With Back-to-School season upon us, I ask myself, what is it that we should really want for all our nation’s students this year?

Less bullying?
Heightened meaningfulness in the classroom?
Better cafeteria food?

I think one core answer is growth. We want our student to elevate their aptitudes.

Kids will come into our nation’s rooms this year with certain skill sets. The goal to which we should all aspire is that they leave our classrooms at the end of the year with improved and heightened abilities.

Their growth ought to mean something. If there’s no growth, it’s troubling. If there’s supreme growth it brings smiles.

However, this is exactly why our current system of assessment is so ridiculously dysfunctional. We don’t reward growth. We aim for arbitrarily chosen targets.

For example, I have kids that have come to my room with 4th grade reading skills… and have left the year at an 8th grade level. And yet, when it comes to the 10th grade tests, they paint my kid’s performance that year as entirely inadequate and underachieving. 8th grade skills in 10th grade student mean we are a failing school and I am a failing teacher, regardless of how much improvement was demonstrated.

It’s hurtful to the kid, it’s demoralizing to the teacher and it’s detrimental to the school. (They act as if I had my feet up on the desk reading the newspaper all year. Sheesh!)

However, if we used growth model assessments, suddenly we’d see a lot more happy face emoticons being implanted in the emails the state department of education sends to our school district.

Instead, because of the means by which assessment is measured, we are ostracized.

Does a 14 month old who does not yet know how to walk get ripped by their parents because the “average” 14 month old can walk?

Does the 5 year old who does not yet know how to write their name get shamed publicly because the “average” 5 year can achieve this task?

Of course not. We reward growth towards these target objectives. And, most importantly, we continue to teach – through praise!!

We continue to inspire and encourage. It’s just common sense.

Yet, does anyone in this country right now think our current form of assessment is characterized by words like encouragement, praise or inspiration.

And are not those some of the most effective tools of terrific teachers?

Screw up the bubble tests and you will be humiliated, scolded, reprimanded and threatened. Pass the bubble tests with flying colors and you’ll get a few checkmarks… maybe an “attaboy” here and there.

Is it not time we started to measure growth?

So the Marxists didn’t take over, the commies didn’t infiltrate, the youth of this nation weren’t indoctrinated unwittingly into an irreversible cult of personality and North Korea’s heinous government regime didn’t supplant our own now that Obama has addressed the kids of this nation with a “you should to do well in school” speech.

But ooh, we were so close to imperialistic calamity, were we not?

Obama talked about hard work. Obama talked about personal responsibility. Obama celebrated the benefits of being well-educated. Matter of fact, with all the hoopla from the far, far right, I am surprised they didn’t send out Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal to offer a rebuttal to El Presidente’ from the minority party.

Could you imagine…

Fair people of this fair country, while on one hand your Marxist Chief believes you should devotedly apply yourselves in school, we in the “real America” know that attentiveness to your own education is a right… and you have the right to refuse to apply that right because it is your right to do so! You do not have to become learned. You do not have to become skilled. You do not have to become part of the well-educated, “elitist” crowd. (Pause for big gasp from audience.) Why let them take away your constitutionally guaranteed ability to be ill-equipped to succeed? Who are they to brainwash you into believing that school is going to help? Who are they to cast aspersions against things like dropping out? Come, be one, unite and fight against this liberal tyranny!

(Right?)

Obama wants to address the school-kids of this nation and, whodda thunk it, there’s controversy surrounding the idea of such an address to our nation’s youngsters.

Now, obviously, (or maybe not, so I’ll say it here) I am of the opinion that a well-spoken President addressing our nation’s kids in a “you can do it” tone now that it’s back-to-school season is good for the kids, good for the schools, and good for the good ol’ U. S. of A.

So I wonder, is it just me, or does this brouhaha strike anybody else as artificially contrived, politically motivated nonsense?

I mean, and this is a quote I pulled off the AP wire:

Texas Governor Rick Perry says he understands the concerns of parents who don’t want their children listening to President Obama’s school-time speech next Tuesday on the importance of education, aimed directly at the nation’s school children.

Well, I am glad he understands the concerns… cause I don’t. Could his political affiliation actually be the cause of the concern?

I mean Obama is OUR president, of the entire country, and if he wants to fire up the students, I say, “It’s about time a President did this.” Nice idea. Come to think about it, we couldda used something like this many, many years ago. But the right wingers (and I mean the far right-wingers) are…

“…saying Obama is using the opportunity to promote a political agenda and is overstepping the boundaries of federal involvement in schools.”

Huh? I mean is “work hard, set goals, aim high and strive to become learned” some kind of liberal agenda now? (I am only speculating that this will be the thrust of his speech.) I mean if it is, I am way more liberal than I thought I was. And trust me, I am a tax and spend, California, left-coast animal lover, who believes in things like universal pre-school, universal health care, and recycling.

