eduskeptic

In the two previous posts, the Eduskeptic wrote about technology use in the classroom and whether it did any good, was useful, or had any proven results.

Todays musings target an ongoing question: is any of it necessary for learning? At what grade level? The short answer to the necessary part is no. As to the grade level issue, it depends.

Children in the elementary grades do not need the techno gadgets in order to learn. Some say that the use of computers (just one of the available techno gadgets) in the early grades is just plain wrong. Others offer a more diffuse opinion, saying that it can’t hurt.

If one adheres to the Waldorf, Steiner, Montessori or developmental philosophies, then computers, especially in the early grades, simply aren’t a necessary part of the learning formula. From a teaching perspective in the public sector, mine to be exact, they don’t need to used at all in the early years. They can be, but don’t have to be.

The balancing act is this: with every minute spent on the computer, time is taken away from hands on imaginative explorations either inside the classroom or outside. Children learn best by doing. The tactile quality of what they use, coupled with auditory and olfactory input (what they touch, hear, and smell), is extremely important in the process. There is no way to replace those experiences. The stick, that lovely piece of wood that exists all over, is actually in the National Toy Hall of Fame. It is probably the most versatile toy on the planet. Its ability to morph into a wand, pony, spear, bridge, best friend, is unlimited. Imagination dictates what it may become.

Young children need to be active. Running, jumping, swinging, climbing, rolling about are all part of learning how to do things. Mud, snow, rain, dirt, rocks, are all part of it. They need to be able to explore without adult interference. They learn so much by doing so.

They learn patience, what works and what doesn’t, how to fix what doesn’t work so well, how to cooperate, how to be compassionate, how to lead and follow, what cause and effect are, how to make up and follow the very complex rules they invent for the very complex games they invent. The result of all this is that they learn about the real world and how they fit into it. Their imaginations create all kinds of wonderful experiences. Skinned knees, hurt feelings, the wonder of a best friend, smiles and tears imprint their brains with very real lessons.

Without all that, the joy of being a child is lessened. None of that can be had on a computer, not because computers are bad, but because computers are not animate. A day in the mud cannot be had on any computer generated program.

Young children need all of that curiosity and activity in order to have the letters and sounds and words they study make sense. Dry, wet, cold, hot, hurt, joy all come from real experiences with real things. Those things pop up when connected with words.

As children progress through the grade levels, increasing use of the available technology offers tools that help them put their ideas into a universal format that othermakes can understand. If the use of a computer program helps a 4th grade student to read or write better, use it.

The ability to use the tool, and understand the consequences of using it, stems not from the computer, but from the lessons learned rolling around the floor, the dexterity that comes with climbing things, figuring out what comes next, and the expanding curiosity that comes with it. There is a time and place for everything.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Technology. Gadgets. Same thing? Useful in the classroom? Worth the money spent on them? The educational community deals with these questions every day. The level of comfort, and the enthusiasm regarding their use, varies from school to school.

During the Eduskeptic’s time in the classroom there didn’t seem to be any clear delineation of willingness to adopt new technology, in whatever form it came in, based on the age of the teaching staff, administration, or support staff.

What was stratified was the basic familiarity with the technology. The younger staff grew up with computers and all that they have evolved in to. Those of us of a certain age possibly took longer to understand some of the operating skills required, but we did learn.

One frequent question is this: Are computers/technology necessary for children to learn?

From the vendor standpoint, the answer is yes. The common refrain is that schools are responsible for not only educating children, but ultimately getting them ready for the working world of the future. It is only possible to do so with a robust computer/technology program.

From the educator standpoint, the answer is diffuse. The technology is good to have, but it may not actually be necessary. Given the pace of change in the techno world, it is fundamentally impractical to get children ready for tomorrows technology systems using what exists today.

Teachers, in general, will use any tool at their disposal if it will help children learn. Keep in mind that the span of abilities in any classroom is very large. A tool that will help one or some children may not do anything for others. The art in this process is being able to apply the correct tool at the correct time.

Computers can be useful in most classrooms. For children who are struggling, programs on a computer may be what they need to practice, review, and move on to the next lesson. For advanced students, computers can fill the need to go past what is being presented, and stay engaged in the learning process. For the vast middle group, individual explorations are possible.

