President Obama’s Back to School Event

I haven’t done a very good job in this blog keeping politics out of education, but neither have we as a country. The ether is all abuzz about the President’s address to kids in school tomorrow. Politicians, media reporters and commentators, bloggers, and educators from all sides continue to weigh in. Depending on what you hear or read, this is the most crucial and defining moment in American educational history (positively or negatively) or the beginning of the end of American society or step one of political indoctrination or a colossal waste of time or, or, or. ..

Impassioned (rightly or wrongly, is not mine to judge) people have provoked responses from educational systems from all over America. Many have chosen to post announcements about whether the speech will or will not be available synchronously or asynchronously. Here’s my response -lingua en buccae. This was originally emailed to a colleague to lighten his day after histrionics from multiple sides…

I must protest. Through the media frenzy caused by this, I guess I’m supposed to understand that I apparently don’t have the intelligence to parent or communicate with my son properly. I assume, from the implicit messages on both sides, that I should be afraid to discuss any ideas with him. It appears that simple exposure to this speech is too dangerous and the potential for sudden, irrevocable change is too risky. And if he doesn’t have access to this speech, he will be at a significant educational disadvantage because I obviously don’t know how to challenge him to set educational goals or expect, with my assistance, that he will take responsibility for his education.

It’s obvious to me now that the media commentators do not expect me to communicate with my kid on any level about any new learning or risk exposing him to the President of the United States. Politicians on both sides have helped me see my total incompetence as a parent to either motivate my kid in school or discuss with him the ideas he may learn there. I’m just so glad my son was not yet born in 1991 when another president did the same thing and the opposition side was all indignant then and the proponent side resented their criticism.

So I end where I began. I must protest…the ridiculous behavior of the politicians who demand respect for the office of the Presidency, except when the other party is in power. I must protest…the idiocy of media commentators who create controversy because it’s good for ratings. I must protest…the polarized lunatics on both sides whose hypocrisy forces schools and districts to waste their time and resources on this sort of foolishness.

In case you want to make up your mind for yourself and possibly engage in a thoughtful dialog with your own kids, here’s the Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Back to School Event.

Looking for the 21st Century in a School Supply List

Ah, it’s that time of year when kids lament the impending end of summer, when frazzled parents and care providers look for oncoming respite, when camp counselors and sports clinic coaches heave sighs of relief, when retailers of every kind look to capitalize on three simple words:

Back to School

Duty bound to support their local economies, schools dutifully publish, copy, distribute, post, email, mail, broadcast and anyway possible advertise the pinnacle of educational readiness:

The School Supply List

Please pause and bow your head in solemn reverence…Thank you, continue on.

Without the sacred and all-important School Supply List, many a poor soul would be relegated to shame and Trapper-Keeper (do they even make those anymore) want,  left to navigate a cruel world of humiliation and incomprehensible un-preparedness. Woe to he that lacketh supplies! Woe, woe, woe!

…And that’s if the parent buys the wrong brand of binder or paste when a glue stick is obviously required.

So here I sit with the 2009-2010 School Supply List (only slightly modified since the 19th century) for my son’s 7th grade year. (It’s the actual one.)

-1 box of facial tissue (turn in to homeroom teacher on 1st day of school)
-1 roll of paper towels (turn in to homeroom teacher on 1st day of school)
-One ream of white printer paper (turn in to homeroom teacher on 1st day of school)
-One small package of graph paper (turn in to homeroom teacher on 1st day of school)
-Dry erase markers (turn in to homeroom teacher on 1st day of school)
-Large Binder (3″ or larger)
-Three pocket folders with brads
-8 subject dividers for Binder
-Five 70-80 page spiral notebooks
-College-ruled loose leaf notebook paper
-Pencil/pen bag or case- unless the Binder has one built in
-Blue/Black ink pens (no gel pens)
-Personal pencil sharpener
-24 count Colored pencils for core classes (these are separate from supplies for electives)
-Colored markers
-Red pen/pencil for checking and editing work
-Highlighters (yellow, green, blue, pink)
-#2 wooden pencils (must have for CSAP practice)
-Metal ruler with both standard and metric measurements
-Glue stick
-Scissors
-Scientific calculator (TI-84 if in Algebra I)
-Highly recommended but not required, 512 MB memory stick

I can only assume by the first item that there will be much weeping either because so many trees will have been sacrificed in the name of paper-based education or because the kids have to surrender the first five items to the homeroom teacher on the first day of school. It could also be that kids should have 8 subject dividers but only 5 spiral notebooks and everyone knows that 5 divides into 8 evenly to represent the 4 quarters he has 7 classes each. I mean, duh!

