Archive

• Why the UnPlug’d Canadian Education Summit Matters

  August 17, 2011 12:08 AM Comments Off on Why the UnPlug’d Canadian Education Summit Matters

  A few weekends ago I had the extraordinary opportunity to participate at UnPlug’d – a PD gathering like no other.  A group of deeply committed Canadian educators converged upon Toronto and rode a train to the western edge of Algonquin Park to share the aspects of teaching and learning that mattered most to them.
  (more…)

• The Education Reform Movement (Part 2)

  July 4, 2011 3:39 PM Comments Off on The Education Reform Movement (Part 2)

  It will be a tough slog achieving even a modest measure of my proposal in earlier blogs, i.e. diploma credit for community activity at the senior high school level. It might have been  easier 20, 30 or more years  ago when, for a brief time, there was popular support for  social, political and judicial reform – e.g. the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982; peacekeeping when and where needed; The International Criminal Court, 1990s; co-operative and alternative education experiments everywhere; apprenticeships of various kinds.

  That is to say, the lead-up to the present (2011) has been marked by an explosive growth in the economics of size buttressed by conservatism in politics.  Bigger is better in both public and private enterprises. The larger the organization the greater the need for bureaucratic efficiency, employee conformity, firewalls against legal liability. In the outcome, lawyers are just as important  as specialized staff in the health and welfare of successful organizations, even hospitals, retirement and nursing homes.  

  Ask any large entity to accept a  half dozen high school students for a couple of months to help them learn about the everyday workings of the enterprise or agency, the answer will almost certainly be befuddlement and bewilderment. To whose office should the request be addressed?  How will accountability and responsibility be assured?  How will the organization be protected from legal liability? Will the receiving person or persons or officials have to endure a police check of the sexual offender registry?  How can the privacy rights of members of the organization be protected? How can an assignment deemed by the assigned student to be a failure avoid unfair blowback on the organization?

  These serious questions and others point to complications that would scare any school board away from community engagement for their students.  School trustees, too, have lawyers whispering in their ears. These men and women in public positions, more than most, are comfortable with the emerging police state about which many observers keep warning us.

  There is a ray of hope in this picture of timidity and uncertainty in the ranks of those in charge.  I am referring to the increasingly serious talk about reducing the voting age from 18 to 16. It is an overdue change for these reasons and more: earlier maturation of young persons coupled with encouraging signs of social responsibility. Digital communication has accelerated these trends. These positive signs emphasize the need to get our 16-18 year olds into the community so that they may  learn first-hand about the world of work, about economic productivity and social planning, about health care facilities and practice, about the global economy, about membership in the caring community and , outstandingly, about their own  personal career planning.  It remains for the political parties to take the initiative by broadening the electorate in step with the social evolution of the young and the parallel growth of the aged segment.

  In that social context, the health of our democracy is the real issue and the engagement of our youth is part of the solution.

• Honesty in the classroom

  June 28, 2011 2:41 PM Comments Off on Honesty in the classroom

  (Note: Yesterday Stephen Hurley invited us to share the professional reading we enjoy or are looking to do over the summer. I’m currently in a book club on Twitter (#kohnbc, Thursdays at 8pm pst). We’re reading Beyond Discipline by Alfie Kohn. My post today comes from that reading.)

  In his book Beyond Discipline, Alfie Kohn states that people tell lies when “they don’t feel safe enough to tell the truth” (p. 16, 2006). This idea suggests that even “good” learners (and people in general) will lie – and the environment we create in our classrooms will encourage or discourage honesty.

  It reminds me of something a veteran teacher told me when I was in my first year: “As the teacher, you bring the weather into the classroom.”

  When I was in Grade 3 my teacher had this rule about signing out balls for recess: if we did not return with the ball we would suffer serious, ominous and vague punishment. Most of us were so scared of this possibility that we always returned with the ball safely clenched tight to our little bodies.

  One day I let some grade 5s use the ball I had signed out. When the bell rang I ran back to class – without the ball. My teacher stood at the threshold and wouldn’t let me pass until I told her what happened to the ball. I remember being scared to tell her the truth. So I lied. I looked up at her looming over me and told her that some older kids had taken the ball.

  Five minutes later she was trooping me through the Grade 5 classrooms, demanding that I identify the miscreants. Those Grade 5s looked big and scary too, so I kept up the lie insisting that I couldn’t remember what the older kids had looked like.

  Unsurprisingly, she discovered that I had, in fact, lent the ball to the older kids and was not a victim of theft. Once again she greeted me at the threshold of our classroom, this time at the post-lunch break bell. She looked down at me from great height and in tight clips told me how foolish I had made her look, how bad I was for being a liar, and how ashamed I should feel.

  I still feel shame at the memory, the burning of my face as I crumbled into my seat after the lecture.

  All this causes me to reflect: how can I ensure the learners in my classes feel safe? How have I treated dishonesty in the past? How might I encourage more honesty in the future? 

  This concept applies to behaviors, but it also works for plagiarism: if students felt safe to take risks with their work, wouldn’t they be less likely to cheat at their learning?

  Please, share your thoughts!

• How to set up community-based education?

  June 20, 2011 1:41 PM Comments Off on How to set up community-based education?

  Exactly how would one go about setting up community-based education? Alas, there is no exact answer. A single high school with authorization to run an experiment on a conditional basis would proceed very differently from a whole school system with the green light after public debate and a full airing of the pros and cons. Let us assume that we’re talking about the latter. The political debate is over, the administrative leadership has been set up and a set of community bodies and organizations, public and private, have signified their willingness to participate.

  Here are some features of such a plan in operation:

  STEP ONE – Students in third or fourth year high school may participate with parental permission. The approved students, without regard to their academic standing, will select a community posting from an approved list.  Each posting will be for a minimum of two weeks and may be repeated. The maximum posting in any year will be the equivalent of 20% of the total regular class hours. A limit of two credits towards a diploma may be earned through community placements.

  STEP TWO – The receiving persons or organization will ensure that an assigned student receives daily opportunities to learn through managed participation in the activity originally identified. For example, a student assigned to an auto repair shop, will be able to assist in actual auto repair and become familiar with the shop as a whole. One assigned to a department store will be involved in merchandising decisions, display, and maintenance work on the floor. A student in a chemical lab will be able to see the practical relationship between the lab’s function and finished products or services in the market. A student with a construction company will learn about the tools of the trade and have some practice in actually using the tools. One assigned to a seniors’ home will meet on a regular basis with an inmate or more for socialization. In other cases, teams of students will engage in modified apprenticeship roles in house building projects. An assignment will be deemed a failure, but not the student, where the student is merely left on the sidelines.

  STEP THREE – A pivotal role will be played by the school team.  They will keep records on each assignment including assessment of outcomes. The school team will be in pursuit of pre-determined objectives as agreed in the original approval process. School team members will familiarize themselves with placement opportunities without interfering in the working details of the placement.

  STEP FOUR – Each student on community placement will keep a file about the experience including descriptive material supplied by the community agency, essays about the experience, pictures and sketches. The file (excepting private material) will be part of the assessment process managed by the school team. There will be one of two grades assigned after a community placement: Successful or Unsuccessful. Comments from the community agency may be included in the student’s report card.

  Anyone reading this brief sketch will be tempted to say: “Why bother?” Why, indeed. The answer lies in the near certainty that teenagers with a good dollop of community experience under their belts will have acquired a sense of social responsibility needed for citizenship in a democracy. More to come!

• From The Editor: On the Campaign Trail

  June 17, 2011 5:00 PM Comments Off on From The Editor: On the Campaign Trail

  As I write these words, we are just days away from a federal election. By the time you read them, the election and its rhetoric will have faded into the contours of a Canadian summer. I don’t want to spoil your day at the lake, but as the last week of this campaign unfolds before me, I can’t resist sharing these thoughts.

  As educators, we stress the importance of backing up arguments with facts. It’s not enough to claim something; you have to support it. That’s pretty basic, but it’s a lesson that has obviously slipped by our politicians. When called upon for clear evidence to support their points, they resort to the repetition principle of debating: just keep stating your premise again and again until enough people absorb it as a fact.

  We also insist that direct quotations and references to other people’s ideas be cited accurately and clearly. We want to know exactly who said it and where you found it. That’s called “academic honesty” in schools; it’s just plain honesty everywhere else – except on the campaign trail. There, it’s barely given lip service. If you can convince the public that the other guy said something stupid, it’s apparently fair game – whether he said it or not. Or for that matter, whether it’s stupid or not.

  Then there’s the principle of clarity. Whether they’re writing a paper for social studies or presenting a science project, students are encouraged to be clear. Can the listener understand what really happened? Can the reader tell what you really think? If not, try again, because good communication skills are essential to academic and personal success – unless you’re running for high office, in which case obfuscation reigns. A convoluted response to a clear question is the best way to prepare yourself for the inevitable misquote (see above).

  If this level of cynicism makes you uncomfortable – well, it makes me uncomfortable too. Educators across the country are placing a new emphasis on citizenship education, instilling in their students a respect for the principles of democracy, encouraging them to participate in the political process, and urging them to approach

  rational

  debate with an open mind. This is exactly what they should be doing. They should also be empowering those young people to insist on the same standards from political leaders. I hope they are.

  If we can’t re-educate our leaders in the basic classroom lessons about evidence, honesty, and clarity, public cynicism will make all political debate irrelevant.

• Playing to Learn

  4:20 PM Comments Off on Playing to Learn

  A review of A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, 2011. ISBN-13: 978-1456458881

  Play is neither trivial nor frivolous; it is how we learn. Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown take seriously the role of play as a mindset that needs to be cultivated in education. In A New Culture of Learning, they invite us to see how a world in constant flux is not either a problem to solve or a challenge to overcome. Via richly textured stories about what learning and play look and feel like in digitally connected participatory cultures, the authors invite readers to imagine how teaching might respond to a world in constant change.

  In a skillful analysis of shifting learning contexts and cultures, the authors explore learning as a cultural, social, and continuous process of inquiry, engagement, and participation in the world around us. Given that knowledge and information are dynamic and changing, that current technologies are participatory and emergent, they argue that learning environments must be transformed into knowledge building collectives that constantly create and respond to change.

  They explore the power, nature, and benefits of learning collectives that shift away from a culture of solitary professionals and experts to worldwide webs of professionals and amateurs working together in knowledge building groups – groups like those highlighted in the book, Seeing in the Dark, a collaboration of amateur and professional astronomers interested in astrophysics theories, or like fan fiction collectives, which illustrate how interest-driven inquiry is about how people learn in addition to what they learn.  Harry Potter fans join an online community engaged in ongoing conversations to connect with like-minded enthusiasts and experts. Through contributions to wikis, blogs, and online forums, readers change the culture by participating in it. Readers learn the stories via the books and explore the meaning of the novels through active engagement with others online in rich, participatory cultural contexts.

