The Global Achievement Gap

On the last day of our Boston trip I had the opportunity to meet with Tony Wagner, author of the education book I mentioned in the “Discrepencies” post. As I said then, I had emailed Mr. Wagner and was surprised to receive a quick response from him. I emailed again when I finished the book and asked if he had any lectures or anything going on that I could attend while in Boston; he suggested lunch.

The book itself outlines the plethora of changes that really must take place in American education. Our current system of disconnected classes, multiple-choice tests, teacher tenure, and memorization-based expectations are part of an assembly-line society that barely exists in this country anymore. We produce students the way we produce cars. It doesn’t and can’t continue to work. Already my students are refusing the model. They know that in the Age of Google, memorization of certain facts, names, and dates is no longer as necessary as it was when people didn’t have access to libraries or encyclopedias. My kids need to learn to think on their feet, ask questions, figure out problems, be self-reliant, be curious, work together – and I need to learn how to teach those skills. Mr. Wagner’s book details each of these issues – what we’re teaching, how we’re testing it, how we teach teachers, how we monitor teachers, how we teach administrators, and the new ways that this generation feels about their old-system education. It is definitely an intriguing read for anyone in an education profession or with student-aged children (especially 10 and up).

The night before the meeting I was nervous. The morning of the meeting I was nervous. I couldn’t quite pin down my anxiety – he is an educator, an author, and someone whose ideas I admire and would like to learn from, but he isn’t scary. Or at least his literary voice isn’t intimidating. I know myself too well. I know that I talk too much. I don’t know how to listen. I get nervous and forget to ask questions, or don’t know which questions to ask, I trip over my words sometimes and feel silly. I have this strange imbalance of confidence and anxiety when it comes to speaking with people I consider my superiors. Tony Wagner is a published author, he taught at Harvard, he worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – he is definitely someone I consider my superior.

But here’s the problem with the way I was raised: I have no idea when I’m supposed to shut up. I believe, because my parents instilled it in me, that my opinions matter. I believe I have a right to express myself. Some people disagree. In the hierarchical society of education, a lot of people disagree. I’m supposed to go to meetings but not say anything. I’m supposed to listen only, even if I have another idea, even if I have a question, even if I have proof that what the other person is saying is completely incorrect. I can’t operate that way. Even when I go into a situation telling myself that I will not, under any circumstances, speak out to anyone, I always do. Maybe it’s my tragic flaw.

So I went to my meeting nervous that I would seen pretentious rather than articulate. Who am I to be questioning this man? What do my questions really matter? Countless teachers have been through what I’ve been through, so who am I to think I could do it differently?

What I forgot is that Tony Wagner, at his roots, is a teacher like me. Teachers are like soldiers in a way – we’ve been through the same battles, we have the same scars, we have the same kinds of victories. We understand each other. There may as well be a secret handshake we do when we meet, because once we sat down to lunch I kind of forgot that I was sitting with this amazing author and educational standard. It felt like catching up with a friend.

Over the course of our lunch I shared some of the ways I’m trying to establish a culture of rigor and thought-provoking assignments in my twelfth grade class. I shared the struggle I’m having to do the same with my ninth grade classes based on class size, lack of student motivation to read, district-imposed curriculum, tests, and writing methods. He shared some things he did as an English teacher and offered a few suggestions. Mostly he commiserated with me.

During coffee, he told me he enjoyed my company and wanted to keep in touch. He suggested that I write a book, or at least pursue writing for a teaching magazine like Education Weekly. He said he was captivated by the way I tell stories. That I am speak simply and directly and articulately. Of course that was the moment I fell over myself trying to figure out a response. How does a person respond to a compliment like that? He asked if I ever wrote. I said of course but that I don’t consider myself a writer. He offered to help me make connections with professors in the Boston University Literature MA program.

Overall I’m still stunned that this lunch even happened. I read a book. I enjoyed it. I’m naïve enough to think an author cares what I thought. I happened to be going to Boston already. (Talk about an opportunity a la The Outliers…)

Boston

I’ve wanted to see Boston for a long time. I thought the interest showed up after I graduated from LMU, but seeing as my Eyewitness Top Ten travel book is copyrighted for 2003, I guess I’ve been thinking about this trip for longer than that. I considered applying to Boston College and Boston University for graduate school, but chose not to because I wanted to student teach near my home town and be with my family.

When Joe and I started investigating trip itineraries for my spring break, they all

included a transatlantic flight and some very rushed visit to as many European cities or countries as we could jam into a 9-day period. I would leave from school, take a red-eye, and wake up someplace I’d never been. Joe would see Europe. We’d sprint through the cathedrals and museums and restaurants of a given city and then arrive home again, exhausted. But every itinerary I tried – Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Croatia, Scandinavia – just felt too short and too cursory. We’re not back-packing college students anymore. We don’t want just the tid-bits. We considered Vancouver. We considered Costa Rica. We kept coming up with something that just didn’t fit our ideal.

The decision maker was simple – I realized that I had a roundtrip ticket for a domestic airline that would expire in May. We had to use it and it had to be within the US. That’s it. Boston it is.