Happily for us, my son apparently can expect to be very organized with his bag case and pocket folders (with brads! -are they related to chads? Hmm, I wonder…)  Organization is a very important skill, one he hasn’t mastered despite heroic attempts every year to manage and file all that paper he’s using.  As his report cards attest, he hasn’t done well in the neat and organized category when compared to all those compliant, neat-writing types who don’t fill the margins of their papers with doodles and comic illustrations.

It seems a little strange that in all this focus on organization, they’re going to ask kids to write on all that unlined printer paper. Hey, that’s what the ruler is for. So they can practice making their own college ruled paper. Absolutely brilliant!

It’s also nice to see an early emphasis on post-secondary preparation by requiring kids to have college-ruled paper.  

I know we’re facing some economic troubles, but in a school that has computer projectors in each room I have to wonder about the dry erase markers. They’re usually four in a pack times 630+ kids, equals lots of un-archived whiteboard writing kids won’t have access to in order to reflect on their learning. Oh! How could I be so silly *that’s* what the 3″ or larger binder is for -to write all that stuff down. I’m assuming my son will use the paper towels to write on and keep like a scroll if his binder fills up. That will test his organizational skills for sure. I don’t want to undermine the organizational educational process, but I’m going to tell him to use his glue stick to keep his papers together.

Although he’s enrolled in a science class, his scientific calculator appears to be destined only for use in Algebra 1.  While we’re on the subject of subject isolation, that must be why he can’t use his colored pencils in his electives. Band and Guitar must require a unique kind -maybe the colored markers.

When I asked for a 512 MB memory stick, the kid at the electronics megastore looked pitifully at me and took his Captain Morgan one off his key chain and gave it to me. Other than that, the only other ones I’ve been able to find are the  novelty ones the vendors gave away at NECC. I’m not sure what my son is going to do with all that space anyway. I don’t think there’ll be much computer use anyway – he doesn’t have a computer class this year.

Let’s review what’s important…*Lots* of paper products; organizational items like folders, binders, and bags; colored pens, pencils, markers, and highlighters; and wooden pencils for standardized test practice -because everyone knows you can’t practice with anything else but a #2 pencil and loose-leaf paper. Well, I’m hoping he won’t need any foam board since it’s not on the list and our local Tar-Mart and Wal-Get didn’t have an opportunity to stock it.

Possibility vs Scarcity Thinking with Ben and Roz Zander

I’ve just finished Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander’s book The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life. This book caps of a trio of books I’ve “read” since January 2009. (Note: I have placed “read” in quotations because I actually listened to two of the books and some of my English-teacher friends would say that doesn’t really count as having read them. That’s their problem, not mine. I’m all the better for my auditory or visual interaction with them anyway and I’ll use read to signify both kinds of interaction here.) The other two books are Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath and The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson with Lou Aronica (listed in reverse order read.)

First of all, Zander’s The Art of Possibility and Robinson’s The Element represent the books I purchased because I watched related videos on TED. TED, by the way, if you have never heard of it is “riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.” For all you corporate, copyright, intellectual control, 19th-century business model, knowledge-hoarding authoritarians, you might want to notice that the free media on TED directly contributed to the purchase of two additional, possibly three items -the Zanders’ physical book and Robinson’s audio recording, which I may also purchase in hard copy for future reference. Additionally, after listening to the Heaths’ book, I purchased the hard copy…I’m just sayin’.

I didn’t intend to read the books in the order I did. In fact I didn’t intend to read them at all other than The Element. After watching Robinson’s TED talk and Zander’s TED talk, I had to learn more. Additionally, reading Made To Stick and The Art of Possibility were a result of recurring recommendations by those I follow on Twitter and those whose blogs I read.

…Meanwhile, back to the books themselves. They all have a similar “long line” as Zander calls it, “a theme upon which each [book] is a variation.” That theme is simply to make a difference our own lives and the lives of others. Each author (or groups of authors) present rather compelling and impassioned ways to do this. But each does it in almost the same way; they tell stories -lots of them. In fact stories are one of the six principles in the Heaths’ “SUCCESs” model. Each book speaks to the transformative power of Story. In testament to this, The Zanders have a section at the end of their book called “A Guide to the Stories.” The Heaths include story references from their chapters also in the end section “The Easy Reference Guide.” Robinson focuses often on “epiphany stories,” those stories that “involve some level of revelation, a way of dividing the world into before and after.” For this post, I’ll focus on the Zanders’ The Art of Possibility.

