Michelle Rhee – Excellent Teaching

A teacher asked me last week if our focus on data, and our use of objective measures of students’ academic growth, means that we want to standardize teaching to one teaching style. Absolutely not. Such a practice would be a disservice to children and it would be a surefire way to strip the joy from teaching and lower student achievement levels. 

Excellent teachers do have things in common, some best practices that help teachers to advance student achievement in their classrooms. For example, excellent teachers clearly and consistently communicate high expectations to their students, and they are very clear about what students can do to meet and exceed these expectations.

The excellent teachers I have met believe that all of their children can learn, and they make it clear to students that the greatest factor in their success will be how hard they work, not “how smart they are.” Excellent teachers know how to manage their classrooms well, and they are consistent in sticking to the guidelines (often created with students) that promote learning. They respect their students and it shows. They are relentless in their pursuit of excellence, and they have the skills in their subject area and multiple successful teaching strategies to hold all their students to high standards for excellence.

This does not mean that all excellent teaching looks the same. Excellent teaching comes in as many styles as there are student needs, and it is truly inspiring to see the different ways that different excellent teaching styles can all resonate with students and challenge them toward success.

For example, we have a veteran teacher at one school who teaches 8th grade boys, and she is strict! Every student walking into her classroom knows he is there to learn, and that she is the one in charge of guiding them toward that result. On the day we saw her teaching, every child was not only listening to her with rapt attention, but every child was actively engaged, responding excitedly to her rapid fire questions that challenged them to respond with high energy in a lesson on fact vs. opinion. Throughout the lesson, they clearly knew what to expect from her, and the routines she had established clearly had taken much time and practice to develop.

Watching another teacher, “strict” and “discipline” were not the first words that came to mind. This teacher communicated the same high expectations as the first teacher did, but in a very different way. His voice did not boom as hers did, and it didn’t need to. His questions were challenging, but he smiled more, facilitated, mediated, was patient as he encouraged students to think before they spoke, and respected the silence it took to do so. Their responses showed the thoughtfulness and critical thinking he encouraged.

Based on what students produced in both classes, it was clear that both of these teachers had approaches that yielded results in student learning and motivation.

* I agree that Excellent teaching comes in many forms. My teaching style is more strict and focused. I teach all of the students in my school including special education computer skills. They have learned microsoft word, powerpoint, excel and we are currently starting to delve into movie maker. The students practice math and language arts skills so that they will learn more in the their regular classes and when you partner technology with  reinforcing foundation skills most children are very excited about learning.

Excellent Teaching: Does it all look the same?

The culture of Poverty

 

How to understand a culture of poverty

By Sudhir Venkatesh, Slate

Published Wednesday, March 18, 2009

http://www.tampabay.com/news/perspective/article985134.ece#

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Pop quiz: Who made the following observation? “At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of (black America) is the deterioration of the (black) family. It is a fundamental weakness of (black Americans) at the present time.”

Each year, I pose this question to my undergraduate students. Most will guess George Bush, Bill Cosby, Al Sharpton or Bill Clinton. This is not surprising, given their age.

More telling is their perception that such a view might come from the political left or right. It reveals just how commonplace the link of family-race-poverty is in the American mind-set.

But there is a little trickery going on: Replace “black” with “Negro” and change the date to 1965. The correct author is Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He wrote these words as part of a policy brief to help President Lyndon Johnson understand the distressed social conditions in urban ghettos. “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” leaked to the press and created a firestorm of controversy with its contention that a “tangle of pathology” engulfed black America.

The so-called “Moynihan Report” brought about a new language for understanding race and poverty: Now-familiar terms like pathology, blame the victim, and culture of poverty entered American thought as people debated whether Moynihan was courageously pointing out the causes of social ills or simply finger-pointing. Moynihan forced a nation to ask, “Is the culture of poor blacks at the core of their problems?”

A deep American schism was born. Liberals believed that black poverty was caused by systemic racism, such as workplace discrimination and residential segregation, and that focusing on the family was a form of “blaming the victim.” Conservatives pointed to individual failure to embrace mainstream cultural values like hard work and sobriety, and intact (read: nuclear) families.

In this standoff, along comes the eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson, whom I studied with at the University of Chicago in the 1990s. Wilson claims his analysis in his new book will bridge the two worlds and create a new, more enlightened way for Americans to talk about race — but he is well aware that won’t happen without controversy.

It is fitting that the most famous contemporary sociologist has decided to address the most significant policy issue of our time. Anything but shy, Wilson has devoted his career to wading into contentious debates that have enormous social implications for the way we understand race and inequality in America.

In More Than Just Race Wilson wants to explain inner-city behavior — such as young black males’ disdain for low-wage jobs, their use of violence, and their refusal to take responsibility for children — without pointing simplistically to discrimination or a deficit in values. Instead, he argues that years of exposure to similar situations can create responses that look as if they express individual will or active preference when they are, in fact, adaptations or resigned responses to racial exclusion.

