I’m honored that the Association of California Schools Association (ACSA) positioned my article right up front in their September-October issue of Leadership Magazine! We’ve done some good work at Bayfront and Mueller. Much more to do. We are El Milagro.
The article is here:
How Children Led One School’s Cultural Evolution
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America, the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”–A Nation at Risk, 1983
All schools have a choice. My schools have a choice. Bayfront Charter High School and Mueller are at a familiar crossroads, and the world is not waiting. On January 20, Trump will begin to govern as he promised and we can prepare our students to compete in that game or we can soldier on—business as usual.
And as usual, we ain’t taking that chance.
Inside my building are Latinos, immigrants, girls, African Americans, LGBT kids, Moslems, Jews and children of democrats. At least that describes 99% of them. And of those, 85% qualify for the free federal lunch program on the basis of their parents’ income. They are–if we falter– the next generation’s working poor. And they are all in our new government’s crosshairs to either deport or demoralize.
America’s educational system has experienced multiple defining moments during which sweeping social or political events have led to ideological and transformational change in the direction of our schools.
Think US History 101:
In the earliest days of our country’s founding, there was a clear religious motive behind teaching kids to read. As waves of Christians colonized the new world, they brought their Bibles and handed down their favorite verses to children who were expected to spread the good news. After the Revolutionary War and the subsequent ratification of the US Constitution, our Founders banked on an “informed citizenry” to nurture and grow the new experiment in democratic governance .
Fast forward 100 years and the industrial revolution churned kids out of farms and prairie schools and into factories that prepared kids for the factories.
Then in 1958, the Russians launched a rocket into space, and the subsequent race to the heavens was on. Sputnik scared the crap out of America’s post-WWII “Greatest Generation” who realized in the span of one evening newscast—that their kids had somehow been passed up in math and science. So the education pendulum swung to math and science with a vengeance—and schoolkids paid.
Then there was the Civil Rights era. The malaise of the 70’s. Forced desegregation and bussing and waves of white flight to suburbs and private schools. And education was the medium for maintaining the sociocultural and economic advantage that was a perceived birthright of white families.
The ominous warning of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 unleashed the pendulum again. Reagan’s ‘rising tide of mediocrity’.
Then the Apple IIe drove a whole generation of post-Viet Nam War era teachers to ask “what am I supposed to do with an Apple IIe?” And they used them as door stops on the theory that this too shall pass.
By the early 2000’s Bush had appropriated no child left behind from the Children Defense Fund and we were awash in still another pet project of Republicanism: “back to basics” and the core belief that what we really need to do in schools is just test the hell out of kids and fire the teachers and the schools that can’t produce evidence of extraordinary achievement.
Public education. America’s whipping boy. Always something.
So now what?
George Bush’s “soft bigotry of low expectations” has given way to trump’s straight up, bold-face racism. And our students have heard every word.
What is the purpose of schooling in a trumpian culture where bluster and lies and bullying and misogyny are rewarded with keys to the White House; when shadowy election schemes and gerrymandering and voter suppression and an archaic electoral “college” are intentionally designed to undermine democracy; when in 2016 it is harder for citizens to cast their ballot then it was in the era of poll taxes and literacy requirements; when it is impossible for citizens to believe that their vote is even really counted; when half our nation considers it anarchy to remind ourselves that black lives matter?
Remember the parable of the boiling frog:
If you place a frog in a pan of hot water– he’ll jump right out. But if you place that same frog in a pan of cold water, then bring it gradually to a boil—he will be oblivious to the changing temperature. Pretty soon it’s too freaken hot to jump!
Our schools move too often like the boiling frog. They wait until it is too late to jump, and for our children, even generations at a time, the results are fatal.
One thing this past election has taught us is that our students need the skills to navigate a massive sea of propaganda and misinformation that seems to routinely persuade the adults to vote against their own best interests. They need a discerning eye that separates entertainment from “the truth”; that rejects Facebook’s brand of political discourse and revives the tradition of deep critical thinking and informed debate.
They need to compete in a workforce that demands higher levels of thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurialism.
They will need to find their generation’s “true North”. And then their voice. And then a spirit of activism which is in their DNA: empathy, vigilance, authentic patriotism, and advocacy for others.
