Teacher Tom: What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

Teacher Tom: What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

Based on my informal and unscientific surveys of early childhood educators, one of the biggest hurdles to fully realizing play-based education is "the parents." Not all the parents, of course, but there are apparently a lot who might like the idea of their children playing, but who have bought into the "fall behind" snake oil. This leads them to apply pressure to us to become "more academic" in defiance of the science behind how young children learn.

I've found that one of the best things one can do for your play-based program is to consciously manage those expectations, right from the start. For us, the process of getting parents on our bandwagon starts with our spring orientation.

I use this opportunity to tell the assembled parents that I will not be teaching their children literacy, although they will be laying the foundations for literacy through their play, their dramatic play in particular; every time we read to them or tell them stories, or when they tell stories to us; each time they get excited and say, "Hey that's my letter!" or "That's your CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: What I Tell Parents About Play-Based Education

Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged | janresseger

Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged | janresseger

Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged

The Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss has been posting reflections on the definition and meaning of learning loss for children during this academic year dominated by disruption, online learning and disruptive hybrid schedules.  A primary theme in these columns is the danger of branding this cohort of students as victims of a lost year, as far behind, and as unlikely to progress well in school from here on out.  None of the authors Strauss has published believes our fear of learning loss is justified, and not one thinks remedial drilling on “lost” content is what should happen now.

In her column on Tuesday, Strauss published an article by Michael Matsuda, a teacher at a California high school, and Debra Russell, researcher at TeachFX. They demonstrate the connection of misplaced but widespread fear about learning loss with what they believe is the Biden administration’s misguided decision to continue requiring standardized testing this year. Ironically, while the existence of the testing puts the spotlight on learning loss, the tests themselves will generate no valid or reliable data to help educators as schools open up: “‘Learning loss’ is emerging as the dominant theme in K-12 education for 2021… But one might argue that the most concerning thing that has been ‘lost’ is our focus on doing what is right for students. The Biden administration’s decision recently to proceed with standardized testing—albeit with expanded flexibility and lighter repercussions—is perplexing where it’s not problematic.”

Matsuda and Russell worry that the test results will be worthless because the data will be, “marred by uneven rates of participation and the varied pace of learning in schools. If (the tests are) administered remotely, these concerns are compounded by the stability of home Internet access, potential help from family members, and proper accommodations for the CONTINUE READING: Branding Students as Victims of Learning Loss Won’t Help Kids Feel Connected and Engaged | janresseger

NANCY BAILEY: The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

The loss important to understand this year, the most critical loss, is not learning loss. It involves the loss many children are facing after losing a mom or dad to Covid-19. Or it could be a grandma or grandpa, a beloved aunt or uncle, or sister or brother, even a friend.

On this Mother’s Day, how many children are grieving the loss of their mother? On Father’s Day, how many will be missing their dad?

We’re told that between 37,000 and 43,000 children in the United States have lost at least one parent to COVID-19. According to the University of Southern California, this is a 20% increase in parental loss over a typical year.

A loss will affect how students look at school, how they take tests, and how they recapture a sense of normalcy as school buildings reopen and they gather once again in person if they are not already in the school building. School and life for them will never be the same.

Parental loss due to Covid-19 has been found more in the black community. Children are called Covid Orphans.

Children may be troubled simply due to the fear and anguish caused by the strangeness CONTINUE READING: The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

The chicken littling about Learning Loss is just never going to stop. Today I came across yet another article (that I won't link to) warning that the Learning Losses from the pandemic pause will haunt students for the rest of their lives.

The worst of the Learning Loss panickers are revealing too much about what they don't understand, but what they especially don't understand is what goes on in an actual classroom, because the whole concept of "falling behind" is a layperson's oversimplification of what actual education looks like.

I think I was a pretty run-of-the-mill example of the teaching profession in my thirty-nine years, so let me explain what my year generally looked like. 

At the beginning of the year, I'd launch the dual processes of Trying To Teach Stuff and Figuring Out What This Batch of Students Knows and Can Do. At no point in my career were the Big Standardized Test results a useful part of this process because A) the results were nothing but a score and we weren't even allowed to see the questions, so had no way of knowing what exactly students got right or got wrong and B) the results don't come until the school year was already well under way. 

In my career, I mostly taught grades 9 through 12, all tracks, so September always brought students with a very wide range of tools. One of things you get better at with experience is assessing what the students bring to the table, both academically and otherwise. And then you go from there.

This initial assessment does not tell you anything CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

'Parents are powerless': Students face being held back after a year of remote learning - POLITICO

'Parents are powerless': Students face being held back after a year of remote learning - POLITICO

'Parents are powerless': Students face being held back after a year of remote learning

Pandemic-related learning loss means some parents are weighing whether their children should repeat a grade. In 18 states, they won’t have a choice.

David Scruggs Jr. has spent most of the pandemic at his second-grade son’s side, helping him with virtual learning as their Nashville, Tenn., home became a schoolhouse as well as his office. In the next room, Scruggs’ wife, Dorothy, sat beside their first-grade daughter, a mirror image on the other side of the wall, doing the same while holding down her own job.

