Improving Your Playing: Drumming and Relaxation

The best drummers are relaxed when they play. Watching videos of Steve Gadd and Buddy Rich, you can't help but notice the passion and technique but also the easy, fluid movement. Total relaxation is the goal, and, despite the unlikelihood of absolute relaxation, the goal remains a key element of proper playing.

Relaxation means minimal tightness of muscles involved in drumming--the fingers, hands, wrists, arms, legs, and torso. These parts of the body would feel at ease as you floated on your back under the warm Hawaiian sun, or, less imaginatively, lounging on a comfortable leather chair.

Yet, drumming is a transformation of musical ideas into bodily energy and consumption of calories—not sloth. We hit things, sometimes very hard and very fast. The art takes a lot of physical effort and mental concentration. Our heart rate rises, we perspire, and often become mentally as well as physically exhausted, especially on engagements that require a lot of sight reading, instant creativity, and recorded perfection. If our muscles are tight, usually due to nervousness, they won’t work as well. To demonstrate this to yourself, try gripping the sticks as tight as you can and playing a fast double-stroke roll. Then try doing the same gripping the sticks loosely. Which grip allows you to play with better technique, and which is more fun?

So how does one resolve the opposing forces of keeping relaxed while performing on a physically and mentally demanding instrument? The following techniques have worked for me. My teacher, Greg Sudmeier, taught me many of these.

1. Breathing: in sections of the music that demand less concentration, such as 12 bars of straight jazz time, I monitor my breathing, making sure my breaths are slow and deep, pushing my stomach out as I inhale.
2. Visualization: I visualize the Hawaiian scene mentioned above, feeling my muscles as completely relaxed. Now my muscles won’t become so loose that I drop the sticks, but they will relax considerably.
3. Internal singing: singing the melody helps me internalize the time and like an old friend, puts me on familiar ground, acting as a relaxation device.
4. Hearing the beat as tension and release: I try to hear the music’s pulse as half notes instead of tension-producing 16th notes. I hear in my head a surdo high-low or tension-release pattern. Listen to Brazilian music for examples of the surdo pattern.
5. Lastly, I avoid alcohol and drugs as they may relax the body but dull the mind and always leave side effects, often a rebound of anxiety.

If you found this post helpful, please let me know.

Dim-Witted Eaters Need Government Help: Taxes on Unhealthy Foods

The following interview is a fictional account inspired by an article in the July 24, 2011 New York Times--Bad Food? Tax it and Subsidize Vegetables and the scholarly report, The Potential Impact of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes in New York State. However, my satire is looking more and more like political reality. The Harvard School of Public Health has come out with taxation schemes to combat obesity. See half of U.S. population will be obese by 2030 experts predict... Also see Plan to Tax Soda Gets a Mixed Reception.
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The president has just appointed a head of the newly created federal agency, Assisting (Preferred) Races (with) Rice, Oranges, Greens and Needed Taxes, acronym--ARROGANT. A journalist, interested in the scope and goals of this new agency, interviewed him. Here is the transcript: 

Journalist: What are you doing?
Leader of ARROGANT: Congress and the president gave me powers to tax foods that cause obesity and other health problems. I’ve slapped a two-cents tax per ounce tax on soda. You won’t find a six-pack of Coke on sale for $2.09 any more. My $1.44 tax makes that Coke six-pack sell for $3.53.
Journalist: The tax almost doubles the price.
Leader of ARROGANT: That’s right. Demand is highly elastic, highly sensitive to price changes. People will purchase much less unhealthy soda. They will immediately lose weight and be healthier. I’ve also imposed a fifty-cents per serving tax on McDonalds french fries.
Journalist: A medium fries used to cost $1.79. Now it’s $2.29. That’s a 28 percent tax.
Leader of ARROGANT: It’s a bargain for the nation! We will lower consumption of soda alone by 20 percent, prevent 1.5 million Americans from becoming obese and prevent 400,000 cases of type 2 diabetes, saving $30 billion dollars.
Journalist: Those projections are based on…
Leader of ARROGANT: a study by Dr.Y. Claire Wang, an assistant professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health for the State of New York. Those numbers she gave for the state were then scaled nationally.
Journalist: Dr. Wang states in the above reference that the “health benefit and medical savings are larger among African-Americans and Hispanics than among non-Hispanic Whites. Lower income individuals are expected to accrue a disproportionately larger share of the health benefits.” The money from the tax could be “used to support education programs and infrastructure designed to promote healthy eating and active living…” (Executive summary) Is that right?
Leader of ARROGANT: That is correct.
Journalist: So you are saying that minorities and the poor are too stupid to know how to eat healthily.
Leader of ARROGANT: We would guide them to make the correct choice through school programs, advertisements, and putting subsidized produce in more available locations.
Journalist: You would put grapes instead of soda in vending machines?
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, just like what’s already in place in Japan and Iowa. Next we will train kids to eat steamed broccoli instead of pizza.
Journalist: I’m not sure that you will be successful. What percentage of over consumption of calories comes from sugary beverages?
Leader of ARROGANT: 40 percent
Journalist: So you have addressed less than half the problem here.
Leader of ARROGANT: We are working on the rest—a tax on french fries as I mentioned earlier and taxes on doughnuts are in the works. Denmark has a saturated-fat tax starting in October. That is our next step. This is the role of government.
Journalist: I don’t recall setting the people’s diet patterns as a constitutionally prescribed function of the federal government.
Leader of ARROGANT: I represent the people. The general will is the rule of law.
Journalist: Do you have a precedent for your actions?
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, the war on tobacco has worked. Cigarette taxes comprise about half the cost of cigarettes. Less people smoke, and the people’s health is more important than the rights of those doing the wrong thing.
Journalist: As less people smoke or drink soda, don’t the tax revenues eventually drop?
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, but slimming people down is more important than providing the poor with subsidies on vegetables.
Journalist: So the poor will be priced out of enjoying a burger with fries and a coke and eventually get less benefits from the tax revenues.
Leader of ARROGANT: Yes, in the long run we know what’s good for them.
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Postscript: Your Federal government is working hard to protect you from making poor food choices. See USDA Secretary: We Must ‘Create Appropriate Transition’ for What Americans Eat here.
Those that want to research the link between obesity and fast food should read Don't Eat This Book. Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morgan Spurlock. See a link here. Cato's research on big government and obesity is here. Libertarian sites examine the civil rights issues connected to taking away people's food choices. The huge Cokes are not the cause. As of June, 2012, researchers have found more important factors than soda (link here).

How Students Can Remember the Transcendentalists: Use a Skit

Name_______________________________ Period __________________

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Instructions: If you were picked for a role, please come up to the front of the class. If not, please listen carefully to the skit and fill in the correct names below.

Characters
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Philosopher and writer
Josiah Holbrook: Founder of Lyceum movement
John Brown: Abolitionist militant
Henry David Thoreau: Philosopher and writer
Margaret Fuller: News reporter and intellectual
Walt Whitman: Poet
_______________________________________________________________
Setting: Emerson’s home, Concord, Massachusetts, 1854

Holbrook: Americans love to learn. Look how well they attend Lyceum lectures! I noticed that in addition to Emerson, Margaret Fuller was an especially popular speaker. I’ve never seen a woman make a living as an intellectual before.
Whitman: Emerson lit an intellectual fire under all of us, and we all changed American culture in some way. It’s too bad that Margaret died so young. Look, here’s an unopened letter from her.

Fuller: “My father educated me in Greek and Latin even though I was a girl. To overcome the odds against my sex, I worked so hard in learning languages that I became ill. I am living proof that women are the intellectual equal to men.”

Emerson: I am honored that Margaret was in my intellectual circle. Our movement, transcendentalism, was built on the idea that every individual, by searching within, can encounter the truth. I am sure that Henry and Walt would agree.

Brown: There are limits to your glorification of the individual, Emerson. In times of national crisis, we need to work as one. Today, we need to destroy the evil institution of slavery. Radical measures are needed. Who is with me?

Emerson: We all are. I have modified my views on radical individualism and have become less eager for the individual to stand apart from society. We all need to cooperate in this time of national urgency.

