tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31769017875208864262024-03-09T18:46:36.924-08:00Speaking of EducationWhat's middle school like...after coming back from remote learning?
Well let me tell you...it's different.
(If you were reading this with standardized test eyes, that's the thesis statement. Just didn't want you to miss it.)
The rest of the blog will explain "different."
Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.comBlogger268125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-58970067697350499992021-12-02T17:56:00.001-08:002021-12-02T17:56:15.286-08:00Starting a new blog<p>I'm going to post specifically about English teacher-y things, by which I mean my own responses to readings, thoughts on writing, and more.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://gentlemanenglishteacher.blogspot.com/">Give it a try</a>, please, and let me know what you think.</p>Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-19012101603004226912020-06-11T13:58:00.003-07:002021-10-24T06:08:25.186-07:00Some thoughts on race, part 4--Tokenism<font size="4">"Some of my best friends are [fill in with whatever group you're trying to show that you don't dislike, distrust, disdain, etc.]." At the moment--and probably the original use, it's "black." </font><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">People who used that line thought they were proving their unbiased, not racist, not prejudicial attitudes. To most people in the "friend" group, it demonstrated precisely the opposite. #1, no, they aren't. The person saying it didn't have best friends in the other group. #2, if they did, it wasn't <i>some</i>, because it wouldn't take many black friends before you'd hear a bit of the frustrations and concerns of black Americans. Or, #3, they weren't really <i>best</i> friends because the black person kept those difficult concerns private...in the expectation that airing the concerns would just earn rejection or dismissal.</font></div><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">In any case, this is a brand of tokenism--in this instance, engaging or focusing on a small number of people from a particular group as a way of saying you've engaged that group. </font></div><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">Tokenism is simplistic. It undermines the complex realities of life. People are not what their token looks like, and the token isn't even all that you wish the token to be.</font></div><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">Tokenism is unkind. It reduces people to caricatures, and puts an awful burden on the token individual.</font></div><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">Tokenism is lazy. It allows you to forgo the work of finding out about people.</font></div><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">Facebook is rife with tokenism right now. Opponents of Black Lives Matter, or people who are angry that protests have turned ugly and violent (and tend to blame all protesters for that), or people who otherwise disagree with the claims of the protesters, and so on, are posting the material from this or that black conservative and saying, 'see, this black person is against Black Lives Matter (or, the protests, or something else about the myriad claims regarding the issues).'</font></div><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">Some people will even say, "and this person is NO token," which immediately instigates the anxiety that that is precisely what the person is. Why else would you bother to point it out?</font></div><div><font size="4"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4">Former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice has been offered in this fashion. She has various conservative bona fides, she's also black and so her name got dropped in what I've here called the Token way.</font></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">She wrote <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/04/condoleezza-rice-moment-confront-race-america/?fbclid=IwAR1As9NcX5KRrWGxJ9sq-aUEcinP7aZlEQNBV0avjyFoe-AzG_9-hWF5jDc" target="_blank">an op-ed</a> in the <i>Washington Post</i>. In it, she was measured and circumspect with her language, but declared "[George] Floyd’s horrific death should be enough to finally move us to positive action." She goes on to explain that "systemic change is necessary to make our institutions more just." </span></div><div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times" size="4">Condoleeza Rice definitely has the conservative credentials--she served the country faithfully under both President Bushes. But she's got black American bona fides as well. She bootstrapped her way to success...out of Jim Crow Birmingham, AL, no less. And she's endured racism is large and small ways. </font></div><div dir="auto"><font face="times" size="4"><br /></font></div><div dir="auto"><font face="times" size="4">So, what to do? </font><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Should I claim the prize for "the best NOT a token black commentator"? Or should I say, try not to use tokenism in support of your claims?
</span></div><div dir="auto"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><font face="times" size="4">I'm going with the second one.</font></div><div dir="auto"><font face="times" size="4"><br /></font></div></div></div>Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-40164340150843891602020-06-11T13:22:00.001-07:002020-06-11T13:22:30.998-07:00Some thoughts on race, part 3--A Colorblindness Redux<div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Colorblindness, part 2.</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/black-girls-innocence-georgetown/532050/?fbclid=IwAR0G9sJgJ_c8PlYaVroCKwgYxL2g0-P_EuVGYtGYeSH_K9v1o-BJybk6Ro8" target="_blank">This article</a> is a few years old, but it reports a "study finds that adults view [African American girls] as less child-like and less in need of protection than their white peers."</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Similar had already been found about black boys. An earlier <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/cops-tend-to-see-black-kids-as-less-innocent-than-white-kids/383247/" target="_blank">Atlantic article</a> says, "Asked to identify the age of a young boy that committed a felony, participants in a study routinely overestimated the age of black children far more than they did white kids...Cops did it, too."</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">I'm not sure I trust claims of colorblindness.</font></div></div>Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-59570679589816856842020-06-11T10:08:00.001-07:002020-06-11T10:09:29.246-07:00Some thoughts on race, part 2--Is colorblindness a good idea?<div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px;"><div class="ecm0bbzt hv4rvrfc ihqw7lf3 dati1w0a" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id="jsc_c_fp" style="padding: 4px 16px 16px;"><div class="j83agx80 cbu4d94t ew0dbk1b irj2b8pg" style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; margin-bottom: -5px; margin-top: -5px;"><div class="qzhwtbm6 knvmm38d" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px;"><span class="oi732d6d ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 qv66sw1b c1et5uql a8c37x1j muag1w35 enqfppq2 jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; color: var(--primary-text); display: block; font-size: 0.9375rem; line-height: 1.3333; margin-bottom: -4px; margin-top: -4px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">I've seen a lot musing on being colorblind, racially. I don't think that's a thing, as they say. Imagine a photo with one lone (pick any "color") individual, a male in this case. Nobody says, "the guy on the left, next to the guy with the red shirt, behind the guy with his eyes closed." Everybody says, "the (whatever the lone color is) guy." And we all get it, we all understand immediately. Innocuous, you say, and maybe it is. But if you're not colorblind there, how do you know you're colorblind when it's not so innocuous? </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Go watch the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkpUyB2xgTM&fbclid=IwAR39OnnPMyyDaq6S9Q1Q8B6G9nz4OmW5_YalVK5L1jG_S3_8GyNKEFz_KnQ" target="_blank">doll experiment</a> for a demonstration of how color-seeing people are.</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Furthermore, to claim colorblindness is to miss things. Not only richness, but also some important context. Take "playing the dozens." (Google it, you'll find countless sites discussing it.) A racially colorblind person would miss that this is a uniquely African-American activity. Again, might seem innocuous enough. So black men one-up each other with cutting insults--usually about each other's mothers...so what? </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Dig a little further, and you find that the roots of this game go back at least to slave days (and possibly to the W. African societies from which America's African slaves were taken). Then consider that most historians agree the game served several purposes of social organization and engagement.</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">For one, some historians think that social orderings and conflict resolution among the slaves were partly handled by playing the dozens. Slaves could not fight among themselves--the penalties were heavy, so verbal combat stood in for fighting. </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Moreover, historians all agree that field slaves certainly were subordinate to house slaves, so verbal "attacks" were the only thing available for field slaves to express anger and address conflicts. Since it's not hard to imagine the white master's "preference" for the house slave did not extend to allowing physical attack on the field hand (that risks damaging the owner's capital investment, after all) an interesting social order and arrangement among the slaves likely arose--a world with some internal autonomy, so long as a general order and productivity were maintained. Sure, the house slave was higher in the white master's pecking order, but all the slaves knew this or that particular field hand had "won" where it really mattered, by throwing shade on the house slave when playing the dozens. (Yes, I'm using my sociological imagination, in conjunction with the histories, memoirs, etc., I've read or seen.)</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Some historians even wonder if parents taught their children a kind of self-control with the dozens. You can't get mad, you can't fight back, but you can turn it into a dozens rhyme (some say that dozens insults should be rhyming, and some even point to this being a precursor to rap).</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">So, an old verbal combat game that has lasted down to today. It's uniquely African-American in style and intent. And it has some important sociological roots. </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">I also wonder about its "consequences" today. I'm not saying I like it, but maybe this helps explain the anger and frustration in rap. Other avenues of expression and pursuit of redress feel somewhat blocked--and certainly comparatively less available than for the white people around them, so you turn to something, music, where you can express those things. </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">And a personal example....I remember being a 17-year-old white suburban kid on an all-star football team drawn from around the area. The team included 3 players from an "inner-city" black school. Whenever we had a break from practice, they'd sit together playing variations on the dozens. I remember them laughing and laughing, and I also remember a creeping anxiety that was basically rooted in wondering if they were laughing at me for some reason. </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">It's not hard to imagine how, if I'd had a position of power over them, and I'd thought they were indeed laughing at me, I could find them "disrespectful." They were just playing the dozens...it had nothing to do with me. </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">This is NOT to say that disrespect doesn't ever happen. It does. </font></div><div dir="auto"><font face="times"> I'd say, however, that the cumulative total of disrespect in American history is much greater white toward black than black toward white.</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">The point is that I don't think colorblindness--racially--is real. And to claim colorblindness is to miss important stuff.</font></div></div></span></div></div></div></div><div class="l9j0dhe7" style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; position: relative;"><div class="l9j0dhe7" style="font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="b3i9ofy5 l9j0dhe7" style="background-color: var(--comment-background); font-family: inherit; position: relative;"></div></div></div></div>Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-41281591838091727162020-06-11T09:54:00.000-07:002020-06-11T09:54:28.429-07:00Some thoughts on race, part 1--What does Black Lives Matter mean?<div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">I have a book called<i> How to be a Gentleman</i>. One rule says that unless he's an English teacher, a gentleman does not correct another's grammar.</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Well, I AM an English teacher, and I want to observe (not correct, per se) something about grammar.</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">In the phrase Black Lives Matter, Black is an adjective modifying the noun Lives. Matter is the verb. What about the Lives that are Black? They Matter.</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">But grammar doesn't necessarily convey the variety of emphases we might want or experience. My son runs the drama club at my school, and he's always telling the young actors to find the word that they want to emphasize--to really hit--in a line. </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">So, do you emphasize the noun, as if to say that the particular thing (really, person/people) matters? (Go ahead, say it with overemphasis--Black LIVES Matter.) </font><img border="0" data-original-height="55" data-original-width="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7aI-ndq_CTrbhEoQBEorAY64tXxEP_-gWwwggqL2xE5d-NISCrkuLlVjUsy4B5CjycAQ41vT7ZjLmfsss5ZHbSM2f9yN40MhhSYkgRyL-jAjwck8_7fkPaZcqEdGyGVgpskUlij_XwDk3/" style="text-align: right;" /></div><div dir="auto"><font face="times">Almost as if to declare that lives matter...because they haven't as much as they ought. And since you've qualified the thing with black, it's as if to say that those particular lives matter...in ways they might not have previously. Or, do you emphasize the noun lives to say that the thing that matters is the lives? As in, other black things (homes, jobs, cars) matter differently from lives....