In Memory of the Overhead Projector

 In schools all over America there are overhead projector graveyards.

Quick, save one to put in the Museum of Outdated EdTech!

When I first started teaching, these projectors were invaluable.

Having one in your room was a status symbol.

     If you wanted to show something to the class, you had to have a transparency.  Some programs came with transparencies already made.  Awesome!  If they didn't, or if you wanted to show a sample of a student's work to the class, you had to make one yourself.  Not awesome!   You had to put a blank transparency in the paper tray of the copy machine and pray the copier didn't get jammed.  It always got jammed.  And it was always in the morning, five minutes before the opening bell, with a line of teachers waiting to make copies for their classes, moaning and groaning and giving you the hairy eyeball.  Then spreading the news all over the school that it was you who jammed the copy machine, so you'd have to skulk around the hallways all day and maybe even avoid eating lunch in the faculty lounge.  Also the bulbs always burned out, often right before you were getting observed doing a lesson that required the overhead projector.  Then you had to beg a colleague to borrow theirs, because there was always a shortage of overhead projector bulbs because they cost like hundreds of dollars and didn't get put in the budget.  And also because teachers hoarded them.  I know this to be true because once a teacher in my building retired and when the new hire came in and looked in the desk there were three brand new unused overhead projector bulbs in the bottom drawer.
     Happily, those days are behind us.  Behold one of the greatest advances in education in the last half century:

The document camera.

      We can show anything we want to the class without the hassles of the old overhead projector.  A picture in a book, the directions to a game, and, most importantly, student work:

     No longer do we have to wait.  We can share the work immediately, in the moment.  Imagine implementing the 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Math Discussions.  Now imagine having to make transparencies of any student work you wanted to share.   Document camera for the win.
     Of course many classrooms don't have document cameras.   Not to worry; take a picture with your phone's camera:

Everybody's got a phone.  Email it to yourself, or AirDrop it.

     The overhead has gone the way of the ditto machine, and the opaque and filmstrip projectors.  Most teachers today have probably never used one, and if they do remember them, it's from their days as students.  And while I will admit to some nostalgia for the calming whirr of the cooling fan and the intimate mood lighting, as well as a touch of sadness at the thought of those once proud machines piled forlornly and haphazardly in the back of a forgotten storage closet, their time has come and gone.

A document camera graveyard??

 

Autumn

     The days had become cooler and shorter.  The leaves on the trees began to yellow and I saw birds flying in flocks--probably on their way to warmer climates.  The nights were colder and longer.  I could not sleep and I went outside for a breath of fresh air.  There were no more lights coming from the bungalows and the sky was full of stars.  God, or whoever He is, was still there, observing his creation.  A new theater?  A new man?  The old idolatry was here again.  The stone and clay idols had been exchanged for a Gertrude Stein, a Picasso, a Bernard Shaw, an Ezra Pound.  Everybody worshipped culture and progress.  I myself had tried to become a priest of this idolatry, although I was aware of its falsehood.  At its best, art could be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a while.  I walked over to the colony.  Most of those whose names the bungalows bore had departed this world, with its illusions, forever.  Those who worshipped them would soon follow.  I lifted up my eyes to the starry sky again and again as if in hope that some revelation might descend upon me from above.  I inhaled the cold air and shivered.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Lost in America

  

The D Word

     In the course of my work with teachers, I'm often asked about a little something called differentiation.  Maybe you've heard of it.
     They might say something like:
     
     Admin is requiring us to have differentiation options in our lesson plans.  What's a good way to account for all the levels of learners in my class?

    More often than not they won't use the d word.  They'll say something along the lines of:

    I've got a lot of low kids in my class.  It takes them forever to solve a problem.  Some of them can't even read.  The high kids finish right away and then just sit around and wait while I try to help the others.  What can I do?

