Educating Responsibility

In the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson on Saturday morning responsible people all across the United States began, once again, to wonder why. Others, including so-called "political leaders" like Ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin began scrubbing their websites and Twitter feeds and US Senators Jon Kyle and Lamar Alexander (both Republican "Leaders") began crafting denials.

Let us begin here: In the long, ugly history of American assassinations, the perpetrators themselves have always been mentally unstable. John Wilkes Booth was a crazed narcissist. Lee Harvey Oswald and Leon Czolgosz were odd, paranoid loners. Squeaky Fromme? John Hinckley, Jr? I wouldn't want to try testifying to the "sanity" of any of these people. But in every case, other voices lay behind their actions. Each of their targets was defined as "un-American" and "destructive to freedom" and part of governments designed to hurt ordinary Americans. So, in each twisted mind, societal justification for their actions could be constructed.

And behind those other voices lay thousands, maybe millions, of Americans willing to allow that rhetoric to go forward, or even voting for those speaking with hate - or at least - via votes for legislators - voting to keep those speakers of hate in power.

And behind that lies the denial. "I didn't mean it that way." "I didn't vote for Newt Gingrich, just my local Republican congressman." "I was just making a point, I can't be responsible for crazy people."

At some point, we all need to point to ourselves and take responsibility. Yes, those who found themselves having to scrub, explain, or deny this weekend need to act most quickly - but, of course, they won't.  They won't even begin to consider taking responsibility. So those of us who were, as my Ma used to say, "raised better," need to act.

Because when assassin Loughner urges people, in a YouTube Video, to "read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws."He is directly channeling not any personal demon, but Speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner. And let me extend the responsibility a big step further out. If you - any of us - voted for a Republican congressperson this past November, or did not vote because we were "mad" at Barack Obama (however legitimately), you - us, we - are responsible for John Boehner being in a position of power.

"We never, ever, ever intended it to be gun sights." Ms Mansour said attemps to tie Ms. Palin to the violence were "obscene" and "appalling." "I don't understand how anyone can be held responsible for someone who is completely mentally unstable like this," Ms. Mansour said. "Where I come from the person who is actually shooting is culpable. We had nothing whatsoever to do with this."

OK, forget Sarah Palin, an opportunistic coward with no observable morals, let's look at the two responsible, sober, US Senators from the top paragraph: Here's Jon Kyle just a few months ago, of course, labelling - effectively - those who are not anti-immigrant as "pro-criminal." Here's Lamar Alexander promising, four days ago, "guaranteed retribution" to those who  might require filibustering Senators to actually filibuster. Nice talk boys. Of course, if you voted for a Republican Senator, any Republican Senator - even sweet Olympia Snowe of Maine, you are responsible for making Kyle and Alexander powerful.

I'm not saying you are guilty. That's a different level, but in basic human terms you are responsible.

But I'm not immune from this criticism. I get hot. I say things. Inappropriate things. I belittle people. I'm responsible as well.

"We live as we were reminded yesterday in a dangerous, hair-trigger time, where tempers always seem near the boiling point and patience seems a lost trait.

"Democracy's arguments have never been pretty, but technology has changed the American dialogue.

"Because we can now know of problems instantly, we expect answers immediately. And when we don't get them, we let everyone know in no uncertain terms.

"We scream and shout - hurl charges without proof. Those on the other side of the argument become not opponents but enemies.

"Dangerous, inflammatory words are used with no thought of consequence. All's fair if it makes the point. Worse, some make great profit just fanning the flames.

"Which wouldn't amount to much if the words reached only the sane and the rational, but the new technology insures a larger audience. Those with sick and twisted minds hear us, too, and are sometimes inflamed by what the rest of us often discard as hollow and silly rhetoric.

"And so violence becomes part of the argument.

"In an eloquent statement, the new Republican House Speaker John Boehner said yesterday's "attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. "

"But it is much more - it is an attack on each of us and our way of life.

"If elected officials cannot meet with those who have elected them without fear of being shot, if the rest of us allow such a situation to exist, then we are no longer the America that those who came before us fought and died to protect and defend.

"We must change the atmosphere in which this happened, and we can begin by remembering that words have consequences.

"Like all powerful things, they must be used carefully.

"More and more, we seem to have forgotten that."-  Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation

OK. so what?

Well, in education we have a special responsibility. We have a special responsibility to responsibility.

On the same sad Sunday as we deal with the aftermath of the events in Tucson I watched this story on CBS Sunday Morning. A story which contains this exchange re: a Middle School principal, a bullying student, and that student's mother:

"But McDermott says Stephanie is still "a work in progress."

McDermott says Stephanie's behavior has not improved, in part because she still doesn't seem to grasp what the problem is.

"I'm not sure yet that she wants to change who she is," he said.

Smith asked her, "How does it make you feel to know that parents are so worried about their kids, what you're doing to their kids, that they called the school to complain?"

"I don't find it right because I don't threaten kids that bad," Stephanie said.

"That bad? If kids are scared of you … come on, this is the first time you're hearing that kids are scared of you?"

"Uh huh," she said. "'Cause they're always like, 'I'm not scared of you.'"

"But what are you saying to kids that they would turn around and say 'I'm not scared of you'?" Smith asked.

"Like, 'I'm gonna beat you up.' Like when I say that to them, they'll be like, 'I'm not scared of you.'"

"Maybe they're not telling the truth," said Smith. "Here's the thing: If you call people names, if you threaten to beat them up, doesn't that make you a bully?"

"Yeah," she said.

But Stephanie's mom, Sue, isn't so sure.

"Stephanie, you know, really isn't that bully that people label her as," she told Smith.

"What do you think she is?" she asked.

"Oh my gosh, I don't know . . . A sassy, sassy smartass little girl, you know?" Sue laughed.

"I get the sense that there's a little piece of you that's kind of proud of her."

"Exactly," said Sue. "You have to stand up for themselves, you know? In society, really, I don't think anybody would really pick on her."

We can bemoan this mother. And it is true that there's some kind of sickness there. But it is a sickness exploited by the Middle School system which remains in place. I cringed watching the little kids thrown into the horrible, completely inappropriate, bullying encouraging environment that are the corridors and classroom spaces of the school in the story. And while a "healthier" child, or a "better" mother might deal with this differently, we simply cannot count on everyone being "healthy" or "better." Certainly not in a nation with no reasonable health care system, no reasonable mental health care system, and no actual societal support for parenting.

So we have to be better. Instead of just counseling kids about bullying, this principal needs to make real changes, to rethink his middle school, to literally make his students responsible for their peers.

As we need to rethink all of our schools, so that we actually model respect for every human and differing lifestyles, beliefs, and behaviors. So that we actually model the ability to take on controversial and complex topics and discuss them in reasoned intellectual debate, and not hide them because "our community won't understand." So that we don't run from, yes, even allowing the President of the United States to speak to our students - no matter what we think of him, or "outlaw" programs we choose not to like.

We need to reconstruct our behavior in schools so that we admit our mistakes, apologize to students when we wrong them, seek their counsel on making them whole after we have hurt them. We need to flexible enough in both our belief systems and our professional actions so that they will see that there is a different way.

This is profoundly important. Profoundly. So let us take heart from a couple of examples. In New York this week new Governor Andrew Cuomo invited the leaders of the state legislature, including the Republican President of the State Senate, to speak - to speak politically and openly at his public first State-of-the-State Address. And in Utah a Civility and Community 2011 effort has been launched state-wide.

These are beginnings. But we, each of us, must do much more. Democracy, or even just "society," isn't easy. It is complex, messy, confusing. Those who hold onto hope for our future must demonstrate our commitment now.

- Ira Socol

Toolbelt Theory, TEST, and RTI - the universally designed technology effort

Karen Janowski asked on Twitter, "have you helped your students optimize their performance using tech?-color choices, font sizes, text-to-speech, readability..." and when I re-tweeted her, she added, "we'll keep preaching it until it's unnecessary. Think that will ever happen?"

But I had just read this story - which, at first glance, seems so hopeful. "But these new devices, according to teacher Chris Quist, are "exciting and fun and engaging. And even in two days, I've noticed the amount of on-task time and the quiet time." Students could use the devices to watch videos to tie in with their Michigan history lessons, Breen said. And Quist said the simple fact that the phones can show photos and other presentations in color -- unlike most classroom handouts -- is significant. "I think that my job as a teacher is to make sure that the novelty doesn't wear off," Quist said." Until you get to the last lines...

Gobles third-graders get smartphones: woodtv.com

"At the end of the year, he said school administrators plan to look at how well the program worked before deciding whether to maintain or expand it. If it is expanded, the principal said administrators will determine which device is best -- from smartphones to tablet computers such as iPads or laptops -- for the needs of students at each grade level."

And there's the problem. We have these ingenious, incredible options but we will not decide what is best for each student, or even each task. Rather, as we "always" have, we will make our decision based only on the chronological age of the child.

As I said to Karen, it often seems hopeless. We replace one "single technology" system - the textbook, paper notebook, and pen for everyone - with another locked-down same-for-all technology system, even if its a really cool "system" like an iPad. And we do this because we really cannot believe that the world has changed and that industrial processing is not our students' best career hope, or because we put our needs (control, ease of maintenance) above our students' needs, or because we are so completely indoctrinated in the industrial education model. Whichever, but we do it, and we do it every day.

But at the same time we are supposedly moving toward a problem identification system in education called Response-To-Intervention. Well, let me say this simply, if we don't break the "one size fits all" model of school technology, R-T-I is impossible, and we're headed straight back to the "let's cure (or dispose of) the retards and crips" policy of the past century. That is - now that I've used the offensive words - if we do not adopt Toolbelt Theory as our guiding principle for educational technology, we cannot change the failure cycle for "special education" and other "high needs" students.

I'm not saying this because Toolbelt Theory is "mine." I have no way of licensing it to you. You will not pay me if you decide to use it, so the "self-benefit" is shockingly small. I'm saying this because I began to describe Toolbelt Theory five years ago because I saw it as the only solution. Since then, the legal, national move towards R-T-I has moved Toolbelt Theory from important to imperative.

Toolbelt Theory begins with the SETT framework of Dr. Joy Zabala. SETT, Student-Environment-Tasks-Tools, was a breakthrough way of thinking about choosing technology for students in the 1990s. But despite training in it, using it, teaching it, I struggled with certain issues. SETT became the tool of "school-based teams" too often making decisions without direct student input, and it seemed to me, that the use of the descriptor "student" encouraged this (It wasn't METT, after all, with "Me" at the start). I also hate - I mean I really - as a dyslexic - hate, misspelled acronyms (SETT isn't a word). And, though I appreciated Zabala's flexible "start at any point" concept, I thought it was missing a crucial point.

That point is that humans are tool users, that everything we do in learning is really "tool-based" to some extent, but that - at the core - we humans pick tools based on the task at hand. We do this to avoid that old problem... "if all you have is a hammer, everything will look like a nail." Just as, if all content is delivered via printed book or "teacher lecture" much of it will "look" like the droning adults in Charlie Brown cartoons.

So I re-wrote "SETT" as "TEST" - Task-Environment-Skills-Tools - and I described a process I called, "Task-based, Student-centered, Assistive Technology Decision Making system."

TEST - Task-based Student AT decision-making

View more presentations from Ira David Socol.

An early conference presentation of TEST

I didn't need to say "student" in the list because the idea is that the student would be making, and learning to make, the decisions. And I did not offer "start anywhere" flexibility. No matter who the student might be, or what issues he or she might face, question one, to me, is always, "What is the task?"

Because, when I wake up these mornings, if the first question is "does my leg hurt really badly?" I'm a "cripple." But if the first question is, "how is the snow going to get off the driveway?" I'm a full human, fully engaged in the world.

Which is where R-T-I comes in. In your classroom the first question should not be, "who is reading at what level?" or "who is holding a pen 'correctly'?" but "How do we make these stories, this knowledge, this information available effectively?" and "How do we let all students communicate efficiently and effectively?"

Because if you ask the former questions you are categorizing, disabling, and seeking "cures." But if you ask the latter you are including, engaging, and helping students to find their way.

Yooper Scoopers - amazing tool

"How is the snow going to get off the driveway?" Well, the possibilities range from a shovel to a yooper scooper to a snow blower to a plow to having someone do it for me. But understand, those are the tools - the last step. In between the Task and those tools I need to know the Environment - how heavy is the snow? how much is there? how cold is it? what's the wind? is it still snowing? is my driveway a hill? and I need to know my Skills at this moment - not my "average" skills, not my skills when I was evaluated 3 years ago, not even my skills yesterday, but my skills right now... is my leg in huge pain? did I sleep last night? how many pain killers have I taken? etc. etc. Only then can I get to Tool choice. And I can only make Tool choices if (a) I know about the tools, and (b) I have access to the tools. As we all know, in most schools I might get through this entire decision-making process only to discover that the school has blown all their money on one humongous snow blower that I can't quite hold on to - or - all they've got is one bent 1972 snow shovel.

Now in your Response-To-Intervention classroom you may or may not be shovelling snow, but you need the tool choices and tool options for the tasks your students face, or you will actually have no idea whether they can complete the tasks with interventions or not.

And if all you have is iPads, or PC laptops, or one-kind of smartphone, and if those devices are "locked down" to prevent change, your students have no chance.

I, for example, am no iPad fan, but many are. It doesn't quite "work for me" most days, but not everyone is me. I like PC-based solutions, Windows Speech Recognition, WordTalk, PowerTalk, WYNN, and I like Firefox as I've "accessibilized" it. So, usually, a PC-based computer is best, unless at that moment - task, environment - a Blackberry or Android phone is best (don't discount Blackberry, with VLingo added and because the browser has a cursor, there are big advantages). But, you see, my needs are not your kids' needs. They never will be. And just like your kids, my needs vary. I have good days for walking and good days for reading. I even have good days for keyboarding (I never have good days for manual writing). But I also have bad days, or afternoons, or whatever, for all of those.

So, using WYNN sometimes, Read-and-Write-Gold sometimes, WordTalk sometimes, FoxVox sometimes, Speaking Fox sometimes, PowerTalk sometimes, VLingo (with our without Sync) sometimes, audiobooks sometimes, or sometimes an index card underlining the print in a book, I can read using my interventions - that is - I can successfully get to the information I need.

And using one keyboard or another, or Windows Speech Recognition, or VLingo, I can write - that is - I can get my thoughts into a form recoverable asynchronously, using my interventions.

But if I didn't have knowledge of and access to this variety of tools, my "response-to-intervention" would be much less successful. If I hadn't been able to test out and find the tools which help in a variety of environments and under the varying "skill" levels I experience, then my ability to respond to the tasks of my every day life would be significantly less.

So, don't buy a "system" for your students, build a tool crib, so they can build their own Toolbelts. Fill the tool crib with possibility. Laptops and desktops and iPads and netbooks. Androids and Blackberries and iPods. MP3 players and Freedom Sticks. Various browsers, various operating systems, various software for every function. Then turn your kids loose to investigate. Let them respond by finding their own interventions.

You will see them perform differently, and you will enable them to be fully human.

Toolbelt Theory 2.0

View more presentations from Ira David Socol.

- Ira Socol

Believing in the Wrong Things

The "New Year" is, of course, a fiction. Why January 1? For the same reason we have seven day weeks, because a Roman Emperor said so. We could pick many other moments in the earth's ellipse around the sun, as Jews do/did, or Chinese do, or Hindus, etc. Perhaps we should pick one of the mathematical markers of that ellipse - a solstice or an equinox - to mark another orbit.

But we celebrate this Janus moment because we "always" have, because we "know it."

As this "New Year" begins, we, in education, know a lot of things. We have this vast foundation of unchallenged assumptions which we see as either "facts" or at least "historical inevitabilities." These range from the "academic year," the week, the semester, to describing students by age/grade, to evaluating students on comparative scales, to rectangular classrooms, to ideas about special education.

"Where in the world had seven come from?
"Italy! Seven is a magic number because only it can make a week, and it was given this particular power in 321 A.D. by the Roman emperor Constantine, who officially reduced the week from eight days to seven. The problem isn’t that Constantine’s week was arbitrary — units of time are often arbitrary, which is why the Soviets adopted the five-day week before they adopted the six-day week, and the French adopted the 10-day week before they adopted the 60-day vacation." - Daniel Gilbert

The problem is that what we "know" can blind us. I once told the fabulous cognitive researcher Rand Spiro that I thought "cognitive frameworks" might hurt learning in two different ways. Yes, if your framework was not sufficiently developed new knowledge might find no place to rest. But if your framework was too built, was too solid, new knowledge might also find no location, bouncing off the complex structure of all one might "already know."

These solid frameworks cover what schools are, how kids learn, and what they need to learn. And when, for example, I challenged a mother on Twitter who stated that it was important that her daughter learn her "math facts," I really wasn't doubting whether the girl needed math automaticity at all, but why the mom thought this was true.

When I doubt why kids need to be in school, it is not because I want to tear schools down, but because I want people to wonder why our schools function - in every way - as they do.

When I doubt phonics instruction, it is not that I fully believe that it doesn't ever work ("If phonics worked it would surely be spelled differently"), but because I want to hear proponents explain why, after 150 years of phonics, 70% of Americans never get past the "sixth grade reading level."

And when I doubt the content that we teach - and test - in schools, it is because I wonder if we ought to rethink the questions which lie behind the curriculum.

Early last year I had a chat with an automotive engineer who is involved in electric vehicle development. "People don't understand," he told me, "that moving a vehicle with electricity isn't hard at all, we've been doing that since 1840 or something, and doing it well since 1895. And batteries, well, batteries are coming. But in terms of engineering its all the stuff that cars did with the rotation power of the internal combustion engine that's hard. Electric power steering, electric air conditioning compression, electric heating. All of those things needed to be created."

In other words, what we - the general public - think is the problem, traction motors and battery charging, seem much more solvable to those in the industry itself. What is hard is not completely draining the battery because it is 95 degrees F/35 degrees C and you're stuck in a traffic jam.

But, no, we don't think that way. In most of the US, for example, we are highly unfamiliar with electric propulsion, though we see it every day. Frustratingly, we call the big locomotives pulling our trains "Diesels," and thus fail to recognize that 99% of them are "electrics" with diesel-fueled generators on board. This is issue one: misinformation. We assume - based on language and cultural repetition - that something untrue is true.

When the "knowledge structure" is different:
The Chevy Volt is a logical product from General Motors
which built diesel-electric locomotives from 1930-2005

Example from today - the Washington Post's trumpeting of the return of "Success for All," a failed reading program from the 1990s, but one beloved by the media because both "Johns Hopkins" and the program name look good in print. Our language, and our knowledge base ("Johns Hopkins people are very smart"), work against learning actual facts.

"...the best teachers understand that their students may find such emotional comfort in some existing model of reality that they cling to it even in the face of repeated expectation failures," says Ken Bain in What the Best College Teachers Do. And this seems doubly true when we discuss rethinking schools. It isn't just that "diesels are not just diesels" or "People at Johns Hopkins can be self-serving fools" challenge our world views, it is that this challenge to our world views makes us uncomfortable, we have to worry about all sorts of things we have not yet worried about. And honestly, few of us want to do that.

"So although they had not been in students' clubs or pubs in 20 or more years, they assumed that nothing had changed. This is known as human plasticity theory; people are stamped with a belief system that they cannot easily shake."' - Eric Anderson

"Human plasticity theory." Our belief system shapes our knowledge. If the mom (way back up in the post) wants her daughter to be automatic with math facts she invents a reason - "she won't always have a calculator" (a basic untruth, we "all" always have calculators with us these days) - rather than worrying about whether math automaticity actually is important.

If the "school day" is challenged, administrators will howl about union contracts - believing in the prototypical teacher of 20 years ago - without ever asking the staff if flex scheduling might appeal to a certain percentage of them.

If I ask why algebra is essential to high school graduation, I will rarely get a coherent answer, rather, I will hear "faith statements" ("The answer to that is that you need it in any occupational field that requires higher education, such as computer science, electronics, engineering, medicine (doctors), trade and commerce analysts, ALL scientists, etc. In short, if someone is even considering higher education, they should study algebra. You need algebra to take your SAT test or GED."). Faith statements based in the idea that algebra has been taken by everyone running schools today. If I say, "maybe algebra is important, but why is it taught with numbers?" I just get blank stares. Algebra "is math" after all - we "know" that.

Anyway, the point is, we can't solve the issues which trouble our education system without unlearning what we "believe" in. Unless we take many fewer things on faith. Unless we make ourselves uncomfortable by worrying about things we have not worried about before.

'"The trouble with people," Josh Billings once said, "is not that they don't know, but that they know so much that ain't so."' - Ken Bain

So let's take this mythical moment in our planet's orbit to consider that. What do we really know? v What do we believe? about our schools, our educational system, our students?

I think its a question we must start to ask...

- Ira Socol

A Middle School that Works

Matt Groening, of The Simpsons and School Is Hell, describes middle school as "the lowest circle of hell." And that is generally true. No, most are not as in need of implosion as the one Principal Anthony Orsini made famous in 2010, but our way of education tweens and early teens is both awful and awfully ineffective.

At a New Years Eve party last night an elementary school principal friend bemoaned the middle school "her kids" would end up attending, and she is right. All over I see fifth graders doing brilliant, creative stuff and sixth graders sitting in rooms bored to death.

So, for Dave Britton's Part Two of Blogging for Real Reform, I want to suggest an option.

See the Links Collected Here at Cooperative Catalyst.

Let's create a new kind of Middle School. Let's try changing everything. After all, walk into your nearby middle school next week, and ask, honestly, what have we got to lose?

Project-Based Everything

The middle school is really just the junior high school continued, and that was always a bad idea. Kids stumble through a bizarrely carved up yet age-dependent curriculum, and nothing could be less appropriate. There is no age range with a greater range of individual skills no matter the birth date, and there is no age range where getting kids interested in school is harder. After all, kids 11-14 have a million things, really important things, to learn - about themselves, society, life, their bodies, and almost none of those things are taught in schools.

Meanwhile, the grades, the subject areas, the sports teams, the honor rolls - even the corridors - of middle school are essentially designed (a) to encourage bullying, and (b) to make kids see school as worthless and irrelevant.

So I want to divide the Middle School Grades - 6, 7, 8 - into 9 large, and 3 "mini" project-based experiences. Project-based experiences which kids choose. Completely interdisciplinary experiences.

Kids would pick three 10-week experience and one shorter experience for each year, and that is what they would do all day. Teams of teachers would join together to offer these options. It could range from building a Habitat for Humanity house to making videos to putting on The Oresteia. Or you could be restoring a 1959 Studebaker, watching vampire movies, or studying the planets. In everyone you can easily include language, history, math, sciences, foreign languages, physical exercise, music, art. If you can't, you need to re-think your career path.


In each case students should stay in project teams, and teachers should come to them, or teachers (preferably) should lead the students beyond the school's walls, both virtually and in reality.

Individually crafted

But none of this could be "industrially designed." In every team you'd have 11-year-olds and 14-year-olds. In every team you'd have mature kids and immature kids. In every team you'd have varying capabilities. And in every team you'd have kids with various prior experiences. If you were building that Habitat house, some kids might need measuring, others would need algebra. Some might need the local history of the neighborhood others might need a complex investigation of human housing options. Some might need to write letters to the future homeowners, others to email the materials suppliers.

Team-based, project-based learning allows this - a classroom full of desks with a common curriculum does not.