</font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><img border="0" data-original-height="68" data-original-width="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4TQvS_POGVzwNrJpamqrwLH2XciCFwNVXpFN3Ipb4UcLrRnQFzLJSWoNia_4RxQLSgxi4fa-ca_2394LPAXRbHDinBm9creHm9MEQFmOhpZ5nVRzs0nz2I_3bLTjwNPgzWhxRUQ8b8YFl/" /><font face="times">Or do you emphasize the verb (Black Lives MATTER), as if to point out so</font><span style="font-family: times;">mething that Black Lives "do" that you--or others--hadn't noticed they do? Or t</span><span style="font-family: times;">o emphasize tha</span><span style="font-family: times;">t they do that? You know, like, Black Lives Eat, Black Lives Sleep, and Black Lives Matter. Nobody needs reminding that Black Lives Eat, but perhaps the creators of the phrase mean to point out that people may need reminding that besides eating, black lives also matter.</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><font face="times">Or do you emphasize the adjective (BLACK Lives Matter), as if to say that a particular kind of life matters?</font><img border="0" data-original-height="83" data-original-width="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs1wT8mTm3enU8IEqRGvnfMEpNpeiNclW0o_O87gFmxn1Zv8-_qfmpgtA1QMwDMwRue0WhuzTqS05ZODkaJt6SmhqT57uHzgLoqee4n_TUbeekIqxbJQCdjCUTVVAat1kCYItRJu2CdXmJ/" style="text-align: left;" /></div><div dir="auto"><font face="times">And, perhaps, that kind of life matters more than other kinds that are not that? The ALL Lives Matter retort apparently answers that last question YES, and is upset about that. Thus, the rejoi</font><span style="font-family: times;">nder is that ALL lives, not just Black lives, matter...to remind us of the status of "mattering" is for everybody.</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">But it's not necessarily as simple as that. One could counter that, yes, I'm asserting that specifically black lives matter because to this point they haven't mattered AS MUCH as other lives. I'm asserting that black lives also belong in ALL, where, to this point, they haven't been. </font></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">So the different grammatical and expressive emphases load the phrase with different meanings. And your own verbal response to the phrase implies both the meaning you took from the first phrase, and your own reply to THAT meaning. You do elevate one meaning above the others...we all do that. It can't mean everything to you all at once. It might mean everything across a group of people, because each person t</font><span style="font-family: times;">akes one of the many alternate views, but it won't mean everything equally all at once to an individual.</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">I suggest that if you want to quickly and emphatically retort that ALL lives matter, you are operating with the "black lives mattering specially, and perhaps greater than non-black lives" definition. As we've seen, that's not the only meaning available. So to assert that'</font><font face="times">s the "real" meaning is to privil</font><span style="font-family: times;">ege (remember, I think that word is better as a verb) your view against other views of the meaning. I'm confident to say you're privileging your preferred meaning, because I've read, seen and heard plenty of black Americans point out that they are relying on something more like the "black lives matter...though to this point they haven't as much as others" definition,</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="139" data-original-width="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipcnI-0Zp2EIxO4B-Ib0R28bmNz720v6gJH9tSSlQ-zaHkN3CyXdqO3NtTbUCeFR6zkGGA03oq3eQAh_BuaqJ_EZiMSomeDOEXCONDppRrDx9pPbTSRRsjlA84N6Z75XDdvirCc1Fz2o9c/" /> <img border="0" data-original-height="86" data-original-width="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZqDu0B2zuFV8-Z3RvTX71CrrrduL7BDzXJ4gwLQ04FwcUQkzGS1oas_H3YENwL5fiDZRhUhtOTGX8jMTj4F1Yfr6GSxBajnMXSudkEurOmt3Fsrfb_u2K51NLzFiJBvGqGpQw4fuaYDyo/" style="text-align: left;" /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times;">to which the rejoinder of ALL lives matter really doesn't make sense.</span></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><font face="times">It seems to me that if the phrase were "The lives of black people really matter more than they have to this point," we wouldn't be as confused. There'd be more definitional clarity, and there'd never have been a movement...nobody'd march in a protest under the banner of such a clunky slogan.</font></div></div>Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-82984750149149639742020-03-23T15:48:00.002-07:002020-03-23T15:48:51.030-07:00School Closure!I should have been recording my patterns, thoughts, attitudes, etc., from Day 1, but...well, I didn't.<br />
<br />
But this morning--Day 6, for my district--I saw some comments on an article about schools that made me want to do a time diary of my day.<br />
<br />
Herewith, then, <b>Day 6 of the COVID-19 School Closure</b><br />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Didn’t realize the smart phone’s sound was still on, so awakened at 4 AM by notification of an email received, on my school email, since I’ve loaded that as my only email login on my phone.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That way, any work related email (and work only) gets to me immediately.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In this case, it’s one of the dozen or so daily reminders of all the different online learning opportunities out there. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Can’t fall back asleep, so I arise…to work on the online opportunity I’ve already got, namely, the one I’ve been creating for the last few years, and am now adjusting for the sake of not having in-person time with students for discussion, explanation, support, etc.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Double check the parent-accessible web page where I’ve summarized the day’s work I’ve posted for their students on Google Classroom.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Since parents only get emailed summaries of what’s on the Classroom site, I post what material (documents, links, etc.) I can on the publicly accessible web site. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Check to see if students have responded to any of the recent work posted on Classroom.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Respond and give feedback to any posted work.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Post a Classroom reminder to students that at 9 AM we’ll experiment with a live online interactive activity (Quizlet Live) covering our recent readings.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Double check the Quizlet flashcard set.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Collect, prepare and load some extra material for tomorrow’s daily work in the special School Closure Activities assortment. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pore over the calendar in consideration of the timeline for our on-going curriculum work (reading and working with Red Scarf Girl).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Upload the next set of work in the sequence.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Begin creating a quiz over the book.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ideally, this quiz will show whether students read the book, and whether they’re ready for me to give them the culmination work. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And it’s 5:30 AM now.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(That was about 75 minutes)</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">6:55</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Upload web sites and instructions for students to write Haiku or Diamante poems about the school closure.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Our district is focusing on Social Emotional Learning this year.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That means we’re trying to be mindful to remember that each student has a particular social and emotional makeup which affects their learning process, and on which they imprint their learning.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And we’re encouraging and modeling social emotional self-awareness and self-discipline, so students can practice those skills, too. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The school closure adds some layers of difficulty in all this.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Students are going to have different social and emotional responses to the closure, they’re going to have issues arise that would have been different had they been in school, and we are not face to face with them each day, so we face limitations in what we can do. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A poem about school closure isn’t much…but I’m trying.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(about 25 minutes)</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">8:05</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Collect, organize, and load material for bonus School Closure Activities for Tuesday and Wednesday.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Update parent-accessible web site.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Score a few responses to a short answer question on a reading quiz from the last reading set.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(about 20 minutes)</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">8:55</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Begin online quiz game, about Red Scarf Girl material.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A lot of posting—to the Google Classroom site—of codes, instructions, updates, etc., in order to play the game.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It works well, though.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>About 45 minutes of playing.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(about 50 minutes)</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">10:15</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Google keeps telling me that it won’t go to certain Google pages (like my Classroom) because it is getting verification messages back (when it tries to communicate with my computer) that someone might be attacking me at the moment, trying to steal access somehow.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So I wait, and logoff, shut down, etc.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">10:55</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back on!</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Review and respond to student work in School Closure Activities set.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Collect student-generated quiz questions for Red Scarf Girl, begin creating quiz.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Start creating new Quizlet set for another round of Quizlet Live later this week.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(about 35 minutes)</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">11:30</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lunch and some non-school business.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1:30</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Respond to student and parent emails.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Review student work submitted through Google Classroom.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Review and score NewsELA work.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(about 45 minutes)</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So far today, a few minutes more than 4 hours. I still need to record and load a short video, check on student work done this evening, and double check on the uploads for tomorrow. But I don't want to do anymore work on this diary today.</span></span></div>
Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-44453145344907269202018-03-14T10:52:00.000-07:002018-03-14T10:52:41.812-07:00Accidental Weapon Discharges in SchoolsMost of these are teacher or officer guns. My point...arming more people in schools will also raise the incidence of accidental discharges, which will eventually kill someone, including a student. So don't forgot to add this prospect to the list of possible outcomes, along with those hopes that armed teachers will stop mass shootings.<br />
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<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-77601803701756565622017-06-29T15:44:00.000-07:002017-06-29T15:44:22.889-07:00CV<br />