To counter, Obama’s people say the reason for it is this:

“It’s simply a plea to students to really take their learning seriously. Find out what they’re good at. Set goals. And take the school year seriously.”

Ooh… sounds nefarious. I bet there are secret code words embedded in the Closed Captioned text too that will send messages to aliens about our nuclear codes.

Yet, folks like Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Steve Russell say this…

“It gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

Like I said, “Huh?”

Why do I have a feeling that if this was an idea from the prior presidency, some of those folks who are now chirping would have been singing an entirely different tune?

Then again, it never would have happened with our last president because Dubya Bush was (at best) a C- student, so having him tell the kids not to “misunderstimate the value of a gooder education” really wouldn’t have helped anyone too much.

Come on, does politics have to taint everything nowadays? I mean can’t the President say one nice thing without it being politically motivated? Will Obama’s Merry X-mas wish be dissected by the pundits for the way he tries to abscond with the well-wishes of the season for Democratic gains in the House come the 2010 elections?

Truly, am I the only one sick of this nonsense? Really, at what point do we not all recognize that this kind of stuff is hurting, not helping, our nation?

You know, Freud once famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Well, “sometimes a speech to kids is just that… a speech to kids.”

Do we need a longer school year filled with more intensive learning for our nation’s children? How in the world can you not vote yes when you see some of the products of our current system?

And if you need more proof, here’s another 4 minutes worth of goodies…

A few laughs: who don’t they help through the week?

Teacher quality is something no one can really argue with. I mean the idea that supremely excellent teachers will do a better job at educating our nation’s kids than weak, apathetic teachers is self-evident.

And the Gates Foundation just spent a heck of a lot of money to verify this.

But don’t fantastic doctors save more lives, exceptional lawyers win more court cases, and phenomenal police detectives crack more crimes? Of course they do.

So the question really is, how do we create more great teachers?

And they are created, not born. In the spirit of the book OUTLIERS, I’d suggest that we are looking at great teachers as if they were simply born that way. Sure, they went to school, did their requisite reading and had a bit of knack for working with kids, but the fact is, if we want more great teachers we, as a nation, are going to have to make them.

And how do we do this?

Professional development.
Conferences.
Planning time.

The objective? The sharing of best practices.

The fact is, the world of teaching has changed spectacularly in the past few years. To wit, 5 years ago I don’t think I even knew what Google was; now it’s an active verb in my teaching life and I do things like take Google Lit Trips — a term that might as well have been spoken to me in Russian but a very short time ago… and still might appear like something in Russian to many, many teachers out there today.

And the fact that I am blogging this on a ning is not lost on me. This is an entirely new vocabulary in the lexicon of education and without me having had these things shown to me, explained to me, taught to me by other educators, I simply would not have these methodological tools in my teacher’s toolbelt.

Then again, I go to teacher conferences.

Sure, I am often invited to speak at them which makes getting to them much, much easier (like my district is off the hook for the funding of this stuff) but look at the arsenal I have available to me as a teacher as a result of being in attendance at national conferences like NCTE. Does this time at the conferences pay off for my district in terms of what I can offer to my students and/or illuminate to other teachers on our staff?

It’s not even a question.

Of course, people ask me to come do professional development for their districts all the time but in so many ways, I am just standing on the shoulders of those who illuminated different tools, ideas, strategies and so forth for me once upon a time. Yes, like any chef, I will often play with the recipe in order to make the meal my own, but first I needed someone to inspire me as to the meal I could cook.

My career is now dedicated to being more of a share-er. (It truly is a place where I find great personal and professional satisfaction.) I try to share through the posts I author, through the material I post on the web at my website, and through the curriculum I write for authentically engaging reluctant readers and writers. But if our nation is serious about great-en-ing our country’s teachers, we are going to have to put teachers in a position where they can be learners, where they can work on improving their craft.

We need to make a commitment to those who work as as teachers in our schools to remain well schooled. We need to make a greater commitment to sending teachers to professional development conferences. It’s where the best of the best gather to give… and I always leave with a full bag of fantastic goodies.

Conferences are the moments in which great teachers are created.

Seems as though a total collapse of the free world’s financial markets has a silver lining: that kids are thinking twice before dropping out because there are no jobs for them if A) they leave school early and B) are citizens who do not have any sort of formal education. As this article points out, every crisis has a silver lining, right?

Seems to me that America has become far too much of a country that requires a crisis before taking intelligent action to deal with the circumstances BEFORE matters escalate to the level of calamity. From New Orleans and the levees to Wall Street and the financial market/housing bubble crisis to gangs in the inner city to the dropout crisis becoming an absolute economic and social albatross for our nation, we are, in far too many ways, a nation of reactors instead of proactive problem solvers.

