A reader in Chicago passed only a YouTube video of what might laughingly be called “professional development” in Chicago, sponsored by the Chicago Public Schools.
Grown men and women chant in unison the very words of the “staff developer.”
I can’t believe the school system pays for such foolishness, nor that it subjects teachers–who went to college and in most cases have earned advanced degrees–to such inane practices.
CPS should demand its money back and buy art supplies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAy3vJn4pbs
I love how she has them chant “By choosing…Flexibly…From a range of strategies..”
The irony literally jumps the shark at that moment. No one in that room was choosing flexibly.
Was this being done as an example of how to do the worst professional development ever?
I love how she has them chant “By choosing…Flexibly…From a range of strategies..”
The irony literally jumps the shark at that moment. No one in that room was choosing flexibly.
Was this being done as an example of how to do the worst professional development ever?
I hope the person who hired these people will be fired immediately.
Is it the intention of CPS to turn its staff of teachers into chanting robots?
This just boggles the mind.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Was she using a technique to teach teachers that we use to teach children. It can be an effective way to induce rote memory, but she wasn’t even doing that right because she wasn’t building a longer response! It wasn’t even call and response, which is what some preachers use. I am not sure what you would call that method other than a mess.
Some words I would use: Demeaning. Unprofessional. Soul destroying.
And you know she gets paid big $$ for that crap. I find it ironic that she says they are to use “grade appropriate” words but does not ocnsider that for her presentation.
Agree
I was wondering how such money this PD cost the district. I just read on you tube that the people were flown in from California and the UK!!! Unreal.
Well, if your teachers use scripted lessons, maybe that is what they expect in professional development too.
Self-styled “education reform” has in a great many instances proven to be implacable in eviscerating learning for students and teaching for teachers.
Everyone interested in a “better education for all” should view this video.
I am not joking when I say I was waiting for the “eduproduct delivery specialist” to suddenly do a Lemov by jumping onto a table, pointing at her own face with the index and middle fingers, and yelling
“EYES HERE!”
And then putting the recalcitrants [Rahm ‘uneducables’ and Petrilli’s ‘non-strivers’] in padded cells to reflect on their lack of proper behavior.
Whatever happened to pairing the words “excitement” and “joy” with “teaching” and “learning”?
Sorry. Quaint notion…
😎
KrazyTA–excitement and joy in teaching and learning might suggest independent thought and actual choice, which the exalted ones at the top fear. It might cause a revolution. Hey, wait. . .
@nittany89 and KrazyTA: it has gotten so bizarre that today, when I was supposed to be doing test prep, I decided to steal some time and do something “subversive”…I told my kids that we were quickly going to spend 10 minutes going around the room sharing what we enjoyed in the most recent book that we had read for pleasure…and as we were going around really enjoying the sharing I started to get nervous, looking anxiously out the door, like I was in an eastern bloc country…I was so worried that an administrator would come in and think that we were not doing something “curriculum related” and that I would get in trouble….so sad!
But on a side note, this was one of my cool GT students’ responses: she had read the… dictionary! “Just for fun, because there was nothing else to read.” She wanted us to know that the word “a” has 7 denotations: 7! She read each one to us…the article, the musical note, the idea of “portion”… Then one of my other GT kids immediately yelled “Hey! How come one of them wasn’t the definition of “a” being “the first letter in the alphabet?”
They kill me, those GT kids:)
The education deform movement is about raw power and control. This chanting is just a particularly clear example of a more general phenomenon. The autonomy of teachers is to be taken away. From now on, what you do in class will be decided for you.
And soon teachers will not remember the bad old days before they had David Coleman to do their thinking for them and the Common Core College and Career Ready Assessment Program to write their students’ performance tasks and other assessments.
The tone of the responses was dripping with boredness and disgust.
Reminds me of those news videos reporting on North Korea!
exactly
Did this presenter start with the usual speil about, “No negative comments will be tolerated”?
thumb up
They call these “trainings,” as in “Sit up. Roll over. Lay down. Good boy.”
What an outrage!!! But these “trainings” are in keeping with the whole autocratic, invariant, top-down model being foisted on the country.
“Good morning class, I am roboteacher model CC$$.TFA.666.v2.3. Pull my string to begin your performance activity on CC$$lELA.RI.8.2b.”
These people are creating conditions under which no thinking person, no individual with any sense of personal dignity, would want to be a teacher.
Shame on the educrats who are collaborating with this.
A small group of plutocrats has engineered a putsch. Completely circumventing democratic processes, they have issued a set of national standards that tell teachers what they can teach and when and new tests, VAM, and school grades to enforce their will. They are spending millions to roll out scripted lesson formats and on an Orwellian national database and computer-adaptive curricula to replace teachers (or reduce them to the roll of facilitators whose purpose is to keep the computers up and running).
This is being played out in “trainings” all over the country.
And the teachers’ unions are collaborating with the invaders of our nation’s classrooms.
