• Weekly short tests. Tests in math need to be frequent and cumulative, with lots of opportunities for practice.  Big monolithic tests are harder to prepare for, harder to grade, and harder to scale to time and difficulty.
• In-class self grading – I could have students take out a red pen after the test when it’s over and put away pencils, and then present the solution to them page by page right after on an overhead.  The immediate feedback may prompt them to look more closely at where they make their mistakes.  They’d circle problems they got wrong, with different points for “answer” vs. “solution”, and score it.  I’d anticipate that the grading would take about as long as the test itself.
• Take home “corrections” after the test. The corrections would be a separate mirror test of similar problems in difficulty and structure.  If you miss number 3 on the test, then you can do number 3 on the correction, to earn back half the credit.  Other problems can be done on the corrections assignment as well to earn back up to 10 missed points by doing them for practice   (A letter grade improvement).  The corrections would need to be graded out of class.  This would also put the grading focus on effort rather than aptitude, which is a good thing.

Not being an athletic student, none of my teachers took an interest in my capabilities at all, and didn’t notice that at my cross country meets I would always sprint towards the finish line… or realize what that meant.

When I became a freshman in college we had “naked hall races” one day (a typically freshman activity LOL). We took the competition very seriously though, and the hallway was fairly short. Well…. I won my dorm’s naked hallway race. It certainly wasn’t very official!

Later I found out that one of the other freshman was a track star, and I realized that I was a sprinter, and that if any teacher at the athletic program at my school had ever taken a moment to notice me or encourage me in any personal way, I would have been a track star in high school myself. But because I was seen as a geeky nerdy kid with no athletic potential, the teachers there overlooked that aspect of me entirely.

As a teacher now, I do not want to EVER have it said about me that I missed seeing the potential in a kid, and didn’t encourage it. Perhaps because of my own experience my eyes are very sensitive to unrecognized potential. Do you have areas of your life that went unrecognized too? Areas of your own personal capability as a person that were undeveloped? Perhaps you can share your stories with your own students. Perhaps that can inspire them to be their own encourager. Perhaps your own experience can spark a desire in you to find the idle rocket-builders with big dreams and nobody that has noticed them yet.

It’s nice to see that someone else thinks this too! Though it’s a bit vague:

The United States last month announced $150 million in military assistance for Yemen to fight extremists. In contrast, it costs just $50 to send a girl to public school for a year — and little girls like Nujood may prove more effective than missiles at defeating terrorists.

That appears in a New York Times article about Nujood and her new book about being ten years old, and divorced, in Yemen.

I’ve never thought about how mistreatment of women could be tied to extremism.  There’s a loose connection between the poor education of women and polygamy.  If you have lots of households with one husband and two wives, then you have lots of single, desperate men.   Which in turn feeds a male-dominated culture where education of women is supressed.   Perhaps that is a simplistic presentation, but sometimes simple is good.

But one thing seems clear to me:  Books, not bombs, give the loudest and longest lasting boom!

That’s pretty conventional wisdom, right? Seems spot on!

I also need to practice my piano more. I’ve been working at it for 5 years and am in Suzuki Book III. I’m teaching myself alongside my daughter’s lessons and see it as sort of a last chance to master piano before I croak, being that I’m…. you know… pushing down the hill now at 45 and all. Ugh. I know that if I don’t practice every day that I won’t EVER get good, and I know that it’s going to take me 5 more years to get proficient. But piano is cool! It’s like riding a bike – if you lose it you won’t completely lose it!

That’s pretty accepted common knowledge too, mmm?

Well what about this?

“I know that I really HATE math and I do not like school in general. I’m in the 11th grade and am a baseball superstar. I know I’m going to get out of high school and go pro – I already have a scholarship to play baseball for UT! Why do I need to sit here and study old dead writers, poets who never made a dime, and learn all this USELESS trig s&*^*&$?”

