I love getting and reading the Sacramento Bee, and love being able to read it online. The comments however are a real mix of the bitter and the sweet. I hate how the limited space in the print version constricts representations of different points of view. If that is the problem in the print paper, the online version is like a polar opposite. To be frank, it’s embarrassing. Many commenters think nothing of making racist comments, ad hominum attacks, or weaving entire backgrounds for stories that have little to do with reality.

A recent Sacramento News and Review (our independent weekly) had this to say:

“If you are someone who leaves comments below news stories on the Sac Bee’s web site, chances are your politics are reactionary and inhumane and your heart flinty and cold.
Under a story about a child who drowned in the river, you might write, ‘Kids drown all the time. Why is this news? And Rodriguez? Was the kid even here legally?

Like a piece in the Onion it is funny and sad, because you could literally find comments that read almost exactly like that in the comments section in any given week. It’s like all the happiness and joy has been sucked out of the comments section. Instead of the milk of human kindness, they’ve reverted to the poison of reptilian bitterness.

My husband follows transportation articles as part of his job, and shares the story about a woman who was forced off the road by a driver enraged truck driver who felt she had taken too long in a drive-through line where he had been stuck behind her. The commenters all came up with reasons why this must have occurred: texting, using a cell phone, putting on makeup, including elaborate descriptions of what she was doing. All of this with no facts to back up any of their suppositions, but it obviously filled their preconceptions.

The comments on recent story on burn victims from the daycare fire in Mexico coming up to Shriners International Hospital here in Sacramento was the most recent example of this combination of ignorance and meanness. Commenters were angry that we were taking care of non-Americans showing their ignorance that other commenters were fortunately quick to address; services are not paid for by taxpayers by the international efforts of Shriners and the hospital is part of a network which includes a hospital in Mexico. The response? One commenter vowed not to contribute any longer to Shriners because he only wanted to help American kids. Local columnist, Marcos Breton, has weighed in on the ugly nativism that paints all folks from South of the U.S. who have a Spanish speaking ancestor as illegal (and squares off on the reality of “illegals” as well).

My maternal grandfather was a proud Shriner for years who collected his own spare change and stood in front of grocery stores raising money. It was to help sick children. Period. I could resort to terms like, ignorant, racist, etc. but the one that really fits is small. We Americans like to think of ourselves as generous people, and we are, those comments were not from that America.

There is another more general concern that I have about the online comments. I teach in Sac City in an elementary, but one of my colleagues is Larry Ferlazzo, who teaches at Luther Burbank. We both have large immigrant populations from Mexico and SE Asia. Our problem is that we rely on using links to stories to help teach our students about their culture and how it intersects with mainstream society, which can expose them to the comments section.

A few months ago Larry pointed out a story on traditional conflict resolution methods in the Hmong community in light of the recent murder that had it’s roots in an extra-marital affair. The comments were the usually blend of sanctimony and bigoted opinions that have marked the online comments.

I wondered, what will students make of this? Most of the commenters probably don’t consider the students important enough to worry about it, but they should. Proposition 13 passed around the time I was 13 years old. In the flurry of threatened closures of libraries and other services Howard Jarvis opined that it didn’t matter if libraries closed because none of these ignorant kids read anyway. That was my political crucible and I have never and will never find anything that Howard Jarvis or his taxpayers association has to say to be credible.

I have to think that some of Larry’s students might be coming to the same conclusion about folks in the Bee comment section that I once came to about Howard Jarvis and his ilk. I once was 13 and powerless, but now I am 44, vote in every election in an electorate where my views are shared by a majority. Someday many of Larry’s and my students may be too, demographics is on their side. Meanwhile, those commenters will still be trolls.

Photo Credit: Dirty Troll Revue on Flickr

Here is an example of that vagueness:

“The best possible thing we can do for low-income students is to fight for their basic human rights, such as equitable access to fully-equipped schools, healthcare, safe and affordable housing, and the sorts of things their wealthier peers take for granted.”– Paul Gorski

I’ve decided to do a series on poverty. The posts will start with theory, look at an anecdote from my or another teachers experience, and last, will finish with approaches that can be used in those situations. While the “solutions” may not always work, but they are more helpful than talking about how lacking poor parents are, or saying the answer is to fight poverty. This first post will be on the overall theories of poverty, next up will be on choice, and the third will be on parents and communities…

“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money. “– George Carlin in brain droppings

George Carlin has a point, and that’s not just my opinion by the opinion of an interesting economist, Charles Karelis that I ran across here at Economist’s View: Is Poverty Caused by Irrational Behavior?

