Using Assessments in Teaching

Formative Assessment Validity

A trendy and popular movement in education, the professional learning community (PLC) may revolutionize teaching practices. In a nutshell, the movement professionalizes the practice of teaching by forcing teachers to rigorously analyze their practice by using a powerful tool--collaborative examination of assessment data. The data, properly collected and presented, shows how much teaching and learning value the teacher adds to a student, and, more importantly, the strengths and weaknesses of the teacher’s practice against specific state standards. Therefore, the teacher knows what she must do to improve and knows where to find assistance, by collaborating with another member of the department that has more success teaching that particular standard. After reading Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness, I am less confident in the power of comparing small samples of assessment data. When we compare larger, “normal” and therefore more randomly selected student samples, I feel more confident that the differences between teacher outcomes are statistically valid. Certainly, teaching technique must be analyzed somehow, and I am more comfortable examining the teacher’s method itself (which is what this writing is attempting to do) and less comfortable relying only on outcomes.

Looking closer at assessments, the linchpin of the PLC process, teachers have many different types of formative and cumulative at their disposal. If a department chooses to improve assessments for PLC work, the assessments must be common to the department at minimum, and later common to the entire district. In order, easiest to hardest to grade, teachers may use for their assessments multiple choice, fill-in, short answer or short essay questions. Longer essays force students to recall and not just identify the answer, and also compel students to critically analyze and synthesize data. Thus long essays may enjoy the highest validity of all assessments, but they are also the most difficult and time consuming to grade. By developing a detailed rubric and training teachers in using the rubric, teachers can work together to avoid reliability issues that usually mar grading across different assessors. Multiple choice tests require no rubric and the reliability between teachers is perfect—all teachers use the same key. However, since multiple choice tests often show ability to identify concepts rather than to work with them in any useful practical way, I have doubts about their validity in judging the “whole” student. I believe that the AP Board assesses students using both multiple choice and essays for good reason. As a one-time AP exam reader, I can vouch for the excellent rubrics and training readers received using those rubrics when grading essays. (See Figure  below for looking at the tradeoff between assessment validity and cross-teacher reliability.)

Reliability Versus Validity of Assessments

Validity of Assessment

High

                                                            D                     E

                                                                        C

                                                                                                B          A        

                                                                                   

 

Low                                                                 High

Cross-Teacher Reliability

A: multiple choice assessments

B: fill-in assessments

C: short answer assessments

D: essays without rubric

E: essays with rubric

Point E, the essays with rubric, combines the highest level of validity with a moderately high level of cross-teacher reliability. Unfortunately, essays take the longest to grade and since the department must create a rubric, demand much preparation time. Teachers consider time a precious resource as well as validity and reliability. (See figure below.) Multiple choice tests are popular since they are graded quicker than any other assessment—you just run them through the scantron machine, and if you are as quick as I, at 20 per minute.

Time Needed for Grading

Time Needed for

Preparation of Assessment                                  E

High

                                                A                                

                                                    B     

                                                            C

                                                                                    D                                

                                                                                   

Low                                                                 High

Time needed for grading assessment

A: multiple choice assessments

B: fill-in assessments

C: short answer assessments

D: essays without rubric

E: essays with rubric

However, multiple choice questions take a lot of time to compose. Teachers are not trained to create multiple wrong answers! The short answer test may offer a reasonable compromise between test creation and time to grade and take the least amount of time when both test composition and grading time are taken into account. Teachers may prefer one formative assessment over another based on both time constraints and the level of validity needed. After administering the assessment, teachers may chose to re-teach a lesson or make other adjustments to future lessons to increase student learning. Successful teachers, in the spirit of the PLC movement, work with their colleagues to find successful strategies for re-teaching.

Informal Formative Assessments

Teachers that include a formative assessment, and therefore check for understanding at some point in every lesson plan, will ensure that more students learn. These assessments can be created by the seat of one’s pants, without preparation, and are usually labeled as “informal” assessments. These may include a “ticket out of class;” asking a specific student the answer to a key concept, and then (if that fails) getting the student to partner up or asking everyone in the class; splitting the class arbitrarily in half and debating a controversial point; and engaging in games. My favorite three games, baseball, jeopardy, and flyswatter (matamoscas) can be created quickly when needed and are so enjoyable that the students ask to play them if there are a few minutes left in the period.

• Baseball (also mentioned above in my [students’] favorite things): allows students to pick a question that is easy or difficult. Students ask for a “single” (easiest), “double” (medium difficulty), “triple” (hard) or “home run” (very difficult). When a student gives a correct response to the question, she goes to one of the four “bases” I have set up around the room. If she gets the answer wrong, she, the batter, is “out” and her team continues with a new batter. If it’s the third out, the other team bats. Each team scores runs when hitters are batted in by others or home runs. Rules for baseball are only loosely enforced, always in a way that allows me to emphasize material they ought to know. Unprepared or lazy students may ask for a home run question to avoid showing the class how little they actually know. When that happens, reserve home run questions for high achieving students or make a miss of a home run question worth two outs. I recycle home run questions, using them for a “double” or “triple” question later since we have lost the novelty of the question, and another student may have looked up the answer to the question. I can play a few innings of baseball in fifteen minutes.
• Jeopardy: demands more teacher preparation than baseball. In my advanced classes I often assign students to come up with answers needed to run the game. These answers must be categorized by topic and by level of difficulty. Harder answers are worth more points. Try to run the game similar to the television show. The winning group can win a nominal prize such as a picture taken with a digital camera.
• Flyswatter (matamoscas): answers must be set up on the board before class, either by the teacher or by advanced students. Typically the composer creates 20 one- or two-word answers that match questions the teacher will give to the contestants. Two contestants compete. Each contestant has his back turned to the board (and the answers), turning towards the board, rolled up newspaper (or flyswatter) in hand. The first contestant that swats at the correct answer on the board wins that round and faces a new contestant. Both Jeopardy and flyswatter require mere identification of the answer. Teachers can compose questions that require higher order thinking, a la Bloom’s Taxonomy, for baseball.
• Interactive lecture: resembles a conversation on two levels. First, the teacher converses with herself, paraphrasing actual history. What might FDR have said to officials in the State Department right before meeting Stalin at Yalta? (Play it out.) What was Reagan’s conversation with Gorbachev as they tried to hammer out an arms control agreement? (Play it out.) Second, the teacher asks questions to students. Why did FDR need Soviet help at the end of WWII? How did Reagan get Gorbachev to go along on arms control? An interactive lecture presents material in a more entertaining fashion and checks immediately for understanding.