None of this is possible without a good teacher in the classroom. The teaching end of the business remains critical to the learning process. The teacher puts together the lesson and hopefully brings it to life. The computer/video screen/recorder/smart board allows for either remediation, review, or extension of the lessons.

The Internet allows for anytime, anywhere academic learning. Children who are natural night owls can plug away later in the day. Children who are early risers can start early in the morning. Being out of the classroom doesn’t mean being out of the loop. Actually, it never did. It’s just the method of staying connected to the learning that’s changed.

The biggest drawback to the proliferation of all the techno gizmos in the classroom is this: technology is the black hole of education funding. There is no end to it, and it only seems to grow.

While there doesn’t seem to be any definitive research to either support or disprove the usefulness of computerized learning in schools, the Eduskeptic can say that the entire spectrum that comprises “technology” in the classroom can be helpful to children and teachers. The caveat is this: nothing in my experience suggests that a good teacher is secondary to the learning process.

Without inspiration and insistence on excellence by a real teacher in the classroom, the personal touch by a caring teacher, all the technology in the classroom just sucks up electricity, and produces not much else.

Next time the Eduskeptic will address whether any of that stuff is really necessary, especially in the younger grades.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Quite a long time ago, Apple made an amazing gift to schools. The company simply gave their apple IIe computers to schools. Apple wasn’t the only company making computers at the time, nor were they any better or worse than the pc’s being produced at the time. This was in the late 1980’s.

Along with the IIe’s came the absolute necessity to stick with proprietary Apple software, which was much more lucrative than selling the machine itself.  It was one of the most brilliant marking moves in the history of marketing. Schools, always cash strapped, snapped up any “free” computers that Apple was willing to give.  It was also the beginning of cult Mac.

We loved them. We didn’t actually have the time to research anything regarding computers, software costs, or anything else related to them. We gladly accepted them and used them until they simply couldn’t be used anymore. The last IIe in my classroom finally died in about 1998.

By that time I had 2 IIe’s, a Commodore 64, an early IBM, and an Atari in my classroom. My Kindergartners loved each of them, and just finally wore them out.

Not long after we started using computers in classrooms the debate about their usefulness entered our educational discussions. Actually the debate generally centered around the use of “technology”.

The sellers of the various types of new technology always presented the educational community with two ideas: children learn better with it, and they won’t make it without it. Good marketing paranoia.

Technology has been present in classrooms, with the same claims, forever. Record players were in every classroom the Eduskeptic was ever in, until high school. Then we had tape recorders and players, movie projectors, video players with TV’s, replaced by CD players, radio/CD player combo’s, laser discs, video camera’s, digital video camera’s, digital tape recorders, DVD’s, green screen computers, color monitor computers, printers of all kinds, floppy disk’s replaced by smaller disk’s, replaced by flash drives, computers that could do more than anyone could figure out, wireless everything, the Internet, white boards, interactive white boards, touch-screen technology, distance learning, telephones in the classroom, and on up to present day computer labs at elementary schools and high schools with servers and work stations, along with computers, laptops, smart phones, and iPads and  tablet computers in classrooms. It’s somewhat tiring just listing all that stuff.

The basic debate has not changed though. Do they do any good? An enormous amount of money has been spent by school districts over the last 20 years to buy, maintain, upgrade, replace, hire techs, and plan for an unknown future for technology that is admittedly quite interesting and useful, but with a relatively unproven effect on education.

The entire span of what technology covers, and will cover in future, is extensive. This conglomeration of gadgets that compose “technology” can best be described as very useful tools. But, does their use help children learn? Is the knowledge of how to use them really necessary for children to succeed?

As with so many things, maybe, maybe not. Absent a good teacher, are they any good at all, and does a really good teacher need any of it?

The Eduskeptics next posting will explore various sides of those questions. In the meantime, as always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Tests in school settings have existed since schools have existed. Whatever the definition of school that you choose, it has tests. How else could a teacher figure out if the student learned the material that had been presented?

One would think that it’s a pretty simple proposition: present a concept, spend some time exploring it, then test the students understanding of the concept. When the Eduskeptic was in the Army, the tests were exactly that. Proof of learning was getting through a course in one piece, or hitting the target in the correct spot. Failure to learn could be pretty unpleasant.

