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A MiddleWeb Blog

As the year continues to flash by, let's capture the moments of this school year now. By now it is fairly reasonable to predict that co-teachers all over the globe are in that "next year I will..." mode. It is great to look ahead, but don't let what remains of this school year pass you or your students by.

Take a second to breathe in the Now-and ask yourself, How can I maximize the learning for my students this year? What can I do with my co-teacher to strengthen our important work together?

In recent conversations and personal reflections, I've been revisiting some common barriers that co-teachers in any inclusive setting need to work through. Overcoming these barriers helps us gain the peace of mind that comes from providing our students with access to learning, while optimizing opportunities for students to achieve their personal best.

So let's get right to three all too frequent co-teaching barriers that we need to push aside for the rest of this school year and beyond!

Finding co-planning time

Meeting before or after school is a given-but what about if your co-teacher seems to be constantly on the go? Simplify your schedules by creating a once a week time (at least) and have a back-up day if and when that day doesn't work.

In between your weekly in-person planning time, open up a shared Google Doc to stay connected. And if Google Doc sharing isn't comfortable for you or your co-teacher, keep communication in the moment with a post-it exchange system. After any (or each) class, jot your thoughts about how the lesson went on a post-it, and exchange these tidbits of golden thinking before you run out the door to your next class.

We have planning time, now what?

First and foremost we must be mindful to remove the worst barrier of all: the attitude of "my students" and "your students." We must keep high expectations for all learners. So just get rid of that "special education" label. Instead adopt the strengths-based focus that our students are variable learners with personal strengths and abilities. None special; all special.

Make sure that you make the most of your co-planning time by creating a planning guideline. Simply write the lesson objective and which teacher will be responsible for what part of the prep and what part of the implementation. Check out 2 Teach, LLC with CEO and President Wendy Murawski, for valuable examples and resources.

How do we adapt the instructional process?

As teachers focus on learning objectives and plan meaningful lessons, it's time to review how to plan for the actual learning time. Consider your students (all students-not just the students with IEP's) and . . .

► Proactively differentiate your instruction using the principles and learning guidelines of Universal Design for Learning.

► Make structural changes by including varied co-teaching models.

► Think about changing font size or highlighting key words in the directions.

► Vary questioning through techniques such as Socratic Questioning to guide students to process and take ownership of their learning rather than having them passively remembering what they read or what the teachers say.

► Provide multiple ways of sharing information with students. For example use tools such as ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard to provide additional video and audio input.

► Make students part of the process! Provide opportunities for students to stay informed of their progress and self-monitor their academic moves accordingly.

► Be sure to provide options for students to express their thinking.

► Be creative-provide options for drawing, writing, speaking, and moving about the room. These options will guide them to connect personally to whatever content they need to know.

In time, through learning within a comfortable learning environment, your students will be able to achieve to the best of their abilities.

I hope this post has sparked some thinking - both validating the great co-teaching happening out there, and igniting those of you who need a quick pick me up! Just select one area to focus on-take the plunge-put yourself out there-and make a difference- this year.You'll be glad you did!
What is one takeaway from this post that could energize you and your co-teacher this year? What ideas do you have for busting through co-teaching barriers? Let's do it-together!

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A MiddleWeb Blog As the year continues to flash by, let's capture the moments of this school year now. By now it is fairly reasonable to predict that co-teachers all over the globe are in that "next year I will..." mode.

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There are tons of quick and easy ways to integrate technology into your instruction -- with powerful results. I've been a fan of Quick Response (QR) codes in education for years and even wrote a book all about how they can be used to promote deeper learning in your classroom. When speaking to teachers about these black-and-white squares, it's so much fun to see the "aha" moments as we explore different ways to use scannable technology in the classroom.

This list of five things that you may not know about QR codes contains some simple ideas that definitely pack a punch. These tips include strategies for differentiating instruction, distributing materials, and keeping families up to date on classroom activities. If you've tried one of these QR tips or have another to add to the list, the comments section of this post is the perfect place to share!

1. Add Your Voice

QR codes can talk! Many teachers have used QR code generators like QRstuff.com to link an article or piece of informational text to a QR code. When students scan the code, they're taken to a website with something to read. Instead of linking to text, teachers can connect QR codes to audio messages. This might include an audio file saved on a cloud-based service like Dropbox, where a link connected to an audio file can be connected to a QR code.

Another quick option is using a web tool like Vocaroo, which lets users record their voice with the microphone on their device. A simple tap of the screen lets you automatically turn your voice recording into an audio recording. This tool can be used to give directions at centers or audio support for English-language learners -- great for differentiation!

2. Attach PDF Files

Since a QR code is connected to a web address, you can take a scanner to any location on the internet. This includes files hosted on cloud-based services like Dropbox. Instead of copy-and-pasting a shared link into an email, take the Dropbox link and add it to a QR code generator. When students, parents, or other teachers scan the link, they'll receive a prompt to download or view the document. Try this tip when sharing documents.