Karelis’ view is actually the opposite of the title, in that he finds that poverty causes people not be rational actors (and make rational choices), because they have too many problems simultaneously to give attention to any one of those problems (like say, their kid’s education).

If, for example, our car has several dents on it, and then we get one more, we’re far less likely to get that one fixed than if the car was pristine before…

In recent decades, experts and policy makers all along the ideological spectrum have worried that the more aid the government gives the poor, the less likely they are to work to provide for themselves. … It was this concern that drove the Clinton administration’s welfare reform efforts. But, according to Karelis, that argument is exactly backward. Reducing the number of economic hardships that the poor have to deal with actually make them more, not less, likely to work, just as repairing most of the dents on a car makes the owner more likely to fix the last couple on his own. …

Those problems become stressors (lack of money, violence, etc.) that lead to brain damage that we see in some of these reports, Study: Poverty dramatically affects children’s brains – USATODAY.com, Poverty may impair growth of brain : News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina I remember seeing a post somewhere after these news reports coming out, saying, yeah we know this is true, now what do we do? Karelis says we need to quit being afraid to fix the problems of the poor directly, but there is something else that Karelis talks about that I think can be extremely helpful and a foot in the door for teachers dealing with this.

Karelis discusses the economic theory of marginal utility with regards to this behavior. It’s similar to an idea in behavior science called the affective filter, and specifically having what’s called a HIGH affective filter.
When families are stressed out, they can’t always hear what you are offering, or accept help. You have to lower that filter to work with them. You all have been very patient while I outlined my theory, so here is where I show how this can work in a school…

My principal is on a mission (he’s that kind of guy). He wants to build relationships with some of our most “difficult” families. He spends a lot of time talking to them, and more importantly listening to them and their concerns. I facilitate our site SST meetings where students having problems are discussed with their parents. He is trying to implement this long term relationship building plan. I was resistant at first because my background working in a behavior school led me to trying to develop discipline and behavior plans that were not parent dependent. The problem with my approach is that kids who are acting out will keep pressing things until you have to involve their parent, so then your alternative becomes suspending them, which doesn’t resolve the long term problem. I think his approach will probably be better for this. In a sense I’ve been doing a lot of this stuff over time as I’ve sat on the student study team.

When parents have a kid with a behavior problem, I share my son’s horrible first grade year. This lets them feel like they are talking to someone who is a mother, and not a teacher who is judging them. With my son having ASD (autism), and the school nurse having two adopted kids on ADD meds, we have a lot of the behavior issues that come up covered. This is not easy. I will share that the hardest thing I have to do is see parents wrestling with a child who may have a language disorder (and the possibility of an autism diagnosis). Those parents always seem to end up in tears, and I feel that because I’ve been there. I never cry with them, but I try to convey to them that I’ve felt that pain. This all helps lower their affective filter. I also try to give them things they can do that are possible, and probable, like behavior plans, etc. I give tips on how to structure those so they are effective, and are not a complete pain in the butt. I tell them it can be hard, but I tell them it’s possible.

Does this work every time? No, but it works better than sitting in a circle around the parent saying, this is what you need to do. Does this address Paul Gorski’s points about addressing the underlying problems of poverty, no, but it is a precondition to doing that which I’ll cover in my last post. So readers, what do you do to lower the affective filter of parents?

In that same post I just briefly mentioned that this year we also banned iPods from the school, though I didn’t go into the reasons why. Jim Peterson, an exceptional Assistant Principal at my school, recently explained the reasons for the ban in an email to staff, and I thought I’d share them in this follow-up post.

One reason, he wrote, was theft. Cellphones and iPods have been the two most frequently stolen items at our school. I can personally attest to the disruption, tension, and fights that can result from this problem.

Another reason for the iPod ban was safety. Jim writes “On a regular basis, administrators and monitors would have to chase down a student in the hall who could not hear them calling because he or she had the music cranked.” I, too, have directly experienced this problem.

Lastly, he writes about “Discipline: Faculty, monitors and admin used to have to spend time giving detentions, Saturday schools and suspensions for iPod-related incidents.” I’m very confident in my ability to engage students, and feel like I have excellent relationships with them. However, even though I never gave any kind of official consequence for a student listening to music when he/she was supposed to be doing classwork, on occasion it did happen. When it did, a quick private conversation worked fine. However, I’ve been pretty lucky in that I have generally either taught all ESL classes (where classroom management is really not an issue) or small double-period classes of mainstream students. If I, as many of our teachers have to do, had to teach five different classes each day with thirty students each, I know I would have quite a few students facing many challenges that even engaging content and good teaching could not solve alone, and being able to avoid one more possible problem by banning iPods would sound good to me.

