Effectiveness of Homework: Research and Blog

The topics of homework and its effectiveness are things that have been nagging me all year as I have struggled to find a way to get some useful and independent effort out of my students. Being somebody who always had to sit down and do everything myself in order to learn it, I have come to associate doing homework with doing real learning. I regularly slept through classes either because I knew I'd only get it if I did it on my own or because I had gone over the material already and was completely bored. It is because of the way my own personal experience with homework seems to be so out of whack with how homework functions in my school and for my students that I decided to jump onto the anti-homework wagon with three books by authors who strongly oppose homework.

These three books are The Homework Myth , by Alfie Kohn, The End of Homework, by Etta Kralovec and John Buell, and the The Case Against Homework, by Sara Bennet and Nancy Kalish. No, it did not actually read each book word for word. Rather, I found myself only drawn enough into one to feel the need to read it cover to cover. That book is Alfie Kohn's The Homework Myth.

Regarding the first two books, their focus is primarily on the effects of homework on families and on its effectiveness for younger students. In the case of Kratlovek and Buell, a great deal of time is spent discussing the way homework loads only widen the achievement gap between the privileged and underprivileged. In short, increasing loads of homework are taking time away from students at night when they should be spending quality time with their families and pusuing other actvities for their rounder development. Such are the woes of more intact families. On the other hand for students without family support or homes that allow any homework to be done, homework only serves to frustrate such students more. While Kratlovek and Buell spent a great deal of time on the social justice aspects of homework and the social evils that make homework a useless effort for many students, Bennet and Kalish add to these view their own advice to parents in evaluating how to help their kids make the vest use of their time at home.

What sold me on reading the Kohn book all the way through was first reading his article "Abusing Research", which is available at his website www.alfiekohn/reaching/research.html. Actually, after reading his full book all the way through, I would recommend that anyone interested go to his website and read his paper first. Besides being a nice article to use to enter into a study of the effectiveness of homework, I bring up this article because it showcase's Dr. Kohn's ability to discriminate between correlation and causality or, in a similar vein, between results and conclusions. The importance of Dr. Kohn's ability here is that he is very adept at pointing out the flaws in research intended to by used either for or against homework.

In his articles and his book Kohn's careful look at studies "proving" the usefulness of homework yields no positive correlations between learning and homework. In fact the most obvious correlations found in recent international sutdies have been negative correlations. The one exception to this is a weaky positive correlation at the high school level, but even it is not separable from other factors like student performance on class work. The lack of correlational data is bad enough, but Dr. Kohn points out very bluntly that correlation does not mean causal. Thus one really should not claim that they can say doing homework leads to better learning if it is even hard to show that doing homework can be associated with good learning. Along similar lines Dr. Kohn points out that it is hard to even define data to collect to support the ideas that doing homework leads to siginificant development of nonacademic benefits like self-discipline and time management.

After weighing the lack of supportive data against the loss of time to be a kid, Dr. Kohn turns from looking at homework as improving learning to trying to understand why we continue to assign so much homework. In doing so he formulates six reasons why we still cling to the notion of homework being so crucial to education. The first two of these are a sort of logical laziness in that we still believe there are data out there showing homework works. The second is really more that we just don't question it's usefulness enough. That homework is necessary is considered the norm, and we rarely make overt efforts to ask tough questions regarding why we are making kids do it. According to Kohn, even ideas such as "reinforcement" and "practice" are not really good enough reasons for assigning most homework, especially when on considers that these ideas come from a history of behaviorism better applied to teaching animals or athletes rather than students in need of higher level thinking.

Kohn's third reason for the persistence of homework is that there is much we have yet to learn about learning. One of the more common misconceptions about the learning process is that more time spent on a subject equals more learning. This stems from the idea that "people need time to learn things", which does not necessarily mean that forcing students to spend a certain time doing something will lead to them learning.

