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Can teachers be held for responsible for social and economic collapse?

August 27, 2011

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Dodgeball – Education reformers aren’t tackling the root problems that lead to bad schools Sarah Garland | August 17, 2011
On an unseasonably warm evening last November, Glendalys Delgado lowered herself into a child-sized chair in the classroom of her youngest son, Juan, a second-grader at Thomas Dudley Elementary School in Camden, New Jersey. Juan’s teacher, Shakira Wyche, sat next to her looking serious.
(AP Photo/Mel Evans)
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
“You’re going to be a little upset,” Wyche told Delgado as she held up Juan’s report card. A line of Fs trailed down the page. Juan is “very intelligent,” perhaps the smartest in the class, the teacher said, but he refuses to work in class or do his homework. “I can’t just give him straight-A’s because I like him,” Wyche said.
Delgado nodded. “I tell him he’s going to be left behind if he doesn’t do his work,” she replied in halting English, giving the teacher a wan smile as she backed out of the room. “No more excuses.”
Delgado, a 32-year-old mother of three, works as a home health aide for the elderly. She moved to Camden at age 18 from Puerto Rico and lived alone with an infant daughter after the child’s father was sent to prison for his role in a murder. Delgado stayed in Camden and had two sons.
By any measure, there are few worse places in this country to raise a family than here. Camden, a small city across the river from Philadelphia, competes with Detroit and Youngstown, Ohio, for the nation’s worst poverty and crime rates. Infant mortality in Camden is 16 percent, significantly more than the 6 percent nationally. This year, Camden’s unemployment rate rose while it stabilized in the rest of the country. The city laid off 168 officers, half of its police force, until the state sent money that allowed it to rehire 50 of them. Last year, the city’s population shrank, like it has every year since the 1950s as people with enough means flee to the suburbs.
Only 16 percent of Camden’s elementary school students pass literacy tests. The graduation rate at the two main high schools averages just 50 percent. Violence is common. Juan, who is 7, describes his first-grade experience as “rough” because of the numerous fights on the playground and in the halls. The district has a notorious history of corruption, cheating, and neglect by the grown-ups in the system.
Many education reformers have become convinced that fixing failing public schools is the best, perhaps only, way to revive places like Camden. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has proposed a series of reforms meant to resuscitate failing schools and, with them, failing communities. “If we get this right, most of our other problems will fix themselves,” Christie has said. “And if we get this wrong, we can’t fix any of our long-term systemic problems.”
Christie rolled out a slate of proposals for statewide school reforms including merit pay for teachers, stricter tenure rules, and more efficient means of removing ineffective teachers from the classroom. In Camden this June, he announced another initiative that would hand the management of failing schools over to private organizations. (Legislation is pending before the state legislature.) At the heart of Christie’s philosophy, shared by reformers that include former school chancellors Joel Klein in New York and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., is the conviction that poverty has been used as an excuse by teachers’ unions and school districts to avoid the hard work of school reform.
But in Camden, even great teachers face obstacles that are difficult to overcome. Increasingly, educators and experts are questioning the reformers’ tactics and asking whether the single-minded focus on schools has become an excuse to avoid the hard work of addressing poverty.
For the past seven years, Delgado has lived with her three children in the Ablett Village housing project. Surrounded by vacant lots, the community sits on a spit of land known as Cramer Hill that’s cut off from the rest of the city by a sludgy brown tributary of the Delaware River and a rail yard. The project is a few square blocks of two-story bunker-style buildings with a reputation for crime and drug dealing. Living there is a trade-off. Although Ablett may be grimy and dangerous, the apartments are at least occupied; about one in seven homes in Camden is abandoned, and at least one rotting, boarded-up house sits on most blocks.
Delgado’s hope is that her children will escape poverty someday, and she has put her faith in the schools to help them do so. “I want them to go to college. I want them to be police or doctors, so that they do something in the morning. I want them to have careers,” she says. This year, her faith in the power of schools was deeply shaken. She moved her children to new schools, asked for better teachers, and has meanwhile watched the district experiment with reforms like charter schools. These changes, though, seemed to have little effect on her children’s academic performance. Were her children’s failures the sole fault of their schools and teachers, or was there something more pervasive at work?
During a parent-teacher conference last fall, Delgado listened to her son Carlos’s sixth-grade special-education teacher spend a half hour complaining about her students: “They do not shut up. They’re all talking while I’m trying to teach.” The woman confided to Delgado that “math was never one of my favorites.” The teacher then explained that she’d started the year with a fifth-grade math book but that the students didn’t understand her lessons. So she switched to a third-grade book.
In Juan’s case, it was more difficult to blame an indifferent teacher for his troubles. Wyche, who has two years of experience, works late most days. One of her lowest-performing students often stays after school to finish his homework because his mother works long hours. Wyche, who spent much of her childhood in Camden and “knows what goes on outside of these walls,” was sent several hard cases last year because her principal thought she was best equipped to handle them. Even after the parent-teacher conference, Juan still refused to do his schoolwork and was suspended twice for fighting. Wyche blames a combination of things: his past teachers, a lack of discipline at home, his environment, his own stubbornness. “I don’t write them off,” she says. “But there has to be effort from everybody.”
It’s hard for schools to hold the line against a city that has crumbled into rubble and violence around them. The first time I visited the high school that Delgado’s 16-year-old daughter, Ninoshka, attends, a brawl involving dozens of students broke out on the lawn. The second time, as I chatted with Principal Tyrone Richards, a school secretary swept him away to deal with an emergency. Gang members had threatened a ninth-grader after killing one of the boy’s friends, and the ninth-grader had attempted suicide. “Learning is our first priority,” Richards said later. “But sometimes it can be hard to focus on academics.”
A recent study by John Fantuzzo, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that even for kids like the Delgados who don’t suffer from problems like homelessness or abuse, being surrounded by kids who do can hurt their achievement.
Delgado has sought out charter schools after hearing good things from other desperate parents about the schools’ “no excuses” motto. She applied to four, but her children were waitlisted at each. Even if they had gotten in, it’s not certain that they would have excelled.
Camden’s half-dozen charter schools have yet to prove that schools alone can conquer poor academic performance in high-poverty areas. Two-thirds of elementary students in Camden’s charters fail state literacy tests, and more than half of middle-school students in charters fail, according to a report by the Christie administration.
The focus on schools as the saviors of communities like Camden have largely quashed discussions about more large-scale anti-poverty policies as a piece of the solution. Two universities in Camden are trying to replicate the whole-neighborhood approach pioneered by the Harlem Children’s Zone of improving parenting skills, health, and other outside-school factors; both projects had hoped for more funding from an Obama administration initiative known as Promise Neighborhoods, but Congress scaled back the budget for the program this year.
Expecting schools to make up for all of society’s problems is shortsighted, argues Fantuzzo. “Success in education is more than the education system,” Fantuzzo says. If schools were to start coordinating with hospitals and doctors, government agencies that deal with homelessness and child abuse, and nongovernmental groups that provide counseling, after-school programs, and other services–all of the “many hands that touch the little hand,” as Fantuzzo puts it–government might be better able to craft more comprehensive, and ultimately more effective, interventions.
On a recent afternoon at her apartment in the Ablett Village, Delgado sat at the kitchen table in hot-pink scrubs after work, thinking back on the school year that she once had high hopes for and recounting her children’s latest academic crises.
She lobbied to have Carlos moved into a regular education class for part of the day, where he was enjoying the more challenging work. But the principal told her that because his teacher continued to report behavior problems, he might have to move to a new school this year, which is known for gang violence. She caught Ninoshka cutting a free tutoring program she had found for her. And she was still at a loss about how to make Juan work harder.
“I’m giving everything for my kids. I told them I want them to have a better life than I did. I don’t know what’s wrong,” Delgado said, adding in Spanish: “I get so stressed and anxious about it. It’s like I’m swimming and swimming upstream, and I don’t get anywhere.”
The same might be said of Camden as a whole. Governor Christie and his fellow reformers hope that teachers will have more success in improving beleaguered places like Camden, where every previous effort seems to have failed. But, as Fantuzzo and his colleagues and many others are increasingly arguing, their job would be easier if poverty and failing schools were attacked together.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.

