No Wrong Answers

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The "Secession" Lesson Jun 07, 2017

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Teachers: Maddie Burkemper (who now teaches 5th grade); Maria Kennedy (high school humanities); David Muhammad (high school government).

Secession is back and not just in American History class. Our teachers this week tackle the story of mostly white Alabama city seeking to secede from a largely black county-run school district. Our teachers have a problem with the district’s stated reasons for seceding and a problem with what they say it means for public education writ large.

Plus, should character traits like “responsibility” and “optimism” on students’ grade reports? Our teachers talk about the uses and abuses of such so-called “soft skills” assessments.

Finally, there’s no Kids These Days this week because our teachers our out of school. (They haven’t been around kids.) But we’re trying something new: a pop culture roundup. This week: a fat-shaming movie poster, Wonder Woman storms America, and “covfefe.”

Links

School secession is actually more common than you might think (U.S. News)
Assessments of “soft skills” are growing in popularity. (Education Week)
A movie poster critics said fat-shamed kids caused a stir. (New York Times)

Music used in this episode is Inspiring Corporate and Scottish Indie by Scott Holmes; all have been edited.

Extra Credit: Vocational Education In The Trump Era Jun 01, 2017

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Few education writers (with the possible exception of Jonathan Kozol) are more widely respected and more widely read than Mike Rose. In a career that’s spanned more than 35 years, Rose has produced eleven books on education and learning, ranging in topic from effective literacy strategies to the cognitive complexity of blue-collar work.

His most well-known book may be the semi-autobiographical Lives On the Boundary. It’s now generally considered a classic of the field, often read in education schools and teacher-prep programs. The book details different ways to reach so-called “problem” students, while at the same time mining the deep vein of Rose’s own personal experiences growing up in a working class household that often felt shut out of the educational establishment.

Mike Rose was born in Pennsylvania, the son of Italian immigrants and grew up in Los Angeles. He’s said one of the most impactful things to happen to him growing up was being moved out of his high school’s vocational track into its college prep track. In the college prep track, he had a teacher who advised him on applying to college.

Rose, who now teaches at UCLA, has tended to focus his writing on class divisions he experienced as a student and that still often plague our education system. He’s written passionately about vocational education--what’s now termed Career and Technical Education--and how it can and should be integrated into a more well-rounded education that also includes STEM learning and instruction in subjects like classic literature. He says votech subjects like auto mechanics and shop class are often looked at with snobbery and elitism and are undervalued by the education system as a whole.

Rose has been revisiting these themes on his blog in the wake of the election of Donald Trump as president. He’s not a fan of the president. He makes no bones about his disappointment in Trump’s election, swept to the White House with the support of millions of white, working class voters like people he says he grew up around. We wanted to speak to Rose about how his career’s focus--his lifelong passion for looking at issues of class in education--now may seem more relevant than ever.

Music used in this episode is Inspiring Corporate and Scottish Indie by Scott Holmes; all have been edited.

The "Googlefication" Lesson May 23, 2017

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Teachers: Maddie Burkemper (4th grade … all of it); Princeston Grayson (middle school gifted and talented); and Rebeka McIntosh (elementary alternative education)

This week, we can’t not talk about the crazy week that was in Washington. (Here’s a recap. Believe us: you need it.) Our teachers say they used to read the news to decompress from school. No longer. Then, we tackle President Donald Trump’s proposed federal education budget, which would completely eliminate funding for a variety of programs, from gifted and talented education to civics education. Finally, has your school gone “full Google?” Our teachers’ schools have all gone one-to-one or are in the process of going one-to-one with Google Chromebooks. Is this a good thing?

Read:

The Washington Post’s break down of Trump’s proposed education budget.
The New York Times has a fascinating story about the “Googlification of education.”

Kids These Days:

Maddie: She says her kids are still talking about the chant their class came up with for their school’s Field Day. (Maddie demonstrates during the episode.)
Princeston: Signed any student yearbooks lately? Princeston has. A lot.
Rebeka: It’s that time of the year. The final days of the school year are a time for time-killing games and activities. You know what we’re talking about.

Extra Credit: How A Maker Space Can Change A School May 18, 2017

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A big trend in public education currently is something called “Maker education” or “Maker learning.” There isn’t one universally settled upon definition though its proponents generally use terms like “hands on” and “learner-focused” to describe it.

Benjamin Herold writing in Ed Week said “maker learning” refers to a “wide variety of activities (from computer programming to sewing) that support the development of a mindset that values playfulness and experimentation, growth and iteration, and collaboration and community.

Maker education is part of the broader, loosely organized ‘Maker Movement’ of tinkerers, DIYers, computer programmers, and hackers who put a lot of stock in the act of creation itself and the experimentation and failure that often goes into that.

As you may be able to tell, there’s a lot of buzzwords to sift through when talking about “Maker education.” But what does this look like in schools?

We wanted to try and answer that question. And in the Kansas City metro area where No Wrong Answers tapes there are few schools to get that answer more clearly than Lewis and Clark Elementary in Liberty, Missouri. The school has undergone a revolution of sorts in how teachers their teach and how students learn. And that’s due in large part to the school’s implementation of Maker strategies.

We went there and did something we’ve never done: a live taping of our podcast in front of a small audience of teachers, parents, and students. We wanted to ask people in Lewis and Clark’s community what “Maker education” has meant to them.

Music used in this episode is Inspiring Corporate and Scottish Indie by Scott Holmes; all have been edited.

**The "Absentee" Lesson** May 16, 2017
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Teachers: LuAnn Fox (high school English); Elaine Jardon (middle school math); Jason Steliga (high school science)
This week, Besty DeVos is back. The Secretary of Education gave the commencement address recently at Bethune-Cookman University and boy, did it get ugly. Then, we talk chronic absenteeism, what federal DOE officials have called a “hidden crisis” in American education. But it’s not just the stereotypical trouble-making skippers that miss a lot of class. Finally, we tackle a new Pediatrics study that says bullying is down...way down. So why doesn’t it feel like it to our teachers?
Watch excruciating video of Betsy DeVos’s Bethune-Cookman commencement address.
Read some eyebrow-raising federal stats about chronic absences.=
This Pediatrics study says bullying in American schools is dropping precipitously.
Kids These Days:
Luann: Students taking Advanced Placement tests aren’t supposed to talk, text, or tweet about the exams on test day. But they do.
Jason: Chance the Rapper was in town. His students’ heads exploded.
Elaine: Even though she’s still on maternity leave, her students are grade-grubbing at the end of the semester. Ah, the satisfaction of being able to delete on their emails...

Music used in this episode is Inspiring Corporate and Scottish Indie by Scott Holmes; all have been edited.

Extra Credit: Poetry In The Classroom May 07, 2017

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We just completed National Poetry Month in April and we recently asked some of our teachers…for a little bit of show-and-tell to celebrate that. We wanted them to pick examples of a poem, or an excerpt of a poem they have found personally or professionally inspirational as teachers. Or maybe a poem that has been used to particularly good effect in their classroom, that resonated with students.

Maddie Burkemper, Jaime Meyers and David Muhammad brought us their poems. And David started us off. If you didn’t know, he’s a rapper in his spare time outside the classroom.

Music used in this episode is Inspiring Corporate and Scottish Indie by Scott Holmes; all have been edited.