Teachers Cheat, Too!

In a school culture where we teachers try so hard to help students be honest (and not to cheat), why then do we hear of more and more teachers cheating themselves?

The answer is simple. More and more (ignorant, ill-educated, ill-informed) legislators are imposing sanctions on teachers–and schools!–where students are not performing yet better on high-stakes standardized tests.

When NCLB was the only game in town, some schools across the country were even shut down because their students didn’t show adequate yearly progress. When Obama announced the voluntary excision of NCLB from the states, we thought sure there would be more states opting out, but that hasn’t proven to be the case. I think it is because legislators still demand standardized-test proof that schools are doing well, and states haven’t come up with alternative measures for it.

I think the direction is clear. At present, many schools base performance pay on student scores. It’s a short leap to setting salaries by test scores, and a small tumble down the precipice to firing teachers based on these scores.

No wonder teachers are induced to cheat. Here are some ways they do it. 

My favorite way for adults to handle these unfair measurements is John Gatto’s Bartleby Project.  In Melville’s short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the main character handles his daily grind by politely saying, “I would prefer not to.”

Of course, teachers can’t say that, but students can. I wish that Gatto’s approach would become a national movement.

Deeper Issues of Testing and Cheating

So long as there are kids and there are tests, there will be cheating. If most of us are honest, we too have participated in cheating. There’s something about taking a test that makes us want to get everything right, even if there are no high stakes involved.

It’s the old way of doing things: teach the information, read it in the chapter, study for the quiz, take the quiz or test. The results determine your grade. Did you understand? Can you use the information? Did you engage with the material at all? None of this matters. What matters is that you chose the correct response, A, B, C, or D.

Masterful teachers have long known that this whole business of testing doesn’t reveal much about what students know and even less about what they can do. I think this is why the Common Core is such a good idea, because it requires that we understand enough to be able to do things, to use the information, to apply what we learned.

Many teachers give open-book tests and that makes a great deal of sense to me. After all, what I want is to create learners. Most of us as adults don’t remember all those specifics we were tested on in schools. What we do know how to do is find the information we need (usually on a search engine, but that’s a discussion for another day–our addiction to search engines for info).

It makes more sense, for deeper learning, for students to show mastery in some way. You can’t cheat on that!

Retiring and my Juvenile Corrections Class

I left college teaching so I could teach in juvenile corrections. What I brought was an arts-based approach to teaching and learning–and what developed has been more than a decade of wonderful relationships with incarcerated kids and with staff inside the facility. If it were not for new state and local strictures which actually forbid me from spending any time in arts instruction “inside,” I’d have a hard time actually letting go and retiring. As it is, however, for the last two years, I’ve been censured and restricted from doing any instruction, and particularly and always, arts instruction. It seems that the new fashion is more and more “answer-the-questions” worksheets–as if half a century or more of research has not proven that to be ineffective at best and perhaps harmful at worst. The research shows that arts-based instruction enhances intellectual capacity and creates positive reinforcement for academics–but evidently the juvenile-corrections educational administrations just do not care. I see arts instruction as a way of opening lifelong doors to rehabilitation and permanent change, and the facility staff has always agreed and supported it. I have tried to be compliant with the educational administration, but just weeks before my retirement, I don’t so much care anymore. What are they going to do, fire me? Of course, I still work to support their educational goals by making sure the book work gets done, but at the same time, I always include some kind of art, music, rhythm, movement or other activity.

Last Friday, after several days of learning basic body percussion a la Keith Terry, 

which I learned at a Body Percussion Conference a couple of years ago, I showed them a wonderful YouTube video by a favorite group, Molodi, and then I taught them a short sequence I learned during the workshop (a brief disclaimer: it was hard for me to learn everything Molodi taught in the workshop, since most everyone there was under 30 and as you can guess, I am certainly not, but taking such risks is what helps me be a better teacher). 

The sequence was a little hard for them, too. We had a good time practicing, laughing, and learning. Afterward, when we settled back down to the books, they started talking to me.

“You can’t retire!” they were saying. “I will give you $100 if you don’t retire! Who is going to teach us if you retire?”

This is about art, music, rhythm, and love. This is about changing lives. This is about relationships. This is sad indeed. But in the long run, retirement is probably the best thing for right now. If you could have been in the meeting where the administrator said, I kid you not, “Teachers, there will be no more teaching!”, then you would know that there is no hope for me left in my juvenile-corrections class. Hopefully after retiring, when we move to warmer climes, I can find another, more supportive venue, to bring the gifts that I have.

How much is too much? Common Core

From what I can read online, one of the big criticisms of the Common Core is that it prescribes too much. Critics feel that good teachers know what to teach without so much detail.

Could be…although I see plenty of Language Arts teachers, for example, just having the students read the offerings in the books and answering the questions. In such cases, the Common Core is certainly a better alternative, because it purports to help students figure things out with critical thinking skills instead of just doing the book/question routine.

At least the Common Core gives students a chance to read and experience the classics. And if a teacher is skilled, students can even understand what they’re reading. That would be a gift! Assessments are another problem, because if higher-level thinking is the criterion, that’s indeed tricky to assess. I guess the potential test writers will have to do some higher-level thinking too.