The Army didn’t invent this structure. It’s been around since dirt first appeared on the planet. The testing procedure is not only related to the content that has been taught, it is cumulative. One concept builds on another. Babies crawl, then totter about, then walk, and then run.

There has been controversy about testing from early on as well. Socrates was vehemently opposed to the written word. He thought that reasoned debate was a far better test of ones skills and learning.

All of this is to say that the current hubbub about testing is nothing new. Not much in education is. The difference today seems to be the consequences of not meeting the required norms of the testing regime. The requirements were put together by politicians, which doesn’t make the unintended consequences all that surprising.

One of the biggest complaints from actual teachers in actual classrooms is the need to teach to the test, almost to the exclusion of everything else. To be fair, the term “teaching to the test” isn’t very illustrative. Teachers have always taught to the test. How could it not be? Present information, test on the information presented.

It’s the loss of the other stuff that is frustrating. Learning to regurgitate factoids doesn’t actually do much toward educating anyone. Robots can be programed to do that.

It’s the person who is doing the programing of the robot who is critical. That person must have critical thinking skills. The ability to branch out and explore quite a few “what if’s” and accept a non-working solution as a step on the road to success is very important.

That’s the major draw back of the current testing drama. Without the ability to take a leap out into the unknown with the information that has been presented, it’s not education. It’s robotic regurgitation. Factoids have limited usefulness.

What is needed is a much more rounded, still vigorous, testing mechanism. It just can’t be so simplistic that only a scantron is used to evaluate what children have learned in school. Education, and children, are much more complicated than that.

The people who are most qualified to put such a system together are, oddly enough, teachers. Newbies, mid-career, end of career, and retired teachers and administrators, along with some of the university profs who are very good at research. Leaving such a thing to the political establishment is, to put it mildly, insane.

Because of the amount of money involved though, it is unlikely that anyone will put together a group of educators anytime soon. In the meantime, the system will probably continue waste energy with the current untenable situation.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Under the No Child Left Behind legislation, there were no gray areas. There were two options, perform to the standards, or be taken over. Not much in life is quite that black and white.

Schools now have the ability to choose a different course. Instead of being locked into a largely unwinnable march to failure in 2014, there are now options.

The Obama administration, with Arne Duncan at the helm of the Department of Education, has offered school districts the ability to opt out some portions of NCLB. Nothing in the legislation lets districts off the hook relative to advancing learning. Rather, it puts in place reasonable goals that are, with work, achievable.

The trade off is this: states that opt in to the new regime will be required  to adopt “…college- and career-ready standards, focus on 15 percent of their most-troubled schools, and create guidelines for teacher evaluations based in part on student performance.”

States applying for waivers have till the middle of November to do so. Those states granted waivers will find out sometime after the first of the year. The requirements are sure to be rigorous, and states will need to fully agree to participate in order to receive a waiver.

What does this mean for education in general? That is hard to say. The reality is that nothing is as it seems on the surface when discussing legislation regarding education. The full import of what all this means won’t be known until a year or so after it is put in place.

It is, perhaps, a good place to start though. Rigorous, not rigid, expectations are far better than the certainty of doom under the unintended consequences of the original NCLB.

Educators will hopefully be included in the discussions about how to satisfy the conditions of the waivers. Gov. Brown would do well to include actual classroom teachers, from rookies to old pros, in this process. It’s not too much to ask for.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

The No Child Left Behind law launched 10 years ago, perhaps with good intentions, perhaps not. It can be compared to jumping out of an airplane, and a few hundred feet later finding out that you don’t actually have a parachute strapped on. Exhilarating, but maybe not such a good ending.

The argument isn’t whether our school systems need to do better. They always do, no matter what. Education is not a static enterprise.

The goals that had to met by schools started out a reasonable point. Each year the expectations increased, and that yearly increase was also a reasonable, reachable goal. Schools did have to focus on the goals and work pretty diligently to meet them, but it could be done.

On a graph, the yearly increases were somewhat like a ramp leading to a classroom. It started at not much, and gradually increased. A few years into the program though, the ramp disappeared. The trajectory shot up at a very steep angle. It very much resembled a hockey stick.

