Archive

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

  March 24, 2011 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.

• How Can We Prevent High School Dropouts?

  March 16, 2011 6:43 PM Comments Off on How Can We Prevent High School Dropouts?

  How do we help students stay in school?

  For most people, completing secondary school has become a basic requirement to be able to live satisfying and productive lives. Much has been learned about the factors that keep young people on track to successful high school graduation.

  The most important single factor is students’ feeling of connection to the school and in particular, the belief by every student that there is at least one adult in the school who knows and cares about that student. Schools can do many things to promote this, such as assigning teacher advisors, and taking action early when a student shows signs of being in difficulty, both personally and academically. Schools can reach out to struggling students to offer extra support; sometimes only a small amount of such support is enough to make a big difference.

  Also important are an engaging curriculum and effective teaching practices. Many students do not find their lessons intellectually stimulating.   Students want and need work that challenges their abilities but that also provides the opportunity to be successful. This is only partly a matter of the content; it is also a matter of effective teaching and of fair assessment practices. Students do better when they feel they have some input into the kind of work they do, opportunities to improve their work, and teaching that pays attention to their background knowledge and interests.

  The fourth key factor is a respectful environment, where staff and students treat one another with consideration and thoughtfulness, where students have a voice in how the school operates, and where rules show consideration for students’ individual needs and circumstances.

  High schools that embody these features will have better outcomes and better graduation rates.

  ---

  Additional Resources For Parents

  GLOBAL VOICES IN CANADA: What Did You Do in School Today?: This article looks at the importance of student engagement in high schools. http://webspace.oise.utoronto.ca/~levinben/Kappan1002levWDYDIST.pdf

  In Canada: 20 minutes to change a life?: The article discusses the positive impact of supportive adult attention on students facing challenges in high school.

  http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/20-minutes-change-life

   

  National Center on Secondary Education and Transition: This website provides tips for parents on strategies that promote graduation and school achievement.

  http://www.ncset.org/publications/viewdesc.asp?id=3135

   

  Ontario Ministry of Education: This website provides options for parents to help children graduate from secondary school.

  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/studentsuccess/index.html

   

  School Leavers: Understanding the Lived Reality of Student Disengagement from Secondary School: This report was prepared by Resource Group The Hospital for Sick Children For the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, Special Education Branch, Toronto, Canada

  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/schoolleavers.pdf

   

  What Did You Do in School Today?: This report discusses the need for social, academic and intellectual engagement for adolescents learners.

  http://www.cea-ace.ca/sites/default/files/cea-2009-wdydist.pdf

   

  Research References Informing this Issue

  Balfanz, R. et al. (2007), “Preventing Student Disengagement and Keeping Students on the Gradation Path in Urban Middle-Grades Schools: Early Identification and Effective Interventions” in Educational Psychologist, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 223-235.

  Hammond, C., Linton, D., Smink, J., & Drew, S. (2007). Dropout risk factors and exemplary programs. Clemson, SC: National Dropout Prevention Center, Communities In Schools, Inc.

  Jerald, C. D. (2006). Identifying potential dropouts: Key lessons for building an early warning system. Washington, DC: American Diploma Project Network, Achieve, Inc.

  Lyche, C.S. (2010). Taking on the completion challenge: A literature review on policies to prevent drop out and early school leaving. Paris: OECD

  Mac Iver, D.J. and M. A. Mac Iver (2009), Beyond the Indicators: An Integrated School-level Approach to Dropout Prevention, The George Washington University Center for Equity and Excellence in Education, Arlington

  Rumberger, R.W. and Lim, S.A. (2008), Why Students Drop Out of School: A Review of 25 Years of Research, California Dropout Research Project, Santa Barbara.

   

   

   

   

   

• Michele Jacobsen: Hands On vs. Hands Up: Technology-Enabled Knowledge Building in High School

  March 11, 2011 9:42 PM Comments Off on Michele Jacobsen: Hands On vs. Hands Up: Technology-Enabled Knowledge Building in High School

  A presentation by Michele Jacobsen of the University of Calgary at CEA’s 2010 colloquium on equity.

• What did you do in school today?

  February 4, 2011 12:00 AM Comments Off on What did you do in school today?

  Today most students are accustomed to completing surveys at school, especially in school districts and provinces that have developed their own satisfaction or effective school surveys. Students take the time to complete the surveys, but schools are not always confident that students are answering honestly or taking the surveys seriously and students sometimes feel tired of completing surveys without having a sense that their feedback is making a difference.

  CEA recently had an opportunity to hold focus groups with students who have completed the What did you do in school today? (WDYDIST) – Tell Them From Me (TTFM) survey for two or three years. At each meeting we asked students what they thought about the survey. As we listened to different groups’ responses we learned that students are most likely to see the survey as a meaningful opportunity to share their experiences of school and learning when they:

  • Understand who is asking the questions.
  • Understand the purpose of the survey.
  • See survey results and changes being made that respond to them.
  • Are invited to collaborate with staff in using survey data as a tool for improvement.

• What did you do in school today?

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

  Schools often invite students to share their experiences and ideas, but how often do they invite them to become an integral part of school and classroom change? Effective learning environments see students as a diverse community of learners who are both willing to and highly capable of shaping decisions about their learning and school improvement.

  CEA recently held focus groups with students at schools participating in What did you do in school today? Many students told us that they complete the survey each year, but do not see the results. When we asked if they would be interested in seeing them they responded with an enthusiastic, “yes!”

• 2010 Ken Spencer Award Winner – The Met School Program

  February 2, 2011 6:31 PM Comments Off on 2010 Ken Spencer Award Winner – The Met School Program

  A video by Seven Oaks School Division (Winnipeg, MB), first place winner of the 2010 Ken Spencer Award.

• Research Use and Its Impact in Secondary Schools

  January 31, 2011 12:00 AM Comments Off on Research Use and Its Impact in Secondary Schools

  The purpose of this collaborative research is to learn about the ways research is encountered and used to shape policy and practice in Canadian secondary schools.

• Research Use and Its Impact in Secondary Schools: Exploring Knowledge Mobilization in Education – Executive Summary

  12:00 AM Comments Off on Research Use and Its Impact in Secondary Schools: Exploring Knowledge Mobilization in Education – Executive Summary

  The purpose of this collaborative research is to learn about the ways research is encountered and used to shape policy and practice in Canadian secondary schools.

• The Museum as a Catalyst for Education and Citizenship: Breaking Barriers in Rio de Janeiro

  January 12, 2011 8:47 PM Comments Off on The Museum as a Catalyst for Education and Citizenship: Breaking Barriers in Rio de Janeiro

  We believe in the role played by the National Museum of History as an agent for helping individuals understand themselves and the world in which they live, through the senses and through the chain of knowledge arising from them, making it possible to develop their reasoning, memory, and imagination.

  Brazil’s National History Museum, Museu Histórico Nacional (MHN), established in 1922, is located in downtown Rio de Janeiro. It is the largest and most important history museum in Brazil and the first ever oriented to public education in the country. Over its eight decades in operation, MHN has maintained its tradition of educational improvement.

  In Brazil, such educational services initiatives started in the 1950s in art museums, reflecting the period’s trend of organizing free art ateliers for children and young people. The movement grew stronger in the years that followed and reached into realms other than the arts.

  During these years, the MHN’s Education Sector started a guided tour program to the galleries, stimulating historical perception by exposing young people to the items in its collection; but initially, there was not a truly educational program. However, after the 1980s, we developed a project for educators and primary school children based on the creation of action-producing images aligned with the construction and acquisition of knowledge and linked to the museum’s collection. Although valuable for the children involved, these programs did not reach the growing underclass in Rio de Janeiro society.

  In the 1990s – and after 2001 in particular – the Museum’s Social Sector was established to undertake the difficult task of establishing relationships between the museum and the wider society, catering to children and young adults and working with a number of other organizations that assist children and adolescents and work to reintegrate social outcasts into the community.

  By following the new museum-related trends and strategies advocated by the International Council of Museums (Icom), which is responsible for defining which institutions must be at the “service of society”, the MHN is expanding its programs, breaking new ground, and maintaining its role as a social player and an educator’s ally.

  The Museum and the City

  The city of Rio de Janeiro is internationally renowned for its breathtaking natural beauty. Located between the sea and high mountains, its urban growth stretches between maritime landfills and the settlements on the hills. The poorest segments of the population live both in mountainous regions and in urban outskirts: the ‘favelas’ are located in those regions.

  Sadly, during the 20^th century, drug dealing became a serious problem. Children and young people began abandoning their families, dropping out of school, and joining organized gangs, some of which are highly dangerous. These young people have little interest in the future. Their average life expectancy is around 25 years, and they live a “short-termist” lifestyle, with no future goals. MHN – located in the city center, with a commitment to education and the preservation of symbolic objects of the national inheritance – could not ignore this reality around it. So, in 1992, an educational program oriented to this segment of the population was started, and as of 2001 it gained a special dimension.

  By searching for a better understanding of the past, we are showing that everyone – regardless of social environment – can play an important role in the great theatre of life. In this way, museums are active in safeguarding the future as well as the past.

  The Program

  This project grew out of the museum’s educational purpose and its preserved collection, which includes the testimonies and artifacts relating to the building of the country, a virtual trail of attitudes and actions.

  As institutions that preserve cultural heritage, museums deal with the concepts of remembering and forgetting. They use historical figures as role models to work on the relationship between these two concepts and to show that everyone, regardless of age or historical context, can grow and contribute to a better society. By searching for a better understanding of the past, we are showing that everyone – regardless of social environment – can play an important role in the great theatre of life. In this way, museums are active in safeguarding the future as well as the past.

  The target population for these programs includes disenfranchised children and young people aged 10 to 20 – those living in the streets, ex-street dwellers, children from poor communities, and young people from penitentiaries. These youth are often referred to MHN by other institutions and NGOs, many of which have formed partnerships with the Museum. Highly dangerous youngsters on parole are referred through the Federal Justice Ministry and the Justice Court of the State of Rio de Janeiro. In spite of concerns initially raised about possible damages to the property caused by this needy population, throughout these ten years not a single incident of property damage or physical injury to the employees and visitors has been observed.