Consider a young man who works in the drug economy. That doesn’t mean he places little, if any, value on legitimate work. Employment opportunities are limited in the man’s segregated neighborhood. Most of the good jobs are far away. To complicate matters, many of his friends and neighbors are probably connected to the drug trade. Survival and peer pressure dictate that the man will seek out the dangerous, illegal jobs that are nearby, even while he may prefer a stable, mainstream job. Delinquent behavior? Certainly, but more than likely a comprehensible response to lack of opportunity.

Now focus Wilson’s “socialization” lens on teen pregnancy: Young inner-city women achieve both personal identity and social validation in their community by entering into motherhood. They join others whose lives are similarly defined by early parenting.

Wilson does more than argue for the rationality of such behaviors. The actions of both the young man and the teenage mother are “cultural,” he suggests, because they follow from the individual’s perceptions of how society works. These perceptions are learned over time, and they create powerful expectations that can lead individuals to act in ways that, to the outside world, suggest insolence, laziness, pathology, etc.

Wilson describes this succinctly: “Parents in segregated communities who have had experiences (with discrimination and disrespect) may transmit to children, through the process of socialization, a set of beliefs about what to expect from life and how one should respond to circumstances. … Children may acquire a disposition to interpret the way the world works that reflects a strong sense that other members of society disrespect them because they are black.”

If you think you’re at a disadvantage (however justified or unjustified that belief may be), you internalize your status, such that your low expectations become as durable an obstacle as the discrimination you might be facing.

Wilson appreciates Moynihan for shedding light on ghetto poverty. But by focusing on the capacity of the poor to act rationally and thoughtfully, Wilson wants us to move past victimhood. In his view, neither defending the victim nor blaming the victim is very helpful in moving us forward.

Three generations of black ghetto dwellers have been relying on welfare and sporadic work and doing so in isolation from the mainstream. It is folly to believe that some distinctive behavior, values, or outlooks have not arisen as a consequence. In Wilson’s work, the recognition functions almost like confession: Let us face the truth, so that we may finally bring forth change.

The book stands to have a powerful impact in policy circles because it points to the elephant in the room. Wilson emphasizes the advantages of “race neutral” jobs programs, knowing that Americans are more likely to support initiatives that are not identified with poor blacks. Stated somewhat crudely, increasing employment will reduce the number of people who might promote or even condone deviant behavior.

Because Wilson advised the Obama campaign, it is likely that his combination of race-neutral social policies and “jobs-first” agenda will be attractive to our president.

Sudhir Venkatesh is William B. Ransford professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of Gang Leader for a Day.