    When I hear comments like this, I set aside (for the moment) my concerns about labeling learners as high and low.  I compliment the teacher on her observation that something is wrong, that not all needs are being met, that precious class time is being wasted, and that she wants to do something about it.  But what? 
     Sometimes teachers will assign certain groups of students certain problems, or adapt assignments, like this:

   
    One common method I've seen employed is dividing students into ability-based groups.  Teachers might call this guided math, or math workshop.  After a whole-class lesson, the teacher will meet with the so-called struggling students and lead them through the problem set while the "high fliers" work through the problems on their own, and then move on to some game or other activity.  If there's time, the students in the teacher-led group may get to play a game.  There's rarely enough time.
   While I do believe there is a time and place for teachers to meet with small, skill-based groups, too often this model becomes the daily, default structure.  The groups calcify, and all the inherent social, emotional, and academic implications manifest themselves.  So what's the answer?
    Here's a differentiation template that I've used.  I take no credit for inventing it, only experimenting with it in some of my elementary classrooms to good effect.  I've written about this before, but as we begin the 2018-2019 school year I feel it's a good time for a revisit.  It goes like this:

Step One:
   Grab a scissors.  Take whatever problem you want the kids to solve and remove the question.  Keep just the text.  If the questions are generated based on a chart or some other graphic, keep just the graphic.
   Some examples:

Before

 

After

Before

After

 
Step Two:
     After a quick notice and wonder, ask the students to write their own questions, questions that can be solved using the information in the prompt.  First in their notebooks and then, after vetting, on chart paper.  Ask students to vary the question type between "thin" and "thick" questions.
   Some examples:

Gr 5

Gr 2

Step 3
    Select a variety of questions and post them around the room.  Allow students freedom of choice to solve whichever problems they want, using whatever strategies they want.
     Some examples:

     I like this model because it avoids the stigmatization of students being put in high, middle, and low groups and it allows for students to self-differentiate, both in terms of the questions they write and the questions they elect to solve.  Engagement is increased because, rather than being told which questions to answer, students have been given the opportunity to pose their own questions and decide which they'd like to tackle.  It's the definition of a low floor/high ceiling task, and it provides opportunities for small group interactions within a whole group community setting.  The teacher can elect to work with whatever students she feels need guidance without the students feeling that they've been singled out in an ability-based group.  Most important, it's fun.
     If you'd like to know more about how this has played out in classroom settings, see posts here, here, and here.  Comments are open for your ideas, observations, and reflections.
   

     

For Those Going Back

      It's back-to-school week in New Jersey.  But not for me.  Over a million students and over a hundred thousand teachers.  Crossing guards and lunch ladies.  Principals and paras.  Bus drivers and van drivers.  Security officers and social workers.  LDTCs and VPs.  But not me.
     This is my second back-to-school as a retired public educator.  At my wife's urging, I put in one year past my pension eligible 30 years of service and 55 years of age.  One final year spent soaking it all up in the only school in the only district I ever worked in: the last teacher orientation, the last room set-up, the last first day, the last back-to school night, the last picture day, the last Halloween parade, the last holiday party, the last assembly, the last parent-teacher conference, the last field day, the last last day.  One year of closure.  I haven't been back. 
     I'm still in schools, but it's not the same.  More a hired gun.  If I miss anything it's the sense of family you build with your colleagues, with your students, with the wider school community.  That's what 31 years in the same school will do.  So I miss that.  That, and all the noise.  The commotion and the hubbub you get from 400-plus kids and 80-plus full and part-time staff together in a brick building not too far from Exit 9 off the New Jersey Turnpike.
     I want you to know I'm thinking about you all.
     So for everyone going back, in this season of going back, I wish you a school year filled with curiosity, wonder, and human connection.  Stay safe.     
     
     
          Across the open mouth of the tent Nick fixed cheesecloth to keep out mosquitoes.  He crawled inside under the mosquito bar with various things from the pack to put at the head of the bed under the slant of the canvas.  Inside the tent the light came through the brown canvas.  It smelled pleasantly of canvas.  Already there was something mysterious and homelike.  Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent.  He had not been unhappy all day.  This was different though.  Now things were done.  There had been this to do.  Now it was done.  It had been a hard trip.  He was very tired.  That was done.  He had made his camp.  He was settled.  Nothing could touch him.  It was a good place to camp.  He was there, in the good place.  He was in his home where he had made it.  Now he was hungry.

