Bray’s Education Blog

The April 2008 edition of The International Educator arrived at my school yesterday and, as always, I drove into reading it immediately. Again the OP/ED page contained excellent commentary on international teaching and education in general, but I was especially impressed with Patrick Bassett’s artile, “What the Finns know shouldn’t surprise us (but it does),” which related the recent results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Once again Finland slapped the hell out of most other nations, but really gave the smack-down to the good old USA.

Bassett points out the three things that the Finns do that America fails to do: 1) get the best teachers; 2) get the best out of teachers; 3) intervene when pupils start to lag behind. The US has a failing system, but the real shock is that we fail to look aboard and copy those who are succeeding.  We feel this loyalty to a system that doesn’t work, and we are too stubborn to mimiick the achievements of others. If anything we should be looking at the success of Finland, and seeking ways to duplicate it in the States.

One example from the article points to the fact that Finland spends more money into middle school years (6-9 grades). During this time when students begin to fail, fall behind, suffer through emotional changes, and social issues with peers is exactly the time that Finland spends extra money and energy on students. Talking about getting bang for the buck! Finland spends roughly the same amount of money on lower elementary school (K-5) as other nations, and far less on senior high school (10-12); but, the money spent in middle school goes much further toward building character, successful habits, and helping those falling behind. Why does this information surprise us? Isn’t it logical? Sad that we are too arrogant, vain, and blind to copy a successful model from aboard simply because it isn’t our idea.

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I’ve been spending time thinking over some of the events that occurred at my current school throughout the year. The year began with a big bang as we swung into our new one-to-one MacBook program in the high school. It was a touchy subject with the students, parents, and teachers. Korea is a PC country, but the school saw the future with the assistance of Clay Burell’s vision and made the tough choice for the MacBook. I don’t think Clay ever got the credit he deserved for pushing for the MacBook. For four years on Saipan, I worked in a one-to-one PC environment, but after a few sessions on my new MacBook, I could see the vastly superior opportunities for student learning with this machine. However, there were several people who found the new machine “different,” and therefore a piece of crap. Some of my students still whine about how they can’t play the games that they used to play on their PC’s as they make a movie, comic book, song, or podcast with their MacBook. Let’s face it — kids are never impressed or truly satisfied. They aren’t the only ones! The adults were often times worse than the students.

It always surprises me how some teachers can complain about not being treated as professionals as they back-stab or ignore a colleague. About a month into the school year, so of the faculty was asked to provide a technology workshop about Web 2.0 and using computers in the classroom. It was clear from the beginning that several of the faculty members had decided to take their frustrations out on the workshop planners. True, the workshop itself could have been better organized at times, but it never helps to be confrontation with colleagues who are trying to help you.

I learned a few things about adults through this situation that I have distilled and wish to share:

1. Always count on adults to act juvenile, but never treat them as though they are behaving that way.

2. Move forward with those willing to move and let the rest fall behind; you don’t need them.

3. Be ready to hold their hands through the simplest activities. You must spend countless hours with them if necessary.

4. Encourage, encourage, encourage — any and all behavior that moves technology into the classroom; even if you think it is a bit elementary, support them. Baby steps!

5. Share, share, share — examples, lessons, thoughts, ideas, time.

So in the end, we have to teach the teachers just like we teach the students, because that is exactly what they are. Those that don’t need your assistance, should be encouraged to help you teach.

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This is a request for thoughts and suggestions. This is sharing of new ideas and practices. Many people are probably currently using the techniques I’m going to write about. Please comment if you have thoughts about the concept of using podcasting and videos in the writing process for reflection; also if you have experiences to share, please do.

Reflective practice is a new buzz phrase in education. I find it funny that someone had to tell teachers that it was a good idea to reflect on their teaching; I’m pretty sure every teacher I’ve ever met that was worth a darn reflected on their teaching, but ya’ know… May be some people weren’t. Anyway, what is of greater interest to me isn’t teachers reflecting on practice, but rather students reflecting on practice. Last semester in English Seminar (the course people are “placed” in or dumped in by the administration), I played around a little with using podcasting and videos to have students reflect on their writing.