3. Collect Information

There are lots of reasons why I love Google Forms, including how easy they are for collecting information. When you make a Google Form instead of sending the link to someone via email, copy the link into a QR code generator. At an open house night, families can scan the QR code with their mobile devices to access a Google Form. This is an easy way to collect information from parents at events.

In addition to trying out Google Forms with families, you can place QR codes linked to Google Forms in different locations for a scavenger hunt. When students scan the form, they can submit information. Once their submission is received, a note will pop up on their screen. You can customize this note to give instructions for the next part of the scavenger hunt.

4. Send a Tweet

I mentioned QRstuff.com as an option for creating free QR codes. If you take a look on the left-hand side of their screen, you'll see an option for Twitter. By creating a Twitter update, families can scan the QR code and automatically tweet a message that you've written. For example, clicking this link (which is the same as scanning the QR code) will take you to a page from which you can tweet the message, "I'm reading an article on @Edutopia by @ClassTechTips on #QRCodes and #ScannableTech."

Creating a QR code connected to a tweet is a great way to have families connect to your school's social media platform or generate excitement about a special event at your school.

5. Change Locations

Most of the QR codes that you've probably created are called static QR codes. This means that it always takes you to one place on the internet. A few websites, such as Kaywa, let users switch from static to dynamic QR codes. This requires a login and lets users change the location of a QR code. If you have a daily Do Now activity connected to a QR code, or a code you'd like to update each week on a monthly newsletter, dynamic QR codes are worth exploring.

Let's hear about your QR code teaching adventures in the comments section below.

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There are tons of quick and easy ways to integrate technology into your instruction -- with powerful results. I've been a fan of Quick Response (QR) codes in education for years and even wrote a book all about how they can be used to promote deeper learning in your classroom.

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'Platooning' on the Rise in Early Grades

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'Platooning' on the Rise in Early Grades

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At Sharpstein Elementary School, 2nd graders are getting used to a routine that most American children don't learn for four more years: Several times a day, they line up and switch classrooms and teachers by subject.

They spend the morning with one teacher for reading and writing, breaking in the middle for music, library, or physical education classes. After lunch, they head to another room for math and science. Then students return to their original teacher for social studies. Sharpstein's 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders have similar schedules.

The school in Walla Walla, Wash., is one of a small but growing number that are adapting for elementary schools a practice that has long defined middle and high schools: departmentalization. Also known as specializing or "platooning," the model has been used in limited ways in the lower grades for years, with children leaving their main classrooms for math or reading instruction. It grew in popularity after the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act increased pressure on schools to raise test scores.

Now, as the Common Core State Standards require new kinds of skills from younger children, some schools are expanding the model by asking teachers to drop their traditional roles as generalists and serve instead as experts in one or two content areas. Most commonly, they're trying it in grades 3-5, but some are doing it with pupils as early as kindergarten.

Some schools provide one teacher for math and science instruction, and another for literacy and social studies, so students work with only two teachers a day. Others split the subjects even further, rotating students among four instructors.

Schools that have embraced this shift are betting on a double yield: Students will learn more from teachers steeped in a given subject, school leaders hope, and teachers will be renewed and excited by diving more deeply into the subjects they love.

But the approach has trade-offs. Chief among them is the risk that the youngest children lose the close teacher bonds and developmentally appropriate kinds of learning they need. Elementary teachers, accustomed to spending many hours daily with the same den of children, might have as little as an hour with them, and take on two or three times as many students in exchange.

For those and other reasons, the departmentalization of elementary schools has not become widespread. But the practice is sparking renewed interest, and uptake, in scattered districts across the country.

Focusing on Content

As a regional superintendent in the District of Columbia schools in 2010, Amanda Alexander oversaw the move to a variety of departmentalized models by her 12 elementary schools. Over the next three years, their gains in test scores outpaced those of the school system overall. Ms. Alexander saw similar progress in 2008 as a principal when she used the model in her school.

Now, as the deputy chief of schools for the 45,000-student district, she sees interest bubbling up from a handful of other principals in the district.

"People are starting to rethink the idea," said Ms. Alexander. "The common core has definitely had an influence on the thinking of those school leaders."

Many Denver elementary schools have platooned for years, but there's been an uptick of interest lately, said Susana Cordova, the district's chief academic officer. One sign of that interest: More elementary teachers are requesting professional development in a single content area, she said.

"They're saying that if they participate in one content area and learn it deeply, as opposed to learning the [common-core] changes in language arts and math at the same time, it helps them get better more quickly," she said.

As a teacher and principal in Massachusetts, Mark Higgins saw academic standards grow more demanding over the last decade. A few years ago, as the principal of Witchcraft Heights Elementary School in Salem, he concluded that his teachers needed more support with the shifting expectations, so he provided systematic training, some of it in conjunction with his feeder middle school.

Fifth graders at Witchcraft Heights now rotate through three teachers daily; 4th graders have two teachers. The staff is considering extending the model to 3rd grade.

Fifth grade teacher Kathleen Marchetti is responsible for social studies and English/language arts, while a colleague handles math and science. She said she loves the new model.

