Big Education Ape

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Fewer Decisions = More Energy - Teacher Habits

Fewer Decisions = More Energy - Teacher Habits:

Fewer Decisions = More Energy

Every teacher I know wishes they had more energy at the end of the day. They want to give their best to their family, just like they gave their best to their students. They want to exercise, work on a hobby, play with their kids, talk with their spouse, and some of them even wish they had more energy for checking papers and planning lessons.

In my last post, Why Teachers Are So Tired, I wrote about the four reasons teachers are so drained at day’s end.

This week and next, I’ll look at what teachers can do to reduce decisions, use less willpower, avoid emotional peaks and valleys, and handle worry so that they go home with more energy. In this article, I’ll tackle the first of those: making fewer decisions.

How to Make Fewer Decisions

It sounds simple enough: just make fewer decisions. And for some people in some jobs, it might even be possible to simply, through force of will, decide fewer things at work. But as teachers, we are inundated with situations that require us to decide. Planning is nothing but a Fewer Decisions = More Energy

BAT Cheryl Binkley - The Metaphor of School as A Business & How It Has Narrowed Our View of Learning and Life

Badass Teachers Association: The Metaphor of School as A Business & How It Has Narrowed Our View of Learning and Life by Cheryl Binkley:

The Metaphor of School as A Business & How It Has Narrowed Our View of Learning and Life

by Cheryl Binkley

Originally posted at: http://3rdmillenniumteacher.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-metaphor-of-school-as-business-how.html

The metaphor of schools as businesses has become the dominant way of describing Education these days. It is difficult to find a conversation about schools in which business terminology and ideas do not pop up. Terms like emerging markets, global competitiveness, and monopoly are ever present in considerations about what our schools should be like and what they should do.

The result of using business as The Metaphor (not just a metaphor) extends even beyond schools to most of the conversations about our society and culture in today’s academic and policy making circles. Our policymakers and policy advisers even see business in a particular light. Business in its contemporary neoliberal iteration is Competition, made up of winners and losers. Business is no longer a method whereby we share goods, develop products, or provide purpose and support for our communities, but is focused almost solely on making money for the investor class.

In other words, our leaders see life as business, and business as pure Badass Teachers Association: The Metaphor of School as A Business & How It Has Narrowed Our View of Learning and Life by Cheryl Binkley:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Decline of Accountability

CURMUDGUCATION: The Decline of Accountability:

The Decline of Accountability

It was just a few years ago that outcomes were all the rage with the reform crowd. The problem with public schools, they said, was that we focus too much on inputs. Outfits like the Rand Corporation produced big reports on giving more weight to outputs. Or here's a paper by Mike Petrilli (Fordham Foundation) telling the state of Wisconsin how to look at those all-important outputs for quality control. The basic sales pitch for charters, repeated again and again, was that charters traded greater autonomy for greater acountability.

But there's a new breeze a-blowin', the same breeze that brought Betsy DeVos, Poppins-like, into town. As has been noted repeatedly, DeVos was never really on board with that accountability thing. Her faith is in God, the free market, rich corporate leaders, and parental choice (well, as much as the first three allow for)-- and that's all we need. In her spate of early interviews, she allowed as how there's not really any issue on which the feds need to intervene. The invisible hand will fix everything.

We don't need accountability. The only part that matters is choice. That is the output that matters.

You can see this new attitude sneaking into the reformsters themselves.

Every year the Fordham Foundation holds a wonkathon, in which they solicit policy ideas and proposals. Last year they also held a design competition in which they solicited ideas for accountability systems under ESSA (I entered that one but, shockingly, did not win). Last year's wonkathon was about looking for a choicy silver lining in the ESSA.

This year?

This year the Fordham is looking for ideas about how to spend the Trump $20 billion in voucher money. There are three requirements that the submission must meet:

It promotes the expansion of parental choice in education
It could reasonably be included in a tax reform bill and passed via reconciliation (since, as Politico is reporting, that appears to be the vehicle the Administration and leaders in Congress will try to use)
It includes the number “$20 billion” (though of course it need not start there and might not grow to there)

Notice what's not here? No accountability requirement. No component to make sure that the $20 CURMUDGUCATION: The Decline of Accountability:

Opt Out FACT – SBAC test will be unfairly used in Connecticut’s teacher-evaluation process - Wait What?