Sarah Garland is a staff writer at The Hechinger Report, an education-news outlet at the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

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Replace lessons in cursive handwriting with keyboarding?

July 12, 2011

Replace lessons in cursive handwriting with keyboarding?

In this age of fast-paced change and ‘technological innovation’ and an emphasis on explicit and extrinsic ‘skill formation’ and quantitative measurements what should become redundant in primary compulsory education?
Some schools and teachers would advocate that handwriting be dropped for keyboarding.

Being a doodler and lover of handwriting and font design I wonder…

Such a decision formalises what is in practise a fact, teachers do not spend hours on handwriting. I think that this is appropriate as there are more important things to do. However it should not be dropped as unnecessary or useless.

A feature, without emphasis, should draw attention to the aesthetic aspects of handwriting – who after all designed the fonts we use? How could we justify NOT teaching cursive to NO formal handwriting instruction but leap to keyboarding instead?

Clear, legible, and quick handwriting should be encouraged which is the power of cursive, running writing once mastered – this involves the correct management of the pen as a tool – where we control it to our advantage. This would overcome writer’s cramp after a couple of sentences. The big assumption is that we are writing culture – and that we all have and use keyboards. This is partly supported by the emphasis in schools on decoding at the expense of encoding which is what we do as we write.

As with many thoughts generated by adults about children’s learning developmental concerns are ignored. This is especially so when such ideas a regenerated in the absence of daily contact with young children. To denigrate handwriting ignores the connection of our early steps toward handwriting and self-expression – ‘mark-making’ in preschool and kinder/prep/reception and the intimate connections between reading, writing, and spelling in the early years and through the primary years.

There is a lot happening on a page of handwriting – design, spatial organisation, consistence of pattern, and so on. Not that difficulty in meeting these demands should be used by teachers to exert power unnecessarily over children. In later writing development there is evidence too that young students especially are unable to get their ideas down quickly.

Teachers have observed that children’s imaginative thoughts and story writing are inhibited on the screen. Sketching out a story without regard to spelling and grammar, to be edited later, is lost on the screen as students become preoccupied with editing, especially when prompted by spelling and grammar checks. The process of drafting, editing, and crafting a piece of writing cannot be avoided by working on screen alone.

I wonder, will drawing suffer a similar fate? Even though fine arts trained draughtspersons are sought out in the animation industry over those who only have computer aided drawing experience. I understand this is the case because they have had to consciously consider weight and form and movement and their representation in 2D. Training that cannot occur with a mouse, a tablet tool, and a screen.

