Thursday, January 10, 2013

In Defense of Lectures, Worksheets, Homework and Other Heretical Educational Practices

Note: Unlike my previous post which sat for a long time, this one was written in one sitting, with no editing and no linking, so take it for what it is.

I pretty much can't go a day without running across a post in my Google Reader or a Tweet in my Twitter stream excoriating lecturing, or flipped classrooms, or drill and kill, or homework, or a variety of other techniques that are currently out of fashion. And, to be clear, I often criticize many of those methods as well. Critique is good, and I'm not suggesting that we stop critiquing or that we can't continue to innovate and find better ways to help our students learn.

But my concern is the black-and-white nature of many of those critiques. It's not just that they think lecturing or a flipped classroom (for example) is bad for students, but they think it's both horrible and evil. It's not just that worksheets or homework are perhaps not always best practices, but that anyone who utilizes those methods is either incompetent or wholly owned by corporate reformers. I think that approach is wrong, and a tragedy.

It continues to amaze me that folks who rail against standardization and who believe in individualized learning, who believe each student is unique and has unique needs, who think that one-size-fits-all approaches are doomed, still apparently have no compunction whatsoever about criticizing a teacher 1200 miles away in a school and a classroom they've never visited, with students they've never met, and with curricular requirements, school structures, and other local cultural norms and expectations that they know nothing about. Apparently one-size-fits-all is wrong, unless it's their one-size-fits-all approach.

So I'd like to propose a New Years' Resolution for the folks who are reading this. Cheeky, I know, since I just got done telling you that mandating from afar has some issues, but bear with me. This resolution has three parts:
  1. Part one is to continue critiquing. Please. It's vitally important that we continue to question our practices and point out questions and concerns about those practices. I would suggest, however, that some folks could perhaps do a better job about simply critiquing the ideas, and not disparaging the practitioners.

  2. But after you're done critiquing, part two of your post should be making constructive suggestions about how to improve that particular practice (not doing away with the practice completely, but how to make improvements to it to try to address some of the concerns from part one. For example, if you were going to critique something like the Flipped Classroom (which I have many concerns about myself), part two might look like:

    Have you considered having students watch the videos after doing inquiry and exploring the concepts in class first, as opposed to replacing the inquiry with recorded lectures?
    (or something like that, this is just an example)

  3. And after you're done suggesting improvements, if you have an alternate, perhaps more radical approach you'd prefer, then in part three you need to describe that, in at least some level of detail within the structures and restrictions of the particular school and classroom you are critiquing. For example, if you were going to critique practices at my high school, then here are just some of the facts on the ground you'd need to address:
  • I teach at a high school with 2150 students. We can argue all we want about whether that's too large (I would agree that, for me, my ideal size would be a lot smaller), but that doesn't change the fact that that's the reality, and it's not going to change any time soon. So if you're going to suggest a PBL/PLN/Individualized-Constructivist-Inquiry-1:1 classroom, make sure you give some details about how to accomplish that in a school of 2150.

  • We have a variable schedule at Arapahoe, which means that while some classes meet five days a week (for about 58 minutes a period), other classes only meet MWF, or TR, or MWRF. For example, my Algebra class meets four days a week for 58 minutes a shot (minus quite a few days taken for testing, or shortened classes for assemblies or PLC days, etc. etc. etc.), so please make sure you take that into account and don't equate it to your Algebra class that meets for 85 minutes a day five days a week. Oh, and keep in mind that our students also take an average of 9 classes at a time due to the variable schedule, and well over half of them are involved in athletics and activities after school.

  • It's hard to really tell how much money we get in our district, but it's in the neighborhood of $7200 per student. That's more than some places for sure, but compare that with the $14-16,000 per pupil that some of my friends in the east coast get. Even accounting for some cost-of-living differences, that's a significant difference. At $5000 per student, that would be over $10 million dollars more per year just my high school could spend. (Yes, I know it wouldn't all go to the school, but theoretically it could since our overhead is currently covered within that $7200.) Yeah, we could perhaps make some changes with $10 million more per year, but we don't have that money. Deal with the reality we have.

