My two beefs with Alfie Kohn

I spent quality time with Alfie this morning, sitting in the bath tub with The Schools Our Children Deserve--it's a fine book, well worth reading. In August, I can dream about idyllic classrooms with children clamoring to learn.

He's been discussed in Time magazine, sat with "Oprah" twice, and he wanders around lecturing a lot. He's been published by The Atlantic and The New York Times. He's his own cottage industry. Nice gig if you can get it.

I will use some of his ideas in class, and toss more around with our faculty.

The two beefs?

First:

The man has not taught in a classroom since 1985. He confesses that "it wasn’t until years later that I began to realize just how little I understood about teaching." Why is it that only people removed from their own classrooms can see the evils of our ways?

OK, that was a cheap shot--he's spent his life observing others, teachers who have been far more successful than he, and he acknowledges as much with charming self-effacement. But it's not nearly as cheap a shot at what's about to follow....

Second:

The man looks like the poster boy for the "San Francisco Flower Child Rescue League." He's preaching solid reform, he's got hard-hitting wonderful ideas, and he looks all of 19 years old. ("Alfie" doesn't help....makes "Arne" sound like a stud.)

We need a face with battle scars, maybe a biker beard. We need tough!

We're getting our butts kicked by Arne Duncan, of all people. So, Alfie, here's my gift to your our cause:

The original image is from Pay Fairly, which got it from Wikipedia,
which says it's a self-portrait used with permission. I hope Mr. Kohn has a good sense of humor.

(And, Mr. Kohn, if you should ever wander to this very tiny piece of this electron universe, and find this piece offensive, I'll remove it.)

Courage, NJ biology teachers!

I saw Willa Spicer, the Deputy Commissioner of the N. J. Department of Education, at an AP conference Tuesday. She made the opening remarks, with platitudes on the courage of teachers.

It doesn't take a whole lot of courage to not be laid off, so I was a bit confused (a common state for me), but the coffee was good, the company even better, so I checked it off as one of those things you do at a conference before the real stuff starts.

Today the state announced the biology end of course pass rate, perhaps better called the fail rate.

Courage, Doyle, courage!

***

Some of my kids are still wrestling with English.
Many of my kids come in believing fire is alive and plants are not.
Don't even get me started with evolution....

***

Here's an idea--test them the day they come in, then again in May. Did I make a difference?


I went to a state conference in March to learn more about the state EOC exam.

• I learned that writing the questions is very expensive.
• I learned that teachers are not allowed to see the questions, even (or maybe especially) when proctoring the exam.
• I learned that even though the state curriculum has changed, not all of the question will reflect the changes because, well, it's really expensive to make new questions, and they have some they've already paid for.

Ms. Spicer once chaired the NJ Performance Assessment Alliance, the crew that developed the open-ended test questions the last few years. We were allowed to see the NJPAA performance assessment questions.

Imagine a question developed by a committee of "parents, educators, and the business community." Toss in horseshoe crabs, a creature as foreign to my kids as escargots bourguignons. Add language that befuddled even the proctors.

I have no idea how the tests were scored.

***

45% of New Jersey's students failed the end of course biology exam this past May. Even more depressing, the passing score was 53%.

105,000 students took the test. If it counted, then nearly 50,000 diplomas would be at risk.

I have an idea--let's give the test to every teacher in the state, everybody in the department of education, every administrator drawing a public salary. What passing score would be needed to guarantee that even half would pass?

I want my kids to pass. But I won't teach to the test.

I can't--I don't know what the test tests....

The photo of Ms. Spicer comes from "School Board Notes."

The cartoon figure of the thylakoid comes from here.
Biology's not the cute froggie course it was a generation ago.

EduBloggerCon 2.0

I remember walking down Alimar Drive to Harmony Elementary School, feeling confused, pretty much all the time.

I specifically remember a conversation when I was in 4th or 5th grade. Scott was talking about the Marx Brothers. I knew Marxism was bad. I didn't know there was a whole band of them. Harpo did not sound like a Communist name.(I rarely asked for clarification of anything--I've always been a tad deaf, and I like to save my myriad interruptions for essential things.)

And so it goes for the techno world. Everything's 2.0, soon to be 3.0. Folks were twittering madly about #ISTE, and I thought maybe I had missed THE BIG ONE!

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the 2.0 Coming is at hand.
The 2.0 Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Siliconus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in mountains of Denver
A shape with man's body and the head of a bot,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its Core i7, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant Luddites.

with aplologies to W.B.Yeats

***

A lot of people spent a lot of money to spend time chatting up social media the old fashioned way, face to face. "Honestly, this is a great event, and many will tell you it is the event to attend at ISTE because it's all about connecting and sharing."

I had no idea what was happening as #ISTE and EduConBlogger references tweeted before me--and again I felt like the kid who could not tell Karl from Zeppo. But I do know this much:

1. Anything promo that needs to start with "Honestly" gets my hackles up.
2. I'm all for connecting and sharing, and I obviously push science. Convince me that an unconference will help me be a better teacher before I plunk down my time and money.
3. Convince me that attending this conference will make me a better teacher than, say, getting stung by a honeybee. (Really, I'd love to have a lesson where the whole class wanders around a clover field barefoot, risking a bee sting or two, but gaining so much more.)

I would love to meet many of the folks wandering around the Colorado Convention Center--some of my favorite writers are there.

Why not save the conference fees next year and all meet somewhere midway? Why not Auntie Mae's Parlor in Manhattan (the one in Kansas)? If we're lucky, Jeff and Vida will be there, singing of life.

And maybe even Scott McLeod, a true techno-guru who himself has become suspicious of these bloggerfolks, might let his hair down.

And I leave you with Jeff and Vida: