These comments were posted by a kindergarten teacher in response to a post about the Common Core English language arts standards:
I teach kindergarden. The five-year olds have an incredibly tight schedule to keep in our county: an hour of math, hour of science, 2 hours of language arts, half hour of social studies. We kindergarten teachers have had to sneak in rest time and social centers (such as puppets, blocks, housekeeping, playdough) which are so critical to their development.
My class has 13 out of 16 ELL students (Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Arabic & a dialect from India are all represented). Ten of them are free or reduced lunch (aka low socio economics). Two of them never went to preschool at all, and two are on the spectrum, one severely so. All of them have to read by the end of the year. All of them have been required to participate in two close reading activities which required writing sentences.
Both of my formal observations were done during the first 60 days of school. I was criticized because my students don’t do “turn & talk” correctly (they didn’t respond to their peer by telling them why they either agree with or disagree with them). I was evaluated as “lacking in pedagogy” because I asked them to give me facts from a kindergarten level book on stars and they repeatedly tried to tell me what they knew/thought. I was told I require action in pedagogy because the book I used to sing and act out verbs also included several words (such as jump, paint, swing, march, & slide) that were also nouns and because my students could not do charades without my assistance (which I gladly gave but caused that part of the lesson to go on too long). Apparently, my pedagogy went mysteriously missing over the summer, as I’ve never been criticized for that in any of my previous 20 years of teaching experience.
They have been forced to sit through the two close readings that go on for three days each and require them to write notes and then sentences to explain what they learned. My poor babies turned in papers with sentences made of fragments from our fact chart we had made, but they hung their heads because they couldn’t read the sentences they’d managed to write. I hugged them, told them they were great, and gave them chocolate. Then I reported that only 4 of my students passed….another poor reflection on my teaching.
If this is happening in kindergarten, I can only imagine what is happening in later grades. My school is set in a high socio-economic neighborhood and has been an A school for 12 years now; I shudder to think how this affects the less fortunate schools!
This comment came from another kindergarten teacher, responding to the post about the treatment of students with special needs:
I am a kindergarten teacher, stressed to the nth degree from having to push 5 year olds in ways that make my blood boil from the wrongness of it. It is immoral to ask 5 year olds to write facts from a story they are listening to and to write sentences when they are only learning to read & write!!
For trying to show that this is too difficult for my students during observations, I have been given far lower scores that I’ve ever received in 20 years of teaching.
Then there is the matter of my own sweet son. He is 12 years old, has ADHD and feels like a failure. His teachers tell me that his thinking in math and science amaze them; that he comes up with solutions and ideas that they have never thought of….yet he is failing because he forgets to hand in homework or write his name on papers, which is clearly the executive functioning skills which he lacks. They tell me he is immature and needs to repeat the grade, yet stay in gifted because he is so obviously bright….how can these coincide? He is already stressed because his failing grades and bullying on the bus, but now they want to retain him????
And even when this clearly caring professional stands up in anguish to inform us that “The emperor has no clothes”, the parade continues onward, apparently unaffected. How tragic and sad.
The proof of the pudding is in the tasting… as they say.
Well, here’s some pudding to taste. It’s an official Common Core training video for Kinder teachers: (if there’s any doubt, there’s a Common Core logo near the lower right corner)
This creeped me out. How about you?
The clapping and response reminds me of dog obedience training, but perhaps I’m overstating it. Would NY Ed. Commissioner John King, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan be okay with their own kids being taught…. er excuse me… “trained this way?”
Here’s some COMMENTS from another thread on this video:
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Linda
December 22, 2013 at 9:06 am
These seal training techniques happen nationwide at many charter chains. When you can’t teach/inspire, you control. This is not limited to NY.
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Bill Duncan:
Go to the standards and see if you see the requirement for this kind of deadening scripted teaching strategy. I’ll save you the trouble: you won’t find it.
Many other states have not found this necessary. And, as someone else pointed out, this is a strategy used in many charter schools much before CCSS.
A state like NY is reduced to this kind of scripting when it is running the good teachers out with punitive testing and privatization and replacing them with TFA and other inexperienced teachers who don’t know any better.
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Linda Johnson
December 22, 2013 at 11:22 am
Both the children and the teacher look so bored.
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Linda
December 22, 2013 at 11:30 am
I was waiting for her to start tossing goldfish in the air, so they could catch them in their mouths like the seals at Seaworld. Sad and joyless.
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I asked a young NY mom the other day whether her four year-old’s private school – known for its commitment to play, discovery and development of “the whole child” – would consider this sample Kindergarten math standard developmentally appropriate:
“Count to 100 by ones and by tens.”
She didn’t know for sure but emailed me a couple of days later, saying,
“Jason [a pseudonym] and his classmates decided yesterday to measure the length of their classroom. They are using small colored cubes like the ones we have at home, and they laid out several hundred of them in a line across the floor. Their job today is counting them.
“So take a guess what sign showed up on the wall this morning to facilitate the counting – a chart with numbers from 1 to 50 and then numbers by 10s to 100 after that…”
To me, comparing this little vignette to that video or to the two Kindergarten teacher stories in this post illustrates the range of choices Kindergarten – and, in this case, preK – teachers have. We, as parents and grandparents, don’t need to assume that learning has to be done as spirit-killing drill rather than play.
Replying to Mr. Duncan: Yes there are more imaginative and innovative ways to teach provided class sizes are not too big. So the question is – Why is CC recommending this?!
CC is not recommending this. NYS is making a big mistake. Nothing to do with CC.
BILL DUNCAN:
“CC is not recommending this. NYS is making a big mistake. Nothing to do with CC.”
