Chris's blog

Who is Responsible for that F on the Report Card?

We have just reached the end of another 9 weeks, and, consequently, I am preparing myself for the expected barrage of student complaints in response to final grades.  Out of all of the comments, excuses, and insults that my students will throw around in response to their 9 weeks grade, one in particular annoys me more than any other.  What is that one comment?  It goes something like the following: "Mr. Curran, why'd you give me a (substitute grade here)?".  There are multiple variations of this comment, but the common denominator is that all versions assume that the teacher is responsible for the grade given.  Rarely will a student talk of earning a grade.

Recently, a fellow teacher wrote a blog in which he discussed the responsibility for state test scores.  In his post, he explored the extent to which teachers and students are responsible for standardized test scores.  His position, namely that a large portion of the responsibility rests with the teachers, has the potential to stir the same kind of feelings teachers feel when their students like mine complain of the teacher giving them grades.  In this post, I will respond to this teacher's post.  I will offer an argument against the author's claim that "Every teacher should be able to at least get seventy to eighty percent of his or her students to pass the exam".

The teacher makes the claim that "Every teacher should be able to at least get seventy to eighty percent of his or her students to pass the exam".  No justification for this claim is ever offered though.  He does dismiss (without reason) a number of factors, such as lack of student effort and lack of prior knowledge, as not being adequate to justify failure rates in the seventy and eighty percent range; however, no positive argument is ever presented to justify why such a passing rate is reasonable.  Such a move would be equivalent to someone stating that 5 = 4 and then stating that we cannot debunk such an equation simply on the basis that 15 - 2 = 13.  While it is true that the second equation does not prove the first equation untrue, it in no way demonstrates that the first equation is true.  Just because a lack of student effort does not mean that a seventy to eighty percent passing rate is unreasonable, we cannot conclude that a seventy to eighty percent passing rate is reasonable.

The criticism of the claim that "Every teacher should be able to at least get seventy to eighty percent of his or her students to pass the exam" does not not stop merely with the fact that the author does not offer an argument for its truth.  I will now offer an argument to show that in many cases such a claim should not be accepted.

1) Student A demonstrates no effort on school work.
2) Student A is over three grade levels behind.
3) Student A demonstrates extreme behavioral issues.
4) The teacher makes an effort to teach Student A.
5) If a student demonstrates a lack of effort, starts several grade levels behind, and/or is characterized by severe behavioral issues and the teacher makes an effort to teach the student then the teacher should not be held to the majority of the responsibility for that student's failure on state tests.
Ergo 6) The teacher should not be held to the majority of the responsibility for Student A's failure on state tests. [1-5]
7) If a teacher should not be held to the majority of the responsibility for a single student's failure on state tests then the teacher should not be held to the majority of the responsible for the failure of a large number of such students on the state test.
Ergo 8) The teacher should not be held to the majority of the responsibility for the failure of a large number of students on the state test. [6-7]

Premises 1-4 are empirical facts about a given student and the teacher.

Premise 4 seems plausible insofar as it seems to reflect our intuitive feelings towards a teacher with a few failing students.  For instance, consider the hypothetical teacher Mr. Long.  Mr. Long utilizes a variety of teaching strategies, engages students, and works long hours tutoring students.  98% of Mr. Long's students pass the state test.  Mr. Long has one student named Tommy who comes to school without any materials, reads on a 2nd grade level despite being a high schooler, gets into fights nearly once a week, skips school on a regular basis, and refuses to do the majority of classwork.  Mr. Long has given Tommy alternative assignments targeted towards Tommy's learning style.  Mr. Long has offered to stay after school to tutor Tommy.  Mr. Long has consulted with the counselor and with Tommy's parents.  Despite these efforts, Tommy fails the state test.  Intuitively, it seems the responsibility for this failure is not Mr. Longs.

Premise 7 is just a generalization to a larger number of instances.  If the majority of the responsibility would not rest with the teacher in the case of one student why should it rest with the teacher in the case of many such students?