Kohn's fourth and fifth reasons have to do with our assumptions of what's really important or what we should teach students to expect in life. The first of these is that the movement toward tougher standards makes homework an attractive option because of the way it can be quantified, in terms of time spent on task, and the way it fits in with the idea of being tougher in order to meet tougher standards. The second assumption is that we need to get students used to doing homework and work at home for the rest of their school and working career.

Kohn's final reason for the persistence of homework is a basic of students' use of their time. In other words we assume that they will not make good use of their time unless we show them what to do with it.

Kohn closes with some suggestions for addressing the issue of homework and its ineffectiveness. Admittedly, he does not spend much time on this, but one of the more interesting suggestions is not get rid of homework altogether but rather to change the default assumption to be that there will not be homework. He also recommends making homework a more personalized, differentiated activity with more input from the students being required in designing the assignements. Another interesting idea is to stop grading or checking off homework assignments. If students do not see the value in doing a certain assignment, then using grades really only turns the situation into one of enforced compliance. Dr. Kohn would prefer that homework become something that is shared rather than graded, that homework become a chance for students to attempt more challenging exercises or problem without being punished for making mistakes.

I agree with most of what Dr. Kohn and the other authors have said, but one of the issues that could use more development would be the topic of how to differentiate between different types of homework. This is less the case with Kohn than the others, but rote memorization and repetitive problems tend to be held up as straw men for the sake of the arguments being made. It would probably interesting to discuss what kinds of homework we have each been assigning and to what success. Similarly, useful conversation to have in our class would be to discuss what role we consider homework playing in our classes.

Personally, I still believe that homework needs to play a significant role in my classes, but finding a way to make it work has been a huge challenge. In a nutshell, I am trying to find a way to have my students do some independent work, to try something on their own without having their hand held the whole time or each step done for them multiple times in advance. I also struggle against a pervasive attitude that homework is a way that students can make sure they pass a class regardless of their mastery of any particular aspect of physics or chemistry. Lately, getting rid of homework in my class is something I would love to do... I just need to find some realistic way to do that. For one thing, I like the idea two of the authors put forth (I forget which) by pointing out that maybe homework should consist of work that can only be done at home. hm.

Small Successes

I think it is always important to stay positive no matter what obstacles you face. However, I have found this year to be one of the hardest for me to stay positive about because I am face every day with so much failure and so much stress. I will say I have had my share of days that I would rather be in a car accident on the way to work then have dealt with the students on that day, but I have also had fabulous days.
I have one class of eighth graders that are the worst behaved class in the school. They yell, they scream, they fight, cuss, throw everything at me and each other, anything you can think of that is poor behavior they do. It got to a point where I was not getting anything done and I had not taught them anything in weeks. So, I asked for help. I went to the assistant principle and talked to her about what I should do to fix the problem. She told me to change my warm ups to something easier and have them watch me grade them on completion as opposed to making them turn it in for me to check later. She also said that she would come and watch a class. Both of these happened as well as their teacher walking them to class every day so that they all showed up as opposed to running the halls all class.
The day that the AP was there was quite possibly the most amazing display of perceived power that I have ever seen. The entire period they were silent. The students raised their hands to answer my questions, they asked their own questions. It was an orderly well run class. It was the first time I have ever taught in a class room like that. It was awesome. She did this on a Monday, and for the rest of the week I held over their head the possibility of her coming in and talking to them again. It was the best week I have had with them. They actually learned about triangles and the triangle inequality and classifying triangles. It was awesome. This week of success with one class definitely renewed my confidence in myself as a teacher as well as my joy for being in the classroom. Since then, they are their regular selves, but i will remember that week. It was a lot of fun. My one question is what can I do to myself to get the kind of control that my AP has?

small successes

sorry for the delay in this post, but i think the question is a valuable one.

like everyone else, this school year (so far) has been a emotional roller coaster. i think many of the small successes that i have enjoyed were the personal relationships i formed between students. I try to offer the students a safe, fun place to learn, and I am very defensive of my kids that show me any effort.

i do the best i can to form a personal connection with each student, i try to give them things they like to read and are interested in. that being said, the amount of work is daunting. i try to parry apathy with enthusiasm.

finally, i think that my greatest success has been forming good rapport with my students and being someone they can both talk to and learn from.