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Really Bill?
Well then why and how did that aqua-gray-white “COMMON CORE” logo end up near the lower right corner of the video?
Was it a mix-up at the post-production house where the video had its finishing done?
Perhaps on the same day, they were “posting” actual “Common Core” videos in the same editing bay, and the editor or post-production tech forgot to remove this pre-set “COMMON CORE” graphic after the Common Core folks had finished up and left? Then the non-Common Core producers of this video here never caught the graphic before the video was distributed, and it eventually ended up on YouTube?
If so, THEN FIRE THAT POST-PRODUCTION TECH FORTHWITH!!!!
If not that, what?
The Common Core logo doesn’t mean a thing, Jack. There is no “Common Core” organization to create or certify any video like this. Education policy, including this video, is under state control, NY in this case. NY has adopted CCSS and gets to use the logo and apply it to its own misguided policies.
But if you look around, you’ll see that this kind of bad teaching predates CCSS and, now, most states have not adopted New York’s stunted concept of teaching.
If there is “No Common Core organization,” then why on earth are we having to jump through all of these awful requirements? Sure, bad teaching does predate CCSS, but now it’s beginning to be required. Sure, every state has different requirements, but they seem to be pretty universally awful. Not to mention, if the states aren’t all requiring the same things, then why have CCSS in the first place? These are all rhetorical questions, by the way, since the answer to pretty much all of these is money.
Their are many ways to solve that makes math a challenge to teach. But more importantly so many ways the viewer works with numbers cognitively. With that said, teachers bring bias, untentionally, as to how they are comfortable in ways to teach it. So what reformers do is to simplify how we teach it–scripit it of course.
Before CC, we had several math curriculum thrown at us. All are good in some ways and not in others. So why then would a scripted, sprialed curriculum be the golden ticket?
The stakes are higher now. If students don’t master each grades’ curriculum, they are doomed for the next grade. You think reformers care? Their solution is VAM. I’m sorry but we don’t work on a production line adding on parts to make a whole. That’s too illogical when you try to mass produce brains to fit in one mold.
Jon,
You hit on something with the words “working on a production line” designed to “mass produce brains”… that’s what this seems to be about… to turn the nuanced, complex, creative process of teaching—in which teachers have developed their own idiosyncratic, creative and entertaining methods—and which requires extensive training in child development, child psychology as well as an apprenticeship period with a veteran teacher before getting your own class….
… taking all of that and turning into something on a par with working the fry machine at a fast food joint…. easy-to-read/follow scripts to regurgitate, with idiotic claps and hand gestures designed to elicit precise responses from the commodities—er children—being molded.
Look at that woman in the video…. you don’t need a M.A. in Ed, or a B.A., or even an Associates Degree from a Community College to blather and gesticulate like her… no… anyone can go through those motions,.. .. and follow the inane script.
God, she sounds so freaking bored and uncaring!!! The kids parrotting back her nonsense sound equally bored.
This whole Common Core and privatization is about de-professionalizing teaching… this is about reducing children to commodities in a Brave New Privatized Ed. World… commodities that are valued by:
1) how cheaply they can be processed… er, excuse me… educated (no Special Ed, Second Language Learners, or behavior problem kids allowed… no homeless, no foster care, either… etc.)… and that means cramming as many kids into a class as possible (to Hell with low class sizes)… or sticking them in a cubicle with a computer and a headset;
AND
2) the greatest profits/outputs that they can achieve… by that, they mean scores on standardized tests…. so test prep them non-stop the way a cheating athlete gobbles steroids to increase his performance…. like steroids, you may get dubious, but measurable results, but are doing long-term damage in the process.
Somebody stop them!!!! Stop them all before they destroy our country and our democracy!!!!
I teach Kindergarten. Empower yourselves and simply don’t abide by these mandates. Defend, justify yourself. Do your research and be your own advocate.
I wish it were that easy, Shaun. Everyone tries their “personal best” to empower & be their own advocate, but if teachers choose NOT to follow mandates, their jobs are on the line. THIS is the problem. Those evaluating/judging DO NOT GET IT, nor do they care.
I agree–you don’t have to do what a bully says! But, you must be willing to fight–all the way to the Supreme Court (if necessary).
Want to learn more about my perspectives (on a variety of reform issues/teacher training)? Visit/follow my blog: http://kennethfetterman.wordpress.com
Kenneth: Read an article on your blog by a HS student “Standardizing Minds”. Now that was very impressive. She obviously has been taught to analyze, synthesize, question, and end with an amazing insightful response. It’s what we hope our young kids can do to have perspective in their lives and articulate their beliefs and values, so that they can make their voices heard. She should be encourage to be a public speaker against CCSS.
Shaun, my comments (under Monique) were intended for you!
Defend yourself–I might add that many private pre-school programs would hire Monique “if” she was terminated. Also, “she” could start a pre-school program in “her garage” — because K is not mandated in …
Sure, at which point she might lose her pension, her ability to fund her retirement, decent medical benefits, etc. It’s just not that simple.
Common Core is trying to apply skills while learning the skills. Imagine when these kinders finally get to high school without the strong foundations of reading, writing, and math skills. But, I can’t understand why more teachers are not complaining. In my district virtually every teacher appears on board with CC (at least no one is speaking out). When I speak out at teacher conferences, board meetings, or school meetings I am made to feel like a crazy loon on the far right, which I’m sure keeps others from speaking out.
As I read the last sentence of your comment, I was struck by your observation and my reaction to it. It made me think of something that I have not seen much reference to in all of these CC and CCSS discussions and that is of “crazy making”.