Opt Out FACT – SBAC test will be unfairly used in Connecticut’s teacher-evaluation process - Wait What?:

Opt Out FACT – SBAC test will be unfairly used in Connecticut’s teacher-evaluation process

As more and more parents understand, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Testing program unfairly discriminates against poor students, students who aren’t fluent in the English language and students who require special education services. It serves no useful purpose in today’s classrooms and certainly should not be used as a “high-stakes” test and punish program.

To make matters worse, as part of Governor Dannel Malloy’s “education reform” initiative, the SBAC test will be used as part of Connecticut’s teacher evaluation system despite the fact that the test is developmentally inappropriate for many students and fails to adequately measure what is really being taught in Connecticut’s classrooms.

As Teacher Development Specialist, Kate Field, explained in a an April 2016 CT Mirror article,

Even the best standardized test is unable to measure the sizable domain of knowledge acquired over a year of study, and contains only a small sample of questions. Selection bias may unintentionally skew the sample of test items, which could result in some students scoring lower than others, not necessarily because they know less, but because they did not understand the way a question was worded.

Standardized tests also do a poor job of measuring important skills like creative problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. Standardized tests tend, to varying degrees, to be culturally and linguistically biased against English language learners and students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Field added,

Using SBAC [to evaluate teachers] undermines the integrity of teacher evaluation, because the test was not designed to Opt Out FACT – SBAC test will be unfairly used in Connecticut’s teacher-evaluation process - Wait What?:

It's Not About Them (It's About Us) | Blue Cereal Education

It's Not About Them (It's About Us) | Blue Cereal Education:

It's Not About Them (It's About Us)

The class after lunch is always a colorful time. Students have just had a rowdy half-hour of the most freedom they’ll experience during the school day, and most are loaded up on sugar, caffeine, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

It’s in that hour that I have Dalton, a fascinating young man who’s often dressed more professionally than I am and who I adore. I assume he’s somewhere on “the spectrum” – a little Asperger’s and a dash of OCD, maybe? Whatever, it’s all good – he’s genuinely warm and friendly, despite an ongoing, irresistible itch to provoke. It keeps the day interesting.

Also in that hour is Tiandra, a theatrical young lady who will likely change the world, but who in the meantime occasionally falls prey to melodrama and emotional exhaustion. Her random outbursts in the name of social justice are technically dead-on, but her timing and presentation lack… refinement. She and her circle periodically break into explosive laughter over things no one else understands. But the joy – who can resent that?

Both of these young people are antagonists in their own ways – hence my particular affection for each. And they drive one another crazy in the most volatile ways. What starts with muttered comments or provocative grunts easily escalates into locked eyes across the room. Emotions escalate and volume rises. It can get ugly if I don’t find some way to redirect or quash it – Every. Flipping. Time.

The conversations I’ve had with them individually in an effort to avoid actual disciplinary action (which I prefer to reserve for overt defiance or repeated, intentional disruption) are built on the same non-negotiable premise: your choices – your behavior – is not about them. It’s about you. We are not gracious or patient because someone else deserves it; we strive to walk with character and style because of who weIt's Not About Them (It's About Us) | Blue Cereal Education:

One Teachers Union Is Talking to Betsy DeVos. The Other One Isn’t. Which Is Right? | New Republic

One Teachers Union Is Talking to Betsy DeVos. The Other One Isn’t. Which Is Right? | New Republic:
One Teachers Union Is Talking to Betsy DeVos. The Other One Isn’t. Which Is Right?

Big Education Ape: Betsy DeVos called me. I sent her this letter - Lily's Blackboard - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/02/betsy-devos-called-me-i-sent-her-this.html

Big Education Ape: DeVos to tour schools with teachers union head | TheHill - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2017/02/devos-to-tour-schools-with-teachers.html

President Donald Trump and his advisers probably didn’t expect his choice for education secretary to cause much of a fuss. After all, Rick Perry was tapped to run the Department of Energy, which he once said he wanted to eliminate. Senator Jeff Sessions, who has spent his career attacking voting rights, was up for attorney general. Scott Pruitt, nominated to run the EPA, has sued the agency at least 14 times. Even Ben Carson was offered a job.

