Sunday, January 18, 2015

GED2014 Panic After Year One

Kristina, our front desk mainstay, quickly walked by the open classroom door and glanced in. A moment later, she retracked her steps and came into the classroom. Not a good sign.

"I've been looking for you." Also not a good sign. I had been talking with another instructor at the time. Our inservice days had just started so colleagues like us were reconnecting and getting up to speed on the schedule and needs for the new semester. Kristina had left her General Studies desk to find a GED instructor to be interviewed by a local television station. "The TV station wants to talk about how hard the new GED is." Uh-oh.

I knew there had been a number of national wire and magazine stories in the last week about the difficulty of the new GED test. The test had been in operation for the past 12-months and reports from GED classrooms highlighted gloom and doom among BE programs: lower attendance, less confidence in curriculum, and a dismal pass rate. According to some, the pass rate was 20-points less than the old test. Sure, the new test was probably two to three grade levels higher than the old test, and, sure, a student couldn't just walk in unprepared and expect to pass it. Few remembered that the typical student couldn't do that with the old test either.

During the television interview, our Chief Test Examiner explained that the Green Bay testing center had been one of the more successful centers in the state last year and so far this year we had more test takers than any other site, including the megalopolises of Madison and Milwaukee. Our passing rate was a healthy four passes out of five. From the instructional point of view, I pointed out that the new GED test mirrored the increase in rigor of high school program. The old GED test was written more than fifteen years ago -- of course it was easier. Why are there fewer students? We spent 18-months clearing the student files of potential GED test takers before the end of the old series in December 2013. Anyone who could complete the series, did. Student numbers will return.

To quote an MVP Quarterback, GED programs need to just "R-E-L-A-X."

The new test has forced our own GED team to completely revamp the curriculum and the way we deliver GED instruction. That's not a bad thing. We want our students to pass the new test at the same rate as those who passed the old test. What worked in the past, will not work now. Instructors knew that when we previewed the new test in the Fall of 2013. I can't speak for other programs, but our team took this as a challenge.

The past year has not been easy for anyone, but our new curriculum makes success more likely if students do choose to work with us in the classroom -- always a good choice. Because of the test change, our program is stronger, more creative and better prepared to help students not only pass the GED 2014 test series, but also to be successful in the college classroom beyond. As an Internet scribe promises, "I'm not telling you it's going to be easy. I'm telling you it's going to be worth it." And, it has been and will be.

I look forward to answering questions to the follow-up interview a year from now talking about our ground-breaking curriculum and incredible successes with GED students. Kristina, I'll let you know where I am at that morning.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Five Best Books of 2014

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success:
West by Northwest book of the year.
Last January I began recording the books I read at the encouragement of number of book club friends.  The list measured my reading habits, and I thought it would be fun to use a post to review and reflect on the authors that I spent time with during 2014. My listmaking rules were simple: I included any book that I finished. I give most authors 100-pages to prove their words are worth my time before the book goes direct to the library donation pile. These partial reads (maybe another dozen) were not included in my list.

From the list of 32 books that I did complete, seventeen books were memorable. Fifteen lesser titles were interesting enough to pass my 100-page rule at the time but did not bring about lasting change in my life. Some, a half a year later, bring back no memories at all. The seventeen that did stick include such staples as Aldo Leopold ("A Sand County Almanac"), Edward Abbey ("The Monkey Wrench Gang"), Karen Armstrong ("The Spiral Staircase"), Neil Gamon ("Ocean At The End Of The Lane"), Raymond Chandler ("The Long Goodbye"), and Edgar Allen Poe (Collected Works). As you can tell, my reading choices span fiction and non-fiction, genres and years. A good read is a good read. Other authors on the 2014 list are less well known but no less enjoyable: Reza Aslan ("Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth"), Kate Atkinson ("Life After Life"), Andy Weir ("The Martian"), Diane Setterfield ("The Thirteenth Tale"), Tom Standage ("The Neptune Files"), and Sylvia Nassar ("A Beautiful Mind").

From those seventeen, I was able to select my personal five best books of the year. My favs tend to be non-fiction rather than fiction which follows my reading preference for history, science, nature and education/psych theory. Truth, I usually find, is often stranger and more entertaining than fiction.

