"The Surge Against First Graders"

Gary Stager at The Huffington Post draws similarities between Iraq and Bush's Reading First.

He outlines "Faulty Intelligence, Profiteering, Enemies Everywhere, The Surge..."

Underlying Reading First is one of the religious right's favorite issues, phonics instruction. Educators have long understood that some students need help sounding out words while learning to read. However, the "reading wars" is an offensive by neoconservatives and religious fundamentalists convinced that every child learns to read in exactly the same way by being taught 43 phonemic sounds in a lockstep sequence. Some suspect that the promotion of "highly structured, systematic sequential explicit phonics" instruction is a Trojan horse for public school privatization while others suggest that phonics is embraced by religious fundamentalists happy to reduce reading to the literal interpretation of text. Either way, Reading First is the federal government's program for mandating uniform phonics instruction. Any parent who has watched a child spontaneously learn to read must question mechanistic theories of human development that oversimplify complex issues.

Check out The Reading First Study: Interim Report. Summary of outcomes:

• "Reading First did not improve students' reading comprehension.
• "Reading First increased total class time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program.
• "Reading First increased highly explicit instruction in grades one and two and increased high quality student practice in grade two.
• "Reading First had mixed effects on student engagement with print."

It doesn't really work, but at least we got our teachers to spend time on it!

Student Produced Documentaries on Civil Rights

The Digital Legacy Project at Facing History and Ourselves worked with Boston students to create documentaries about Boston's civil rights history by interviewing leaders in their communities.

What was so meaningful about this experience was...being able to meet... I don't want to call them our ancestors but...being able to meet somebody who pretty much changed our lives today, so that we don't live- we wouldn't live the same lives they did in the 60s...."

My favorite: The Struggle for a Good Education with Jean McGuire, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO). (Only 5 minutes long.)



More on what you'll hear about in the video:

• Boston Freedom Schools
• Operation Exodus
• Boston Busing: Integrating Schools in Massachusetts
• Boston's Busing Battle (Time, 1965)
  
  
  

Teacher Says Goodbye, Thanks to NCLB

In this School Library Journal Op-Ed, Jordan Sonnenblick, an urban teacher, shares why he left the classroom.

An exerpt:

If you’re a teacher, thanks for being braver than I am. Thanks for riding it out when I’m just, well, riding out. And if you’re a parent, please fight for your child. Ask to see your school’s test-materials budget and its library budget. Ask to visit the classroom on a random day, unannounced. Ask whether your kid is getting more or less art than she would have had five years ago. Ask why band practice is at 7 a.m. when it used to be part of the school day. And while you’re mourning the loss of art, music, language, or history, ask the one most damning question of all: What took its place? If you get really riled up by the answer, please consider running for a spot on the school board.

As for me, I’m out. And I’m sorry.

Keep Arts in Schools Webinar: May 29

Keep Arts in Schools will be hosting a webinar featuring Varissa McMickens of The DC Arts and Humanities Education Collobarative and Erin Offord of the Dallas Arts Learning Initiative.

The focus of the conversation will be "Igniting Community Action for Arts Learning."

Immigrations Raids Scare CA Parents

Aggressive immigration agents were spotted near an elementary school in East Oakland, CA. Parents fear that students will be targeted.

Listen to the NPR report here.

Talkin' bout Liberation

Education for Liberation has hosted an online discussion about teaching current events in the social justice classroom.

talkin' bout is an online discussion series that brings together educators, activists and youth to participate in a public conversation on the network website about timely and important topics in liberatory education. From Monday, May 19 to Tuesday, May 20 a panel will answer questions posted to an online discussion board about what teaching current events in the context of Education for Liberation means. The conversation will take place on the website of the Education for Liberation Network (http://www.edliberation.org/). Please join us by posting questions and comments for the panelists andparticipants. This discussion features panelists from organizations and media outlets that publish current events teaching materials including The Nation magazine,IndyKids, Democracy Now! and World Savvy.

Justice Not-Just-Tests Meeting in NYC

Justice Not-Just-Tests Meeting
Monday, May 12
5:00PM
CUNY Graduate Center, Room 5409
Email jnjt@nycore.org for more information.

More about NYCore here.

