PD Follies - part two, Death by Verbiage.

Professional Development Follies - part two.

Professional Development is one of those things that light up the stress meters in almost every teacher I've ever known. Bill Ferriter talks about it. So does Mr. Teachbad. Darren needed Google Translate to interpret the Educationese. What's my excuse? I have many things that trigger me and get my back up. Here, over the next couple of days, are some of those triggers. Mr. Teachbad's List contained Major Peeve #2:

Powerpoint Death Slides.

There is <sarcasm> nothing more thrilling </sarcasm> than settling in, readying myself to take some notes, and then watching the presenter click open a PowerPoint slide covered with words.

 

As Tufte says: "Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Here's the thing, people. I can listen and take notes: I had lectures all through college. I also had homework for which I was required to read and highlight, and then take notes. I'm okay with taking notes. MY Notes.

The problem with most PP is we are combining two separate and incompatible entities - a lecture and much reading material, densely packed and illegible, slammed together with cliched or cartoony graphics, interspersed with every transition possible.

Presenters, it seems that ...

• Graphic design is an Art that you do not possess.
• Public Speaking is not one of your skills either.
• You have graphs riddled with errors.
• You have abysmal spelling. Right down there with your grammar.
• You need to buy a clicker. Do not have someone tapping the SmartBoard to advance slides.
• You have a 200-word minimum per slide.

It's a PRESENTATION and it needs to be PRESENTED, not read. Stop right there and think about that. If you don't know it cold, inside and out, then you don't belong on stage.  Watch a TED presentation, like this one by Hans Rosling. Notice that he is presenting, not reading. If the presenter is reading his own slides, then everyone should walk out and collect a copy of the "notes" on the way.

Sure, Rosling's a pro at this and all the TED presenters are pretty awesome, but come on, the district is paying a grand or two for your time today. Spell check and grammar check are simple. If you've given the same talk before, grammar and spelling errors are inexcusable.

Stick with the fundamental designs if you aren't a PP wizard. You should be able to present the material without PP. The PP is visuals: icing on a knowledge cake, the froth on your Guinness.

If you want me to read it, then give it to me ahead of time, in a form that I can read. Paper is acceptable, but really, can't you give me a pdf so I can save and reference it? (Especially if the presentation is about using technology, you know.)

Don't get all huffy and defensive.  I want to read it at my leisure, not at the speed you choose. I also want to review it later. I have a very good memory but it's nice to use my computer's "Search" function, too.

For example, at the beginning of this year, we had a bullying workshop. The people were setting up and I wandered over with a thumbdrive and asked if I could have a copy of the presentation - for later review and for notes. After getting all huffy and asking "Who are you?", she refused. (Like the general public was coming in and demanding to see her bullying presentation.)

This was information we were getting recertification credit for, and fulfilling an important state requirement for, and we couldn't get the information in any way other than paper handouts. I still have those handouts in a file at home. A simple pdf would be much more useful.

PD Follies - part one, the Blind.

Professional Development Follies - part one.

Professional Development is one of those things that light up the stress meters in almost every teacher I've ever known. Bill Ferriter talks about it. So does Mr. Teachbad. Darren needed Google Translate to interpret the Educationese. What's my excuse? I have many things that trigger me and get my back up. Here, over the next couple of days, are some of those triggers.

The Blind Leading the Blind.

When I went to get my commercial driver's license many years ago, I was faced with a guy who drove these vehicles every day. He knew the ins and outs, knew the laws, knew what was important and what had to be memorized for the test and then filed away. An expert who was teaching? How quaint.

How many times have I been in the room and the HIP, Highly Ineffective Principal, (thanks for reminding me, Richochet!) or an AP would get up and present as definitive fact a half-remembered workshop from the summer?

Too many times.

The more it was stressed that we were a "High School on the Move," the more stressed I got. With every new and improved "Best Practice," I wondered why no one, apparently, had never thought of this obviously brilliant idea before ... and then after maybe two seconds of thought, realized that it was pretty much what everybody tended to do anyway.

"We need to create A School Within a School."
"According to the Latest Brain-Based Research, students need to write about their feelings."
"I want all of the teachers to begin differentiating all classes with respect to the three Learning Styles."
"We're buying netbooks for each fifth grader because Maine did it and had the biggest gains in state history."

Before we should implement something, shouldn't there be at least one person who completely understands it? Perhaps we should rename this one as the "As Seen on TV" Initiative because it looks cool and shiny, no one understands it fully, it costs a lot (plus shipping and handling) and invariably doesn't work. Any of you suggesting we call it the "iRenew Initiative" can be quiet back there.

I'm not getting behind this nebulously defined initiative until someone clears it up and explains it. "You're being obstinate because you don't want to be a team player. You argue about every initiative."

Sorry. Got to do better than that. Argument by Accusation - not valid.

Thanks for the Help

Gee, thanks Bill.

Joanne Barkan, writing in Dissent, argues that three big nonprofit foundations (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation), working together, exert a “decisive influence” on public-school education. ”Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making,” she writes.(h/t to the Freakonomics blog, Dubner and Leavitt.)