Of course I am of a generation that was taught to write in the suggested forsaken manner – I acknowledge not everyone met the desired end but then we didn’t get caned either. Ultimately the employers do not need hand-writers but key strokers, and there’s the rub.

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Teacher stands up for what is right

March 13, 2010

The Attack on Tenure and Teachers’ Job Security
March 10, 2010 by emmarosenthal
A recent L.A. Weekly article “addressed” the “problem” of getting rid of “bad” teachers. (see link below)

As someone who retired from LAUSD with disability retirement after trying to get the most minimal of accommodations for my dis-ability and facing incredible harassment for such a request;

As someone who requested basic accommodations, found ways to make the whole proposal cost free for the District while offering to fill high need hard to staff areas of education, (bilingual special ed) and fully aware that if I had merely kept my mouth shut, showed Disney movies, gave out busy work, and gave all my students C’s, then I would have had no problem with the same administration, but only had a problem when requesting the resources to do my job well.

As someone who NEVER had a bad evaluation, had several outstanding evaluations, and wrote and received several grants and coordinated several school wide programs;

As someone who filed and won approx 30 grievances against the district for collective and individual violations of the contract, never observing any consequences, reassignments, discipline etc against these principals for such wanton rights violations;

As someone who observed and confronted gross misuse of school funds and a crony system that favored mediocrity and obedience over dedication and commitment to teaching;

As someone who used tenure to defend and advocate for students and the community and teachers, against the will of the administration;

As someone who ONLY KNEW ONE ADMINISTRATOR who went after bad teachers– with the full support of the highly unionized faculty. (I consider her the best administrator I worked with);

As someone who observed administrators go after activists, whistle blowers, community, educator, worker and student advocates while perpetuating or ignoring sexual harassment, sexual abuse, hate speech, racism, sexism, dis-ability discrimination etc. both by staff and students;

As someone who graduated magna cum laude, is bilingual in English and Spanish, continues to study and to teach, is a life long activist and writer;

I find it hard to believe that:

1. Michael Kim, a man with cerebral palsy, who neurologically can’t control his hands, is the best example of the district trying to defend the rights of staff and students against sexual harassment and gropping!

More to point, the District doesn’t WANT dis-abled teachers. This whole case was totally offensive and outrageous, and should be transparent; a perfect example of how dis-ability discrimination is used to take us all down, to set a pretext for greater rights violations.

2. the present administration is able to select the appropriate teachers for dismissal– which of course would explain why it is so hard to fire the teachers the district is trying to fire. It is quite possible that very few of these people should be fired and the ones that need to go are comfortably doing the principal’s bidding!!!

3 given that the City of Los Angeles decided NOT to fire a single cop for beating up press and community members for the May Day demonstration a few years back, wonders what city employees ARE doing that warrants (“the easy” removal from their positions.

4. there are only bad teachers and not bad administrators, who also need to be removed from their positions which the district can do, and doesn’t. It seems that a lot of bad teaching might be resolved by creating acceptable working conditions, starting with a supportive administration.

5. that the grievance process is the problem, The grievance process is a three step process: 1.A meeting with the principal, 2. A meeting with the area supt. And 3. Binding arbitration with an arbitrator chosen by both the union and the district. A principal looses a grievance against a teacher when either the District or the arbitrator chosen by the district says a violation of that teacher’s rights has occurred. In such a situation is it right to assume that it is the teacher that is failing to perform basic assigned duties?

6.that settlements of 40-100 thousand dollars for the removal of teachers the District wants to fire, are excessive and against whom no evidence exists, other than district say so, that these teachers deserve to lose their careers, which includes 5 years of university study, and often thousands of dollars each year for materials the District fails to provide and in a District that has bought out the contracts of several of its superintendants for over half a million dollars.

The entire premise of the Weekly article is that the District can’t fire the teachers it wants to fire because of the Union and tenure, and not that these constructs actually protect the academic freedom of teachers who should not have been brought under scrutiny in the first place.

There is no evidence IN THE ARTICLE, except the District’s say so, that the District is actually trying to fire the BAD teachers. That is an essential missing element of the article. Sure there are bad teachers. But if the district isn’t going after bad teachers, but is going after teachers who demand their rights or the rights of others, then the waste of resources is even more outrageous.

http://www.laweekly.com/2010-02-11/news/lausd-s-dance-of-the-lemons/

Posted in Anatomy of a Blacklisting, Calling out neo-liberalism, Disability Rights, Education, Human Rights, Immigrant Rights, UTLA, this is what a police state looks like

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Early Childhood and curriculum

March 5, 2010

My critical reflection on the ‘fit’ between my own approach to early childhood, the current national political agendas in early childhood education, and the curriculum framework that I am required to work within’.

I am yet to work in the early childhood area however I have had the opportunity to run a Prep/1/2 using the principles of the approach of Reggio Emelia for two years. A situation that would similar to Victoria and the ACT where they are introducing integrated maternity services, childcare, and K to 2 learning places. My practice could be defined as respecting and valuing the ideas of children; emphasising the critical role of communication and relationships for productive learning, and learning to be a learner; art as the primary medium for the expression of children’s thinking; a pace of learning that is in accord with the needs of the particular children; and so, appreciating the different roles this means for teachers. My situation then included team teaching in the classroom and the support of a visiting part-time teacher conversant with the emergent curriculum, and close collaboration and integration with the Art and Garden teacher’s program.