Answer: Because you have…. you know… a brain? And if you don’t use it, you won’t have a good one. And it’s growing right now, and now is the time to make it a good brain! You’ll never get another one, after all. You’ll also never get another chance to grow it like you have right now. And what you do with it during these last years will largely determine how good it is… *** FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE ***.

(Though aptitude is slightly plastic all through life, recent studies are revealing)

That needs to be common knowledge too. It, in my view, is the most important reason why we need to be studying lots of different “traditional” subjects.

Taking ownership of one’s education to a large degree means that students need to own their own education, which in part means reflecting upon progress and study skills.  The SUNY study builds self-reflective practice directly into courses rather than teaching study skills separately.

There are two driving assumptions that led Barry Zimmerman to explore this topic.  One was that students often overestimate the degree to which they understand a topic.  Perhaps it’s natural to think that we have a good understanding of something after a few lectures or after reading a textbook, but most things we study are more complicated than this, and while all teachers want our students to achieve “deep learning” of the subject material, this usually doesn’t come from just one or two lectures and a few readings.

Another is that students often blame failure on external factors rather than looking at their own approach.  The textbook was not easy to understand – the teacher didn’t explain things clearly – the assignments so far haven’t given me a good foundation for learning this.  Students see these external factors beyond their own control.

But the fact is that students take a class to learn something they could learn on their own if they really wanted to. That’s true for anything.  Having the teacher present in a context with other students just makes the job easy.  My own principle of  “own your own education” means that I as a student need to do what I can to learn the topic I’m studying, and the course materials, teacher, textbook, and classmates are simply resources to help me towards that end.  It also means that if any of these resources are lacking, and I’m paying for them, you can bet I’m going to be complaining and demanding that the deficiencies be addressed.

But the self-directed learning does more than this.  Barry’s two golden rules of teaching are  to “give students fast, accurate feedback about how they are doing,” and to make sure students demonstrate that they understand the feedback that you just gave them.  The self-directed learning approach gives me tools as a teacher to facilitate the self-reflection students need to do in my classes.  To accomplish it, there are some things I need to do:

Give constant feedback. Students need to know they’ve made a mistake as soon as possible.  That means that small, daily assignments even for a  class that meets twice a week are more powerful than weekly assignments in addressing deficiencies quickly.

Small, incremental, daily assignments. That’s from above.

Immediate, daily grading, feedback, and evaluation. It’s hard for me as a teacher, but the work has to be done anyway, and it might be easier to stay on top of grading a small daily assignment than larger assignments 1, 2, or 3 times a week.

Requiring correction. Students need to be evaluated on the process of correcting their work, which should include self-reflection below.  Students should be required to rework at least two of the problems they miss, and optionally more.

Build in reflection. Ask the students if they did as well as they expected to do, and to reflect and write down why or why not on their test corrections, as well as something they can do differently if they did not do well.

I’ve also reviewed another paper from Meredith Lawry at NTLF.  Other elements to include in course materials, sectional information, or the syllabus include:

Build in entry points outside of the course material that are places to start for both beginning study and for further study.

Be a learning facilitator rather than one who conveys information. This is also one of the principles for “What Great College Teachers Do.”

Provide examples of good work, possibly in the form of a correct solution, a good paper, or the like.

Establish clear rubrics for evaluation so that students know what to expect before they complete their work, and

Illustrate the self-evaluation process by showing how to compare your own work to a rubric.

Teach organizational skills. Encourage students to find methods of organization that work for them, such as checklists, daily planners, notes in books, underlining texts if students own their own books, problem selection.

Promote study circles. But require individual work with clear citations to any joint contributions.

I’m going to work hard to apply these principles during my next class and see if I can ascertain any improvement for my students, who generally find learning computer programming exceedingly difficult.  That’s because it’s hard – but students are just not prepared for how hard it is going to be.

