Guest Post: the Pencil

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Jennifer Wagaman

I am an elementary school pencil. You might think my life is quite boring, but on the contrary, I live a very interesting life and have often wished for the opportunity to share some of my experiences with the teachers at my school. Here is my chance, so thanks for reading!

I often find myself being squeezed so tight I used to think that the child wanted to squish the lead out of me. As time went on, though, I realized that the child was in fact concentrating so hard on making me move in just the right ways. It makes me wish I could help a little, just to provide a bit of relief from the stress that the child feels.

When the teacher responds with comforting words and help, the pressure often lessens some, but all too often the well-meaning words don’t provide the help necessary and my point cracks from the pressure.

Another common experience I have is the inevitable tapping from a bored student. Thankfully, the tapping is usually on my eraser side, so I don’t generally lose my point over it, but sometimes it is on my point and I find myself making tiny dots all over a paper, book or the desk. If only the lesson were more interesting…

Speaking of making dots, teachers, please check the pictures that some of the students are drawing! My goodness, some of the things I find myself making are amazing! The talent that these kids have, and inevitably the reward the kid gets is a chastisement for not paying attention. It’s too bad you can’t find a way to use that drawing talent to enhance the lessons somehow.

While I am thinking about it, I wanted to say a quick thanks to those teachers who monitor the pencil sharpener – I hate it when I am wasted by being sharpened down to a tiny nub, and the poor fingers that try to hold me as a tiny nub, oh my.

Well, thank you for taking the time to read this, I will see you soon!

-The Pencil

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Dress code for Parents?

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Jennifer Wagaman

I am sure many teachers have had issues with students breaking the school’s dress code, but what about parents? One school on a military base had such a problem with parents dress when dropping students, they had to ban pajamas.

Yes, you read that right, parents dropping kids off in pajamas. Honestly I am not entirely sure what that means and would love to sit out side the school to see what these parents sleep in that is such a problem. Honestly, most of the time my “pajamas” would pass as ok to shop in or drop kids off outside a school, so either someone was tired of seeing wrinkled shirts and yoga pants or parents think it’s ok to go out in public in little nighties.

So ok, lets just say parents please dress in a way that you could stroll through a grocery store or stand outside at a gas pump, when you drop your kids off at school, ok?

Not sure which is worse – the fact that parents of young children are wearing inappropriate nightwear in public, or the fact that the school is imposing a dress code on parents outside their building.

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In-service Days, are they a waste?

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Jennifer Wagaman

The concept of an in-service day is very beneficial – providing direct, up-to-date, relevant training to teachers that they can turn around and apply within less than 24 hours from the time of the meeting, in many cases. The reality of in-service training is a bit suspect, in my opinion.

First, the “experts” in whatever the topic might be, prioritize all the most important information that all the teachers MUST know, including, often, the history, research and other miscellaneous facts that are not applicable to the classroom at all. Then they type up all of this information, along with the more useful information about how to use the new idea, and make a copy for everyone.

These information packets are usually a good idea, unless they are simply a printout of the power point presentation. Honestly, teachers have to go to college to get a teaching certificate, which means they know how to take notes. Pass out blank sheets of paper and you’ll likely have more teachers paying attention and use a lot less paper and ink in the process.

Then, the presenter reads the packet to the group of gathered teachers. This only insults their intelligence. I mean, really, I’m pretty sure reading is a prerequisite to teaching! It’s even more insulting to stop halfway through a paragraph and comment, “I’ll let you finish reading this later, instead of just reading it all to you” like you’re saying “I know you can read, but I am supposed to fill the time and yet on second thought, I don’t find this information interesting or useful myself so I’ll stop reading now”. Waste of paper and time.

Then comes the inevitable group activities, designed to make the lesson useful and interactive and keep teachers from grading student work that is hiding in their laps, or sitting in plain sight on the table in an open statement that says “you are wasting my time”. The problem with these activities, at least in elementary schools, is that those in charge are often elementary school teachers and so the activities are a bit (or a lot) elementary, and often result in being just plain dumb, or at the very least, a frustrating waste of precious time.

Time is valuable to a teacher, it would be so much easier to just have someone run through the important points, give a few illustrative examples and then take questions. It would cut the time in half and still have the same outcome of teaching the teachers something new to do with their students.