  • My school allows students to bring their own devices, but we also try to provide many devices as well. It's all well and good to say we should be providing chromebooks/netbooks/iPads/Macbook Airs to all of our students to ensure a level playing field, but my entire budget for technology at AHS is $12,000 per year. To be sure, the district spends a lot of money on network infrastructure, and Internet access, and servers, etc., and sometimes is able to provide us with some machines (we got 28 staff machines for staff this year, as well as a 26 replacement computers for one of our business labs), but in terms of day-to-day funding to try to provide a 1:1 experience in my school, I get $12,000 per year, or approximately $5.22 per student and teacher in my school. Please keep that in mind when you suggest that BYOD is a travesty.

  • Feel free to rail against the Common Core State Standards (I frequently do). But please keep in mind that my high school is in Colorado which, like 44 other states, had adopted the Common Core. Which means that teachers in my school are required to teach to those standards, whether you like it or not. So we can (and should) continue to advocate for changes to those standards if we disagree but, in the meantime, it's the law of the land in 45 states so please stop telling teachers they should either ignore them or quit their jobs in protests. Yeah, that's going to help our students.

I could go on (and on, and on), but I think you get the picture. Each and every school has their own structures, restrictions, and culture. Please note that I'm not suggesting we don't advocate for and try to make significant and perhaps radical changes in our schools. What I am suggesting is to stop trashing teachers who are trying to make the best of the current situation. Some folks argue that anything that incrementally improves the status quo is verboten, because it makes it less likely we'll achieve their picture of educational nirvana. Other folks, and I'm one of them, say let's do the best we can with (and for) the students we have in front of us, while still pressing hard for those larger changes we believe in.

And next time you critique someone for their use of lectures, or worksheets, or homework, or anything else, please consider following the resolution above and completing parts two and three as well.

As always, comments are open.

22 comments:

  1. >Feel free to rail against the Common Core State Standards (I frequently do)

    We couldn't find anything in your blog.

    >So we can (and should) continue to advocate for changes to those standards if we disagree

    What changes do you advocate?

    Some of the changes we advocate are at http://ccssimath.blogspot.com

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    1. @CCSSI Mathematics - Umm, you didn't look very hard (or very long) if you can't find anything that I advocate. And who's "we?"

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  2. I really appreciate your approach. This frequent "UR DOING IT WRONG!!1!" stuff on Twitter and the blogosphere is hard to take when it's so personal, and so devoid of an attempt to understand and engage in dialogue.

    Thank you for writing this, and I hope that other people will agree with you as well. It would certainly make my little corner of the internet better.

    Now, I'm sure we have ideological differences, and differences in practice, but without understanding, there is no dialogue. I wouldn't dream of offering you an unsolicited solution for a problem I didn't understand.

    I wish everyone would do the same.

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    1. Agreed. Certainly we need to offer constructive criticism, and I think even "unsolicited" solutions are fine as well, as long as the folks offering them realize they may not fully comprehend the situation.

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  3. Yup. Sometimes good teachers start to feel like they suck because of exactly what you described,

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  4. Karl, the one thing I have spent a lot of time considering and including in my practice is that abolition of absolutes. I realize that systems help create efficiencies, but every system has an exception... a valid exception. So, as I read these posts (and perhaps write some) railing against practices, I do so attempting to keep my eyes wide open to the fact that lectures may be appropriate at times, book work may be purposeful, flipping can work, and that a worksheet or two may provide value to students. Our very best teachers employ practices from times near and far and our very best critics respect that.

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  5. Karl
    There IS nothing wrong w/ lecture, homework, worksheets, et.al., as you allude to, the problem is w/ the frequency of these practices. As an English teacher at heart, my students are always going to have reading and writing for homework. Because skills are developed through practice, a worksheet is ok, as long as you do something meaningful with it. A lecture should be a vibrant presentation designed to activate students, not make them "passive and dreamy", and so on. I guess I really have nothing new to add, but only an affirmation...

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    1. I agree. And I think a big part of the problem is our loose use of the words "homework" and "worksheet" and similar things. One person's worksheets is another person's interactive activity. One person's homework is another persons reading for pleasure.

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  6. Well said. Really loved your post.

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  7. I recently said this http://ideasandthoughts.org/2012/12/04/be-careful/

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    1. Well, dang Dean, perhaps I should've read that first since it pretty much makes this post redundant.

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  8. Thanks for your post Karl.

