Women's march

I wanted to take a second to write about the women’s march this weekend.  It was the largest march to ever occur in the history of the United States of America.  Women and men who care about women gathered together to organize and be visible.  These marches were markedly different from any other larger protest in that no one was arrested, no one was raped, and no one was murdered.  These women did not break windows, turn over cars or burn down buildings.  They assembled and acted like good citizens.

After the march was over, I listened as people who were not involved attempted to label and turn the women into straw-men.  These people said:

• “The march was about the election. “ It could have been but maybe not in the way you think.  
• “This march was all about Trump.”  I know he would like for it to be.  More people turned out for it than for the inauguration.
• “This march was about Hillary. Although she won the popular vote, she worked hard to win a contest that did not matter.  Trump targeted the areas he needed to gain the electorial votes.”  This march was not about the convoluted political process.
• “The march was about abortion.” If you can get it to be about that a divide can be created but it was not. I am not saying there were not women there who may have been marching about these things but the women I know marched to end domestic violence and other violence against women.

So why did they march? The women I know marched to end domestic violence and other violence against women.  They marched to end the practice of light sentencing for violent rape. They marched to protect their disabled children by raising their visibility.  They marched to raise awareness that more than half of the country is female. In a representative country, shouldn’t their perspectives be represented?  There were many Godly women, who pray everyday to Yahweh, who were marching.  These women recognize the scripture that tells us to speak up for the voiceless and that is what they are doing.

Even though the event was unusually peaceful I noticed there were several people who attempted to shut them. Some attempted to shut them down by shaming the women or making fun of them.  One noob in the US senate said that Trump had managed to get more fat women walking than Michelle Obama ever had.  That is an example of the nonsense that has been shared.  Some people beg to be ignored.  Others attempted to stop the momentum by telling all of us ‘why these women were marching.’  I am disappointed in the people who feel the need to do this.  These people seem afraid to politely engage their neighbor and ask why she marched or why she supported the march.  These women managed to march without becoming violent.  I think engaging them would be physically safe, so why not talk and hear a different perspective?  It’s not as if there weren’t so many of them you don’t know anyone who participated. There is no reason for such a fearful reaction when a group of women assemble peacefully.

I recognize there were a million different reasons the women assembled this weekend.  I am just so glad to see them waking up.  The civilizations/times when women were treated equally tend to be marked by an explosion of arts and innovation. This is a rising tide that can raise all ships.

Credit these women.  They were able to run this march with class and dignity.  Women of all ages, sizes, attractiveness, education, height, income, shade and any other delimiter you care to choose, assembled.  Even though they greatly outnumbered the police and could have torn the cities down, they came together to build one another up.  I hope the movement continues and women take their God given place in the C-Suite, in America, and in the rest of the world.

Next on my Reading List:
https://www.amazon.com/Black-White-Bible-Blue-Wife-ebook/dp/B010R0I6DU/ref=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=teachersandco-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=da42915cf5ed9fcbaf5abe608591ad41&creativeASIN=B010R0I6DU

No One who needs a Computer should be without a Computer....

....When we can source them for free.  There are computers which have had the Hard Drives removed that go into the land fill everyday.  If you create an OS with Linux you can make these machines usable.  I am sharing a talk on how to build these today during the Nashville Maker Faire at the Adventure Science Center.  We have the Linux Lab set up for you to play with and we will be demoing drive creation and talking about how to find free machines.

Here are some of the directions I will be referencing: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu

and

http://teachersandcompany.blogspot.com/2016_07_01_archive.html

My son and I have published a book on the subject for kids with a gentle approach to the vocabulary and methods to avoid the pit falls we ran into when trying to find this information out in the wilds of the internet.  An update with the Ubuntu directions are coming soon.  Find this book at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Z0TMEBY/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=teachersandco-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00Z0TMEBY&linkId=0c044723688cdb81a0c3a23536ec3387

Many thanks to Make Nashville, the Adventure Science Center, and BencinStudios (video game creation) for making these talks possible.

How to stop bullying in your child's school part 1

My son attends a school with a diverse population.  Some of the students do not have the resources to meet their basic needs.  One day Boy came home and was complaining that a girl next to him kept insisting on borrowing his pencil and would use the eraser up.  This had been happening for a while and he told me he was not sure how to deal with it.