My curriculum vitae, for the post to Superintendent Reykdal.<div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Andrew K. Milton, Ph.D.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Education</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Teacher Certification, 2007, Pacific Lutheran University</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ph.D., 1998, Political Science, University of Oregon</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dissertation: “Institutional Change and Continuity in Post-communist East Central Europe: Why are the media still dependent?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">M.A., 1995, International Affairs, California State University, Sacramento</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Thesis: “News Media Reform in Post-communist Eastern Europe”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A.B., 1989, Political Science; Economics, University of California, Davis</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">II.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Academic Experience</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Visiting Assistant Professor/Adjunct Instructor</i>: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pierce College, Fall 2015-Present </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Troy University, International Relations (Masters program), 2003-2015</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">University of Washington, Tacoma, Various terms, 2003 & 2012</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Tacoma Community College, Political Science, Various terms 2005 & 2006</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">University of Puget Sound, Politics and Government (Full Time), 1998-1999, 2002-2005 </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Central Texas (Community) College, Ft. Lewis (WA) Branch Campus, various terms, 2002-2005 </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pacific Lutheran University (Full Time), Political Science, 2000-2002.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Northern Arizona University (Full Time), Political Science, 1999-2000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Middle School Instructor:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pioneer Middle School, Steilacoom/DuPont, WA (2006-Present)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Language Arts Teacher, August 2006-Present</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Social Studies Teacher, August 2010-June 2011</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Develop and teach 8th grade classes (125 students, daily), serve on district-wide teacher evaluation committee (2011-2013), serve on school leadership team (various times, 5 years), serve as English Department leader (3 years), coach sports (1 year).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">III.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Publications</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Books</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The Normal Accident Theory of Education: Why reform and regulation won’t fix schools</i>, Rowman & Littlefield, (Lanham, MD), 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Uncivil Societies: Human Rights and Democratic Transitions in Eastern Europe and Latin America</i>, Rachel A. May and Andrew K. Milton (eds.), Lexington Books, (Lanham, MD), 2005.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The Rational Politician: Exploiting the Media in New Democracies</i>, Ashgate Publishing, (Aldershot, UK; Brookfield, VT), 2000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Refereed Journal Articles</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“The Conservative Peace: An Institutional Explanation of Post-Cold War Stability,” <i>International Politics</i> vol. 39, no. 3 (September 2002), 293-310. (Co-authored with Patrick H. O’Neil.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Bound, but not Gagged: Media dependence and institutional opportunities in post-communist East Central European transitions,” <i>Comparative Political Studies</i> vol. 34, no. 5 (June 2001), 493-526.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“International Peace: Is it Liberal or Conservative? An Institutional Explanation,” <i>International Politics</i> vol. 37, no. 2 (June 2000), 121-142. (Co-authored with Patrick H. O’Neil)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“News Media Reform in Eastern Europe: A Cross-National Comparison<i>,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics</i>, vol. 12, no. 4 (December 1996), 7-23.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Book Chapters</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Civil Society and Democratic Transitions” in <i>Uncivil Societies: Human Rights and Democratic Transitions in Eastern Europe and Latin America</i>, Rachel A. May and Andrew K. Milton (eds.), Lexington Books (Lanham, MD), 2005.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“News Media Reform in Eastern Europe: A Cross-National Comparison,” in <i>Post-Communism and the Media in Eastern Europe</i>, Patrick O’Neil (ed.), Frank Cass Publishers, London, 1997. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Book Reviews</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Review of <i>The Romanian Mass Media and Cultural Development</i>, by David Berry, in <i>Slavic Review</i>, vol. 64, no. 2 (Summer 2005) 423-424. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Review of <i>Baltic Media in Transition</i>, Peeter Vihalemm (ed.), in <i>Slavic Review</i>, vol. 62, no. 2 (Fall 2003) 378-379.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Review of <i>Framing Democracy: Civil society and civic movements in Eastern Europe</i>, by John K. Glenn, III, in <i>Canadian and American Slavic Studies, </i>Vol. 37, no. 4, (Winter 2003), 465-467.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Review of <i>Temptations of a Superpower</i>, by Ronald Steel, at H-Teachpol, website sponsored by Michigan State University and the National Endowment for the Humanities. http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/book_reviews/1997/Milton_A._K._3_97.htm</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Review of <i>Ride of the Second Horseman The Birth and Death of War</i>, by Robert O’Connell, at H-Teachpol, web site sponsored by Michigan State University and the National Endowment for the Humanities. http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/book_reviews/1998/Milton_A_2_99.html</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Non-Refereed Articles</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Baby Brain Cells Beat Education Bureaucracies,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, January 8, 2017, p. 7B</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Modern Education in Post-Modern Culture,” <i>Christian Renewal,</i> August 24, 2016, p. 20-21. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Testing Process may have Negative Side Effects,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, March 13, 2016.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">“Politics needs to stop at the schoolroom door,” <i>The News Tribune</i> <a href="http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/05/18/3797430/politics-needs-to-stop-at-the.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 3, 44);">http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/05/18/3797430/politics-needs-to-stop-at-the.html</span></a>, May 18, 2015.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Does the revamped SAT meet the standards?,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, March 21, 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“High schools would benefit from later start times,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, April 10, 2013.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“At the heart of it, what we’re missing in education is trust,” <i>The News Tribune, </i>December 14, 2012.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Competition isn’t the cure for schools,” <i>Port Orchard Independent</i>, March 10, 2011.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“The hope of Advent comforts in time of loss,” <i>The News Tribune,</i> December 19, 2007.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Steilacoom teacher, students face the music about iPods,” <i>The News Tribune,</i> March 18, 2007, Insight 3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Costly homes, college degrees do not a ‘cool’ city make,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, October 1, 2006, Insight 3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Convention on Rights of Child holds no one’s feet to fire,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, July 6, 2006, p. B5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Love of Google, Amazon won’t produce something EPIC,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, February 6, 2006, p. Insight 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“‘Creative class’ theory runs out of gas for economic engine,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, October, 30, 2005, p. Insight 3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Durable democracies in Central Asia could be oil pipe dream,” <i>The News Tribune, </i>July 31, 2005, p. Insight 3.<i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“<a href="http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/columnists/story/4318474p-4100149c.html">Free elections won’t stand firm unless anchored in rule of law</a>,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, December 12, 2004, p. B7.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Moral Clarity Hard to Come by in Sudan,” <i>Seattle Post-Intelligencer</i>, September 28, 2004, p 7. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Australia’s Treatment of East Timor a lot like a US Power Play,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, March 30, 2003, p. B6.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Three from New York leave their finest impressions on naive visitors to WTC,” <i>The News Tribune</i>, January 20, 2002, p. B7.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Civility may be the best shield,” (co-authored with Patrick O'Neil), <i>The News Tribune</i>, August 5, 2001, p. B4</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">IV.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Professional and Community Service</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pioneer Middle School/Steilacoom School District--</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>District Teacher Evaluation Committee, School Leadership Team, Department Head; various years</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Faith Presbyterian Church, Tacoma, WA</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Editor, Words of Faith newsletter, Fall 2011-Present</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Coordinator, Safe Families, Fall 2015-Present</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Teacher, ESL Sunday School, January 2016-Present</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Presentations for <i>The Normal Accident Theory of Education</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>George Fox University, February 16, 2015</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Pacific Lutheran University, October 7, 2014</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>University of Washington, Tacoma, July 9, 2014</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>RossTalk, Dave Ross Radio Program, KIRO Radio, June 6, 2014</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Board Member, Life of Liberty (Tutoring/Mentoring Organization in Tacoma, WA), October 2012-September 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Tutor, Life of Liberty Reading Program, June 2013-August 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Tutor, Fern Hill Elementary School, Tacoma, 2011-2012. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Teacher, Summer Language Institute, LCC International University, Klaipeda, Lithuania, Summers 2007 and 2008.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Member, Human Rights Commission, City of Tacoma, WA. 2005-2007.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Presenter, World Affairs Council of Tacoma, Classroom of the World program, April 11, 2006.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Coordinator and Moderator, Panel on Initiatives 330 & 336, November 3, 2005.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Panelist, City Club of Tacoma, “Youth Participation in Politics,” September 21, 2005.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Coordinator and Moderator, Panel on Proposition 1: Tacoma Dome Bonds, September 15, 2005.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Presenter and Seminar Leader, International Development and Educational Associates conference “The Stories From Which We Learn,” (a conference for English Teachers), Almaty, Kazakhstan, June 21-25, 2005.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Panelist, UPS Diversity Theme Year Panel on USA-Patriot Act, November 1, 2004.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Guest Speaker, UW, Tacoma, Public Policy courses, various years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Student Advisor, University of Puget Sound, 2004-2005.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Guest Talk, Sumner Rotary, February 2003.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Coordinator, Professor’s Brown Bag Discussion Series, Pacific Lutheran University, 2001-2002.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Panelist, Key Center Library Forum on September 11, October 2001.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Invited Panelist, September 11 Panel, Pacific Lutheran University, September 20, 2001.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Volunteer, Aylen Junior High School, 2002-2003.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Volunteer, Keithley Middle School, 2001-2002.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Member, Faculty Senate, Northern Arizona University, 1999-2000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">V.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Other Educational Experience</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">National Science Foundation, Chautauqua Program on Chinese Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs University, Beijing, China, June 2004.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Study Abroad</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Karl Marx University of Political Economy, Budapest, Hungary, Fall 1987</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Internships</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Arms Control Association, Washington, DC, Summer 1991</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Board of Supervisors, Sacramento (CA) County, Spring 1988</span></div>