  Program activities are guided by monitors in the Museum’s Educational Sector, by restoration technicians, file specialists, and librarians working in the museum, and by professors hired on demand for specific projects. The resources come from institutions set up for the care of minors, from some NGOs, and from partnerships with banks, public and private enterprises, and educational institutions, which offer scholarships to the top students of each group.

  The activities designed for this student population are divided into three major categories, subdivided into a number of programs:

  1. Cultural Leisure: Sowing the Seeds of History. This program is comprised of many guided tours to the exhibition galleries as well as activities geared to children. The purpose is to create a relationship with the museum space and – based on the proposed objectives – to establish the link between the past, the present, and the future. These activities are often accompanied by short videos or musical performances because these children and young people, due to their chemical addictions, often display very limited attention spans.
  2. Professionals of the Future. This program is subdivided into short- and long-term courses, some of which may last as long as a year. They train young people, providing them with theoretical and practical knowledge in handcraft, gardening, chair stuffing, furniture shining, cabinet-making, book and document conservation, to name a few. Technicians and museum restoration specialists, along with specially hired teachers, supervise their work, using the museum collections in the practical training. In order to meet the high demand for such activities, the Social Sector has contacted other cultural institutions, museums, collectors, and decoration stores which have started to accept the services provided by these young people. After completing the courses, many are hired for practical training at those places.
  3. Working World. This program is a training course to prepare young people for the formal job market, taught by museum staff and specially hired teachers. As reinforcement, classes are taught in Portuguese grammar, mathematics, and history, using museum exhibitions, information technology, public relations, etc. At the end of one course semester, the students start practical training in businesses. The business partners are committed to respect the school hours of the young people. The MHN itself receives close to 34 student trainees per year, offering them the opportunity for apprenticeship and the chance to experience the day-to-day routine and administrative rules of an institution.

  In 2009, 5,489 young people attended these programs. In recent years, the Museum has also begun offering special programs for disabled children, senior citizens, and adults living in poverty.

  Program Evaluation

  Initially, our expectations were very low. The first groups consisted of 15 to 30 students, and little did anyone know whether the program would continue. The results, however, year after year, have shown a significant increase in both new programs offered by cooperating institutions and the number of young people enrolled. These marginal communities, which used to perceive museums as high-end spaces forbidden to the less fortunate, can now see that the barriers separating the poorest communities from the museums have fallen.

  Many young people who attend the programs have managed to free themselves from drug addiction, stop smuggling, and move away from a life of crime. Some have even become instructors and managers of new groups and have established a highly emotional bond with the MHN. For this reason, in recent years a “Big Get-together” has been held to reunite ex-students and serve as a socializing event with the current students. Many bring their spouses and children.

  Conclusion

  The MHN senior management and the entire team are involved in the program, sharing the belief that the education task carried out in museums should not be limited to the exhibition of collections in permanent or temporary exhibits, reducing the discourse to merely praising the objects and rendering them intangible to the less fortunate. By opening its doors to a population deprived of cultural and educational contacts, the museum has become a catalyst for many types of social transformation.

  Through this process, everybody learns: employees, teachers, visitors (who often express surprise that these young people – often regarded as dangerous – are appreciating works of art), and students. It is a painstaking task, requiring patience and persistence.

  If, out of each group we receive, one young person would be rehabilitated to live in society, this alone would make life worth living! The importance of the Museum to human development has already become apparent.

  EN BREF – Le Musée d’histoire naturelle du Brésil à Rio de Janeiro tend la main aux jeunes les plus marginalisés et s’établit comme un important partenaire en leur offrant des solutions de rechange à une vie de crime et de toxicomanie. La population ciblée de ses programmes comprend les enfants démunis et sans droits et les jeunes de 10 à 20 ans – les sans-abri, les ex-itinérants, les enfants de quartiers défavorisés et les jeunes de pénitenciers. Les programmes d’éducation tirent parti des collections du musée pour que les jeunes s’identifient à leur histoire et à leur place dans la société et pour qu’ils acquièrent des compétences qui leur permettront de travailler. En ouvrant ses portes à une population privée de contacts culturels et éducationnels, le musée est devenu un catalyseur de transformation sociale et de protection de l’avenir, ainsi que du passé.

• Finding Place in Education

  8:38 PM Comments Off on Finding Place in Education

  In other words we must apprentice ourselves to an experience of place, if place is to become our teacher.[1]

  At five to eight, with the shadows of spruce and fir lengthening into disproportionately long fingers of dark, I became aware that two students were missing.

  It had been twenty-five minutes since the last of the stragglers had pushed into camp. Now I was suddenly aware that I alone among the leaders held any back-country credentials and experience, that the responsibility for the missing students fell squarely upon my shoulders. Fighting to maintain a facade of calm, I quickly delegated camp responsibilities, grabbed my first aid kit, headlamp, and cell phone – which proved useless as I was within a cellular blackout zone that hugs the rugged coastline of Newfoundland even today – and hurried off. They couldn’t be, I was sure, more than ten minutes or so away. I ran through the deepening dusk, hyper-aware of the way the trail hugged the rugged coastline, cliffs jutting off suddenly – a fall of a hundred feet and often more over grey-red rock into the swirling cold of the North Atlantic. My eyes betrayed my worst fears, searching out for the billowing white of a t-shirt, so akin to a jellyfish, that would mark disaster.

  As a society, we are less and less comfortable in our localities. We have embraced the idea of a globalized placelessness, where everything, everywhere, resonates with a sameness.

  But after running back nearly two kilometers, my shins scraped raw and bloody, I had to stop. Re-evaluate. My brain tripped over itself, trying to formulate a plan. I wondered how well the students knew the outdoors. If they were comfortable, had set up camp. To be lost is an awful sensation, especially in one’s own backyard.

  As it would turn out, the students had come to a fork in the trail at five in the afternoon. Tired, their feet blistered, they had stopped and phoned for help. Had they been more comfortable in the woods, in their ability to read a trail, I wonder if they wouldn’t have been able to press on without incident.

  As a society, we are less and less comfortable in our localities. We have embraced the idea of a globalized placelessness, where everything, everywhere, resonates with a sameness. Wendell Berry considers this the result of seeing in places nothing of value save what can be mined, stripped, or drilled from them.[2] What do we lose, educationally and in society at large, when we reduce our inhabited places to those components that provide material wealth alone? One result is that our scholastic curricula, by and large, avoid teaching specific places. They turn instead to the “mandates of a standardized, ‘placeless’ curriculum and settle for the abstractions and simulations of classroom learning.”[3] Yet if students and teachers do not have the opportunity to work within and develop a relationship with place, how can we ask them to take on the challenges of climate change, of finite fresh water supplies, and the burgeoning necessity of weaning ourselves from oil. All of these challenges demand a respect, indeed a love for place, wherein lessons can be learned and knowledge stored away so that we can transform society for the better. Edmund O’Sullivan asks that we bear in mind the totality of life that acknowledges we are but “one species living on planet ‘Earth.’” This is the context of the planet, housed within specific localities, that will give students and teachers the opportunity to meaningfully see and interact with the world.[4]

  Is this asking too much from schools, from teachers overburdened with curricular objectives to meet and from students swimming against a strong rip-tide of subjects and the overarching needs of homework and tests? Sheila Geisbrecht argues that, as educators, we need to fuse various curricular objectives to incorporate local places into our teaching. “Localism allows students to explore their worlds through hands-on participatory learning experiences which build on core curricular areas…”[5] Rather than distracting from the mandated curriculum, embedding place within our teaching allows students to see the connections between classroom learning and the world beyond school, to make the learning truly meaningful. Students and teachers in this light begin to create maps of their localities that make them resonate with meaning.

  “This is where Ruth kissed Johnny. Or that’s what he said anyway. And over there, behind the convenience store, that’s where I found a fifty dollar bill once.”

  These are story maps, housed in geographical places but extending beyond and into them in a manner known best by the storyteller.[6] Such story-maps challenge the idea of places as mere sources of economic opportunity. Looking back, this is the kind of resource that would have made my teaching internship, done in Grand Bank, Newfoundland more palatable. Teaching World Geography 3202, a public examination course, I understood the course material but often had a hard time linking it meaningfully to students. After a particularly long class where I met the usual symptoms of student apathy, pronounced yawns, background chatting, shrugs of passive indifference when called upon, my cooperating teacher suggested I try to make the class more meaningful locally.

  “Bring the curriculum to them,” she suggested. “Make the global local.”

  The men and women who once worked the land are becoming marginalized, their story maps lost. It is through their stories that students can find the point of beginning their own maps, to find new directions locally and by extension, globally.

  I nodded but found the idea off-putting, a practiced cliché. How could I make a curriculum based on global inequalities in farming and food production resonate in a community still suffering from the plight of a cod fishing moratorium? When I looked out the window all I saw was snow blasted along by the infernal winds. There was, I decided, no point of connection between the two. Partly, I was too immature to see the possibilities. More to the point, I was willing to sacrifice student understanding for the banality of what became a largely boring intellectual exercise because I found comfort in global ideas rather than local realities. How much richer would that class have been with the presence of local fishermen, talking about the collapse of the cod fishery, the myriad variables that plague commercial fisheries in the global world, giving global resonance to the local historical narrative of dependence on the cod fishery. Grand Bank’s history – indeed, its name tells much of this narrative, cultural and socio-economic, perched as it was atop one of the richest cod fishing banks in the world.

  Such a lesson was not beyond the scope of possibility. And the lessons of Grand Bank, of localities being mined and stripped for economic gain, are becoming increasingly commonplace. The men and women who once worked the land are becoming marginalized, their story maps lost. It is through their stories that students can find the point of beginning their own maps, to find new directions locally and by extension, globally.

