Monthly Archives: February 2011

Two Worlds

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One world is inhabited by 73-year-old Richard Stoker, his wife Jane, his dogs, and his new neighbors in their Miami, FL luxury condominium development.

Stoker was featured in a recent  WSJ article on an increasing number of investors purchasing homes with cash in the belief prices have bottomed out.

“The prices were just irresistible,” Stoker said. “Florida’s been hit pretty hard.”

The article continues:

To pay the $1.8 million, $1.2 million and $1 million prices on the condos, Mr. Stoker and his wife, Jane, cashed out of some financial investments and sold a Roy Lichtenstein painting and an Alexander Calder mobile. Since mid-October, Canyon Ranch in Miami Beach, the development Mr. Stoker bought into, has sold 35 units, with a third of the buyers from overseas and many others retiring from the Northeast. . . . The Stokers have a home in Potomac, Md., but spend most of the year in Florida. Mr. Stoker doesn’t plan to rent out any of his new properties, saying he and his wife will live in one with two dogs, his son might live in another and the third will house an older dog and guests.

What are we to make of Stoker and his world? We don’t have many details, but in 2011 America, here’s what I think I’m supposed to conclude. “Good on you. Probably worked hard your whole life and played by the rules. Enjoy the spoils of your labors.” Besides, who knows, maybe he’s an inspiring philanthropist who has given similar amounts of money to good causes.

But I’m tired of the status quo, so instead of giving him a pass and congratulating him, I have some questions.

What kind of person agrees to participate in an article like that under their own free will? What kind of person admits to the world that they bought a $1m condo for their dog? Why are there only two socially acceptable responses to conspicuous consumption in the U.S.—laissez faire nonchalance or awe? Why aren’t we embarrassed for the Stokers of the world when they publicly flaunt their wealth? Why don’t we freeze them out?

The Coming Ed Tech Tidal Wave

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Will smart phones eliminate the digital divide? That’s the title of an interview article with Elliot Soloway in The Journal Digital Edition. Here’s a video version of the same content. And finally, here’s his company’s website with a “contact us” tab in the upper right.

I don’t know enough about Soloway to know if he genuinely cares about improving teaching and learning or if he’s simply out to enrich himself.

Of course already extensive cell phone usage among young people is going to increase over time, but that doesn’t mean every K-12 student in the U.S. will be using a cell phone for educational purposes within five years. That’s his claim, but more accurately I suspect it’s his hope because he just happens to have created a company that outfits local districts and schools with personal cellphone learning devices.

Unfortunately, I can’t find anywhere on his website where I can place a bet on his claim. So maybe he’s just blowing smoke. I’d like to put $1k into escrow based on my belief that there will be at least one student somewhere in the U.S. in September of 2015 that isn’t using a cellphone device in their classroom. Maybe a kindergartner at a Waldorf School somewhere in Vermont?

The larger question posed by Soloway’s snake oil is whether more personal technology in the classroom is going to translate into achievement gains. The burden is on the techies to explain why that might be true. Soloway’s argument is extremely weak and only adds to my skepticism that personal technology is a panacea for improving teaching and learning.

An even more pressing question is whether more personal technology in the classroom is going to reduce the achievement gap. Again, the tech zealots have to do a much better job explaining why that might be true than Soloway does in the linked material above.

The achievement gap exists mostly as a result of outside of school factors. Uneven teacher quality also plays a large part. Soloway is silent on both of those essential factors.

Teachers and parents have to be on guard against tech salespeople who are desperate for a chunk of the textbook millions that will be increasingly up for grabs.  Headlines like this, “Georgia State Senator Hopes to Replace Textbooks with iPads” are going to be increasingly common.

At school board and related meetings a healthy skepticism requires us to ask the following types of questions:

• How will the personal technology device you’re selling improve the quality of teaching?

• How will it help students develop 21st century job and citizenship skills and sensibilities?

• Will it reduce the achievement gap? If so, how?

• What unintended negative consequences have you discovered through pilot studies and what are you doing to mitigate those things?

• If our district or school adopts your gadget, how much money does your company and your employees and you stand to make?

• If we adopt your device, what will you do to restrict image advertisement and direct marketing of commercial products to our students?

• If we adopt your device, how can we be assured you won’t try to influence the content of our curriculum?

The Definitive Television Sports Habit Explanation

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Super Bowl edition. Full title: The Definitive Explanation of Why Many Grown Men Waste Inordinate Numbers of Hours Watching Much Younger Men Play Sports on Television.

Sexist built-in assumption? Guilty as charged. Granted, there are lots of sports-minded women sprinkled in among the men on the sofas of America, but the vast majority of viewers are of the male persuasion. If you’re a female sports television addict, bless you, and post a comment explaining whether my insights apply to you or not.

I probably shouldn’t assume to know why men waste inordinate numbers of hours watching much younger men play sports on television. All I can do is explain why I enjoy watching sports on television.

I grew up playing the sports I watch. I started playing golf at 5 or 6, about the same time I started dominating in tee ball. In Ohio, in elementary school, my friends and I played football and other sports (depending upon the season) after school every single day. The worse the weather, the better. Sometimes I’d want a take a late afternoon off and I’d beg my mom to tell my friends I wasn’t home. Knowing she was bluffing, they would walk right past her and ferret me out. In elementary school, I honed my lethal forehand, my silky smooth “J”, and my otherworldly chipping and putting. Later on, throw in some YMCA swim meets and water polo awesomeness. More recently, running, cycling, and triathlon amazingness.