Assignment #3: Writing to Learn Math, Matthew Hallahan

The book I read was Writing to Learn Math, by Joan Countryman. The basic gist of the book is that students learn by exploring, discussing, and predicting. In short, by being active. So this passive learning of skills and processes (that math teachers are often guilty of) is not adequate and is not preparing our students for interacting with their world, or with the larger world.

So, one of the ways we can encourage active participation and real thought in our math classrooms (sorry non-math teachers) is to have our students write. It is important to practice writing simply for its own sake, because communicating ideas clearly and persuassively is such an important skill. But also because writing can be a stimulus for deeper thought. I think we've all had that experience were as soon as we start writing, the creative juices start flowing and we find ourselves roaming down paths that we hadn't thought of at first. Writing is like a catalyst.

Here are a few ideas that I thought were helpful, and would be beneficial in a math class.

The author states that students are often receptive to short writing assignments. She suggests learning logs, where students record examples and explanations about how they did a problem. (this is an idea I keep meaning to implement but never do!) She also suggests short writing prompts such as: I think calculators...., factoring is easy when....., or teachers usually say....

She also suggests journals. Students can record anything they want. How the day went. Troubles they had during class. How they were feeling. These can be helpful to understand how your students approach the subject matter. One idea I really liked is that the teacher keep their own journal about the class. For example, "Today's lesson didn't go as well as I had planned. A few students struggled because I think I breezed through the review of the ratios in the beginning of class. Tomorrow I will review ratios in more detail, and hopefully things will go more smoothly" Then the teacher should share their journal entries with the students. It will show them the importance of keeping one and how it can help your learning, and there is the added encouragement that adult people actually do this, its not some time sucking task that is given to kids to bore them. It was also suggested to add a table of contents, opening, and closing to give the journal a more official feel.

The last topic I want to discuss is how to handle word problems. It can be a very useful assignment to just have the students work on one (only one!) word problem in a day. If its an open ended question, that requires lots of thought and no definite answer, it can be a great opportunity to have the students explore it through writing. Make this on problem a project. Have them write a report on it. Discuss how they approached finding a solution. Discuss the various solutions they found and under what conditions they hold true. Have them include charts, graphs, diagrams. This is all good math, and just because only one problem is being tackled does not mean its a waste of time.

So thats all.
love,
matt

Re: SSR

Jill suggested I tackle the following in my presentation and blog: “Teachers as models - you might discuss the research on the "Drop Everything and Read" or "Sustained Silent Reading" programs - referred to in our text in Chapter 7. The idea is that teachers and administrators model reading along with requiring the kids to read. The problem is, there is no research showing it helps comprehension any. But it may encourage kids to read more, which can't hurt.”

I did some web research to find anything written about the efficacy about SSR with urban secondary students. I really wanted to find something to support SSR because I feel strongly that the more you read, the better you read and write. But as you would probably guess, I didn’t find very much. Here are a few items that I thought you might find interesting.

Item 1: “Trenton Central High School SSR: A Case Study” written by Diane Waff and
Patrice Connell and published in English Journal in May 2004.

The majority of students at Trenton Central High School are low-income minorities. In 2001-2002, 61 percent were considered proficient in reading and writing compared to 73 percent statewide.

To kick-off the SSR initiative, every teacher received a copy of Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle School and High School Classrooms (Cziko & Hurwitz). Teachers who had received special training led professional development sessions for other teachers. The school decided to have SSR in social studies and language arts classrooms and used $50,000 in grants to purchase books from Scholastic. Each student had a SSR log that included a series of metacognitive prompts such as “While I was reading I got confused when...” or “I first thought...but then I realized...”