Boys and Girls Together, Taught Separately

March 11, 2009 Boys and Girls Together, Taught Separately in Public School By JENNIFER MEDINA Michael Napolitano speaks to his fifth-grade class in the Morrisania section of the Bronx like a basketball coach. “You — let me see you trying!” he insisted the other day during a math lesson. “Come on, faster!” Across the hall, Larita Hudson’s scolding is more like a therapist’s. “This is so sloppy, honey,” she prodded as she reviewed problems in a workbook. “Remember what I spoke to you about? About being the bright shining star that you are?” They are not just two teachers with different personalities. Ms. Hudson, who is 32 and grew up near the school, has a room full of 11-year-old girls, while Mr. Napolitano, a 50-year-old former special education teacher, faces 23 boys. A third fifth-grade class down the hall is co-ed. The single-sex classes at Public School 140, which started as an experiment last year to address sagging test scores and behavioral problems, are among at least 445 such classrooms nationwide, according to the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education. Most have sprouted since a 2004 federal regulatory change that gave public schools freedom to separate girls and boys. The nation’s 95 single-sex public schools — including a dozen in New York City — while deemed legal, still have many critics. But separation by a hallway is generally more socially and politically palatable. And unlike other programs aimed at improving student performance, there is no extra cost. “We will do whatever works, however we can get there,” said Paul Cannon, principal of P.S. 140, which is also known as the Eagle School. “We thought this would be another tool to try.” Over the years, Mr. Cannon had experimented with after-school tutoring, playing sports with students and their fathers on weekends, and creating welcoming science and computer labs. Test scores improved enough to remove P.S. 140 from the state’s list of struggling schools, but Mr. Cannon noticed that fifth graders’ results were largely stagnant, a slump common across the city. He heard about a school in North Carolina that had all-girls classes and was inspired. So he decided to try it — under the Bloomberg administration’s philosophy of letting principals run their schools as they wish, it was as simple as that, with no special training or monitoring. A few parents expressed reservations at first, but it was popular enough that this year, the middle school around the corner followed suit with its sixth grade. “Before it was all about showing the girls who was toughest, and roughing up and being cool,” said Samell Little, whose son Gavin is in his second school year surrounded only by boys. “Now I never hear a word from teachers about behavior problems, and when he talks about school, he is actually talking about work.” But Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said separate classrooms reinforce gender stereotypes. “A boy who has never been beaten by a girl on an algebra test could have some major problems having a female supervisor,” she said. While some advocates believe that girls are more likely to participate in class when no boys are present — and that boys, particularly those from low-income families, tend to focus better without girls around — academic research is inconclusive. “The question always must be: What are you trying to accomplish with separating the students and how will you do it?” said Rosemary C. Salamone, a law professor at St. John’s University and author of “Same, Different, Equal: Rethinking Single-Sex Schooling.” She added, “If you don’t do it thoughtfully, you run the risk of reinforcing stereotypes and playing to students’ weaknesses.” In California, a high-profile governor’s initiative that split six middle schools and high schools into single-sex academies in the late 1990s ended after a few years, and few students showed sizable improvement. At the Bronx’s Eagle School, there is also little evidence so far of improvement, at least of the easy-to-measure variety. Students of both sexes in the co-ed fifth grade did better on last year’s state tests in math and English than their counterparts in the single-sex rooms, and this year’s co-ed class had the highest percentage of students passing the state social studies exam. But these numbers are as much a reflection of who is in which room. In general, struggling students are steered toward the single-sex classes (anyone who objects can opt out). While test scores might not show it, Mr. Cannon and his teachers said there have been fewer fights and discipline issues, and more participation in class and after-school activities, since the girls and boys were split up. Mr. Napolitano, one of four men among the school’s 30 classroom teachers, said he thinks of his students as “23 sort-of sons,” and engages them with Marvel Comics and chess. He proudly held up the book “Patrol Boy,” with a picture of a young man with a large tattoo on his back, as an example of material he would not have used in a co-ed class. “There’s an aspect of male bonding, a closeness that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” he said. “I feel more like I am teaching them about right from wrong than I might have normally.” And he said he can “be a little more stern” with his students now. “If I get in the face of a girl, she would just cry,” he said. “The boys respond to it, they know it’s part of being a young man.” Indeed, when asked the best part of being in an all-boys class, Jorge Jimenez, 11, responded confidently, “I am learning how to be a man.” Asked to explain himself, he announced, “To learn how to put on deodorant.” (A few days earlier Mr. Napolitano had handed out small bags of soap and deodorant samples as part of a brief lesson in body odor.) There is a sisterhood equivalent in the girls’ classroom, where a recent assignment was to research influential black women (several wanted to interview Ms. Hudson, but she directed them to the Internet for higher-profile subjects like Harriet Tubman and Michelle Obama). Ms. Hudson often has the students work in small groups, which she said fosters both independence and a sense of community. And, as Guadalupe Bravo, 11, put it, “drama.” Take the recent afternoon when the students were making posters on the Revolutionary War. As the class broke into two-person teams, one girl was left on her own, her face buried in her hands. Ms. Hudson approached the two students at the next desk. “You notice that someone is on their own without a group and you don’t do anything about it?” she asked, mindful of lingering feelings of some perceived slight. “I am surprised at you, really. If someone apologizes, you try to forget about it and move on.” Moments later, the three girls were trading markers and debating what words best described the frustration of the revolutionaries. “Even when there is an argument brewing, they can get past it,” Ms. Hudson said. “The truth is, that’s an important skill, too.”

Arne Duncan- Can he save Urban Education?

WATCH THE SECOND VIDEO FIRST!!!!!!

While the world had me looking at Michelle Rhee and Linda Darling Hammonds as possible  candidates for the top job in Education, here comes Arne Duncan. Without me being too sarcastic, I hope that the only reason that our President elect did not pick one of these two very talented women is because they don’t play basketball…lol

In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools – the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001. 

President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday tapped Duncan to become secretary of education in the upcoming administration. 

Duncan, hailed by Obama as a reformer, said he would like to take the lessons he learned in Chicago with him when he moves to Washington. “I’m also eager to apply some of the lessons we have learned here in Chicago to help school districts all across our country,” Duncan said after Obama formally named him to the job in Chicago.

I agree with David Boaz who states “ In seven years running the Chicago public schools, this longtime friend of Obama was apparently not able to produce a single public school that Obama considered good enough for his own children.”

 

I am anxious to see what programs Mr. Duncan has in store for schools around the country.  Because he has experience leading an urban school system, I hope that he will introduce policies that will be a win-win-win for students, parents and educators.

Math + Play!

Math and Play!

 

Here are some pictures of some math problems that I found on the ground. As I was walking down the Riverwalk to a meeting, I was pleased to see children using their colored chalk to work out math problems during their  summer vacation!