Note that premises 1-3 and premise 5 could be altered to include any number of reasonable circumstances that limit a student's ability to learn.

The premise that the original blogger would most likely take fault with is 4, namely that most teacher make an effort to teach the students.  I agree that there are some teachers who do not put forth the required effort to teach students though I am not sure this is reflective of the majority of teachers that I have encountered, and I agree that such teachers should be held accountable for their failure.  My concern is simply that state tests do not offer enough information to categorize a teacher.  Through testing alone there seems to be very little ability to discern between the teacher who does not teach and the teacher who does a superb job of teaching but is burdened with a tougher crowd of students.  It would seem to be a mistake to fire the Mr. Longs of this world simply because they took on the challenge of educating a room full of Tommy's rather than a class with a single Tommy.

Where then does the responsibility for failing students fall?  I do not know that there is a straightforward answer to this question.  It falls in part on the student that does not want to learn and makes conscience efforts to fight learning.  It falls in large part on the failures of teachers who did not put forth an effort in teaching the students during earlier grades.  It falls to some extent on the parents and home-life situation of the student.  It also falls on the shoulders of a society that fails to glorify the benefits of education.  There is no single responsible party, and for every student the distribution of responsibility falls differently.  What we must do, though, is be careful not to use the good teachers as a scapegoat for the harms done by those truly responsible.  We must accept that sometimes, given the situation, a twenty to thirty percent passing rate on a state test represents a job well done.

Miles to Go In Mississippi

The Southern Education Foundation, a public foundation aimed at improving education in the South, recently published an update on an earlier report examining the state of public education in Mississippi. This updated report put in no uncertain terms that dire state of education in this state and the economic outcomes of a failing education system. The article reinforced the fact that the lack of a high school degree or post-secondary degree severely limits the potential income of the individuals involved. The reports calls for a change in the education system in Mississippi, and it bases such a call on the basic premise that the majority of Mississippi's problems are intimately related to the failure to educate the state's youth. Coming from outside of Mississippi, it is common to look at some statistic about the state I was in and hear someone comment that at least we were not as bad as Mississippi. Such a comment is usually safe because Mississippi seems to always fall dead last in the pack. If the SEF's contention that these numerous shortcomings are in large part a result of the shortcomings in education, and I think that they are, then there is hope for the state insofar as a solution to the education problem may be the key to a solution to many of the other problems plaguing the state.

The focus of the SEF report was on the need for early intervention in education, and I couldn't agree more. When I found out I was to be teaching middle school, there was an initial feeling of disappointment. After all, I had looked forward to helping high school aged students fill out applications for college. I had looked forward to helping high school students prepare for and take that next step in life. What I have come to realize, though, is that the real work to be done is not on the high school level. A high school teacher can help a junior or senior student fill out an application to Ole Miss, but if that student cannot write a coherent sentence or divide two whole numbers then there is little hope that the student has the academic ability to get accepted at an institution of higher learning much less the ability to actually succeed at such an institution if accepted. The key is preventing these students from falling behind prior to arrival in high school.

With this realization in mind, I was excited to enter the middle school classroom. Wouldn't this be the place where children are transitioning to young adults, where the foundations for a prosperous future could be established? To some extent, I think the answer is yes. Middle school is the time to ensure that students have the end of college in sight. It is the time to help the students decide what type of individual they want to develop into; however, I have come to see that for some students intervention at the middle school level is still too late. A seventh grade student who reads at a third grade level has an incredible, though not impossible, obstacle to overcome.

SEF seems to have followed this argument all the way to the root. Students are behind before they start. Children from impoverished backgrounds enter kindergarten unable to identify letters or read simple words. In contrast, children from more privileged backgrounds enter kindergarten reading entire sentences. Before school begins, the stage for failure is already set. The question then is how do we, as teachers and concerned citizens, fix this problem.

