Like a two-story outhouse

Once upon a time, a very well-known man commented on his radio program that to be a teacher requires being an absolute master in his area.

He was absolutely right, divided by 2.

That same teacher also has to possess and master the ability to interact successfully with kids. If a teacher can't do this, his attempt is going to go over like a two-story outhouse.

"Dropout Factories"

I'm not a guy who really likes to complicate things any more than they have to be. So here's how I'm going to pitch it to you: If you have a window that is losing expensive, valuable warm air from your house in the middle of the cold season...what do you do? YOU CLOSE THE WINDOW.

"1 in 10 High Schools Are Dropout Factories"

This was the title of an AP story by Nancy Zuckerbrod, and AP Education Writer. According to the article, a school is a "dropout factory" if they have 60% or fewer of their entering freshman not graduating after four years. Granted, some of the kids had transferred by that time, but most had dropped out.

It's also true that in many of these areas, education and traditional schooling are not valued by the culture. Apparently many of these kids dropped out because of a necessity to support themselves and/or their families with jobs such as millwork. I understand this sentiment. And I also understand that this has changed.

Turning people's beliefs around and the culture in which they live is not easy. But we (the school community) absolutely must change! We must make education relevant, fun, innovative, novel and challenging to prepare our young people for their futures, which is our country's future. Cripes...it has to be turned around from the inside! We can't afford to waste people! It's immoral, it's stupid, and it's dangerous.

That being said...I need to point out that we train students in my school starting in Kindergarten, that they must take control of their own learning and exert effort! That anything short of that will not affect any positive change! You can't sit around and wait for life to happen to you. To do so is also a stupid and dangerous waste!

Let me remind you that in order to get muscles to grow, or any physical conditioning to take effect, an overload on the system is necessary which may include temporary muscle failure or exhaustion. Anything less than this will not work. And we're way beyond the at-least-it's-better-than-nothing approach.

But standing in our way, is our fragile sense of self and our egos.

For starters, let's change what we can...from the inside. Close the window, stop the loss, and start valuing kids and learning from the inside!

Dr. Rudy Crew has cornered the animal

I just finished reading Only Connect by Dr. Rudy Crew...an interesting read. The man definitely has ideas. He suggests that schools concern themselves not just with academic proficiency, but workplace literacy, civic awareness, and personal integrity.

This, folks, is what I call barking up the right tree. This man has the animal cornered! I don't necessarily agree with his method of paying for it all, but...

He sees shaping people with these traits as a way to foster competence and comptetitiveness on a global stage, and he's right. I welcome the idea of completely re-envisioning schools to turn out people, not pupils. I think he would agree with my idea of maximizing the potential of all kids...not just the college bound.

One of the most dependable, competent, socially capable, and trustworthy students I ever had...was mentally retarded. He had most of the traits that Dr. Crew offered as guidelines and it breaks my heart that most people won't get to know him well enough to recognize this. My question is: What are we going to do about it?

Start with reading Only Connect.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Here's something that will perk you up. In his book Only Connect by Dr. Rudy Crew, Education Week reported that all the states spend around $500 million per year on versions of the same test, which still vary widely in their ability to differentiate actual skills from simple memorization.

And you already know how I feel about memorization.

One of the worst feelings that gnaws away at me because of this is that there are kids who "graduate" and still remain somewhat to completely dysfunctional contributors to society. This is what I mean when I say we are barking up the wrong tree. Yikes.

Aren't Schools Learning Centers?

Sign on a local high school: Barker High School and Learning Center.

Shouldn't one assume that if it's a high school, it would follow that it is also a learning center? Not additionally a learning center?

Mr. Powell vs. Pop Culture

I get a kick out of people who claim to be so "connected". They have internet, mobile internet, laptops, tv, cell phones, ipods, downloads, wireless, brainless, im this, text message that, satellite, cable, radio, microwave, space modulators, mother load boards, card boards, really boreds, and all the other ones I can't name. It's a scream.

Then there is me.

My wife and I haven't had "television" in twenty years. Twenty years folks. And people ask how we manage. Imagine what else we go without. Some people think I'm Amish. This is probably the reason that I see things from an entirely different perspective than most of my colleagues in the teaching world. It clarifies for me one of the biggest battles I face in teaching everyday: Mr. Powell vs. Pop Culture.

I want you to check out www.realityparents.com and look at their slogan. Look closely. This phrase dials it right in for me: "Unplugging from pop culture..." Some of our kids and adults in our schools stand in their own way because they don't see what we see: It's not what we're unplugged from, it's what we're plugged in to.