During this time, the Eduskeptic was teaching Kindergarten in a small district in the Sierra, east of Sacramento, California. In meeting after meeting, we went over all the data that we could generate regarding our K through 4 grade levels. Everyone was engaged in this process. We knew what was expected, what we needed to do, argued fiercely over it, and it was kept at the forefront of our planning processes.

As a result, in 2008, the school was awarded the California Distinguished School designation. Pretty cool. The process of educating very young children continued in the same manner as before. Nothing changed. Meeting state and federal expectations continued to be a big part of what we did.

While this was going on, I looked at the graph of expectations, noted where we were, and where we needed to be, over and over again. It was obvious that a train wreck was on the way. The Eduskeptic admits to being mathematically challenged in some higher math areas. One of his Kindergarten colleagues, however, was a math person.

One fine day during one of our Kindergarten recesses, I brought out the graph, with our progress meticulously charted. My reading of the trajectory of our progress relative to the hockey stick of requirements was that we would, at a very definable time, run into the handle of the hockey stick, far short of the requirements. My colleague confirmed what I thought to be true.

There was nothing in our upward trajectory history that indicated that we could ever meet the goals once the line of expectations rocketed upward.

The only way to do it would be to swap out our entire student population and replace it with certified genius level drones. We were going to run into the wall of the hockey stick handle in the 2010-2011 school year, and be in the school improvement boat starting in the 2011-2012 school year.

That was an accurate prediction. Like many other fine schools doing a wonderful job of educating children, the school where the Eduskeptic taught is indeed in the school improvement program, not because of the quality of teaching or make up of the students. It is entirely due to the unrealistic tenents of NCLB. Keep in mind that the fine teachers at this school didn’t all of a sudden take a two year nap. This school, and too many others just like it, has no business being put into such a designation.

Now, though, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, have pulled the plug on most of the unattainable requirements of NCLB. To be sure, there are still stringent requirements, and there are some other requirements put in place. The end result seems, at least right now, to be a recognition that mathematics can be a predictor, there is always a bell curve and it cannot be defeated, and, oddly enough, gravity really does work.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

In the last two articles, the Eduskeptic discussed teaching reading to very young children, ages 4-7, and the reality of the developmental processes involved.

A short review:

• developmental processes in children cannot be pushed or hurried up, which is the reason they are called “developmental”
• the best care, nutrition, family, cannot hurry the processes
• the worst care, poor nutrition, dysfunctional family, can slow things down
• decoding and reading are very different things
• until the neurons axons are fully myelinated, especially in the angular gyrus region of the brain, children can’t read well, if at all
• the angular gyrus isn’t fully myelinated until sometime after the 5th year, and prior to the 7th year.
• the angular gyrus, when fully myelinated, allows many different functions to come together and be quickly transmitted
• the process occurs more quickly in girls
• reading, as opposed to decoding, follows this developmental process

The question then is this: can very young children, Kindergartners, be forced to read? It’s not likely. They can, however, be supported as they are exposed to and gather the information that will allow them to read.

Kindergartners can learn to decode words, and are certainly able to memorize pages from a short book. Comprehension about what they are decoding is rare. Decoding is a necessary step on the road to reading. Comprehension is reading.

Kindergartners  can remember a short word list. Around 25 is pretty much OK, by the end of Kindergarten. To require that they either understand what the words are, or be able to use them consistently in sentences is absurd. The idea that these very young children should know 100 words in order to be ready for first grade is patently insane. It is strange enough to require first graders to know 100 words.

If Kindergartners are read to on a regular basis, given books to look at, exposed to the printed word,  are included in participating in predictable books, and are read familiar stories more than once, they quickly get the idea that all those squiggles on a page mean something. Their natural curiosity kicks in, and they are on the path to reading—all in their own time. Yes, some Kindergartners actually do learn to read. It’s got everything to do with the myelination process.

First grade children are at a more developmentally appropriate age to begin to read. They will do so at varying rates. Nothing about children happens in lock-step with other children. The process of teaching these children to read is a very complicated endeavor.

Good teachers know that everyone moves at their own rate, though some just give lip service to the idea. The really good ones actually know how  to support these different rates, and are comfortable with how children progress.