  Thomas and Seely Brown’s key ideas about new learning cultures converge in a case study of a massive, multiplayer online game. In World of Warcraft, groups of players form guilds, go on raids, battle monsters, and progress through increasingly difficult challenges. A raid is a complex group action that can involve 25 globally dispersed players in six-to-eight hours of game play.  The authors invite us to imagine the ways in which players develop and hone dispositions and character traits – embracing change, understanding the power of diversity, using feedback for constant improvement, and living on the edge – valued competencies and attitudes needed for a world in constant change.

  A New Culture of Learning is an important book that disrupts notions of schooling built on stable knowledge and individual learning. In constantly changing contexts, where new ideas are exploding, learning has to be continuous, connected, and collective. Play becomes a strategy for cultivating our imaginations, engaging our creativity, and embracing change, not something to “grow out of”. As the world grows more complicated, complex, and fluid, our opportunities for imagination, innovation, and play increase.

  In technology-enabled learning environments, teaching can be transformed in ways that recognize learner participation and engagement in networked conversations as fundamental to knowledge building. In new learning cultures, teachers design learning environments to cultivate creativity and the imagination, offer flexible boundaries, and support learners in undertaking meaningful, challenging, and collaborative tasks – playing with rich resources and making collective contributions to their culture.  Evaluating the collective act of knowledge building involves a shift of focus from the individual effort to the quality of the product.  Reminiscent of Seymour Papert’s ideas about hard fun, the authors argue that when students feel passion for a topic, they will seek out the tough problems, work hard to solve them, and have fun doing it.  Participatory learning environments sustain student motivation and engagement in powerful ideas and in questions about things that matter to the learners and to the world.

  Thomas and Seely Brown’s book will appeal to prospective and practicing teachers, school leaders, graduate students, post-secondary teachers, and leaders who need to understand how complex learning happens beyond school in order to design participatory learning environments. The authors’ examples of beyond-school learning, from blogging, to multiplayer online games, to Wikipedia, serve to illustrate the new, fluid culture of learning.

  The authors call for a balance between the structure that educational systems provide and the freedom to play in new participatory and connected cultures. Education should be a place where we embrace the many online resources and rich opportunities for play, exploration, and cultivating the imagination, not attempt to shut them out.

  Readers can access the book’s online community for reviews, videos, and additional resources at  www.newcultureoflearning.com

• Engaging and Challenging Teachers – Engaging and Challenging Students

  2:04 PM Comments Off on Engaging and Challenging Teachers – Engaging and Challenging Students

   Kids just know that they don’t have an option to not do their work… I always had successful students, but now everybody is successful… It’s not that the kid doesn’t want to do it. It’s that the kid is unable to do it the way we are asking them to…  It doesn’t make sense to factor in zeros. That is not a true reflection of what kids know; they don’t know nothing… A lot of the mystery of where marks come from is gone now… If they haven’t learned then I haven’t taught them and I am the one who needs to do things differently… It really makes me look at how far we’ve come, really, in everything… I think the kids here recognize that they have something special.

  – Excerpts from a video of teachers talking about their work and their growth over the last few years.

  As part of our ongoing school improvement at Cornwallis Junior High in Halifax, we included the full school community – families, staff, and students – in a comprehensive process to identify our strengths and challenges. We questioned our core beliefs, practices, and purpose, and we sought out ways to offer the best possible learning opportunities.

  Our conclusion: Yes, we were a good place, but not equally good for everyone. Some students were not engaged or successful. It was time for meaningful focused change.

  We decided to dig deep into our own beliefs and practices, excavate those that were not learning supportive, and focus on developing a strong foundation on which to base improvement strategies. We prepared to make a shift in our way of seeing assessment, and in turn student learning, with carefully targeted, research-based professional development.

  We used the works of diverse educational researchers. Rachel Kessler’s The Soul of Education and Parker Palmer’s Courage to Teach led us to deep reflection, trust, and honesty; the work of Rick Stiggins and Ken O’Connor on authentic assessment practices informed our own learning and that of our students; and the broad research related to effective schools and professional learning communities informed our design of an effective student support structure.

  In the past, struggling students were encouraged to attend extra help sessions – but the choice was theirs…We were leaving the choice of whether to succeed or fail in the hands of 12-14-year-olds!

  We identified two key strategies that could move us forward: 1) targeted and consistent student support; and 2) a focus on outcomes based assessment that supports learning. These strategies are embedded in our processes of reflection and analysis, and in our willingness to embrace change.

  Core Strategies

  Student Success Support Pyramid

  Our original data indicated that only 55 percent of our students were meeting most of the outcomes in every subject. When we looked at report card data, we saw that the comments for students not achieving outcomes were limited to three areas: not handing in work they had completed, not completing homework, and not taking advantage of extra help. We were leaving the choice of whether to succeed or fail in the hands of 12-to-14-year-olds!

  In the past, struggling students were encouraged to attend extra help sessions – but the choice was theirs. The majority of those who chose to attend succeeded; those who opted out did not. We realized that students need interventions that are directive, not invitational, and that occur within the school day. So we implemented a Student Success Support Pyramid (SSSP) of interventions that included mandatory extra help and work completion support.

  It took two years (2007-09) for us to fine tune our lunchtime mandatory Guided Study Hall (GSH) program, but it is now accepted as an integral part of our academic culture. When a student is assigned to GSH, the teacher notifies the Vice Principal, who informs the parents/guardians that their child will be attending GSH and asks them to make sure that their child brings a lunch the next day. The teacher e-mails the GSH teacher with the work that needs to be completed. After each session the GSH teacher e-mails assigning teachers and the VP, detailing the work that has been completed. The process has been so effective that students now self-assign because they recognize the benefits to their learning.

  Assessment

  We believe that effective assessment is central to providing students, and their teachers, with a clear understanding of their learning. This understanding allows students to develop self-advocacy skills that will benefit them throughout their lives. Our school-based in-services have focused on classroom assessment of, for, and as student learning. To support this shift, individual teachers have attended conferences and sessions related to differentiated instruction, formative assessment, mentoring and co-teaching, curriculum alignment, effective schools, the What did you do in school today? initiative, and data collection analysis.

  We have moved well beyond the assessment processes that resulted more in sorting students than assessing learning. Our assessment, teaching, and learning practices now focus on supporting every student in successfully achieving the outcomes. We have made great strides toward closing the achievement gap and are working to raise the bar for those students who would benefit from more finely tuned challenges. Establishing and articulating this “right level of challenge” is an important goal as we seek to make our junior high school a place where all students succeed.

  Challenges Met

  These are some of the challenges that we encountered, and how we met them:

  Cultural Shift

  • Developing the level of trust required for deep reflection on our own practice and the naming of our own challenges and strengths so that we can each find our entry point into the process.

  It takes time to build enough trust to realize our challenges and show vulnerability with our colleagues.

  • Working through our individual philosophical struggles with forms of assessment that moved us away from punitive assessment practices to true outcomes-based assessment; that eliminated the grading of behaviour; and that allowed for multiple opportunities and multiple ways of representing learning.
  • Shifting from a culture of seeing students as “lazy” or “not caring” to one that sees them as needing more targeted support.

  One of the unpredicted benefits from our shift to a true learning culture is the ability to more readily identify students with learning challenges. Once the appropriate learning supports are put in place (often forms of assistive technology or environmental strategies), these students are able to shine.

  Student Success Support Pyramid

  • Including the Guided Study Hall as part of the teachers’ regular teaching schedule.

  Previously, teachers volunteered extra help, so making GSH a part of a teacher’s timetable created a timetabling challenge. It also signified a commitment to this process of student support. Teachers continue to offer extra help before and after school.

  • Shifting from a sense of “punishment” to “support” for lunchtime interventions.

  Lunchtime had been used for detentions, so when we shifted to lunchtime GSH and lunchtime Resource, it took time for students and families to see it as support rather than punishment.

  • Developing a central referral system that kept communication clear among teachers, students, and families.

  Initially teachers called home to inform families of the student’s referral to GSH. This became so cumbersome for teachers that they were reluctant to assign students to GSH. When this communication became part of the Vice Principal’s assignment, it worked more smoothly and efficiently.

  Assessment

  • Shifting from assessment that sorts to assessment that informs learning.

  Shifting to assessment that not only allows for, but encourages, multiple opportunities for demonstrating achievement and does not punish students for taking more time to learn has been difficult for some to accept. We use the “driver’s licence” analogy to explain our learning model to new staff and to families. We give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning, and we do not average those assessments. When they get it, they’ve got it, just like a drivers licence.

  • Targeting professional development to meet teachers where they were in their assessment practice, while ensuring that we continued to move forward as a group.
  • Developing flexible timetabling that allowed time for teachers to support each other.

  There can be great resistance to changing old habits, traditions, and ways of seeing. We believe that all teachers want to be good teachers – the best that they can be – and once they see the benefits of these shifts in beliefs about learning they will move forward with a passion. It comes down to this: once we know something, we are faced with the question “What do we do with what we know?” And there are some ‘knowings’ that are so elemental that they will not allow us to not act. Just as the students know that the supports are in place and they “do not have the option of not doing the work”, teachers need to know that the supports they require will be in place as they proceed on this change journey.

  Cultural Shift

  As a result of these strategies and meeting these challenges, there has been a shift in the academic culture of our school. We are now engaging students and teachers in what matters most: teachers feeling successful with all students and students feeling successful in their learning. Students recognize that they are expected to succeed and that there are supports in place to help them. They are beginning to understand how to take responsibility for their own learning.

  As a staff, our conversations are related to how we can support each child’s learning because we believe each child wants to and can learn. Teachers can name the changes they have made and how these changes have gone to a deep level that causes them to question, even beyond the school setting. We ask ourselves, what are we missing and how can we best serve the students’ needs? We then act collectively to support each student. Our student achievement data indicate that we have made great gains in closing the achievement gap. Currently 89 percent of our students are meeting outcomes in all subjects; our goal is 100 percent.

  We are now engaging students and teachers in what matters most: teachers feeling successful with all students and students feeling successful in their learning.

  Another result of this shift in the learning culture is that students now realize that “not doing the work” is no longer an option. Supports are in place for students who need them, and we review both student progress and supports on an ongoing basis. As a result, we are now more successful at engaging students where they are as individuals.