Common Core Solves High-Stakes Test Issues

If you are like me, you have despaired of the immovable entrenchment of high-stakes standardized tests at all grade levels. Teachers of tested subjects are so bound by the pressures of high-stakes test results that they often feel they can’t teach their best; they just teach to the test.

The Common Core curriculum solves this.

The whole point of the Common Core is to promote higher-level thinking, problem-solving, true understanding, and being able to apply what you learn. This is directly antithetical to teaching to the standardized test.

Did you know that on average, one in four high school students don’t graduate? And did you know that one in five cannot even read their diplomas? Yet these are students from schools that have passed AYP, which means that a high percentage of all students have passed the standardized tests. Clearly, they haven’t learned; they haven’t learned! Certainly they haven’t understood.

The Common Core requires understanding. True, there is a big lag between the actual Core and tests which address it, and that’s a problem, because students in schools with Common Core may not pass the standardized tests.

But from my point of view, the test results don’t show us much, unless they are formative tests, which only help us to see where students need help. The projects based on the Common Core certainly do show us that students understand.

Conservatives and the Common Core

There’s a state chapter of the Eagle Forum that hates the Common Core. They go to the Legislature every year to fight against it, along with sex education and other conservative issues.

As I understand it, they think that the Common Core will demand that everyone teach material that is offensive and that will corrode the family. They want teachers to have complete freedom in choosing curriculum so that somehow this will keep family values safe.

The irony here is that the Common Core material, which was selected by top teachers all over the nation, is very traditional. If you were to choose material that would actually suit conservatives this would be much of the Common Core. Ironically, if you have read Generation  Me, you know that many young teachers today are members of the Me Generation, many of whom might not have even been exposed to the standard literature works that the Common Core provides.

I wish that conservatives would take time to peruse the common core literature list to see the excellent works provided there. I think they would see that there’s nothing subversive here. Indeed, they will likely see that these are friendly and familiar works that they read when they grew up.

Drum Building Workshop 2013

This last week, and this upcoming week, we are making drums with our lovely Artist in Residence, Stan the Drum Man! Stay tuned for astonishing pictures of drums in progress!

Learning How to Think for Oneself

There’s a fascinating MIT MOOC that I’ve joined (peripherally). It is about Creativity and Education. The members of the Yahoo TAB Group, which is a splendidly interesting group about choice and education, have decided to post their responses as part of the group, since there were thousands (20,000 last time I checked) enrolled in the MOOC and I couldn’t get enrolled (along with many others).

The material for the first week gave many ideas about how, as children, we take on thinking models that serve us later in the ways we learn. Other discussions pointed out the discrepancy between the absolute need for obedience in our public schools with the later need, in business and in the world, for independent thinking.

And that got me to thinking.

It seems to me that we have an astonishing opportunity every day, both in elementary and secondary classrooms, to help children become independent thinkers. Sadly, many of us are still hemmed in tightly with the threats of standardized tests. I think that the Common Core has the potential to help us out of the corner we’re painted in, but perhaps this is cancelled out by our legislatures’ rabid calls for more and more (perceived) accountability.

Every day, we could set up experiences that help our children think, help them take specific skills and apply them to real problems and projects, help them grow up into independent thinkers. Good behavior comes naturally, in my experience, when real work happens in our classrooms. I think that elementary teachers have the best chance to nurture this excellent kind of work, if only our administrators near and far would let us.

 

Choice-Based Art Ed at my Junior High

After two years of reading about TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior), watching my classes move in that direction, I decided to take the plunge.

You can read about it here.

It has been a revelation, a journey, opening doors and windows for all of us.

Here is how TAB Art works, at least for me.

Every week, at least once, I present a short demo lesson on something I am interested in, something I think they need to know, or something that seems to spin off some of their projects and interests.

For example, one week it was suminagashi marbling, because I had bought the kit, and we expanded to marbling on starch and on shaving cream (cool!).

This week it was tessellations, a little art history and a cool technique spinning off some isometric grid drawings we’d done last month.

Then during the week, the students may choose the project or something they are interested in doing. I have stations set up for drawing, painting, clay, printmaking, and 3D work. We’ve had lessons for skills in each of these during the first term.

They must document their work on an evaluation sheet (self-evaluation) as well as complete three approved major projects each term.

Read my blog. It seems almost too good to be true, but it is!

Telling Time In Detention

The other day, a boy was waiting to be released from lockup.

He asked me, “What time is it?”

I responded, “Look at the clock and see for yourself.”

He said, “I can’t tell time [using a clock].”

I said, “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

I got up from my desk, came over to him, and said, “The little hand means the hour. The big hand tells the minutes. Can you count by fives?”

“Yes,” so I said, “OK, look at the ONE. That’s five minutes. Now let’s count around the clock by fives.”

We did it. I said, “So what time is it?”

He said, “2:05!” Then against all the rules, he jumped up, ran out of the classroom, and hailed the detention staff.

“I can tell time! I can tell time!” he told them. They all glanced into the classroom through the windows to make sure everything was all right.

Thumbs up .