Cathy Larson
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Knowledge versus experience

7/18/2016

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My dad is the smartest man I know. Not only does he know the answers to most Jeopardy questions, he can also build anything, fix anything, sell everything, read people, problem solve, question the status quo, inspire others, crack jokes, remember just about fact every he’s ever heard, debate with the best of them, and invent ingenious products, in theory, every day. When I think of “smart,” he’s my benchmark.

Therefore, when I saw a graphic this past week made up of two frames, the thought of him helped me make sense of what I was viewing. In this graphic, the frame on the left was titled “Knowledge”; it was a simple box with a black outline, filled with random black dots. The frame on the right was titled “Experience”; this second box was exactly like the first with a simple black outline, filled with random black dots, but in this box the dots were all connected by thin black lines.

A simple graphic on the surface. Profound in its meaning for education.

My dad is the epitome of the “Experience” box. Sure, he would do well on Jeopardy because of his great memory for miscellaneous factoids, but it’s because of his life experiences he is so smart. It has been his experiences that connect his dots; his experiences that allow his knowledge to shine. Without a lifetime of opportunities to put his knowledge of math, English, history, language and science to work, these subjects he learned back in the 1950’s would be meaningless. Because he had opportunities in his life to work with the earliest computers, travel the world in the Navy, and experiment with his career, he can seamlessly make connections between seemingly disconnected events. He can find solutions to insurmountable challenges. He can make sense of the senseless.

What does all this mean for education, though?

It means our kids need opportunities to put their knowledge to work, because it’s these opportunities that will become the experiences, creating a generation who can build, fix, sell, question, inspire and invent. Our kids needs these experiences during school – time to volunteer, work part time, build small businesses, invent new programs, solve real problems, grow gardens, take apart old electronics, swim, play, travel. With these experiences, and with us supporting them along the way, our kids will walk out of high school with more than just a box filled with historical dates, comma rules, and memorized facts.

Our teachers can help by providing assignments with real audiences. They can stop with the meaningless, rote homework. Stop with the quiz, after test, after assessment cycle. Stop with the mundane worksheet lessons recycled year-over-year.

As a community, we need to ask our schools to start helping our kids not only fill the box on the left, but also make connections between those dots in order to ensure their success in our interconnected world. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Thanks, Dad, for reminding me that facts are the foundation, but it’s in the experience wherein the wisdom lies.
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Summer Homework Blues

5/9/2016

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A group of families, including my own, spent this past weekend in Santa Ynez camping, barbequing, golfing, enjoying each other’s company, wine tasting and running a half marathon. The weekend couldn’t have been better. The parents found time to relax, and the kids spent time being kids: catching snakes, walking to the alpaca farm, playing bocce ball, and roasting s’mores.

The weekend reminded me that summer is coming. The lazy days of summer wherein our engines are recharged doing those things that inspire us and give us purpose. This may include traveling, hanging by the pool, hiking with the family, or even engaging in new hobbies. What it shouldn’t include is pressure from our schools to complete summer homework.

Summer homework is like requiring an adult taking a two week vacation to spend some time every day of that vacation reading and writing reports for a client who expects a full proposal or accounting the first morning they arrive back at work. Has this ever happened to an adult? Absolutely. Once in a blue moon. But it doesn’t happen at every vacation, and I can’t imagine an entire career rests on this first morning back. So why do we expect this of our kids?

Summer needs to be a time for our children to follow a passion, get an internship, create a business, play a sport, develop new skills, volunteer or pick up a book for pleasure and enjoyment. I know that’s what I do, and I know that’s what most teachers do.

But this doesn’t mean our minds are inactive.

Active minds are important in the summer to prevent the “summer slide,” but that activity doesn’t need to be studying environmental science, world history or even the “The Odyssey.” Activity comes in the form of creativity, engagement, creation and innovation. Activity comes from team building, group play and problem solving. Activity comes from participating in the local library’s summer reading program, setting goals and discovering new authors.

What activities hamper real growth and stall passion? Rote memorization and pages of outlines. The exact kinds of activities the summer homework requires. Rather than read chapters in a science book, our kids need to go out and plant a straw bale garden. Rather than complete history outlines, what if they instead traveled to an historic city or museum. Rather than read literature written in 700 B.C., how about they try to write their own short stories or rediscover a love of reading -- actually find a genre that gets them excited about reading again.

Summer should be a time to refuel for the upcoming race. Adults who work year-round jobs would kill for the concept of the old-fashioned summer. So why are we stripping our kids of those carefree days that build the foundation for nostalgia? Let’s allow our children the benefit of stepping out of the rat race for just a few months, in order for them to be able to tackle it head on with a full tank of gas come September. They’ll all be better for it.
​

And isn’t that the point?
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What is the purpose of homework?

3/7/2016

1 Comment

 
All our kids all have it. They all complain about it. And it drives most family discussions in all households across America. “Do you have homework?” “Is your homework done?” “Why didn’t you turn your homework in?” Over and over and over again on any given night in households with school-aged children, these questions get asked, answered and repeated ad nauseum.

I don’t remember an excessive amount of homework when I was in school. I do, though, explicitly remember doing specific homework assignments, but that’s because I don’t think I did that many. The few I did, therefore, stand out. Weekly, I did a workbook page or two of my foreign language, a short study guide for history, the few math problems I didn’t get done in class, and added finishing touches on English essays. A couple hours a week, maybe? And my husband tells me he did even less than that.

Then education changed, as it always does, and homework became mandatory. Rote. Ubiquitous. Lots of it. Every night. As if the homework itself created rigor and had the power to transform learning. If I had to pinpoint a cause, I would look to No Child Left Behind -- high stakes tests and expectations for kids to know excessive amounts of content knowledge.

With recent changes in standardized testing, current educational reform, and clear parent voices, districts are beginning to rethink the purpose of homework. They are even beginning to place restrictions on the amount of homework kids can be assigned, limiting the amount of time or number of pages sent home each night. The days of “piling on the work” in the name of rigor are being revisited. In professional development meetings, educational research is being disseminated on local campuses, and school faculty are discussing the research findings -- that too much homework can be a detriment to learning.

I say, “It’s about time.”

The research tells us that too much homework causes undue stress. Research tells us that there is oftentimes clear disparity between homework and achievement. Research also tells us that excessive homework results in diminishing returns.

So thank you, local school districts, for having these tough conversations and challenging teachers to reevaluate their status quo.

If your child’s teacher hasn’t yet embraced this new direction in assigning homework, however, I have one question you can ask on your next Back to School Night, Parent/Teacher Conference or Open House to hopefully get your child’s teacher to think more carefully about her practice.

“What is the purpose of your homework?”

Is it given in the name of practice? Is it given to attain mastery of a skill? Is it to introduce new concepts or content? Can less be done with the same result? Is it necessary? Regardless the answer, just make sure the teacher has one. Homework for the sake of homework just isn’t a good enough answer any more.

Imagine your home without homework every night. What might you talk with your kids about instead? What could you do more of as a family? What extracurricular activities would you now get to enjoy? How might your child’s life be more fulfilling? Could all your lives be less stressed? Would there be fewer tears?

Ultimately, more purposeful homework planning on a teacher’s part will create more purposeful living for a child.

Imagine all the free time. What will you do with it?

Anything you want --- and that’s the purpose!

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Let's stop calling kids lazy

2/29/2016

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I went away this past weekend and spent some time with a teacher from another district who works with struggling kids. At her school, all kids who are underachieving, earning D’s and F’s, or struggling to complete homework are placed under her care during one period of every day; the school has filled her entire day with these classes. When explaining her teaching assignment to me, she said that most of the kids assigned to her “are just lazy.”

I walked away from this conversation feeling sorry for these kids -- kids who are most vulnerable and fragile. Those who are on the verge of withdrawing from education completely. Those who need a teacher both trained in meaningful, purposeful intervention and who actually care. She isn’t that teacher. She simply monitors them while they “complete packets and get missing homework assignment done.”

Not only am I a teacher, but I also have two kids of my own, and I can’t imagine them in her classroom.

Let’s create an imaginary boy and assume he isn’t doing well in school. He misses a few assignments. Doesn’t turn in homework. Didn’t pass a recent exam. Hasn’t met with his teacher to request a make-up exam or deadline extensions for missing homework. Is your first instinct to say that the child is lazy? The teacher I met this weekend would.

But here is another way to look at the situation.

Missing assignments? Look for commonalities among the assignments. It’s possible the student has a gap in knowledge that keeps him from completing the work. In English this could manifest as him not turning in anything written, because he doesn’t know how to organize his thoughts. In math, this could mean that whenever fractions are involved, the student doesn’t know where to begin. This isn’t laziness -- it’s an opportunity for a teacher to help.

Didn’t turn in homework? Maybe the homework required access to technology unavailable to the child. Maybe he doesn’t have a quiet place to work. Maybe, even, he needs a little more instruction to be able to do the work on his own. It may even be he is busy with other activities: soccer, basketball, work to support the family, babysitting younger brothers and sisters, church commitments -- his life is actually extra full. Again, not lazy.
 