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Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-54282169334683910102017-06-29T15:40:00.003-07:002017-06-29T15:45:05.709-07:00Supt. Reykdal, please do something sensible<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">June 29, 2017</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Chris Reykdal</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Superintendent of Public Instruction </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Old Capitol Building</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">PO Box 47200</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Olympia, WA 98504-7200 </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dear Mr. Reykdal,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m writing to explain a situation that I hope you can change. I’m an 8th grade English teacher, and a part-time college professor of political science, in which I hold a PhD. I recently applied for a high school social studies position in the district where I live, and the district office did not forward my file to the school for review, because my certificate did not have a social studies endorsement. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As I understand it, the new policy is that everyone must take the West-E exam for Social Studies in order to get endorsed. Under the old “highly qualified” procedure, I was thus designated, but now I must have an endorsement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So I looked at some sample material from the West-E, and, frankly, I’m embarrassed, because we deem someone qualified after passing a multiple choice test, study guides for which make the whole thing into a mere memorization activity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At a time when we’re emphasizing “college readiness” in high school students, we’re endorsing their teachers by way of a process that would be wholly inadequate for even the most rudimentary college social science course—I know, because I teach those courses. In other words, we are expecting more of our high school <i>students</i> than we are of their <i>teachers</i>. To put it in the language of education, the test demands little more than Depth of Knowledge 1 or 2, while teachers are to push students to DoK 3 and 4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Is it any wonder that anybody who pays the least bit of attention regards the education bureaucracy as practically farcical?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I say this not simply because I have a PhD, but because that PhD—like an endorsement—serves as a reasonable proxy for readiness, preparation, capacity, training, or whatever else one thinks necessary to serve as a high school teacher. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Further, I think that even a cursory glance at <a href="http://speakingofeducation.blogspot.com/2017/06/cv.html">my CV</a> indicates that I have a wealth of social science experiences that transcend many of the narrow requirements of the West-E. Moreover, my record—particularly publishing—reflects that I understand the idea of social science argument, how to make arguments, and how to undertake the learning necessary to do so effectively. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">No doubt, the bureaucrats who hold the keys to the kingdom are sure they’re serving all of us well by making certain everyone follows the rules, to the letter…there’s no basis for questioning their judgment that way. They just followed the rules, after all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Well, I’m calling somebody’s judgment into question. Unfortunately, the nature of the “system” precludes discerning just who that should be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So I’m going right to the top. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Will you make some sense of this ridiculous system?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Sincerely,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Andrew K. Milton, PhD</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">P.S. I’ll take the test, and I’ll do just fine. (I got 10/10 on the sample test described below.) But let me evaluate a few sample questions as a means to highlighting the silliness of the West-E. I took this test at <a href="http://examedge.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">examedge.com</span></a>. They give away three sample tests, in an attempt to entice you into buying more. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Which of the following were the primary commanders of the armies fighting at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Benedict Arnold and Simon Fraser. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Robert Howe and Archibald Campbell. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>George Washington and Charles Cornwallis. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nathanael Greene and Alexander Stewart. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Correct Answer:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">George Washington and Charles Cornwallis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(What the test company called an)</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; line-height: normal;"> Explanation:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Correct Answer:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">George Washington and Charles Cornwallis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Washington commanded the American forces and Cornwallis, who eventually surrendered, commanded the British forces. The Battle of Yorktown was the last major battle of the American Revolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This isn’t really an explanation, of course. It’s just a recapitulation, with greater detail. And, frankly, correctly answering the question does not necessarily reflect understanding of what the war was about, why it was fought, how remarkable it was that the upstart beat the reigning world imperium, or the consequence of American victory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Great Lakes region is most accurately characterized as:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>A humid continental, warm summer climate zone. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A highland climate zone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A humid continental, cool summer climate zone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A semi-arid steppe climate zone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I got this one just by knowing the Midwest is hot and humid in summer. Didn’t really take any special abilities, skills, knowledge or preparation. Helped that I’d been there, but I wonder if someone hadn’t been, what does it really show that they understand about social science that they would have memorized this question and answer?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One factor that enabled the transition from feudalism to market economies in Europe was:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The code of chivalry. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The three-field system of farming. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Primogeniture. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The introduction of Arabic writings on algebra and geometry. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I understand feudalism enough (I also have a degree in Economics) to know that chivalry and primogeniture stood in the way of markets, and three-field farming is irrelevant. So I had a pretty good sense that Arabic math—and their use of zero—made accounting possible, which is fundamental to market operations. Again, someone’s having memorized this off a study guide means little.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Also note that a good college social science class (that covered this topic) would require a student to explain how chivalry and primogeniture sustained feudalism, how nascent market actors overcame those legacies, and why feudalism gave way to markets in different patterns in different places throughout Europe. Unfortunately, this question does not indicate that the tester could explain these things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Constitution of the United States provides which of the following instructions regarding the selection of the President?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The President shall be elected by obtaining the majority of the popular vote. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The President shall be elected by the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The President shall be elected by an institution whose members are appointed by the states. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The President shall be appointed by a joint committee of the House of Representatives and the Senate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Cheeky to describe the Electoral College without using the name. Really functions as something of a trick, then.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The lowdown on baguettes in Philadelphia is this: There are not many bakeries that make them, they vary in price from $1.50 to $4.00, and the bakeries that do sell them, sell out pretty quickly. Paris, by contrast, is a baguette lover’s heaven. There is no end to baguettes in Paris. There are bakeries on every street corner, and they only cost from $1.00 to $1.50; and best of all, there is also no end to baguette lovers. Which of the following statements most accurately describes the economics of the baguette market in Philadelphia in comparison to Paris?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The baguette market in Philadelphia seems to be an oligopoly with collusion, while the market in Paris is a non-colluding oligopoly with price ceilings. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The baguette market in Philadelphia seems to be in a state of immature perfect competition, while the market in Paris is a subsidized oligopoly. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The baguette market in Philadelphia seems to be in a state of mature perfect competition, while the market in Paris is a natural monopoly subsidized by the government. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The baguette market in Philadelphia seems to be in a state of monopolistic competition, while the market in Paris is in a state of mature perfect competition. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It isn’t actually necessary that Philadelphia be monopolistic competition. Could be lots of things. Could be segmentation in the market, with constraints on factor mobility, or with significantly different characteristics in each segment (e.g., in wealthy neighborhoods, higher pricing generates a socially desirable luxury good aspect) Could be oligopolistic. Such a price variation doesn’t look like monopoly, after all. Why aren’t the monopolists charging closer to $4 everywhere, or skipping those areas of the market where they can only get $1.50? (That’s one of the critiques of monopoly—they won’t bother to serve markets where the monopolist’s profit isn’t available to them.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Of course, the word <i>seems</i> does offer something of a qualification. And explaining those qualifications would be a worthy endeavor. But answering the question may or may not reflect one’s ability to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the United States House of Representatives, the tenacious task of overt partisan advocacy falls to:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Speaker of the House. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Majority Leader. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Majority Whip. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Conference Chair. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You either know this, or you memorized it from the study guide. And, again, somewhat useless either way, at least in so far as it doesn’t necessarily show the tester has a capacity to make interesting analyses of important political processes because they got the question right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Cotton grows best in areas with a high amount of rainfall, but not too much, because cotton also needs a lot of direct sunlight. Also, from the time the cottonseeds are planted to when the bolls are plucked, there should not be any periods of frost or freezing temperatures. Which of the following regions of the United States meets these requirements?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Northeast. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Northwest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Southeast. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Southwest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Trying to pass as a geography question? But if you’ve spent 15 minutes studying the Civil War, you’d get this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">During the Heian Period, diaries such as the Pillow Book and novels such as the Tale of Genji were written by:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Japanese noblemen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Japanese noblewomen. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Chinese noblemen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Chinese noblewomen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I had no idea, except that Genji is Japanese not Chinese. And it would be just a little tricky to have it be the women (Pillow Book, helps too), not the men, so I took my chance on that…and I was right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now, the big question…what does this prove about someone’s capacity to teach social studies? Really?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">During the Middle Ages, feudalism was an economic and social system binding rulers, landowners, farmers, and warriors into codified relationships of vassalage, patronage, and labor in which of the following regions of the world?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">New Spain and New Guinea. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Polynesia and Mali. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">China and North America. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Japan and Europe. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of the first things you learn about feudalism is its prevalence throughout Europe. Must choose the only answer with that in the set. And, again, doesn’t mean the tester could say anything about what feudalism was, what’s its legacy was, what it begat and how.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In short, answering such questions isn’t the kind of proof that demonstrates a relevant readiness or preparedness to teach high quality social studies courses in high school, so I’m disappointed to know that the West-E is the measure we use for endorsing teachers to do just that.</span></div>
Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-80147750005296839472017-06-06T06:50:00.000-07:002017-11-28T21:19:04.652-08:00Beware of the gifts borne by Greek grammar<div class="MsoNormal">
Every day, numerous students (which means anywhere from 4 to
15, depending on how many times I pursue it) will reflexively and self-righteously
assert the integrity of and commitment to their work by thrusting a piece of
paper—with some small amount of written material thereupon—toward me when I ask
if they’re getting their work done.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Typically, I’m asking because, having given some class time
to get work done, I see the student(s) in question doing something—chatting,
daydreaming, fidgeting, playing, etc.—besides work, or the self-same student(s) rather
consistently neglect(s) work. Usually,
it’s the combination of both those factors.