In 2007 the federal government spent in excess of 25 billion dollars annually funding the education of underachieving and handicapped children, in contrast to 7.5 million dollars annually (1/3300) funding the education of the gifted (Ed.Gov, 2007).  John Cloud’s recent article in Time magazine, “Are we Failing Our Geniuses,”  highlights the neglect of our nation’s mentally elite.   “In a no-child-left-behind conception of public education, lifting everyone up to a minimum level is more important than allowing students to excel to their limit.”   (Cloud, p. 3).

If the aims of public education are to educate for political participation, ensure civility, prepare for work roles, promote social responsibility and mitigate social problems, and convey cognitive skills, substantive knowledge and inquiry skills (Hilty Slides, 2009) then the omission of gifted education is not contrary to the goals of  public education.  Absent from these goals is a notion of student attainment to full potential. Indeed, there is an expectation that all children should meet some minimal proficiency, in some cases irrespective of their ability to achieve it.

Walker and Soltis Curriculum and Aims (W&S) detail the philosophy of curriculum development in public schools, including those of Apple and his  Ideology and Curriculum, stating that “schooling functions … to reproduce and sustain an unjust, inequitable, and inhumane maldistribution of power.”  (W&S p. 72 on Apple’s Ideology and Curriculum).  In an odd turnabout of standards, the treatment of gifted children in the U.S. public education system seems to confirm this claim, as the educational machinery exercises its disdain and jealousy of the most endowed minds in our country by denying them an opportunity to pursue their potential.  Knowledge is the currency of power in a culture, and in our public schools, these children are not being taught what they could learn.  They are victims of the “Criterion Steering Group” of Dahllof, wherein “teachers set the pace of a class’s progress through the course material by depending on the performance of some subset of the class”  (W&S p. 75), usually a subset below class average.  “Advocates for gifted kids consider one of the most pernicious results to be ‘cooperative learning’ arrangements in which high-ability students are paired with struggling kids on projects”  (Cloud, p. 5).  By contrast, children who are able to skip grades and proceed at their own pace, even without special assistance, turn out socially well adjusted and achieve academic success. (Cloud, p. 6).

Gifted children by nature may not need the coddling support of the disadvantaged, since they are able to learn independently in many cases.  Educational systems should allow them to proceed through the curriculum at an accelerated pace if necessary, and should provide them with minimal support through that process.  Moreover, an incorporation of personal well-being and the importance of achieving one’s potential need to be incorporated into the aims of public education.  After all, for most of us, our best teachers are the ones that pushed us to achieve to our full capabilities, showing concern and care for us as students even in the midst of their hectic teaching schedules.

The philosophy of “No Child Left Behind” is a blind admonishment to the fast pace of the gifted.  Are they not allowed to move ahead?  While intelligence or giftedness does not make one a better person, given the dramatic range for human intelligence differential abilities should imply differential pacing. To do otherwise is on the one hand a saddling of the disadvantaged with unrealistic expectations, while on the other hand a squandering of the gifts of the gifted.  “No Child Left Behind” by its nature implies that “No Child Moves Ahead.”  Public educational philosophy should be recast as “Every Child To Their Best” instead.

References:
ED.gov, “Title I — Improving The Academic Achievement Of The Disadvantaged” as portrayed by:  http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg1.html

Ed.Gov, “Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program” as seen by: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/javits/funding.html

Watch the video here

This talk is amazingly inspiring. Ken says so many things that give you this “Oh yeah.. that’s TRUE!” experience that the whole talk is one massive goosebump dose.  And while he’s correct – our education system teaches people that they should be right vs. inventive – that the heady topics in education are at the top of learning but the arts are at the bottom – that our education system does not properly value creativity as a necessary component in our new culture – he’s a bit short on any details as to how things might change.

One big idea that he only hinted at is the notion that our current degree oriented system is outmoded because it doesn’t value creativity, not just that it doesn’t value creativity.  The millionaires in our culture are the movers: athletes.  The drawers:  movies and film.  The creatives: Musicians.

Somehow, our education system simply does not value these endeavors much.  And he’s correct – the system is geared on a need to feed our young into an industrial society.

We aren’t an inststrial society anymore.