The solution that SEF seemed to push in their report was the need for a statewide preschool program. SEF reported that Mississippi was the only Southern state without such a program. I am not versed well enough in the realm of preschool education to know exactly what SEF has in mind for a statewide preschool program. I am aware that a number of my students have attended the federally backed program of called Head Start though I am unsure how Head Start compares to preschool programs offered by other states or to private preschool programs utilized by financially capable families. While I do think that a well run preschool program could help more students to enter kindergarten on a competitive level, I have several concerns. Foremost, where will the funding come from? In a time of economic hardship and educational cutbacks, expanding public education to preschool would seem to be a financially difficult endeavor. Secondly, if Mississippi has thus far failed to provide a K-12 system that can compete with its peers across the country then why is SEF so confident that the state can develop a preschool program of any meaningful quality?

To me, the solution is to ensure that students go on to receive quality education from quality teachers at the K-12 level. One point of hope is that a good teacher has the ability to move a failing student several grade levels in one year. In other words, if a student was to receive high quality teachers from kindergarten to high school, the shortcomings of their prekindergarten home environment could be undone before the student ever left elementary school. Instead of exerting money and effort to a state run preschool system, I would prefer to see an effort to identify, hire, and retain quality teachers and administrators in the schools that already exist. Rather than try to eliminate the need for a quality K-12 system by developing a preschool system, let us try to eliminate the need for a preschool system by developing a quality K-12 system.

The Atlantic

I just finished reading an article from The Atlantic which attempted to answer the following question: “What makes a great teacher?”, and, after reading the article, I was inclined to reflect on my thoughts on the question and the implications for my teaching. The article begins by recognizing that it is relatively easy to identify good teachers. We can all identify those individuals who in leading the classrooms we sat in led us into the realization of our potential futures. What seems more difficult, however, is abstracting from these individual cases to a general picture of a good teacher. Of course, without such generalization, it is incredibly difficult to identify quality teachers when it comes time for a school district to hire or fire.

In the article, the author cites what appears to be one of the first and largest scaled research attempts at identifying characteristics of a good teacher. This research, conducted by Teach for America on its participants, had several surprising findings. Good teachers were found to be marked by an ability to maintain a positive attitude, a track record of extracurricular accomplishments, and a willingness to change constantly. One thing that surprisingly had little impact on a teacher's ability were their past experience with underprivileged populations.

Prior to reading this article, if you asked me what makes a great teacher the one thing that I think would have been first to my lips would be a commitment to protecting learning time. I can vividly recall several moments spent sitting in the classroom of who I would consider to be the best teacher I have ever had. Among these moments, I remember this teacher consistently continuing his lesson for at least thirty seconds beyond the time in which the bell rung. I can recall this teacher refusing to talk to a parent that had shown up at his door during the middle of class. His comment to the parent was that he had students in the classroom and his job was to teach them. What I cannot recall from this teacher's class is any moment in which teaching and learning was not taking place. While this meant that this teacher's class was not always the most enjoyable period to attend, mainly because you weren't going to be able to chat with friends or put your head down for a nap, it did mean that this class was one in which you were always going to walk away more enlightened than when you walked in, and that is the point of school.

The second characteristic that I believe marks a good teacher and one that I have only begun to recognize since I started teaching is the ability to let students know that you care about them. As an undergraduate, a professor told me that “students do not care what you know until they know that you care”. In the course of my first semester of teaching, I have had stints in which I have been angry about my job, frustrated with my students, and negative on what I saw as the probable outcomes of the year. In contrast, I have also had stints in which I have been excited about the job, hopeful for my students' futures, and positive about what is going on in my classroom. During both of these times, I have never wavered in my love for my students. I have consistently cared about them. What I have not been consistent in is the way in which I demonstrate my caring. When I was negative about the job, my caring took the form of lecturing my students about the terrible outcomes that they were headed towards if they continued their bad behavior. When I have been positive about my job, my caring has took the form of encouraging my students' good behavior, greeting my students in a cheery manner, and asking my students about their lives. I have found that when I demonstrate my caring in the positive way, my students respond with better behavior, but when I demonstrate my caring in a negative manner my students respond with worse behavior. My conclusion? It is not just enough to care. You must show the students that you care. This point was made anecdotally in The Atlantic article when the author speaks of a veteran teacher who has spent her own money to buy supplies for the class but commonly broadcasts a negative view on her students' potentials.

