In response to the outdated state of the average American classroom, Slate Magazine recently solicited reader suggestions for transforming American schools. Go to their site to see what readers had to say about a model classroom for the 21st century.
Also, be sure to click on the following links (or just scroll down) to read responses from Teacher, Revised contributors: Gabrielle Lensch Plastrik and Alistair Bomphray.
We hope you will leave your own suggestions/critiques as comments below.
Filed under Uncategorized
by GABRIELLE LENSCH PLASTRIK
This piece was written in response to a Slate Magazine contest in which readers were encouraged to enter their ideas a for a model classroom.
The success of a classroom has a lot less to do with the objects that are in it than with the people, but arrangements and teaching/learning aides can make a significant impact. For instance, I taught in a public high school for a year. My classroom was long and narrow with the board on a narrow end. When I had twenty-eight students, kids had to sit in the back row, which was about twenty-two feet from the board. I couldn’t arrange the desks in a “U” or a circle because of how many desks there were. Just the size and shape of the room were limits to the effectiveness of my teaching. Based on my experience at that public school plus my four years of teaching in private schools, I have designed the following model classroom.
Layout: The room should be a 20’X20’ square. There is no teacher’s desk. There are thirteen of these desk/chairs and thirteen bean bag chairs. (The Great Books Foundation recommends that, in order to be effective and all members to equally participate, there be no more than 12 participants in a discussion. Those twelve students plus the teacher make 13.) Sometimes these are arranged in a circle, for discussion, sometimes they are pushed to the walls, so students can be up and moving around in the empty space in the classroom. Sometimes, they are in rows, so the students can best see an area of interest. It is important that the chairs be comfortable because learning is hard work, and being comfortable can make participating in hard work more enjoyable. Also, students’ backs shouldn’t need to suffer from poor chairs. While I personally love carpet, this is to be an all-subject classroom, so it needs to have a floor that is very easy to clean. As such, it would be best if it were patterned concrete. This wood design would give the classroom a homey feel, but also be incredibly easy to clean.
One of the walls will have slim bookcases built into it. On these bookcases, each student will have a shelf. There, they will keep a small journal, any books they are currently reading, any necessary texts for the class, and resources they have found useful to their reading, writing, math, and science. The remaining shelves will hold free-reading books and teacher suggested resources. Another wall will be covered with cork board. Each student will have a spot to display his/her work. In addition, the teacher will have a spot to display his/her work and information that will be helpful to the students. The remaining two walls will be painted with idea paint, a new product that turns walls into white boards. It is better to use paint than actually have a white board because a) the paint can cover the entire wall and b) the walls can be repainted when the white board becomes un-writable because of all of the smudges from past work.
Filed under Essays
by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY
This piece was written in response to a Slate Magazine contest in which readers were encouraged to enter their ideas a for a model classroom.
Technology is amazing, hey? The fact that you’re reading this blog right now is nothing short of amazing. How many new tweets/blog posts/Facebook status updates have been projectile vomited into cyberspace in the short time it has taken you to read these three sentences? It’s like that scene in Stand By Me when Lard Ass Hogan barfs on four-time pie-eating champion, Bill Travis, and then “Bossman” Bob Cormier barfs on Principal Wiggins, and then Principal Wiggins barfs on a lumberjack, and then everybody starts barfing on each other all the way up to the Women’s Auxiliary barfing on the Benevolent Order of Antelopes. Which is all just to say—amazing!
No doubt about it—technology has revolutionized our world. Google is our collective hippocampus (how ironic that I just Google fact-checked that), and wireless broadband our neurons and axons.
But when it comes to school innovation, technology is a crutch. This isn’t to say that it isn’t good, or that it shouldn’t be a part of school innovation, but that too often it enables laziness on the part of school leaders. Rather than do the hard work of thinking about what will really make our students the kind of people we want to inherit the earth (or improve their test scores, if that’s your thing), we compensate for our lack of ideas by bowing before the altar of technology. Got a spare 100K? Build a new Mac lab, by God! Smart Boards in every classroom! Surgically implanted grammar chips!
