Awake & Curious

There is a saying that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. My grandmother, Nana Broderick, used to say it a different way usually to my father when he was trying to fix something, ” please don’t fix it if you are just going to break it “. If you look at American history there are plenty examples of “fixing things only to break them”. One is the failure of Public housing, another is a little piece of legislation called NCLB.

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, like to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,

Public housing began (as a result of the National Housing Act of 1937) as apartments for middle and working classes. The Great Depression was in full swing and the corner had not been turned to more prosperous times. It’s early advocates believed the private market would fail all but the most affluent third of the population. Over time, however, those with means have departed public housing, leaving behind what amounts to a modern-day version of the 19th-century poorhouse, dominated — except in those projects reserved for the elderly or handicapped — by single mothers and children. Nationwide, only 8 percent of public housing households are two-parent families with children.

Laudable ideals started public housing. However in truth it was a product. In this case “affordable housing” sold to the American public utilizing tax dollars ( my grandmothers tax dollars she worked two jobs in the 20’s, 30, 40’s and 50′, Schraffts downtown Manhattan and Con Edison) . Public housing offered affordable housing to the poor. People who moved into public housing would be given – houses they could afford. The problem was this had not been thought out carefully. They were fixing one problem while creating a host of others. ( I remind you of the words of Nana Broderick)

Sure they had a place to live and tore done functioning poor neighborhoods to build these “places to live “. What they forgot was the neighborhood. There was no plane for a neighborhood to support the buildings. No local jobs for it’s inhabitants, schools, shopping districts, hospitals, churches, police stations, firehouses, recreation centers etc… Yet millions , the equivalent today of billions tax of dollars today went into making these “prisons for the poor”.

Remember this rule, When millions/billions of dollars are spent in the U. S. there is always big payoff for someone. Sometimes these days it is Haliburton in Iraq or New Orleans, or corporate welfare to McGraw-Hill’s Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery program to the tune of 4.8 billion dollars.

Anyway those of us who have taught inner-city kids who grew up in public housing in the United States are quite aware what a failure and incredible waste of my grandmothers tax dollars public housing has been for the past 50 years. In my own city a city planner named Robert Moses raised “successful” lower income neighborhoods to create these “prisons”

I see a parallel between this and the NCLB standards movement. I realize it is a stretch, but again the American public has been sold a “product” to correct a social ill. Testing, testing and more testing. But it doesn’t end there. They have lots of very expensive educational products They are going to sell you to make sure children do well on these “tests”. That coupled with the not so thinly veiled threats from NCLB that your children better do well on these tests and you have a national disaster in the American Education system comparable to the Public housing disaster of the last 50 years.

Now in schools in this changing 21st century instead of looking at how the world is changing, what new skills the 21st century demands, we are stuck following very expensive pre-packaged educational programs that are after all “researched based” and promise us the only thing that NCLB respects — better test scores. So what if these educational tools are offered at exorbitant prices and completely curtail teacher devlopment,and student thought and creativity, it meets the requirements of NCLB. C.Y.O. A. so to speak.( or as Nana Broderick would have said “Cover your own ass”.

Public housing for all it originators good intentions sentenced generation after generation to a form of “apartheid poverty” that still exists today. I fear the fate will be just as bleak if NCLB ’s testing craze is allowed to go unchecked in the near future. What is worse is this is happening at a time when U. S . schools should be undergoing a revolution based in the demands of globalization, and needs for different kinds of skills, like to take center stage in the classroom.

Anyway I return to school tomorrow, and I have the luxury of creating blogs , teaching, film-making, and thinking with our kids. I am not stuck following scripted programs like Every Day Math. In a lot of ways I really feel sorry for our kids, teachers and our country.
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 NCLB,
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Public Housing,

Chris Sessums posted this video from Youtube from an old Alan Watts talk.. Thoughtful and timely in these data-driven, bottom-line days. So much of teaching is a musical, intuitive, serendipitous affair. Not quantifiable at all. Yet we are always completely concerned with attainment and the bottom-line. Indeed a hoax. Good Stuff.

I am trying to get my tech-sensitive assistant principal to blog. No he does not break out in red blotches when near computers. (Well perhaps Windows platform PCs)

Tech-sensitive: meaning to have an understanding and sensitivity to the fact that technology in education is no longer about infusing tech into a curriculum that is a separate entity. Indeed tech (what a horrible word) is the curriculum. The two are inseparable the way books were to tribal knowledge, oral history, and religious thought after Johann Gutenberg in 1440 started fooling around with movable type and ink.

I have some good ideas but they may not be enough to convince him. The main reason I want him to blog is we bought as a school, November blogs for September and I think the only way I am going to move the initiative forward is to get him to blog, as a leader, as a teacher. He is what many people in the NYC DOE are not, consumed with ideas about teaching kids. He is not consumed with watching the Educational Data-driven Indy 500 sponsored by NCLB, the Everyday Math Company and the Reading First people. Not that he doesn’t know everything about our school numbers and data, he does. He knows how to play that game; he just is not consumed by it.

