In response to today’s ongoing discussion about teaching and specifically what kind of teaching is right for urban students, this comment came from Ira Shor. Shor teaches at the City University of New York. He has written extensively about critical pedagogy. Our discussion began with the proposition that poor kids need a tightly disciplined environment, some would say a “boot camp” or “no-excuses” pedagogy. Others disagreed. Shor gives his view here:
| Many thanks to Diane for for so decently inviting discussion on conundrums of teaching. Conditions for teaching/learning are outcomes of educ and social policy, though not reducible to these enormous factors. In terms of high expectations for kids of all colors and classes regardless of home address, I’d propose that all lessons in all classrooms should be designed for and with the students who are there. The local conditions, language use, cultural themes should be the starting point for a curric of critical inquiry offered to all students based in the familiar materials, issues, and words of their everyday lives. This is a common critical approach which rejects a “high-order” curric for high-rent districts and a low-order one for low-end areas. Common sense now is that schls in poor areas are out of control b/c kids are out of control. But, as Diane and others have said before, what is out of control is poverty and the imposition of degenerate/destructive conditions on kids and families and teachers who come to schools with hopes. Teachers are undermined by the same enemy hurting the vast majority of kids and families in public schools; Inequality, Class Prejudice, Racism, Privatization, Testing. We need small classes, lots of mentoring/tutoring time and staff to work individually with kids; project methods in and out of the classroom; after-school and weekend programs; good food; school nurses and librarians in all units; counseling, dental care, trips to historic sites, theaters and museums for all classes–basically all the stuff Geoffrey Canada buys for his privileged kids in the Harlem Children Zone with the $56mil/yr he gets from Wall St on top of the $28mil in public taxes….ira shor |
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Ira, thank you for your post. I teach pre-k at an inner city school in Brooklyn. When allowed to create curriculum that speaks to my young students they are engaged and come away with so much. When forced to follow the party line, they are often frustrated, bored, disinterested and just want to “get it over with”
I created a unit on subways and students who hadn’t spoken all year suddenly had so much to say about the buses and trains they went on and where they went. They had so much vocabulary. They knew about metro cards and which trains you had to transfer to get to South Ferry.
Children everywhere, not just in poverty areas, need to have authentic and relevant projects. You can teach any skill if you get the students’ interest.
I don’t believe that students come to school hopeful that the day will be a disaster. This lockstep mentality is destroying children’s creative side.
I am not a teacher who encourages chaos in my classroom and my students understand rules for safety. I do, however, encourage a lot of conversation and in my experience, I have the fewest behavior issues when children are truly engaged rather than being forced to do stuff in which they have no interest.
I agree, Sheila — but with the caveat that sometimes, students should be expected to do boring stuff.
A teacher should always engage, but at the end of the day, work is sometimes work and it’s okay that sometimes it’s boring.
A little drilling or repetition now and then are part of a student’s “complete breakfast,” I think. They learn some self control and self discipline.
My experience with students has shown that too many have never had this expectation, and I want to teach them how to be motivated intrinsically– not only externally.
I spent great swaths of time as a kid bored— but I learned to engage in the world independently during those times, and as an adult, I never find a moment of life dull or unfulfilling as a result.
Your point that teacher- or team-created curricula are the most engaging is spot on. I totally agree. Lockstep curriculum will create nothing but dullness and drilling, and leave little space for teachers to scaffold that excitement and love of learning by sharing their own.
To the person who commented below. Pre-K kids do not need to learn to do boring work. As a matter of fact, however, pre-K kids delight in all kinds of repetition.
I taught for 8 years in a school surrounded by the projects, trailer parks, and run down section 8 apartments. I had a very unpopular belief (unpopular with my principal) about what it took to be an effective teacher in that area. I said the kids need to be entertained in order to learn. What I meant by that is that if they can’t connect with the topic or the topic isn’t very interesting to them, then they will tune out and stop trying. When they find the lesson entertaining then they pay attention and give their best effort. Stock curriculum provided by the district is boring to them and they can’t relate. It is so simple but very true.
