Digital Communication, Part I

For anyone who is in education, it’s impossible to avoid references to the “six Cs” of 21^st century education. In case you’re not familiar, the “6 Cs” refers to the skills and knowledge that educators and business leaders have deemed necessary for the future success of our children in the world marketplace. The 6 Cs are:

1.     Collaboration,

2.     Communication,

3.     Creativity,

4.     Critical Thinking,

5.     Cross-Cultural Competency, and

6.     Character

For this blog post, I want to focus on communication. Lately, I’ve been think a good bit about how we communicate in today’s digital world, how that communication has changed since I was in school, and how we best go about teaching communication to students who are “digital natives.”

To start with, I think there are some very good things about our connected, digital world of communication. Social media certainly has its utility. For example, I have 1,989 “friends” on Facebook. Through Facebook, I’ve been able to reconnect with former students, friends and acquaintances from high school, and relatives who live in other parts of the country. I’ve also met people online who have common interests I never would have met, otherwise. Here at HA, we have Skyped with job candidates and hired teachers from as far away California, Minnesota, Utah, China, and Latin America. My children still keep up with their friends from Tennessee, where we lived five years ago. 

Furthermore, I have almost unbelievable access to information. When I first graduated from college, I subscribed to a half-dozen magazines in order to get my news. I don’t subscribe to ANY magazines anymore; I read them on my tablet and phone. In fact, my cell phone gives me access to more information more quickly than I could have EVER imagined when I first started teaching. Additionally, the novel I just finished reading was on Apple’s iBooks. I didn’t have to go to the bookstore or even order it online. I wanted to read it, and POOF, it was on my iPad AND my phone. I could have bought it at the bookstore, or I could have ordered it on Amazon for much less money, but I didn’t want to have to wait for the actual book to arrive. After all, I now live in a world where I demand and receive instant gratification.  

Similarly, I can give feedback to students and parents almost immediately through email and through my web-based Google Classroom. My students in my AP Economics class have a free, online textbook, with links to relevant primary sources and websites, and I can post announcements and changes to my students in real-time, after they leave my classroom. I have to say, as a teacher, it’s pretty awesome.

So, I suppose all of this is good – or at least it’s not bad. But I can’t help but think that in the history of mankind, we have never been so connected, yet, so disconnected. I find myself asking the question: “Is the communication in which our children are engaged authentic.” For example, have you noticed that when you go on vacation that our kids don’t seem to miss each other?

I can remember that when my family went on vacation, I missed my girlfriend and my buddies. I couldn’t wait to see them when I came home. Plus, my girlfriend and I would spend hours and hours on the phone, actually talking.

Not anymore. 

After we returned from fall break this year, I asked my kids if they wanted to get together with their friends, and the response was condescending. “DAAAD!”, they snarled (with a hint of an eye-roll), “We’ve been TALKING the entire time we’ve been gone!” There was no sense of urgency to see their friends. In fact, they told me stories about some of the funny things that went on during break in the cyber-world of Instagram. It actually occurred to me that the kids tell stories of happenings on the internet in a way that resembles the stories I’ve told about my fraternity days. But the kids’ stories aren’t about wearing a goofy costume to a date party or swimming in the campus fountain. Their stories are about clever memes or “LOL” retorts.

Moreover, it’s not just the fact that our children are communicating online, but the amount of time they are spending “plugged in” is worrisome to me. A 2015 Pew Research Center report indicates some not-so-shocking data about teenage social media and electronic usage. 92% of teens (aged 12-17) go online, daily, and 24% report being online “almost constantly” (Lenhart, 2015). Still further, 88% of all teens have cell phones or smartphones at their disposal (Lenhart, 2015), and according to the Common Sense Media, teens spend an average of nine hours per day using media online (Tsukayama, 2015).

So, I’m posing the question, to which I honestly don’t know the answer. Is today’s communication real or even healthy?  To me, something seems very wrong, but maybe it’s just a bad idea whose time has come? Maybe I am just old-fashioned? Maybe, I’m like my grandparents who thought rock and roll (and Elvis Presley, in particular) was the source of all evil in society? I mean, to our children, Snapchat IS authentic communication. Our children DO feel connected and DO feel they are engaging in genuine dialogue. Just because I don’t think it’s authentic doesn’t mean it isn’t. 

In my next blog post, I’ll delve into some of the research on social media and screen time, and also talk about some of the ways we can use online tools to our educational advantage.

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It's Showtime!