  Conclusion

  There is something special about the way we have learned together and how we now see ourselves as learners. This intimate process has moved us forward with passion and skill, both collectively and individually. We have created the expectation that everyone will succeed. In a true learning culture, students lose the feeling of self-consciousness – lose the fear of being judged. They are comfortable as themselves and as learners. They are able to take risks, and teachers are able to meet them where they are. When we break through the barriers that hold young adolescents back, they can be successful and proud of who they are. They can become the best they can be. 

  EN BREF – La communauté d’apprentissage de l’école Cornwallis Junior High à Halifax a suivi un processus de réflexion et d’analyse, établissant deux stratégies clés pour appuyer l’apprentissage de tous les élèves : un soutien ciblé et constant des élèves et un accent sur l’évaluation axée sur les résultats. En intégrant à la journée scolaire et en rendant obligatoires l’aide supplémentaire et l’achèvement des travaux pour les élèves en difficulté, on a supprimé l’option de « ne pas faire le travail », réduisant considérablement le taux d’échec. En évaluant en fonction de l’apprentissage acquis, l’école a beaucoup progressé pour combler l’écart de réussite et travaille maintenant à relever la barre pour les élèves susceptibles de profiter de défis plus adaptés.

• On the Campaign Trail

  June 16, 2011 7:35 PM Comments Off on On the Campaign Trail

  As I write these words, we are just days away from a federal election. By the time you read them, the election and its rhetoric will have faded into the contours of a Canadian summer. I don’t want to spoil your day at the lake, but as the last week of this campaign unfolds before me, I can’t resist sharing these thoughts.

  As educators, we stress the importance of backing up arguments with facts. It’s not enough to claim something; you have to support it. That’s pretty basic, but it’s a lesson that has obviously slipped by our politicians. When called upon for clear evidence to support their points, they resort to the repetition principle of debating: just keep stating your premise again and again until enough people absorb it as a fact.

  We also insist that direct quotations and references to other people’s ideas be cited accurately and clearly. We want to know exactly who said it and where you found it. That’s called “academic honesty” in schools; it’s just plain honesty everywhere else – except on the campaign trail. There, it’s barely given lip service. If you can convince the public that the other guy said something stupid, it’s apparently fair game – whether he said it or not. Or for that matter, whether it’s stupid or not.

  Then there’s the principle of clarity. Whether they’re writing a paper for social studies or presenting a science project, students are encouraged to be clear. Can the listener understand what really happened? Can the reader tell what you really think? If not, try again, because good communication skills are essential to academic and personal success – unless you’re running for high office, in which case obfuscation reigns. A convoluted response to a clear question is the best way to prepare yourself for the inevitable misquote (see above).

  If this level of cynicism makes you uncomfortable – well, it makes me uncomfortable too. Educators across the country are placing a new emphasis on citizenship education, instilling in their students a respect for the principles of democracy, encouraging them to participate in the political process, and urging them to approach rational debate with an open mind. This is exactly what they should be doing. They should also be empowering those young people to insist on the same standards from political leaders. I hope they are.

  If we can’t re-educate our leaders in the basic classroom lessons about evidence, honesty, and clarity, public cynicism will make all political debate irrelevant. 

• Safe Schools: The Threat From Within?

  4:21 PM Comments Off on Safe Schools: The Threat From Within?

  In Ontario, the first steps toward implementing safe school legislation and policies began in the early 1990s, with public demands for more surveillance and safety measures in schools following several violent incidents. In many urban schools, principals began putting security guards in their schools, installing electronic surveillance, and demanding that students wear identification tags. The emphasis was on discipline and zero tolerance, with the brunt of those efforts aimed squarely at a school’s own student population. In June, 2000, the Ontario Ministry of Education passed the Safe Schools Act, which set out a list of offences that could trigger expulsion, suspension, and other disciplinary responses. Interestingly, it did not define safety. 

  At the same time a parallel effort was playing out in Toronto public schools, culminating in 1999 when the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) adopted The Equity Foundation Statement – a comprehensive commitment to equity and a rally against racism, homophobia, sexism, and oppression based on class.

  Standing Up for Equity: Two Teachers Speak Out

  Sharon Dominick teaches English and Media Studies at Burton School – not its real name – a high school of over 1,200 students in metropolitan Toronto. One student described Burton School as a school for “rejects” and that anyone with academic ability – and means – transfers out. A large number of the students are Black, although their numbers are dwindling.

  While the students view Sharon as a person of some leadership, because she is White, both she and Melanie Rangan – another teacher in Sharon’s department – believe the real power in the school is held by the male physical education department and the “tech” department, who dominate Burton School’s Safe Schools Committee and Dress Code Committee. In Sharon and Melanie’s view, these two committees use their power to control students, not to make school space safer. Melanie attributes the undisguised and widespread use of this controlling power to the Safe Schools Act, which allows schools to dictate student behaviour and remove students from school in the name of safety.

  Now, this is a very heavy thing, to get rid of students, but they do it under this whole umbrella of making the school safe for students. [These two committees] are very powerful groups because they really do make the rules.

  Melanie offers a calm assessment of her own role in the school, describing herself as “a colonized person”.

  The students see that I am one of the unimportant visible minority teachers in the school. They know that if they need help, they have to look to the White teachers who are either in the Tech Department or who are closer to the administration. And that’s the only way they can get help.

  When a Black male principal replaced the White principal two years ago, membership on the two committees opened up, and Melanie joined both. But even with the new principal, she saw these committees ignoring equity issues and trying to “shape the identity of our students.” The rules seemed aimed solely at Black students and “most of what the school was concerned with was controlling who they were.”

  The “crackdown” on hair, and the implementation of other security measures in the name of school safety, was really a “crackdown” on the identities of visible minority students, particularly Black students, primarily Black male students.

  Under the Safe Schools Act, one of the first things the school did was to implement a hat policy. According to Melanie, “students were not allowed to cover their heads – no hats or head coverings of any kind.” Both Sharon and Melanie understood this rule to be directed at keeping students’ faces visible for the two security guards who patrolled the school, as well as for the cameras. And yet, girls were told they could not use scarves or barrettes to manage their hair. Melanie talked about the policy.

  When I went to the Safe School Committee, I brought up the point that Black people have different texture of hair. It’s very wiry, very curly, and it stands up…And maybe the students tie their hair in scarves or whatever they do, to hold their hair back. If they don’t do this, they either have to straighten it, they have to tie it up. They have to spend money to fix their hair if it’s not shaved off or cut off short.

  Later, a committee member said in a staff meeting, “Well that might teach the Black kids to wash their hair before they come to school, and maybe then it would lie down.”

  In Melanie’s view, the “crackdown” on hair, and the implementation of other security measures in the name of school safety, was really a “crackdown” on the identities of visible minority students, particularly Black students, primarily Black male students. The Safe Schools Act was being used to materially and symbolically reconfigure the composition of students at Burton School – and at other schools. The rules restructured the school in one of two ways, either by eliminating Black students from the school’s population or by reconstructing the pupils who remain as “White”. In this sense, the dress code, for example, could be read as a cultural device reinforcing dominant social relations and restricting cultural identities.

  Safety, Equity, and Sexual Minorities

  Targeting visible minority students has had a corresponding and inevitable chilling effect on the environment of the school for sexual minority students. Both Sharon and Melanie told me that sexual minority students would not come out at Burton School.

  “Sexual minority students are not on the administration’s radar and they know it,” Melanie told me. “I am aware of one girl who tried to come out. I think when they do want to come out, they get bullied and picked on. They transfer as soon as they are in Grade 11. I think they’re afraid to come out if they’re gay and lesbian because nobody respects anybody here. It’s a whole cycle of control of some, neglect of others.”

  The TDSB’s Equity Foundation Statement calls for significant content of queer issues in curricula and is thorough and specific in championing the equality rights of these students. It also provides the means of recognizing, accommodating, and allowing safe and welcoming spaces for minority students – particularly sexual minority youth. 

  For most sexual minority students, the emphasis on safety, security, surveillance, and punishment found in the Safe Schools Act does not translate into safe schools, even where incidents of physical violence are low or subject to a quick response. So what is the potential of safe school legislation and equity policies to combat the bullying and oppression of sexual minority students in high schools? I spent three months in ten Toronto high schools (including Burton), interviewing approximately 25 sexual minority students, to find out how they define safety – particularly in the absence of legal guidance – and how they perceive the ways in which safety is pursued at their schools.

  Most of the students I interviewed indicated that safety policies should incorporate equity, but most also reported that their own schools pursued safety in terms of security rather than equity, with an emphasis on responding to physical violence. 

  I asked Sarah, a sixteen year old, White lesbian, if she thought her school was a safe place.

  At this school, safety is framed as an issue of control, not equity. Security guards, surveillance cameras, always talking about crime and the dress code. The dress code forbids hats so that our faces are not obscured for the security cameras. Baggy pants and anything to do with hip hop culture is out. There’s a toxic environment at this school. It’s not safe for students because we don’t see safety in the same way the school does. Queer students don’t even register. Nothing is being done for us.

  A Failed Policy

  According to Melanie and Sharon, the school’s refusal to conceptualize safety in terms of equity is contributing to the very problems the Safe School Committee had intended to eliminate. They insist that such a re-conceptualization is the only way to create safe schools for visible minority students and queer students. Students who were targeted victims of “safety as control” and “safety as security” have rebelled against it – and were consequently removed from the school.

  Most of the control issues revolve around the dress code, which strikes at the heart of student identity. In the name of security, the Burton School Dress Code Committee first banned coats, and then backpacks, from the classroom, on the grounds that they could be used to hide drugs or weapons. Then they decided that if students were going to house their belongings in lockers, the Committee should have access to the lockers, and so imposed an additional rule that required students to purchase locks from the school. Failing to comply with any of these rules resulted in suspension from the school or other disciplinary action.

  When I was visiting Burton School, the Dress Code Committee was discussing whether or not to introduce a school uniform – white shirt and dark, tight pants for boys, dark pants or skirt for girls. According to Melanie, this is a direct affront to student identity.  

  It was like they weren’t allowing the kids to be Black. They had to try to be White, by dressing and straightening their hair and doing things that looked more like the White culture.

  For Melanie, lanyards – which she compared to “dog tags” – were the most intrusive control mechanism used by the administration and an impediment to learning. Several students and teachers noted that students constantly lost their lanyards, and if they were caught without one by the security guards or in random classroom checks, they were suspended. “Sometimes it’s a day; sometimes they can’t come back unless they buy a new lanyard. So strictly speaking, without these ID cards, they can do nothing in the school. It’s policing, not a safety issue.”