These experiences convinced me that there are better ways to organise public education that is conducive to maximising children’s happiness and flourishing, and that with appropriate support it can be achieved. At this time I was also responsible for overseeing the introduction of Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) and the Principles of Learning and Teaching (PoLT) within the school. The VELS is the curriculum framework and the PoLT addresses the pedagogical questions around student and teacher engagement and curriculum relevance. Many committed and engaged teachers greeted this curriculum reform with enthusiasm. I was fortunate enough to have participated with a number of these teachers in forums under the auspice of the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority.

I remain with the conviction that what we were doing at that school in Prep to 2 was in complete accord with the intention of the VELS and PoLT. For me education means power through knowledge. My interest in education came about partly due to a lifetime of overcoming the sense of failure that my own (non-government) school experience had left me with. I had been encouraged to enter teaching at a time when the Thinking Curriculum was de rigueur. I had a background in community arts, where I had first come across the work of Paulo Freire the Brazilian educator who had illuminated the way in adult literacy and political agency – he coined the phrase ‘Reading the word; reading the world’. While at Latrobe University I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to study Philosophy with Children as a part of my philosophy degree. It was here I found the work of Dewey and Vygotsky. It is all these experiences, and others, that inform my approach to Early Childhood.

In many respects I believe my pedagogical approach is in accord with the aims and intentions of the VELS and the PoLT and the Early Childhood Blueprint which has the vision of providing the means for the holistic development of young children from Year 0 to Year 8 to develop “optimal health and wellbeing”. However I do believe that government Blueprints are one thing and the actuality in schools and learning places for preschool children another. The Victorian Government has been working closely with Early Childhood Victoria and its national office to implement the National Early Childhood Learning Framework. In this regard dues must be given to the latter organisation for keeping the bureaucracy up to the mark and the government honest, so to speak.

I believe as practioners and educators we have an obligation to meet the standards being set by these various blueprints and frameworks. However many of the methods being employed by departmental and regional bureaucrats to improve quality are counter-productive to building teacher confidence and self-respect. If we are to be respected as professionals, and build the profession we need to be prepared to challenge and argue against these pedagogical and industrial counter-reforms that determine so much of what happens in practice. If we wish to recognise the social and political agency of children, preparing them for their active adult participation so necessary for a democracy, then we as the current adults must also actively model our agency in democratic classrooms and learning places.

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VOTE for Teachers’ Alliance Elect practising classroom teachers

December 22, 2009

VOTE for Teachers’ Alliance
Elect practising classroom teachers

Peter Curtis for Council
Hurstbridge Primary School

I am a classroom teacher and an active
representative of my sub-branch.
If elected as a Teachers Alliance candidate I will work to improve the conditions of all staff. By building sub-branches we can fully involve all members of the union to;
• Develop policy, stop divisive deals and further reduction of conditions
• Participate in negotiations and agreements prior to public acceptance
Ensure Branch Council participates in organising a united public education sector, and supports combined unions’ campaigns.
• Prioritise the defense of our Occupational Health & Safety laws
• Enact OHS Conference decisions by fully involving members in the VTHC campaign.
• Participation in our federal campaign to stop league tables and other policies detrimental to working conditions and quality education.
Invigorate Branch Conference with democratic discussion and debate on;
• The Government’s Blueprints and VELS
• Reducing workload
• Reducing contracts by reinstating Relieving Teachers
• Replacing the VIT

Teachers’ Alliance candidates will work to ensure officers stay in touch with members by receiving the salary of teachers, and
stand for no more than two consecutive terms.
Vote for a voice representing Primary Teachers

5 Gerritsen, Prue
6 Preston, Ella
4 Cohen, Daniel
3 McPherson, Hamish
1 Ghiotti, Beth
2 Curtis, Peter
7 Atkinson, Anthony

http://www.teachers-alliance.org

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Bullies and Australian education counter reform

December 22, 2009

Bullying is the topic of two articles in the Australian Education Union, Victoria Branch News, March 2009. The problem of bullying is a timely one as it is an issue that dominates many teachers’ concerns, both personally, and across whole school communities. Schools are microcosm of society and consequently the problems that beset our communities are also present within our schools.

Australian society’s political and economic system, like most, is based on the exploitation of many to profit the few. To do so inequality must be enforced to ensure ‘social cohesion’. This is most evident in the federal governments repressive industrial relations legislation that deliberates against any reasonable democratic action to defend wages and working conditions by workers generally, but especially those who are organised in trade unions.

In regard to education Julia ‘Gradgrind’ Gillard apparently must appreciate that many teachers strive to be the embodiment and promoters of democratic values. It is no accident her ministerial responsibilities are education, social cohesion and industrial relations. Let your own internal ‘Big Brother’ make the connections before the development of our imaginations and emotions are outlawed totally. The ‘Gradgrind’ view of education is one directed by bullying business managers manipulating data, and micromanaging the life out of teachers and teaching. Trevor Cobold, national spokesperson of Save Our Schools argues that this “toughness masks their ignorance of curriculum and teaching.”

