Why the Author is Getting Her Degree

I'm having a hard time right now thinking that going to public university to get my bachelors in education was the right idea.

I had a short conversation with the cooperating teacher I'm student teaching with yesterday. It went a little like this:

Her: I know you're looking to go into Montessori, but the reality for me, as a public school teacher, is that I have to get these guys ready for the state test in March. I HAVE to. It's my job.

Me: I know. I know that's reality, and while I'm student teaching here, that's my job, too.

Her: *sigh* I wish I could go back to how I taught when I was teaching fifth grade, which was thematically. When I taught thematically, I could encompass ALL of the subjects, and the students were naturally more engaged because they were earnestly interested.

Me: But you won't be able to teach that way now, anyway, because the district has adopted math and reading programs.

Her: ... You're right. *gets up*

*ten minutes later*

Her: You're right. I wouldn't be able to teach that way anymore. It sucks. *sigh*

She had obviously been thinking about it after our conversation ended.

Today, a friend linked me to this article about play based learning. Reading it, I knew that my heart firmly agreed. To requote from the article's source, Scientific American,

"...parents might be surprised to learn that “just playing” is in fact what nearly all developmental psychologists, neuroscientists and education experts recommend for children up to age seven as the best way to nurture kids’ development and ready them for academic success later in life. Decades of research have demonstrated that their innate curiosity leads them to develop their social, emotional and physical skills independently, through exploration—that is, through play."

So why am I doing this to myself? Why am I jumping through all of the hoops that are a bachelor's degree in education when I'm doing my own research online and it's telling me not to structure the lives of small children with "school"?

The semester is over in two weeks, and obviously I'm more than a little stressed about all of the work that's required to be finished.

But aside from that, the question still remains. Why am I getting my bachelor's in education, anyway?

I'm passionate about teaching children, but honestly I feel deep down that my real life's mission will be raising my own children one day.

Why, then?

Because, first of all, I need to show others (including future parents and employers as well as those involved at the Montessori training school) that I am capable of diligent, professional research, reflection, and self-growth. Sure, I can tell them that verbally, even show them research I've done, say, on this blog. But in today's society, the only thing that really gets the message across, unfortunately, is a degree.

Second, because it IS teaching me. It's teaching me the WRONG way to go about education. A good way to know that I'm teaching the way I want to be teaching is by knowing that I'm NOT doing something I don't want to be doing. Plus, all of the experience is certainly good for me.

So, as stressed as I am, as much as I may feel that what I'm being asked to do is asinine and counter intuitive, I really just need to hold out a little longer. Graduation is in six months.

No Need for "Practice"

Of all meditational cleaning, dish washing may be the most effective. Somehow the calm flow of the warm water helps my thoughts to surface and come cleaner. Today it helped two formerly unrelated thoughts connect and become stronger.

1. Children should not be given "practice" plastic cups and plates before they are trusted with glass ones. (This is a Montessori idea.)

2. Children should not be taught to master addition and subtraction without regrouping before they are allowed to move on to addition and subtraction with regrouping. (My university math methods teacher taught this idea.)

Upon meditation, this is the same principle applied to different areas of life, and it comes down to trusting that our children can handle bigger ideas and concepts. The things we trust our children with do not need to be broken down into smaller steps. If we tell our children that we are trusting them with something, they will live up to our expectations. Sure, a child may break a plate or regroup incorrectly at first, but helping them clean up their mess and letting them grow through experience is easier in the long run than babying them and expecting constant growth.

Teaching simple addition connects certain synapses in children's brains that tell them what math is like. When we teach regrouping as a separate lesson, it tells the student, "Remember how you thought math was easy? Well, it's not really. There's actually a whole other step that you have to do now." They see it as an entirely different (and more complex) process. Contrariwise, if regrouping is taught first, not only is the base ten system emphasized (because children, especially English-speaking children, need all of the help with base ten they can get. More on that later), but simple addition seems even easier.

Similarly, if we hand toddlers a plastic cup (usually in the form of a sippy cup, in most societies today), it connects synapses that tell the child the properties of a plastic cup--it's light-weight, liquid stays in if I tip it over, it doesn't break when I drop it, liquid only comes out at this specific point, etc. Then it doesn't make sense in a child's mind that her father's cup has different properties, and he's upset when she breaks it. However, if we give the same toddler a miniature glass cup to begin with (I've seem shot glasses used for this purpose), she learns an entirely different set of mental rules about the properties of glasses and any glass thereupon requires no other handling consideration. Yes, the first one will be broken. Yes, a few others may be broken in the next couple of years. But that only emphasizes the properties of dishes.

Rather than giving children "practice" cups and plates when they are small, cut out the middle man and give them smaller sized glasses.

Rather than teaching children "practice" addition, cut out the middle man and teach regrouping first.

Rather than babying children with a modified version of life, let them experience reality.

