More on smart boards - in pictures

My new smart board showed up! Yay! I'm freaking psyched because during Professional Indoctrination Development on Monday the principal told us all that we should be using Google Maps now because some of the maps hanging on the walls still have the USSR on them. Take that nasty, paper map (I almost couldn't bring myself to type the word "paper") off the wall, put it to the side, and use a $5000 piece of ... technology ... to display the, uh, exact same thing. Yeah. Go future!

She actually said the thing about Google maps and the USSR. I made up that second part.

Try not to weep with joy as you gaze at this incredibly overpriced valuable technological marvel straight from the pages of an Isaac Asimov novel:

What a stunning piece of technology, right? Cutting edge. There is going to be so much learning happening in this classroom, the prospect almost makes me nauseous - with excitement. 

Meanwhile, here's a typical keyboard. I teach a beginning instrumental class with around 50 students and we have about 20 keyboards, over half of which look like this:

That's OK, though, because we have plenty of other instruments, like this cello:

OK, so it doesn't have a bridge. I'm hoping the smart board can replace it for me.

I love teaching, but I hate being a teacher

It's getting to be that time of year where every minute I spend in this building, I feel like I'm dying a little inside. I plan on spending the first week of summer vacation holed up at home licking my psychic wounds by composing, reading, and sitting in the sun.

The worst part about hating my job is that I really love my job. Let me clarify. I really do enjoy working with my students and teaching them music. I love conducting the band, getting kids to tackle a challenging piece of music, working on it for months, then pulling off a stellar performance at the concert. Things like that bring me real satisfaction.

I love music not only because it's music, but because when you're learning it there are no shortcuts. The sense of self esteem that comes from learning a new instrument isn't the false, everybody-gets-a-trophy nonsense that gives people inflated egos with no skills, but is born of a genuine satisfaction with struggling with difficult material and achieving goals. Athletics are similar, I think, which is why I also like coaching. You can't fake a 20 minute 5K or a killer first serve.

The main problem is, what I love to do is not my job.

In fact, the things that are my job largely interfere with teaching. My main duties can be summed up as follows:

1. Getting students to do things they're not interested in. New York State has mandated that all high school students get two "arts" credits in order to receive a diploma. Guidance councillors place students in my class because they need the credit, with no regard for their own interests. 80% of my choir doesn't like singing. More than half of my beginning instrumental class has no desire to learn an instrument. Because the primary goal of our school is to ensure that the required number of students graduate, I have to focus a large amount of my effort on cajoling apathetic students into playing music. I'd be perfectly happy telling the students who don't want to learn anything just to mind their own business and don't cause any trouble, and then focus my efforts on helping those who really want it, but my bosses are also heavily focused on making sure every student is "engaged," all the time. They frown on walking into a classroom and seeing most of the students loafing around, texting, and playing Temple Run. 
2. Grading. I'm not going to mince words here. I hate grading. I've written other posts on this topic so I'm not going to go into it here. To sum it up, grading kills learning. If my students want to know how they're doing, I just tell them.
3. Attendance. I have to try and make sure kids have their butts in the seat. In some cases, this is sufficient for passing the class. You can't, however, get away with graduating kids who don't show up. Most students don't want to come to class, but they do anyway. They fall into the category of students addressed in number 1. There are some, though, who avoid the classroom but still come to school. They spend most of their time wandering the hallways. I assume they do this to avoid the police showing up at their homes and arresting their parents because of their truancy. Otherwise, why show up at all?
4. Making what I do conform to meaningless government standards. I spend a large part of my "curriculum development" efforts ensuring that the appropriate jargon, assessments-du-jour, and governments mandates are included, even when (which is always) this detracts from petty concerns like actually learning about music.

As soon as my debt is paid off, I'm done. I have an app that counts down the number of days left until my last day of being a teacher. As of today I'm at 422.

While I was writing this, a student of mine to whom I had made a comment about free jazz came in my room inquiring what exactly this free jazz stuff was. I played him some Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, and then ended up listening to a track with Sonic Youth jamming with a contrabass saxophone. It was a good moment, and later I remarked to a fellow teacher that most of the moments that make me happy I'm a teacher don't take place when I'm teaching my class. So after 422 days, while I will no longer be a teacher, I hope that I can still teach.