The informal formative assessments above and formal formative assessments fulfill two objectives: they show if the students learned the material and, since it’s usually necessary, gave an opportunity to review the material in an enjoyable way. Occasionally, I let students know that I will be using the same questions they encountered on an informal assessment on a formal assessment. Since the formal assessment counts for a grade, I have now increased interest in learning the material. What if only a few kids have not learned the material? Should the class be held back for the benefit of a few? Perhaps the top students need to work with the laggards. I prefer that slower learners get the benefit of some remedial opportunity built into the school structure, such as a study hall or mandatory tutoring opportunity. PLC writers have demonstrated how this can be done. (See figure.)

Remedial Opportunities when Students Don’t Learn

Informal formative assessment                                       Teacher reviews material         

Students learn

Students do not learn                            Remedial Opportunity

For this model to work, teachers need to have enough slack time in their curriculum mapping for a small amount of re-teaching time, but the greatest responsibility for re-teaching falls upon the system already in place such as a school day study hall.

Homework as Formative Assessment

I use homework primarily (though not exclusively) as a formative assessment—to find out what the kids do and do not know. Since I use homework as an instrument to determine where teaching should go instead of an opportunity to engage in new learning, I keep the assignments short and infrequent. I prefer the bulk of new learning to take place in class where I am available to help with understanding of concepts, vocabulary and writing technique. The education literature does not show a strong correlation between the amount of homework assigned and student performance, especially with at-risk students. Therefore, when I do assign homework I use it primarily to give me feedback and not as an opportunity to grade.

Summative Assessments

Summative assessments do not enable much learning to take place—since after the summative there is no second chance—but, ironically, these assessments are the ones that give both teachers and students headaches and ulcers. Final exams, standardized tests such as the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), CST in California (AKA the STAR test), ACT, SAT, and AP exams, and music auditions put both teacher and student under a microscope. These high stakes tests determine who graduates, who goes to a four-year school, and under NCLB, whether a school that receives federal funding can continue under its current leadership and teaching staff. Since the feds keep raising the bar, increasing numbers of schools have become low performing schools. If the government makes no changes to the process, in a few years all schools will be low performing schools, and, if they receive federal funding, will be subject to corrective action.

Summative assessments can be gut-wrenching experiences for both teacher and student, but we can also make these assessments interesting learning experiences. A final exam can contain an essay prompt that asks for synthesis—asking the student to retell or put facts together in a creative way, using critical thinking. Examples could include questions like the following.

• US History: Show parallels between the 1968 and 2008 Democratic Convention.
• Psychology: Evaluate this clinical vignette and write up this patient under Axes I and II.
• Describe how your membership in groups and your beliefs about the meaning of life have made you who you are.
• World History: Explain why the French and American Revolutions progressed differently.
• Economics: show both theoretically and practically why Keynesian economic policies will (or won’t) work and give historical examples from the crash of 2008 that back up your opinion.

How Teachers Benefit from Summative Assessments

By analyzing state testing results through the number crunching software of Data Director or by hand, teachers can examine the correlation of semester grades with the state test scores. When a teacher discovers a gross discrepancy, such as top test scores but a class grade of C, he needs to explore the reasons why. (See figure.)

Standardized Testing Results Versus Classroom Performance for the Individual Student

Standardized Testing Results
High	Quadrant I Ideal	Quadrant II Unmotivated but bright student or test results may have been altered. Classroom assessments may have little predictive validity.
Low	Quadrant III Student may have “bubbled” test, randomly picking answers or student may have cheated his way through the class. Schools must make standardized tests meaningful and important. Teachers must defend against cheating.	Quadrant IV Expected valid score. Schools must intervene to help low-achieving students learn.
Classroom Performance	High	Low

Teachers expect students to fall within quadrants I and IV. Gifted students usually do well on standardized tests and earn high marks in their classes. Poor students usually do poorly in both testing and grading. Problems arise when students fall into the other quadrants.

What to do right now: work with your department and come up with a plan to better the performance of students in quadrants II and III. Why does your quadrant II student refuse to work at his potential? How can I arrange my assessments to prevent the quadrant III student from cheating or how can I get her to take the standardized tests more seriously?

Teaching Activities to Use in a Pinch

Activities to use in a pinch

Not every school day goes well—students learning and the teacher enjoying herself. Some days have been and will be quite challenging. I’ve been threatened and laughed at by students, splattered by water balloons, chewed out by parents, and criticized by administrators. Even during these difficult and frustrating times, I found balance with a satisfying teaching moment or successful lesson. Typically, I would engage in a few of my (students’) favorite things.

• An informal assessment with “baseball”—I pick the kids and they pick the difficulty of the assessment question—a single, double, triple, or homerun. I run them around the class if they answer the question successfully.
• With dramatic passion, partaking in a read aloud of a passage of primary source text.
• A performance of a skit, created myself or purchased, on a historical topic.
• The bubble: three or four students discuss a difficult subject while the rest of the class watches.
• Students pairing-up to discuss or review a concept followed by a demanding Socratic seminar.
• Illustrating a concept with a cartoon, earning extra credit if the work is funny.
• Asking students to write a short (three-paragraph) story with the six vocabulary words we just learned
• Providing feedback on whether a concept was learned through students self-reporting, using a Likert (one to five) scale.
• Psychological demonstrations and experiments on memory, reinforcement and punishment, and perception.
• Assigning poster presentations or PowerPoint presentations on controversial history and economics topics and biographical anecdotes.
• Analyzing primary source documents such as political cartoons, photographs, short speeches, and editorials placed around the room.
• Bringing in technology—making a video commercial of a concept, “publishing” a biography in Facebook format, and doing web searches.

Some of these activities are teacher-centered and some are student-centered. They all engage both student and teacher and usually succeed. Teachers may compose these activities themselves, copy and adopt colleagues’ activities, discover and implement lesson plans from trade magazines such as Social Education and American Educator, find lessons on various internet sites, buy lessons from publishers, and create lessons through a summer group devoted to that purpose such as Teaching American History (TAH).

Too many teachers mindlessly use the textbook as their main teaching tool. I find three problems with this. First, the state standards and your department’s agreement on which ones are most critical and not the pages of the textbook should determine your curriculum. Second, many textbooks include topics that are not part of the state standards and do not include enough material on standards that may be more important. Third, students with poor literacy skills and those unable to steadily concentrate have trouble reading a dense textbook.

