Snow Day Make up--the rough cut

Two things off the top:

First, our charge was to come up with something that could be done in the equivalent of two-three class periods if we were in school, but that could also be scaled up or down in the future depending upon the number of days that were missed.

Second, I made the executive decision that each teacher was not going to do his or her own thing.  It seemed to me to be easier for us to all collaborate on one project for each grade level (so all 9th graders will do the same thing in all classes) rather than each teacher try to come up with an acceptable activity on his or her own.  I also wanted to avoid the inevitable comparisons that parents would do between what one teacher assigned and what another assigned.  Invariably, someone would complain that so and so's assignment was easier/harder than another teacher's. If they all do the same thing, this concern is a non-factor.

What follows is the first draft of the project description:

9th grade: Are to research how a person registers to vote, where voting happens, and how voting is done in the town of Burlington and the state of MA. They can interview, research and read about this. They must then make an infogram and a physical poster explaining this information that would help to guide a person with the process of voting, from registration to casting the ballot. We provide them with copies of the MA Constitution with commentary/annotations/presentations to guide their reading in this process, and perhaps also give a guided reading about voting rights in the US. Posters are placed in the hallways of the school and town buildings. Infograms are shared via Padlet.com. Honors student possible extension: look at how voting rights have evolved in MA from colonial times until now.

10th grade: Are to learn about how town government works--what happens at all levels of local decision making--Selectmen, Town Meeting, School Committee, Ways and Means, etc.--They can interview, research, read about this. They are then to create a digital presentation that shows the way that all aspects of town government are interrelated...like a flow chart in Explain Everything/Showme, or a series of slides, or a diagram of who does what, how it happens and how a person gets involved/elected. Presentations are posted to a YouTube channel and/or given to BCAT as infomercials to run and shared with the town government.  We provide students with copies of the MA Constitution with commentary/annotations/presentations to guide their reading, and perhaps a guided reading about the history behind NE town government as a structure different from the rest of the nation's structures.

11th grade: Are to learn about how state government works.  Who are their state representatives, how long have they served, what do they do.  What are the parts of state government and how do they connect?How does the state government function? They can interview, research, read about this. Students are to produce a video that explains state government (think, I’m Just A Bill-esque, or a Welcome to Your State Government, or a TED talk).  Videos are posted to a YouTube channel and/or given to BCAT for broadcast and shared with Burlington’s State Reps and Senator. We provide students with copies of the MA Constitution with commentary/annotations/presentations to guide their reading, and perhaps a guided reading about the differences between state and federal government.

All we have to do ahead of time is annotate the MA Constitution for the relevant information for each grade level, and find a reading and make some questions, all of which can be done in Google Docs for rapid and easy distribution on a snow day. I can create the common submission points for their digital work, which would make it easier to pass along to others, and to check off compliance/completion. Because they are publishing their work publicly it can be largely done pass/fail, I think, or we can create scoring guides if we want to, and scale the expectations for AP/Honors, CP I and CPII, with a layer of expectations depending on future number of days they have to spend doing the work. In the event of lots of days off, we could also extend it by asking them to submit a written reflection, or a critique, or suggestions for improvement to the political process they are researching.

return to writing

I'm returning to the blog to post on two topics as they unfold in the coming weeks.

Topic #1: The state has asked that my high school be one of two to pilot a program to allow the school to "make up" snow days through the development of teacher-directed student work that students may complete at home on their own time.  This is being referred to as "Blizzard Bags," after the program that many other states have who are routinely stricken by snowy conditions that prevents students from attending classes. (Apparently my state, which is also routinely dealing with weather-related closings, is just now discovering this fact?) In those states, elementary students are presented with a literal bag that has numbered assignments in it.  On a day when there is no school, students reach into the bag and withdraw an assignment, and they hand it in when they return.  I'll be sharing what I and my department develops in the hopes that what we do might be useful for others as the program rolls out.