Low test grades and not advocating for himself? This could simply mean he hasn’t been taught how to advocate for himself, is afraid to approach the teacher, suffers from anxiety that prevents him from approaching adults, missed key instruction because of a verified absence, or the test was just badly constructed. None of these mean lazy, they simply mean teachers need to know more before labeling their students.

My own kids have challenges at school. All our kids do. If one of our kids’ teachers went around campus calling one of our own children lazy, we would be livid.

I guess I just want to challenge educators to make sure all kids are empowered, rather than labeled. I want children to receive the benefit of the doubt. I want teachers to really care and ask questions to uncover a child’s individual challenges. And I especially want our most vulnerable, fragile kids to be treated with respect, kindness and compassion.

In fact, ironically, wasn’t this teacher the one being lazy -- by being so quick to label?

I think maybe so.

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It's Time to Re-Evaluate Summer Homework

11/16/2015

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The summer before my freshman year of high school, I was required to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) and Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I remember sitting on my parent’s bed struggling to finish both novels but enjoying the process of tackling the stories and feeling confident upon completion that I’d done it on my own. As hard as it is for anyone to believe me, today Great Expectations is one of my favorite novels. I argue this is the case because I conquered it on my own when I was just a kid.

However, that’s not the end of the story. I also argue it’s one of my favorites because my teacher introduced me to Pip and Miss Havisham and Estella in her unique and talented way once we started school that year. My only job that summer was to get through the texts. Upon our return to class, my teacher spent the first weeks of school helping us unpack them. These two texts are complex, intricate, long and written in the 1800’s -- not one of these qualities conducive to generating a teen’s interest over summer. Nevertheless, I completed them and felt a sense of accomplishment when I finished.

What I wasn’t expected to do upon my return to class in September was take a comprehension exam, a vocabulary test, and a character quiz that either set me up for success or failure within the first days of school. While reading the novels over the summer, I wasn’t stressed to the point of needing expensive private tutors, study groups, Cliffs Notes, Sparknotes, and Wikipedia (if it’d existed) just to be “prepared” to be tested on day 1 of the new school year -- especially if I’d finished my work at the beginning of summer and felt like I needed to re-read everything.

I’m sure my teachers must have been aware of the “summer loss” we hear so much about today. They knew a summer reading assignment was a good idea to keep us engaged. They must also have been aware of the importance of their role in teaching. Yes, my teacher challenged me with complex texts, but knew that I was going to need her for strategies to maneuver the subtleties of the themes, to glean context from character’s names, to approach 19th century language, to understand the power of the cliff hanger, audience, figurative language, satire, and tone, and to be able to synthesize the symbols from both novels to make an argument about classic, canonical literature. These are sophisticated texts with sophisticated needs that I, as a fifteen year old, couldn’t cognitively grasp without her support.

I am not opposed to summer homework, but I’d like to see it approached in a way that celebrates teaching and teachers while giving kids opportunities to both enjoy their summer and challenge their mind. Using summer homework to kick start the curriculum workload isn’t a bad idea, but expecting kids to be able to unpack a challenging text without assistant for the purpose of a summative assessment is unfair and erroneous.  

I will argue any day that testing isn’t the point of education; rather, it’s the learning and love of the process that allows success. So why do we continue to treat education as punitive process? Why do we expect students to learn material on their own and then punish them when they struggle? How does this “more,” over a time during which our kids are supposedly on break, equate to “rigor”?

As parents, it’s time we ask our school leadership teams, the LAUSD district curriculum division, and our school board to step in and re-evaluate the purpose of summer homework.

And because we are only in the first half of the school year -- there is still time for us all to have discussions and, ideally, influence change.
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Failing Students

9/15/2014

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Why are districts facing an epidemic of students who aren’t passing their classes? Why are we struggling to graduate students from high school?

I believe the challenges for struggling students are multi-faceted, hard to pinpoint, and can’t be solved with a one-size-fits-all solution. However, I do believe teachers are oftentimes at fault for perpetuating the problem.

My job as a teacher is to educate. What does that mean, though? I’ve had dozens of conversations over the years – at multiple schools and districts – about what it is we actually teach. Are we, as teachers, responsible for teaching responsibility, time management, consequences for selected behaviors, morality, citizenship, real world realities, fortitude? Or is a teacher’s job to teach a curriculum and ensure children can show proficiency in that subject? Or are teachers responsible for both? Teachers have philosophies that run deep in the core of who they are. I’m not sure an answer exists to meet the needs of every child or every teacher. Nor do I believe we need to create one. What I do know is how I run my own classroom.

