Are Introverts Worse at Friendship?

I had to teach a lesson that included a 25 question "Friendship Quiz" to third graders. The students were asked to rate themselves: 1 - Never, 2 - Sometimes, 3 - Most of the time, 4 - Always.  I must say, at the outset, that some of these statements seemed above the level of third graders, who are mostly 8 and 9 years old.  But some of them also made decidedly uncomfortable.  Remember, this quiz is titled "Friendship Quiz", so if you think of yourself as a good friend, you want to score pretty high.

Some of the statements that were to be rated:
I enjoy meeting new people.
I enjoy group activities.
I can carry on a conversation with someone I have just met.
I am able to find something I like in most people.

It seems to me that the quiz favors extroverts and that it would leave introverted students feeling as though their less gregarious characteristics mean that they aren't good friends.  There is a scale at the end of the quiz.
     75 - 100 points - You probably already have a lot of friends and are able to get along well with them most of the time.
     50 - 74 points - You have the potential to make friends, but you are probably having some problems  in some of your friendships.
     25 - 49 points - You have much room for improvement in your ability to make and keep friends.

And it was clear that some of the students NEEDED to rate themselves highly on everything.  One young lady gave herself straight 4s.

So, I have several questions about this lesson.  Is it appropriate for third graders?  Reading level: It seems to me that it was worded as though it was intended for older children or adults.  One of the statements was "I avoid criticizing friends."  Quite a few of the students did not understand the word 'criticizing'.  Emotional awareness: again, it seemed to me that some of the concepts might be unfamiliar emotionally to third graders.  How many third graders actually think about their ability to carry on conversations with strangers?  What about the kids who are told to not even talk to someone they don't know?

Then there was the one that was in specific conflict with something they had been told earlier in the year:  I am able to keep a secret.  Evidently, they had been explicitly told that "there are no secrets" at their school.

There were, as I said, 25 statements to this quiz and a number of them, including others not detailed here, made me a bit uncomfortable.  Not only would they make introverts feel as though they were bad friends, the level of introspection might make all the kids a bit anxious about their personalities and their reactions to normal events (meeting someone for the first time).

And a final question: given that the quiz made me uncomfortable and that I thought many of the questions were not worded in a helpful way, is there any way I could have gracefully gotten out of teaching the lesson?  I am a sub and this is a really nice school.  I enjoyed the day with the class.  I really don't want to alienate the teacher.  But I also don't like some of the messages the lesson has.  What should I have done?  What could I have done differently?

Writing Sentences

I was teaching a literacy lesson today for third graders.  There was a reading selection and then 3 pages of worksheets about the lesson.  I went over the directions for each section of the worksheet, slowly and carefully.  I emphasized that the students were to write their answers in COMPLETE sentences.  I reviewed what a complete sentence was: it begins with a capital letter; it ends with punctuation, and it expresses a complete idea.  I gave and elicited examples of complete sentences and sentence fragments.  Then I let the students work.  They worked very well and were completely focused on their work.

When they finished, they were to bring their work up to me to review, before turning it in.  AT LEAST two-thirds of them had failed to write complete sentences.  WHY??? Did they not understand  the directions? No, they understood the directions. Did they think that their sentence fragments were sentences?  No, they realized that they were not complete sentences.  WHY didn't they do the assignment correctly?  Blank looks.  So, I sent them back to re-do it.  And re-do it.  And re-do it.  Some of them took three or four tries before they were even close.

Oh, and these were gifted students.  I really don't understand why this is so often the case - and it is.  Not just in schools for gifted students, but for kids in a lot of elementary school classrooms.  They learn to spell a word for spelling instruction, but they spell it wrong in writing class.  They learn correct grammar on worksheets, but fail to use it in an essay.  They know how to write complete sentences and they know they are required, but they don't write them.

I am still puzzling out WHY???

Personal Connections to Learning; Ten Obvious Truths about Educating Kids that Keep Getting Ignored

Re:  Ten Obvious Truths about Educating Kids that Keep Getting Ignored

The above article touches on a lot of what I have to say, but I want to consolidate my own thoughts about what we know, but ignore.

Engaging interest; telling our personal stories.

There is a huge time crunch in schools these days.  As a teacher, you are supposed to get through the given reading lesson, for several different reading groups.  You are supposed to teach mini-lessons on writing to a given writing prompt and there all all those other literacy things that you are supposed to teach, too.  You have a (largely scripted) math lesson that needs to be taught.  You have to fit in those social studies and science lessons somewhere.  And then there are silent reading and read-aloud times that you know are so beneficial.  There isn't really time to get the students really interested in the subject matters and most of all there is no time to pursue things that the students really ARE interested in.

Say you are supposed to be teaching a lesson about longitude and latitude.  How many lessons actually start with kids holding a plain ball (an orange, a pummelo?, a rubber playground ball) decorated with random dots?  How do you get kids to actually wonder why we need longitude and latitude?  How could you get kids to describe exactly which dot was indicated?  Put random continents on the ball.  What directs would you give to get from one dot to another?

Who has time for this?

Instead, you have the kids read the two pages on longitude and latitude and then do a worksheet trying to find Chicago (which half of them think is a state or a country) or find the object that is at 40 degrees North and 105 degrees West.  Which they also don't care about - unless they live there, and then it is mildly interesting, but quickly forgotten.

When I am subbing, I generally carry a picture book to read to the kids, if there is an awkward time when something is cancelled, a lesson is too short, kids need to settle down from recess, or whatever. One of the books that has been very effective for me is Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French.  Part of the reason this book is so effective is that I take the time to talk about going to Australia, going to a couple of zoos and seeing wombats in real life.  I physically show them about how big wombats are and tell them that the ones I saw were rather stinky, but still adorable.  Then I tell them about the author of the book, who actually had a wombat living under her house.  All of these stories are personal things that interest me.  And since they interest me, I am able to get the students interested in them.  And even though the kids don't really know me, personal stories connect them to the book.  If there is time, we can also talk about their personal encounters with interesting animals.

The key word in the previous sentence is "time".  Too often, there just isn't time.  How many times have kids been assigned the ubiquitous "Do a report on your favorite animal" project?  How much time does the teacher take to help the students decide what it is about the animal that they find interesting?  Usually, what I see is a list of things the kids are supposed to find out about "their" animal (habitat, range, life cycle, etc.).  And a stack/shelf/cart of books.  And Kid X can't do their project on Animal A, because that animal was already taken by Kid Y, so they will have to do Animal B.

Perhaps most teachers do take the time to develop the interest in these projects before they set the kids loose on them.  As a sub, I am only there for a short time - usually just one day - so I probably, yeah UNDOUBTEDLY, miss most of what the teacher has done.  But I also know that kids generally seem detached from these sorts of assignments.  They aren't really following up their interests.  Gory shark attacks aren't generally allowed to be discussed in their slide show, but it is really what interests them about sharks.  There isn't time for that.

We need more time and more personal connections.

Teachers' Manual - Math Differentiation

I taught a 4th grade math lesson the other day and enjoyed it a lot.  I don't know how the particular group I had was chosen, but I suspect that they were selected on the basis of their above grade level achievement.  Since I have been on the look out for explicit instructions in the teachers' manuals for dealing with kids who have no trouble with the grade level material, I looked carefully at the teachers' manual for this lesson. 