Topic #2: I and my co-teacher are conducting an experiment with our 9th grade inclusion-level US History class.  We are removing all devices from the classroom for a unit, and doing everything as though we were in the 20th Century--handouts, written notes, three-ring binders (sorry, no TrapperKeepers!) and assessments done on paper (quizzes, tests, essays, etc.).  We expect this unit (on the Civil War) to last between 3 and 4 weeks.  We will be showing videos, and using Google Presentation/ExplainEverything as our platform for lecturing, but we will not be sharing those items with the students.  We will then re-introduce devices for the next unit (Reconstruction and Westward Expansion). We will set up their digital notebooks explicitly and teach students the use of Notability, and how to structure their Google Drive Folders and use Google Classroom to distribute handouts.  Assessments will be run through Socrative, and all materials we create will be shared with the class.  We will use exactly the same assessments in both units to determine student learning, and to generate a comparison between the two styles of classroom. I'll be sharing our findings as we go along, and trying to provide an account of the various joys and frustrations of each unit as they unfold.

So if that doesn't get your pulse pounding, well...

Availability in the digital teaching world

Let's start with a true confession: I'm addicted to digital media. Email, Twitter, texting, Facebook, Instagram--I compulsively check them all. 

But during the summer, it's just for me and it's just for fun. But during the school year, it's a different story. Email used to be the only digital portal for student communication. But now Twitter is too. And last year, my students figured out that if they want a fast response, Twitter was the way to go. And I would be tweeting back at 11 pm. Which is a problem.

I'd like to train my freshmen to be pro-active with the help they need, and, more, I'd like to draw a boundary between my work and my life. But how to go about this on my end of things? Defeat my digital addiction (which may or may not be a good thing for my overall well being), or try to limit my responses to work-related items? In this 24 hour digital world, what is the line between work and home lives? As a teacher, it feels like this is getting blurrier and blurrier, and I'm not sure how to best address it...

But I'm open to suggestions...maybe you could tweet them to me...?

Putin's figured out the "new" game

What we are witnessing in Ukraine is the first in what will be a series of moves made by aggressive, avaricious nation-states in the coming decades, and indeed, could become the new norm for conflict escalation around the world, unless the Obama administration develops some new tools for response in a hurry.

Since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648, European states bought into the notion of sovereignty, or being free from outside interference in their domestic affairs, or the affairs of their nation of peoples. Thus the nation-state was born.  Europeans then carried this notion out into the world with them over subsequent centuries; wars were fought between and among nation-states, not individuals, not groups and not nations.  On the basis of this fundamental understanding, conflict happened, treaties were negotiated, goods and services were exchanged, and we eventually saw that the majority of international relations were conducted at the nation-state level.

Throughout the 20th Century, what we saw, and what Putin has neatly circumvented in Ukraine, was the idea that aggression comes from one nation-state to another. This occurred, it has been argued by many, in a largely anarchic society of nation-states who were concerned ultimately with self-interest.  As a result, nation-states, like the US, became guarantors of sovereignty for themselves first (and those nation-states who were their allies second) on the basis of military strength. This strength was measured by the ability to deter or defeat another nation-state's military. As a result, nation-states acted in response to other nation-states.  But in the 21st Century, when the aggressor isn't a nation-state, the options for military response is effectively muted.

This is Putin's tactically brilliant maneuver.  Ukraine's sovereignty is certainly being assailed by members of the Russian nation, but Ukraine is not being directly assaulted by the Russian nation-state.  This makes a definitive, protective, military response by those nation-states who would support Ukrainian sovereignty (or the idea of sovereignty in general) impossible, for against whom can they direct their military efforts? Putin's plausible deniability is clearly a sham, but it is thick enough that no nation-state can act militarily against his nation-state, while members of the Russian nation begin to systematically dismantle Ukrainian sovereignty, first in Crimea, and now in the eastern part of Ukraine. Ultimately the Russian nation-state will benefit from the influx of natural gas, warm water ports and other resources and will pay little to no military cost for these gains. Russia may pay an economic cost through sanctions, but Putin is clearly calculating that economic sanctions with either not last long, or will not be all that costly or both.

In the aftermath of 9-11, the US learned about how a nation-state can respond to the super-empowered individual, and it found the experience to be messy, largely unsatisfying, and costly.  Now the US (and all nation-states) will have to figure out how to respond to the diffuse aggression of nations of people within foreign states.  This isn't a new problem: witness how China has occupied Tibet. The world of nation-states will be challenged to come up with new solutions to this problem in the coming decades, lest they wake up one morning to discover that their sovereignty is merely a thought from the past.

