dan willingham

A Letter To President Obama, On Education Working Conditions

by Jose Vilson on November 15, 2012

An excerpt from my latest at Education Week:

With that said, even if we reach the lofty goal of getting 100,000 more math and science teachers into classrooms, the problem will most likely not be recruitment but retention. Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, recently cited new research re-confirming what so many of us have known all along: Math and science teachers leave the profession at or around the same clip as every other teacher does. Some of this is due to retirement, but they also tend to leave for higher salaries and, yes, working conditions.

For more, read the rest here. Share. Like. Comment. Let Obama know, too. Thanks.

Mr. Vilson, who can’t believe he posted more than twice today.

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Great. Another Non-Math Person Complaining About Algebra.

by Jose Vilson on July 30, 2012

Holy cow, Andrew Hacker. Shut up!

OK, that was a bit harsh. Warranted, but harsh. Say what you want to, but lower your voice a few decibels. Frankly, I didn’t care much for your rhetorical question, but you had to write it in the New York Times, adding a semblance of legitimacy (if not outrage) to your argument against teaching abstract math to kids. The crux of your argument, that we shouldn’t teach algebra except to those of us who want to get deeper into the math and that we should instead focus on useful life math, whatever that means. I won’t spend time debunking any of your claims because Dan Willingham did so rather convincingly today.

Rather, I’ll ask: if we taught the humanities (presumably English, arts, and yes, political science) in the same way you’re suggesting for math, how would that look like?

If you’re OK with English and language arts taught this way, then let’s focus 100% fully on non-fiction texts … like “How To Operate Your VCR” and “The Intricacies of Setting Up Your Passport.” Useful, and often complicated, these texts would surely be of worth post-college, especially for kids who never get out there. They’d have no need for Jon Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, or Julia Alvarez; their texts aren’t very relevant to what students actually encounter on a daily basis, so we’d leave it alone in the hopes that they don’t have to think abstractly.

If you’re OK with political science taught “with relevance,” you’d teach them about a few politicians here and there, their initiatives, and ow the media views the two prominent candidates. You’d never have to discuss political ideology, how bills are created, and about the Electoral College. About 58% of citizens of voting age actually vote anyways, and they don’t use with strategy in mind, but their message, and how their favorite news channel views the candidate. They’d never see The Federalist Papers, or the Emancipation Proclamation; all people need to know is that they’re free … so long as they’re not imprisoned. It doesn’t matter anyways, because that’s not very useful to the everyday citizen. Just the ones it affects.

If you’re OK with the arts taught this way, then … we wouldn’t have use for the arts, really. Unless you show a gravitation towards creativity early on in age, then everyone should get to paint the fruit basket with the shadow to show a level of mastery in the arts until they get to college.

Most math pedagogues would agree that we need to reexamine the way we approach math for our students, especially those who get taught math as a way of passing the deluge of tests at the end of the year. But you didn’t see that, Hacker. You chose instead to spew what I’m dubbing a humanities elitism that perpetuates attitudes this culture espouses about math. If you’re not interested in math, that’s really up to you, but don’t call for a disbanding of math if you don’t want anything to do with math. Instead, join us in saying that we need to infuse more mathematics into the socio-cultural discussion of civilization.

Because that’s a much more compelling argument. Every civilization’s greatest contributions involved math, from the architecture to medicine, fostering a love of math meant having an understanding of how society’s form, whether abstractly or otherwise. Don’t be the loser who asks us to dummy the math down to “usefulness.” Be a voice that asks us to transform the teaching of math.

Jose, who strives for relevance as a teacher …

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Differentiation: The Dirtiest Word In Education Today

by Jose Vilson on November 14, 2011

Be Different

It’s like a few people sat around a table, steaming mad at their own opposing views on the direction of education, and said, “What’s a good word that we can all hold our hands around?” The minute they spread the word around, it became the go-to word for evaluators and validators across the country. People began to set up stations all around their classroom with no rationale for their stations. Teachers sat down for hours of PD on the word “differentiation” where people heard that this word, vital for the 21st century classroom, ought to appear out of thin air with no concrete examples to follow. Some person who is equally as qualified in differentiation (meaning, not at all) with a clipboard might come in your room and rate your differentiation skills on a rubric  created by one of your favorite validators, too.

But don’t be afraid because it’s not the first nor will it be the last time we’ve been thrown a quasi-scientific / pedagogical term that has been called a “best practice” without proper training or clear-cut examples of what that looks like.

As “differentiation” suggests, no one ought to be against differentiation. I know I’m not. You’d be crazy to do that. I think. I mean, we know it has something to do with trying to get the most out of every student no matter what level they land on whatever assessment we give them. I think one of the validators, Carol Tomlinson, defines it as “the process of “ensuring that what a student learns, how he/she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he/she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning.”

That sounds great … except for the following contradictions:

  • According to Dan Willingham, different learning styles don’t really exist. Everyone needs to see things. They might interpret what they see differently because of their previous experiences, academic or otherwise.
  • In this age of hyper-standardized testing, many teachers don’t see the point of differentiating if they’re all being assessed against the same measure? (And no, giving a student more or less time to complete the task is not differentiating … is it?)
  • We all have “standards.” For some of us, they’re just the baseline for learning in the classroom, and we can / should exceed them as need be. Many of our higher-ups see these standards as the barometer for good teaching, and if that’s the case, then why differentiate if we’re held to these uniform guidelines?
  • Isn’t it weird for us to have differentiation in light of a Common Core?
  • Multiple pathways are plausible, but how many people are trained in the fine art of reading student work? The only problem I have with teachers not being able to check their own students’ work on extended-responses is this: who is most qualified to look at the students’ exam and understand what the person is saying more than the teacher who’s been with them for the better part of the year? If we’re saying that any random educator should be able to understand what the student said, and we’re measuring these responses against a rubric, then we’re admitting that student responses, no matter what level we perceive our students to be, ought to have a similar look and not too different.

I don’t mean to destroy our perceptions of the word “differentiation” so emphatically; I just have a core belief that we ought to be clear with what we think are best practices. We can’t just profess on the virtues of differentiation without being able to fully demonstrate that in some form. I’d substitute the word “differentiation” for “scaffolding” in that a) it provides a powerful image for what we ought to do in the classroom and b) it leads to discussion around multiple pathways more than differentiation. Differentiation places the onus on teachers to eventually discover what students gravitate to; scaffolding tells the teacher to provide and accept different ways for the student to approach the problem, and whichever the student gravitates to will make the most sense for the student.

There, I’m differentiating, too. But it’s no different than anything I’ve been saying about the execution of any well-meaning practice that comes from on high.

Mr. Vilson, who owns up to every word in his blog …

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