Richard Elmore recently edited a book entitled, I used to think, and now I think. Twenty well known educators wrote essays on this topic. I was struck by the ridiculousness of what they used to think, and the common sense of what they now think. In other words, they used to think what they were taught within the social science paradigm for school improvement. Now they simply use common sense and experience, when they look at school improvement.

Here is my personal IUTTANIT:

Like many education professors, I used to believe:

1. Good teaching cannot be defined, so we describe it in hundreds of ways, hoping aspiring teachers learn something from those descriptions.
2. Good teaching produces test scores that are better than the ones students would have gotten with less “effective” teaching. (Teaching is an applied social science.)
3. Teachers should be held accountable for the development of student knowledge and skill. Student test scores are the bottom line.
4. Our beliefs about education should be based on “research-based” facts and reason because those are the “best” beliefs.

Now that I am wiser, I believe the opposite:

1. Good teaching can be defined. A definition says what something always is and what it never is. Good teaching always involves understanding, imagination, strong character, courage, humility and generosity. It never involves ignorance, intellectual incompetence, weakness, fear of truth, pride, or selfishness. It is difficult to be a good teacher, but it is not complicated.
2. Good teaching starts with teacher appreciation for the subject and students. It ends with student appreciation for the lessons and teacher. (Teaching is an art.)
3. Knowledge and skills are not “measured” by standardized tests. Test results are not points on a ruler, they are like light switches that are either “on” or “off.” Therefore, teachers should be held accountable for modeling and teaching the six virtues that lead to knowledge and skills. They are easy to observe. No standardized tests needed.
4. Beliefs are based on experiences, not facts and reason. All of us “just believe” many things. An example is those who just believe that “beliefs should be based on facts and reason.”

Nobody believes what I believe. So, although I am right, I am irrelevant.  I love irony.

This morning’s newspaper (1/28/2014) had a “tech quote” from Knightscope CEO William Li, whose company sells robotic security guards:

There are 7 billion people on the planet, and we’ll soon have a few billion more, and law enforcement is not going to scale at the same rate; we literally can’t afford it.

Li wants people to (1) imagine how to live more safely on a crowded planet, and (2) invest in his company.

Modeling and teaching what it means to be educated is another way to live more safely on a crowded planet. For those of us who are educators, the choice is ours. We can continue to ignore the six virtues, or we can make them the foundation for graduating a more educated citizenry.

If we ignore them, Li will be wealthy and his robotic security guards will be happy (if properly programmed). The rest of us will live in fear. I love irony.

Guest blog by Ryan Chandler

Social Studies Teacher

Jesse C. Carson HS, Rowan-Salisbury Schools, NC

Many adults believe high school students are self-absorbed and care only about themselves. I had a recent experience that shows the other side of adolescence. My story is about student generosity.

At the beginning of November, the mother of one of my students was hospitalized. Not long afterward, she passed away.

Once students heard about the mother’s passing, they told me they wanted to do something for their classmate. I thought it was a wonderful idea.

What happened the next few days blew my mind. I could not have been more proud of this class. For several days they took up collections. They even asked students from their other classes to contribute.

I was amazed at how generous the students were, and I know their classmate appreciated it. This also brought my class closer together as they shared their concern for the well-being of another student. It showed me that high schoolers care about others, too.

Guest blog by Loryn Morrison

Asst. Principal, Welcome Elementary School

Davidson County Schools, NC

I am a worrier. My husband often jokes with me, saying I am constantly waiting for the sky to fall. I try to prevent myself from worry by avoiding difficult situations. To clarify, though, I do not worry about everything. I worry about money.

My husband lost his job three years ago when we were eight months pregnant with our son. To say that I thought the sky had fallen would be an understatement. We have been recovering from financial hardship ever since, but money worries still haunt me.

While it is embarrassing to put these concerns into words, I am trying to be courageous so others can identify.  For the past year I have been using our hardship as an excuse to avoid giving to others who are less fortunate.

For the past five years, I was in a district leadership position for a rural school system. I worked in many schools, but was never part of their cultures. For example, students on free and reduced lunch were a number associated with Title I funding, rather than people struggling for proper nutrition. I believe I lost touch with the reality faced by many of our students.

This year, I am an assistant principal in a school with many free and reduced lunch participants. This school is teaching me about generosity and humility every day.

I believe in teaching the six virtues, but I have to model them before I can teach them. Specifically, I need to model generosity.

One of my responsibilities is to greet bus riders each morning. This has taught me about our students. Some don’t have gloves or cold weather coats. Some wear the same outfit every other day. When I pass the local food shelter on my way home, I sometimes see our parents in line.

I also met Kim (a pseudonym), when her mother enrolled her in kindergarten. Kim and her mother had just gotten an apartment after living in a homeless shelter. Each morning Kim came to school excited to learn.

In October, Kim’s mom was far along in a pregnancy, and Kim started being late for school. Each morning she would come in and just cry. Many thought she did not want to leave her mother.