In using stories told from each of their perspectives, Ben and Roz (as they identify themselves in the book) illustrate in concrete ways we can make a difference in our own lives and of others. Of the three books, theirs provides some of the most practical thinking for transformation -well, duh, it is in the title. One of the most compelling thoughts comes early on in the book as they reframe the context of world from one of scarcity to one of abundance. Here are some examples from the book. While note set against each other for a direct comparison, some do flow that way. Some may make immediate sense, while other may necessitate your reading the book.

Scarcity Thinking	Abundance Thinking
A world of measurement: assessments, scales, standards, grading, and comparisons	Beyond the world of measurement to include all worlds: infinite, generative, and abundant
Obstacles show up as a scarcity of people, time money, power, love, resources, and inner strength	We gain our knowledge by invention
Acceptance and Rejection	Action may be characterized as generative, or giving, in all senses of that word -reproducing new life, creating new ideas, consciously endowing with meaning, contributing, yielding to the power of contexts. The relationship between people and environments is highlighted, not the people and things themselves.
Surviving in a world of scarcity and peril
Responses: alertness to danger, a clever strategic mind, an eye for assessing friend and foe, a knack for judging strength and weakness, the know-how to take possession of resources, a measure of mistrust, and a good dollop of fear
Resisting challenges to our personal viewpoint	Resources are likely to come to you in greater abundance when you are generous and inclusive and engage people in your passion for life
We know each other and things by measuring them, and by comparing and contrasting them	A passionate energy to connect, express, and communicate
Children are compared to each other	Children contribute meaning and are passionate
Life arranged in hierarchies	Taking a long view without being able to predict the outcome
People, ideas, and situations can be fully known and measured	When you are oriented toward abundance, you care less about being in control, and you take more risks
Some groups, people bodies, places, and ideas seem better or more powerful than others
Some people, races, and organizations are safer and more desirable than others	All are contributors
There are only so many pieces of the pie	The pie is enormous, and if you take a slice, the pie is whole again.
A world of struggle	Setting the context and letting life unfold
Competitive sports and war metaphors apply to almost any situation	A cooperative universe
Conversations chronicle personal trials and triumphs	A wiliness to be moved and inspired
Fear, anger, and despair at losing	A humane, charitable world
…virtually everybody, whether living in the lap of luxury or in diminished circumstances, wakes up in the morning with the unseen assumption that life is about the struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of limited resources.	Unimpeded on a daily basis by the concern for survival, free from the generalized assumption of scarcity, a person stand in the grate space of possibility in a posture of openness, with an unfettered imagination for what can be.
Seek more for ourselves no matter how much we have and treat others as competitors no matter how much they have	Lighting a spark in others
Questions of assessment	Questions of inquiry
Persuasion	Enrollment
What’s best for me	What’s best for all of us
Expectations to live up to	Possibilities to live into
Reality is fixed	No guarantees
Winning and Losing	Life appears as variety, pattern, shimmering movement, inviting us in every moment to engage.
Overcoming odds and prevailing
Being acknowledged and included
Competition is the vehicle to success
Exhilaration of coming out on top
Supplies are fixed and limited
The frenzied accumulation of resources by some leaving others without enough

 

Further in the book the context for these ideas are framed in the illustration of “downward spiral” and “possibility” talk/thinking. The define the downward spiral talk as “a resigned way of talk [thinking] that excludes possibility…[f]ocusing on the abstraction of scarcity…creat[ing] an unassailable story about the limits to what is possible, and tells us compellingly how things are going from bad to worse” (p. 108). They introduce possibility earlier on page 20, but it stands contrast:

“The action in a universe of possibility may be characterized as generative, or giving, in all senses of that word -reproducing new life, creating new ideas, consciously endowing with meaning, contributing, yielding to the power of contexts. The relationship between people and environments is highlighted, not the people and things themselves. Emotions that are often relegated to the special category of spirituality are abundant here: joy, grace, awe, wholeness, passion, and compassion.”

See the video on Pop!Tech to hear from Zander himself on the topic -and many others from the book. Zander is one of those teachers we all wish we could have. He walks his talk absolutely graciously. It has some similarities with his TED talk, but this one has a kid! Stay for the end. The 30 minutes is completely worth it.

The above quote from the the book, published in 2000, resonates with me as an educator (and I suspect others also). It’s what we strive for as educators it speaks to our passions and best hopes. It’s often how we define our educational reform efforts.

This is one of those must-read books for educators. It has so much more than a blog post can do justice.

If you’ve read this book or have feedback on the post, I welcome your comments.