"Our curriculum was becoming almost like middle school; there was so much to cover in each subject, that after planning my week out, I wasn't having enough time to plan creative things to do, or go into anything deeply," she said. "Now I get to do stuff I wouldn't get time to do in [a] self-contained [classroom]."

The flip side is that Ms. Marchetti now has more students. When Witchcraft Heights first switched, she went from having 24 students to 75. That was "a lot more essays to grade," she said. But the addition of another teacher eased her workload.

"Now I just have 40 essays," Ms. Marchetti said. But even still, "I stay later than I used to."

The Palm Beach County school system, in Florida, was a something of a laboratory for departmentalization. The 187,000-student district required it of all 109 elementary schools for grades 3-5 in the 2009-10 school year. But when that requirement was eliminated the following year, some schools stuck with it and some didn't, said Debbie Battles, the district's director of elementary curriculum.

As an elementary principal in 2009-10, Ms. Battles concluded that with departmentalization, it's important to create cross-disciplinary teams so teachers know how their students are doing across the curriculum. She now advises schools to that effect if they inquire about the model.

Given the common core's expectation that teachers of all subjects teach literacy, those teams are especially important, Ms. Battles said.

Deepening teachers' content knowledge requires an intense focus on professional development. Rocketship Education, which runs nine charter schools in California and Wisconsin, has used the platoon model since the network was launched in 2006. Students rotate to four different teachers-sometimes changing rooms, sometimes changing stations within a large, multi-teacher classroom.

To help steep teachers in their disciplines, the network provides 250 hours a year of professional development, plus in-class coaching during the year, said Lynn Liao, the network's chief programs officer.

Since Rocketship schools serve primarily low-income children with weaker skills, it's particularly important to have a way to help teachers go "from good to great more quickly," Ms. Liao said. And many of the charter network's teachers are relatively new to teaching, so the heavy serving of professional development helps them get up to speed more quickly, she said.

'Protected Time' for Subjects

At Blue Ridge Elementary School in Walla Walla, Principal Kim Doepker is in her fourth year of platooning. She recently took calls from principals in Arizona and Michigan who are interested in doing it, too.

Reorganizing the school in a way that developed-and then took advantage of-her teachers' content expertise has been a key part of Ms. Doepker's strategy for improving achievement. It was also a "good fit" for a dual-language-immersion school like hers, she said, since students were already changing teachers for classes in English and in Spanish.

"I asked myself what we could do to work smarter, know our content, and focus on our planning, and this has really been wonderful," she said.

Ian Yale, the principal of Columbia Elementary School in Burbank, Wash., whose school was a model for Ms. Doepker and her team, said one of the best aspects of departmentalizing is that each subject gets "protected" time. His 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, who have experienced the approach for eight years, get an hour a day in science with teachers who are experts in that subject, he said.

The model requires Mr. Yale to invest more money in deepening teachers' content knowledge, he said, but he saves on curriculum materials.

"I don't need 90 books when only 30 kids are coming into the room, so my dollars go farther," he said.

At Walla Walla's Sharpstein Elementary, Principal Matt Bona added a twist to his departmentalizing model: "looping," in which teachers keep the same students for two years. A pair of 2nd and 3rd grade teachers-one who focuses on math, another on literacy, social studies, and science-shares students, switching off during the day. The same is true for the 4th and 5th grades.

The combination of content specialization and looping is particularly helpful to the school's English-learners as they develop language skills, and it also benefits all students by allowing them to build relationships with their teachers over two years, Mr. Bona said.

Sharpstein parent Karri Bruce said she appreciated that Mr. Bona held a series of discussions with parents as he considered the change. In those meetings, some parents worried that with multiple teachers, their children wouldn't "be known" as well, and that a potential problem could slip through the cracks. Some parents felt, too, that departmentalization could rush children-and their parents-into a middle school model before they were ready, Ms. Bruce said in an email.

"I personally feel that with decisions like this, you gain some things and you lose some things," she wrote. "My children will have the same teachers for a two-year block. I like that level of continuity. But you also have a larger communication circle for your child, which can be tedious at times."

Her 3rd grade son, though, enjoys "the variety and the change of scenery" of going to different teachers, Ms. Bruce said. "While it's taken me a while to get used to this new schedule, I don't think he ever missed a beat."

Even fans of platooning, though, often are wary of using it with children younger than 3rd grade.

Ms. Alexander, in the District of Columbia, said she would advise schools to stick with 3rd grade and higher.

Ms. Doepker, of Walla Walla's Blue Ridge Elementary, acknowledged that "we do have some kiddos who don't do well with transitions." To address that problem, she "hand selected" children that struggled the most with the switches and grouped them with one teacher all day.

Preserve Play, Exploration

Donna Snyder, who oversees "whole-child programs" for ASCD, a professional-development organization in Alexandria, Va., said even children in 3rd grade "really need that go-to person" at the center of a self-contained classroom. Changing classrooms risks undermining the feeling of security that facilitates learning in the early years, she said.

