Goodbye, Old Paint

My beloved and reliable running watch, face cracked years ago after being accidentally dropped on the brick patio of a Courtyard Inn on the Cape, has finally stopped. The digital numbers, still big enough to read without glasses, vanished into blankness without me noticing this weekend. Perhaps when I chose the Garmin over it for my long run (this watch does not have satellite capabilities) Saturday, and then chose the freedom of watchless running on Sunday, it decided it was a good time to retire. After all, it has been in almost constant use since the summer of 2007, when I decided that I needed a “real” running watch (i.e., one with a digital readout, ability to time workouts, and rubber wristband) instead of the Mickey Mouse one (literally, not metaphorically) I was using. While I still periodically use the Garmin, which calculates my pace, calories burned and miles completed, I always come back to this cheap Nike black and yellow watch. When my fancy Anne Klein fell off my wrist and broke one afternoon in the hallway of Central Falls High School, I started wearing the Nike on a daily basis, no matter how nice my outfit. Not only could I read the time, but I saw it as a voiceless sign to other runners: “Me too.”

 Buddhists say that attachment leads to clinging, to expectations that can’t be met, to a life of disappointment in things not being as they are. Yogi ethical precepts include aparigraha, or non-possessiveness, and liken attachment to carrying extra baggage, both material and emotional. Both suggest that disappointment will arise from being attached to outcomes over which we have no control.

 I am not feeling bereft because the watch was valuable—it was probably $40 at the most at Dick’s Sporting Goods. My sense of loss is partly about its representation of my progress from walker to walk-runner to marathoner to recreational runner. It also helped me figure out much time I had before leaving the house for school, whether I had time left in class for one last activity, and how much longer I had to stay in meetings before I could say, “I really have to go.” Its value is in its non-obtrusiveness and reliability.

I find that I am attached to many objects, not for their value but for sentiment. I love the white wicker basket on the toilet tank that holds my brush, comb and hairbands. My Aunt Chartie gave me a bunch of little gifts in that basket from the department store where she worked right before I got married. I love the cat food bowls my sister-in-law Joyce made when she was first making pottery. We have many finer pieces she has made since, much more skilled and sophisticated, but I still love these bowls best of all.  I love the Pizza Express cups that remind me of Bloomington.  And I love the Rose of Sharon trees our neighbor John gave us from the garden he and his wife Mary Lou tended before he died a couple of years ago.

So now, as one neighboring family divorces and another one moves away; as I mourn the passing of beloved friends and newborns; it is as about as much as I can handle to mourn the passing of a watch. Goodbye, old friend.

What's your Sign? Four Ways to Think about Education

Valentine’s Day is all about compatibility in love…and maybe politics too.

If you are like me and have occasional—or frequent--arguments with friends, family members and acquaintances on social media or live (at the dinner table or in bars—in my case, usually in Florida for some reason) regarding education, the following might be useful in going beyond emotion, personal experience and deeply held values.  Below, I share four different research-based perspectives on schooling.  In reading political speeches, Facebook posts and educational blogs, it becomes easy to see how and why I agree or disagree with the author as I recognize these ideologies in their language.     

The current conflicts over educational policy have as many sources as stakeholders.  Teachers, parents, students, administrators, educational researchers and policymakers—not to mention the general public and business leaders—bring a variety of viewpoints as to what constitutes a meaningful education.  H. Kliebard and Michael Stephen Schiro built upon existing frameworks to name four distinct ideologies, or standpoints https://goo.gl/8IbTkn that can perhaps explain how deep and painful these arguments over education can be, even if we who disagree ostensibly want something similar: for youth to be prepared for the world beyond K-12 schooling, whatever that may bring.

The four ideologies are Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner Centered and Social Reconstruction.  The Scholar Academic ideology is based on the premise that all worthwhile knowledge is based in academic disciplines and certain cultural texts.  Student knowledge and experience are not considered, and students are assessed on their place in a hierarchy, with experts at the top and apprentices below.  GPA rankings, IQ tests and E.D. Hirsch’s premise that there is “Core Knowledge” http://goo.gl/RtKlUy that all students should know are examples of this. 

Unfortunately in the United States, these disciplines and texts are often centered in Western European white male values.  Few women and even fewer people of color are mentioned, so the experiences of millions are not acknowledged.  Many elite schools, including Brown University, supposedly a bastion of liberal thinking, still adhere to a Scholar Academic framework in some ways:  http://goo.gl/F9ORDc.  This may be one reason why white male privilege continues unabated. 