The really good first and second grade teachers will recognize when one of their students has hit a ceiling. Rather than blindly insisting on the next level, they go back, re-teach, re-teach, re-teach until that child reaches the next level. It’s been called laddering, scaffolding, framing, circling, supportive reading, and so on.

Regardless of the edu-speak word or phrase du jour, it involves a couple of really important issues: teachers who absolutely know what they are doing, and who understand and embrace the developmental growth of their students. The ceilings that the children hit have to do with the myelination process, and being continually supported through this growth process allows them to jump to the next level of proficiency as soon as their brains are ready to do so.

It is vitally important that teachers of K through third grade students acknowledge and support the developmental processes that all children must go through as they grow. Unrealistic expectations do nothing more than frustrate teachers and parents, and can do irreparable harm to very young children.

Young children who are pushed by adults to things they are developmentally unable to do are likely to exhibit burn out in third grade. It is a long way from third grade to high school graduation.

It is important for those in educational policy making positions to actually be familiar with the developmental processes. They, of all people, should understand the myelination process, and act accordingly. Mostly, they do not.

Someone has to stand up for the children. Parents and teachers are in the best position to insist on developmentally appropriate practices when it comes to their young children. The politicians quite obviously do not.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

The last musings of the Eduskeptic centered on teaching reading to young children. Young children, for the purposes of this article, are those who are between 4-7 years old.

The push for ever more expectations of Kindergartners and first grade students started prior to the No Child Left Behind legislation. It came to the forefront with gusto when NCLB was passed into law. It was a seemingly good idea. However, it was ill formed, badly executed, carried forward by people who had no experience actually working with very young children.

Developmental processes cannot be hurried along. They are called “developmental” for a reason. There isn’t any known method of speeding up how the brain, and the body develop. The best nutrition and care in the world, while certainly a benefit for young children, don’t equal a faster process. Conversely, lack of good nutrition and care can have a negative impact on development. The body does need nutrients and care to prosper.

The biological time table rolls along at an individual pace. Each child is different in reaching certain milestones. Children crawl, walk, run, talk, explore, at different times, dictated by their own internal biological clock. None of these happen at the same time for children who are the same age. That much is certain.

The ability to read is determined by many things happening in the brain, and in the child’s environment. Reading depends on the brains ability to connect and integrate various sources of information–visual with auditory, linguistic and conceptual areas–and to do so quickly.

All this is dependent upon the maturation of each of the brains’ individual regions, their associated areas, and the speed with which they can be connected and integrated. The speed with which these actions occur depends a great deal on the myelination of the neurons axons in the brain.

Myelin is the fatty sheathing wrapped around a cells axons. More myelin equals a faster neuron, basically a faster conduction of the electrical charge that fires across a synapse to another axon.

Myelin growth follows a developmental schedule that differs for each region of the brain. For instance,  auditory nerves are myelinated in the 6th prenatal month; visual nerves, 6 months postnatally. Sensory and motor regions are myelinated and function independently before 5 years.

The principal regions of the brain that underlie our ability to integrate visual, verbal, and auditory information rapidly–like the angular gyrus–are not fully myelinated in most humans until 5 years of age or later. This is a critical piece of information related to reading.

It has been suggested (Norman Geschwind) that for most children the myelination of the angular gyrus is not sufficiently, or fully, developed until between 5 and 7 years of age. The process takes longer for boys.

This is the information that is commonly referred to by some teachers as the “developmental processes” . It is in fact probably not understood at this level by most people, including teachers, who are outside the medical field. Brain research related to teaching is woefully inadequate. Who in the teaching field has ever heard of something called the angular gyrus and the myelination processes?

The Eduskeptic, in all of the professional development workshops attended over a 30+ year career, never heard anything about this. Reading specialists the Eduskeptic has spoken to are in the same boat.

What all this means is that, prior to the full myelination of the angular gyrus, the processes that lead to reading simply aren’t in place. It also goes a long way in explaining the reason that some children read before others.

It also points out the futility of insisting that Kindergartners read before getting to first grade. It is a biologically ridiculous idea for most 5 years olds’. What is OK is the preparation for reading. Being exposed to books and print, learning rhymes and songs, being read to–which is hugely important–are all critical to the process. It is important to remember that decoding and reading are two wildly different things.