5. "The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln" (2012) by Stephen L. Carter. I have read many Lincoln and Civil War biographies and was interested in this alternate theory of what would have happened if Lincoln had survived John Wilkes Booth's attack.  Carter presented the defense of Lincoln's extreme actions during the war and subsequent Reconstruction in the form of a legal brief by a defense team defending the President. The plot and characters stretched credibility, and the ending disappointed, but the legal and historical discussion was quite interesting. It all could have happened. Or most of it.

4. "Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House" (2013) by Peter Baker is another defense of an administration against critics, but this did happen. I don't usually read recent political histories since they often seem superficial or have an obvious agenda. The President came off a little better than the Vice-President in this book but I never felt like I was being bludgeoned by bias. The excellent detailed onslaught of reporting by Baker bombarded me, a former journalist, with feelings of "shock" and "awe." The writing was unpretentious and narrative entertaining. You could not make up these characters.

3. "Thordarson and Rock Island" (2013) by Richard Purinton is a locally published collection of letters and local history that I bought at Peninsula Bookseller in Fish Creek. Chester Hjortur Thordarson was a Chicago inventor and businessman, and a proud Icelandic descendant who bought most of Rock Island, just off Washington Island in Door County's northern tip. Purinton tells Thordarson's story through decades of correspondence. With very little commentary, the letters carry the narrative and reveal the complex personality of Thordarson, his friends, family and foes, and his dreams of his Door County retreat. The use of letters tells the story through the pen of Thordarson rather than the author -- an interesting technique.

2. "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation" (2013) continues Michael Pollan's immersive exploration of the world around us. I have been a fan of Pollan's since "Second Nature" (1991) and "A Place of My Own" (1997). "Cooked" continues Pollan's new-journalism exploration of how we use food prepared through baking, barbecuing, brewing and booyah. Stories, information and inspiration keep each of the four sections of the book readable and entertaining. It's technical information with a spoonful of sugar.

1. My top read of the year is: "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" (2006) by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. I was introduced to this text while taking a course in an alternative strategy to teaching math -- I would say Common Core, but don't want to scare readers. Dweck is an optimist who preaches that everyone can improve by adopting a Growth Mindset rather than a Fixed Mindset. A Growth Mindset person is always looking for new ideas, new techniques, new ways of doing things, new ideas to adapt to a changing world. She provides examples, exercises and encouragement to change not only the way you do things, but the way you view and interact with the world.

You are what you read and this is what I have been during the last year. I look forward to new volumes and pages in the year ahead. Pardon me while I go to my reading chair, for as the quip goes, "So many books, so little time."

Sunday, January 4, 2015

The Friends and Family Graduation Plan

One of my favorite moments during a graduation is toward the end of the ceremony. It's after the speakers have spoken, the graduates have shaken the hands of dignitaries and faculty, and after tassels have been moved from the right to the left signifying graduate status. The President of the College asks the graduates to stand, turn and face their audience of friends and family and applaud those people who have made it possible for them to be where they are.

Anyone who has gone back to school -- especially those who have gone back after a long time away -- knows that that moment gives you goose bumps. Up to then, the spotlight has been on the graduate. That's the point of the ceremony, really. The community celebration of academic achievement is an ancient tradition that purposely ties the current crop of graduates to a long line of other graduates through the robes and regalia, the solemn march to "Pomp and Circumstance", and even the particular order of speakers and dignitaries. It's as if each school has a secret ritual sequence that cannot be disturbed or altered without invalidating the post-secondary credential.

Up to that point, the focus has been on the front of the auditorium where the graduates and dignitaries sit. Now, at the behest of the President of the College, attention shifts to the balconies, the seats along the aisles and even those standing in the back waiting to present the new graduates with roses, helium balloon bouquets and graduation baskets of goodies. Very few students complete a certificate, diploma or degree without help and support from those who stand behind them.

These are the people who have supported the students day in and day out through semesters of classroom work, in long hours of study, though moments of self-doubt, and now, in this final celebration of academic success. These are the people who offered to babysit, who drove the student to class when the car didn't start, who loaned them a few dollars to cover the cost of books and supplies for the semester. These are the people who pushed, pulled and persuaded grads to see the work through to this completion.

These are the people who believed, with the grads, in a better life beyond the status quo. This shared belief is what George Eliot described in the quote, "It is never too late to be what you ought to be." When the President asks grads to applaud fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends, family and neighbors, graduates often cheer, wave their caps and strain to see over the shoulders of classmates to catch a glimpse of the people who have been most important to them. Giving friends and family credit at this moment seems both right and just, and long overdue.