In recent days, you have read posts about the program in Lawrence, Massachusetts, called NNN (No Nonsense Nurturing), a for-profit program in which coaches sit in the back of the room and tell teachers what to do and say via a wireless earbud. EduShyster wrote the original post. Others did research on google and connected NNN to the Gates Foundation and KIPP. It is a behaviorist approach to classroom discipline.
One reader points out that NNN was tried out first in Memphis.
Some wired-for-sound city school teachers are testing the value of real-time coaching that the NFL has made as common as a Sunday in the park.
Through earbud headphones, the teachers hear cues from experts observing from the back of the room.
“Once a teacher understands what it feels like to be successful, it takes root immediately,” said Monica Jordan, coordinator of teacher professional development in Memphis City Schools.
“The teachers get training first. It’s not like someone walks in and shoves an (earbud) in your ear and starts rattling in your ear,” she said.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the work in Memphis, Tampa and New York, hoping to prove that tailoring professional development raises the needle on test scores….
Teach for America in Memphis sees so much promise it is spending $15,000 to conduct its own earbud research next year.
“Essentially we are looking at a control group that doesn’t get coaching to see to what extent coaching and real-time feedback enhances the process,” said Athena Turner, TFA executive director.
“We want to know, does it speed up the timeline in which a teacher develops?”
The back-and-forth between the coach and teacher is happening through walkie-talkies now. As early as March 2, the coach could be anywhere in the world, coaching with digital video feeds from Memphis classrooms….
“I think this new approach gives you an opportunity to differentiate professional development based on teachers’ own strengths and weaknesses,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard University researching working with the Gates Foundation.
Kane’s hypothesis is that teachers who can watch themselves work will see places to improve.
“Next year, we would hope to have enough classrooms so we can start to answer that question,” Kane said.
Memphis ordered 11 180-degree cameras at $4,500 each. When parent permission slips are returned, the cameras will be set up in classroom corners.
“We’re asking teachers to watch themselves and reflect,” Jordan said. “What does it feel like to be your own observer? … What would you tell yourself if you had to give yourself feedback?”
The technology is so new that the cameras, which also record audio, are being built as they’re ordered.
“Memphis is right behind Harvard’s order,” Jordan said.
Question: Did Harvard get its order? Is it videotaping professors? Who is being videotaped and given earbud instructions at Harvard?
Next question: Is Lakeside Academy in Seattle, where Bill Gates’ children are students, putting earbuds in their teachers’ ears?
Next question: Four years have passed since the experiment was launched in Memphis: What are the results? Was there an experimental group of teachers with earbuds and a control group without earbuds? What happened to the test scores of their students?
Last question: Was the experiment worthwhile? O should the money have been spent on reducing class sizes and tutors?
The parents of any children that develop hearing loss should file a class action suit.http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/generation-deaf-doctors-warn-dangers-ear-buds-n360041
It should be the teachers suing. THEY have to wear the earbuds.
What a bunch of bull for a program. If I want an NNN coach here is my choice: DeNiro 1976 You Talking to Me?
Love this !
Mine would be Pacino and “say hello to my little friend” !
Do they tell the gym teachers how to deflate the footballs?
And we have a winner!!!
There is a portion of the linked article from the Memphis newspaper not mentioned but possibly more important. The video feed can be used for teacher evaluation for the proposes of job retention/dismissal. My state chose to embrace the same evaluation model as Memphis a few years ago. Does this mean that a remote observer could arm-chair quarterback me out of a job?
There’s also a lot of push in NY for continual demonstrable assessment during class time. In other words, leaning over and making check marks or abbreviations, or clicking on icons or names on some device that represent assessments of individual students at the moment, AND giving them actionable feedback on the spot. This is for schools to hit high on their reviews, but it is stressed by many admin desperate to keep school scores up. I wouldn’t call them GAGA (go along to get along) as many just trying to keep their job could be called that. I’d classify them as GAGAh (go along to get ahead) giving that extra push that isn’t just about maintaining some degree of job security, but attaining an unnecessary leg up regardless of whether it is good for students or teachers.
I have 36 students in each of my classes. I would NEVER be able to teach anything with a requirement like this. I would have to go to an all-worksheet model, which is far inferior to what I do now.
If my teacher was getting coached through an earpiece by people in the back, I would assume that she/he was incompetent.
I am curious if this really is an attempt to undermine older and more costly teachers’ authority in the classroom in some districts.