Enough.
Resist.
Perfect Reply to this PD Cr*p.
I think I would have gotten up and walked out that door!
The horror of this is that the folks in that room could not simply get up and walk out. They have kids to feed, mortgages to pay. They have to submit to this degradation. It’s obscene and tragic and shows education deform in its real light.
Not me, I would have just put my head down and slept.
I’ve attended PDs that consisted of the trainers teaching full-length 6th grade lessons. Instead of having a discussion or explanation of pedagogy, the leaders just playacted as if they were teaching 6th graders, and treated all the teachers present like 6th graders, for 1.5 hours. The teachers present taught a range of levels, from 1st to 8th grade. The amazing thing is that the same math lesson was repeated in two different PDs, apparently the trainers lost track of what they’d already covered.
Hard to say if that was better or worse than the PD where the principal told the teachers to get into grade-level groups, passed out papers showing the school’s low test scores, and told us to brainstorm how to raise the scores. This was two weeks before class started, a bit late to be be planning the school’s educational strategy from scratch.
I’ll bet you never got to see what they missed on the test!
I was a new teacher at a new school, so at that point I hadn’t even seen the tests, let alone the questions that were missed. But I was still given the responsibility to help brainstorm ways to raise the scores.
Most Chicago Public Schools administrators today are non-teachers with MBA or LLD degrees. At Wednesday’s Chicago Board of Education, of the more than 35 administrators arrayed around our “Chief Executive Officer,” I could count only three who had any experience as teachers of administrators in Chicago’s public schools. This policy has gone on in Chicago for so long that it’s no longer even seen as a problem. Barbara Byrd Bennett’s home is in Ohio, and she was ruining Detroit before coming to Chicago after being vetted by the Broad Foundation. Her “Chief Officers” (this is organized around titles, like in the Army) are almost all out of towners (there are currently two who are not) with little or no urban teaching experience. The Chief Officer for Diverse Learners (that’s what they call Special Education in Chicago today) was imported from Ohio, as were her “Chief of Staff” and one of the “Network Chiefs.” The “Chief Officer for Innovation and Incubation” (honest, that’s the job title) was imported to Chicago from Michigan. The qualification for the “Chief Transformation Officer” was that he has an MBA from the University of Chicago and worked as a McKinsey consultant.
Is it any wonder that the city that launched Arne Duncan on the world has come to this? What’s distressing is that the teachers sit there and go along with this demeaning nonsense.
Yes, and I’m sure it is one big front of phony people pretending to know how lead people in education. It is all so gross. Well at least I saw Chicago teachers go on strike. Just think if all the teachers across America walked out on the same day.
All I can say is OMG….this is horrendous and demoralizing. I find it a bit disconcerting that the teachers were going along so willingly. Mindless repetition…..Give them an anonymous quiz the next day to see how much they actually remembered. (Just to prove a point, not to rate/rank the teachers.) I bet that data would be eye-opening. I think teachers who are in no way “engaged” in this type of nonsensical “training” are using their creative capacities in other ways in order to participate on autopilot while actually thinking about other more interesting things. Like getting through the pain so you can be on the other side. Unless these folks are the next ones in line (sometimes called turnkey trainers or as I referred to myself at times “turkey” trainer back when I did some ELA workshops for a writing program). The word trainer always makes me think of seals. Teachers are highly educated professionals who are licensed. I am not against changing some of the undergraduate requirements so that new teachers are taking more wide-ranging liberal arts coursework as opposed to a steady diet of education courses. I do know that the literature available now, compared to when I started out has lots more to offer and a reading course of wonderful books on literacy (to start) is a great idea. But education majors should have more gravitas and less simplistic courses (if those actually still exist) in order to garner more respect in general. Then the staff development should be done by highly qualified individuals. I have always maintained that sending teachers to national and excellent state conferences (and monitoring their attendance at a required number of programs, not just a junket type of conference) would help a lot. I know places where teachers are not able to attend conferences. Very hard to keep up on new information without that.
But not this. This really is upsetting. If they take this back and teach their students this way, who would want to stay in school?
Brain-based education, left brain-right brain, visual/auditory/kinesthetic learners, multiple intelligences, all typical of teacher training. And all NOT supported by modern psychological research.
The American medical field would not allow such quackery. Well, except for chiropractory.
See http://www.danielwillingham.com/ for more information on the latest in up to date psychology.
Agree
All together now…….Pat attention Teachers..Pay attention…Pay attention!
A-B-C-D-E-F-G……
H-I-J-K
LMNOP….
Q-R-S-T
U and V
W…X…Y…and Z
Now I’ve said my ABC’s..
Tell me what you think of Me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My heart goes out to the teachers made to submit to such degrading activity.
Shame on the education deformers and on all those who collaborate with them.
To the music of ABC’s..let us sing our Common Core
R-E-I point 662
This-is-what-you
HAVE.TO.DO
Then You do an S-S-E
Write it out for me to see.
