No Child Left Behind, in the Words of Other Professionals

No Child Left Behind continues to loom over public education here in the United States. I think about the law a lot, I have written numerous (unpublished) papers on the topic, and am definitely an advocate against it. I have talked with President Obama's Administration twice on the matter (not that they really listened to me), once at a conference and once through an e-mail exchange. As a parent, I think No Child Left Behind hurts because it means that my son has to sit in the classroom and have the pressure of the law put on his shoulders. As a teacher, it puts the wrong focus on my job and forces me to do things that do not teach students, they teach them to test.

I've discussed this many times, so today, for those of you who are interested in hearing a little more, I'm going to throw a Youtube video titled "No Child Left Behind: Truths and Consequences." It's around 9 minutes long, but has some interesting information that I think most teachers could agree with. So here it is:

Public Education: Yes It's Broken, But We Can Have Hope

Budget shortfalls are the norm here in the state of New Mexico as it relates to public education. Budgets are being slashed, salary raises are being frozen, and staff is being cut at schools all across the state, especially here in the southern part of the state.

Yes, things are bad, and it does not have all to do with the bad economy. Years of mismanagement or outright shady business practices by central office administrators all over the country (especially here in New Mexico) have put us in this mess. In my short career, I have already seen numerous snake oil salesmen come along, unloading their programs upon my district, all because one person downtown was impressed by what they had to say. I've seen millions of dollars spent on a program and a year or two later have seen that program forgotten. I have seen more and more kids crammed into classrooms, while the same central administrators who tell us that there was simply no more funds to hire another teachers gives themselves hefty raises. I've seen school funds funneled into new schools and schools where the wealthier students go while poorer and older schools literally fall apart.

There's no way around saying this, public education in New Mexico, and the United States, is in perilous disrepair. The people who actually do the educating, and the students, who are the point of this whole education thing, have been shelved so far down the food chain that they've been all but forgotten. In this age of standardized testing, with the multi-billion dollar testing industry banking in, and with the government happily playing along, there's not much left to go around. And what is left has been pilfered a dozen times before it reaches the classroom.

So yeah, things are screwed up, but there is hope. Hope lies in the fact that central administrators really don't do much (trust me, their decisions have minimal impact on classroom instruction, they could just sign paychecks and make sure the money is divvied out evenly and everything would work fine). Hope lies in the fact that there are many great teachers out there, who can make a difference without Reading First, Nancy Fetzer, Malcolm Baldridge, Reading 180, and all the other flavor of the moment programs. Hope lies in the fact that there are people out there who care, and who don't appreciate seeing tax money thrown away on nonsense.

There are a lot of reasons to think that public education is faltering, and I would agree with many of them. But that doesn't mean we give up. Public education teachers, support staff, and other interested people will keep caring, will keep working, and will do it even if there is 50 kids crammed into a class and there's not enough money to run the air conditioner. Because after all, at least we know that the head honchos can afford another year of membership at the country club, right?

Some More Technology in Literacy: Finding My Way Under New Mexico's Response To Intervention Model

I've been talking about technology in literacy a little bit lately, so I figured I'd stay on that topic today. My school district, like all school districts in the state of New Mexico, is implementing a "Response to Intervention" model (from here on referred to as RTI). The RTI model does have some MAJOR issues, including the fact that schools are basically left to their own devices to implement it, that it takes instructional time from the day, and that in many cases (whether the state department wants it or not) all students are given the interventions.

If you're not familiar, and I don't want to get too deeply into this, RTI is a mainly literacy intervention where kids are given extra small group tutoring sessions in heterogeneously grouped settings. I can't honestly say that I agree with the model and in the two years we have implemented it I haven't seen it do any good. But that's not the point here.

My grade level implemented RTI by taking one classroom teacher a quarter, as well as support staff, and splitting up the students in need of intervention (we defined them as "below benchmark"), while the other teachers took the kids not needing it and did science. When it was my turn, I had an intensive group of four students.

Rather than beat them over the heads with worksheets and mundane tasks, I pulled out some technology and had them interact with each other and texts in a new way. This was easy because there was four of them and I had eight computers in the classroom. One of the biggest things they did during their 9-weeks with me was they would read Diary of a Wimply Kid on Funbrain.com. This was basically the same book that I had six copies of on my bookshelf, but they came to me every day begging for more.

We were on computers four days a week during my RTI cycle (the entire 9-weeks). When these four students went to take the MAPS Test, an online assessment, they grew more than any other RTI intensive students that year. Of course, I knew why. They were excited about their reading, they were seeking out more, and they stayed positive. They were in an environment that allowed them to experiment with the text, to interact with it, and to get out of the mundane routine of worksheets and textbooks.

I guess my point(s) here are:

1. Sometimes school districts or state education departments implement programs that are not in the best interest of learning.

2. Sometimes teachers have to make the best of a bad situation (that is more than sometimes in some cases).

3. Think outside the box, even if it's just baby steps. I know that computers in the classroom aren't a "WOW" thing anymore, but they are still out of the routine.

4. Follow what works. Just because it worked for me doesn't mean it will for you. I'm just sharing in the hopes that maybe it will work for somebody else.