Book Review: Highly Effective Questioning

On the lookout for good Socratic education books, I stumbled upon Highly Effective Questioning: How and Why to Ask Questions in the K-16 Classroom by G. Ivan Hannel. It's a short textbook, less than 200 pages, and I flew through it.

Hannel absolutely confirmed my thoughts about last week's lesson to my peers, so I'm glad to say that I was on the right track!

I also noticed that it conflicted directly with a few things I'm being taught at the university, particularly where tests are concerned. In public schools, we teach students test-taking skills to better prepare them for assessments. If assessments weren't necessary, as implied in Highly Effective Questioning, we wouldn't teach test-taking strategies but learning strategies.

At any rate, what follows is my notes from reading. It was a wonderful read, and I found myself writing and quoting a lot! Thus, I think I'll put them under a cut.

Teaching Reading

I got into a conversation with my husband today about teaching children to read. A lot of alternative schools don't--Waldorf, Regio Emilia, Montessori for the most part. They don't sit down with the students and have reading lessons. More, they teach the love of reading and allow the children to pick it up on their own or come to the adult to ask for help "when they are ready."

For some reason, I was thinking about this and asked my husband for his thoughts.

He did not approve.

"It has taken us thousands of years to get where we are today," was his response, in essence. "It took us thousands of years to develop oral language, thousands more to be able to write it down, and now, finally, we are at the point where we can teach it immediately. The basics of letters and numbers are taught for an entire year (kindergarten) because they are such an important basis upon which the entirety of our education system exists. If we neglect to teach reading properly, children must forever afterwards read through cargo culting."

Cargo cult - a term used for the act of applying something that is not entirely understood.

I guess that means we'll personally be teaching out own children the rules of reading and spelling. It's just that English, being a pidgin language, has so many of them, and so many exceptions. It's a nice fantasy to say that explaining all the rules and exceptions would just confuse children, and that they'll pick everything up just fine on their own.

But what about how the differences in reading between Montessori-, Waldorf-, and Regio Emilia-educated children and children from a public school background disappear by graduation? This is what I've heard, but I suppose I don't have any research to back it up.

Little did I know that all of this spawned in the back of my mind from the 30 hours I've had with the third grade class I'm student teaching this year. Their classroom teacher maintains that they are exceptionally "low" and is scrambling to prepare them for state assessments in the spring. We both know that many of them will not pass, and I'm worried about the kind of stigma that must come with that. Not passing a test that everyone says is so important, being classified as "low," and coming to think of yourself as dumb or inadequate. These are sweet kids, and I don't want that for them. I guess in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, "If these children weren't in a public school, they wouldn't have to go through this. It wouldn't be such a big deal that they don't have any number sense because they'll pick it up when they're ready. By the time they graduate, all the difference between them and other students will have disappeared."

Now that I know where all my thoughts stemmed from, I can focus on that. I suppose I need to figure out a way to keep my third graders this year to keep from feeling the pressure the state assessments are going to put on them.

Socratic Teaching in Practice

Today I was required to teach a math lesson to my university methods class. I taught it Socratically, and in hindsight I realized that it was my first experience doing so! My peers hated it. They were polite, but I could tell the only thing on their mind was, "We didn't do anything! There were no activities! There's no difference between lecture and what you just did!" Part of that was because it was my first time teaching using this method, and the other part was because the group I taught was not familiar with it. If I had a regular class of students I taught using this method frequently, they would have been more at ease with it.

I did think, however, that because teaching Socratically is so different than a regular lesson, I should announce what kind of teaching I will be doing before I begin. A good way to do this might be, "We are going to have a Socratic dialogue about decimals, so please turn your desks into a circle." Having the circle will definitely indicate to the students that they will be working collaboratively to answer questions. Having my "students" sit normally today indicated to them that I would be teaching a normal lesson, and they were confused when my lesson didn't meet their expectations.

I may also need to work on the questions I ask. I tried to use a new classroom management today, as well, using the word "together" to indicate when a choral response was requested. It didn't work so well because it was my first time using it and I wasn't in the habit of using it, but more importantly because it clashed with the dialogue. I asked a lot of low order thinking questions that were answered in one word responses so that I could use the "together" trick, and this did not lead to good dialogue. The "together" trick would have been good in a classroom that needs a lot of management, and it seems that Socratic discussion works better in one that doesn't need as much management, at least after the students have gotten used to the routine of the discussion. At any rate, the technique as unnecessary and a hindrance.

This is what I should remember for my future Socratic teaching:
*Announce in some way when I will teaching Socratically
*Remember those higher order thinking questions. Refer to Bloom's as much as necessary
*There should only be one classroom management technique used at this time, respect. Remind students to raise their hands any time they have something to add to the discussion.

Pledge to Guide Today's Students--draft 2

Pledge to Guide Today's Students
I pledge to guide my students in learning about the world they live in.