Teacher Models and Attitudes

Observational Learning

Teachers must manage the classroom by modeling the behavior they want to see imitated by their students. I learned many teacher techniques by sitting in the classroom for twenty years (kindergarten through 12^th grade, four years of college, two years of a masters program and one year of a credential program). I have observed teachers from the perspective of a student since the mid 1960s, and I have stolen from the best! Students will imitate teacher behaviors, especially if they perceive that those behaviors are noticed and rewarded by other powerful adults. When I go to work, I dress up as if I’m attending a corporate board meeting in San Francisco. In other words, I wear slacks and a tie four or five days a week, and if I attend a public event such as Back to School Night or a district board meeting I wear a suit. My outfit radiates professionalism, purposefulness, maturity, wealth, and ambition. Parents mistake me for an administrator or district official and ask me questions, because I look like I am in charge. Students notice this attention, deserved or not.

Would I teach better in jeans and a flannel shirt? My dress does not alter my teaching nor does it change my classroom technique one way or another. However, my outfit does generate more respect from both students and parents than if I wear jeans and a flannel shirt. I feel that as an uber-authority (in the students’ eyes) I will be subject to less acting out than the teacher in jeans and the flannel shirt. I will enjoy less disruptions and more successful lessons. I advise all high school teachers to dress up like business professionals unless they are preparing science labs, art projects, or physical education programs. Unfair as it is, a kid will construct a poor first impression of a teacher that looks like a grounds keeper. He will maintain that impression for a long time, saying to himself, “If he doesn’t have respect for his appearance and his profession, why should I?” I want a student’s, parent’s and administrator’s first impression and subsequent sentiments to be working for me, not against me. Psychologists state that visual clues are used more than other modalities. Abraham Lincoln bought a new suit so voters would not “judge the peanut by its shell.” You may be subject to some mocking by your teacher peers who dress like fast-food workers. Accept the teasing in good cheer. It’s still worth dressing up.

Similarly, I do not want to discount our power and prestige by belittling our remuneration. I tell students that this profession pays a middle class salary and allows me to stay on the same yearly cycle as my children, and unlike a lot of jobs, I really enjoy the work. I do not criticize the school board for remuneration issues while at work, nor should you. Save those conversations for your union meetings.

What to do right now: Dress for success and count your blessings. You get paid to work in the world of ideas and you get to help kids.

How the Best Teacher Models Perform

My own best teacher models, my astronomy professor father, music professors Gene Graves and Frank Sumares, and psychologist James Temple, were performers. I observed their techniques on how to attract and hold an audience. My dad used to throw chalk in the air and catch it behind his back. He showed slideshows of galactic cataclysms and metaphorically elucidated the expansion of the universe by pretending to be a raisin in a loaf of baking raisin bread. A teacher doesn’t have to be the center of attention, but that attention must be channeled somewhere in the classroom and not allowed to dissipate.

Physical Fitness and Teaching Success

Teachers who don’t direct attention to a class project must direct it to themselves and “work the crowd” like a musician, comedian or stumping politician. The more the teacher directs attention to himself, the more energy the teacher must expend, and therefore a teacher that uses this style often must get enough rest, proper nutrition and exercise. Many, if not most, successful people say their daily workouts are a key part of their success. George W. Bush ran on an Air Force One treadmill on his trips to Europe. Barack Obama loves his gym workouts, golf, and basketball. I recommend doing something vigorous every day, and I often exercise early (5AM) so I’ll be sharp for my 7:25 class. Ironically, many of my students, 17 years young, near the peak of their physical prowess, shuffle in as if they are being led to their execution. They didn’t get enough sleep, have breakfast, or enjoy a workout. If I get my workout finished early, the students (and staff) benefit from my alertness and tranquil mood. My equanimity cannot be disturbed by adolescent angst.

I found an unintended benefit of exercise early on in my teaching career--showmanship. I hold the attention of students that are more impressed by physical strength than mental acuity. I tell these kids that I can do more pushups than they can do. Then I do the pushups when the class needs a break. Students love this, whether they are athletic or not, and this intervention often leads to a breaking of barriers and increased respect from hard-to-motivate kids. See below.

Physical Fitness and Teaching Success

Out-of-shape teacher ------ less respect from “physical" students------teacher works harder-----teacher is more tired

Physically-fit teacher-----teacher is sharp and “on”------more respect from “physical” students-----teaching is more successful and fun

Looking Good and Having Fun, While Modeling Somewhat Conventional Attitudes

As you may have surmised, a teacher that dresses as I have suggested and exercises at 5AM exudes preparation and ambition, zest for life, drive and purposeness, and success. No bohemian attitudes radiate from my display. Radicalism and counterculture attitudes are not inherently shocking, but education stakeholders—colleagues, parents, administration, school board and students—tend to be fundamentally conservative when dealing with the young. After stakeholders digest your personal appearance and vivacity, they evaluate your attitudes and teaching philosophy. I base my attitudes toward teaching on a simple unarticulated mission statement borrowed from jazz writer Michael Zwerin (Close Enough for Jazz, Quartet Books, London): “You can’t beat fun.” Learning must be fun for the students, and teaching must be fun for you. When I visibly enjoy myself, acting in a friendly way, smiling, telling stories and jokes about the historical subject, acting, and giving demonstrations to explain something in a novel way, the students usually enjoy themselves too. Students, when they like what they do, work “in the zone” of efficient and deep learning, and the task becomes play rather than work. As I stated earlier, I want to encourage an internal, implicit enjoyment of learning and avoid an externally-based reward for learning which leads to education being looked at like work. (I get “paid” for it, so it must not be fun.) Thus I model enjoyment and excitement by learning publicly. When I have the time, I read along with the in-class reading, remarking to disruptive students that they should not interrupt my learning. In addition to getting a good laugh, this comment shows students that knowledge is inherently valuable. I do not read in order to better my grade, make more money, or impress anyone. I do it because it’s fun. What could be more powerful than modeling learning for learning’s sake in front of your students? Teaching and learning must be interesting and exciting. If it’s not, why bother? Neither you nor the kids are then getting anything out of the partnership, and the profession doesn’t pay enough to do it only for the money.

Classroom Management Issues

Classroom Management Issues—Day to Day Tenor of the Room

I keep classroom management issues, or, more precisely, the tenor or activity level of the room, constantly in awareness. Are the students excited, absorbed, interested, and enjoying learning? We all hope so. Sometimes, however, teachers work with distracted, bored, and angry students. Teachers must deliver a lesson plan while maintaining awareness about how their students seem to be feeling.