  Students Speak Out

  Sharon and I are sitting in her classroom nearing the end of lunch period. Lots of students came to Sharon’s class during lunch to use the computer and because they feel safer in her classroom than in the cafeteria or in the area outside the school. When class starts, Sharon introduces me to the class. “Everybody, I want you to meet Donn. Donn is interested in safe schools. Does anybody have any questions for Donn? Use your hands.”

  Immediately, several hands wave in the air. “What do schools have to do with the law?” I am prepared for this question. I mention the Education Act and the Safe Schools Act; I talk about school boards and policies; and I explain how the laws and policies regulate schools. I also talk about informal laws – the ways in which students regulated themselves according to their own “laws”.

  “Okay,” says Sharon, “Let’s discuss school safety. What are we told will keep us safe? You don’t have to use hands.” One student shouts, “Lanyards.” Other answers produced a long list:

  • lanyards
  • security guards
  • police
  • cameras
  • rules

  “Okay, let’s make another list. What are we told about equity?” There is absolute silence in the classroom. Sharon repeats the question. One student ventures, “Muslim prayer on Friday?” Sharon writes down the one response on the board and asks, “Anything else? Okay, then, what equity policies do we have?”

  A tall black male student, Wayne, says: “There is no equity. It’s garbage.”

  This gets the ball rolling. and there are several answers are shouted at once: “Dress code…No hats…No nothin’…Black students are stopped more.” Sharon listens until there are no more suggestions. “And is that equity?”

  Wayne answers again: “Here it is. Equity is shit.”

  Connecting the Dots

  At Burton, as at most of the schools I visited, there was a disconnect between students’ conceptualization of safety and equity and how they experienced them on a day-to-day basis. I did find two schools – just two – where the students felt that equity and social justice were integrated into the concept of safety.

  At these two schools, the sexual minority students I interviewed indicated that safety was pursued in terms of equity, emphasizing equality and incorporating queer realities into the curriculum and in extracurricular events, such as school dances and assemblies. At one school, students characterized their school’s approach to safety in terms of a general climate concerned with social justice issues. The students at this school were aware of the TDSB’s Equity Foundation Statement, but felt it was just “a starting point”.

  There is little doubt that that the work being undertaken by students and teachers like Sharon and Melanie is complicated, political, and long-term. These stories ­– not just the stories of their students, but of their experience as well – are a diary of accomplishments and resistance on the ground. Sharon concluded, “The school fights everything I want to do. My goals don’t fit with their idea of what makes a safe school.”

  The purpose of my research has been and will continue to be to listen to the voices of sexual minority students, grounded in their own experiences, in an to attempt to understand how they perceive what most threatens their personal identities, as well as their physical safety, as one means to measure the effectiveness of constantly shifting conceptions of how to construct safe schools. Only with this knowledge can more effective reforms be imagined. Other researchers have produced data that confirms the legitimacy of the experiences of the students and teachers I interviewed.[1]

  Since Ontario first introduced the Safe Schools Act in 2000, the legislation and policies have been amended significantly to deal with bullying as a specific threat to school safety, with a greater focus on homophobic bullying. We need more research to understand how successful those amendments have been and to what extent the needs of sexual and other minority students are being met.

  This research was part of a study funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia. A national study of teachers’ perspectives and experiences of homophobia and transphobia in Canadian schools will be conducted by Dr. Catherine Taylor, Dr. Donn Short, Dr. Tracey Peter and Dr. Elizabeth Meyer, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and will be undertaken over the next three years.

  Les gardes de sécurité, la surveillance électronique, les insignes d’identification d’élèves, la discipline et la tolérance zéro caractérisent les politiques de sécurité scolaire de nombreuses écoles urbaines en Ontario. En 2000, le ministère de l’Éducation de l’Ontario a adopté la Loi sur la sécurité dans les écoles, qui énumère les infractions susceptibles de provoquer le renvoi, la suspension et d’autres mesures disciplinaires, sans définir, toutefois, la sécurité. Parallèlement, le Conseil scolaire de Toronto a adopté The Equity Foundation Statement en 1999 – un engagement global à réaliser l’équité et à lutter contre le racisme, l’homophobie, le sexisme et l’oppression fondée sur la classe sociale. Cet article contraste les conceptualisations de la sécurité et de l’équité des élèves et du personnel enseignant, ainsi que la façon dont ces aspects sont vécus au jour le jour.

  ---

  [1] See for example C.J. Pascoe, Dude You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); George W. Smith, “The Ideology of ‘Fag’” The Sociological Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1998): 309; and Kevin Davison, “Masculinities, Sexualities and the Study Body: Sorting Gender Identities in School” in Experiencing Difference, ed Carl E. James (Halifax: Fernwood, 2000); Rob Gilbert and Pam Gilbert, Masculinity Goes to School (London: Routledge, 1998). 

• A Dead Seagull

  4:02 PM Comments Off on A Dead Seagull

  After reading, “High School’s Dark Corners” in the Winter 2011 edition of Education Canada, I thought I would share this story… 

  My high school days are particularly memorable for all of the wrong reasons. On the night of my graduation, my girlfriend chose to break up with me and my parents didn’t attend. But then, neither did I.  

  Recently, I attended a professional development (PD) activity (Tribes Training) designed to help teachers get away from the traditional teacher-centered activities by incorporating more group and sub-group activities. The facilitator of our session directed us to recall and recount a high school memory. I already gave you one of mine, but not everyone was so pathetic. A colleague, for example, fell in love with the high school quarterback and married him, and even more memorable they are still married. One teacher recalled playing senior football for four years. You do the math. He now teaches Religion, likely due to a conversion experience on the way to the coliseum. 

  I recall our high school putting on the play “Annie Get Your Gun.” I played a pivotal role in a climatic scene in which Annie raises her rifle, takes a bead, and shoots a bird right out of the sky. The audience watches in amazement as a bird falls from stage left, where I was in the wings strategically situated in such a way to launch the trajectory of the bird prop synchronized with Annie’s shooting. What can I say: it was a huge coup and theatrical success at a formative stage in my life. 

  As we went around the sharing circle in our PD group, other teachers recounted similar, yet more meaningful and insightful stories than my own. Stories about their high school past, spoken with passion and animated faces – about winning awards, trophies and other honours, about being on various teams, about socializing with friends, and frequently about skipping classes. Some gloried to hear their names announced in a track meet, setting a track record, going on a school trip, dancing slowly and intimately to “Stairway to Heaven” with the dry ice in high gear. But –­ and this is the point here – not one teacher mentioned a single magical pedagogical moment, a learning nirvana, an inner Zen epiphany. No stories were about learning or being at one with the curriculum.

  After the requisite reflection, I had to conclude that if we remain so fixated on curriculum and testing, are we really missing the big picture and the truly holistic view of our students? Schools should be so much more than curriculum-based learning factories.

  When I look yet again on my own high school days, I do remember with satisfaction my Geography teacher who made meteorology come alive for me. I had the unique opportunity to meet with my mentor about five years ago. Although securely ensconced in his retirement, he did seem to remember me. Like his own son, I too became a high school geography teacher. I became fascinated with Geography because I made a real connection with my teacher. I have come to realize that school is more than a sheltered haven for linguistic and mathematical skills. For me teaching is about making the connection with students, and only then is there any hope of giving the content relevance and greater meaning.

  We are the sum total of our experiences. I want to be a teacher who – yes, of course – covers most of the curriculum, but also provides meaningful memories and opportunities for my students. After all, everyone deserves the empowerment of a positive school experience whether they are an ace student or not. I firmly believe that every kid should have the opportunity to throw a dead bird on stage at least once – but I think you get my point.

• Canadian Education Wire – School Boards Grapple with Anti-Homophobia Policies

  June 10, 2011 4:41 PM Comments Off on Canadian Education Wire – School Boards Grapple with Anti-Homophobia Policies

  ‘Rainbow’ ruckus hits Catholic high school – TO Star

  Catholic school board bars lesbian comedian from performing in Toronto – Globe and Mail

  Burnaby school board to consider revised anti-homophobia policy – Burnaby Newsleader

  What news am I missing? Can you recommend some education blogs for me to follow? Please tweet me at @max_cooke, e-mail me at mcooke@cea-ace.ca or better yet, use the comment box below to suggest additional articles happening in your region so that others can check it out.  

  OTHER EDUCATION NEWS

  Anti-Tory effort could backfire on teachers – National Post

  Stelmach awakens sleeping teachers’ union – Calgary Herald

  Ontario Student Survey allows students, parents to have a say – Cottage Country Now

  83% of Grade 10 students pass literacy test – TO Star

  INTERNATIONAL

  The Futures of School Reform – Education Week
  A working group on the “Futures of School Reform,” organized by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and led by Robert B. Schwartz and Jal Mehta of Harvard and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, includes more than a dozen researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from around the country. Education Week is running a seven-part series of Commentary essays expressing visions of members of the “Futures” group. 

  EDUCATION BLOG HIGHLIGHTS

  The Millennials are Googling Us – Shannon in Ottawa (Shannon Smith)
  Caveat:  Although not a member of the Millenial Generation, I should disclose that I scored an 87 on the Pew Research quiz, “How Millennial Are you?”  Go ahead and try it out 
  Over the past few weeks we have been in the thick of staffing and hiring for next year.  As my principal, Jen, and I have reflected after each set of interviews, I have been formulating a blog post giving some pointers to teacher candidates hoping to land not only the interview, but the position.  But that isn’t this post.  This post is for my colleagues in administration who are still reluctant to start a professional blog or switch to a blog for their schools.

  Making Transparency Concrete – Culture of Yes (Chris Kennedy)
  Transparency has become an overused mantra in the workplace, and in the public sector, in particular, leaders have faced an increased demand for transparent thinking and actions. In my role as superintendent of a 7,200-student school district, transparency is about promoting accountability and accessibility, providing timely information for students, staff and parents about what their school district is doing. Essentially, it demystifies the work of schools and school districts.

  Do I serve you or are you to support me? – For the Love of Learning (Joe Bower)
  As a classroom teacher, I spend the majority of my time working with students while they are still learning, so I have an intense understanding for how important it is for kids to be engaged in learning by doing projects that are in a context and for a purpose. Without the information (read: observations) that I gather from such projects, I could not call myself a teacher, nor could my students call themselves learners. But how often is data defined like this?