  The local knowledge of place, its temperaments and possibilities, is still known where people live in working harmony with it. In the summer of 2007, my wife and I ventured out to Fogo Island, slung nine rocky, shoal-strewn miles off the north-east coast of Newfoundland by the retreat of the last ice age. My wife was studying the island’s cultural heritage. As part of her work we were invited to attend the annual mass on Little Fogo Island, a further six miles across from the community of Joe Batt’s Arm. At one time a thriving community of four hundred, largely employed in the cod fishery, today it is home to a handful of summertime residents. It was a calm July day, the sun high in a washed out blue sky. We rode the six miles on waters barely rippled by any wind in a newly made trap-skiff, once the heart and soul of the Newfoundland inshore fishery. The refurbished Acadia engine puttered in fickle opposition to being worked so hard after thirty odd years of accumulating dust in a store, and consequently cut out frequently. A salty-lipped fisherman, shrouded in a perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke, squeezed his sinewy torso into the narrow confines of the engine hold to restart the motor. In fits and starts we made our way across, the frequent breaks just another opportunity to enjoy the day, the sun strong across our faces as we bit into another slice of homemade partridgeberry lassie tart. The sermon was almost anti-climactic after the leisure of the trip, and I made ready, after more pieces of tart and sandwiches, to explore the island. I was aware that the men – largely ex-fishermen – had congregated, but I thought little of it.

  We’re going, I was told as I crested the first hill, my wife waving me back. Indeed, everyone seemed to be on the move. Picnic boxes were being hastily packed, carried down rickety, greying spruce-wood ladders to the temporary fleet of boats that were docked in the narrow confines of the harbour.

  Surprised, I inquired why.

  Storm’s coming, came the answer. Though I squinted across the Labrador Sea, I could see nothing more ominous than a few clouds scattered at the horizon line. The sun still shone bright in a brilliantly blue sky. But I was there at their behest, so I got back into the boat. The wind had picked up some and we crested the waves with a heavy slap of the bow. Conversation was difficult over the roar of the engine. But never once did we seem in any danger. It was only after successfully navigating the tricky shoals that mark Joe Batt’s harbour mouth that I glanced back at Little Fogo. It had disappeared. In its stead a black sky edging to a mauve-red at the waterline, rain lines visible, slanting nearly horizontal, shrouded the island. Lightning punctuated an already apocalyptic scene.

  Such knowledge fosters “a sense of cultural responsibility” to one’s inhabited place.

  To know a place so well as to see a storm coming from the minutia of clues offered that day has stuck with me. Clearly, these were men who had generations of knowledge, as well as their own experiences to build upon. We don’t value such knowledge anymore because there is no economic merit to it at first glance. But such knowledge fosters “a sense of cultural responsibility” to one’s inhabited place. Therein we need to grapple, as Newfoundlanders and as Canadians, with what our localities mean to us and, through such discoveries to “forge more ethical, reparative attachments to place as a practice of renewal and hope.”[7] In becoming more comfortable with our localities, hopefully we can find a way forward wherein we can restore places as meaningful interactions between human life and the natural world that surrounds us. But to do so we need to make place part of our scholastic mandate. It is not test scores we are worried about, but the viability of our communities and places for tomorrow’s generation.

  EN BREF – En tant que société, nous sentons de moins en moins notre appartenance à notre localité. Nous avons adopté l’idée d’une sorte d’existence anonyme mondialisée, où tout, partout, est essentiellement pareil. Que perdons-nous, sur le plan de l’éducation et dans la société, quand nous réduisons nos espaces habités aux éléments qui assurent uniquement la fortune matérielle? Si les élèves et les enseignants ne peuvent travailler de l’intérieur et développer une relation avec le lieu, comment pouvons-nous leur demander de relever les défis du réchauffement planétaire, des quantités limitées d’eau potable et de la nécessité croissante de nous sevrer du pétrole. Tous ces défis requièrent un respect – en fait un amour – du lieu, où les leçons peuvent être apprises et les connaissances peuvent être retenues pour que nous puissions transformer la société en mieux. Nous devons intégrer le lieu à notre mandat de scolarisation. Il ne s’agit pas de s’inquiéter de résultats d’examens, mais bien de la viabilité de nos collectivités et des lieux de la génération de demain.

  ---

  [1] BrianWattchow, “Experience of Place: Lessons on Teaching Cultural Attachment ot Place,” in Nature First: Outdoor Life the Friluftsliv Way, eds. Bob Henderson and Nils Vikander (Toronto, Natural Heritage: 2007): 263.

  [2] Wendell Berry, “Preserving Wildness,” in American Earth (Library of America: 2008): 525.

  [3] David Grueneweld, “The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place,” Educational Researcher 32, no, 4 (2003): 8.

  [4] O’Sullivan, Edmund. “The Project and Vision of Transformative Education,” in Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning, eds, Edmund O’Sullivan, Amish Morrell, and Mary Ann O’Connor (Palgrave Macmillan: 2002): 8.

  [5] Sheila Giesbrecht “The 100-Mile Curriculum,” Education Canada (Spring, 2008): 27.

  [6] Robert MacFarlane, The Wild Places (London: Granta Books, 2008): 15.

  [7] Ursula Kelly, “Where Biography Meets Ecology,” in Narrating Transformative Learning in Education, eds. M. Garder and U. Kelly (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): 46.

• Engaging Students Through Effective Questions

  7:48 PM Comments Off on Engaging Students Through Effective Questions

  Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers. – Josef Albers (1888-1976)

  My youngest son Robbie, aged 12, often asks thought-provoking questions.  Every few days he surprises me with a topic that seems to come out of the blue.  Responding appropriately and respectfully can be a real challenge for me.  Here are some examples of questions he has posed recently:

  • Who invented the alphabet?
  • Do dogs have feelings like we do?
  • How do people measure the height of a mountain?
  • Why do we use the same word (“love”) to describe what we feel for family members and also to describe romantic feelings?
  • If you were alone in the house, and the phone was disconnected, and a robber was coming in, what would you do?
  • Which way will my paper airplane fly farther – if I point it up or if I point it sideways?
  • How do painkillers work?
  • What would you do if you knew you only had two days to live?

  and many, many more, often beginning with “What would happen if …?”

  There are no easy answers to any of the above questions, and they are great conversation-starters.  What I like about Robbie’s questions is that they open up ways to explore what other people might think, not just about the question itself, but also about related topics.  Thanks to Robbie’s open-ended questioning technique, he and I have discussed ancient Egypt, the nature of emotions, the scientific process, the use of drugs, personal values, slide-rules, mathematical principles, safety procedures, and many other assorted subjects.  Often I respond to Robbie’s query with another question, such as “What do you think?”  He is quick to divulge his opinion, and the great debate begins.

  One of the reasons I am so intrigued by Robbie’s questions is that, somewhere along the way to adulthood, I began to forget how to ask wide-open questions.  When I was a student in school, I was so busy learning the answers, I forgot how to ask the really deep questions.   As a teacher, I had to re-learn questioning techniques in order to engage students in their learning.   That’s because I couldn’t help noticing the students’ eyes glaze over when I went off on a long-winded tangent.  A thought-provoking question could bring them back to the subject, though, and that’s when I saw the wheels start turning.  The right questions can get learners talking, discussing, reflecting, and writing their thoughts.   That’s when they really begin to “own” their learning.

  In what ways might questioning techniques improve student learning?  What kinds of questions enable educators to tap into different parts of the cognitive domain?  How can questions engage students when their attention begins to wander?

  Student Engagement

  Like many teachers, I have seen my students begin to doodle or show signs of boredom as I explained a point or waxed eloquent about the subject under discussion.  When I first saw this happen during the early years of my teaching career, my initial response was to talk faster or louder, gesticulate, write on the board, or otherwise enliven my performance.  But I’ve changed.  Now, when I notice the students’ attention waning, I immediately reconnect with them in a very different way.  How?  Instead of trying to keep the focus on my message, I reverse the focus so it is squarely with the students.  I stop talking and start asking questions.

  For example, I was recently teaching communications students about the changes that have taken place in the English language over the past hundred years.  When I detected some of the students losing interest, I stopped right in the middle of a sentence.  I waited a moment, and then I asked them:  “Turn to the person next to you and, together, make a list of ten words that you think are recent additions to the English language.  You have five minutes for this exercise.  Then we will compare your ideas.  Go!”

  The students looked at each other and started talking.  Those who had been daydreaming immediately got down to work because of the immediate attention from their “shoulder partners.”

  Asking secondary students insightful questions has many benefits for professional teaching practice.  Whether the response is intended to be written, spoken, dramatized, or conveyed in some other manner, it will provide feedback on how successful the lesson was in stimulating their thought processes.  The students will reflect on their learning through higher-level thinking processes such as analysis, synthesis, comparison, or summation.  Finally, students are more likely to remember what they have learned when they explore the implications of their learning.

  Benjamin Bloom is credited with developing a way to categorize levels of reasoning skills in the 1950s. His taxonomy of questions is a widely-accepted framework that many teachers use to guide their students through the learning process.  Though not necessarily sequential, the hierarchy of Bloom’s Taxonomy is often depicted as a pyramid, with simple knowledge-based recall questions at the base. Questions higher on the pyramid are more complex and demand higher cognitive skills from the students.

  Bloom’s Taxonomy provides a structure for developing questions that encourage students to think on different levels.  In order, the levels are:

  • Knowledge (facts, recall, recognition)
  • Comprehension (translation, interpretation, extrapolation)
  • Application (to new or unfamiliar situations)
  • Analysis (break into parts)
  • Synthesis (combine elements into a new pattern)
  • Evaluation (apply criteria to defend the conclusion)

  Within each level, closed-ended and open-ended questions can be constructed to engage students in different kinds of cognition.

  Closed-ended and Open-ended Questions

  Let’s consider two common forms of questions:  closed-ended and open-ended.  A closed-ended question (sometimes called a convergent question) is a way to find a specific answer.  These questions can usually be answered with one or two words.  Closed questions work well for simple recall, to determine whether students understand a concept or for review.

  Closed-ended questions are common in everyday communication situations.  We use them when we need specific information quickly:

  • What time is dinner?
  • How much did that cost?
  • Have you finished your work?
  • Who won the soccer game?

  Closed-ended questions and statements are appropriate on a pop quiz, to check for understanding, or to determine whether students completed their homework.  However, for other purposes, their effectiveness is limited.  For example, they are not effective when you want students to open up and freely express feelings or ideas. Closed questions do not usually encourage reflective dialogue or creative thinking.  Faced with a barrage of closed-ended questions, students sometimes feel that they are being interrogated.  Similarly, they may interpret a series of closed questions as an attempt by the teacher to control the direction of the discussion.

