Once you're stuffed with turkey and dressing and Uncle Earl has begun to repeat stories from his oh-so-distant childhood, push back from the table, excuse yourself for some "Internet research," and partake of these recent writings by teachers in the Teacher Leaders Network. 

Cindi Rigsbee gives thanks for being "Called to Teach" in this Teacher Magazine essay from 2008, which we've asked our Education Week partners to repost during the Thanksgiving holiday. Cindi, one of four finalists for 2009 National Teacher of the Year, is currently a middle school literacy coach in Orange County, NC.

High school English teacher David B. Cohen offers tongue-in-cheek thanks to those teachers from his past who ignored his "whole child" in favor of rigor and regimentation in "A Rigorous Thanksgiving." You'll find his essay at our companion blog TLN Teacher Voices.

In case you missed them, two recent Teacher Magazine contributions from the Teacher Leaders Network feature dialog excerpts from our never-ending TLN Forum conversation. In "The Experience Factor" (11/11), TLN members from the Baby Boomer generation explain why they'll postpone retirement to reap the benefits of their hard-won knowledge and skills. And in the article "Should Teachers Sell Their Classroom Materials?" (11/18), our members offer a variety of opinions about a recent New York Times article reporting on teachers who sell their lesson plans and other intellectual property via the Internet.

Uncle Earl still telling the one about chasing the Thanksgiving turkey around the barnyard with a hatchet? Keep your seat – we've got more! Among the blog offerings at our Teacher Leaders Network website:

Nancy Flanagan (Teacher in a Strange Land) believes that "It's a good week for thinking about what makes us happy--and how we, the village, can raise our collective children to pursue the kind of happiness that matters, while simultaneously being aware of and grateful for their many blessings."

Dan Brown (Get in the Fracas) acknowledges that "Keeping a sharp eye on what isn’t entirely working is a crucial piece of the reflection process, and an indispensable facet of teaching well." But this is a week, he says, to celebrate "the good classroom moments, the tiny breakthroughs, [that] are everywhere…."

Renee Moore (TeachMoore) offers her own selection of good Thanksgiving weekend reading, as she enumerates "A Few of My Favorite Things" -- in her case, committed colleagues. "Contrary to myth, there are many successful educators among us, some of whom are pointing us toward a promising future."

Ariel Sacks (On the Shoulders of Giants) has been reading the recent research about the attitudes of today's teachers toward their profession -- and "questioning whether I fit into the contented, idealist, or disheartened category of teacher." She suspects she's leaning toward "disheartened" and would be thankful for any and all advice.

Bill Ferriter (The Tempered Radical) is not thankful when faced with "blocked websites, antiquated tools, or technology decisions that are not aligned with a new vision for teaching and learning…" But he's determined to be Digitally Resilient on behalf of his students, for as long as he can stand it.

Finally, your delicious reward for reading this far: A series of blog posts detailing the Pow Wow unit taught each year at Chets Creek Elementary in Jacksonville, FL. You'll find it at the blog of Dayle Timmons, TLN member and former Florida Teacher of the Year. She recounts:

About six years ago Kindergarten teachers became uncomfortable with their generic "Indian" Pow Wow celebration around Thanksgiving where all the little "Indians" wore brown pillowcase garb with feathers and pounded homemade drums. The teachers began researching Native American tribes as a professional learning community and decided that each class would research a specific tribe and bring those traditions to our annual Pow Wow celebration.

Dayle's commitment to capturing the instructional life of her school is unmatched, in our opinion. Follow this link to a collection of Pow Wow posts and see for yourself. You can begin with this year's first entry (Nov. 10) or view posts from the very beginning in 2007.

Happy Thanksgiving! Is that slamming car door we hear the sound of Uncle Earl heading home? Wonder if he ate all the dessert?

Having spent the better part of the past few years tinkering with technology and assessment, I’ve done a bunch of experimenting with—and writing about—student response systems lately.  I believe that they just might be the key to seeing teachers make real instructional decisions based on data, which is the key to quality formative assessment. 

The biggest risk that I see for schools that incorporate student responders into their assessment practices is a subsequent over-reliance on low-level multiple choice questions to gain information about student mastery.  The way I figure, our kids have enough multiple choice in their lives already!

These are exactly the kinds of concerns that I shared in my recent Digitally Speaking column for ASCD’s Educational Leadership—and they are the kinds of concerns that one of my readers from Tennessee emailed me about yesterday. 

She wrote:

I can visualize using student responders for science and math, but will be one of those teachers who need "strategies for asking open-ended questions with responders."  Very few questions I ask in my classes can be answered with a "click." 

Would you might sending me some examples of the open-ended questions you use in your classes? 