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This little game—a mime so frequent it could be a meme—occurs so regularly and so predictably that it’s beyond humorless. It’s enervating. Yes, I know, I ought to respond differently,
find another way to get students to respond differently, by engaging them differently. To that I’d say, you probably haven’t spent a
hundred and eighty days with 8<sup>th</sup> graders. For those who want not to do work, the powers of avoidance and creative reframing a situation are vastly superior to any
teacher’s capacities to redirect, reconstruct or otherwise redesign material,
pedagogy or curriculum.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Believe me, you can execute a delightfully creative and
engaging 15-minute activity, then send the class off to do 10 minutes of work
following the activity, and some number of students will simply decline to do that
work. Unless you make the work the
playing of some sort of silly game on their smart phone, certain students will
avoid anything that looks academic. (I
have had, for example, students declare that they’re not doing anything, because
“8<sup>th</sup> grade don’t matter…I’ll start working in high school.”)<o:p></o:p></div>
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It seems to me that this process, these claims by students, are a repudiation of our very way of thinking, and--more importantly, of course!--the renunciation of the standardized testing process!<br />
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I say this because the test, and the standards behind it, are clearly Greek, by which I mean they engage in hypotaxis*. That is to say, both grammar and thinking are constructed to make one point, with subordinate ideas and evidence supporting or elaborating that point. If you've had--what?--five minutes of writing in an American public school, you know what I'm saying. The five paragraph theme, the "kite" graphic organizer, Step Up To Writing (no doubt, with that little TM symbol appended), "tell me what you're going to tell me, tell me, tell me what you told me," or whatever other structure or mnemonic you know or use, are all creatures of hypotaxis. <br />
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So, a student who is clearly not working, can--when called out for the same--confidently show a piece of (bad) evidence to "prove" that they are working. Or, they had, at one point worked, as in, they wrote--in the last 7 minutes-- one thing on a piece of paper. And on the standardized test, following the expectations driven by our commitment to the forms of hypotaxis, if not serious content within that form, a detail supporting a key idea in service to a main point is, in fact, the point. The quality of the details doesn't much matter on the test--the graders can't spend a ton of time on them, so if you have a quote and a statistic and an expert opinion, you're gold. Get the right <i>type </i>of stuff, and we'll say that correlates reasonably well with actually having good stuff, so we'll call it good.<br />
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Or, if you want to talk with your neighbor during class, make sure you have a piece of paper with a few words scratched on it, so you can show evidence that you're working. Then everything else--talking with your neighbor, spinning this year's ridiculous fidget toy, whatever--isn't relevant, because it is <i>not </i>confounding evidence refuting the "I'm working" thesis. <br />
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Has the slovenly evaluation of the standardized test wrought this intellectual laziness? It's a circuitous claim...but it may not be a leap.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">* Yes, there are Greek texts that use parataxis (the use of coordinating rather subordinating grammatical relationships, and characterized by sharp juxtaposition of different--but equal--ideas or images), but as a rule, Greek has bequeathed us the very hierarchical logic embodied in hypotaxis.</span></div>
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Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-3124085849975670752017-05-18T10:17:00.000-07:002017-05-18T10:17:13.423-07:00Testing!<i>I haven't said much about it this year. Mostly, I'm just tired...from the year and of testing. But there was one little story....</i><br />
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<i>We--8th Grade--were first. Work out the kinks with the most experienced group. Some particulars aligned just right for a perfect storm this year. For instance, new testing coordinator and new principal--who had been out until about 2 weeks before the tests started.</i><br />
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<i>And, then, on the first day of SBAC (we still do Science in one day, under the old testing format--which isn't as "intense" as SBAC) chaos...here's the story.</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">In late March, staff met to discuss the SBAC schedule. At that time, testing was to start on May 2 (with 8<sup>th</sup> Grade ELA), and run until June 1, with testing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Fridays for make-ups. At that meeting, a staff member proposed a compressed schedule—testing over 3 weeks, five days a week. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">On April 13, we got an email with the new compressed schedule, with this line: <b>Unless there are other concerns that haven’t been addressed, this will be our schedule moving forward</b>. That came as something of a surprise, and some staff raised concerns. For instance, ELA testing had been shrunk down from 3 days to 2. My 8th Grade ELA colleague and I expressed a desire to have 3 days for ELA.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">On April 18, we got an email saying that the Classroom Activity portion (a half hour class room discussion before starting the test) of the Performance Task was dropped. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">The schedule published on the web site and handed out to staff retained 3 days for 8<sup>th</sup>Grade ELA, and my colleague and I both told our students that we would have 3 days. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">The ELA CAT (day one of the three--readings with questions) was fine (May 8). On the morning of May 9 (day 1 of the 2-day PT, in which students create longer responses to readings, drawing on the multiple sources the test itself offers), I sent the following email to 8<sup>th</sup> grade Test Administrators:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">All,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">The Performance Task portion of the ELA test involves some reading (and listening) with short answer questions, then the lengthier essay (which could be any type—narrative, explanatory or persuasive). 2 sections, in other words. There is, I believe, a firewall between the two. Once you go to the essay section, you can’t go back to the previous section. But you can start in on the second section today, and that work will be there the next day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">So far (2 years), it has seemed that students get through the initial reading and short answer section today, easily. Some students then charge right into the essay work and are done with both today—and they really shouldn’t be. Other students come back tomorrow and do a most cursory review of the previous day’s work and then submit. And some students use both days fully.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">(My colleague) and I have always encouraged students to do the following:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Do the initial section work—today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Do some sort of preparatory work before actually starting to write the essay. (We’ve never mandated what, how much or how long, but we have always strongly encouraged students to take their time and to do some sort of prewriting.) Personally, I’d think that some decently full draft of the essay today would be reasonable. At least an outline.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Come back the next day and reread (with a critical eye) their work, so they can do real revision. It’s not unreasonable to encourage them to not even start immediately on the third day. Take plenty of time getting themselves back into it, if they prefer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 12pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Take breaks—mentally—between rounds of revision, in order to get some “distance” from the writing and thereby enable revising to be as productive as possible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">About 10 minutes later, the new test coordinator told me that all work done on day 1 would be frozen for day 2. That had not been the case before (but he later read the testing manual and found that he was wrong...day 1 work <i>would</i> be accessible on day 2). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">About 7:55 AM, I asked the principal to confirm the expectations. She said she would ask the district assessment <span class="il">coordinator</span> about Segment 1 and Segment 2 guidelines and expectations, and send out an email.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">We began logging into the test about 8:10. Most students were taking their test by about 8:20.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">At 8:45, we got this email (from Asst. to Testing Coordinator, for the Principal):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">Students are <b><u>NOT</u></b> to move on when they finish PT Part 1, students are to pause the test and then shut down the computer. I will check in with everyone at around 9:30ish to get counts of how many students are still testing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">At 8:56, we got this email (from Principal):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">PT Part 1 is taking a lot less time than anticipated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">We are GOING ON to PT Part 2 today. That means all kids will need to keep testing and finish today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">9:03, </span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">(from Asst. to Testing Coordinator, for the Principal):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">You cannot go back to and work on anything from Part 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">[T]hose that move on will need to finish everything. Rewrites and all</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">9:04, (8th Grade Proctor):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">I think the 7<sup>th</sup> grade has students go on to part 2 and then has students WRITE their graphic organizer and do their pre-write ON PAPER first. Then, tomorrow they type part 2. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">9:05, (Another 8th Grade Proctor):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">So no testing tomorrow?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">9:06, </span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">(from Asst. to Testing Coordinator, for the Principal)</span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">Not if we are all done. They have to finish Part 2 today</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">And 9:07, </span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">(from Asst. to Testing Coordinator, for the Principal):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">Those students that do not finish Part 2 today will move to the extended testing site and finish their test there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">10:32, </span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">(from Asst. to Testing Coordinator, for the Principal):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">Here’s the plan… Send all students who do not finish to the Library Computer Lab @ 11 am, Counselors will begin a new test session there and the downstairs computer lab if needed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">Please don’t forget to walk the students’ cards to Counselors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">11:02 (Principal)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">NEW PLAN:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">ALL kids on part 1 go to library now to cont and finish part 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">ALL on part 2 pause and will continue tomorrow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">Of course, by this point, some proctors had already sent their continuing testers on to the library. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">The key issue is that we told them they’d have 2 days…that was familiar (from the last 2 years), and they have some internal understanding of how that works.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">And we changed it to one day—<i>after</i> the test has started. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">Even if they’ve only unconsciously “planned” (and they have at least unconsciously planned), that’s a tough readjustment to make, once the test is in motion. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">So, I don’t mind one day, but switching from two to one, after we’ve started was disruptive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;"> Everything worked out...we're all fine. I do wonder if there might be some marginal impact on a few students' scores. Certainly was not the way a standardized test is supposed to be standardly (if you will) given.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.1199989318848px;">I can only imagine how many times something unusual like this played out across the whole testing universe.</span></div>