PISA results and motivation

A confluence occurred:

A) NBC News ran a story about the PISA results on December 3rd, in which a Chinese student (who appears to be high school-aged but wasn't identified as such), when asked, "Why do you want to study so much?" responded, "Because I want to have a better future."

B) A colleague was telling me that very few of her students even knew about the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship, which offers free in-state college tuition to students who score highly on all aspects of the MCAS exam.  Many students appeared to be downright shocked to know that this was even available, and several commented that they would have tried harder had they known about this their sophomore years.

C) While researching information for my Modern America class, I saw that, according to an article in EdWeek citing stats from the US Department of Education, in 1969, 77% of the population of the US had a high school diploma.  More recently, this number has settled to just under 70%. That's a lot of high school diplomas...

These three things converged in my head to cause me to think that part of why the US is being "passed" by other countries on measurements of assessment like PISA, is not only because we are teaching outmoded content in outmoded ways, but is also because our students are hell and gone from the attitude displayed by the student in China.  There is little to no connection in the minds of our students that a high school education is the door to a better future. High school is what they do because they have to. They are required to be there, but they don't see how their learning could lead to a better job, a higher wage, and thus greater economic security. Where that got lost, I don't know, but it got lost. "I have to be here," is what many of my students say when I ask why they come to school.

I think that if more American students saw both an intrinsic and extrinsic value to what they did in high school, they would be more invested at performing at a high level, and thus would apply themselves more--they would "try harder" to get that scholarship.  I'm left wondering who and when and where and how can we as a society can communicate this value to our teenagers. "So you can go to college," is lovely, but if more, future school is the reward for school, the value and motivation wanes for focusing on what is immediately in front of the person. Especially when the person is 15. And especially when the person is being presented with irrelevant material...

Oh, and apparently 6100 15 year old US students took the PISA. According to the US Department of Education, that's out of a total high school age population of about 20 million (public and private) students aged 14-18. You can decide if that is or is not a representative sample of students, and thus whether or not we should be gnashing our teeth about being surpassed by Vietnam...

And if you like, the PISA results are tabulated here. Makes for some interesting reading...

Goal vs. Plan

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best: "A goal without a plan is just a wish."

Needed in some schools: Stop wishing; start planning!

My goal for my department is to successfully implement Common Core Reading and Writing standards in our curriculum by the 2014-2015 school year.

My plan began two years ago.

Year 1 (12-13)
Step 1: "Be an expert." I need to become an expert in Common Core Reading and Writing standards.  My timeline to become an expert: 1 school year. I will attend conferences, gather information, and spend time reviewing the different standards.

Step 2: "Play."  Design my own activities that utilize the language of the Common Core and try them out in my class.

Step 3: "Collaborate." Work with someone else in my discipline to expand my practical understanding of the standards.

Step 4: "Shake Hands." Once I know my stuff, I will have the members of my department meet the standards; We will discuss them as a group (both small and large) and have the opportunity to develop an understanding of what the standards are asking.

Year 2 (13-14)
Step 5: "Integrate." Have members of my department create assignments that align with Common Core Reading Standards. This is done collaboratively, with large group sharing of outcomes.

Step 6: "Evaluate, Re-Create/Curate." Have members of the department utilize the standards in the creation of common assessments, collect data on student performance, then tweak for future use. Share and curate assessments that are created. This is where we are now.

Step 7: "Be comfortable." Department members are familiar with the Reading Standards, have several resources at hand, and have designed lessons, activities and assessments that reflect the standards. No one is a stranger to the standards, and colleagues are supportive.

Step 8: "Repeat with a twist." The department will go back to Year 1, step 4 with the Writing Standards, and cycle through steps 5-7 with them during the latter half of this year and first part of the 14-15 year.

Year 3 (January, 2015)
Step 9: "Relax." The department should feel comfortable (and perhaps slightly smug) about their mastery of the Common Core Standards.

Is it perfect? No, of course not.  It won't be all smooth either.

But it is a plan, and it does help my goal become realized.

Which gives me an excuse to say:

"I love it when a plan comes together." --John "Hannibal" Smith.

A response to Trevor Packer about AP World History Scores

Today, Trevor Packer, the College Board's Head of AP, according to his twitter bio, tweeted the following:

AP World History scores, 2013. 5: 5.7%. 4: 13.5%. 3: 29.4%. 2: 30.4%. 1: 21%. These may shift slightly as late exams are scored.