They'll buy me a smart board, but I can't get an accompanist

About a month ago, my principal called me into her office, looked at me very seriously, and said "It's my goal as a principal to get a smart board in every classroom, but only if you'll use it. You don't have one in your classroom. Do you want one?" Of course the answer to this is "yes," I better want one because if I don't there's going to be problems. This was confirmed in my last professional indoctrination (oops, I mean development) session when our fearless leader told us that she was noticing smart boards off to the side in classrooms, unused and neglected, and that they were to be front and center, in use, whenever possible. There was an unstated but strongly implied "or else" at the end of this lecture.

What's obvious is that somebody from this smart board company has greased some palms and worked out a sweetheart contract with the New York City DOE. Smart boards run around $2000-$3000 apiece. I have no idea how many classrooms are in my school, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of equipping every room ran in the range of $40,000 or so, and could be much more. This is clearly a city-wide effort, so do the math.  Furthermore whoever worked out this deal is trying to ensure that these smart boards aren't just sitting around like furniture in the classrooms of teachers who never really wanted them or don't care to learn how to use them because that would look pretty bad.

Now, do smart boards actually do anything? For that kind of money, they better. I'm kind of tired and not really into doing much research right now, but a brief internet search showed me this page which gives anecdotal (meaningless) evidence, as well as research that supposedly indicates the effectiveness of smart board technology. A cursory reading of the research results, however, will simply show that the only thing it proves is that kids pay more attention because there's a big pretty screen at the front of the room.

The problem is that looking at a big pretty screen has repeatedly been shown to accomplish absolutely zero in terms of real learning. In fact, it's even been shown to have a negative impact on brain development, especially for young children. I went to Montessori school, and I recall lots of moving around, tactile stimulation, and social interaction. This is really how children learn well. If staring at a screen really helped education, then you'd think we'd have the smartest, most educated generation ever, but in fact, the exact opposite is true.

Meanwhile, all my guitars and violins are broken, three cellos need bridges, almost all of my keyboards have multiple keys missing, my drum kit is shot to hell, the bass amp has a loose input jack, two of three timpani have holes in the heads, and I have a pile of wind instruments in need of minor repairs. I also need an accompanist for the school concert, for which the school is willing to pay $150 - less than 10% of the cost of a smart board. I found an excellent pianist willing to do the job for that very low sum, but unfortunately that requires registering as a vendor with the DOE, which could take months, and she might not even get approved, which means she wouldn't get paid. Not only that, they require months of notice to "move the money into the right account."All told, accompanist plus instrument repairs and replacements would come to around $3,000.

But there's no money in the budget for that. Instead, I'm getting a smart board. And it will be front and center in my classroom, and I better use it.

Are they making kids stupid on purpose?

I came across a web site the other day, www.deliberatedumbingdown.com, which is devoted to a book by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt called "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America." The book's premise is succinctly stated in the forward, which says:

American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists.

Now, this might seem like some crazy conspiracy theory, but the more I think about it and relate it to my own personal experience, the more it seems to make sense. I have yet to read the book - it's very long - but I did download the electronic version and I'm beginning it, to see what evidence she brings up.

When I try to wrap my mind around the world of education, all I can do is marvel at the idiocy of it all. "New" solutions are proposed to problems that anybody with any common sense would realize will only make things worse. The idea of teaching math without actually teaching math, for example, immediately comes to mind. Time-tested and effective methods of education that have been in high esteem for thousands of years have been systematically abandoned and stigmatized. Things such as lecturing, memorizing times tables, rote learning of basic concepts, copying and studying the works of masters, the mainstays of education for time immemorial and methods which have produced some of the best thinkers in the world, have been entirely jettisoned for nonsensical approaches to teaching that are couched in fancy terminology that seems to say a lot while really meaning nothing.

All of this takes place in an environment that is vaguely Orwellian. The whole concept of educational jargon reminds me strongly of Newspeak. By twisting language around, people manage to say things that, if labeled truthfully would be immediately rejected. Who can argue with "student-centered learning," for example? Only if it's admitted that student-centered learning means that the teacher doesn't really teach anything. "Whole language" is another example. And who can object to teaching children "critical thinking skills," and "mathematical thinking?" It is conveniently left out of the discussion that in teaching critical thinking skills and mathematical thinking, any actual content or real mathematical knowledge is left out of the equation (pun intended).

So now I'm realizing that when you look at the whole big picture, the idea of a conspiracy really starts to make sense. I mean, the people who foist this stuff on us can't really be THAT stupid, can they? They can't actually think that what they are doing is helping, or works, when faced with mountains and mountains of evidence to the contrary? They can't possibly be THAT obtuse, and not only in isolated pockets but just across the board, could they?