I do not know that we yet have a clear picture of the good teacher, but I am confident that the research oriented approach is the right way to go about developing such a picture. In the future, I hope to see such research expanded beyond the pool of new TFA teachers to the body of traditionally trained veteran teachers.

MLK Parade

This Saturday, I headed to Greenville for the annual MLK parade.  A steady stream of rainfall put a bit of a damper on the event and probably caused a number of people to stay at home.  Maybe that's why I was the only white person in attendance; however, I had a terrific time watching the local bands.  The band featured in this video may not have been the most musically gifted, but they sure put on a good show.

Greenville MS MLK Parade

SDC16985

For those worried, terrorism was not an issue insofar as the homeland security pickup was on the scene.

SDC16981

Off Roading Roots

It is my understanding that the Mitsubishi Lancer has its roots in European off-road racing.  While the 270HP, 4WD Lancer Evolution might be quite the beast at off-roading, I found out this evening that my domesticated ES version was not quite up for the task.

All I wanted to do was take a scenic route home from Greenville.  After all, I drive the same route everyday to and from work.  What I did not know was that the road I identified on the map was little more than a gravel path.

Call me stupid.  Call me adventurous.  I saw some gravel, some dirt, and some mud, and I thought I could make it.  I thought I could make it until I had travelled twenty feet in.  At this point, I no longer thought I could make it, but I also did not think I could make it back.  As a result, I continued forward.

About half a mile down the road the car finally stopped.  Thank God I am a card carrying member of the AAA.  Within the hour, a pimped out Expedition on 24 inch chrome wheels had arrived with a chain to pull me out of the mud.

For another half mile, my car swayed back and forth on the end of a chain as we proceeded to solid ground.  My car came dangerously close to flying off the road and into a large drain of water.  All the while, the man steering my car ensured me this was the stupidest thing he had ever seen done.  

After two hours spent spraying and digging dirt out from around my tires, my car has returned to a barely drivable state.  I cannot currently take it past forty miles per hour without violent shaking, but I am confident this problem will be fixed as soon as I can get my tires rotated.

Why You Should Not Join The Mississippi Teacher Corps

Note: This is a balanced analysis of MTC.  The positive perspective is presented in the previous post.

The Mississippi Teacher Corps is not for everyone. It is not so much that MTC is not for everyone but that teaching in general is not for everyone. I have heard it often stated that teaching is a calling, and after teaching for one semester I have come to believe this statement to be true. On the surface, there are many things that make teaching unappealing. The pay is low, the hours are long, and there is a general attitude of disrespect towards the profession. There are many mornings when I awake before the sun rises, reflect on a late evening spent grading and lesson plans, and wonder where I am going to find the energy to get through another day of students cursing each other and generally refusing to do anything productive with their time. This energy will not be found through financial gain or community standing, rather it must come from one's desire to teach. I have such a desire to teach. If you do as well then teaching is the profession for you and MTC is an excellent route to getting started in this profession; however, if you lack such a drive then teaching is not a route you should pursue.

If you can truly say that teaching is what you are meant to do then there is a further question of whether or not MTC is the best route for you to enter the field. When it comes to training, benefits, and immediate experience, no program can match MTC. Where MTC can experience some weakness and what might make MTC a poor choice for you are the location in which you will teach and the people that you will find around you while teaching. I will address these issues in turn.

