Checking Our Sources

I spent the first part of my weekend helping chaperone our school's cross country team for their first meet of the season. The meet to place in Quinhagak (quin-uh-hawk) which is a short 20 minute plane ride for us. The boys did well with our middle schooler placing first, and I even participated in the village's annual Salmon Run - a 5K marathon. I didn't run the complete course though, nor did I run. I walked about half of the course and decided that the amount of rain that was coming down on us made it more of a swimming marathon than a running marathon. It was fun though, and it was nice to get to know the students who came with us.

I got back to Eek at around 2:00 pm, and decided to head to the school and relax. I started using Pinterest recently since it has a lot of cool images for me to use with my lessons, and it's also just a cool site to browse for ideas. I recently started a board for poetry and was browsing through some poetry quotes when I ran into this quote which is attributed to Alfred Lord Tennyson - the Victorian poet whom you may know for poems like In Memoriam or "Crossing the Bar."

"Awwwww," you might say. "What a cute thing to say to a loved one." I thought the same thing, too. In fact, I had already added it to my repertoire of cute things to say to ladies when I started to wonder where this line came from. I not only studied Tennyson in a few of my collegiate classes, but I also studied him on my spare time. So, I was a little miffed with myself when I couldn't remember where this line came from. Doing a quick Google search, I came up with a BBC article that attributed the quote to him. Wonderful! I thought. Now I don't have to do anymore searching. However, I noticed the article didn't attribute the line to the poem it came from, or any work of Tennyson's for that matter. The English teacher in me didn't like that. Not. One. Bit.

Digging a little deeper, it turns out that a lot of websites attribute this quote to Tennyson, but don't tell you where it comes from. Finally, I found a website that attributed the quote to a poem Tennyson wrote called "Flower." Well, it actually turns out that it's not in that poem, nor any other version of the poem I can find. In fact, Quote Investigator traces the first use of the quote back just a short 30 years, well after the life of Alfred Lord Tennyson. The phrase was used as a popular Valentine's day message in the 80's, and I suppose attaching the name of a well known poet made the gesture more grand.

This is the part where my students would ask me, "So what?" or "What's the point, Jake?" and I can only imagine you are asking the same thing. Well, what I'm getting at, folks, is that we need to be sure what we're posting on the internet for everyone to see is true, backed by facts, isn't supported by just one credible source, and doesn't just end up being a phrase you took from a Valentine's day card. 

People are starting to get heated up about political candidates with the 2016 election coming up next year, and I'm glad to see that people are willing to participate in the election. However, please please please please please take nothing at face value. Do the research. Google, Youtube, Fact Check, talking with other people and listening, and relying on more than one news source are great ways of making sure you're getting what you're voting for. Unfortunately, I see our society becoming more and more dependent on the news articles our friends post on Facebook rather than doing the research ourselves. And, it's just so darn easy to hit that share button for things you totally agree with despite whether it's true or not.

In the end, I'm just advocating for a smarter, more intellectual approach to political discourse. I'm advocating for researching both liberals and conservatives. Know the good, know the bad, and know the ugly. Chances are, you are going to want to know what they are before you vote.

Let's Talk Assessments

Part of the way I'll be assessed as a teacher in Alaska this year is how well my students do on two tests. They take a test in the early fall, then they'll take a different version of the same test in the spring. The school then takes the two scores and compares them to see whether growth occurred for the student. If I'm an effective teacher, the student grows at a rate that is at the 50th percentile [that means the student learns at the national average]. If I'm an ineffective teacher, they are below that line. If I'm a super, awesome, every-teacher-in-every-feel-good-teacher-movie-you-ever-saw-combined kind of teacher, then my students will be well over the 50th percentile. Simple enough, right?

It turns out that it really IS that simple. The problem is the fact that it took me two inservice days and a district wide class (over 12 hours total) to figure that out. And I think the reason for that gets at the real core of the problem with using assessments the way we are using them today: we actually don't really know what we're doing with them.

One of the trends I see in education today - especially at the political level where the decisions are being made - is that we're often times looking for a silver bullet: a quick fix to our terrible situation in education. And in case you aren't aware, there is no quick fix. If we are treating education as a serious science, we need to stop assuming that one idea, or a new test, or a new way of teaching will have an enormous effect on education in just one year.

Science is the process of making observations, making a hypothesis, making more observations through controlled experiments, analyzing data, and then moving forward by communicating results. A lot of times, testing companies suggest that their tests are backed by statistics or don't even suggest that there is scientific research to back what they're doing. Even when testing companies say they have research and statistics to back what they're doing though, we rarely see what exactly the statistics and research are. However, departments are paying loads and loads of money for these tests simply because they're aligned to the national standards. Hold on, this sort of reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies...

   Dr. Ian Malcolm: Gee, the lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me. 
   Donald Gennaro: Well thank you, Dr. Malcolm, but I think things are a little bit different then you and I had          feared... 
   Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, I know. They're a lot worse. 
   Donald Gennaro: Now, wait a second now, we haven't even seen the park... 
   John Hammond: No, no, Donald, Donald, Donald... let him talk. There's no reason... I want to hear every    viewpoint, I really do. 
   Dr. Ian Malcolm: Don't you see the danger, John, inherent in what you're doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun. 
   Donald Gennaro: It's hardly appropriate to start hurling generalizations... 
   Dr. Ian Malcolm: If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now 
[bangs on the table] 
   Dr. Ian Malcolm: you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Well... 
   John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before... 
   Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. 

We have a long way to go in education when it comes to finding standardized testing that works. You see, I'm not totally against standardized testing; we have to have a way for keeping teachers accountable, and I don't see many other options for doing so. I am against bad standardized testing though, and that's what we have nationwide. I have hope that, eventually, someone will listen to what teachers, students, and parents are saying. I also hope we have things figured out before the velociraptors figure out how to open doors. That just wouldn't be a fun day.