  Another often-overlooked danger in closed-ended questions is that the question itself could be misleading.  For example, young children will ask, “Is Santa Claus real?”  Phrasing the question in this manner suggests that Santa Claus has physical characteristics; taken as a closed-ended question, it precludes discussion of the spirit of Christmas or the nature of contemporary Christmas traditions.  Indeed, most children who ask this question are just becoming aware of symbols and metaphors, so I prefer to interpret the query as a child’s effort to begin a discussion about Christmas and gift-giving.  It is an opportunity to enter into an open-ended dialogue about who or what Santa Claus represents, the reason(s) that people give gifts, whether a true gift needs recognition of the giver, our own roles in our families and communities, and other related ideas as the conversation unfolds.

  Many questions at the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy – particularly knowledge and comprehension – are closed-ended questions.  Higher order reasoning such as synthesis and evaluation is stimulated through the use of open-ended questions.

  Asking an open-ended question (sometimes called a divergent question) is a way to elicit discussion, brainstorm solutions to a problem, or create opportunities for thinking outside the box.  The highest-order open-ended questions engage students in dynamic thinking and learning, where they must synthesize information, analyze ideas and draw their own conclusions. Some examples are:

  • Why did the Vietnam War take place?
  • How did you solve the numbers problem?
  • What do you think will happen in this experiment?

   Open-ended questions can also be phrased as commands or statements:

  • Describe how photosynthesis works.
  • Please explain the main character’s motives.
  • Discuss the fairness of Canada’s judicial system.

  When students believe that you have a “correct answer” in mind, they are slow to respond. On the other hand, a true open-ended question sincerely invites authentic reflection and discussion.

  Questions such as the above invite the students to elaborate on their thoughts without limiting the direction of the discussion. That’s because, like the response to Robbie’s questions, a respectful answer will be longer than a word or phrase.  Instead, an appropriate response requires at least a few sentences or paragraphs.  Beware!  Answers to open-ended questions can surprise and baffle even the most experienced educators.

  Engaging Students at a Deeper Level

  For the purpose of student engagement, an open-ended question is a powerful tool that any teacher can employ.  I am not talking about an occasional question thrown out to the class.  Nor do I mean a rhetorical question, to which the teacher has a pre-conceived answer.  When students believe that you have a “correct answer” in mind, they are slow to respond.  On the other hand, a true open-ended question sincerely invites authentic reflection and discussion.

  In the larger community outside the classroom walls, few issues are black-and-white.  That’s why, in order to become fully contributing members of our society, adolescents need to become critical thinkers, find their own voice, and be recognized for having opinions that matter.  Innovative thinking is valued in our fast-changing society, and our classroom questioning techniques can help prepare young adults for what lies ahead.

  Formulating open-ended questions is often more difficult than designing closed-ended questions.  Open-ended questions or statements are most appropriate when you want to:

  • Brainstorm ideas
  • Problem-solve
  • Look for lots of information
  • Encourage thinking “outside the box”
  • Resolve conflict
  • Negotiate agreement
  • Elicit higher-level thinking such as application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation

  Effective teachers use a combination of open and closed questions, depending on their purpose.  In designing lesson plans, we keep in mind learning outcomes.  As our lesson plan becomes more specific and detailed, we ask ourselves, “What is my objective?”  or “What kind of question will help achieve the learning outcome?”

  Let’s say that you are teaching a lesson on poetry.  You have already motivated the students by linking poetry with music.  Perhaps you have discussed how the lyrics and melody of a song reinforce the theme.  Now it’s time to see if the learners understand a poem that was assigned for homework.  Whether you ask the initial questions orally or in writing, you want to “warm up” your students with some relatively straightforward, closed questions (simple recall) such as:

  • What is the name of the poem you read last night?
  • Who is the author?
  • What is the subject of the poem?
  • Did you understand it?  Did you like it?

  After three or four such closed questions, students are ready to think about and respond to some open-ended, higher-level questions, such as:

  • Why do you think the author wrote this poem?
  • What mood did he intend to convey?
  • What did you like or dislike about this poem?

  A similar technique can be utilized in designing quizzes.  In setting the questions, I usually begin the quiz with relatively straight-forward recall or recognition questions before moving to more complex, open-ended questions.

  Once students are familiar with different questioning styles, they can be asked to design their own questions.  For example, students who are dissecting a frog might be required to compose three closed-ended questions and three open-ended questions about that activity.  The nature and depth of their questions will often surprise even the most experienced educators.  They might be ready to explore the concept of metacognition and/or Bloom’s taxonomy of questions.

  Since the term “metacognition” was coined by John Flavell in the 1970s, the concept has become an important part of the ongoing dialogue about student learning.  Metacognition – i.e., an individual’s awareness of his or her thought processes – requires an ability to stand back and observe oneself.  Most adolescent learners are mature enough to review their progress, identify their achievements, and chart their direction.

  Inside and outside the classroom, we all need to be mindful of open-ended questions that masquerade as closed questions.  When a student asks me, “Should I go to college?” he has phrased his question as if it is closed-ended.  In reality, this is an example of an open-ended question disguised as a closed question.  The person asking the question does not want a one-word answer “Yes” or “No.”  The underlying message I take from this question is that the student wants to talk about the implications of pursuing a post-secondary education, whether making the commitment is a good idea, how much it will cost, and who knows what else.

  Parent-Teacher Communication

  Meeting parents in person is an ideal time to ask open-ended questions. The purpose?  To learn something unique about each student from the parent’s perspective.  On Parent-Teacher night, parents sometimes have to wait in line to meet their child’s teacher.  Those few minutes are precious.  How can they best be utilized? I have engaged parents and learned more about my students by having paper and pens handy, with open-ended questions or statements that will provide insight into my students’ needs and abilities, or parental expectations – questions such as:

  • What would you like me to know about your son/daughter?
  • What are your thoughts about homework?
  • What do you hope your son/daughter will achieve in this class this year?

  Of course, questions should be tailored to meet different objectives or to reach out to specific communities of learners.

  Conclusion

  When we ask open-ended questions of ourselves and our students, the answers sometimes surprise us.  Here are some sample questions you might ask of yourself or your students to explore your thoughts:

  If I were not in school right now, I would be ….
  The most amazing thing that happened to me …
  I think school could be …
  I wish people would …
  My idea of happiness is …
  In five years, I want to …
  In moments of weakness I …
  My worst fear is …
  My greatest hope is …
  I’m good at …
  I’m not good at …
  I live by this principle:

  So, go ahead. Ask an open-ended question and explore the cognitive domain. You never know what you might learn.

  EN BREF – Comment les techniques de questionnement peuvent-elles améliorer l’apprentissage des élèves? Quels types de questions permettent aux éducateurs d’accéder aux différentes parties du domaine cognitif? Comment les questions peuvent-elles accrocher les élèves quand leur attention vagabonde? Souvent, les questions situées aux niveaux inférieurs de la taxonomie de Bloom – en particulier les connaissances et la compréhension – sont des questions fermées. Les questions ouvertes stimulent le raisonnement d’ordre supérieur, comme la synthèse et l’évaluation. Poser une question ouverte constitue une façon d’aiguillonner la discussion, de chercher des solutions à un problème ou de créer des occasions de penser autrement. Les questions ouvertes d’ordre supérieur entraînent les élèves dans une réflexion et un apprentissage dynamiques, où ils doivent synthétiser de l’information, analyser des idées et tirer leurs propres conclusions, ce qui les prépare à une communauté élargie, où les sujets sont rarement tout l’un ou tout l’autre. Les adolescents doivent apprendre la réflexion critique, trouver leur propre voix et être reconnus pour tenir des opinions qui comptent.

• High School’s Dark Corners

  January 6, 2011 10:29 PM Comments Off on High School’s Dark Corners

  “Ms Moore! What’ssssss’up?!” I squinted to recognize the sweaty student as he careened past me. His hair stood in spikes, his white shorts and T-shirt shone with sweat, and gold chains swung from his neck. Maybe I would have recognized him had my attention not snapped to the mini-skirt wearing girl on his arm. Was that Julie? I thought, incredulous. Front-row-sitter-who-never-speaks-out-of-turn-and-always-has-something-intelligent-to-say Julie?! I graduated just over a decade ago myself, but I was suddenly and acutely conscious of having entered unfamiliar territory: a high school dance in the era of ubiquitous music videos and barely-there clothing. Brace yourself, I muttered.

  The place smelled of bodies. From my spot against the wall I could see beads of moisture misting the colourful darkness: colourful from the multi-hued strobe lights, dark because all the regular lights were off – a gift for teachers who were spared the sight of students’ shimmying and shaking.

  “Can you believe this?” I asked another supervising teacher. I felt alarmed at all the flesh sweating and jiggling and grinding and swaying and heaving and sliding and bumping and bouncing around me.

  Directly in front, but a comfortable ten feet away, an anxious knot of Grade 8s, the babies of the school, clustered. While dancing, they would occasionally glance coolly over their shoulders at the Grade 9s. The Grade 9s spent a lot of time moving importantly around the gym, not getting too close to the Grade 8s but not yet comfortable enough to join the Grade 10s. The Grade 10s, apparently content with their spot in the middle of the ranks, danced in groups but with lots of pairing off. Every few seconds or so one of the boys and one of the girls would press against each other and grind to the floor looking pleased with themselves. The Grade 11s and 12s were difficult to see; they danced in a dark corner of the gym I wasn’t brave enough to visit.

  “Is this normal?” I asked the other teacher.

  “Yup,” he chuckled. “Welcome.”

  Surveying the crowd, I noticed Kevin, a boy with autism in my Grade 10 class. Kevin had no speech and limited abilities to communicate. He had just begun using a machine which speaks words as he types them. His parents ensure Kevin has every opportunity to socialize and learn, and this dance presented one of those opportunities.

  “There he goes again,” said my fellow supervisor, nodding towards Kevin.

  “Yeah, I was just noticing. Why is he walking around like that?”

  “He does that at every dance. Makes him more comfortable in all this chaos, I guess. Having no structure is disorienting, so he walks around the gym’s perimeter which gives him a pattern to hold on to but still lets him be part of the action.”

  “I notice that nobody picks on him.”