Many would argue that K-12 schooling currently adheres to the Social Efficiency ideology, whose goal is to prepare students to be competent, efficient and docile workers socialized into the hierarchies of the workplace http://goo.gl/0Pc8aV.  Indeed, the SE perspective is supported by business leaders and policymakers who privilege economic progress over democratic citizenship.  Behavioral objectives, standardized assessments that sort students into predictable categories, and accountability are hallmarks of Social Efficiency.  The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) http://goo.gl/o7MoaI and high-stakes exams like PARCC  http://goo.gl/W7T5gt are contemporary examples pushed by corporate leadership, underscoring the link between private sector goals of profit and SE as an approach to schooling.  While it would be easy to agree that we want competent workers, the emphasis on creating the same experience for academically and culturally diverse learners, despite their particular experiences, is troubling, as is the lack of attention to youth using inquiry and creativity to problem solve and develop individual talents. 

In contrast to the Scholar Academic and Social Efficiency standpoints, the Learner Centered ideologists believe that the individual, not the curriculum or a particular set of beliefs, should be the center of learning.  The job of the educator is to foster personal and academic growth, which are valued over meeting certain standards.  Learners may be assessed by portfolios and encouraged to explore and make mistakes in the name of inquiry and creativity. This model, unlike the previous two, can support diverse learners.  The Montessori method  http://goo.gl/7qWGYR and the writing workshop model http://goo.gl/U6ExcV are good examples of the Learner Centered ideology.  However, it is also difficult to measure, quantify and compare student growth, something that our outcome-based culture deeply questions. 

The Social Reconstructionists believe that the purpose of education is to create a more just society.  They contend that inequities are a manifestation of—and perpetuate--economic and social privilege.  These educators recognize social problems and work with their students to identify the sources of these problems and ways to fix them.  Rethinking Schools http://goo.gl/Sh9sbC is a great example of how pedagogy and curriculum can expose students to how American economic and social policies adversely affect individuals who identify as anything other than white, male, middle class, heterosexual, Christian, and/or other forms of difference than the mainstream.  For Social Reconstructionists, it is important for youth to understand the historical and cultural roots of these policies and to work for social justice.  This ideology is different from the others because the measure of success is not the individual, but the learning of the group as the students take steps toward community and social change.   

So what’s your ideology?  Are you compatible with your partner, friends, family, colleagues or chosen presidential candidate?  Take the inventory and find out:

https://www2.bc.edu/~schiro/sagefiles/inventory.pdf

Rest in peace, Glenn Frey

Glenn Frey was probably my third favorite Eagle after Don Henley and Joe Walsh, but his death still brought an unwelcome and uncomfortable recognition that an important part of my youth has vanished.  His death isn’t necessarily a personal loss, but more of a reminder that I, too, am getting older.  Music was a refuge for me back then.  It served as an escape and a point of connection with others.  Most importantly, it served as a dependable familiarity, even as everything and everybody else, including myself, was changing. 

I appreciated the songs from the first Greatest Hits album, separately, from the clock radio on my bedside table, on stations as pop as WMEE and as hard as WXKE in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana.  These songs were 10-15 years old before they had any real impact on me, though.   When I graduated from high school in 1986, my boyfriend had that album along with a much better-worn collection of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Pink Floyd.  The boyfriend would make me mix tapes of those bands, but when I made my own, I chose “Take It Easy,” “Already Gone” and “Peaceful, Easy Feeling.”

Don Henley once called that last song vapid, which stung.  Sure, it lacks the ambition (or pretentiousness) of his early solo work, but I didn’t listen to the Eagles to be preached at or to analyze the lyrics.  The Eagles’ music represented escape.  It was a world of sun, lust, freedom and possibility, even in the midst of personal (“Desperado”) and existential (“Lying Eyes”) darkness.  That world appealed to me—basking in the joy of light while acknowledging and appreciating the shadows.   

30 years after I first connected to the band, I cue up the Greatest Hits as I drive down 195 toward a heavy meeting or long day https://youtu.be/IKpay8gumw0:

I was standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona

Such a fine sight to see

A girl my Lord in a flatbed Ford

Slowin’ down to take a look at me

Also on my iPhone, a different message.  “Hole in the World” https://vimeo.com/33989886 was written as a response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.  The song calls for listeners to be our best selves in the face of enormous tragedy, made all the sweeter by the four-part harmonies. 

There's a hole in the world tonight.
There's a Cloud of fear and sorrow.
There's a hole in the world tonight.
Don't let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.

Oh they tell me there's a place over yonder,
Cool water running through the burning sand,
Until we learn to love one another
We will never reach the promise land.