National Poetry Month 2009 4.6 The Far Mountains

Written in response to Bud’s prompt 6: Juxtaposition

 The Far Mountains

A mantle white has freshly fallen on the far mountains,
     But through the dirty window
     Crowd grimy cars on the pavement
A crisp curtain of blue crests the peaks,
     And the highway’s rumbling trucks
     Fling their blackened mist
High and low the horizon hops in a pulse line,
     Yet the angular rooftops
     Creep relentlessly across the plain
Situated in marvelous splendor the scene unfolds,
     For the straight concrete barriers
     Feign creation in mocking assembly
Toward the skies the summits soar,
     So progress itself is even outreached
     Revealing feeble hubris

National Poetry Month 2009 4.5 The Fizz

For Bud’s prompt 5, I submit this one inspired as I watched my son immediately dive into his drink after it was dispensed from a soda fountain machine.

The Fizz

He likes to drink the fizz

            From the top of pop

Fizz! Fizz! Fizz!

            His eyes bulge

His lips pucker

Slurp! Slurp! Slurp!

            And a grin

His eyes twinkle

His lips curl at the edges

He’s captured the fleeting effervescence

            Of bits of dancing bubbles

Too quickly the fizz flattens and flees

            Into the air

Like the breath of youth

            Which, once exhaled,

            Becomes the vapor of memory

In the mind of a father

National Poetry Month 2009 4.4 Bottles

This poem, while inspired through the  photo prompt, stands well alone and is better with it. In response to Bud’s prompt for today, I thought I would experiment with structure, form, and meaning even more.

As an English teacher I sometimes find it annoying when writers seemingly leave us in the dark, grasping to find the light they may have only seen. This feels particulary true with poetry and often shows up in the popular attitudes that poetry is inaccessible only to a few learned so as to not be understood,  or that it is pedantic and trite  warranting no further intellectual investment. As a a result, poetry has lost its place among everyday people and I find that very disturbing on so many levels.

Anyway, I digress. In the poem below, I have deliberately played with the structure intending each though to be encapsulated in the three lines in the 1-2-3 form. That form has multiple meanings for me (and I hope for the reader): person-other-whole; you-me-us; creator-created-creation; and, well, you get the point. Additionally, the poem stands as a whole when read traditionally left to right, but each column is intended to be a complete poem in itself representing another perspective or dimension of the idea. The last phrase ends two of the four poems and can end the first and second column poem as well.

I didn’t intend to write it like this from the begining, but after the 6th line, I really didn’t have a choice. I hope you enjoy it.

Bottles

Photo Credit: gierszewski via Bud Hunt

     With intention
            Filled with purpose
Dripping
     Life flavors 
            Our experience splashes
Colored
     In moments
             Of human hues
Qualities
     For us
            Revealed by others
Mixing
     Fleeting feelings
            And subtle shades
Distinct
     Unique contrasts
            Illuminated in prisms
People
     To be
            Filled with light
Together  
     Wholly made
            As is intended

National Poetry Month 2009 4.3 No Time

Bud’s Prompt 3 led me to compose this one. If I had more time, I’d make it better ;-D If you want to make it better, feel free and count that as your National Poetry Month exercise for the day.

Without time for a poem
Our minds will stop growin’
The rub, while not right,
Is that even to write
Doesn’t stop time a goin’

National Poetry Month 2009 4.2 A Book

In response to Bud’s prompt 1…

A Book

A book
Full of words
Line by line
The story revealed

A book
Pages numbered
Turn by turn
The story told

A book
Authored
Letter by letter
The story crafted

The page
Contains its lines

The lines
Contain their words

The words
Meaningless
Without their links
Before and aft

Each word hangs on the next
As each breath mists into another
Each grows
As the days grow to weeks
And the weeks to months
And the months to years
And the years
A lifetime

The letter second
The word minute
The sentence day
The page month
The chapter year
The book lifetime

Authored artfully
Made meticulously
Crafted carefully
Composed consciously

As randomness contradicts purpose
So does meaninglessness life

The chapter complete
In its number
Fails the book
In its sole telling

The sentence powerful
In its wholeness
Fails the story
In its only completeness

The word essential
In its purpose
Fails the sentence
In its isolation

The letter necessary
In its formation
Fails the word
In its scrutiny

The letter makes the word
The word makes the sentence
The sentence the page
The page the chapter
The chapter the story

To disentangle a sentence from a book
May reveal a morsel
The sentence hangs in the air
But a brief moment
Revealing itself
Hinting at its purpose
In the grand design

But it falls
Lifeless as a petal plucked
Untethered
Laughable

Its purpose lost in the extrication and isolation
Pointless parsing
The whole lost
On one
Why?

