Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick believe schools should teach 16 habits of mind.
In their words:
Entries Tagged 'Cut the Crap' ↓
Better the world with intellect? Or with intellect, character & spirit?
February 3rd, 2012 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Media Reviews, Teacher Reads
Study finds what we already know!
January 9th, 2012 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Media Reviews, Teacher Reads
Education Week (online, January 6, 2012):
Popular Frameworks Found to Identify Effective Teachers
Descriptor:
For this study, the researchers broadened the list of outcomes slightly to include a measure of student effort and emotional engagement. Students taught by the teachers studied reported, for instance, on whether they pushed themselves to understand lessons in the class, and whether they felt happy in class.
Who doesn’t already know that teachers whose students “pushed themselves to understand lessons,” and “felt happy in class” will get better results than teachers with students who did not push themselves to understand lessons and who were not happy in class?
It’s simple — just teach the 6 virtues!
October 26th, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Media Reviews, Teacher Reads, The Six-Virtue Definition is Useful
Scholarly Crap:
Here is another recommendation for what we should teach in public schools, complete with complicated qualifications:
From the article:
So, instead of defining high school success solely in terms of mastering a common, college-preparatory curriculum, we should develop a broader and more individualized measure of high school success where students achieve a sense of competency by demonstrating mastery in an area that most interests them—whether it is math, physics, cooking, mechanics, or sports—while achieving acceptable proficiency in core academic areas.
Educators should teach young people “math, physics, cooking, mechanics, or sports” and core academics. Is this a new idea? How many of these do we pump out each year? How is that working?
Bill Gates again
October 24th, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Gates blogs, Teacher Reads
Bill Gates Crap
Thanks to the WSJ, we hear from Bill Gates again:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576641123767006518.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
Two excerpts:
(1) The intermediate goal of MET (Measures of Effective Teaching) is to discover what we are able to measure that is predictive of student success. The end goal is to have a better sense of what makes teaching work so that school districts can start to hire, train and promote based on meaningful standards. . .
(2) Some people think that teachers should be like commissioned salespeople, receiving pay based on end-of-year test scores. We don’t believe that. When we think about the kinds of teachers we hope our children have, we realize that it’s impossible to capture everything in a single metric. We believe you need multiple measures to make evaluations accurate and fair.
There are others who say that teaching is so nuanced that it is simply impossible to measure. We can’t accept that either, because we know that just throwing up our hands is bad for students and for teachers.
Because we have been unable to define effective teaching, we now reward teachers for easy-to-measure proxies like master’s degrees and seniority, even though there is no evidence that these things help students learn. As a result, a tenured teacher with a master’s degree whose students aren’t learning much will always earn more than a recent college graduate whose students are sweeping the academic decathlon. (Emphases added.)
We need anti-bullying curricula?
October 16th, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Teacher Reads
Bully Prevention Crap:
The Education Week email said:
Advocacy groups have designated October as National Bullying Prevention Month, and education organizations from across the country are getting involved by disseminating information and promoting anti-bullying curricula.
I wrote about this before:
http://sixvirtues.com/blog/2010/08/12/we-dont-know-how-to-prevent-bullying/
but it is National Bullying Prevention Month, so I will write about it again.
Truth, beauty & goodness are ideals, not virtues
September 24th, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Media Reviews, Teacher Reads
Psychology Crap
Several years ago I read Howard Gardner’s The Disciplined Mind; and I thought, “Truth, beauty and goodness are ideals, not virtues. This is an incredibly ironic book title.”
Those thoughts returned when I read Gardner’s recent response to critics:
Teacher Evaluations: Delicate Conversation? or Ironic Ignorance?
August 6th, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Media Reviews, Teacher Reads
The Washington Post headline reads, “Evaluation of DC Teachers is a Delicate Conversation:”
The article is about a teacher who wanted to know why a “master educator” evaluator gave him a low grade on his math lesson:
Master Educator: This does not measure your effort . . . But I do see your effort . . .
Math Teacher: So — what is this measuring?
Master Educator: It’s measuring the effectiveness of that effort . . .
Really?
Bill Gates: Teachers are like athletes, artists, social scientists. Really?
July 19th, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Gates blogs, Media Reviews, Teacher Reads
Bill Gates Metaphor Crap
In his interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates presents three metaphors for teaching.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703858404576214593545938506.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
Q: Do you think it is possible for school districts to build great teachers?
A: Absolutely. But the amount of research into what great teachers do has been so slow that you can’t make huge improvements in the average….Even professions like long-jump or tackling people on a football field or hitting a baseball, the average ability is so much higher today because there’s this great feedback system, measurement system.
Instead of 6 virtues, we teach what?
May 21st, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Media Reviews, Revering Democracy
The previous blog described the belief that our definition of “educated” should always be open to democratic debate. Where has that belief led us? Here are examples from the Education Week article, “State Lawmakers Make Curricular Demands of Schools.”
Education Pendulum
April 29th, 2011 — Book Thoughts, Cut the Crap, Media Reviews, Teacher Reads
Veteran teachers know education swings like a pendulum. The same ideas are expressed in new words that make them popular for a while, before they fade and go out of favor.
Educationese Crap
This month’s Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) publication, Education Update, explains that peer tutoring can increase student engagement and achievement. It describes and defines (1) cross-age tutoring, (2) cross-ability tutoring, and (3) reciprocal tutoring.
Cut the Crap
The first strategy is when Grade Four, Five, or Six students work with students in Grades One, Two, or Three. Remember that from grade school?
The second is when students who understand something right away help those who do not. Remember that?
The third is when students take turns explaining material and challenging each other. Remember that?
For decades teachers have known these practices increase student engagement and achievement — when monitored properly and used in the right situations with the right students. Instead of Education Update, it should be called, “Education Swings Back and Forth.”