While usually used in reference to emotionally abusive personal relationships, I see a dangerous parallel in what is happening to those who would question or otherwise speak out either in warning of or against various aspects of the implementation of the various components of CCSS.
From: http://voices.yahoo.com/crazy-making-form-emotional-7078566.html?cat=72
“Are you in a relationship where you are made to feel like you need to doubt yourself, doubt your sense of what is real or that your every thought and behavior is questioned? Do you feel like you may be “going crazy?” If so, you may be in an emotionally abusive relationship.
According to the University of Missouri Extension service, the term “crazy making” is used to describe a process in which a victim of abuse questions their sense of what is real and what isn’t. People who constantly have their perceptions denied by an abusive partner can tend to lose this ability to see what is real, thus questioning whether their own mental health is to blame and not the emotional abuse that is actually occurring.
Crazy making can also be called psychological abuse. This abuse is about trying to make you look bad, discredit you and silence you; all while making the actual abuser appear to be calm and cool to the outside world. The following are some signs that psychological abuse may be occurring
Except in the current situation, that partner, the abuser, is the corporate reform movement.
That is exactly it! We are made to question our own minds and our opinions are made to seem outrageous and irrelevant. All the more distressing since it’s the opposite of what should be expected in educational discourse. All opinions are important and valid.
GE, great connection you made! I see a lot of teachers second-guessing themselves these days. The school environments are toxic with fear, distrust, and impatience. It will take a while to reform the reforms, but it’s going to take even longer to repair the trust and camaraderie, if they even can be.
THE BEST DESCRIPTION I’VE READ OF WHAT THIS IS DOING TO OUR SCHOOLS, OUR STUDENTS, AND US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LarryWirth,
“All opinions are important and valid.”
Interesting, very interesting (not sure whether in a good or bad sense).
Unfortunately many people consider their opinions to be facts.
Great post! The irony is that the whole reform movement was supposedly a child of the far Right. How is it that they are their own boogeyman? While its being pushed by Obama, Duncan, et al., no less. We’re getting played. This is not a Left/Right thing.
As for teachers not complaining, they do at my school, but only to each other. No one wants to make waves (or lose their job) over something they think will be gone in 5 years anyway (the next big thing syndrome). Everyone suffers in isolation, more or less. This is where our unions have failed us. To be fair, they are trying to fend off attacks against their existence and are basically in PR mode. Until we get that sorted out, it’s basically up to the parents to make the main stand.
As it is, the only reason we’re even in the battle is because of Dr. Ravitch. I don’t think we can overestimate her importance.
It’s always good to have theory and ideas to back up what you are doing, not just loving these babies. Have valid reason why you are doing what you are doing, so if you get written up you have a discourse. Create periods of enjoyment for kids and label the activities “critical thinking skills”. “Shared reading” is always fun. Two can play this game. It’s always good to have work posted to show students abilities. I really suspect teachers who have nothing on their walls and hide behind posters of nonsense.
“I really suspect teachers who have nothing on their walls and hide behind posters of nonsense.”
I guess you would suspect me then as I don’t have student work up on the walls, they are filled with realia, maps and posters in Spanish.
I never did like seeing my “artwork” or handwriting sheets up on the walls in grade school as it was quite apparent to me that I couldn’t color within the lines, my drawings were ugly and my penmanship was always in need of improvement, still is by the way-I just call it the Swacker font now. I knew it, but I didn’t appreciate that everyone else could see it.
I totally agree with GE2L2R, Shaun Johnson and Momoffive – it’s easy to see how fear for your job can outweigh the bravery to resist. The above examples of “lacking in pedagogy” and “lowest scores in 20 years” put teachers’ backs to the wall and on the defense. Instead of respecting our opinions, like in Momoffive’s case, we are isolated and made to question our own thinking. The money and power behind the CCSS implementation will roll over all of us unless we resist with numbers – solidarity is our only weapon. We can’t give up, and we have to continue to educate our peers. I think teachers tend to believe that anything that we are told to do MUST be in the best interest of the kids – why else would we be asked to do it?
Agree! Many teachers are sheeple and do what they are told is good for kids without investigating things on their own. And even if less than convinced of the benefits of the latest and greatest reforms, they don’t want to stand out from the crowd and be viewed as “that teacher”. You know, the one doesn’t buy in- the crazy one.
Then there are the ones who can think for themselves, and do some sleuthing about what is being foisted on them, but feel powerless to resist out of fear of losing their career. What is a teaching parent to do when income and insurance benefits are on the line?
Thankfully there are the folks who are spreading word on blogs like this, for doing so will eventually create a critical mass of teachers that moves the fight forward from the classroom to the building level, to central office, to the state level and beyond.
And once enough parents see their babies being harmed by corporate education run a mock, “It’s so on!”, as a high profile rabid pit bull on crack charter school principal named Steve Perry Tweeted after being shot down by his BOE in response to his request to run 2 Hartford CT schools for his own profit.
I don’t think it’s really fair to label “many” teachers as “sheeple.” We have responsibilities to our families and can’t just jump off the cliff, as some are suggesting. We’re all in different places, and a lot of teachers that I know are fighting CCSS in ways that they can, while still trying to maintain their own sanity and their responsibilities to their families. As teachers, we need to really support each other right now. Educate, but not name call. No one else in the country supports us, save Diane and one or two other outliers, so we have to support each other.
Here’s a great article about the Common Core. And the CCSS is indeed a runaway, ridiciculous machine. Follow the money. It’s all about money and control. Plus the theoretical basis for the DEFORMS are NOT researched baeed. It’s voodoo.