In this case, the Eagles found the magic of how words and voices can offer emotional succor and simple wisdom. 

Rest in peace, Glenn Frey. 

"Not a Fair Test": RI Teachers Perspectives on PARCC

Teacher voices have been notably absent in the recent controversy over the PARCC test in Rhode Island.  Articles in the Providence Journal have focused on the perspectives of RIDE officials and superintendents, many of whom insist the test is fair, valid, and has few problems (“Few hitches in first week of PARCC testing in RI” 3/22/15).   Despite this, parents in a variety of districts chose to have their children opt-out.

As educators prepare for the EOY (End of Year) PARCC, it is important to understand what happened with the recent PBA (Performance Based Assessment) PARCC. 298 teachers responded to an online survey asking about their experiences preparing for and administering the test.  

Larry Filipelli, assistant superintendent in Scituate, acknowledged that the PARCC caused a “massive loss of instructional time.”  Teachers agreed.  One teacher described how the average middle school student will spend 22 out of 180 days of school taking standardized tests.  69% of teachers altered the curriculum to prepare students for the test.   One English teacher wrote, “I teach less literature and writing every year because of time lost to testing.  How is that conducive to student learning?”

Mary Ann Snider of RIDE stated, “Superintendents said the test questions were of a really high quality.”  Teachers disagreed, citing three problems.  First, the tests were developmentally inappropriate.  Third grade students lacked the stamina to sit at the computer for long periods.  Teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs) said the test measured proficiency in English rather than content.  One teacher wrote, “If students have an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan) for reading, it doesn’t matter how much I prepare them, they still cannot read the test.”  A math teacher noted that the math content was “unrealistic” for her ninth grade students.   An English teacher said the readings by James Joyce and Charles Dickens were inappropriate for her middle school students.

Second, teachers objected to how questions were phrased.  One wrote, “The questions could be interpreted in different ways.”  Another teacher wrote, "This is not an authentic measure of knowledge.  It’s a measure of ability to play the game.”  Others noted that the questions were poorly constructed.

Third, survey data show students had difficulty with the computer interface.  One teacher wrote, “If [students] don’t understand the tools, can’t type quickly enough, or find the layout confusing,” then the results do not reflect the students’ knowledge.  As these teachers point out, developmentally inappropriate material, poorly worded questions, and computer navigation problems suggest the test results will lack validity.

Testing also took an emotional toll on students.  78% of teachers reported that students exhibited stress, sadness, and anger.  According to research, one key component of student aspirations is belief in their academic efficacy.  Many teachers wrote that ELLs and students with learning disabilities lost confidence in the progress they had made over the year.  

Unsurprisingly, 90% of teachers felt that time spent on the PARCC was pointless.  They will not see the results until fall, when they no longer teach the same students.  Furthermore, they argued they do not need standardized tests to show student progress because they use various assessments throughout the year. One wrote, “Any teacher can tell you what the student could or could not do without PARCC.”  

In addition to critique, teachers offered suggestions for improvement.  One teacher wrote, “Let’s be creative and work harder to create assessments that are fair and valid for students of all economic backgrounds.”  Another said, “It is time to focus on what we know improves learning:  smaller class sizes, interesting curriculum, inspiring teachers, and support staff to assist students at risk.”  These teachers echo what educational research has demonstrated for decades, and what current national policies have ignored.

As a small state with a new Board of Education and searching for a Commissioner of Education, Rhode Island should place teacher voices and findings from educational research at the center as we move forward in supporting students as learners and citizens.  We could be leaders in national public education by developing policies that include the input of the many dedicated and knowledgeable professionals in K-16 education throughout the state.   

Janet Johnson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Secondary Education and Co-Director of the URI/RIC Ph.D. Program in Education at Rhode Island College.

Lessons of the Flu

I have been sick with what must have been—is—the flu for the last ten days.  For the first time in ten days, my fever is within one degree of normal.  For the first time in six days, I am wearing something besides yoga pants.  For the first time in four days, my right eye is not puffy, red, and oozing.  After going through at least one roll of toilet paper (we ran out of tissues) and one box of Puffs plus lotion (Nels bought these special for me because the skin around my nose was raw), I am at last in the mood to be grateful. 

