World don't want you to do that

Procrastination is a problem with workers, with students, and, yes, with instructors. We know what we need to do, we just don't get up and do it. I just read a memorial by Dinty W. Moore to memoirist Harry Crew (1935-2012) in the online blog for the online magazine, Brevity, that puts it much, much better. Crew wrote:

"You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live... The world doesn't want you to do a damn thing. If you wait until you got time to write a novel or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read -- if you wait for the time, you'll never do it. Cause there ain't no time; world don't want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week."

Go out and live. Amen.

When the Best Class is the College Community

The question of the Wall Street Journal feature on Monday, March 19, was, "Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?"  The debate featured a professor from the Harvard Business School (he thought it could be taught) and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who thought it could not be taught. Since I have been an successful entrepreneur and taught the subject as an adjunct some years ago, I thought both writers scored points. The truth lies somewhere between: you need knowledge to be successful, but you also need an undefined passion and drive that can't be taught.

A comment made by the venture capitalist, Victor W. Hwang, under the heading, "The Best Class is Real Life," made me think of the students I work with at the school. Hwang spoke of working with entrepreneurs, "We should come up with ways to help entrepreneurs help themselves to learn more effectively. This means finding ways to provide them with a network of mentors and advisers and nurturing a business culture around them that says: dream big, open doors and listen to new people, trust and be trusted, experiment, make mistakes, treat others fairly and pay it forward."

Wouldn't it be great if education could consistently do the same with students: surround them with mentors, encourage them to dream big, and preach the virtue of paying it forward? Sure, some of our students are fortunate to fall into a situation where this kind of support is in place, but for most the support needs to come from within, just as it does with entrepreneurs. Both groups benefit from social groups that support and sustain their dreams. Hwang advocates supportive communities for entrepreneurs; in college, instructors, organizations, and fellow students take those roles. In fact, the design of a college community surrounds its students with levels of support that can be ideas exchanged over coffee in the Daily Buzz, or an instructor-initiated evaluation of a semester-long project.

Initiative and drive can't be taught in the classroom, but it can be supported and nurtured.

Fifty percent increase in student success

The top-tier students have their advocates, as do the bottom-tier students (although the advocacy there may be of an entirely different nature). But what about the students in the middle? Those who are not trouble, but those who do not post perfect scores on their SATs either. Those students make up the bulk of the high school and college classrooms. Students who barely survive post-secondary classes and only have a two in three chance of collecting a diploma. Where are their advocates?

USA Today published an article on March 17 about a New York program called SEO (Sponsors for Educational Opportunity) that provides mentoring and all-day Saturday school for the great middle of our classrooms. These students sit quietly, rarely volunteer, and are passed just above the minimum GPA in the traditional classroom. What, the program asks, would happen if these middle-tier students had just a little extra help?

SEO works on classroom basics: math, reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar. Results are impressive, according to the article written by Greg Toppo: "SEO students post academic skills indistinguishable from those of their suburban peers. Last year, the program sent 100% of its graduates (about 120 at a time) to four-year colleges. Nearly all earn diplomas: 91% last year vs. 63% for most college students." 

The difference between a student taking advantage of supplemental education program, like SEO, and those who have to make it on their own, can be life-changing. The figures quoted by Toppo speak volumes: almost a 50% increase in the final collegiate goal, receiving a diploma. So, if there is a proven program that increases success by 50% why isn't it being used in every school system?

True it is expensive because it is teacher-intensive. The SEO program costs about $5000 per student per year. And, working on the basics of grammar and vocabulary is not as sexy as wiring the classroom with the latest technology. We seem to want to invest our education money in toys that go whiz-bang rather than the proven building blocks that help students get to where they want to go. We can do better by our middle-tier of students. We know how. We just need to give them a little more help.

State Conferences: Place a Face to the Space

I spent two days at a Wisconsin Technical College System curriculum conference last week. To be honest, I would rather be in my assigned classroom working with students, but on occasion it is important to mingle with fellow BE, ELL, and Literacy instructors. Since this was my introduction to state level meetings as a faculty member, I stayed a little in the background, trying to match faces with colleges, and sort out jargon that comes with the position.

The NRS (National Reporting System) seemed a little clearer to me after hearing from the Washington, D.C. speaker who manages the system from the Department of Education. In the past, the NRS had just been a list of requirements from the "feds".  You report student outcomes, and employment, and progression not only because it's a good idea to quantify what you are doing, but because it was required by the "feds".  After the Wednesday session, and over a beer at a reception Wednesday night, I had a chance to meet one of the feds and place a face to the system. A few moments of face-to-face discussion is more productive than a stream of impersonal emails.

Since you are the new person, you are often the one going up to people saying, "Hi, I'm Doug from Green Bay." I met colleagues from the northern-most regions of the state in Superior, to Racine and Kenosha instructors. Madison Area Technical College faculty peppered the sessions, since the four-story downtown campus is across the street from the Concourse Hotel where the spring meeting was held. And, I met faculty who are from neighboring districts from Moraine Park Technical College in Fond du Lac, Fox Valley Tech in Appleton, and Northcentral Tech in Wausau.

I still need to type out notes for my team members in Green Bay who were not able to attend, and I was recruited to take minutes at a final afternoon session about BE Writing classes. Followup to a conference like this is important -- otherwise why attend at all? So, you might see a little more about the conference in future posts.