And, yes, I do understand that iPods could have an effective educational use. When I was a community organizer in my nineteen year career prior to becoming a public school teacher, we would talk about the “world as it is” and “the world as we would like it to be” (Barack Obama has used that contrast in some of his speeches as well). We want to always strive towards “the world as we would like it to be.” In our inner-city high school, though, sometimes we have to make compromises with “the world as it is.”

When I was taking my ELD methodologies class I had a really great husband and wife team from SFUSD teaching. They were well known, and did some travel and lecturing. One trip was to Korea to speak to EFL educators. The husband was taught the phonemes for the Korean alphabet by some Korean educators, and picked it up so well that he could “read” ads on the bus to the amusement of the Seoul natives. He had NO idea what he was saying, but it was a great party trick. That’s because he wasn’t reading, he was merely decoding. Those are not the same task, a mistake made by many people, and some educators.

As I started working in classrooms during my observations while taking classes, I noticed that I had students who were native speakers who couldn’t decode worth a darn, but if I read the story, and asked for a recounting, they knew it. On the other hand, I had language learners, who could give me a flawless reading of grade level text, but when asked what they had just read, had no idea at all. I have also run across EOs (English only speakers) that can’t do either, or like the ELLs (English Language Learners) decode without comprehension.

California solved the licensing problem by basically not training teachers (in state colleges/universities) for any other type of license except one that includes an endorsement to teach language learners English. There has been a multi-year (heck it’s been a decade) effort to get teachers with older credentials endorsed to teach language learners. Opponents claim, that all you need with language learners is “good teaching methods” and I agree with that, because I don’t think what Holly did was good teaching for EO students. I think the methods taught for ELD will be helpful should you have Special Education, or students who just think and learn differently (with IDEA, more of those students are in regular ed classrooms).
My own sense is that Holly and other teachers like her would probably benefit from taking some ELD methods classes not just to prevent them from doing instructional malpractice on language learners, but to make them better teachers for all their students.

Last night was fantastic, I was out on the river walk with a small group. We started out at the Discovery Anniversary event which was a zoo, but had great food and drinks. In an effort to be somewhere quieter, we moved on down to meet some others at an Irish Pub that had singing. I know that doesn’t sound like it would be quieter, but we were outside, and it was.

An interesting point was made about “well known” edubloggers, and how being out of the classroom affects your perspective. Someone who had moved from classroom, to resource, and back-and-forth between them shared that they thought moving out of the classroom was when their blogging really grew, and they started getting on the whole “change” bandwagon, but they began to forget some essential parts of classroom teaching that can make that difficult and still need to be addressed. Another member piped in that they felt leaving the self-contained elementary class for a P.E./Computer position made going back like starting over from scratch as a teacher. That made me think, have I lost some essential truths of teaching by moving to the lab? Do I need to try to get back in a self-contained class at some point to keep that perspective?

We left some folks behind and moved onto a place for dinner. I had some really stellar conversations there. The question was asked, about who you have in your reader that you disagree with. I shared that some edubloggers do NOT understand why practicing elementary teachers have no patience with some Web 2.0/constructivist/collaborative “critics” because of our experiences with them on discussions around Reading First/What Works, etc. and that this is where we live, in the curriculum areas, and a lot of this has been really problematic for us (there are some really great bloggers like Doug Noon who know those folks and read them thoughtfully, if critically). I’m going to be taking a diet and sculpting my RSS feed soon, so I will need to keep this in mind.

The party added some more folks via twitter, and we moved on for drinks at a bar (I was sticking to soda at this point, in case you were wondering). One member of the party asked me what I was going to use in the classroom, and what I had learned. I told them honestly, I’m still processing my school year, and what I need to change from how I did it. I have to tell you that in talking to all sorts of folks from newbies, to established “names”, the thing I’m hearing is that they are getting a lot socially from this conference, but not so much about pedagogy. I hear things like, the session were mostly already at the level I’m at, but it was nice to see that I’m on the right track, and, this has been the best conference I’ve attend from a social networking perspective, but the worst for learning.