    I am/was a firm believer in PBL and that the idea of worksheets and lecturing had to go the way of the dodo. This past school year I have a group that like the worksheets and lectures (not the homework so much). I do agree with you that there is a time and place for PBL and all of the new fangled words that are making the rounds in education but every day is not a reality in today's public schools. Until governments limit class sizes and teaching loads (which is not at all feasible in today's economy) teachers are forced to teach in a way that they can get the most out of their students while maintaining their sanity.

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    1. I'm pretty sure I saw a dodo in the halls last week . . .

      I agree. And I hope it's clear to folks who've read my blog that I'm not necessarily suggesting all of these things are best practices, but that teachers need the flexibility to do the best they can with the situation and conditions they have, while still advocating for the broader changes that many of us think need to happen.

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  9. "We have a variable schedule at Arapahoe, which means that while some classes meet five days a week (for about 58 minutes a period), other classes only meet MWF, or TR, or MWRF. For example, my Algebra class meets four days a week for 58 minutes a shot (minus quite a few days taken for testing, or shortened classes for assemblies or PLC days, etc. etc. etc.), so please make sure you take that into account and don't equate it to your Algebra class that meets for 85 minutes a day five days a week."

    Are you taking the current course schedule/limitations as a given? And, if so, isn't one of the reasons that schools are having so much trouble doing something differently their inability to rethink time?

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    1. No, I'm not taking it as a given. And, yes, I am taking it as a given.

      No, in the sense that in the long run as we advocate for change the schedule is certainly something I suggest we look at.

      But also yes, in the short run, it is a given for all the teachers in my building. This schedule will not change this year, or next (we're already scheduling for next year), and not even the next (even if we started discussing a schedule change tomorrow it would take longer than that to implement it).

      And that's the point - even if teachers agree and think we should have a different schedule, in the short term they still have to deal with the schedule we have. For folks to criticize - without offering parts 2 and 3 as described above - without knowing anything about the conditions on the ground is not only frustrating, but counterproductive. I've long argued that education is global - and local. I fear that too many folks that should know better keep forgetting the second part of that.

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  10. I know you have little control over the schedule as an individual teacher, Karl. But I also know that we're probably not going to get to where we need to be as school systems as long as we're chunking time into 45-90 minute blocks. We seriously need to rethink time. The challenge is getting the conversation on the table in our local systems.

    One more thing: If it takes several years to even start having the conversation about initiating a change (e.g., "we can start talking about changing the schedule for 2015-2016 or later"), that's not good either. How can (y)our schools be more adaptive and do it faster?

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    1. I've been trying to figure that out for a few years now. As soon as I do, I'll let you know.

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    2. And, as you said, THAT'S intensely local and contextual...

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  11. Hi Mr. Fisch,
    I am Jana Sharpe and I am currently in EDM 310 for future educators at The University of South Alabama. We have been reading articles and writing blogs about how technology needs to improve in the the classroom. It has also been about how the same old lectures and worksheets are not the best teaching methods. I really appreciate everything you said in your article and it gave me another point of view on this topic. In a perfect world our school systems might be completely different, but we do not live in that perfect world. I can write in my blog how I want to make use of all the new technology, but lets face it, I will probally give a few lectures and pass out some worksheets in my teaching career!
    Have a great day!

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  12. Hey Karl.

    I really appreciate your thoughts and couldn't agree more. There are a great number of "experts" on twitter with a full decade of teaching experience who apparently have all the answers to the "woes" of education. What these experts fail to realize is that a healthy mix of approaches (including periodic lecture) is required; everything in moderation.
    It is the teacher's job to continually evaluate (not summatively) what the students require for learning to take place. This is a very dynamic process and the approach in the classroom should reflect that.

    Earl

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  13. Hey Karl.

    I really appreciate your thoughts and couldn't agree more. There are a great number of "experts" on twitter with a full decade of teaching experience who apparently have all the answers to the "woes" of education. What these experts fail to realize is that a healthy mix of approaches (including periodic lecture) is required; everything in moderation.
    It is the teacher's job to continually evaluate (not summatively) what the students require for learning to take place. This is a very dynamic process and the approach in the classroom should reflect that.

    Earl

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  14. Excellent article that reminds all of us that providing solutions and alternatives is much more upbuilding than providing criticisms

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