop.  This is a somewhat frequent question of mine, and on top of my other suggestions and comments, was not exceptionally well received.  His labored response: “That’s what we were supposed to do.”  My son continued, “Besides, he told us it had to be a page long, and a handwritten page is not nearly as long as a typed one.”  He left off the word, “duh,” but as a linguist with vast experience in the world of teen dialect, I’m led to believe that it was implied.

The truth of the matter is that I was asking the wrong person.  As I compose this post, I am writing, re-writing, revising, cutting and pasting, moving some paragraphs, inserting others, exchanging words, etc.  (I used to do some of these things on my yellow legal pad, drawing arrows across the page, scribbling sections out, and writing in the margins.  In the end, it looked like one mysterious hieroglyph.)  One simply cannot do these things well on paper, and it can’t be done at all without completely re-writing the entire thing at the end.  All things considered, to not encourage students (or even coerce them) to use digital tools is malpractice for a writing teacher, isn’t it?  To teach writing today without offering the ability to easily edit, and without directly teaching the practice while using those tools, is simply mis-educating.  Often times we educators find ourselves grading finished products instead of actively teaching the writing process.  It’s a shame that we don’t do less of the former, and more of the latter.

Of course, all of the finger pointing in the world won’t change the fact that I completely messed up the moment.  My faux pas of not embracing the opportunity to hear his writing without offering editorial comment was a big one, and left me hoping that someday I would get another chance.

Failing schools are in the news. 

“What schools are being taken over by the state?  Tune in at 11 to get the full details.”

Stories about vouchers abound, including directions of how to help one’s child escape a failing school.  Policy and law makers admit that NCLB is a broken system, though the agenda to alter or dismiss it is put off to another day.  “The Test” becomes more powerful every day, and it is quickly becoming the final or sole arbiter of a school’s or a student’s performance.

Simultaneously, pedagogy is taking a back seat to accountability.  I found it interesting this spring that while our veteran teachers were required to prove to the state that they were highly qualified despite their many years in the field and despite their continuing education requirements, many of the resumes that I received for open positions included the phrase “considered highly-qualified by the State of Indiana to teach (subject area) under a Transition to Teaching Permit.”  These “highly-qualified” applicants had not yet begun their pedagogical coursework, but, by golly, they sure are ready to come in and save our profession.   If you can’t see the sarcasm dripping off the last sentence, it’s time to change your browser.

As a school that creates a perennial success story via our state’s mandated testing, it might seem counterintuitive to criticize the measurement mechanism.  Perhaps.  But success on these tests indicates a starting point, not an accomplishment.  Take for example reading comprehension.  No one would argue against the need to comprehend what one reads, but then what?  All of us who remember Bloom’s Taxonomy recall that comprehension is a low level skill in the cognitive domain.  All of the fun resides in the application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  And it’s not just the fun…it’s where one finds meaning, purpose, marketable skills, and any chance of making school relevant.

Our task, then, is to continue our success on the mandated accountability measures by focusing on real goals like teaching kids how to learn autonomously, encouraging students to form their own opinions and then to logically support them, and to help students find their academic passion. 

One of my favorite professors used to frequently ask the question: “So what?”  It immeditely brought complete silence to the room.  The silence was uncomfortable as he exercised proper wait time, but we eventually broke into lively discussion about our perception of the topic’s relevance to our lives and profession.  It was always a hard question to answer because we had to create it before we could give it — it wasn’t written in the textbook.  (It is likely not coincidental, by the way, that he never used a textbook.)  It is my hope that our students can not just give the “what” when asked to do so.  I would love for them to understand the “so what,” and eventually not because we asked it, but because we have trained them to do so on their own.  That, to me, is the point of our efforts in literacy, project-based instruction, 1:1 instruction, etcetera, ad infinitum.  Teachers creating an atmosphere in which students pursue, apply and appreciate knowledge and the ability to learn.

Measure that CTB/McGraw-Hill.

You’ve seen the poster/T-shirt/cartoon before: “My favorite 3 things about teaching are June, July and August.”  It’s no doubt meant to be high brow comedy, but I have to admit that I’m bothered every time I see it.  First and foremost, it’s false advertisement.  The saying implies two things: 1) “I don’t work in the summer,” and 2) “I’m happiest when I am away from my job/children.”  Isn’t that when the studio announcer in the sky comes on and says, “Thanks for playing, here are your parting gifts…”?