The tenor of the room guides the teacher in selecting how to deliver the lesson plan. For example, I do not ask students to read a textbook if they are sleepy or bored. A group activity or discussion could wake them up. Then, after they have come around, assign the reading. I reserve some room for improvisation in planning and delivering each lesson, because I cannot predict tomorrow’s mood. When I judge correctly, matching the type of lesson (reading, activity, group work, lecture, etc.) with the mood of the students, the lesson goes over well. When I don’t judge the classroom disposition correctly, or, more likely, become so enthralled with a lesson that I don’t pay attention to the student’s mood, I end up working harder to keep everyone engaged and focused.

What to do right now:

If students are:

• Bored or sleepy, try a group or partnering activity.
• Feeling exhausted and overworked, try a skit or a funny story that relates to the lesson. The lesson may also need to be broken down into smaller chunks. Or send the kids to the computer lab with a webquest created for your current unit.
• Overly excited and scattered, try a short lecture or a read aloud. Follow that with a silent reading assignment.
• Distracted, try to refocus students using music or art.

Group work or partnering, assignments using technology, drama or storytelling add interest and excitement to the classroom. Lectures, read alouds, music and art calm down and focus students. Reading a textbook, if set up correctly with introductions to the material, also calms students down. Do you want to energize or calm and focus the kids? In my student teaching I was often overly ambitious. These students could handle an hour-long lecture on the British Civil War I thought. These were the best students in the school, bound for the top universities in California. Their vapid stares by the end of class and poor performance on a subsequent exam proved that I was wrong. I made two mistakes—lecturing for too long and not breaking the material down into smaller pieces. Similarly, teachers often respond to the pressure of high stakes state testing and copious state standards by talking too much and jamming too much material in a lesson. The results—glassy-eyed students and ghastly test scores—confirm that teaching less achieves more. Students learn and retain more when the curriculum is delivered in a variety of ways and broken down into smaller chunks. If there is extra time in the lesson, check for understanding and re-teach as necessary. In other words, pursue depth of learning over breadth of learning. If you and your department have skillfully mapped out the curriculum beforehand, covering the requisite breadth will probably take care of itself.

Classroom Management Issues—General Overall Environment

Looking at classroom management issues more globally, independent of the day-to-day moods of the students, teachers can plan an environment based on their personality and instructing style. Teachers must find a general approach to running the high school classroom that sets limits, yet feels caring and warm to both teacher and student. See Figure I, Teacher Personality Versus Amount of Structure, below.

Figure I

Teacher Personality Versus Amount of Structure

                                    Teacher Personality

                                    Warm and Empathic

                                               

           

Amount of Structure                             A

Low                                                                                                                             High

Cold and Uncaring

Figure I borrows from the ideas of systems theory. The X (horizontal) axis is the amount of classroom structure, especially rules and procedures. The Y (vertical) axis stands for teacher personality characteristics. Point A is Spinrad’s ideal management style for the middle class high school classroom. The Y axis, warmth and empathy can be observed by how often the teacher smiles, jokes with students, asks about their family, friends and extracurricular activities, self-discloses, responds to student questions, comments on problems (in and out of the classroom), clowns and acts in a self-depreciating manner, goes off topic to attend to a “teaching moment,” creates class jokes, signs yearbooks, performs in rallies, writes and uses music and drama (and other emotion-based devices), and lastly, visibly enjoys teaching the material and the interacting with students. Most teachers cannot exhibit an elevated amount of warmth for every class—it takes too much energy and few of us feel this loving day in and day out. The students would also object. Many adolescents prefer a more business-like tone from adults. However, I recommend that teachers consider working on the warm and empathetic side of the cold to warm continuum. If the classroom is mildly inviting, students will want to stay.

What to do right now: decide in advance how much and what you will self-disclose and how much privacy you want for yourself and family.

The X axis, the amount of classroom structure—rules and procedures—can be found in how the teacher arranges the room; writes, explains, and practices rules and procedures; and punishes infractions. Teenagers need and crave some structure, but too much dampens creativity and openness of ideas, turning the classroom into a bureaucratic labyrinth instead of a place for learning. Who wants to go to school at the DMV? So here too, I prefer to teach in the middle of the continuum, leaning slightly more towards structure, as shown in the placement of point A. Teachers can increase structure by modifying the layout of desks. Turning tables or desks toward each other decreases structure. Desks organized in rows, faced toward the teacher increases structure. Reviewing rules and procedures throughout the year and enforcing them increases structure. Routine tasks such as writing lecture notes on the board before class or always showing a PowerPoint at the start of class increases structure.

I desire enough structure so that the class is perceived as safe with the teacher in control. Students must know a few general rules and procedures and abide by them. That is all. Teachers have the power to add or subtract structure as they wish, based on the maturity of the students and the class interactions. Younger students or classes with a critical mass of rebellious or unruly students require more structure. Mature students that collaborate and find creative solutions need a teacher who will loosen structure and step out of the way. Thus I find it foolish to ask most 15-year-olds to brainstorm, since they cannot handle the freedom. Similarly, teachers perform a disservice when they keep well-behaved, gifted high school seniors away from disorderly but creative group projects.

Teachers may adjust the amount of classroom structure in the same class over the course of a year. Most teachers tend to relax structure and punitive sanctions over the course of the school year, starting the year on the strict side and loosening up later if the students can handle the freedom. Teachers must find the level that works for them and the students. I have seen classrooms with the strictness of San Quentin State Prison and others that remind me of the chaos of Grand Central Station at 5PM on a Friday. Since structure must change with differing circumstances, I don’t always find the proper level. During a chaotic outdoor event I asked some of my sophomores to move to a different spot. The art teacher told me to leave them alone—they were fine where they were. He was right—for his style of teaching.

What to do right now: The teacher can and must adjust the amount of structure to fit his or her style and fit the needs of adolescents. These students respond positively to firm limits and a feeling of safety in the classroom but also require enough freedom to encourage creativity and exchange of ideas.

Who to Call When the Limits are Tested

Adolescents will test the structure and limits set up by the teacher, since this is what youth do in modern American culture. How should an educator react? Teachers have not been trained as policemen, drill sergeants, or probation officers. Lacking preparation, beginning teachers and occasionally veterans throw the book (figuratively) at the offender, sending him or her to the office for relatively minor infractions. Sending a student to the assistant principal (AP) for chewing gum gives both the student and the AP the message that you, the teacher, cannot handle minor discipline issues on your own. No, instead, the teacher must handle all infractions except the most draconian. You were there, and the AP wasn’t, and you know the context of the infraction. Does this kid always act like this, did the incident serve as a challenge to your authority, and do you want to keep the power vested in you or give it away to an AP?