In this particular lesson, there were instructions for how to deal with students who could readily do the types of word problems the lesson was addressing.  "Give them multi-step problems to solve."  The problem is, the teachers' manual did not include any examples of such multi-step problems.  And the question I have is, why weren't example problems included in the teachers' manual or perhaps an extension worksheet?  Why does each teacher need to re-invent the wheel for their gifted students? 

The teacher I subbed for teaches some remedial reading groups, in addition to this math class. There are huge boxes of materials for use with students with reading difficulties.  There are step-by-step goals for these kids.  Why aren't there analogous materials for kids who can do MORE than the standard curriculum?

Why is the only help for differentiating for gifted kids, "Give them multi-step problems to solve." with no indications of what such problems might look like?

Sigh.

Gifted Kids Have It Easy (Academically)

You think gifted kids have it easy - they don't have to work hard to get good grades; the teachers love them. Yes, gifted kids have it easy.

Too easy.

You think it is great to not have to work hard to get good grades?  So, while you are learning good work habits, how to study, how to fight off distractions, and how to recover from errors and mistakes, the gifted kid never has to deal with most of those problems.  And that IS the problem.  Why shouldn't GT kids have to work hard?  Why shouldn't they have to work as hard as the rest of the kids?  We don't give other kids a pass when the going gets hard - we support them in their struggles.  Why not make the gifted kids work hard, too?

Yes, all kids need a chance to get interested in things and follow their interests, but ALL kids, gifted kids included, need to know that sometimes learning something is HARD.  Sometimes it isn't especially fun.  Sometimes you make MISTAKES.  Sometimes you feel DISCOURAGED.  It isn't the end of the world and they can get through all of those things. 

No, teachers don't actually love all of the gifted kids.  GTs make them feel strangely uneasy.  The teachers know that they aren't really teaching some of the GT kids very much.  They learn the lesson too quickly and then the teacher has to think up something for the GT kid to do while the rest of the kids are still working.  They may be ready to go on to a new part of the lesson, but that would spoil the motivation s/he planned to present for the other kids, make other kids jealous, and get everyone out of sync.  They could work on something related to the topic, but there aren't any materials for that and, besides, the teacher doesn't really know how to teach anything about that, so the GT kid would just be working on her/his own.  So, usually, the GT kid just gets to read quietly while the others finish.  That is common enough that the other kids aren't jealous of the opportunity and the teacher doesn't have to find something else for them to do.  Anyway, reading is a good activity, isn't it?  It's easy.

Too easy.

Re: Five Reasons Kids Should Still Learn Cursive Writing

RE: Five Reasons Kids Should Still Learn Cursive Writing

The article lists 5 reasons why the author thinks kids should still learn cursive writing.  Here are my thoughts about those reasons.

It isn't happening. With all the pressure to cut out everything that isn't tested, cursive writing has already fallen by the wayside. 

1) Signatures are required.

Yes, sometimes signatures are required, but given the vast differences in penmanship, even before cursive writing instruction fell into less favor, I am not sure just how a signature is defined.  Most people can fake it, anyway.  Turn your first capital letter into a squiggle and then just keep on going. Close enough. 

2) Good for mind - It is good for fine motor skills and you learn things better when you write them out physically.  

There are MANY wonderful activities that will help with fine motor skills - art class, constructions in math class, origami, to name a few.  Personally, I agree that writing things out physically (i.e., not on the computer) helps with retention, but I use printing for my notes. I am not sure that there is a significant difference between the two in this respect.  I would be interested in more data about this.

3) Children won't be able to read original historical documents, like the Declaration of Independence. 

I can read cursive; I have never read the original documents. We don't worry about being able to read original books in Latin or Aztec or Egyptian.  I think it is great that people who are interested in this can learn it.  I am not sure it is a necessary skill for everyone.

4) Some people need it.

Yes, some people can only read and/or write cursive.  I would venture to guess that this number is VERY, vanishingly small.  Some people need glasses. Create a font that looks like cursive - have person change all other typefaces to this font. 

5) People like the way it looks. 

Yes, cursive can be beautiful.  It is an art form.  Teach it in art class and let those who love it explore further.  People also like the way flowers look. Flower arranging isn't required.

I like cursive, but I am not sure that it is essential, with all of the other calls on children's time.  I am especially wary of the way it is currently taught.  As a sub, I see SO MANY students with horribly uncomfortable ways of holding their pencils/pens.  If teachers aren't teaching students how to grip their pencils properly when they are teaching them to print, how can we hope to teach proper penmanship.  I do occasionally have classes that are given penmanship lessons, but I see a lot of improper penmanship nonetheless.  In addition to the bad pencil grip, the most common problem is forming the letters in the wrong way - starting in the wrong place, mostly. 

My younger daughter had a terrible pencil grip when she first started writing.  She would grip the pencil overhand, with the thumb bracing one side of the pencil and the fingers cascading up the other side.  Her handwriting was laborious, but legible.  Her teacher was reluctant to break her of the habit, fearing that she would begin to dislike writing, but I was afraid that if she let it continue, she would never switch to a more comfortable grip.  We did make her switch to a more standard grip, which she got used to after a short time.  

If teachers are going to teach handwriting, they have to be able to monitor the students, for both pencil grip and proper letter formation.  If they aren't willing/able to do this (and from what I can see they don't have time for this - big classes, too many other demands), then cursive writing is just a time-wasting activity. 

Montessori Upper Elementary

I got to sub in a Montessori school today - only a half day, but I had wanted to sub in that school for a while.  When I lived in Alaska, I subbed several times in a Montessori school and was impressed with it.  And I have wondered since then how general the Montessori model was for upper elementary age children.  It was interesting to me that several of the things were the same and others different.

Physical characteristics of the room
True to the Montessori model of schooling, there were a lot of wooden materials in both classrooms.   But, also in both classrooms, the wooden materials don't seem to be being used much.  For instance, today I saw a couple of interesting models of the sun and the planets, including the Earth and its moons, but they were high up on a shelf and not in use, while the students worked on a worksheet packet about phases of the moon.  There were a lot of reference books available, but the students seemed to use the information in the packets the most.  The room in Alaska had wooden tables of various sizes throughout; this room had standard desks for each student, with small tables at various places around the room.  The room in Alaska seemed spacious; this one seemed very crowded.  But, in this case, some of the crowding was due to a plethora of large tanks for turtles, lizards, fish, and other creatures.  Personally, I would like to have seen some more large tables for their work.

Assignments
In both classes, the students had a work schedule that they filled out.  Long term projects were listed in one section, daily work in sections devoted to each day.  In both classes, the assignments seemed to be specific to grade levels and not to current achievement levels.  The 4th graders had one social studies assignment; the 5th graders had a different assignment.  There were two different math books, one for 4th grade, one for 5th grade.  In a way, I am a little disappointed that there didn't seem to be much individualization of achievement levels.  It may be that the classes are differentiated, since there are multiple 4/5 grades in this school.  I really couldn't tell that.