  “Nope. But then, these kids have been going to school together since pre-school. They all know Kevin; it’s nothing new.”

  An awkward looking Grade 8 student walked past me, and I noticed many others walking around in a way that suggested they were busy looking for someone – maybe a ruse to avoid a situation for which they were obviously not ready: sweaty dancing with intimidating peers. Kevin was one of the few who looked comfortable, not the least bit self-conscious.

  The rap beat stopped and a slow song oozed from the speakers. In a frantic rush, students scrambled to find a dance partner – any dance partner. Senior students in the corner used the slow song as an opportunity to make out with their partners. The Grade 10s paired up, and I had to glance away when I saw one of my students bending awkwardly to place his arms around a girl much shorter than he. The boy made sure to maintain space between her body and his as they stepped side to side almost in time to the music.

  Adolescence looks complicated from the sidelines – more complicated than many of us remember. While we teachers focus on our lessons, our students are experiencing life’s bigness for the first time. Remember the day you gave your heart to someone for the first time and got it back damaged? The day you worked your absolute best at something, but failed anyway? The day you realized the people you love won’t live forever?

  As the dance swayed to a close, my colleague and I looked at one another with raised eyebrows: “We made it.” We made it through dance supervision, but we also made it through our own high school experiences, relatively confident in our ability to learn, improve, and succeed in life and relationships. We were among the lucky ones.

  As I left the stickiness of the gym and drove home, leaving the loud music, the gyrating students, and the insecurities of a high school dance behind, I resolved to be more mindful about using my subject matter to empower students with the tools for life’s tough situations and the confidence to use them.

  Brooke Moore teaches English and Writing at Rockridge Secondary in West Vancouver, B.C. She would like to note that the dance she writes about here occurred a number of years ago; since then the Leadership 11 students at Rockridge have been working to connect with the Grade 8s. One of their most successful initiatives has been to help the young students feel more comfortable and confident in situations such as these.

• Closing the Gender Gap

  10:14 PM Comments Off on Closing the Gender Gap

  When my children attended elementary school in a rural, K-8 school in northeastern Ontario, both the principal and vice-principal were men. So were four of the classroom teachers – one, remarkably, in the primary division. My grandson now attends the same school. Last year there was one male teacher. This year, he’s gone. The principal, the vice-principal, the teachers, the secretary, the aides, the noon-hour supervisors – all women.

  My grandson is a normal little boy who sometimes runs afoul of school rules. His parents worry that, in a school staffed entirely by women, the tolerance for horseplay and other little-boy behaviour is low, and that he and his friends will begin to see themselves as a “trouble-makers” rather than as bright and lively boys with energy to burn.

  Their concern is being echoed across the country, as was recently pointed out in a six-part series on boys and education in the Globe and Mail. There is some debate about whether the absence of male teachers affects the academic success of boys, but there can be little debate about the impact it has on the climate of the school. Just as we bemoan the paucity of women in positions of economic and political power, we should bemoan the paucity of men in positions that provide nurturing and guidance for young people of both genders.

  Teaching has always attracted more women than men, but the recent widening of that gap has resulted in many schools that look like my grandson’s school. The reasons are varied and complex; Jon Bradley’s article on “False Accusations” in this issue tells part of the story. Whatever the reasons, we should be concerned about the consequences. Many perfectly normal little boys are spending their days in school surrounded by adults who struggle to comprehend them and have nowhere to turn for another perspective in a single-gender workplace.

  The world inhabited by young boys is unfamiliar, sometimes troubling, territory for most women. This is not to ignore the obvious – that behaviours and attitudes of both genders at all ages span a wide and overlapping range. Nor is it to make any assumptions about whether these differences are the result of “nature” or “nurture”. It is just to recognize that boys, as well as girls, need to relate regularly to adults who’ve “been there”. For that to happen in our schools, we need to find a way to get more men into the classroom and to make sure they are comfortable staying there.

• False Accusations: A Growing Fear in the Classroom

  9:02 PM Comments Off on False Accusations: A Growing Fear in the Classroom

  “Where are the male teachers?” Male role models are becoming increasingly scarce in Canadian classrooms, and the demographics indicate that the current low numbers will continue to decline. While general statistics are open to flux and are often several years behind reality, it is clear that male teachers in elementary and middle schools will soon be a thing of the past. Secondary schools fair a tad better, but males are an increasing minority within the teaching ranks at all levels. Generally speaking, the male-to-female ratio in elementary schools is 20-to-80; in secondary schools, 35-to-65. Whatever data one teases out, there is no question: our classrooms are increasingly dominated by female teachers.

  Recent Narrative

  Henri Fournier, a teacher with the Commission scolaire Grandes-Seigneurs in Quebec who has an impeccable 30-year employment history, has had his life turned upside down by a set of circumstances straight out of a B-grade movie. Several students (all girls between 8 and 12) accused Mr. Fournier of inappropriate touching. Acting with dispatch so as to protect the children, Mr. Fournier’s school board placed him on unpaid leave. He was investigated by the local police, charged by the Crown Prosecutor, and sent to trial.

  As part of this shrinking minority myself, I watch with concern the declining numbers of males who select elementary education as a career path.

  Almost two years would elapse between the laying of the charges (ready for this – 34 separate charges!) and the commencement of the court trial. During this time, one can imagine the chatter on the Internet and the emails that winged back and forth. The climate in the school was tense and – notwithstanding overt attempts at privacy – everyone knew the identity of the girls and what Mr. Fournier was alleged to have done. Throughout this ordeal, while proclaiming his innocence, Mr. Fournier was supported by his union; but at the same time he was the object of all manner of scurrilous innuendo and talk within his community.

  There are those who may look at this situation and be pleased with the swiftness of the action. A predator had been caught, and the lives of so many girls saved from eternal harm. Even though a couple of the girls recanted their stories prior to formal court proceedings, and the justice system was grinding slowly, Mr. Fournier was going to get his just rewards.

  One small difficulty: Madame Justice Odette Perron threw out every charge! Further, in a somewhat scathing rebuttal, she noted that all of the accusations were without foundation, many of the so-called statements were contradictory, and she could find no fault at all with Mr. Fournier.

  Then, in what can only be described as educational decision-making run amuck, Mr. Fournier was reinstated by his school board (no back pay, by the way) and assigned as a teacher to the same school where many of the accusing girls were still students.

  Whatever the formal ruling, Mr. Fournier is branded. No charges were ever laid against the minors who made false police reports, no disciplinary action was meted out to overzealous officers or educational administrators, and the insult of reassigning Mr. Fournier to an environment where his former accusers have free and unfettered reign to continue the gossip borders on harassment. In a final irony, a labour arbitrator recently ruled that Mr. Fournier is entitled to no back salary or benefits, and there will be no compensation for his additional legal expenses.

  Status of Male Teachers

  Such stories concern my students. As a teacher of teachers, I have a special interest in the status of male elementary teachers. As part of this shrinking minority myself, I watch with concern the declining numbers of males who select elementary education as a career path, and I view with sadness the kind of impact cases such as Mr. Fournier’s have on my education students.

  At McGill’s Faculty of Education, the percentage of males opting for elementary teacher training rests, now, around five percent. This number has been slowly declining ­– from about 20 percent over my tenure with the Faculty. Within the broad Anglophone school network, many elementary schools are now places of a single gender. Many factors contribute to falling numbers of male teachers (lack of merit pay, stifling administrative regulations, double standards, and the like), but the sad reality is that the committed male classroom practitioner is slowly becoming a thing of the past. From the principal to the custodian, it is often the case that all in-school staff are female. To highlight this issue, it is not at all unusual for school administrators to call our Student Teaching Office and plead for a male student teacher.

  There is no question that classroom teaching today is extremely challenging. Internal educational pressures are mounting as more and more special needs students are integrated into regular classrooms, and instructional materials are found wanting as increasing numbers of immigrant students bring diverse cultural histories into play within the close confines of the classroom environment. It is also fraught with danger. On a regular basis, as aptly documented in a CTV/W5 report “Unsafe to Teach” released in 2005, teachers are being verbally and physically assaulted, and increasingly subjected to false accusations of inappropriate behaviour. More and more teachers are leaving the classroom for other careers.

  My students – both male and female – are quite prepared to take up the pedagogical issues raised by changing standards and a changing demographic; however, the spectre of violence and false accusations adds a level of danger that is truly frightening – the former to female student teachers, the latter primarily to males.

  False Accusations

  As there is no central database documenting false accusations, and as many cases are reported only at a local level without receiving any kind of national attention, attempts to accurately appraise the number, degree, and kind of false (and real) accusations of inappropriate behaviour against male teachers has been a daunting task. Internet organisations, such as “menteach.org”, have tried to report such cases, and random searches of various news databases do tease out interesting human interest cases. However, formal attempts to quantify the issue have been frustrated by a lack of information.

  However, thanks to a ground-breaking study by researchers from the Northern Canadian Centre for Education & the Arts (NORCCREA) at Nipissing University  entitled “A Report on the Professional Journey of Male Primary-Junior teachers in Ontario (Gosse, Parr, & Kristolaitis, 2010), we have an initial benchmark figure. Approximately 13 percent of the male teachers in their study – one in seven – reported that they had been falsely suspected of inappropriate contact with pupils. This is a significant number and, for the first time, quantifies the reality faced by male teachers.*

  Despite the lack of national data, it is clear that classroom teachers across Canada are being falsely accused in growing numbers. Local teacher unions and other educational authorities are struggling to identify such incidents and, at the same time, appear ill-equipped to develop realistic procedures and plans that safeguard due process and the reputations of those falsely accused. Since we are not tracking the increasing level of violence (both verbal and physical) against teachers, it is likely that these incidents are under-reported, and we tend to ignore the extremely high dropout rate of teachers who leave the career path after less than a decade of experience. We don’t know how many leave because they have been falsely accused, or because they see others losing their reputations and careers because of lies, rumours, and innuendo.

  There is no question that the children must be protected; any adult who does indeed act in an inappropriate way must be drummed out of the school system. But here comes the conundrum: how are the rights of innocent teachers protected?