Mechanism for developing and strengthening practice are part of the very definition of a profession. However, teachers in systems around the world that have made significant progress have done so by providing time for professional collaboration, sharing practice and getting access to others with expertise. A critical component is building trust and personal relationships. The earbud, whispering the teacher’s, ear solution misses an essential characteristic of effective feedback, engaging the learner’s ideas and helping the learner to gain understanding and investment in solutions. Instead, it appears to favor simply feeding teachers, just tell me what to do solutions– not a recipe for lasting improvement.
“Next question: Is Lakeside Academy in Seattle, where Bill Gates’ children are students, putting earbuds in their teachers’ ears?”
Admission to the Lakeside School is extremely competitive: students must score very highly on a standardized test (SSAT) and have a lot of money (70% of the students receive no financial aid).
Between parents who have a lot invested in — and expectations for — their child’s education, the school’s ability to expel students who don’t behave, and the flexibility the school has with respect to hiring — and firing — its teacher, I’m guessing that classroom management is a relative breeze at Lakeside.
It doesn’t hurt that they only have around 14 students per class, either. I would be in HEAVEN to have class sizes that small.
I get sadder every day as I read about the destruction of the profession I have loved for 26 years and dreamed about as a child. I wanted to be just like Mrs. Sinclair and Ms. Adams and Mrs. McCarthy and Mr. Jackson and Mr. Jelly and Mrs. Fultz (I could go on!!!!). They were not robots. They didn’t need Gates or Coleman or NNN telling them how to teach. They were amazing professionals who inspired me.
ENOUGH!! Let us teach!!!!!
And Mrs. Riley from October Sky.
“In recent days, you have read posts about the program in Lawrence, Massachusetts, called NNN (No Nonsense Nurturing), a for-profit program in which coaches sit in the back of the room and tell teachers what to do and say via a wireless earbud.”
This makes me furious. Why would some ‘expert’ who sits in the back of the room have absolute knowledge of what a teacher should be doing? These ‘walk-in” experts have no knowledge of individual students nor any real connection to what has been happening in the classroom.
I’m tired of so many ‘experts’ who have all the answers. How about having them teach to find out whats really involved? I doubt that any program which exists for profit actually benefits anyone except corporate profits.
Let teachers be the experts. This is nonsense.
As a tool in teacher training I can see some of this. As an ongoing process in watching and evaluating teachers, heck no. The very presence of another adult in a classroom changes the dynamics of the classroom, especially where discipline is concerned. I’d like to hear the results of this system where class management is concerned, probably totally useless. I would never agree to be taped and evaluated in this system unless every employee, including administration is evaluated this same way.
I don’t even like the idea of doing this in teacher training, because it would be SO distracting as a teacher to try to interact with the students AND listen to the “experts” at the same time. I wouldn’t be able to properly attune to the students. Which, ironically, means there is no “nurturing.”
i have an idea. use earbuds i. Legislators with constituents in the back telling them what to do. The citizen has to have sufficent knowledge of the US to pass a citizenship test. If they don’t lusten, I propose a cattle prod.
Legislators already have earbuds. They’re called ALEC laws.
What company is receiving the money for these cameras??? It’s absolutely disgusting. I can’t believe ANY teacher would submit to this.
It’s because the teachers will lose their job if they didn’t. Once a teacher refused the buds and they got fired. 😦
Why not eliminate the middleman?
Put earbuds in *children’s* ears.
Then tell the children what to do, monitor their responses by video (or else monitor more easily if they are working at computers), and give them merits or demerits for every response.
This system would ensure that everything will be measured!
As we know, measurement is the key to improvement. If everything is measured, then everything can be improved.
I can’t help but think that educators around the world are seeing this and saying “only in America” !
I know my students, I socialize with their parents, I have watched the children grow up (and in some cases, their parents before them.) I form relationships with them and build rapport. I do not treat them all the same because through outside activities in drama and sports I know them. Just as importantly, I have let them know me. I do not need a dehumanizing script of Skinnerian behavior modification and threats to work with them. We have a relationship. Furthermore, such stilted language is not conducive to my writing class where we regularly share ideas in pairs and small groups to develop as writers together. The children must here full rich language and share it. In my room we speak and write in full sentences in order to internalize language. I will not set a bad example for them. They need me to be a human being.
hear not here, my cat is sitting on my keyboard trying to help me….he has spelling issues.
So what happens if the parents don’t sign the permission slips? No cameras in the corners?