If you want
We’ll sing some more
You gotta learn..
that Common Core..
P.S.
I will take my Throw-Up Bucket to the next session
Total mind control. Better start questioning CCSS and blind adherence.
The question was asked, “Is it the intention of CPS to turn its staff of teachers into chanting robots?”
The answer is, yes, that is precisely the intention.
1. This is very intimidating and unprofessional….
2. The Teacher-Presenter will receive “5” in my state on her evaluation as the principals are not allowed to give a 5 except to the Teachers that Teach Teachers.
3. Can you imagine yourself in this workshop of Fairy Tales…???
Then again…The CC$$ is a Fairy Tale….with a Flawed Beginning and a Very Bad
Ending….
I would name this video
The Race to Never-Never-Land
And now CPS teachers are being threatened if they opt out of testing: http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/the-cps-isat-letter-and-the-parent-response/
i WOULDN’T EVEN SUBJECT MYSELF TO WATCHING SUCH A DISGRACE. SHAME ON THE TEACHERS THAT PARTICIPATED IN SUCH ACTIVITIES.
Why would any teacher go along with such an activity?
It furthers the infantilization of teachers which is more of a problem in the school system than any other issue. It trumps any policies that the education deformers attempt to implement on our schools.
Not until teachers become vocal adults and seriously challenge as individuals, and as a group, refusing to take part in such acivities, programs and policies, willing to subject themselves to the notion of “insubordination” – will we begin to see substantive changes in the school system,
If the claim is that I am blaming the victim for his/her victimization, I am guilty! We need to begin to change the culture and mindset of our teachers. To teach not to fear speaking out and act on our convictions, can we be real educators and role models for our students!
I wonder what our students think when they see their teachers in such venues?
fear and intimidation
Yes, not a great model for the students. So it was in Vichy, France. So it always is when there is an occupation.
The person videotaping this nonsense reminded me of the bartender at Romney’s fundraiser in Florida, and Romney’s remark about the 47%. I hope this tape helps someone lose an election in Chicago.
North Korea. Bingo!
A brief dictionary of education deform, useful for interpretation of the Reformish spoken by consultants at these “trainings”:
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/from-the-reformish-lexicon/
This gave me chills. How well I remember those “professional development” days. They were a source of extreme frustration for many reasons, but,most importantly, because there was never enough time to do what I wanted to do for my students. I felt disrespected, violated, and insulted.
>
Last fall, during one of our PD days while we were being professionally developed on the lies of (oops I mean finer points of) CC$$ I borrowed and read a book about haunted houses, unusual lights and animal ghosts in the Ozarks of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. During one of the “share with your group” times the presenter came over and literally leaned against me for a couple of minutes. I completely ignored her and she went back up front. I guess being an old fart Spanish teacher made me immune to the “proximity” trick. She must have sensed that it was better to not address me or all hell might have broken loose and I would have gotten written up.
Great Chuckle this morning! 🙂
Thanks Duane
Oh man, how I miss those de-skilling sessions! Anybody shocked by this video is out of touch with teachers. Time to walk a mile…
I’m not happy to say this, but should we be surprised that teachers continue to be attacked and treated with disrespect when they passively accede to this insulting nonsense?
No wonder the so-called reformers smirk and think of us as chumps.
The parasite at the front of the room should have been met with either derisive laughter or total silence.
yes yes yes yes yes
Holy shit! George Orwell, are you in the house?????
There is literally no occupation that I hold in lower esteem than that of the educational consultant. Useless. All of them. Without *any* exceptions. I’m 100% serious.
Absolutely. Surprised that Mike Rowe never did an episode as an educational consultant for “Dirty Jobs”. Know nothing, know-it-alls ripping off the public schools.
This was horrible to listen to. I reminds me of Direct Instruction, a rote learning program in which Pk, Kg and first grade children learn vocabulary by repeating what the teacher says. This is what Paul Vallas was going to introduce in CPS in 1995. Now he is running for Lt. Governor of Illinois “because of his expertise in finance and education”.
Talk about wanting to reevaluate your life after attending this inservice.
The presenter’s twin must be a 3rd grade teacher: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-number-patterns?fd=1
It’s the same voice, same response, same horrible repetition, same control … except with 3rd graders. So this is the great innovation and critical thinking of Common Core?
50 bucks says the woman that ran this workshop was a KIPP teacher at one point in her very short “career”.
… and Teaching like a Champion, still.
LOL
It always amazes me how these professional development instructors NEVER follow any practices in teaching that engage or excite learners. How many mind deadening endless power points teachers are forced to endure as the “leader” reads directly from it (as if the teachers could not have received it by email and read it themselves at home). It gets worse when these “trainers” stop occasionally for a contrived “turn and talk” or whip out a lot of “eye candy” strategies at awkward moments (thinking parking lot, popcorn etc).. And then there are the PD’s were even the trainer is unprepared because some “newest and best” directive has been mandated and rolled out and everyone is scrambling to learn it.