Team focused

Nothing is more important in this age range than learning how to build effective interpersonal relationships while learning how to appreciate different types of people and different skillsets. So the team-based school, rather than encouraging bullying, encourages interdependence. Kids will need each other, work with each other, form "tribal" links across patterns.

And students would be seen in very different ways by teachers, who would see these students across circumstances and skill capabilities.

Individual Education Plans for all

Within all this, each student needs an individual plan and portfolio, tracking what they've accomplished, and what they need to do. We should not choose projects for the students, that's their's to do, but within projects teachers would need to help students grasp the skills they need. This would be true for every student, not just "special ed." And speaking of special ed, of course this school creates an atmosphere built on full inclusion for virtually all students.

"Extra" curricular

It is vital that the "extras" - athletics, band, orchestra, Odyssey of the Mind, chess club, whatever - be treated fully equally by the school. No cuts in sports, no auditions for band. If you need four basketball teams, go for T-shirts instead of uniforms and have four teams. Don't let boosters/parents support one extra-curricular activity over another. Don't allow one team's lockers to get decorated without the same treatment for every kid doing anything beyond the "school day."

Hard to do?

This is a massive change, but it is neither expensive nor difficult beyond the very hard concept of re-thinking. You don't need new walls, you don't need new teachers, you may not even need much new equipment - consider mixed and handheld technology and especially allowing/encouraging student-owned devices. You needn't change bus routes or build charter schools...

And yet, within those existing walls, with that existing staff, you will have changed education completely, and offered real choice - student choice, not parental choice.

And if you wanted to, I guarantee, you could be up and rolling with this by Fall 2011.

- Ira Socol

The King's Speech

There is a certain collection of literature I feel is important for people seeking to understand "disability" in a deep way. This includes books like Borderlinersand The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, films including Edward Scissorhandsand Rory O'Shea Was Hereand plays like The Elephant Man... Anyway, there are not many. Most suggest either "cure" or evoke the notion of "supercrip" and I despise both of those tropes.

But I watched The King's Speech this week and immediately added it to the list. Yes, the context... the British Royal Family... is far from most of our experience, but only one level of the film is "royal/historical" (though that is a very fine level indeed, with some fascinating attempts at insight into both the Queen Elizabeths of our age). The other level is a much more common tale. A tale of disability and bullying, powerlessness and power, perseverance and the high costs of being seen as a success.

"Bertie Windsor" is mocked and abused because he cannot do "the expected" easily. This occurs at the hands of the father who loves him and desperately wants him to succeed, and at the hands of those - including his older brother - who simply enjoy feeling superior. He is mistreated by quack "healers" - wait for the marbles scene - and made to feel as if he is somehow less than human, royal birthright or not.

This film is not a tale of triumph. Yes, George VI becomes a beloved monarch who did much for his nation at its time of greatest peril, but that is not the point of the film, or of this man's life. Rather it is a story of fear, of loneliness, of desperation, of effort, and yes, of cost. Becoming what others want/need him to be is a mountain which "Bertie" must scale, and it is a climb which injures him in permanent ways. As the film The Queen puts it, [Tony Blair on Elizabeth II] "That woman has given her whole life in service to her people. Fifty years doing a job SHE never wanted! A job she watched kill her father."

And it is not a tale of "cure" either, though Geoffrey Rush's Lionel Logue uses that term. Bertie needs "accommodations" his whole life - in the form of the personal and constant efforts of Logue at every speech. He needs - in the media of the time - to be seen much more than heard.  It never gets easy, it never gets solved, and Bertie battles his "issues" his whole life.

When you watch the film, when you watch Colin Firth's face as he struggles, as he is humiliated, see the faces of all the children in our schools who find themselves struggling, with speech, with reading, with writing. And stop telling them to "try harder" and reach out with the individual helps they need. And accept that they are fully human, even if they never will quite do things as you do.

- Ira Socol

"God bless us, everyone"

What was Charles Dickens modeling when he gave us "Tiny Tim"?

"'As good as gold,' said Bob, 'and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.'"

1870s illustration

It is Christmas, and so our television screens will be filled with one of literature's most enduring portraits of disability, Tim Cratchit in Charles Dickens' 1843 A Christmas Carol.

Tim has a small part in the book, but it is a powerful one, even before the pity inducing film performances of the 20th century. But, after debating with a friend on Twitter over whether Tim was a "positive" or "negative" for the disability community, I wanted to separate Dickens' Tim from Hollywood's Tim, because they are somewhat different characters - different in crucial ways.

The first difference stems from both time and intent. The book Dickens wrote at the start of the second industrial revolution was an indictment of early capitalism, barely less "radical" politically than the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels which would appear just five years later.

In Dickens' story Scrooge's capitalism runs over everyone and everything in its path, it is as malevolent to the well-born as it is to Tim and his family. Tim might be there to heighten sympathy a bit, but really, he is just another voice protesting for a more humane world. When Hollywood, or the British film industry, retold the tale before and after the World War, it became more Christian than political, and more sympathetic than angry, and Tim's position within the story changed.

1951 Tim

"The image of the Tiny Tim gained popularity in the 1940's and 50's when charities focused on finding cures for disabilities such as polio. They realized that pity opens wallets, so they began poster child campaigns. These campaigns played on society's fear that this thing, this disability, this horrible tragedy, could very easily invade their homes. Unless, of course, they sent in money to find a cure. The undertone of these campaigns was clear: G-d forbid you end up with a disability like the child on the poster. You're life will no longer be worth living; you'll be less then human (Shapiro, 1994)."

Tim gets prettier in these films, cuter. Of course everyone does. In the 1938 Hollywood version Bob Cratchit is fat. Capitalism has no longer run amok, rather, we are telling a story of charity, and charity needs the 'poster child.'

So the film Tiny Tim is sweet, high-voiced, pretty, and pathetic. But is that the character Dickens described?