Let me go back to my earlier bold statement: teachers are oftentimes at fault for perpetuating the problem.

I’m not suggesting a teacher maliciously targets, fails or sabotages students. I will argue, however, teachers may lose sight of what I feel is our ultimate responsibility as teachers – to help children find success through differentiated instruction, intervention, individual plans for special circumstances, compassion, equity and fairness for all students based on their needs, and a focus on the course content.

Let’s take a look at a sample student to see how this plays out. Let’s call him Bob – because I’ve never had one in class. Bob’s story:

  • unstable family life
  • living in a middle-class neighborhood
  • mixed race (Caucasian/Hispanic), but speaks English as a first language in the home
  • performs at Proficiency in standardized tests
  • struggled to pass English in seventh and eighth grade, ultimately pulling a D all four semesters 

Bob is capable, but struggling. As his teacher, unless he opens up to tell me why he struggles, all I can do is manage what happens in the classroom. Approaching the end of the first semester of ninth grade, it appears he won’t pass. This could be devastating for him. Students need to pass four full years of English to graduate high school. Projected out a couple years, he could potentially fail multiple semesters of English before his senior year, leaving him without enough time or summers to make up the credits and graduate high school; hence, he doesn't graduate. That is unless we work with him early to help him find success.

As a school team, we intervene. I re-evaluate his performance. I not suggesting I change his grades; I re-evaluate his performance.

  • Does he turn in his homework? No
  • Does he complete in-class work? Yes
  • Does he perform at grade-level on quizzes and tests? Yes
  • Have I been able to assessment him through oral, formative activities? Yes

Upon closer look, what I discover is that his homework grade is creating the biggest problem. Then I ask myself, Is he proficient in English and able to demonstrate that proficiency to justify a passing grade?

 Yes.

But it’s hard to imagine passing a student who earns an F in any class. So how do I “re-evaluate”? I look back at his homework grade. Turns out he’s only turned in only 20% of his homework. Not great, but each item turned in was an A. Regardless his performance, with the number of missing homework assignments included in his semester grade, he is earning an F.

So what’s a teacher to do? I had to go back to my philosophy. I want a grade to reflect a student’s proficiency or mastery of the content knowledge. Ultimately, isn’t this what a college wants to know?

I make accommodations for Bob. In the end, he is responsible for passing the semester final with a 70% to show he understands the material. He does, and he passes the first semester of ninth grade English with only a 49% in the gradebook.

Bob is now on track for graduation; he isn’t spending the next year trying to dig himself out of a hole he created for himself when he was only 14. That’s the part I continue to remind myself of … he’s just a kid. I WILL NOT let a 14-year-old child make decisions that will determine his future as an adult. I am the adult. I will cajole, push, encourage, accommodate, nurture and do whatever I can to champion a child.

This year he is in tenth grade and thriving. He is turning in more work, has figured out how to manage his home life, has become more organized, feels capable and is finding success. He’s also on the road to graduation and college. Did I have to change a grade? No. Did I have to lower my standards? No. In the end did I help teach responsibility, time management, consequences, morality, citizenship, real world realities, fortitude? I will argue “Yes.”

But you know the most important thing I taught him?

 Self worth.

In the end, ask yourself … are students really failing or are we failing our students? 

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What does "rigor" mean in a classroom?

9/8/2014

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Of all the teachers I’ve ever encountered, I can pinpoint only a handful of them who stick with me today.
  • Mr. Didier taught middle school French, and he had us engaged in the language by listening, speaking, writing, and reading on day one in seventh grade. By the end of eighth grade, I could carry on a pretty decent conversation in French.

  • Mr. Bickel was my Geometry teacher. Every day we took notes and dissected triangles without fail. He was tough, but he had a way of engaging each of us. We were responsible for mastering the strategy, maintaining our knowledge, and performing every skill with precision. 

  • Mr. Howard taught science. I can still remember some of the content we explored that year, and I’m sure it’s because the science class was taught through experimentation and questioning. In fact, he had a bulletin board on his wall all year with one simple quote: “Always wonder why.” I’m convinced that bulletin board influences my life every day.

I could mention a few others, but I think you get my point. We all have these: the teachers who inspire us to be better, teach us ideas and concepts that stay with us for a lifetime, and make us believe we are invincible.

But were these classes rigorous? Or do I just remember hilarity, style, personality, classmates? As a teacher, I think about this all the time. What exactly do I want my own students to walk away remembering? That I was the “cool” teacher? Or that I was the teacher from whom they learned more than they thought possible?