In most classrooms, the teachers just had the students read for 15 minutes and then write for another 5 minutes. In the better classes (those of the two authors), the teacher created more of a reading and writing community. That included:
1) Teachers would write notes back to students in the reading journals.
2) Students were encouraged to make real-life connections with the text and to reflect on their struggles as a reader.
3) Students made two- to three-minute presentations about their book to the class.
4) Students wrote letters to the authors.

I like what these teachers did, but there was nothing about impact on the students’ grades, test scores, or even feeling about reading.

Item 2 (for English teachers only): “An Attitude Adjustment: How I Reached My Reluctant Readers” by Kathleen Gutchewsky in English Journal, November 2001.

Gutchewsky discusses how she brought SSR into her class. She identifies three kinds of students: those who don’t have time to read, those who hate to read because they’ve never liked anything they’ve read, and those who have reading problems.

She started the school year by giving her students a reading survey. Only one out of 100 admitted to enjoying reading; 59 percent said they don’t read because they hate it or it’s stupid and 24 percent said it’s too hard. (She never describes her students except to say that she had freshman nor does she describe the school’s student body.)

Guchewsky then re-configured her curriculum to include a reading unit at the beginning of the year. She developed a list of 30 books at a variety of reading levels for them to choose from with authors and summaries. Students convened in student-to-student book talks after she modeled it and also kept reaction journals, prepared projects, and answered reader-response questions.

Throughout the rest of the year, students could earn extra credit by reading books at the high school level, complete a reaction journal (one page for every 50 pages), prepare a project from a list of options, and have a book talk with the teacher or the whole class. She had library staff (if only my school had any!) present books to the students and that was very successful. Participation in the extra credit was limited but increased when she allowed in-class reading time once a week.

SSR in Guchewsky’s class meant 20 minutes of any reading except texts for other classes. She kept a chart listing who was reading what. This gave her a chance to ask students if they liked their book. She would read too and let them know if she liked her book.

At the end of the year, Guchewsky had the students complete another reading survey and the results were much more positive – 70 percent said they liked to read. Again, nothing about any impact on grades or test scores, but the teacher considered it a success.

Item 3: “Accelerated Reader: Does It Work? If So, Why?” by Stephen Krashen, School Libraries in Canada, November 2002.

AR is a reading management program in which students have access to books, are given quizzes on the books for points, and earn prizes with those points. Krashen claims the program works in two ways and uses evidence from his school as well as a lit review he did. 1) Providing more access to books results in more reading and 2) Increasing recreational reading increases reading achievement.

To be honest, I found his argument lacking in evidence.

Item 4: One interesting idea I stumbled upon that I’m considering sending to my principal: We currently have homeroom at the start of the day. As you may imagine, attendance is dismal since most students see it as an extra 30 minutes to get themselves to school. One teacher on the National Council of Teachers of English website said her school has homeroom at the end of the day and the time is used for SSR. Considering how difficult it is to get my last class of the day to stay focused, that might make more sense. This could work in middle school because the students don’t skip out before the end of the day. I’m not sure it would work in high school.

Item 5: One useful resource: a list of SSR extension activities from the website of the National Council of Teachers of English:
http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson141/ssr.pdf

Small Successes

It is sad to me that I have put this entry off for over a week... especially since the reason for putting it off is that it is something I really need to and want to think about. However, the fact that I will put such things off is only an indicator of the fact that I have indeed lost perspective in no small way.

