While I'm still coming back from my break, and thinking in internal worlds (as much as external realities) I am trying to process what I saw today. I promised improved blogging presence so I will do this processing as a written piece. What we were engaged to do, how I took the task, are here. I think I want to write this rapidly and see what lands on the page. A reflection. The day called for "reflective practices."
Briefly we've discussed Power Standards for years.
It's a "frame" that to my "trained" ear seems to imply that we can basically prioritize and sort the Standards that drive our curriculum to be more effective in instructional decision making. The guru we've been seeing held up in this is "Doug Reeves." And, no, I have not seen him "in person."
Our administrator today set forward three criteria to "select" amongst the Reading, LA and Writing CA Standards to parse them down to 8 to 10 per grade level. A selection of our Power Standards at a tentative first draft level.
I have no inherent issue with prioritizing these, and in the main I sat ready to take on the task cheerfully, which I'll briefly describe so that I can get to what this "produced" and what I started thinking deeply about later in the day.
In brief we began the day discussing upcoming District wide intentions, it appears we are going to re-design the Report Cards and use these "Power Standards" to do so. They are targeted to drive instruction, assessment, and appear on the new grade card. Something of this process is beginning in teachers in groups like ours to encourage teacher leadership and direction and spiraling through the networks of decision making we have to completed selection of Power Standards we will utilize. So this is an initial activity, we were told. Fine.
Our pd leader implied that National Standards will seem very similar to those we were using from the state of CA. I'm not sure about that actually. I think there will be some real consternation in the switch. When I read about them last I thought there was a real shift, but, I suppose this was briefly mentioned this day to assuage someone thinking this process might be done to be re-done or undone when National Standards take hold. CA Reading Standards can be accessed here:
English-Language Arts
- Common Core State Standards for English-Language Arts, Adopted August 2010(Outside Source)
- English Language Arts, Adopted December 1997 (PDF; 830KB; 91pp.)
- Word version of English Language Arts Content Standards (DOC; 343KB; 64pp.)
- Braille version of Reading Standards(PDF; 670KB; 109pp.)
And so the criteria to sort was laid out:
Power Standards have to meet the test of Endurance-knowledge that lasts them long after a test is completed.
They must have Leverage-applicability in many academic disciplines, and it must create Readiness For the Next Level of Learning.
I'm not sure I saw this being applied well in the selection process.
I'm not entirely sure it was understood.
After a brief power point we got a document we did not read, no time I tried, informing us that the gurus we hear about- Doug Reeves and Marzano- are on board for Power Standards along with what I assume is a Reeves justification and description of "effective" schools where meetings do this kind of thing over complain about the time needed to do it, and simply put, in those "effective schools" the meetings are not allowed to fall into places with announcements and discussions. Important work like this is being had.
I had no issue with this either. I think announcement meetings are generally horrifying. I was just watching and listening. We were quickly directed to small grade level groups and then given envelopes and tasked for our selected portion of the Standards in the grade level to use the "criteria" and pick a set of Power Standards. This was collected together with peer groups doing other sections of the document and displayed. we circled the chosen ones on a document copy we had of the standards for our grade level. Then that proposed "set" of Power Standards was read to our group and teachers were given 8 sticky dots to vote on their top 8. That process was so fast as to be comparable to a bargain sale. A lot of moving around to get the dots up. High demand on certain items.
Then we read them, these selected Power Standards Proposed at the grade levels to the entire room.
And a really interesting thing happened. I took notes quietly on what these standards were as they were read out. Almost across the board one thing happened-comprehension standards fell out. No, not as becoming the Power Standards. As whatever it is we were rifting out. Gone. Now I sat rather dumbfounded at this. It said it all if you know our test results. A mirror image.
And across the board the most basic skill standards stayed in, in ours things like segmentation, blending, capitalization, sight words, it went on and on. In 1st grade we lost these standards we had.
3.3 Recall, talk, write about books read during the year.
2.6 Relate prior knowledge to textual information ( ever tried to teach reading free of THAT?)
2.1 Identify text that uses sequence or other logical order.
2.2 Respond to who, what, when, where and how questions.
2.3 Follow one-step written instructions.
2.4 Use context to resolve ambiguities about word and sentence meaning.
2.5 Confirm predictions about what will happen next in a text by identifying key words ( ie. signpost words)
As it turns out all are the Comprehension Standards. Gone save one. In second grade none remained. In third one, fourth two and fifth I really forget, equally clear.
And that was reflected throughout the room and grade levels.
Now what did I learn?
At least on the surface I saw a basic skill driven Power Standards criteria emerge. One of the things I know globally about our "issue" in this particular under performance school is we have doggedly narrowed . We have focused on "explicit'"skills sets, we have chanted, drilled, memorized and basically still come up last. The Literacy Coach when I pointed out the comprehension issue said, "That makes sense we are focused on 'how'nthey read. "
It doesn't actually add up for me.