John and Laura, I disagree. My Pre-K son does need to learn to be still and patient at appropriate times, and how to entertain himself without structured activities, and to self-spark his curiosity.
Small doses of boredom are indeed healthy, even for that age. As I sit and type this in a home with no television, my Pre-K (K in Sept) has been walking around the house, Practicing his reading and writing, and is now doing a star wars journal with his brother with an open book in front of them.
All that from letting him be bored for a few minutes until he found his own activity.
I think that Laura is sharing an idea shared by many teachers– and it can a counterproductive idea if overdone. Being entertaining is a tool in our kit, but sometimes it’s ok to leave that tool in the box.
I’m glad to have done my Master’s at CUNY/QC, I had a good experience there! Well said, Professor Shor.
A real, supportive, diversified, in-depth, and locally grounded educational experience for all. That is indeed the picture of equality of opportunity.
I feel field trips are especially critical for low income kids, giving them a chance to see the world outside of school.
Low income kids tend to be very restricted to their own neighborhood. Even in California, low income kids in LA may not have been to the nearby beaches or forest areas. Getting them out to natural settings, to museums, to Living History, to science camp is exactly the kind of activity that upper income parents want for their kids. I think all kids benefit, especially kids whose parents cannot get them there due to financial or time constraints.
If you want to expand horizons about the kind of work they might do, they need to meet people who do those things. They need to meet people with STEM careers if you want them to do STEM. They need to visit colleges – starting in Jr. High – so that they start thinking about the path they’ll take through school if they want to attend those places.
And we need to watch the kids after they leave 12th grade. Say we get them into college and they flame out the first term. That’s a failure. We need to know if that’s a failure of financial support, emotional support, or academic support, and figure out how to give the kids the tools they need to finish the path they start.
Check out what this program does for HS seniors.
http://www.wiseservices.org
Reblogged this on elketeaches and commented:
An excellent quote by Ira Shor via Diane Ravitch’s blog page. I agree! Individual students, their personal and community experiences must be considered when teaching. I also like that he included “trips to historic sites” etc…..this is important for children to gain a wider perspective.
Sadly, while impoverished urban kids should have the best learning conditions, the opposite is true. In Wisconsin where I currently reside Milwaukee has the largest class sizes in the state. In Brooklyn NY, where I taught high school, we routinely started the school year with class sizes over forty. We subject kids who require the most individualized attention to the most cattle like environment.
Reblogged this on Teacher as Transformer and commented:
ElkeTeaches brought this to my attention and I thought I would share. Public education needs to become public. What this means will require a grand conversation led by courageous people and eloquent questions. It is of concern when you hear that public schools in Michigan are sold to private interests or when Canadian politicians send their children to elite private schools. What are public schools not good enough? If not, what will you do to change that? Fortunately, we do have leaders, not manages, bureaucrats, technocrats, and autocrats, but real leaders who are finding their voices.
Thank you for addressing this issue on your blog. I recently participated in (and subsequently dropped out of) the teachNOLA teacher training program in New Orleans. TeachNOLA is organized by TNTP Academy. The vast majority of their curriculum for pre-service teachers focuses not on how to deliver high quality lessons, but on classroom management techniques. The suggestion here, of course, is that our goal for low-income students should be order and compliance as opposed to the development of higher-order thinking skills. When teachNOLA sent us out to teach summer school to some of New Orleans’ neediest children, we were armed not with high quality instructional content (which we were told to garner from the internet), but with 17 techniques from Doug Lemov’s book Teach Like a Champion. It was appalling to me and insulting to the children we were supposed to be serving. I have no doubt that, had we been preparing to work with middle class children, the focus of our training would have been on delivery of instructional content and strategies for supporting the development of critical thinking. The fact that TNTP Academy focuses overwhelmingly on classroom management techniques says a lot about how they perceive the students they serve.