Ernest Hemingway

Big Two-Hearted River: Part I

  

TMC '18: A Photo Retrospective

I-71 North.  Hello Cleveland!

First-timer Jamie Spinato.  I met Jamie when she student taught at my school.  She got a job in the district, participated in one of my summer workshops, and signed on to twitter.  I convinced her to try TMC, and we co-presented a session on Friday.

Opening Ceremonies.  Lisa reminds us all to be on time.  

Chase Orton led my morning session on Japanese lesson study.  Nobody pulls off a cap like Chase.

Brian Miller led a session on how to use geometry to draw a human eye.

Mine didn't come out so good.  

Brian Miller, Graham Fletcher, and Sheri Walker

Nicole Paris, Wendy Menard, Annie Perkins, and Hedge

Wendy Menard, Jamie, and Edmund Harriss grab lunch.

Jason Henry.  We need Lisa, and Lisa needs Jason.  Ergo we need Jason.

Not exactly sure what Max has in mind here, but it looks like Barbie Bungee without the bungee.

A few blocks from the hotel.  This was a good place for breakfast.  They had fresh squeezed orange juice.

What do you notice?  What are you wondering?

Greta and Jamie outside Phoenix Coffee.  This was a few blocks from the school, and another good place to get breakfast.

John Golden and Elizabeth Statmore share a moment.

Kent Haines did a session on Exploding Dots.  I kinda get it now.  

Bob Lochel did a session on how to make yucky math topics more fun.  I wish Bob had been one of my high school math teachers.

I mathed.  Thanks Bob!

Dinner with Lisa Bejarano, Amie Albrecht, Nicole Paris, and Chrissy Newell.  Amie came all the way from Australia!

Pretty much everybody wound up at Mitchell's at some point.  Their ice-cream was really good, and I'm an ice-cream snob.  

Dylan Kane made a last minute appearance.  He did a session with Lisa Bejarano.  

Megan Schmidt, Steve Weimar, and Annie Perkins were kind enough to run a flex session on Islamic Geometric Design.  Not bad for my first try!

Ben Sabree was so into it he continued to work on his design on the bus back to the hotel.

Megan did a My Favorite and reminded everyone about the importance of elementary school teachers.  Thanks Megan!

Edmund, Glen Waddell, and John at the Phoenix preparing for their keynote.

Jersey girls Jamie Spinato, Anna Panova, and Sasha Fradkin.  They don't pump gas.

Game night is one of my favorite parts of TMC.  This year, the game of Set was a big hit.  That's Chris Luzniak, Chrissy Newell, and Michelle N.  

Tina Cardone shows off one of her creations.

John O'Malley IV, Glenn Waddell, and a friend exploring tiles.

John Golden finally taught me how to play Magic.  He let me win.

Goodnight TMC '18.  (Photo credit: Tina Cardone)

Where will we be in 2019?  The suspense is killing us!!  

Who's in?

Now You Know

     One spring many years ago my principal needed to take some personal time during the week of the grade 5 state standardized test.  As lead teacher (there was no vice-principal), I was nominally in charge, but given the grave importance of the week's events an administrator from central office was sent to help me cover the building.  Not minutes into first day of testing we got a call from the BD room.  One of the students, set off by the stress of the situation, was having a violent, emotional breakdown.  His teacher had removed him from the room and was restraining him in the hallway.  The rest of the students were waiting to continue.  Who would take over the test administration?
     After assessing the situation in the hall, the covering administrator stepped into the breach.  She stayed with the class for the rest of the morning, overseeing the completion of the day's test sections.  At lunch I stopped by the office to see how she had made out.  I found her sitting at the principal's desk, head in hands, visibly shaken.  It looked as if she had been weeping.  She didn't have to say anything.  I knew what the matter was.
   

