This is how it’s done right:
“You are the reason we are here.”
No Common Core Standards, no testing schedule, just a genuine welcome. Bet there’s a lot more learning that goes on behind that door than many others.
Tip of the old scrub brush to @Kiwigirl58, Sahila ChangeBringer.
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Classroom management, Education, First day | Tagged: Classroom management, Education, First Day | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Scott McLeod at Dangerously!Irrelevant put together a video, with computer voices to protect the innocent naive genuinely ignorant and proudly stupid.
Teachers who watch this may cry as they watch America’s future slip away into the Tide of Mediocrity™ we were warned about, which NCLB mistook for high water. Turn it up so you can hear the full sound effects. That’s the level of mediocrity rising as the “official” fiddles.
W. Edwards Deming researched and wrote a lot about organization managers who don’t really have a clue what is going on in their organizations, and who lack tools to measure employee work, because they lack an understanding of just what products are, what the resources are that are required to make the desirable product, and how to processes that make those products work, or could work better.
That’s education, today.
Should teachers be “held accountable?” Depends. Effective organizations understand that accountability is the flip-side of the coin of authority. Anyone accountable must have the authority to change the things that affect product, for which that person is “held accountable.” Texas schools lose up to 45 days a year to testing — that may drop as the TAKS test is phased out, but it won’t drop enough. 45 days is, effectively 25% of the school year. If time-on-task is important to education as Checker Finn used to badger us at the Department of Education, then testing is sucking valuable resources from education, way above and beyond any benefits testing may offer.
Today, Texas Governor Rick Perry has proposed laws sitting on his desk that would greatly pare back unnecessary testing. A coalition of businessmen (no women I can discern) with a deceptively-named organization urges Perry to veto the bills, because, they claim, rigor in education can only be demonstrated by a tsunami of tests.
What’s that, you ask? Where is the person concerned about the student? She’s the woman with the leaky classroom, who is being shown the door.
Why is it those with authority to change things for the better in Texas schools, and many other school systems throughout the U.S., are not being held accountable? If they won’t use their authority to make things better, why not give that authority to the teachers?
Check out McLeod’s blog — good comments on his video there.
More:
Fitzsimmons in the Arizona Daily Star
2 Comments | Education, NAEP, TAKS, Teacher Evaluation, Teachers, Teaching, TEKS, Testing, Texas | Tagged: Accountability, Classroom management, Education, NAEP, No Child Left Behind Act, TAKS, Teacher Evaluation, TEKS, Testing, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Try the blogs listed at Teach.com, Teach Make A Difference, in their ranking of teaching blogs. 
I’m fascinated at the great teacher resource blogs I don’t see listed; one of the criteria for listing is that at least 50% of the posts must deal with education.
Consequently, it tends to be pedantically-oriented towards classroom technique, with a great diminution of education management and especially policy and politics, which are greater problems in education today, for my money (and lack of money, too).
You will find a lot of useful stuff there.
Was I right? Lots of useful stuff?
2 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Education blogs, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: blogs, Classroom management, Education, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is a good video that all math teachers ought to see (heck, I can figure out how to use it as a bell ringer in social studies, I think).
I had to mention it, just because of Michael Tobis’s wonderful headline at Planet 3.0: “Bored in class? Do some math instead.”
I confess to being caught doing math instead, in English, in history — and in art we often made mathematical games to create patterns. From the stuff I see on walls in schools, that’s still popular.
Some time ago I ordered a poster from Max Temkin, the brilliant poster propagandist/artist. It says that the universe is easy to understand if you speak its language, and that language is mathematics. True.
Also true that in most of the disciplines that work into classes we call social studies, we do not have the ability to discern the cool patterns like Fibonacci numbers in pine cones, pineapples and sunflower blossoms. People look for those pattersn in history anyway, and that poses a key problem to policy makers. People want to see a pattern, expect to see a pattern, and historians cannot meet that expectation, other than quoting Santayana.
