Quick Impressions of NAIS

I’ve been so busy it has been difficult to find time to blog here – a situation made more difficult by a general lack of connectivity, which I think is surprising and disappointing for San Francisco. The Moscone Center, where the convention is, has a free wi-fi access, but it is so sluggish and spotty that it is useless. In stead, the center set up a “cybernet cafe,” which is a series of Lenovo laptops set up at stand-up only positions at kiosks.
Someone told me the city itself has a free wi-fi service, but you have to have a password to use it – perhaps just for residents? Hardly gracious for a city that thrives on tourism.
And finally, I’ve heard several stories from people staying at “big name’ hotels, that you can get wi-fi there – for a cost of around $20/day.
Bad, bad, bad.
(My hotel, by contrast, has free wi-fi and it’s fast and reliable. Problem is, I’m at the convention all day and by the time I get back, work is not in my plans.)
Despite my whining, SF is still a beautiful city and the convention has been, so far more hit than miss. I’ve been to some good workshops and talked to some interesting people. I’m still a bit at a loss as to why Arianna Huffington was the keynote speaker, but she was at the very least entertaining, and at best, a nice reflection back of ideas I’ve heard being kicked around in the “rank and file” for years. It was good to hear her encouraging everyone to get over the machismo of no sleep and to get a good 8 hours every night.
Something I plan to do a soon as I get back to DC.

NAIS: Wednesday

Coming to this conference must be getting me fired up. In response to Chris Bigenho’s blog about helping students become self-regulated learners, I had this to say:

It is ridiculous to grade students in this day and age. In the educational revolution that is happening NOW, we need to topple this statue, and we need to do so forcefully and publicly.

Teachers need to band together and insist that grades give way to digital portfolios, which are far better communicators of what a student has achieved, understood and is capable of than a letter or number grade.

How to do this? Quite simple: every teacher gives every student an A, for all work, tests, assessments and course grades. But most importantly, we insist and help the students create online portfolios of their work.

What stands in the way? Fear. Fear that if we don’t use grades as motivators, the kids will stop working. Fear that parents will protest. (THAT would be a sight, wouldn’t it? all those parents protesting that their children got too many A’s?) Fear that administration would fire us.

But if grades are OUR language to communicate to the world what a child has done in OUR class, then we can take back control over how that language is used. It is a deeply flawed and outdated language and it is time that we – as educators!- put it to rest!

Mei Flower: What Is Making Me Mad This Week?

A teacher’s take on how others can sometimes see our profession.

Mei Flower: What Is Making Me Mad This Week?.

Program to prep teachers

From the Chicago Tribune comes a story about how Illinois State University is hoping to help “budding educators focused on how make their instruction relevant to students, excite the desire to learn and help them go on to college” (Sic - maybe even have better command of the language than reporters.)

The kicker? This was accomplished with a 43 hour “marathon.”

While I applaud any effort aimed at bettering education, it’s difficult to know exactly how to react to this. Learning to excite someone else’s desire to learn, to making teaching relevant and to help your students get to college are worthwhile goals – maybe achievable with lots of hard work, over a considerable amount of time. Certainly not in forthy-three hours.

This kind of over-reach has several negative (and, I’m sure, unintended) consequences. For one, it implies that effective teaching can be learned in a weekend and so belittles the profession.

It also sets up these “budding educators” for immense disappointment, an all too common reaction among new teachers (who leave the field in droves).

I would humbly suggest that if you are going to hold a forty-three hour marathon for teaching educators, you narrow the scope to something much more manageable – such as “An Introduction to Classroom Management and Why You Need to Learn this Skill PDQ.”