Self-contained classrooms and departmentalized models can both work, as long as the teaching approach is age-appropriate, said Daphna Bassok, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, who co-wrote a recent paper exploring the increasing academic emphasis in kindergarten.

"Kids are capable of a lot, and they're curious, and more flexible, than we give them credit for," she said. "But all of it comes down to how it's done. There isn't a problem with more of an academic focus if it's handled in a way that keeps in mind what 5-year-olds are like and how they function. You have to be sure to preserve play, exploration, social interaction."

Mary Riner, a parent in the District of Columbia, said she is glad her children went to a departmentalized elementary school. It offered them sufficiently challenging content instruction, she said, and prepared them better for changing classes in middle school.

"In the younger grades, no way could I ever give up that iconic kindergarten teacher in her rocking chair reading a story," Ms. Riner said. "But as they get older, they need more knowledge, more depth, someone who really knows their stuff."

Published in Print: February 19, 2014, as 'Platooning' on Rise in Early Grades

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'Platooning' on the Rise in Early Grades

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At Sharpstein Elementary School, 2nd graders are getting used to a routine that most American children don't learn for four more years: Several times a day, they line up and switch classrooms and teachers by subject. They spend the morning with one teacher for reading and writing, breaking in the middle for music, library, or physical education classes.

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Comments on NJ’s Teacher Evaluation Report & Gross Statistical Malfeasance 

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Comments on NJ’s Teacher Evaluation Report & Gross Statistical Malfeasance 

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The Hard-Knock (and Downright Dangerous) Lives of Teachers

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The Hard-Knock (and Downright Dangerous) Lives of Teachers

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The Associated Press this week reports on the dangers teachers face on a daily basis.

"When a 16-year-old student slammed a metal trash can onto Philip Raimondo's head, it did more than break open the history teacher's scalp, knock him out, and send him bleeding to the floor," the Associated Press writes.

Violence against teachers isn't new ground, it's just progressively sadder ground dampened by further bloodshed. In September, the Teaching Now Blog's Hana Maruyama wrote about other recent physical assaults on teachers, including incidents in Kansas City, Mo.; Los Angeles; Georgia; the Brooklyn borough of New York ...

A master's degree in teaching does not confer upon the recipient any form of invisible shield. It does not bestow super strength or airbags. Teachers are no more immune to a violent climate than their school's students, and yet they're in a position to have a vastly greater influence, both positive and negative, than a single student likely is.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Broward County, Fla., community-wide agreement that would establish the point at which police should become involved in school discipline issues; it's basically a flow chart. Everyone in Broward County, based on the enthusiasm expressed at multiple events pertaining to the agreement's adoption, seems thrilled. But some were quick to point out that discipline is a reaction to an event, not a proactive solution. Or, in less diplomatic terms:

@OaklandSchools @Rulz4Engagement Great. Now use the flow chart to stop the student from beating the hell out of his teacher.
- Alfonzo Porter (@PorterEducation) November 12, 2013

While Porter might not model tactfulness, his critique reflects the same problem that plagues teachers: ensuring good student behavior.

Now, to be fair to Broward County, it's not ignoring the roots of student misbehavior. I followed up with Superintendent Robert Runcie, and he noted several school district initiatives meant to address those problems. But first among those, he said, was getting administrators to understand an issue existed.

"Until we started to present that data and have some courageous conversations with principals in the district, many did not even comprehend the magnitude of the problem," Runcie said.

He added that the district has an office of student support initiatives, which helps improve the district's positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS), as well as conflict-resolution programs and mentoring.

"We've stepped up our strategies for providing case workers, family counselors, doing a more coordinated effort with social services agencies, to provide the kind of wraparound services our students need at an early age," he said.

Not all schools are implementing, perhaps, the best approaches to improving behavior (specifically, encouraging bullying to discourage bullying, in one Colorado charter), but schools are coming around to improving behavior, including through such programs as Project SEATBELT, or with, um, math.

At the same time, though, social-emotional learning, the kind that helps reduce bullying, lacks priority in many schools. Additionally, according to Kwok-Sze Wong, the executive director of the American School Counselor Association, only 20 percent of children with mental disorders are identified and receive mental health services each year, and yet the sequester cut federal funding for counseling programs. And while the AP story mentioned above cites a "recently" formed national task force that recommended a national registry of incidents of violence against teachers, that recommendation came in January, based on a report from 2011. Maybe the AP adds some momentum to that call to action, but even if so, that recommendation is about data collection-useful for the future, but not the present. Violence against teachers lacks more in national action than in national coverage.

If funding doesn't show up for any of those solutions, though, at least removing every school's trash cans is cheap.
Follow Rules for Engagement on Twitter @Rulz4Engagement.

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The Hard-Knock (and Downright Dangerous) Lives of Teachers

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The Associated Press this week reports on the dangers teachers face on a daily basis. "When a 16-year-old student slammed a metal trash can onto Philip Raimondo's head, it did more than break open the history teacher's scalp, knock him out, and send him bleeding to the floor," the Associated Press writes.