Neither Joe or I had ever been to this colonial history haven, but I had always had a desire to BE in Boston and once Joe realized how close we would be to Walden Pond, historical thinking spot for his literary idol Thoreau, he was completely on board.

Even more quickly than I had expected, I fell in love with this city. It’s big and cultural and historic and interesting. But it’s also manageable and clean and friendly. It feels markedly different from home in San Diego, but isn’t overwhelming like New York. There are a variety of neighborhoods, but the more we explored the different areas the easier it seemed to get from one area to another. Boston looks and feels like a big city, but the longer we were there the smaller it felt. It seems perfect.

We arrived on a slushy-rainy night but I didn’t care. I was enchanted. Our hotel, the Omni Parker House, originated the phrase “catch of the day,” developed the original Boston Cream Pie and Parker House Rolls, was the meeting place of The Saturday Club, and is the oldest continually working hotel in the United States. Plus it was beautiful! We had a view of King’s Chapel and the Old City Hall. In the distance we could see the new bridge. Just outside the entrance we could see the famous church where revolutionaries hung lanterns to warn that the British were coming – “One if by land, two if by sea.” This was enough to captivate me, but of course there was more.

Our first full day, a Saturday, we bought plums and blueberries at Fanueil Hall marketplace then took a train out to Concord and walked to Walden Pond. Joe was in heaven. We didn’t even care when it started to rain – the drops sounded so cool on the leaves around us and it felt like we had the whole area to ourselves.

On our second full day we took a bike tour with Urban Adventours. (If anyone reading this is ever going to Boston, I recommend this tour option.) Instead of walking a small part of the city or taking a bus, which can feel disengaged and unimaginative, we were able to cover the majority of the main city sites and get some exercise at the same time. We rode down streets that busses and cars couldn’t enter. We got to really see the city, be there, feel each individual site, read the plaques and take in the panoramic views. The breeze as we rode down Beacon Hill was cold but invigorating. We felt a little like we were getting a Boston most tourists never encounter.

Everything from that point on continually charmed me. I’ve been bewitched by Boston. We spent an afternoon reading in the Public Library and on the schedule of upcoming events I recognized two speakers and would have paid to see 2 more. Everywhere we went there was good food and Joe found good beers he couldn’t drink at home. There are about 6 universities within the stops on the T and apparently 160 more nearby. There is such a respect for education, literature, and history in the surrounding area that I can’t help but imagine what it would feel like to be here, in Boston, longer than a week or two.

This blog was started on the premise that I would be moving to London to teach for a year, so it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that while in Boston my head filled with “what if…” scenarios. What if I moved here for a year? What if I applied to graduate school here? What if Joe and I gave this a try, just for a short period? I think we could do it. The weather might be hard for us Californians, of course, but I could do it if I knew it was just one year. Could I handle being away from my family? Could I leave if I had the chance to renew my teaching contract at my current school? What if I just applied for teaching jobs in SoCal, grad schools in Boston, and just figured out a plan based on the results? What if? What if?

I imagine an entirely new and exciting version of myself would live in Boston.

For now, Joe and I left a few sites unseen with the promise that we would return to Boston again in the summer or fall sometime in the next few years.

Travel Year: First Quarter

Back in September or October, I began investigating discount travel sites looking for opportunities Joe and I could take advantage of. Mostly I wanted to find a European package for a steal of a price because Joe has never been and I really want to go back. But for Europe you need a week, at least, and between my full time teaching contract and Elite during the summer, I really only have that kind of opening in my schedule 3 or 4 times per year – 2 of those times during big holidays our families would be unhappy with us for missing. So shorter, closer adventures were next on the list. Thus Joe and I declared 2011 our “Travel Year.”

BIG BEAR

First up was a weekend in Big Bear with our friends Ryan and Chantel. We did this last year over New Year’s and had a fantastic time. This year was more relaxed, shorter, and didn’t include a snowboarding day because Chantel was 6 months pregnant with their first child (to be named Connick as of now). Still, it was peaceful, beautiful, and a nice break from our regularly over-scheduled weekends at home. I played with my new camera, we took walks, ate good food, and hung out with good people. All around, a nice mini-vacation.

NEW YORK

In February, right as the entire East coast experienced a giant snow dump, we took advantage of a huge discount on airfare and a random 4-day weekend in my schedule due to furlough days.

We took a red-eye, arrived at 6 am on Friday and returned to LA at 10 pm on Monday. Since both of us had “done the tourist thing” in New York previously, we didn’t feel it necessary to do that again. Mostly we walked, ate, walked, stopped in somewhere warm, walked, ate/drank, and walked again. Highlights of the trip definitely include: taking in a New Jersey Devils game at the Prudential Center in Newark, Shake Shack hot dogs outside the Museum of Natural History, Central Park covered in snow, and countless yummy treats like Korzo Hungarian in Alphabet City and Franchia Vegan Korean in midtown. By the end of the trip we agreed that, though we’ll inevitably return to New York, we are satisfied that we never again need to do it in winter.

March presented a very different opportunity from January and February – there was no snow involved, no historical site-seeing, no sports.