This was exciting to me, because I believe it is important for students to look back and think about the choices and decisions they made in their work. The problem I’ve always had with metacognitive assignments in a writing course is that you end up asking students to write about their writing. It isn’t a huge problem for some students, but for the reluctant writer this is a horrible task. After struggling and toiling to produce a piece of writing, the reluctant writer is asked to do what? Write some more! OUCH! So this time I decided to try some podcasting and videos in the reflection phase.

I will admit that I had no clear idea in mind when I asked my students to do it. I allowed students to choose between podcasts or videos. This worked well because some of them were burned out on podcasts from other classes and preferred to make short videos; others didn’t want people to see their faces and preferred podcasting. What you will see on the wiki is very raw material from the students. (Link to my wiki from the class.) But the outcome was clearly something that had room for growth in the future. The students enjoyed talking about their writing and recording it; instead of writing about their writing. I believe a list of twenty or twenty-five questions for students to choose from would help the process in the future; the questions would provide focus on different elements of the writing process.

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In the past, I thought the College Board was really interested in education through offering challenging, rigorous, college-level academic courses to high school students. But recent events show me that the College Board is really all about the money. For years the College Board has bragged about the research that shows that high school students who take an AP course perform better in college; even if those students failed the AP exam, they still posted high GPA’s than their counterparts who never took an AP course. Two years ago, in order to bring some uniformity to the courses being called AP, the College Board asked all AP teachers to submit a syllabus of their course for approval. Those who wrote a good, college-level syllabus were accepted as official AP classes. After many long and difficult hours of preparing my syllabus, I submitted it to the College Board; later, it was approved and my class was given the permission to be officially called an AP course. Now, just two years later, the College Board is not only allowing students to take the AP Exams without taking official AP courses, but they are also building AP Exam preparation centers to train students to take the exams. So why was I asked to submit a syllabus for approval? If students can avoid taking official courses and still take the exams by “studying” at cram schools, what is the point of having official AP courses? The College Board for years has been showing the research that demonstrates that students who take actual AP courses in high school perform better in college; but now they are saying that those course are unimportant, because students can simply take cram sessions and pass the exam. This decision is clearly about money. The College Board wants to make more money by building special cram schools where students learn the exam and then pass it; where is the rigorous, college-level work coming into this new equation?

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It was back in August 2001. Aysem and I were waiting to cross the street in front of her parent’s apartment. The light turned green for us and Aysem got the jump on me, so I was about a meter behind her. Then I heard the crashing sound. I glanced to my left and saw a delivery van bouncing off the back on a car. Things really did slow down like a freakin’ slow-mo scene in a poorly made action movie; I could see little bits of glass flying as the taillight and front lights of both vehicles exploded from the collision.

The car hit by the van rocked forward into the car in front of it and that car was pushed toward me. The only thing I could do was hope to get across the street before it hit me. I could see the face of the driver and he was looking at me like, “Dude, you’re screwed! Sorry.” BAM! The front right quarter of the car hit the back tire of my bike and sent my flying through the air. My head bashed into the traffic light pole. I was completely knocked out for a few seconds, but I woke up in a pool of my own blood. Aysem was screaming at the driver to call the police and an ambulance, but he was arguing with the other drivers. The worst place on the body to get a cut is behind the ear, because it hurt so bad I thought that my ear had been torn off my head.  Of course I was completely disoriented and had no idea what the heck was going on. The traffic was terrible and the accident only made it worse, so the ambulance was going to take forever to arrive. Right then two guys in an old BMW pulled up and told Aysem to get me in the car. These two totally unknown dudes gave us a ride to the hospital. I felt bad because I bled all over the backseat of their car.