Being a language arts/social studies teacher, I can certainly understand how student responders don't seem all that useful for promoting higher level thinking at first glance!  But if you choose to use responders to ask Likert-scale-style questions, the results can be informative to teachers AND challenging to students.

Here's a concrete example:  The BBC (Britain's news service) recently decided to allow the leader of a racist political party to appear on a political news show.  The general public was outraged.  In fact, hundreds of people protested against the BBC's decision in the streets outside the studio.

Knowing that the ways that governments deal with issues of justice and injustice is a part of my required curriculum, I decided to introduce this current event to my students.  We read this “kid-friendly” version of the story in class and wrestled with whether or not people with controversial views deserve the right to speak publicly on news programs broadcast across entire nations. 

If I had our school's responders---which I didn't because we only have two sets in the building----I would have started my lesson with a simple open-ended question that students would have answered with responders:  How important is freedom of speech?

My students would have had 5 “position statements” to choose from that looked something like this:

1. I believe no one should have freedom of speech.  The government should be able to control speech to make sure no one is ever offended by the words of another because offensive words can end up leading to wars.
2. I believe that freedom of speech should be carefully monitored and that a list of what is okay to say and what isn't okay to say should be developed and enforced.
3. I'm not sure how I feel about freedom of speech.  I like having freedom, but can see how it can go wrong.
4. I believe freedom of speech should be a right in almost every situation.  To limit ideas is horrible.  That being said, I don't think people should have the right to lie or offend others.
5. Freedom of speech is the most important freedom that we have and that it should NEVER be limited, regardless of circumstances.

After we’d gathered and reviewed our initial thoughts with responders, I'd have students share their stance on each position statement.  I might even have students join together with peers who voted the same way to polish their thoughts and then join together with peers who had different positions, providing the opportunity for thinking to be challenged. 

Then, we'd read the article together—just as I did in my lesson without responders!  We’d note that the British people didn't appreciate the speech of this political leader or the decision of the BBC to give an audience to someone pushing hate.  Finally, we’d review the BBC’s position on the protests, which emphasized that protecting freedom of speech was more important than keeping an audience happy. 

Finally, I'd have students vote on our initial question again to see if any of their opinions changed.  Whenever I take second votes in activities like these, I force children to make a choice by eliminating the third position statement.  Doing so challenges all children to engage with the controversial issue that we’re studying.

Inevitably, there is lots of “movement” between the first and second votes that we take on controversial topics—and movement becomes a source of great conversations.  I ask individual students to share the evidence or ideas that forced them to change their minds.  Then, I ask students whose opinions remained the same to try and convince our class that they’ve been right all along.  

Now don’t get me wrong:  You DON’T need student response systems to pull activities like these off. 

I’ve had the same kinds of powerful conversations in my classroom without any technology.  But the kinds of instant visual evidence of ideas and opinions provided by responders is helpful to me as a teacher—allowing me to tailor my approach to the upcoming conversation and to “measure” ambiguous standards in my curriculum—and motivating to my students, who always want to know how their ideas stack up against those of their peers. 

More importantly, these are the kinds of activities that teachers who DO HAVE sets of student responders MUST integrate into their instruction.  Without an active focus on increasing the quality of questioning with student response systems, schools will inevitably end up with really expensive, overly-simple multiple choice nightmares. 

The best news is that these kinds of activities are possible in any subject area.  Language arts teachers could have students reflect on the decisions of a character in a novel that they are reading.  Science teachers can have students think through the responsibility that nations have for cutting greenhouse gasses and tackling global warming.

In math, students could argue on behalf of different strategies for solving the same problem.  Art classes could debate the value of different styles of painting or the work of a particular artist.  Students in health and/or physical education can decide whose is responsible for the healthy living habits of today’s teens. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that any question that is "likert-able" is also "student responder-able." 

Does this make sense? 

Over the past week, I’ve been sharing sets of tips that I always recommend to teachers who are beginning classroom blogging projects. 

The first entry covered questions connected to common technical questions:  Should I have one classroom blog or a blog for every student?  Should our blogs be open for commenting?  The second entry addressed the steps that teachers can take to connect readers and writers in classroom blogging projects. 

Today’s third (and final) entry is sort of a grab bag, sharing general thoughts about topics ranging from the role that visitor maps play in blogging projects to the importance of emphasizing high-quality writing in student entries:

Emphasize the important role that quality writing plays in successful blogs

Because writing and publishing online is so easy—and because interactions between students in electronic forums are often defined by casual grammar and language use—many students approach blogging with a careless attitude, failing to invest significant time into crafting polished entries. While they crave audience, they misunderstand the message that mistakes send to readers.