June Factor (The Age 23/3) too makes a number of critical and salient points to challenge the ‘Gradgrind’ view.
“… this reductionist virus, as is evident from the Federal Government’s recent enthusiasm for a local variant of the No Child Left Behind approach. Every school must adopt a “performance reporting regime involving constant standardised testing and the naming (and shaming) of schools where the children don’t perform as required.
The Bush government’s Orwellian-titled No Child Left Behind policy has forced many schools, especially the poorest, now dependent on test results for their survival, to diminish or omit subjects such as music, drama and art.”
There are now whole school districts in the US where children’s play time is reduced, adult-directed or simply eliminated. This trend was visible even before George W. Bush. According to the superintendent of schools in Atlanta in 1998, “we are intent on improving academic performance. You don’t do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars.”

Educators know that their student’s suffer when they are involved in bullying. We know that bullying is a complex of social behaviour that involves those who are perpetrators, victims, and as well the ‘innocent’ bystanders. The methods being proposed by the Federal Government are tantamount to bullying for the social and personal harm that they perpetrate on teachers and their students. The enforcement of Gradgrind’s system of joyless education can only work by making a Louisa of us all.

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SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS from the economic and political agenda of big business corporations.

July 19, 2009

To all those who care about our home and a culture
of ‘A Fair-go’ and ‘Participatory Democracy’.

SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS from the economic and political agenda of big business corporations. This corporate campaign to do in Australian authors and small independent publishers and bookshops is being ably run and organised by the giant corporations’ quislings.
One vocal example of this species is the ex-ALP Premier of NSW, Bob Carr; he is on the board of Dymocks Books. Despite his many years as a member of the ‘political class’ he thinks crossing the floor means a move to the Macquarie Bank.
Are we prepared to let Coles and K-Mart monopo-lies the economic, political and cultural agendas?
If not find out more and read on …

URGENT – SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS

You will probably have heard by now about the Productivity Commission Report that recommends abolishing Territorial Copyright on books and so allowing the Parallel Importation of books. Many Australians are up in arms about this.

Some of us are developing a short campaign to convince the Federal Government to reject the Commission’s report, and retain restrictions on parallel importation. But we need to let people from all walks of life know about this threat to Australian-published books, both fiction and non-fiction.

We have initiated a new blogsite to help explain our campaign and the issues behind it, and to demonstrate the breadth of opposition amongst authors, publishers, independent booksellers, parents, teachers, librarians, printers and book lovers. The blogsite address is http://savingaussiebooks.wordpress.com/. This new website offers information (easy to understand), links, comments and access to practical ways people can contact (and lobby) politicians, letters to the editors – and getting our concerns out to the general community.
We also are developing a petition on the blogsite and/or a petition format to print off and circulated as widely as possible.

The site also has guest bloggers willing to put their names to blog entries, (hopefully not just authors) because there’re many other professions and trades who will be affected by this change of law.

Please pass on to as many people as you can in your circles.

The timing is URGENT as the Federal Government will make its decision in the weeks ahead. Many thanks for your interest and support.

Regards
Sheryl Gwyther
An Australian writer’s alert regarding the loss of Australian culture with the threat of Parallel Importation of Books.
Some of you may know of author and teacher Sheryl Gwyther. Lothian Books published her first novel, Secrets of Eromanga in 2006. In 2002 was awarded an Australian Society of Authors’ Mentorship. In 2009 Sheryl and other Australian authors and publishers are fighting for their livelihoods. For Sheryl, ”writing is my life now … and with my visits to classrooms and libraries enthusing kids about the amazing world of Australian dinosaurs and about writing, I’m never bored.” You may or may not have heard but Australian authors and culture is under attack from giant global corporate interests.
On June 30 Sheryl wrote, “The Productivity Commission took their findings to the Australian Parliament on whether Australian authors and illustrators will lost Territorial Copyright. Over the past decade this protection has ensured a phenomenal increase of quality Australian-authored books and the emergence of a battalion of award-winning authors. More significantly is the fact it has given the world an insight into our country through the eyes and words of Australian authors.”
Do you want to see Australian children reading books without Australian content and ‘Americanised’ with Mom instead of Mum or faucets instead of taps, and vacation instead of holiday? It could happen if pressure from some quarters (e.g. Dymocks company’s management and major retail chains of Woolworths, Coles, K Mart, Big W and Target) convinces the Australian Government to relax the current Parallel Importation Restrictions on books. (PIRs)
What is Parallel Importation of Books? Parallel importation would allow Australian booksellers to import books from the US and the UK, irrespective of whether they’re already published in Australia. These two countries prohibit Parallel Importation of books into their countries so why allow it in Australia?
How will it affect Australian book buyers? Removing PIRs will flood the market with inferior imports, drown out Aussie content/language and reduce your choice of books – with no reliable evidence that books will cost you less.
If you want to read Australian books; if you want your kids to see their lives and experiences reflected in the books they read, write to your politicians. Tell them NOT to remove PIRs on books. This is an issue that every good teacher should be concerned about. So I have asked that her open letter be published.
Regards,
Peter Curtis,
Primary Teacher, AEU.