Unfortunately, this is not just about Bill, Eli and Sam wasting their own money.  It's about three foundations that are pushing an anti-public school agenda that aims to destroy the teachers' union and reduce the educational possibilities for the public. It's about the capitalization of an "industry" at all costs, using tactics that sound good on the face, but are mainly aimed at money.

But, Barkan warns, these market-based reforms are hardly a panacea: “[E]vidence is mounting that the reforms are not working. Stanford University’s 2009 study of charter schools—the most comprehensive ever done—concluded that 83 percent of them perform either worse or no better than traditional public schools; a 2010 Vanderbilt University study showed definitively that merit pay for teachers does not produce higher test scores for students; a National Research Council report confirmed multiple studies that show standardized test scores do not measure student learning adequately. Gates and Broad helped to shape and fund two of the nation’s most extensive and aggressive school reform programs—in Chicago and New York City—but neither has produced credible improvement in student performance after years of experimentation.”

Misguided reform coupled with tragically misguided legislation has left us with the same problems we had before coupled with many new ones.

• We have public schools in which the teachers at the top of their payscale (e.g., here in Vermont) with all the bells and whistles, degrees and seniority, still are earning less than the state median wage. 
• You have charter schools opening up on the cheap, closing down significant public options, simply so that Green Dot and other groups can make a profit. The principal of such can look super while pulling in $200k to $500k but apparently a teacher making more than $30k is the AntiChrist.
• You have organizations like Teach for America, set up solely to destroy teachers who want to make a career of teaching. How? By making it harder for serious candidates to get into places to establish themselves.  Why would a school want a career teacher when it can hire a fancy thoroughbred that will seem flashy and pretty and fast, but ultimately flame out in two years? Instant gratification writ cynical.
• You have reforms that are directly counter-productive, that "everyone knew were going to revolutionize education" but that really wound up wasting a significant portion of that budget that the pro-voucher, pro-private school advocates were pointing to as a problem in the public schools.
• Think: Small Schools Initiative. (Break big schools into smaller ones and then bitch that the smaller ones don't have economy of scale.)
• Think: Technology Uber Alles. Microsoft is the Education King! Every kid should have a laptop! Every kid should have a smartphone! iPod! iPad! Netbook!
• Think: Parochial, Private, Charter, KIPP! Profit is better.
• Think: Merit Pay!
• Testing, testing, testing. Test them in October, release the scores in May. And I'm supposed to do what in the last six weeks of school to change my curriculum to help this kid?

Like I said, Thanks. Now would you all please go somewhere and stop helping?

Just be quiet and pay attention.

Just once, I'd like the President to tell Congress to "Hold your applause until the end. Hey, you in the back. Do I need to keep you after class?"

It's a Rosy Picture, Rotten at the Core.

I shouldn't need to add much to this:

New York City’s top-ranked school is under investigation for cooking the books, reports the New York Times. Theater Arts Production Company School, a middle and high school located in a low-income Bronx neighborhood,  graduated 94 percent of seniors, more than 30 points above the citywide average. The school earned a near-perfect score in “student progress,” based partly on course credits earned by students.  The school’s no-failure policy requires teachers to pass all students who attend class, regardless of their performance; no more than 5 percent of students can get D’s.

In practice, some teachers said, even students who missed most of the school days earned credits. They also said students were promoted with over 100 absences a year; the principal, rather than a teacher, granted class credits needed for graduation; and credit was awarded for classes the school does not even offer.

When you tie teacher and admin pay to "performance", tie school survival to "attendance" and "graduation rates," it's not a stretch to imagine why people would lie. Should we blame Klein, Black, Bloomberg, Duncan, Obama, GWBII?  Some combination of all of them? Or just go firing school officials?

Ray Allen wins again.

Funny guys, those Boston Celtics. Winning on an awesome Ray Allen shot and immense Shaquille O'Neal shoulders.

And yes, that tweet makes total sense.

BTW,
Reggie Miller: 2560 three-pointers.
Ray Allen: 2533 three-pointers. 13-21 shooting threes for the last five games. When's the record gonna be?
Data below the jump.

Don't text and walk.

5 minutes of my life - gone. But it was funny.

She was texting and walking, then tripped into a fountain. Splash. (You can see her there in the still, just about to fall in the water.) She instantly gets up and climbs out of the fountain, nothing hurt but her pride. "I fell in the fountain. I was so drenched."

Mall security didn't rush out to help her. She called them the next day "I'm a mall employee. I don't want my employer to know."

The story would have ended there but the surveillance video, as all video eventually does if it's embarassing or funny somehow, wound up on YouTube. (There's a lesson there, kiddies.) "I admit. It was funny, but (whiny sniffle) nobody took my feelings into consideration. Nobody called. Nobody went to my aid. It could have been anyone's mother." .... yeah, but it wasn't and she got up so fast that I'm not sure how anyone COULD have gotten to her before she took off. Naturally, she feels wronged and the lawyer smells deep pockets. A lawsuit is born.