Respecting and honoring others
-Learning about cultures and societies across the world

Respecting yourself
-Self concept, eating well, exercising

Respecting the Earth and the environment
-Using resources and dealing with waste properly

Living in the age of technology and information
-Respect and honesty while using the internet
-Critical thinking skills when learning from any media
-(How to multitask and monotask where appropriate)

Seeing the big picture of life
-The universe and how we fit into it
-The Earth and its inhabitants

I've made just a couple of changes to this draft.

First, the category of "Respecting the Earth and the environment" was the only one that didn't have a subheading. I added "Using resources and dealing with waste properly," which basically speaks for itself--I'll be teaching the three R's. I barely remember reading somewhere a new list of R's more appropriate for the 21st century. I need to do more research on that.

Second, I took another look at the category, "Living in the age of technology and information." I wrote down some notes a week or so ago with the thought of adding it to this category,

Marketing. Kids need to be able to see through marketing schemes. "What are they trying to sell me? How are they doing this? What kind of tactics are they using?"

What is planned obsolescence?

Also, "What is the REAL price of this item? Although the monetary cost is low, what am I paying for? What kinds of practices am I helping support when I buy this? What kinds of work practices? Who gets the money I pay? Do I want to support these companies or stores when I don't know who they are or what they do?"

However, in retrospect, I believe ALL of this is covered in the subheading, "Critical thinking skills when learning from any media." Maybe I should make some bullet points under each subheading? I may do that in a subsequent draft.

Also in my notes, I had written, How to use technology and multitask, but also how to monotask and slow down to enjoy the moment. (((Monotasking Mondays? It sounds nice, but wouldn't a better day for monotasking be Friday, because we are all stressed from the busy week that we need to slow down?)))

I couldn't decide whether this point was important enough to include or not. I finally added it as "How to multitask and monotask where appropriate," in parentheses, considering that I could always exclude it in a subsequent draft.

A Second Look into Cooperative Education

I've been avoiding thinking about cooperative education.

After my first day of basking in the glow of its concept, I spoke with my husband about it--my realistic, down-to-earth husband. I don't even remember what he said, but after that, my glow had burned down to a low fizzle. Teacher Tom, after receiving many comments from others also realizing that this type of education had been staring them in the face all this time as well, began a week long special all about coops. I read them along with everyone else, but could no longer get excited. It wasn't until the last day when I was finally able to (almost) put my thoughts into words. Tom asked if there were still questions to be answered and I finally choked this out,

I love the community that evolves from a cooperative school, but I'm concerned about teaching students that don't already have parents that are that engaged in their children's learning and future. How could I create a cooperative-like atmosphere when a full-fledged cooperative school isn't appropriate? I'll do my best to engage parents at whatever school I'm at, but what about parents that can't come into class to help? Or parents that can't pay the tuition for a cooperative school (I know yours is cheap, but I expect getting costs low is a difficult task that not everyone has the skills to do).

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, how do I get my low-income students into the wonderful atmosphere a cooperative school creates?

Someone else must have asked the same question. In his next post, he referenced the question and someone else's name. (Which is good because I just realized when I went to find my comment that I placed it on the wrong post. So there's a possibility he didn't even see it.) His full response can be found here, as it's too long to quote in its entirety, but the most important part of the answer was,

I'm only half joking when I suggest that instead of putting money into things like high stakes testing, new buildings and text books, or getting teachers competing against one another for bonuses, we might want to consider paying these poor parents to get involved with their kid's school. That's what the research seems to indicate will make the most difference.

(He goes on in an elaborated follow up post here.)

You know, one of the reasons I got into education was to make a difference in the world. The biggest difference. The greatest impact. The students whose parents love them enough to send them to an alternative preschool and go into the classroom to work once a week? They're already guaranteed to get a great education whether I'm involved with them or not. The kids that concern me live with their single parent who works three jobs and is too tired when she comes home to cook anything more than macaroni or read a bedtime story. Those are the ones that need me the most.

So to my question, "How can I make cooperative education work for students in low socioeconomic standing?" I'm pretty sure the answer is, "You can't."

And that's why I've been avoiding thinking about it.

It's a wonderful model, especially for today's world of parents who are choosing to stay home with their young children, homeschooling them, providing them local and organic diets, and keeping them away from anything plastic or corporate-made. Not that there's anything wrong with this type of parenting--honestly, it's how I see myself parenting when the time comes--but it's a luxury choice that the middle-class have. It's simply not an option for a lot of families in the United States at this time.

It's a wonderful model, but I no longer see myself getting involved in it. I'm thrilled to hear that it exists, and I loved learning about it. I wish everyone involved in cooperative education the most sincere best of luck.

Now, like Tom suggested, if we could only rearrange some government spending to pay the parents of those inner city children to come into the classroom instead of picking up an extra job...

To learn more about cooperative education, read Teacher Tom's Cooperative Nuts and Bolts series:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5

Also of interest is Montessori Candy, a blog about a cooperative Catholic Montessori preschool. Here is a list of their posts with the Coop tag.

Just a note, October is Coop month.