Thoreau: I went to jail rather than support the Mexican War. I knew that a consequence of that war would be the expansion of slavery. I will break the law now to oppose the evil institution of slavery on our shores. It is time for civil disobedience!


Which character espouses the following policy or idea? Pick the one best answer.
1. Civil disobedience:____________________
2. Amazed by American lecture attendance:___________________________
3. Men and women are intellectually equal:_______________________________
4. No longer interested in radical individualism.:_____________________________
5. Grateful for Emerson’s inspiration:__________________________________
6. Radical abolitionist:_____________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. What ended up happening to John Brown? What was Emerson’s reaction?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________

8. What was the significance of Brook Farm?

_______________________________________________________________________
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9. Would you have preferred to be educated in Margaret Fuller’s day or today? Why?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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10. Should the State be subservient to the wishes of the individual or should the individual be subservient to the State? Why?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Colonial History--Now You'll Remember It!

I've composed mnemonic aids to helping AP US History students remember chapters one to five in the textbook, American Pageant.

Background material from The American Pageant, Twelfth Edition, is followed by Spinrad mnemonics in italics.

1. New World Beginnings

Three sister farming: beans growing on the trellis of the cornstalks and squash covering the planting mounds to retain moisture in the soil. The rich diet produced the highest population densities in the North American continent, among them the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples.

Beans, maize, and squash,
Sister farming of three
Sustained the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee

New world exports: gold and silver; corn, potatoes, pineapples, tobacco, vanilla, and chocolate; and maybe syphilis. Old world exports: wheat, sugar, rice, coffee; horse, cows, pigs; African slave labor; and smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

The new world exported syphilis, silver, and gold.
Europeans sent horse, cows, pigs, and slaves in their ship holds.
America received sugar, rice, coffee, and wheat.
She gave to Europe corn, potatoes, tobacco and a chocolate treat.
But European diseases were also sent.
Indian deaths—ninety percent!

2. The Planting of English America

Virginia Company of London chose a location on the banks of the James River—Jamestown. The Virginia Company was saved from utter collapse by Captain John Smith and new governor, Lord De La Warr.

From Virgin(ia) (queen) then James.
After Smith then War(r).

John Rolfe, husband of Pocahontas, was the father of the tobacco industry and economic savior of the Virginia colony.

Rolfe loved an Indian,
Perfected a good smoke.
To grow it needed lots of men.
Virginia didn’t go broke.


Maryland—Catholic haven,
Supported Act of Toleration

Carolinas exported rice and imported slaves.
CERIS

Georgia served as a buffer colony against Spanish Florida and French Louisiana.
Georgia is in the way of Flo and Lou.

3. Settling the Northern Colonies

Puritans were English religious reformers who wished to undertake a total purification and de-Catholicization of the Church of England. Separatists vowed to break away entirely from the Church of England. The Pilgrims were a group of Puritans, including some Separatists, who secured rights to settle under the Virginia Company’s jurisdiction. Their ship, the Mayflower, missed its destination, and they settled on the shore of Plymouth Bay, New England. All signed the Mayflower Compact, a step toward self-government.

PILGRIMS

Puritans
Icy first winter killed half
Left England and then Holland for America
Good leadership in William Bradford
Refused to be discouraged
In fur, fish, and lumber found prosperity and a thanksgiving celebration with the Indians
Mayflower Compact
Separatists influenced the group.

Massachusetts Bay Colony started off on a larger scale than any other English settlements. John Winthrop believed, “We shall be a city upon a hill” and a calling from G-d to serve the new colony as its governor. The purpose of the government was to enforce G-d’s laws. Only “visible saints” could vote.

Massachusetts Bay Colony,
Not a true democracy.
Votes only for Puritans,
Not rabble that sins.
Governor Winthrop had inspiring skill:
“We shall be as a city upon a hill.”

Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams challenged the Puritan orthodoxy of Massachusetts Bay. Hutchinson was banished and Williams fled to the Rhode Island area where he built a Baptist church and established complete freedom of religion.

Who Ceri Arf
Williams, Hutchinson, orthodoxy challengers. (He) escaped (to) Rhode Island and religious freedom.

Indian King Philip (aka Metacom) forged an Indian alliance and mounted a series of coordinated assaults on English villages throughout New England, but he was captured and killed. King Philip’s War inflicted lasting defeat on New England’s Indians, and thereafter they posed only sporadic threats to the New England colonists.

King Philip organized in order to fight,
But his head ended up on a pike.
New England’s last serious Indian attack
Set the tribes’ numbers back.

Residues of Charles II’s effort to assert tighter administrative control using English officials aggravated Americans.

Charles’ judges sent
Were viewed by New England with contempt.

William Penn’s colony included an elected assembly, freedom of worship, no restrictions on immigration, and benevolent Indian relations.

Pennsylvania assembly worship, Immigration, Indians
Paw II

4. American Life in the Seventeenth Century

Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid (MDT) cut ten years off the life expectancy of newcomers from England that left for the Chesapeake. Half the people born to early Virginia and Maryland settlements did not survive to celebrate their twentieth birthdays.

Virginia 1600s=MDT minus ten. With luck, ten again.

Both Virginia and Maryland employed the “headright” system to encourage the importation of servant workers. Whoever paid the passage of a laborer (and Britain had a labor surplus) received the right to acquire fifty acres of land. The laborer, an “indentured servant,” voluntarily traded several years of labor for the cost of the transatlantic passage and later clothes, provisions, and maybe a small amount of land. The planters became great land holders. The indentured servants often became low-wage laborers. Bacon’s rebellion showed the tension of the landless former servants against the plantation gentry. African slaves solved the problem for the gentry as the pool of available English laborers shrank in the late 1600s.

Bacon replaced indentured with African slaves.
Brid Africans

Slave life was most severe on rice plantations in the deep south and slaves there didn’t live long. Blacks in the tobacco-growing Chesapeake region had it easier, and by the early 1700s family life and natural increase was possible.

Slave life wasn’t nice
In the deep south growing rice.
Slave health was a great lack,
To import more, slave ships had to go back.
Chesapeake tobacco had more spice
And allowed slaves an easier family life.

Southern society in the seventeenth century was characterized by a few great merchant planters who owned most slaves and land and monopolized political power. Beneath the planters were the small farmers. They tilled modest plots and might own one or two slaves but lived as subsistence farmers. Beneath them were landless whites, most of them former indentured servants. Under them were indentured servants. Black slaves were on the lowest rung of society.

Planters, small farmers, landless whites, indentured servants, black slaves
Pretty Sally Finch loves when I sass brother Sam.

Healthier New England life on average added ten years to an Englishman’s lifespan. A stable family was the center of New England life, and early marriage encouraged a high birthrate.

If on this earth you wanted to stay,
Best to live in Massachusetts Bay.
Strong family units were partly how
People lived almost as long as they do now.

The Puritans’ Congregational Church government led to democracy in political government.

Church democracy to town meeting

By conferring partial membership rights in the once-exclusive Puritan congregations, the Half-Way Covenant weakened the distinction between the “elect” and others, further diluting the spiritual purity of the original settlers’ G-dly community. Strict religious purity was sacrificed somewhat to the cause of wider religious participation.

Partial church membership—
Half –Way covenant
Diluted spiritual purity
Of Puritan Community.
Infused the congregation
With more religious participation.
A group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women. A hysterical ‘witch hunt” ensued, leading to the execution in 1692 of twenty individuals.

Salem hunt executed “witches”—“bewitched girls of adolescence in Massachusetts.
Shew B Gam

5. Colonial society on the Eve of Revolution

The 18th century American population boom shift the balance of power between the colonies and Britain. In 1700 there were twenty Englishmen for each American colonist. By 1775 the ratio had fallen to three to one.

America grew
To many from few.
In 1776 the British were undone
Partly by a ratio that had fallen to three to one (British to American).

Ethnicities of (non-native) Americans in 1790 were predominantly (in order of population, greatest to least) English, African, Scottish, German, and Scotts-Irish.