So we drove over to the Dollar Store and picked up a nice pack of pencils with a paper back to the packaging.  I wrote a note on the back addressed to the student.  I told her these pencils were a gift and that she is loved.  I also said if she ran out in a couple of weeks to let me know. After Tom gave her the pencils the girl stopped yelling at him and stopped asking to borrow his pencils.  She began to treat him more like a friend.

I can't imagine how lonely and stressful it must feel for a student who does not have pencils for class. Who hasn't had nightmares of being unprepared for class? This is many student's lived reality.  It was not expensive to help her and it made my son's educational environment more pleasant.

We may not be able to change the world but if there is one kid your child is complaining about ask about supplies and other needs. By reaching out we can change the timbre of our schools.

I do need to add the caveat that if your child is being threatened by a student you need to report that immediately and insist steps are taking to protect your student.  But for low level aggravations we have found sometimes the best way to be rid of a bully is to turn them into a friend or at least a friendly acquaintance.

Amazon is a nice place to stock up on school supplies.  I like these pencils because they use thicker lead that seems to be less prone to break.
https://www.amazon.com/Paper-Mate-SharpWriter-Mechanical-Pencils/dp/B00006IEE4/ref=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=teachersandco-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=228c78b9d412702a1091deaf68411a8b&creativeASIN=B00006IEE4

Linux drive creation (temporary)

Step by step on how to create a drive:

1. Go to pendrive linux

pendrivelinux.com

-Do not click the top link -no “GETITNOW” it's click bate and will not give you what you need

Scroll down and find YUMI mid screen CLICK LINK

2. Scroll to mid page and download YUMI

3. Open a new tab

type distrowatch.com and search in the top left corner for your distro

4. Choose your website and download the mirror

- It looks overwhelming Don't Panic

5. Scroll down to the bottom

- choose the last one that ends with .iso

6. Download that .iso file to your computer.

-This may take awhile

- when you have both yumi and your .iso downloaded you will be ready to create your thumb drive

-Through School internet it took almost an hour

7. Run Yumi- will ask choose drive= Drive E, never choose C (computer) if creating a USB drive

which distro version- choose downloaded one, which is xubuntu

Browse for dot ISO file, Open and will show up in Green

Click CREATE

8. When it says installation is done CLICK NEXT

9. Choose NO- unless you plan to put more distros on your drive

10. Choose finish

Harpeth Hall Python Minecraft camp for girls

One of the challenges of increasing diversity in coding is recruiting young women to learn these skills.  This week Ellie Fitzpatrick and I ran a camp on how to program in Python. This is an all girls camp and we taught them the way we learn best, by incorporating creative coding opportunities.  We utilized both Processing 3 and webbing Minecraft to Python.

Ellie has lead a lunchtime coding club at her school, Harpeth Hall, for 3 years.  As a seasoned Python tutor she learned to use innovative coding examples that engage girl's imaginations and make them think critically.  This week we covered the basics and much more. Our curriculum included:data types, lists, dictionaries, loops, functions, objects, and attributes by creating 'fish stores', 'big fluffy dog functions', and auto building in Minecraft.

 By Friday, these young women had designed their own project.  All are solving problems with their programs and creating unique code to perform their selected tasks.  This programming class has morphed into an coding art creation event.  Our youngest coder is working on the variables so she can move the doors and windows populating into her world from Python.  She has spent the entire day on this project.  Girls who learn to code in this manner learn persistence.

Our young women who took our class told us that there were some things that helped them. These requests set them apart from mixed gender groups.  Handwriting notes was one of the things they requested to do often.  Although I would not let them entirely write because working in the IDE and getting error feed back is important, note taking was calming for them and helped them with retention. They also reported sublime text was beneficial because Bella told us that 'the colors help her see different parts of the code'.  All agreed the colors helped them know if they had saved their file as a .py  and it was pretty.

We were all so involved in the coding projects on Friday we were an hour late to lunch.  Not one person was waiting time checking email or playing video games.  They were serious about learning and making their code function.  Highly successful camp for our girls.  I learned as much about teaching girls to code as they learned about code.  Thank you to Harpeth Hall for providing the space and to WITT for sponsoring our work.

We used this reference to help build our camp:
https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Program-Minecraft-Transform-Python/dp/1593276702?ie=UTF8&creativeASIN=1593276702&linkCode=w00&linkId=9da2bb0112980892453add16ef058ffa&ref_=as_sl_pc_tf_til&tag=teachersandco-20

Ellie's favorite reference book to learn Python is:
https://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Beginners/dp/1617290920?ie=UTF8&creativeASIN=1617290920&linkCode=w00&linkId=c9e511f0f876c9bc8405abd2503136ce&ref_=as_sl_pc_tf_til&tag=teachersandco-20

One Million New Tech Positions and Few Free Paths in Public Ed - Amy Flatt

Our economy is changing.  Many people in the recording, manufacturing, and other industries are losing their positions due to automation and new, less-expensive, technologies.  These new technologies mean you no longer need a big recording studio to produce a record or an MP3. Several recording studios in Nashville were shuttered in the last few years.