There was a discussion at one point that night about a session in particular, School 2.0: Combining Progressive Pedagogy and 21st-Century Tools, where someone pointed out how a lot of the attendees are not aware of the theory and learning theory, and that we need to be out at the curriculum conferences (like NCTE, etc.) discussing these tools, but there also needs to be more about learning, and theory, and less about tools in the sessions here. We really need to bring them both together. I think this would help edubloggers understand the real boundaries that we live in, in our classrooms. I was discussing that with a primary teacher at a Title One school like my own. There is a very real concern about how to fit things in given the curriculum demands. I didn’t point that person to David Warlick, or Will Richardson for answers, but instead suggested peers like Brian Crosby, Mathew Needleman, and Doug Noon, the first two of whom are working in scripted curriculum schools, but still doing projects. No knock on the first two, but that’s not where the answer to her question is going to be. Who do I rely on for my answers? Are they practioners? Who do I rely on for my ideas? Are they both thinks and practioners?

I spent a lot of time that night in various places talking about my perspective. Now part of it is nice to have people listening to me, but when I have that discussion with “famous” blogger/Web 2.0 personality, it’s for a reason. I am an ambassador for my kids, and my school. That is why I started In Practice, because we need to talk about the specific context of teaching in this environment. I want them to know that. So when I saw someone who is well known and found out that their school is a Title One school I asked them if someone there would be willing to join us at In Practice. I didn’t do it just to have a “famous” name on the author list, but because that name will mean something, and may carry some weight. It’s about being the New Yorker, not People magazine.

This ties into another interesting discussion I had on politics and edublogging. We were discussing the whole Will Richardson teleconference with Lamar Alexander. I discussed my own background which involved a lot of work on politics and especially lobbying and campaigning for libraries, etc. and how I found some efforts that are made in edublogging to be naïve, and that was an example. I was not surprised that Will experienced was used, what I was disappointed about was that he and we were not able to “use” the Senator back, and THAT is what you need to do. Yeah, they are getting your “name” in their conference, but how do you leverage that to get your message out?

Finally, there has been a lot of discussion about social politics and hierarchy here at NECC and in the virtual NECC that I’ve been out of the loop on for a variety of reasons (like attending sessions, and meeting people, hey it’s a convention folks). Let me go back to another discussion I had last night. It was about anonymous blogging, and there was a strong position against it. They said that there were only limited circumstances where that type of blogging is acceptable, when you understand that eventually, names might be revealed, and you have a specific purpose. This is not an anonymous blog, but I’ve left ALL the names out from these conversations for a couple reasons. If I put them in, I would be name dropping, and the focus would be on the personalities, NOT the interesting discussion points. If you recognize yourself in these conversations, thank you. If you don’t like what I said, or have a correction, drop a comment.

Today I was introduced to a new concept to me; Gradual Release Instruction.   This seems to be the “missing link” in my development as a teacher.  I have been able to implement curricular programs with fair success.  Nevertheless, I have felt some frustration in engaging my students in the learning process.  Working in a Title one school with a high English Learner population, there are certain things you cannot take for granted.  I would normally expect my students to come prepared to school with a rich background and school readiness.  I would expect them to have a natural disposition towards learning and school work.  I quickly found out that this is not the case.

In teaching, I am constantly looking for ways to engage my students in learning and building their responsibility in this process.  Right now we are learning how to blog to encourage reading and writing.  We are using VoiceThreads to respond to our new learning.  So, technology has a role to play.  I think that the possibilities in  connecting learning to engagement is increased when students are provided with the appropriate use of these tools.  It empowers them to build on their own learning.  It is even better when they are able connect with the global community to share their learning.  I have to find a bridge between the analog world of teaching new concepts to a digital representation of the learning process.  I go back to my classroom tomorrow morning with a different perspective.  It’s time to roll up my sleeves and immerse myself in a new way of teaching.

On the down side, I just came face to face with one of the challenges of online activity. About half of my class spends time on a social-networking site (for which you have to be 13 to register; my students are not 13). One student received threatening messages through the site including references to a recent assault in our area and personal information. We suspected these messages came from another student at our school, but couldn’t be sure and turned the matter over to the police. The police did a fantastic job and traced the messages to the home of a student. Fortunately, we could rule out the possibility of a stranger lurking around the school and homes of students. Sadly, it means another fifth grader felt a need to anonymously terrify a classmate.

