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Olympic athlete David Oliver with students from 51st Avenue Academy in Queens at Madison Square Garden earlier this year. (Photo courtesy of Mackenzie McCluer/SI Kids)

Last spring, I felt as if all of the energy and momentum of the first half of the year was being sucked into a vortex. Was it caused by consecutive years of teaching the same grade, or was the inevitable arrival of test season to blame? I knew my students were feeling it too; I found myself refereeing more than the usual number of disputes over pencil ownership and hurt feelings. It was about that time that a link appeared on GothamSchools: “How to get an Olympian into your classroom. Teachers, apply here to adopt an Olympian to work with your school.” It sounded like something that would be good for kids, so I applied. The truth? I am a full-on Olympics fanatic, so I applied.

The organization behind this intriguing offer was Classroom Champions. Their stated mission is to use Olympians and Paralympians as role models for success and goal-setting, while increasing students’ digital literacy. They would accomplish this by connecting athletes and students via blogs, videos, and live video chats.

I teach a fifth-grade Integrated Co-Teaching class that includes general education students and students with special needs. Engagement and community are always issues. I was hoping that Classroom Champions would give me a boost in these areas. It sounded so cool; what kid wouldn’t want to meet an Olympic athlete? But I’m never really sure that what thrills me will have the same impact on my students.

Each class is paired with an Olympic or ParaOlympic hopeful, and each month the program has a theme, such as Community or Goal Setting. I know that my students hear me remind them to treat each other well or to do their best. I suspect that to them, I sound like the adult in a “Charlie Brown” cartoon- mwa, mwa, mwa. It turns out, however, that they do listen when their athlete sends them a greeting and a message in a video. At first, they just sort of parroted the sentiments: I will treat people with respect; I will set a goal and work toward it. But the videos that the students create using the program-provided Flip video camera show that Classroom Champions is touching something deeper. Sometimes their videos have the raw intensity of a reality-show confessional: (more…)

I never lack for reasons why I love my job, but none of them ever supersede the privilege of seeing young women and ment take hold of the views and positions they will carry with them into their adulthood. In rare cases, I get to bear witness to a student who not only attains a mature and nuanced understanding of a complex issue, but finds her voice to share that position with the larger world.

Earlier this month, Amani A., whom I am proud to be able to call my student at the Academy for Young Writers, took third-place at the annual Knicks Poetry Slam at a sold -out Broadway theater. I am hardly an aficionado of performance poetry, so I won’t comment on the quality of the poem nor its performance (though I can only assume she was robbed of first place), but I do want to engage with the content of her poem: the education of young men of color. There is much to admire and love in her message. (more…)

The Useable Knowledge series brings education research to GothamSchools readers. In the first installment, Janice Bloom and Lori Chajet present their research into the college application and transition process in New York City Schools. Bloom and Chajet both taught in small city high schools that mostly serve low-income students of color before enrolling in CUNY Graduate Center’s urban education program. They now co-direct an organization, College Access: Research & Action, to ease the college transition for city students.

Leave questions for Bloom and Chajet about their research in the comments section.

What questions guided your study?  

Bloom: How does social class impact students’ choices about post-secondary education and their transition to college?

Chajet: What happens to students when they move from a small urban public school, with a college-for-all mission, to college, and how does this illuminate the power and the limits of small school reform and the policies and practices of higher education?

How did you conduct your research?

Bloom: I used ethnographic research to study students at three small New York City high schools over the course of a year. The elements of my research were: Weekly observations of college prep or “advisory” classes; focus groups and individual interviews with a small target group of students; interviews with parents, college counselors, teachers, and the school principals; two surveys administered to a large cohort of seniors at each school.

Chajet: My study had two parts: 1) an ethnographic school based study that included participant observation, interviews with staff members and students, and document collection at one academically-unscreened small school; 2) a graduate follow-up study for which I followed a group of 6 students for three and a half-years as they transitioned into and through college – including interviewing them and their families, visiting them at their colleges, collecting their of syllabi and assignments, emailing and calling them. I also did interviews, focus groups and surveys with approximately 100 other graduates.

What were your major discoveries? (more…)

Earlier this month, my ninth-graders read the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet.” Whenever I teach Shakespeare, I like to have my students do some acting. When I teach the balcony scene, I push the students to take this process very seriously. I look for enthusiastic volunteers who can read the lines with aplomb. This is, after all, one of the great scenes in world literature.

In case you’ve forgotten, teenagers are extraordinarily self-conscious. A few of them put their hands up right away, ready to stroll up to the front of the room and try on some Elizabethan English, but they’re a small minority. When I ask for readers, most students aren’t even thinking about Shakespeare’s language; they’re worrying about the pimple on their nose or their changing voice. So when I ask for volunteers, it’s never surprising that many students simply slump down in their chairs and try to hide.

I teach in Brooklyn now, but my hunch is that this response, this hiding, is universal. Some years ago, I taught at a private school in Ann Arbor, Mich.; my students there used to hide too. What are these kids hiding from? What are they so afraid of?