      *

     My feelings about high-stakes standardized testing have never been a secret.  Administering them to students was part of my job description, and doing it made me feel morally compromised.  Not having the courage to stand up for my principles, actually becoming a part of a system that was being used discredit myself and my colleagues by weaponizing data in an attempt to delegitimize public education while at the same time causing emotional trauma to children, made me feel powerless, guilty and complicit.  (That's how systems like this are designed.)   Refusing to allow my own children to be used by opting them out helped, but only a little.

*

        Here's an equation.  See if you can guess what it represents:

*

     One year I was assigned to administer the NJASK to one of our classified students.  He was a fourth grader at the time.  His IEP stipulated he was to receive the test in a separate room, one-to-one, with all text and questions read aloud and all written responses scribed.  I was chosen to be his test administrator.  The LDTC was asked to vacate her room from 9:00 to 11:30, and it was there we set up shop.  There were actually three of us in the room; myself, the student, and his imaginary friend who stayed under his desk and whom he would occasionally consult.  This went on for an entire week.  Although he answered only a handful of questions correctly (some by lucky guess), he was pretty smart.  He knew he didn't know the answers, but he pretended to try and figure things out.  As much as I encouraged him, and told him that he was putting forth a wonderful effort, I could tell that he knew that I knew that he didn't know much of what was on the test.  I silently prayed he didn't feel he was embarrassing himself in front of me by his performance.  We both did a good job pretending that what was really happening wasn't really happening.  The only way I can describe the experience is to say it was truly surreal.
      

*

     Once when I was teaching third grade a kid threw up on his answer booklet.  I had to stop the test administration and call the principal.  The student went to the nurse.  I continued testing and the principal filed an irregularity report.  We had to put the vomited-on test booklet in a plastic baggie and send it back to the state.  I'm not sure what they did with it.  The student had to take a make-up.

*

     When New Jersey implemented its regimen of testing every single child every single year from grades 3 through 12, the test developed for use was called the NJASK (New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge).  The summer before the test went "live" I sat for a week in a conference room at a hotel in Monroe with a bunch of other elementary school teachers from the state.  Our job was to read through stacks of booklets containing student responses from the pilot version and, using that as a guide, set cut scores for proficiency.  I was proud to have been selected for the task.  It was an important job, and we took it very seriously.  Towards the end of the week we provided our cut score numbers to the Department of Education and ETS overlords who had been monitoring our work.  They told us to go back to the drawing board.  Why?  Because given our numbers, "Too many students would pass."  It was then I realized that the entire exercise had been a farce.  They could have just set the cut scores themselves.  They were using us as cover.  I protested, and refused to participate in re-setting the cut scores.  After the work was finished, they asked for three volunteers to go before the state Board of Education and present the findings.  I volunteered along with two others.  Guess who didn't get picked to go.

*

     Remember that equation?  Here's what it means:

      The project of using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers has been discredited.   We've known this for a long time.  The sordid underside of testing industry's scoring practices has been exposed.   We've known that for a long time too.  For a teacher, the results come back too late to be actionable.  And even if they didn't, they still wouldn't help, because if something was wrong I'd have little idea why.  If there is value in using them to evaluate larger populations, then sampling would do the job just fine.  It just isn't necessary to test every single child.  To paraphrase Stephen Krashen, when you go to a doctor for a blood test, he doesn't take all your blood.  To understand why it continues, follow the money.  Billions of dollars have gone to line the pockets of test developers, curriculum and test-prep writers, publishers, and providers, computer software developers and tech companies tasked with bringing school wireless capacities and other technologies up to standardized testing requirements (and of course providing continuing tech support).  This is all in addition to those school operators who profit from the corporatization of education when public schools are shut down.  Thought experiment:  If you had billions of dollars to spend on education, how would you spend it?