The things I consider right now to be my small successes are things I haven't gotten to put on paper for anyone whose job is to make sure I'm doing my job, and since I always tend to go too long I'm just going to list the ones that come to mind and hope they stand out enough on their own to people who can sympathize:
--I have never had to call a parent or send a kid to the office to keep the class in control.
--My two special ed kids are among my top ten performers despite their D-averages outside my class. The father's of each have actually left their conferences with me trying to cover a lump in their throat after twenty minutes of my efforts to prove that their kids is not a screw-up in my class.
--I have sat through over a dozen intervention meetings with parents, teachers, the "problem" student and administrators, and, yet, I have walked into every one of them totally clueless as to what the behavioral problems could possibly be.
--I honestly believe that my students trust me to be fair, and, though they whine and occasionally erupt at my expectations of them, their complaints never seem to come up once that episode is over.

As it turns out, these things were actually the things I was most proud of in November. Pressure to hit the standards and "catch up" to the other physics teacher made me forget about these things, but now it's nice to think about them and give some credit to myself for them. Now though, I have to finish grading, to finish making solution sets, to draft some worksheets. There simply is not time to dwell more on this, though the energy it would give me would probably be more to the benefit of my students today than the worksheet I'm drafting. But maybe learning to make a choice even as small as "getting back to work" might seem, and learning not to mourn it too much if it turns out to be the wrong one, is also a small success.

I have put this entry off because, like Twain would point out, it is hard to write the short version of this. The longer is easier and so I put things like this off until they wake me at 3Am and leave me staring at the ceiling to ponder cracks--cracks up there and in any claim that these successes are in any way "small" to me.

Website for WordWeb

I think this is the original one. In any case, it is one that can be put on your Google Homepage.
http://www.vocabgrapher.com/mapmyword.html

Self-Regulated Learning

Self-Regulated Learning
Ashleigh Rhodes
March 13, 2007

Paris, Scott G. and Peter Winograd. “The Role of Self-Regulated Learning in Contextual Teaching: Principles and Practice for Teacher Preparation.” Preparing Teachers to Use Contextual Teaching and Learning Strategies To Improve Student Success In and Beyond School. U.S. Department of Education Project.

Self-regulated learning is a theory that incorporates on one of my basic beliefs about teaching: that the real goal is not to teach concepts, but to teach students how to be learners. The principle of “teach a man to fish…” except with learning. I don’t necessarily limit this to learning math. I in fact don’t expect or even hope that my students learn to love math. That’s unrealistic and silly. What I do hope is that my students all develop the skills to be able to achieve whatever it is they want to achieve. I want my students to be able to realistically look at their lives and their goals and take appropriate action, whether it’s going to college or focusing on their art or music or learning to repair cars.
How does that have anything to do with self-regulated learning? According to the authors of this chapter, self-regulated learning is made up of three parts: awareness of thinking, use of strategies, and sustained motivation. This is a more comprehensive theory than I saw in other sources, where more of the emphasis was just on the first part, the awareness of thinking.
The foundation for self-regulated learning is the awareness of thinking. This has been divided up into self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-reaction. The idea is to engage in metacognition, which is the first step for self-regulated learning. Students have to first be able to observe their current behavior, determine the outcomes of that behavior, and decide if that outcome is acceptable.
Self-awareness can be put into action by learning and, even more importantly, using strategies for learning, studying, controlling emotions and developing and pursuing goals. One important distinction is between just knowing a strategy and being able to use that strategy in the appropriate situation.
Lastly, the authors’ model of self-regulated learning includes an aim towards sustained motivation, meaning an ongoing effort to achieve higher and better goals. The distinction made is between pursuing success as opposed to avoiding failure. The goal is to develop students who are consistently applying positive awareness, strategies and effort to constantly improve themselves and their lives, as opposed to just following the path of least resistance. Doing just enough to pass can be considered a form of self-regulated learning, but not the ideal one.

Esa's Successes

"While I no longer have the confidence that I can dramatically increase my students' reading level, I have decided to focus on another big goal: decreasing apathy. No matter what we teach and no matter a student's background, apathy plays a critical role in the persistence of failure. While there's no tried and true indicators for the degree to which students care about school or what they are studying, it certainly shows in their attitude and performance.