English, African, Scottish, German, and Scotts-Irish.
Eat all sweet grapes—stuff it!

Scotts-Irish led the armed march of the Paxton Boys on Philadelphia in 1764, protesting the Quakers’ lenient policy toward the Indians. They also led the Regulator movement, a rebellion against eastern dominance of the South Carolina colony.

The Paxton Boys protested Quakers’ lack of fight.
The Regulators rebelled against South Carolina eastern might.

The colonies’ economy in the 18th century could be explored by region. New England specialized in fishing, whaling, shipbuilding, rum, and trading. The middle colonies grew grain, raised cattle, and traded. The south grew tobacco, rice, and indigo, and traded.

In New England you might trade some fish,
Drying cod for a Spaniard’s dish.
Middle colonies made the bread
Or had cattle in the shed.
Southerners made their dough
From rice, tobacco,
And indigo.

Parliament passed the Molasses Act, disallowing crucial North American trade with the French West Indies. American merchants bribed and smuggled their way around the law.

The Molasses Act didn’t stick to the rum American smugglers bought from the French West Indies.

Two “established” or tax-supported churches in 1775—the Anglican (Church of England) and the Congregational (Puritan) —were strongest in different parts of the country. The Anglicans were established in the south and a part of New York. The Congregationalists were formerly established in all the New England colonies except Rhode Island.

The Anglican or England’s church
Held a strong southern perch.
The Congregational—Puritan—
In New England sermonized sinful men.

Clerical intellectualism and more liberal doctrines set the stage for the religious revival during the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening. “Old light clergy were skeptical of the emotionalism and theatrics of the revivalists. “New light” clergy defended the Awakening for its role in revitalizing American religion. The Awakening led to the founding of “new light” centers of higher learning such as Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth and was the first spontaneous mass movement of the American people, unifying them over sectional and denominational boundaries.

Whitefield
Wrath Hellfire ITinerant (preachers) Emotional (in open) FIELD

Peter Zenger’s newspaper assailed the corrupt royal governor. The mere fact of printing, irrespective of the truth, was enough to convict. The jurors defied the judge and declared a verdict of not guilty—a blow for freedom of the press.

Attacking corruption, Zenger’s paper did tell.
The governor put Zenger to trial for seditious libel.
The judge told the jury that whether truth or tale
Just making the statements should send Zenger to jail.
Zenger’s defense—opposing arbitrary power
Won, permitting press freedom to flower.

Compared to Europe, 18th century America offered unusual opportunities for social mobility and a greater level of democracy.

American mobility and democracy
AMAD

The Classicists Versus The Relativists

The Classicists Versus The Relativists: Robert M. Hutchins Versus Antonio Darder

John Dewey

Since the ancient Greeks, men and women of the West have looked at the world through critical eyes. No longer content to rely on Aristotle and the Church for knowledge, since the Renaissance empiricism has held sway. For example, American scientists of the 21st century are not satisfied with a Newtonian view of the physical world. Instead, science has evolved and theories have changed over time. According to Kuhn (1973), science progresses because scientists scrutinize and change their belief systems. A new paradigm replaces an existing paradigm. Einstein has replaced Newton’s paradigm in physics. Likewise, those involved in Western social sciences, working in disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, history, economics, literature, political science, and art, demand fearless scrutiny of reality, both inner and outer. It has been so for thousands of years in the West. To illustrate, let us pick a few great thinkers from the Western tradition. The historian Plutarch, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and religious philosopher Maimonides dispassionately investigated their personal feelings, their culture, other cultures, and the concept of truth. Plutarch gave us an unbiased, detailed, anatomized, and synthesized history of Rome. He wrote history so his people, in search of truth, would not repeat mistakes. Epictetus showed how one could choose to react to life’s traumas. One was not a slave to her emotions. Maimonides aligned faith with reason. All these thinkers asked and answered the great questions of life. William Bennett (1992) writes:

The classics of Western philosophy and literature amount to a great debate on the perennial questions. In the end, the study of the seminal works of Western civilization is … a case for philosophy and for thoughtfulness….The West is the most self-critical of cultures. Reason is exalted and reason leads to a look, a second look, and, where necessary, readjustment, redefinition, and change. It is one of the distinguishing features of Western civilization, in fact, that it has engaged in this dialogue, self-examination, and correction over the centuries (pp.173-174).

Robert Hutchins (1953) defends these “seminal works of Western civilization” not simply because these works promote reason and powers of judgement over irrationality and one-sidedness but because studying them makes people morally better. Hutchins states that the “aim of an educational system…is to improve man as man” (P. 11) through the teaching of moral virtues. He does not reveal a Western canon but would probably include The Bible, writings of Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the later Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics. The great Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers would also be on the list. He would also include Western economists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, writers and artists, too many to catalog here. All of these great thinkers thought logically and critically, basing their ideas on values, on absolute values.

Cultural relativists challenge Hutchins’ aim of an educational system. If values are relative or not important, a good person yesterday may not be a good person today. The relativist does not think that goodness is an absolute but is dependent on culture and the historical situation. Even more extreme, some cultural relativists would ask, “Who cares if someone is good. All that matters is that she is useful to the State.” John Dewey (1938) is more interested in effective classroom technique than debating whether values are absolute. Therefore he would not necessarily be opposed to Hutchins’ views, especially if students were interested in learning about good values. The “static aims and materials” (P.5) that Dewey rails about could apply to the pedantic memorization of Latin grammar or some other ineffective and boring pedagogy. Dewey is not necessarily against the learning of useful classic works simply because the authors died a long time ago. He is against outmoded, traditional pedagogy. Learning must be presented in a palatable fashion, connected to the lives of the students. A student can benefit from improved pedagogy while studying Greek philosophy. Dewey and Hutchins are not opposed to each other’s views.

Antonio Darder (1991), not John Dewey, is a real cultural relativist and true critic of Hutchins and teaching the Western canon. Drawing from the writings of Pablo Freire, Darder states that

since knowledge is socially constructed, culturally mediated, and historically situated, dominant discourses function to determine what is relegated to the arenas of truth and relevancy at any given moment in time. Thus…[critical educators] hold a view of truth as relational, in that statements considered true are seen as arising within a particular context, based on the relations of power operative in a society, discipline, or institution (P.92).

Simply stated, Darder states that there is no absolute truth, and the ruling class defines knowledge in such a way to continue its oppression of the poor, women and minorities. Darder’s arguments in favor of relative truth appear correct at first glance. However, neither the premises of his argument nor the conclusion of his thesis make sense.

Knowledge is not dependent on place, culture, or historical situation. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, whether one is testing the water of the San Francisco Bay or the Red Sea. The laws of chemistry or physics are not dependent on culture. Additionally, knowledge, even of the social sciences, is not “historically situated.” Does anyone believe that the Ten Commandments are no longer valid since they were written 3,000 years ago? Does the Iliad still speak to us, even though we live in a postmodern, urban culture? These books tell us that murder is evil and friendship is virtuous. Heroism is a virtue. The ideas in these books resonate in us because the moral teachings are valuable in our day as well. The ancient Greek virtues are absolute and not dependent on time or place. Darder’s Marxist conclusion, that education merely another type of oppression is also invalid. The educated know how to control their emotions. Only the educated know how to be a good, virtuous, moral person. The educated know the value of freedom. Those who have had a Western education have control over their inner and outer lives.

Three Cheers for Teaching Summer School

High school teachers that spend part of their summer vacation teaching summer school provide a valuable service, giving kids a second chance in passing required courses and directing them back on the path to graduation. Teachers themselves benefit as well. Teaching and working with young people is a skill. Teaching skills must be practiced like any other, and summer school prevents a lapse in practicing. There’s still plenty of vacation time left for necessary relaxation and recharging after summer school is over.

Second, teachers can make some extra money. My district pays me at a higher hourly wage than I make during the regular school year. True, I can make an even higher rate consulting, teaching drums or playing gigs, but I can’t work nearly as many hours. And I would rather teach than engage in the seasonal work that most teachers do—retail, construction, herding, etc.