Our kids will need the armor of resiliency– in the face of an apparent national sentiment that their success, their future…their very lives may not matter at all.
So in our school at least, at Bayfront Charter high School, EVERY student will be…
In defiance of who this president promises to be, we will be proactive. The water’s on the boil… but our children rise.
Sometimes we have an idea… and we search for a pathway to bring that idea to fruition. And sometimes we don’t. And sometimes our ideas just roll off the edge of the keyboard like once-familiar coins that have long since lost their shine.
So that drive along Bay Blvd. last October was not one conducted with any great promise. There was no urgency to find this building– dropped so neatly by the side of the road. There was no expectation. I was just driving– and sometimes that’s all it takes.
I wonder if the universe reached into the driver side window and grabbed the wheel and pulled me to the curb. Or whether it was the building itself. Or the magnetic force of ideas stacked for years and waiting to take wing. Seabirds…pinned to the wind and pushed as if flying sideways would always be their lot.
But then in instant those ideas are all set free… because that is what we live for.
So I was in the moment and Bayfront Charter High School was born. By providence.
United States University is a half mile away from El Milagro. It is a newly renovated 30,000 square foot building with 18 colorful classrooms, and meeting spaces. They are a small private university that caters to working adults. 75% of their students are on-line and the rest come at night. They could have leased a double-wide storefront in the strip mall; built a one room virtual schoolhouse sandwiched between 7-11 and the beauty supplies.
But they didn’t. They rolled the dice on a business model built for agility and open to change. And that decision contributed to Bayfront Charter High School, too.
So there it sits. A gorgeous building with exquisite functionality– architecture in search of its own meaning along an undeveloped bay front– and instantly, it became the face of a dream that had been incubating for years.
In 2007 we launched our middle school called Mueller Charter Leadership Academy (MCLA) because it broke our hearts to graduate six graders and send them off to a two-year under-performing school that was public education’s answer to purgatory. The traditional middle school is that two year wasteland that promises neither rigor nor relationships. So we built our own bridge and by-passed it all together.
Then we started to take a closer look at the comprehensive high schools with nearly 3,000 students. In those schools kids have to compete for every inch of support. They compete for attention, for opportunities, for services, for lunch, for access. They compete to get into the freaken rest rooms.
Maria went to one of those neighborhood high schools and was told by a counselor that she needed to go to the community college because her grades weren’t good enough for a four year university. She disagreed and today she is a sophomore at USC. Aldo was the class valedictorian last year but they decided not to let him deliver the valedictorian speech because it didn’t conform to their expectations. He’s at Dartmouth. Jose’s parents called multiple times to speak to a counselor and were consistently instructed to leave a voicemail message. They never called back. Alejandra wanted help in her math class– but the tutoring times she was given by her teacher were actually the teacher’s lunch time. And he ate lunch in the faculty lounge.
We decided that if these high schools aren’t going to teach the students that we send them– if they are not going to inspire and lead and love and counsel and advocate and push and support and celebrate the children we have invested nine years in– we will take them all back. And we will do it ourselves.
But this building had to fall out of the sky on that October morning in order for us to do that. And then other stuff had to fall out too. And so it did. And now its March and we are on schedule to open the doors in July to our first 150 freshmen. The Class of 2018.
El Milagro grows. Bayfront Charter High School.
Dr. Yong Zhao has been a provocative voice in school reform as he challenges educators and public policy experts to refrain from panicking over our children’s consistently low international ranking on standardized tests:
“Although American schools have not been as effective and successful in transmitting knowledge as the test scores indicate, they have somehow produced more creative entrepreneurs, who have kept the country’s economy going. Moreover, it is possible that on the way to produce those high test scores, other education systems may have discouraged the cultivation of the creative and entrepreneurial spirit and capacity.”
As a product of the school system in mainland China, he is perfectly positioned to remind Americans that our advantage in the global economy is our innovation, our creativity, and our knack for entrepreneurialism.
So I was a little surprised by his recent post about the Common Core State Standards and all the misinformed commentors who piled on in the anonymity provided by a typical blog debate.