And yet, Betsy DeVos turned out to be Trump’s most controversial cabinet pick. It came as a surprise to many in Washington, but it didn’t come out of the blue.

Teachers unions, which have given hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democratic Party over the years, led the fightagainst DeVos, a billionaire Republican donor and education philanthropist. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers released a joint letter decrying the “two decades she has spent attempting to dismantle the American public school system.”

“[DeVos] and her family have spent millions to promote failed private school vouchers and unaccountable for-profit charter schools while working to destabilize and defund public education,” the unions wrote. “This is a dangerous direction that will do nothing to help our most vulnerable students and will exacerbate glaring opportunity gaps.”

DeVos bolstered the case against her with a disast rous performance at her confirmation hearing. She was confused about basic education policy debates. She showed little familiarity with federal education law, and in some cases wouldn’t commit to enforcing it. In one viral moment, she even said schools might need guns to guard against “potential grizzlies.”

Ahead of DeVos’s confirmation vote, union leaders hammered her on cable news, and the NEA organized a million people to email senators in opposition to her nomination. At least 40,000 called the Capitol through a special switchboard the union set up.

DeVos was nonetheless confirmed by the Senate earlier this month, thanks to a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. Since then, she has only stumbled further, most egregiously after her visit two weeks ago to Jefferson Academy, a public middle school in Washington, D.C. Though she called the school “awesome” at the end of her tour, she later told the conservative publication Townhall that the teachers there were in “receive mode.” “They’re waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child,” she said. “You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching.”

Jefferson Academy promptly took her to school on Twitter.

Kaya Henderson, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, also jumped to the school’s defense.

Few public school teachers, it seems, are willing to give DeVos the benefit of the doubt. That’s certainly true of Lily Eskelsen García, the president of the National Education Association, the largest union of any kind in America (3.2 million members). “She will get no grace, and she deserves no grace,” Eskelsen García told me on the eve of DeVos’s confirmation vote.

But Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (1.6 One Teachers Union Is Talking to Betsy DeVos. The Other One Isn’t. Which Is Right? | New Republic:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Lessons of Fordlandia

CURMUDGUCATION: The Lessons of Fordlandia:

The Lessons of Fordlandia

This week in the New York Times, Simon Romero took a fascinating visit (with photos) to one of Henry Ford's most monumental failures. It's reminder that billionaires who want to remake the world in their own preferred image are nothing new-- and their failures frequently come back to the same old lessons.

In the 1920s, Fordlandia was going to be Ford's solution to several problems. It would help break the British near-monopoly on rubber production, and it would allow Ford to set up his ideal American town. Even if it was going to be in the Amazonian forests of Brazil. It was a high aspiration, and it was doomed to failure.

Henry "History is bunk" Ford made no attempt to tap the expertise of people who knew about life in the Amazon. He dismissed the expertise of people who knew about how to cultivate and grow rubber trees. He made a series of rookie mistakes when it came to establishing his cash crop.

Ford also seriously overestimated his power to shape the lives of his workers (who were to live in made-in-Michigan bungalows). It was his growing belief that to fix the world, he would have to expand his horizons, creating not just factories, but entire cities and cultures in his image, all managed by an overseer who managed the city like a plant manager would manage a manufacturing floor.

Beyond producing rubber, Ford, an avowed teetotaler, anti-Semite and skeptic of the Jazz Age, clearly wanted life in the jungle to be more transformative. His American managers forbade consumption of alcohol, while promoting gardening, square dancing and readings of the poetry of Emerson and Longfellow.