An AP must be brought in if a student threatens physical harm to self or others (and you may be required to warn the intended victim as well) and in incidents involving extreme defiance and controlled substances. District policy occasionally takes the discipline procedure out of the teacher’s hands, as in cases of plagiarism or vandalism. Sometimes a few kids take over a class, especially if the teacher is a powerless substitute, and then again the AP must be called. In most other cases, in a role similar to parenting, the teacher serves as lawmaker, judge, and executor of classroom discipline and must handle the problem herself.

Proper Discipline When the Limits are Tested

A good dishwasher uses the least amount of muscles, soap and water to get the job done. Using too much is costly, an inefficient use of resources, prematurely exhausting, and may even damage the Teflon pans. Similarly, using the least amount of punishment necessary to change a student’s behavior leads to a focused, successfully-paced lesson and maintains the effective mood in the classroom. Teachers also support the adolescents’ sense of justice when they see minor infractions followed with appropriately light punishments. Figure II, below, illustrates how different interventions affect the pace of instruction in the classroom.

 

Figure II

Interventions with Problem Behavior, Least to Most Interupting

A staring at the problem behavior or nonverbally asking the offending object to be put away

B joking about the problem behavior without looking at it

C walking over to where the problem behavior is occurring while continuing to teach

D asking the disrupting student an assessment question on the task at hand

E nonverbally asking for note, gum, cell phone, Ipod, etc. to be surrendered to teacher

F saying the student’s name in a barely loud enough voice for the student to hear it

G writing on the board or telling the class that every minute of disruption will be added to the time they must stay in class after the bell rings and following through OR writing on the board or telling the class that every name written down will get in-class detention writing Latin verb conjugations or an equally odious task

H shut down—standing silently and staring at the class, waiting for them to react

*I taking a student outside to discuss his/her behavior

J writing a referral during class and calling for a yard duty escort to send the offender to the office or calling an administrator to the classroom

K taking a student outside and calling the student’s guardian on a cell phone—the “nuclear bomb” intervention—very disruptive to class time and interrupting the pace of learning

*The class should be able to see but not hear the actual lecture. The teacher must use acting skills, appearing angry for the class but not sounding angry to the misbehaving student. Notice that the teacher avoids wherever possible public humiliation, since it works poorly with adolescents who so badly need to “save face” among their peers.

Positive Reinforcement

As one with a background in behaviorism may attest, reinforcing desired behaviors achieves more than punishing undesired actions. A reinforced student is a happy student and will repeat the reinforced behavior (by definition). Some teachers give out primary reinforcers such as candy. However, explicit (external) reinforcers may take the place of the more powerful and long-lasting implicit (internal) reinforcers. Teachers should give students an acknowledging smile and kind word for a job well done, but I do not think candy or overly effusive praise works well as a reinforcer. Will the student still perform if the reinforcement is not given? I find the best reinforcers include doing interesting work and receiving immediate feedback for that work. Both of these are implicit reinforcers. Grades work well as a reinforcer, and a teacher that gives frequent assessments, whether or not they are marked in the grade book, employs a powerful tool.

These reinforcers, work that is inherently interesting and performance feedback, also duplicate the behavioral contingencies students will encounter later in life outside the classroom. Few of us get paid every day, but most teachers get to learn something new and receive daily feedback on our performance. Reinforcers work better than punishment. Punishment doesn’t tell the student what TO do, only what NOT to do. Punishment produces side effects such as anger and sullenness and so should be used sparingly. Does the problem behavior require an intervention at all? Some bad behavior will go away if ignored for a minute.

When to Use Punishment Instead of Reinforcement

Punishment MUST be used occasionally, and the teacher that tries to survive on using only reinforcement in a class of unsocialized adolescents will have a harder time than the father trying to logically convince a two-year-old in the grocery store to stop throwing things off the shelf. Secondly, teachers must punish poor behavior occasionally or it loses its ability to serve as a deterrent. We do not have our students for an unlimited amount of time and cannot afford to waste any-- that ten-minute disruption may be 20 percent of the class time. Punishment works quickly and it works well in shutting down unwanted behavior. I have noticed three types of adolescent misbehavior in the classroom and have labeled them bravado, shutdown, and clowning. The teacher can determine which of these types is at hand by monitoring his own emotions.

Bravado

The student full of bravado uses loud profanity and boasts, also loudly, of fighting or sexual prowess, or substance abuse. The student wants to impress others with his toughness and show that he’s not afraid of this teacher or any rules. Other students will watch closely how you react, and if you do nothing this obnoxious behavior will spread to other students. When you have one or more of these students in a classroom, teaching feels a bit scary, like you are a warden in a prison. I rarely see this type of misbehavior if I have the student for a semester or more. Almost always, the student is in summer school or I am a temporary teacher, a short-term sub (or student teacher). Anecdotally I have noticed more bravado in mixed sex rather than single sex classrooms.

What to do right now: Resist the urge to publicly mock or confront these students, because they then feel forced not to lose face These kids often respond to adults that have relations with them. You don’t have that relationship. If you have time, find someone that does and you will have all the leverage over this student that you need. This might be a coach, another teacher, a parent, or the assistant principal. Until you find this person, stay calm and dignified and ask the student to quiet down. If he still doesn’t behave, write a referral and with little fanfare send him out of the classroom or to the office.

Shutdown

This student refuses to cooperate—won’t read, won’t do the writing assignment, and won’t participate in any form. Her mind is elsewhere, not on your class. Often the student will attempt to cheat if worried about her grade. When you have one or more of these students in a classroom, teaching feels tiring—the student is capturing all your energy.

What to do right now: Often the student is showing learned helplessness rather than purposely acting out, so a kind word may be the best intervention at first. If the student is not suffering but has decided to fail, get numerous respected adults to remind the student to get to work. These adults could include the student’s family, coaches, or other teachers the student likes. Thirdly, make a deal with the student: “You will pass if you do…” and keep your agreement. Lastly, perhaps this student and the rest of the class could benefit from a more engaging lesson or some partnering work. You can’t beat fun.

Clowning

This student wants attention and wants to stop working. He may become a hero in the eyes of his fellows by finding a way to allow everyone else to stop working too. He gestures, jokes, ridicules, belches, makes faces, and throws things behind the teacher’s back—in a summary steals the attention that should be on the assignment or the teacher. He turns serious and significant discussions or debates into a mockery. The teacher has great difficulty focusing the class. When you have one or more of these students in a classroom, teaching feels exasperating as your best efforts are deflected and you are unable to build up a head of steam. What to do right now: Try your best to stay on track by ignoring the offending student while exhorting the class to get back to work. In more extreme cases, send out the aberrant student or give him a special job to do around the classroom or on the critical class assignment.

