Ewan McIntosh shared this article and several updates yesterday.  Goes right along with the TED presentation by Stuart Brown on the value of play.

I was NOT impressed at all with this new school nor do I believe the claims they make.  Further, I believe that ANY school, in any district in Texas today, can do the exact same things they have done and claim the exact same results.  This is due to how they select their students, how they have structured their curriculum and how they are actually practicing their model.

First of all, the school is part of Manor HS.  The students come from the registered HS district population.  The Dean of Students made a grand pitch with slides to show how their ‘randomly selected population’ is scoring almost twice what the students at MHS are scoring in math & science.  They claim a pass rate on TAKS at 77% overall vs. 44% for the MHS students.

But their population isn’t random.  It is self-selected.

The school sends out a recruitment letter to all parents of 8th graders in the district.  This sounds fine, but Manor is typically a transient-heavy district, and students move frequently from household to household.  So the letter goes ONLY to those families registered in the district with legal 8th graders.

Second, their deadline is a ’strict’ 30-day window within the end-of-school sprint.  Parents who will sign and return the application with all the proper documentation will limit the numbers to involved parents.

Third, the students who will actively CHOOSE to attend a math/science heavy curriculum will pick this academy.  The students who do not see themselves as good at either, or do not want to be challenged, will not opt for the academy.  These three factors help to select a population that is already (in my opinion) statistically significantly different from the general MHS population.

The curriculum focus is based on Problem-based Learning.  I have great respect for this process, and have used this model extensively in my classrooms since 1996.  I have had success with this model and have received grants to use it in my teaching.  The Manor Tech Academy model supports PBL through a 2 hour block of teacher professional developmnet each Monday, use of rubric grading and 80-minute blocks of class time limited to 5 periods per school day.  This structure allows extensive teacher preparation, comprehensive student work and meaningful feedback.  The students and teachers that I observed were generally enthusiastic about the focus.  But…

Of the 5 teachers I talked to, only two seemed to understand the overall process of PBL from the preparation design involving TAKS and planned assessments through the experiences they planned in the classroom.  For example, in one classroom, the students were supposed to design a website discussing and exhibiting the differences between biotic and abiotic process.  The only document the students had was a one-page rubric and whatever information appeared on the teacher’s network-based website.  I asked a typical Freshman student how he was constructing his site, and he said, “Cut & pasting from Google”.

A ‘master teacher’ mentor explained that some students have a real issue with PBL and prefer the worksheet and repeat style of education.  She said those students opt ouit of the program and return to the MHS population.

Additional curriculum support issues include the fact that the school is NOT held to the district’s 6 week bundle schedule and may teach their objectives anytime within a 12-week window.  They have a trimester system instead of the traditional semester, allowing students to accrue more credits.  While this is conducive to PBL, it is not a standard allowed in the other HS.

Finally, in the physics class I visited, the teacher was directly teaching TAKS objectives, just as any remedial class.  She said they would be doing this for the next two weeks to prepare the students for the TAKS test.  In my experience, ‘teaching to the test’ is not a good use of instructional time.

In practice, the class time structure, curriculum support and professional development will foster good PBL activities.  I am sure the students feel and are, in reality, successful.  I believe the teachers are very enthusiastic and committed to the model.

The building has been gutted and rennovated to have that open, glass-bare walls-open ceiling look.  Teachers have been given special markers that are neon and can write on the glass walls of the classrooms, so colorful lists and names of students and drawings are all over.  Mac computers are the tool of choice, so the look and feel of the environment is very progressive, open and busy.  But it is NOT a silver bullet. 

We should NOT have any illusions about the ‘magic’ or ‘miracle’ that the Principal and Dean of Students suggest.  Any school that puts in place the same supports for the same group of students will achieve the same results.

This is about students.

The traditionalist teacher in me says, “Put that away and pay attention!”  But the pragmatic human that I am says, “Why?  They ARE paying attention…to what’s important to them.”

Let me throw this idea out.  Can they set the agenda?  Can they be given control to make their own path?  Perhaps, but it’s gonna be messy (the trad. teacher warns).

There are several courses currently in place here (AVID, Connections, Comm Apps) that attempts to focus their attention in new directions.  But often, the right prompts or questions are not aksed, or asked in the wrong way, and the response is never given coherent thought.  So traditional teacher gets 2 sentences, poorly written, with no point.  And the text message grows to several connected paragraphs on why traditional teacher is clueless.

I ran across a colleague who has an idea for a journal.  Old fashioned handwritten diary-type journal.  But with prompts, and ideas and a POINT…to be left for posterity.  To live beyond the moment of ‘today’s assignment’.  Check it out at www.wendysoria.com.

More later.

Last summer, I had many plans and got to about 1/2 of them.  This summer, I had few plans, but it seems like I have been busy every day.  REAL teachers make use of the time.  I hope, like Kipling wrote, that I “fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds’ worth of distance run…”

I noticed the calendar marks this week for Teacher Appreciation.  For Boss’ Day sometime last fall, I signed a card from all of the teachers to each of the principals.  On Secretaries’ Day, we all pitched in for lunch, even took their duties during lunch so they could go off campus.

I know I should be grateful for my blessings…I HAVE a job, etc.  But acknowledgement would be nice.  But there have been no notes in our boxes, no appreciative email from the Supe, no candy from Student Council, no $1 off coupons from the PTO, no acknowledgement from the principal during morning announcements.

Like I said, I’m lurking.  It’s only Thursday…maybe tomorrow?

Michael Smith wrote a great blog about teachers and lawyers.  It is really to the point.

We also tend to review what went well and what did not.  In John Young’s column of April 12 in the Waco Tribune-Herald, he makes a great point about teachers.  Unlike, ‘private contractors’, teachers (like soldiers and public health workers) are a bargain for the taxpayers, PLUS, we do our jobs… every day.

The Saber-Tooth Curriculum is almost a cliche, as it is almost 60 years old, and I use it as a reference in my C&I classes.  It goes to the heart of the discussion about vision and direction and core values and societal pressures that need to be examined by all of us.  I can live, for example, in an organization which maintains that the final product (a Pass/Fail system) is the goal.  As Yoda said, “There is do or do not, there is no try.”  Very limited, no room for ’style points’ or ‘good effort’ , but effective.  This is the way the Army trains.

On the other hand, we have Gardner and Darling-Hammond and Dewey who regard the affective domain as the critical component connecting the cognitive and physical domains, so style, effort and cooperation are important enough to measure.

Both approaches are fine, but there must be balance and vision.  We cannot live in the past, it’s NOT ‘good enough’…not for us, not for the US.  It’s good enough for China & India and the developing countries of the 3rd world, because our system made us the dynamic industrial nation we are.

But our world has evolved, so we must look at what it means to be educated all over again.

The project involves having students run a business (virtual) on the computer.  I never seem to have enough time to 1) make them comfortable with the game aspect of the scenario and 2) have the entire class take the project as a serious attempt at PBL.  Sometimes, games are just games to them…