Excellent article, “Supporting Common Core Is Supporting the Entire Reform MACHINE by Paul Thomas. Please pass on.
http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/supporting-common-core-is-supporting-entire-reform-machine/
It’s not only the ELA standards that are inappropriate for kindergartners; the mathematics standards are also out of whack.
For example, http://ccssimath.blogspot.com/2012/04/decomposing-numbers-in-kindergarten.html
The mathematics standards have both substantive and “practical” components; one “practical” component being students should “[c]onstruct viable arguments and critique
the reasoning of others.” The oddest aspect of the “practical” components is that they do not evolve from K through Grade 12 commensurate with students’ cognitive skills; they are identical for kindergartners and for high school students. Thus kindergarten teachers seem to be required to make their kindergarten students justify, say, why counting one way is better than counting another way.
The earliest grades are for learning basic skills, both substantive and social; debate is not developmentally appropriate.
CCSS Standards are developmentally inappropriate for first graders as well.
And so on. Requiring a 7th grader to read several long passages, formulate an argument, and write a well-constructed argumentative essay in 60 a 60-minute setting, as my state is requiring (as one of SIX separate sections in a 250 minute test), is also inappropriate. And I could go on.
Again, professional educators are being unfairly evaluated by admins and others who wouldn’t know good teaching if it jumped up and bit them.
“At the height of the strike last month, the CNTE mobilized tens of thousands of teachers who protested and blocked roads across the country, even in many states where Section 22 didn’t previously have a presence. “Oaxaca is the train pulling the protests,” Mr. Vargas said.
In Mexico City, about 30,000 striking Oaxaca teachers and union colleagues from other states paralyzed the capital for days at a time, blocking access to the airport, stopping lawmakers from entering the Congress, laying siege to television broadcast studios and public buildings and turning the main square into a tent city.
The Oaxaca teachers have a history of violent protests and frequent strikes. In 2006, the teachers and leftist allies took over the colonial city of Oaxaca, the state capital, for five months, stopping authorities ranging from judges to police from working.
As Oaxaca teachers return to the classroom Monday, the CNTE is leaving a few thousand teachers in permanent bivouac camping on a Mexico City plaza to continue protests.
The CNTE is also drawing support from teachers affiliated with the 1.4-million strong National Syndicate of Educational Workers, or SNTE, of which the CNTE forms a dissident current. The SNTE’s leadership supports the educational reforms, but many of its rank-and-file members don’t.
The Oaxaca teachers have refused to accept the law, which includes performance-based evaluations and a census of teachers to eliminate payments by the Ministry of Education to thousands of non teaching union members.”
American teachers, follow the lead of our Mexican brothers and sisters in Mexico.
The only way to take bake our schools and democracy is to seize it, by any means necessary!
Yes. I like bold and courageous. We used to march in mass groups in the 70s. What happened? Darn, it’s how we communicate passively with technology. We need to get out there folks.
I must apologize, Dr, Ravitch, because both of the responses you quoted were from me. I didn’t realize I had responded using different names (my husband helped me sign in on the first one). I also thank you so much for supporting me and recognizing that there really is a problem, because, as GE2L2R posted, I have begun questioning myself and my teaching ability.
I was criticized because I hadn’t formally taught rhyming, and when I explained that they weren’t ready for it, that 80% of my class is ELL and don’t rhyme in their native language, I was told that it’s a county & CCSS expectation and that I needed to teach it…soon! What my administrator doesn’t accept is that I have talked about it to my students when there was an obvious rhyme in a story or when one of them or I had said something that rhymed. I thought I was scaffolding and preparing them for the lesson. When I did formally teach it 3 weeks ago (using a Kagan strategy and then rhyming games and the ‘dreadful’ worksheets that provide practice and give the opportunity for immediate feedback on their individual progress) all but 5 of my 16 students could rhyme. One of my students, a Spanish boy on the spectrum….is absolutely in love with rhyming, although he still only gets it 60% of the time, (which is probably due to my poor pedagogy) he is delighted when he discovers or comes up with a rhyme…often in the middle of science or math!
Better yet, ask me about the new fad, “Daily 5” and the hullabaloo that arose when I rejected it in my kindergarten class as inappropriate!!
In response to the “requires action in pedagogy”, I am going to pursue my masters in Early Literature to prove that I do know what I am talking about. It will put my family into deeper debt and will not effect my pay at all, but it will improve my teaching and give me back my respect for myself and as a professional.
On one last note, for Thanksgiving, our Superintendent wrote a wonderful happy note to all the teachers reminding us of all we have to be thankful for. I wrote her back a letter that it is hard to be thankful when the evaluation system she has put into place make so many of us go home in tears and question ourselves as teachers. I told her it’s difficult to be thankful when we worry about keeping our jobs in a career which we love. I told her it’s stressful that we spend so much of our own money in our classrooms that we have little left to pay bills and nothing left for our families. I told her to think on these things, because something stinks in Denmark. And I cc’d it to my teammates, thinking they’d be grateful that someone had spoken up. Now I’m a pariah. But on January 8th, 2 representatives from her office are coming to meet with me. When I invited my teammates to come, no one on my team wanted to be there and I was asked not to mention any of their names. I was also told to make a list of my complaints, research (which they would gladly supply) but not to give into any emotions or feelings. I ask you….why is passion against injustice wrong? Why is it so wrong to speak out for what you believe? Why is it wrong to say that something is developmentally inappropriate? I wonder what will happen to me for (again to quote GE2L2R) pointing out that the Emperor (in this case Empress who receives a lot of financial assistance from Bill Gates) has no clothing on. Hopefully, come June, I will still have my career that I still love. Regardless, I thank you for giving me back my self-respect!!!!