Maybe one of my students will be the one who discerns a key pattern. It’ll be one of the slackers, if it happens.
2 Comments | Classroom management, Education, Mathematics, Natural history, Nature, Teaching | Tagged: Classroom management, Education, Fibonacci Numbers, Mathematics, Nature, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Cover of Clark's new book; he is also the author of "The Essential 55"
What we have found at the Ron Clark Academy is that if you teach to the brightest in the classroom and hold every student accountable to that level, all of the test scores will go up.
Leave a Comment » | Classroom management, Education, Education reform | Tagged: Classroom management, Education, Education reform | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s a great idea, but I didn’t even dare think it possible
We’ve had blackboard paint for at least a century. Teachers at our school sometimes paint their closet doors, or part of a wall, to use as a chalkboard.
I prefer whiteboards, though.
Watching Neil deGrasse Tyson on Nova: Science Now, I caught a reference to a researcher whose lab walls are all painted with “dry-erase” paint. (The NOVA piece is the episode on how the brain works; this segment deals with researcher David Eagleman.)
Is that even possible?
Vodpod videos no longer available.Quick answer: Yes!
Check out applications ideas at IdeaPaint’s blog.
Lowe’s carries IdeaPaint, the stuff displayed in the graphic above. It isn’t as cheap as other paint, but compared to the cost of a whiteboard, it’s pretty good. RustOleum manufactures a version available at Home Depot and other outlets. It’s advertised as cheap as $20 per kit online, but runs as high as $40. One kit covers about 49 square feet (7 feet by 7 feet). I’ve found at least five different manufacturers of the stuff, with different features.
I haven’t calculated prices (at about $3.25/square foot), but there are also dry-erase skins which can be applied to any wall — with the added advantage that the product claims to be erasable for virtually any marker, including Sharpies® and other permanent markers. One manufacturer offers skins in clear, to allow underlying paint colors to show through, and white, and says it will match colors on a whole-roll basis (pricey, I’ll wager).
Uses for math and writing should be obvious — think about those mural-sized wall maps in a geography or history class, covered with clear, dry-erase paint . . .
Wouldn’t it be great if school districts had architects, or instruction coaches, who knew about this stuff and could help us keep up in the technology and tool wars/sweepstakes?
More, resources:
2 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Brains, Classroom management, Classroom Paint, Classroom technology, Dry-erase paint, Dry-erase skins, Education, IdeaPaint, Nova: Science Now, RustOleum, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Some teachers desperately work to make sure that education doesn’t completely miss the computer, internet and telecommunications revolution, the way it missed the television revolution.
Twitter? Sure it’s annoying — if you know it only as a tool for egotistical twenty-somethings to brag about binge drinking.
Can it be useful to support learning in the classroom, or for the classroom?
New Century History delivers information on Twitter to you on a platter. Part 1 discusses the basics of Twitter, and the most common uses including communication that should be very useful to any classroom teacher. Part 2 pushes the envelope a bit, discussion how to use Twitter in direct support of the classroom, and maybe in the classroom .
Well worth the read, if you have a lot of kids on smart phones, or a lot of kids with internet access at any place during the day.
This is good stuff, really. I just routed the posts to our entire department. I’m looking for allies who know how to use technology in the War on Ignorance of History.
More:
4 Comments | Communication, Education, Parents, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom management, Communication, Education, History, Parents, Resources, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Spent half a day with H. W. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas, and author of at least one of my favorite history books, The First American (and several others).
Brands banned the use of computers for notetaking in his classrooms this fall. It’s not the notes he objects to, of course, but the students’ side-activities of checking e-mail, eBay, and ESPN, rather than paying attention to the lecture, and other activities in lieu of taking notes.