Third, and most important, summer school challenges a teacher’s classroom management skills. Students that take summer school are usually (but not always) the least skilled and attentive and worst behaved. They often have parents that don’t care about their academic performance or have given up on them. These students already consider themselves failures and work hard to keep that view consistent. Many have learning disabilities and read at a low level. If you teach summer school you will encounter bravado and defiance, clowning, and shut down behaviors every day. You will need to work out how you will react to these problems in advance, before summer school starts, both working with administration and alone in the classroom. Your classroom management skills will be quite sharp when you go back to the classroom in the fall.

The Business Model and the Education Model

Management consultant Peter Drucker taught the concepts “management by objectives” and “management by results.” An employee’s compensation, he wrote, should be linked to the company’s goals.

We teachers are managed by objectives, such as completing an AP training, preparing a new course, or observing a colleague’s lessons with English learners, but we are rarely managed by proper results—increasing student learning. To be fair, student learning is hard to measure. Do we, as most states do, use the questionably suitable but statistically reliable standardized multiple choice tests? Or should we use more valid but less reliable measures such as essay writing and projects showing critical thinking? And even if we can successfully measure student learning, teachers contribute to only a portion of the variance. Other factors such as home life, the student’s peer group, and need to succeed also influence the amount of learning that takes place. Yet, managers in private industry make little allowance for excuses. “Make your sales quota or you’re out!” Similarly, teaching quality is the most important predictor of student success.

Looking at state test scores as an example, what happens to teachers who do not increase and perhaps decrease student learning? Usually nothing. What happens to teachers who do increase student learning? Perhaps they will receive a community award, but these teachers do not receive an increase in salary commensurate with their value to the public. Perhaps individual teachers should not get an increase in salary, because teamwork as much as individual effort crafts good teaching. Intra-department competition damages a school. Inter-school competition benefits everyone. If a department works together and increases student achievement, it makes sense to reward that department with an increase in salary. Students and teachers would benefit. Teachers would have their interests aligned closer to the interests of the students. However, if the incentive program is designed poorly, like the New York program, it won't improve student achievement. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/education/18rand.html?_r=1 here.)

First of all, administrators should not measure student achievement strictly through state test scores. Instead teachers and administrators should work together, creating a formula combining three components: state test scores, student grades and work product, and the teacher’s teaching process. The last component, teaching process, examines progress toward standards and analyzes lesson plans, class engagement, classroom management, and assessment.

Bad Behavior and the Medical Model

The American public has shown interest in a recent scandal involving a married male politician getting into trouble by texting inappropriate messages and pictures. The politician found it impossible to remain in office and resigned and entered “rehab,” leaving open the possibility of running for political office again when “cured.”

This case interests me because it illustrates a societal shift in attitudes about deviant behavior. Bad behavior is no longer “wrong.” It is “sick.” Sickness can be cured and this politician’s career may be rehabilitated. On the other hand, when a mature individual is not ill but merely makes poor choices, the public considers the perpetrator to be morally flawed, and this flaw will last in perpetuity.

A quick examination of the history of the treatment of severe mental illness shows a similar, and I argue, laudable shift in attitudes. What used to be considered bizarre behavior has now been reframed as mental illness in many cases. In biblical times, behavior was viewed through the lens of morality. Deuteronomy reads: “Choose life (good behavior) so that you and your descendants will live…”Similarly, the Bible is fairly agnostic (pun intended) about the causes of King Saul’s depression and self-esteem and anger-management issues, but the moral lesson is clear—the king’s character defects bring his dynasty to an end. A few thousand years later, we can use the character of Sabbatai Tzvi as another example. This 17th-century false messiah had moments of rapture and times when “G-d hid his face from him.” (See the wonderful biography by Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah.) With 21st-century eyes, we would say that Sabbetai Tzvi was bi-polar. In the 17th-century, however, this man was viewed as a messianic figure by much of world Jewry because of his alleged closeness (and distance) with G-d and exemplary character traits. He was not evaluated as a man with a medical condition.

Similarly, Europeans suffering from schizophrenia during the middles ages were treated as victims of demonic possession and later as creatures to be put on display at a madhouse such as Bethlam hospital. The United States finally saw a change of social attitudes after the pioneering work of Dorothea Dix, a woman who worked for better treatment of the mentally ill—releasing them (literally) from their chains and insisting on humane treatment. Still, those we describe today as insane were characterized as capable of only limited (animal-like) capacity for human reason. Ms. Dix worked for their compassionate treatment. The insane were characterized as mentally ill more recently.

Today little controversy remains in calling many types of mental illness an illness. Most who have worked with schizophrenics or depressives will attest that a medical model fits—certain parts of the brain, down to the cellular level, function abnormally in these patients. We can measure differences in brain structure and levels of neurotransmitters between healthy and ill patients, and these patients benefit from psychotropic drugs. Like any other medical malady, professionals can give schizophrenics and depressives a diagnosis, a prognosis, and prescribe a cure. Treating schizophrenia or depression as a moral failing sounds barbaric.

Why stop there? Why not view all deviants as victims of an illness, best treated by treatment and the language of medicine instead of moral suasion and the language of morality?

Though it may appear that looking at behavior this way is a radical paradigm shift, looking at bad behavior as a medical problem can be traced back to Hippocrates’ four humours or the determinism and atheism of 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers or to the developmental theories of Sigmund Freud. Modern psychiatric research on anti-personality disorder (ASPD) supports the medical view. These psychopaths, unable to feel any empathy for another’s suffering, may have a biological problem, a brain malfunction.

Yet we are a long way from confidently naming what parts of the brain are altered by ASPD and even farther away from a prospective cure. Additionally, perhaps these severe maladies mentioned here—psychiatric (Axis I) cases such as schizophrenia and depression and a personality disorders (Axis II) such as ASPD—remain the only examples where the medical model fits. In most human behavior most of us want to believe that people have free will and are responsible for their behavior. Perhaps people simply make bad choices at times.

Single-Sex Instruction

Do students do best in single-sex classrooms? Examining the behavior of the wealthy as an indicator, it appears so. The rich like to put their children in private, single-sex schools. But what do they know? Do kids behave better and learn more in single-sex classrooms? Do both girls and boys benefit from keeping the other sex out of classroom competition and collaborations and social interactions?

Do kids behave better and learn more in single-sex classrooms? Only occasionally. Most of the time K-12 students benefit from classrooms with both sexes. Arizona State University psychologists (Fabes et al.) have aggregated studies that show these classrooms exhibiting more learning and less acting out behaviors and less learning and more behavior problems in single-sex classrooms. They believe that bringing boys and girls together early creates better understandings of the opposite sex, a softer approach to sex roles, and less misunderstandings between them.

I speculate that teacher leadership, not the composition of the students, has a lot to do with the good outcomes of mixed-sex classes. Mixing boys and girls, per se, does not create good outcomes and without teacher leadership may create quite negative outcomes such as bullying. If the students fall into the high risk category (low income, poor family history, low achievement) teachers or facilitators need to act even more vigilantly to prevent problems. I have facilitated group therapy for inner city teens in a diversion program as well as teaching inner city high school. In both of these high risk situations, the normal rules don’t seem to apply, and I have had much better (anecdotal) experience in single-sex male groups. Why might this be? Low-functioning, and how shall we say it gently, adolescent boys without much impulse control see less reason to act out in a single-sex environment. The boys don’t need to challenge the male therapist’s authority when all are of equal status and the therapist holds power over them—the keys to graduating from the program. Throw a couple of girls into the diversion program and the dynamic changes. Now the boys want to raise their status over one another. They jockey for position as they try to impress the girls, engaging in bravado, clowning, and attention seeking. The group becomes much more difficult to control. The same change happens in an all-male high school credit recovery summer school program when a few girls are added to the mix. These high school seniors, usually boasting a history of behavior problems and poor academic skills are banded together by the school district for a last-chance opportunity to pass a class or two and graduate. The students, typically 18- or 19-year-old males work effectively and without incident until a female or two joins them. (These classes are typically 90 to 100 percent male.) Then, like what happens in the diversion program, the credit recovery group descends into anarchy. Boys claw each other for status and challenge the teacher’s authority. Earlier, as a single-sex group, they felt no need to do this.