Textbooks/Worksheets
This classroom seemed to use worksheets more than the school in Alaska.  In Alaska, they had a lot of laminated assignment materials that the students rotated in using.  Since the assignments usually came in 2 or 3 week chunks, there was plenty of time for the students to rotate through the assignment materials.  Neither school used textbooks for much of their work, except for math.  

Other interesting things
The class had an aide; the one in Alaska did, too.  What a difference this makes!  Supervision is easier, grading is easier, talking to individual students and small groups is easier.  It was a moderately large class, 25 students, but you can get to know the kids better, even in just a half day, with another adult in the room.  Your focus doesn't need to be quite as widely scattered.

The academic level of the students in this class seemed average.  So perhaps the same work for all of them in each grade was appropriate.  It was hard for me to tell.

Final thing
Both Montessori schools address teachers, administrators, and staff by their first names.  It must be a characteristic of the Montessori philosophy.  I am not sure I am comfortable with that.  I think I would prefer some mild honorific, such as Teacher Laura or Ms. Laura.  I guess I am not as egalitarian as the Montessori philosophy would have me be.  Still, I had a interesting morning.  I would go back.

Geographic Knowledge

I taught a math lesson this past week for fifth grade students.  It was evidently a lesson that the teacher had skipped over and planned for me to teach the day she was gone, as the students remarked that they were going backwards in the book.

The lesson had to do with using map scales to find the straight line distance between two places on a map.  Interestingly, using the scale and even the rulers was not really a problem for the students.  The biggest problem was trying to find the cities in the U.S. that were to be used for the measurements.  The students mostly had no idea what the letters MS, KS, CT, or IL stood for.  They also didn't know where most of the notable cities were located.  I was asked more than once if Chicago was a city or a state.  They needed help to find San Francisco.  I knew that kids' knowledge of geography, even US geography, was not great, but I was a bit surprised that it was this bad.

I frequently play a game with kids if we have extra time before going somewhere.  I have the students name a country in the world that is NOT the United States.  I get all sorts of interesting answers - Chicago, Texas, and, it never fails, Africa.

I love maps and I cannot quite fathom that kids are so lacking in knowledge about basic world geography.  I wonder if it is just Americans, or if children (and adults) from other countries are also lacking in this knowledge.  Even the kids I taught in Alaska, many of whom were children of military personnel, were really unsure about whether Alaska was a different country from the US.  They kind of knew that Germany was a foreign country.  And, even though many of their parents were stationed in Iraq at the time, I don't think many of them could find Iraq on a map. 

This is discouraging to me.

Colorado Association for Gifted and Talented - CAGT 2013 - Day Two

Since I do not have a regular position and I just sub, I chose the sessions I attended at this conference mainly on the basis of simple personal interest.  I don't need to focus on specific areas of education.  I could just go where I pleased.

So, for the second day, I started with a presentation by Lindsey Reinert and Penelope Heinigk titled "Going Deeper with Technology".  They specifically addressed one of the major concerns I have had about the way technology is typically used by classroom teachers in the elementary schools.  The topic is assigned and kids are told to use a given technology, usually PowerPoint or Prezi to make a presentation on their topic.  Sometimes, to help the kids along, the teachers give out requirements for the presentation.  Example:  at some time or another in their schooling, kids will be assigned the "do a slide show about your favorite animal" topic.  The teacher specifies that it must be at least X pages long (X being equal to approximately 6 slides), with a title slide, one slide about habitat, one slide about food, one slide about reproduction, one slide about geographic distribution, and one slide with a bibliography.  So the kids go to Google, and find the answers.  They then cut and paste whole sections of their reference work, usually without even reading them, except to make sure they contain the required information.  It doesn't matter if they have no clue what the article says, that they don't understand many of the words they have just copied.

That said, I am VERY glad that these women emphasized that there is a GREAT deal of preparation work, "front-loading" that needs to be done BEFORE the students even begin their presentations.  Personally, I would have liked to see them step us through the entire process.  Choose a middle grade level and outline the steps from beginning to end product.

The presentations they showed were good examples of the final products, but I would like also to have heard a bit more about why a particular tool might be best for a particular type of presentation.  Personally, I think Prezi's are more flash than substance, but straight PowerPoints can get repetitive and boring.  What are some other products and why might one choose one over another.  They gave us two web sites that list a number of tools, but no guidance in why one might choose a particular tool.

This was one (of several) presentations that simply needed more time.

The second presentation I attended was the keynote panel of gifted students, moderated by Jim Delisle.  I have seen Dr. Delisle on numerous occasions now and I never get tired of hearing his insights (though I must admit that I didn't really listen as intently to the leaf poem the third time he used it).  The problem I have with his presentations is that I usually end up wiping tears from my eyes far too often.  Even the panel of students had that effect.  What the students had to say wasn't particularly new to me, but it is worthwhile to hear them say it.

And, to prove that I still hadn't gotten enough of Dr. Delisle, I also attended his next session, entitled "Can't You Just Chill Out?:  Appreciating the Intensities of Gifted Individuals"  This was basically a talk about Dabrowski's OverExcitabilities.  I am not terribly fond of that term.  I actually prefer "Intensities".  This was familiar ground for me, but I ALWAYS appreciate the stories about the kids that highlight what he is talking about.  Since this conference was basically just for me, I felt free to apply all of these insights to myself.  In particular, the Emotional Intensity seems to be dominating my thoughts lately and causing me a deal of pain.  But it is hard for the patient to treat herself.

The next session was Susan Jackson again.  I find her presentations interesting and with some great insights, but I am left afterwards feeling a bit confused as to what I can take away from her talk.  As with Jim's stories, I LOVE the talk about real kids and real approaches to them and their difficulties.  But sometimes, I had a hard time telling how she got to that particular point with that particular kid and what the next steps might be.  I don't think I could tell you what more than a very few of her 27 points were.  She is undeniably brilliant, but some of us lesser mortals have a hard time making the connections that seem so obvious to her. 

The final breakout session I attended was Ed Zaccaro's.  He has written a number of books to use for teaching kids mathematics.  I have long loved his books and I wasn't disappointed in his lecture.  I don't agree with him exactly on his views on acceleration - he thinks there are problems for underage kids, especially in when they get to high school.  I agree that keeping kids with other approximately their own age and ability would be better, but this is just not happening in schools nowadays.  Yes, I would prefer to have all the highly mathematically gifted fourth graders working together in fourth grade.  But I just don't see it happening.  At least with acceleration, you are sure SOMETHING is happening.  I even agree that it isn't always the right things that are happening - greater depth or complexity.  I am just frustrated that most teachers and schools don't do those things.  At any rate, I enjoyed his talk.  It is another one I wish had had much more time.

It was a worthwhile two days for me.  I still feel alone and frustrated by my own failures, but at least I understand them better.  Ha. 

Re: Things We Should Stop Doing to High-Ability Students

Original article by Tamar Wyschogrod
http://smokingtowardnewjersey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/five-things-we-should-stop-doing-to.html?spref=tw 

I have a couple of minor complaints about this article and some major comments. 

First of all, a minor complaint:  in the second paragraph, I think high-ability is equated with high-achieving. They are IMNSHO different things.  I don't object to the use of high-ability to equate to "gifted", but high-ability does not necessarily translate to high-achieving.  And high-achieving does not necessarily translate to high-ability.  That last statement needs to be explained a bit more.  While it does take a certain amount of ability in order to achieve highly, in most of the things required for school, a modest amount of ability combined with hard work and support from parents, teachers, or peers is sufficient to result in high-achievement, or at least noticeably above average achievement.