• Let’s get serious about community-based education

  June 8, 2011 6:09 PM Comments Off on Let’s get serious about community-based education

  It does not take much persuasion to grasp that engaging high school students in the everyday activities of the community is terribly important to their maturation. A list of reasons pours out of my fingertips:

  • An escape from the school cocoon – its boredom, repetitiveness, irrelevance, passivity.
  • Innovative power of involvement in community activities where imagination is tempered by practicality.
  • Hands-on activity as a supplement and relief from textbook learning.
  • Adult role models to stoke the admiration of teenagers.
  • Interaction between teachers and the world of economic and social activity around the schoolhouse.
  • Career counseling from the grass roots.

  The obstacles are nearly as numerous and much more formidable:

  • Personal safety anxieties in a fear-ridden society.
  • Professional jealousies.
  • Curriculum erosion, which might devalue the graduation diploma.
  • Job security fears among teachers.
  • Loss of monopoly power over schooling by the politicians.

  Any one of these obstacles could strangle a proposal for community-based education at birth. But the ways and means of a democracy are ingenious and quite durable. A start-up committee broadly representative of the community (i.e. inclusive of the public and private sectors) would likely need a year or more to explore the multiple possibilities for implementing the idea. After that it would be a matter of trial and error for another year or longer to get it right. A myriad of questions would bedevil the committee:

  How to gain the approval of the central education authority?  Recruit the support of the municipal council? Engage the private sector in the planning? Respond positively to media curiosity and criticism? Assure the teachers and administrators that community-based education is a well-tested idea that will not cause the sky to fall.

  It is obvious that the committee would need to do a lot of homework. The question will be asked a thousand times: Why bother? We’ve got a good working system now. My answer: the publicly supported schools of Canada and the U.S. are under threat. Home schooling and private schooling are undermining the walls of the public system. Changing the system to foster civic enthusiasm, democratic enhancement, and vocational excitement can reverse the slide.

• What did you do in school today? Infographic

  12:00 AM Comments Off on What did you do in school today? Infographic

  What did you do in school today? has provided the EdCan Network with insights into how more than 63,000 Canadian students feel about their experiences of engagement in school and learning. The EdCan Network has created an infographic of these student engagement results in Canadian schools. We invite you to take a walk through a school to see the national picture of intellectual, social and institutional engagement in elementary, middle and secondary schools and classrooms.

• The Education Reform Movement

  May 25, 2011 9:14 PM Comments Off on The Education Reform Movement

  Earlier blog postings at this website have roamed widely over the field of needed changes: Teacher training and compensation, student assessment, community engagement by students, teacher-student relations, standardized testing, innovation, creativity, digital learning, discovery learning, etc.

  Some of the blogs have obliquely referred to the obsolescence of the school model. As I see it, schools are indeed dysfunctional places – fertile seed grounds for bullying, e-mail hate mongering, smoking, doing drugs, engaging in unsafe sex, negative peer pressure about nearly everything, competition as a prime value, materialism, cliques and gang codes of behaviour, the iron bands of teen conventionalism in dress and language – any of which can be factors in teenagers’ mental and physical health. In the worst cases, schools are hellholes of classism (see the movie Waiting for Superman). Fortunately for some, schools are happy places – for the winners on the playing field and in the high marks game.

  Historically, teenagers and many pre-teens worked side by side with adults in ugly circumstances. Liberal democratic societies invented public schools in the 19^th century or earlier as models of social advancement. In the evolution of the schoolhouse cocoon, we have by and large ended up with what is written above. We seem to be at a historical crossroads with a chance to turn the corner.

  To break the mould, it will be necessary to re-engage students with the adult world as part of their formal education, at least for those in their adolescent years. Done successfully, most school graduates, will have the benefit of adult role models to steer them in the direction of good citizenship – engaged, tolerant, open-minded, curious persons.

  This is not a pipe dream. There are examples of high school students involved in the life of their communities as pre-apprentices, job shadowing, carpentry assistants, personal support for institutionalized persons of all ages, hands-on work to beautify parks and school grounds, etc. There are stories of community-engaged students putting in as much as two hours daily within the school timetable in addition to their schoolwork. Less glamorously, to do this will be hard work for everyone concerned. But the result will be worth the effort if it enhances our democratic citizenship as a benefit for both the most and the least advantaged. I view this as the primary purpose of public education. All the rest is secondary.

• Rethinking School Design: Part Two

  May 23, 2011 11:39 AM Comments Off on Rethinking School Design: Part Two

  If I were to walk in through the front doors of your school, what message would I receive? Would I feel welcome there? Would I be encouraged to stay for a while, or would I be more inclined to complete my business and get the heck out? Would I be able to get a sense of the vision and purpose of the school?

  In my last entry, I started to do some thinking out loud about architectural design and, in particular, how values, vision and purpose can be expressed and affected by the physicality of this place we call school.

  For many educators, the physical design of their schools are a given, inherited and already determined. Often the only opportunity to change design features is through a retrofit or renovation process.

  But let’s start doing a little blue-sky thinking and imagine that, as a parent, a teacher, an administrator or a community member, you were invited to be part of the planning team for a brand new school in your district. What design aspects would be important to you? What architectural features would help to reflect your school’s values and vision?

  And let’s begin by making a grand entrance!

  Entrances are powerful places, possessing the ability to communicate so much about what goes on beyond the threshold. But I would also argue that what goes on in the rest of the building can be greatly affected by the design of the entrance.

  One of the “mantras” that I use to remind me of the vision for my own dream school is, “Let’s turn this school inside out”. This involves the idea of drawing the outside community into the life and work of the local school, and allowing students to engage in more frequent learning activities out in the community.

  So how could that vision be reflected in my school’s entrance?  One idea would be to dedicate electronic display space in the front foyer. A photo and video feed displaying recent school trips to local businesses, facilities and learning centres would help to underscore the importance of that connection to the immediate neighbourhood and wider community. The multimedia pieces would be student-designed and part of the curriculum-based follow-up to each excursion.

  Another design related to this same inside-out principle would be an established and jointly sponsored studio area, along one side of the foyer. Studio spaces for dance, drama and visual arts would allow local artists to “take up residence” in the school, have a place to work, and act as an on-site resource for teachers, students and the rest of the community.

  Another learning principle that should be reflected in my school’s entrance involves a commitment to the environment. An indoor garden area is a simple and sustainable project idea that could involve students, teachers and the local community.

  Important to both the life of the garden and to the sense of openness that I wish to inspire in my school is a substantial amount of natural light. Ground level window space might be impractical and pose some threats to security, but skylight and overhead window spaces would do the trick!

  A couple of final design features that would help to establish an inviting atmosphere.

  First, comfortable furniture! Nothing says, “Come in and stay awhile,” more than soft, comfortable furniture arranged in ways that invite dialogue and conversation. Coffee tables with copies of the latest school and parent council newsletters, as well as student-produced books and magazines would help to communicate what is happening in the school.

  Finally, background music can go along way to offering a subtle invitational quality to any open space. I’m not talking about loud or intrusive music, but something that complements the atmosphere created by other design elements. 

   

  Entrances represent more than a way to get to other spaces in a building. They are a type of calling-card for visitors and a reminder to residents and employees of what it means to be in that space. I’ve been to many schools where it is obvious that time and thought have gone into the design of the entrance space. I’ve also been to others, however, where the entrance is rather dull and uninviting. 

  But entrances can also help to inspire and influence the life of what goes on in the rest of the building. By making design elements interactive, dynamic and open to the input of students and teachers as well community members, it is quite possible that curriculum activity within classrooms will change to take advantage of the opportunities provided. 

  So, now it’s your turn. Tell us about the grand entrances that you’ve seen in some of the schools that you’ve visited. Perhaps your own school has a particularly engaging design feature. Or maybe you would just like to join me in some blue-sky thinking about the school of your dreams. 

  As always, I look forward to your input! 

• How Effective is Sex Education?

  May 16, 2011 9:40 PM Comments Off on How Effective is Sex Education?

  Most research on sex education targets teenagers, a group that wants and needs accurate, complete and unbiased information about sexual activity given that a significant proportion of adolescents engage in sexual activity. In 2005, 43 percent of Canadian teens aged 15 to 19 reported that they had had sexual intercourse at least once. Eight percent of teens reported having had sexual intercourse before they were 15 years old.

  The effectiveness of most sexual health interventions is not evaluated. The research also has relatively weak research designs, such as poor use of control groups.

  However some conclusions are:

  • Adolescents who receive comprehensive sex education have a lower risk of pregnancy than those who receive abstinence-only or no sex education. Comprehensive sex education includes information on birth control and on prevention of sexually transmitted diseases as well as abstinence messages.
  • Programs that focus on abstinence without discussing safer sex behaviours do not seem to reduce HIV risk. Some abstinence-only programs can decrease teens’ sexual behaviors, although the effects are modest and short term.
  • Sex education programs often ignore youth with non-heterosexual orientations (i.e. homosexual, bisexual, transgendered).
  • Many students with disabilities receive poor sex education services or may be excluded entirely.
  • Studies have found that self-esteem and adolescent’s sexual behaviour and attitudes are not related, so self-esteem should not be the main focus of sex education.
  • Using peers to deliver sexual health education to young people does not seem to increase condom use or reduce the odds of pregnancy or of having more partners.

  Parents can support their children at home through open discussion of information about sex, and by reinforcing messages about condom use and other forms of birth control as well as around the risks of and social pressures related to sexual behaviour. Role-playing hypothetical situations can be a useful strategy. If the child is not comfortable talking to his or her parents or vice versa, finding someone the child can talk openly with would be a good alternative.

   

  Additional Resources For ParentsManitoba Healthy Schools:

  This website gives advice to parents, teenagers and teachers on the realities of sexual health. It outlines a section on how parents can talk to their children about sex.http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthyschools/topics/sexual.html

  The Sex Education and Information Council of Canada: SIECCAN is a Canadian non-profit education organization with the mission of informing the public about all aspects of human sexuality. This website links to a resource page with articles on sexual health.http://www.sieccan.org/resources.html 

  Alberta Health Services: This link provides a guide for parents on sexuality and developmental disability. The document was prepared by the Calgary Health Region and includes information for parents, tips on ways they may to talk to their children and a list of further resources. http://www.calgaryhealthregion.ca/programs/sexualhealth/pdf/sdd.pdf

  The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada: This webpage includes a focus on information and tools for parents to guide their children to be sexually healthy. There are also hypothetical scenarios for parents to discuss and role-play with their children.http://www.sexualityandu.ca/en/parents

  PFLAG Canada: PFLAG Canada is a national organization helping Canadians struggling with issues surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity.This link provides information for parents trying to understand their children, links to useful websites and a list of readings that may be of interest.http://www.pflagcanada.ca/en/index-e.asp 

  Research References Informing this IssueBennett, S.E., & Assefi, N.P. (2005). School-based teenage pregnancy prevention programs: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Adolescent Health. 36(1), 72-81.Duke, T. (2011).

  Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth with disabilities: a meta-synthesis. Journal of LGBT Youth. 8, 1-52.Goodson, P., Buhi, E,. & Dunsmore, M.S. (2006).

  Self-esteem and adolescent sexual behaviours, attitudes, and intentions: a systematic review. Journal of Adolescent Health, 38, 310-319.Harden, A., Oakley, A., & Oliver, S. (2001)

  Peer-delivered health promotion for young people: A systematic review of different study designs. Health Education Journal, 60(4), 339-353.Kim, C., & Free, C. (2008).

  Recent evaluations of the peer-led approach in adolescent sexual health education: A systematic review, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 40(3), 144-152.McKay, A., Fisher, W., Maticka-Tyndale, E., & Barrett, M. (2001).

  Adolescent sexual health education does it work? Can it work better? An analysis of recent research and media reports, The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 10(3/4), 127-136.Oakley, A., & Olive, S. (2001).

  Peer-delivered health promotion for young people: A systematic review of different study designs. Health Education Journal. 60(4),339-353.Oakley, A., & Fullerton, D., &Holland, J., & Arnold, S., & France-Dawson, D., & Kelly, P., &McGrellis, S. (1995)

  Sexual health education interventions for young people: A methodological review. British Medical Journal, 310(6973), 158-162.Rottermann, M., (2008).

  “Trends in teen sexual behaviour and condom use.”, Health Matters. Statistics Canada Catelogue no. 82-003-XPE • Health Reports, 19(3). http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-003-x/2008003/article/10664-eng.pdf ( accessed April 24, 2011).

  Underhill, K., Montgomery, P., & Operario, D. (2007).

  Sexual abstinence only programmes to prevent HIV infection in high income countries: systematic review. Retrieved April 10, 2011, from http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7613/248.fullWainwright, P., Thomas, J., & Jones, M. (2000).

  Health promotion and the role of the school nurse: a systematic review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32(5), 1083-1091. 

• How Best To Motivate Students?

  April 20, 2011 4:32 PM Comments Off on How Best To Motivate Students?

  Students’ interest and desire to participate actively in the learning process is central to their success at any level of education. All students are motivated by some activities; in schools, student motivation is deeply affected by what happens in classrooms. Research drawn from several fields suggests ways we can improve students’ engagement and motivation:

  • Relevance – Building on students’ interests and making the lessons relevant to students’ lives and what they already know are good practices.
  • Choice – Giving students more choices in their learning, both about what to study and about how to present what they know and can do, makes learning more interesting and heightens curiosity.
  • Recognizing Effort – Success is a big spur to further effort. Students’ motivation increases when their efforts and contributions are consistently valued.
  • Feedback – Timely and specific feedback tells students what their strengths and weaknesses are. Feedback must be given so that students understand what they need to do in order to improve. Multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning are also important.
  • Teaching Methods and Tools – Students learn best through a variety of teaching techniques and strategies that challenge them and encourage them to explore ideas. The use of technology, such as computers, and SMART Boards, can also help to motivate students.

  Parents are valuable partners in the learning process. They can support their child’s learning by suggesting strategies to teachers that they have observed to be successful at home. This will help teachers meet the child’s learning needs.

  Teachers and parents support their children’s learning when they praise effort and hard work rather than intelligence. There is growing evidence that children’s intelligence is not fixed, and the children who do best are those who develop “growth mindsets” so that they are prepared to put in the effort to succeed.

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  Additional Resources For Parents

  Canadian Education Association: This article from Education Canada Magazine presents ways to engage students through effective questioning. Parents can try these strategies at home with their children.

  http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/engaging-students-through-effective-questions

  Concordia University: This website provides links to detailed tips that parents and educators can implement to encourage children to improve in their academics.

  http://teaching.concordia.ca/resources/teaching-strategies/motivating-students

  Scholastic: Scholastic provides information on children’s learning styles and a short quiz to help you determine your child’s needs.

  http://www.scholastic.com/familymatters/parentguides/backtoschool/quiz_learnstyles

  Scholastic: Scholastic provides practical suggestions that parents can implement to motivate their children to succeed.

  http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=1304

  Ontario Ministry of Education: This website provides a link to a report entitled “Me Read, No Way” with practical strategies on motivational strategies to improve reading among boys.

  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/brochure/meread/index.html

  Research References Informing this Issue

  Brophy, Jere. (2004). Motivating Students to Learn. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  Hidi, S., & Harackiewics, J. (2000). Motivating the academically unmotivated: A critical issue for the 21^st century, Review of Educational Research, 70 (2), 151-179.

  National Research Council Institute of Medicine (2003). Engaging schools: Fostering high school students’ motivation to learn. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

  Palardy, Michael. (1999). Some strategies for motivating students. NASSP Bulletin, 83, 116 -121.

  Perry, N. E, Turner, J. C., & Meyer, D. K. (2006). Classrooms as context for motivating Learning. In Alexander, P. A., & Winne, P. H. (Eds.), Handbook of educational psychology (327-345). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

• Ethical Parenting: “Doing Right Takes Work”

  March 24, 2011 8:30 PM Comments Off on Ethical Parenting: “Doing Right Takes Work”

  A review of Good Kids, Tough Choices: How Parents Can Help Their Children Do the Right Thing by Rushworth M. Kidder, Jossey-Bass, 2010. ISBN-13: 9780470547625

  “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” – Thomas Jefferson

  This book applies the lenses of core values, ethical decision-making, and moral courage to assist the “… many parents [who], facing ethical issues with their children and not knowing what to say, either come at their kids with moral sledgehammers or tiptoe past on eggshells” (p. ix). Kidder presents an approach to “ethical fitness” that will prepare parents to seize on such issues as opportunities to develop their children’s moral sensibilities and skills “with sure-footed immediacy and unlabored grace” (p. 56).

  He assures them that “[y]ou can develop your ethical fitness by thinking through every situation that makes you morally uncomfortable, even if you never talk to your child about it” (p. 70). Of course, this is not easy. “Like many other things in life, doing right takes work. Ethics is often inconvenient and sometimes tough” (p. 42). However, the effort is worthwhile, not only for your own children but for the greater good. “Ethical parenting takes moral courage, persistence, and commitment. But it brings with it a lasting fulfillment: the moral nurturing of children who know what’s right, make tough choices, and stand for conscience. If parents truly help the next generation learn those qualities – not as ornaments but as practical, productive talents – there isn’t a single problem facing the world that they won’t find the way to address and the confidence to master” (p. 218).

  The book consists largely of commentaries on a series of extended anecdotes gleaned from Kidder’s discussions with parents over many years of work with The Institute for Global Ethics. Through these commentaries, he introduces principles for developmentally appropriate approaches to ethical parenting for kids in five age clusters running from birth through age 23. While the anecdotes are sometimes slightly saccharine and the commentary occasionally a bit credulous, the method is effective, the overall message sound, and the impact encouraging.

  The foundation for Kidder’s ethical parenting framework is “the five shared moral values that are common to cultures around the world: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness and compassion” (p. 1). For young children, he advocates overt instruction in the meaning and importance of these values, but as children mature he moves beyond obedience and introduces more sophisticated methods for resolving moral dilemmas that arise when it is not clear how, or even if, these values can be applied – particularly in the face of what Kidder calls “right-versus-right” dilemmas. As children become youth, Kidder adds a discussion of the challenge of developing their moral courage and a family culture of integrity.

  The most useful and powerful aspect of this book, aside from the reassurance it provides about the possibility of ethical parenting for moral development, are the three “resolution principles” that Kidder has distilled from normative ethical philosophy, which he claims “appear to account for a great majority of decisions that parents describe as ethical” (p. 100). He calls these popularized forms the ends-based principle, the rule-based principle, and the care-based principle. It is by employing these principles that parents strengthen their children’s ability to apply the values that have been inculcated in their early years to the vexing issues of teenage and later life. In most cases, these principles do not help one to resolve an ethical issue. In fact, they often reveal its complexity; but by providing a shared logical framework for discussion, they enable ethical reasoning, and it is this reasoning that helps children to learn, and parents to teach them, to live according to their values.

  Kidder asserts that “if, as you correct the behavior, you carry the discussion far enough to expose the child’s fundamental misconception about right and wrong [rather than simply demanding compliance], he may have to rethink his notion that the only wrong thing is getting caught” (p. 122). Moreover, this shifts the discussion from mere moralizing to inquiry-based learning about ethical issues. “What kids need as they move forward aren’t multilayered rationalities but clear frameworks. They don’t need advice on what to do so much as coaching on how to think … The task of good parenting … is to subject the vast, roiling tempest of the teen universe to a few simple, enabling ideas” (p. 136).

  Although this book is written for parents it would also be useful for teachers, coaches, and others who stand in loco parentis. One may not agree with everything that it says, but it would be hard to imagine anyone not benefitting from the significant but simply stated insight and thoughtful advice that it provides.

• From Competition to Transition: Sharing Resources to Ensure Student Success

  7:06 PM Comments Off on From Competition to Transition: Sharing Resources to Ensure Student Success

  The fundamental thing that we all agree on in our learning community here at Edmonton Public Schools is that we want our children to successfully complete high school. One way to achieve that is to focus on the transition from Grade 9 to Grade 10 – from middle school to high school. In Jasper Place High School, we had often looked at this time as a point of recruitment. In our school district we have open boundaries so there is no automatic feeder school to high school connection.

  In a system of site-based decision-making, where dollars follow students, we have found ourselves competing for students. It was essential for our school to be well-populated in order to have ample resources to operate effectively for student learning. It is also essential for students, once enrolled, to succeed; in Alberta, high school funding is based on the number of students successfully completing courses. When students are unsuccessful in their course work, the school loses funding for those students.

  Many Grade 10 students poked their heads in the door early in September, saw how big we were, and slipped away before we even knew who they were.

  In a school of 2,400, students can easily slip through the cracks – and they were. When we delved into the matter, we found that students were most vulnerable in the first five months of their Grade 10 year. Many Grade 10 students poked their heads in the door early in September, saw how big we were, and slipped away before we even knew who they were. But, if they stayed long enough to get a successful semester under their belts, they usually completed the three years with us.

  Once we determined who we were losing and why, we began to look differently at the transitioning process. We scrapped the word “recruitment” and adopted the word “transition”. I met with principals from our 12 feeder junior high schools and spoke about how we might provide service to their students earlier and over a longer period of time. The goals were to know the students who were coming to us and to identify their needs earlier. The junior high principals were excited about this opportunity and embraced the idea that we needed to change how we were working with Grade 9 students before they moved into Grade 10.