Manufacturing is not leaving the US but it's sector is shrinking.  Fortunately, there are parts of the market that are growing, like the tech industry.  Right now the United States is not positioned to take advantage of the opportunities.  Coding and other technologies are a core skill set for our age similar to Math, and Literacy.  Our teachers are constantly trained on how to teach Mathematics and Literacy and integrate them into other subjects.  However, here are few if any Professional Development opportunities for teachers to learn Coding, Info Sec, or even information about the components of the computer/how to hook it up.

Last week, I taught a class on the Unity Engine and Game Development to a group of Middle and High School students.  Half way through the week the students began talking about how to troll a teacher.  The school computers are typically slow.  The students have taken to suggesting the teachers, "Download more RAM."  Which is a little like telling someone their blinker fluid is low.  The students reported that teachers have googled "download more RAM". If the teachers had replaced RAM in a computer they would know it's a physical thing you can hold in your hands not something to download.

So our teachers are mostly unprepared to integrate tech teaching in our schools and our students are not preparing to take these jobs in the future.  Students, who are interested, are encouraged to go on line and "figure it out".  Although there are many great websites and books to teach students coding, could you imagine what it would be like if we took the same approach to Math instruction?  Granted there are many good resources online but that is not the path to have a well educated population.  Our approach to teaching tech must change.

Great Britain has instituted a plan where every child starting, at 5 years old, will learn how to code.  The US is trying to catch up.  The Whitehouse is earmarking funds but we also need a plan similar to GB to make sure that all teachers and students have the basic knowledge to take part in the 21st century.  We need to think towards the next ten years so we can continue to have a strong, vibrant economy.  Tech learning must become integrated, have a measurable plan, along with strong Professional Training Program for our teachers so they can do what they do best, teach!



Cool Tool of the Week

A Great City Needs a Great Maker Space

     A maker space is like a community center.  They have tools, technology, and various art and manufacturing equipment.  They are wonderful places where people can play, create and learn.  Maker spaces create new opportunities for the public.

     There are No actual maker spaces in Nashville today.  However, there are organizations which have some maker space elements.  There is a co-working space for makers called Fort Houston. Most of the clientele right now seem to be small businesses.  I think a similar space is being built.  Although these have maker space elements they are not complete maker spaces. There is also studio NPL run by Nashville Public Library but it is only for teens.  Because it's geared for minors the programs are very directed.  Hacker Consortium, Bon Homme Collectif and many others maker spaces have all gone defunct.  Similar to libraries, they are tricky to monetize without nonprofit funding (grants, gov support, others) 

     Maker spaces should be: 

• Accessible- reasonable price points for individuals
• Self Directed- people learn and create the things they choose 
• Welcoming- communities with egalitarian cultures
• With outreach to under-served populations

    We were able to hear from Rice University and Georgia Tech at Vanderbilt on Friday about the surprising advantages of maker spaces. 

    Some of the advantages they have found that maker spaces:

• Aid in retention
• Make the curriculum stronger
• Let people access tools and skills they would not be able to reach otherwise
• Seem to improve gender parity and increase confidence in underrepresented populations
• Matches the outline of ways students tell us they most like to learn with hands on real world experience as opposed to lecture

...And the artists they attract increase the rate of revitalization of blighted areas.

     Make Nashville is wanting to establish a maker space and they have been working on it four years.  They have gained traction by having a kick starter.  They ask individuals to give $100 to become a founding member. If they could get 40 people to give then they would receive a dollar for dollar match.  They now have 56 people, including the founder of JS Foundary. This opportunity closes December 31.

     Make Nashville has several pieces of donated lab and maker equipment and donated furniture. They have funding. They are currently seeking space.  If you would like to help support this movement you can donate at: http://www.makenashville.com/donate/

If you aren't in Nashville but want to get your geek on: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/059651428X?creativeASIN=059651428X&linkCode=w00&linkId=BB73VGC6OINSM57K&ref_=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til&tag=teachersandco-20

Cheers!

Learn all the Things!