And the days I keep

my gratitude

higher than my

expectations

well, I have really good days

That’s from a song called “Mother Blues” by Ray Wylie Hubbard.  I try to remember it when I am feeling particularly pissy and put upon, as I was for the last two weeks.  Avoiding treacle and sentiment is important to me, so I resist those calls to say what I am thankful for, which usually occur during Thanksgiving and Christmas.  At the same time, I want to be aware of my unearned privilege, as a being born in a particular time, at a particular place, and to particular parents.  I am also aware that this privilege has given me the opportunity to meet my life partner and have a job that is pretty much tailor-made for me.  I am profoundly moved by this.

Perhaps less profoundly, but no less important at this moment when I can breathe through my nose, swallow without wincing, and see clearly through both eyes, I am most grateful to Snowstorm Juno and tissues.  Snowstorm Juno cancelled classes for me, so I was not tempted to go to school when I had no business being there.  One of our favorite cats was named Juno, and it seems her spirit fought for me.  I did not have to shovel snow due to my pathetic condition and the electricity stayed on.  That’s all I wanted. 

And there is the issue of tissue.  Sure, I had to use toilet paper in a pinch, but I had ample, reasonably soft material in which to rid myself of the seemingly endless goo manufactured by my sinuses.  Perhaps because of the blizzard, I was thinking of my Laura Ingalls Wilder books, particularly The Long Winter, which I found to be the most tedious from her series.  Blizzard after blizzard.  Pa going to dig out the train tracks over and over again.  Mary and Laura fighting over whether to have sage or onion stuffing.  “What the hell is sage anyway?”  I wondered back when I read it for the first time.  I now know about sage, so my wonderings turned to what happened when they got the flu.  Kleenex, Puffs, and even Charmin were just white twinkles in the eyes of their inventors, no doubt.  So what did 19^th century folk do?  Of course, then I want to know what they did about toilet paper and now wonder if that folk story about the Sears catalog is true…and did they even have that back then? 

Which brings me back to gratitude.  Maybe I would have been more productive if I had not been sick.  Maybe I would have been more timely with my emails, more attentive to my students, more likely to fill out necessary forms.  Instead, I read two great books, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.  These, on top of reading John Dufresne’s No Regrets, Coyote the week before, reminded me of how important literature is to me.  I would like to think of myself as a writer, but more than anything, I am a reader.  Of all the privileges and identities, earned and unearned, that I have, it has been the most important.  I have a better idea of who I am by reading about who others are.  I am utterly grateful that I am a reader, above all, because that means these last two weeks have not been wasted.  What I know about history, human nature, love, and wisdom comes from books. 

Thank you, flu, for reminding me of that.

  

Damn Him, that Steven Pinker

You know how, when you’re listening to or reading something, you have a flash of “Why didn’t I think of that?”  Listening to NPR last week was a series of those moments.  I listened to shows about Title IX and how girls are more involved in sports at a young age, but that interest wanes later in the face of the hyper-masculinization of professional sports; how sports cost so much for kids that it is not the great equalizer of race and class that we might have imagined; and how cats have one paw in the household and three out in the wild.  I had Researcher Envy.  Why didn’t I choose to be a sociologist with sports as my focus?  How cool would that be now, with sports the epicenter of conversations about race, class, and gender?  Or maybe I could have been an anthrozoologist, and know why Ozzie refuses to take naps, Silent Bob is, well, silent, and Mama Cass pretends she’s Tony Hawk, zooming across our furniture like she was performing in the X Games?  Thus was the source of my envy.  I love being an educator and educational researcher, but let’s face it:  education is simply not as sexy as sociology and zoology. 

There was another show that stood out: an interview with Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard:  http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/10/02/writing-science-pinker.  He has a new book called The Sense of Style, and it’s about one of my favorite topics, good writing.  In the vein of Strunk and White, Pinker is a minimalist, and says that writing is about the visual as well as the lyrical.  I have no issue with either.  He’s also down with splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions, which we can all be thankful for.   However, he went on to pick on his fellow academics, accusing us of convoluted terminology, excess verbiage, and all-around turgid prose.  Touché, my friend, touché.  As I embark on an exciting research project and counsel novice doctoral students about writing up their research, I realize he has a point.  While I do believe that complex thought and theories may indeed require equally complex writing (Habermas, to take one example), I understand the need for clarity and brevity.

As a language aficionado from way back, I knew about writing bullshit to sound as if I was smart (of course, many of my teachers were onto me and those of my ilk.  Mrs. Parsons was famous for saying, “Yes, but what do dat mean?” whenever I or one of my fellow Honors English students tried it).  Maybe some academics do that as well.  Steven Pinker, an insider, is not about to let us get away with bullshit. 