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Interview
In 2009, after working for three decades in magazine publishing, John Owens decided to become a teacher. He quit his job and enrolled in graduate school for a year before being hired as a writing teacher at the pseudonymous "Latinate Institute," a high school in the South Bronx in New York City. Owens faced many challenges right off the bat, one of the greatest being the school administration's relentless focus on data. "Ms. P," the principal at Latinate, demanded teachers maintain an 80 percent student-pass rate for their courses. Owens managed to meet this quota, but still had trouble pleasing his higher-ups. At one point, he declined to participate in a workshop for writing teachers in New Jersey because he didn't want to take time away from the students—a move that Ms. P interpreted as noncompliance. Later, when he had problems with a parent, his principal not only refused to defend him but didn't ask for his side of the story. Suddenly, Owens writes, "It became clear to me that Ms. P & Co. weren't so much interested in making me a good teacher as proving I was a bad teacher."
Owens' career in teaching ended less than a year after it began. Not surprisingly, though, his experience at Latinate stuck with him, leading him to write a piece about it for Salon. The article received more than 140 comments, and thousands of people reached out to Owens. Education historian and advocate Diane Ravitch tweeted it to her many followers, and MSNBC asked him for an interview.
Now, two years later, Owens has published a book about his experiences called Confessions of a Bad Teacher: The Shocking Truth From the Front Lines of American Public Education. We recently spoke to Owens by phone about his new book and his brief, unhappy career as a teacher. Below is a lightly edited transcription of the conversation.
Why did you decide to leave what sounds like a successful career in publishing to become a teacher?

I'd seen these signs on the subway: "Become a teaching fellow" or "Become a teacher and be remembered." And I said, "You know what? I think I should do that!" I guess I was very naïve or very idealistic, which is something that's unusual for someone who's been a journalist for so many years.

I got a job in the South Bronx, and that's when it went bad. The school I ended up at considered itself a model of school reform. It was just a heartbreaking place. It was not about so much teaching kids as making it look like kids were learning—as putting on a big pageant of uniforms and slogans and data. The place was just run by data. It was spreadsheets taking over the education in the school.

Schools need to monitor students' progress, though. How can they avoid doing this without approaching education as a stream of data?

We have to understand that the numbers that we've been looking at—that most of them are meaningless. And made up. And bogus. They are. We are not using scientific research. We're using data. I had to put in 2,000 points of data a week for my kids. Everything from attendance to homework. But I also had to put in things like self-determination. I mean, what is self-determination? I don't know, but it can really help boost your grade if you have it. It was just so that the administration could prove whatever they wanted to prove. They didn't want to prove that the kids were learning, they wanted to prove that they were passing. And then that they would graduate.

[ Ed. note: According to Owens, Ms. P, his principal, and the school's assistant principal were eventually removed from their positions for alleged involvement in a scheme to falsify student records.]

In the book, you call yourself a "bad teacher." Why do you say that?

Because I was constantly told that if I were a good teacher, the kids who had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder would sit still and learn. If I were a good teacher, the kids who didn't speak English would speak English. If I were a good teacher, all the problems that these kids faced would be solved in my 46 minutes a day with them. Basically, the administration was trying to have plausible deniability for anything that went wrong in the school or with the kids anyplace. In or out of school. And good teachers could solve these problems. Well, obviously, you're not a good teacher if you can't.

You argue in the book that teachers have become scapegoats for our failing education system, even though cops haven't been blamed for crime rates and nurses for health problems. Why, in your opinion, do we scapegoat teachers?

I think that we keep hearing from people like Bill Gates that the teachers are the most important aspect of learning. All these experts kind of slide over the fact that poverty has a lot to do with kids not learning.

Also, I think that people have historically resented teachers. Teachers supposedly have a soft life. They have the summers off. But I'll tell you what: I have worked in many, many jobs, for decades, and I never had a harder job than that. But I think that there's been basically a public-relations campaign against teachers.

You argue we need a better way to evaluate teachers. In your book, you say that Ms. P's supposedly objective classroom observations were "highly subjective and capable of turning in any result Ms. P wanted." Yet you mention peer, principal, and student reviews as ways to get information that can't be put into an Excel spreadsheet. Why do you think that type of data would help to evaluate teachers?

The school I was in—and maybe the district I was in, which is the New York City school district—they're very negative on teachers. I have never worked in a place where they hated the employees so much. I think that in a system where we're trying to make teachers better and we're trying to make the kids better and we're trying to make everything better, those peer and principal reviews could work very well. They're not the perfect answer. There's no perfect answer. If you work in any place—I mean, any place—there's politics and there's subjectivity and there's personalities. There's no way around that. But the kind of hatred I saw in schools seemed to be systemic.

At a turning point in the book, Ms. P, the principal at Latinate, offers to pay for you to attend a workshop, but you ultimately decide not to attend. Why did you make that choice? And would you choose differently if you could do it over again?