Secondly, crappy differentiation is crappy, because it is difficult, takes time, and is politically a hard sell with kids.  I have written quite a few times about the problems with touting differentiation as the solution for high-ability students.  Check the tag if you are interested, but basically, it simply isn't enough for HG+ students, teachers can't do it (conceptually difficult), and teachers don't do it (not enough time).  

I haven't ever addressed specifically the last point of the above paragraph's opening statement:  differentiation is politically a hard sell with kids.  There are a few kids, for whom getting something different is such a relief that they don't care how their classmates view it.  There are also a few kids who take getting something different to mean that they are somehow better than their classmates.  But, IME, a lot of the students react to getting something different with either embarrassment or reluctance.  They might be embarrassed because they are afraid that their classmates will take the view that they are "stuck up" or they might be embarrassed that they are singled out - "out"ed, as a smart kid, when they were just trying to "pass".  And, there are a lot of high-ability kids who look at differentiation as just more work for them to do (as the author points out).  Given a list of options for projects, they choose the easy ones, even though they aren't very challenging, because they are less work.  Not all high-ability kids WANT higher challenge work.  

Now for the rest of the article.

Group Projects.  Yes, in general, these are the bane of the high-ability students.  This comes largely from the teacher-training recommendations for group constitutions - one high-ability student, two average students, one low ability student.  High-ability student can sometimes cajole one average student into helping, but oftentimes ends up doing most of the work.  What does the low ability student learn?  That s/he is too dumb to help and it is best to just clown around so that the others don't notice.  One teacher inservice that I attended said that group projects aren't themselves the problem.  It is the make-up of the groups.  She recommended never including high-ability students with low-ability students.  Her recommendation: groups of four should have similar abilities, e.g., one or two high ability students and 2 or 3 moderate ability students.  That way, the lower ability groups can't get away with doing little or nothing, and the teacher might be able to adjust the project so that they, too, learn something (differentiation).  

Crappy Differentiation.  Already discussed.

Contests instead of Curriculum.  I like contests.  They can be interesting and motivating for gifted kids.  But I agree that they are no substitute for curriculum.  But just regular classroom differentiated curriculum isn't good enough.  It isn't challenging enough, it isn't (usually) at the correct level, and it isn't consistent enough.  High-ability kids need real and regular work.  It isn't fair to make the average kids work hard at learning and let the high-ability kids coast.  They don't learn good work habits.  They don't learn how to react to difficulties.  They don't learn how to learn.  That is why I am actually opposed to gifted advocates insisting on touting differentiation.  It isn't working.  High-ability kids need classes designed for their abilities.  The easiest way to do this is by structural changes - subject acceleration, whole grade acceleration, grouping across multiple classes, and possibly cluster-grouping.  I am still uncertain about cluster-grouping, because, as a sub,  I have yet to see it in action.  

Ignoring Their Achievements

This isn't a biggie with me.  I think schools are doing better at touting achievements of high-ability kids.  Yes, in some cases, it still feels like tokenism, but this is one area where I think schools have been reasonably responsive.  

Low Standards

It seems like, in many classrooms, there is a race to the bottom.  We don't want the low-ability kids to feel bad, so we teach lessons where all kids can achieve.  We don't require good spelling in science class, because there are kids who simply can't spell well (true, even for high-ability kids).  We don't check social studies tests for correct grammar, because it is a chore to even get them to write in complete sentences, let alone write a paragraph that is longer than two sentences.  We make tests so that everyone who learns the material can get an A.  (relevant discussion on LinkedIn Math Education).  And most importantly, we don't give teachers enough time to hold kids to higher standards.  You can't teach kids to write well, if, every time you ask them to write, you have to spend hours and hours of your own personal time - not planning time - grading those papers.  30 students X 3 minutes per paper ==> 1 1/2 hours of grading for one paper in one subject.  That is the ENTIRE planning time for 3 days.  

Thanks for some interesting food for thought to Tamar Wyschogrod.

Handwriting

OK, I get it that teachers are no longer teaching cursive.  That curriculum has been pushed out with the emphasis on the language arts block and the math block, leaving little time for cursive writing.  It is even a struggle to include social studies and science.  But this rant is aimed at teaching PRINTING.  I have subbed for 3rd through 6th graders recently.  In each of these classes, the MAJORITY of the students didn't even print correctly on their papers.  There was a mixture of capital and small letters, with B's and P's being the biggest culprits, but many other letters capitalized at random.  One student even wrote half of her B's correctly, but the other half incorrectly.  When I asked her why she didn't write them correctly, she said she didn't think it was important.

Another boy, who did the same thing said that he usually types things on the computer.  Ah, ha!  A clue.  Has auto-correct gotten to be so good that students don't even notice when they are typing the wrong thing?  Of course, on the computer, it is easier not to type capital letters at all.  MS Word will even correct sentences to automatically capitalize the first word.  Some students don't even seem to know that the word "I" is always capitalized.  And, they seem unconcerned by all of their errors.

The assignment for the 5th graders was to write up a science experiment.  Specifically, they were to write a conclusion, with three requirements:  1) they had to restate their hypothesis, 2) they had to include their data, and 3) they had to use complete sentences.  They could also state whether their hypothesis was supported or not and whether their experiment seemed to be reliable.  Only about 5 of the students managed to write a conclusion what was acceptable their first time around.  Many of the write-ups were almost illegible.  To be fair, it would have helped if the worksheet had included lines on which to write the conclusion, and it is the beginning of the school year.  Still, I felt justified, even as a sub, in sending them back to improve their written conclusions.

There are still times when students will need to use printing, as far as I can tell.  I think teachers should hold students to printing the letters with correct capitalization - and spacing, which was another problem I haven't even touched on.  One word would run right into another word and it was hard to decipher which word was which, because, frequently, both were misspelled.  Even the word "hypothesis" was usually misspelled - and it was there for them to simply copy.

The Common Core and the Common Good and Where the Smart Kids Are: Comments on Recent Blog Posts by Famous People

 This post is in regard to the following two articles: 

The Common Core and the Common Good

Where the Smart Kids Are

From what I see, Mr. Blow (The Common Core and the Common Good) is correct.  There is nothing wrong per se about the common core standards.  What is wrong is how they are being implemented and general conditions of teaching these days.  Teachers work directly with students too many hours of the day and don't have nearly enough time to prepare lessons, to look for top quality lessons, to grade student products, to work with other teachers, to work with parents, etc. It is as though you were being given a test on your knowledge of differential equations, before you had a chance to study them, and were then given a test on the subject, to be completed in 10 minutes.

I am wondering if it is even possible that Common Core will be implemented well.  Schools are on such stringent budgets right now; class sizes are rising higher and higher; curriculum specialist positions have been cut drastically.  My sister is the assistant superintendent for a school district and they have repeatedly cut her budget.  Many years ago, she had curriculum coordinators in each of the broad subject areas, but over the years they have cut and cut and much of the burden has fallen solely on her.  People just can't get it into their heads that teachers and school administrators have to have enough time and support to do their jobs well.  Yes, you need well trained, intelligent teachers, but you can't get by with hiring just one of those well-trained, intelligent people and expecting them to do the jobs of several people at once.