  As a group of principals, we generated many ideas about how to personalize the service from our high school for each junior high feeder school. The feeder schools had very different populations, and they required very different strategies for the transition of their students. Drawing from our entire administrative team, student services team, outreach personnel, and mental health team staff, we formed smaller teams to work with two feeder schools each. This was a dramatic change from the one counselor “road show” and open house that had occurred for junior high presentations in the past. Each junior high brought its own team of key personnel, and together the high school and junior high school teams developed plans for what the Grade 9 students needed to make a successful transition into Grade 10. These plans included:

  • authentic learning activities at the high school in specific classes ranging from honours activities to options;
  • shadow days;
  • school tours;
  • staff meetings held in our school to familiarize the junior high teachers with high school;
  • library presentations and project work with junior high students;
  • mini options over a week period with our teachers teaching the courses alongside junior high teachers;
  • accessing mental health services for at-risk junior high students.

  We continued to meet as principals and debrief the strategies that seemed to be working. One thing became apparent very quickly: we needed to know our at-risk students in more depth before they arrived in September. Junior high principals brought some individual students to access some of our student services early, and we began to form relationships with those students and to anticipate the effect those relationships might have the following year.

  What, we wondered, would be the outcome if we formally identified those students before June and invited them to join us in summer school to complete some key courses? What were the courses our “at-risk/ at-promise” kids did not typically complete? Could we offer physical education and career and life management (CALM), both courses necessary for a high school diploma? Could we tailor our courses to just meet the provincial requirements of three credits each, a philosophical change for our school policy? In our school these were typically five-credit courses and only one could be taken in the month of summer school. What would the outcome be if we offered two three-credit courses that these students could complete during the summer? They would then have completed two “gatekeeper” courses, have six credits under their belts, and we would “know” them.

  Early intervention is the key. We believe we are getting a great bang for our buck in moving these resources to the junior highs.

  We sent our success coaches out to the junior high schools to talk with counselors and to identify the neediest, most at-risk Grade 9 students. Two “rock star” teachers, who would probably be teaching these students the following year, agreed to teach this summer school course. In 2009, our first summer, we had 20 students come in for the summer programming. Eighteen of the 20 completed the courses and are still attending our school and demonstrating success in Grade 11.

  Based on the success of our first year, we decided to expand the program the following summer. Three success coaches, trained youth workers, were already working in our school, supporting our mainstreamed at-risk students. I decided to hire an additional success coach at Christmas break who would take on a new role in two of our junior high schools. She would spend two days in each school and one day at our school coordinating any services needed for those Grade 9 students with whom she was working. The junior high principals were very receptive to the idea and excited about additional support available for their Grade 9 at-risk students.

  A success coach costs roughly $50,000. We believe strongly that the relationship with a success coach formed prior to starting high school will lead to an effective transition into high school. Early intervention is the key. We believe we are getting a great bang for our buck in moving these resources to the junior highs.

  The success coach we hired was Angel King. Her job was really undefined, and we asked her to document the work in the form of a journal because this was unchartered territory. We felt that putting our resources into our needier junior highs – supporting our neediest students early – would pay off, but we weren’t sure how it would all unravel in the schools.

  As Angel began to send us her journals, and we met with her on her Wednesdays to review her work, we began to realize some key components to establishing this work. Job one was the establishment of relationships with the personnel in these two feeder schools. Angel documented her introductions to the staff at the schools and attempted to outline what her role might be and how she could provide support to teachers and students.

  Excerpts from Angel’s journal entries

  I am your new success coach/ transition coach and will be at Hillcrest Tuesdays, Fridays and part of Wednesdays until summer. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in Education. I work for the Family Centre and have been hired by Jasper Place to help transition students from junior high into high school. My job is to help students independently discover what may be hindering their performance in junior high and what things may deter them from succeeding in high school. Although my formal clients will be in Grade 9, the entire school could be thought of as an informal client.

  I will introduce Grade 9 students to high school and attempt to make their first experience a positive one.

  The second lesson learned was that students needed to establish trust with Angel in very fast order. This was helped by school administration being on the same page and assisting this process. The junior high school principal was the key to making this fly!

  This week was full of introductions and relationship building. It has been going well; Wednesday was awesome. I think the part that was most successful was being in the office with Kim and Mike [junior high counselors] during their discussions with students. I believe meeting them in this way told the students that they could trust me and outlined my role with them. I independently met with approximately six students who were each on an in-school suspension and was shocked with how open they were to talking with me. In most cases I asked very few questions and the students led the conversation. The majority of the students subsequently asked how they could contact me. I am very excited about what the upcoming weeks hold!

  The work in each school developed as needed, based on the school administration and the students’ needs. There was no set agenda for what it would look like, but the outcomes were identical. Students would know a Jasper Place staff member well, and would feel supported in coming to our school.

  Things are going fairly well, I have now done four after school groups, two at Westlawn and two at Hillcrest. Hillcrest always has more students [for me to see], but they also have more Grade 9 students in the school. At Hillcrest there are generally 10 students that stay and about 20 that come and go. At Westlawn there are about seven, and 15 that come and go. The kids that come appear to really enjoy this time and have asked what they did to deserve a party.

  We monitored our success by the interest generated in summer programming and the number of students willing to give up part of their summer to join us for a month at Jasper Place. These students had not previously demonstrated interest in school and certainly were not typically motivated to attend “more school”. The numbers were up significantly from the previous year, and this was from only two feeder schools. It looked like the power of having Angel build relationships with students was having a definite impact.

   Things have been going quite well. GYM/CALM Summer School registration (going to introduce the class to various junior high schools as well as collecting and submitting forms from Hillcrest and Westlawn to Jasper Place) has been taking most of my time… So far we have more than 30 students registered!

  That second summer, teachers from our Jasper Place staff taught the 50 students. Angel was with them to support the summer programming, and more than 95 percent of the students registered in the two courses completed their six credits. Angel was key to this process because the students came in anticipating her presence and did not miss a beat in getting right down to learning.

  When I met Kyle in Junior High School, he had less than 30 percent attendance. When I started working with him, I was told I was wasting my time. I invited Kyle to attend the Gym/CALM programs summer school classes at Jasper Place. Kyle was unable to pay for the course, so we paid for it and gave him bus tickets to and from school. Kyle attended summer school almost every day and passed both classes.

  We watched as these students acted as ambassadors for their peers. In many cases they were the leaders in those first few weeks. It was a joy to see them so at ease and so comfortable in our school.

  The plan was that Angel would be at Jasper Place fulltime from September to January. She was a familiar face for students from both junior high schools, and she was a necessary support for those students she had identified the previous year. Her client list was full. It was remarkable to see how these students were coming into their Grade 10 year. They were confident and happy; they had already experienced success with us, and they had six credits in their high school portfolio. They knew their way around the school, knew key personnel, including their teachers and the administration team. We watched as these students acted as ambassadors for their peers. In many cases they were the leaders in those first few weeks. It was a joy to see them so at ease and so comfortable in our school.

  By October, I was receiving calls from the two feeder school principals asking when Angel was coming back. I reminded them of the plan to have her work with Grade 10 students at Jasper Place until January and then go back into the junior highs. The principals expressed how much teachers and students were missing the additional support. We met as a team and decided to modify our original plan. We currently have four success coaches working in our school. We decided to target an additional two feeder schools and each coach would spend one day per week in a junior high feeder school until January. After January their time would be increased to two days per week.

  That is where we are right now. Four junior high schools are receiving front line support from Jasper Place personnel. The message is clear to our learning community. We want our students to be cared for and assisted in their goals to complete high school. We are not just vying for students to keep our schools alive, and we are not just looking for “desirable” students who will help our academic standing. We want to provide great service and resources to all students who come to us, and we want to make sure they are prepared and supported when they come to high school. We are striving for success with every student who enters our school. 

  EN BREF – Quand l’école secondaire Jasper Place à Edmonton commença à s’efforcer moins d’attirer le plus d’élèves possible des écoles intermédiaires environnantes, privilégiant plutôt de retenir ses élèves, elle s’est rendu compte que le processus de transition constituait la clé du succès. La direction d’école et les conseillers scolaires de Jasper Place ont collaboré avec leurs homologues des écoles intermédiaires pour cibler les élèves à risque et amorcer la transition dès la dernière année d’école intermédiaire. À partir de 2009, Jasper Place a offert à ces élèves l’accès à un « accompagnateur de réussite » en 9^e année et la possibilité de suivre deux cours obligatoires du secondaire au cours de l’été précédant la 10^e année. À leur arrivée à l’école secondaire en septembre, ils avaient donc acquis une expérience de réussite, leur dossier du secondaire comptait déjà six crédits et ils connaissaient les locaux de l’école ainsi que le personnel clé. Souvent, ils étaient des leaders au cours de ces premières semaines.

• Reel Reform: Documentaries Spur Debate About Educational Reform

  4:06 PM Comments Off on Reel Reform: Documentaries Spur Debate About Educational Reform

  There’s a rather uncomplicated story that we’ve been telling ourselves for decades now, a story that draws a fairly straight line between success in school and success in life. One thread of this story centers specifically on students and has consistently assured them that most any barrier to school success can be overcome by hard work and dedication. Poor performance in school, the story goes, can usually be attributed to laziness, lack of motivation or simply not caring enough. It’s a story that was told to me by my own parents, and by my grandparents. It is a story that was repeated by my teachers throughout my elementary and secondary years, and it’s a story that is still part of the many back-to-school rituals each autumn. On September 8, 2009, U.S. President Barak Obama told the story again to all American youth in his publicly broadcast speech to a group of students at the Mann Elementary School in Boone, Kentucky. His message was clear and familiar: success will come from hard work, setting goals, and taking responsibility for your own learning.

  At the same time, Hollywood has been very good at inspiring us with a parallel thread in our inherited school story, this one with a focus on teachers. It tells us that a passionate and dedicated teacher can make a huge difference in the lives of students, especially those who are struggling to get on the right track. Films as seemingly different as To Sir With Love, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dead Poet’s Society, Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver and The Freedom Writer’s Diary all share a basic and well-known story line: a newly minted, and as yet unaffected, teacher is placed in a challenging and seemingly undesirable context, usually with a group of students who lack the motivation, energy, insight, or socio-economic means to achieve success in school. The teacher-hero slowly recognizes this and, after an initial refusal of the call to act, jumps in, faces a series of personal and institutional demons but, in the end, successfully transforms a once-barren and uninspiring classroom space into a virtual educational oasis, full of confident, enthusiastic, critically-thinking kids ready to – you guessed it – work hard, set goals, and take responsibility for their own lives. A classic hero’s journey narrative, this thread continues to inspire and motivate existing educators, and even draw new ones to pursue a career in the field.