Filed under Essays
by ALEXANDRA BOMPHRAY
During my time teaching first and second grade English language learners (ELLs), I was very frustrated that all of the written texts that they were able to successfully independently read were also texts that were written for much younger students. These texts tended to be simplistic pictures books with limited, if any, story line and were of little interest to my students. The written text provided students with a simpler, fragmented, and often awkward example of the English language. To make matters worse, these ‘baby’ books—as they were thought of by my students—carried with them the negative stigmatization of being for struggling readers. My ELLs needed books with exciting, age-appropriate storylines that were also accessible for their reading level. Unfortunately, I struggled to find texts meeting that criterion.
Three years ago I became familiar with graphic novels—a new, invigorating genre of children’s literature that provides ELLs with accessible texts that are rich in meaning. Graphic novels look like more advanced chapter books and their complex storylines match those found in higher quality children’s literature. They are an ideal solution for teachers looking for quality texts for their ELLs. Reading graphic novels has the potential to help ELLs avoid the negative stigmatization connected with traditional ELLs’ texts and provide an opening for them to experience the types of texts that lead to vigorous conversation and comprehension. The text in graphic novels also tends to be rich in authentic, interactional English thus helping to model to ELLs the appropriate use of English in a variety of social settings.
While quality graphic novels provide accessible and engaging texts for ELLs, few graphic novels are written specifically for ELLs living in inner cities. This is not unique to graphic novel genre—elementary teachers often struggle finding books in any genre that are personally relevant for students in their culturally diverse inner city schools. For this reason, I was ecstatic when I came across Sue Stauffacher’s Wireman series. Stauffacher created Wireman with the goal of creating a story—within a familiar urban setting—that would help inner city students ‘see’ themselves reflected within the literature. To achieve this objective, she had inner city teens assist her in developing the different storylines in order to ensure the authenticity of her writing. She also uses appealing, black and white images that help to create a gritty and mysterious tone to the novel.
The result of Stauffacher’s work is an engaging, complex story that is steeped in mystery and supported by well-developed and relatable characters. The multiple mysteries that are weaved together throughout the series help motivate students to read more. These mysteries also provide an excellent opportunity for students to practice important reading comprehension strategies such as making inferences, asking questions, and predicting. Each addition in the series leaves room for students to discuss with each other what is actually happening and how the different pieces of the mysteries might fit together.
Filed under Book Reviews
by TASHA KEEBLE
I’ve lived in the Bay Area for the last 15 years. It is now a home to me in the same way Oxnard, Pine Bluff, and Atlanta are. I am accustomed to its rhythms and wait for expected changes the way my foot waits for the light to change; I know it’s coming, and I also usually know when.
Seasons change oddly here. We stay a little chilly and resentful all summer, then in fall, we end up quite hot, remembering that this happens every year (I always forget). Summer is fall in the Bay and that means my bedroom window’s open, the ice cream man can earn a little money, and some of this nation’s youngest, most industrious prostitutes have taken over what used to be named E.14th St. in Oakland. International Boulevard. That’s what they call it now, though most of us refuse that name.
For over a year I have waited to interview one of the young girls I see on the street. I do not know why it’s taken so long. I talk to my students everyday and ask them what’s up with them. I try to get them to reflect and consider their choices, in much the same way folks tried to get me to reflect when I was so young and unwittingly vulnerable. I have waited however, for this one. Probably because it’s such an overwhelming proposition: to talk to a street walker like she’s a person, I mean, and imagine that she has a life just as ordinary or as tragic as my own.
I did it tonight. I will share what happened. I will share what I thought. I will share what I felt, but I will not cry.
I see little girls walking up and down E. 14th, unabated by police, social worker, preacher, priest, nun, teacher, parent, grand-parent, auntie, uncle, or cousin. No one. No one.
No one interferes as they wave down the eager men who pick them up in their clean, over-insured minivans, sedans, and fabulous pearl and blue sports cars. They know the girls. They catch their eye and point around the corner. These are grown ups, picking up little girls to drive around in their cars. I don’t know how much the girls charge. I do not know what the girls do, but I can imagine. I also know the girls are young. Very young. Some look as young as 11, or 12—don’t know how to walk in heals; their dresses fit loosely. But no one stops them.
Last year I stopped several girls on one corner, because I frequent a fellowship on this block, see them all the time. I told them to be careful. I also told them they should talk to some of these old “hos out here” and find out what’s really going on. This used to be the end of the line. Now it’s the starting line. I have two daughters of my own and seeing this cavalcade breaks my heart. I stopped fellow-shipping in that place, it wore me out so. I returned, however, some months later with an idea; thinking I would write a story and they would be saved. Someone has to know that this is happening here.