There might be someone out there that would suggest whatever we, teachers in under performance, in the sarcasm of the day, whatever we suggest it should be REVERSED- such is the stuff that we know. I honestly EXPECTED a part two today, in which this would then rapidly be synthesized and used to demonstrate to us, kindly perhaps, but none the less clearly, how we were MISSING the criteria for selection stated above, because we are drunk on the notion that our students are "deficient" and we need to "fix" them.
And quite possibly so limited by it we fail them. By tracking, by maintaining failure through not moving students into the reasons why we read. TO KNOW, or simply for comprehending and being able to relate to what we read and write.
It was shout out at me, anyway.
I know if my children were still at my school, not in college, I'd move them from a curriculum driven by these most basic Power skills. That should impact us. My kids attended the school. I would do this because it is boring, it does not have "legs", it cannot get them to Harvard (or in our case Caltech and UCSB) and I doubt that it would be particularly tolerated by parents, if we were dealing with highly involved parents that were able fully to see from a very literate point of view. And I'll tell you why.
Some time ago my husband, a local Superintendent, did an experiment. He contacted the schools like his own in the area-in the county-asking them how they achieved high scores in their lower socio-economic students. he selected a very, very few places with very impressive sub sets on CST. He had analyzed where the scores were highest. He further looked at issues of 2nd language and poverty in the picking. From a survey he sent to the leaders very few responded. But one Super did respond. And the answer was reading.
They promoted it, they had volunteers reading with kids, they sent home reading packs, they increased libraries. In every way you can imagine they promoted literacy through reading books-not more basals, not texts, but books. Teachers were bought room libraries, incentive programs were used. Interestingly she did not say "Power standards" nor did she say "really good basic skill explicit instruction" but their District success with students like I am teaching was 150 points higher per child on the average. Something like this speaks to me.
I am not trying to critique my District. Way no. But I m noticing that the teachers themselves sought to answer in ways unbelievably limiting. By setting these as their "focus" they are indeed limiting a 1st grade student because the comprehensional piece of reading was the one thing the MOST neglected. Only one of the seven standards chosen, with overwhelmingly different percentages in more drill based skills-those went in almost 100%. And as I went home I thought about it.
Rather a lot.
Because truthfully these particular standards are heavily weighted in skill in the first place.
I'm not sure but just on the surface I think the results would be very different with different socio-economics, and I'm not entirely sure this is because this is as one teacher asserted to me is "what they need" or "where they are." Except in a sense it is "where they are" in terms of location, geographics, socio-economics and possibly the limits we are imposing.
And that led me to thinking about what reading and writing ARE to my staff.
And to children around us in more affluence. Is reading actually for us "word saying" is it a skills driven mechanical dialog? Certainly the way we are approaching the issue is mechanical. We often have Marzano out- and use it to justify reams and reams of dictionary definition papers through the grades, words removed from context, from a piece of student reading, endlessly defined, we have an exercise that doesn't resemble a much more affluent district that is getting different results with a significant population like ours. I wonder about this.
Maybe our "instincts" are the issue.
Maybe when teachers read those criteria of endurance, readiness, leverage they weren't thinking of what readers apply reading to do, because I see so little of it happening. If the seat of reading is "to read" we are in significant trouble.
Across the board.
And we might need training to point out that we just engaged in a powerful exercise revealing some deep seated biases about our learners.
I don't know. But I think we would be better served by facing the issue that we might be better at replicating significant mis-perceptions and I can't blame the leadership-such is the stuff that's out there to do-it dominates. We are not going wrong looking to focus and prioritize standards. The argument doing this I read is not entirely without merit. But I think it was in the selection I saw a pattern that these three schools demonstrated and I think that has very broad implications. I think.
Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and think differently, but it looked like teachers just reflected out what this narrowed curriculum of the past ten years has been asking them to do. It hasn't dealt well with our population if scores are the point. It has replicated an impoverishment in reading access-I really do seldom see teachers reading to kids, kids reading independently, literature as a joy and a dominant theme. Something really changed. I'm thinking one of the windows we might open is to take that data, those things chosen, and examine them deeply against what we know from our scores. And we know that comprehension across the board keeps our students down on these tests. They don't understand what they read there, and they don't fully understand the answers.And beyondthat they are missing out on a lot of wonderful work.
So as we were tasked to do several years ago in impassioned beginning of the year dialogs-we do need to "teach them to read," but if we aren't careful we may mistake the mechanics for the road they need to drive upon. I think we are stuck under the hood. Tinkering.
And from this I started to ask myself broader questions about how this came to pass...because surely we all know narrowing and skill driven dynamics have ruled our schools in the last few years. As we did everything we were directed to do.
--
Posted By Sarah to A Day In the Life at 1
No comments:
Post a Comment
I am now moderating comments.