Not only should teachers interested in blogging projects encourage students to work through the steps of the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, revising and editing) before publishing—just as they would on traditional tasks—they should also reinforce time-and-again that the credibility of writers is dependent solely on the quality of their written work.

Students must know that the potential for having influence in online communities exists only when students present ideas in ways that will impress readers.

Consider naming and training student editors

Teachers who are starting classroom blogging projects often enthusiastically jump in with two feet, encouraging classes to churn out dozens of entries, promoting posts with parents and peers, and building new lessons with their blogs in mind.

Then, they end up buried by entries that are poorly written or by students who need technical help to get new pieces posted online. Eventually, they begin to question whether the time that they are investing in monitoring student work for quality and in facilitating digital novices is really worth it. Enthusiasm is replaced by exhaustion.

That’s why student editors are so important for successful classroom blogging projects. Training a handful—three to five per year—super motivated students to proofread new entries and to support students struggling with technical skills can ensure that teachers don’t suffer from “monitoring burnout.”

Over time, you’ll have veteran student editors who take great pride in the blog that your class is producing. Not only will they continue to write for you once they’ve left your class, they’ll serve as competent gatekeepers, polishing entries that aren’t quite ready to be published, monitoring comments that are being posted, and generating enthusiasm for the work that you are doing online.

Require that students use pseudonyms while writing

For many schools and districts, the risks involved in introducing students to tools for communicating, collaborating and publishing content online far outweigh the rewards. Frightened by stories of internet predators, restrictions are placed on the kinds of information that students can reveal and the kinds of opportunities that students can be engaged in online.

One step that you can take to keep your students safe—and to comfort district leaders who question your decision to begin a classroom blog—is to teach your students about the importance of remaining confidential online.

Resist the urge to include the name of your school or yourself in your blog’s title. Refuse to link directly to any sites that readers could connect back to your classroom, and require that students use pseudonyms to sign their writing.

As “cloak-and-dagger” as these efforts at internet safety may seem to you, your students are likely to enjoy them! Pseudonyms and confidentiality allow them to try on different identities and to be judged based on their thoughts instead of their age or their social groups.

And the first time that their work is mistaken for that of anyone older than they really are, your students will be electrified!

Include—and regularly explore—visitor maps and statistics on page views.

As motivating as local readers can be for student bloggers, discovering that visitors from all over the world stop by to read their work never fails to amaze tweens and teens. To prove to your students that they are reaching readers in faraway locations, be sure to include a visitor map in the sidebar of your blog.

While there are many services that will track the location of the visitors that land on your site, Cluster Maps (http://www.clustrmaps.com/) is one of the most popular because it highlights each visitor with a red dot on a digital image of the world. Before long, red dots will cover entire continents, reinforcing the idea that your students are being heard!

Cluster Maps also reports the number of page views that your website receives on a regular basis—and can break those page view statistics down by continent. Consider asking students to track this information carefully in their notebooks or on a classroom bulletin board.

Watching your readership grow over time will be just as motivating to your students as seeing where their readers are coming from.

So what ideas, tips and suggestions do you have for teachers who are tackling classroom blogging projects?  Is there anything that I’ve left out?  Are there points that I’ve made that you can improve on?

I’d love to hear what other readers are doing to make blogging work in their classrooms!

I’ve been doing a bunch of work lately with teachers who are interested in incorporating more digital learning opportunities in their classrooms.  Often, the first tool that they express interest in are blogs.

Blogs offer teachers and students a natural bridge between work that they are already doing (producing written reports and reflections on classroom content has been a part of classroom experiences since Socrates was stumbling around the agora with groups of learners) and work that they’d like to be doing:  Exposing students to a broader audience that can publicly challenge their thinking.

There are several considerations that teachers interested in blogging must think through before starting classroom projects, however.  Three of the most common questions that I’m asked about blogging in schools are answered below:

Should I have every student create their own blog?

Heck no! For blogs to survive and thrive, they need to have a constantly updated stream of content—at least 2 or 3 posts per week. Blogs that are not updated on a regular basis lose the attention of readers, who have plenty of other options in today’s digital world.

Because most K12 students will struggle to generate 2 or 3 meaningful posts per week—and because monitoring the content posted on 50+ blogs can be an overwhelming challenge for any teacher—it is best to start any classroom blogging project with one blog that every student in your class or on your academic team can post to.

While you’ll have to work with one username and password—which could lead to inappropriate or unpolished entries being posted by students that you don’t completely trust—your chances of generating an audience for your students are far greater when your students are working together to generate content.

Does blogging always equal writing?

