‘As if “what needs to be done” is obvious or even known to any one of us.’ Just perfect.

Some of the frustration captured and unwisely paraded on Scott’s website is so far beyond anything that’s actually helpful. It’s Season 4 of the Wire-level disappointing.

Like many commenters, I speak from experience. It is a rite of passage for teachers to go through bouts of cynicism and self-righteousness. In the beginning, some colleagues and I just tried to “out-work” everyone- sometimes staying at school as late as midnight, turning teaching into competitive performance art. You weren’t cool if you left before seven-thirty.

It was ridiculous Rheeian logic: through sheer self-discipline (and grading every piece of classwork), the achievement gap will be no more. I am math teacher. I am strong. I eat achievement gap.

What’s sad is the testing data only confirmed our naivete. Our kids’ scores went way up! Anecdotal longitudinal observations- that is, following up with our students into the next school years- suggested that those precious gains were quickly lost. My former algebra students were unable to solve simple systems of equations. A devastating blow to the ego of the super-teacher. You realize, slowly and painfully, that this is a process.

If Scott’s goal was to genuinely answer these two (very good) questions he mentions in his first comment, than the post was a radical failure. Outliers are outliers. Talk to, and seek data from, more moderate and statistically normal sources.

The answers to what makes a good teacher are challenging, painful, but most of all: complicated. Trying to answer it by appealing to the visceral- really, like you’re trying to win a campaign- is irresponsible.

I have found that through the invention of such technologies like the Internet, blogging, YouTube, Facebook, and many others, that when authors fail to describe their purpose of sharing whatever they are sharing. This leaves readers/viewers to create their own context and often it is contrary to the author’s true purpose of sharing their thoughts or creations on this public medium.

Sometimes, like art, the creator intends for the viewer to create their own context. But if this not the creator/author’s intent, then they should frame their gift to the world or give us a lens through which to view their gift, that provides a context.

Perhaps this may be why some Math book publishers, create pseudocontextual problems. In Math, is creating pseudocontext for an application of a Math concept just as bad as sharing a bunch of videos with no context at all?

Perhaps our delivery as teachers would be better if we either provided more or less context.

This comment is more of an aside than something that contributes directly to the intense conversation the rest of you are having. :-)

When I first saw the Youtube videos I was stunned. But, when I went to Youtube directly, I was pleased to see many videos posted by students who wanted to show their “crazy” and “cool” and “best ever” MATH teachers (most were math teachers it seemed). Seeing all these teachers from around the country putting forth their best efforts was fun.
And it was a relief to see its not all bad.

To answer the questions posed by Scott’s post:
“1) Do you know what your students are saying at home about your school?”
I have the luxury of teaching (real) adults, so they just tell me to my face.

“2) Is this something that educators should care about or just ignore?”
I only worry about it if the criticism is valid and not something I was aware of.

I’m new to Scott’s blog, so I can only give my initial impression. It seems that Scott believes that students are not engaged because there are too few glowing screens in front of them. (This is, of course, being perpetuated by the chalkboard unions.) I will be reading more of his blog to see if my impression is wrong.

I personally don’t think that a computer will make a bad teacher any better or a disengaged student more involved. My motto for teaching with technology is: “The Pharisees didn’t understand Jesus due to a lack of PowerPoint.”

Very heated but interesting exchange.

I think the most interesting aspect of this entire issue goes back to POWER. Scott mentioned that students don’t feel as if they have POWER in the classroom, and that the teachers (I am deducing) are the blame for that.

And in some respects, I can agree with that. However, I think we can all agree that as a whole, TEACHERS have little to know POWER in the system of education, but we take the brunt of the BLAME for the PROBLEMS.

Scott says teachers are not preparing students for the world they live in. And he’s right…but look at the standards. They are enormous. And no one is willing to agree what to cut, so we keep piling it on. And it’s up to teachers to sift through all the muck to get enough done so the student can jump through the hoops of standardized testing.

I think the debate about education does need a dose of civility and reality. This blog post gave a little of both.

What you probably don’t see enough from my blogging is my very real, very palpable, very concrete, and – according to those I work with, very helpful – roll-up-my-sleeves work that I do every single week with practicing educators. We’ve done nearly 200 days of training in the past 2 years (and, yes, I’m exhausted from it). We’ve helped change the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of educators worldwide. We’ve nearly single-handedly helped Iowa move into a situation where as many as 1/4 of all districts will have some sort of 1:1 laptop initiative next year. We host free conferences where educators can learn from each other about best teaching, learning, assessment, and technology practices. We work with national and state leadership policymakers, leadership associations, and other groups on effective support structures and policies. We create free electronic resources and blogs and other information channels to try and help move educators and schools forward. And so forth…

In other words, like you, I too am working at the ground level WITH practicing educators and professors to give them the skills and understanding (and, to the extent that we can as a university-based center, the support) to do what needs to be done. It’s not simple. It’s incredibly complex and difficult work. And, yes, Dan, I understand the lack of appropriate vision and support within districts, and the challenges that puts on classroom teachers. Most administrators haven’t a clue about 1) what it means to prepare students for the next few decades, or 2) how to create and support the various systems that will do that effectively. We’re trying, but there are many more principals and superintendents than there are of us. We’re working at it. It would be nice if there were other places with an explicit focus on the leadership side of all of this. But there aren’t.

All of this aside, the problem still remains HUGE. The felt need by educators to do more than tweak the current system isn’t there in most places. So we need to call it what it is, put forth a larger and better vision, and then work to enable and support “the big shift.” That’s what I’m trying to do. If the way I’m currently operating isn’t working for the two of you (and/or others), I appreciate the feedback and will think on ways to make our day-to-day helping work more evident.

Have a great weekend. I appreciate the conversation.

Your frustration with teachers over at least the last year has been growing, palpable, and is far disproportionate to the power teachers actually wield over their own circumstances.

It isn’t the tone of your writing that bothers me, though. It’s the impression I get from your writing (like Rhee’s speaking) that the answers are obvious and that all failure can be traced back to a lack of willpower to “do what needs to be done.”

As if “what needs to be done” is obvious or even known to any one of us. Just one example:

There are countless impediments between teachers and good technology use. We’ll disagree on how much of the blame for those impediments you pile on teachers themselves. One impediment you fully ignore, though, is all the really, really bad educational technology teachers have to evaluate and discard. Because you don’t differentiate “technology.” Technology, to you, doesn’t differ in quality or accessibility or price. Technology is analogous to a cash register or AutoCAD or a Bloomberg terminal. But the only technology that has been that widely endorsed by management, that has been vetted for quality that rigorously, that has been priced that reasonably, that can be that ubiquitously accessed is a) e-mail software and b) attendance software.

You want to hassle teachers for not using either of those two, be my guest, without condition. But as long as teachers are the second-to-last link in this long causal chain, I encourage you to balance the help / train / cajole categories more appropriately. (DetentionSlip proves there’s an audience for self-righteous cajoling, after all.) I’m sure your best work is ahead of you, Scott, but I’m encouraging you to rebalance the scales in favor of humility in the face of a problem that goes way beyond easy answers.