*

     When I found the central office administrator behind the principal's desk that long ago spring,  I wanted to ask, "What did you think went on?  How exactly did you think all that data got harvested?"  But I didn't.  She had witnessed something sad, disturbing, and frightening, and I felt bad for her.  I guess it was her first time.   All I offered was, "Well, now you know."          

     

Commencement Address

     My daughter graduated from high school last month.  (I told you not to worry so much.) Several days before the end of the final term, she brought home her cumulative folder.  It contained absence records, consent and registration forms, proof of residency, various permission slips, and, of course, report cards and standardized test scores.
     I could brag about many of her school accomplishments.  And I don't mean to show off, but here's one I'm especially proud of:

Grade 7 PARCC report.

   
     Determined not to have our children used by the testing-industrial complex, and inspired by a visit to Washington, DC, where as a family we attended an Occupy the DOE protest and a march to the White House, we made the decision in 2013 to opt-out of our state standardized testing.  We faced pressure from the school, the district, and the state, but our minds were made up.   The superintendent refused our request to have our daughter moved to another room to read, study, or do schoolwork.  She sat at a desk in a classroom hour after hour, day after day, as the rest of her classmates filled in bubbles and wrote constructed responses in their test booklets.  (That first year we learned an invaluable lesson; even if you have no intention of taking the test, you need to actually crack the seal on the booklet.  Day one she had left the book unopened, and we were informed that when the week of testing was over the district would insist she sit for that day's make-up, missing actual instructional class time.  As if we needed any more proof that the system was completely out of control.  Of course now things are different and I'm not sure what the computerized equivalent of cracking the seal might be.) 
    She was bored and self-conscious, but children have suffered much, much worse in displays of civil disobedience.  The following year she did it again, and my son, two years ahead of her in school, did the same.  My hope was that the opt-out movement would grow, ultimately reaching some type of critical mass.  I pictured the entire corrosive system as a giant monster with an insatiable appetite for data.  Data was its fuel.  Data was its sustenance.  It needed data to live.  Withhold the data and the monster would die.  As the years went by the movement did grow, as more students elected to opt out.  And the district softened its policies.  They provided rooms for the refuseniks to read and study while their classmates were testing.  But the critical mass I had hoped for never materialized, and the insanity continues.
     In recent weeks New Jersey has moved to eliminate some of its testing requirements, and I can't help but think we played a small role in making that happen.  Yet federal law still requires that all children starting in grade 3 be tested each and every year.  States can work around the edges, lessen the number of testing days and change the name of the assessment, but the monster still lives, feeding off the data generated by the sweat, tears, and humiliation of hundreds of thousands of children.  They won't be mine.

*

     The truly educated become conscious.  They become self-aware.  They do not lie to themselves.  They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good.  They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick.  They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business.  Thought is a dialogue with one's inner self.  Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked.  They remember who we are, where we came from and where we should go.  They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power.  And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconscious.  The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. 
     ....We must fear, (Hannah) Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the structure of blind obedience.  We must fear those who cannot think.  Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.

     

Chris Hedges

Why the United States is Destroying Its Education System 
April 11, 2011

*

     The path to graduation wasn't always smooth.  Classified the summer between grades 4 and 5, by the time her middle school career was over she would, by sheer force of will, work her way from a self-contained class to a resource room to full declassification.  And despite the continued protestations from the state and the district, she would never take the PARCC.  The earth continued to spin on its axis and circle the sun.  She went to class, did her homework, and took an untold number of school quizzes and tests.   She became a bat-mitzvah, danced, got her driver's license, and worked 20 hours a week as a server in a retirement community dining room (no cash register.) She has attributes that no standardized test can measure, like courage, persistence, and empathy.  What could a PARCC score have possibly told me about her that I didn't already know?  That her teachers didn't already know?  What could taking it possibly do for her except reinforce the notion she was a less than adequate student?  Whose interests would be served?  Ultimately, who would care?  Not any of the six universities that were happy to have her enter with their freshman class.

      I told you not to worry so much.