Most boys do not and have not attended diversion programs or credit recovery programs. Most boys interact with girls in the average classroom and do just fine. It is not the interaction itself that creates the outcomes we desire. It is teacher leadership. Teachers ignore overly exuberant boys and call on girls to answer questions and dissuade boys from yelling out all the answers. Teachers facilitate group work, forcing boys and girls to work together. Teachers lead and model democratic decision making, rejecting the slower and less efficient consensus style favored by girls. Top-down leadership enables mixed-sex groups to work.

In summary, I am hoping researchers will examine two areas of study. First, if mixed-sex schooling is superior for at-risk youth, why have I had better results with all-male groups? Second, do the teacher’s skills contribute more to the success of the classroom than the sex or sexes of the children?

Dipsea 101: Who Can Win the 101st?

Dipsea 101: Who Can Win the 101st?
By Sam Spinrad

Can the second century of Dipseas match the first in drama, surprise, and epic victories? This Dipsea is likely to set a competitive precedent for the rest. For the second straight year, there is no clear favorite. There are several past champions, a swift newcomer, and a bunch of dark horse candidates to triumph on June twelfth.

Last year’s champion Reilly Johnson will be hard-pressed to repeat her first place finish. She loses six handicap minutes. Even a great improvement is unlikely to yield a victory in a slightly improved field.

More likely to triumph is Roy Rivers, who is the only runner of last year’s top six to receive another handicap minute in 2011. He is in excellent condition and says that he likes his chances. His wife Jamie was injured last year, but she is a top contender too.

Alex Varner, winner of the last two best time awards, has improved each year since 2006, climbing from 19th place to 12th, to 3rd, and then 4th in 2010 (his time last year was the first sub-49:00 in years). He has a better chance to win than Scratch runners have had in decades. His main competition for the best time trophy will be Johnny Lawson, 16, who got 9th place last year. Unlike Varner, Lawson has three handicap minutes, giving him a likely win if he can run under 50:00.

Hans Schmid and Russ Kiernan, two excellent runners in their 70s, both gain minutes. But of the two, Schmid appears to be the lone contender. While Kiernan has slowed considerably in the last two years, Schmid has continued to excel.

Brian Pilcher, the 2009 winner, insists that this will be the year of the men in their 50s. He believes that the top contenders to win are Chuck Smead, a newcomer who has won several marathons, Roy Rivers, Don Stewart (who won the Practice Dipsea, came 11th in 2010, and gains a minute), Mark Richtman, who got a black shirt five years ago, himself (who was injured in 2010), Iain Mickle (34th last year, but improved), and Roy Kissin, who is also running well.

Another possibility is for this to be the year of the J’s. Besides Jamie Rivers, there are several “J” contenders. Julia Maxwell finished 4th in 2009 but did not finish last year. Julie Nacouzi won the Open Section by a considerable margin in 2010. Judy Rabinowitz did not run last year, but gains two minutes from 2009. While none of the “J’s” even got black shirts in 2010, any of these women could score a surprise victory on June 12th.

Melody Anne-Schultz, last year’s runner-up, is rumored to be injured, along with perennial top-ten finisher Mark McManus. Greg Wilson and YiOU Wang are not running this year.

Finally, there are a few dark horses who could surprise spectators. Stefan Venne is a ten-year old who is improving fast and finished in the top hundred last year. Chris Lundy finally gains a minute for turning 40 and could surprise. Diana Fitzpatrick and Karen Steele both gain an unexpected two minutes and could move up in the finishing order. Dan Milechman and Sissel Bernsten-Heber have finished high up before; both of them return after time off. Finally Christine Kennedy has never gotten a black shirt, but Dipsea prognosticators insist that she could win someday.

One thing is for sure: it is going to be a spectacular race on June 12th. The winner could be is young as nine or as old as seventy-three.

Sweat the Small Stuff

There are many ways to go wrong when managing a classroom. However, if new teachers enforce a ban on just two items, hats and Ipods, they enforce the message, an especially powerful symbolic message, that the teacher is in charge and all students will learn in this environment.

Hats: No hats are worn in the classroom. I enforce this District rule, and it is worth it. The hat, usually, a baseball cap, is a symbol of outdoor activity, sport, gang membership and general lawlessness. I would allow a head covering for religious reasons, but, so far, no one has requested that.

Ipods and other music devices: District policy does not allow them on in class. Kids can listen on breaks and during lunch. Teachers that allow them in the classroom send students the following destructive messages:
1. It is OK to be inattentive in school as long as you are not bothering other students.
2. The quality of your work doesn’t matter. Only getting it done quickly matters.
3. When you’ve done the distasteful stuff—learning—you may do something you enjoy.
4. Multitasking is effective.
5. Negative musical energy and lyrics are acceptable in the classroom. (They aren’t listening to Mozart.)

Students figure that if I ban the little things, hats and electronics, I may be equally against classroom use of foul language and marijuana. I still have occasional classroom management issues, as do most teachers, but I have less of them when hats and Ipods are out of sight.

Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall—from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

Reading Frank Brady’s thorough and well-documented book was a bitter-sweet experience for me. I was a serious chess player in my teens, and Bobby Fischer was every American chess player’s hero, even, if for some inexplicable reason, he refused to play after winning the title—for twenty years it turned out. Later, when he broadcast on the radio anti-Semitic and anti-American rantings, I and most of the world figured that his brittleness and easily aroused paranoia, never far from the surface even when in his teens, had taken over his mind and he was lost to the chess world. His mental pathology also ended his life prematurely. He would not accept medical interventions and died of renal failure after a three-month illness.


What lessons can we learn from this deeply disturbed “genius” of the chessboard? Here are three:

1. Dedication and commitment are the surest road to success. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers writes about the 10,000 hours needed for mastery in most fields, rock music to surgery. Fischer put in these hours, probably before he was 16 years old. If anything, his commitment intensified as he got older. A telling anecdote from the book reveals his dedication. After a tournament had ended, Fischer stayed in the hotel and continued to analyze games, working 10 hours per day. He did this for two weeks, until the tournament sponsor told him he would no longer pay for the hotel room.
2. If you are successful at something, the world will forgive at least some of your faults. Few were as narcissistic and ungrateful as Fischer. Yet he had loyal friends who would do just about anything for him until the end of his life. Perhaps celebrity status is more important for admirers than actual talent, and Fischer had both. I was quite unsettled by so many people reaching out to this talented but horrifically flawed individual, and by the end of the book was rooting for him to get a well-deserved come-uppance. The flip side of this rule also seems true—an untalented but righteous person who avoids the limelight must work hard to find friends and is rarely forgiven after committing a few unavoidable life errors.
3. And yet…Sacrificing oneself to a career at the expense of gaining a spouse and perhaps children is rarely worth it. Erik Erickson wrote about the life stages of “Intimacy versus Isolation” and “Generativity versus Stagnation.” Fischer’s life remained unbalanced, because he was unable to commit to an intimate partner until a few years before his death. He did not marry until he was imprisoned near the end of his life and never generated children. Despite his long-term interest in finding a young woman to marry and start a family, he never did. The book does not speculate whether his lack of success in this area led to an Eriksonian existential despair. Yet Fischer in his early sixties was a bitter man who cared little about his appearance and looked twenty years older. Now middle-aged myself, I chose spouse and kids before career many years ago. Perhaps I made the best move.

Two Generations of Teachers

Student achievement is directly related to teacher training. Well-trained teachers have a better chance of increasing the learning of their students. Now that I have lived long enough to have anecdotal data from two generations of teachers, the high school educators that taught me from 1974 to 1978 and my cohort of teachers working now, I have come to some conclusions about their differences.

However, when I compare my Campolindo High School social studies department to mine, I am surprised by the great amount of similarities: both departments are almost completely white, male, and athletic, fun-loving but able to manage the rowdies in a classroom with just a glance.