When I first arrived at Houston Academy in 2012 someone told me, “We’re not an arts school.” First of all, that wasn’t true. We already had an incredible band, a fine chorus, a vibrant lower school music program, an award-winning visual arts program, and a talented dance team. What we lacked was a theater program. Secondly, though, that statement angered me. Why wouldn’t we want to be known as an “arts school”? Very few offerings in a school can more positively impact students’ competency in the 6 Cs[1] than participation in the arts. Moreover, people acted like it was a zero-sum game – that we could be good at the arts or we could be good in athletics, but you couldn’t do both. Frankly, that’s nonsense.  Given the caliber of our student body, we can and should be good at everything we do, and our students should have the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of activities.

Well, my message to you today is that we have reached a point where our theater program is first rate. This year, we have already put on our 4^th – 6^th grade play. If you missed our production of Aladdin, you really missed an outstanding performance. It was not just “cute;” it was excellent. Plus, it’s worth pointing out that each performance we have done in each of the the last three years has been more difficult and has had a higher production value than the previous one. Additionally, our participation rate has been consistently high. This year, 44 students participated in the play, which constitutes 43% of the student body in grades 4-6.

Tomorrow night, (Tuesday, November 8^th) at 6:30 PM in Dunning Hall, the Arts Department will be presenting its Fall Showcase. Admission is free, and you will get a chance to hear our jazz band, chorus, and the extracurricular chorus. Furthermore, the drama class will be putting on Café Murder, a family-friendly murder mystery that only YOU can help solve. Admission is free, and having seen the rehearsals, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Finally, the 7^th -12^th grade students will be putting on a performance of Singin’ In the Rain. This will be an endeavor the likes of which we have never attempted at Houston Academy. It is full of intricate choreography and difficult numbers. From what I’ve seen in rehearsals, it should be outstanding. Singin’ in the Rain is a really entertaining and funny show, and it would be well worth your time to come see it. It will be performed in Dunning Hall at 7:00 PM from Tuesday, November 15^th to Thursday, November 17^th.

In short, in just three years, we have gone from having no drama program, to having one in which approximately 90 students are participating. Moreover, our program is of high quality, despite our lack of a facility. I should also note that our band has 54 members, our show choir has 13 members, our upper school chorus has 20 members, our extracurricular chorus has 20 members, and our dance team has 17 members. These students are not only doing outstanding work, but they are collaborating and learning in ways they would not do in any other environment. When we talk about 21^st Century Learning, this is what it’s all about.

See you on Tuesday!

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[1] Much attention has been paid in the educational literature and in the media to what has been termed “21^st Century Education.” Generally speaking, educators and business leaders have identified the competencies that our students will have to master to be successful in the workplace. Pat Bassett, former head of the National Association of Independent schools referred to these skills as the “5C’s plus 1.”[1] I’ve just started calling them the “6 Cs.” These 6 Cs are:

1.     Collaboration,

2.     Communication,

3.     Creativity,

4.     Critical thinking,

5.     Cross-cultural competence, and

6.     Character.

Memorization?

For this blog post, I want to try something a bit different. I'd like to point you in the direction of some interesting videos and articles we have come across in our discussions at Houston Academy.

Over the past three years, we have been engaged in a discussion about what education should mean in the information age. As a 1:1 MacBook school, our students have more information at their fingertips than there has ever been in human history. The “Knowledge Doubling Curve," created by Buckminster Fuller, tells us that up until 1900, human knowledge doubled about every hundred years. By 1945, knowledged was estimated to double every 25 years. Now, we believe that human knowledge doubles every 12 months. IBM asserts that it will soon double every 12 hours. Moreover, we can pull out a "smart phone" and access that information instantly, from anywhere in the world. We have "smart" TVs, and "smart" computers that can "think." That begs the question of "What is essential for our students to know?"

For example, we would agree that students need to know their vocabulary in their world language classes if they are going to be fluent in their chosen language. However, debate is raging in the educational community about the nature of essential knowledge and the role of memorization in our educational system. Do students need to learn times tables? What about spelling? Do they need to know that "in fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue"? We still have a "classical" educational model that maintains that memorization is the key to learning, but at HA, we have come to  virtual consensus that it is more important for our students to be able to find information that to memorize information. Furthermore, once that information is acquired, the real challenge is to synthesize and analyze that information and separate good information from bad.

Actually, the argument against memorization is far from new. As early as 1956, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom identified six cognitive domains, starting from the most simple to the most complex. Informed by brain research, "Bloom"s Taxonomy" was revised in the 1990s to place "creativity" at the highest level. "Remembering" (or memorizing) has remained at the lowest level.

I encourage you to click on the links I have provided. These videos and articles are thought-provoking, and I would love to get a discussion going about the value and role of memorization in our educational system.

