January 27, 2012

Dear Families:

This week we reflect on learning.

All for now,
Alyce and Anna

From Anna:
At the end of the day, when we measure learning, our focus is not so much on the skills of decoding and computation, but rather on the ability to make meaning, to ask questions, and to express understanding. We recognize that even as adults each of us struggles with different skills.

Consider for example, foreign language. Last week in the NY Times, there was an article about the book Babel No More by Michael Erard, a book which explores why some people become multilingual and others become polyglots, people able to speak as many as fifty languages. Michael Erard writes about one polyglot who retains his fluency by studying constantly. Of 4,454 hours of language study in 456 days, this man spends 456 hours on his native language, English, and another 456 on Arabic, and then a smaller amount of time on the other 50 languages that he knows. Erard also looks at the field of neurolinguistics to see how a polyglot’s brain may be physiologically different from the average one. He discusses the cognitive abilities involved in learning languages, and the areas of the brain that are used when language is learned.

Last summer, many of our staff read Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf. Wolf discusses how the brain learns to read while also reminding us that humans have only been reading for a few thousand years. Wolf shows us that the brain that read the cuneiform script of the Sumerians is different from today’s brain that reads alphabets. She also looks at what happens when the brain finds it difficult to read and shows us that reading can happen only when parts of the brain develop interconnected pathways to share information, and thus allow the brain to read.

I mention foreign languages and reading to point out two specific skills, both of which are taught in school and both of which are easily acquired by some, while being much more difficult for others. The teacher needs many strategies in her toolbox to ensure competency in her students. But even then, even with dozens of strategies, she will end up with a group of students with a range of strengths in these areas. The polyglot who is in her class will certainly learn the language despite or because of her methods. The dyslexic who is in her class will slowly improve his reading skills despite or because of her methods. This speaks to the complexity of teaching and becomes even more profound when we consider how the teacher’s work is evaluated. If, for example, she has been focusing on the conjugation of verbs in her language class, her strong conjugator may still fail a standardized assessment that focuses on adjectives and adverbs. If her reading student is already two years below or above grade level, then a reading test that doesn’t give opportunities for reading below or above grade level will be a reading test that will not accurately measure what her student can do.

It is not an expectation that all of our students perform well on standardized tests. It is, however, an expectation that all students demonstrate progress within a school year. But how do we measure this progress? How do we know what it is that our students have learned. Perhaps we need simply to listen to them. Consider this comment made by fifth grade teacher, Cora, in an email that was sent to her colleagues:

“Just wanted to share a conversation my class had on Friday. We were talking about the Classic Maya and the kids were comparing Classic Mayan culture to the Lenape and to Ancient Chinese culture. It was really amazing how much they knew and how articulate they were at discussing not only things like food and clothing, but also things like the difference in power and how the societies were structured. Just thought I'd share that they really do remember what you all teach them in the lower grades, and they learn an incredible amount.”

So there’s an area of learning that shows growth: the ability to compare and contrast different societies, the ability to discuss big ideas with others. But how would you measure that on a test? And how would you show that growth? And anyway, do our keepers of the data really want to know whether or not a group of students can discuss a big idea? This is a time in which the powers that be appear much more interested in how each individual is doing and not as concerned about the collaborative aspect of learning or the fact that individuals can thrive when engaging in discourse. How sad that our society has no way to celebrate the power of that discussion in Cora’s class. But at the end of the day, when we measure learning, our focus will always be on the ability to make meaning, to ask questions, and to express understanding because these are the skills that a good citizen truly needs to do well in society and these skills can not be readily assessed or tested.

From Alyce:
Many thanks to the BCS parents, staff, and students, who took part in our Project Serve kickoff event last Saturday! You made BCS a more beautiful and better environment for learning.

What we learn and how we learn is a bit like a toolbox or a painter’s palette. We are long past the point where most educators accept that there is a canon of knowledge that must be taught in the elementary, middle, or high school grades - or even in the first years of college. I began my career in education pre-computers, pre-information age, and pre-Google, at a time when students still used encyclopedias to find information. Today, I accompanied eleven BCS students on tour of Google’s NYC headquarters. Part of our visit included a walk through an informal and growing museum of obsolete computers including one from the late 1970s that was nearly five feet tall. The questions our students asked today weren’t questions I could have imagined even a decade ago. More and more our work is teaching young people to find and synthesize information and to evaluate its sources.

In 1996, as an NYU Astor Fellow, I visited the world renowned Reggio Emilia pre-schools, where 1-5 year-olds work intensely on projects they conceive and develop in long well-documented conversations with their teachers. There is no effort whatsoever to impose content or topics on these young learners - and each day, in class meetings, they determine how and what they will work on and what materials they will use. In this very open-ended, respectful and nurturing process, these children develop language and art-making skills that one would expect to see in much older children. A common question from my fellow teachers was, “What happens to your children when they leave the Reggio pre-schools? Are the elementary and secondary schools like this?” We were told again and again, that most Reggio children went into very traditionally structured elementary schools - and since the Reggio pre-schools have a history that dates back to the end of World War Two, there are many alumni who can reflect articulately on their experiences, including the transition into elementary schools. Reggio teachers describe their children as having “deep pockets” full of thinking and language resources that they can draw from no matter what kind of learning environment they find themselves in. These words stayed with me - and now, fifteen years later, this is what I hope BCS students leave us with - deep pockets full of the will and desire to think and learn.