A great holiday message from WSWHE BOCES IN NY via Ken O’Connor.

Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy Chanukah to all of you!

The Science Goddess once was a classroom teacher whose adventures in eduland made for humorous stories about the foibles of our stereotypical edutyrants and eduposeurs. Nowadays, with a doctorate about to be conferred, she often forces us to think of our grading and assessment practices that impact, sometimes with terrible irony, the success of our students in middle and high school.

The Science Goddess now works at the state level, but still finds time to share with us the fruits of her explorations into the frontiers of education as it may, and probably should be, in the next century.

Read The Science Goddess. Subscribe to her RSS feed. Your brain will thank you.

During this deep and prolonged recession here in Oregon, we get to thinking about the costs of public education, especially secondary public education. (If you don’t think about it, that’s okay…I do, and I have to admit to a lot of ambivalence.)

Yesterday, the Orange County Register published an online artlcle about the differing expectations of teachers, parents, and students with regard to exactly what we should expect from a high school education.

This might be a bit of an overgeneralization, but I think of high school as both a beginning, and for many, an ending of formal education. Logically, a high school education needs to prepare students for life after high school, whether it’s joining the workforce and raising a happy little family, or going on to college and then joining the workforce and raising a happy little family.

In short, preparing students to be prepared for anything.

What do you think high school is for?

I don’t know how long this link will be available, but Eric Schopmeyer, a Portland, Oregon music teacher speaks about, not the impossibility of instituting merit pay fairly across the board, but of the disrespect to our profession by pushing the issue.

Right on, Eric!

For another view on merit pay, which highlights how the federal government (a government that intrudes on the constitutional right of the states to handle public education) views the issue, check out Larry Ferlazzo on In Practice.

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Should Eric’s link become history, here’s the text from “The Stump,” opinion from The Oregonian online.

Education, In My Opinion, Sunday Commentary »

Merit pay for teachers

By George Rede

March 21, 2009, 6:46AM

Eric Schopmeyer

Count instead on real incentives to help kids achieve

Implicit in the idea of merit pay is the notion that teachers would work harder at their jobs if only they were motivated by the promise of more money. This misapplication of market principles is utterly disrespectful to our nation’s educators. At best, it reads as a dark, satirical joke.

A scene in such a black comedy might open thusly: A classroom of 32 second-graders struggles in a futile attempt to complete an assignment while a teacher leans back lazily in her chair, ignoring them, counting out a neat stack of twenties thinking, “No, still not enough. Oh, if only someone would make it worth my while, I could easily get all these kids to pass the test. But until then … .”

Any cursory examination of our education system will turn up a group of serious and dedicated professionals who pour their hearts and souls into their jobs, working countless hours of unpaid overtime, dipping into our own pockets for needed supplies and tirelessly shepherding children toward academic success.

We do all this in an environment of essentially untenable conditions caused by the toxic dichotomy of ever-increasing demands and ever-diminishing resources. And it shouldn’t come as news to anyone that people don’t go into teaching for the money. We work our hardest every day not for the promise of the dollar but for love for the children and a deep belief that education is the key to a healthy society. You could give us a million dollar bonus every year, but it wouldn’t make a difference without a substantial investment in improving the fundamental conditions under which we are made to work.

A parallel scene might take place on the battlefields of Afghanistan. A small battalion, outnumbered and unarmed, is deployed behind enemy lines. Their commanding officer promises each of them bonus pay should they reign victorious. They’ll fight because they have to. They’ll fight for survival. They’ll fight out of loyalty. But without proper weaponry and ample reinforcements, the battle (and their survival) is a lost cause. The motivation of bonus pay is moot.

If you want to spend money to improve teaching and learning in the classroom, spend it on reducing class size, spend it on the resources and materials that we desperately lack, spend it on upgrading our crumbling facilities, spend it on programs to end the poverty that prevents so many of our kids from succeeding.

Sure, teachers deserve more pay — all teachers do. That’s a simple matter of respect for an extremely challenging profession that is so vital to our society and our economy. But I’d take a reduction in class size over an increase in pay any day.

Eric Schopmeyer is a music teacher at Marysville Elementary School in Portland.

The novel was written by a well-informed science historian with a knack for suspense. If the equations fell into the “wrong hands,” the result could be a weapon more devastating and sinister than the A/H bomb.