It’s clear to me that they are afraid of failure. In many cases, they’re absolutely convinced that they will fail. Day after day, dejected students tell me that they can’t do things. They can’t write a paragraph; they can’t draw a tree; they can’t multiply fractions. Very often, our job as teachers is simply to push students to engage in tasks that they already know how to complete. It might not sound like hard work, but many of our students are so demoralized, it’s a wonder they even get out of bed in the morning.

Here’s the thing: They’re not just being moody teenagers. These students are expressing a hopelessness that’s been drilled into them for years. Day after day, year after year: our students hear the same message: that they are failures. (more…)

I teach eighth grade humanities in a New York City public school. This week, we began preparation for the state English language arts exam — the very beast responsible for the now famous, much debated teacher data reports recently published by several city news organizations. Sitting in my classroom, I find I am also seated in the midst of a political and ideological firestorm. As various voices in the news duke this out, we teachers quietly choose for ourselves how to respond on the ground.

In my class this year, we have a motto: “You are not a number. You’re a human being.”

It’s meant to be silly and serious at the same time. Around here, we encourage 13-year-olds to embrace their silliness. So, on Monday, we took a moment to acknowledge and release a bit of the pressure created by the impending state exam. On the agenda, I wrote “Celebration of ELA-related Creativity.” I gave my students the instruction to create something that would help us kick off the test preparation unit. The only guidelines: It must be creative; it can be funny if you like, and overall, it must be positive.

Among other things, my students composed a “Schoolhouse Rock”-style singalong song, performed a re-written Shakespeare scene, showered the audience with paper airplanes containing a mathematical formula that determines the odds of getting a good score by guessing on every question, and choreographed an interpretive dance. I can tell you, for last-second projects with no grade attached and 30 minutes to create, they were awesome. This never fails: I am always humbled and amazed by the outpouring of creative energy that occurs when kids are given the space to express themselves in a non-judgmental environment. (more…)

I came to teaching more than eight years ago by way of the law — having graduated from Fordham Law School in 1992. So I knew full well how intricate, malleable and unreliable evidence could be. When the New York City Teacher Data Reports came out and were touted as measuring my “value” as a teacher, I was deeply annoyed. Invalid, inaccurate and irrelevant, these data were no more useful in proving or disproving teacher value than the temperature on a single day could prove or disprove global warming. It’s not that I don’t think I’m a good teacher, I do. I simply measure it in ways that cannot be captured on a test. My reaction came as a surprise to some of my family, friends and co-workers because I was ranked in the 99th percentile.

As the first notes of congratulations began to arrive in my inbox, I understood that people meant well, yet I felt annoyed that anybody would and could delve into my professional life. Notably, I also felt grateful that my numbers would not force me to ashamedly try to explain them away. I was keenly aware that the rope that would have me swinging back and forth in jubilation could just as easily have been wrapped around my neck in humiliation. I felt sickened by the numbers next to the names of my colleagues who I know to be hardworking. I wrote back to those who sent their well wishes, disavowing the data and explaining that the so called “evidence” meant nothing because it could not measure that which makes a teacher valuable.

Now in my ninth year in the classroom, I understand the art of teaching, that is, those things not measurable by multiple-choice questions or by assessors armed with clipboards and checklists who believe the breadth and depth of learning in my room is revealed by the freshness of my bulletin board or the sheer quantity of newsprint hanging from my walls. I could teach in a hut with a dirt floor and be an excellent teacher because what makes me excellent is, in large part, an unquantifiable aesthetic that cannot be captured by a mathematical procedure. Inspiring students, giving them something to think about long after the school day is over, pushing and poking them to be their best selves, nurturing wisdom, stimulating passionate efforts, assisting discovery, facilitating connections, determining when to lead, guide or let go — these things cannot be found using an algorithm.

Armed with this belief about teaching and the positive responses of those I loved and valued, I reached out to other teachers in the 99th percentile to see if they felt the same. Many of them did and a group of us have signed a statement renouncing the data’s usefulness and publication.

Still for all the motivating anger I felt, I also felt demoralized and quite simply sad. The data had no power to prove my worth, yet, since it was being used for political purposes and to misinform the public, the data did have the power to make me feel worthless. And that is when a very unlikely visitor reminded me of the true value that I add to my students’ lives. (more…)

A short time before my school was slated for possible turnaround status in January we saw our first “random” scanning by the New York Police Department. In the short time that has followed we have had three additional visits.

Scanning is quite the operation. Students are herded into a roped-off line leading into the gymnasium, which is transformed into a pseudo-airport where scanning machines and a large police presence have replaced games of basketball and volleyball.

The items at the center of this process seem to be cell phones. Department of Education policy prohibits cell phones in school, but many schools turn a blind eye. Some students are able to get their phones through the scanners while many have their phones taken from them. If a phone is taken, parents are required to come to the school to reclaim their child’s property.

Is cell phone use in schools a serious problem? Yes. I understand, and can empathize, with the argument frequently made by parents: Having a phone is a matter of safety and allows parents and their children to contact each other in the unfortunate case of an emergency. But students are constantly using their phones in non-emergency situations.

