One Size Fits None

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

A warm welcome to DCRainmaker readers who are pouring in as a result of Ray linking to my recent “Where’s the Romance?” post. My most read post of all time, by a considerable margin, is one titled “School Mission Statements”. Do a Google search for “school mission statements” and it’s the fourth link, but whose counting? Ray gets 6,000 hits a day, a little more than me. If yesterday’s record uptick in readership continues for very long, “Where’s the Romance?” may give “School Mission Statements” a run for its money.

Now back to regular programming.

Read an interesting swimming article recently that detailed the different mindset of sprinters. Even elite Olympic caliber sprinters don’t like training and get bored extremely quickly. (Was that the rare double adverb? Is that legal? Shouldn’t I know that?) The ability to adapt to differences and individualize one’s coaching, teaching, campaigning, and sales pitches often distinguishes swim coaches, teachers, politicians, and salespeople as particularly excellent.

In teaching it’s referred to as curriculum differentiation. Curriculum differentiation occurs when a teacher adjusts his/her lesson plan so that it meets the needs of all students.

Amazingly, nearly all of the car salespeople I’ve interacted with seem to be reading from the same script. None of them have successfully read me. If they had, they’d bypass the small talk about what I do for a living and my family which I can’t stand and focus exclusively on the car’s features (which they often are unable to do very well).

The high school coach that I help and I sometimes get frustrated with some girls that don’t practice very hard. They sleep-swim, stop to adjust caps and goggles, stretch their shoulders, go to the bathroom during main sets, and in some cases miss practice altogether. But now that I think about it, they tend to be the sprinters. Their natural tendencies and our workouts are misaligned. They’ll probably never embrace the process, or the long, sometimes monotonous and always tiring rhythms of distance training.

If I’m ever a head coach, I think I’ll design three different workouts—a sprint one, a distance one, and a distance-lite one. The sprint workout, which will emphasize intensity and variety, will last about 60% as long as the others. Instead of coasting for ninety minutes, they’ll go real hard for 50 minutes.

Problem Solving

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

In response to last week’s social science/wealth inequality posts, a comment averse reader sent me the exact kind of response I had hoped to generate when I started blogging. Let’s call her Private.

Private wrote:

Duh? Were you surprised by ANY of those stats? I was not. For me, the far, far, far bigger question concerns my personal responsibility, your responsibility and our corporate responsibility to address those numbers.

She continued:

My Tuesday Lunch Club is superb at identifying social trends and issues therein. It’s solution we struggle with. My Friday dinner friends frequently discuss the week’s news. Again, no useful, doable answers. Based on your variety of sources quoted, you, too, spend a fair amount of time gleaning news stories. It’s my hope that thinking people, such as yourself, spend equal time pondering and yes, even working on and discussing with others, solutions to the problems you identify so clearly. Let’s see some posts about that!!!

Three exclamation points demand a response.

I’m an educator; consequently, I believe consciousness raising is important in and of itself. Ideas matter because they shape our behaviors. But Private would most likely reply what good is awareness of social problems absent concrete actions to solve them? Put differently, quit intellectualizing, roll up your sleeves, and do something to create more equal opportunity.

I don’t have any special insights on problem solving probably because I’m too content with the ambiguity engendered by good questions.

Nonetheless, here is an overarching belief: social problem solving takes many forms all of which should be encouraged equally. Among the forms, 1) practicing selfless, socially conscious, caring forms of parenting; 2) modeling socially redeeming principles such as humility, kindness, and empathy in one’s day-to-day interactions; 3) practicing socially redeeming principles in one’s purchases and lifestyle choices; 4) choosing work that explicitly improves others’ qualities of life; and 5) giving money and time to causes and groups that have proven track records of helping people locally, nationally, and/or internationally.

What would you add?

The GalPal is way more inspiring on this topic than I’ll ever be. While I’m reading, thinking, questioning, debating, and writing, she’s often organizing a team of friends to make dinner for a hundred homeless men and women at the Salvation Army.

What’s Your SSQ?

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Social science quotient.

Probably not as high as it could or should be because we’re shaped by Ron and Don.

The “Ron and Don Show” is a popular Seattle-area radio program on 97.3 FM that I occasionally tune into during NPR fundraising campaigns and sports talk commercial breaks.

Their success isn’t accidental, it rests on great names, radio voices, personalities, energy, chemistry, and pacing, all topped off with a laser-like programming focus on whichever individual is deemed most interesting each particular day: the barefoot bandit from Whidbey Island, the Bellevue City Council person who got mauled by a black bear, the police officer charged with deadly force, the college student that committed suicide.

