Years ago in Shifting I posed the challenge of coming up with a more accurate phrase with which to replace “sunset” and “sunrise”. The last two months my literature class has been writing iambic pentameter poems as part of our study of Shakespeare so I’ve grown sensitive to the accents of syllables. From this iambic consciousness rose last week the phrase “the turning into Night” and “the turning into Day” or “the turning out of Day” and “the turning out of Night”. It can also be shortened to Into Night and Out of Night or the Turning Into and the Turning Out of. Though these shortenings are two syllables longer than sunrise or sunset, the shortenings are iambic (an alternation of light accent followed by heavy accent) and that helps it flow easily.

Hyporheic

 I’ve occasionally referred to experiments I do each spring with putting fertilizer in the final pools of our seasonal stream with the idea that groundwater will carry it through the saturated rocks beneath the surface and fertilize spring and summer plants with the hopes that these plants will then provide more resistance to the scouring flows of the following winter. I was delighted to discover that “hyporheic” refers to this beneath the surface portion of a stream’s flow and that an internet search of the word will lead to lots of research being done in this recent and ongoing area of research into stream dynamics and ecology.

Systems Thinking and Education

First two stories. 1. This year I decided to take advantage of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival which is two hours away in Ashland, Oregon. A Midsummer Night’s Dream presented a perfect introduction to Shakespeare so we studied the play, put on the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play within the play, and then went to see the play as the culmination of the unit. The kids loved it. Their eyes shone so brightly, with such excitement the next day. One of the kids wanted to build a stage. Now that they realized how richly a story could be embroidered upon the stage, they asked if they could put on the entire play. After pointing out the challenges, I put it to a vote and they voted unanimously for staging the play. (They also voted for studying another Shakespeare play that will be presented at Ashland next spring.) Theoretically, attending that play was the culmination of that “unit”. To extend it by putting on an entire play and studying another Shakespeare play will mean not covering some other literature I had scheduled for that year. Do I run with their enthusiasm or stick to my original plan?

2. That same after-play day, I introduced the “systems thinking” concept of Feedback in my Change Class (where the subject of the class is Change). The next Monday during Field Studies, the kids were planting valley oaks as part of a riparian corridor restoration project. Later in the day we were going to measure stream depth and velocity in order to calculate stream discharge. During lunch I started balancing one of the meter sticks we were going to use. Soon I had several kids balancing meter sticks on their hands, chins, and toes. As they played with this, I said “This is a perfect example of feedback. Your eyes are watching the top of the stick. What the top of the stick is doing goes into your brain and changes how you move your hand which changes the bottom of the stick which, in turn, changes the behavior of the top of the stick which changes what we see which changes how we move our hand, etc....

And suddenly, as I watched this spontaneous lesson on feedback deepen and I thought of the enthusiasm for Shakespeare, I realized that feedback is an important concept for understanding what is happening in public education. We must understand that as people high in the educational hierarchies push for national standards and standardized tests, a system is being created that is unaffected by the feedback of student enthusiasm or boredom. “Your enthusiasm will have little shape on this class because we are going to move through this textbook at a certain rate whether you like it or not.”

One of the amazing qualities about Chrysalis is how easily the teaching responds to student interest. This increases student learning in two ways. (1). Because the learning responds to their interest, the teaching tends to be couched in a delivery that students find interesting. And (2). like modern interactive computer games, school is more interesting because it is interactive. You have more control over what happens. Becoming more excited can change the “game” in ways that makes it even more exciting. Or it’s like the difference in awareness between a person driving to work and a person riding the bus. If your attention is not needed to shape the lesson, your mind can slip off elsewhere.

Probeware

Speaking of interactive learning - Alysia attended some training and got excited by calculator-interfaced sensors and bought many for the school. The most exciting one is a motion sensor. The calculator takes the input and generates a graph of how far a student is from the sensor. By having that student move back and forth, different graphs are formed. Kids quickly catch on to the connection between their peer’s movements and the graph projected onto the wall a few seconds later. One activity they enjoy is for me to draw a line up where the graph is projected and then give them the challenge to move in the way that will produce a graph that fits onto that line. Another challenge they love is to have the class close their eyes, then a student does some movement in front of the sensor, and then the class opens their eyes and uses the projected graph to figure out how the student moved. It is exciting to watch third grade students using the graph’s slope to point out where their friend was moving faster or slower.

No Child Left Behind

Chrysalis finds itself in a mischievous position amidst the forces shaping public education. I wish to take some time describing this position because understanding it is a good exercise in systems dynamics and because doing so might enlist you in some public outcry. You may have read articles describing the influence Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation is having on public education. A major component of the legislation is that public schools have to administer standardized tests and the test scores have to show that all sub-groups of students within the school are demonstrating either proficient academic mastery or a certain amount of improvement towards proficiency. If the school does not do this after a certain number of years, consequences start to apply. Theoretically the law proposes a carrot and stick approach but the proposed carrot money has been underfunded so the law is mostly a stick.