I have to admit that I relish the summer, but not for the reasons that the general public assumes.  I’m simply not a very good “big picture” planner during the school year.  My summer hours are the ones that I use to dream and imagine what could be.  For me, September through May are spent making things happen, whereas June through August is a period of exploration and reflection unfettered by the realities of having to make it work in class tomorrow.  (Full disclosure would also reveal that today’s 3:30 tee time is not a luxury I can afford during the school year.  Let’s be real, I’m not ALL work and no play!)

This summer I am looking forward to reading The Book Whisperer, and Elements of Grading, developing the next steps from our staff’s group-read Readicide, analyzing the school’s performance in 2010-2011, considering the formation, structure and purpose of a multi-media club, and developing an ongoing dialogue with colleagues about interdisciplinary, project-based instructional strategies.  These aren’t things that I’m compelled to do.  I want to do these things, and I am ecstatic to have an opportunity to do them in a distinctly different environment than the one found in the midst of a 36-week school year. 

So, I’m curious.  What do you plan to do this summer?  The “Let It Out” section in the Indy Star once again included a mention of the “teachers who only work 9 months of the year.”  I know these suggestions are woefully misguided.  Can you help me count the ways?

I look forward to your comments!

Math teachers from the Northwest Suburban Conference schools met on Pi day (How’s that for planning, huh?) in an effort to learn best practices from one another, compare and contrast Indiana’s standards with the Common Core Standards, and to discuss meeting the needs of all learners — especially the highest and lowest achievers.  It was an excellent day of sharing and learning.  I promised the attendees to send a screencast of how to upload a document to a wiki page, but later realized that a screencast would be too large to e-mail, too large to host on a free wiki site, and that any Youtube video would likely be blocked by most of the schools (which is a blogpost for another day!).  With that in mind, I decided to simply imbed the screencast here: 

WikiUploadScreencast

My weekly updates to staff always include a quote, typically from something I’m reading at the time.  Last week’s quote came from Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide, and it read:

“My students are always reading two books at a time: one that requires a teacher to be in the room, and one that is a high-interest, fun read.  Ignoring the recreational side of reading is a recipe for readicide.  Both sides of reading – the academic and the recreational – need extensive emphasis.”

One of our teachers replied to me and said that she loved the quote in the update, and then asked rhetorically how many of our teachers I thought were always reading two books, one professionally and one for fun.  People who know me well realize that I’ve never come across a rhetorical question that I didn’t think required an answer, and now I evidently think I need to take you on the trip with me.  (Well, the first step to overcoming the problem is admitting you have it, right?)

If I were to guess, I would say that most educators are not constantly and simultanelously engaged in reading for work and for pleasure.  The number one obstacle to reading books (professional or personal) is, of course, grading.  So to suggest that teachers aren’t voracious readers is to oversimplify — if student work counts, we read our tails off!  Having said that, though, it is problematic that as a group we don’t read more books than we do, and reading professionally and for pleasure is almost certain to only happen in the summer.

It’s also interesting that professional literature for teachers is at least a two-headed monster.  We must stay in touch with information our content areas (think of the scientific developments of the last 20 years, technological advances, or simply keeping up with current events and societal shifts), and then there is the pedagogical side, which is completely different territory.  So to truly be at the top of our game, our professional literature would include works from both of these strands.

That’s a tall order.

As I reflect on my own practice while in the classroom, I realize that I read anything about my content area (German) that I could get my hands on.  Pleasure reading is a tough concept to determine when one loves one’s subject area — when I read a German literature work, it was kind of both for me.  But for the sake of argument, if that didn’t count for pleasure reading, then periodicals (Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian and the Indianapolis Star) would be my only source of reading.  Does that count?  (For the record, and to again answer a rhetorical question, I vote “yes.”)

However, I never (NEVER!) read any works about pedagogy.  As I transitioned to the principalship, this fact became obvious to me.  My fellow principals would quote books and authors left and right, and I was left there smiling, nodding, and noting my insufficiencies.  Several years later (more than I’d like to admit!), I don’t feel that way anymore, but it took an intentional, concerted effort to do so.