My experience as a teacher in Dutch language & literature at a middle-sized ‘multicultural’ school in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is that children between 12 and 18 from, say, ‘challenging backgrounds’ LOVE to widen their horizons, LOVE to be taken seriously and treated with due respect, and LOVE to see themselves challenged and making progress. It is what makes them tick, and what makes me tick.
I am a senior educational researcher at the University of Amsterdam and a teacher educator for grades K7-K12 with 20+ years experience, and have decided from early on to spend 33% of my tenure on teaching in high school. It is the part of my work (and my identity) of which I am the most proud and that is the most rewarding, in spite of the tragic – and vexing – lack of ‘status’ of teachers in society today.
‘Boot camp’, ‘no excuses’ or ‘zero tolerance’ pedagogies are disrespectful of any kind of students, and impede any kind of meaningful education. Students do have excuses. Students make mistakes, like my own children make mistakes. Their rightful ‘excuse’ is that they are children, not grown-ups, and have a natural right to make mistakes & the possibility to repair them. They have a natural right to doubt, to discover, to try their luck, to change their minds, to find and test the boundaries of what they can do and of what they are allowed to do. These principles are exactly the same for white ‘Dutch elite’ children (I have taught them for years) as for black ‘urban immigrant’ children. All of them know it when they are given the necessary space, when they are being treated fairly or not, when some adults get in their way, or when other adults inspire them to pave their own way.
Poverty in The Netherlands is not as bad as it is in the US (I hope that remark is taken as a concern, not as a sign of arrogance). Dutch children from ‘challenging backgrounds’ are not hungry, they have medical & dental care, and have free access to a range of public services such as libraries, the Internet, playgrounds & sports, To make sure all of our kids are provided with these necessities is considered a matter of civilization – although some right-wing politicians need to be reminded of that principle from time to time.
But providing kids with the basic necessities does not equate proper education. I come from a working class background myself (my parents only visited primary school) and am fully aware of what schools may offer some kids in terms of widening horizons, strengthening self-assurance, learning to deal with very different people, and building up experience with things in society that you don’t hear about at home. That is an important part of what schools are for. That is, IF we want our schools to provide for this.
If we only want our schools to provide ‘urban kids’ or ‘kids of various colors’ with high test scores or tickets to Oxbridge, then we make it too easy on ourselves – and hard on our kids. Because then we fail to provide them with what they really need, and want. This is: a meaningful education that includes both books, experience, and thoughts. Furthermore, it includes a respect for knowledge and for our ability to acquire it; but also for questions, doubts and possibilities. And finally a good education includes a getting-to-know-yourself, along with the self-assurance that a part of this world lies in wait for you to conquer.
We owe this to our kids. Both to our own kids, and to the kids in our classrooms, both native & immigrant, who will make up tomorrow’s society. We owe this to the next generation, who will succeed our own in only a couple of Thanksgivings. Yes, we pass on a society that includes ‘inequality, class prejudice, and racism’. But at school, it is always a fresh start. At school mistakes are noticed, but forgiven – like at home. School helps you to not only correct & surpass your own mistakes, but should prepare you to correct & surpass the mistakes of a previous generation. We can only fight inequality by treating all students equal. We can only fight prejudice by listening to children instead of judging them. We can only fight racism and other forms of bigotry if we put this ugly human trait out in the open and learn to look it into its ugly eye.
So let us care for all of our children, from any kind of background, and give them what we owe them: the joy of being educated, a fair chance and equal opportunity, and a well-aimed jump into tomorrow’s society. What this has to do with a ‘low-order curriculum’ is beyond me.
hminkema, I would love to reblog your comment or at least share a snippet with your permission. This is solid stuff.