Technology and Teaching

The relationships between teacher, student, and parent have changed by evolving societal norms but also by the evolution in technology. Students can reach their parents throughout the day, through cell phones and email. Similarly, parents expect teachers to respond quickly to messages. Yet, pedagogy has not advanced much since the days of my grandfather. He and my children were taught high school with a teacher, a desk and a board. We have learned, along with 30 or so others, in neat desks arranged in rows—a factory formula—for 100 years! Why do high school teachers typically have five classes per day, thirty kids per class, teaching about 150 kids per day? Through using the factory model, we can educate the most pupils using the least amount of resources—that is, this model is the most efficient. We sacrifice the quality of one-to-one tutoring that produced the depth and breadth of Thomas Jefferson’s learning for the goal of giving everyone at least some education. Perhaps we can improve on the factory model by using technology. Internet lessons enable students to enjoy the following advantages.

The Excitement of Technology: Technology is the denizen of the young. Young people create it, become fluent in the use of it, and find all the possibilities for its use, both technically and sociologically. They like cutting-edge technology and will more likely attempt an assignment simply because it uses technology. As an adolescent, I used microfilm and card catalogs to do research. I had perhaps six good friends and a few dozen colleagues in the band room and chess club I would consider close acquaintances. There was no Google search and no hundreds of “friends” on Facebook. An old-fashioned research assignment that would elicit groans of protest will instead be tackled with alacrity if it involves researching links you have set up for them on the internet.

Teachers themselves also now have access to an encyclopedic amount of information online that they never had before outside of the Library of Congress, including websites with primary source documents and ready to use PowerPoints, podcasts, and videos.

The Shrinking of Time and Space: Anyone in the world with internet access (living in a nation that allows free exchange of ideas) can access an internet class, watching lectures from famous Yale professors or watch a live cam of life in Jerusalem or Beijing. Anyone in the world can find out about these through search engines. Summer school, just a make-up class or two and not an important venue for socializing or enrichment, will eventually go the way of the dodo bird. Now these few classes can be taught where the students reside—wherever their computer is located—without the expenses heating a building or supporting more than a bare-bones administrative staff. Students download lessons any time of the day or night, working on assignments at their own pace as long as the product or assessment is produced by the deadline. A fifty-minute lesson doesn’t have to be completed in fifty minutes. Fast learners can finish the lesson and the course quickly, and slow learners can take much more time than they would get in the traditional classroom.

Self-Paced Curriculum is Differential Instruction:

Why does the typical United States history course take an academic year to complete? Gifted and ambitious students could complete the textbook readings in much less time but are held back to the slower pacing of the teacher’s lectures and assessments. These more ambitious self-paced students can finish course readings in half the time it would take a student in the regular classroom curriculum. Slower students that need more time than given in a traditional classroom can review lectures and demonstrations on video, PowerPoints, and interactive tutorials as often as they like. The teacher does not force pacing based on an academic calendar. Rather student needs differentiate pacing.

Quicker feedback:

Both students and the teacher depend on the teacher’s scheduled informal and formal classroom assessments to assess whether students are learning. In cyberspace, however, lessons typically include formative multiple choice assessments. These give students immediate feedback on how well they know the material. Smarter software programs provide internal brachiation, choosing new questions depending on how the student answered the last one. Of course, multiple choice tests are not enough. Teachers can assign short answer tests or essays and quickly return these, graded, to the students.

The internet shortens the time of the feedback loop, from student to teacher back to student, since this exchange is not dependent on meeting in a classroom on a certain day of the week. For example, if a student submits a short answer response at 7PM, she may have feedback from the teacher two hours later. In a traditional classroom setting this exchange would take at least 24 hours. Students are “paid” through feedback--any feedback is reinforcing and makes them want to repeat the activity that led to the feedback. The faster they get the feedback the more reinforcing it is.

Differentiation of Curriculum:

Students may be automatically guided to different levels of instruction depending on how they answer assessment questions, saving both student and teacher time and avoiding needless frustration. All students may end the class learning roughly the same amount of material, but they may progress from different starting points.

Keeping Students Honest:

Essays may also be checked for plagiarism and copying from others through online services. It is impossible to do a complete check offline.

Communicating Better with Parents:

Parents get very frustrated with teachers that don’t return calls or emails. A good teacher’s website will link to the students’ grades, the teacher’s email address, and have downloadable current assignments. Parents have everything they need from the teacher on the website. They need to contact you less during the year. When they do contact you and you check and reply to your email daily, parents will feel that you are an empathic and responsive teacher.

Changed Relationships of a Virtual Community:

Some students do not participate in classroom discussions. They may be shy by nature or trained not to be assertive; they may be afraid to open up in front of peers; they may be overshadowed by louder, more aggressive students; or they may be disinterested in the way the material is presented. The online world, the chat room and bulletin board, cannot properly recreate the give and take of the classroom, the nuance of expression or even the timing of a joke. However, many students that do not participate in the classroom for the above reasons will participate in the online virtual classroom. Online anonymity tends to lessen classroom problems of overbearing students, embarrassment in front of peers. Teachers can combine the best of both worlds by mandating that their online class meet physically from time to time.

What to do right now: As soon as you have the time, get yourself a teacher’s website. Perhaps your school district already has the capability to set you up. If not, Google, Weebly,  and other online businesses offer free sites and still other companies offer sites custom made for teachers for low costs, less than $50/year. Search online for “websites for teachers.” Most of these require no knowledge of code, and an absolute beginner can work easily within the architecture designed for educators and have lessons online within an hour.

Food Stamps in Antiquity and Today

Augustus, Wikipedia

Food stamps are not a new idea. Taxes earmarked for religious upkeep and gleanings for the poor date back to the Biblical record, thousands of years ago. Somewhat later, near the end of the Roman Republic, politicians instituted handouts of grain for the poor of Rome. Citizens still had to get the grain milled, but they were assured of a monthly supply of food. (Gregory Aldrete in The Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia claims the monthly handout was enough for two people.)

Imperial Rome was no different. Here, in Suetonius' words (tr. by Robert Graves) are emperor Augustus' remarks on the free grain distribution:

I had a good mind to discontinue permanently the supply of grain to the City, reliance on which had discouraged Italian agriculture; but refrained because some politician would be bound one day to revive the dole as a means of ingratiating himself with the people (The Twelve Caesars, Section 42).

