Let's Start REALLY Respecting Teachers

Anybody even remotely connected to education in BC has heard by now of the BCEdplan, and those of us in the profession have been literally surrounded with talk about it.  There are some great concepts in the plan, some true indicators that those at the top are really starting to comprehend how learning occurs, and how we need to alter our current system to reflect what we know about learning.  But there is one BIG elephant in the room that's going to hinder acceptance of the plan and 'buy in' from the biggest stakeholder group involved (other than students).  I refer of course to teachers, and here's the dilemma.

Exacerbated by the coincidental timing of the release of the Edplan and the current job action by the BCTF, some of the language within the plan itself is, at best, disrespectful of the great work that the vast majority of teachers already do for the students of BC.  For instance, let's consider a couple of passages;

"Professional standards will be high, and we will bring in a new system to regulate the teaching profession."

Anything beyond the most obtuse and perfunctory analysis of that statement would interpret it as being disrespectful, even slightly aggressively so.  Are standards, as measured by student achievement, not already high?  Yes they are.  So why not write something like "Professional standards will remain high...".  Is there any concrete evidence that the teaching profession in BC requires a new system of regulation?  Is there a preponderance of incompetent teachers?

Or how about this statement;

"On Pro D days, parents make alternate arrangements for their children and they need to be assured that these days are used as intended."  The implication?  To me it's that there's a pervasive problem of teachers using Pro D days in unprofessional manners.  No evidence however has been put forth by anyone that this is the case.

Yes, there are cases where teachers have wasted Pro-D days, and yes, there are a (vanishingly) few teachers  that need "regulating", but the government does a huge disservice to the profession when it panders to all the negative stereotypes about teachers and teaching that we see in the media.  And that's exactly what this aspect of the Edplan is doing.

In formulating this plan the ministry has done a very good job incorporating findings from recent research that sheds light on how humans learn and how our system could better facilitate that learning.  That's a good thing.  But other research suggests that one of the surest ways to improve an education system is to attract and retain quality teachers. Therein lies the problem, due (amongst other things) to budget shortfalls, stagnating wages and a general political and cultural disrespect for the profession,  teacher morale in all of North America has suffered a beating over the past two decades.  But countries in which students achieve the best results consistently say that the best way to encourage and motivate teachers, and to attract some of the best and brightest to the profession, is a reasonably simple combination of fair pay and nurturing a culture of respect for the teaching profession within society.  The ministry is currently at a deadlock with teachers over pay, (thanks to a line in the sand drawn by a previous government) and is showing what could best be described as disdain for the profession in the wording of this plan.

Given these factors, the ministry of education can't reasonably expect teachers, as a group, to be enthusiastic about this education plan.  Without the support of teachers, this plan, which has some genuinely promising ideas with which to work, will not fly.  That would be a shame but that, unfortunately, is the reality.

Improving Assessment and Evaluation Practice....One Department at a Time

Recently I've been having informal discussions with members of our ESL Department about rethinking their assessment practices and implementing a more "progressive" approach.  We're looking at a system based on competencies, a key component of BC's new Education Plan, rather than grades, with the culmination being a simple pass or fail upon completion of the course.

This all stems from the ongoing issue that I blogged about here.  Our teachers are getting frustrated with students using their smart phones for legitimate study purposes, but then furtively using them on other tasks after having being asked specifically to put them away.  This practice is counterproductive on every level, and it's up to us to get that point across to the students.  For instance, forgetting completely the moral imperative not to cheat, lower level ESL students who use a translator on a simple vocabulary assignment end up giving the teacher a completely erroneous impression of how much they know.  The teacher, after assessing the work, will assume that the students know the material and will move on.  And though this last point is true in ALL classes, students' other incentive to cheat, "We need the grade to get into university!" has no validity in ESL classes.  Post secondary institutions pay no attention to student achievement in these courses.

To combat this misuse we looked at motivation and incentives.  Students are motivated to cheat because they have too much invested, emotionally, on "getting a good mark".  As long as we offer a "mark", say a number out of 10, then getting 8/10 will always be more desirable than getting 4 or 5/10.  But as educators, we know that the value of assessment does not lie in these these marks, it lies in the formative feedback we give the kids and, more importantly, how the students use that feedback to improve their own learning.

The long and short of it is that there really are no valid reasons for ESL students to continue this practice.  But they do, simply because we attach an extrinsic value to the work.  If we remove this incentive, then students are genuinely left with no reason whatsoever to continue cheating.

Removing extrinsic incentives and implementing more pedagogically sound assessment practices should be the goal in all our classrooms, but given these circumstances, I believe that ESL Departments are an ideal place to start a systemic implementation of these assessment for and as learning practices.