I teach in a title one school, I don’t expect most of my students to have consistent access to the internet. It’s clear to me that I have relied on that as a safety net. The majority of our students don’t have access at home. However, plenty do and we’ve done precious little to educate them about being safe online. In this instance, of which we are aware of the specifics, there wasn’t really any danger. But it did show me that they are online and in places they shouldn’t be. It seems I have a responsibility here.

Therein lies my question about it all. What is my responsibility? I consider myself to be fairly savvy about the online world, certainly more so than the parents of our students. I can, and will, teach my students more about internet safety. However, I think their parents need to be educated as well. If students have computers with internet access in their bedrooms or in basements isolated from the family, they will push the boundaries. Parents need to be watching, talking, and aware of their children’s activities. How do we help ensure that or at least promote it?

1. Fill in background knowledge with visuals. To borrow a film making adage, “Show, don’t tell.” Find something visual, auditory, or some realia that grabs students’ interest and helps them to understand the story. If you’re reading about Martin Luther King, don’t just tell them what a great speaker he was. Show them a video, play them the speech…it’s too easy to find these and download them now not to do it.

   Pictures work too. You don’t have to make a powerpoint, just print out a picture! Mount it to construction paper, label it, and hold it up. If you’re reading about the city of Parmele, show them pictures of Parmele and locate it on a map. Reading about a guinea fowl?…show them a picture of a guinea fowl (or present a feather).

   Where do you find these pictures? As long as you’re just using the pictures in your classroom, use Google Image Search. If you need to repost the pictures, then try these royalty free image sites. Don’t just open the book and start reading.
   

2. Everybody reads, all the time. If you didn’t get the memo, popcorn reading is out (see: Goodbye Round Robin by Opitz and Rasinski). When one student reads, notice what the other students are doing. Most are probably not paying attention. If you have students read in a predictable group pattern, then they anticipate when they’re going to read, get ready, and then tune out again when their turn is finished You will see increased participation if everyone reads the story aloud at the same time.
3. Have students discuss…not with you, with each other. Typical teaching involves a teacher asking questions to which the teacher already has an answer in mind. The teacher calls on the first student who raises their hand, hears the right answer, and then rephrases it further.Everyone who isn’t that one student answering is bored or not listening and all the students get the message that there is one right answer. Then we wonder why students aren’t capable of higher level thinking. We don’t expect it or even allow it in most classrooms.

   Instead, ask authentic questions…ones that have no right answer, questions that really ask for an opinion or something that you really want to know an answer to. Lower level thinking questions are fine to begin with but don’t stay there forever.

   Give students a chance to pair share or talk in groups. Sometimes they can share out to the whole group but they don’t have to. Resist the urge to rephrase everything students say as if we know more than they do. We don’t always.

   The goal of having them discuss is to involve more students in the conversation and to ask them to think on their own in a safe environment but without the safety net of the teacher stepping in with “right answers” when things get tough.While students are talking, you walk around and monitor. Sometimes encouraging students to share what they’ve said in small groups with the whole class, sometimes asking followup questions to stimulate further conversation.

   Note: If you’ve never done this before, the first few times you do it will be hard…pulling teeth hard. Don’t give up, it gets better.

4. Explicitly teach comprehension strategies before and after beginning the lesson. Particularly if you are working from a reading anthology, the point of the reading is to practice using comprehension strategies, particularly ones which involve clarifying and lead to inference (these are the spots that tend to tie students up when they’re reading on their own).

   I teach students that they’re not going to like everything they’re going to be reading. Sometimes I even tell them (when we’re done reading and already discussed it) that I don’t like a particular selection. However, the point is that even a story we don’t like is an excuse to practice our reading strategies.

   By explicitly I mean you can’t just use the strategies and expect students to absorb them through osmosis. You need to emphasize the strategies you’re using by naming them and drawing attention to them.

It reminded me of an earlier post here by Mathew Needleman: » Letter to a First Year Teacher Regarding Using Technology In Practice and this piece on teacher training by Jennifer Orr.

There are two competing things that I worry about with new teachers, that they will not do enough of their own work on their curriculum, and that they will do to much. The first worry is more about how they teach over time (not in their first year or even three). I think Mathew’s advice of looking at the curriculum and figuring out where you can add your own input is wise, but you have to do it, and not just teach the script. Take it in small, manageable pieces, although little enough of teaching will be small and manageable.

I’ll come back to this advice that Doug picked out from my post on this: Be clear in what the program (text book/publisher based curriculum) is doing, what you are doing, and what needs to be done. Don’t do it all at once, but take on what you can adding in a little each year.