Augustus realized that Italian farmers could not compete against "free" grain, brought over from Egypt, and the image of the small, self-reliant Republican farmer had become a mere myth. He also saw the danger of demagogues using free grain as a means of gaining power. Similarly, Abraham Lincoln felt that homesteaders could not compete against slave labor and came out against slavery for, at first, economic reasons. In our time, African farmers are ruined by the free grain the United States gives to their countries, and food stamp programs alter the turnout of American elections.

from Agora Financial

During the last four years the number of Americans receiving food stamps has skyrocketed, while the number of Americans supporting the program has diminished. If this was a temporary situation and there was a quick jobs recovery, employment would rise and food stamp participation would fall. The blue and red lines on the graph on the left would intersect, and we would congratulate ourselves for supporting the poor while on the road to economic growth and prosperity. But there is little evidence that employment is roaring back. We have not had a good jobs report (more than 200,000 jobs created/month) in a long time. Unlike Rome, we are not (I hope) going to take over another country and steal its grain. We will be forced to cut other programs and/or raise taxes, which may slow our economy further.

What Presidents Teach Us about Luxury

Photo from PBS

Eleanor Roosevelt's austerity in the White House kitchen (abstract here) seems quaint today. Franklin D. Roosevelt put up with meals costing ten cents per serving (adjusted by inflation to $1.70 today). Despite the strains of the Great Depression and WWII on a polio-ravaged body, FDR traveled abroad for conferences with the allies, campaigned vigorously, battled the Great Depression (unsuccessfully but with great energy) and the Axis powers (successfully), and vacationed 958 days in close to 12 years as president, about 80 days per year. During much of those 958 days he was still engaged in executive duties in his vacation house in Warm Springs, Georgia. Most considered his vacations neither frivolous nor overly expensive.

Obama vacations are much more expensive, not because of his rented house (which he pays for), but because his large Praetorian Guard must be jetted over to Hawaii and put up in hotels.The latest $7 million dollar vacation can be inspected here. Let us put this most recent vacation in perspective. This one trip will cost more than the average American would make in 175 years of work. When Obama's wife or children vacation away from the president, they too must be guarded by a large entourage, and taxpayers foot the bill.

I am aware that George W. Bush vacationed a greater amount of time than any president including Obama. However, most of that was at the Crawford Ranch, 1,300 miles away, "working at home," which W preferred. That may be qualitatively different than jetting 4,800 miles to Hawaii to play golf and enjoy a tropical paradise, maybe not, since W's trips were also expensive. Most will agree that the attitude towards luxury and the use of taxpayer funds is quite different than what FDR experienced at the hands of his wife. Neither W nor Obama seem embarrassed by these trips, 54 Christmas trees in the White House, or, most fittingly, lavish White House state dinners (such as the million dollar gala for Mexico's president). Too bad FDR wasn't invited. He would have enjoyed a little caviar and champagne.

Eleanor Roosevelt was implicitly telling the public that the Roosevelts may be rich but they can live frugally and responsibly, and she vicariously shares the hardship of most Americans during the Great Depression. The current White House attitude is the opposite in every respect. Corporate boards often tie CEOs' bonus pay to corporate performance. Maybe we should do the same for presidential vacations, limiting taxpayer funds as long as America's economic performance is sub par.

How Well Did I Predict the Future? Ten Political and Economic Predictions for Year 2012

12/27/2012
A year ago I made ten predictions in economics and politics. How did I do? I'm disappointed--six out of ten correct. This is good enough to win in investing but I expected better. I give myself a grade of passing. Please see the links analyzing the results below.

12/31/2011
Each of these predictions will be graded a year from now as correct or incorrect. No hedging is allowed. I will grade the list next year as 60 percent, passing; 70 percent, fair; 80 percent, good; and 90 percent excellent. You may or may not like the predicted outcomes. This is how I read the trends.

1. California will pass a ballot measure that raises taxes. CORRECT: prop 31 passed
2. White flight out of California will accelerate. CORRECT link 1 2 3
3.  Liberals will decry corporate control of politics, but neither Barack Obama nor the Republican nominee will seek public financing for the 2012 general election, in order to avoid fundraising limits. CORRECT
4. Inflation will rise over 2011 levels. No, the economy slowed.
5. Obama's health care bill will be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. No, shockingly SCOTUS ruled that Obamacare is a tax and therefore legal..
6. Participation in food stamps and long term unemployment will decrease only slightly, by one percent or less. CORRECT Food stamp participation continues to skyrocket. link 1 2 3
7. A rating agency will further downgrade U.S. debt. CORRECT link
8. The House of Representatives will remain in Republican hands. CORRECT
9. The Republicans will capture the Senate.No. The Republican turnout was poor.
10. Gold will go down to $1400 per ounce. No. Gold is up again!

Pleasure in Imperial Rome

British academic Ray Laurence wrote Roman Passions, A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome (Continuum, London, 2009) to fill a void. Historians and researchers had not yet looked deeply into Roman pleasures. This book examines in detail the enjoyment of country villas, the baths, sex, dining, music and dance, violent entertainment, and art.

Laurence debunks many longstanding myths about Roman society, for example, the myth of orgies. Sex was, for the most part, private. Roman eating could be outlandish but only for the rich. If one was rich one's diet was quite varied and sophisticated, based on contrasting flavors and a fish paste. Laurence connected the culture of consumption, which peaked in the first century CE, to economic growth and a building boom. "Cores from the Greenland ice cap reveal a peak in atmospheric pollution in antiquity occurring about 2,000 years ago, in other words, from the beginning of the first century CE" (P. 161). This level of production needed to produce these levels of atmospheric pollution was not seen again until the industrial revolution in the early 19th century (ibid.). And the Romans built and polluted with a much smaller population!

Laurence could be talking about 19th century Britain or our own times in America when he tells us that the Roman empire "was the first global economy with cheap products (such as wine) being produced in the provinces for consumption in the capital" (ibid.) The better we understand what went on in ancient Rome, the better we understand our behavior in 21st century America. Since we know what happened to Rome and why, we may have a glimpse on what our future holds as well.

The book is heavily footnoted by a well-known antiquities scholar but is not dense--it flows easily and is lots of fun to read.

Striking Parallels in History

Perhaps a future historian might write the following about the United States: "America's very overseas successes from WWII to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began to create internal tensions as presidents amassed too much power and prestige at the expense of Congress, poor Americans lost their houses and fell into debt, the old European and Asian allies became resentful, immigration policy became illogicical, and a government system developed to rule itself was strained by having to manage nation-building."

Here is what professor Gregory S. Aldrete wrote about Imperial Rome (The Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 2004).
"Rome's very overseas success, however, began to create internal tensions as individual generals amassed too much power and prestige, poor Romans lost their farms and fell into debt, the old Italian allies and half-citizens became resentful, and a government system developed to rule a city was strained by having to manage an empire" (P. 8).