Mississippi is a world unto itself. By some peoples' accounts, Mississippi qualifies as a third world country. While such a classification may be an exaggeration, there is no doubt that coming to teach in Mississippi will require you to make many adjustments. You will be in for a culture shock. Be ready to live fifteen miles from a grocery store. Be ready to shower in water as brown as the Mississippi River. Be ready to live in a community where jobs are a rarity and encountering someone with a college education is out of the norm. If you are not ready to deal with such daily encounters of an impoverished community then you are not ready to join MTC.

By joining MTC, you are agreeing to take on the challenge of teaching students with incredible amounts of baggage. You will have students that come from drug infested households. You will have students who can barely read in large part because their parents can barely read. You will have students who see no route out of the bad situation they are in, and you will have to deal with the behavioral fallout of such hopelessness. If what you want is a teaching job in which you go to school everyday to meet twenty smiling faces that are eager to learn and willing to do the work to achieve learning then MTC is not the program for you. You will have to fight to help give these students a future. If you are not willing to take on this struggle then you should not join MTC.

Why You Should Join The Mississippi Teacher Corps

So, you're an achieved soon to be college graduate, you have everything in life figured out except what to do next, and you've found yourself toying with the idea of packing your bags for the Mississippi Delta to try a round at teaching. Are you making the right decision?

As someone who was in a similar place less than a year ago and who ultimately ended up taking the plunge into the classroom, I see it only fitting that I offer my perspective on the experience and attempt to impart some words of wisdom which might help you in making your decision. I will provide you what I perceive as the reasons for joining the Mississippi Teacher Corps in two parts. First, I will outline why one would find teaching in a high poverty school district as a worthy use of two years. I will then outline why I believe the Mississippi Teacher Corps is one of the best routes to taking on such a challenge.

Teaching in high needs schools can be an incredibly rewarding job. There is very little that surpasses the satisfaction felt when seeing a student's face light up with the bright gleam of understanding. It is even more satisfying when you know that you played some role in bringing about that moment. Unfortunately, for many students in critical needs schools, these moments can be few and far between. The culprit is partially a matter of the home life, culture, parenting, and peers. Sadly, far too often the cause is also in part due to a dearth of qualified teachers. There are classrooms devoid of a certified teacher and there are classrooms with certified teachers who have lost the drive and devotion to the profession of teaching. While control over the components of a child's home life are far too often out of our hands, we do have the opportunity to influence the school environment that a students walk into everyday. You have the power to do something about the shortcomings of these school districts. You have the power to become that motivated, highly qualified teacher that occupies one of those previously empty classrooms. You have the power to make a student reach that moment of understanding a few more times in the course of his or her academic career. You have the power to influence the outcome of students' lives, to take a student from the streets to the universities. In short, this is why you should join a program like the Mississippi Teacher Corps, namely that there are students in need and you have the power to assist them.

With the moral argument out of the way, I can turn to more practical reasons for taking on teaching. You should consider joining a program like MTC if you enjoy teaching and seeing others learn. You should join a program like MTC if you enjoy working with children and young adults. Finally, you should join a program like MTC if you are capable of setting aside the highly idealistic views that made you accept my previously presented moral argument and are willing to embrace the reality that the change you make will most often come in small, barely noticeable moments. In other words, you should join a program like MTC if you are willing to accept that the crowning moment of your two years may be helping Tommy understand the steps of mitosis without ever becoming aware that in doing so you inspired him to go on to be a world class geneticist.

In regards to why someone should join MTC over other alternative route teaching programs, such as Teach for America, I will keep my comments short. If Mississippi is high on your list of places to teach, MTC offers the best opportunity. The program provides a free masters degree which you will complete within the two years of teaching. While it is true that TFA has arrangements that allow for the completion of a masters degree, MTC is unmatched in its integration of the degree with the program. While a masters with TFA requires additional work and stress on top of TFA training, the training is the masters work for MTC. Training with MTC is personal due to the small size and coursework is practice driven rather than theory driven. In other words, the training provided is meant to benefit you immediately in the day to day routines of your classroom. Joining the Mississippi Teacher Corps is a decision that I am satisfied with and will cherish for the rest of my life.

