Reflections on #aera2011

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After a couple of days to recover, I wanted to share a few thoughts on another AERA conference. Though they do not represent everything I saw within the conference, I think they speak directly to what needs to be improved.

 

Lack of twitter

While I didn’t expect a twitter feed as lively as #dml2011, I was disappointed by the lack of engagement with the not-so-new medium. With nearly 15,000 people and the usual phone-book sized directory of sessions, Twitter is an ideal way to personalize the conference experience, engage in networking, and collaborate. Competing hashtags, a lack of free wifi & spotty service in the main hotels, and a limited number of tweeters made the conference generally disappointing in terms of social networking. One person tallied roughly 20-25 attendees (total) were contributing tweets from the conference.

And having a mobile app that does little more than act as a clunkier version of a directory doesn’t bring AERA any closer to connecting to a “social imagination.”

 

The problem with CHAT

The problem with CHAT isn’t really a CHAT problem at all. Instead, it is much more a problem of depersonalization and decontextualization of the research at AERA. I described AERA to several people as a giant five-day show-and-tell. While there is meaningful research being contributed, what happens as a result of AERA? More directly: we have 15,000 experts in the same place, at the same time, and all largely wanting to engage in conversations about education; why can’t AERA be productive, active, and responsive?

And so, I found myself participating in a working group that largely revolved around discussing CHAT-related sessions at the conference. Don’t get me wrong, when I understand CHAT, I find it really interesting. I’ve described it this way to a friend recently: “CHAT is a theory about everything and nothing. It’s kind of like the Seinfeld of learning theory.” In any case, geometry has never been my strong suit, and a conversation about CHAT eventually devolves into a conversation about triangles (literally). I couldn’t help but feel the tension of having flown across the country to engage in dialogue with the best of academic researchers only to have this be a conversation about triangles.

[btw, I’m amazed there is no wikipedia entry for CHAT … get some grad student to get on that!]

 

The “It’s so nice” syndrome

I spent a healthy portion of my time with the UCLA IDEA Council of Youth Research. I can say that they were the true highlight of the conference, representing both cutting edge research and calling those that saw their work to enact change.

However, I heard several conversations throughout the conference that described the research of teachers and students in ways that was tokenizing. Specifically, a conference attendee described hearing students talk in ways that matched current researcher rhetoric. The students were described glowingly and the attendee said it was “so nice” to hear these students speaking so clearly. I’ve been on the side of the discussed students before as well; teachers presenting and interacting at AERA fare little better than students. While the Council argues for students and teacher to be engaged in the process of research, we are still more subject than peer at AERA. It is difficult to imagine a research community that will treat practitioners and youth as legitimate partners if their experiences and voices are not more fully developed within the conference. I’m pretty sure I’ve ranted about this when reflecting on past AERA conferences as well.

Monday morning had one of the best sessions of the entire conference: four different youth-oriented research groups from across the country presented their findings. It was powerful and meaningful work and it was all voiced by high school students and teachers. Of course, it was the only session like this and a morning sessions towards the end of a conference (in New Orleans of all places) didn’t yield record crowds. Yes, it’s a step forward for AERA to have sessions with students, but with this sliver of a door open, it’s time to budge open full swing. How about, instead of a single, round-table session where students are literally competing for audience members, we make this a regular part of the conference. What if sessions had students and teachers as discussants? Or are we not as concerned about relevance when it comes to our work? Summarizing a question Ernest Morrell asked at the end of a session on Saturday, what’s going to be more important at the end of the day: directly interacting in research with teachers and students to improve education, or getting another citation in a peer reviewed journal?

 

The future and beyond

A non-Council of Youth Research highlight for me was seeing the members of the New London Group discuss what is in store “Beyond New London.” While the academic Lollapalooza was fun, at the end of the day, it left me curious about what’s next. When actually addressing what is “Beyond” in terms of the future of literacies, the group did little more than shrug. Likewise, the working group I was involved in, “Intervening for the Future,” while a useful group for intellectual conversation, puttered more with the concept of intentional intervention; should we or shouldn’t we? Not that I’m thrilled with a book like this, but I do wish AERA had a bit more forward-thinking, on-the-ground engagement at this year’s conference. I do see the research of my colleagues and I as moving beyond New London “stuff,” and the Council provides me with a sense of optimism and possibility for the future, but these are tangential groups and not all mainstream practices within AERA.

 

There’s An App For That: Gearing Up For AERA

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Finishing up my packing for AERA. I’ll be wandering around the convention and the French Quarter, so if you’re in town, send me a tweet.

I’ll be speaking at a couple of sessions related to the Council of Youth Research. You won’t want to miss the kids speaking at the sessions on the poster below:

 

I’ve been playing around with the AERA mobile application. I appreciate the step forward. It takes a while to load:

There are way too many speakers to make the name and sessions searching very efficient. If anything, I think an app like this misses the social component that I’m expecting from a convention like this. #dml2011 was a huge resource during the Digital Media and Learning conference; I suspect those that weren’t on twitter missed a substantive amount of that conference. Likewise, AERA is trying to move to wireless devices, but lacks the social engagement that would have been easy to embed in the application. Compared to an incredibly smaller sized conference like DML, AERA’s twitter presence is pretty subdued…

AERA President-elect Bill Tierney has some suggestions on weaving through the waves of AERA and is also looking for feedback to improve the conference.