I have found a little grin on my face when overhearing my students spiritedly discuss the merits of communism, debate the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, or note the injustices apparent in DC's local government structure. Even though they may never think about it a second time, and they will certainly not lie awake at night contemplating the longterm cultural and political impact of European colonialism, it's an incredible thing to witness those fleeting moments of excitement.

History can be a hard sell. Aside from the off chance that they will wind up on a trivia game show, or that they make the curious decision of pursuing a history PhD, or conveying the dangerously abstract moral importance in studying the past, it's pretty hard to make the case for history's importance in my student's lives. I've tried, but can't say that we are on the same page. So the moments in which they truly empathize and connect to people of different cultures from different time periods, however brief, are truly rewarding."

Veronika's Presentation (March 6)

Veronika Kasalova
March 6, 2007

Production Strategies: Research-Based Approaches to Improving Writing

To find strategies to improve student’s writing I used the book “In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents” written by Nancie Atwell. This book was suggested to me by my English language teaching colleagues. I am not sure how the strategy described would work in DC, but it is worth discussing as it may be adjustable to the benefit of our students.
Nancie Atwell was a 7th and 8th grade English language and reading teacher. At first she was teaching in a standard manner, giving vocabulary lists and teaching grammar. After attending a workshop on writing she decided to experiment a little. She had the students write more, and for all assignments gave them lists of subjects to choose from. This did not produce the desired result. It took the help of Susan Sowers, who at that time was conducting research under a National Institute of Education grant, to find a strategy to improve student writing.
The end result was a classroom setup which has three components. The first component is a mini-lesson at the beginning of the class. The purpose of a mini-lesson is to teach grammar. This is done by discussing issues that have arisen in previous classes or in pieces of student writing. Early in the year this is largely teacher-led, and often focuses on procedural information. Later on, students are allowed to take charge of the discussion.
The heart of the lesson is the “Writer’s Workshop,” where the students sit and write. Students may write about any subject they choose. If they are having difficulties, or feel the need to discuss the subject, they can talk in the “conference corners” – places set aside for student discussions. The student papers can go through several drafts (no erasing allowed) and the final product is graded at a time of the student’s choosing. Graded papers have corrections on them, and once the student makes these changes the paper is “published” by having printings given to the other students.
To close the lesson there is “Group Share” during which the students voluntarily discuss their writing. This brings closure to the lesson, and lets students find out what other students are writing about.
This strategy was developed with the following seven strategies kept in mind. Writers need regular chunks of time. Writers need their own topic. Writers need a response that comes during (not after) their composing. Writers learn mechanics in context from teachers who address errors as they occur. Children need to know adults who write. Writers need to read. And finally, writing teachers need to take responsibility for their knowledge and teaching.

Ms. Shuer's success

Out of all the things that I have done this year, I have had two small successes: one is relationships with certain students and the other is more content-related.

First, the relationships. Several of my students needed to interview someone that they thought was a leader for their ESL class, and I had aboud 10 students choose to interview me. The fact that they saw me as a leader at the school was very touching, considering I feel like I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. It made me realize that at least some of my students look up to me as an authority figure.

Second, the math. While many of my students still struggle with solving equations and finding the slope of a line, most of them now have a solid understanding of basic math ideas that they did not understand before. Negative numbers, number lines, and decimals were all foreign concepts to my students, and I am proud that when I now ask for the answer of -3 + 9, most of my students can conceptualize that the answer is 6. Considering that my students should be fall along in algebra by now, this certainly qualifies as a small success.

Question 2

Small Success

I have found some success in getting to start over. I was fortunate enough to get new students this semester (as of Jan 19), which allowed me to almost start completely fresh. I changed the amount of papers I collect daily and how I run my classroom, which has help me have fewer things to grade nightly and my classroom management is much better. Last semester I had a class that was completely out of control and the concept of lecturing or note taking was out of the question because I couldn’t get a word in. This semester the small success I have is that in every one of my classes I can do about 15 minutes of notes with the class quiet or raising their hands and asking questions. This also may be due to the fact that I am much more strict this semester in not letting the students who come to class just to disturb the class into the room.