Good Days and Great Days

Rewards in the Basic Education classroom are often found in small steps: mastering fractions, finishing a grade-level book that had been beyond reach, understanding how the five-paragraph essay is put together, understanding the sedimentary layering of debris. Added together, they show progress, but on a day-to-day basis, basic education can seem like a slog.

Then there are days like yesterday.

I was able to deliver good news to two students who I have been working with since the fall. The first student is of Filipino descent and had working to improve reading so that she could enter our CNA program. The minimum reading standard is grade level 8.3. For some native speakers, this can be a challenge. For someone new to the language and the country, this is a very tall hurdle. She worked hard in the classroom before Christmas and, disappointed, still fell short of the mark.

After the first of the year, she returned and continued to work in the lab and on an online basic education program called Skills Tutor. The combination of time (probably more than 20-hours) and effort finally worked. Yesterday she showed me her TABE reading score: 8.3, right on the money. She is thrilled to be cleared for entry into the program, though her preparation is not yet complete. She still needs to work on her reading and language skills: 8.3 is college minimum, and higher levels would make the course work easier. I have confidence that she will put in the work.

The second good news was about a final GED test. This student had also been working with me since, I think, October. He had been patiently taking GED tests at the Shawano Regional Center (once a month the test examiner visits us on Tuesday mornings) and had been collecting a series of excellent scores, including two 800-point (perfect) GED tests. His last test, Language Arts: Writing, included a multiple choice grammar and punctuation section and a 45-minute essay. This test had been left to the end, because he was dreading it. The results had been delayed because the dreaded essay needs to be graded by two outside examiners and that takes time, often a couple of weeks.

Yesterday, I received the scores. He passed comfortably and I was able to pass the news on him. This student not only passed the GED tests, but he passed with High Honors. NWTC has a graduation ceremony in the commons of the Green Bay campus in June to celebrate the GED/HSED graduates of the past year. I encouraged him to take the time and "walk" across the stage to receive his diploma and acclaim. He deserves the praise.

All my students deserve the praise.

A Long Commute Home

The roads from Green Bay to Oconto Falls this morning were passable for the patient. I'm glad I didn't have to drive much farther though. Hwy 141 was closed north of Crivitz for part of the morning. That's a hazard of being a Regional Center instructor during the winter months in Wisconsin. Most of the time winter driving is not a problem, but once or twice a winter, getting to work can be a challenge.

The worst drive was a few years ago when I taught the 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. shift at the Shawano Basic Education lab. A storm was predicted for later in the day, but the initial drive was clear. Maybe the storm would pass south or north of us, I thought. By 4 p.m. the lab and most of the other classrooms had cleared out leaving me and a few front office staff members still at the center. Green Bay central offices officially closed the college at 5 p.m. releasing us. I thought of staying put, but decided to try my luck in the storm.

The road conditions, the closing dark, and the blowing snow almost forced me into a hotel/restaurant at the Hwy 29 interchange even before I left the city. But I pushed on driving down the on ramp onto the east-west highway. Most of the time, I could see tracks left by cars along the way. The plows had been pulled off by that time. Sometimes I was able to follow the lights of a car or truck in the distance, but I wasn't sure if the vehicle was on the highway or an access road. Most of the time all I saw was the suggestion of a road and the diagonal streaks of blowing snow. My speed was down to 20-15 mph at times as I kept track of the road by following the waist-high reflectors posted along the right side of the road way.

After creeping along for more than an hour, a car came up behind and passed me on the roadway. I sped up sticking to its tail lights, twisting and turning. I thought Hwy. 29 was a relatively straight road, but I kept behind those twin tail lights. When the car pulled off into a private driveway, I realized that I had followed it off the highway, onto an access ramp and north onto a crossing country road. I wasn't sure where I was headed, but I had three-quarters of a tank of gas and the road was a little clearer than before. I just kept driving.

I ended up in the city of Pulaski, a few miles north of Hwy. 29. Again, I was tempted to pull into an inviting restaurant to wait out the storm, but I didn't know how long the wait would be, so I turned south and rejoined 29. By this time the worst of the story had passed and the driving was just difficult, not impossible. I pulled into Green Bay's city limits, pulled off the side of the road and called Nan to tell her that I was safe and still on my way. The time was 7:30. A 45-minute commute from Shawano had taken more than two hours. I probably should not have been out, but now I was home.

Comparing Beginners and Enders

"Wha'cha writing?"

My writing projects begin with a vague idea of a direction and then move through twists and turns of vocabulary choices and sentence construction until the work develops its own rhythm and sense of purpose. This may seem to be an odd way to write, and often relies on a heavy finger on the delete key, but I find, talking with fellow writers, that my method is not uncommon. Writers write to find out what we think, more than we think of what we ought to write.

I mention this after reading a quote from the book, Art & Fear: Observations and Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland: "Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending." I can understand that about writing single sentences as well as on applying that strategy to other non-writing projects. One begins a task with a literal or metaphorical blank piece of paper. We are bound by the limitations of the paper, but can, within limitations of time, space, and talent, sketch out wonderful ideas and produce creative work.

I believe those who are productive and most successful are not worried about the results. This is in contrast to those who are stuck on the process and feel the need to see the ending whole and complete, before they start typing a single word. I suppose that strategy has its advocates and has its place, but I truly wonder if the "enders" get as much done as the "beginners." Most of what we do does not have a prescribed ending -- Good Lord, it sometimes does not even have a beginning. But if we wait to puzzle out all the details before we start something new, we spend all our time puzzling and not much time producing.

"Wha'cha writing?" I don't know. All I can promise is it will be better than what I have done before.