So why do I want him to blog?

Reason 1. He will inspire others. Well, people honestly respect him, I do too. If he blogs he will move others to take blogging seriously. He will move communication off the bulletin boards and memos that no one except a few kids and teachers see, to the world.

Reason 2. Audience. I want him to blog because of audience. I think Ewan McIntosh says it best when he says, “the average audience for student work is one (two for a conscientious student who bothers to read their own work). ”

Now we have the possibility of hundreds, thousands, to view student work and teacher thought. Amazing.

We were talking about it while we watched an army of movers on the last day of summer school, move one buildings belongings to another and the reverse for September start up. (Don’t ask but suffice it to say our Autism spectrum classes are moving into our smaller building, and our standard assessment classes into the main building) Not a decision that he made, or my principal even. (Who wants to worry about setting up 25 classrooms the first days of school, instead of thinking about the direction the school is taking?) These were their marching orders from NYC DOE. This is one of the main things administrators do, try to respond to the ever-changing demands made by a pretty faceless and heartless bureaucracy. Then do damage control so as to not completely destroy the educational experience for the kids and teachers.

Anyway he said quite seriously, I would have to write. Meaning he rarely gets time to go to the bathroom with the demands of the job now, how could he possibly make time to write thoughtfully about his job or education. Bingo. Here is one of the best reasons to blog. It makes you stop and think about what you are doing as a teacher, as a leader, as a student. Of course this ties into the father of education’s most famous line, (no not John Dewey) Socrates,(” the unexamined life is not worth living”)

Reason 3. Blog for self reflection and record. Know where you have been, and what you thought while you were there, this will give you a better idea of where you want to go.

Not that I meant that as a slam on John Dewey.

Just this morning over at 21st Century Collaborative there was a great quote by Dewey that indirectly contains some reasons to blog.

The quote was:

“”The world is moving at a tremendous rate. Going no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past. Not for our world. But for their world. The world of the future.” Learning by doing. Learning through real and authentic experiences. ”

Add the words global and connected to the lyrics and it sounds like the song Will Rich is forever singing rather well over at Weblogged, on behalf of blogging and other social media, or an article at Edutopia, Not something over 75 years ago about how education must reinvent itself to meet the demands of a world that was about to explode politically and economically after we all finished killing each other across the globe in WWII.

But listen to Dewey’s words: “The world is moving at a tremendous rate”. Certainly true today, we have to prepare for a world that does not exist, and don’t let anyone tell you they know exactly what that world will look like, because if they do they probably want to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

If anything has changed in our world at a tremendous rate it is connected communication. I mean the phone company as we know it can be effectively put out of business and is hanging on by redefining it self as an Internet provider and cable TV. So blogging and podcasting (if you have an ipod and italk that is a piece of cake) is the natural foot forward in education. Not because I know that our students will use blogs and pod-casting in their careers I am not making that claim. (I have no bridge to sell). But because the logical step forward for education is in the area of globally connected communication.

Dewey says we should learn by doing, authentic experience. Blogs are real. Blogs may elect our next president (or more importantly keep track of what Anna Nicole Smith’s baby is doing.) Bringing blogs into the classroom and the administrators’ office makes those experiences more “real” or “authentic”. Well perhaps that is a stretch.

I taught for 20 years before blogged. (Yes I am old, a little fat too) I used Project Based Learning for 15 of those years and did some terrific things but so much of that experience is lost. There is no publication of student work, or my thoughts as my students conquered ; the Civil War, Separatists in Holland” Dian Fossey, Mexico, D-Day and The Battle of the Bulge” Civil Rights, Anne Frank, Hiroshima, Child Labor, The life of bats, Zoos, The Founding Fathers etc… I could go on with this list of titles. But that is all that remains, titles that really tell me nothing. Even if I were a pack rat, (I throw everything out and I never taught the same thing twice in 20 years) the only person that would have seen what we had accomplished would be me.

Reason 4.Blog to share what you do and know.

Blogs also are a kind of progress report. A really fertile progress report that is living and can have interactive relationships. Blogs indeed could meet the goal of Data-driven education or what I like to call Educational Indy 500 . You have a real record with writing, photographs, self-reflection, podcasts maybe even videos of progress or lack of a student or a whole class. You also have teacher review and peer review of what has been created and presented. Real reflection. Not a number 1-4 that may tell you more about whether the child or the teacher was in a good mood on the day of the test rather than what kind of a job the teacher did, or how much the child has progressed. With a blog as opposed to a one dimensional score 1-4 , you have a picture of what and how the teacher taught, what the child did and thought. Very fertile stuff. You want an initiative that will give your real accountability Al Klein? Go for real public transparency with the classroom, instead of reading first how about blogging first? Take heart educational companies I am sure you can make fortune on this one too.

So, Reasons 4 &5 Accountability and public transparency of a public agency.

Any way I want my A.P. to blog. He is good at his job and I think it will only make him better. If you have any thing to add please do. Why should he blog? Tell me what you think.
[BloggingEducation]
[21stCenturyLearningskills]
[JohnDewey]