I still can’t get my students to class on time, my first period class has no more than 4 people in their seats by 9:15, which is a half hour late, and the class should have 33 students. I am still only passing a handful in each class. But those who come see to be understanding what is going on- so I guess that is a small success.

Question #2: A Small Success

The other day I did have a small success. My 7th grade homeroom class was busy chatting while I tried to go over a timeline with them on the whiteboard. I stopped what I was saying and said, "If you respect me, please be quite." And they were quiet.

Granted the chatter did pick up again somewhat from time to time, I was happy with this moment. And overall my management has gotten exceedingly better. Various security/office members have commented that I don't call down too often any more.

This is an ever-evolving process - but little things work from time to time. The teacher next door to me is a veteran. When the kids leave her classroom, they seem so restrained and somehow more mature. I know that she was constantly on top of them for the first part of the year and stays on top of them. When you enter her class, the kids are unbelievably quiet. It's as though they've given up being disrespectful and out of line. Watching them it is clear that they know how to do what is right. But they need the constant consistent reminder. I've adopted some good systems for this, but I could use more - and it would be great to have them from the start.

All in all though, I have started to sort of like my job in the past month. I appreciate working with the students more. In early December I would not have said this. So that is a small success.

Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males (Techner)

Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males
By: H. Techner
February 6, 2007

Resource: Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Male, by Alfred W. Tatum

Alfred Tatum, who is a Literacy Education professor at Northern Illinois University, wrote this book to help teachers close the achievement gap in reading and literacy, specifically in black males. Tatum started his career as a teacher in South Side Chicago where he saw how large the achievement gap was in reading for black males and how these males’ life struggles contributed to their problems in education and literacy.
In inner city schools (such as DCPS) the students often have hard ships that extend beyond the classroom. The male students in these schools are usually from low socio-economic backgrounds, live in poor neighborhoods, and many are involved in territory gangs. The strategies Tatum has come up with to help black males become more literate stems from understanding the culture they grow up in. In regards to education an eighteen year old named Craig said he “had thought about his future, something most of the young men in this neighborhood rejected- often for good reason- as a waste of time” (pg. 14). The reason so many of Tatum’s students did not care about school or learning how to read was because it did not seem important for survival. Many of the boys’ interviewed said they were probably going to die or go to jail before they were eighteen so why bother learning anything?
Tatum says in order to effectively teach literacy to black students, we as teachers need to acknowledge their culture and experiences and use them as motivation and interest. The most important thing black adolescents need to experience “flow” of learning is control. The student needs to feel in control of his learning, and if he feels like he has no power then he will probably reject the education. To give black males the sense of control in literacy it is suggested that teachers choose male-oriented texts that have characters that the males will become emotional engaged with, such as stories that have characters they can relate to. In addition, the text should expose boys’ to nonfiction they can learn something new from, by drawing on their own experiences, this way the boys will feel like their experiences are legitimized.
The literacy gap in black males will not close over night, and thus the amount of challenge in each assignment needs to be appropriate for where the student is and where he needs to be in the next step in closing the gap. Tatum says that males need to see exactly what is expected of them (clear goals), and also need feedback immediately; therefore, don’t make the student feel like the goals are unclear or that the work they do is ignored. Since many black males are focused on the present, they will reject literacy if it is not related to their immediate interests and needs. Tatum says we should have our students learn about real events and situations because that is what young boys want, and will create a passionate learning environment. At the secondary level teachers need to make sure their lessons address the cultural, emotional, and social needs of black males, as well as the academic needs.