Ron and Don hammer away at each individual’s story for hours on end and we eat it up because we always have been and always will be suckers for detailed stories well told. Even better when the stories are somewhat sordid and make us feel better about our lives.

But we’re out of touch with the effect of the Ron and Don-like media shining its spotlight so continuously and narrowly on individuals.

The cumulative effect is we’re utterly unable to think sociologically about pervasive patterns and themes among groups. Put differently, we can’t take stories of individuals and extrapolate about what they do and don’t represent in terms of larger social scientific trends.

We’re intellectual weaklings.

Here’s two non-Ron and Don stories from last week that I offer as a social science quotient quiz. Determine your “SSQ” by using a scale of 1 to 10. Assign yourself a “1” if these findings completely surprise you, a “10” if you were already familiar with the studies and the findings, and “2’s” through “9’s” for points in between.

Story one is available here. An excerpt:

Harvard and Duke Biz school professors Michael Norton and Dan Ariely asked over 5,000 Americans about US wealth distribution and how it should look if things could be changed.

“Respondents vastly underestimated the actual level of wealth inequality in the United States, believing that the wealthiest quintile (20 percent) held about 59 percent of the wealth when the actual number is closer to 84 percent.” Studies show current US wealth inequality is near record highs, with the top one percent of Americans estimated to hold around 50 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Story two—available at Slate.com.

The U.S. imprisons more people in absolute numbers and per capita than any other country on earth. With 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. hosts upward of 20 percent of its prisoners. The country’s incarceration rate has roughly quintupled since the early 1970s. In 1980, one in 10 black high-school dropouts were incarcerated. By 2008, that number was 37 percent.

For extra credit, submit your score via the comment section.

If our scores are low, as I presume they will be, it’s not Ron’s and Don’s fault. They don’t have a dog in the “individual versus collective thinking” fight I’m outlining. All they care about is that more listeners tune into them than NPR and sports talk. And their winning formula elevates the individual at the expense of social scientific understanding because we tune in and don’t demand any more from them.

The Ultimate Power Hobby

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Who knew? Apparently, college teaching is the ultimate power hobby for deep pocketed bankers, attorneys, and business executives.

Make me laugh. Cohen isn’t teaching, he’s presenting. Big difference.

I present sometimes. Fly in, fly out. Lecture hit and run. When you have one at bat, it’s relatively easy to hit a double or triple. Cohen takes the train from New York City to Philly and a club car back home four-five hours later. Half a day a week. Nothing wrong with presenting, just don’t conflate it with teaching which is far more challenging.

Presenting is to hook up as teaching is to marriage.

Mike, my ace colleague, conferenced one-on-one with about half of his writing seminar students in his office one day earlier this week. I couldn’t help but overhear the specific, caring, insightful feedback he provided each person. He listened as each explained “what they meant” and he skillfully lightened things based upon the hearty laughing emanating from his open office. Taught his ass off.

I taught all last Sunday (sorry God, help me not procrastinate). Read twelve first year students papers, made numerous comments on each and then followed up with concluding paragraphs in which I explained each person’s clearest strengths and most important next steps.

When Mike and I work together each year to figure out how best to tweak our teacher education courses based upon Washington State’s continually shifting standards, we’re teaching. When we revise our courses based upon student evaluations, we’re teaching. When we serve on university committees, we’re taking responsibility for faculty governance, and contributing to the institution’s greater good. When we advise students, and administer programs, and write accreditation reports, we’re in essence teaching. We continually swap teaching stories and ideas about how to strengthen our craft.

If you were to visit our classrooms you’d witness just one of many different teaching activities that we engage in day in and day out, semester after semester, year after year, decade after decade.

Sorry Counselor if I can’t welcome you into the community of teachers who work tirelessly, selflessly, and up close with students on their behalf. But by all means, enjoy your presenting gig.

Why the Rich Don’t Feel Rich

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

The title of a great article by Laura Rowley on Yahoo’s Personal Finance page last week.

In short, Todd Henderson, a U of Chicago lawyer who makes $300k/year with his doctor wife, got hammered by his blog readers for arguing that he wasn’t rich and couldn’t afford a tax increase.