Real-time coaching is not a horrible idea; it is how this program is being implemented that is so wrong-headed. Garmston and Costa wrote Cognitive Coaching many years ago. In their model a positive relationship between the coach and the teacher is developed. The coach, often a teaching colleague, helps the teacher reflect on how a lesson went with questions such as, “How did you know whether the students were fully grasping the concept you were teaching?” or ” What was the strongest portion of your lesson? Why do you think that?”. The teacher is doing the thinking and is not being told what to do. A good coach follows up the teacher’s comments with probing questions that help the teacher explore more deeply his/her teaching practice. Pre and post conferences are also key—the teacher is fully engaged in the process and is an active learner. The money spent on the earbuds and walkie-talkies could be better used to pay for peer coaching training and subs so teachers could observe and coach one another or to support Critical Friends groups. I love technology in the classroom, but in this case it is not building teachers’ capacity to reflect critically about their own practice. Top – down direction may have short term results, but it will not develop a self-reflective teaching cadre that is motivated to explore all avenues for reaching each student and to develop an inner confidence that their practice will positively impact students’ lives. I’m pretty sure that Nancie Atwell, the first winner of the Global Teacher Prize of $1,000,000, never had an earbud in her ear. She did have great mentors and colleagues with whom to bounce ideas around. Why won’t administrators look at the excellent research on developing teacher expertise that already exists and allocate the resources necessary to implement programs like peer coaching and Critical Friends? My guess is that these types of programs require administrators to give away some power to the teaching ranks, and that is very scary and certainly not advocated by the Broad Foundation.
I hate the idea, regardless. HOW is a teacher supposed to attend to his/her students with all of that buzzing in her/his ears? It’s distracting and humiliating.
What will it take to get the NEA and AFT/UFT to take strong action? Reading about this NNN program makes my blood boil! When will the profession (what’s left of it) fight back?
I left Memphis City Schools (now Shelby County Schools) one year ago. About two weeks before the end of that school year we got an e-mail from a woman who was going to come in and coach us using this technology. Several teachers at the school got the e-mail and we were signed up without our knowledge or consent. We basically refused. I got the feeling someone needed to get a box checked off on their paperwork. It would have been really silly to have someone coaching us on a new behavioral approach who was unfamiliar with our school, who only had a few years of teaching experience herself, and at the end of the school year when high schoolers are preparing to take final exams.
Also, the schools there have all kinds of video cameras to record teaching already. One of my colleagues was being filmed for TNTP or a Gates experiment, can’t remember which, using what I believe was a 360 degree camera. My experience is most of that stuff just sits in a closet. I think what its really about it impressing people on paper.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
My principal would never allow this and no teacher should volunteer for this “brave new world “in education
If a new teacher needs support, put a mentor teacher into his/her class to observe, script, conference, and if necessary, assist. I’ve done this many times in my career, and most of the young teachers I worked with found their footing and were able to become successful.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/local-news/test-scores-wakeup-call-in-millington_09337026
An article on TN schools today mentions that testing will change next year to short answer and essay questions. It claims that “All districts are expected to see declines in scores until teachers and students adjust. In districts like Millington, where more than half of students in grades 3-8 lack proficiency in math and reading, the change could have deeper repercussions.”
Whatever happened to tests that tested student skills and knowledge? Those sorts of tests didn’t require a learning curve for students and teachers to learn how to teach and take the tests! How long will the madness go on? Until every good, reasonable teacher has quit? Until all public school children are so consumed by test-anxiety and compulsive fears of education that they must spend every day in a drug-induced haze simply to get on and off the bus?
One more in long series of gimmicks to implement in a classroom. I would not want my own child in a classroom where this bizarre activity is going on.
They used 360 cameras for two years then dropped them. It might have had to with the merger of Memphis city schools and Shelby county schools, but the end result was a lot of expensive wasted equipment. The practice didn’t go away though, they bought pads. I’m not against the practice, but the waste was absurd. The one time I participated, I never heard from anyone. Others in the school had the same happen. Just someone collecting videos for a quota. So we just outed for peer observations with a couple cell phone videos. Plus, I always found peer observation was more helpful, immediate, and accurate.
Not for teachers… or surgeons and dentists.
The next step after this will be battery powered electrical probes that jolt the teacher when they do something wrong.
So Tommy, how would you work this problem? (“You failed to use random calling!” ZAP!)
“Direct Data Dump”
Earbuds are just fine
But microchips are best
Implanted in the mind
To prep for VAM and test
An additional question to the “Next Question” on control groups and experimental groups of teachers… Or did all the teachers in the study quit?