You do yourself proud! Hang tough.
JediTari/Tarilee: I humbly wish you the best in a difficult situation. Just remember that whatever happens, you will be able to look yourself in the mirror and not be ashamed of the person looking back.
“It is not living that matters, but living rightly.” [Socrates]
And you are following in a great American tradition:
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” [Frederick Douglass]
😎
I left education, level 5, Federal setting 4, e/bd in 2004 due to emotional and ethical questions about using locked quiet rooms to improve a learners educational acumen. And I see these teachers struggling the same way. We are not going to test or punish our way to better educational outcomes for the US.
Instead, I suggest educators familiarize themselves and employ literally everything from http://criticalthinking.org …thinking and reasoning well, now utilize Ethology – specifically Tinbergen’s four questions to the historical events and memes described by M. Foucault. http://www.egs.edu/library/michel-foucault
How, you may ask, does any of this apply to education? Hmmmm.
A comment I left earlier that fits this article about how we push hard at an earlier age.
When curriculum is spiraled throughout the grade levels, it means students must master the previous year or the house of cards collapses. Reformers are taking a huge gamble by assuming that this is achievable for all students. It gets nastier when we are dicatated by certain curriculum, time frame, and high stakes testing. And of course we are to blame for those students who are not proficient in meeting standards
My hope is that junior high and high school teachers are supporting elementary teachers when they see students “spiraling downward” though the grades and are performing 5 years behind when they get them. It will only get worse as those testaments above hold true everywhere.
Short video that Jack posted shows kindergartners sitting like mechanical robots and speaking like them too. Kids at that age need to explore, socialize, with several centers that open minds to see math in many ways. In that video, it demonstrates rote training with only one way to see math (teacher-centered). I’ll bet many of them cannot count 1-to-1 correspondence. Where is the scaffolding to build conceptual knowledge?
I’m a High School teacher and I get students in my classes who can not read or write. That stems from their education before that. You may be an exception but starting 12 years ago most of my students had teachers who did not teach them correctly. They pushed them through the system. Judging by the end result, the way it was done (….especially in inner city Abbott schools)….was incorrect.
So although I am sorry for your situation, as you seem to be a conscientious teacher; my advice is to change your methods. Constructive criticism and suggestions are way more effective than aimless pathetic complaints. Other professions have the same challenges and they deal with them- look how medicine has changed over 20 years, or what it means to be a librarian. Teaching is no different and we must adapt so our students can compete with a global workforce.
Explain “…12 years ago most of my students had teachers who did not teach them correctly.”
Seems to me that the only way that you want to see results your “correct” way is to collaborate with teachers in elementary and explain what you see as correctness. Sometimes we only see what’s in front of us and not all around us.
BTW-12 years ago is when NCLB began. You see how it only has gotten worse.
Did you know that junior high and HS teachers are suppose to teach reading and writing strategies and not just content. When I did my masters in reading curriculum and instruction 4 years ago, I was shocked that content area teachers assumed that students could write an essay. They still need exemplars.
You make the point that we all struggle with is that kids can’t read and write. There are many reasons for it. “Changing methods” will not solve what we are dealing with.
In HS you teach one subject. In elementary they teach multiple subjects. May be it’s time K-12 teachers switch roles, so that we have a better perspective on both sides.
Teaching reading is not straightforward. There are two parts: decoding and comprehension. Elementary schools tend to do a good job with the former, not with the latter. Why? Because most teachers still believe that reading comprehension is a skill that can be imparted with minilessons and practice. In fact reading comprehension is a function of general knowledge (which is inseparable from vocab knowledge). You “get” an article about cricket if you know something about cricket and you know most of the words in the article. So schools should be flooding kids’ minds with core knowledge about the world, but instead they’re wasting kids time teaching almost-worthless reading strategies.
Ponderosa:
There are more than 2 parts to teaching reading. The basics are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
I beg to different. In my experience they don’t give elementary teachers enough time to teach decoding (phonemic awareness and phonics) which makes comprehension difficult. It happened when the whole language approach was bestowed upon us.
Reading strategies are not worthless. Good readers use them, however, struggling readers need them to develop metacognition while reading. Word callers are an example of a fluent reader whom experience comprehension difficulties because they weren’t taught to monitor their reading.
Many of these reading strategies have been heavily research to help struggling readers. You might mean that they are not using them at the proper time is why you think they are worthless.
In the reverse, a student can comprehend without being a fluent reader, because of having prior knowledge and background knowledge which means high vocabulary, worldly experiences, and high verbal skills.
“So schools should be flooding kids’ minds with core knowledge about the world…”
You’d be amazed how little prior knowledge young children from low SES school come with. Many of these kids have little exposure to the world compared to fortunate kids who take family vacations. So we have to artificial create prior knowledge through youtube videos, picture books, etc., which we hope they make connections.
Conceptual knowledge of the world is very difficult as I alluded to how outside of school exposure creates a gap and a difference in the starting line. Kids are fortunate if their families have discussions about current events and how to see it from different perspectives.
So buiding background knowledge doesn’t end in elementary, especially for those who don’t come with prior knowledge.
Yes, kids get most of their prior knowledge from home. We’ll never close the achievement gap unless schools do what professional parents do: flood kids’ minds with didactic instruction about the world.