I was recently approached to build a website for pay.  The person who was negotiating to hire me told me he had no idea how technology worked and I felt sorry for him.  Not knowing technology is a little like not knowing how to read.  So I said I would happily teach him how to build a website.  It is not difficult.  He replied, "You are the geek, you do it."

This was a shock to me.  Later, I was sharing the story with a friend who codes in Python full time.  He said, "Congratulations you are now a programmer."  While I am delighted to be a part of the "club", I am dismayed that people wouldn't want to give this a try.

This reticence to try new things which develops in adulthood for many people is another good reason students should be taught coding from the moment they can read and write.  If they have a chance to familiarize themselves with these skills I believe they would be more likely to take it up later when they are grown.

Education is not about producing widgets for corporate America to use up.  Education is about passing on the collective soul of our community to the next generation.  Children need exposure to many disciplines and skills so they can find and hone their unique giftedness to share with society.

Since school time is so limited it is possible that many of us will not discover our knack during that time.  That is why I would like to encourage us to not only enrich the school experience for children but enrich the educational experience for ourselves.  Too many adults allow society to push them into a cubby and allow their work to define them.  Many of them never open another book after high school or learn another skill they aren't required to learn.  Not good.

Attend a class you have never attended, try something you have never tried before and meet people you have never met before.  I have found that when I do this it opens up all kinds of opportunities, gives me a store of skills I may someday need qnd it makes me happy.  Unlike storing items these skills do not take up any physical space.  We can keep them for the someday which rolls around more often than you might think.

The best place to start learning programming on your own is with Scratch. Here is a resource which may help.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672337096?creativeASIN=0672337096&linkCode=w00&linkId=BUELNN33SY7AAPP4&ref_=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til&tag=teachersandco-20

A Plethora of Options

     I received a lovely letter and resume from a young man tonight who would like for me to help him find an internship in tech.  I am delighted to help him but suddenly I realize how vast the field is.  His request would be similar to asking to learn about the new industrialization 160 years ago.  I could simply place him in any tech company and hope he learns what he would like to learn.  Instead I wrote back and asked him what he would like to learn. I am interested to see how he responds.

    He may ask me to help him narrow it down.  So now I am thinking about how to classify the jobs in tech that I know about. 

    There has been an explosion of types of jobs available.  In the early 80s every job known could be listed in a single thick book.  Now I am not sure you could contain them in an encyclopedia set.  In fact, I bet you couldn't.  How do you help narrow something like that down?

      I suppose you could start with categories.  I think I will give him a set of a few categories and hope if I point him in the right general direction he can find work that suits him.  There are so many choices to consider, even as a novice.  He could consider work building webpages or collecting data from web.  He could go to a company which focuses on a programming language like Ruby, PHP, C++ or my favorite- Python.  He could study one of the operating systems like Windows, Unix, or Linux.  He could learn about hardware and computer repair or networking, Information security or even robotics.  It's so hard to narrow down. With this list I haven't even scratched the surface.  I didn't even mention local opportunities in the game industry or animation.  I just hope he knows what he would like to study otherwise it may take a while to narrow it down.


Fortunately for this young man I have a map and a compass.  We will figure it out.

Questions about Special Ed and No Child Left Behind

       Last night, I went out to have supper with a couple of friends who work in Special Ed.  While there, of course, they started talking shop.  Special Ed is not my forte so I just listened and I learned something I did not know.  No child left behind initiated inclusion in Tennessee.  However, Tennessee does not implement inclusion the way other states do .  Here, in Tennessee, a decision was made to replace most of the self contained classrooms with inclusion models.  

     The problem with inclusion is that it excludes some of the students in Special Ed.  For example, one of the students attends a music class where the other students are playing instruments. Due to the pace of the class this child cannot keep up.  If his assistant tries to help him it disrupts the entire class.  This child is unable to transition quickly.  To stand up and sing and then sit down and do an activity is very difficult.  Or consider the child who is learning how to feed themselves.  Should that child be in the cafeteria with all of the other students in his grade who can watch him struggle.  How about a newly verbal autistic child who is placed in a gen, ed. classroom where they are expected not to talk. This child needs to be encouraged to talk or he could lose his small but significant gains. It seems we have taken a one size fits all approach to something that should be custom tailored for the needs of the child.

      We are all wondering what the original intent of NCLB is for Special Ed students.  Did the legislators who drafted this consider the wide variety of needs which must be addressed? Is Tennessee approaching this correctly?  What are other states doing?  Although I realize inclusion is cheaper, it sounds like there are student falling through the cracks who need greater support.  Are we producing citizens who can join the workforce when they are sitting in a gen.ed. class coloring pictures?