I take actual sports headlines from newspapers and substitute Mr. Powell and Pop Culture in various places, and it sums up my results as a teacher:

Pop Culture Eliminates Mr. Powell
Mr. Powell Out for the Season
Pop Culture's Attack Puts Strain on Mr. Powell's Defenses
Pop Culture Stuns Mr. Powell
Pop Culture Pulls Away From Powell in 3rd Period
Mr. Powell Falls to Pop Culture Comeback
Top Ranked Pop Culture Prepares To Play Unranked Mr. Powell
Pop Culture Dumps Mr. Powell
Mr. Powell KO'd in First Round

But here's the only headline that matters:

Pop Culture Going Unbeaten? Mr. Powell Says It Won't Happen

Sponge Bob, Schwarzenegger, and Jack Assery

So I did this imitation of Patrick from Sponge Bob one time in front of my middle school kids. (I'm really good at it! Actually, I can do Schwarzenegger even better.) Anyway, as I was ranting through this riff of Patrick, another teacher had walked through my room behind me, unbeknownst to me. She was great, but apparently she stared at me like I was pulling a knife on everybody. After she left the room the kids erupted and had a tremendous laugh (at my expense of course) at the effects of my jack assery. Then a kid stated: "You don't get along with adults very well, do you Mr. Powell."

She had no idea how close she came to hitting the ball out of the park.

It's not that I don't get along with other adults; It's that I get along better with kids. I don't know what I'm doing. I never know what I'm doing when I'm in the zone. But I do know that I use my instincts, and I feel that propellant and that signal coming from the inside.

Not only that, I trust it.

I could rarely tell you what teaching technique I use, or what strategies I'm employing, or the best practice for this or that. All of that language that teachers come up I find dull, sterile, uninteresting, and irrevelant to my teaching.

Anyway, I'm reading (for the second time) The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer (1997), and she points out, and has conducted a body of research that actually somewhat supports my "practices." In one particular study, she noted that students who learned new material in a traditional manner tended to recall less information and showed less improvement than kids who received the new material in a "mindful" method that involves variety, creativity, and novelty. And she also stresses that these students learned more regardless of whether or not they knew they were going to be tested. They showed more improvement in their intelligence and creativity in their writing about what they learned.

I'm not saying Patrick is going to save the world. Frankly, he's a symbol of glorified stupidity, along with Bart Simpson and many other characters that pop culture jams down our throats. But I will say that I teach from my core, and my instincts. I use my instincts and try to deliver from my authentic center. Something that was never taught to me in "teacher school". I had a teacher friend tell me once that this is all because I teach from another "plane". No doubt about it. I'd jump out of any other. :)

Next up will be my Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy done as Schwarzenegger. That should go over like a two story outhouse with the high school teachers.

Don't pee in your shoes

I've been asked by a couple of readers (mostly a couple of teacher friends, and Teri out in Colorado) what I actually did when my daughter came home with the "memorization assignment" that I recently wrote about. Well...after I convinced her that peeing in her shoes would probably go over like a hand grenade in a bowl of oatmeal...we danced.

Yes. Dan Powell, the teacher on the edge, took his daughter into the living room and did a Baryshnikov: We put together a little dance that had specific moves for each and every one of those pesky prepositions. Gross motor movements united in one two minute dance. It looked a bit like we were swatting at bees. I thought my daughter was going to choke, she was laughing so hard. It's a great way to burn those fifty-plus little things into her muscle memory.

The fun didn't begin until she told me that while she was taking her test at school, she was jostling around in her seat so much doing the dance, that her teacher thought she was going to wet her pants. I told her as long as she didn't pee in her shoes, it would've been fine with me!

So next time you need to memorize, you need to make it meaningful, or kinesthetic, or both.

Denver's "Best" High Schools

In the August 2007 issue of 5280, "Denver's Mile-High Magazine", the cover article targeted Denver's best high schools. I was intrigued, as I always am, at these ratings not because I want to see which schools are the "best", but to see what criteria they used to make the determination. I saw it coming from ten miles away: the criteria was heavily weighted to the college bound, forsaking all of the young entrepreneurs, interns, trade school candidates, apprentices and the like. As if college bound equals firm ground.

Let's be straight. A college education can do no harm. But generally we get results for what we produce, not for what we know. And I for one want to maximize the potential for all learners, not just the college bound!

Here are the seven criteria for the Denver ratings: Student-Teacher Ratio(not a bad one for starters, unless you have teachers who couldn't get a ripple on an EEG); Lowest Number of Disciplinary or Safety or Safety Problems Per Student; ACT Composite Score (college entrance test); SAT Critical Reading+ Math Score(again, sterile college entrance material); Percentage of Teachers With Advanced Degrees (some current research has shown this to be clearly irrevelant); Number of Advanced Placement Classes (courses where students can earn college credit if they pass an exit test); and Dropout Rates.

In addition, some of the comments from the top seven schools read like this: "4.2 million dollars in (college) scholarships...", "85% of students attend four year colleges", "100% of students attend four year colleges", "...academic rigor...", "...largest number of AP offerings...highest AP scores in the region.", "94.6% of graduates attend four year colleges...", and so on.

It's fascinating, because I've read that landing a job is overwhelmingly (up to 85%) a function of one's personality, attitude, desire, and flexibility.

So what do we learn from this? If you want to be a chef and make a six figure income in your own mobile business and perhaps consulting or coaching on the side, don't worry about being stuck in one of the "loser" schools. In fact, in a related article about a Denver area school that won't be on the (elite) list, one students says "People don't know anything about (us)...They don't know how to overcome adversity...The teachers and staff at my school are wonderful...they teach us more than what we need to know...they teach us life lessons to help us survive."

Enlightening, huh? I'm with that kid!