“I wanted to ask all of us to ask again,” he writes rhetorically, “if the new world of education ushered in by the Common Core will be better than the old one scheduled to end in a year.”
Fair question.
Then Zhao offers five more questions which he answers in support of his own position:
• What makes one globally competitive?
• Can you be ready for careers that do not exist yet?
• Are the Common Core Standards relevant?
• Does Common Core support global competence?
• What opportunities we may be missing?
His collective answers to these would suggest that he doesn’t think so. But I have actually read the Common Core State Standards and monitored the developments of the new assessments, and respectfully disagree.
In fact, Dr. Zhao asked the wrong 5 questions. Here are mine:
• Are the 21st Century skills—including the ability to be “creative and entrepreneurial”— essential for our students?
• Would you favor a return to the era of no standards… where educational quality and academic outcomes were solely left to the interests and whims of individual teachers and learning was optional?
• Is the ability to think deeply, read closely, invent, create, collaborate and apply their learning essential for educated citizens of our global society?
• Are these skills what you want for your own children?
• If this is not what is called for in the Common Core State Standards—what is?
In 1990, the SCANS (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) report captured the consensus of corporate America when it described the skill sets that were critical for young people as they entered the work force of the 1990’s. The report is called “What Work Requires of Schools” and consists of two main sections:
Three- Part Foundation: Basic Skills (Reading, writing, mathematics, speaking and listening, Thinking Skills (including creative and critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, and reasoning) Personal Qualities (responsibility, sociability, self management and honesty);
Five Workplace Competencies: Interpersonal (including teamwork and leadership), Managing Resources, Information, Systems, and Technology.
In a March 1992 article for ASCD’s Educational Leadership, Arnold Packer, the SCANS executive director wrote;
“Students won’t learn SCANS skills by osmosis nor will schools meet new standards without fundamental changes in teaching methods and materials. The most effective way to teach skills is in the context of real-world situations and real problems. Students should not be filled with abstract data to be recalled for a test and forgotten, but rather, they should begin by applying their knowledge.”
For more than a decade, many progressive school systems relied heavily on the recommendations from the SCANS report as they defined their own standards for students. Then NCLB began testing for only one component from SCANS (basic skills in reading and math) and the rest gradually disappeared.
Many of us who are actually leading in K-12 public schools remember the SCANS report and have been arguing that NCLB does not prepare children to compete in college or eventually become contributing citizens to our world—global or otherwise. We have warned that missing from the current basic skills pablum is an equal passion and reverence for creativity, invention, authentic thinking, teamwork, complexity, initiative, perseverance, LANGUAGE… and relevance. Not just “content” standards in basic skills… but “performance” standards that are authentic and empowering.
In the 21st Century we call these 21st Century skills and colleges and employers are still looking for them.
To counter the race to the bottom over the past decade, I have advocated that our teachers infuse 21st Century Skills into everything they do. With Common Core and the assessments currently being developed, this is exactly the curriculum we will shift to.
So all the drama around “common” state standards across the country is puzzling. Sort of.
It is apparent that many of the individuals who argue (at least in blog threads and twitter) against the Common Core state standards– haven’t read them! “Standards” do not equate to standardization. They don’t compromise local control of schools. But they do set a high bar which every student will have to eclipse no matter what else local schools want to do. To me, it’s an issue of equity.
Dr. Zhao is fully aware that Americans eschew standardization. But he fails to address that thorny little problem we have with differences and diversity.
We ought to excel at 21st Century skills! But America’s potential global advantage in education is also our greatest weakness. We have the most diverse student population on the planet, but have failed to develop a school system that simultaneously celebrates each child’s uniqueness while insuring that every student has fully developed the skills they need to compete at any level and any walk of life they choose.
The public school system has been designed to never change… and so it rarely does. Thus, the achievement gaps that reveal disparities in terms of race, ethnicity, native language, and in some areas, gender have not gone away.
This is where a profound difference between Common Core and the “accountability system” engendered by NCLB is apparent.
NCLB is a punitive system that is not focused on what children actually need to be successful in their lives. In many ways it was created to expose public schools as ineffective, and drive institutional change through unfunded mandates and threats. The result – for all the wrong reasons– was a hyper-focus on multiple choice testing and test prep in a narrow band of the curriculum (basic skills in reading and math).