To me, the literary Tiny Tim is something very powerful - especially in the context of his time. Whatever Tiny Tim's "affliction" - kidney disease is the most speculated - Tim was a fully embraced human in this story, when all across Britain, northern Europe, and the United States society was beginning to dehumanize those who could not 'compete.' The first "school" (asylum) for "idiots" was opened in Paris in 1841, with various other separated facilities appearing along with industrialization over the next 30 years. Tim was not separated. He fully participates in the life of his family. He even participates "as a male" - going to church with his father and brothers, not staying home with the females as they prepare the Christmas dinner.

And unlike so many "defectives" of the period developing as Dickens wrote, Tim has a voice. A clear, respected voice. This may not sound like much today... unless you've ever attended an American IEP conference or its equivalent in other nations... but in 1843 it was perhaps as radical as Dickens' call for redistribution of wealth.

Dickens is also decidedly less "romantic" about the ending. Though films often end with a "cured" and robust Tim, all Dickens will say is, "Tiny Tim, who did not die." There are no promises of "normality" here, only promises of humanity.

The visions of disability matter, and they need to be brought out into the open, and discussed. I like to use Edward Scissorhands as the classic example of trying to drag "the disabled" into "normality" by making them "heroic servants." I'd love high schools to do The Elephant Man - the play- rather than hold "carnival game"-type disability awareness weeks. (Compare it to the very different film as well). I saw a fabulous college version of Richard III a few years ago with Richard as a "contemporary" disabled man. In a wheelchair, constantly stared at by an unblinking video camera.

But we can begin this Christmas, in our homes, to explore those visions, and the divides between sympathy and empathy, and between victim and human. I see Tiny Tim as a great step forward for 1843, and sadly, in many ways, a great step forward today. But it is not a big enough step either way.

- Ira Socol

What do you do with history?

Two New York Times efforts ran in parallel this past week, and emphasized all that we might do in schools if we move away from the bizarre subject divisions imposed on us in the late 19th Century.

One, running for some time now, has been an effort to watch the build up to the United States Civil War 150 years ago. I cannot recall the Civil War Centennial, but I'm old enough to have grown up with the aftermath - that is textbooks and lessons which often emphasised a "morally neutral" vision of that war. "In these sensitive times [the 1960s] we need not offend the South," I came to presume before I knew of the bizarre power of the Texas State School Board over American curricular content.

The view the Times is offering this year is much deeper, much more conflicted, much more interdisciplinary, and much darker.

Slavery Visualized: from The New York Times

The county-by-county demographic mapping of slave possession, a map-making work of 1860 census workers, tells us much about the times, and even the sciences of the times, if we embrace this opportunity. But so does this tale of "Jim Crow on West Broadway" regarding race relations in the "free" states. For a nation which actually believes that slavery ended in the United States on "Juneteenth" it is important to discover what really happened [actually: "Legally, the last 40,000 or so slaves were freed in Kentucky by the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865. Slaves still held in New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Maryland, Missouri and Washington, D.C. also became legally free on this date."].

In this series you will find ways to lead your students into history, literature, geography, map-making, statistics, music, art, political theories, calculus if you wish (can't discuss artillery without calculus), all based in fantastic stories.

This week that series has been joined by a story from a hundred years later, December 16, 1960, when two airliners, a DC-8 and a Lockheed Constellation, collided in fog-bound skies above New York Harbor.

This was a traumatic moment for New Yorkers, even those of us too young to really recall it...

Years later "older kids" would scare us with stories about planes "falling from the sky" - or worse - "boys falling from the sky." The event was a critical marker - where jet travel became something other than simply glamorous - a little taste of the loss of RMS Titanic48 years before. More than that, for those raised after World War II, but with the constant threat of 'death from above,' this was a frightening manifestation of that.

You can start here and follow this story. One of inexact sciences, yes, and mathematical equations, but also a depiction, in words, sights, sounds, of another time. A depiction of both the apparent simplicity of the 1950s and the complexities our nostalgia hides.

Stephen Baltz

Especially with the link to a child's story, you could build a fascinatingly complex set of projects around this bit of history, from glide paths and gravity to the march of technologies ["As hard as it may be to imagine today, it was standard practice then for a jet hurtling over the metropolitan area at more than 350 miles an hour to be left to find its own way for minutes at a time. When the controllers on the ground were tracking planes on their radar scopes, using grease pencils to identify them on plastic strips called “shrimp boats,” they could not judge altitudes."] and the patterns of racism, classism, and urban decay patterns.

Now, take a minute and imagine how boring any of these topics - James Buchanan, the speed of a falling object, block-busting in Brooklyn - might be if separated from other stories which give them context, which create avenues for student interest. You know, like the classes we've all attended.

- Ira Socol

A week without technology?

Just about every "education reporter" in the United States - from small market local media to The Today Show - has written this story at least once by now. Students are asked to spend a few days or a week without "technology" so they can - well, get smarter? be less distracted? become better at human interaction? become better humans?

OK. Yes, by "technology" these people mean, "tools their teacher is uncomfortable with." By becoming "better" at something, these people mean, "becoming more like the teacher." Though those tidbits are never reported.

So students are asked to turn off computers and mobile phones, but not clocks or pens. They are asked to not use email and SMS, but school busses seem fine. They are asked not to use digital signals, but paper is actually recommended.

We need to understand this a whole lot better. Technology is the tools with which we manipulate the world, or even the art of manipulating the world, and it is time to stop pretending that it is "anything invented after [I] was born.

A small paper making machine. This is NOT technology.

The book, and the paper it is printed on, even the ink used to form those letters, are gigantic technologies. Expensive, polluting, highly-evolved technologies typically controlled by a few major capitalists - from Bertelsmann to Barnes+Noble to Amazon. Pens and pencils are also invented technologies. Sort of complicated and dangerous too. Kids cheat with them. Bully with them. And there's still a chunk of graphite in my hand from when I was nine and got stabbed for - I'm sure - "no reason at all."

But there are technologies I'd like schools to go without, for a week - or much longer... Technology "abandonments" that would truly demonstrate important things to kids...