It illuminates the importance of a systematic, sensitive, and fully informed approach to reading in first grade and second grade, taught by teachers who understand the developmental processes the brain must go through prior to being able to read. Anything less places unwarranted expectations and stress on very young children.

The Eduskeptic encourages anyone in the early education field, teaching children from 5 to 7 years old, to read Maryanne Wolf’s book Proust and the Squid. The basis for this series of posts regarding reading are due to the information presented in her book, along with many years of complete frustration dealing with “educational leaders” and colleagues who simply didn’t, and may still not, understand developmental processes.

Next post: what’s important in teaching reading to the very young. As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Some time ago, when my teaching career was at about halfway through, young children were not expected to be reading by the time they left Kindergarten. Those of us who taught very young children in Kindergarten, and our first and second grade colleagues, understood that developmental issues precluded doing so for 4, 5, and most 6 year old children.

Fast forward a few years. There came a push for the very young to be able to “recognize” a set number of words that were used most often in first grade reading. The Eduskeptics radar went off.

It seemed at the time, and I was clear in my statements about it, that we were about to step onto a very slippery slope that would end up with this “recognition” morphing into a “requirement” related to a “standard”.  The Eduskeptic was, most unfortunately, correct in paying attention to his long range radar warning.

Each year I would remind my Kindergarten colleagues, and everyone else, that we were caring for very young children. Developmental processes cannot be pushed. They occur on their own biological time table, and it differs from child to child.

Our third grade teachers, long ago, said that third grade was where the preceding 3 years would come together. Reading really took off. It if didn’t, the probability that a problem existed was very real. The coming together part was, in actuality, the developmental processes in the brain finishing a task related to reading.

It is important to understand that reading is wildly different from decoding. Simple word recognition is not reading. Working through a series of words, and naming them correctly, is decoding. Decoding and reading are related but are very different critters.

The “standards” march came on full force with the No Child Left Behind Act. Over time, people who didn’t actually teach young children decided that everyone needed to be at “average”. It is a completely unattainable goal. As the Eduskeptic has pointed out many times before, average only exists in the presence of below average and above average. Average is the quintessential moving target. Death is more certain than “average”.

Standards were developed for every grade level. Reading, inappropriately, became part of Kindergarten. Children 4, 5, and 6 started to be held accountable for something that they were very ill equipped to do. Read.

It was, and continues to be, an extremely stupid skill to insist upon in Kindergarten. Stay tuned. The Eduskeptic’s next post will explain the reason for this.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Summer break is in full bloom by now. Depending on where in the US one lives, it started either somewhere around the end of May or at the beginning or middle of June. It was always an exciting time when I was still teaching. It still is.

The break is generally a big hit with teachers, children, and parents, although some parents might really rather that the little ones continue to spend time away from the house. This break happens in summer due to one seasonal fact: it gets hot.

Long ago, after the industrial revolution, students were, for the first time in this country, going to school in large warehouse-like buildings. The move off the farms into the city put large numbers of children in school. The buildings lacked one really important feature: air conditioning of any kind. The summer break was born.

The Eduskeptic is convinced that this break is absolutely necessary, for everyone. There are those who will claim that children lose what they learn over the summer break. Some still think that the break is 3 months long. It isn’t and never has been. The pundits who claim that this educational loss occurs regularly advocate for a longer school year. They will point out that other countries do it, so we should.

Our system is different than most other countries. It’s difficult to produce a good comparison without launching into the apples and oranges mirror.

There isn’t any evidence that children lose what they learn. The beginning of the school year start up always produces a need for everyone to get back into the swing of things. Teachers need just as much time to get back into it as the students do.

What does the summer break do then? Ideally it provides a time for children to simply be children. Unstructured time, especially for the elementary years, is extremely important. It’s a time for children to put to practical use what they learned at school. It’s a time for unfettered running amok of their imaginations, the pure joy of exploration for explorations sake. It’s a time for the teenagers to run till they are empty, then sleep for long periods of time. It’s a time for them to explore the emerging teen relationship/friendship puzzle. It’s a time for families to play, love, and live without any particular reason to pay attention to the clock.

In short, the summer break gives everyone time to just be. It’s good, it’s always been good, and will, in the Eduskeptics opinion, always be good. It’s good to take time to wonder, explore, and learn at your own pace.