The AP program had not yet achieved great popularity in social studies, and the Campolindo social studies department did not offer AP Macro/Micro Economics, AP European History, and AP US History. Three of my teachers have received the specialized AP training to teach these courses, and one (Spinrad) has served as a reader for the AP US History essays. But the AP universe is the only area where my department excels over the Campolindo faculty. Why? Every social studies teacher at Campolindo had a Masters degree, and many earned their advanced degrees long after joining the Campolindo faculty. In contrast, only two members of my faculty hold an advanced degree, and only one (again, Spinrad) holds a Masters outside of the education field. The Campolindo faculty felt that getting an advanced degree was a basic prerequisite to successful teaching. My department does not.

Does holding a post-graduate degree really make a difference in teaching quality and student learning? Did the Campolindo social studies department generate higher levels of student achievement than my faculty? I believe the answer is yes, but I have no comparable test scores or other psychometrics. Muddying the waters further, the literacy of students nationwide has declined, and I will not blame that phenomenon on teacher quality (since the computer and communications revolutions are probably more to blame). Certainly, though, the Campolindo faculty was more committed to their chosen field of study, usually political science or history. They boasted of their expertise and kept up to date in scholarship. That excitement and interest oozed out of their teaching. Since these teachers proved their dedication to themselves as well as their fellows, they would be subject to cognitive dissonance if their practice showed a lack of dedication. For that reason alone, I would like all in my department to earn graduate degrees as well.

Another Look at Bridging Cultures and Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching

The writers of, Bridging Cultures in Our Schools (Trumbull et al.) and A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching (Wlodkowski and Ginsberg), both assume that teachers holding traditional Western values should replace or modify them. The authors of Bridging Cultures believe that one should interact with some students and their families using a collectivist orientation. The writers of A Framework argue that one must adopt a constructivist philosophy of learning to successfully engage all students.

The writers of both articles assume that teachers should motivate and educate ethnic minority students. I agree. The authors also assume that teachers should embrace cultural relativism--that all cultures, American, Mexican, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., are of equal value in the classroom and should be respected as they are. There is no reason to change students’ value systems to “traditional American” values. Here I disagree.

The tone of Bridging Cultures is much less strident and less far-reaching in scope than that of A Framework. I found little to object to in Bridging Cultures. As a counseling intern I used in clinical practice a collectivist framework with some ethnic clients, and the contrasts of individualism versus collectivism are well known when counseling the culturally different. I have seen this dichotomy between individualism and collectivism explained differently in other texts. For example, a future-based (Western) world view may be compared to a present-based (Native American). In counseling, the therapist must enter the world of the client, and the client must feel that the therapist has entered her world. The therapist assists the client in changing his problems, thinking more logically, or assisting the client in attaining a cathartic release, but the therapist does not attempt to change the client’s primary world view, collectivism in our case. Here, in my opinion, is the difference between the purposes of psychotherapy and education. A professional educator should teach more than mathematics, history, or music. She must teach Western values and attempt to change the world view of her ethnic students. All students should be taught the benefits of individualism, and therefore, train students to succeed. How can I be so sure of myself, or be as some might say, chauvinistic (or, as others may label, racist)?

My ancestors immigrated to this country from roughly 1880 to 1910. They left to escape “interdependence and success of the group” (Trumbull et al., P.10), the stifling socialism of Bismarck and rigid social roles of the Czar. They came here for a better life--for private property, flexibility in roles, self expression, and university education--as well as to escape forced conscription and political oppression. They thrived under America’s individualist framework. Individualism works! Immigrants continue to come here, not to collectivist countries like Cuba or Venezuela. What worked for my ancestors will work for anyone with an open mind.

Despite my disagreements with the underlying philosophy, I agreed heartily with the cross-cultural techniques explained in Bridging Cultures. I certainly can “allow students some flexibility when their cultural background has not prepared them to voice opinions or publicly ask and respond to questions” (P.50) through using journals or small discussion groups. Similarly, taking a “partnership approach” (P.54) when conferring with parents makes sense whether the child is from Seoul or Boise.

A Framework, on the other hand, is a theoretical article, with concrete examples (P.19) of a teacher using the constructivist perspective but less practical suggestions. I find A Framework to be more controversial on many levels.

Wlodkowski and Ginsberg examine only one perspective when they state that motivation is inseparable from culture. People are motivated by many different factors, including biological (for example, whether the student had breakfast), psychological (for example, whether the student hates all authority figures), talent (for example, whether the student has artistic ability) and historical factors (for example, whether an Irish Catholic student was persecuted by Irish Protestants or English soldiers). My brother and I grew up in exactly the same culture, and I greatly disliked art classes and was poorly motivated no matter who was teaching. My brother loved art classes no matter who was teaching. I would argue against Wlodkowski and Ginsberg’s overemphasis on the importance of culture. Culture is only one of many factors that influence motivation, and motivationally effective teaching comes from knowing students well as individuals rather than as members of a cultural group.

In addition to ignoring many factors of motivation besides the cultural, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg complain that education is still overly influenced by “deterministic, mechanistic, and behavioristic” orientations towards human motivation (P.18) but fail to define “deterministic, mechanistic, and behavioristic” models. Perhaps they are referring to psychoanalytic and operant conditioning (Skinnerian “carrot and stick”) models for human motivation. Even though these models are no longer fashionable in the education establishment, and to my knowledge, rarely taught to prospective teachers, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg find behaviorism rampant in the educational structure. Simply using external rewards and punishments is evidence of rampant behaviorism. In other words, if teachers and students are held accountable to State standards, they are behaviorists. Furthermore, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg say that culturally different students will not be at all motivated by such “behavioristic” means. I see little evidence that they are correct.

After setting up the behavioristic straw man, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg destroy it with their pet constructivist theory, based on intrinsic motivation, which, supposedly, is more effective than extrinsic motivation. They argue that you can’t have both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and that extrinsic rewards dampen intrinsic motivation. (pp. 18-19). My own personal experience does not bear this out. I was motivated through school primarily from intrinsic factors despite the presence of extrinsic rewards. In fact, I hypothesize that the majority of working teachers were motivated intrinsically as students despite the prevalence external motivators.

Lastly, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg set up an intrinsic motivational framework (P.19), four steps or motivational conditions, that can be used in the classroom. Step three of this framework assumes that students have “perspectives and values,” which, of course, they do. However, these perspectives and values have not been solidified in a fifteen-year-old. It is the educator’s job to gently challenge the student’s belief system and confidently teach American values and individualism. Putting Wlodkowski and Ginsberg upside down, I believe that relating lesson content to the student’s background is only a first step. One should aim for eventually changing the student’s background, the belief system, itself.

A Study on the Value of Teacher Feedback

Teachers spend copious amounts of time commenting on students’ social studies papers. Teachers may comment on the students’ understanding or misunderstanding of the unit content, completeness and balance of analysis, and investigation and comparison of sources. Additionally, teachers typically comment on the logic and structure of the paper, grammar, spelling, proper academic language, and other literacy aspects of academic writing.

If the teacher comments are interpreted as constructive criticism, the student is engaged in a joint productive activity. “Learning occurs most effectively when experts and novices work together for a common product or goal, and are therefore motivated to assist one another”(Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy, 2002, www.crede.ucsc.edu/tools/research/standards/standards.html). This is well and good, but do high school students interpret teacher comments on papers as constructive criticism? More basically, do the students even read the comments, and if so, do they use those teacher comments as a guideline for the next paper? That was the question I asked 22 High School history students. I was unable to find previous studies that answered my questions. However, I speculate that the research has been done and is in some education or psychology journal. Perhaps I’ve stumbled upon a research idea for someone’s masters thesis.

I gave a tenth grade World History class the following instructions. (The number of students that answered is in parentheses.)

Please put your head down, and don’t be influenced by your neighbor. I want your honest analysis—not what you think I want to hear. You may pick from four possible answers: never, seldom, usually, or always. Raise your hand for the best answer for two questions:
A. When a teacher corrects a paper I wrote, I read the comments… never (1), seldom (2), usually (7), or always (10).
B. When I write the next paper for that same teacher, I use the comments on the first paper as a guideline... never (4), seldom (4), usually (10), or always (2).