You may have also heard of some of the systemic consequences (they were sadly predictable) of this: schools weeding out kids who aren’t making academic progress, less class time spent on untested subjects (such as science and art) so more time can be spent on test-preparation drill work in math and language, a skewing of resources away from students who are already proficient onto those who aren’t. Really good teachers are starting to resign because they aren’t allowed to teach, only drill. We hear many such stories because Chrysalis (like many charter schools) tends to attract those families that don’t like what they see happening in the “traditional” public schools. Many of our families don’t want their children’s time taken up by testing or the atmosphere that surrounds testing. (One consequence of NCLB is that many students have as their adult role models teachers and principals operating from fear. It is sad how fearful and mousy many teachers and administrators have become in response to this legislation. “Hey kids, here is our “silent lesson” on what it means to become a grown-up. Be afraid.”)

In California, by state law, families have the right to have their children not tested. Parents can do this with a written notice to the school. My understanding is that schools aren’t supposed to tell parents about this right because schools could use it to improve their scores by asking parents of low-scoring students to ask the school to not have their children tested. In the same way, the NCLB also realizes that schools can “improve” their scores by somehow not testing their low-scoring students. Therefore, NCLB has two components to its AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) determination. To make AYP, the first requirement is all of a school’s subgroups must demonstrate either proficiency or adequate movement towards proficiency. This is the component that is reported in the public press. The second component is less widely known. 95% of the students in every subgroup must take the tests. Because Chrysalis attracts somewhat independent families, we have several families who don’t like standardized tests and so have requested that their children not take the tests. Therefore only about 90% of our students took the tests. So Chrysalis did not “earn” its AYP.

So we find ourselves in an interesting position. An administration that says they are pro-family choice judges us not making adequate yearly progress because of our support of family choice concerning test-taking. And it seems that if we are to be a nice, compliant school, we need to graciously communicate to those certain families that though they do have the right to not take the test and though they do not like what standardized tests are doing to the school system or their student, would they please have their child take the test anyway so that we can find grace with NCLB? Another possibility is we’ll ignore our lack of AYP until the law kicks in with penalties and then the top-down administration will finally actually look at the school’s high test scores and enthusiastic family support and decide to ignore the lack of 95% participation. And the other possibility is that the Feds will take our lack of our 95% participation as grounds for changing the staff three or four years from now. We shall see.

However, this all brings up an interesting area for citizen activism. Theoretically if just 6% of public school families at each school decided that their children would not take these tests, it would set off red flags that focus attention not on test-taking but on federal test-requiring. Unfortunately the public schools aren’t going to provide much moral leadership in this area. So it is up to families. So think about it. If you have children in public schools, watch what influence the drive for higher test scores is having on their education. If you don’t like that direction, consider removing your children from the testing. In California, parents have that right. I don’t know what the law is in other states but I’d be amazed if other states would compel test-taking over the objections of parents. And spread the word to other families that they might want to consider opting out of the testing.

The New York Times

I’ve been grateful over the years that I can receive The New York Times free over the internet. (www.nytimes.com). You have to sign up but when you do you can indicate for them not to send spam and other junk to you which they do honor. Though it has a few biases I disagree with, on the whole, it is one of the great papers. One of the tests of greatness is whether the paper informs you about developing forces that will become significant in the future or whether they just report the current events. The Times, for example, was reporting on the widespread accounting shenanigans corporations were doing with options a year or two before the tech bubble burst. Another way to put it is how accurate is the news source at predicting the future?

Because I rely on the Times to keep me in my semi-rural conservative setting better informed of the world at large, I can’t help but notice how much conservative commentators have been attacking The New York Times recently. One reason for the attacks is an editorial writer named Paul Krugman. He is an economics professor that the Times asked, back in the 90’s, to write occasional editorials explaining economic issues. He writes well, pointed but not shrill. However, as he observes the Bush administration at work, he sees an incredibly irresponsible running up of deficits that amounts to a systematic looting of the United States’ future by greedy people. Therefore, an increasing amount of his editorials are not strictly economic but focus on the interface between economic and politics. I e-mail his editorials to my mom. If you would like to start receiving his editorials and test them against your perceptions of the world, you can subscribe to the Times or e-mail me and I will include you in the address each time I e-mail one of his editorials to my mom.

Meadow reminder

A tentative date for a several day wilderness sharing time in “my” meadow in Lassen National Park: Monday, July 12 - Friday, July 16. If there is extremely heavy snow, this date might have to be changed. Come spend time in some land with a lovely shape and abundant opportunities to play with water. Come explore what it means to be alive within this amazing universe.

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Business Stuff

My book, Seeing Nature: Deliberate Encounters with the Visible World, may be ordered from me. Prices are $16 for one book, $29 for two books, $64 for 5 books, or $112 for 10 copies. My movie, Spirals of Hope, is available for $10 ($25 for three) as either a video or DVD. All prices are postpaid and include any sales tax. Mail orders to Paul Krafel, P.O. Box 609, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609