And as for Annie Murphy Paul's article about students in high schools in other countries, I believe that the problem starts at a much younger age than high school.  I was subbing in a school recently in a mixed-age classroom of 3rd and 4th graders.  I asked the students I taught (as per teacher instructions) what the best part of their day was. The answer was overwhelmingly “recess”, followed by “going home”. When pressed to mention something they had done DURING instructional time, most of the students could not think of a single thing. The students seem to think that education is something that is done TO them and not what they do for themselves. There is no buy-in to the process. They aren’t interested in the gimmicks that we try to use to get them involved; they aren’t interested in finding out answers to any questions. In fact, they don’t even HAVE any questions more complex than where to get paper and pencils, how much time they have until recess or lunch. They have no concern for the abysmal quality of their work, because, in fact, it doesn't seem to them that it is THEIR work, it is work they have to do for the teacher.

The students were supposed to write a "sticker story".  Using stickers to make a picture or using stickers to represent individual words, they were to write a story with details and a beginning, middle, and end.  They were to use grammar and spelling as well as they possibly could.  This writing was to become part of their portfolios.  It is a good thing this is the "before" sample, as I found the writing to be terrible.  Some of the stories were clever and humorous (considering that they were 3rd and 4th graders), but the mechanics of the stories were awful.  Most of the students could not even print correctly (mixtures of capital and small letters at random).  Most did not capitalize or punctuate correctly.  Spelling was abysmal.  And very few of the stories actually followed the directions, with a beginning, middle, and end.  I helped a number of kids get a story outline, but even that didn't help.  Many of the students told me that they weren't good at X, one (or more) of the requirements of the writing, so they simply gave up.  We just can't allow students to say this.  We have to STOP giving students a pass on this.  We need to insist that they keep trying until they CAN do it.  We have to help them learn to CARE about the quality of THEIR work. 

Another assignment that they had was to compute the "value" of their names, given that A = 1 cent, B = 2 cents, and so forth.  Even though they insisted that they had done this "last year" and it was "2nd grade work" (which they were, actually, correct about), there was at least 1/3 of the class that couldn't do it.  They couldn't figure out how to write their names and assign each letter a "value", and ultimately, they couldn't add a sequence of 7 or 8 (or however many) numbers.  And, yes, this WAS modeled for them. 

Now, I know that I am "just a sub", but I know, also, that it takes time to make sure that each of the students gets help in doing the assignment.  Fortunately, two students were absent from an already not-so-big class (21 students; 19 there today), so I was able to help individually the students who could not do the assignment - and to make sure that the ones who tried to hide that they couldn't do it were still held to its completion. But many teachers are not fortunate to have such small classes. 

We have to stop allowing students to say that they aren't good at something.  That is the whole reason for them being in school - to learn to be better at things.  Teachers seem to have the mantra now that students should be valued for their differences and that students don't need to be good at everything.  That is certainly still true, but they can and should be held to being much better at the fundamentals - and I include arithmetic and basic writing as part of those fundamentals.  We can't keep allowing kids to beg off doing better than this. 

I was disappointed and discouraged by the level of skills I saw.

There are times when I would like to turn the whole school model upside down.  I subbed once in a school for teenage students who, either because of jobs or child care responsibilities or disciplinary reasons could not attend a regular high school.  Instead, they came in whenever they could to a large, open space room.  In the center of this room were tables and computers for student access.  Around the periphery of the room were cubicles for the teachers.  Students could make appointments with the teachers for instructional time, either individually or in groups, or could just ask teachers questions during the course of their work.  Yes, there were requirements, but, like the Korean schools, the requirements were in the form of exit exams for various courses or various types of diplomas.  It was the STUDENT's goal to finish the coursework.  The teachers were there to help.

I would like to see this type of buy-in at the younger grades, too.  Kids come to school so eager to learn and then it gradually disappears, until by 3rd or 4th grade, they are already jaded.  I wish I could be a long term observer in some other countries around the world to see what it is about their schools and their cultures that keeps students committed to THEIR educations. 

Re: Before Reading or Watching Videos, Students Should Experiment First by David Plotnikoff

Thoughts about this article:

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/before-reading-or-watching-videos-students-should-first-experiment/ 

General conclusion:  it is more effective for students to experiment BEFORE learning about something through text or video than doing the same lessons in the opposite sequence (text or video first, then experimentation).

My thoughts:
I think this is true for a lot of science. When I was a kid (100+ years ago), kids had lots of active experience with science - collecting rocks, growing vegetables, building dams in the creek, using a teeter-totter. When they came to school, the science lesson used practical experience to build the theory on. Nowadays, kids have lots of virtual and digital experience, but much less hands-on experience - many have never hammered nails or fixed a bicycle or made cakes from scratch. So the theoretical lessons often aren't rooted in personal knowledge. 

In school, many teachers have found that manipulatives are difficult to manage with large classes, so those lessons have disappeared - at least it appears so to me. I am a sub and I often find unopened manipulatives and shrink-wrapped science kits in teachers' classrooms at the end of the school year. 

Many years ago, I was tasked to teach gifted classes, with no specific curriculum and few materials.  I did have a hot plate and some beakers, though, so I decided to teach a Kitchen Physics-like set of lessons - with sugar cubes, food dye, water, and the beakers and hot plate (and a thermometer).  The kids were skeptical at first.  They wanted me to tell them what to do.  So, I started with a simple experiment on how long it would take the sugar cube to dissolve in the water.  And I asked them what else they needed to know.  I helped them frame a group experiment in a scientific way.  Hypothesis, test, explain, discuss what is still unclear.  The first few times through the cycle, they didn't even know how to ask questions, but soon they caught on and were completely surprised at how interesting the simple system could be. 

Kids enjoy the hands-on lessons, but I fully agree with teachers that they are harder to manage with ever increasing class sizes and substantially less time that can be devoted to science. 

The Complete List of Problems with High Stakes Testing

This comment is in response to this link:

The Complete List of Problems with High Stakes Testing

As the comments to the original article demonstrate, this isn't exactly the complete list of problems with high stakes testing.  From my viewpoint, Marion Brady is hitting some of the major problems with the tests.  I would only add a few things for a bit different emphasis.

"Teachers oppose the tests because they provide minimal to no useful feedback; are keyed to a deeply flawed curriculum adopted in 1893; lead to neglect of physical conditioning, music, art, and other, non-verbal ways of learning..."