More updates to come!

Once Again, Late to the Party

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Hey LA Times, I was reading you online today and noticed this.

It’s funny how this is news today. Remember how, like, two weeks ago, I blogged about Manual arts, our 32 RIFs, and included an image of the exact same demonstration? I guess not.

Oh, and while we’re at it, I was just wondering why you don’t really bother mentioning anything related to this.

 

School Reform for Dummies: The Problem with Steve Lopez’s Column, the Future of Manual Arts, and How to Cut a School In Half

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This is going to sound overly pessimistic and cynical, but it’s hard to read an article like this and not grit my teeth.

The anecdotal stories of layoffs are a useful tactic to maybe get the public to understand that there are faces and names to the teachers that are continuing to be cut and villainized in the current political rhetoric.

However, the article points to the inequity of cuts and to the general (more than usual) messy situation of layoffs in LAUSD. Hamilton students are in tears and parents are shocked by the loss of teachers they loved. This is something new for these students.

At Manual Arts, I want to applaud the continuing efforts of students to fight for teachers they are losing. But the picture is muddy and isn’t getting clearer any faster.

Here’s what would have been different if Steve Lopez had written about Manual Arts:

  1. there wouldn’t have been a sense of surprise: amazing teachers–like my friend Peter Carlson–have received layoff or Reduction in Force (RIF) notices every single year. It’s not even a surprise.
  2. students have been trying to be proactive in fighting for their education for a long time: Student walkouts became a persistent aspect of how students tried to fight for their teachers and for their education. These were both effective and detracting; some students felt like they were able to engage in public discourse that directly affected them; some students were able to miss a whole lot of class.

 

And before reading further, you might want to compare the general data–particularly the College Opportunity Ratio (COR)–for Hamilton and Manual Arts to see how these RIFs will play out.

 

Both images come from the UCLA IDEA’s California Educational Opportunity Report.

A Timeline for Dummies

Manual Arts is also a great microcosm of the mess in the district. If you want to know what the plight of public education looks like, here’s my best play-by-play of how it’s played out in … oh six months at my school:

November: Our sixth principal in the six years I’ve been here quits. [This is a highly politicized event that divides the campus. To leave things simple: I felt that Principal Irving was an effective leader in his professional role and I see his departure as a loss for our students. Not everyone will agree with me.]

December: Rumors of reconstitution and heavy RIF numbers are shared in weekly union meetings. It becomes clear that the QEIA grant funding that was paying for nearly 20 teachers and other faculty positions at the school is not being renewed next year. [This is a highly politicized event that divides the campus: some teachers blame our school’s network partner and leadership staff for the fact that we did not meet benchmarks that we set. Some teachers blame the school district for imposing benchmarks on us that we did not meet. In any case, these are real jobs that we had saved with these funds… because of these saved jobs, it looks like Manual Arts did not have a lot of RIFd teachers at our school, which directly impacts what happens as a result of … the Reed Settlement.]

January: The Reed Settlement is Approved. Anticipating the many layoffs that will likely occur under the current doomsday budget, 45 schools that would be impacted the most are placed on a list that would protect them. [This is a highly politicized event that divides union. To leave things simple: the settlement protects RIFd teachers at some schools but disrupts campuses that are not typically affected by these layoffs – schools in affluent in communities, schools that don’t have newer teachers, school that are probably doing academically better … probably schools like Hamilton High School.

[Oh yeah, despite being either the lowest or second lowest performing school in the district (depending on if you count Jordan’s missing API data from last year) … Manual Arts was NOT on the list of protected schools. Our administrative team was efficient enough in the past with shielding our staff from layoffs that we did not look like a school that will need to be protected. Instead the RIFs from other schools will burden our school on top of the RIFs we will already have. This will be very bad as we shall see.]

February: District RIF projections are around 5,000 teachers, we are told our school will move to a traditional calendar, Manual Arts is requested to create a plan to show the superintendent why we should not be reconstituted­–all staff reapply for positions. [This is a highly politicized event that divides the campus. Several teachers–myself included–are seen as colluding with our network partner and are not seen as trustworthy.]

March 8: One of our network partners, WestEd, announces that they will not be involved with our campus in the near future. [This is a highly politicized event that divides our campus. Blame is placed on our other network partner.]

March 11: At an afterschool faculty meeting, our teachers are told that we will have 32 RIF teachers. In addition, (and partly because we are going to a traditional calendar) we are losing 50 other teachers, 10 long-term sub positions, and 8 district intern teachers. Yes, we are losing 100 out of 190 teachers. Oh yeah, and our expected enrollment next year is anticipated to be the same.

March 15: 32 Manual Arts teachers receive certified mail letters that let them know they are being laid off next year; they are neither surprised nor clear about what this means in terms of what will actually happen (RIFs are projected and some are rescinded in the past). Steve Lopez writes about the shock at Hamilton High School.