At the hospital they placed me in an exam room and I sat there waiting for a doctor to look at me. The nurse had placed a badge on the huge cut on my head and another one on the road rash on my face and Aysem had finally convinced me that my ear was fine and the least of my worries at this point; meanwhile, every person who came be the exam room felt like they should look at my head and provide their personal medical opinion about it. This involved them walking into the room, quickly saying something in Turkish and then lifting the badge and looking underneath. Seriously, these were just random people, I swear that the third guy was the janitor because he was pushing a freakin’ mop-bucket around. Each time the badge torn off the scab that was rapidly forming.

After waiting 20 minutes or so, our principal called and told us to go to a different hospital in another part of town. When we arrived there, I was still completely out of it. They did cat scan and the doctor told me that there should be no longer term effects. I still have a little reddish area on the left side of my face if you look closely; there is also a scar under my hair on the right side of my forehead. After about a week the physical pain was gone, but I still felt a little mentally slow for about a month and a half.

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I’ve been having a tough time making a rather important decision about my future education. The whole situation started when I thought about organizing an M.A. program at our school. Organizing the program has the added bonus of making the program free of charge; plus, such an endeavor looks great on a resume. But not long after I thought about that, another school decided to offer a doctoral program. I was truly interested in the this, however there was one little nagging thought in my mind — what if I end up hating administration? Once I’m several thousands of dollars in the hole on a doctorate, I’m certainly going to keep working as an administrator to justify that expense. So, I’ve been going back and forth about what to do for about three months now and driving myself crazy in the process (I hate indecisiveness).

There was another problem as well which involved Aysem, my wife, who still needs to solve her teaching license issues. We found a program for that little problem in Australia, but she needs to go there for a week and take a few online classes. So now we were facing the idea of taking the doctoral program and her trying to do the teaching license program at the same time — definitely not possible. Which brings me back to the original plan — the M.A. in Educational Leadership. This is the final decision on this topic for me, so I need to contact my director and make sure that he will support it next year and then begin finding twenty people willing to do the program. Finding twenty people in Seoul shouldn’t be a big problem, but I guess we will see. Anybody reading this who happens to be interested in earning an M.A. in Educational Leadership, please feel free to contact me for more information about the program.

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As stated in my previous post, I have read this book several times now, but another thing I really enjoy about it is that I always seem to notice something different during each reading. This time the character of Old Moses really struck me. The obvious undertones of religion surround this character. His place “up in the sky just past the clouds” and called Sugarcandy Mountain is clearly a rip on the concept of heaven. Orwell clearly has some contempt for organized religion and how it can be used to manipulate the masses. It is always very ironic that Old Moses disappears from the story after Jones leaves the farm and then reappears after Boxer dies. With the inspiration and strength of Boxer gone, the pigs need a calming force to make the animals stay in line, so religion returns to assist in crowd control.  Is this a fair damnation of religion by Orwell? Is it really as simple as people believing in something, because their everyday lives are so hopeless? Do governments truly use churches to manipulate and control society?  Well… Yes. Sadly religion has been used time and time again to pacify the desperate masses; however, this reality shouldn’t be used to write off religion completely, because religion can also be used to help and provide hope to people. Many churches use their influence to assist those who are less fortunate. Many people who attend church feel better about life and the future. So religion can’t be all bad, but it should be critically observed; especially by those who do whatever a religious leader says without thinking.

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Well some of my students have been putting up a little fuss because they are reading Animal Farm for the second time. For the record, this is my ninth journey through this little novel, so suck it up. Many of my students read the book in elementary school, which I think is a little crazy on the part of the teacher who they read it with or the school that has it in the curriculum at that level. Sure on the surface level kids could find it interesting as a fable where some animals decide to over throw their tyrannical, evil farmer, but this only scraps the surface of the thick cream in this novella.

