Comments on: You Can Run…

By: Doug Noon

Doug Noon — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:47:07 +0000

Hi Dorothy, the system you describe is what we call “block scheduling,” in my area, and it does solve part of the problem. The other part, which you also describe, is the communication piece. And of the two, I think that the communication is the more important. I wish we could find a time to make those meetings happen. They took away our middle school teachers’ team planning time here, a couple of years ago, to save money. No more middle school, now they are just junior high. And the teachers lose touch with the kids. The structural issues are real important.

By: Dorothy Burt

Dorothy Burt — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 05:00:06 +0000

Hi there
I have enjoyed reading the blog post and comments. Though I live at the end of the earth, New Zealand, many of the things talked about are familiar. And during the 5 years my husband and I taught in Papua New Guinea the power going out was part of our daily lives too.
Our school is inner city Auckland (poorest cohort, called decile 1a in our jargon) and we have the same specialist withdrawal problems you talk about. One thing we have done to make it work for us is to have the whole school work on the same timetable (elementary/primary school). So every morning we start with a 2 hour literacy block where reading/writing/speaking/listening happens and specialists withdraw kids during this time for literacy related things.
Then we have a half hour recess and the numeracy hour follows across the school.
I think we teach differently though because our teachers all ‘micro-teach’ ie small groups of 3-6 students at a time, with very minimal whole class teaching. So the specialist withdrawal can be balanced around that too.
It is a very tricky balancing act though isn’t it. Also we have feedback regularly from our withdrawal specialists via an after-school ‘Special Needs’ meeting where all involved with a student are in the same room and discuss the wholistic picture (including health and social welfare). It is time consuming but effective.

By: alicemercer

alicemercer — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:18:09 +0000

About the give them audio tape and that’ll fix it, the materials I gave the RSP teacher were things like graphic organizers to use before reading, and during reading to help the kids make sense of it, but the idea was an adult (RSP instructor/aide/para/tutor) would go through it with the kids. I’m all for audio, but that won’t help them sort out what the heck it means.

By: Doug Noon

Doug Noon — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:03:30 +0000

Chris, I’m not sure where that particular false dichotomy is mentioned or implied. There might be one where we try to distinguish between what is, and isn’t technology, and I’d agree that such distinctions are impossible.

The point of my rambling post, which I may not have made very clearly, is that social policy and it’s bureaucratic mechanisms are a part of the “technological system.”

The word, ‘technology’ is a problem, I think, because it’s an abstraction with many possible meanings.

By: Chris L

Chris L — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:06:40 +0000

The false dichotomy between being a “do-er” and a “creator” and using technology is troubling– particularly when it comes from educators. Sure, there are knitting machines and automatic greeting cards, but hand tools and knitting needles are technology– shouldn’t one do macrame by hand?

I love writing with fountain pens and typewriting, among other things, but the writing isn’t less real. Clearly there can be an over-reliance on technology– and I am one of those who believes there is a serious change in our cognitive capabilities happening because of technologically mediated communication– but there are many kinds of wilderness and many different, important strategies that help us travel in them… technology being “just” one.

The notion of being a “do-er” is predicated by an understanding of what “doing” is– and that’s in part a moving target.

By: Doug Noon

Doug Noon — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:27:49 +0000

In a meeting with a SpEd teacher last year about problems I reported students having with the social studies text, she suggested we make an audio recording of the book text, so that the kids could hear the words as they followed along in the book. My response: What good will that do when they don’t even understand what it says as I read it aloud with them?

Students (all of them) need lots of explanation and background knowledge to process any new material. Thinking that technology will supplant the need for a personal connection between teacher and student is one of *the* most pernicious edtech and policy myths. Technological “solutions” (including policy directives) will always come apart without the exercise of human judgment.

By: alicemercer

alicemercer — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 15:18:57 +0000

Doug, I had a massive number of pull-outs happening at my school last year in the rush to tutor students to improve their test scores (and our school rating) for AYP. I had agreement with the Special Education teacher and Title One/Bi-lingual tutors to use supplemental materials with our class text in at least some of their sessions so kids were being exposed to the same materials they were missing by being out of class. This meant I had to coordinate with numerous tutors and teachers. To help a fellow teacher (new) who had a number of special education students going out for RSP, I had to coordinate my schedule with her. I sent them organizers and supplementary materials to use. This required a lot of time and effort on my part. Even with this greater effort to coordinate our efforts, it still had a piecemeal feel to it.