      The issue is not with the teachers.  There needs to be more tools available for them to provide the support the children need.  The issue is not with the students.  Many of them have their own gifts and they need to be honed.  They also need the opportunity to socialize with their peers.  The fault, once again,  is with a policy which is disconnected from the realities of the classroom.  These misinformed policies are putting so much extra strain on good teachers.  When I hear people discuss the need to retain good teachers, it's easy to see that one of the first things that needs to happen is our policies need to line up with the reality of actual schools.

        We would love to hear how your district is addressing Special Ed with inclusion, especially related to students with co-morbid conditions such as blind students with auditory processing issues or situations where inclusion has the potential to humiliate the exceptional ed student.

Co-written with current education professional
   

Change of Venues

    As of this week I am no longer teaching in a Public School.  I have been tapped by the Nashville Technology Council to head up their K-12 initiatives.  I spent the weekend at Phreaknic19 in Murfreesboro learning Python, Info Sec and Basic Networking.  I am looking forward to sharing what I have learned with teachers, volunteers and students across the Southeast.

    I am still an educator/trainer but my venue has changed.  This blog was originally written to give an in classroom perspective from the war on our public schools.  I no longer have the vantage point to do that well.  So if you are currently teaching in Public Schools and would like to share a story from your classroom I would be glad to share it on my blog.  When I do not have a story to publish by a teacher I will blog about some type of tech education.

I will be back in touch next Sunday.

Amy

Restorative Justice is not the only Important Tool

      Although I like the concept of restorative justice I have learned it cannot be the only tool in the toolbox of professionals working with poverty populations.  I realize someone will say you need great relationships with the students.  I don't disagree.  Relationships are vital. But these two things alone are not always enough.

        I saw someone teaching on wisdom literature.  I bring it up because she mentioned there are 3 types of foolish people.  There are people who just don't know any better.  These are the people restorative justice reaches easily.  One you teach them the right thing to do they make changes and all is right with the world.

       Then you have the other end of the spectrum.  There are a few people that no matter how well you teach the correct behavior they will not make changes.  Sometimes even discipline will not turn them around.  Thankfully these young people are not the majority.  The majority of people are somewhere in between these two extremes.

      The vast majority of people follow the expectations because they do not want the consequences.  They see someone who will not choose right punished and they decide they don't want that.  Children are not the same as adults. Students do not have the life experiences of adults and they may need more immediate consequences.  That is why I now understand that ISS may be an important part of a successful inner city school program.  I think all school systems wishing to create success for these schools will bring in something in addition to restorative justice to help provide some noticeable consequence for young people who cannpt be reached by restorative justice alone.

     

An Over Reach of a School Board with Solutions

A sick day threw off my count. I am still scrambling to catch up from the day out to care for my sick child. I am on track to have given an additional 10 hours of 'volunteer time' beyond the school day. It would have been more but I have other responsibilities that cannot wait. I will plan to be at school early tomorrow so I can start the week ready.

This week, Amy Frogge posted about the the state of Tennessee School Board overturning an MNPS School Board decision to block unneeded charters. In Metro, supply of Charter School seats far outweighs demand. These all charter seats drain a disproportional amount of money from our local schools.

When the funding model was selected to pay funds per student I understand they simply took the funding provided utilized in the district and divided it by the number of students to get an average. However, the cost to educate every child is not the same . Students struggling with poverty or with special needs are require more funding to educate. I am not sure the higher cost of educating exceptional children has been considered. Charter Schools do not serve these population. I think there could be a two fold solution.

First, it seems over reaching for a non elected board to overturn a decision by an elected board. If the state school board is going to overturn local decisions of elected representatives, then this state board does not need to be an appointed board. We need to hold elections for these positions as soon as possible. Any decisions this non-representative board has made need to be on hold until the people can weigh in, by choice of representatives.

Second, the children should be weighted by cost to educate. Since Charters choose the students who are the least expensive to educate and further cut the cost by violating copy write and refusing to provide supplies such as textbooks and computers, they should only be paid for the education they are providing. Education using public funds should not be a fiscally profitable endeavor. A formula can be created to make educating children here a truly non-profit effort. If we only pay for the seats the children are using and if we only pay for the cost of the education these students are being provided Nashville will become a less inviting market for profiteers.