Sandi's Small Success Blog

I hate to say it, but I'm having a hard time
coming up with a small successes. I think what
Matt says has a lot to do with it. I think I'm
forgetting how important it is for my students to
have small victories. I think my assignments are
sometimes too hard or too confusing...especially
when I'm having such a hard time getting my
students to be quiet long enough to give out
directions. I have a new electronic grading
system that is making it easier to keep track of
what work my students are (or more often aren't)
doing. I post the grades by ID number once a
week.

Out of 96 students, only about 25 are passing
right now. I thought that would motivate them to
work harder and settle down, but it hasn't. I
think I've made it seem to difficult. I'm
allowing them to do make up work, but again, I
think the assignments are even more confusing
when the students have to do them without any
class instruction.

I know that wasn't the question you asked, but
that's what's on my mind right now as I try to
plan a poetry unit that's a lot easier to deal
with than my last unit on media and persuasive
writing.

Successes?

I'm really struggling with coming up with successes for this semester. I mean, if I try hard enough, I find them, but they all have caveats.

Yes, I did for one class period get the school set of brand new laptops into the hands of my students, after weeks of pestering the school supply person to figure out who had the key, then realizing that no one had the key, and cutting off the lock (!), and getting a new padlock.. However, that lesson totally bombed because these brand new laptops won't open Java Applets because of some setting which I can't change because I have no passwords, not even a teacher one.

Yes, I have been able to get some sticky tough math concepts in front of my students this semester, particularly with slope. However, I feel like the ones that are getting it are the ones who would get it anyway, and I'm losing some of the ones who were borderline successful and doing very little to help the really troubled ones. And a good many of them believe my class is jaw-dropping boring, which I hate and I don't know how to fix. I mean, it's precalculus. It's the nuts and bolts boring stuff you have to know to get along in calculus.

Organization wise, I'm beginning to really see how lost I am, curriculum-wise. Last semester, I had an idea what I needed to cover in a semester, and this semester it's so much more nebulous that I'm floundering, plus I'm trying to do it for two different courses (precalculus and physics). I'm really having trouble with the planning, because precalculus and intro physics are basically the same material, but viewed from completely different perspectives, and it's really hard to essentially write those two curricula at the same time.

Yes, I did somehow get my principal to order physics equipment, which will probably be here in time for the end of the semester. It'll be useful for next year, when most likely I'll be teaching physics again. Probably by next year I might have a chance of teaching a decent physics course. This semester feels like it's almost hopeless already. I hate that "next year will be okay" feeling, which I hadn't had until this stupid physics mess.

I don't think I have any more off the top of my head. Really, my biggest success is that I still have hope that I'll get through the year without completely embarrassing myself, and that I might get myself out of the quicksand I'm in right now.

Question #2

Matt--it's interesting that you had a student tell you that a teacher calls him stupid, because just 10 minutes ago I had one of my students come in to my room, asking me if it was right that a teacher called a student stupid (apparently she called him stupid for not bringing a pen to class). So unfortunately I guess it's systemic.

One of my favorite small victories involved two students who I've had since the beginning of the year. Both of these boys started off the year highly self-proclaimed math-averse. They were in my room after school last week and somehow they got on the subject of buying cars, and how much a car would be worth years after you bought it. Not only did they remember the concept of depreciation (which we did back in September) but started figuring out the explicit formula for the geometric sequence to actually compute it. They grabbed some chalk and a calculator and worked it out on the board while I just sat at my desk, pretending to be grading but really trying not to smile too big as I watched them.

Yesterday, I had a group of students in my room to work on homework during my planning period because their fourth period teacher was absent. One girl, who was super-quiet and strugged a bit last semester, has been killing everything we've done since January. She grabbed some chalk and started making up, and solving, her own very complicated Law of Cosines problems on the board. When another student, who was my top student in Algebra II last semester and is now in Precalculus, asked what she was doing, she taught him clearly and knowledgeably. A third student (actually, one of the boys from story #1) thought she had made a mistake and told her so, and she eloquently showed him that she was, in fact, correct. Her confidence has grown exponentially to the point where she is not only learning but teaching as well.