If it were Thailand, it would be a shame. But it’s Oakland, so it’s a different kind of shame. Somehow because these girls live here, they have clearly made this choice. When it’s children in other lands, they are victims. Here, they are making choices. We turn our heads, in order to go on about our business sanely. But please do not turn away. I beg you to listen.
She wore black heels, about 3 inches, a white sleeveless T-shirt and a neat black mini-skirt. She was petite. Maybe 5 feet; weighing about 98 lbs. Her face was long and reddish brown, the color of Georgia clay: maybe African and Latino. Her hair hung wavy, with leave in conditioner and ash blond tips. I walked over and sat beneath a window a few feet away. It’s early evening. The sky is burnt and heaving above us. It’s 84 degrees, and East 14th Street is hot.
I say, “Hey,” and motion her over. I know full well she is accustomed to doing what people ask and that makes me feel safer. “I don’t want nothing from you, but do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
“What kinda questions?” she says a little baffled. Continue reading
Filed under Essays
Rethinking Schools, the progressive ed magazine out of Milwaukee, has been pretty active in the anti-Waiting for Superman movement. Here’s a link to their website, NOTwaitingforsuperman.org, which is basically a collection of articles critiquing the film and the policies espoused therein. Good, smart stuff. Check it out.
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by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY
Education writers, policy-makers, administrators, union leaders, and teachers alike drape their ideas in the rhetoric of reform as if it were some magic cloth immune to criticism. It peremptorily turns the critic of said idea into a behind-the-times hairsplitter who is getting in the way of progress.
The way industrial food corporations like Dole scramble to affix the “organic” label to their product, purveyors of educational policy are all too quick to identify themselves as “reform-minded.” But what does “reform” actually mean? Has the word been so overused as to have lost all meaning (much in the same way the meaning of “organic” has been appropriated to the point of meaninglessness)? Or is it kind of a deceptive concept to begin with?
Literally, the word simply means “to form again.” This means every time I change the seating arrangement in my classroom, I’m engaging in a mild version of educational reform. In this sense, the word carries no qualitative connotation. It just means changing shit up, for better or for worse.
The Random House dictionary, however, is not so nebulous. It defines “reform” as “the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc.” In which case, anything that makes our education system better, could be described as reform. But if it makes our education system worse, then it would be the opposite of reform, right?
Merit pay is one of those ideas that’s consistently peddled under the umbrella of “education reform.” Problem is, at this point, we have no idea whether merit pay would make our education system better. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan theorizes that it would. But that in itself is not “reform.” The dictionary demands certitude in the matter, a kind of certitude that is impossible in the present moment.
Shouldn’t a policy like merit pay at the very least be tagged as “potentially reformative,” in the same way someone accused of theft is an “alleged” thief until proven guilty?
by GABRIELLE LENSCH PLASTRIK
This is the summer that I had to buck up and undergo the certification renewal process here in Wisconsin. I should say that I probably find the Wisconsin process more annoying than people who have always lived here do because in my home state of Illinois, a teacher only needs to teach and take six credits to switch from an initial educator license to a professional one. No such simplicity for Wisconsin.
The thinkers at DPI (The Department of Public Instruction) saw that young teachers leave the profession mostly because they feel that they have not accomplished anything. Based on the nationwide research they were using, a plan that went beyond coursework and helped educators see themselves meeting goals would be highly superior. It is beautiful in theory—like most of education reform.
And such was the birth of the PDP (professional development plan). Initial educators have five years to change their license to a professional one. In order to do so, they need to set a professional development goal (a goal for their own learning) that ties into their students’ academic success (preferably judged by a standardized test). Then, in order to ensure that teachers know how to go about meeting their goal, they have to set up three to five objectives, all of which need to be supported with three to five pieces of evidence. Then, three people need to approve the goal plan: an administrator, a member of the higher education community, and a professional educator. They all also have to have been trained in being on a PDP team.
At the end of every year of the plan—it is supposed to take four years after the first year, which is spent devising the plan—the teacher is supposed to reflect on his or her progress and submit evidence of progress toward the goal. Then, at the end of five years, all evidence has to be submitted and approved in order for a teacher to be a professional educator.