Indeed. I’m not sure which is worse, the PD instructors who criticize the lecture format, doing so in a lecture format or the PD instructors who have you do something like a jigsaw, making you wish they had stuck to a lecture format…
“CPS should demand its money back and buy art supplies.”
Ok, that line right there is just downright hilarious. I think it actually applies outside of public education. Our government spent 3 billion on what? They should demand their (our) money back and buy art supplies…
These professional development people are asinine and insulting to their peers.
The Entertaining Crockus PD: Part 1
When Duncan was CEO of CPS, I attended a PD that many teachers found entertaining and thought enlightening. The male presenter began his talk to a large audience of mostly female Early Childhood Education (ECE) teachers by referring to a component of the brain that he said was attributable to important differences between boys and girls. This laid the foundation for subsequent assertions about why and how the genders should be taught differently.
According to the presenter, the brain structure is called the “crockus.” The girls’ “Crockus is Four times larger than boys” and it accounts for why “girls see the details of experiences” and “boys see the whole but not the details.”
This was a very engaging presenter and I seemed to be about the only educator who was not enthralled. But, having had graduate training in neuropsychology and familiarity with research on gender differences, I was skeptical and that brain region sounded bogus to me. So, ultimately, I walked out. I then checked into it…
The Entertaining Crockus PD: Part 2
All evidence indicated the PD presenter made up the “crockus” and other info. He may have fabricated his PhD and some awards he claimed to receive in his bio, too. See: http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2007/09/dan-hodgins-awa.html (Scroll down for details in The Dan Hodgins Files.)
I reported this to school district authorities and it was reported to the state DoE, too. The presenter’s name was removed from my state’s list of approved PD providers, so public school teachers and assistants here can no longer earn PD credits for his presentations.
However, Google searches show he’s still presenting at conferences primarily aimed towards ECE community college students and private preschool teachers here. He’s also still providing PDs to public and private school teachers in other states. So be forewarned, if a presenter named Daniel J. Hodgins comes to “enlighten” teachers in your neck of the woods, the “crockus” is truly a crock, as is much of whatever else comes out of this man’s mouth, however entertaining he seems to be.
The Entertaining Crockus PD: Part 3
By the way, I am amongst those that people here despise, as in,
“There is literally no occupation that I hold in lower esteem than that of the educational consultant. Useless. All of them. Without *any* exceptions.”
At the time that The Entertaining Crockus PD occurred, I was employed by my district as an educational consultant to coach teachers. I can certainly understand the concerns, since I share them as well, but we are not all dullards without training and experience in education.
I want to resist making this about the “reform movement”. This is about the fact that every single educational consultant, without any exceptions at all, is at best useless and more often actively doing harm. This is whether they are peddling KIPP-style reform movement stuff or whatever your favorite pedagogical technique happens to be.
I know some educational consultants read and participate in this blog. I know that right now they are thinking “yeah thats probably true of most educational consultants but its not true of the stuff I do. I conduct practical and research-based PD sessions and I get rave reviews by teachers and administrators”. To those consultants: you are *wrong*. Regardless of your method, regardless of what “researched-based best practice” snake oil you are peddling, regardless of how many slick acronyms are on your mind numbing Powerpoints, I am telling you right now that your work is useless and you would do society a favor by getting a real job. Iif you’re too lazy to teach or administer a school (which is why most educators enter consulting), may I suggest a part-time job at a coffee shop or something like that? I guarantee that a single good barista does more to make the world a better place than everything every educational consultant has ever done, combined.
“I guarantee that a single good barista does more to make the world a better place than everything every educational consultant has ever done, combined.”
Well said, CTee!
Go get a real job, all of you consultants. Don’t even come around unless you’re carrying a vente latte.
We were hired precisely because of our decades long and recent classroom teaching experiences. Many were newly retired. What we did primarily involved working 1:1 with classroom teachers.
I was the only person in a room of several hundred educators who stood up about the bogus PD to senior administration, and I knew that I was risking my job by doing so. But those of us who are genuine, experienced career educators know better, and live by our principles, because we have had skin in the game for too long to just play along and stay silent. That’s probably why so many people hired by “reformers” as educational consultants today are not veteran educators.
Still, that’s not everyone, so I have to wonder about the integrity of someone who stereotypes and discounts an entire population of ANY people, let alone those who are colleagues.
Your comment is so correct
“But those of us who are genuine, experienced career educators know better, and live by our principles, because we have had skin in the game for too long to just play along and stay silent.
That’s probably why so many people hired by “reformers” as educational consultants today are not veteran educators.”
They hire the young with no experience.. easy to control..cheaper..
“We were hired precisely because of our decades long and recent classroom teaching experiences. Many were newly retired.”
Older consultants are just in consulting to pad their retirement income and pretend like they are still doing good.