There are several points to be made here.  First of all, there ARE standardized tests that provide useful and immediate feedback.  Computerized adaptive testing is getting better and better.  I dabbled with using these kinds of tests more than 10 years ago.  At that time, there was a concern that some students would find the computerized testing environment too intimidating.  I think that worry has greatly diminished, as students repeatedly demonstrate that they are quite adept at handling the computers, thank you very much.  The advantage of CAT is that it gives virtually immediate results and those results can potentially cover a wider range than most of the standardized tests that are used for high stakes testing.  Instead of the 3 or 4 grade levels covered by the high stakes tests, CATs can cover more ability levels.  On the high stakes tests, a 3rd grader would typically see material designed for 1st through perhaps 5th grades.  On a CAT test, a 3rd grader could see material designed for pre-school or Kindergarten all the way up to the top level of the test, probably 12th grade, depending on how successfully s/he answered the questions.  The feedback provided to the teacher can be quite specific, down to exactly which items caused the student problems.  Aggregate statistics are available, too - and immediately.  If a teacher sees that a large number of his/her students are having trouble with capitalization, s/he can add a few extra lessons on the subject in short order.  With high stakes testing, the results are usually not available until this year's class has already moved on.

The second major point I would like to make is that it is not just P.E., art, music, and drama that are suffering.  It is also science and social studies.  As tests get added for science and social studies, perhaps this won't be quite as apparent.  But right now, science, especially, is suffering.  What used to be taught daily is now relegated to once or twice a week.  And, since setting up for, and cleaning up after hands-on experiments takes too much time, a lot of the science that is taught is done in the form of a reading lesson.  The "literacy block" and the "math block" take up huge portions of the day and science and social studies have taken a back seat.

"Teachers oppose the tests because they reduce teacher creativity and the appeal of teaching as a profession..."

Yes, indeed.  There is a lot of pressure on teachers to make sure that they "cover" the curriculum.  The spontaneous discussion, the divergent anecdote, the ability to listen whole-heartedly to what the students are saying - these things are sometimes lost, under pressure to cover everything they are responsible for. 

"...lead to the neglect of the best and worst students as resources are channeled to lift marginal kids above pass-fail 'cut lines'..."

Those who know me know that I am deeply interested in gifted kids.  It seems to me that the needs of gifted kids are being greatly neglected, because of this emphasis on helping the marginal kids succeed.   All kids are in school for the purpose of learning, but gifted kids especially are learning a lot less that they need to learn.  There is a proverb that goes something like: if you feed a mouse a grain of corn, he may feel nourished and full; if you give that same grain of corn to an elephant, he may not even notice that he has been fed.  Is it right to make the gifted child sit in class day after day, year after year, with only a few grains of corn? 

Another thing that I dislike about the high stakes tests is the fact that so much time now is spent teaching to the test.  It isn't bad to learn to write a 5 paragraph essay, but that isn't the only form that essays can take - nor is it always the most effective.  But many students will never learn anything else.

I have actually taught some of the test prep materials in the classroom.  The materials themselves are sometimes worthwhile, but these are things that should be part of the regular curriculum if they are important.  Teaching them as part of test prep only makes the students think that they are only important on the tests and then can be dropped when the tests are done.  Their impressions are usually validated. 

There are many problems with high stakes testing and fairness - both toward students and toward teachers.  Marion Brady covered a lot of the problems, but I wouldn't consider his list "complete". 

Gerald Coles: Why Bother Educating the Poor? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Gerald Coles: Why Bother Educating the Poor? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Reforming education has been a national pastime since my mother first started teaching - and my mother is now 97 years old.  But the recent (past 15 years) of reforms have been the meanest spirited at all.  In the guise of improving education, they have made it virtually impossible for teachers to enjoy being in the classroom.  There are ever increasing demands to cover ever more "standards"; there are significantly larger classes and therefore a much increased work load; teachers are required to accommodate an ever increasing list of special education students and practices; there is less provision for kids who are at the extremes of "normal".  It would almost seem as though people are determined to eradicate creativity and caring from the classroom.  Creativity is a waste of time and caring is monumentally difficult,  with so many students to take care of.

People who would have made excellent teachers are driven away from teaching or don't even consider it as a profession, because of low pay, low prestige, uncertainty in working conditions, and heavy work loads.  People who enter the profession with hope soon encounter the reality of the job and drop out of teaching in droves.  I read recently that teaching loses half of the teachers that enter the profession in 5 years. 

The increased testing regime has been discussed extensively in many places, so I am not going to address that.  I am going to discuss what I consider the most insidious of the reforms: differentiation.  On paper and in theory, this looks great.  Teachers are taught simple techniques for making lesson plans adaptable to the various ability levels of all of the students in the classroom.  What proponents of differentiation often fail to consider is the amount of extra time required to plan for a differentiated classroom and the fact that this increases with the increase in ability levels in the classroom.  A simple 5th grade lesson on the rock cycle can be an example.  There is a standard textbook, which is probably written at a 5th grade reading level.  Most of the students will be able to read it, but there will be a few who cannot.  The teacher has to find other ways of teaching the rock cycle for the students who cannot read the text - maybe an audio recording, maybe partner reading, maybe a movie, maybe a simpler book.  Each of these have to be checked to make sure they cover the standards and objectives for the lesson.  Then, there are the kids in the classroom who have special needs.  Each of their needs must be accommodated in the lesson plan.  And finally, there are probably a few gifted kids in the class, maybe even a highly gifted kid, who has studied the rock cycle extensively on his own, has a large rock collection at home, and is interested in comparing the difference in microscopic structure of granite and marble.  The teacher knows nothing about high school or college level geology and would have to struggle to find appropriate materials for this child.

All this might be do-able, if the class size were under 20, or if the teacher could count on teaching the same thing several years in a row and could gradually amass materials to use with outlier kids, or if there were a curriculum specialist would could gather appropriate materials or find a mentor.  But the recent budget cuts have boosted class sizes into the mid 30s, teachers are often reassigned year after year, depending on class numbers, the curriculum itself is redesigned on a regular basis, and the curriculum specialists have been eliminated by budgeting problems.

And, the fact of the matter is, elementary teachers are almost universally responsible for multiple lessons in one day.  When I was teaching full time, I counted 34 different lessons that I was responsible for in one week (grades K through 8, for me).  Planning for these lessons, teaching them, and assessing student progress took much more than the 30 minutes planning time I was allotted each day.  

Simply put, the job of teaching has become too much.  Teachers pay lip service to differentiation, to standards, to new technologies, but in my experience, they can't do it all.  Perhaps I see a biased sample of what most teachers are doing.  I am a substitute teacher, so teachers might, in fact, simplify the lessons they leave for me, so that a sub can handle them.  But, I look carefully for signs of differentiation or individualization or indications that the students think that the lessons I am given to teach are somehow different from what they usually do, and I don't see very much evidence for those things.  It seems to me that most of the teachers end up following the textbooks and "covering" the content they are responsible for.  There simply isn't enough time to do anything else.  Parents then wonder why their students' needs aren't considered.  They decide that the teacher is lacking or doesn't care.  And the stress piles up on the teachers. 

So what do the 1% do?  They send their kids to private schools.  I recently read the blog of a teacher who chose to teach in private schools.  She originally planned to teach in public schools, but couldn't find a job there, so took a job in a private school - and stayed in those schools.  She claimed in the blog that she was grateful for having stayed there, because they allowed her the creativity and autonomy to mold her work into an enjoyable career.

Monica Edinger's Blog

I am one of the co-founders of a private school and I helped establish that school because the public school wasn't serving the needs of my highly gifted child.  It isn't entirely in keeping with my support of public schooling, but, when it is your child, you do what you can to get them the best education you can afford.  And, people who can afford those schools often do - schools which often have smaller classes and more autonomy for the teachers. Meanwhile, the public schools are suffering.