It seems to me that Calkins, Kinsella, Tovani and other proponents of teaching reading strategies have made a fundamental conceptual error. They noted that good readers used metacognition and concluded that poor readers must be taught metacognition. But they’ve mistaken correlation for causation. Metacognition does not cause good readers to be good readers. Prior knowledge causes good readers to be good readers. I am not aware of good studies that prove the value of teaching metacognitive strategies. I am aware of studies that show a mild benefit after several lessons, but zero additional benefit thereafter. It seems to me that as a profession we’ve taken a huge wrong turn. Until we recognize that teaching core knowledge is far more important than teaching strategies, we’ll continue to have very poor readers entering our high schools and colleges.
“Metacognition does not cause good readers to be good readers. Prior knowledge causes good readers to be good readers.”
Having prior knowledge helps readers make connections and understand their reading in a deeper way. However metacognition is a reader’s awareness of their own thinking. Good readers know when meaning is loss and use fix-up strategies (go back and read, look up a word, use words around the break down, apply background/prior knowledge to infer, etc.
Just because kids have prior knowledge doesn’t mean they know how to apply it to their reading. They have to be taught to use what they know so that text makes sense. These are called reading strategies.
“…teaching core knowledge is far more important than teaching strategies, we’ll continue to have very poor readers entering our high schools and colleges.”
In order to have core knowledge, it is important to plan before, during, and after reading activities. Before reading you introduce vocabulary, you might show a video, look at text features, etc. During reading you may have to stop to have a discussion and ensure your kids “got it”. After reading, you synthesize the information. These are reading strategies you teach kids to be better readers and comprehend content areas. There is no way around to teach “core knowledge” (I assume you mean content areas) without uses reading strategies.
Jon, you restate the Tovani gospel well; I’m just very skeptical of it. I am a good reader, yet I was never taught metacognitive strategies and I’m not at all certain that they’re key to my ability to comprehend most of what I read. I suspect I “get it” because I know a lot. I suspect Cris Tovani didn’t “get it” because she didn’t know a lot. How do I know a lot? My parents were professionals with big vocabularies who told me a lot of stuff and exposed me to a lot of enriching things. This gave me the knowledge base to start reading on my own, and from then on reading became a big source of new knowledge. One needs to have prior knowledge of 90% of the words in a given text to “get it”. Strategies won’t help you much if you only know 50%. There was study done where groups of “good” readers and “bad” readers read an article on baseball and were tested afterwards. The “bad” readers who happened to be baseball players did better than the “good” readers who didn’t know much about baseball. Isn’t this pretty strong evidence that prior knowledge is what counts most in reading comprehension? Schools ought to make transmission of knowledge their central mission.
Unlike speaking, reading needs to be taught. Toddlers cannot teach themselves to read. Your parents taught you how to read and without knowing, because you were too young, they did teach you metacognitive strategies. Or someone did. People have taught themselves to read, but they couldn’t have done it without have reading strategies that successful readers use.
I agree that decoding needs to be taught. I don’t agree that “using context clues” or “making inferences” needs to be taught, or that that the failure to do these things is the reason that poor readers struggle. My parents definitely did not teach me these things.
Look, Jon –humans have been learning how to read for ages. Until about twelve years ago, the teaching of metacognitive strategies was never part of a teacher’s bag-of-tricks. Doesn’t this make you doubt their claims? It seems to me that, for the most part, metacognition automatically deploys when faced with a text. When kids still don’t “get it”, it’s because they don’t know a high enough percentage of the words they’re confronting. It’s like you or me being confronted with a Spanish newspaper article of which we only know 50 percent of the words. Metacognitive strategies are not going to help us “get it”. There’s no way around learning the vocabulary, and that’s a long, slow process.
I don’t doubt it as it use it with my learning disabled students. What would you suggest I use otherwise?
If you don’t know what you don’t know, how do you expect to be a successful reader. If someone doesn’t teach you learning strategies in something your’re not good at, would your option be to fail. Metacognition may not have been apparent until recently, but it has existed for a very long time. May be you don’t buy into neuroscience,
Try teaching someone who is a word caller. You can’t expect them to comprehend without using strategies.
Jon, the harsh reality may be that there is no fix for kids who lack the background knowledge. In my school the weak readers get year after year of extra training and practice with strategies, and they never improve significantly. We don’t pull the plug on these programs despite their failure because we feel compelled to do something. We can’t not have a “program” to “address their needs”. But until we address the fact that Johnny only knows 1/10th the number of words that Michael does, that he has no concept of the world outside his neighborhood, Johnny is never going to catch up to Michael.
I’d be interested to read any studies that purport to prove that teaching metacognitive strategies can make significant improvments in kids’ reading comprehension.
FYI-Prior knowledge is what kids bring with them from their culture and traditions that instill beliefs and values (learned outside of school). Background knowledge is what they learn from the school culture (what we are responsible for as teachers). And metacognitive strategies have to be modeled, because we can’t see what students are doing in their head. What happens when you don’t understand a word or phrase that you read? Well, some kids don’t have metacognitve strategies like you. So we have to model it. Does it work for everyone? No, but we must give them some tools (strategies). Strategies and programs aren’t guaranteed. But strategies that are researched are far more reliable than those that are not. And it depends on how the teacher delivers them as well. Some don’t give it enough time, and others do a poor job of implementing them.
You and I see success differently.
Yours: “But until we address the fact that Johnny only knows 1/10th the number of words that Michael does, that he has no concept of the world outside his neighborhood, Johnny is never going to catch up to Michael.”
My belief is that looking at individual progress builds intrinsic motivation vs. comparing two individuals for the teacher’s and student;s sake. There is always a way to build background knowledge and vocabulary if we link it to what kids already know. When we know our students’ well enough, we can teach them many things. And if they aren’t emotionally engaged to the content of the lesson then the learning may be superficial if at all.