No wonder the teachers in Chicago went on strike to protest the use of test data in their evaluations.
No wonder the teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle staged their own little Arab Spring and refused to administer the MAPS assessment.
No wonder parents are standing behind their classroom teachers.
No Child Left Behind targets educators.
The Common Core, on the other hand, re-focuses our schools on the needs of children. With the stated emphasis on college and career readiness—(What Workplace Requires of Schools)– it has “north star” potential in the quest for the uniquely American concept of equity. If implemented with integrity, it will assure that every child, in every community, has access to a highly trained teacher and a curriculum designed to promote 21st century skills.
Dr Zhao asks rhetorically: Do we want individuals who are good at taking tests, or individuals who are creative and entrepreneurial? As if we have to choose between the two.
If the vision of common core is realized, we will have both. Our students should excel at taking authentic tests that are as innovative as we expect American kids to be. And in the spirit of local control, that is exactly the vision of El Milagro.
IDEO, the Palo Alto company famous for designing Apple’s first mouse back in the 80’s, has since created user-centered solutions for everything from computer games to ice cream scoopers, defibrillators and shopping carts. As one of the world’s leading innovators in Human-Centered Design, they even create strategies to address such social issues as poverty, nutrition, health, water and sanitation, economic empowerment, access to financial services, and gender equity throughout the world.
It should not be surprising that they also have some thoughts about designing our schools from the perspective of the students who attend them every day. Everything from the culture of school environments and education reform initiatives, right down to more user-friendly student desks.
And, of course, Aiden also has some ideas about school designs as he develops his journals in Fighting for Ms. Rios.
Ultimately, Fighting for Ms. Rios is not just about a kid and his teacher. It’s deeper than that. It’s a case for intentionally designing student-centered schools around a culture of what the corporate world refers to as “deep customer empathy”. Authentic relationships. Mutual respect. Caring. User-centered design!
The notion of “empathy” is a central tenet of Dev Patnaik’s book called Wired to Care. Patnaik, a renown business strategist, writes about how organizations of all kinds prosper when they tap into a power each of us already has: empathy, the ability to reach outside of ourselves and connect with other people. He believes that when people inside a company develop a shared sense of what’s going on in the world, they see new opportunities faster than their competitors. They have the courage to take a risk on something new. And they have the gut-level certitude to stick with an idea that doesn’t take off right away.
In Patnaik’s view, people are naturally “wired to care” and many of the world’s best organizations are, too. But they must learn to stop worrying about their own problems and see the world through each other’s eyes.
Ms. Rios had a natural gift for empathizing with her students and Aiden writes about it constantly. In “THE NINTH JOURNAL: The Last Day” he says:
During that time Ms. Rios found hope and inspiration in her students. She believed in every last one of us from Trinity to Atticus Hinzo to Rafael to Angela to Charlie Flowers and Remy Padilla and Vera Ruiz and Inca and even Lester…and me. And Raymond. Especially Raymond.
Raymond, is a special needs student who was placed in her classroom to test his ability to adapt to every-day school routines. He struggled… (because he had special needs!) Ms. Rios’ class would have been the perfect placement– but she was a brand new teacher and too easily influenced by Wanda, the burned-out teacher next door. As we come to know Ms. Rios from Aiden’s writings– a natural born teacher wired to care– we realize that giving up so quickly on Raymond was very much out of character for her:
In his few short weeks with Ms. Rios, he had taught her more about teaching than any university or workshop or conference or colleague ever could. She knew in her bones that she had given up on Raymond far too soon and she vowed to never let that happen again. She regretted listening to Wanda. She should have been Raymond’s advocate.
From that day forward, Ms. Rios never quit believing in her students. No matter what. She remained resilient. (From “Lambs”)
It is possible (and critical) to design and manage schools–including the systems, services, relationships and programs– from the student out… instead of the outside in. But to do so, we truly have to see the world through our students’ eyes. That’s really what “deep customer empathy” is all about– and why, by the end of her first year, we come to regard Ms. Rios as such an extraordinary teacher. And why Aiden becomes the voice of children in schools everywhere.