Things really came into focus for me when I took a long hard look at the origins of Common Core. Now, obviously, local, parental control is an anathema to one seeking big-government control of education, so implementation of "national standards" is a red flag. Now, this was all presented to us as simply bubbling up spontaneously from the states, as if all of a sudden the state governments got together and decided, hey, let's all submit ourselves to federal control of our schools. Sound fishy? I think so. In actuality, this was all brought together by giant, corporate-funded organizations, and foisted upon states as a condition for receiving money from the feds. In this way, the feds were able to claim that states were "voluntarily" adopting these standards. The stated goal of the standards is to make students "career and college ready." So basically, you have giant corporations getting together and telling the federal government what kind of people they want working for them.

Then, when teachers are given the task of "aligning curriculum" to the Common Core, we're told, as we are with every single fucking change that happens, that "Oh, this is just stuff that you're doing anyway if you're doing good teaching. They're just changing the words around." Now that reeks of bullshit, doesn't it? If it's really just good teaching, then why change anything anyway? Why try to pacify us like this? Why spend all this money implementing this massive federal takeover of education if all it is is a change in vocabulary?

Am I getting paranoid? Maybe. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. I hope Google isn't passing on this blog to some government agency right now... Who knows, sometimes in the not too distant future I might get that 4am knock on the door.
 

Why nobody is learning anything in school

Did you know that teachers aren't supposed to teach? We're really "facilitators of learning." Did you know that, in the ideal classroom, the teacher will just light a spark, step back, and watch while students discuss, question and answer all by themselves, thus magically arriving at knowledge of the subject being discussed?

Well, at least according to the learning theory called constructivism, that's what's supposed to happen. This theory was invented in the early 20th century, and is still taught in education schools and at professional development sessions throughout the United States. It is still greeted as a radical, new, and challenging theory, mainly because it completely defies common sense and everything most of us think of when we think about what we send out children to school for and what teachers are supposed to do.

To quote Prof. George Hein,

What is meant by constructivism? The term refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves---each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning---as he or she learns. Constructing meaning is learning; there is no other kind. The dramatic consequences of this view are twofold;
1) we have to focus on the learner in thinking about learning (not on the subject/lesson to be taught):
2) There is no knowledge independent of the meaning attributed to experience (constructed) by the learner, or community of learners.

So if you thought that in a math classroom, the idea is that the teacher knows math and the students are there to learn it, you're wrong. If you thought that history happened and that a history teacher's job is to teach it to her students, guess again. In fact, there is really no knowledge at all. We all just kind of make it up ourselves!

This might sound ludicrous to the average person who sends children to school thinking that they're there to actually learn something, but in education circles it's taken deadly seriously. Never mind that student achievement is generally measured by standardized tests that test, guess what, knowledge. Apparently every student in a given community is supposed to spontaneously construct knowledge identical to what's on the test. If we're really serious about this constructivism stuff, then shouldn't we give every student 100%? Anybody could validly argue that just because the knowledge they constructed doesn't match the knowledge you constructed doesn't make their construction any less valid that yours, right?

Seriously, though, we teachers are consistently taught that actually teaching students things is bad. It's denigrated as "rote learning," and "drill and kill." Those things are out the window. I personally have found that when I want to teach something, or when a student wants to know something, the most efficient thing to do is just to explain what I know to them. I could spend an hour having them figure out how to play an A minor chord, or I could spend 30 seconds telling them. I'm not supposed to do that, though. Instead, I'm supposed to rely on the "prior knowledge" that students bring to class, and somehow, magically, that prior knowledge, through "facilitated" discussion, will become... new knowledge?

You can't make this s**t up, people.


References:

Hein, George. "Constructivist Learning Theory." Institute For Inquiry. Institute for Inquiry, 1991. Web. 1 Feb 2013 <http://www.exploratorium.edu/ifi/resources/constructivistlearning.html>. 

Reality vs. propaganda

I'm currently reading "Gulag: A History" (which, by the way, is an excellent book), and as I was reading something interesting struck me and I thought, "I need to write in my blog about this." Now, I am in no way going to say that school is like a Soviet labor camp. Even the poorest of the poor students in the United States have it 1,000 times better than a prisoner in a Soviet lagpunkt. What made me think about school wasn't the conditions in the camps or the treatment of the prisoners, or even the strict regulation of their lives (which, interestingly enough, revolved around bells that told them when to wake up, when to eat, and when to work), but the disconnect that Applebaum often notes between the official version of what is supposed to be going on in the camps vs. the actual reality on the ground.