Let's try a week without clocks and bells. Few technologies interrupt the learning process more, and limit learning to "the shallows" more, than the school timetable. And few things belittle students more - or expose our hypocrisies more - than bells. They are not just Pavlovian, they are unfairly so. Kids are "late" when the bell rings, but teachers often insist that they get dismissal power, meaning bells are only significant when they can punish students.

So take a week. Cancel the start time and the finish time. Abandon the class schedule. Let students pick which of their classrooms they want to be in - and when. Let kids spend a day working on one thing, or five minutes, whichever they need and want. Let them eat when they want, use the toilet when they want, debate Shakespeare when they want. See what happens.

Our school schedule was invented by Henry Barnard to train kids for industrial shift work. Is that what are schools are still designed to do?

Let's try a week without desks and chairs. Pile them all up in the corner and ignore them. Let kids bring what they need to make themselves comfortable. As I asked one school district: "Do any of you have furniture like this at home?"

The chair and desk, that contribution of William Alcott in the 1830s, might have made sense them. But we have central heating now, and carpets are available everywhere. And pillows are cheap at Ikea - so are lapdesks. And kids would rather be comfortable.

And... teachers might find themselves worrying a whole lot less about controlling how kids sit in their chairs.

Let's try a week without books and paper. We know how many of our kids struggle with reading and writing - the physical acts. The word decoding, the holding of the pen, the traditional keyboarding - these things are our primary creators of disability.

So let's get "Socratic" for a week. Lets get fully digital (adaptable text, speech recognition) or simply verbal/audio. Let's talk and listen. Let's think out loud and work on auditory memory.

We might see a whole new set of student skills rise to the top with those "Gutenberg technologies" stripped from our kids' lives. We might see a whole new kind of learning.

- Ira Socol

Comfort and Joy

At a certain point in my childhood I would spend a lot of time sitting on the shoreline rocks at Davenport Park in New Rochelle, looking across the water at the ruins of Fort Slocum. I could have been at school, or I could have been with the others not in school at the Park's car park, or down at Hudson Park, or up at The Mall, or wherever. But sometimes it is better to be alone.

Fort Slocum (now fully demolished) from the Structural Descent Blog

There are a lot of places you go as an adolescent or pre-teen when you need to be away, when you need to work on seeking yourself. I've written "some" about this...

The Drool Room(2007) River Foyle Press

We so rarely acknowledge this need in schools. In fact, we fight daily against this. Our students - especially secondary students, go through the day without any personal space or time. It is an abusive, continually challenging environment which forces students to adopt the worst of self-defense mechanisms - from bullying, to gang membership, to surly disassociation from all those around. It robs students of the psychological space in which to think, to add knowledge to a framework in a personally effective way. Our students end up acting exactly as caged rats - with lizard brains locked in survival mode - they simply fight or please their captors, rather than having time or opportunity for higher learning.

This is why, when I ask people to "re-think learning spaces" I rarely suggest that they think about "schools" at all. Our notion of "school" is a trap. It presupposes a certain concept of spatial and societal organization which interferes profoundly with our expressed desires for education.

The Long Meadow, by Frederick Law Olmsted, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

I ask instead that we look at parks, and bookstores, street corners and coffee shops. Places where people voluntarily go to learn and commune. Places where people can make themselves comfortable, join groups or not, and let their defenses down.

Outside the Brooklyn Public Library, Main Branch [photo cc: Ira Socol]

Because defenses and discomfort block the possibility of learning. If I'm uncomfortable, fearful, hungry, thirsty, worried about time - those emotions dominate the brain. There is no room for higher order thinking.

JP's coffee, prime hangout, Holland, MI

So, space design, like the "Do Not Disturb" sign, the classroom hiding place, creating a more "ADHD-sensitive" set of school rules, corridor open spaces with comfortable furniture, even increasing "passing times" to allow kids "safe times" and, of course, personal technology devices which allow momentary escapes and personally directed learning, will all allow students to make space and time their own.

Make sure your classroom has various kinds of furniture, various kinds of lighting, various kinds of noise control. Make sure your school offers kids options in terms of space wherever they are. Booths, high tables, benches, in the cafeteria. Carpeted floor areas to hang out on. Umbrella tables outside and in offering a tiny sense of enclosure. Make sure those spaces offer choices - calm, interactive, private, voyeuristic, loud, quiet, and make sure creation tools - from wireless access to drawing spaces are available. We want students to have the option of personal learning time or an environment with contagious creativity.

This means being less paranoid. It means less pretending that somehow your school security systems will see all.  They won't. They don't. Right now they miss the bullying going on by the lockers - hall or gym. They miss the sex acts in the back stairwell too. They miss the casual cruelty of the crowded corridors during your 4 minute time between classes. But your attempts at security do make your students' lives miserable. So just calm down.

Seattle Public Library

"Instructional Tolerance" is a key phrase. It implies accepting that your students are individual humans who will shift between on-task and off-task, between engaged and unengaged, between interested and bored, just as you do. It implies that your students need space just as you do. And "planning time," and - sometimes - they need the right to be alone - physically or just mentally.

When I sat in that park - in a place as comfortable for me as any I have ever known - I was breaking all "the rules," but I was not away from education. There, certain parts of my brain relaxed in important ways, and the world came into a certain kind of focus. I sat on fossil-pocked boulders hacked up and flipped by the movement of great glaciers. Tidal pools with life's beginnings glistened at my feet. The inexorable reach of salt water stretched to the east and west. Airplanes began their descent toward LaGuardia. Wind pulled some boats along while others moved with throbbing motors. A Civil War-era fort marked one horizon, speaking of a time when distances were much greater and, perhaps, war much closer.

All kinds of things I had heard in disconnected trivial segments from "teachers" came together in a place I might both learn, and find questions.

Why couldn't school offer me that?

- Ira Socol

Teach (Know) Your Children Well

This was the last night of the undergraduate course I co-taught with Sara Beauchamp-Hicks this semester. It was a class in Special Needs Students in Regular Ed - inclusion - and in the technologies which make that easier. But while we used lots of technology, exposed these future teachers to lots of technology, our goals were more personal, and more human...