Nominally our discussion centered on the decade of 1890 to 1900, the Reckless Decade, as Brands’ book on the era titles it. Brands took a larger, circular route to the topic, today. These discussions come under the aegis of the Dallas Independent School District’s Teaching American History Grant, and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute chipped in today, too. We are a polyglot group of teachers of American history, and a few other related social studies subjects, in Dallas high schools.
I asked about technology beyond lecture, or “direct instruction” as the curriculum and teacher berating rubrics so dryly and inaccurately phrase it. Brands focused on the effects of connected students in the lecture, a problem which we officially should not have in Dallas schools. We discovered he’s using Blackboard (probably the electronic classroom standard for UT-Austin). I’ve used Blackboard in college instruction, and a somewhat less luxurious version in high schools. Blackboard works better than others I’ve tried.
Over several hours Brands said he teaches best when he performs well as a story teller — when the students put down their note-taking pencils and listen. Two observations: It helps to be a good story teller, and, second, that requires that one know a story to tell.
Our grant could give us better stories to tell. Most educational enterprises produce great benefits as by-products of the original learning goal. Our teacher studies of history are no different.
3 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, History, Teachers, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom, Classroom management, Dallas ISD, H. W. Brands, History, Teaching, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
From the Department of Education where my group was in charge of dragging the rest of the research branch into the computer age — putting computers on desks of contract managers for the first time, in most cases — I moved to American Airlines. Though American boasted the best computer reservations system in the world, at headquarters my cubicle came with no computer, not even a typewriter.
I requested a typewriter to draft documents. “That’s what we have secretaries for,” I was told. “You draft longhand, let the secretaries turn them into print.”
That quickly changed, thank the business gods, but I feel like I’ve been thrust back to 1987 in many ways since my laptop crashed last week.
The good people at Fry’s noted the fan wasn’t working, but feared it might be damage beyond that. I’m informed now that it’s been sent to its birthplace with HP/Compaq in California for a more serious assessment and, I hope, quick repair. Alas, when we bought the extended warranty (the first time such a purchase seems to have not been a really stupid idea) we did not purchase the “automatic loaner” rider.
Oh, I’ve got the data backed up. What I don’t have is an easy access to one computer I can use regularly or transport with me to get that information into the formats I need. Lesson plans, presentations, worksheets and tests are essentially on hold.
A somewhat better prepared group of juniors this year. They have heard of Columbus. They know basic map stuff, like in which direction we say the sun rises. Prehistory remains mysterious to them, human migrations prior to 1750 are fuzzy to them, and the Age of Exploration seems to be complete news. All that stuff I put together last year in case this happened? It’s on the backup drive, the drive that I don’t have enough USB ports to tap into while doing much of anything else.
My classroom for a good book! Of course, I’d have to reinvent the book check out process, and find some way to transport a half-ton of books from the book room to the classroom, and check them out.
We had a meeting Friday on what we’re doing to differentiate classroom lessons for differently-abled learners. Unable to get lessons to any learners, I found it a waste of time at the moment. How much other work teachers do is frustrated by the assumptions that all systems are go for teachers, when few systems are.
A reader, nyceducator, noted he’s never had a working computer in his classroom in 25 years. He’s better prepared than I am as a result, and I envy him at the moment. Should I retrench and prepare for a paper future?
Teaching in America is, too often, a constant reinvention of the wheel.
The laptop I’m typing this on is 9 years old, old enough that it can connect to the home WiFi only with an expensive modem. That takes up the one USB port. I think I donated the last wired mouse I had, and the touchpad on the computer is failing (which is a big reason I bought the now-ailing computer back in 2009). The battery has been failing for a long time, but that model is no longer manufactured. Used batteries are tough to find on eBay, even.
I can write it out longhand, and fax it to a secretarial service who will convert it to electronic files for me.
How is your 1987 going?
4 Comments | Administrivia, Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Teachers, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Administrivia, Classroom management, computers, Education, Teaching, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
How long will the madness persist?
Via Lenore Skenazy at Free-Range Kids comes word that MommaLou has a meeting to find out why her kid’s school wants the kids to spend recess time engaged in something other than recess.
