WHY CHILDREN STUDY

    

     Catherine Gewertz reported an interesting study in the Harvard Business Review. It found an employee's good feelings toward work are far more dependent on "making progress," not on incentives or compliments offered. Gewertz sees this, too, with her own children, how much more empowered they feel when new, difficult topics open up to them.
     For some time now, when I've work with kindergarten students in my room and they correctly answer a challenging question, I'll place a small sticker on their arm. "This is a Smart," I tell them. "It shows how smart you are getting." Then, when they line up to leave, I'll ask them how much they had learned in class. Little arms rise.
     According to Harvard and Gerwertz, I am doing something right. Good.
     I give older students paper clips for correct answers during discussions which, by the end of class, they "cash in" for a letter, then for stars on a chart which, in turn, eventually become small rewards. Especially difficult questions might earn two, even three, clips. I justify the process in that it gives a bit of playfulness to class, it gives the students a visual (the clips) of how active they are in class, and it takes very little time to manage.
     But with these older students I may be omitting the very point the Harvard article makes. It should all be about what the child realizes she's acquired, not the incentives. Of course, that has always been my primary intent. I am consistent in my discussions with my five-year olds. Do my 10-year olds understand the same?
     I need to check. Otherwise, I have some changes to make.

PHOTO CREDIT: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnnystiletto/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

BABY COLLEGE

      NPR some time back posted a story about Harlem Children's Zone and its Baby College. I've been buzzing ever since, hoping perhaps we just might have a new model that would turn children in our inner cities around. After all, it followed the usual successful plans -- a community taking charge of its own in order for it to succeed. Apparently major federal money is now targeted to replicate the HCZ model and place it throughout the country. Good. Or so I thought.

       But I guess somehow I missed out on my research. Recently I caught articles by Alexander Russo and Linda Perlstein that tell of a possible different story, one of the media not scrutinizing HCZ as they should, of HCZ withholding data results, of excuses being made by the organization for weak results (despite over 10 years since the inception of Baby College and 35+ years for HCZ). And the latest  interview in City Limits did little to quell questions.
       Let's see, No Child Left Behind mandates schools to show substantial results within one year, and every year after that -- results even from special education and struggling minority students as well as recent immigrants -- or millions of federal dollars will be withheld. And this same federal government now plans on shipping new millions to HCZ that has yet to show acceptable results? 

      I want Harlem Children's Zone to succeed, or any other program that can move these children on. But with all the financial fiascos we've seen in the past two years, all the wasted monies, I would think the federal government would be a bit more cautious with the depleted dollars, do its homework, and deliver dollars where dollars will best succeed, not just to the most hyped program of the hour.

      Please, Mr. Canada, don't operate as the business world operates -- hiding design flaws, critical data, finances. It usually all comes out in the end, anyway, and the business looks the fool. 

      So if Baby College doesn't yet have the data to support its tales of wonder, wait. Experiment. Improve.
      Please.

MERIT PAY AND OUR SCHOOLS

 As a teacher, I've always been torn with the pros and cons of merit pay. Universities, also in the business of educating, routinely pay professors salaries based on productivity. Then again, when is the last time a history professor's performance was impacted by how well her students scored on the GRE?

     But I do hate excuses.  
     Perhaps one of the best arguments I've read recently against merit pay is by Shafeen Charania of  synthesis. He refers to an article in Education Week, saying merit pay simply cannot work in an environment where the success of one teacher relies heavily on the input of so many others. "Merit pay ONLY succeeds in individual, competitive games; i.e. when you have to beat someone else to win," Charania writes. "It's really easy to motivate salespeople based on merit 'cause they control their destiny; they can only win when their employer wins; and when they win, their competition loses."
     Well, that certainly speaks to any of the schools where I've worked. We all have some form of child study team, a once-a-week gathering of administrators, classroom teachers, and specialists to discuss any student in the school.  Imagine if we were only rated on the success on the students specifically assigned to us? Would classroom teachers share lessons with one another?
     Collegiality and a shared passion, I've found, often set one school far above others. The adults join forces to teach, inspire, coach, and nurture their collective students; they then turn around and provide the very same for their colleagues.  
     When people point to a business model to emulate, they gloss over the problems businesses create for themselves -- the  cheating; the backbiting; the financial lying to stockholders; the serious product design flaws that are quietly hidden, then later main and kill innocents. 
     So let's not use business models to "improve" our nurturing schools. In fact, business has a lot to learn about humanity -- from teachers.
     No, there has to be something better.

PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrettelementary/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0