Unclear on the Concept

I was subbing in a 6th grade recently and the warm-up question for the math lesson (directly from the teacher's manual) was something like this: A certain state has chosen to use the following format for their license plates: a single letter, followed by 5 digits. How many different license plates could they make that start with the letter A? The students were supposed to write their answers on their individual white boards and then show them to me to verify their answers.

The first answer I got was 28. I was completely baffled. Then came the other answers 15, 59, 25, etc., etc. NONE of the answers was even above 100, let alone near the correct answer. When I told the class (of 29 students) that their answers were all way too low, they started guessing above 100. But their guesses were completely (to me) random.

I decided to give them a hint: if they could use only 1 number after the A, you would have license plates A0, A1, A2, A3, ..., A9 - for 10 license plates. With two digits, you would have A00, A01, A02, ... A99 - giving you 100 license plates. They still didn't get it.

Pedagogically, I was so baffled by their lack of understanding, that I missed a golden opportunity to ask them what their reasoning was. I wish I had asked. "My bad", as they say. But now I am left wondering how they could possibly have thought that 28, 15, 59, or 25 could be anywhere near reasonable. This was a charter school, where the kids had to be delivered to the building in cars by their parents every day and picked up at the close of the day. How could they possibly think that 28 license plates starting with A, 28 starting with B, etc., would be enough? There are nearly that many cars at that one school in one day.

I was left thinking that the thinking habits of those kids were pretty bad.

Then came the lesson. It was on the number of degrees in specific turns. Though this wasn't in the teacher's manual, I had them stand up and demonstrate turning clockwise and counterclockwise. That isn't nearly as intuitive was it was in the days of all analog clocks. Our digital kids nowadays don't seem to have quite as much familiarity with the rotation of the hands on clocks. So I had them practice. First we established that a full turn, either CW or CCW was 360 degrees. Then that a quarter turn was 90 degrees and a half turn 180.

As I expected, a lot of the students mixed up CW and CCW, until we had practiced quite a bit. What surprised me a little was that several students refused to participate at all. This is a fairly strict and structured charter school and the non-compliance was unexpected. I didn't make a big deal of it, however, since it was an unplanned part of the lesson. I was more interested in the fact that this was actually a fairly difficult exercise for 6th graders.

That was just about the whole lesson - that and a few word problems. I was not terribly impressed with the curriculum, but this is a curriculum that I am not terribly fond of, anyway, so I am not going to name it. I was more interested in the seeming lack of comprehension of the students. They could do the rote problems, but the applications seemed to baffle them.

I would love to blame it on the curriculum, but I am not so sure that that is the problem. I have seen similar things with other curricula. What seems to me to be more evident is that kids are not particularly interested in making sense of things. They are willing to learn the arithmetic procedures - essentially just memorizing "how to do the problems", but they have very little (no?) interest in understanding why things work as they do. How have we gotten such disinterested kids? Was it always this way?

I remember hundreds of years ago, when I was a child, that I wasn't particularly interested in math. I could do the problems reasonably well, but the mathematics behind the arithmetic wasn't compelling to me. I don't remember if it was taught. I just remember that I was good at math, but, to me, that meant that I was good at arithmetic.

Then came my own 6th grade. The math teacher taught us about number bases - the reason behind carrying and borrowing when you get to the number of the base. It was, for me, a whole new ball game. Math became much more interesting. But that kind of enlightenment was sporadic. I remember asking several times in calculus classes how calculus was used, but I usually got either completely useless answers (It is used in everything!) or vague answers (In physics it is used to derive the laws of motion).

So now, I am wondering: it is counterproductive to try to explain mathematical reasoning to young children? Perhaps they just need to learn to do arithmetic very well. Then, in middle school or high school, with a bit more mature brains, they should take a class called number theory - and learn the reasoning behind the algorithms.

It is scary, though, to think that kids have so little practical understanding of math that they can't see the unreasonableness of the answer 28 for the number of license plates starting with A and having 5 numbers following the A.

Even I Get Tired of My Complaints

I was subbing the other day in a technology class and, since the regular teacher hadn't sent in lesson plans, his friend, the librarian, was explaining what the kids were supposed to do. That much is fine, but why did I detect a note of "this is probably too hard for you to understand or do much about" in his explanation? True, I am older and probably don't look all that technology literate, but why is that an assumption? I actually have a master's degree in computer science. True, it is a bit outdated, but I have learned things in the meantime. And the teachers who stopped by to pick up printouts also seemed to have that look on their faces, that "Gee, I am surprised YOU are in this job" look.

When I sub for teachers who are actually there and who explain the day to me, I also sometimes get that look. And, even sometimes from other teachers who stop by to help. Don't get me wrong, I am VERY HAPPY when the teachers nearby offer to help (or even just introduce themselves and make me feel welcome), but I am often surprised what they offer to help with. The things that I often need are class lists (why, oh why, do elementary teachers usually forget to leave a spare class list and, if they switch classes for a certain subject, a class list for the other class as well), schedules, a map of the school, directions on where to pick up the kids after they go to lunch and recess, where the copier is in case I have to make emergency copies. Instead, what I often get is questions about whether I can handle the curriculum for the day. That isn't, by the way, usually the hardest part of the day.

Which brings me to another question: why do teachers often give busywork (a puzzle worksheet, a movie with note-taking) to a sub? The students recognize that it isn't part of what they would normally be doing. It is actually harder to get them to do work that is "easier". They recognize that it isn't important and that the regular teacher will probably just throw out any papers they do while the sub is there. What regular teachers would consider an "easy day" has frequently actually been harder for me. The only conclusion I can come to is that the regular teachers don't have much confidence in the abilities of subs. Perhaps this is justified. But in many cases it is not. I have talked to a lot of subs over the course of my years subbing and many are retired teachers, others are people new to the area, trying to get a foothold in the school district. They usually take only jobs for which they are qualified.

Perhaps the reason the regular teachers are less confident in subs is that subs DO mess up at times. Part of the problem is dealing with normal classroom routines, which the teachers often don't explain - How are requests to go to the bathroom handled? Are kids allowed to go to the library during independent reading? What do you do when the kids don't have any pencils? How do you switch the overhead projector from the document camera to the laptop?

There are lots of things that the teachers assume the subs will know or that the kids will tell them. But often the kids will tell the subs the wrong things - yes, we are allowed to wear hats in class; yes, we can chew gum; the teacher always lets us do X... And, in a few classes, where bossy kids have been designated as "helpers", I have gotten so annoyed at the "help" that I had to ask the student to stop helping me - you have to push this button to get the overhead to work; no, it must be this button; well, maybe this has to be unplugged and plugged in over here; no, maybe that was OK, but this needs to be turned on (and by that time, the whole set up is hopelessly messed up). There are times when I just want to say, "I CAN read the teacher's directions by myself." But, of course, there are also times when the teacher assumes that all subs can work their particular kinds of equipment. Guess what, subs are never trained on using the equipment - and different kinds of equipment are set up differently, are activated differently, and fail differently.