So as I consider the question of whether my own current reading practice could serve as a model for our students, I think I could honestly say yes.  (I also don’t have papers to grade, but I think I can give myself a pass on that — I do attend a handful of athletic contests, music concerts, board meetings, parent gathering, etc.  And it might even be fair to say that I have to respond to an e-mail or two along the way!)  But I also must admit that I have to be cognizant of it, and to deliberately ensure that it happens.

Am I in the majority or minority?  I really don’t know.  I do know that it is critical to remain lifelong learners, and not just espouse the practice.

I would love to know your practices.  What do you read?  How often do you read?  How do you make time to do it?  (Oh, by the way, those are not rhetorical questions!)

One glance at me and my “generous” body type leads one to the immediate and accurate conclusion that I really like to eat.  My culinary habits are somewhat odd in that I am on one hand non-discriminating (I’ll eat anything!), and on the other hand routine (I have a few stand-by foods that I return to with regularity and frequency).  One of my favorite moments of each fortnight is looking into the freshly stocked refrigerator to select my initial meal from the array of personally selected favorites.  Unfortunately, the outcome tends to be that I stand there, door ajar, unable to select which of these selections has truly piqued my appetite.

In an odd way, that’s how I feel these days when trying to select a blogging topic.  Disappointingly, the available topics aren’t as uplifting as the way I feel when contemplating a favorite meal — many of them actually make me feel the way I do after I’ve overindulged — but there are so many pressing educational issues from which to choose that I’m experiencing a certain topic-choosing-paralysis.  And I’m letting out all of the cold air!

The quandary results, I think, from the inter-relatedness of the strands.  I’ve been reading Disrupting Class, Christensen’s tome about public education’s monolithic structure, our need to dismantle it, the reasons it is difficult, and the ways to go about doing it anyway.  It’s an economist’s attempt at improving education, and he makes some compelling points among some other dubious ones.  His analysis of why it is difficult for the educational system to change itself (and the fact that it has done so in the past despite long odds) seem compelling, as is the notion that geography is currently the driving determinant of where students attend a one-size-fits-all school versus a potential model in which schools varied and students attend according to learning-style compatibility at a time in which we have technology and other supports that do not make this a necessity.  He seriously oversimplifies the pedagogical/learning intricacies when he suggests that what we do can be reduced to a series of if/then statements that would result in every student learning optimally without fail.  And his conclusion that schools should be funded solely by their student outcomes seems completely contrary to his notion that different school types should be supporting different learners.  How does one equally compare entities that are intentionally and fundamentally different and made for intentionally and fundamentally different consumers?

Meanwhile, I pick up this morning’s newspaper to see an image of 1,100 educators converging on the Indiana Statehouse in an effort to bend the ears of our state’s lawmakers.  (If bending their will doesn’t work, bend their ears, right?)  Governor Daniels’ loyal minions will be putting through all types of “reform” legislation, most of it bent on depriving public educators in the name of helping children.  It is this deception that I find most disturbing.  He will hold a press conference and state publicly that he is in favor of merit pay so that our best educators can be paid more, and then he is quoted in Sunday’s Star telling a group of teachers (off camera, of course) that they are overpaid.  Creating a fiscally lean education machine driven by intense accountability is the aim.  Oh, and unregulated competition is the way to get there.

Simultaneous to this, my friend Jenni sends me an article written by a standardized test evaluator.  Frightening is the word that comes to mind as he describes the process of the serially temporary employees of the testing companies.  He describes in detail the practices of at-home evaluators who are paid by the number of tests scored, and the directions they are given by their employers.  The author, Dan DiMaggio, shares:

“Usually, within a day or two, when the scores we are giving are inevitably too low (as we attempt to follow the standards laid out in training), we are told to start giving higher scores, or, in the enigmatic language of scoring directors, to ‘learn to see more papers as a 4.’ For some mysterious reason, unbeknownst to test scorers, the scores we are giving are supposed to closely match those given in previous years. So if 40 percent of papers received 3s the previous year (on a scale of 1 to 6), then a similar percentage should receive 3s this year. Lest you think this is an isolated experience, Farley cites similar stories from his fourteen-year test-scoring career in his book, reporting instances where project managers announced that scoring would have to be changed because ‘our numbers don’t match up with what the psychometricians [the stats people] predicted.’”