Hi Tony, reblog and cite all you want. Learning = sharing = learning = sharing etc. Cheers from a cloudy Amsterdam!
hminkema,
Your post is a pleasure to read and very thought provoking and I have sent it to all my peers. I appreciate your thoughts and the insightful way you view teaching. We need this chance to share here, in our communities and around the world so public education in all countries can grow and meet the needs of our students. Diane has created this positive forum with this site! The exchange of experiences and information and concerns will help us all grow. I hope you will post and share your thoughts often.
Hello ‘Confused’, one year ago a colleague of mine referred me to Diane and her many, many contributions on Twitter. This made me discover the ongoing, fiery debate in the US about public education. What’s more, it made me discover how similar – and worrisome – the political developments in public education are among many western countries.
Finnish educational director Pasi Sahlberg widened that scope, and provided us with a concept and a word that designates what is going on in your country and mine: GERM (an abbreviation of the “Global Educational Reform Movement”). Of course there is the wider context of privatization of public affairs, the corporate model being forced upon public services based on the ideology that ‘greed is good’ and that some people’s greed will lead to other people’s prosperity.
After imposing the ‘corporate model’ on Dutch public schools, we have witnessed (at least those who open their eyes witness) a 120% increase in public spending on education in only 13 years. Yet class size did not diminish, teachers’, teaching facilities did not improve (with the exception of Win95 computers), teachers’ wages did not increase, and student performance (as measured by PISA and TIMMS) did not improve (on the contrary). Like in the US, teachers make long hours (the longest of the EU) and are being forced into the ‘standardized testing’ hell-hole. Teaching is among the least popular of career choices – while as you & I know teaching *could* be a total professional and personal fulfilment. It is only because of the financial crisis that schools draw applicants for teachers’ jobs that would otherwise be vacant.
Where do all these billions go? Not to education in the narrow sense: something to do with students, teachers, and classrooms. A vast army of non-teaching staff, managers, board members, directors, coordinators, consultants, project managers, lobbyists, PR-people, inspectors, interims, assessors, test developers etc. has gotten hold of the money and the power to keep and spend it.
They’re only people so I can’t blame them personally for seizing the opportunity. Money and power are, and will remain, tempting forever. We have democratically provided them with it, and now I say we should democratically take it back because we’re not happy with the results and the way education is developing. But will we succeed in re-taknig control of public education, or have we crossed a point of no return? Only time will tell.
I realize that this is not in line with the more positive message I wrote last night. Sorry for that. But this is how it works in social media: we share our optimism, and double it – and we share our concern, and thus cut it in half.
Cheers from Amsterdam on the verge of a long summer’s holiday!
“Teaching is among the least popular of career choices – while as you & I know teaching *could* be a total professional and personal fulfilment. It is only because of the financial crisis that schools draw applicants for teachers’ jobs that would otherwise be vacant.”
Yes, when the economy improves, there will be far fewer teachers.
What then? Have the reformers figured out that with the retirement of baby boomers looming, and the scapegoating of teachers, not to mention evaluations, paperwork, and working conditions in general, teaching jobs will not be attractive. There will be shortages–then what?
I can tell you for a fact what will happen then. When schools ‘suffer’ from a shortage, they will hire unqualified ‘teachers’ to fill up the vacancies. They will keep silent about that, and since the government is their best accomplice, they will keep silent about it too.
In The Netherlands there is a big shortage of qualified teachers, for about 15 years. Even though we have lowered the qualification norms (you can be a teacher here if you can’t divide 4 by 0,5, or if you believe that the Second World War was some fight between Germans and Americans), still one out of every three secondary teachers is unqualified. Parents don’t know this, pupils don’t know this. It is a fact admitted by the Education Department, but they don’t do anything about it. Their main concern is that ‘someone’ is teaching, whoever it is, and whatever their capability. In short, teaching as a job is sold out by employers and the government.