The Human Rights Campaign has been profoundly influential in encouraging public schools to develop policies that protect students from any forms of discrimination or bullying– especially LGBT students. San Diego Unified School District, for example, has developed a model, Board-adopted, anti-discrimination policy that assures children a safe learning environment, regardless of their “actual or perceived” sex, gender, or ethnic group identification.
Adopting policies that prohibit discrimination in our schools is essential for children and staff. But the real work is in creating safe, inclusive, loving environments that are often the one safe haven in a community. Like El Milagro.
In “Fighting for Ms. Rios,” Aiden introduces us to Matty in the Fourth Journal: Virtuosos.
Matty was an athlete. Matty was a fierce competitor. Matty played little league. Matty played kickball. Matty wore a Baltimore Ravens football jersey. Number fifty-two. Matty always had a short-cropped haircut and was tall and thin. Matty pounded Augie behind the backstop for trying to cut to the front of the kickball line. Matty cussed and spit and told crude jokes and talked with a full mouth.
For Halloween Matty dressed up as a professional baseball player. A catcher with eye black and all the gear and the shin guards and a cup. (Madeline’s Costume)
Aiden has been playing with Matty since the beginning of the school year, but it is not until the Halloween Carnival– when the kids take a bathroom break and go into separate facilities– that he discovers she is really a girl. The other kids knew all along. Perhaps they have known her since kindergarten. Perhaps they paid attention when their teachers lined up the boys and the girls separately. Perhaps in elementary school it just doesn’t start to matter yet.
“Matty is a girl, you dumbass!” said Charlie Flowers. He stopped adjusting the crimson pirate bandana that bordered his crimson head. He paused and looked at me to see if I was serious. “She’s supposed to go into the girls’ restroom.”
Matty is a character based on several students we have served at Mueller Charter School. Even in pre-adolescent years, some children identify more with children of the opposite gender– and at that age– it is often difficult to tell them apart. Matty dressed like a boy, wore her hair like a boy, talked like a boy and behaved like a boy. Enough to confuse Aiden, who seems to blush a little, shrug his shoulders, and move on: “In any case, it just didn’t seem to matter much at the Halloween Carnival where, at least for one night, we were all hiding behind one disguise or another.”
We have seen children so insistent on behaving like a child of the opposite gender that they refuse to use the school restrooms. So we just make quiet arrangements for them to use the nurse’s restroom whenever they need to.
Aiden comments on the sensitivity and compassion of the teachers at El Milagro and we can easily imagine that the staff there has adopted policies similar to those inspired by the Human Rights Campaign. It is as if he knows, even at the age of ten, that policies don’t change attitudes and that what really matters is how children are actually treated every day.
As we walked around the carnival, I watched all of the adults interact with Matty like she was any other kid. They all knew. Her former kindergarten teacher even called her by her real name: Madeline. “You look like a pro tonight, Madeline! You look stunning!” Matty smiled.
I had a new respect for Matty and for my school. I felt proud of who we were at El Milagro—a place where kids could be who they needed to be for however long it takes to work it all out.
For a while I was blogging all the time. Right here. Some really, really good stuff. I cranked out blog post after blog post– at least once a week– usually on Saturday mornings. I would consistently check my stats and it looked like, depending on what I wrote, I’d have quite a few people dropping in. Then something happened. I got so tied up in writing and editing my second book, I couldn’t pour any more creative energy into sustaining my blog. So I didn’t.
Now “Fighting for Ms. Rios” is complete and soon to be released. It is a story told by a highly gifted fourth grader named Aiden who is not only an extraordinary young writer, but he is amazingly perceptive about adults and their schools. And he can fight. Aiden writes a series of nine journals over the course of the school year, chronicling his experiences with his friends and with his remarkable first year teacher– Ms. Rios.
I had lots of people edit my book and at one point even had it placed with a publisher called Park East Press. But I realized publishing can be a sleazy business if you get caught up with the wrong folks– and Park East Press turned out to be the wrong folks. So I wrestled my manuscript back from them and decided instead to join the hundreds of other entrepreneurial writers and inventors and musicians and filmmakers who value their voice… and I placed my book project on Kickstarter. Check it out. There is even a book trailer there.