There are a lot of great ideas in this plan. I particularly appreciate the plan to have trained professionals evaluating the PDPs. The process, while unnecessarily complicated, is by no means difficult. My major gripe, though, is how arbitrary the whole thing is. It forces a new teacher to focus on filling out paperwork and reflecting on one small goal that is necessarily not central to his or her practice because of its focus on self-improvement linked to student improvement. That means that whatever the focus is has to be quantifiable. I couldn’t, for instance, learn about fostering creativity in order to improve my students’ creativity in their short story writing or, more accurately, I could, but I would be unlikely to pass at the end of the cycle.
Instead of putting a smart screen in every classroom, why not give every student one of these?
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by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY
Remember that movie An Inconvenient Truth? It was pretty good, right? Al Gore’s triumphant return to relevance, or something like that… 
Well, Davis Guggenheim, the director of that cleverly developed treatise on climate change, shifts his attention to the state of public education in America in his latest feature documentary, Waiting for Superman. A few weeks back I went to the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco to retrieve a lost phone only to discover that Waiting for Superman, a surprise entry into this year’s SF International Film Festival, was starting in five minutes. I had a stack of student work burning a hole (turning to compost is probably more accurate) in my teacher bag, but who am I to refuse destiny?
Let me make this clear right away. I think this is a bad documentary. As a piece of journalism, it’s lazy and manipulative. As a “methodical dissection” of our public education system (which the film’s official movie site purports it to be), it falls far, far short. Its flaws are multiform, but for brevity’s sake, I’m going to focus on, oh, I don’t know, four:
1. Waiting for Superman is a Michael Moore rip-off, plain and simple, and this in a time when Moore’s own stuff is a little tired already. From the amusingly quaint 1950’s-era footage to the use of animation to add humor and watchability, Guggenheim borrows freely from Moore’s bag of tricks. He even includes footage of Bush saying dumb things. I mean, I like laughing at Dubya as much as the next guy, but at this point, it just seems too easy, you know? All of this stuff would’ve been fresh eight years ago, but in 2010, I couldn’t help thinking, “Haven’t I seen this before?” There’s no nice way to say this—Guggenheim’s a biter.
All in all, it is a moderately entertaining film, which should come as no surprise; Moore’s shtick works. But unlike Moore in, say, Roger & Me or Bowling for Columbine, Guggenheim sacrifices content for entertainment. It’s one thing to propel a viewer through dense, difficult subject matter; it’s quite another to do so and also shed light on the subject.
2. And that’s the problem with this film—it doesn’t really have anything new to say about education. And the things it does say are oversimplified and/or politically trendy. About halfway through, I began to have the sneaking suspicion that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called Guggenheim up and said, “Hey, remember what you did for Al? Well, I’ve got something for you.” (OMG—is Duncan the Man of Steel? He certainly is dreamy enough.). Personally, I have a hard time trusting a documentary that so unwaveringly cleaves to one party’s line, even if that line is occasionally my own.
One of the film’s major theses is that teacher unions are getting in the way of educational reform. To anyone even peripherally acquainted with the current educational zeitgeist, this is not a new sentiment. And with good reason—though their intent is to protect teachers, teacher unions too often simply protect the status quo. This includes keeping bad teachers in a job. Guggenheim points to oft-touted examples of bureaucratic excess such as New York City’s “Rubber Room” where suspended teachers receive full salary and benefits to do nothing (a story already covered by, most notably, The New Yorker and This American Life).
Unfortunately, Guggenheim’s view on this debate is as free from nuance as a DC comic book. Enter Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of D.C. schools, as the caped union buster. And over there, feasting on the wormy corpses of our children’s dreams, is Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, as Lex Luthor. Rather than provide useful historical context or explore the philosophical gap between these two opposing figures, Guggenheim is content to paint the issue in broad strokes. Yes, of course, the Rubber Room is straight out of Catch 22, and, yes, of course, there are bad teachers out there (we’ve all had them), but, c’mon, what about all of the average to amazing teachers who are doing their job? Instead, Guggenheim focuses on a minority—the woefully inept, cruelly indifferent, really, really, bad teacher.
Filed under Movie Reviews