And we pay for it each and every time.

As a parent, I don’t allow my 2 year old daughter to cut herself with a sharp kitchen knife before I take the knife away from her. My daughter doesn’t get access to knives of any sort in the first place. But as a country, we allow ourselves to play with fire time and time again, much to our detriment.

When it comes to students, being proactive about matters is one of the best lessons I think I can ever hope to teach them. Fixing the mentality of our entire nation might be a bit ambitious but today, Earth Day, it might be time to think about becoming just a wee bit more green, don’t ya think?

I saw John Wooden on PBS last night, the legendary coach of UCLA basketball who won like a ba-zillion NCAA championships. His feats are almost unparalleled in the world of sports but the reason I think he is still so darn interesting to so many people — he’s nearly 100 years old and still speaks, signs and does appearances — is because he developed a sort of life philosophy that transcends mere sports.

He calls it the Pyramid of Success and without a doubt it is a tool from which ALL YOUNG PEOPLE (heck, all people) in this country can derive tremendous benefit.

There are so many things that this triggers for me that I could write a book about his book — it’s truly that spectacular. But out of all the things I could address right now, the thing that spoke most to me last night was when Coach Wooden said, “Above all, parenting is the first profession.”

Wow. I mean this is a guy who is Hall of Fame huge in his professional accomplishments and the number one area in his own career, the arena which he considered professionally preeminent above all, was being a good parent. And this outlook on life is what he considered to be the core foundation to all his other “life success”.

Values drove the way he lived his life. And if you look at the pyramid, you see that each and every element is something that falls under an individual’s control. Success was a by-product of proper conduct, proper living, proper preparation, right attitude and right effort. He talked about how bad breaks were inevitable, both in the world of sports and in the game of life, but how one responded to the inevitable adversity almost always trumped the circumstances of the adversity itself.

He raised his own kids from this perspective, he coached his team from this perspective, and his legacy to us all will be, not the banners that hang from the rafters which proclaim him a “winner” many, many times over, but rather the ability he provides all of us to bring these tools into our own lives.

How much would education change if the parents of this nation took the counsel of Coach Wooden to heart? And if the parents won’t do it, then does it not falls to us, the teachers of this nation, to pick up the slack? If every student owned — rather took ownership over applying the principles illuminated by Wooden’s Pyramid — I think fantastical strides for our schools and our nation could be made.

Funny how we have all these great tools at our disposal, but, I wonder, if they go unused, what’s the point in even having them?

Parents, teachers, administrators and lay folks — seize the pyramid! I know my own life is better for having worked hard to do so.

So today in class — as if I needed any more proof – my students showed to me for the zillionth time how and why they should never be underestimated.

Find one minute and 14 seconds to check this out and you will see that inner-city kids at a Title I school are NOT the stereotype that society wants to perpetuate.

Click here: http://thebookjam.ning.com/video/brilliant-student-alice-in

(I just posted the video under BRILLIANT Alice in Wonderland in case the hyperlink doesn’t work).

Once you have viewed this, please take into consideration how our own expectations of students dictate the realities of ou modern day classrooms. And what’s the prevailing belief at schools like mine? Unfortunately, it’s best evidenced by the educational publishing companies who keep providing silly scripted curriculums and dumbed-down, watered down textbooks to “serve” the educational interests of our students.

These people have no idea what our students want. And frankly, while thy may say they care, it’s rare that I see how. What they do care about is the sale. The moola. The contract that seals the deal on milking the district cow. That’s why they bend over backwards to create materials that simply meet “criteria” and vest very little if any interest in effectiveness.

The video that was made shows a depth and scope of comprehension as well as a knowledge of technology in concert with a litany of critical thinking that is SO RARE to find in our nation’s classrooms. And did it come from a textbook assignment? Did it come from scripted curriculum seeking to differentiate instruction. Did it come from Intervention? Of course not. It came from a group of students who simply WANTED to make it. The fact that they showed it to me was only because I try and do PBL projects all the time and they thought I might be interested.

Interested? I want to broadcast their capabilities all across the planet and show the world that Lynwood is not a ghetto school and we have plenty of kids on our campus that can innovate with the best of them if only given the chance.

So keep your boring worksheets, stuff your 5 pound textbooks where the sun don’t shine and start bringing real books, real stories and real engagement back to the classroom. Our nation’s kids are starving to be challenged and far too many powers-that-be are simply busting their brains and emptying their wallets trying to teach to a silly bubble test.

I know I am preaching to the choir on this ning when I yap about this but we have got to start somewhere, right?

You go, Esther! (She’s on this ning.) Students such as Esther, Maura, Mary, Danielle and so on are the reason I stay in the classroom. They make me better a better human being.