Officially, there were hundreds and hundreds of rules and regulations for the labor camps. Prisoners were not supposed to be overworked. Prisoners were supposed to receive specified amounts of food. They were allowed a certain number of letters or packages every month. They were allotted rations based on their work output. There were ambitious production quotas that had to be fulfilled. In short, nearly every detail of the camp and what was supposed to happen and be produced by it was decided in Moscow and laid out in detailed rules. What happened in reality, however, was so far divorced from the official version as to be nearly laughable. In reality, everything was pretty much subject to local conditions, the surrounding environment, the whims of the camp guards, the nature of the prisoners themselves, and a myriad of other factors completely out of control of the bureaucracy in Moscow. Camp inspectors constantly found that what was going on did not meet with standards, but nothing meaningful was every done to change anything.

That's eerily similar to the way public schools function. Teachers, principals, superintendents, even state  education departments are constantly being given rules to follow, norms to meet, an idealized, official version of what school should be. However, none of this squares with the reality of what goes on in the schools. The chancellor of NYC states that cell phones are supposed to be banned from all schools. In schools with metal detectors, they are. In ours, students blatantly use them in front of students and administrators. Teachers can't confiscate them, and every now and then the administration cracks down and ends up with a pile of phones that get picked up and then used in school again days later.

That's just an example at the city level. On a state level, students of all backgrounds are expected to meet the same norms imposed by the government. Now, those standards are becoming nationalized. Teachers in all subjects and situations are expected to use the same materials and the same teaching methods. Administrators in every district and school are supposed to use the same method for evaluating teachers. The farther up the ladder you get, the more removed from reality the official version of school becomes. This is clearly evident when you look at federal programs like No Child Left Behind or Race To The Top. This might all be innocent if nobody took it seriously, but in the education world, it's just the opposite. People's careers are at stake, with their job performance mostly tied to how well they fulfill these norms. Many teachers I know are constantly wracked with anxiety because most of their students aren't managing to act how New York State says they should and can't do what they're supposed to do. I used to be, too but I recently stopped caring so much.

Despite the clear dysfunctionality of this system, education just keeps getting more and more centralized. Those in power do not want to give it back to local school boards or, heaven forbid, parents and students. There is a massive, officially sponsored propaganda campaign to mask the failures of the system, and nobody will admit the emperor has no clothes.

Some random bits of insanity

Just thought I'd share a few random bits of public school nonsense probably not known to the general public. First, I'll define some terms. The regents exam is a standardized subject test given in NY state high schools. It might be given in other states too, but I'm not sure. Most high school classes are meant to prepare students to pass a regents exam. CCLS stands for Common Core Learning Standards. Those are a set of standards that states "voluntarily" adopted - voluntarily meaning if they didn't then they wouldn't get money from the federal government. These standards are supposed to promote higher level thinking and make students "career and college ready."

So, here's some ridiculousness for you.

-A passing grade on regents exams is 65 or above (out of 100). For math regents, any score of 34 and above is rounded up to 65.

-New York State has steadily lowered the score students need to pass because too many were failing.

-In a non honors class at my school, less than half of the class usually passes the math regent. Meaning they score below 34.

-In math regents, students don't have to get the right answer to get most of the credit for a non multiple choice question.

-Grammar and spelling are not counted when scoring English regents.

-Though social studies teachers are now asked to teach writing skills because of CCLS, writing skills are not counted when scoring the social studies regents. Neither are grammar and spelling.

-CCLS mandates that every teacher be a literacy teacher - even math teachers. Guess what isn't tested on the math regents?

-In the new system of teacher evaluation mandated by Race to the Top, 40% of a teacher's rating is based on their students' scores on certain standardized tests. The only tests that are used are for English and mathematics.

-That means 80% of subjects don't have tests.

-To fill in the gap, a Spanish or art teacher's rating could be tied to a student's performance on math tests. Or English. The totally arbitrary decision is left up to individual districts.

-Alternatively, teachers can design their own tests. That's right, teachers are being asked to design standardized tests to which their own job ratings are tied. These tests are not evaluated for consistency or validity, a process which takes years of research by professional test designers.

That's all I have time for now. Why doesn't the public know this? How do schools get away with demanding more and more money? Ridiculousness.