They come armed with some sales pitch about how they’ve been in education for over 15 decades and they’ve held every position you could imagine in a school district from custodian to superintendent and they are going to show you some awesomely practical stuff that you can implement in your classroom tomorrow.
Younger consultants are just in consulting because after they finished TFA and got their graduate degree they realized that they hate teaching but want to stay in education so that they can pretend like they are still doing good.
They come armed with some sales pitch about the some cutting-edge, research-based, technology-driven methods that have already transformed [insert some charter school] into an achievement-factory in just 1 year.
Its all lies. Its just that sometimes the consultant actually believes his or her own lies. The only difference between the young consultant and the old consultant is that the young one doesn’t need help setting up the projector for the obligatory inane Powerpoint.
There are no PowerPoints in 1:1 coaching. Coaches are mentors.
Also, when the mentoring period is up, many coaches return to teaching in their own classrooms again.
So, here’s an example of why I don’t believe you’re really different from the consultants I know, “ECE professional”. You write, “I have to wonder about the integrity of someone who stereotypes and discounts an entire population of ANY people, let alone those who are colleagues.”
See, you go all out and denounce the actual integrity of your critics by claiming civil rights protection for your industry as “an entire population of ANY people”. No, it’s just a corrupt business we’re talking about. We’re not denying you your humanity, we’re just saying, go get an honest job.
If ECE stands for “early childhood education”, for example, are you qualified to teach for-credit courses in child development, nutrition, or language acquisition? That would be a good direction, and then you’d have to join us in defending the real graduate schools from relentless attack by the corporate reformers who invented your fake-development industry.
School districts hire people to serve in a variety of different capacities as educational consultants. They do not all just give PD presentations, like the atrocious PD in the video.
Some consultants are hired to coach or mentor novice and veteran teachers. Some come from within the district and others come from outside. Some work with many schools, others work with just one or two schools. Some work with groups of teachers, others work 1:1. It’s a diverse group with a variety of different duties in various settings that’s being painted with such broad strokes.
As I said in my original post, I coached teachers at the time that my district scheduled a very alarming PD, where the presenter boldly fabricated a bogus brain component and lied to teachers, which was in 2007. I don’t do that work now. The following year, I returned to teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in ECE.
I’m familiar with consultant coaches who are hired as minders in reform-dominated districts, ECE professional. That kind of district will indeed subject teachers to the kind of insulting PD you describe.. You demand that we take your word for it that the teachers you “mentored” are better off with a consultant like you, than in an internally developed support program which builds their teaching community.
That’s one reason I’m disgusted by your presumption. You “wonder about the integrity of someone” like CTee, when he speaks the simple truth of his own experience (which is also mine). His point is that, in his experience, there are better possibilities than your consultant services, in every single case.
Instead of attacking his integrity, consider the possibility that he’s right. Here’s an example of a program in Oakland, which is a partnership between Oakland teachers and Mills College. We could model more such programs, if you and your patrons would please step out of the way.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/anthony-cody-dialogue-gates-foundation-how-do-we-build-teaching-profession
Thanks for sharing this example.
You are assuming the specific program I worked in was not internally developed and was just dumped on unwilling teachers. That was not the case. Teachers volunteered to be involved. It was a school district-university collaboration, similar to what Anthony Cody described, and there were many components. Teachers and mentors all took credit bearing college courses together. It was not top down.
This post is another example of why teachers should have more control over the schools in which they work, and the professional development that they attend.
“Outstanding local educators often are not included in programs to help the current and next generation of teachers and principals, whether offered by schools or colleges.”
http://hometownsource.com/2014/02/26/joe-nathan-column-why-are-some-talented-teachers-underused/
Listening to and learning from educators like Megan Hall, Steve Allen and Bill Wilson reminded me last week of two important things. First, they have so much to offer, not only to youngsters, but also to other educators and those learning to be educators. Second, their skills, insights, experience and knowledge are dramatically underused. More youngsters will succeed if we make better use of these and other talented educators.
Let’s start with Allen. He recently retired after more than 35 years teaching in Minnesota public schools, starting in Granite Falls, then in North Branch and then, for 10 years, at its area learning center, a cooperative program with North Branch, Chisago Lakes, Taylors Falls and Rush City. He finished his career at Oak Land, a cooperative of Cambridge, St. Francis and Princeton, for the last 20 years.
Allen worked mostly with youngsters who struggled in traditional schools. He and his students helped convince the 1987 Minnesota legislature to approve new options for these youngsters.
One was a young woman who had been a National Honor Society member and a cheerleader in her rural high school. But during an economic crisis that devastated her farm family, she unfortunately went “looking for love” and became pregnant, so was kicked out of the honor society and cheerleading squad. Fortunately she found the alternative school Allen directed.
She told legislators that the school “probably saved my life.”
Another of Allen’s students told legislators that he was the youngest of a “drinking family.” When he entered the high school, teachers reminded him of his older siblings’ bad behavior. This youngster met their expectations and failed. Fortunately he found the alternative school. Like the young woman mentioned earlier, he graduated and is living a constructive life.