But his workers just left town and procured alcohol anyway. And his vision of a world where workers CURMUDGUCATION: The Lessons of Fordlandia:

So far, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is just what her critics feared - The Washington Post

So far, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is just what her critics feared - The Washington Post:

So far, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is just what her critics feared

Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos has been U.S. education secretary for only a few weeks, but already she has shown herself to be exactly what her critics feared. In her brief time running the Education Department she has (among other things):

*insulted teachers at a middle school;
*bashed protesters, saying they are “hostile” to change and new ideas;
*said she would be fine if the department she runs is shut down;
*complained that critics want “to make my life a living hell;”
*failed to participate in the first Twitter chat her department had for teachers on Feb. 21;
*suggested schools should be able to compensate for troubles children have at home, such as absent fathers;
*had U.S. Marshals protect her after protesters blocked her entrance to a D.C. school door;
*made a confusing statement about the Common Core State Standards;
*made crystal clear that a top priority will be pushing for alternatives to traditional public schools, otherwise known as “school choice.”

[DeVos: Critics want to ‘make my life a living hell’]

And, according to this Washington Post story, while she personally opposes plans by the Trump administration to withdraw Obama administration guidance protecting the right of transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice, she did not say so publicly and was unable to persuade them to leave the guidance in place. Though Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), issued a statement saying that she hoped DeVos “stands strong” and doesn’t “cave to pressure,” the New York Times reported that she was given the choice by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to go along with the move or resign — and she “relented.”

[Trump administration poised to change transgender student bathroom guidelines]

DeVos’s boss, President Trump, has come to her defense, saying that she has been unfairly So far, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is just what her critics feared - The Washington Post:

Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools? - The New York Times

Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools? - The New York Times:

Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools?

Image result for Promise of Public Schools?

In the days leading up to and after Betsy DeVos’s confirmation as secretary of education, a hashtag spread across Twitter: #publicschoolproud. Parents and teachers tweeted photos of their kids studying, performing, eating lunch together. People of all races tweeted about how public schools changed them, saved them, helped them succeed. The hashtag and storytelling was a rebuttal to DeVos, who called traditional public schools a “dead end” and who bankrolled efforts to pass reforms in Michigan, her home state, that would funnel public funds in the form of vouchers into religious and privately operated schools and encouraged the proliferation of for-profit charter schools. The tweets railed against DeVos’s labeling of public schools as an industry that needed to adopt the free-market principles of competition and choice. #Publicschoolproud was seen as an effort to show that public schools still mattered.

But the enthusiastic defense obscured a larger truth: We began moving away from the “public” in public education a long time ago. In fact, treating public schools like a business these days is largely a matter of fact in many places. Parents have pushed for school-choice policies that encourage shopping for public schools that they hope will give their children an advantage and for the expansion of charter schools that are run by private organizations with public funds. Large numbers of public schools have selective admissions policies that keep most kids out. And parents pay top dollar to buy into neighborhoods zoned to “good” public schools that can be as exclusive as private ones. The glaring reality is, whether we are talking about schools or other institutions, it seems as if we have forgotten what “public” really means.

The word derives from the Latin word publicus, meaning “of the people.” This concept — that the government belongs to the people and the government should provide for the good of the people — was foundational to the world’s nascent democracies. Where once citizens paid taxes to the monarchy in the hope that it would serve the public too, in democracies they paid taxes directly for infrastructure and institutions that benefited society as a whole. The tax dollars of ancient Athenians and Romans built roads and aqueducts, but they also provided free meals to widows whose husbands died in war. “Public” stood not just for how something was financed — with the tax dollars of citizens — but for a communal ownership of institutions and for a society that privileged the common good over individual advancement.

Early on, it was this investment in public institutions that set America apart from other countries. Public hospitals ensured that even the indigent received good medical care — health problems for some could turn into epidemics for us all. Public parks gave access to the great outdoors not just to the wealthy who could retreat to their country estates but to the masses in the nation’s cities. Every state invested in public universities. Public schools became widespread in the 1800s, not to provide an advantage for particular individuals but with the understanding that shuffling the wealthy and working class together (though not black Americans and other racial minorities) would create a common sense of citizenship and national identity, that it would tie together the fates of the haves and the have-nots and that doing so benefited the nation. A sense of the public good was a Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools? - The New York Times:

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