In the meantime… “Fighting for Ms. Rios” will be released on bookshelves and Kindles in September. But that’s not all. I’ve nearly finished a sequel called “Broken in the Middle,” where our gifted little writer, Aiden, is now in 7th grade and struggling to rise above the worst adversity that a kid will ever face. The theme of the book is resiliency, and it is a hopeful story.
And of course there is a sequel to the sequel. In “Catching In A Crowd” Aiden is a senior who attends a very unusual charter high school. He is a decorated high school athlete, but the real offers are coming in from schools that specialize in creative writing. In the final book of what has now become the Milagro Trilogy, Aiden’s journey through the K-12 system is complete.
So that’s where I’ve been. Writing the Milagro Trilogy instead of blog posts. But I intend to resurrect my blog, if for no other reason than to update you on the progress of the Trilogy and Aiden’s latests exploits.
Let me know what you think.
A few years ago The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology released a study on the trend of tattooing. In it, they estimated that 24% of the population between the ages of 18 and 50 had at least one tattoo. But that was five years ago. It is likely much higher now.
And the most popular tattoo? It is the tribal band, a sun or butterfly, or some Chinese script that one can only hope means what you think it means when you commit to wearing it for the rest of your life.
A tattoo is all about commitment and communicating your “brand”.
So I wonder why our parents and our teachers don’t routinely get tattoos of our school logo. Come to think of it, I see all kinds of tattoos every day at my school, but I have never seen even one that promotes our brand.
That’s troubling. Not because I want to see a bunch of tattoo designs of our school, but because tattoos are the the ultimate expression of a customer’s faithfulness to a product. The single most powerful indicator of customer loyalty is when clients willingly share their positive experience with family and friends and urge them to see for themselves. It is the concept of “net promoter”.
And how do citizens of a capitalist and democratic society express their product loyalty? Through their frequent patronage. By word of mouth. By wearing a tee shirt (Hard Rock Cafe-London?) Through Twitter and Yelp and Facebook.
And by affiliating oneself to an idea… symbolically captured in a tattooed brand: the mercedes benz hood logo, the channel interlocking “c’s”, the nike swoosh, the flirtive persona of the playboy bunny, the venerable “NY” of the New York Yankees.
If you were to Google tattoo designs for Harley Davidson you would find pages and pages of them and no shortage of examples carved into every conceivable body part. It is a small price to pay for attaching oneself to the notion of raw power, independence and engineering excellence. Tattoos are, among other things, metaphoric.
If you Google tattoo designs for your school, on the other hand, chances are you won’t find any. You won’t find my school either and that’s the problem. Our stakeholders would sooner ink images of automobiles or household appliances or tobasco sauce to their forearms than their neighborhood school.
There may be some reasons for that:
• Product brands are familiar and reliable and often represent an attribute that an individual is willing to “advertise” for the rest of his or her life. It is less about the product and more about the metaphor. And our schools don’t make good life-long metaphors.
• When schools do show up as tattoos they are logos for universities like USC or Notre Dame or the bright red “A” of the Crimson Tide. But don’t be mistaken. These tattoos are not in tribute to the math department or to the fine services rendered over in accounting. They represent football teams that win more than they lose. Teams with history and swagger. We all like a winner. The Trojans may be on probation but they certainly aren’t in Program Improvement.
• Perhaps most importantly, if someone is willing to tattoo the icon of a business or product to their body, it is because that brand is incontrovertible and well defined. There is no going back. There is, for example, no debate about who (or what) the Apple or Target icons represent.
The neighborhood elementary school? That’s a different story.
But if people have a positive enough experience in the marketplace, if they are so passionate about a product that they feel it in their bones, if they are willing to shout from the rooftops, to at least buy the (Ferrari) tee shirt until they can afford the car– then you have a brand that works.
And if people are willing to compromise their career aspirations for a visible tattoo, to endure the stinging pain and fuss with the healing process, to brook the criticism from mom and the in-laws, to say nothing of their jealous friends’ incessant chiding–it is only because they believe so deeply in what that brand represents.