In my old state of mind, I would have let someone else care about Kim’s situation, but my new state of mind said I should step forward. I found out Kim and her mother were living in their car. Her mother lost her job because she couldn’t stand for long hours (doctor’s orders). She couldn’t pay the rent, and Kim couldn’t ride the bus in the morning, which meant she missed breakfast.

Kim was crying because she was hungry. She was not eating dinner and now she was missing breakfast. Each morning, it became my mission to get Kim breakfast. Seeing Kim’s face when she got food in the morning showed me that my sky had never really fallen. Since meeting Kim, I have stopped avoiding situations that might cause me pain or worry.

I became an educator because I want students to love learning. I now realize children cannot love learning if their basic needs are not met. Children in our schools need to see that we care about their basic needs as well as their education. We need to model that caring, so others can see that our hearts are in it for all of them.

Our school now donates to the local food shelter on a regular basis. We have maximized our backpack program. And there is a large room where students can get clothes, if needed.

Last Tuesday a fourth grader saw that her classmate needed shoes. That night she gathered several pairs from her closet and brought them to school the next day. She asked the teacher if she could meet with her classmate privately. She and the other girl went into a quiet area during independent reading time. They probably did not read that day, but one girl got to go shoe shopping. The girl who donated the shoes told only her teacher, and the other girl has proper shoes because of her generosity. That is why I am in education.

My students say we define “educated” in terms of knowledge and skill because these can be measured by tests. Really? How do tests measure knowledge or skill?

They don’t. Student answers indicate whether a specific learning is present or not. Test answers are like on-off switches, not yard sticks. Just like virtue, knowledge and skills are “measured” with teacher judgment. They are just more difficult to gauge than virtue. I love irony.

For three reasons I was drawn to the article, “For better North Carolina schools, link teacher pay to effectiveness.”

1. I want better NC schools.
2. Paying higher salaries to “effective” teachers is a good idea (if it can be done).
3. It can be done only if we define “effective” teaching.

We all want #s 1 & 2. The hard part is #3. It is not enough to describe “effective” teaching. Paying higher salaries for all those descriptions would increase spending, not keep it the same or lower it. Continue reading →

When pollsters question people who know very little about the topic of the poll, we say they are polling an “uninformed population.” This poll is an example.  Although parents don’t know the difference between norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests, and they don’t know why we give the first and not the second, they “back standardized tests.”

From hearing policy makers talk about test scores, I already know uninformed people back standardized tests. I love irony.

Dear Mary,

You mentioned a highly successful program in your school (brain-based ways to teach letter patterns and phonics). I believe you say it was successful because student reading scores went up. Is that right? Continue reading →

Bringing the six virtues to learning situations improves education just like burning more calories than are consumed reduces weight. The analogy holds in two ways:

Continue reading →

An old friend of mine used to warn about analogies: “They can both clarify and distort relationships.”

I thought of that as I read the Asheville Citizen-Times column headlined, “Abstinence is the answer” (July 20, 2013, p. A6). The author is a woman who periodically argues against abortion in our local paper. In this column she quoted Reverend Dahl B. Seckinger:

There is an alternative for the unmarried, and that is through the practice of chastity. It is foolproof, it is not hazardous to your health, parental permission is not needed, it is nondiscriminatory between the sexes, as either can practice this form of birth control, it is cheaper than any other form of birth control. It is energy-saving, it is tax-free and does not require billions in federal spending, nor is any red tape involved. I might add that it eliminates much of the danger of contracting venereal disease. Is this too simplistic an answer to the problem? It is medically sound and safe in its practice. There is no question about its moral implications. It is biblical. Why not deal with the cause rather than effects?

Reverend Dahl’s answer to the abortion question is like my answer to the school improvement question. We both want to address the cause of the problem — he wants to eliminate unwanted pregnancies, I want to improve education. Refraining from sex (chastity) does, in fact, prevent unwanted pregnancies, just like bringing the six virtues to a learning situation does, in fact, improve education.

But neither is a viable solution to the problem. People often fail to be chaste and teachers can’t model virtues they don’t have. Opponents of these solutions don’t say we should not be chaste, or that teachers should not model the six virtues.  They say we sometimes fail to be chaste and teachers sometimes fail to be virtuous.

In other words, my argument for the six virtues is like the chastity argument because it does not solve the problem, even though it is based on what is true. Reverend Seckinger lists the truths of the chastity argument. And the six-virtue argument is based on the truth that all virtues are combinations of these six. But neither set of truths solves the problem because the problems are caused by another truth — people fail to be chaste, and teachers can’t model and teach the virtues they lack.

But let’s be careful with analogies.  The chastity and six-virtue solutions are not analogous in one important way. Chastity is only one thing. It is the absence of the act that causes pregnancy. That is why “abstinence” is in the headline. But bringing virtues to learning situations takes many forms. Education improves whenever teachers bring any of the virtues, even if they can’t always bring all six.