Creativity in Education

Creativity is something that has been on my mind a lot over the past few months. I have found that being a teacher has pushed the limits of my creativity to their max. As a campus leader in my undergraduate studies, I interviewed over fifty people for various leadership positions. In the interviews, my colleagues and I enjoyed testing our applicants creative side with a variety of off the wall questions. In one scenario, we would pick three items in the room (perhaps a garden hose, set of blindfolds, and a frisbee) and give the interviewee about five seconds to devise an event, using only the three items, that college students would enjoy. Creativity was something we valued in our applicants. Unfortunately, creativity was an area in which many applicants fell short.

As a teacher, I find myself daily in similar circumstances to those faced by the individuals I interviewed. I am supplied with a limited number of materials that do not necessarily go together and am asked to work miracles. I have enjoyed this challenge, but I have also recognized that it is a component of myself that the vast majority of my education to this point has failed to develop.

I recently watched a speech by an individual named Sir Ken Robinson who called contemporary education out for just this failure, namely a lack of development of creativity. In fact, Ken Robinson not only thinks that contemporary education systems do not support creativity but goes as far as to say that they effectively stifle creativity. Robinson sees today's education systems as being far too structured towards the development of subjects like math and science while ignoring students' desires to study more overlooked subjects like dance or art.

After listening to Robinson's speech, I was convinced. As I mentioned, I have felt firsthand the failure to develop creativity, and in taking on this job of teaching I have experienced how good it can feel to be creative. Its a pity if all of my creativity as a teacher only serves to degrade the creativity of those students in my classroom. Is it time to change my approach to this profession? While harmonious visions of students simultaneously dancing, painting, singing, and writing in my classroom give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, they seem to be little more than just that, visions. It is not realistic to think that I could create a classroom environment in which students all explore their creative impulses without limitation. This does not mean, however, that creativity must be snuffed out. Rather it means that creativity must be fostered within certain limitations. In a class of twenty some students it is necessary for some students to temporarily place their creative impulses to the side in order to foster the impulses of other students. The goal, though, would be for all students to have their creativity encouraged on the whole for the year.

My only worry about Robinson's call for creativity is that it might be taken to an extreme in which basic tenets of education would be overlooked. A student who explores their interest in dancing is a good thing. A student who explores their interest in dancing but never learns to write a grammatically correct sentence is not a good thing. The goal must be to find a balance between encouraging creativity and encouraging necessary life skills and knowledge. I would be interested to see Robinson provide a concrete plan for the encouragement of creativity as such pragmatic steps towards his ideal educational environment seemed to be lacking in his speech.

Note: Ken Robinson's speech can be found at the following address: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Arne Duncan Speaks: The Future of the School of Education

Arne Duncan, the United States Secretary of Education, recently presented a speech regarding the state of our nation's schools of education. This speech, whose transcript I have just completed reading, provided a critical examination of the most common route to to teacher certification, namely the traditional college of education, and offered a series of recommendations about the future of educating our educators. I will comment briefly on my reaction to Secretary Duncan's critique of schools of education, assess his recommendations for the future of education, and intermingle several of my own thoughts on the best way to approach the training of teachers.

Duncan offered a lengthy criticism of schools of education. His focus was on the numerous shortfalls in the training offered at these schools and the resulting lack of of quality graduates. Duncan contended that schools of education are disconnected from contemporary issues of education and generally offer a less than academically rigorous curriculum.