If control is returned to the voters through properly held elections then local gate keeper can stem the waste of taxpayer funding. This money is flowing through these 'non-profit' front school companies to line the pocket of people out of state. Please contact your local representative to let them know what has happened here. Together we can stop the starvation of our local public schools but only IF we speak up.

An Idea for a Request for Proposal to Evaluate Teacher Evaluations

Current Update: For the first three weeks in an inner city school I averaged 55 hours per week. This week I am down to 51 hours.

      During this month, I have met several teachers of note. They go above and beyond the expectations of a typical teacher. These women and men create posters for every standard they teach and post them in their classrooms. They study responsive classrooms and other pedagogy and share the things they learned with one another. For many teaching in this school is their profession, hobby, evening plans, and subject of study.

      Often students are seen working in small groups during class, after school and during the teachers' duty free lunch. These folks have multiple degrees and honors posted in their room and they are well loved in the community.

      Many of them are rated as a one out of a scale of five under Tennessee's rating system. Ratings are based on test scores. These ratings do not reflect the levels of professionalism, ingenuity, and sweat I observe these teachers investing in their school every day. I have a suspicion the issue could be the test, not the teachers.

      Here is my suggestion for a RFP, I propose we test whether the teachers are truly at fault for the low test scores in these poverty schools.  I propose the faculty and administrative staff for this  school switch buildings and clientèle to one of the upper level schools for one year.  I hypothesize, if the schools were swapped, the test scores for the teachers at my current school would go through the roof and the teachers who had high scores would suddenly have low scores.

    If I am correct we would know the issue is not teaching, the churn of teachers is not improving education; and we may need to step back and re-evaluate how we evaluate.  

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003IPYFC8?creativeASIN=B003IPYFC8&linkCode=w00&linkId=CGMDHGALLKFUAFNF&ref_=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til&tag=teachersandco-20

 Thank you to the teachers who are fighting this difficult fight.  You are all heroes to me.

Lets talk about Play

Children use play to understand their world. They set up a scenario to work out the details of something they may not quite understand. They choose roles and then they act it out. Sometimes it's silly stuff they see on TV. Other times it is real life situations and issues. 

It makes sense that you can see what things are occurring in the children's lives by watching them play. Professionals have used children's art and play to determine if there is stress, issues or dysfunction. Play is important for children and can be diagnostic.

I notice play is changing. My son asks my daughter if she would like to take a test. He draws something on the page and asks her to tell him what it is. She will tell him what the picture is and he will tell her she is wrong. He will identify the picture by the color. 

“ No, It's blue.” 

The questions change but the outcome is always the same.

 “No your answers are not correct.” 

 The target keeps changing so there is no pattern to follow and no way to get the right answer. It's clear the answer changes after she has answered.  The answer changes to insure she will not get it right. This game is similar to the “impossible quiz” on line my students love to take. If you would like to give it a try you can find it at addicting games.

Remember children use play to grapple with difficult situations. Why are the children playing these type of games? What are they mimicking to try to understand? It's clear to me they are attempting to manage the stress of the high stakes testing  The pressure from testing is affecting children in so many ways including play. The outcome is a weaker more narrowed education and stressed kids. Could we please consider the warning signs?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0742561496?creativeASIN=0742561496&linkCode=w00&linkId=U2NBV55QMYAHC47R&ref_=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til&tag=teachersandco-20

Unsung Hero

In my journeys as a teacher I have been able to meet many remarkable educators.  Today I would like to highlight a teacher who goes above and beyond.  She gives up her lunch and planning to meet with parents.  She is often working with students after school and she is usually one of the last teachers to leave the building.  The 50 to 55 hour weeks is not unusual for her. She has managed this schedule for months.

The community, parents and students respect her.  She has become part of the foundation for this school in her community.  She deserves to be celebrated.  She has asked me to keep her name confidential because...

She told me this would be her last year teaching.  The workload has gotten so much heavier and she said she often feels like a failure.  Her feeling do not match reality. She has brought nearly all of her students up to passing under the new grading for learning standards.  I have seen how much effort she put into her students success. Her successes are just not being measured in appropriate ways. She works so hard but the bar has been set too high with no means to reach it.  She is being held accountable, accountable for things which limit her students success, accountable for circumstances she is unable to change. See this former blog post to understand the things we cannot change. http://teachersandcompany.blogspot.com/2015/01/map-comparison-level-of-poverty-to.html

Sometimes people need some external appreciation or they are more likely to suffer burnout.  There is no real mechanism to acknowledge the teachers who strive to help students the way this she does. She goes far above and beyond her job description. She has so many markers of true excellence which go unnoticed as the reformers drive profit motivated changes in local education.  The people who have the greatest chance of making a change in a students life are driven over and driven off.