The blowback took two forms. First, people understandably took him to task for his questionable logic. After reading his post, I was stunned by his lack of perspective. I guess he doesn’t know many regular folk. And I guess he didn’t read the recent WSJ article that detailed how many poor people go shopping at Wal-mart at 11:50p.m. the last day of every month so that by the time they hit the check-out registers with their baby formula, diapers, and food, their new food stamps have kicked in. Or I guess he hasn’t traveled in a developing country.

Second, people questioned his sanity for daring to write the post, intimating that he would have been better off not writing it at all. This is where I disagree. While I have no sympathy for his argument, I admire his courage for honestly stating his views. As a blogger, and person I suppose, I probably self-censor myself way too much. Henderson didn’t get hung up on “what might other people think”, instead he chose authenticity. Questionable arguments honestly communicated deepen our civil discourse and strengthen our democracy.

The Intrapersonal Conundrum

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Recently I advocated accepting and adapting to people’s irritating behaviors rather than trying to change them. But what about our own irritating behaviors? How do we know when to accept them versus when to commit to trying to change them?

Of course, not everyone is introspective; as a result, some people lack self understanding. Ask them which of their behaviors most irritate the people they’re in relationships with and they draw a complete blank. I’m probably too reflective for my own good, regularly engaging in self-assessment. One limitation I’m keenly aware of is an aversion to personal networking. Closely related to that, I suck at self-promotion.

Among other ripple effects, this blog has a small readership and my professional successes exist mostly within my classrooms. A colleague of mine is the opposite, a brilliant networker and self-promoter. A mediocre teacher, she’s developed a national reputation as an expert in a very specific sub-category of education. She travels all the time and speaks to large groups for lots of money.

Am I envious? Not on a personal level, but maybe professionally. I would enjoy more consulting opportunities than the one or two a year I average. But not enough to change. I understand that there’s a perfect correlation between my lack of networking initiative and the number of consulting gigs I get.

Even though social and professional networking skills are more important than ever, I’m perfectly content not being a networker or self promoter. In fact, I don’t want to get better at networking or self promotion. I’m an educator, so I’m not anti-social, I just have no patience for the phoniness on which so much of it seems to rest. “Here’s my card.” “Who cares.”

Another limitation I’m keenly aware of is a deeply rooted counter-cultural propensity for saving. My dad grew up during the Depression, and it left an indelible mark on him, and so I blame his hyper-frugal modeling. But unlike my aversion to personal networking, this is a limitation I want to change.

Here’s one of millions of examples of my often irrational economic behavior. One day in Chengdu, China I argued at length with a Carrefour manager about socks I purchased. Despite being on sale, the socks were rung up at the regular price. Our language differences, the store’s employee hierarchy, and my stubbornness made for a combustible, and in hindsight, hilarious combination.

In this area of my life, I want to act more rationally, so I’m working on loosening up.

What explains my markedly different way of thinking about these two personal limitations?

I’m not sure.

I Wonder

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Is there such a thing as “intrinsic motivation”? Apart from built-in biological compulsions to eat, sleep, reproduce? I’ve wondered this for a while and asked myself the question most recently as a result of excerpts from Robert Samuelson’s September 6th Washington Post article titled “School reform’s meager results“.

A few excerpts:

“Reforms” have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are (in business lingo) “scalable” — easily transferable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains.”

“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a “good” college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure.”

From that comprehensive list, only curiosity strikes me as something we would likely agree is mostly intrinsic in nature. We’re not very introspective when we talk about our intrinsic motivations. If we were more reflective I suspect we’d find our motivations are at best intrinsic/extrinsic amalgamations.

When I listen to people explain why they think they did well in school, they typically say, “I didn’t want to let my father/parents/grandmother down.” They weren’t naturally gifted. There were adults in their lives they didn’t want to disappoint.

Given that, maybe the key to education reform is strengthening families in ways that will lead to heightened parental expectations to the point where students are extrinsically motivated by them to work harder and achieve more.

Make Parents Accountable for Children’s Fitness

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

More positive impacts of aerobic activity. Wish I had a dollar for everyone of these types of articles I’ve read recently. Key paragraph from a NYT blog titled “Can Exercise Makes Kids Smarter?” “. . . the researchers, in their separate reports, noted that the hippocampus and basal ganglia regions interact in the human brain, structurally and functionally. Together they allow some of the most intricate thinking. If exercise is responsible for increasing the size of these regions and strengthening the connection between them, being fit may ‘enhance neurocognition’ in young people.”