Yahoo! New Social Networking Site for Teachers

Yahoo!'s new social networking site for teachers: http://teachers.yahoo.com/.

Reflecting Democracy in Education

Great post on Education Policy Blog: Democracy Is a Learning Theory, informed by John Dewey's perspectives.

It turns out that democratic education is considerably more difficult than a form of education that seeks primarily to induct the young into the ways of the old. Dewey spent considerable efforts during his career to try to outline the principles and methods of democratic education, and remained frustrated that many readers of his works seemed unable to escape the tired dualism of an education that is primarily grounded in tradition and one which is primarily aiming to free the myriad possibilities of each child. The best education, Dewey argued, would take account of both the curriculum—taken from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of intellectual and social tradition—and the child, with his or her creativity, fresh perspective, and lively imagination.

It is important to understand how Dewey’s concept of democracy connects with this nuanced and hard-to-achieve conception of education. Education cannot be considered apart from the conditions of associated living in the society, and such conditions cannot be considered separate from education. Life rooted in “conjoint communicated experience” is inherently educative; young people in a democracy inevitably grow to become participants in shared activities and shared governance; and schools—as institutions explicitly designed to further education—must necessarily be continuously redesigned to serve—and reflect—democracy.

Worth reading: Dewey'sThe School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum

The Rubber Room Movie

Looking forward to watching this...whenever it does come out.

Watch the trailer here.

Education & Conflict

Is any discussion of political issues in schools indoctrination?

Joanne Jacobs highlights the University of Delaware's Residence Life program as having an "agenda" because it will include discussions of: “Stereotyping, Oppression, Prejudice Reduction, Privilege, Heterosexism/ Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Awareness, Racism, Ageism, Sexism, Values Clarification, Multicultural Jeopardy, Classism.”

When we keep the "politics" out of our schools, we silently give a nod of approval to the status quo. Schools aren't places of indoctrination, but places for conversation, interrogation, and transformation. Schools can and should be safe places where we discuss and explore any and all of the above.

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. --Paulo Freire

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. --John Dewey

Seattle Teacher Rejects Standardize Test

NPR on the Seattle teacher, Carl Chew, who refused to administer the state's standardized test (WASL) to his students.

"If we are training students for a set of specific skills, and that's all we spend our time on, we are casting them into a dead end."

Beyond Tolerance Workshop: May 31

The New York Collective of Radical Educators is sponsoring a one-day workshop on building communities that support core students and teachers:

NYQueer Presents:

Beyond Tolerance:

Building Communities that Support Queer Students and Teachers

Join students, teachers and community organizers for a dialogue and workshop on challenging heteronormative assumptions and combating homophobia and transphobia in NYC schools.

Saturday, May 31st
9:30 AM to 3 PM

NYU Barney Building
34 Stuyvesant St.

*Lunch and a lite breakfast will be provided.*

NYQueer is a NYCoRE working group focused on gender and sexuality as they relate to school communities. The daily pressures of teaching students at any level (K-12) are such that teachers often feel as if they do not have the time, the support, or access to the resources they need for addressing gender and sexuality in the classroom. More specifically, they are unsure how to challenge heteronormative assumptions and combat homophobia and transphobia.

Recognizing the wealth of resources that both individuals and organizations throughout the city have to offer in this area, NYQueer is planning a one day event that aims to unite students, teachers and community organizers for the purpose of building a stronger solidarity network and increasing awareness about existing resources and possibilities.

For more information and/or to RSVP please contact us at NYQueer@nycore.org.

"The Kids Are Alright"

Great post on What I Want to Talk About - Practical Theory.

The blogger is Chris Lehman, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. These are his thoughts prior to giving a keynote speech at a technology conference in Oregon.

I want to scream at these folks... I want to shake them up. I want to tell them that we have to stop thinking that business has any idea what schools need to be. I want to tell them that our reliance on test scores will kill innovation and creativity. I want to tell them that every time I go to the exhibit floor at a conference and see more tools for monitoring, accountability and security than I see tools for creativity, creation and collaboration, I see us move one more step away from the dream of what I believe our schools can be.

I want to tell them that the Who had it right. The Kids Are Alright. It's the adults that keep screwing up.