By: mrssommerville

mrssommerville — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 13:15:18 +0000

I enjoyed reading Kelly this morning, coffee in hand, until WHAM! Bolt of lightning, crash of thunder, and the power went out. No lie. Made me feel like the link was meant to be! Interesting, his thought of managing technology by not creating it in the first place.

In working with my students and in raising my own children, I’ve found my mother popping out of my mouth quite often. Raising me she often stressed that one should never throw the baby out with the bathwater just because something newer, more flashy, seemingly more useful, came along. So I not only buy blankets for my family and friends, I crochet them as well. I don’t have to ask my Aaka for a parka, because I learned to make one myself. I cook and bake what I want because I’ve learned how to recreate my favorite recipes, and I love surprising friends and family with regular “snail mail,” humorous cards, long letters, and silly family photos. Like most Alaskans, I’m a do-er. I’m a do-er by choice and a do-er by necessity.

Over-reliance on technology is what worries me when I encounter people who don’t strike me as being do-ers. When they look for the magic diet pill or gizmo to make their belly disappear instead of going out and playing with the family, or going for a walk with the dog. And the people who set their computer calendars to auto-send birthday or anniverary greetings to friends and family (after plugging in all the dates/events/emails once) because they’re just too busy, fully embrace being impersonal, which just isn’t me. I suppose it’s all a matter of balance, and choice. Pesonally, I feel much more empowered, much more in touch, much more capable, and frankly, much more WHOLE when I feel like a person who can create, and not just consume.

Yep, when we lived in Barrow, we did it t.v.-free for five years. We read, and listened to radio shows while…crocheting. I like Kelly’s assertion that we can enjoy technology and its advances by fine tuning it, moving it if necessary, without eliminating it (or letting it completely replace another). There are knitting, crocheting, quilting machines out there. But I’ll be using my own two hands, yarn I’ve chosen, and my own hook (ivory, carved by one of my uncles), thank you very much.

By: Meredith Broderick

Meredith Broderick — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 12:59:24 +0000

“My experience in the classroom over the last couple of weeks is typical of the beginning of every school year. Many people don’t realize how piecemeal policy implementation disrupts elementary school classrooms. Specialists come around with schedules asking when it’s a good time to take kids out of class. I respond, “There is no good time, but… but surely they are learning something with those other teachers?”
I like your term “piecemeal policy implementation” it seems all policy implementation is piecemeal in the NYCDOE .
I also wonder what other “teachers or specialists” are teaching my students.
Interestingly the only “teachers” who ever taught me anything as everything I needed to know I learned was not in Kindergarten, but out of school buildings mainly, save for 2 or 3 teachers. These three all had
the same creative highly”personal” passion for their
subject. Their own fingerprint so to speak, that could not be replicated by some piecemeal policy of “best practices” . They were in one way or another mavericks, rough riders and pioneers rolled up into one. All were highly different, one was a hippie, one was a strict italian, disciplined,steeped in the classics and I guess gay though I did know it when I was in the 6th grade, and one was an ex cheerleader, with the face to match, young and pretty with a command of Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Wolf and Dicken’s not to be rivaled in any other Literature course I took in college.

By: Chris L

Chris L — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 09:02:58 +0000

To take just one small point, and not the most important one… There’s no reason for people to feel bewildered when the lights go out or the technology goes south (and it can happen for all kinds of reasons, as you know). After all, we’ve been dealing with this particular blend of surprise and dissatisfaction and agitation for a long time. It’s the same thing we feel and deal with when the book we bought turns out not to be so good, the meal we work at gets burnt, the story we told doesn’t move our listeners, or our jokes go flat. It’s not a technological problem.

I don’t even think the problems are *worse* with technology. By definition, moving away from (or expanding upon) repetition is to embrace the unpredictable. It’s the same when we try to do things that are innovative and interesting even if the only technology involved is our voice and some time in the same room.