I will respond to each of these criticisms in turn. As regards the assertion that schools of education are disconnected from contemporary issues in the field, I would offer my agreement. It seems that most professors of education are far removed from the actual school classroom. This might be an unfair judgement on my part not only because I have only experienced one graduate school of education but also because many higher education departments are filled with individuals who to some extent are disconnected from the practice of their discipline. As a member of a chemistry research group, I can recall only a handful of times when the professor I worked for actually entered the laboratory and even on those occasions she certainly wasn't picking up a beaker to run an experiment. From my experience, the same holds true for the majority of professors in the sciences. Given that criticisms are rarely leveled against members of science departments for being disconnected, despite their hands off approach to the discipline, why is it fair to criticize professors of education for not being in the classroom? I think the answer lies in the differences of the two disciplines. Education is a discipline that does not lend itself well to being summarized in numbers and hands off analysis. Teaching is a craft of dealing with people. Being intertwined with changes in society, education requires an experience based approach to mastery. It is this experience of contemporary students that Secretary Duncan correctly points out is missing from the repertoire of many education professors.

In regard to lack of academic rigor, I again find myself agreeing with Secretary Duncan that schools of education offer a less than intellectually challenging curriculum. My experience with education courses is limited to that of one course at the University of Florida and my coursework through MTC at Ole Miss. While I agree that education coursework most often falls short of taking an intellectual titan, I do not necessarily see this as a negative of colleges of education. In many ways, the art of teaching is just that, an art. I do not think that an education course could ever demand the same higher order reasoning skills that a philosophy course can. Nor could an education course demand the same cognitive ability in applying complex formulas as a calculus course can. Education courses inability to match the other disciplines in these regards is not, however, a bad thing. Education requires an ability to think creatively, make split second decisions, and achieve great things with limited resources in a way that is unmatched by virtually all other fields of study. It is in these areas that education courses must develop an academic rigor that can eventually lead to respect of the field. For instance, rather than attempt to offer legitimate, respected coursework by asking education students to read about and contemplate theories of educational technique, education courses should ask students to think outside of the box by engineering innovative lessons out of objects found around the house. This would offer education students the mental challenge they desire while creating graduates that are more prepared to take on the actual classroom.

After criticising the current state of schools of education, Arne Duncan proceeds to name two keys to reinventing the training of future teachers. These two keys are research based training and increased clinical experience. By research based training, Duncan means to call for an inquiry into which schools of education are successfully producing quality teachers. He means to achieve this research by tracking teacher performance and linking this performance to the training the teacher received. Such an approach makes sense. After all, we cannot reform education if we have yet to determine which techniques work. Unfortunately for Duncan, this approach, while appropriate to undertake, will not render immediate improvement in teacher training and student learning. Collecting the necessary data, analyzing the data, and then bringing about the necessary reforms will be a lengthy process, a process that will not render immediate improvement to the graduation rates of America's youth that Duncan and his superior, Barack Obama, are urgently pressing for.

As a result, the overseers of the country's education programs are left to utilize the techniques which seem most plausible to offer results and have demonstrated success in smaller scale studies. One such approach is the clinical experience. By clinical experience, Secretary Duncan just means in the classroom training. Duncan praises several teacher preparation programs for their heavy emphasis on real primary and secondary classroom teaching. Secretary Duncan is correct in identifying hands on training as a critical component of successful education programs. Most teachers will assert that most of what they learned about teaching really took place once they started teaching. With this in mind, I was disappointed to see Duncan breeze over the impact of programs like TFA and MTC. Duncan praised these programs while simultaneously asserting that they are not the solution insofar as they train too few teachers per year. If Duncan likes the hands on approach to training teachers, which no one does better than MTC and TFA-esque programs then why not expand the presence of such programs? It is an obvious fault of logic to hold that a program like TFA cannot meet the growing demand for quality teachers merely because it does not currently train an adequate number of teachers.

I am sure my ideas regarding the optimal approach to teacher preparation will continue to be molded as I progress in my time as a teacher.   

Homework

Coming into my job as a teacher, I planned to give homework every night.  I was and for the most part still am convinced that homework is a critical part of a child's learning of the material.  Despite this belief, I have given no more than one homework assignment per week.  Some weeks my students have escaped without any homework.  My reasons for not assigning homework are several.  First, I have only recently figured out a manageable way of collecting and grading homework.  Trying to take up, grade, and return 110 pieces of paper was far too time consuming to do on a daily basis.  I have now moved to a system in which I visually check homework, grade for completion, and mark the score on a checklist.  The second reason why I have not given homework regularly is a lack of resources for assigning homework.  I do not have enough textbooks to send home with students, and I am limited to 400 copies per month, a number which does not allow for many assignments.  I tried giving homework using a class website, but I found that too many of my students lack reliable access to the computer and the internet.  