I want to tell them that we have to forget so much of what we think schools are now -- we have to unlearn so much of current educational thinking. And then I want to tell them everything they have to relearn... I want to tell them that we can't look to the future unless we are willing to learn from the past.

I want to tell them that pedagogy matters. That we have to empower, even if that means giving up the soft comforts of security... of filtering... of mandatory curriculum... of lecture.

I want to tell them how much this matters.

I want to tell them that yes, Bill Gates and all the folks yelling and screaming about the broken American system are a little bit right and a whole lot wrong. I want to tell them that yes, our schools have issues and problems, and they aren't perfect. Sadly, they are a reflection of all of us who work in them, and sadly, we often build our flaws right into them.

But I also want to say that those folks have no idea how to fix our schools. And how dare they think they do.

But I want to ask them this... how is it that so many bright people... caring people... dedicated, idealistic people work in our schools, and yet we still have the problems we have.

I want to ask them how a test score matters when kids come to school hungry?

I want to ask them how a lecture matters when kids cannot see a connection between the work of the classroom and the life they see outside the school.

I want to ask them how, given a seven hour work day, we can possibly hope to do everything currently asked of us in the classroom.

I want to remind them that the average School District of Philadelphia high school teacher sees 165 kids in a day. And I want to ask them how they are supposed to do anything caring, meaningful and real in that time.

I want to tell them that technology solves none of this by itself.

None of it.

Not even a little bit. In fact, the way it's being used now, it's making it worse, as online tests and digital "delivery of instruction" command a larger and larger part of the educational-technology landscape.

And then I want to tell them what we have to do.

I want to tell them that schools can't be all things. We have to give up our notion that we can do everything. We can't teach coverage and creativity. We can't assess depth and breadth as our primary focus and have any kind of sanity. We can't tell kids we want them to think for themselves, take ownership, solve the problems of the 21st century, oh and by the way, first you have to take this test that was made by someone you never met and if you don't pass, forget all that stuff.

I want to tell them that we have to question every single system we have in our schools. I want to tell them that everything should be on the table. All of it.

And then, after I say all that, I can talk about SLA. That's less scary, I think.

Amen.

Searching for the Mouse

Looks like an interesting read: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

Here's the author, Clay Shirky, speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, April 22-25.

Cute story from the talk:

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago and one of them was talking about sitting with his 4 year old daughter watching a DVD.

And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. It seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora was really there.

But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables and her dad said, “What you doing?”.

And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Lookin’ for the mouse.”
Here’s what 4 year olds know. A screen that ships without a mouse, ships broken.

The moral of the story? Shirky says: "Media that targets you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for."

I'd add: "Education that targets you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for."

On the Radar: A Few Upcoming Conferences

Hip Hop in Education
Coalition of Essential Schools (CES)
August 13-15, 2008
St. Paul, MN

New England Conference on Multicultural Education (NECME)
October 8, 2008
Hartford, CT

NAME International Conference 2008
(National Association for Multicultural Education)
November 12-16, 2008
New Orleans

Check out the Coalition of Essential Schools Calendar.

Reject your own culture, kids: "You're here. Adopt American values."

Incorporate the lived experience of our students and communities into our schools? "Na", says Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce. And other legislators have actually agreed.

Funny how teaching anything outside of the traditional American white values is considered "indoctrinating." Yet, "to inculcate values of American citizenship" is not?

Find a petition against this Amendment here.

The Arizona Republic reports:

Arizona public schools would be barred from any teachings considered counter to democracy or Western civilization under a proposal endorsed Wednesday by a legislative panel.

Additionally, the measure would prohibit students of the state's universities and community colleges from forming groups based in whole or part on the race of their members, such as the Black Business Students Association at Arizona State University or Native Americans United at Northern Arizona University. Those groups would be forbidden from operating on campus.

The brainchild of Rep. Russell Pearce, the measure appeared as an amendment to Senate Bill 1108, which originally would have made minor changes to the state's Homeland Security advisory councils. The House Appropriations Committee approved the new proposal on a 9-6 vote.

Pearce, a Mesa Republican, said his target isn't diversity instruction, but schools that use taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate students in what he characterized as anti-American or seditious thinking. The measure is at least partially a response to a controversy surrounding an ethnic-studies program in the Tucson Unified School District, which critics have said is unpatriotic and teaches revolution.