For a year, the Scruggs worked to keep their kids from falling behind as the pandemic forced children to stay home and America’s education system struggled to adjust. The family installed a whiteboard and baby pink desk next to their TV. The coffee table became a receptacle for homework, folders and laminated multiplication tables.

Now, the Scruggs and thousands of families like them in Tennessee and more than a dozen other states face a reckoning with how well they succeeded in their new role as substitute teachers. In the coming months, under a new, stricter state policy, if their son doesn’t do well enough on a standardized reading test next year, he could be forced to repeat a grade.

“I don’t know how much was lost or gained in this process. That’s the scary part,” Scruggs said of learning during Covid-19. “I would hope he’s not held back. CONTINUE READING: 'Parents are powerless': Students face being held back after a year of remote learning - POLITICO

Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss” | gadflyonthewallblog

Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss” | gadflyonthewallblog

Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss”

Things are different in school these days.

The classes are smaller.

The kids are more subdued.

The teachers are exhausted.

But that’s life as we try to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic and somehow get back to normal.

I come into the room every day and sit behind a glass barrier.

My kids either stumble in from the hall wearing masks (often below their noses) or they log in to Zoom and participate on-line.

It’s far from ideal, but we get things done.

Right now we’re reading the play version of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

The kids were reticent at first.

With the unreliable schedules of in-person vs remote learning, it took us months to CONTINUE READING: Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss” | gadflyonthewallblog

NANCY BAILEY: Acceleration: The Meaning Behind the Buzzword

Acceleration: The Meaning Behind the Buzzword

Acceleration: The Meaning Behind the Buzzword

Acceleration is the new pandemic buzzword brought to you by pro-privatization school reformers. Students may have missed some in-person schooling, even though most learned remotely or in person. Still, the frenzy surrounding learning loss is mounting.

The pandemic has given rise to a new way to reframe the old learning gap talk, with new terminology, acceleration. If students have missed out on schoolwork, they’re told they need to accelerate and catch up if they’ve fallen behind.

The fear is that the pandemic will be used as an excuse to push students harder. Poor students will bear the brunt of this, a doubling down on strictness.

But all students are affected when advanced learning disregards a child’s development.

This message has festered for years, starting with No Child Left Behind. Failure was not an option, we were told, as they continually raised the ante. If students did well, the test CONTINUE READING: Acceleration: The Meaning Behind the Buzzword

Acceleration Nation | Teacher in a strange land

Acceleration Nation | Teacher in a strange land

Acceleration Nation

There it was—an ad for dealing with imaginary learning loss. Nope—your kid doesn’t need remediation to bring him up to speed after this year of screen-based semi-school. He needs acceleration! Sure he’s, umm, fallen behind somebody, somewhere. But the solution is not reviewing what he may have missed—it’s accelerating. Going faster. Catching up, then presumably surging ahead. Winning.

I was so struck by the totally American nature of this language—We Must Compete! No remediation for us!—that I googled the company’s motto and found that there are several pre-packaged learning systems and books using the same theme and jargon.

Acceleration, it appears, is having (another) sexy moment. It may even be sexy enough to tap into some of that federal funding this summer, if education vendors hustle and enough media figures wring their hands while bemoaning ‘learning loss.’  

If your kids have been moping around, griping about not seeing their friends and the head-banging monotony of Zoom lessons, it’s logical to be a little anxious about what they have not learned in the past year. Things that might have been not only interesting or challenging, but important for future coursework and plans. It’s OK to worry about their emotional health, their need for exercise and socializing.

But while I have absolute faith in well-prepared, caring teachers to do their best to CONTINUE READING: Acceleration Nation | Teacher in a strange land

Dana Goldstein: Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss? - The New York Times

Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss? - The New York Times

Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss?

Research shows many young children have fallen behind in reading and math. But some educators are worried about stigmatizing an entire generation.

Over the past year, Deprece Bonilla, a mother of five in Oakland, Calif., has gotten creative about helping her children thrive in a world largely mediated by screens.

She signed them up for online phonics tutoring and virtual martial arts lessons. If they are distracted inside the family’s duplex, she grabs snacks and goes with the children into the car, saying they cannot come out until their homework is done. She has sometimes spent three hours per day assisting with school assignments, even as she works from home for a local nonprofit organization.

It all sometimes feels like too much to bear. Still, when her fifth-grade son’s public-school teacher told her he was years behind in reading, she was in disbelief.

“That was very offensive to me,” she said. “I’m not putting in myself, my hard work, his hard work, for you to tell me that he’s at second-grade reading.”

Ms. Bonilla’s experience illustrates a roiling debate in education, about how and even whether to measure the academic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation’s children — and how to describe learning gaps without stigmatizing or discouraging students and families.

Studies continue to show that amid the school closures and economic and health hardships of the past year, many young children have missed out on mastering fundamental reading and math skills. The Biden administration has told most states that unlike in 2020, they should plan on testing students this year, in part to measure the “educational inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.”

But others are pushing back against the concept of “learning loss,” especially on behalf of the Black, Hispanic and low-income children who, research shows, have fallen further behind over the past year. They fear that a focus on what’s been lost could incite a moral panic that paints an entire generation as broken, and say that relatively simple, common-sense solutions can help students get CONTINUE READING: Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss? - The New York Times