Allen was president of and now directs the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs. I asked if he had ever been asked to teach a class or even speak to a class of prospective educators. “No,” he replied.
Then there’s Hall, Minnesota’s current state “Teacher of the Year.” She said she’s never been asked to teach a full teacher preparation class. She’s been asked to speak to teacher prep classes at St. Scholastica, Metro State and the University of Minnesota. So the vast majority of Minnesota’s teacher preparation programs haven’t asked her to speak – even once. Having learned from her, I think she has lots to offer.
One more example: Three times, US News and World Report has cited Higher Ground Academy as one of Minnesota’s, and the country’s, top schools. The Star Tribune regularly names it a “Beating the Odds” school. But Bill Wilson, Higher Ground founder and former Minnesota Human Rights commissioner, told me no Minnesota college professor helping prepare teachers or administrators has asked him to speak with a class in the last several years. (Full disclosure: My office shares space with this school.)
Beating the Odds schools aren’t just those that have high-test scores. They’re also schools, like some of the best alternative public schools, that help previously unsuccessful youngsters identify and develop their talents.
This comes up in part because Hamline University recently hosted a panel on the achievement gap. Several weeks ago, I asked officials there why no panel member was from a Beating the Odds school – either district or charter.
Hamline didn’t respond until the day after the event. JacQui Getty, Hamline’s associate vice president of strategic communications and content, wrote, “You raise a good point. When we do this again, we would certainly be interested in including someone from a Beating the Odds school.”
My concern isn’t just about Hamline. Outstanding local educators often are not included in programs to help the current and next generation of teachers and principals, whether offered by schools or colleges.
Hall told me, “When teachers’ expertise is tapped by district leaders, our schools continuously improve.” Talents like those of Hall, Allen and Wilson should be used more not only by districts, but also by colleges and universities.
Walk through any school and you will see different teachers teaching the same curriculum in different ways. Everyone has their own strengths and the best teachers know how to use those strengths to help students. “Consultants”, and administrators should help each teacher realize their strengths and help to develop them. It take a couple of years to do this. Young people and poor teachers often vbecause they are trying to follow a technique forced on them or never realize their own strengths.
What if Washington, the states and all the school districts suddenly quit all their reforming and PD and suddenly turned to their teachers unions and said “you are responsible for student academic achievement from here on” and the government will just buy the books and keep the lights on. This sounds scary, but isn’t that what we want? Each district administration then would act as a manager and a go-between for the school authorities.
John, this book (and the schools that are carrying out the idea of teachers in charge) may interest you.
http://hometownsource.com/2013/03/06/a-book-about-trusting-teachers-draws-praise-from-educators-and-activists/
I was shocked by the video showing ridiculous and sad example of PD. Those folks should have walked out.
However, I was equally shocked by the posts painting all consultants and PD with the same brush. There are some great.experienced consultants who are master presenters who base their work on decades of successful experience. You do Dr. R.s work no favors by showing your complete disregard for adult learning and lack of adult learning in your professional work. No wonder CCSS is moving forward with attitudes like this from so called professionals.
Agreed, RTS.
See if you can find the overreach in this attack on critics of the hired outside consultant industry:
“You do Dr. R.s work no favors by showing your complete disregard for adult learning and lack of adult learning in your professional work.”
No, our contempt for the egregious crap being dished out by the “consultants” who infest our buildings is a show of RESPECT for actual “adult learning”.
I was proud to serve as a teaching assistant for a real organic chemistry class at UMASS Boston, that carried actual graduate credit towards a masters degree for working biology teachers. I learned a lot in the process. The teachers earned a stipend, and the course was funded by DOE and NSF grants. That was all shut down, and now Great Schools and Pearson send in their sales force, instead. Yes, some of those are retired teachers who took the bribe. They sell snake oil, and they know it, and they absolutely should be ashamed of themselves.
If any of you are exceptions, I haven’t met you. I’m thinking you wouldn’t introduce yourselves by attacking the integrity of “professional development” critics. You would join us.
You trashed someone who said she had been an educational consultant when she blew the whistle on a fraudulent PD presenter. When was the last time anyone else here got a spurious PD presenter banned from their state’s approval list for scamming teachers? This sounds like a “professional development critic” to me. It seems like, in order to “join” you, it’s more important to agree that all consultants are evil than it is to take action and prevent unethical, incompetent consultants from presenting more bogus PDs.
Yes, Veteran Educator, it’s more important for us to pull together an action plan, to dislodge the consultant industry itself from the bizarre and unwarranted pinnacle of domination it has reached. That may well mean you, sadly. You consulting practitioners have been lying around (profitably) with a lot of dogs, and now you’ve got you some fleas.
Several defenders of the industry have taken up the familiar “broad brush” rhetorical device. This is so rampant in pro-reform commentary I imagine a consultant coming in to teach you all how to construct all-purpose “broad brush” distractors.