The total number of students in the class was 22. Two students refused to participate.

The total sample size was too small to extrapolate to a more general population of high school students. If the same trend was found on a larger sample size, such as fifty or more students, and one drew from a statistically normal population, disturbing conclusions could be reached. Despite lessons from a skillful and accomplished educator, large numbers of students do not engage in a joint productive activity with their teacher. If 40% of students don’t use teacher comments constructively, the assessment process is no longer a feedback loop. Instead, assessment is only a means for the teacher to determine a grade.

Fortunately, schools can fix this problem before high school. Grammar schools can and should teach students how to use teacher feedback.

Race and Cultural Sensitivity in the Public Schools

California schools are witnessing an influx of Latino students, predominantly from Mexico. According to the Federal Department of Education, Latino students are now the majority ethnic group in California public schools. (Link here.) Teachers and administrators want to engage these students and make them feel welcome and valued, aiming to increase their academic performance. What is the best strategy to get “buy in” from these students?

Many believe that cultural awareness and sensitivity will increase participation of these students. Administrators believe, and I write “believe” on purpose, that if school staff demonstrates interest in Latino themes, these students will reciprocate by getting more involved in school activities, completing homework, pushing for parental involvement in PTA, and participating in athletics and clubs. This belief by administrators translates into assemblies highlighting famous Latinos, observation of holidays on the Mexican calendar, and celebration of Latino food, art, and music.

While I also believe that cultural awareness is useful and an important part of secondary education, increasing connection for all those in our community, dissuading students from holding ethnic stereotypes, and reinforcing the curriculums of world history, government, languages, art, and music, I do not believe it will achieve its stated purpose—to increase this population’s interest in school activities. Assuming that other groups, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Asians, Whites, Muslims, Jews, etc. do not react negatively to the lack of attention for their cultural heritage, will Latino cultural activities raise school grades and test scores?

Some empathy about what it is like to be a minority student may show whether these programs will work. As a Jewish kid in a lily-white suburb, I felt that students did not understand my background and culture. Would I have felt more at home if all attended school assemblies describing the achievements of Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Levi Strauss? Would I have felt more connected to my school if they made everyone watch Roman Polansky movies, listen to Simon and Garfunkle, and attend a bagel fest? The answer to these questions, of course, is no. I felt less connected to my school, not more, when I was embarrassed by being asked to bring in a few Hanukkah songs to balance the Christmas concert play list.

There is a better way to connect kids, all kids, to school activities. Teachers can and should make one-on-one connections to students, inspiring students to work harder, apply to college, and join clubs, student government, and athletics. More often than not, these connections make the difference. Many successful minority students say that an inspiring mentor catalyzed their performance. Why not ask teachers to increase their efforts to make a connection with Latino kids? If lack of connection is not the problem; instead, blatant racism is turning off Latino students, administrators can facilitate small group discussions with Latino parents and students and school staff. Administration can then take necessary action. Most of the time, however, the problem can be alleviated by a closer teacher-student relationship.

Dad, Weather, and Directions--40 Years Ago

Winter mornings were dark but full of life and with a hum growing louder like an orchestra’s slow crescendo. My father, his head on the pillow only moments before and eyes still half-closed put a few scoops of Folgers in the coffee maker and opened a can with a label of some smiling animal probably drawn by an Andy Warhol wannabe. The dogs, of course, were ecstatic, jumping on their hind legs like circus animals badly needing Ritalin, since they were sure they hadn’t ever tried this food before, and it was probably better than fillet mignon. It wasn’t, but I’m sure the dogs’ grating squeaks of gratitude made it to the upper spheres. The coffee machine gurgled and dripped and the bitter aroma wafted through the house. Morning smelled like plain coffee, the stuff that cost a quarter along with your eggs and toast at the local diner. Everyone was awake, eyes still closed, but aware by now. Dad then roused all the kids with four simple words: “Time to get up.” Naturally a morning person, I sprung out of bed and was dressed and eating in the kitchen in ten minutes. (Unfortunately for the rest of humanity, I didn’t discover the wonders of daily showers until adolescence.) My brother usually joined me a few minutes later. I enjoyed reading the San Francisco Chronicle while consuming my usual Life cereal and milk. Now fully awake and in good spirits, coffee in hand, Dad would regale me with questions about the weather in cities around the world. “What was the high in Buenos Aires yesterday? Guess the average temperature in New York City.” Later he became an hour-a-day devotee of the Weather Channel, and he and a few farmers complained bitterly when the cable company dropped this exciting program. He asked me and my brother these questions with such excitement and interest that you’d think he was talking about the end of the Vietnam War or the Apollo Space program, but no, it was whether it rained yesterday in Death Valley. Eventually my brother and I amused ourselves by giving purposely wrong answers and watching Dad’s horror—on this dark December day Anchorage had a high of 95 degrees and it snowed on Oahu. How could his boys be so ignorant after all the training he had given us? Completely disgusted, Dad quit asking us about the weather.

However, my father’s interest in weather was renewed in the days before the family embarked on a summer road trip. Dad would check and double check that my brother and I packed the proper gear for the coldest early morning hours. If there was a chance of a sprinkle, he told us to bring rain gear too. Despite myself, before we left I knew the probable highs and lows of every leg of our trip and the chances for rain at our destination. If my memory serves me, he was usually right—never off by more than a few degrees. He wasn’t just lucky or possessing special skills in watching birds fly. A scientist through and through, he read local weather reports, watched newscasts on television, especially the jerky storm maps (about as interesting as the natural history museums he also loved), and perhaps most critical, forecasted from his “instruments” he perched in various places in the backyard. Using three primitive tools, a thermometer manufactured around the time of the Korean War, a plastic barometer the size of a large clock that my mom found at some G-d-forsaken garage sale, and the dogs’ water dish (which measured precipitation and the night’s low by thickness of the ice) he saw patterns in our area. He successfully generalized these patterns to our trip locale after looking at the television weather maps. To this day, I trust his forecasts better than the professionals—he has a better track record.

Dad occupied himself with the logistics of the trip as well. Three different color pencils and straight edge in hand, he calculated the best route, tracing colored lines in sections over a National Automobile Club map. As he hunched over the well-illuminated table like General Patton in his war room, he let everyone know that he could not be disturbed as he was “figuring out how to get there.” Never have I seen such absolute concentration. I secretly hoped that some day I would possess this manly skill and calculate my way to and from the high Sierra Nevada mountains. Dad didn’t hold much stock in road signs, believing only in following the directions of the compass, usually assessed by the placement of the sun and the name of the highway. On the rare occasions that he lost his way, he, a combination of American Indian chief and US Army Ranger, oriented himself using celestial objects and moss on the trees.

Today I never use a map. I could never come close to the skills of the master, and I prefer depending on road signs and some inner compass to guide me. Dad’s maps, an anachronism for anyone using modern GPS systems, are no longer needed. Dad doesn’t trust the GPS though, and brightens when he proves the machine wrong. Besides, he’s a much better father than any machine, warning us adult children every year about the fog bank one block from his house.

PT Poker

Note: My son, who is studying to be a teacher, invented this game to keep physically fit. He is a Marine Corps cadet, and, like me, knows that physical fitness is a key element of teaching performance.

PT poker is a two-player game. Players bet in pushups. The loser takes the pot. If player A owes 100 pushups and there are 50 pushups in the pot and player A wins the hand, 50 pushups are not subtracted from his total. Player B simply owes 50 pushups.

Since pushups can get tiresome, players may exchange a number of pushups for other exercises. In our version, five pushups are equivalent to one eight-count-body-builder. 100 pushups equals a sprint up a very steep hill. Ab workouts or different types of runs can also be applied.

We keep track of pushups owed on paper. Players are not required to complete all pushups instantly. They may do them at any point during or after the game.

There is an additional penalty if player A does not fold and player B has some rare combination. The penalties we play with are the following: 10 pushups for a straight, 50 pushups for a flush, 100 pushups for a full house, 200 pushups for quads, 500 pushups for a straight flush, and 1000 pushups for a royal flush. So far, nobody has ever owed more than 500 or 600 pushups.