Many of my students read it in private institutions formed to help them do well on standardized tests; many more read it with doctor SparkNotes and his pal doctor Cliffnotes, so they understand the conventional read of the novel. You know the one, where Orwell is making his comments on the Communist Revolution and its outcomes. But even this read is still a small piece of what Orwell was really getting at on the universal level.

Orwell certainly was making a comment on the Communist Revolution through the allegorical tale of the farm animals, but he was also making the universal statement that all governments born through the sword will eventually fall victim to a small group of elite people. This happens in communist and capitalist countries alike. His idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely is the more important message to take away from Orwell’s Animal Farm. If Orwell were alive today, what would he have to say about the War on Terror in the US? Or what about the Iraq War? Orwell would see pigs and humans in the White House mingling together with the rest of us sitting outside and staring in and wondering what went wrong.

To the students who have read this far, congratulations… You have found the elusive extra credit assignment and learned something about Animal Farm along the way. The assignment is this — write a blog post about Animal Farm on your blog and link your blog to mine in the comments section.

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During this week we have been celebrating Read Across KIS at Korea International School. One of the many activities planned for the week was to have my 9th grade students read to students from the elementary school; also, the elementary students could read to the 9th graders. I’m happy to say it was a smashing success. My high school students were absolutely fabulous with the lower elementary students, especially the grade 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades.  The elementary students loved it! They liked reading to their older classmates and really enjoyed being read to by older students. Two of the classes shared writing projects with my students.

Afterward, the comments from the high school students were wonderful. They didn’t want to act like they enjoyed it too much of course, because it was reading and school, but I saw them all having a good time. Some of them were shocked at the sophistication of the stories that the low elementary students has written; others were surprises by the reading ability of the younger students. One boy even stated, “He reads better than I do!”, when referring to his reading buddy.

More and more of this type of activity should be done. Possibly even once a month, because it clearly builds positive interactions between the grade levels and a sense of the school as a shared community; also, it helps to develop that elusive “learning environment” that is the buzz phrase in education these days.

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At a previous international school that I worked at we had a general lack of professional development. Due to this problem, at least one teacher didn’t receive the renewal points he needed and lost his certificate and other teachers left to schools with professional development programs so that they wouldn’t lose their certificates. To avoid the problems other teachers were having, my wife and I took advantage of a Master’s program that was being offered through the public school system. In many ways, on the international scene, teachers need to be more responsible for their own professional development, because many international schools, fail to meet the professional development needs of their faculty. Often the reasons are expense and access, but in today’s world both of these problems can be overcome easily. There are several small and inexpensive things that every school can do to support professional development.

Every school can offer self-directed professional development programs. These require teachers to establish their own goals and then achieve them. In theory this is the type of program that the international school I worked at had in place, but it failed to work because the administration was not requiring any level of accountability. These types of programs must have an administration that is willing to meet with teachers and discuss their short-term and long-term goals.

Action Research is another avenue for a school with a tight budget. Administrators and teachers working in groups identify problems the school is facing. After identifying the trouble areas, they gather research about how the problem was dealt with in other schools, or theoretical solutions to the problem that haven’t been tested in a real school as of yet. This allows all the members to have buy-in to the process and the new approaches that come out of the process. It also helps develop that elusive place called a learning community that some many schools are trying to build these days.

Lastly, a school membership is ASCD is not very expensive, yet provides low-cost professional development for all faculty members. A basic membership is around 1000 USD, a price tag that all schools can afford. The membership allows access to professional development programs that are 99 USD each; again, in the affordable range for most schools and teachers.

The fact that some many schools fail at providing meaningful professional development for their faculties is not only troubling — it is criminal. How can we afford to short change the very people who are in charge of education our children who make up our future. It is not an investment we can afford to neglect.

For more information on Action Research, I recommend Dr. Larry Creedon’s website at http://www.larrycreedon.info/.

For more information on ASCD, please go to their site at http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/index.jsp/.

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