If we do not wake up and stop these harmful changes we are going to lose the people who make a real difference for our children.  Please oppose profit driven reform and support the teachers who are willing to fight this difficult battle for the sake of our community's children.

Enjoy your Fall break.  I'll see you in a week.

Right now I am reading/listening to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.  It's essential for anyone who wants to understand how people find success and the recipe for success. It was not at all what I expected it to be. You can find a copy at  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316017930/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0316017930&link_code=as3&tag=teachersandco-20&linkId=KA5RR6OWXG7OGJQC

"Accountability" Might be the Match that Sparks a Revolution in Public Education

Three weeks ago I transferred to an impoverished school because my former school needed to lose another teacher.  Not enough students attend now to support a programming teacher.  We lost our Chinese teacher the month before.  So many teachers over 40 had been constructively dismissed by the administration in the year prior I took the opportunity to escape.  I moved to a new school and I am glad I did.

The administrative team here is supportive.  The teachers are forging a culture of camaraderie to do the improbable. The school offers art, dance, music and socio-emotional learning opportunities which make it a good place to be.  The students are good kids but there are still barriers in place due to the poverty of the population.

Parents are so busy trying get the complex needs of their families met that aren't able to give as many opportunities. If it is going to cost $8 to put everyone on the bus to go to the free day at the Frist. The free day on Oct 18 becomes a $16 day. That $16 may be needed to pay the light bill. The issues these children are facing are not the fault of their families or of the students. Poverty is a handicapping condition.

Stressed out students in poverty do not retain information as readily as their less stressed peers.  For example, I taught them the day before about a blue moon being an event where there are two full moons in a calendar month. The next day they asked me to tell them how the moon turns blue.  They remembered the term blue moon, which is good, but none of them remembered the concept.

They do not have the same baseline knowledge.  I gave them an article on the Pope coming to speak at a poor school in Harlem.  I thought they would be excited to hear about the papal visit by a pontiff who has compassion for kids living in similar situations.  I asked them to write any vocabulary they did not know on the board so we could go over it.  They wrote Pope, Catholic, and Cathedral. I doubt you could understand the text without these concepts.  I used it as a teaching moment.  I may create a humanities center for my classroom.

I gave a Math test using the questions formulated by Pearson because these questions are supposed to be very much like the questions my students will face on the upcoming TNReady, a thinly veiled Pearson exam.  I taught the ways I've always taught. I have high scores so my methods have demonstrated success.  My new students did not do well on this test.

I began to deconstruct why they performed poorly.  The test questions are high level word problems. If you cannot get the meaning out of the text and find the right algorithm, then you never get to show you know the Math.  We will attempt to train them to survive the test but we are told we must.  That's really not a great basis for a full, rich, broad education.

This lovely little school will live or die by these upcoming test scores.  Survival looks bleak with the form of testing we are facing.  I now see clearly how elitist education reforms have become.  For our high stress, low income, students who struggle with reading and vocabulary this test is unnecessarily burdensome and is limiting their education. We need a revolution. We need education that hones each child's unique giftedness instead of forces conformity to an unreasonable testing standard.

Sir Ken Robinson has written a book to highlight the path.  The link to Creative Schools is listed below.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670016713/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0670016713&link_code=as3&tag=teachersandco-20&linkId=EAYT4WG2ZWAS4NRT

So this teacher walks into a Maker Faire

Last week, Nashville had an embarrassment of riches.  There were so many things to see and do.  The Greek Festival, the Italian Festival,Tennessee State Fair and so many others.  Since I am a geek I chose to attend Nashville's geek festival, the Mini Maker Faire, sponsored by Make Nashville and the Adventure Science Center.

We were able to watch 3D printing, aluminum smelting and science demos, all of which were delightful.  But the best part was the chance to see so many creative people channel their creativity in unexpected-brilliant ways.  I stood inside a responsive-geodesic dome a woman had built and was programming to have the images move and dance with the people who were in it.  My daughter held the bridle of a dinosaur.  I learned some things about paper from the origami artists who meet at Plaza Art that were mind blowing.

This weekend was the same.  I simply could not choose.  There were Arduino classes that showed us how to connect motors of all sizes to controllers.  I am so glad to have been able to attend these classes.  There are so many things I want to build.