This year’s AP World History essays earned the lowest scores ever. It appears many students are being rushed into the course.

Out of 9 points possible on each of the 3 AP World History essays, the mean scores were: 2, 1, 1, the lowest essay scores ever on this exam.

113,000 AP World Hist students (60% of all) earned 0/9 pts on Q2 (politics – continuity/change in medieval cultures)

Ideally, AP World History is a 12th grade course, after a standard world history course in an earlier grade. But some 10th graders excel.

The AP World History exam is designed and scored by many college faculty, who ensure it reflects the standards of a college course.

You can see the actual tweets if you go to the feed of @AP_Trevor. 

So the test results indicated that students did universally poorly on the Free Response Questions with mean scores of 2, 1, and 1. Why is that, I wonder? And overall, the vast majority of students who wrote the exam, over 70%, did not earn a score that would garner them college credit!

In my experience, any teacher worth his or her salt can look at student performance on an exam and gauge a number of things. The majority of good teachers, when confronted with a universal fail (because that's what mean scores on the FRQs of 1 and 2 out of 9 are: failure) are faced with one of two causes for that failure. It is either a failure to prepare well, or it is a failure to write a good test. Mr. Packer would indicate by his tweets that it is the former, and not the latter, and that this is due largely to students being "rushed" into taking a course that is ideally taught to 12th grade. On what does he base this assumption? Presumably, since all AP courses must submit a syllabus to the audit process and receive approval to be named "AP," the College Board is aware of the grade levels, content, structure and pedagogy of the class being taught. Is Mr. Packer indicating that the College Board has been rubber stamping courses that are poorly structured? Surely not. Is Mr. Packer indicating that they should not approve this course to be taught to any grade lower than 12th? Why, then, are classes like mine, taught to 11th graders, approved? If the course is for 12th grade, then it would behoove the College Board to limit the courses designated as AP to lower grades by applying an even stricter standard of pedagogy to those syllabi for non-senior classes. But they don't. Perhaps there is not enough free response practice built into the syllabi of the nation's classrooms teaching AP World. But if that were the case, why are classes lacking in sufficient practice time approved? My students write an essay every two weeks, and we spend a lengthy amount of time reviewing the score guides. Is that not enough because they are juniors and not seniors? I don't think that Mr. Packer has a leg to stand on with his justification for the score results based on preparation. This simply is not an acceptable reason for the low rate of success on the Free Response Questions, and the low overall scores unless Mr. Packer is meaning to discredit the audit process. And maybe he is, but since his checks come from the College Board, I rather doubt it.

No, the conclusion we can point to is that the Free Response Questions were poorly constructed. Now, Mr. Packer's defense is that the exam is scored and designed by "many college faculty." This would certainly help to explain why recent questions are written around such esoterica as Cricket and Indian Politics, the mechanization of the textile industries in Japan and India in the late 1800's, and the "continuity and change of politics in medival cultures." Could you write a broader question? When 60% of your students can't even write an acceptable thesis statement for a question and gain one point, Mr. Packer, you have a poorly. written. question. Or you have 113,000 poorly prepared students nation wide. So which is it? Were the 40% who scored higher than a 0 on that question all the 12th graders? I doubt it.

Mr. Packer, the initial test data are telling you that you need to hire a different group of people to write your questions, because the esoteric minutia that interests your "many college faculty" don't result in good questions. I have not seen the FRQ's from this year's exam, and I shall not rely upon my student's reportage to comment on them specifically. But I can feel very safe in assuming that the questions did two things: poorly represent the scope of actual world history in any larger sense (i.e.: they were likely pulled from 600CE-2000, (a mere 1400 years, not even close to the full 8,000 years the course is supposed to address) and that they relied upon students using information about Europe to generate answers. Those are the overwhelming trends of the FRQ's in recent years. Perhaps the "many college faculty" who design and score the course are all specialists in European history? are all a group of modernists? cast offs from the AP European cohort? Of course, when you design a course that is not supposed to deal with Europe and North America, and then you only design the test questions around Europe and North America, those are the results you get. Face it, Mr. Packer, just as happened in 2002 with the first time around, your "many college faculty" wrote a bad test.