Some context: public education in The Netherlands consist of 99% charter schools and 1% private schools. All schools get an equal sum of money for every student. School boards receive a lumpsum every year; a big bag of money that they can spend any way they like, as long as students make ‘sufficient’ progress. ‘Sufficient’ is not an absolute norm but a relative one: school boards must make sure that their schools don’t get in the bottom 10%. When a school gets in the bottom 10%, directors usually leave the school and get better paid positions at other schools. No one is accountable exept for the ‘interim manager’ who receives a high fee for getting the school on track and in the ‘upper’ 90%.
The economic prosperity 1990-2008 has led to a huge expansion of management, consultancy and bureaucracy in education. In contrast, the economic adversity 2008-present has led to increasing class size, canceling of educational programs for deprived children, more teaching hours per teacher, and teachers’ wages being frozen for four years.
It seems like employers don’t care that there is a huge shortage of qualified employees. I can’t think of any other profession with such a phenomenon. Just imagine a shortage of medical doctors, lawyers, policemen etc. – and employers silently hiring tens of thousands unqualified people to fill up the vacancies!
hminkema, I fear you are right! I think it will take a national strike to get the media involved, but teachers are not all in unions, so many won’t fight for their rights.
This is something that has been bothering me for a long time so it will be long. Classes for gifted students, high end private schools and special education all offer experiential learning.
Gifted kids go on trips to museums, concerts, festivals and other enriching places. They interview community and religious leaders and do project based learning. They get the most highly trained teachers, small classes and a variety of materials.
So do private school students. There is a private school in Atlanta, Paidea, which was started by hippies where the students choose when and how they study particular concepts. Their graduation is the presentation of a major project. This school was started because the hippie parents thought the public schools were too structured and it has become one of the elite privates!
In special education we have what is called community based learning where kids use public transportation, when available, work on jobsites, plan meals, buy groceries and cook and learn in a hands on way. We had a teacher in Atlanta who took moderately retarded primary level kids on trips every month. (She got grants and sponsors to pay for them. Being a preacher she had plenty of contacts.) The classrooms are busy.
But look at what is offered for disadvantaged kids. It is just the opposite. Uniforms, extreme structure, punishment, military-like rules. Non-teachers. Field trips are considered an interruption of learning and are placed after the standardized tests are completed when they do little good because they cannot be connected to learning. These school actually brag about their highly structured classrooms. Real learning is what takes place in the summer when they go to day camp and Vacation Bible School, yet they complain about them losing learning over the summer. You do not lose learning that you have mastered. I learned this a long time ago teaching special ed. You only lose concepts that are still at the acquisition level.
If creative, freedom affirming, independent, individualized educational practices are considered best for the very bright and the very slow, why not for the run-of-the-mill and disadvantaged students? It is a myth that disadvantaged students are out of control. Black children, in particular, sit through 2 hour church services every Sunday by the time they are 5 years old, sometimes by age 3. And they participate! They have choirs that perform and, well you should see the little bell choir from a church in Baton Rouge. The leader had colored cards that she flipped cueing which bell should be ringing. These were elementary children. All eyes were on the leader and they did a beautiful job in an unfamiliar environment, not their home church. Disadvantaged children are not undisciplined unless they don’t know what the expectations are. If nothing else, they are over-disciplined because they live in small, crowded apartments without enough space to go around and are often not allowed outside. Unless mama is a drunk or on drugs they DO know how to behave! And if she doesn’t do right, Grandma often comes to the rescue.
What disadvantaged children don’t have is a variety of positive life experiences that teach them that there is life beyond the ‘hood, and that there are people different from them, good and bad. This is something that needs to change. Kids came to a rural school where I worked in the 1970s never having seen a flush toilet. Kids came from a housing project in Atlanta never having been to the grocery store in the 1990s because the way the bus ran it took two buses and a train to get there. So mama went while they were at school or bought from the Rolling Store. 4th graders in New Orleans had never seen a hill! Even though it was only 2 miles away, some had never seen the Mississippi River or the Gulf of Mexico which might have been 10! Some of these children, especially the ones in Atlanta, had never seen a white person up close and just LOVED to play with their hair.