So, are in-service days a waste? Not at all! Providing:

  1. The presenter remembers that their audience is well educated adults, not elementary kids who can’t read or take notes.
  2. The information is presented clearly and succinctly.
  3. Extraneous information not relevant to the classroom is avoided at all cost.
  4. and finally, that the time is kept as short as possible, leaving off the group activities and instead allowing for time for questions and answers.
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Don’t Trip on the Race to the Top

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Jennifer Wagaman

The Bush administration implemented the No Child Left Behind act, the goal being that all children will test proficient or advanced. The flaws behind this idea are not the point here, so I won’t get into that at the moment.

In comes the Obama administration, and in the zeal to demonstrate just how terrible the Bush administration was, we now have a new educational reform hitting the schools: Race to the Top.

The idea behind Race to the Top is that American education should be the best in the world – thus we begin the race to the top of the world in educational standards. (Kind of reminds me of kids playing King of the Hill) Along with this lofty ideal of being the best, we have sweeping changes including standardized core objectives for all states to adopt (if they want to, of course), new testing, new evaluations for teachers and much more.

There are a lot of questions that I have, and my biggest concern is that the entire education system doesn’t trip on the race to the top. If teachers evaluations are to be linked to student test scores, how do you differentiate between schools in affluent areas where the parents are involved and the students simply WILL achieve more? If teachers in that area are up against teachers in low income areas with absentee parents or parents who simply don’t care, then I know where I would want to teach.

If instead, teachers are evaluated based on individual growth of students over a single year in school, that would be better, the problem still remains those things which are out of the teacher’s control, like attendance. Missing school has a statistical impact on student scores according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, but is not something that teachers can have any control over, so how can we penalize teachers for that?

I suppose only time will tell, but it seems to me like more of the same, or if it is arguably different, then different for the wrong reasons… Because I know we all want to improve the educational system in America just so that we can be better than the Japanese and Swedish, right? I know everything I strive to do better at is for the purpose of being better than the person next to me…

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Learning styles: An Error of Judgment

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Jennifer Wagaman

Everyone is familiar with the concept of “learning styles” and I have classified myself as a visual learner and my eldest as an auditory learner. Research shows, though, that I may be more gullible than I thought because learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile) are not actually supported through scientific studies.

I, along with many other educational professionals have preached the importance of meeting students where they are so they learn best – display information, give auditory information and allow students the chance to manipulate objects, so that all three learning styles will be addressed and all students will have the best chance at learning the information. Likewise, I have been a huge proponent of home schooling because the parent can focus instruction in whatever way is best for their child’s learning style.

A group of men have come together to review the literature on learning styles and have determined two things:

First, most studies done on learning styles do not follow a randomized trial methodology and are thus not valid.

Second, those that are valid reveal contradictory results, meaning that studies that support the idea of learning styles are not able to be repeated, thus negating the theory.

An Idea Better than Learning Styles: Research Based Teaching

An NPR report on the issue provides a better idea – follow research based ideas for teaching:

Psychologist Dan Willingham says that studies show that “mixing things up” will help to boost attention and the closer students pay attention, the better they will learn. Additionally, studies show that the human brain retains information better when learned over months as opposed to cramming information into a short period of days or even weeks.

One benefit of mixing things up is this will also help maintain classroom management. The idea of spreading things out over months instead of weeks flies in the face of the modern education system, though. Teachers often complain about the lack of time available to teach any one concept. A commonly agreed upon statement is that teachers have the time to introduce concepts, and the bright students will master these concepts, but there is no time to extend the concepts into the abstract for mastery for all students.

Changes Needed in Curricula and Teaching Methods

I would be willing to bet that this concept of spreading learning out supports the spiral curriculum method, where students are able to return to the same concepts over and over as they learn. That said, I would think that the traditional “grade level” curriculum, specifically for math skills, needs to be revamped in order to avoid teaching skills in isolation. This is something that Shiller Math does a great job of.

It’s time to stop spending what precious few dollars we have in the schools on in-service training that focuses on learning styles and instead focus on how students are similar. Really, the idea is intriguing – do students learn best differently or the same? I would bet that the assembly line method of grouping students together by age might be less an issue than it is a precursor – we grouped students by a similarity and then tried to separate them after the fact by learning style. How does that make sense?

Maybe we need to find more ways that students are similar instead of spending so much time focusing on differences. One similarity I can think of off of the top of my head is the fact that ALL students, without exception, will learn better when interested and excited about learning. Maybe that is a better place to start lesson planning!

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