I'd heard so much about classroom management and that the important thing in classroom management was consistency. Because these kids don't have much consistency in their lives. A lot of them were moving among schools, among relatives. A lot of things change. And I'd read and I'd heard that consistency was important. Between school holidays and test days and all these things, we hadn't been that consistent. I get this offer to go out of state and learn how to teach writing for a day or two. It didn't even occur to me that I would be considered a bad person for saying no. I just wrote back and I said, "I'd rather stay with the kids here in South Bronx and bring some consistency to the class." Well, little did I know that that was considered ungrateful and lazy. And so the woman took a big dislike to me. And there was no way she was ever going to ever forgive me for that.

One part of your book that stuck with me was when your student Keena wrote a story about a girl being raped by her father that seemed a little too vivid to be fiction. You asked the administration how to handle this with the social worker, but they dismissed your concern by saying that Keena's story wasn't real. How do you think that this incident should have played out?

I think the girl should have been contacted by the social worker, and sat down and talked to. These kids want people to talk to them. I'm no psychologist but I could see that these kids, so many of them, were just bringing out their lives in any way they could. I had a student, the very first day, she wrote a story about how she had witnessed her father being arrested at a check-cashing store. It was a real story. Another kid wrote a story about how her cousin was shot and killed on a playground. And so these were very real stories. This was not made-up. That's why when someone wrote a story about being raped by their father, I didn't think it was fiction.

Are there times when a teacher should go against the advice of their administration?

I tried to be a good team player and I was getting in big trouble. If you went against them, you would basically not have a chance. They hung the "unsatisfactory" rating over you like a sword on a daily basis. It really was sort of a career gun being held to your head constantly. Everything from the bulletin board to the way you dismissed the kids from the class could lead you to an unsatisfactory rating. If you went against the grain, you might as well just pack up your Smartboard. It's over. At least in the school I was in.

You say that we ask a lot from our schools. What should we be asking of our schools? What is fair to ask?

Well, I think what's fair to ask is that we give the kids a well-rounded experience and we try to teach them to be good citizens, not just good employees. What we're hearing now all about the Common Core [State Standards] is that they're designed to make students college and career ready. I don't know what's going to be required of someone who graduates 12 years from today but I do know that if they have a love of learning, and they have a sense of community and a good moral compass, they'll do just fine.

You say you wrote this book to give back to your students. What do you think the book has achieved?

I've had teachers from all over the country saying, "This is my life. Somebody finally expressed it." I'm hoping to get parents to understand what the teachers in their communities face, and how their children are being short-changed, and to demand that this kind of nonsense stop.

All I have to do is get a couple people in a couple communities to kind of take it to heart. That's how snowballs are built.
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Interview In 2009, after working for three decades in magazine publishing, John Owens decided to become a teacher. He quit his job and enrolled in graduate school for a year before being hired as a writing teacher at the pseudonymous "Latinate Institute," a high school in the South Bronx in New York City.

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Let the Games Begin: Students and Teachers Dive Into SimCityEDU

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Let the Games Begin: Students and Teachers Dive Into SimCityEDU

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Choice Equals Power: How to Motivate Students to Learn

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Choice Equals Power: How to Motivate Students to Learn

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Ferlazzo's school is Title I; all the students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Some of his students don't know where they will be sleeping each night and life outside of school can feel out of control to many of them. Ferlazzo recognizes the external challenges his students face, but still tries to give them authentic choices within the classroom to help them develop intrinsic motivation to learn.

"Clearly the more power students have, the better, assuming they are in a position to use it and they have good judgment when they use it," Ferlazzo said. He's a realist and is interested in solutions that work in the world as it exists today, not how they might work in a fantasy school that doesn't exist yet. In his class, some easy ways to give students genuine choice include discussing the seating chart, allowing them to help decide how misbehavior should be punished or inviting input on the cafeteria menu.

"For a lot of our students, having them just involved in deciding what kind of homework to get is a good first step for developing a sense of power," Ferlazzo said. And when they are given that opportunity to make the learning experience their own they care more. Ferlazzo challenges his students to think about why learning to read and write is important in their lives as they envision it. His students keep "life skills notebooks" to think through how what they learn in school connects to their experience of life.
DO NO HARM TEST PREP
Any public school teacher will say that tests loom large in the classroom. No Child Left Behind tied school funding to test scores in math and English Language Arts, subjects that have increasingly dominated classroom time. Preparing students for tests that matter for their advancement and future success is important, but Ferlazzo points to studies showing prolonged focus on test prep produces a short term bump in scores accompanied by a long term deterioration in achievement. Ferlazzo finds that approach unethical and a disservice to his students.

He still does test prep, but for only a handful of classes. Instead, he focuses on giving his students strategies to deal with high stakes, high stress situations in the future. "The reality of it is these are high stakes for all of us, and students can develop skills or knowledge about how to be focused in high stakes situations that they can apply to job interviews in the future and other high stakes situations," Ferlazzo said.