For instance, anybody who points out the corruption and stupidity of the virtual charter industry lacks integrity and shows a complete disregard for learning, because they overlook my saintly Aunt Nellie, who operates an exemplary online charter.
RTS is right. You are making those of us who want to learn from peers (including P-12 teachers who’ve become college professors) look bad and appear as if we don’t want to learn at all. That feeds into the “reformers” assertions that we come from the bottom of the barrel, our graduate degrees are worthless and thus we need national standards. Messaging should not trump successful actions.
Who is this “we” who should be worried about feeding into reformer talking points? Calling up those talking points is one more mealy mouthed attack on the honest teachers who have spoken up, and another sly way to try to beat teacher respect.
My suggestion is that college teachers get off the consultant industry gravy train and teach college. I have seen no honorable actions whatsoever come from anybody on that payroll. It’s an innately corrupt mechanism for delivering “training”, as is demonstrated by this sickening video. Thanks very much if somebody did get one jerk removed from one consultant roster, but as you can see, your whole system is designed to deny teachers the authority to defend our profession ourselves.
We don’t need you, we don’t want you, go get a real job with no backing from Gates, Broad, Knopp, Murdoch, etc. Their agenda is the destruction of self respect in the profession.
When you discount teachers who don’t think the exact same way as you and accuse us of being part of the corporate sponsored PD industry because our perspectives differ, reformers are sure to be glad, because you are effectively doing the dirty work of dividing and conquering for them. This is a nuanced issue that should not be seen as all or none.
Strange bedfellows. CTee, is a veteran TFAer, who is actually one of the people who has written about teachers coming from the bottom of the barrel, as in:
“Education is widely regarded as one of the least serious and least rigorous majors around, and even at the graduate level it has a pretty dismal reputation. Prospective education graduate students perform at or near the bottom in the GRE compared to prospective graduate students in other disciplines.” https://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/21/teach-for-america-political-juggernaut-for-privatization/
It’s interesting that this is the source of such vehement criticism of all PDs, since CTee wrote today (on Diane’s poverty post page) that s/he teaches in a “public school system in a developing country where 100% of the students are in poverty.” I realize that teachers have been subjected to some truly horrendous PDs here, but maybe international borders have not been preventing inane, useless PDs, too, Makes sense, since since Pearson et al. are multinational conglomerates, and TFA has Teach for …(Name Your Country) across the globe now.
That’s the irony. The awful CPS PD presenter on the video reminded some folks of TFAers, such as Bob Shepherd, when he commented about “roboteacher model CC$$.TFA.666.v2.3”
I know what kind of PD I would like! I would like to be able to attend a professional development where my teaching peers share ideas that worked for them in the classroom (can certainly be organized by topic). When I leave the PD I can put the information I learn in my personal storage bank. And then (if I am treated as a professional), I can go back and WHEN AND IF the time is right use what I learned. I also would be able to sit in on a classroom of a teacher who I feel I can learn a lot from (this is worth a lot while a PD from a 20 plus year old PhD with no classroom experience but with AL THE ANSWERS does nothing for me or anyone). And please.. do let me choose whose classroom I am able to observe. And here is another good point in all of this… my ideas for professional development would cost basically a few substitute teachers but no highly paid consultants on top of substitute teacher charges! I am very tired of the top down “cookie cutterness” of it all where cash-strapped schools waste loads of money on the already stretched time of teachers by these useless and degrading PD’s.
Artseagal
There is value to teachers sharing best practices in a building, but schools can be improved by looking outside their doors and taking good, proven ideas from others who know. This does not include the TFA types like the one in the video. Those folks really hurt those who really have something valuable to share and know how to involve teachers in it as adult learners.
Unbelievable! And heart wrenchingly demoralizing to watch adults be so infantilized.
This is absolutely hilarious until I remember that the people responsible for this bizarre spectacle were paid from our precious tax dollars!
However, if I don’t find a way to laugh, I might just cry, so here’s what I find funny about this.
This reminds me of my first job immediately after my college graduation: I was hired to sell “High Tech Vacuum Cleaners” on a commission basis only.
But instead of helping us get out and sell to potential customers, we were constantly having to go to Group Motivation Meetings, where we would be forced to listen to obtuse guys talking about “How To Develop The Winning Attitude For Sales!”
And THIS was just ONE of the chants they made us do, at least two or three times at every meeting:
(In a CALL and refrain mode)
HOW’S YOUR ATTITUDE?
great!
WHAT DO YOU LOVE?
our fantastic new vacuums!
SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?
sell, sell, sell!
(Doesn’t that sound similar? Really it does.)
Deeply disturbing.
Whoever was involved in making the decision in bringing these staff developers into the schools should be demoted to the level of classroom teacher.
These patronizing developers have no sense of what classroom conditions are. This is a scandal upon the nation. What vibrant social democracies have teacher training handed over to these ignorant corporate-minded staff developers?