Computers and Video Games in the Classroom, How To Set It Up and Keep it Going

This past school year, I had set up four older computers in my classroom with video games (strategy games), including Free Civ, an open source version of Civilization, and Zoo Tycoon, an interesting game in which the player builds a zoo and takes care of the animals. As this was the first time I was using games in the classroom, I didn't build too many learning objectives around them. I offered my students coupons that bought them time to play the games.

Right from the start, Zoo Tycoon became very popular. Free Civ was popular among a few of my more analytical students, but it is definitely an advanced game for elementary students. I allowed them to continue to "buy time" to play these games, and would monitor their progress. I asked them to take their game seriously and act as if it were an assignment, and most of them did, they took their zoo or civilization seriously.

This got me to thinking about the next steps here. Of course, most teachers are limited in their classroom by the number of computers. This past year I had 18 students and 7 working computers (8 if you count the laptop, which they usually used only for research). This upcoming year, I will have 28 students and 8 computers (9 if you count the laptop). So there has to be some creative planning.

The way I planned computer usage last year is I incorporated it into the classroom environment. The first way I did this is by making the computers a station in my literacy groupings. My literacy groupings this past year (under the guided reading model, a requirement of my school district) had students rotate on a daily basis through four different stations (they would do one station a day for a period of 45 minutes) including vocabulary, book productions (brochures, dioramas, etc.), silent time, teacher time, group reading, scholastic newsletters, and computers. In computers, they were given various tasks to complete that went with our current book or their current individual choice. During the course of the year, they did powerpoints, video projects, webquests, blogging through Moodle, Goodreads.com reviews, and many many other tasks.

I am going to incorporate something similar this upcoming year to include the video games in the classroom. I see valuable learning opportunities in playing strategy/simulation games. I would like to have my students complete tasks when the play Zoo Tycoon, tasks that could be science related (biomes for example), math related (they could keep a log of money spent and do some long term graphing), and reading (have them find books or information about the animals in the game and study them).

Oddly enough, what got me thinking about this was Roller Coaster Tycoon. That's right, THE original RCT. I pulled it out last night and was playing it, thinking about how cool it would be for students to get a shot at building a theme park. Of course, I don't want to overwhelm them, so I think I'll start with Zoo Tycoon, and when most of the class is getting tired of it, maybe move to Roller Coaster.

Multiple Intelligences in the Literacy Classroom

Howard Gardner's theory on Multiple Intelligences has sparked a mini-revolution in certain areas of public education. Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory rejects the notions of learning simply as a linear, reasoning and conceptualization, process. The implications that arise from MI theory include individual learning styles and students taking control of their own learning.

There are some great article in Edutopia magazine about MI theory (I highly recommend this magazine to educators all across the world, it's one of the best there is), and a good starting point would be with the article The Multiple Intelligences Redefine Smart. I don't want to get caught up defining the theory here and all of its details, so check out that link for more information on that. What I did want to discuss very briefly here are the uses in the classrooms.

There have been schools, especially over the last 13 years or so, that have made full use of MI theory and have created MI schools. Most of the schools that have implemented this program only were able to last anywhere from 3-5 years. So I'm thinking more practical, for classroom teachers to implement this, specifically in literacy.

I have managed to embrace parts of the Guided Reading Model of reading instruction into my intermediate grade level classroom. Using guided reading in a limited capacity (45 minutes per day the way I did it) gives students a chance to work individually, or in small groups, on projects over an extended period of time, and it offers them more choice in their reading as well.

It seems that multiple intelligences fits well into this model. By giving students choices that fit along the lines of the intelligences (i.e. art projects that are book based for those Visual-Spatial learners) and letting them use their group time to work on projects that fit their intelligences or their likes at that moment would give students choice, would be allowing them the chance to work in an area of strength, and would be fitting the guided reading model (something I'm required to do in my school district) all at once.

I have every intention of doing this in my classroom, and as I get some more solid ideas, I'll pass them along here on this blog. For now, a good starting point would be to find out what your intelligences are. You can also have your students take this quiz and get a look at their own learning styles. CLICK HERE to take the quiz on Edutopia. Here is what your results will look like (this is my profile):

The World At Your Fingertips (Or Not): kgb_ 542 and Literacy

It may be stretching a little bit here, but I wanted to discuss the uses of text messaging "answer your question" services like Cha Cha and kgb_ 542. I finally gave in to life without a cell phone back in February (I tried, but it was too hard not being in touch with everybody) and went to the extreme by getting a Blackberry. I don't really find much of a need for services like Cha Cha and kgb_542 because I have the internet at my fingertips pretty much anywhere I am, which is a new concept for me.

I've had times where I'm out, and need to know the number to a place, or need to check on something, and I can look it up on the spot and find out what I need to know, without having to call directory assistance or my wife at home to look it up on the computer. So this is a novel concept that is revolutionary in many ways. For a lot of people who don't carry a "smart phone," they're beginning to rely on these text message answer services.