Despite my loyalty to needing three diverse theories to form a conceptual framework; to digging as deep and long as I can into philosophy and research to frame a literature review; and of course, triangulating my data,  I have decided that October is Haiku Month.  I will dedicate myself to writing, every day, a traditional version of  a haiku:  three lines, 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and then 5 syllables, to hopefully gain an appreciation for clarity and image over an addiction to words with multiple syllables and meanings. 

I invite you to join me.  Share your daily haiku on Facebook, Twitter, or write it in your journal. Maybe the world will become a land of clarity and directness.  And it doesn’t even have to be a haiku.  Any poem format will do.

Here are mine so far, as of Oct. 5:

Oct. 1: Rain

Finally rain. Dull

skies, puddles, damp, sweaty smells

glad plants, grumpy me

Oct. 2: Swans

Swan soundly asleep

orange beak tucked in feathers

partner nibbles fish.

Oct. 3: Reading

Fiction takes away

the blues.  Handsome detective

plus supernatural.

Oct. 4: Loneliness

Nels out of town.  Should

I buy a new stove or fall

wardrobe? Maybe both.

Oct. 5: Sandwiches

Last BLT with

tomatoes from our garden?

Sun promises more.

What's your mantra?

Do you have sayings that you come back to, over and over again?  Words of wisdom from your own intuition (or what Emerson might call the Divine Spark) or from others, who might be friends, teachers, songwriters, or comedians? 

One friend of mine, when she went through a heartwrenching divorce, used the words “grace and dignity” to hold herself together.  I wanted to bang her ex over the head with a snow shovel (one of the old-fashioned ones with a metal scoop, not the new-fangled plastic kind), or at least say nasty things to him.  But she gave me the example of acceptance and moving on, so I felt like I had to as well.

Another friend who took on the huge commitment of a 500 hour yoga teacher training, while being a wife, mom to two pre-K kids, a small business owner, and consultant, used the word “Devotion.”  She even wrote it on her hands during those long weekends so she would not lose her sense of dedication.  It was important to her that she engage in such a life-altering commitment in a full-hearted way. 

Unlike my friends, I have been unable to settle on just one mantra.  These pictures are from around my desk, and I also have what I fondly call “the mantra envelope” where I put old mantras.  I used to type them up in big letters, but now I just scrawl them on orange stickies and tape them to my desk lamp. 

The latest is actually a question.  I was driving to a school to conduct some field observations and it was the first day.  Stuck in traffic on I-195 at 8:30 a.m., I could feel myself getting impatient about being there on time.  I despise being late.  It makes me feel self-conscious and as if I am taking more space than I should.  I have skipped classes as a student and meetings as a grownup because I did not want to walk in late and call attention to myself. 

In the car that day, I heard a voice ask, “Why are you in such a hurry?” 

The other voices in my head could have come up with a million reasons, and then I realized that there was no need to rush, whether in actuality or in my mind.  Having my heart race out of anxiety was not helpful.  I would get there when I got there.  I was not in charge; this was not my show. 

Sure enough, traffic lightened and I was walking up the steps to the school shortly before 9, when I was due to be there.  A couple of students who were just arriving said to me, “Miss, you’re late!”  probably thinking that I was  a teacher.  I signed in, and as I did so, I heard them explain to the office worker that they were late because they had stopped to get a snack.  Luckily, this was not my problem, and I floated down to the classroom where the kids were talking about what it meant to be a warrior.  It was a good morning.

Over the last couple of days, I have asked myself that time and again:  why are you in such a hurry?  When I am eating, working, doing laundry, washing my face, meditating (as if you could rush that), I have paused enough to realize that there is nowhere that important to be, at least not at the expense of my well-being. 

My very first mantra is on display in one of these pictures, but it may not show up because it’s so faded.  I got it from David Robinson, the leader of an NEH Seminar on Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller that I was lucky to attend at Oregon State back in 1998.  We were talking about how to make meaning out of the mundane tasks of life, and I, ever the skeptic, asked how it was possible to not just rush through household tasks, like washing the dishes. 

David said, “Make what is necessary in life fulfilling to do.” 

That blew my mind.  I wrote it down in my notebook, and then later wrote it in black Sharpie and put it on the bulletin board of the dorm room to which I had been assigned.  I brought it with me back to Bloomington and put it up in my office there, and now I have it here, in Bristol. 

We all encounter tasks and people in our lives that feel draining and less than worthwhile.  After spending four hours this afternoon answering email and only getting back to Monday of this week, I can attest to that.  But David’s statement reminds me that it’s up to me to decide that all tasks can have meaning.

I would love to see your own mantras or bulletin board pictures if you care to share.