Excuse me?
They aim to “change the perception of recess from free time away from learning to a valuable learning experience that will teach them and will help them cope in all social settings and environments. When children view recess as “free time” they have a tendency to act in a less responsible manner and push the limits of irresponsible behavior. In order to change the perception of recess, children must see that its content is respected and valued.”
The absolute best memories I have of my childhood consisted of me and my sister on the loose in our backyard making mud pies and playing “lost kids”. When I was in college studying early childhood education, I spent countless hours in classrooms learning about how kids learn. Kids learn through play. They just need the resources. The tools. And time.
Well, yeah, that’s what recess is all about, isn’t it?
Kids need recess to stay healthy, the studies show. Recess keeps them healthy. In my corporate consulting, we counseled managers to provide recess. Creativity and corporate problem solving experts, like Dr. Perry W. Buffington, recommend business people take a recess and get away from work for a while when things get tense, or when problem solvers get dense. In one session I watched with Buffington, one manager didn’t get it and kept coming up with all sorts of things to do to avoid taking a recess. Buffington finally spelled it out for him: Get away from the office; make sure that the activity is AWAY from the building . . .
Heck, do they have an “organizational health” survey at that school? The teachers need recess for the kids, too.
Recall these resources from my earlier post:
Nota bene: Even just a little movement works. It works for adults, too.
Resources:
PEDIATRICS Vol. 123 No. 2 February 2009, pp. 431-436 (doi:10.1542/peds.2007-2825) (subscription required for full text), “School Recess and Group Classroom Behavior,” Romina M. Barros, MD, Ellen J. Silver, PhD and Ruth E. K. Stein, MD, Department of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and Rose F. Kennedy Center, Bronx, New York
OBJECTIVES. This study examines the amount of recess that children 8 to 9 years of age receive in the United States and compares the group classroom behavior of children receiving daily recess with that of children not receiving daily recess.
- See this year-old post at The Elementary Educator
- Post in agreement from the venerable Trust for Public Lands, one of the best and best respected non-profits in America
Also, be sure to see this post from Ms. Cornelius at A Shrewdness of Apes. If you’re having difficulty telling the difference between school and a prison — or if your school kid is having that difficulty, it’s time to act.
Via doxpop.com. See Andertoons.com, and buy it for your newsletter.
3 Comments | Cargo Cults, Classroom management, Education, Education quality, Health care, Public health, Rampant stupidity, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: Classroom management, Education, health, Rampant stupidity, Recess, School | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
So, if you’re not giving away distressed Black Sabbath t-shirts, how can you be sure you’re reaching the teenaged boys in your classroom?
Ms. Peña, a Disney researcher with a background in the casino industry, zeroed in on a ratty rock ’n’ roll T-shirt. Black Sabbath?
“Wearing it makes me feel like I’m going to an R-rated movie,” said Dean, a shy redhead whose parents asked that he be identified only by first name.
Jackpot.
Ms. Peña and her team of anthropologists have spent 18 months peering inside the heads of incommunicative boys in search of just that kind of psychological nugget. Disney is relying on her insights to create new entertainment for boys 6 to 14, a group that Disney used to own way back in the days of “Davy Crockett” but that has wandered in the age of more girl-friendly Disney fare like “Hannah Montana.”
What if you could make algebra 2 or world history feel like going to an R-rated movie?
1 Comment | Anthropology, Classroom management, Education, Education success, Mathematics, Research, Teaching | Tagged: Anthropology, Classroom management, Education, Effective teaching, Gender Differences, Motivation, Teaching, Young Boys | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Newark Star-Ledger file photo of kids at recess at Newton Street School. Patti Sapone photo
The old classroom teachers knew it. The new, test-the-hell-out-of-the-little-brats administrators need to learn it.
Kids need physical activity to be good students.