08/07/2009 An open letter by Sheryl Gwyther

Culture for DUMMIES

Forgive the acerbic tone to this post, but I can’t let Professor Allan Fels’ latest comment go regarding his desire to scrap Territorial Copyright laws for Australian authors.
This is part of what he said last night on ABC TV’s 7:30 Report about our present copyright protection: “There’s also a claim that it’s good for culture, that is, it’s good for culture that Australian book readers should pay more for books. I don’t understand that.”
An open letter to Professor Allan Fels, Bob Carr and all….
Well, let me enlighten you, Professor Fels with my Culture for DUMMIES.
Heinemann’s Australian dictionary says culture means, ‘ a development or improvement of the intellect or behaviour; the distinctive practices and beliefs of a society.’ Well, that’s pretty straightforward, don’t you think, Professor Fels?
Let’s put it in context of Australian children’s picture books and novels. After all, that’s the area that will be directly hit by yours and Bob Carr’s, Dymocks Bookstores, and the discount retailers Woolworths and Coles’s bid to destroy Australian Territorial Copyright on books. If the Parallel Importation Restrictions (PIRs) are abolished or watered-down (as desired by you and your fellow free-marketeers) future Australian books risk losing their Australian content, voices and experiences.
In the world of children’s books – and maybe you have no experience in this area – the risk is even greater. Australian children must grow up having access to books from their own country. Books that hold mirror images of their own experiences not those of children living in Manhattan, Texas or Manchester. Books that echo with Australian voices, multi-cultural and all; stories connecting with our own place in the world.
If PIRs are abolished and Australian authored books are published overseas they WILL BE CHANGED to suit American or British tastes. Then they will be exported back into this country with American spelling, language and terms – gone will be Wagga Wagga, Mum, footpath, rugby union, gum tree, Indooroopilly, possum and a host of other words.
But even worse than losing our own language is the threat to Australian content in books. Aussie children understand Aussie humour – North American and British children don’t quite get it. Okay, I mustn’t generalise, so let’s just say that publishers (the gatekeepers) in the US and the UK don’t ‘get’ Australian humour … just ask popular Australian children’s author, Morris Gleitzman about his experiences. (His texts are Americanized for the North American market)
And what can Australian authors do when a large American publishing firm says we’ll publish your book, but we’ll need to make a few changes. If we refuse the changes we do not get published. We’ve seen this happen already where Australian books are picked up by US publishing firms. Even picture books are not immune – they become bland, superficial facsimiles of their Aussie twins.
So, Professor Fels, please open your eyes and your mind; life isn’t meant to be all about making more money. And don’t try to pull the wool over Aussie eyes – people who want to buy a book in this country are not bound by the price at the bookshop. We all have access to free libraries across this wide land so no child needs to go without a book because of what it costs. (And let me remind you, the Productivity Commission says there’s no guarantee books would be any cheaper if the restrictions are lifted).
I’m just an ordinary Australian children’s writer trying to make a living in my beloved country – following my passion for storytelling set on this land, that uses the language and experiences of its peoples. Like my fellow authors I live with rejections, rewrites and edits on work that might take many years to complete. I don’t complain if I’m lucky to earn 10% of the RRP on a proportion of a few thousand published copies.
I just move on to writing the next one with the thrill of knowing many children read my stories and enjoy them; and the knowledge that I’m part of a noble profession working to ensure our Australian culture in its written form will survive and thrive, long after you’ve become a tiny, full-stop dot in the book of Australian history.

sherylgwyther.wordpress.com
http://www.sherylgwyther.net

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The Classroom as a Community for Inquiry

July 18, 2009

The classroom as a community of inquirers and learners.

Inquiry learning begins from the premise that we are, by nature, inquirers and thinkers. The Community of Inquiry is an approach which develops the practice of the Socratic method: this means that a stimulus or a provocation is provided to the community which then stimulates thought and dialogue. Dialogue identifies for the community those concepts that are central and common to us all, such as fairness and beauty; while we take for granted a common belief or definition, we also find that they are contestable concepts. Socratic dialogue assists to build the skills of thinking about thinking, argument and reflection. Dialogue allows students and the teacher the space to explore our own and other minds. Developing these skills is the intention of the philosophical community of inquiry as promoted internationally and nationally, by the various associations of Philosophy with Children in Schools.

Children’s psychological and cognitive development

Even though we still know very little of children’s psychological and cognitive development, our understanding has grown over the past few decades. In regards to education there is a large body of work that discusses how children construct and reconstruct knowledge. This approach is known as constructivism and it is a dominant theory that informs learning and teaching today and it is generally associated with the appreciation of child development as a continuum, a spiral, rather than a series of independent stages of development. Holding the metaphor of the developmental spiral, imagine also that our embodied minds travel through four-dimensional space, and, as we do so, we encounter resistance with nature and each other. We therefore seek solutions by asking questions, we imagine other possibilities, we try to change the circumstances that cause us discomfit.

•    One question for me is, can we assume that curiosity, and wonder, awareness, consciousness, and thinking, and a general desire for understanding are present in the baby to the grave? If so, the elements that change along the continuum of development supply the ‘complexity’ of conceptual understanding and knowledge.

Essentially, constructivism understands that knowledge is socially constructed and defined by our relationships. Consequently, there is an emphasis on the quality of the relationships between students, teachers and peers. I like to describe this collaborative thinking as the ‘meeting of minds’. Classroom instruction is not only defined by the teacher transmitting facts but by all members of the classroom thinking and communicating together: thereby learning by thinking; imagining possibilities; seeking opportunities; the means for a particular end; evaluating and reflecting; thinking about their thinking and coming to a common understanding. This approach requires a classroom environment which is safe for all to express their thoughts, explore their concerns and questions, and learn what it means to take responsibility for and manage their own and each other’s learning. Such a classroom is often defined as a  ‘democratic classroom’.

Learning to be a learner: Maturity and imagination.