So I decided to sign up to become a kgb_542 "agent," someone who sits on the computer and finds the answers to peoples questions and sends them out to their cell phones via SMS text. The first thing I noticed is that the legitimate questions are pretty straight forward, things like "I'm looking to buy a 2003 Ford Ranger, what kind of gas mileage does it get?" These are the types of questions that owners of smart phones like Blackberry or iPhone would just jump online and find, so this is a valuable service in that respect.

The vast majority of those seeking answers seem to be teenagers just blowing time. They ask novelty questions, or attempt to antagonize the agents at work (which doesn't make sense, because if you continue a line of questioning, the same person won't get it). So working for them was somewhat interesting for a few days. I made a few bucks, and decided it was a neat experience, but it was pretty tedious and boring after a few days.

Now, for the implications on education. The whole "world at your fingertips" thing is the next logical step in the internet. It was a revolutionary idea when the internet started up and search engines like Yahoo! started indexing the web. Most classrooms have some sort of internet access, pretty much making encyclopedias obsolete (unless the individual teacher decides, as I do, to have students still use book based information on top of computers). But now, we are able to carry the world in our pockets.

The argument could be that this changes the world because there's unlimited information out there for anyone to get at any time. But who is actually seeking that information? Is it really changing the world? Text messaging services don't have educational implications, mainly because they're expensive ($1 a text at kgb_542, and only 4 texts every two days at Cha Cha) and because the answers the agents offer are often incorrect or very lacking in their substance.

I do intend on taking a step next year to incorporate texting into the classroom. I already use online classroom tools (Moodle and Goodreads.com), and have students keep portfolios online. My gradebook (Teacherease.com) is online and parents can access grades and reports at anytime online. I am going to offer, to my parents next year, the ability to subscribe to text message alerts from me. I will send out important announcements and such this way. I think this is a good first step for incorporating this technology, at least on the elementary level (I'm a 4th grade teacher next year).

So as far as kgb_542 and Cha Cha goes, they're neat, sure, but they're novelty. They're very shallow and aren't reliable resources for education. I'm sure many students use them to get a quick answer to homework problems, but considering that homework is pretty worthless to begin with, that doesn't change much.

Sometimes a Break is Good

Over the first few days of summer vacation (our last day of school here was Wednesday, May 20th), I've been watching a lot of movies with my family and have not done much reading. Let me change that, I have not done any reading. Although I am a voracious reader who can put away a dozen books in a week if I so please, I have found that it's good to take a break sometimes. Part of it is that my eyes start to hurt (I have horrible vision), and part of it is that I start to over-read and have nothing else in the house left to read.

I tend to read by grabbing a stack of things I want to read, sitting them on the shelf, and plucking them off one at a time. I'm sure I will start attacking my stack sometime later this week, but it's good to get a chance to relax and enjoy some movies.

Of course, if you hold a similar definition of literacy as I do, then movies are literacy, but most of you know what I mean when I say that watching a movie is different than reading a book.

This extends into the world of the classroom by knowing that this is magnified in the lives of children, most of whom aren't big time readers the way that we are (I'm assuming that a lot of my readers are big "literacy people"). Kids need a break sometimes, and it's easy to gauge this. Give the child some free time, and if they pick a book, fine, if they don't, let them get away from it for awhile. It is difficult, coming back to a new school year, seeing a little regression in skills, but this is natural. School years are long and hard (for students and for teachers), and everyone needs a break.

There isn't really any greater purpose today other than that, sometimes a break is good.

My Take on Watchmen

I had never read Watchmen, the highly popular graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (artist). When the movie came out a few months ago, the book gained in popularity again, and I finally caved and got a copy to see what all the hype was about.

I am by no means a graphic novel aficionado, I have just read a few things that have caught my interest over the years, so I'm not one who feeds on these types of books. I have, however, started branching out and trying to read more, and have found it to be a varied experience.

My first thought when I began reading Watchmen was "wow, this is just a big giant comic book." I was drawing back on my childhood experiences, reading X Men and Superman comics, among others. However, when looking at this book through a historical lens, knowing that it was written during the later years of the Cold War, there was a lot to this book. The cynicism, the disillusionment, and the tongue-in-cheek dialogue, especially from the narrator Rorschach, made this a great adult reading experience.

I'll admit that some of the Dr. Manhattan stuff got a little "out there," but I enjoyed the metaphor that lied behind it. That's a good way to describe my overall experience with this book. It was out there, but was a great story that kept having me go "ah yes, I got that, very nice."

Now, does this book have potential in the classroom? First off, if you're talking anything below AP English Literature for Seniors or really insightful Juniors, forget it, don't even bother. If this book fits some kind of unit of study on, say, the Cold War, or in a greater survey of graphic novels, comic books, or something along those lines, then sure, I can see it fitting in terms of its content along those subject lines.

It is a very witty, very multi-dimensional story. There is a lot more sophistication than I was anticipating, and I'm not saying that in a snooty, "those darn kids won't get it, they're just not smart enough," kind of way. I am saying that it simply might go over their heads and end up being just another comic book with an adult theme.

This is a great piece of literature that has aged well, but is an adult piece of literature. I commend anyone who has managed to use this in the classroom and go deeper than surface level with it. Personally, I say it's more of an adult read, but if you've had experiences teaching with this, please share.