Ten minutes before the test, Ferlazzo has his students write about a successful ancestor because research shows recalling a personal success can help increase motivation. He also has students talk to one another about something that interests them because it activates the brain, helping them to be a little more "on." He also advocates that his students take the tests in a familiar place, somewhere comfortable. His students take the exam in the English classroom with him as their proctor.
THE REAL PERSONALIZED LEARNING
Helping students to think about how they learn and to assess themselves is the Ferlazzo's big goal. "We want students to be able to see it in their self-interest to be thinking about their thinking when we're not around, when they're not even going to get graded on their meta-cognition and awareness," he said. If students can do that, they will not only be more motivated, but they will have a deeper skill to take with them beyond the classroom.

This version of personalized learning is quite different from the data-driven computer-based learning dominating education conversations today. Ferlazzo is all for data, but he doesn't think tech-based data collectors are assessing some of the most critical data points. He's thinking about the quality of student questions, whether they are relating topics to other things they've learned, and if they can effectively help a peer learn. Helping students to identify personal learning styles, tricks to improve research and studying and an awareness of how he or she learners, is much more personalized than any data report spit out by a computer.

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Choice Equals Power: How to Motivate Students to Learn

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Ferlazzo's school is Title I; all the students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Some of his students don't know where they will be sleeping each night and life outside of school can feel out of control to many of them.

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Commentary

I wrote the nation's first parent-trigger law. I acted because I understood that education is the civil rights issue of our time and the key to the American dream.

I'm the daughter of a mother who attained only a 6th grade education, but who understood that education is what lifts us out of poverty.

As a Democratic senator representing the diverse, heavily Latino East Los Angeles-eastern Los Angeles County community and the chair of both the state Senate's education and prison oversight committees, I understood that if we do not educate, we will incarcerate. California locks away a disproportionate number of Latino and African-American youths, and, nationwide, nearly 70 percent of inmates are high school dropouts.

For years, California's education department routinely released data on schools with disturbingly high-indeed, morally shameful-percentages of children who fail to score at even basic levels of academic proficiency. These are schools identified as chronically underperforming and in need of intervention, but all too often they were simply ignored, forgotten on bureaucratic lists. Nothing was ever done for them. Ironically, many of these schools were named for civil rights heroes, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. Nonetheless, they were left to languish year after year, most parents unaware of their status. In the 15 years since I was first elected to the legislature, some of those same schools have appeared on the lists again and again.

I am a product of the civil rights movement. I graduated from a high school where I was "counseled" that college was beyond my reach-after all, I lived in one of those zip codes, at the end of a dead-end road in a mostly rural county. But with a mother who had faith and inspiration drawn from the late John F. Kennedy, a farmworkers' movement, and an intense love of learning, I rose to become the Senate majority leader of the state of California.

I never forgot my roots. I drafted the language of the Parent Empowerment Act-popularly known as the parent-trigger law-in 2010. Ben Austin, who is now the executive director of the organization Parent Revolution, suggested the idea of such legislation to me. I immediately wrote the language for the bill, understanding the transformative power it held for parents of kids who are trapped in failing schools.

It allows parents whose local school has been identified by the state as chronically underperforming-failing, in my view-to petition to force change at that school, including changes in school administration and teaching staff, or bringing in a charter school operator.

At the same time my bill was moving through the California legislature, American parents were increasingly demanding greater school choice, revolting against arcane school assignment laws more reflective of an 18th-century feudal society than a 21st-century global, mobile society.

In no other part of American life do we tie parents to the land, define them by zip code, and empower government officials who are strangers to families to make fundamental, life-altering decisions on behalf of their children based on five digits of geographic identity. The zip code has become the definitive great divide, a profound separation between high-poverty, minority youths and the American dream.

Undoubtedly, if sweetheart contracts didn't enable effective teachers to bypass struggling neighborhood schools, and if bureaucrats actually used the federal laws at their disposal to transform such schools, I never would have had to write the parent-trigger law. But that was not the case. Lists of failing schools, representing hundreds of thousands of kids in California, were simply released and promptly ignored. Few people even knew about the lists, and those who did weren't outraged.

So I looked back to the foundations of our democracy and gave parents the right to take on their own government when it refused to act on behalf of their children. Thus, parent trigger was born.

I understood that power never concedes power without a fight. Parents attempting to use a law written for them have discovered that the adults in the education system who enjoy paychecks, pensions, and perks at the expense of kids will fight back to protect themselves.

But we're not in Kansas anymore. From Topeka and Brown v. Board of Education to Compton and Adelanto (two California communities where parent-trigger petitions were filed) and Los Angeles today, parents have been given the unalienable right to truly become the architects of their children's educational futures.

As of today, some 20 states have considered enacting legislation like the little law I wrote in California. Sure, the original law I wrote has flaws, but they can be remedied.

But the power of parent trigger is true to the principle for which it stands: We, the people, have the right to petition our government for change, and when it fails to act, we have the power-with our own "John Hancock"-to tell government to get the hell out of our way. Our children's futures are at stake, and we will no longer be complacent or silent.

Published in Print: November 6, 2013, as Why I Wrote the Nation's First Parent-Trigger Law

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the role of the k-12 parent special report

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Commentary I wrote the nation's first parent-trigger law. I acted because I understood that education is the civil rights issue of our time and the key to the American dream. I'm the daughter of a mother who attained only a 6th grade education, but who understood that education is what lifts us out of poverty.