Signed,
A classroom teacher that is subjected to this kind of unprofessional perversion of pedagogical training.
During the last two years, my school has been involved in engagement training. The goal is 40 opportunities for student response in 10 minutes, repeated all day long. The only way to reach that goal is through constant choral response. The teacher poses a question for example:
10 is the same as 6 and ? When you know the answer put your finger on your nose. When the teacher gives a signal all the students respond together. Then the students get to be praised for their participation. I can play the game well. We were reading a story in our anthology. I asked a comprehension question and asked for the choral response. I heard lots of indecipherable answers. To me it is just a buch of noise. I couldn’t tell if any student really understood the question or the answer. So I responded nice job, I heard…. I then answered the question with the correct responses and posed the next question. I got top scores for the observation. But at the end of the week, on individual testing, there was no correlating improvement on student scores. Many students dropped. What I see in my students with this approach are two things. 1. Greater disconnect from the curriculum with either non -sense answers or just grunting, or 2. screaming the answers as loud as they can in an attempt to be recognized. It is demoralizing for my students as well. But it is the expectation.
Is this in Chicago or elsewhere?
Welcome to the world of direct instruction. Now imagine children enduring it. If you understand what I am saying, place your hands on your head and bark like a dog.
This is just dreadful for teachers, as demonstrated in the video, as well as for students, as described by Firstgrademonkey and her/his “engagement” training –all of which is direct instruction, as Joseph mentioned.
This is absolutely about “reform.” The federal government, which is so enamored by no-excuses military style charter schools but is not permitted to prescribe curriculum and instruction, has figured out, once again, how to circumvent the law. They are basically imposing old style Behaviorism, aka animal training, on our nation’s teachers and children. Essentially, that’s being accomplished now by Broad-trained superintendents and former TFAers micromanaging teachers and classrooms.
Parents really need to see how what politicians and elites want for Other People’s Children differs from what they want for their own kids. So, here’s what I would suggest:
Firstgrademonkey: have a colleague videotape you doing those required “engagement” activities from the back of the class (be sure that faces of you and your kids cannot be seen).
Then, someone like Paul Horton, who teaches at U of C Lab school (where Duncan attended, Obama’s kids went and Rahm Emanuel’s kids go) should also videotape what goes on in a progressive classroom at a similar level (First Grade?), as well as videotape what a PD for their teachers looks like.
Then make a public service announcement (PSA) showing all of these videotapes, so the models can be viewed side by side, and upload on YouTube for all to see.
Diane, could you please speak with Paul Horton about this? It needs to be coordinated, but I think that a low cost PSA like this might be an effective way to inform parents of what is and is not happening in public education today. (It would be great if a mole in a no-excuses charter could videotape there as well…)
Has Paul Horton ever considered working in an urban public school?
So he can become a manipulated, robot teacher who is denied autonomy in his classroom, too? If I were him, I’d stay at the Lab School. Plus, he’s engaged in effective advocacy for public education where he’s at right now.
What a person does has always impressed me more than what he/she says.
You probably don’t like what he says, since he has spoken out against the deleterious impacts of charter school expansion by his own university. That says a whole lot more to me about his integrity and support of public education than changing jobs.
As a veteran of urban public school teaching, I was never impressed by private school educators who felt they could tell public school educators how to do things.
And yet, you are very impressed by graduates of private schools that are not even K12 educators who tell public school teachers how to teach, including Duncan and Obama.
Yes, I’m impressed with Obama, although I don’t agree with everything he’s done. So are millions of others. I have much more mixed feelings about Duncan.
Again, I judge people by what they’ve done.
Duncan does what his hoops buddy says. And Obama’s ratings have declined, including in your own state. People have caught on to his neoliberal agenda and allegiance to corporate elites.
New St. Paul Minnesota teacher/board contract recognizes that “teachers have good ideas too” – congrats to the St Paul Federation of Teachers for the progress they made. http://www.twincities.com/education/ci_25251268/teacher-deal-goes-beyond-wages-and-class-size?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com
Hurray for the Chicago teachers who filmed and posted this crap! Look at this very page, where the sock puppets are wringing their hands in their concern that teachers who resist professional development vendors “play into stereotypes” that we’re the bottom of the barrel, our grad schools are no good, and we’re resisting learning.
Never again. The emperor is exposed. He’s naked, and nobody is afraid to say so.
It could also be a hollow success that ends right here, with corporate sponsored PD presenters continuing to impose their blather on educators, since “reformers” keep hacking away even when they’ve been exposed. That is, of course, unless,teachers take action and work collaboratively with colleagues, principals and other educational resources of their choice in designing their own professional development programs.
I know it’s been said so well already, but I just have to remark- What a shameful thing to do to this profession… The women’s tone said it all- she was talking to lowly teachers who need to be spoon fed these ignorant ideas from on high… This is a deep insult.