Cell phones, for better or for worse, have become an engrained part of everyday life. My students do not know life without them — they use them to text in the hall, entering and leaving class, and in the middle of lessons. Teachers are responsible for curbing usage to some degree, and creating quality lessons, I hope, encourages participation and discourages phone use. At the same time, I can attest from experience that there are some students that will push the boundaries regardless of the pace of the lesson. (I believe the answer lies in teaching proper phone-use etiquette.)

Despite these challenges, scanning and confiscating phones is not the answer. These are some observations I have made during the days where scanning has taken place: (more…)

One major problem behind the Teacher Data Reports and other forms of test-based teacher evaluations is that they put all of the onus of student performance on teachers.In reality, struggles in school are most often the result of domestic tumult or of any number of poverty-related woes — poor nutrition, unstable housing, or lack of family support. Trouble at home is trouble at home, and it will bring your grades down whether you’re living in the ghetto or the wealthy suburbs. But there’s another universal issue high schools must deal with that is mentioned even less often when education reformers talk about teacher evaluation: Adolescents.

Teenagers are freethinking citizens of the United States who are discovering their growing ability to argue, to think for themselves. If they are not given the opportunity to face the consequences of their own choices, these citizens will not grow up to be the responsible adults we need them to be. Unfortunately, sometimes the consequences include low scores.

I recently witnessed a scene in my school’s main office that reminded me how powerful and necessary it is for the adults in a young person’s life to put the burden of academic responsibility on his shoulders. This scene needs to be shared as badly as any TDR data, lest the notion of the teacher who doesn’t check in with parents — not to mention the stereotype of the parent who doesn’t check on his child — go unchallenged in our city.

As a public school, Kurt Hahn lacks the personnel and after-school hours (let alone the legal prerogative) to truly require anything from parents beyond an emergency contact card. Yet our parents know they are welcome in our doors at any time, and I’ve seen teachers repeatedly drop their prep materials to have the essential conversation with students and parents that puts everyone on the same page about academic progress. This is how I witnessed a student’s freshman year forever change — for better or for worse, of course, is still up to him. (more…)

What can one say about Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s leadership of the New York City public schools that hasn’t been said before? After nearly a decade of mayoral control, the Bloomberg regime is the status quo.

Through most of that time, Bloomberg has justified mayoral control as a mechanism for focusing accountability for the achievement of New York’s 1.1 million students. Mayoral control, he argued, placed him solely responsible for the system, and he should be judged by the results. If members of the voting public didn’t like what they were seeing, well, they could just vote him out of office at the end of his term.

The centralization of authority in a single individual paralleled a structure with which Bloomberg was highly familiar: CEO of a large, complex business. Bloomberg L.P., the company Mike Bloomberg founded, offers an array of financial and information services to hundreds of thousands of customers around the world. The company’s website describes its hallmark as “innovation and a passion for getting things right.”

That’s why it’s so disconcerting to hear the mayor hold forth on educational outcomes in New York City. Is he speaking as a CEO seeking to bolster his investors’ confidence in his products? Or do his public pronouncements reflect the assessments that he uses to guide the internal strategies of the organization? Does he respond to new information and incorporate it into his thinking? A certain amount of public optimism and embellishment would be tolerable if they were accompanied by a realistic appraisal of the successes and failures of his initiatives. Does the mayor truly understand the state of education in New York City?

Speaking at a panel on big-city school reform in Washington, D.C. on March 2nd, Mayor Bloomberg repeated a claim he’s made before: “We have closed the gap between black and Latino kids and white and Asian kids,” he said. “We have cut it in half.”

It’s a claim that has never held up to serious scrutiny. (more…)

Nobody would accuse Scott of being an ineffective teacher. He has a clean-shaven head and well-pressed dress shirt and tie. His calm demeanor and busy students make it seem like he effortlessly expands minds on a daily basis. It was my great pleasure to meet this particular teacher and his particularly high-functioning classroom on a visit to Brooklyn International High School in October of 2010.

Teaching in a school devoted to serving the needs of English language learners from across the world, Scott taught in a way that might have seemed unconventional. Learners used to understanding teachers as providers of knowledge might have been caused discomfort at first.

On the day I walked into Scott’s classroom, every one of his social studies students was engaged — a challenge often noticeable enough in an environment where students’ needs are so diverse. What I was most impressed by, though, was that no more than three students were working on the same task.

As I made my way through the room looking at students’ work and asking questions, I was amazed to see students creating posters, writing essays, having academic conversations, or tutoring others; all as a means of demonstrating learning of the same material. In the middle of the room Scott stood taking notes as one student after another stepped up to defend the learning he or she had accomplished in the unit the class was concluding.

To the layman, it may have appeared as if Scott had merely be blessed with a batch of phenomenal students. To the aspiring expert teacher, the distinguished skill and dedication necessary to create this kind of classroom learning space — done during, but more often outside of class time (e.g. curriculum planning, parent conferences, diagnostic assessments, relationship building, classroom culture and routines development, professional development around effective strategies for English language learners in the social studies content area) — was inspiring. (more…)