As a result, I have spent a semester wanting to give homework but only giving it rarely.  Near the end of the first 9 weeks, the superintendent spoke at our staff meeting and imparted some words regarding homework that made me ponder whether or not my lack of homework was such a bad thing.  Our superintendent thinks homework is a mistake.  He does not believe that homework leads to learning, and he believes that it detracts from family time.  My original reaction to his position on homework was one of disagreement; however, in order to further consider his position I tracked down several other resources on the topic.  

The first article I ran across was a piece by another blogger.  In the article, the author rants against the time consuming (more than 2 hours per night) nature of his 7th grade daughter's homework.  The author cites several books which claim that homework has little correlation with higher achievement goes on to make the claim that instead of homework children should  "...be encouraged to use their after school time to explore their own curiosities, read books of their own choice, to play, and to get adequate sleep".  

While I tend to agree with the author that homework often is assigned in overwhelmingly large doses, I do not see that it follows that all homework needs to be done away with.  Rather than abolishing homework, I believe schools need to focus on giving homework that is concise, purposeful, and tailored towards brining out the curiosity that the mentioned author feels traditional homework kills.  For instance, instead of assigning a student thirty textbook problems on plants the teacher could ask students to create a poster using plant leaves found in their neighborhood.  Such a homework assignment would reinforce the material on plants while encouraging students to explore the outdoors.

I went on to read a letter written by an elementary school principal which informed parents of the school's new policy against homework.  The letter pointed out that homework was being done away with because of a lack of evidence of its benefit for students.  The letter went on to point out that the following five items were shown to improve student well-being:

• Children need to play outside for at least an hour after the school day. They should be at the point where they are almost sweating.
• Dinner with your family every night or at least 4 times a week. This is shown to decrease eating disorders in females, decrease smoking and drug abuse rates in males and recent research suggests it teaches life-long good eating habits—more fruits and vegetables.
• Early to bed. Research suggests that children need 10-12 hours of sleep a day to be ready to learn.
• Limited television, video games and computer time, especially an hour before bed time.
• Reading time every evening. This is a great time for the whole family to sit and read together.

While I agree that these five tasks are an important part of the positive development of a child, I wonder if the principal unduly underestimates homework's ability to coincide and support these goals.  I will address each of the above mentioned five goals in turn.

1) Homework does not have to interfere with playing outside.  There is enough time in the evening for both outside play and homework so long as homework is assigned in reasonable amounts.  Furthermore, homework assignments which actively engage students in tasks around their homes allow students to explore the outdoors while completing a homework assignment.  Such an approach has the added benefit of helping the students build connections between their immediate surroundings and the material covered.

2) Eating dinner takes the same amount of time out of a students evening regardless of whether or not the dinner takes place with the entire family unit.  Eliminating homework does not have any bearing on whether or not family dinners take place.

3) It will again be mentioned that so long as homework is assigned in reasonable quantities there is no reason why a student should not be able to complete homework and get adequate sleep.

4) The responsible parent has just disconnected their child's television and video game system.  What is the child going to spend their time doing for the rest of the evening?  Why not spend some portion of the evening doing homework?  Less time spent with the electronics should mean more time available to fit in homework.

5) Homework in any subject should require frequent reading.  Does it make sense for the principal to encourage parents to have their children read at home while discouraging teachers from having students read at home?

There is a need for a move towards more inquiry based homework.  There is a need for a move towards less time consuming homework.  There is a need for a move towards broader homework which provides students with a framework in which to let their curiosities explore.  There is not, however, a need to eliminate homework.