SB 1108 states, "A primary purpose of public education is to inculcate values of American citizenship. Public tax dollars used in public schools should not be used to denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization."

For schools that violate the anti-Western-teachings provision, the bill provides the state superintendent of public instruction with the authority to withhold a portion of state funding.

Rep. John Kavanagh, a member of the Appropriations Committee, said he hopes the measure helps return cultural studies in the state's schools to a "melting pot" model.

"This bill basically says, 'You're here. Adopt American values,' " said Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican. "If you want a different culture, then fine, go back to that culture."

But Democratic committee members complained that the measure is overly vague, failing to define what constitutes teachings that "disparage or overtly encourage dissent from the values of democracy and Western civilization."

The result, said Rep. Pete Rios, would likely be a chilling effect on public instruction regarding diversity and other cultures.

"There's nothing wrong with being bilingual, bicultural," said Rios, a Hayden Democrat. "I like Mexican music. I like Elvis Presley. I'm bicultural. What's wrong with that? I think kids, students, need to learn about their culture."

What are your thoughts?

Social Justice Teaching Debate on Eduwonkette

Interesting back and forth about "social justice teaching" on Education Week's eduwonkette.

Definitely worth reading the entire three posts on eduwonkette, starting with:What Is Social Justice Teaching, Anyway?

She mentions Sol Stern's article in City Journal criticizing Bill Ayer and social justice teaching. Stern says that Ayers "has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children." (His social justice teaching agenda, that is.) Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and was formerly a Weatherman, a group that emerged out of opposition to the Vietnam War and support for the Civil Rights movement. Stern criticizes:

As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.” Ayers’s texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers’s major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.

Bill Ayers responds as a guest blogger on eduwonkette:

The one true assertion he makes about my actual work—and he repeats it several times—is that I am in favor of teaching for social justice. He never explains why that’s a bad thing—Stern favors teaching for social injustice?—but simply calls it the “social-justice teaching agenda.”

So a brief word on schools and social justice: all schools serve the societies in which they’re embedded—authoritarian schools serve authoritarian systems, apartheid schools serve an apartheid society, and so on. Practically all schools want their students to study hard, stay away from drugs, do their homework, and so on. In fact none of these features distinguishes schools in the old Soviet Union or fascist Germany from schools in a democracy. But in a democracy one would expect something more—a commitment to free inquiry, questioning, and participation; a push for access and equity; a curriculum that encouraged free thought and independent judgment; a standard of full recognition of the humanity of each individual. In other words, social justice.

From Sol Stern's guest post on eduwonkette:

Perhaps Stanley Fish put it best: “Teachers should teach their subjects. They should not teach peace or war or freedom or obedience or diversity or uniformity or nationalism or antinationalism or any other agenda that might properly be taught by a political leader or a talk show host.”

Sol Stern suggests that the works of Maxine Greene ,Paulo Freire, Jonathon Kozol, Henry Giroux, and Bill Ayers are the mainstays of teacher education schools, while "among those education writers who are almost never included on course lists are advocates of a knowledge-based and politically neutral curriculum, such as E. D. Hirsch Jr. or Diane Ravitch."

Here appears to criticize the following topics included in one of Ayer's syllabi's:

Ayers offers these comments about the role of K-12 teachers for his course on Urban Education: “Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression—we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot
be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine.” So, not only should public school teachers be working to overcome racism and oppression in Chicago but they should be advocating for the “children of Palestine.” Considering that Ayers’ website includes rants against Israel and Zionism, we can just imagine what he means by that exhortation.

I'm not really sure what is suggested by a politically neutral curriculum - as I believe it is pretty much nearly impossible to be politically neutral in the classroom. Schools are political places.

I agree with Stern in that schools should not be places of indoctrination. Learning should be student centered, and the teacher should support the student journey as they pose problems and come to conclusions. However, this does not mean that the classroom is a neutral place where social justice issues can't be discussed.

To support a status quo, to advocate against "social justice teaching" is equally as political as to advocate for it.

Thoughts?