And, sadly, that is why there aren’t a lot of public schools represented in tattoos. Neither for metaphoric value. Nor for the sake of sentiment.
When it comes to our experience in public schools, there simply is no “brand” identity that invokes the kind of passion required to allow some 19 year old to carve a Chevy monster truck with Bridgestone tires into your ribcage. We forfeited that responsibility to the marketing genius of politicians who chose instead to brand public schools in a far less generous light: as ineffective, archaic, moribund sinkholes that waste taxpayer dollars.
Time for a different brand. Time to promote the extraordinary capacity of teachers and schools to not only engender amazing academic results in whatever test you want to gives us… but to simultaneously prepare students for a future that they will actually inherit– one that will no doubt require them to think, create, innovate, problem solve, communicate (in multiple languages) and work effectively with others.
What would that brand look like? And would you be willing to tattoo the icon to your body if it all lead to extraordinary results?
(This post also appears on LeaderTalk)
Three weeks remain in the 2009-10 school year an we have just finished testing. We expect to see significant growth over the year before and we expect the schools down the street will have gotten even more growth and we will be reminded that the schools down the street did it right and we are somehow not as efficient or effective or committed or skilled or blessed or insightful or something.
In the meantime, we also moved the ball down the field on our plan to implement more multi-age classrooms and transform our teaching. We are preparing to return to a curriculum that inspires our children to think and create and spring out of bed in the morning and race down the street to El Milagro because there are things happening here that are worth learning. In the post-test celebration our students danced on the playground and I was reminded how much I miss seeing them find their rhythm.
Along the way we even challenged ourselves to find a solution to that stubborn dilemma that all teachers face in June: what to do with the kids that aren’t ready for the next grade. Retain them? Socially promote them? Transfer them to the schools down the street that have all the answers?
We decided that no one zeros in on student needs like we do. We decided that we wouldn’t have to retain or socially promote kids that weren’t ready… if we just get them all ready! And since kids learn and develop on their own time , we decided we would give each struggling learner their own timeline and gameplan for promotion… and multi-age classrooms allow us to do that.
So much is happening at El Milagro… even in the face of opposition and cynicism that we are somehow cheating or taking short cuts. If you read this blog you know… we are totally focussed on finding a better way. So we dip, even for a moment, into the fires, searching for that wisdom that even those schools down the street might learn from us.
A new study from the Center for Research and Reform in Education at John Hopkins University has concluded that “Spanish-speaking children learn to read English equally well regardless of whether they are taught primarily in English or in both English and their native language.”
In other words, bilingual instruction does no harm as it relates to the acquisition of English literacy skills; we can reintroduce the goal of bilingualism and Spanish literacy – without any negative consequences to English reading acquisition.
In still other words… if it does no harm… and thus there is no adverse impact on test scores… then the advantages of bilingual instruction now outweigh the disadvantages… according to the latest research on the topic!
The director of the report, Dr. Robert Slavin, noted that
“Here’s a study that gives more solid information than has existed before that quality of instruction is important. The idea that the language of instruction is going to be decisive just doesn’t come through. You can succeed in either language. You can fail in either language.”
We have always said that it’s the quality of the teaching and the passion for promoting biliteracy that makes the difference!!!
Of course at El Milagro, we have stretched to squeeze every point we can from the California Standards Test. Our student mobility and the drive to stay out of Program Improvement forced us to abandon dual language instruction. But next year we are eliminating those external pressures by
• Dramatically increasing the number of multi-age classrooms on our campus
• Developing a rich, integrated curriculum for those multi-age classrooms
• Placing students in grade levels according to their performance level (and not according to their age)
• Promoting students only when they demonstrate mastery of their grade level standards
Not only does this allow us to satisfy all the AYP demands, it will allow us to reintroduce the arts, health and fitness, science and social study. We can teach children to think again. We can promote creativity and performance and problem solving and innovation. The multiple intelligences!
But it also suggests that it is time to resurrect our dual language program… and our dream of biliteracy for all children.
Joy. Authentic learning. Dos idiomas. El Milagro.
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KIRA’S BLOG Seth Godin Dangerously Irrelevant
"El Milagro Weblog" 