I will argue the later without question. And I'm convinced my own experiences with Mr. Didier, Mr. Bickel and Mr. Howard prove just that. But how is something like this accomplished?

Rigor.

Rigor is more than content and standards. Rigor is the why, the how and the “so what” – the ability to take the strategies, knowledge and skills and apply them in areas outside of one in-class assignment.

Let me give you an example near and dear to my heart – grammar.

Grammar worksheets make me crazy! I don’t use them in the English classroom, and I go ballistic when I see or hear of my own children doing them. Our educational system has decided that the eight parts of speech need to be taught, reviewed and practiced every year from kindergarten through twelfth grade. But many adults who lived through these painful worksheets themselves will argue they struggle with writing today. Businesses and hiring managers of the 21st century will argue that high school graduates don’t know how to write a memo, business proposal, marketing brochure or simple email. So do grammar worksheets equate to good writing?

No.

However, is it important to know how to write a complex sentence? Is it important to use introductory phrases for style? Can short and long sentences used in combination make a point more effectively than a report written without?

Absolutely.

Grammar plays a role in voice, style and fluency. However, grammar worksheets take grammar and teach it in isolation. Rather, a teacher who wants to teach an element of grammar needs to do so in conjunction with a rigorous writing curriculum. Let's take a look at one simple example. Instead of grammar worksheets to combine pairs of 40 simple sentences to create compound sentences, how about that same teacher:

  • give students a writing model about a page long that includes sentence variety,
  • ask the students to identify the compound sentences based on samples,
  • give students a few minutes to discuss in pairs to identify the components of a compound sentence,
  • require the students to annotate on the model the effect of each sentence type,
  • tell them to take out the draft of a paper or essay they've started previously,
  • require them to now color-code their paper based on sentence type and annotate for effect,
  • require them to revise their piece for sentence variety, and then
  • ask the students, in a formative assessment Exit Ticket from class, to give one example of a compound sentence as could be written for an argument paper in history and explain how using sentence variety can be more effective than not.

This is just a simple example, but in it you’ll see that the student will have had to learn parallelism, coordinating conjunctions, sentence types, audience and purpose.

Rigor requires not only content mastery as listed above, but also the ability to engage in that content, apply the strategies and skills, transfer the knowledge and show accountability for learning.

Rigor is a shift in teaching philosophy. It doesn't mean more. It means different. And I see no excuse for rigor not being the standard in all classrooms. No longer can we be content with seeing the same worksheets and projects year-after-year.

It’s time for a change. 
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Why does summer homework mean summer stress?

9/3/2014

0 Comments

 
The summer before my freshman year of high school, I was required to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) and Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I remember sitting on my parent’s bed struggling to finish just the number of pages I was expected to get through, but enjoying the process of tackling the story and feeling confident upon completion that I’d done it on my own. As hard as it is for anyone to believe me, today Great Expectations is one of my favorite novels. I argue this is the case because I was expected to read it on my own.

However, that’s not the end of the story. I also argue it’s one of my favorites because my teacher introduced me to Pip and Miss Havisham and Estella in her unique and talented way once we started school that year. My only job that summer was to get through the texts. Upon our return to class, my teacher spent the first months of school helping us unpack them.

What I wasn’t expected to do upon my return to class in September was take a comprehension exam, a vocabulary test, and a character quiz that either set me up for success or failure within the first days of school. While reading the novels over the summer, I wasn’t stressed to the point of needing expensive private tutors, Cliffs Notes, Spark Notes, Wikipedia (if it’d existed) just to be “prepared” to be tested on day 1 of the new school year.

I’m sure my teachers must have been aware of the summer loss that we hear so much about today. They knew a summer reading assignment was a good idea. They must also have been aware of the importance of their role in teaching. Yes, my teacher challenged me with complex text, but knew that I was going to need her for:

  • strategies for how to maneuver the subtleties of the themes
  • background for how to glean context from character’s names
  • approaches on how to read 19th century literature with all its language challenges
  • help in understanding the power of the cliff hanger, audience and figurative language in relationship to the author’s staying power
  • assistance in synthesizing the symbols from both novels to make an argument about classic, canonical literature

I am not opposed to summer homework, but I’d like to see it approached in a way that celebrates teaching and teachers while giving kids opportunities to enjoy their summers, challenge their minds, and kick start their curriculum work load in September.

Because I’ll argue any day that testing isn’t the point of education; rather, it’s the learning and love of the process that allows success.

Don’t you agree?
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