Lawyer wants to hold all responsible parties accountable, demand an apology, hold persons responsible for making the video public, blah, blah, blah. Aaaaaah, who gives a damn .... she walked into the fountain!

But there is a message here. Swimmer girl's lesson: "Do not text and walk. Especially to the younger generation. The fountain could have been empty. I could have been hit by a bus. I could have been hit by a car. (sniffle)"

Ain't that freakin' awesome? "I coulda been hit by a bus."  How? YOU WERE IN THE FREAKIN' MALL!

Let me think how this could have been avoided.

PISA scores - another look.

What do you see? When you look solely at schools with fewer than 10% of students on FRL (i.e., poor), US schools would be better than those of the top of the chart, Korea. When you include the whole spectrum of US schools and their students, the US is much lower.

The US has a much bigger spread than any other country (the largest standard deviation of wealth in the developed world).

Our overall scores are unspectacular because we have a high percentage of children living in poverty, over 20%. This is the highest among all industrialized countries. In contrast, child poverty in high-scoring Finland is less than 4%. For Cleveland and for the US as a whole, the major problem is poverty. Before we worry about teacher quality, institute longer school days, and increase testing, we need to make sure that all children are protected from the effects of poverty: This means adequate health care and nutrition, and access to books. When we do this, American test scores will be at the top of the world.-- Stephen Krashen

Shocked. Alabama Governor is religious.

"Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother," Bentley said Monday, his inauguration day, according to The Birmingham News.

The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday called Bentley's remarks shocking. "His comments are not only offensive, but also raise serious questions as to whether non-Christians can expect to receive equal treatment during his tenure as governor," said Bill Nigut, the ADL's regional director.

Sorry to burst your bubble, ADL, but you're living in Alabama. What gave you the idea that everyone would be treated equally without fighting for it? Has Alabama EVER been anything but resistant to Muslims, Jews, etc?

Techno-silly

Twain: Non sucky lecture.

Rick Hess's blog was taken over by a guest (Meira Levinson, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education) who opined:

As a professor, I am a techno-enthusiast: I'm constantly asking my students to do in-class activities using GoogleDocs or wikis, and I've moved all my lectures on-line on the grounds that it's criminal in 2011 to force a bunch of people to show up in the same room just to hear one person monodirectionally deliver information.

Criminal? Interesting choice of words. Why should it be such an imposition for the students to show up to one place at a scheduled time? The reason they are (usually) required to be there is that lectures are rarely one-directional, unless the lecturer sucks. If I lecture, I am always looking for some kind of feedback if for no other reason than to ascertain whether any of them are awake.

I guess if you're that boring or if you're just reading from, and never veer away from, a script then an attendance requirement should be waived, but that doesn't seem like much of a college to me. It's curious that the college manages to convince people that this online, easy-access, don't care if you do or not, video repeated for the third straight year is worth the tuition:

Full-time Students	Per Academic Year	$35,568.00
Part-time Students	Per Course/Per Term	$ 4,446.00

If it doesn't matter whether or not the students are there, you might as well be running a video. Go ahead and put it online.

Stupid

I think Robert DeNiro is a brilliant actor. This does not necessarily translate over to education.

"For the children, you just hope the movies do well enough so you can keep them in private schools." — Robert DeNiro, on receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes.

Screw you, Bobby. I've taught in private schools before. Ain't nothing special. The "difference" is selective admissions and money.

Algebra in the Third Grade?

I got the NASCO 2011 catalog in my mailbox this morning. If you haven't dealt with them, they are a pretty typical school supply catalog - prices are double what you can find if you search diligently or ten times the scrounger's price. What it is really good for is as a wish list, a source for ideas. "How does that toy work? I could do that in the garage for $2 in materials."

My problem with them is that sometimes they really miss the mark. Here's the cover:

Really? Third grade and up? I rail all the time about my students arriving in 9th grade without a clear grasp of fractions and clueless about operations with fractions (sans calculator), limited fluency with percents and decimals, and an unsteady grasp of their multiplication tables and other basic stuff. I had usually blamed the 3rd through 6th grade teachers for not really understanding arithmetic and passing on any math phobias, but this seems like a major problem right here.

If the expectation is that this kind of thing is possible for 3rd grade and up, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that fractions and arithmetic aren't getting as much attention.

My questions:

• Is this typical? Do third grade teachers really do this?
• Is it just a stupid cover by a catalog desperate to sell overpriced AlgeBlocks to a gullible school system?
• Shouldn't we be solidifying knowledge to the point of automaticity instead of spreading algebraic materials ever lower?
• I'm pretty sure that a few third graders could get this but is it appropriate for that level? 
• Is it possible without manipulatives at this age?

 Then, there's the other debate:

• Are manipulatives appropriate? 
• Does the use of something tangible and obviously fixed in size get in the way of learning an abstract idea about a variable?

Not a two way thing.

Genius, but not ignored or derided.

Many geniuses and their brilliant ideas are misunderstood, ignored or derided before being accepted by the mainstream as obvious. 

This does not mean, however, that because you are misunderstood, ignored or derided, that you are a genius with brilliant ideas that deserve acceptance.

Just sayin'.