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Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-79107708715020557072017-04-13T08:54:00.002-07:002017-04-13T08:57:46.769-07:00Technology will make ALL parts of life better!A colleague, who chidingly tries to convince me that technology tools make most teaching and learning better, sent me an article, <a href="http://www.techlearning.com/resources/0003/all-writing-can-be-better-through-technology/70507#.WO-Yd6EoaEw.email">All Writing Can Be Better Through Technology</a>.<br />
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I couldn't even finish the article. Couldn't get past this:<br />
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<i>...technology can
provide feedback throughout the learning process. In both Google Docs and
Office 365, teachers can leave real-time comments on students’ work while
they’re writing.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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I'll state the obvious first. The feedback doesn't make all writing better. It might (MIGHT) make the feedback <i>process</i> easier for the teacher, but by sleight of hand, the author has played upon the unspoken assumption of technophiles that when something is done through technological means it gets done more smoothly, more efficiently (in the procedure) and therefore more effectively (in the outcome).</div>
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That, of course, is a debatable assumption, but please recognize it as the assumption it is.</div>
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Second, just how is leaving comments something done in
real time? What does real time mean
here? That the student and teacher are
on the technology at the same time, so the student can get instant feedback at
the very time that they're working? If it's something less than that, what the
teacher has done is a leave a comment at one point in time, that the student
will see at another point in time, and then you don't have anything that could
seriously be called real time. And if
real time does mean simultaneous, then the teacher can really only serve each
student one at a time, sequentially. Just
like a teacher would do in live (real time!) interactions. </div>
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And, of course, a teacher can give real time feedback throughout the learning process without any technology--well, two chairs and a desk, perhaps.</div>
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So in the end, it might be logistically easier (a bit) to give feedback by way of a computer, but <i>writing gets better through technology</i>? Shouldn't the title be Teacher Feedback Can Be Slightly Easier Through Technology? But that's just not as stylish an idea, is it?<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-60503370274491760332017-04-06T10:29:00.002-07:002018-03-12T19:00:40.955-07:00Writing Camp, 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Writing Camp</div>
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Early August 2018<br />
<b>????????</b><br />
<b>I'll do it, if there's enough interest. Let me know.</b></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At Writing Camp, young writers will</span></div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">practice a variety of writing skills</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">build self-confidence as writers</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">sharpen analytical skills</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">develop writing skills for self-expression</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 3px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">create essays, stories, poems and plays</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">At camp, we will work on a variety of writing forms and structures, among several purposes for different audiences.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">My goal is to work some each day on non-fiction essays (expository and persuasive), narrative stories, and a little bit of poetry and drama. We'll read (and work on summarizing, conclusion-drawing, inference-making, etc.) some, too, since reading is an essential input into writing. In the process of our writing, we'll work on the component pieces of a written work (thesis statements, key ideas, evidence for non-fiction work; narrative arc for stories, poetic elements for poetry), and exercise our skills at developing and following structures for organizing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Most of all, I want each camper to get both a little better and a little more comfortable with writing, so that s/he will want to do more of it, and thereby continue to get better and more comfortable through the on-going practice of the craft.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Probably the second week of August, 2018</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">9 AM-1 PM</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Faith Presbyterian Church, Tacoma</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">$50</span></div>
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<a href="https://thebaynet.s3.amazonaws.com/media/photos/gallery/becfcba4-01b2-4f6c-9ef2-ec90825b7626.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://thebaynet.s3.amazonaws.com/media/photos/gallery/becfcba4-01b2-4f6c-9ef2-ec90825b7626.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The camp is intended for students entering 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th grades, but I can discuss the possibilities of slightly younger and older students participating.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "georgia";">My background--I've taught middle school</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">English for 11 years and college political</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">science for 19 years. I've authored</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">numerous books and essays (links for some of which you can find to the right).</span></div>
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Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-6757358150118554132017-03-01T08:49:00.001-08:002017-03-02T07:35:29.001-08:00Cool FailWhen I was a young'un, we used to watch Schoolhouse Rock cartoons that taught some mini-lesson about government (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHp7sMqPL0g">the Preamble</a>) or English grammar (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AyjKgz9tKg">Conjunction Junction</a>) and so on. They were the occasional interstitial material between Bugs and Road Runner episodes...and I remember <i>waiting</i> and <i>hoping</i> for them to come on. They are so memorable, in fact, that if you ask almost anybody, they'll hum the tune from their favorite SR installment. Even young'uns today. Somehow (YouTube, etc.), kids 40 years later know these ditties, and--maybe--a bit of the lessons they taught. (My colleague uses the Preamble song to help his students memorize the Preamble.)<br />
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So today when we watched CNN Student News and they "rapped it up" with a bad--musically speaking--rapped summary of the content, I found that I wanted to turn it off, not listen again. And I realized how silly it is that adults try to appropriate some sort of supposedly cool cultural form by which to smuggle some informational material into the minds of youngsters. </div>
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That seems a dead end, to me. If rap (or any other cultural product enjoyed by youngsters) is badly contorted to another end--especially one seen as less "cool"--it will fall flat, because it will fall much flatter than anything "organically" of the genre.</div>
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Schoolhouse Rock, by contrast, carved out its own niche, with a cultural product that wasn't derivative of an already existing form that kids connected to and thought desirable/cool already. I liked both Led Zeppelin and Schoolhouse Rock. But I would have hated a lesson on conjunctions set to a bad ripoff of Led Zeppelin. It would have seemed "fake."</div>
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Schoolhouse Rock created its own kind of dorky cool, which works much more memorably and enduringly than bad cultural appropriation. 20 minutes later, I can't even remember anything about the schoolhouse rap.<br />
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Update--March 2<br />
It's Dr. Seuss Read Across America Day today. For a similar reason as described above--though from a different angle--I don't like this day, either. We're trying to encourage youngsters upward in their reading, and I wonder if this encourages downward instead. I loved Dr. Seuss when my own children were 5. But I don't want to go to a college graduation and hear a young adult admonishing his/her class mates with <i>Oh, the places you'll go</i>. </div>
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Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-47781913999475773412017-02-24T13:54:00.000-08:002017-02-24T13:54:56.730-08:00What have we done?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9DlkMmcgqSj-twq572sH_uGfJ7l4RLAEXAMHFjQWIhdqGlv8pSvXdt1gT6EcIKAs_OtOsAEWuuph2GTDEUsmAl9k5l2SwAqdzKtpZRklZ8bNSSmwS3hFpVlDtKjsW0v7wAxfY9TLTD4qk/s1600/Survey+snap.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9DlkMmcgqSj-twq572sH_uGfJ7l4RLAEXAMHFjQWIhdqGlv8pSvXdt1gT6EcIKAs_OtOsAEWuuph2GTDEUsmAl9k5l2SwAqdzKtpZRklZ8bNSSmwS3hFpVlDtKjsW0v7wAxfY9TLTD4qk/s400/Survey+snap.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
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This snapshot--indicating the participation thus far in class surveys I am running--is part of a story about what strange things we've developed in youngsters.<br />
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I created a survey--one for each class period--to ask students about their sense of readiness and capability for the SBAC, the annual standardized test. I emailed to both students and parents to ask that the students do the survey, and I included a link right to the survey appropriate to their class period. <br />
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Over night, I got 9 responses from the first group--which now has 15, 2 from the second, which now has 7, 1 from the third, and none from the fourth and fifth. <br />
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12 total responses, out of 115 students.<br />
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When I told the class that had 9 (out of 25) that they had done the best, one student exclaimed, "Can we have a pizza party?"<br />
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I was despairing already--about how badly they'd done with their Parts of Speech work, so I slipped. And my response was, "You know how many pizza parties we had when I was a student..? NONE!"<br />
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A pizza party!? Because barely 1/3 of the students had taken a 2-minute quiz...and they just happened to outperform the other 4 classes!?<br />
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Years ago, <a href="http://speakingofeducation.blogspot.com/2012/11/what-monster-are-we-creating.html">I asked</a> what consequence the Wow! Effect of things like letter learning with singing birds on iPads would have. I wonder if pizza parties for answering a 7-question survey is the answer.<br />
<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-22611341217165683312017-02-22T10:30:00.001-08:002017-02-22T13:26:31.019-08:00Mark Driscoll<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Mark Driscoll was the rock star pastor of the megachurch Mars Hill, in Seattle, until he--and then the church--unraveled in accusation and recrimination. He's power hungry, some said. He has anger problems, others claimed. Plenty came to see him as something of a megalomaniac with control issues. The leadership tried to rein him in, but he seemed to prefer to reign (or so it appeared). So he left, and the church imploded, cutting all the remote campuses loose to do whatever they could/would. </div>
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So last fall one of my Pierce students saw that Francis Fukuyama's arguments about how the awkward realities of personality-based organizations (states or churches, apparently) can lead to organizational (and "political") decay as helpful in understanding the spectacular collapse of Driscoll and Mars Hill.</div>
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When presenting, he said it simply enough. </div>