Read this article!

And this one! 

Watch this video!

And watch this one!

"You Can't Fatten a Cow By Weighing It!"

In my last blog entry, I briefly alluded to the “high stakes testing” regime that has accompanied the standards movement. “High stakes” tests have taken different forms in different states, but primarily, they involve standardized tests that students have to pass in order to allow them to move on to the next grade level, graduate from high school, or pass a given class. To be clear, these exams do not typically comprise any percentage of a student’s grade in a class; these tests are the sole criteria used to measure student mastery and proficiency.

 I believe that our nations’ high stakes testing regime has had a crippling effect on our nation’s schools and has harmed our children. It’s been disheartening to teachers and administrators, but it’s also caused many school systems to focus on teaching to the tests instead of teaching children. The pressure to have students perform well on standardized tests has also led to widespread cheating by teachers and administrators across the country. In fact, there is strong evidence that some sort of cheating or score misrepresentation has gone on in 48 out of 50 states (Beckett, 2013).

One would think the nation would have moved to a different school accountability measure by now. The preponderance of educational literature has been highly critical of the federal No Child Left Behind Law [NCLB], which is the law that has required that states institute high-stakes testing.  The literature has pointed out that NCLB was an unfunded mandate based on faulty assumptions about teaching and learning; that it was antithetical to all philosophical dispositions towards a more democratic leadership style; that it ignored the possible contributions of mixed methods or qualitative studies; that it had the unintended consequence of increasing dropout rates, narrowing curricula, and discouraging good teachers; and that many of the statistics assumptions on which it was based were not accurate (Amrein & Berliner, 2003; Chatteriji, 2000; Jones, 2004; Mathis, 2003; Neuman, 2003; Slavin, 2001; Wheelock, 2003 ).  In actuality, the testing movement is working under the implicit assumption that test score indicators are the only true and “scientific” way to measure learning outcomes – ignoring all recent research on the effectiveness of constructivist pedagogy; ignoring the realities of multiple intelligences; and ignoring the truth that, by their very nature, standardized tests are pedantic, rudimentary, and limiting. Furthermore, standardized tests were never intended to decide if one went from the 8^th grade to the 9^th (Ghezzi, 2005). The tests were supposed to be “used to determine how best to teach kids” (Ghezzi, 2005), not to narrowly define what learning is and punish those who cannot operate within that narrow definition. Moreover, in a norm-referenced test, won't half of our children always be below average? This, after all, is not Lake Wobegon.[1]

I understand that many state graduation tests are criterion-referenced test – that is, they are tests designed to determine whether a student has mastered certain material. However, many of the principles of these tests are based on perceived problems which become evident through the results of norm-referenced tests, and many of these state tests are still culturally and socioeconomically biased, narrow, and invidious. Proponents of NCLB and the state legislatures generally make the assumption that the proverbial playing field is level, when clearly it is not (Neuman, 2003). For example, children from high socioeconomic status families are exposed to thirty million more word before kindergarten than children from low socioeconomic status families, and that gap does not disappear in one year; it is cumulative (Neuman, 2003). There is nothing in a state-mandated test that is going to get our poor and underprivileged children up to the level of more affluent children before they enter kindergarten, much less the 9th grade. 

To this point, there’s an old Iowa farm adage that says, “You can't fatten a cow by weighing it.” In other words, its one thing to say, “Our students are failing;” it’s another thing to figure out what to do about it. Even if you assume that criterion reference tests identify the problems correctly, they do not begin to offer us a solution.

What is most troubling to me, though, is the research that shows that since the passage of No Child Left Behind, American students’ creativity[2] has plummeted.  In 2010, Newsweek published an edition of their magazine titled “The Creativity Crisis.”  I urge you to read the magazine in its entirety, but the gist of it is that what has made America great and economically successful has been our ability to be creative. Moreover, the world is facing environmental and social problems on a global scale. These problems require leaders with an ability to come up with creative solutions to complex problems. These problems also require an ability to build consensus and work collaboratively. We have traditionally been a country of entrepreneurs and innovators. America has led the world in scientific, technological, and artistic endeavors. While children in China were learning how to take tests, American children were learning how to think.  The research tells us that as a direct result of our “drill and kill” daily drudgery and emphasis on standardized test scores, our schools have now become a place (in the words of Pat Bassett) where “creativity goes to hide.”  They have become a place where, by fourth grade, most students wallow in boredom and misery.