March 18: Students begin demonstrating at Manual Arts. Reports of walkouts and sit-ins trickle into texts and facebook updates throughout the day. [Update: brief coverage of student efforts here.]

Without adding too much more commentary, I want to point out how the snowball has been rolling into an avalanche throughout the year. Morale, unsurprisingly, is at an all time low at our school; we are still a big question mark in terms of our future. It could be minutes or days until we know about if our school is reconstituted. A mass exodus of teachers–those RIFd and those that have just had enough–is expected at the end of the year. I also want to point out how all of these events are layered in meaning. With each major announcement, the school roils in finger pointing. Calls for unity are voiced; a union election is wedged throughout all of this, as are the Public School Choice results, as is an election that affects the School Board, as is a new incoming Superintendent next month, as is an ongoing attack on unions and public education. The results compound rhetoric and confusion. At the end of the day, how will any of this help the 3400 students that will be walking into our classrooms at Manual Arts next year. Or tomorrow?

 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Standards

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I am currently on a plane back to Los Angeles. I am returning from a very long, very exhausting trip.

I spent four days in DC with twelve other colleagues reviewing and discussing the ELA standards for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

It was the first of five meetings over the next six months in which we will be updating and rewriting how we define accomplished teaching for ELA educators. To say that this is daunting work is something of an understatement. Though I was one of a very small minority on this panel that has not gone through the National Board’s certification process, I can say that the ELA standards as they are written now speak strongly to the kinds of robust learning experiences I hope to provide for my students and for the role I see teachers taking within the profession. Other people in the meetings and discussions admitted to a sense that we were tinkering with the Bible as we spent the better part of two days deconstructing the standards as they currently exist and began reorienting our thinking toward the future.

The document we are working on now, the third major revision of the NBPTS ELA standards, will likely exist for the next 7-10 years and my colleagues and I are working to consider how the field of English and English education will change over this time. For me, as a tech and literacies geek in the group, this has been a process of imagining the increased modes of production and engagement with texts that have been shifting. I have also been thinking significantly about the ways that students are learning; that much of the “stuff” of learning that kids are developing today is outside our classrooms is not lost on me, and something I hope our standards will reflect as we continue to develop and shape them. Finally, as those of you who have helped me think out loud while dissertatin’ know, the civic value of English instruction is also something that is of importance to me. We are at the precipice of significant changes in how we understand viewing and producing and where literature fits into this.

There is a lot of work left in this process and I honestly cannot yet predict exactly how the ideas my colleagues and I have been developing will be articulated. There will also be a period for public commenting on our proposed standards and I am hopeful that many of you that have had rich discussions about the participation gap, multiliteracies, inequity, and passion for literature will help shape and guide our work. I can say that five days ago I flew into DCA with a foreboding sense about the work to which I had committed. I am thrilled that this sentiment is completely reversed; I feel ecstatic about the community of practice from which these conversations about ELA have sprung. And while things on the Manual Arts front are anything but solid at the moment, I do feel that this is a lasting contribution that can have significant student impacts.

There is lots of talk about standards these days. Which ones do we use? How do we assess them? How do we punish teachers that aren’t in line with them? It’s difficult, these days–at least in California–to consider the role of standards without thinking about standardized tests, measuring teacher effectiveness, and the entire can of public bashing of the profession that has become an ongoing source of rhetoric.

One evening, as I was catching up on the current and numerous challenges that my high school is facing, I mentioned why I was not in Los Angeles and unable to attend pressing meetings. The teacher on the other end of the line said, “That’s great, you’re writing standards.” I understand the frustration and genuine anger with which my close friend spoke. It is hard to see the work of standards and the dusty cobwebs they connote as a place from which to advocate for the students that will be with me in room 173 in two months, when we return on track. It is hard to see the value of standards when it has become clear that more than half of the teachers at my school will not be there next year. It is hard to see the value of standards as the profession for which we are writing them is become more and more a transitional profession. That being said, it is hard for me to speak to the value of teachers and our roles as empowering students to change the world if I cannot articulate clearly the ways in which accomplished teaching occurs. I feel like my work that is going into this process of rewriting privileges the students I see each morning. This work is aimed at making the teachers our school so desperately needs and will be losing the most valuable resources and advocates for the students in South Central. For me, this work is aimed at responding to the onslaught of rancor in which we–my colleague on the phone, my fellow Manual Arts High School Toilers, the nearly five thousand laid off teachers in Los Angeles–continue to tolerate as we strive for excellence.

DML Notes

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If anyone is headed to the Digital Media and Learning Conference in Long Beach, I’ll be sneaking around much of Friday and Saturday.

On Friday, I will be doing an afternoon Ignite talk. I will be elaborating on learning implications related to this post.

On Saturday, I will be part of a panel called, “DML Competition Winners and Race to the Top: Adopting Participatory Learning in Schools.” I’ll be sharing updates on the Black Cloud, and educational policy impacts on digital media.

If you’re at the conference, please send me a note so we can meet in person.