A study published this month in the journal Pediatrics studied the links between recess and classroom behavior among about 11,000 children age 8 and 9. Those who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none. Although disadvantaged children were more likely to be denied recess, the association between better behavior and recess time held up even after researchers controlled for a number of variables, including sex, ethnicity, public or private school and class size.
The lead researcher, Dr. Romina M. Barros, a pediatrician and an assistant clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the findings were important because many schools did not view recess as essential to education.
The article in the science section of the New York Times put it well:
The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it.
A convicted murderer in prison gets an hour a day for exercise. But our kids, the high-performing ones we depend on for our nation’s future? We treat them worse than convicted felons?
Nota bene: Even just a little movement works. It works for adults, too.
Resources:
PEDIATRICS Vol. 123 No. 2 February 2009, pp. 431-436 (doi:10.1542/peds.2007-2825) (subscription required for full text), “School Recess and Group Classroom Behavior,” Romina M. Barros, MD, Ellen J. Silver, PhD and Ruth E. K. Stein, MD, Department of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and Rose F. Kennedy Center, Bronx, New York
OBJECTIVES. This study examines the amount of recess that children 8 to 9 years of age receive in the United States and compares the group classroom behavior of children receiving daily recess with that of children not receiving daily recess.
5 Comments | Classroom management, Education, Education assessment, Education quality, Education success, psychology, Research, Teaching, Testing | Tagged: Classroom management, Education, Obesity, Physical Activity, Recess, Research, student performance, Testing | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I’m struggling. I’m looking for software that will allow me to make animations and movies for classroom use. I know very little about it, though, and I’m not sure where to look.
I stumbled on this site, from the University of Houston, Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling.
Do me a favor: Social studies teachers, especially hop over there and look at the video/animation/presentations they offer — on the Dustbowl, on human rights and Nobel winner Aung San Suu Kyi, on Hiroshima, the race to the Moon, and other stuff. Look at the presentations: Can you use them? Do you have better stuff to use?
Other examples include mathematics, art (some of which might also be good for history), English as a Second Language (ESL), language arts, and other subjects.
Do you make movies or animations for your classroom? What do you use?
What does a teacher need to get started in digital story telling?
The UH site offers a free download of Microsoft Photo Story 3 — have you used it? Good stuff? What’s your experience?
3 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Education quality, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Video and film | Tagged: Classroom management, Education, Education Automation, film, Technology in the classroom, video | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Does your school encourage the use of technology in your classroom?
My school says “no iPods, no exceptions.”
I learn from P—ed Off Teacher that may not be a good idea:
I was just about to tell Kevin to put away his I-pod, when I looked down and saw the graph of the function we were looking at on it. I did not know I-pods had this capability. He said that he downloaded a program with math applications and that is why he was able to do this.
Some days, I just love my job. I yelled at Kevin. “It’s kids like you that are keeping me from retiring.”
Who knew?
Of course, it takes a special teacher to be doing the job so well that the kids use their toys to learn the subject. Or does it? This is a special category of “discipline.”
How are things in your classroom today?
1 Comment | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom management, Classroom technology, iPods, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Give up?
Yeah, often the students give up, too. If you don’t know the answer, your school may resemble a prison.
Gary Stager’s post with jarring comparisons is here, at District Administration’s Pulse! blog. [District Administration purges its archives about every three years, it turns out; here is a copy of Mr. Stager’s column courtesy the Wayback Machine – Internet Archive.]
When the elder Fillmore’s Bathtub son attended intermediate school, he complained of the discipline. So did a lot of other good kids. We got a call from a parent asking if we’d join in a meeting with the new principal, and hoping to learn things were really hunky dory and offer assurances to our son, we went.
Read the rest of this entry »
17 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education success, Ethics, Pedagogy, Public education, School discipline, TAKS, Teaching, TEKS, Testing, Texas | Tagged: Brain learning, Classroom management, Educatio Success, Education, Education reform, Gary Stager, Prison | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
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Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 