Later in the post the blogger references research that claims 25% of school-aged children are sedentary. The conventional conclusion, recommit to physical education in schools. Before doing that, it’s important to ask who should be accountable for K-12 students’ relative fitness, their teachers or their parents and guardians? Recommitting to physical education in schools assumes it’s their teachers, but I assume two things: 1) public school teachers are being held accountable for far too many non-acacademic social/economic/health-related problems and 2) parents or guardians should be held most accountable for their children’s relative fitness.

Consequently, I propose doing away with traditional team-sport based physical education in elementary, middle, and high schools and in its place breaking up the school day with two or three ten minute-long calisthenic/walking/yoga breaks. In addition, I propose mothballing every school bus in urban and suburban districts and banning parents and guardians from driving their able-bodied students to school. Similarly, I propose banning urban and suburban high school students from driving to school. Under my proposal, every able-bodied urban/suburban K-12 student will have to walk or ride bicycles to school every day.

The protests will take the following forms: 1) it’s too far and will take too long; 2) at times throughout the year it’s far too cold, dark, and wet; 3) the neighborhoods we’d have to walk/bike through aren’t safe enough; 4) it violates freedom of choice.

In order. 1) Move closer or enroll your child in your neighborhood school. My tenth grade daughter lives 1.75 miles from her locker. Most people can walk 16 minutes/mile, so in her case it would take approximately 28 minutes to walk to school or about 15 more than in a car given the before school traffic jam on the streets and in the school lot. She’d have to go to bed 15-20 minutes early which is tragic because she’d probably miss “SuperNanny.” So it’s an extra 30 minutes a day, but not really since I’ve eliminated physical education. In actuality, she saves 25 minutes a day. If she rides her bike at a comfortable 12mph, she’d reduce her commute to about the same time as a car. I can hear her, “What about my gargantuan textbooks and violin?” “Get an iPad and I didn’t hear you practice last night.”

2) Inevitably, parents/guardians would have to walk with young children which would create community and also contribute to their fitness. And a little physical toughness would be a very good thing.

3) This might be just the impetus to make them safer. It’s illogical for some to claim we’re the “greatest country in the world” if some of our neighborhoods aren’t safe enough to walk through. Again, groups of parents taking turns escorting children in the mornings and afternoons would most likely have a very positive ripple effect on the safety of dicey neighborhoods.

4) True, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Consider not just the health benefits, but the economic ones. Imagine what school districts could do with their transportation savings. Reduce property taxes, offer more extracurriculars, reduce class size, update their technology tools.

To make my proposal more pragmatic I propose letting any student (and all bass players) that can verify that they’re getting at least 30 minutes of cardiovascular activity a day (through after school sports or independent play that a coach or non-parent/guardian adult can vouch for) opt out. Ideally, this will lead to swimming, cross country, and other teams being overwhelmed by new students turning out, which in turn will require districts to devote some of their transportation savings to these activities. It may also provide coaching opportunities for the displaced physical education teachers, the only real losers in my proposal.

Or parents and other citizens can keep blaming teachers for problems mostly outside of their control.

Three Changes

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Life in the U.S. will be considerably different in twenty years as result of three changes that few people think about much at all. While we watch “reality television,” obsess about celebrities, follow sports as if which team wins really matters in the grand scheme of things, and shop til’ we drop, these changes will remake the United States in profound, yet unknowable ways.

1) Young women are running circles around young men in secondary schools and in colleges and universities. I’ve written about the implications of this before.

2) The world’s economic power is shifting to the east.

3) The earth is warming much more rapidly than anticipated.

What specific, symbolic, yet tangible changes might wake people up to these fundamental shifts? This example is far too subtle, but still worth noting. With respect to the first change, last year, for the first time ever, women earned more Ph.Ds than men. Another more dramatic example I anticipate happening sometime in the next twenty years, the first female President of the United States.

The second change isn’t as worrisome to me as to citizens whose identities are primarily national in orientation. I reject the zero sum assumptions of the global economic race metaphor. I celebrate the fact that hundreds of million impoverished, rural Chinese and east-Indians, fellow human beings, are experiencing markedly improved qualities of life.

Number three is the most vexing because reducing C02 emissions will require international cooperation on a level never before demonstrated by the world’s governments.

Like waking from a collective slumber, twenty years from now many will wonder when and how women became so much more influential than men, when and how three billion Chinese and east-Indians became so much more influential than 400-500 million Americans, and when and how we made such a mess of the natural world.

Pressing Pause

Small steps toward thriving families, schools, and communities

Category Archives: Education

One Size Fits None

The Ultimate Power Hobby

I Wonder