Believing that blogs are ONLY opportunities for students to practice writing skills is a fatal flaw for most classroom blogging projects. Instead of digital soapboxes, teachers and students must begin to see blogs as interactive forums for continuing conversations around topics of interest—and interactive forums require two-way participation.

That means your students need to become avid readers of blogs, too. Consider organizing a collection of student blogs in a public feed reader that your students can visit during silent reading time or while surfing the web at home.

Encouraging students to read blogs written by other students serves three primary purposes:

1. Students who read blogs see models of writing that can be use as comparisons for their own work.
2. Students who read blogs are exposed to ideas for interesting topics that they may want to explore and write about in new entries for your blogging project.
3. Students who read blogs connect with potential audiences for their own ideas.

Should I open student posts to comments?

Absolutely—as long as you’re willing to review comments before they become “live” on your classroom blog.

The comment section on blogs characterizes the participatory nature of digital learning experiences.  Not only are blogs a forum for your students to express their own thinking and ideas, they can become a forum for thinking and ideas to be challenged—and challenged thinking is the primary source for new learning.  When readers force your students to reconsider their original positions, you’ll see a level of mental wrestling that you’ll be proud to celebrate in your classroom.

Don’t forget to systematically teach the skills necessary for writing effective blog comments, too, because commenting gives students opportunities to practice reacting to ideas in writing. What’s more, comments left on entries written by other authors can serve as first drafts for future posts on your own classroom’s blog.

Finally, commenting emphasizes the community nature of blogging and draws reciprocal readers—people interested in looking closer at the ideas expressed by your students—to your classroom’s blog.

I’ll post Part Two in this series of posts—answering more common classroom blogging questions—sometime next week

Detracking for Excellence and Equity

By Carol Corbett Burris and Delia T. Garrity
(ASCD, 2008)

Reviewed by Sherry L. Annee
Biotechnology Teacher
Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School (IN)
Teacher Leaders Network

What are the indicators that a book has made a significant contribution within its discipline? It’s one that challenges and moves the reader to take notice of the information, internalize it, and act upon the new knowledge and one the reader quotes and reflects upon long after reading it. Detracking for Excellence and Equity by Burris and Garrity is such a book! For example, read these compelling claims by the authors:

“Tracking, by its very nature, causes the achievement gap to widen.”

In a tracked system, the “talents of late bloomers go undiscovered.”

“Track movement occurs in a downward direction far more frequently than it does in an upward direction.”

“When schools are determined to level the playing field for disadvantaged students and ensure that all have access to their finest curriculum, students begin to see college and career possibilities that before seemed out of reach.”

“The reality is that you can’t close the achievement gap until you close the curriculum gap that is created by tracking.”

“The practice of tracking is based on the belief that the capacity to learn is shaped by biology ad childhood environment, and that there is little that schools can do to affect learning capacity.”
Whether or not you agree with the previous statements, you must read this book. Burris and Garrity are persuasive and credible because they support their assertions with research and firsthand experience as former teachers and current administrators in New York.

They’ve witnessed the achievement gap and apathy that occur as a result of tracking. They worked for a superintendent who claimed that “By the year 2000, 75% of all South Side High School students will earn a Regents diploma” — quite a bold statement given it represented a 17% increase from the number of students receiving the Regents diploma when superintendent William H. Johnson set the goal in 1993. By 2000, 84% of South Side H.S. students earned a Regents diploma and in 2005 that number increased to 97% as a result of a systematic and purposeful elimination of tracked courses.

In their book Detracking for Excellence and Equity, Burris and Garrity define tracking, debunk the myths associated with it, tackle the politics of detracking, and address how to dismantle tracking and develop an effective curriculum process, support teachers, and maintain reform.

Chapter 4, which is perhaps the most compelling chapter, outlines the “Three Ps” that sustain tracking: prejudice (intellectual, racial, and socio-economic), prestige (teacher, parent, and student), and power (parent, teacher, administrator, and board member). Once a school leader has been able to identify resistant stakeholders in the community and confront their deep-seeded myths and fear with various types of data, many people emerge with a greater understanding of detracking and the educational obstacles associated with it. The authors acknowledge that “the most difficult phase of detracking is when a school begins to question its assumptions and beliefs about teaching practices” but frequently reinforce that it is important to differentiate the learning experiences but not the standards or learning objectives.

The authors’ coverage of detracking is so comprehensive that it leaves readers with far more answers than questions — while simultaneously inspiring us to improve the educational opportunities for students at our local schools. Upon finishing the book, one is left cheering for Garrity and Burris as they claim, “By altering our methods of instruction in heterogeneous classes, we can accomplish what tracking never could — excellent educational experiences for all students.”