Aldrete's analysis applies to us as well as Imperial Rome and is somewhat chilling, yes? We can have an empire OR we can have prosperity and freedom, but we cannot have both.

Lincoln--The Movie

I rarely watch new movies, unmoved by the current excesses of sex and violence that seem to be matched to the tastes of Caligula, but finally, Hollywood has released a movie that is as engaging and intellectually stimulating as the writings of Winston Churchill or Edmund Morris. That movie is Lincoln.

I knew the movie would be good but was worried about how it would portray the war and all its gore. I was relieved to find that the fighting was de-emphasized. Even Lincoln's assassination at Ford's theater was only announced rather than acted out on screen. The war's violence did not haunt me. Instead, hours after viewing the film, I still felt inspired by Lincoln's leadership, his decision-making process, and his greatness of character.

I must give credit to Dr. Jane who invited me to go with her and her mother who saw the movie first and knew it would be perfect for me. Dr. Jane bought our tickets for the price of a glass of wine--a bargain I couldn't refuse. As a history teacher I was well aware of what the movie would be about-- a screen play based on Team of Rivals: The political Genius of Abraham Lincoln-- and how Lincoln sought after his cabinet's counsel, managed the great egos of the men involved, and, against the odds, defeated the Confederate armies and passed the Thirteenth Amendment barring slavery. For a specific description see David Wolfford's wonderful review here.

I hope my fellow movie goers will forgive me for whispering excitedly in Dr. Jane's ear, "There's William Seward." "Goodness, it's Edwin Stanton". "It's radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens". "That little guy is Confederate Vice President Stephens." "Do you recognize Robert E. Lee on horseback?" The actors looked uncannily like their namesakes pictured in the history books. The actors also portrayed their characters' personalities accurately. Seward was confident and full of himself. Stanton was serious in purpose and impetuous. Lincoln and Grant were both rough-hewn and honest.

The movie revolved around the political maneuvering in passing the Thirteenth Amendment. It was quite entertaining watching the anti-Amendment Democrats get bribed (with political patronage), bullied, cajoled, or persuaded to vote for the Amendment. Interwoven with the political fight over the Amendment were the themes of prosecution of the war and prospects for a negotiated peace--these factors determined whether the Thirteenth Amendment would pass on schedule.

This movie is about personal and political relationships--Lincoln's relationships with his wife and children, his cabinet, his party, the opposition party, slaves and freedmen, the voters, and the public. It is a successful movie because people can be fascinating if you let them be, and Lincoln does.

Caesar's Legion--The Military of Imperial Rome Lives

Vercingetorix and Caesar

The western Roman Empire has been gone for close to 1700 years, but authors continue to release excellent books about the period. Stephen Dando-Collins' Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome can be found in paperback for a song. Dando-Collin's book (Wiley, 2002) takes us on an exciting historical journey through the end of the Roman Republic and Julius Caesar's dictatorship to the fall of Byzantine. However, the book concentrates on the forming of the 10th Legion under Caesar in Spain, Caesar's battles in Gaul, his invasion of Britain, the civil war against Pompei in which Caesar came close to losing, the next civil war in which Octavian was victorious, and the actions of the 10th in Judea, especially the destruction of Jerusalem.

Dando-Collins vividly describes army life--what it was like to be a Roman infantry soldier from 40 BCE to 100 CE: the technology of the weapons, the arms worn and carried, the uniform, the discipline endured, the recruitment procedures, and especially, what the battles looked and felt like if you were there.

Once the javelin struck anything, the weight of the shaft caused it to bend like a hockey stick where staff and head joined. With its aerodynamic qualities destroyed, it couldn't be effectively thrown back. And if it lodged in a shield, it became extremely difficult to remove, as the Helvetii [invading warriors from the area that is today Switzerland] now found.What was worse, in their case, with their shields overlapping, javelins were going through several at a time, pinning them together. With members of the [Helvetii] phalanx downed and others struggling with tangled shields, their formation was broken by the these initial volleys. Caesar gave another order. His flag dropped, and the trumpets of the first line sounded the "Charge." With a roar, the front-line [Roman] legionaries charged down the hill with drawn swords. After repeated attempts to free their shields, many Helvetii threw them away, leaving them virtually defenseless (pp. 18-19).

Another sample of Dando-Collins' eloquent and striking narrative, a description of the surrender of an enemy Gallic leader follows:

Without a word, Vercingetorix removed his sword belt and handed it to Caesar. Caesar accepted the sword, then passed it on to one of his staff. Vercingetorix removed his helmet, with its distinctive Gallic crest, and passed it over. Then his armor, richly decorated with gold and silver--attendants helped him out of it, and then this, too, he presented to Caesar, who in turn passed it to subordinates. Then Vercingetorix sat himself at Caesar's feet. There, in silence, he watched as his hungry, dejected troops came out of Alesia in a long stream with heads hung low, and piled their weapons and armor before the conquering Romans and were then led away into slavery. Finally, Vercingetorix, too, was bound with chains and taken away. (P. 60).

Through its focal point, the history of the 10th Legion, the book closely reviews the major political events of the Empire from Caesar's ascension to the rise of Vespasian. Dando-Collins takes the side of the Romans in the first Jewish revolt of 66-70 CE--not surprising since Josephus, not the Talmud was the author's major source in this section. The Jewish freedom fighters are portrayed as foolish zealots, locked in a bloody internecine conflict when not fighting the Romans. Roman general Titus is portrayed by Dando-Collins as quite reasonable, giving the Jews holding out in Jerusalem plenty of opportunities to surrender with reasonable terms. Unfortunately, the revolt in Judea led to the destruction of the Temple, a tragedy still mourned by Jews today. Many of the survivors were sold into slavery, and Dando-Collins does not mention the thousands of Jewish prisoners that were exposed to wild beasts for the entertainment of the Roman masses (Laurence, P. 135). The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem may have been a disaster for Titus as well and not just the Jews. Roman historian Suetonius quotes a feverish Titus as confessing that he was punished with death for committing only one sin. Perhaps his disregard of Roman law, entering the Temple and Holy of Holies, and destroying the edifice was that one sin.

Dando-Collins has written other books of Roman and most recently, Hawaiian history, but Caesar's Legion is a good place to start for those unacquainted with the author and wanting to explore what life was like as a Roman soldier.

Bibliography
Laurence, Ray. Roman Passions; A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome.  Continuum UK, London, 2009.
Suetonious. The Twelve Caesars. Tr. Robert Graves, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1975.