Education Bears the Brunt of Colorado Budget Cuts

Everyone is falling on hard times. I get it. People are losing jobs, consumer spending is down, tax revenue collections are down, and the Colorado has an almost $632 million shortfall for the current fiscal year 08-09 with a potential $385.5 million shortfall for 09-10. I get all that, too. But, here’s a few items I don’t get:

• From Governor Ritter’s State of the State address on January 8, 2009: “I’ve seen the promise of Colorado in every corner of our great state, in classrooms…the best economic strategy is an education strategy…we can’t shortchange hope…Now, more than ever, we must focus on policies like this, which will help us rebound from the downturn and put us back on the path to prosperity.”
• Of the $201.1 spending reductions and program cuts, k-12 and higher education shoulder ($45.8 million+ $30 million= $75.8 million)  or 37.7%, larger than any other area, according to his budget balancing plan.
• Of the $289.7 million in transfers and diversions to the general fund, The Higher Education Maintenance and Reserve Fund will lose $47.2 million, again, larger than any other area.

Add those two together and education in Colorado is out $123 million of the $631.9 million, 19.5%, this year alone. This is the “best economic strategy” the governor can propose? Really?

So now, schools (here and here) and colleges (here and here) are left to sort out the mess. We get to do more with less. (Yes, more, didn’t you see that enrollment is up nearly 2%?) What it certainly feels like is that education only really matters when politicians want to introduce “bold education-reform legislation.” By sacrificing education on the political altar, disguised as “protecting life, safety and public health,” Governor Ritter is doing exactly the opposite and revealing that he and all those who support such cuts are actively pursuing the destruction of public education, despite what their press releases say. And when the terrible test scores start coming in and the dropout rates continue to rise and kindergarteners enter first grade miserably prepared and those who do graduate from high school find themselves ill-prepared for post-secondary education or careers; it won’t be the politicians who bear the wrath of public discontent, but those ridiculous educators who need to reform but just aren’t willing to do it. 

So much for “push[ing] hard against the status quo and creat[ing] a bold new vision for education in Colorado,” right Governor? So much for your “moral document” reflecting our values (6th paragraph on page 4). I have a hard time reconciling your actions (especially when you use education as a political tool) with the “sacred trust” you mention at the beginning of your State of the State Address. Perhaps what would be truly bold would be to stand resolute and not cut a single dollar from the State’s education budget, in any form, this year or any hence. That, Honorable Governor, might be the only way we can truly believe you when you say, “Our children deserve nothing less than a world-class education.”

A New (Old) Component of Postsecondary Readiness

If you’ve lost track of the ongoing conversation, especially here in Colorado (but generally across the US), about college and workforce readiness. There’s been lots of buzz about it. The Colorado Department of Education is town hall forums meetings all over the state. All this, you may recall is a result of Senate Bill 08-212, the “Preschool to Postsecondary Education Alignment Act” also known as the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4Kids) legislation introduced by Governor Ritter. According to one CDE news release,

The town hall forums will focus on such questions as:

• What do students need to be workforce ready?
• What do students need to be postsecondary ready?
• Are there special considerations for the workforce or higher education in your region of the state?

S.B. 08-212 requires that the Colorado State Board of Education and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education adopt a description of “postsecondary and workforce readiness” by Dec. 15, 2009.

Further, S.B. 08-212 seeks to establish a seamless pathway from preschool into college or the workplace. Essential to that pathway is an understanding of what it means to be ready for education or the workforce after high school and a plan to ensure that students take the necessary courses and master the content to do so.

These are good questions, no doubt, but CDE is missing a critical element, a new (old) component of postsecondary readiness…

Cost.

I don’t mean how much all this legislation is going to cost. (That’s a whole post in itself.) I mean the cost of going to college. Consider an article from today’s New York Times that reports “…college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent.”

Sure, we need to prepare our kids for postsecondary and workforce readiness; I’m not arguing that -yet. But, once we get them ready -especially for college -then what? Student loans, multiple jobs, navigating college over 6-7 years, scholarships and grants (not for all)? Not likely, probable, viable, sustainable, or practical. How many financial crises do we need in this country until we learn massive debt is NOT a good thing?

Unfortunately, massive debt is what we are really making our kids ready for as long as postsecondary education is a commodity to be brokered on capitalistic terms. That is our fundamental problem at the intersection of democracy and capitalism. We simply want postsecondary education for all, but we really can’t provide it for all. We can’t pay for it because we have to pay for it. No government “ism,” assistance programs, or bailout plans are going to help; no legislation introduced by and governor, president, mayor, or whomever will make a difference until we decide that education is a fundamental right for everyone. We’ll fall miserably short of our readiness goals until we restructure our social, economic, political, and cultural priorities to make it happen.