Media and Messages

Everyone (at least everyone over the age of 40) is familiar with Marshall McLuhan's famous quip "The medium is the message".  I'd like to use it as an analysis point for what's probably going to turn into a bit of a ramble.  Here goes;

With technological change moving at such a frenetic pace, McLuhan's observation has never been more true.  That's neither a good thing nor a bad thing, or it can be both.  As we all struggle to implement technology in our schools we must keep in mind that the technology itself is merely a set of tools to facilitate quality teaching and learning.  In this respect, as educators part of our responsibility is to ensure that the medium does not become the primary message.  That is, if we get too wrapped up in always implementing the newest/greatest/"coolest" thing to come around, we risk losing our focus on the real reason we do what we do, helping kids achieve success.  Every teacher I've talked to recognizes this.

On the other hand however, if we don't at least make an effort to keep abreast of developing communication technologies (whether we choose to use them or not) our messages, whatever they may be, may end up falling on deaf ears.  It has been said that as educators we have to "engage the students where they are".  Our kids are communicating with each other and the world primarily through electronic media.  If we insist on ignoring this, sticking stubbornly with "what worked in the past" (sometimes the rather distant past) then we risk our students disengaging from whatever it is we're trying to communicate.  I cringe when I periodically run across a sheet that looks exactly like what it is; a typewritten page with whiteout marks.  In this respect, the medium is at least part of the message.  Or more precisely, the outdated medium is the negation of the intended message.

Modern information technology has greatly decreased the length, and increased the number of "messages" that each of us receives in a day.  Again, this can be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how we use the "messages" that we receive; and this is what we have to teach kids.  The same technologies that have reduced communications to tweets, memes and banners also allow the user to dig deeper and access a far broader range of knowledge than at any time in history.  In the past we taught students the differences between reading a novel and reading a science text and how to filter the salient points out of each.  We now have to ensure that students have the same abilities with modern communication devices.  They need to know how to filter the steady stream of sound bite information they receive to discern the meaningful from the inconsequential and legitimate sources of information from those with a hidden agenda (usually profit driven).

The medium may not necessarily be message, but they're closely related.  If the 140 characters of a tweet constitute the whole message, or the banner headline becomes the extent of the story, then we've wasted the medium.  But if they lead the reader to another link, or in some other way spur the reader to further thought or research, then in a way, the medium is no longer the message but has become the messenger.

(Anyone reading please respond, I'd like some help in tying these thoughts together and extending them)

What to do about 'grades'?

There's a very thought provoking article by Alfie Kohn in the latest edition of Educational Leadership.  The Case Against Grades makes a very strong argument for moving away from any and all systems that attach a value to the work of students.  Kohn cites findings from as far back as 1933 that putting a 'grade' on students' work has almost no positive effect and numerous negative effects.  Grades have been shown, among other things, to diminish student interest and limit student achievement in a number of ways.  Essentially the argument against grades can be boiled down to this (and I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to say this); When people are given extrinsic rewards for any work that they do, the intrinsic value of that work is inevitably diminished.  Many kids in our system (and some parents) are so strongly focused on the extrinsic rewards available; grades and, by extension, university entrance, scholarships etc. that they completely lose track of what education is supposed to be about in the first place.  Even "standards based" grading, according to Kohn, is just another way of quantifying and labeling.  He even pokes holes in the argument that students "need" grades to get into university, citing examples of broad based admission policies.

So, how do we work toward a grade free world?  Well, let's start with a realistic assessment of what can and can't be done in the near term.  First, though more post secondary institutions are indeed moving to more broad based admission criteria, achieving a mark of x% over y number of courses is still the primary determinant of who gets coveted spots at most large universities.  In Richmond that's no small issue.  Interested parties, primarily government, need to put pressure on these schools to change admission criteria to make broad based admission policies the norm.  However, as a school system, collectively letting universities dictate how we do our job is letting the tail wag the dog.  If secondary schools across the province, perhaps as part of the new Education Plan, were encouraged to move toward grade free environments then universities would quickly find ways to continue to attract the best and brightest.  After all, universities are in competition for the best students just as much as those students are in competition for limited spots.

What can be done on a school level?  My feeling is that there's an appetite amongst teachers to find more productive alternatives for student assessment (see my post FromGoodtoBetter: Rethinking the Currency of Marks).  But they need encouragement, they need some guidance and, perhaps most importantly, they need 'permission' (note the quotes).  That is, they need to feel a true sense of permission from the system as a whole, from the ministry right on down to the school level and perhaps even from parents, to radically change what they've been doing their whole career.  Such a transformation would take time and resources, but I believe that this is one educational reform that would have the backing of most teachers if done properly.

Here's one suggestion for moving this along.  Now that the number of ministry exams has been drastically curtailed, secondary schools will be left with even more unstructured time at the end of semester or the end of the school year. This time could well be used by teachers for things like summative meetings or interviews with students, or other assessments where kids would leave a course with a genuine knowledge of what they'd done well, what still needed a little work, and what their next academic step may be given their current accomplishments.