An important aspect of children’s development is developing our mutual understanding of the importance of collaborative thinking and learning. Engaging with each other’s minds in dialogue assists in constructing our personal and social experience and gathering knowledge of the world around us in a meaning and purposeful way. This approach is based or modeled on the conception, and development, of a community of scientists as a community of inquirers. A community of inquiry pays as much attention to cognitive development, that is, thinking and related skills, dispositions, habits and ‘thinking tools’ as to physiological development and tool use. My engagement with children in the classroom in all its variety is about getting to know each other as ‘people’, as ‘humans’ and as learners learning together. I think understanding our ‘human-ess’ is essential to making sense of ourselves, and each other.

A critical aspect of effective teaching and learning is respectful relationships.

Assessment in such a classroom environment involves a matrix of ‘objectives’ broadly categorised into three parts, Assessment OF learning, Assessment FOR learning, and Assessment AS learning. Assessment AS learning is the dominant field and is intimately connected to our human, and personal, social and cultural relationships. It is about imagination, thinking, and reflection.
When assessing children’s performance, it is important to consider the learning environment, and as well have an understanding of our psychological and physical development and their interrelationships.
Ten assumptions about children’s development when thinking about assessment and reporting:
•    Students are always watching and observing what is going on around them.
•     Have inquisitive minds.
•     Grow and develop at varying rates.
•     Learn best when they engage in meaningful activities.
•     Need to be exposed to a variety of experiences to allow learning outcomes to be achieved.
•     Need a supportive environment to develop self-understanding and to understand others.
•     Respond to praise and recognition.
•    Engage in individual, and collective experiences involving ‘risk-taking’ and problem-solving.
•    Develop the means of making their own and collective connections, conclusions and judgements.
•    Need to repeat activities so as to explore possibilities refine skills and reinforce learning.

The following is an account of of my classroom practice over one year.

Sociability – interpersonal and Personal relationships  – Civics and Citizenship.

Grandparents Day was a great morning. The day just buzzed as children proudly talked about their work and the different things they do at school. From observation, there is a real affinity between these two generational groups. Initially, our morning ran much as we would do on any other day. Our guests joined in, keen to ask questions of the children and contribute themselves. There was no shortage of willing presenters to explain the various projects we have pursued over the year. Our grandparents were very impressed with the combined talent and maturity demonstrated by all the children. It would be great to see grandparents even more involved in the school in the future.

We have investigated how we can contribute to improving water quality. A major focus throughout the year has been around our concerns about water. We have begun exploring the natural water cycle and system of Transpiration and as well, the way we transport and use water. These understandings have been developed by applying their knowledge to understanding our connections to the local Plenty River and along with experiences of meeting with engaged adults, the Friends of Plenty River and the local councils Water Watch officer who is also a participant in the local Teacher’s Environment Network.

Guardians of the River is how the class defines itself in relation to their explorations of the Plenty River. Other literacy and numeracy strategies have been developed through the Litter Campaign and by reading the Jennie Baker story “Where the Forest Meets the Sea”, and researching, sharing experiences, writing songs and planning and developing an animated story about litter and the Plenty River. Others began writing a story using the structure of “One Drop and a Million More” which describes nature’s water cycle.

Numeracy and Literacy

Ukulele and the formation of the ‘BUGs’, the “Briar Hill Ukulele Group”. There is clearly much musical talent and a desire to perform, which I hope will be developed over the coming years. The children had great fun designing their bugs and transferring their designs to their T-shirt. Their debut concert at the Spring Fair was a cause for delight and was one of the highlights of the year. Learning the ukulele has stimulated discussion about how we learn and the need for practice, effort and motivation. Apart from the challenge of learning a musical instrument, the program supported our learning and singing of the song “Botany Bay”, which provided the stimulus for an exploration of child convicts and transportation, and the occupation of land and settlement of the early colonies. This theme arose out of a story about the gold rush and the Ballarat diggings. We also explored the different media used to tell stories: in this case we watched the Australian children’s animation, ‘The Little Convict’ by Yoram Gross, and we read, compared and exchanged ideas about the book of the same name.

Creating an animated story using the stop-motion software on the Mac computers has been a literacy focus over the semester for some Children. Rachel Bishop introduced the Jeannie Baker story, ‘Where the Forest Meets the Sea’ and the story structure provided a model for the class to create their own story about the Plenty River litterers. Planning for the story introduced concerns about plot, character, and sequence. The children had to develop their ideas, organise their storyboards and come to agreement about how each idea would connect to make the overall story, truly a team effort. Discussing and making their own animation was also supported by our visit to the Pixar exhibition at the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI). This visit assisted in our appreciation of constructing stories and story telling, and as well supported their process in creating their own animated story. Earlier in the year we had read the Judith Wright novel ‘The Dingo King’. Supporting activities around this story explored how writers used descriptive words to ‘paint’ pictures for us to imagine. In their reading and writing activities we have looked at how our choices of words and character are important elements of a good story.

Environmental Education for Sustainability activities have connected to literacy and numeracy in the classroom. Numerical understandings have been applied and reinforced by collecting rubbish, sorting into categories, and counting rubbish in the playground. The rubbish was later washed and used to make dramatic symbols supporting their ‘put litter in the bin’ message. Children wrote and performed songs that further promoted this message. In the classroom, they have used their graphing knowledge to develop comparative data. Their anti-litter campaign and the Plenty River and water use will continue to be a focus next year. Our visit to the Rethink Center (Banyule Council’s recycling centre) allowed us to see how these ideas are used in recycling rubbish where it is sorted ready for the manufacture of different products. The continued drought and the difficulties of growing plants and maintaining a garden in these conditions have been recurring themes. The children have planted gourds, pumpkins, zucchinis and corn and sunflowers as well.  In the classroom, we have been observing and recording the conditions and variables that affect the growth of moulds.