The previous paragraph exposes a universal truth about men and sports—the older the athlete, the greater the selective perception. We always exaggerate our athletic excellence. I skipped over the time I got chewed out at dinner for heaving a golf club right as my dad was driving home from work; the time I wrapped and tackled the air when one-on-one with a running back who caught a screen pass right in front of me; the time some idiot age group swimmer jumped out of the pool, dried off, and threw his clothes on before I finished the same race.

I’m guilty of wasting inordinate numbers of hours watching much younger men play sports on television for two reasons. The first is nostalgia. More specifically because of positive associations with my childhood. After sitting through a final four-hour round of the Masters, the galpal’s disgust is palatable, but what she doesn’t realize is that I’m in a time capsule. I’m back at Louisville Kentucky’s Plantation Country Club (sure hope they’ve updated that name) nine-hole par three where I was known to chuck a club or two. I can smell the freshly cut grass. I’m back in Cypress California at Los Alamitos Country Club playing two balls by myself after parking golf carts and picking up thousands of range balls. I’m hitting greens and draining putts in the Southern California dusk. I’m fifteen again. I’m not wasting time, I’m reliving my youth.

The second reason is irrationality. More specifically I often fantasize about being in the same position as the athlete on the screen and coming through in the clutch. Ernie Els has a twenty foot putt with 18 inches of break. I’ve made that putt lots of times. Missed it far more of course, but I’ve made a fair share. As Ernie lines up his putt, I’m subconsciously thinking to myself, I could make that. Watching Super Bowl 45 I’ll engage in a similar thought process. A receiver will beat a defensive back and be all alone, but the ball will slip through his outstretched fingers. I’ll completely block out the fact that I run a 7.4 40 and could never, ever get in the same position, I’ll just say to myself, “Had it been me, I would’ve laid out and pulled it in.”

I remember mother dear driving me home from a little league practice once with a bespectacled, bookish, non-athletic teammate. Mid trip he grilled me about why on earth I dove for a ball during practice. Didn’t make any sense to him. Of course if you have to ask, you’ll never understand. Who cares that I was eight and playing baseball and now I’m forty-eight and watching football. Dammit, I would have made the Super Bowl catch. Sometimes a college or NBA player finds himself all alone just outside the three-point line. That’s happened to me several times—in my mind. Each time I nail it. I hold my follow throw while back pedaling to the cheers of the adoring Pauley Pavillon crowd.

Now you’ll understand that I’m not just putting off mowing the lawn, changing the oil in the car, and emptying the dishwasher, I’m reliving my youth and fantasizing about the catch, the long distance putt, the perfect passing shot on a hot, sun-drenched Australian Open hardcourt.

Can Individuals Learn to Be People Smart?

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Can beginning teachers learn to interact with their co-workers, students, and students’ families more successfully? Can they improve their interpersonal skills? Can they learn to listen, to empathize, to communicate more clearly, to use humor appropriately, to caringly discipline, and in the end, to competently direct student learning? Can individuals more generally learn to be “people smart”?

Yes, to a degree, I think.

My hesitation in part is a result of working with a teacher in training a few years ago. His test scores and content knowledge were off the charts. His Aspergers didn’t surface until he was in the classroom with thirty-five diverse teens who couldn’t care less about his book smarts. Unable to decipher half of what was going on in the classroom, he washed out of his student-teaching internship.

State teacher credential bureaucrats require passing scores on content exams, but prospective candidates interpersonal skills aren’t evaluated at all. Granted, evaluating them in a valid and reliable manner would be tough, but no one is even trying. Instead, we just assume everyone with the requisite book smarts has sufficient people smarts.

Once teacher candidates are in credential programs, what should teacher educators and their classroom mentors do to help them strengthen their interpersonal skills? What about MBA students? What about doctor residencies? What do business and medical faculty do to help their students develop leadership and bedside manner skills? Like state teacher credential bureaucrats, most teacher educators focus far too narrowly on content. The thinking being, “If they just know enough about their content, curriculum, and assessment, they’ll be fine.”

But that’s not the case. The thoughtful and effective application of content knowledge requires well developed interpersonal skills.

One powerful case-study I use in my teaching requires students to role play an angry student, a teacher, and an upset parent. I use it to emphasize the importance of active listening. Even more important, beginning teachers need to see their mentors model active listening; use humor and communicate clearly; discipline in a firm but caring manner; be friendly, but not friends.

I recently finished reading an amazing book that I recommend: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. In one especially moving passage, Mukherjee’s describes Thomas Lynch’s otherwordly touch with patients. He writes, “I watched him resuscitate. He emphasized process over outcome and transmitted astonishing amounts of information with a touch so slight that you might not even feel it.”

Mukherjee was fortunate to learn from Lynch. Teachers in training get assigned mentors by the schools where they intern. It’s a serious structural impediment to improved teaching, a mentoring as turn-taking lottery where too many interns are assigned veterans with iffy interpersonal skills.

What about you? Whatever you deem to be your interpersonal strengths, have they always been built-in or are they the result of two steps forward, one back learning processes?