It is truly sobering to consider these three topics in unison.  I consider myself a reformer at heart, a believer that there is a better way, and that we must tirelessly seek it.  And I read Christensen’s work and realize that he’s promoting choice and customization (and a system that employs each without error), but as an economist, he does not profess which choices and which custom made parts need to be offered (though technology is definitely a major player in his plan).  As I watch Governor Daniels’ plan unfold, it’s as if he used the book as his “field guide to change education.”  Both Daniels and Christensen espouse the need for accountability, and cite standardized tests as both the evidence of our need to improve and as the vehicle to track it.  Reading DiMaggio’s piece underscores how unseemly this path is, and I can’t help but realize that real educators are completely absent from anything described above.

Now that’s plenty to chew on! 

A teacher who attended the rally at the statehouse suggested to me that it was a wasted effort.  I’m not sure I agree with that — it became evident for perhaps the first time that there are a number of educators unhappy with the direction our politicians are taking education, if for no other reason than the visual of the people in the statehouse.  It is my hope, however, that our focus remains on continuing to build a better mousetrap, and that this desire is evident to everyone even as we voice our displeasure about the one being built for us, or more accurately, despite us.

If not, we will be left, perhaps deservedly, standing in the cold.

After finishing my review of departmental and grade level notes from a recent staff development day during which the focus was data analysis of student performance on common assessments, I was reminded of how infrequently we educators have had the opportunity to practice this strategy.  A number of realizations occurred to me including:

• Most common assessments that teachers have encountered have been “done to us” rather than assessments that we have created for ourselves.  The high stakes variety tests are done in a cloak and dagger manner making it difficult for teachers to gain as much information as we would like, so much so that teachers often clamor during the tests for an idea of what the kids are even being asked!
• Some educators have a difficult time viewing themselves (or their performance) as a variable.  For us to be the best we can be, we must understand that if T=teaching, E=experiencing and L=learning, and if T x E = L, the amount of learning varies as T and E change.  There should be no constant in this equation, and if there is, it’s a problem!
• Teachers are willing to create common assessments and to use student outcomes as a learning opportunity for themselves to guide instructional choices.  Many are far more than willing, and are eager to learn from the practice.
• As a long-time viewer of the original CSI series, I thought of the character Gil Grissom as I read over the meeting minutes.  Time and again, Gil would remind his highly-skilled and respected CSI’s to “follow the evidence” as they drew conclusions without really having done so.  He never suggested to them that their conclusions were wrong, just that one cannot draw a conclusion without first basing it on collected evidence.  We would do well to heed Gil’s advice.
• It is easier to reflect on the group’s instrument than one of our own.  I saw numerous references to “bad questions” on the common assessments.  Teachers appear quick to suggest that they should have asked a question differently.  Certainly the data pool is larger for group assessments, but it’s also easier to see if three different instructors elicit poor or wildly varying responses.  It made me wonder if we use this same practice when the assessment is for our own classes only.  If not, we should. 
• I saw evidence of teachers recognizing someone else’s instructional prowess, and soliciting instructional strategy advice.  One group’s common assessment showed a significant mastery difference between one teacher’s sections and those of the others, and the minutes reflect that the group spent time to analyze the instructional differences and make future recommendations.  Powerful.  Professional.
• Disparate courses can benefit from collaboration.

For the groups that appear to have understood their purpose and collected their data for their own analysis (approximately 50%), this activity seems to have been the best utilized staff development time ever.  For those who don’t yet understand how this process works, here’s hoping they can still find their way.  It will take a group effort to achieve, and certainly having a pedagogical leader who clearly defines the purpose of the activity is the starting point (a goal that I certainly have not achieved given the data I collected!).  But interestingly, I can see some teachers developing an appetite for data, and they can’t wait for the next set to analyze.  That is so exciting to see, and a great sign of things to come!

As always, I’m curious to hear/read your thoughts!