I also believe that there is no curriculum that will fix a kid: that is why we pull certain strategies that are useful. A skilled teacher tweeks (differentiates) the curriculum to benefit the student.
I’m assuming you teach jr. high or high school. If kids aren’t able to read by 3rd grade, their chances of reading success is slim. Perhaps this is the reason why you see it differently. Sixth graders who are behind see their fate as they think of moving into jr. high and high school. These kids have other issues that impede their learning, to which a learning strategy pales in comparison.
I have a friend whose job is to get kids in junior high who are failing get caught up. I can’t imagine what that’s like.
The ineffective teachers you reference are but foot soldiers patrolling the trenches and doing the dirty work. Most do their best despite there being; too many students in their rooms, too few aids to help the too many mainstreamed to save the district money children in their rooms, too few empty little stomachs in their classes, too few dollars to purchase materials, and on and on and on.
Where is the blame for their commanding officers? The ones who let these conditions fester out of control?
I think you are actually confirming the poor consequences of the teaching methods being imposed on this K teacher. 12 yrs ago NCLB began high-stakes testing, targeting ‘failing’ schools (i.e. those in poorest districts such as Abbott) for warning/ turnaround/ closing, establishing a teach-to-the-test mentality. Simultaneously Abbott School curriculum has become ever more restrictive as it aligned to stds to account for the high $ spent there. I challenge you to find a more age-inappropriate PreK/K curriculum than that imposed minute-by-minute on the Abbott School day– children are most definitely “just pushed through”, as required. To whom is the teacher, reduced to a de facto implementer of scripted classroom materials & content, to make ‘constructive criticism & suggestions’? The message from the top is clear, do as we say or lose your job.
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch for posting this. I teach in a public elementary school that houses all of the kindergarten students in my district. The writers could have been me or any of the teachers from my school. I have been an ESL teacher for 18 years in this district, 23 years in the NYS school system. On Friday, my principal called me into her office to “teach” me how to be a “language” teacher. She showed me a book she had used to conduct a read-aloud that morning and all of the “language lessons” she wove into her 20-minute read aloud. She has also told me that I need to use a “Reading Recovery” model in my 45 minute sessions with my students. 10 minutes with a familiar book, 10 minutes with a new book, 10 minutes of “conferring” which involves diagnosing a child’s needs on the spot and coming up with a quick teaching point a la “Balanced Literacy” and, by the way, I better have my content and language objects posted a la SIOP. I though “Reading Recovery” requires very explicit training and is a model that calls for one-to-one teaching.
To change the topic slightly, I was deeply impressed by the video attached to this post. I had just finished watching a documentary about orcas who go insane in captivity. The physical confinement and the boredom of having nothing to do but follow structured and monotonous routines of tricks controlled by their trainers makes many of them have mental breakdowns. Sound familiar anyone?
I fear that Common Core is ushering in a new level of hideously boring teaching. Instead of units designed around “skills”, we need units designed around juicy topics (e.g. the Amazon Basin) that impart world/word knowledge. When content becomes secondary, boredom sets in and joy departs.
Here are NH teachers speaking out about how the Common Core is liberating.
Whoopie Bill Duncan then NH teachers can have the CC and leave the rest of us out of it. CC and everything that goes with it high-stakes testing, teacher evaluations, school evaluations, have caused toxic environments in many of our schools. I believe you could find more teachers dissatisfied with the CC then those that find it liberating.
Sarcasm plus, “I believe you could find more teachers dissatisfied with the CC then those that find it liberating.” Now there’s a persuasive comeback.
Bill, like most Americans, most teachers are “good soldiers” determined to “make it work”. Sadly most teachers are not critical thinkers or critical readers. They swallow, uncritically, the rhetoric that these standards really do mean “rigor” and that the new tests really do test “higher order thinking”. Teachers trust. They trust the “authorities” to a fault. Have you done a close reading of the standards? How do you know they’re good? Are you just trusting?
I’m not sure, Ponderosa, but I think you are accusing any teacher who supports the Common Core of being a dummy. Is that right?
No, most teachers are intelligent, but lack the habit of thinking and reading critically.
Ponderosa,
Please support the following:
“most teachers are intelligent, but lack the habit of thinking and reading critically.”
Most?? How did you come up with this ridiculous generalization? Is there data somewhere to support this or did you think teachers reading the statement would not think or read it critically?
Ponderosa- believe it or not, I had this same “discussion” with my principal last spring- and I work with toddlers! She wanted me to stop planning using themes relevant to their young lives to plan activities across the different domains. She wanted me to develop individual activities bases on the data I enter which rates a child’s level in specific skill areas. These activites (which are generated by the data program) are specifically designed to supposedly move kids to the next level-even if they are where they should be. Even remediation teachers, who actually do have to target specific skills kids are struggling with use interesting content to develop remediation activities.
CCSS is lap-band surgery for the human brain/mind.
Reading this made me sick to my stomach. When my son was in kindergarten he hadn’t even lateralized at this point: His teacher told me that when they had to use scissors to cut, he always looked like he would cry. She guessed his distress and tried left-handed scissors (actually old blunt ended bandage scissors given by a nurse friend). She asked him to try them and wow! it worked: she gave him a “special” place on her desk to keep them. He also made his first attempt at reading, as all kids did, although they weren’t pushed and given individual books to work on according to their levels, my son wasn’t in the highest level, but no other kid knew that after all, the goal was to get students used to reading. It makes my stomach lurch to realize that the idea of “play” as learning is being turned into robotic kill (whoops, drill), that provide little time for teachers to get to know kids and little time for kids to get to know one another through play.