Tonight we are attending Nashville's inaugural Game Jam.  There are multiple opportunities to learn by doing in Nashville.  There are so many users groups to join, attending the meetings alone could be a full time job, a dream job.

In the last year we have attended events with The Global Game Jam,  Hack Nashville, Make Nashville, Middle Tennessee Robotic Arts Society, Nashville Women Programmers and so many others.  Every time my family and I attend an event we learn something we would not have learned otherwise and new opportunities keep opening.  Right now I just had a guy ask me if I can create a sprite.  Of course I can.  I will learn the basics of a new program and create something I would not have know how to build otherwise. I love this town and the free chances to learn that are available here.

Teach In!

SO I went out to lunch to plan the week with one of the teams I work with.  We located a coffee shop with wifi and staked out a booth to spread out our curriculum, books, computers, and lunches and began the work we do all the time.  But today was different.  We were in a public place and we begin to hear comments.

"What are they doing?"
"They are teachers getting ready for the week."
"Oh my G--, I had no idea that was so involved."

I realized then John Q Public really has no idea what is going on in our classrooms or what is involved in the job of teaching.  We have to know our curriculum, where our students are in the learning process and decipher what they need next.  When children are failing we have to figure out how to reteach them so they learn it.

In four hours we had a plan to create rotating groups for the week, re-mediate children who had fallen behind, teach responsively, provide memory scaffolding, review and test on the curriculum for science and math.  The people around us were surprised and I hope a little impressed.  They should be!  Effective teaching is awesome and so is this team of teachers.

Two things have occurred to me.  The first, I have put in more than 50 hours this week on my work. The kids are worth it but I am going to need to begin to limit myself to 50 hours or less.  The other thing I realized is Nashville and other school districts could really benefit from a 'Teach IN'!

I just came up with the idea today.  I would like for every teacher to select one Sunday afternoon on the calendar and go out to lunch to plan with colleagues.  Regardless of your political stripe or professional affiliation, this is something that all of us can do easily.  It will give the non-teachers in our communities an inkling of what we do and why we do it.  We teach for the benefit of the children of our city. We are bright, capable, dedicated professionals.  The rhetoric of 'bad teachers' is light years from the reality.  Educating the people we help could help turn the tide to save our public schools.  We just need to pick a day and spread the word.  Thoughts?

This Labor Day I'm thinking about Little Abner

Little Abner was a brilliant comic strip by Al Capp.  It was written before my time but I remember my father telling me about it.  It was one of his favorite comic strips when he was young.

One of the recurring characters was a Shmoo.  Shmoos are so sweet and super accommodating.  They have a huge rear end and were written to represent the American worker.  The Shmoo liked nothing better than to be kicked in the pants.

Mr Capp noticed the American worker would bend over backward to keep the boss happy even when it really hurt.  They would not stand up to improve their situation.

This is the natural way.  Humans are herd like animals. When on their own they get kicked in the pants, A-LOT but when they organize they begin to look less like Shmoos.

When a group of workers organize they have rights they would not have otherwise.  They can discuss working conditions, organize as a group and even critique management.  These rights create checks and balances in large organizations where the employees work.

There are some barriers to organizing right now.  Workers rights have been eroded and sometimes organizers face punitive action.

In 1948 the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated, “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”  Times have changed and these rights are not being protected under the current legislation.  But Fear Not!  New legislation is being considered which would add the right to organize to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  This would allow workers to sue in federal court if they are discriminated against for trying to organize.  But what can we do until this legislation passes?

What can you do to strengthen existing rights?  You can join a related association. A trade association, a union, or a group like BATs may be what you need.  If you are a teacher there are many to choose from. Research carefully and choose the most effective for your purposes.  

Support local action to protect your own rights and the rights of your fellow workers.  This is important because our working conditions are the students learning conditions.  Unless we all work together to improve working conditions, teaching will become a high-churn, low-quality environment.  I don't want that for my fellow teachers or my students.  For the sake of all stake holders teachers need to stand up and insist on proper working conditions.  

Today I am grateful for the active, volunteers who earned Labor Day, eight hour work day, minimum wage and so many other rights.  Even though they are long gone their actions reverberate down through the ages.  Do not be afraid to join together with others to make improvements.  It may be the only thing that can save public education today.  

I am posting this tonight as a grateful member of Professional Educators of Tennessee.  I am looking forward to working with other members and other teachers to rebuild our public schools into what they can be.