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Something like this, <i>You had to get on the bus...the bus he created and was driving. But he lost his way and the bus broke down. And now he's left alone, with a broken down bus.</i></div>
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I like that it appears to be out back, behind the building. It's a kind of concrete metaphoric rendering of the situation...and I like the way it works.</div>
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<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-14253563130564251782017-02-18T21:13:00.000-08:002017-02-18T21:13:06.977-08:00Lord of the Flies Art<i>I</i> have said a variety of things about <i>Lord of the Flies </i>in the last couple years. <a href="http://speakingofeducation.blogspot.com/2015/04/standardized-tests-ruin-curiosity.html">I lamented </a>that standardized testing doesn't motivate us to capture some of the things that are really interesting about the book. <a href="http://speakingofeducation.blogspot.com/2015/03/teachable-moment.html">Likewise, here.</a> And here, some of the <a href="http://speakingofeducation.blogspot.com/2017/01/flies-redux.html">fun of the Chief-led class</a>.<br />
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But today, some art, in the voice--as it were--of a student. Both of these are by the same artist, and both are quite interesting and effective.<br />
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I like that we can't see faces, but can discern that the boys are mesmerized by something. Is it the sun? Or the hint of the "beast" barely concealed in the bushes? <br />
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The backs--rather than fronts--of heads characterize this piece, too. I can't figure out why I like this piece so much, but I do.<br />
<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-79158487505644788462017-02-17T08:00:00.004-08:002017-02-17T20:37:07.991-08:00More Student Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For one assignment (in late November/early December, so after the election) in the Intro to Politics course I taught last fall at Pierce College, I offered an art option. My instruction was to create a piece that expressed your thoughts, views, values, preferences, etc. about anything in "politics." I use the quote marks there to indicate the fact that I told them that you could render almost anything as politics, or political. Indeed, I noted, Marx was wrong...everything isn't economics, it's politics. But that's an argument for another day.<br />
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This piece generated a lengthy and interesting discussion about identity, group orientation, the social politics in the US today, etc. I can't remember all the artist even said about the piece, but I was grateful for the conversation.</div>
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Detail, from the bottom left corner. Thank YOU, Hannah...I appreciate your work.</div>
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<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-17249048007645368322017-02-17T05:25:00.003-08:002017-02-17T05:45:45.587-08:00Post-Modern Education<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I don't think I ever posted this, from last year. It appeared in <i>Christian Renewal</i> last summer...screen shots from an emailed digital version appear below.</div>
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I should say that I'm still in public school, still want to be in public school...<i>and</i> I'm very frustrated with what is happening there. </div>
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Indeed, I enjoy the challenge of trying to insinuate some of this post-modernity into my classes, but it's daunting challenge.</div>
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<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 18px;">A lecture series at George Fox University last year asked participants to consider the ramifications of</span><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 18px;"> </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(20, 20, 20); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #141414; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-indent: 18px;">Living in Postmodern America</i><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 18px;">. </span><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 18px;"> </span><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 18px;">I was invited to give the talk on education, which caused me to ponder whether teaching, learning and school are, in fact, postmodern.</span><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 18px;"> </span><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 18px;">The simple answer to that is yes and no--yes, teaching and learning are postmodern activities, but no, education, as a system, is intensely Modern, and fundamentally hinders the process of teaching and learning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Modernity is bureaucratic, which means it is organized, structured and numerated. Postmodernity is, by contrast, situational—in other words, constructed, subjective and relational. Education, the social and collective endeavor to deliver teaching and learning to students, is highly bureaucratic, and getting more so by the day. The bureaucrats who populate those bureaucracies, and who organize and measure the minutiae of the activities of our lives and work, are the hallmark of Modern life. And education bureaucrats (or, educrats, if you will) numerate and measure features of education that bear little relevance or connection to the complicated relational reality of teaching and learning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Consider the push to create more thorough and comprehensive standardized testing. This requires outcomes measured in numerable ways, which render evaluation and assessment both valid (that is, objectively measurable and comparable) and easy. Along the way, of course, more standardized testing stimulates the inevitable, even if unintended, standardization of learning and curriculum, and this Modernization elevates and prefers assessment devices that can be easily compared, and numerated test results do precisely that. And the infinite loop of bureaucracy’s self-fulfilling order runs on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Modernity’s impact extends beyond the practical problem of standardized testing to the philosophy of education, though. The Enlightenment bequeathed us rationality, and a philosophy of science and an epistemology that elevate empiricism and the observable and confirmable above all other forms of knowing and understanding. If it can’t be observed (measured) and confirmed, then we don’t know it’s true. The social science literature—from political science to organization studies—abounds with analyses of how bureaucracies fixate on concretely measurable things, which too often grossly misapprehend the breadth and depth of a situation. This is true—and astoundingly so—of the growing education bureaucracy today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> The culture in school is clearly that the data will show the real picture, data don’t lie, and good numbers will always be smiled upon. So, Modernity hums along, having given us a rationalism and empiricism that tilt toward the accumulation of ever more (questionably useful) data. And education—the social endeavor—marches in step with Modernity’s tune.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Modernity’s grip on Education, thereby, infringes on and alters the relational activities of teaching and learning. This reality gives (or, should give) Christian parents pause. For people who take their children’s education so seriously, it’s no surprise that home schooling or private Christian school are so often preferred over the highly bureaucratized public school.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Christianity is about relationships—our individual relationship to God, through our relationship to Christ; our relationship to our neighbors and strangers; and our relationship to our families, not least of which is parents’ relationship to their children. And a fundamental aspect of that relationship is the educating of those children. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But many Christians “fear” Postmodernism, of course—it is thought to be the font of self-oriented, subjective, relativist philosophy from which flows every pathology of contemporary secular America. But in the all too typical cyclicality of human thinking and endeavor, postmodernity’s ascendance looks plenty like a return to premodernity, and in ways that can be perfectly comfortable to Christians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Where Modernity relies on an empiricism that repudiates truth claims that can’t be verified by rationalist science, the “Pre is Post again Modernity” emphasizes a reliance on language—not numbers. Postmodernity’s emphasis on intersubjectivity focuses on stories, as told by people, akin to the way the Bible uses personal stories to testify to God’s and Christ’s work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Moreover, postmodernism opens up room for a robust notion of theology, even if only unintentionally. Where Modernity begat academic disciplines that have increasingly segregated both enquiry and understanding in closely guarded silos, postmodernity breaks down those disciplinary boundaries, encouraging knowledge and understanding to be applied across the range of human endeavor and understanding, similar--at least procedurally--to the way Christ-centeredness reaches into every domain of a Christian’s life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The complex web of learning and thinking indicated here hearkens back to something like the classical education so many Christians have so long sought for their children. Seeking wisdom from ancient examples (through the <i>stories</i> of the lives and times of those people) is something like a postmodern return to the premodern, and is completely unModern.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This brings us full circle, for the Common Core State Standards—and the accompanying testing processes—are fundamentally at odds with classical teaching and learning. Where classical approaches value the knowledge and wisdom accumulated through the ages, the CCSS establish skills as the paramount virtue. Finding the main idea (and identifying the passage that communicates that) is more important in the new philosophy of Education than pursuing any particular set of ideas and values. Texts need not be prioritized for their content or meaning, rather each and all can be mined for quasi-technical elements like main point and supporting evidence…all the better for standardized tests that must be easily gradable in order to generate the required data that will tell us how Education in America is going.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">As a teacher in the Modern system, I can attest that the bureaucratic endeavor called Education is going nowhere fast, especially as far as what Christians want for the teaching and learning relationships that comprise their children’s lives. As a parent who sends his child to a classical Christian school, the possibilities for teaching and learning, which I have here described as postmodern, are still wide open, but not in a Modern public school.</span></div>
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<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-81519972568962624402017-02-11T13:42:00.000-08:002017-02-11T13:42:50.948-08:00Where are US--oops, WE--going?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuIDoZSougR2NOQdlGpB_IraH3FTeCxWCuUdXbfPgTaGx6kiY9h4JEpe9Nd4vO4jK6xcxcfVctlQYKpH4JPIZgphBRJMar4cAmWiftronmkuFiV0uTZcKGEdayeAFAjmTSCmxcu3O1GKNO/s1600/Uncle+Sam.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuIDoZSougR2NOQdlGpB_IraH3FTeCxWCuUdXbfPgTaGx6kiY9h4JEpe9Nd4vO4jK6xcxcfVctlQYKpH4JPIZgphBRJMar4cAmWiftronmkuFiV0uTZcKGEdayeAFAjmTSCmxcu3O1GKNO/s400/Uncle+Sam.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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For one assignment (in late November/early December, so after the election) in the Intro to Politics course I taught last fall at Pierce College, I offered an art option. My instruction was to create a piece that expressed your thoughts, views, values, preferences, etc. about anything in "politics." I use the quote marks there to indicate the fact that I told them that you could render almost anything as politics, or political. Indeed, I noted, Marx was wrong...everything isn't economics, it's politics. But that's an argument for another day.<br />
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I liked several of the pieces that the artists presented, and I'll offer up some others later. But for now, this one, which seems apropos in a particular and special way in this current political climate. <br />
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In fact, I won't even explain, interpret or analyze what you see...have what response you want.<br />
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<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-25000225195764627452017-02-10T07:48:00.003-08:002017-02-10T07:48:55.695-08:00If Donald Trump were a...<br />
...character from <i>Lord of the Flies</i>, which would he be?<br />