  Although schools, school boards, unions, and other educational stakeholders are scrambling to develop and implement policies, this is a complex issue on many levels. There is a general assumption that any student accusation simply must be true (kids don’t lie), and this is especially true if the accusation is made by a female student against a male teacher. The rights of children (often couched in the phrase “we must protect the students”) appear to take precedence over the rights of teachers. There is no question that the children must be protected; any adult who does indeed act in an inappropriate way must be drummed out of the school system. But here comes the conundrum: how are the rights of innocent teachers protected? And what action is taken against students and their parents who are shown to lie? In far too many cases, there is no “right to privacy” or “right to innocence before judgment”; rather, there appears to be a rush to judgment with little regard for the impact on the falsely accused individual or the collateral impact upon the school and other professionals within that environment.

  False accusations are being made against both male and female teachers. These reports often take one of two broad avenues. In the first, and less severe, the teacher is accused by one or more students of being “unfair” or “picking on” a student. These accusations are usually wrapped around words such as “harassment” or “culture”. The second set of false accusations levelled against teachers is far more serious and might be broadly termed “sexual”. In these cases, students accuse a teacher of various forms of touching and/or other inappropriate communication.

  Now, let’s be very clear on two fronts; some students lie, and some teachers act inappropriately. With millions of pupils in schools and tens of thousands of teachers in classrooms, inappropriate and questionable speech and actions are bound to occur. In many cases, such actions can be easily explained by the close quarters and natural connectedness between teacher and pupil. On the other hand, teachers do cross the line. Similarly, not every story out of the mouths of adolescents rings true. Incidents can be stretched and expanded and, in a growing number of cases, simply made up.

  To help my male students prepare for an environment in which the usual student-teacher interactions can be misconstrued ­– intentionally or unintentionally – I have developed a list I call the “Six Nevers”. They illustrate how the threat of false accusations can interfere with the development of a warm, caring relationship between students and teachers, and why males considering teaching as a profession might have second thoughts.

  • Never touch a student!
  • Never be alone with a student, and never in a closed classroom!
  • Never use language/tone that can be interpreted as anything but professional.
  • Never use Facebook/Internet to chat or communicate with students!
  • Never maintain an outside school association with a student/family.
  • Never allow your guard to falter!

  Another Narrative

  A senior administrator characterized Ron Mayfield as an energetic and experienced teacher who related well to his students; his death was tragic. Mr. Mayfield was accused by one of his students of a physical assault. In line with school policy, he was immediately suspended (with pay) and police and youth services were notified.

  While various investigations were carried out by many agencies, Mr. Mayfield was left on the sidelines. He was not kept abreast of actions and was left open to the rumour mill that swirled about in the school and the community. Unlike many such investigations, this one moved quickly and, within two weeks, it was clear that there was no substance to the charges. Further, the 13-year-old student had recanted his accusation.

  Unfortunately, no one in any of the agencies thought to inform Mr. Mayfield. Sadly, he committed suicide. While it may never be proven, his family (and many colleagues) share the view that Mr. Mayfield sought this drastic release because he could not bear the stain of a false accusation and the thought that his whole career was on the line.

  Accountability

  What is the punishment for students who lie about teachers? In today’s Canada, little is done in a systematic manner to hold youth accountable for their false narratives. In case after case, parents leap to the defence of apparently “abused” children and, when the dust has settled, offer no compensation to the aggrieved teacher. This skewed arrangement puts more emphasis on unsupported adolescent narratives than on verifiable facts.

  In some isolated cases, individual teachers are fighting back. Teachers, both male and female, are personally resorting to the courts to seek redress from parents and school officials. In a small number of U.S. cases, the teachers have prevailed and been awarded significant amounts. Closer to home, falsely accused Quebec teacher David Fletcher, in a precedent setting case, was awarded damages in the $70,000 range. Nonetheless, far too many falsely accused teachers are on their own as they attempt to deal with legal and educational systems that do not have procedures in place to deal swiftly and fairly with student accusations.

  The history of school-based abuse is a clouded one. The mainstream press is filled with recollections of religious transgressions and sexual abuses committed by teachers in First Nation and elite private schools. There is no question that children were abused in the past, and many reports of abuse were ignored (as evidenced by the Residential School situations). Yes, the reports of these abused children were discounted, and those in authority sometimes acted criminally. However, the common contemporary assumption – that any and all accusations against teachers (specifically male teachers) are true – flies in the face of data.

  Many of the accusations made against teachers are false. They are stories – lies made up by students who find support in parents and friends who are far too quick to point fingers. Careers are ruined and families lost, and those who make such false accusations often face no consequences. Along with those who support them, these students are being allowed to undermine a pillar of the Canadian justice system: guilt must be proven in a court of law, and innocence is something that cannot be given back when falsely wrenched away.

  EN BREF – Les modèles masculins deviennent de plus en plus rares dans les classes canadiennes et les facteurs démographiques indiquent que leur faible nombre continuera de diminuer. Le nouveau personnel enseignant est bien préparé aux questions pédagogiques soulevées par les nouvelles normes et par une nouvelle composition démographique des classes, mais le spectre de la violence et des fausses accusations ajoute des dangers qui font vraiment peur – aux étudiantes-maîtres dans le premier cas et aux étudiants-maîtres dans le deuxième. Un enseignant masculin sur sept est faussement soupçonné de contact inapproprié avec des élèves et les systèmes scolaires canadiens ne disposent pas de procédures pour réagir rapidement et pour protéger la réputation des innocents faussement accusés. Bien que la sécurité des élèves soit primordiale, les droits du personnel enseignant doivent également être protégés.

  * Please note that on April 29, 2011 a correction was made online to this paragraph, clarifying the results of the research cited.
  

• Banning the Strap: The End of Corporal Punishment in Canadian Schools

  8:30 PM Comments Off on Banning the Strap: The End of Corporal Punishment in Canadian Schools

  Trivia question for educational history buffs: in what decade did it become illegal to strap students in Canadian classrooms? Was it a) the 1870s, when compulsory education was introduced in Ontario and Atlantic Canada; b) the 1960s, when “child-centered” education practices swept the nation; c) the 2000s, in the wake of a campaign against child abuse by children’s rights advocates? The correct answer is c) – more precisely 2004, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that corporal punishment was an unreasonable application of force in the maintenance of classroom discipline. Notably, in the so-called “spanking case”, the Supreme Court upheld the right of Canadian parents to hit their own children (with a hand only) between the ages of 2 and 12. With this ruling, the strap and other instruments used for disciplinary purposes formally disappeared from Canadian schools, though certainly not from Canadian families.

  The story of the long campaign leading to the end of corporal punishment in Canadian schools is largely unknown. The Toronto Board of Education pioneered on this front, abolishing corporal punishment in 1971 following a protracted and controversial campaign, though the matter had long been a subject of debate in educational circles.

  Indeed, the various justifications for the bodily castigation of children echo throughout history. Governments, religious leaders, educators, and parents commonly believed that corporal punishment was righteous and efficient. Used appropriately, it would secure or restore order, discipline the body and motivate the mind, imbue religious and moral lessons, and both punish and prevent aberrant behaviour.

  Theological doctrine offered a powerful validation for the physical discipline of children and youth at home and in school. The Old Testament famously warned adults not to “spare the rod,” and according to the doctrine of original sin, flogging the essentially “depraved” child contributed to the expulsion of the devil.

  While corporal punishment endured, and was practiced with particular intensity in early nineteenth-century British and American schools, dissenting or at least moderating views were periodically voiced. Enlightenment thinkers, notably John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, advised teachers not to rely excessively on force. In 1847, American author and educator, Lyman Cobb, questioned the morality and effectiveness of physical punishment in the burgeoning common school system and recommended that the rod be employed only “as an ultimatum or last resort to make a boy yield or submit when all mild and persuasive means have failed; and not as a ‘means of moral discipline’ at all.” Nevertheless, corporal punishment in schools thrived in the United States. New Jersey formally abolished its use in 1867; the second state to do so was Massachusetts – in 1972.

  Similar sentiments and practices endured in British North American schools in the late 19^th century, where students (boys and girls) frequently experienced and probably always feared the rod, the ferule, the birch, or the teacher’s open hand. The rise of mass, state-funded, and compulsory schooling posed particular challenges with respect to discipline. On the one hand, teachers were tempted to use corporal punishment to establish and sustain order in large and growing classrooms, and regularly did so. On the other hand, prominent officials like Egerton Ryerson, Superintendent of Education in Ontario, realized that force alone would not, in the long run, create a compliant, appropriately socialized citizenry. A robust, peaceful, and morally grounded community required voluntary deference to authority, not simply threats and physical coercion.

  The province sought to oversee and generally regulate classroom discipline while leaving implementation to the discretion of local educational authorities. The language on discipline included in the Department of Education Act of 1891, which remained in place for most of the 20^th century, was an idealized expression of “in loco parentis”, a construct which assigned authority to the teacher to “stand in place of the parent”, or in the words of the Act, “to practice such discipline as would be exercised by a kind, firm, and judicious parent.”

  The various justifications for the bodily castigation of children echo throughout history… it would secure or restore order, discipline the body and motivate the mind, imbue religious and moral lessons, and both punish and prevent aberrant behaviour.

  This rather benign statement disguised both the pain endured by students (mostly males) who were subjected to corporal punishment, and the fear among those who were threatened with such treatment. The strap or its equivalent was an important instrument in the teacher’s disciplinary arsenal, and professional associations of teachers and principals consistently fought every effort to end the practice.

  Opponents of corporal punishment included the authors of the 1968 Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives in the Schools of Ontario, known popularly as the “Hall-Dennis Report”, which sharply condemned corporal punishment and the use of the strap. It found no “educational advantage in pain, failure, threats of punishment, or appeals to fear.” Notably, the Ontario Minister of Education agreed. In a speech to the Legislative Assembly in December 1968, William Davis called upon principals and teachers to “refrain from using [corporal punishment] in the schools of Ontario.” The province, however, took no legislative or regulatory action on this matter. Instead it encouraged school boards to develop disciplinary approaches, which would foster “an atmosphere of respect and trust between students and teachers with the cultivation of individual responsibility as a major goal.” This directive allowed Ontario school boards to continue using corporal punishment, and for the time being every single board did.