NYCLU Freedom in Expression Contest for NYC Youth

Pass it on:

The New York Civil Liberties Union is sponsoring its annual Freedom in Expression contest that asks youth to tell their stories, voice their opinions and speak out. Winners will receive cash prizes of up to $1,000.Contestants can enter an essay, a song, a spoken word piece, a poem, visual art, a video, a public service announcement or something even more creative. Entries just need to express views on an aspect of justice in America. The contest is open to all New York City youth younger than 20-years-old and the deadline is coming up! Entries must be submitted by Monday, May 19. For more information and to enter the contest please visit ww.nyclu.org/contest.

Opportunity to See Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Augusto Boal in Action

Worth checking out:

The Brecht Forum, The Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed at The Riverside Church, The Education Ministry of The Riverside Church, The Social Justice Ministry of The Riverside Church, and The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) present:

A Public Performance/Demonstration of Rainbow of Desire, a Theater of the Oppressed technique facilitated by Augusto Boal Tuesday, May 13, 2008 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the Assembly Hall of the Riverside Church 91 Claremont Avenue *New York City*

See a performance/demonstration of the Rainbow of Desire, one of the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed. The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970s by Brazilian director and Workers' Party (PT) activist Augusto Boal, is a form of popular theater, of, by, and for people engaged in the struggle for liberation. More specifically, it is a rehearsal theater designed for people who want to learn ways of fighting back against oppression intheir daily lives.

In the Theater of the Oppressed, oppression isdefined, in part, as a power dynamic based on monologue rather thandialogue; a relation of domination and command that prohibits theoppressed from being who they are and from exercising their basic human rights. Accordingly, the Theater of the Oppressed is a participatory theater and form of popular education that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants. Theater is emphasized not as a spectacle but rather as a language designed to: 1)analyze and discuss problems of oppression and power; and 2) exploregroup solutions to these problems. This language is accessible to all.

Rainbow of Desire is one of the techniques of the Theater of the Oppressed and is similar to a related technique called Cop-in-the-Head. Where Cop uses games and exercises to recognize and confront internalized forms of oppression, Rainbow of Desire deals with conflicting needs, desires and wants within individuals and explores power relations and collective solutions to concrete problems. This is a method and set of techniques that is especially useful for teachers and educators who work with disadvantaged populations, social workers, psychologists and mental health professionals, and community activists and organizers who are involved with marginalized constituencies and constituencies which have traditionally been the victims of bias and discrimination.

Augusto Boal will demonstrate these techniques, assisted by both members of the audience (participation is optional but encouraged!) and by members of a three-day workshop in Rainbow of Desire and Forum Theater techniques being held at the Brecht Forum.

Augusto Boal is a political activist and major innovator of post-Brechtian theater. He served as Artistic Director of the ArenaTheater in Sao Paulo from 1956 to 1971. In the 1970s, he came underattack by the Brazilian government, resulting in his imprisonment,torture and subsequent exile. Boal has lectured, conducted workshops,and mounted productions throughout North and South America, Europe, India and Africa, and has written a number of books, including Theater of the Oppressed; Games for Actors and Non Actors; and The Rainbow of Desire. An
activist in the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT), he presentlyresides in Rio de Janeiro. In 1992, he was elected to the City Councilof Rio, a post he held for four years. Once installed in office, headapted his theater techniques for use in city politics, with somehilarious--and sometimes rancorous--results. Members of the Center forthe Theater of the Oppressed became Boal's City Council staff, andcreated seventeen companies of players practicing "Legislative Theater"throughout the city. Currently, Boal continues to work with the Centerfor the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro and is researchingand formulating a theory of the aesthetics of the oppressed.

If you've been wondering what this work is all about now is the time to find out!

Admission: $10
Free for Brecht Forum subscribers and members of The Riverside Church

"We must emphasize: What Brecht does not want is that the spectatorscontinue to leave their brains with their hats upon entering thetheater, as do bourgeois spectators."--Augusto Boal

Travel directions:
Subway: IRT Broadway/Seventh Avenue #1 local to 116 Street
(ColumbiaUniversity). Walk north along Broadway (passing Barnard College on the left) to 120 Street (also called Reinhold Niebuhr Place). Turn left andwalk one block to Claremont Avenue. The church entrance at 91 Claremont isone half block north of
120 Street on the west side of the avenue.Bus: #4, #5 or #104 to Broadway and 120 Street.

RSVP Here: toplab@toplab.org