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Why Is Kindergarten Still Half Day? | Scholastic.com

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Nearly half of Americaâ??s 5-year-olds arenâ??t getting a full day of kindergarten. Why boosting your kindergarten program could be the best money your district ever spent.

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NBCT: How to maintain
passion as a classroom teacher 

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NBCT: How to maintain
passion as a classroom teacher 

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TakePart | Stories That Matter, Actions That Count

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Stories That Matter, Actions That Count.

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Schools work on computer, keyboard skills so students capable of taking online  exams

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Schools work on computer, keyboard skills so students capable of taking online  exams

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When teacher Andrew Lynch begins a kindergarten technology class at Fairmount Primary Center in Brackenridge, he starts slowly - "This is a mouse, this is a monitor, this is where you put your hands on a keyboard."

"I had a girl the first two weeks of school who started every day trying to manipulate the monitor with her fingers," he said. "For a lot of our youngest kids, smartphones and touch screens are all they've ever known."

Teachers worry that upcoming online exams may unfairly assess student progress and understanding, or worse, that students will be penalized by unforeseen and all-too-common problems in being connected to the Internet as states and school districts work to upgrade lesson plans and infrastructure.

"What we learned about typing 30 to 50 years ago hasn't changed, but the learning curve has," said Amy Wolff, Shaler Area's fourth-grade computer teacher. "I have kids who can type 30 to 40 words per minute when they first walk in, but I also have five others right now who still can't log onto the computer by themselves. They just haven't developed those skills yet."

Skills taught for generations in middle or high school are becoming staples of regional elementary schools, where educators employ colorful games and guises to practice the motor skills many youngsters lack in primary grades.

Little ones have shorter attention spans, said Carla Lagattuta, technology teacher for Allegheny Valley School District. Their ability to stay on task is limited, and often their hands are too small to manipulate keys effectively.

Instead, they learn the location of function keys - enter, space, backspace, shift and handy combinations such as control-alt-delete - and when to use them, Lagattuta said.

Students learn to see the keyboard in halves - one for the left hand, one for the right. They practice usernames and passwords, but specific hand placement comes later, she said.

"How do you teach letter keys when the youngest kids are still learning their letters?" Lynch said. "I can tell them to press 'A,' but they may not know what that is yet."

With the national introduction of exams aligned specifically to Common Core standards, students struggling to master handwriting and basic classroom etiquette will be expected to begin taking non-graded online exams as early as next year, including third-grade reading comprehension tests that require advanced keyboarding skills.

Many Pennsylvania districts lack tech support to offer widespread online testing, state Education Department spokesman Tim Eller said. Schools have the option to administer pencil-and-paper versions of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment and Keystone assessments.

"If we switch, it's going to be a challenge," said computer teacher Jeanann Madden, who circulates through small clusters of Gateway School District's third- and fourth-graders every three weeks. "At the K-2 level, kids are still trying to figure out how to express themselves with proper English and grammar, let alone composing those thoughts on a keyboard. I know adults who still struggle with that."

At Shaler Area, district leaders only recently adapted junior high curricula for students in their latter primary years to comply with Common Core standards that require fourth-graders to type a page in one sitting. By the fifth grade, students should be able to accomplish two pages, though the length of "one sitting" isn't defined.

"At first, we wondered if their hands are even big enough," said Brian Opiela, fifth-grade business education teacher.

Students' coordination and dexterity seem to take off around age 12, he said, deferring to his wife and sixth-grade business education teacher, Amy Opiela.

"Even then, I can't see taking a written test online," she said.

When youngsters write something by hand, they take more care to spell it correctly and avoid text abbreviations such as "ppl" and "thru," Wolff said.

"But when they type it, they may not think about being as careful," Opiela said.

Highlands School District brought developmentally appropriate computer curricula into early grades years ago, Lynch said, starting regular typing exercises no later than second grade.

"So now we have sixth-graders keeping blogs and uploading their own podcasts," he said. "We did a lesson this week with third-graders on Excel. We want them proficient on the hardware early, so managing the software in high school and college isn't a problem.

"Pennsylvania will switch from paper tests to computer tests eventually. When they do, my students will be ready."

Megan Harris is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach her at 412-388-5815 or mharris@tribweb.com.

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Schools work on computer, keyboard skills so students capable of taking online exams

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When teacher Andrew Lynch begins a kindergarten technology class at Fairmount Primary Center in Brackenridge, he starts slowly - "This is a mouse, this is a monitor, this is where you put your hands on a keyboard." "I had a girl the first two weeks of school who started every day trying to manipulate the monitor with her fingers," he said.

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Livebinders is a useful tool for creating an E-Portfolio or for building any sort of profile. It allows you to organise digital content into sections, so you can have a whole range of digital assets all organised in one LiveBinder. A great tech tool for teachers that can allow students to create t...

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LIVE BINDER PRESENTATION November 5, 2013

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LIVE BINDER PRESENTATION November 5, 2013

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Presenter: Ed Aguiles