As a high school teacher, very much interested in the experimental and project/problem based learning, I wish to take my students to a level where they can engineer their own learning through creative problem solving. My goals are to increase curiosity about the world that surrounds them, curiosity about how others think, live and how to engineer their own social experiences and learning experiences. My job is to show students, to the best of my ability not what to learn, but how to learn. I know this sounds idealistic and extreme, but what is teaching without provoking curiosity?
Is there a place in this new CCSS dominated world where we can actually teach children? How can we get others we work with to see that CCSS leads only to conformity and increased testing and only serves to ensure the Admin. in public districts keep their scores high in order to show powers that be that our students are conforming to standards that are impossible and impractical for healthy, developing minds? I find that many of my colleagues would rather conform than to seek out conflict, sadly to the detriment of children.
I find this video disturbing. I want to give the kids a hug and let them build with blocks. No, this alternative isn’t lacking in educational experiences. It’s teaching them to develop healthy relationships with others and learn through first-hand experiences, which is what kindergarten used to be about. Are these kids learning to love to learn? No.
DId you notice toward the end when the kids got on a roll with 10-1, 1-02, etc? They were having fun and got carried away with the pleasure of counting in unison. And then what happened? Because they made a mistake, they got scolded and told that they need to be “looking and thinking…that’s how it goes.” Well, they got the right answer the next time, but at what cost? They are being “schooled” in being mistake-free and obedient.
I counted at least 2 kids yawning. Both the kids and the teacher seemed to be enduring this lesson. Are there no manipulatives in K-2 anymore? How prevalent is this kind of lesson?
As to the Kindergarten teacher struggling to implement an immoral CC where 10 of 16 had special needs, yes your more affluent school is lucky (hard to think of it that way I know.) How about this spectrum of students in our K-5 high needs school with 29 kindergarten students per class and no aids. Write a paragraph by the end of their first year! We are the only mammals who can’t figure out how to teach our young.
The teacher in this video might as well have been having her students repeat a Gregorian chant. What an utter waste of natural curiosity. What do they say to their parents when they’re asked if they did anything interesting in school that day?
The question has to be asked:
Do you believe that this asinine ritual goes on at the Montessori School NYS Ed. Commissioner John King sends his own children?
Or at the Chicago Lab School where Duncan, Rahm Emanuel, and
(formerly) Obama sent their kids?
Or at Sidwell Friends, where Obama currently sends their kids?
Someone ask that at the next “community forum” King and Tisch appear at.
Someone asked King this very question. He claimed that his children’s Montessori school does (at least in King’s own dream world) follow the principles of the CCSS.
Dear John King (again) …. the Montessori method is not like CC and CC is not like Montessori. I’m not sure why some Montessori schools spent the time, money, and energy to align the Montessori curriculum to CC. I think that they didn’t ask enough questions before jumping on the bandwagon. Or maybe they just like to do a lot of needless paperwork? Anyway…
Unlike the kids in the video, the kids at a Montessori school would be using materials such as the teen board or bead bars and they would be happily discovering the answers on their own or working with a classmate. We give the lessons when the student is ready and it is a lot more fun because there isn’t all of the adult- generated pressure to be something that you are not.
Maybe John King is clinging to the original idea of CC that might have had some validity in its infant stage (?) but it has morphed into something quite ugly. Our goal in a Montessori classroom is to teach the kids how to learn and not have them depend on us to problem solve and discover. Independent learners don’t need someone to clap for a response. I’ve seen this clapping response “technique” in other CC videos so it must be part of being totally rigorous.
Montessori schools are usually open to having visitors come and observe. Observation of other classrooms (of all types, subjects, and areas) is a powerful tool to find out what works and realize what doesn’t.
And of course, now, the data on these littlest of school children will be captured and mined by money-grubbing companies who will try to sell schools stuff to make the kids even more stressed. A vicious cycle has begun. Here’s a quick and easy opportunity to protect our children and to stop Albany from amassing and disseminating so much data without parental consent — a petition: “Protect New York State School Children.” If you like the petition, please sign it and circulate it far and wide. Let’s get a grip on Albany before Albany completely strangles our kids. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/protect-new-york-state
There is a reason why kindergarten is not mandatory. Children are not expected to be ready for structured school before 6 years old.
Recently, I spent some time with parents of a 3 year old. They were very upset that their child was not eligiable for free day care. Meanwhile her father did not know who (Peanuts) Woodstock was and drowned the child in piles of Barbie, Hello Kitty and other mechanical toys. Not one crayon, musical instrument, CD, puppet, building toys or Play-Doh. I believe parents see ‘schools’ as environments to learn not homes. It was very sad.
I wanted to respond about the commenter’s experience with her ADHD son. I understand your frustration. That’s a terrible system, and it’s actually something Commom Core should improve if implemented correctly. With the new standards is coming a push for standards based grading. That means that grades shouldn’t be an average of how students do on everything but rather separate the feedback on each standard and grade for proficiency. When done correctly that would mean that you never take points off of how a student is performing on a skill based on whether their name is on it or even when they turn it in but simple their ability to perform each task. And as with the evaluations- the problem isn’t the standards themselves but poor implementation.
ELA standards are absurd. Way too subjective; way too abstract.
No method of implementation can fix the fundamental flaws in the CCSS.
You don’t know how lucky you are. In LAUSD, teachers are forbidden to have any type of play. Teachers have been fired for this.