A winner is never declared. If someone wants to quit they can quit, but they must complete all pushups owed at some point during the day.

My Dining Experience and Culture Change

I assumed that my childhood dining experience was the norm everywhere until I served, in my late 20s, as a counseling intern in a poor urban area of California. I co-facilitated a group of teens in a diversion program. Similar in philosophy to traffic school, the attendees avoided a worse alternative—juvenile hall—by attending sixteen sessions of group therapy. Most of the kids wanted to quickly get through the program and get on with their lives, but more than a few enjoyed engaging in macho posturing and making the therapist squirm. One time my partner went on vacation and I was on my own with seventeen teens, many of them well over 200 pounds with a recent history of low impulse control. My boss told me to call 911 if things got out of hand. Boy, that made me feel empowered! The group sensed my discomfort and I heard comments like, “I’d like to tear off, one by one, the fingers off that cop that hassled me.” “Have you ever done crack?” And my favorite, “Man, this group sucks.” Somehow I survived. Teaching high school was easy after these experiences.

One day I asked the group what they talked about at the dinner table. I received back seventeen blank stares. My more astute partner was familiar with inner city life, and asked, “How many of you eat dinner with your family at the same time?” None did. Instead they would grab something out of the refrigerator and eat it, in their room, alone. Taken aback, I realized that the family life of many inner city children was qualitatively different from mine. What glued these families together? Perhaps their family glue was less sticky than mine. My family’s dining experience was the centripetal force that held us together.

For my first seventeen years of my life, from birth to when I moved away to college, my family ate together whenever possible but especially at dinner. If someone was away or sick their presence would be missed. Dinnertime was when we kids told everyone about our day, usually what happened at school. Topics included who in class got in trouble for placing a tack on the “kiss up” girl’s chair; whether plants grow from the top or from the bottom; pi to ten digits; who got the weekly “room 13 citizen of the week” award; and who threw up during running drills in P.E. and who was forced to clean it up. If you weren’t talkative, you were angry at a family member or “something was wrong with you.” Religion and politics were also highly prized topics of discussion, and non-believers and political enemies were described in colorful and draconian terms as barbarians and evil-doers. Specifically, I remember a dinner time discussion that included the Vietnam War, President Nixon, and Eugene McCarthy after some Berkeley radical or reactionary tore off my father’s McCarthy for President bumper sticker. After a Christian missionary came to our door, we discussed a few differences between Christianity and our Judaism. I was a good son that agreed with his parents and as a devout junior Hasmonean and budding politician looked forward to dinnertime, hungry or not.

Indeed, when I started forming opinions of my own, the discussions became more heated. Our dinner table conversation would have made excellent court room training. We all used time-tested rhetorical techniques on each other, especially ad hominem attacks, and sarcastically questioned our opponent’s intelligence. Yet we children also learned that our opinions mattered and were valued and were taught how to think and retort quickly and sometimes cleverly.

Update: 
My pulse quickened when I found a New York Times article, Why Does it Matter that Families Eat Together? Sam Sifton writes that this communal time inoculates family members somewhat from depression, drug use, obesity and teenage pregnancy. The children do better in school. Read the article here.

Does Teacher Tenure Help or Hinder Student Learning?

Plenty of ink has been spilled about whether tenure contributes to better or worse high school instruction. Tenure insulates teachers from education stakeholders, more specifically parents, fellow teachers, and administrators, who may want to remove an unpopular but otherwise good and effective teacher. These successful teachers must contend with political pressures from administrators, parents, or colleagues. A principal may demand that the teacher teach to the test to produce higher test scores or inflate grades to generate higher pass rates. Parents may complain to the principal about the curriculum, the teacher’s political or religious views, or their child’s grade. The school board may object to whistle blowing activities. Fellow teachers may object to the teacher’s activism. Administrators may want to hire those that can be more easily molded to carry out their policies and fire those that get in their way (Brekke, 2001, Koorstra, 2000). Teachers should not be terminated for political reasons, and tenure insulates teachers from these political winds.

However, tenure may be a redundant protection since public school teachers are guaranteed due process by state and federal governments and additionally sheltered by union grievance procedures. Tenure acts as a disincentive for some teachers to give more than a minimum effort (Pound, 2000) and makes it quite expensive and difficult for school boards to fire incompetent, destructive, and dishonest teachers. From 1990 to 1999, “Los Angeles Unified School District—the second largest in the nation—dismissed only one teacher.” Administrators tend to move bad teachers rather than fire them, so they gravitate to schools in low-income areas where supervision tends to be more forgiving (Schwab, 2005) and where, ironically, the best teachers are needed. High school tenure requires no record of published research or long probationary period required at the university level (Stephey, 2009). In California, teacher probation is only two years.

Let’s conduct a mind experiment. What would high school education look like if both teacher protections, unionization and tenure, were removed? We would then be a nation of private schools! My oldest son attended a private high school five years ago. Nine out of thirteen former teachers and the principal have moved on. Not all private schools suffer from the high turnover that plagued this school, but public schools without union and tenure protections would certainly approach the higher turnover rates of the private sector. University of California, Berkeley education researcher Xiaoxia Newton shared with me by email that a national study comparing private and public school churning was conducted by R.Ingersoll in 1995. (Teacher supply, teacher qualifications and teacher turnover. Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics.) This study showed that small private schools have relatively higher levels of teacher turnover. (See Dr. Newton's work comparing charter and public schools here.) Does higher teacher turnover hurt student performance? According to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, teachers at low-performing schools often leave before they have mastered their craft and created a successful learning culture (Barnes et al., 2007). If all schools suffered from much higher turnover, student learning would suffer. Additionally, private schools often pay less than public schools and fewer good candidates would be attracted to the profession.

What if we kept unionization in place and limited the use of tenure in high school, either requiring a longer probationary period or weakening tenure that shields teachers receiving poor performance reviews? Five years ago California voters discarded these ideas, packaged as a ballot measure, Proposition 74. I see little evidence that changing probation and tenure policies will more than slightly affect the aggregate of teacher performance and therefore, student performance, but it may be worth looking at the probationary period again. Would students be better served if California had a three-year probationary period? I think so. Most California high school teachers are good at what they do, but, anecdotally, I have come across poor-performing teachers who weren’t quite weeded out after two years of probation. One more year of hard scrutiny, adding fifty percent more time to their probationary period, may have convinced them to find ways to improve their skills or seek another line of work. Since these teachers, now mediocre performers at best, cannot be removed and have little interest in improving, student performance suffers. Would beginning teachers be discouraged by a three-year probationary period and one more year of high-stakes performance reviews? I think not. Most states demand a longer probationary period than California.

Alternately, the law could be changed to weaken tenure protections for poor-performing teachers. If a teacher receives inferior performance reviews from administrators AND a board of peers AND state tests scores declined for a majority of students under this teacher, we have a pretty good idea that something is wrong. This teacher should lose tenure protection. Notice that tenure would still protect teachers against overzealous parents, administrators attempting to remake departments to their liking, and faculty objecting to a teacher’s politics. Only truly bad teachers would fail performance reviews run by both administrators and fellow teachers, including subjective examinations of performance and an objective analysis of state test scores. Those teachers could choose to learn necessary skills or leave the profession and student learning would incrementally improve.

Bibliography

G. Barnes, E. Crowe, and B. Schaefer, The Cost of Teacher Turnover in Five School Districts, Executive Summary, National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 2007, http://www.nctaf.org/resources/demonstration_projects/turnover/documents/CTTExecutiveSummaryfinal.pdf

Brekke, Stewart E, Why Teachers Need Tenure, 2001, http://teachers.net/gazette/JAN02/brekke.html

Koorstra, Dirk, Tenure Protects Good Teachers, Too, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, February 10, 2000, http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=2696

Pound, Gerald A, Tenure Law is Impediment to School Reform, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, May 12, 2000 http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=2874

Schwab, Alexander, Teacher Tenure Protects Jobs Instead of Education, http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/guest_commentary/reform-teacher-tenure.htm

Stephey, M. J., A Brief History of Tenure, Time, Nov. 17, 2008