  Toronto Trustee William Ross sought to change that practice. An elementary teacher in the 1950s who left the profession for a business and legal career before being elected to the board in 1961, Ross felt that he had “misused” the strap, and from that time onwards he favoured its abolition. In January 1969, he put forward a motion that Toronto schools “refrain from administering corporal punishment at all times.” The motion was tabled and never reintroduced.

  The issue, however, was far from settled. It erupted again in Toronto in the fall of 1970, when Graham Scott, a newly elected trustee from Ward 7, appeared on the front page of the Globe and Mail brandishing a plywood paddle, which he claimed had been used by the then principal of Brant Street Public School to discipline six- to ten-year-old children with “emotional problems” in a “rehabilitation” class.

  The previous day Scott, a vocal opponent of corporal punishment, had visited the school (which was not in his ward) and obtained the paddle from a teacher. Scott then contacted Globe and Mail education reporter Loren Lind, who, accompanied by a photographer, attended the Board Management Committee meeting on the afternoon of 15 September, where Scott dramatically produced the paddle.

  Alerted to Scott’s impending revelations, the board summoned the former Brant Street principal, Robert Holmeshaw, to a Management Committee meeting. Holmeshaw explained that there were severe behavioural problems among the children, that he used the paddle on seven of them a total of twelve times in the previous school year, and that he administered no more than two “smart smacks” on the buttocks of each child. He also acknowledged having washed three children’s mouths out with soap for using foul language. The parents were made aware of his disciplinary methods and none complained. He contended that the use of the paddle was more humane than the leather strap.

  In the wake of the Brant Street School controversy, the board established a special committee on corporal punishment, headed by Trustee Robert Orr, to offer advice on this form of discipline. Graham Scott and his supporters on the board pressed the committee to consider limiting the use of the strap. After extensive debate, the committee accepted Scott’s proposal to give parents the right to “exempt” their children from corporal punishment, a resolution endorsed by the full board in December 1970.

  Toronto’s decision remained exceptional in the North American educational community… Elsewhere in Canada, the tide turned towards abolition in the 1990s.

  The decision moved the board closer to a policy of abolition, but this outcome was far from certain. The director’s officer reported on July 6, 1971, that the number of strappings in 1970-71 had declined dramatically from the previous year. For those favouring abolition, this was a sign of the anachronistic status of corporal punishment, and ending it was the logical next step. For defenders of the strap, the numbers meant that teachers were showing restraint and were using the strap only as a “last resort”, a prerogative that ought to be maintained. At its July 13^th meeting, the Management Committee, consisting of thirteen board members (nine of whom were present) and chaired by “reform” trustee Fiona Nelson, opted for the abolitionist position. It prepared a report recommending to the full board that the strap be permanently banned.

  The full board vigorously debated the matter at its July 22^nd meeting. Notwithstanding Director Ronald Jones’s continuing opposition to the recommendation for abolition, the board resolved by a vote of eleven to six to abolish corporal punishment in Toronto schools.

  Toronto’s decision remained exceptional in the North American educational community. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that physical discipline in the classroom did not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”. By 1979, the York and North York School Boards had joined Toronto in banning the strap, but in the early 1980s it was still permitted in Scarborough, Etobicoke, East York, Peel, York Region, the Metropolitan Separate School Board, and virtually everywhere else in the province. Elsewhere in Canada, the tide turned towards abolition in the 1990s. Between 1989 and 1997, the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Yukon, Prince Edward Island, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Newfoundland, and Quebec amended their education acts to prohibit corporal punishment.

  The final (or at least most recent) judgment on the matter arose from the Supreme Court of Canada decision in January 2004 referenced above. While it abolished physical forms of discipline in schools, it ruled that “teachers may reasonably apply force to remove a child from a classroom or secure compliance with instructions, but not merely as corporal punishment.” By way of illustration, this meant that teachers could intervene in a fight to separate or restrain students, or guide a disruptive student by the arm to a different location in the school. Thus, teachers who acted reasonably while using a minimum of force would not be subject to prosecution.

  The long historical debate over the physical discipline and punishment of children arose from different perspectives on appropriate forms of child rearing and pedagogy. At one end of the spectrum were adults and educators who believed that social order, good behaviour, and moral development required the regular use of disciplinary instruments such as the rod and the strap. At the other end were those who felt that physical discipline constituted, or would lead to, the abuse of children. Classroom instruction and school management, instead, should draw from “positive” and empathetic forms of teacher-student interaction; in the modern era, the incentive to learn should not be built on the fear of physical punishment. The majority of Canadian adults most likely occupied a middle range on the spectrum, neither believing in the moral virtues of strapping, nor persuaded that occasional physical discipline constituted child abuse. Polls consistently showed that Canadians were divided on the question. Nevertheless, changing pedagogical practices, medical and psychological evidence, children’s and human rights advocacy, and widely publicized incidents of child abuse combined to tip the balance against the application of corporal punishment in Canadian schools. But the political struggle to ban the use of physical discipline in Canadian families and households continued.[1]

  EN BREF – Le débat de longue date autour du châtiment corporel des enfants a son origine dans les différents points de vue portant sur la pédagogie et la bonne façon d’élever les enfants. À une extrémité de l’échiquier se trouvaient les adultes et éducateurs croyant que l’ordre social, le bon comportement et le développement moral requéraient le recours régulier à des instruments de discipline comme la baguette et la lanière de cuir. À l’autre extrémité se trouvaient ceux soutenant que le châtiment corporel constituait un abus physique des enfants, ou pourrait y mener. Le Conseil scolaire de Toronto a été à l’avant-garde de l’abolition du châtiment corporel en 1971. Dans la plupart des autres provinces et territoires canadiens, la lanière de cuir est demeurée un important instrument de l’arsenal disciplinaire des enseignants jusque dans les années 1990. Ce n’est qu’en 2004 que la Cour suprême du Canada a statué que le châtiment corporel était une application déraisonnable de force pour maintenir la discipline en classe.

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  [1] In the years following the Supreme Court ruling in 2004, Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette introduced several private members’ bills to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code. The bill she sponsored in 2008 was passed by the Canadian Senate in June, but because of the dissolution of Parliament for the November federal election, it was not taken up by the House of Commons.

• Penny Milton, Cailey Crawford, and Ron Canuel on What did you do in school today?

  4:17 PM Comments Off on Penny Milton, Cailey Crawford, and Ron Canuel on What did you do in school today?

  Penny Milton, Cailey Crawford, and Ron Canuel talk about the What did you do in school today? project.

• An innovative pilot project in Alberta asks …“Do credit hours equal learning?”

  2:19 PM Comments Off on An innovative pilot project in Alberta asks …“Do credit hours equal learning?”

  Since reading Westley, Zimmerman and Quinn-Patton’s Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed (2006), I’ve found myself looking at educational change in a lot of new ways. The authors ask a lot of compelling questions, but one in particular really stuck with me: “What is holding the system in its status quo?”

  All organizations have a tendency to hold on to some things even if after they’ve stopped serving their original purpose. Could the way we organize time in schools be one of the things we’re holding onto in education? Might the relationships between time and teaching and learning be holding the status quo in place in school systems despite years of educational change efforts?

  Since the early days of public schooling the school day has been driven by time. Many years ago we might have been able to argue that schools were organized in ways that fit with conventional knowledge about how young people learn. Our knowledge about learning has grown immensely since the turn of the twentieth century and yet the school day, especially in high schools, looks very much the same as it did 100 years ago.

  In November I had the pleasure of working with staff from 16 high schools participating in Alberta’s High School Flexibility Enhancement Pilot. This innovative project was designed to address tensions between contemporary beliefs about learning expressed in Alberta’s curriculum and the practice of funding all credits on the basis of the Carnegie Unit of 25 hours of face-to-face instructional time per credit. Carnegie Units took hold across North America as a system for accrediting and funding high school credits in the early 1900s. By releasing 16 high schools from policy requirements built around this unit, Alberta Education will discover, among other things, if they continue to hold educational value in the 21^st century. 

  Through the pilot project, a diverse group of high schools (large and small, urban and rural, French and English-language) are exploring the relationship between hours of face-to-face instruction and student success (e.g. achievement, engagement, school completion) and the merits of various innovative high school designs for teaching and learning. Over the course of the three-year pilots (2011-2013) students, parents and staff at each school will work together closely to develop an approach to school organization that does not necessarily equate time with credit. 

  The project’s leader – Gerry Fijal – and participating schools are currently finalizing an evaluation plan for the project that will include What did you do in school today? measures of social, institutional and intellectual engagement.  Outcomes of the project will likely be available in 2013, but regular updates will be posted on the project website where you can also find a copy of the literature review written to stimulate thinking about innovative practices for high school redesign including,

  • Increasing learning opportunities for students;
  • Enhancing engagement of students in their learning;
  • Addressing diverse learning needs of students;
  • Enhancing relationships in the school community; and,
  • Enhancing teacher collaboration.

  What do you think might be holding up the status quo in our school systems? Are you exploring innovative ideas to disrupt policies or practices that might not be working anymore in your district or region? If you are, share your ideas here and look back here in a few weeks to see others that I’m learning about through What did you do in school today?

• Should We Be Streaming Students?

  December 13, 2010 12:00 AM Comments Off on Should We Be Streaming Students?

  ‘Grouping’ by ability, or ‘tracking’, or ‘streaming’ means that students are placed into groups defined by their ability levels. Students may be grouped by ability either for a subject (for example for mathematics or reading) or for all or almost all their instruction. Students’ assignment to an ability group may be temporary, changing during the year, or relatively permanent.

  Advocates of grouping by ability claim that it can raise achievement standards since teachers can target their instruction and use resources more effectively. However, researchers have shown that grouping by ability can have adverse effects on students’ attitudes towards schooling and their self-esteem. Studies on ability grouping show inequitable outcomes and social consequences:

  • It is very difficult to distinguish ‘ability’ from ‘prior achievement’.
  • Use of grouping by ability is associated with worse overall student performance.
  • Students placed in higher ability groups may perform better but students placed in lower ability groups typically perform worse than in mixed ability groups.
  • There is a tendency for lower teacher expectation and lower quality of instruction in lower ability groups.
  • For students assigned to low-ability groups, there are negative effects on their self-esteem, motivation and attitudes towards schooling.