VEGAS!!!

Our newlywed friends Alicia and Manuel found a killer deal on a weekend in Las Vegas and asked if we’d like to join them. With all of our already-planned travel I assumed Joe would not be interested, but of course he’s more spontaneous and adventurous than I am and responded with a positive “sure!” So off we went to Vegas. This was another whirlwind weekend but we had a great time together and with our friends.

Book Camp – Long Overdue

Last summer I had the opportunity to teach two distinct classes unlike any I do during a regular school year. The first, for 11^th and 12^th graders, is an intense “boot camp” meant to prepare students for the SAT. Unlike other test prep programs, however, this company refuses to teach strategies or methods to “beat the test” and instead maintains that the smartest people are those who read deeply and extensively, so to do well on a test of reading comprehension or writing, a student must read and write. A lot. Daily. Intensely. Last August I posted two articles I got from that experience. Those were the mornings.

In the afternoons, however, I had a completely different assignment for students entering 9^th and 10^th grade. This “book camp” was equally intense: 7 books in 8 weeks, 2 hour classes for discussion and exploration 4 days per week. It was heavenly for me. We read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, traditional and off-beat literature. I had students who were motivated, who actually did the reading and came to class ready to discuss their thoughts and opinions and observations. I felt like I was discovering alongside them and almost felt like I was taking a class myself.

The reading list included:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes: Hound of the Baskervilles

Mark Haddon - Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (a mystery story from the point of view of an autistic, 16-year-old British boy)

Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (a diatribe against television and all it has done to us)

Temple Grandin - Animals in Translation (a non-fiction piece about how autism can help humans make connections to the ways animals think)

Malcolm Gladwell - The Outliers (an exploration of the roots of success: opportunity and legacy)

Leif Enger - Peace Like a River (a novel about a teenaged outlaw and his family)

Paulo Coelho - The Alchemist (an allegory about finding yourself and your life’s purpose)

Yann Martel - Life of Pi (fall extension class – a novel about an Indian boy, a sunken ship, and 7 months on a lifeboat with a tiger)

Of the 8 books I read, I have wanted to blog about 3 of them ever since. Here is the Cliff’s Notes version of my thoughts:

The Outliers

Rarely, even in the experience of an avid reader, does a single book completely change how a person sees the world. For me, The Outliers is one such book. I was so captivated by this text that for weeks I read it at anyone who sat still long enough. I read the first chapter to my mom and she proceeded to read the entire book. I read it to Joe. I read it to Joe’s mom. I read to my sister and Rocco and Kirk and his girlfriend and then bought the book as a gift for two more people. If I were to make one of those Top Ten Books That Changed My Life lists, this book would definitely be there.

The premise of the book is that our traditional ideas of how someone becomes successful in America – pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work hard and long and be dedicated – while not completely untrue are definitely misguided. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, separates his investigation into two categories, Opportunity and Legacy, and then develops the stories of several archetypes of success. He uses examples like Bill Gates and the 18^th century railroad and newspaper tycoons to show that it’s not just about talent, intelligence, and diligence but about being at the right place (in the world, in your life) and at the right time. Then he talks about how none of that, without the proper background and cultural mindset can even work. A person’s legacy can be their ticket to success or can be a wall that stops all effort.

Peace Like a River

I read a lot of novels. I read a lot of great literature and chick lit and classics. Peace Like a River is one of those stories that I never would have picked up from a book store if I had just seen the cover, title, or dust-jacket blurb. It’s about a teenaged outlaw, his asthmatic brother, child-prodigy sister, miracle-working father, the Midwest and the badlands – none of which sound interesting to me at all. But oh, I was fooled. Because Hound of the Baskervilles is a mystery and Curious Incident is narrated so unusually by an autistic boy, Peace Like a River felt like the only “proper novel” we read during summer book camp. Together, my students and I fell in love with the 8 year old Swede, a budding writer who composes epic poetry about Sunny Sundance and his rides through the old west. We were captivated by the whole novel – uncanny as it may be. We were disappointed that we only had a week and a half to spend on the whole thing.

Life of Pi

This novel played a big role on the New York Times Bestseller list a few years back but, again, based on the back of the paperback I really didn’t see myself getting into it. The basic plot is that a young Indian boy and his family are sailing to the US with a zoo-full of animals, basically a modern, Indian Noah’s arc. The ship sinks. The family dies. The boy is lost in the ocean for months, alone, except for a Bengal tiger that could kill him. Again, not my idea of some fun, relaxing reading to do when I’m done grading essays or lesson planning for Hamlet. This was also the reading assignment for my new, fall book camp; only 4 students, me and this novel. But again, I fell in love. There were so many layers of literary, cultural, spiritual, and social significance to get into. It was beautifully written, and although there was really only one human character throughout the 600 page breadth of it, it was never boring or dull. I cried and laughed out loud so many times that Joe got sick of asking me what was going on (because then I would read him 2-3 page long sections and expect him to react in a similar fashion). I know that most of the reading public in America has already read this one, but if you haven’t, please consider it.

To see my blog for students click here: Read Deep Blog