Long story short, I began to think about how unbearably complex the field of education has become. I wondered if there are, perhaps, a few simple principles we could discuss, validate, and practice, that would forever serve every student well. How powerful would that be?

Think about it…a Unified Field Theory of Education.

What would be some of the characteristics of such a theory?

I’ll suggest one, then I’d like to see some ideas from the rest of you. The simpler, the better. (No need for “research validation.” Follow your intuition.)

Here goes: “Every student is a genius, and our job is to help them discover that fact.”

Join me on the adventure.

Ken O’Connor sent me the following link. It shows how far the SBG movement has come, and that we not only have achieved a critical mass, but there are folks out there pushing the limits.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1039511

This very cool song pretty well sums them up…

Now go visit Tom Chapin’s web site, Not On the Test.

For those of you who want the lyrics, Tom generously published them on his other web site, tomchapin.com.

Not On The Test
by John Forster & Tom Chapin
© 2007 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

Go on to sleep now, third grader of mine.
The test is tomorrow but you’ll do just fine.
It’s reading and math. Forget all the rest.
You don’t need to know what is not on the test.

Each box that you mark on each test that you take,
Remember your teachers. Their jobs are at stake.
Your score is their score, but don’t get all stressed.
They’d never teach anything not on the test.

The School Board is faced with no child left behind
With rules but no funding, they’re caught in a bind.
So music and art and the things you love best
Are not in your school ’cause they’re not on the test.

Sleep, sleep, and as you progress
You’ll learn there’s a lot that is not on the test.

Debate is a skill that is useful to know,
Unless you’re in Congress or talk radio,
Where shouting and spouting and spewing are blessed
‘Cause rational discourse was not on the test.

Thinking’s important. It’s good to know how.
And someday you’ll learn to, but someday’s not now.
Go on to sleep, now. You need your rest.
Don’t think about thinking. It’s not on the test.

Thanks to Tom Brandt for hooking me up with the video!

Late last night, Chris Lehmann posed the following idea on Twitter: Question on my mind: How can you demand that people to improve if you don’t improve the circumstances of their life / work / etc?

My response: Perhaps “demand” isn’t the right road? Perhaps we inspire or support or model?

CL: I agree completely. So why do we see so little of that in today’s educational landscape? Especially in urban settings?

SG: I think we do model another “reality,” but may be unwilling to accept that many are happy as they are.

If you’ve read her post, you may be feeling some frustration, a twinge of resentment, or even some outright hostility for the education system that seems not to be able to reach all students with the message that they can succeed in life (whatever the definition of success is) if they work hard and persist.

The fact is, most people, and that includes students, have their own agendas. Their desires and schedules for achievement of their personal goals may never be clear to us, but we can still do something important, and that is to, as The Science Goddess mentions above, inspire.

Before you comment about my apparent Pollyanna attitude, let me define “inspire.”

Science teachers know that grasshoppers have spiracles along their bodies. These openings play a big part in breathing for the grasshopper — like, that’s where the air gets into the organism.

The root of “spiracle” is the Latin spiro, a verb that means to breathe. (Can you see where I’m going with this?)

In Latin, the prefix “in” means in or into. Put the prefix “in” together with “spiro” and you get “inspiro,” to breathe into.

So if we cannot control, coerce, or command success for students, we can breathe into them our desire that they succeed by setting a truly professional example, by making available visions of possibilities, by teaching them well, assessing them accurately, and grading them fairly.

And most importantly, treating them as equals with the respect we’d give to our most revered elders. And that implies that we accept their decision about what to do with our inspiration.

That’s what inspire means to me.

Next, read page 21-22 (The Case Against the Zero by Doug Reeves) of this pdf. (Scroll waaaay down to the title.)

Reflecting on the Reflection of My Reflection

Notes From The School Psychologist promises to fill a gap in our common pedagogical reflections. Rebecca Bell, Ph.D. blogs without a pseudonym, and offers insight and encouragement to us to see kids as vulnerable human beings who need our mentorship and caring rather than control and the always inequitable discipline that too many of us practice.

The world of a school psychologist is similar to a counselor’s and once or twice removed from a teacher’s, but all the reflections and anecdotes will enhance our vision of our profession.

Welcome to this little corner of the edublogosphere, Rebecca. I think you’ll find some folks you can talk to here.