While researching my blog on Common Core, I read a letter to the editor in the New York Times written by Howard Miller, who is the chair of the department of secondary education at Mercy College School of Education. He said it better than I could:

The sticking point rests not with the standards, but with the ways in which we attempt to measure student learning through a combination of multiple-choice test items and short essays.

Learning is a very complex human enterprise. It is a building up of a depth and breadth of knowledge and skills over time through a process that includes trial and error, interpretation and analysis, “aha” moments of discovery, and applying what we have learned to different situations.

Standardized tests are flawed because they decontextualize learning and attempt to break it up into tiny measurable segments. With learning, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts that we do measure.

Simply put, I'm not convinced that ANY of our standardized tests accurately measure if a student has what it takes to be successful in work and life. For example, does the ACT measure persistence? Resiliency? Emotional intelligence?  Does it adequately address the competencies (“6 C’s”) that have been identified as the core facets of 21^st century learning: collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, cross-cultural competency, and character?

On a national scale, the high-stakes testing movement works to absolve society or the

broader educational system of any real accountability for the root problems in of poverty, malnutrition, housing, and unequal opportunity. We know what our root social problems are, and they are not going to be solved by giving students a test, the results of which will be used to hold them back a grade level, fire teachers, or shut down a school.

We know that education is the key to opportunity in any Western country. Many well-meaning educators support a high-stakes testing system in our country with the hope of raising standards and holding our teachers and students accountable. Our teachers and students should be held accountable. A standardized test, however, is just one measure on one day; this is not the right way to promote accountability (Ghezzi, 2005).

References

Amrein, A.L., & Berliner, D.C. (2003). The effects of high-stakes testing on student motivation and learning. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 32-37.

Bassett, P. (2011, October 11). School: Where creativity goes to hide. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.nais.org/Independent-Ideas/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=318

Beckett, L. (2013). America’s most outrageous cheating scandals. ProPublica. Retrieved from http://www.propublica.org/article/americas-most-outrageous-teacher-cheating-scandals

Biddle, B.J., and Berliner, D. C.  (2002). Unequal school funding in the United States. Educational Leadership, 59(8), 48-59.

Chatterji, M. (2000). Models and methods for examining standards-based reform accountability initiatives: Have the tools of inquiry answered pressing questions on improving schools? Review of Educational Research, 72, 345-386. 

Darder, A. (2005). Schooling and the culture of dominion: Unmasking the ideology of standardized testing. In G. E. Fischman, P. McLaren, H. Sünker, & C. Lankshear (Eds.), Critical theories, radical pedagogies, and global conflicts (pp. 3-22). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Ellinger, K., Wright, D.E. III, & Hirlinger, M. W. (1995). Brains for bucks?: School revenue and student achievement in Oklahoma. The Social Science Journal, 32(3), 299-308.

Ghezzi, P. (2005, May 8). Experts: Student testing overdone. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

Goldberg, M. (2000). An interview with Harold Hodgkinson: Demographics, ignore them at your peril. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(4), 304-307.

Jones, K. (2004). A balanced school accountability model: An alternative to high stakes testing. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(8), 598-605. 

Mathis, W. (2003). No child left behind: Costs and Benefits. Phi Delta Kappan, 84 (9), 679 – 686. 

 Miles, K., Ware, K. & Roza, M. (2003). Leveling the playing field: Creating funding equity through student-based budgeting. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(2), 114-119. 

 Miles, K.H. (2001). Putting money where it matters. Educational Leadership,59(1), 53-57.

Miller, H. (2013, June). Will common core improve schools? [Letter to the editor]. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/will-common-core-improve-schools.html?_r=0

Neuman, S.B. (2003).  From rhetoric to reality: The case of high-quality compensatory prekindergarten programs.  Phi Delta Kappan, 85(4), 286 – 291.

Odden, A. (2001). The New School Finance. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(1), 85-91. 

Odden, A. (2003). Equity and adequacy in school finance today. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(2), 120-125. 

Payne, K. J. & Biddle, B. J. (1999). Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics achievement. Educational Researcher, 28(6), 4-13.

Reville, S. P. (2004). High standards + high stakes = high achievement in Massachusetts. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(8), 591-597.  

Slavin, R.E. (2001). Putting the school back in school reform. Educational Leadership, 58(4). 

Slavin, R.E. (2003). A reader’s guide to scientifically-based research. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 12-16. 

Starratt, R. (2003). Opportunity to learn and the accountability agenda. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(4), 298-303. 

Wheelock, A. (2003). Myopia in Massachusetts. Educational Leadership, 61(3), 50-54. 

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[1] "Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."  - Garrison Keillor

[2] Generally, we use the term creativity to mean the ability to produce something original and of some use or value.