Disadvantaged kids need choice and control over their learning, within limits of course. Even though the kids at Paidea had choices they could not sit all day and do nothing. They need a variety of experiences. I would choose more field trips over the latest technology. I would like to see every child in a school go on one trip per month, minimum. They don’t need excessive structure. If they are taught appropriate behavior and how to learn when they are little and still think the teacher is a god, they are more likely to be strong learners and good decision makers when they hit those horrible middle school years.
If it works for special education it will work even better for typical learners because they learn faster. If it works for gifted kids, it will work for regular kids too even if it comes later or is not as cognitively advanced. Our disadvantaged kids need schools that are learner centered, nurturing, interesting, challenging, cooperative and safe. They need a school community that looks after more than their educational needs when necessary. They need structure but not the prison like environment they often get now where the administration is afraid to have an assembly and when they do, the teachers are expected to patrol the aisles like prison guards. They need teachers who care about them as individuals and who are determined that they will have a wonderful, life altering learning experience in school, take that home and make their family life better and grow up to be functional adults.
twinkie1cat: You have many valid points on students of poverty. I am taking a class right now and you sound like you are familiar with Ruby Payne’s book “A framework for understanding poverty” I too believe that any activitiy that is good enough for gifted students should also be offered to students of poverty! These students have different issues that control how they learn, but should not be offered different things just because of their socio-economic status. These students need teachers and administrators that are aware of the unique challenges these students bring to the classroom…. they also need teachers who care to give them the best education possible.
Thanks for posting!
Having taught in a Title I high school in the South Bronx, a poor high school (for Westchester County, NY), and one of the most affluent public high schools in the country, I have seen students of all sorts.
The bottom line is to treat an adolescent like an adolescent regardless of where they live. Be honest, fair, and as my buddy from Occupy DOEDC, Ira Shor says above, “care about them as individuals”, provide them with a “wonderful, life altering learning experience in school”, with structure. Be tough, but fair.
Give all kids high expectations and help them get there. Give them challenging work, as opposed to the overused word, rigorous. Put them in positions where they learn how to use information to solve problems, not just regurgitate it for a test, and respect each and every one for who they are as an individual.
Teaching thematically is a wonderful way to teach children in poverty. I’ve worked with ELL students for much of my career. I’ve worked with students in poverty all of my career. I started teaching my ELL students thematically. I found that all of my students benefitted from this approach. It is important to help students make learning connections. Vocabulary is key when teaching thematically. This helps both my ELL students and my students in poverty. Children from homes in the lower socio-economic level do not receive the same level of communication with parents and have less academic vocabulary and background knowledge than other students. Using their background knowledge and building upon it by making connections is one effective way to reach students in poverty.
I agree that teaching thematically is a fabulous way to teach children in poverty. I have a degree in Child Development, we were instructed to teach our early childhood students with thematic units. I have been teaching either 1st grade or Kindergarten for the past twenty years. My entire teaching career has been with Detroit Public Schools. I have had much success with a thematic, center based (small group) approach whenever it has been possible. I am also taking a class right now, and have just finished reading Ruby Payne’s book “A Framework for Understanding Poverty.” I also believe that dedicated teachers who strive to meet the challenges students living in poverty bring with them, can make a tremendous difference in these individuals lives. It is a challenging job, but the rewards no matter how small at times continue to give us the perseverance to provide the high quality education these unique students deserve.
I can teach my subject or I can teach students. I agree that children should be challenged and have high expectations. There needs to be a framework on which to build upon for understanding and comprehension. Once a teacher knows a students interest, deeper understanding and learning will take place. Teachers also need to have contact with each student’s family. Ruby Payne’s book “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” exemplifies how we can better understand poverty and strive to help every student achieve and learn to his or her fullest potential.