  We’ve been pretty comfortable with these rather simple, uncluttered storylines. They are familiar to us and have gone relatively unchallenged in the larger public narrative for nearly 50 years—unchallenged, that is, until recently. Some film critics have dubbed 2010 as the year of the documentary and, in particular, the year of the educational documentary. Three new American offerings including Waiting for Superman, The Lottery, Race to Nowhere and one British entry, We are the People We’ve Been Waiting For, have attempted to push their way into the school reform debates by pulling at the threads of our existing school narrative.

  And there is good reason to believe that their efforts couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. The films have been introduced in a year when the American public, in particular, has been struggling to come to terms with a socio-political context shaped by major economic recession, increased foreign competition for both jobs and market share, poor student performance on national and international assessments, as well as the stubborn and confounding problem of the gap in school success that still exists between the poor and the wealthy. All of this has created a perfect storm, pushing Americans to look for answers, search for scapegoats, and demand quick and effective solutions. In its own way, each of these documentaries seeks to disturb the rather entrenched and stubborn thinking that exists around public schools, by claiming that our educational institutions are suffering from a malaise that is preventing them from adequately preparing students for life in a 21st century society, let alone a 21st century economy. For each of these films, there is a clear source of the problem and a relatively simple solution.

  Although Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman was the last of the four films to hit theatres, it certainly carried with it the most advance publicity, media coverage, and blogospheric buzz. In fact, in the two weeks prior to its general release, Superman premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, inspired a full week of special education coverage from a major American television network, and was promoted on not just one, but two episodes of Oprah. A combination of savvy marketing and the credibility banked by An Inconvenient Truth, Guggenheim’s earlier work, guaranteed that Waiting for Superman  would catch the attention of an American public at the start of a new school year. In doing so, it managed to carry the other educational documentaries along in its wake.

  Now that several months have passed since the release of the documentaries, and now that the media hype and furor has subsided somewhat, it may be time to take a more objective look at the narrative threads.

  Now that several months have passed since the release of the documentaries, and now that the media hype and furor has subsided somewhat, it may be time to take a more objective look at the narrative threads that these films sought to weave into our story of school and the degree to which they were successful in doing so.

  In a sense, Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman and Madeline Sackler’s The Lottery set out to tell the same story. Both films follow the lives of several American children and their families as they attempt to escape a dysfunctional and broken public school system. It is a system that spends more on its students than most other countries, yet falls far behind when it comes to basic proficiencies in math, science, and literacy. It is a system that is divided along socio-economic lines, to the point where zip code and school zone can really determine the quality of education that a child receives. And it is a system that, in many ways, stands in the way of improvement by allowing unions to protect the jobs of underperforming teachers. In both films, there is an underlying sense that most public schools, especially those caught in “Inner City, U.S.A.”, are beyond repair and beyond salvation. In this story thread, it’s not the lack of effort that children are putting in that accounts for poor performance; instead, it’s the lack of effort being put in by the adults at all levels of the system that is the real smoking gun!

  Both films tell the story of a school system that has become so overburdened with poor quality teaching, bureaucratic mismanagement, and lack of ability to deal with the inequitable access to quality education caused by a wide gap between rich and poor that the only hope for many students is to somehow opt out and pursue an alternative form of schooling. Enter the charter school option – schools that operate with public money, but stand outside of many of the rules and regulations that impede traditional public schools from offering quality education. The charter schools featured in both films are able to craft rigorous curriculum designed to lead to college acceptance, set high expectations for all students, and extend the number of hours that both teachers and students spend in school each day and each week. For many charter schools, an implicit guarantee of success attracts many who feel disadvantaged by their local public schools. 

  Although Waiting for Superman and The Lottery support their storylines with a collage of talking heads and sobering statistics, the real power of both films lies in the compelling connection that the audience makes with the families around which the narratives turn. For the most part, the parents and children followed throughout both documentaries are placing all of their hope for a quality education in winning a lottery that will determine who will be admitted to a successful charter school. This becomes the question on which the both films ultimately rest their case, “Should a quality education be left to the luck of the draw?”

  While the stories told in Superman and The Lottery focus mainly on a economically and culturally disadvantaged sector of the population, Vicki Abeles’ Race to Nowhere shines a light on school life in middle class America. This is a world characterized by private education, well-resourced public schools, and financially successful families. At first glance, in fact, one would question whether there was a story here at all.

  But, as Abeles looks deeper into the lives of students and their families, she reveals a world where the race towards higher levels of achievement is really having an opposite and rather ironic effect. In an effort to increase test scores, graduation rates, and college admission numbers, students are being subjected to tremendous amounts of undue and unnecessary pressure. Instead of demanding schools that nurture a passion for learning and a curiosity about the world, we are accepting schools that foster the belief that education – and, indeed, childhood – is all about developing a robust resume, inscribed with high academic standing, a full slate of extracurricular activities, and little evidence of failure.

  In Race To Nowhere, the pressure under which students operate doesn’t stop when the bell rings at the end of the day. Instead, as Abeles illustrates, the pressure that young people are facing inside the schoolhouse is a reflection of the same pressure to be great in the rest of their lives. The student voices that are heard throughout the film reflect on the need to be beautiful, athletic, and socially active. Abeles does not have to go beyond the boundaries of her own family to find evidence for this. In one rather poignant statement, her own daughter, who was diagnosed with a stress-related disease when she was in Grade 8, muses, “I can’t remember the last time I had a chance to go in the backyard and just run around.”

  The larger storyline told in Race To Nowhere represents a type of counter-narrative to Superman and The Lottery. It hearkens back to our original thread about hard work and dedication resulting in school success but, for Abeles, the plea is for society to carefully examine the criteria with which we judge success. In Abeles’ view students are being forced to be their own superheroes in a world that judges them more on the symptoms of success then on what lies beneath the surface. In Abeles’ story, this is not a school problem but a social problem, and it needs to be addressed as such.

  The British film, We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For, goes one step further than Race to Nowhere by challenging the ideological roots of modern schooling. Arguing that we are labouring under a model of education designed for a historical period that has long passed, We Are The People also challenges our understandings of success and happiness and calls for a major redesign of our education systems to reflect these values. It questions the deeper purpose of school, claiming that education that fails to ignite a sense of passion, curiosity and interest in the world will not be able to keep up with 21st century demands for a passionate, curious, and interested citizenry. Academic learning, literacy, and numeracy are important, but insufficient on their own to meet the demands of modern society. We Are The People attempts to shift the narrative away from costly efforts to retrofit an old model and calls on us to develop a whole new way of thinking about school and large-scale public education.

  Each of these four films has attempted to frame the story we tell about school in a different way. None of the filmmakers has tried to downplay the importance of school. If anything, each serves to revitalize the importance of change in order to make schools even more central to the social fabric. Each film does, however, offer a different perspective on what is most important in that change process.

  If there is a common element that runs through all of the films, it would be that it is no longer helpful to talk about students who fail school without also talking about schools that fail students.

  If there is a common element that runs through all of the films, it would be that it is no longer helpful to talk about students who fail school without also talking about schools that fail students. The main question with which all modern societies need to wrestle becomes how to deal with that sense of institutional failure.

  If it truly is a matter of providing better trained, more dedicated teachers who are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that all children have a shot at academic success, then the voices of Guggenheim and Sackler become prophetic and their films provide a legitimate call to action. If, however, it is true that there is a strong need to redefine what success means, both academically and in the context of broader society, then we should heed Abeles’ plea to carefully examine where precisely the race to the top is taking us.. Finally, if we attend to the strongly presented message in We Are The People, then our priorities will shift from trying to reform what may, in fact, be beyond any kind of positive reformation.

  Some Canadians will admit to watching the firestorm caused in the U.S. around the release of Waiting for Superman with a touch of voyeuristic envy. To be sure, online interactions over the past several months have been marked by passion and vitriol, rational conversation and visceral response.

  At the same time, one wonders whether a similar intensity of discourse would be possible in Canada. By international standards, this country’s education is deemed one of the finest in the world. Even though Canada faces serious challenges when it comes to equity, the gap between rich and poor, and connections between culture, race, and school success, these are not part of the everyday water cooler conversations that Canadians have about school.

  There is evidence, however, of opportunities emerging that could help draw attention to the story we are telling our citizens about schools and education in this country. In fact, as the final sentences of this article are being written, it seems that at least two of the main issues from the Waiting for Superman narrative are drifting north across the border. In B.C., a liberal leadership candidate is proposing that his province look at merit pay for teachers. At the same time, the province of Alberta is receiving visitors from abroad interested in borrowing some of Edmonton’s thinking around charter schools.

  The story that we tell about school, its role and its place in any modern society, is well-established and firmly rooted in the lives of the citizenry. Waiting for Superman and its companions have helped to animate an American public at a time when complacency and inaction are not real options. They have worked to place education in the “worry pool” of the American people, and the people have responded. The threads involving teacher effectiveness and charter schools that have been introduced by Guggenheim and Sackler appear to have gained the most traction and seem poised to find a home within the larger school narrative. It is unfortunate that the equally important and admittedly more ideological messages of both Race to Nowhere and We Are The People may be overshadowed in the process.

  While it remains to be seen whether the conversation in the United States will have any lasting impact on the Canadian discourse, it is clear that our efforts to work for deep educational transformation would be energized greatly by the introduction of some new narrative threads of our own. Lights? Camera? Documentary anyone?

  EN BREF – Trois nouveaux documentaires américains – Waiting for Superman, The Lottery, Race to Nowhere – et un film britannique, We are the People We’ve Been Waiting For, ont animé les débats sur la réforme scolaire. Chacun de ces documentaires remet en question les idées reçues en affirmant que nos établissements d’éducation souffrent d’un malaise qui les empêche de préparer adéquatement les élèves au 21^e siècle. L’un des éléments communs des quatre films, c’est le message selon lequel il n’est plus utile de parler des élèves qui échouent à l’école sans parler aussi des écoles qui ne sont pas à la hauteur pour les élèves. Ces films ont contribué à secouer le public américain alors même qu’une attitude de laissez-faire et d’inaction ne suffit pas. La situation canadienne diffère grandement de celle des États-Unis. D’après les normes internationales, nous avons l’un des meilleurs systèmes d’éducation du monde. Il reste à voir si le débat américain se répercutera durablement sur celui qui, au Canada, porte sur la transformation en profondeur de l’éducation.

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