So we began the last class session with this clip of a Japanese classroom...

There's so much here, about everything from creating a classroom environment which allows dissent and values every child to the way that project-based learning re-orients the learning process, and the students were struck by how different that class - and the student-to-student attitudes therein - were from what they see every day in their "pre-internship" placements. That difference became even more obvious when we watched the next video...

"I've spent a lot of time focusing on autism," one woman said, "on giving them voice, but after watching this I realized how many kids need to be given their voice." We talked about a lot of things after that, and then, just before the end, I showed the beginning of Mickybo and Me. Before I started this I asked the class to focus on the boy they'd "meet," to assess his strengths, to consider what issues he might have in school, to think about how a school might make these strengths work to help him overcome some of the socio-economic issues he might struggle with.

Because I'm very sure that this isn't "rocket science." This isn't about "common cores" or standardized tests or more time in the school day or private school operators or any superman. Helping kids find their path to learning lies in knowing the kids, and in getting the learning environment to meet their needs.

In the end we want these future teachers to know that we really do not want them producing any "product." Humans are not raw materials ready to have "value added." They are individuals who deserve to be treated as such. Individuals who will learn differently, have different interests, and who will grow up to lead different lives.

If we got any of that across this semester, it was a good semester indeed.

- Ira Socol

Learning Space

Above is the best educational space in the College of Education at Michigan State University. Just off the building's entrance, in a heavily trafficked zone, there is this space overlooking the Red Cedar River. Behind "the photographer" is a coffee shop, and in this area there are booths and big tables and small tables, high tables and desk height tables. Regular chairs and bar height chairs. Bar stools. Benches, couches, and soft chairs. And a broad window sill to sit on. At the far end of the picture are quieter rooms with similar furniture mixes, including a couple of tables separated from other spaces by a level change. To the left, out of the picture above, is a small maze like zone of screens creating places for one to four people to gather quietly, and next to that, is an open zone filled with creation equipment - powerful computers and tools for video production, interactive white boards, giant monitors, etc.

This arrangement allows people to find their comfort zone, whether individually or as groups. It affords them "what they need" - whether that be fast wireless or "decent" coffee or a pita wrap or a doughnut or, yeah, a flip camera or a powerful scanner. You can have quiet and (a certain level of) privacy, or you can be loud and very public.

But most importantly, this space is an intersection. It is where people from every different part of the college bump into each other, meet, discover, talk, share. It is where silos break down and communities mingle and overheard conversations become opportunities for intellectual cross-pollination.

It is our "commons."

How different that is from our classrooms, our formal conference rooms. How different this is from the K-12 classrooms our students work in.

In 1832, when William A. Alcott wrote his "Essay on the Construction of Schoolhouses" and introduced the classroom-as-we-know-it, with desks and chairs all the same in rectangular rooms, he was advancing a certain idea of education, and a certain conception of society. He was trying to both make students more comfortable, protect female dignity, and support teachers. Alcott is no villain here, but we might think that (a) times have changed, (b) student needs have changed, and (c) our knowledge of the young brain and the learning process has grown in the 178 years since. Alcott, a keen observer, would - I think - be shocked to find his designs still central.

Alcott's classroom, 1832

This notion of "the commons" really matters, on so many levels. If your school is broken into little dis-connected rooms for discrete age-groups and subjects, if your classrooms are filled with one kind of desk and one kind of chair, you have created extreme limits on your pedagogical opportunities.

You have prevented much "peer" tutoring, you have prevented kids from joining ideas together, you have forced yourself into disciplining uncomfortable children, and you have blocked "natural" learning paths.

Remember, when Alcott created his rows of desks, at least his classroom already included all ages, dealt in all subjects, had no set time-schedule, and offered big windows looking outside on two-sides, specifically arranged to the natural sequence of the day would be obvious. Your classroom probably lacks many of those benefits.

Those are not the only ways in which we actually offer our students a "worse" experience than what Alcott was recommending:

"Again—no provision has been made for the pupils standing at higher desks a part of the time, because it is believed they may sit without injury for about half an hour at a time, and then, instead of standing, they ought to walk into the garden, or exercise in the play-ground a few moments, either with or without attendants or monitors. Sitting too long, at all events, is extremely pernicious...

"The relative position of each pupil should occasionally be changed from right to left, otherwise the body may acquire a change of shape by constantly turning or twisting so as to accommodate itself to the light, always coming from a particular window, or in the same general direction.

"If a portion of the play-ground is furnished with a roof, the pupils may sometimes be detached by classes, or otherwise, either with or without monitors, to study a short time in the open air, especially in the pleasant season. This is usually as agreeable to them, as it is favorable to health. A few plain seats should be placed there. A flower garden, trees, and shrubs, would furnish many important lessons of instruction. Indeed, I cannot help regarding all these things as indispensable, and as consistent with the strictest economy of space, material, and furniture, as a judicious arrangement of the school-room itself.

"Sensible objects, and every species of visible apparatus, including, of course, maps, charts, and a globe, are also regarded as indispensably necessary in illustrating the sciences. They not only save books, time, and money, as has been abundantly proved by infant schools, but ideas are in this way more firmly fixed, and longer retained. In the use of books, each child must have his own ; but in the use of sensible objects and apparatus, one thing, in the hands of the instructer, will answer the purposes of a large school, and frequently outlast half a dozen books."

In other words, we don't even afford our students today the best ideas of 1832, but a pale reflection of that design science.

So today we must do better. Today our students are much more isolated from society than they were in 1832. Today our students are not parts of big, multi-generational households with numerous siblings around them. Today our students do not play in village squares or farm-yards where all the news and sciences of the world are on display.

So we need not simply dispose of Alcott's rows, we must create Jeffersonian "Academical Villages" with the kinds of urban intersections and parks and coffee shops where people gather, get comfortable, and share human knowledge. We must allow - encourage - our kids to interact, to learn with each other, to collaborate and grow together.

Please, lets stop teaching in a bad replica of an 1832 learning space. We can do better.

- Ira Socol