Scientific and philosophical understandings.

Scientific and philosophical understandings allow fascinating comparisons to be made between different forms of living things and their own mutability of form. I hope to continue this line of investigation next year as one of our big ideas. The development and application of these understandings will inform their environmental studies as they apply this knowledge to the science and lore of cooking, and their work of cultivating the garden, and as well, to the natural cycles of the garden.

Weighing, measuring, supermarkets and commercial packaging. It is important to see literacy in all its dimensions, such as imaginative, speculative and historical writing and as well the use of non-fiction, informational and commercial texts. Our visit to the supermarket was a stimulus for a number of different activities and projects in numeracy and literacy. They have begun looking at type-faces, choices of colours, size and placement of words and the relationship those things have to imparting a message. Explorations of packaging and nutritional content lead us to look at weighing and measuring. I would hope to continue these activities as part of their health program. Another emphasis this year has been the practising of the structure of algorithms and process. We have been developing our understanding of multiplication and multiplicity concepts, beginning with repeated addition. We have also been revising adding and summing, the relationship with subtraction, which is finding the difference between two numbers. Division, fractions and time have also been introduced.

Spelling strategies have been a particular focus especially as the students grapple with words that are not obviously phonetic in the way many three-letter nouns are. There has been a focus on the different ways of writing the same sound and how two or more vowels clustered together are used to denote one sound but also indicate a change in meaning and use. Everyone received a spelling journal for use in the classroom and as an element of their home reading activity. The purpose has been to encourage them to focus on the increasing complexity of English words and spelling.

Words and their meaning have been an element in our literacy and numeracy studies. We have been using reference materials such as atlases and dictionaries to connect language to the comparing of size and measurement and the understandings we need to make meaningful comparisons. Examples of these included the very tiny baby, born premature weighing only 318 grams – or, as the children discovered, 1½ cups of dry rice. The news story about the squid that was washed up on a Tasmanian beach was used as a stimulus for a measuring and comparing activity. By measuring themselves, they worked out how many of their body lengths were equal to one giant squid of seven meters. These stimuli were taken from newspapers where the same information is often presented in a variety of ways – text, photographs and a comparative diagram. Each element introduces new information that can be comprehended only according to its form, that is, the written, the visual and the diagrammatic. This layering is an element in what is called ‘multiliteracy’, which explores the connections between the different modes of delivering stories and supplying information.

In these ways, we have experienced how numeracy depends on language capacities.  Inquiry learning encourages their acquisition by establishing a classroom grounded in mutual respect sustained by shared knowledge. During 2007, we set out to achieve a love of learning. This letter locates the formal report in the ethical and pedagogical environments that make sense of assessments.
Peter Curtis, 19/12/07

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The Crowded Curriculum and the Question of Content

July 18, 2009

Making content matter requires a focus on inquiry learning and the emergent curriculum. Specific attention needs to be given to the role of the teacher in the inquiry process as well as to recognising the whole-school-environment as an important element for integrating a curriculum which is overflowing with purpose and creativity for learners and teachers alike.

The “crowded curriculum” encapsulates the pressures of content that teachers feel in meeting the demands they put upon themselves, and confront from government institutions and the broader society, inflamed by shock-jocks.

To many the curriculum problem can appear to be a recent phenomena, perhaps a product of the late 20th-Century’s explosion of information and the means for its delivery; the increasing expectations upon teachers to provide solutions and success for individual student needs; and to solve all social and economic dilemmas.

John Dewey, the North American philosopher and educator, spoke of similar curriculum concerns in the early decades of the last century. It remains important to think about the actual circumstances of teaching, learning and schooling today in relation to curriculum content and modes of delivery.

Consider the following;
• There are about 1,000 hours of class-time each year out of a total of 8760 hours, which leaves 7,760 out-of-school-hours.
• The first six years of school age are equal to a total of 52,560 hours while total-class-time is 6,000 hours, leaving 46,560 out-of-school-hours.
• That is, class-room time is one hour out of every nine, or approximately 11.5 % of the student’s life.

Clearly, more learning will happen in the out–of–school-hours than in total-class-time. As so much learning does take place in out-of-school-hours, it is vital that connections be made with the ways they impact on school experiences.

Inquiry-learning not only builds on the positive aspects of what is learnt elsewhere but also assists students to “unlearn” much that is specious or tendentious. For example, students will be encouraged to understand the cultural reasons behind the spelling of “lite” and the phrase “Toys-R-Us”.

These concerns pose many questions about the tasks before teachers. One important proposition is that we must make careful and consistent choices; judgements must be made, so that as much as is humanly possible can be enriched by total-class-time and the whole-of-school-time experience.

The easy way out is to remove play and drama, music and the environment in favor of a tick-the-box approach to literacy and numeracy. This bias presumes, first, that play and drama, music and the environment are not in the children’s minds when filling in their work-sheets, and secondly, that learning about drama, music and the environment is possible without deepening the students’ comprehension of language and mathematics.

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