  Research suggests that students in non-grouped settings, especially for those with lower achievement, have more healthy and positive attitudes towards school than students in grouped settings.

  Researchers advocate using mixed grouping and reducing ability grouping in schools, but more important is to focus on improving instruction and curriculum for students of all achievement levels.

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  CEA and the Ontario Institute in Studies in Education (OISE) have teamed up to provide you with relevant and timely information based on current empirical educational research. The primary goal of this project is to get relevant and needed research into the hands of parents and other interested people. Five blurbs will be posted to our website throughout the 2009-2010 academic year. They will be written in plain language on topics of interest to parents, such as homework and class size.

   Additional Resources

  • Ministry of Education, Government of British Columbia:  The Government of British Columbia provides tips for teachers and parents on career advice and planning for students taking Applied courses in high school.  [Website]
  • The Disadvantage of Tracking and Ability Grouping – A Look at Cooperative Learning as an Alternative:  This article provides an alternative approach to ability grouping.  [Available for Download]

  • Duke University, Talent Identification Program:  The Expert’s Forum on the discussion of ability grouping provides answers to the following questions:  What is Ability Grouping?  How does ability grouping compare to tracking?  Why has ability grouping been so controversial over the years?  [Website]
  • Settlement.Org:  This website provides Ontario parents with advice and information on high school courses and choices for their children.  The information gives an insight to parents on whether their children should take Academic or Applied courses, and where it leads them in career choices.  [Website]

  Research References Informing this Issue

  Boaler, J., William, D., and Brown, M. (2000).  Students’ Experiences of Ability Grouping:  Disaffection, Polarisation and the Construction of Failure.  British Educational Research Journal, 26(5):  631-648.

  Eder, D. (1981).  Ability Grouping as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:  A Micro-Analysis of Teacher-Student Interaction.  Sociology of Education, 54(3):  151-162.

  • In general, the results of this study indicate that the common practice of ability grouping should be questioned. (pg. 160)
  • The results of this student clearly indicate that homogeneous grouping compounds initial learning problems by placing those children who have learning problems in the same groups. (pg. 160)

  Gamoran, A. (1993).  Alternative Uses of Ability Grouping in Secondary Schools:  Can We Bring High-Quality Instruction to Low-Ability Classes?  American Journal of Education, 102(1):  1-22.

  Gamoran, A. (1992).  Synthesis of Research:  Is Ability Grouping Equitable?  Educational Leadership, 50(2):  11-17.

  • Given poor instruction, neither heterogeneous nor homogeneous grouping can be effective; with excellent instruction, either may succeed. (pg. 11)
  • Little evidence supports the claim that tracking or grouping by ability produces higher overal achievement than heterogeneous grouping. (pg. 12)

  Hoffer, T.B. (1992).  Middle School Ability Grouping and Student Achievement in Science and Mathematics.  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 14(3):  205-227.

  • This analysis has shown grouping has no significant overall benefits in either science or mathematics. (pg. 221)
  • In both subjects, students in the high groups learn somewhat more and students in the low groups learn less than comparable students in non-grouped schools.

  Ireson, J. and Hallam, S. (1999).  Raising Standards:  Is Ability Grouping the Answer?  Oxford Review of Education, 25(3):  343-358.

  • Streaming, it is argued, can play a major role in polarizing students’ attitudes into pro- and anti-school camps. (pg. 348)
  • At the primary level, the research suggests that children in unstreamed classes have healthier and more positive attitudes towards school than children in streamed classes and that this is particularly true for those in lower ability. (pg. 348)
  • There is clear evidence that low ability groups tend to include disproportionate numbers of pupils in low-socio-economic status, ethnic minorities, boys, and those born in the summer. (pg. 349)
  • School effectiveness studies have no identified pupil grouping as a key characteristic of effective schools. (pg. 349)

• Students Speak About the Benefits of Student Voice and Involvement

  December 2, 2010 5:29 PM Comments Off on Students Speak About the Benefits of Student Voice and Involvement

  Students at Sir Robert Borden Junior High School speak about participating in What did you do in school today?

• Marginalized Youth and Education: Voices from Regent Park

  November 24, 2010 10:48 PM Comments Off on Marginalized Youth and Education: Voices from Regent Park

  They say I’m less than average
  They say I can’t succeed
  Because I live in Regent Park
  They say there’s just no need.

  Excerpt from a poem called, They Say, written by Zeinab Mohamed, then aged 14 and a Grade 8 student at Nelson Mandela Park School in 2003-04.

  Former Regent Park resident and Pathways’ alumnus Andrew remembers the incident well and considers it a defining moment in his life.

  It was 1999, just prior to the establishment of Pathways. Andrew, then 13 or so, was on his way home from a skit put on by 51 Police Division’s Community Partnerships office. The skit, ironic given what was to transpire, was born in the early days of community policing and illustrated the tension felt between Regent’s community members and the police. It was intended to forge better relationships with the people who lived in the community by getting to know them better, engaging with them, dealing with them as individuals. After all, not all of Regent’s youth were drug dealers, petty criminals on their way to a life of violent crime – many of them were just plain good kids, some of them in the wrong place at the wrong time. So it was for Andrew and his friend.

  As the two young teens were walking away from the event, they were nabbed by police, frisked, more than a little roughed up, and held briefly in connection with a car robbery that had taken place moments before, near 51 Division. They tried to explain where they had been, only to be told to quiet down. They were scared and shaken up.

  Andrew (not his real name) came to Canada as a refugee from Kosovo two years prior to the incident with the police, with his parents, one brother, and two sisters. He came from a place where folks made every effort to avoid such confrontations. In Kosovo, to see the police show up in your neighbourhood meant almost certain danger, and potentially even death. Most of Andrew’s male family members had had violent run-ins. As a result, this incident was particularly traumatizing for Andrew, and it upset his parents greatly.

  This could have been a turning point for Andrew, and in a way it was. Andrew was pretty shaken up. Relations between the police and youth in Regent Park were not good – some would say downright hostile. Quite often, young people who experience such encounters are tempted out of anger and pride to retaliate, to make bad choices that reflect this anger that sometimes take them down a dangerous road. But instead, Andrew kept his anger in check and committed himself to avoid, if possible, all such future exchanges with the police. He would keep his head down and concentrate on doing well in school and getting into university. And he did.

  Andrew had what the researchers are calling these days, “resilience”. But that so-called resilience didn’t reside in his genes or his neuro-networks, or at least that’s not how Andrew sees it. “I could have gotten angry and focused on getting even, retaliating. But I didn’t. If it weren’t for Pathways, it might have been a different story.” In fact, a few years later, Pathways staff facilitated a formal apology from the police to Andrew and his father for the 1999 run-in.

  Nowadays, lots of kids who live in Regent Park begin their sentences with, “If it weren’t for Pathways…” For them, Pathways represents a parent figure, less emotionally vested in the kids’ lives, but equally committed to their success. The program was first established in Regent Park in 2001, following a lengthy period of research and consultation with the community. Regent’s residents were clear in what they considered was the principal challenge of their community: to better support their young people in finishing high school, which would enable them to attend college or university and to gain more meaningful employment. Today, Pathways remains committed to ensuring that all youth in its programs – regardless of their social or economic situation, or where they were born – have the same opportunity for success, in school and in life.

  Pathways’ students now talk about a new culture of expectation… They say words such as disadvantaged, poor, violent, and at-risk do not address the fullness of reality and life in their community.

  The Pathways Program itself consists of four principal components, which each address the academic, emotional and cognitive, social, and financial barriers that young people in vulnerable communities face as they move through adolescence. They include: the assignment of a Student Parent Support Worker; access to tutoring and mentoring, including career mentoring in their later years of high school; opportunities for peer mentoring and social supports; and the provision of some financial assistance, whether in the form of bus tickets or meal vouchers. Together, these four major supports ensure the successful completion of high school, which enables young people to move into early adulthood poised to make the choice that’s right for themselves, one which reflects their interests and personal aptitudes, be it going to college or university, or entering the workforce.

  Pathways, as well as the rebuilding of Regent Park, have profoundly changed the community. Pathways’ students now talk about a new culture of expectation. They bristle at, and obviously reject, most of the labels the media and others place on them and, by extension, their community. They say words such as disadvantaged, poor, violent, and at-risk – to cite a few – do not address the fullness of reality and life in their community. In fact, if you ask the young folks who live in the community today, the feelings and dynamics captured both in the poem excerpt and Andrew’s run-in with the police are coming to represent more Regent Park’s past than its future. Even its present is looking pretty good. Though the relationship with the police is still not perfect, there is a sense that the legacy of struggling against a set of circumstances that have conspired to limit their possibilities relates to the past. As one student put it, “the labelling and other negative things associated with Regent are more related to the older kids… because now this community has changed and now we don’t face the same obstacles.”

  This even applies to the classroom. Because Pathways students attend high schools from all over the city, they often find themselves in highly diverse settings, and are just as likely to find themselves sitting next to the son or daughter of an accomplished business person or academic as they are to attend school with a friend from the community. Historically – for some of the older Pathways students – teachers, however unconsciously, held Regent Park students to a different set of standards. Youth from Regent Park were just not expected to do as well. Today our program participants say that has changed. “We proved to them we could be as smart as everyone else, if not smarter,” said one recent Pathways graduate.

  The results concur. And now, as graduation approaches for yet another cohort of Pathways students, not applying to college or university is simply out of the question.

  EN BREF – Les élèves du projet Pathways à Regent Park parlent maintenant d’une nouvelle culture des attentes. La plupart des étiquettes que leur attribuent les médias et d’autres, et donc la collectivité, les hérissent et ils les rejettent. Ils affirment que des termes comme défavorisés, pauvres, violents et à risque – pour ne citer que ceux-là – ne décrivent pas toute l’envergure de la réalité et de la vie de leur collectivité. En effet, si vous consultez les jeunes qui y vivent aujourd’hui, ces termes sont en voie de mieux représenter le passé de Regent Park que son avenir. Même que son présent semble plutôt positif. Comme le dit un élève : « L’étiquetage et les autres choses négatives associées à Regent se rapportent davantage aux jeunes qui sont plus vieux… parce que maintenant cette collectivité a changé et nous ne faisons plus face aux mêmes obstacles. »

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