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We--my 8th graders and I--are in the middle of the novel. In case you forget (or haven't read it), a group of English schoolboys, ages 6-13ish, are stuck alone on an island...without any adults. They elect Ralph as Chief, though nobody is quite sure why. Piggy is the most sensible, but he's ostracized by the others because he's overweight. Jack is the natural leader, but he's also overbearing...pushing for the authority he thinks is rightly his to have. Simon seems weird (see below) because he's a sensitive introvert.<br />
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So, part way through (in the midst of chapter 6, if you know the novel that well), we talked about authority and character, and I asked for some thoughts on various aspects of governance. One thing I asked was, which character most seems like President Trump and why.<br />
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Here are the answers (from those who gave them) of my 8th graders....<br />
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President Trump is like…<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jack, because he<o:p></o:p></div>
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Piggy, because he<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ralph, because he<o:p></o:p></div>
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Simon, because <o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->only does what wants<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is bad<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->may have some good ideas but he is somewhat
stubborn and not the best listener<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->says what he wants to do<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->doesn’t care about other peoples’ opinions<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->makes decisions without really thinking about
the consequences<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->is ambitious<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->isn’t very accepting or open-minded<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->is talking smack about everyone, with no fear<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->makes courageous and dangerous decisions, and
will end terribly<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->biased <o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->hard-headed and does everything his way<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->power hungry, rude and unethical<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->makes bold statements and doesn’t care what
other people think<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is demanding and does what he wants<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->does what he wants<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->he has to be in control of everything and
blames others when he’s at fault<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->wants whatever whenever<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->has a huge ego<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->wants his way<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->likes to control people <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is clear about what he wants<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->thinks he’s a better leader than he might
actually be<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he doesn’t listen<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he wants to have power<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he doesn’t care what he says as long as he
gets to be in charge<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s brash and aggressive<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he doesn’t have a filter and he’s very
argumentative<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s confident and says what he wants<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s demanding<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s got a one-track mind (business) and he
always disputes people<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s selfish and demanding<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he alienates people<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s brash and headstrong<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he is controlling<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he does what he wants<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he needs to make himself important<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he gets savage toward those who disagree with
him<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s self-centered<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he actually takes charge<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he’s rash<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he can be mean<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.35pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->he bullies<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 157.5pt;" valign="top" width="210">
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->has good ideas but nobody sees it<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is smart and an out of the box thinker<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is trying to help; trying to control<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->can help<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->follows the rules and tries to make things
right<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->thinks outside the box (and they both probably
got beaten up at school)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 166.5pt;" valign="top" width="222">
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Is a know-it-all and people are beginning to
rebel<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->makes decisions and backs them up with
evidence<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->smart, but demanding<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is trying to maintain order but people keep
ruining it<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is trying to keep everything in order<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is trying to maintain order<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is the leader…and he’s demanding<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->has no idea what he’s doing<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->doesn’t know what he’s doing<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->thinks he’s the only who can be a leader<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is demanding and straight up<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is mean and influential<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->wants a lot of attention on himself<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->is not knowing what to do<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 12.6pt; text-indent: -9pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->doesn’t know what he’s doing<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 166.5pt;" valign="top" width="222">
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->They’re both weird in some way<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-16408354712794301722017-01-31T11:32:00.001-08:002017-01-31T19:16:20.317-08:00Wendell Berry<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><i>The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.”</i></span><br />
<br />
And done rightly--according to this approach, it is very difficult to numerate, measure, count and standardize teaching and learning, at least not in the way we endeavor to do with the Common Core and the attendant testing process.Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-16702277248749702402017-01-30T13:33:00.002-08:002017-01-30T13:40:34.706-08:00Flies, ReduxIt's that time again. I've written before about how my colleague and I let our<a href="http://speakingofeducation.blogspot.com/2015/03/teachable-moment.html"> classes elect a chief</a>, as the boys do in<i> Lord of the Flies</i>. It's an interesting, if somewhat frustrating, pedagogical "moment." Every year--indeed, every class period--is different, but we have always found benefit in doing this exercise. <br />
<br />
It replicates some of the aspects of youngters living unsupervised, bringing some of the themes of the book more obviously to life. This happens most clearly when you try to look at the story through a thematic lens of human nature--what people are like in difficult circumstances. <br />
<br />
It's satisfying when you see confirmed before you your expectations of which students will hum along just fine without any real supervision...about as much as it is strangely compelling when those students you think will completely exploit the system and do absolutely nothing confirm your worst fears. <br />
<br />
I admit, it's also pleasantly affirming when the student chief stands before the class and explains his/her frustrations with what the students are doing. We've heard more than one, "I have a new found respect for the teachers."<br />
<br />
And then sometimes it's just fun. Today, one class had a sit-in protest. (We just did a unit on civil rights, and I think they got the idea from that.) They succeeded in removing their interim chief (the regular chief is absent) for the remaining 9 minutes of the period.<br />
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I've lost track of how many coups we (my colleague and I) have had, sponsored or fomented. Almost no classes make it more than 3 days without some sort of distress. One year, one class finally got so annoyed with all that was happening that they held a new election...and I won, even though I wasn't running. Like Sally Field, "I have to admit it...you like me. Right now, you really really like me."</div>
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Ultimately, the <a href="http://speakingofeducation.blogspot.com/2015/04/standardized-tests-ruin-curiosity.html">exercise and the book are particularly worthwhile</a>...and I'm sure they meet some Common Core Standard or other.</div>
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<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-70355975329438459812017-01-24T13:07:00.002-08:002017-01-24T13:07:59.489-08:00Spelling and Proofreading Matter!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I hope this student has a permit for that!</div>
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Our leadership class made encouraging/inspirational balloons for every locker in school. I think they meant "I am caring," but you can see where they missed. </div>
<br />Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3176901787520886426.post-972129068778031542016-11-18T17:33:00.000-08:002016-11-18T17:50:54.877-08:00New Year, Same Result<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For about about 7 or 8 years now, I've been doing a week on Brains and Electronics with my 8th graders. We cover material about how we really don't multitask...we sequentially task (<a href="http://www.brainrules.net/attention">Brain Rules</a>), how <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/21/health/led-streetlights-ama/">blue light</a> (smart phones, computer screens, LED lights, etc.) is bad for your health, how <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-wealth/201402/gray-matters-too-much-screen-time-damages-the-brain">too much screen time is bad for your brain</a>, and <a href="http://www.steilacoom.k12.wa.us/Page/3360">more</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then we take an attention test, to which I add increasing electronic distraction. Each year, the result is the same--their Baseline performance (before any distractions, like iPods, or other personal listening devices) was better than all the Distracted scores (and this year, the first test with multiple distractions was particularly bad). Further, one last test, after one minute of a breathing and relaxation exercise (Relaxation), was demonstrably better than all other tests. (<a href="http://pricejh.com/milton/start.html">Try the test</a>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here are the most significant findings:</span><br />
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<li><strong><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ALL Relaxation Scores went up, to the highest level of all tests in the sequence.</span></strong></li>
<li><strong><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">iPods Plus (the first test with multiple distractions at the same time) all showed significant drop off.</span></strong></li>
<li><strong><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All “Distracted” scores were lower than the best Baseline score.</span></strong></li>
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<span style="color: #22293d; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.15000000596046448px;">For more details,<a href="http://www.steilacoom.k12.wa.us/Page/4677"> go here</a>.</span></span></div>
Andrew Miltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02916107897031979364noreply@blogger.com0