Yes, the curriculum is usually the least of my worries. But I think that probably, for the regular teachers, it is the MOST of THEIR worries, so they assume that it will be the biggest worry for the sub as well. Regular teachers are used to their equipment, their routines, their school procedures, and they don't have to be aware of them - they just ARE. Delivering the curriculum is their focus.

That, and the behavior of the students. I usually DO get warnings about the problem students.

Young AmeriTowne

I was subbing in a fifth grade yesterday and for social studies, they worked on a curriculum called Young AmeriTowne.  It is a curriculum written for 5th and 6th grade age students (10 through 12 year olds), that helps teachers teach about business, economics, and free enterprise.  I was only there for one lesson - the penultimate lesson before they take a field trip to the bank site, which has been set up to simulate a town, in which their "shops" are set up.

For the lesson I saw, the students in four 5th grade classes were sorted into various shops.  The shops in my room dealt with travel, containers, a market, and investments.  Students, who had applied to work in those shops had assigned roles, some of which they had applied for with job applications.  The project managers ran the meetings for their shops and the accountants prepared the financial information.  The students decided on such things as the shop name, the shop logo, advertisements for the radio, newspaper, and television.  They applied for a loan to start up their business when they get to AmeriTowne, and the accountant wrote out salary checks, so they would get paid when they get to the site. 

So much for the basic design of the project.  What impressed me most was what happened when the project managers took over the management of the projects.  As a substitute teacher, I knew less about what they were doing than they did, so I basically just wandered around the room, watching and listening to the progress of their meetings.  Most of the groups had fairly strong managers, but sometimes other students seemed to be very helpful to the management, too.  The accountants, who presumably had been chosen for their mathematical confidence, seemed comfortable in their roles, but occasionally they seemed stronger than the project managers.

The program says that it helps to teach leadership skills, and, if the day I was there is any indication, they are correct.  The project managers had a long list of objectives for the session and they seemed to figure out how to get their teams working on them.  There were enough jobs and things to do that each person could be involved.  There were a few passive students, who seemed uninvolved or disinterested, but in general, I was impressed with the interest and task-oriented behavior.  The groups varied in size from four students to six or seven.  The group with only four students was very focused and hard-working, but they were the last to finish, because there were fewer students to do the work.  The other groups were done sooner.

All in all, I was impressed with the program.  I have often thought that schools need to include more economics in their curricula, and this is a good start.  I have seen other methods of doing this, including classroom based shops or economies, but this is one of the better examples of economic curricula.  I liked the level of active involvement for every student.

I wonder a bit about the cost of the program.   Another teacher said that the program cost each student $25.  I am not sure how the money was raised.  This school was in a relatively wealthy area of the school district.  I wonder if the program could be implemented in the much less wealthy school I had been in the previous day.  That school was less than 5 miles away, but had an entirely different demographic.  I hope that isn't part of the lesson:  the richer kids get to learn about economics; the poorer kids can't afford it.

And Again

Monday night I got called to sub for the rest of the week - four more days.  It is now Saturday and I made it through the week.  From what I heard, he will be back on Monday, so I am hoping I am done.  Eight days in all.  It really wasn't that bad, but it wore me out.  First of all, I have had a year off without having to work and, even though it was frustrating in many ways, it wasn't exhausting.  Subbing full time is exhausting.  The exhaustion stems from several sources:  discipline, procedures, work parameters, and content.

Discipline:  this is always a challenge for subs.  With younger kids, they are often upset that their teacher mom is gone and purposely act up a bit, so that the substitute won't stay and replace their teacher mom.  With older kids, it is the chance to gain popularity points by being a clown or annoying the sub in any of many "subtle" ways.  One class I was in this year, a high school math class, while the class was quietly working on the assignment, every so often, a boy would say clearly, "Penis".  I think the game is to see how long they can keep it up, before the sub tells them to stop.  Sigh.  Another high school class:  the kids were using patty paper to explore translation, rotation, and reflection.  One boy took a tape roll and taped paper to his face.  The question is always, how much to try to ignore and how much to intervene in.  With the classes this week, relatively older students, I chose to ignore some of the childish behavior, but eventually had to intervene in some of the most egregious instances.  Luckily, so far this year, I have taught essentially good kids, who are just being silly, immature, whatever, because they can.  Unlike some of the schools I have been in, they aren't threatening or dangerous - just obnoxious.

Procedures are also a source of stress.  How does this school organize the day?  Is there a dress code - for students and/or staff?  How do you get copies made if you need them?  Where do you park, so you aren't ticketed?  How is attendance done?  What are the hall rules?  What about students leaving the classroom for the bathroom, their lockers, a drink of water?  How often is homework handed in?  Where is it put?  And dozens of other questions.  This past few days, one procedural source of stress was the fact that subs in this building are not issued keys for the day.  The faculty restrooms are supposed to be locked, so there isn't a locking mechanism on the inside of the door.  But, since I didn't have a key, I couldn't lock the door - meaning anyone could open it.  Not having a key also meant I couldn't get into the room with the teachers' desks, their supplies and the microwave and the room where the other teachers ate lunch.  It also meant that I couldn't get into the computer lab for the lesson I was supposed to teach there.  There are work arounds to all of these problems, but they take more time and energy than just using a key would take and they make the sub feel helpless and like a second class citizen. 

Work parameters:  these are similar to procedures, but more specific to the teaching part of the job.  Are there lesson plans?  Are the materials for the lessons available?  What happens if the lesson plans are absent? take too long? don't take long enough?  What if the teacher doesn't specify what to do about homework?  Is grading homework part of the lesson or left for the teacher?  What can you do if the students don't understand the lesson at all?  What if you discover that the teacher has taught a previous concept incorrectly?  This has happened to me at least twice.  The lesson I remember best was about scientific notation.  The teacher had taught that scientific notation used the significant figures and one decimal, then powers of ten for the rest of the notation, e.g. 1234.5 X 10^8, which is incorrect.  It should be 1.2345 X 10^11.

This last example overlaps with another source of stress for subs: content.  What if the content is unfamiliar?  There isn't a lot of time to prepare for teaching a lesson.  What do you do when you know you aren't quite prepared enough?  What if you are called to teach Chinese, because there is no one else willing to take that class? And you don't know any Chinese?

In the end, I did OK.  I wish I had been more confident with the calculus, but maybe it is OK to let them know that this is hard stuff and you don't always get it right the first time.  And, on the last days, I did have a bit of fun.  I had brought in my Escher stuff for the geometry classes to look at and two of the students in one of the classes were very interested in it.  So I let them take two of the models of Kaleidocycles and assemble them.  They had a good time doing them and the other students were impressed, so, on the last day, I showed the geometry classes how to make tri-hexaflexagons.  Some of the calculus students wanted to do them, too.  I love it when something really ignites their interest.

I also like the Geometer's Sketchpad lesson I developed.  It wasn't any great shakes as far as content or process, but I was proud of the fact that I developed it rather quickly and did so in spite of only having briefly used the software on one of the previous days.  And, it was a valid thing to do at that point in their studies.

I hope the regular teacher is satisfied with the work I did for him.  I guess I shouldn't worry about the geometry, at least, since he didn't tell me what to do.  I did stuff that was helpful and consistent with what they should have been learning at that point.  He may be less satisfied with the calculus.  But I did what I could.  So that is what he gets.