In short, the old arguments for grading students are sounding to me increasingly like "We do this because that's the way ________ wants it done."  That refrain is getting old, as educators why are we letting ______ tell us what's best for students?  I'm under no illusion that we'll be moving to a grade free system anytime soon, but if we hold a vision in our collective consciousness of what a grade free environment might look like, incremental steps in that direction can be implemented.

NOTE: As I write this post, this is in today's Vancouver Sun "Entrance GPA Reliable Predictor of School Performance: study"

"Interviews and supplementary application materials such as reference letters, resumes and essays, add little value when it comes to predicting how well students do - mark-wise - in nursing school."

In other words, students who did well in the "marks as currency" system which is predominant in most high schools continued to do well in post secondary, where the "marks as currency" system is even more predominant.  The frustration is that studies like this make meaningful change even more difficult.

...More Technology in the ESL Classroom

One of our ESL teachers is incorporating the use of wikis into her teaching practice.  This strikes me as an outstanding example of how to use one of the many powerful communication tools that have emerged over the past decade.  The premise is simple, for individual work, students post their writing to the wiki and the teacher, along with classmates, can read the writing and make corrections.  For group work, students can work together to write pieces, all the while collectively correcting and editing their work.  I even suggested that given some topics germane to the average teenager, the results of such a process might yield work that could go into the school newspaper or the school newsletter.

The fine line between learning and cheating.

An interesting thought came to me the other day as I was dealing with a minor "cheating" incident.  A student in an ESL class had typed a phrase, in Mandarin, into a website for translation.  And though the student was clearly in the wrong (he had specifically been told that he could not use his cell phone or the site in question) it got me thinking about the nature and use of technology in our classrooms.  More specifically, it raised the question in my mind "where does 'translation' end and 'copying' or 'cheating' begin?"  In the days of paper, when students used translation dictionaries, they had to piece things together one word at a time.  It was a labourious process that often ended up with some awkward sounding (or downright funny) results.  And sometimes, especially when homonyms were involved, the meaning of the phrase was lost altogether.  The first generations of electronic translators worked in a similar fashion.  But the teacher was sure that the work had been done one word at a time and that the student had spent some time working with English.


However, with the advent of powerful handheld devices and much more sophisticated translation technology, the process of translation within ESL classes has changed dramatically.  Students can now type phrases in Mandarin and the technology will translate the whole thing (though not always terribly well).  As software and algorithms evolve, these translations will become increasingly accurate encompassing things like idiomatic expressions and nuances. To add another dimension to this conversation, iPhones now have an app that will translate verbal communication on the fly.


With all this change comes an interesting dilemma.  Is use of this technology "cheating"?  Or is this just a different way for students to acquire a more clear and comprehensive understanding of the language as a whole?


As mentioned above, translations done one word at a time often distort, or even lose the meaning of a phrase.  But if students simply have to type a phrase into a translator, or dictate into their iPhone, and out comes the polished English version, will they learn the language effectively or will they just rely on the software at hand?




I'm sure the answer lies somewhere in the middle and is heavily dependent on both the context and how the teacher chooses to use or not use these technological tools.  But two things are for sure.  The days of the  "____________ (fill in the blank) to English" dictionary are numbered, and we ignore this software, (and dilemmas like this) at our peril.

One Sign of a Good School

One of the most vexing problems facing modern public schools and those with a vested interest therein is deciding what evidence of a ‘good school’ looks like.  At one end of the spectrum there are those who swear by statistical results on standardized tests.  In fact much of what passes for ‘educational reform’ is based on various sets and interpretations of numbers. (Though I’ll never for the life of me figure out how the designers of NCLB decided that  ‘punishing’ low performing schools by reducing funding was a good idea!)  Others look at graduation rates.  Our own government uses “satisfaction surveys” to garner opinion around BCs public education.

But anyone who is involved in education will tell you that most of these indicators are blunt instruments at best.  Completely misleading at worst.  Wandering around our school at lunch I was struck by what I would consider as genuine signs of a ‘good school’.  There was intramural ball hockey in the gym refereed by a teacher.  There were students eating lunch with teachers in various classrooms.  There were teachers and students playing pickup basketball together in the gym.  There were students working on various projects in the art rooms.  There was a group of teachers meeting to discuss student excellence in order to award scholarships at valedictory….and the staffrooms were all but empty.

The common theme in all of these was teachers volunteering their own time in order to enrich the lives of their students, in most cases, by simply being there as a responsible and caring adult.  These casual adult/adolescent interactions are what differentiates a true education from simply going to school.  Unfortunately for those intent on putting numbers and values on everything, measuring the value or the outcomes of such interactions is impossible.  The good news for the bean counters however is that fostering a culture where these interactions are the norm doesn’t cost anything.