29. Son. Husband. Father. Servant of Jesus. 8th Grade ELA Teacher. Science of Reading Advocate. Mentor. Coffee Enthusiast.
New Jerusalem
Joined November 2021
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Drew Alexander retweeted
The argument that teachers are humans, not robots, is often used as a reason to oppose scripted instruction. I actually think it can be used to make a case for having scripts available, at least as an option.
Teachers are human. We have plenty happening in our personal lives, in our schools, and with our students from one day to the next. All of those demands can easily overload our working memory and affect the clarity and conciseness of our instruction. How valuable would it be to have a script available on those days when we recognize that teaching from a prepared sequence is going to be more effective than relying entirely on what we can pull from memory?
I felt this firsthand this week. Between school activities, a contest, a pep rally, guest speakers, and everything else happening in the building, there was a lot competing for my attention. Knowing I had a script to work from was genuinely comforting. I didn’t have to rely entirely on my own mental bandwidth to deliver the instruction I had planned.
I don’t think we should downplay that everyday benefit. Having a script available doesn’t make a teacher less human or less capable. It acknowledges that teachers are human, that some days demand more of us than others, and that having a well-prepared instructional resource to lean on can help us teach more effectively.
Drew Alexander retweeted
In real classrooms, retrieval practice, spacing and interleaving all work, but at roughly half the size the laboratory studies suggested. link.springer.com/article/10…
Drew Alexander retweeted
The drop off between ES & MS is exacerbated by the fact that that’s when parents (rightly) perceive schools to become chaotic & dangerous. Want to keep parents in the system? Run safe orderly schools that protect learning environments.
Today my office has released a major new report on student enrollment in NYC.
We found that k-12 enrollment in our public schools has fallen by 187k since 2013, with a projected decline of an additional 128k students by 2034.
As total enrollment declines, NYCPS is serving a student population with growing needs. The number of students with disabilities is increasing. In the most recent school year, approximately 73% of students were in poverty and 14% were homeless or living in temporary housing.
Our report finds the drop in enrollment is driven by declining births and families with children leaving NYC, with a particularly notable drop in public-school enrollment as students transition from elementary to middle school.
These trends have massive implications for our schools that we have only barely begin to grapple with. My hope is that this report will spur a long overdue conversation about what the era of falling student enrollment means for NYC, and what we can do to reverse or slow it. 🧵
Drew Alexander retweeted
Let’s just be honest and call it “restorative injustice“
Misbehaving students get away with everything and victimized students have to just put up with unsafe classrooms, chaotic, learning, and verbal harassment
Drew Alexander retweeted
"Students expressed the urge to be forced to tackle classics they otherwise wouldn’t read, the need to combat frayed attention spans and the desire for an antidote to The Machine.
“A lot of what we get out of this class is the human experience,” said a government and neuroscience major “The only way to get anything out of this class is to not use AI.”
"At the core of the humanities is, of course, humanity...."
wsj.com/lifestyle/harvard-cl…
4 of my GATE pupils did their science project dedicated to my attention securing phrase “Refocus”.
When they hear this, my hand is up. They are to stop what they’re doing, place their hand up and have their eyes forward at a Voice level of 0, waiting for further instruction.
This encourages accountability as a classroom community, I’ll frequently hear a pupil tell their peer “Refocus” as this practice has been embedded into the core of our class to ensure that attention is focused and directed towards each part of the learning task. It’s nice to know that it travels, as my colleague stated to me “it’s the only thing that gets them back”.
Drew Alexander retweeted
Completely disagree! It is neither ‘snobbery’ nor ‘policing’ to teach pupils standard English and grammar. We cannot be uncomfortable or squeamish about teaching children that, when discussing academic subjects, we use a consistent, shared grammar. It’s our duty.
As the national policy shifts towards "oracy", this video illustrates the massive problems we will have.
It's almost impossible to correct regional dialect things like "we was" into standard English without appearing to be a massive snob.
It's also *categorically impossible* to do it consistently. For example, in this video, I think Amy speaks clearly and persuasively. However, she uses the word "like" a lot, and says "you know" and "um" very often.
I personally do not care. I do the same. I am horrified when I read transcripts from the podcast or videos I've produced. But, critically, I think that's a *normal way to talk*. It's natural, and most people neither notice it nor care.
But if you tell me I now need to *assess* someone's spoken language, I *have* to start thinking about things like that, and policing the way people speak and turning into something which feels unnatural, forced and desiccated.
Hurdles ahead!
Drew Alexander retweeted
Somehow we've reached a point in education where:
- teaching kids explicitly is controversial
- academic rigour is treated as a threat to student wellbeing
- memorizing math facts is discouraged or considered unnecessary
- practice is dismissed as "drill and kill"
Low expectations are not kindness, and nothing hurts someone's confidence more than falling further behind every year.
Drew Alexander retweeted
A quiet classroom shouldn’t be something your parents have to earn enough money to buy you.
It’s crazy to me how often the people lecturing us about helping disadvantaged children object to enforcing the rules that would give them a chance at an education.
Drew Alexander retweeted
This video is doing the rounds again because a critic has questioned whether the pupils here are really learning anything. The quality of this class’s questions can reveal a lot here. So, strap in for a thread! 🧵 1/9
Drew Alexander retweeted
Update on Samuel Sey's situation.
I'm sorry to learn about Sam apparently over-staying his visa. Believers uphold the law even as we pray for this young family. There is nothing to gloat over or celebrate here; whatever is going on, godly Christians seek their good.
I have received a statement from DHS regarding Sam Sey:
“On October 21, ICE arrested Samuel Sey, an illegal alien from Ghana, at the Columbus International Airport. Sey entered the United States legally in 2022 but overstayed his length of admission by over four years, in violation of our nation’s laws. Sey has no pending applications and accepted voluntary departure. He will remain in ICE custody until removed from the United States.
“We do not pick and choose which laws to enforce or where to enforce them.
“We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App. The United States is offering illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.” - DHS SPOX
As I get more information, I will update.
Drew Alexander retweeted
For YEARS, I was told to “meet students where they’re at”…
…then, I was questioned about why so many students are behind and need an IEP before they’re working at several grade levels BELOW their current grade level.
Districts have dug us into a hole and they do t know how to get us out. We’ve created a culture of “meeting students where they’re at” with no actual plan to get them where they need to be.
Stop lowering the bar for our students! Raise the bar, provide support and explicit instruction and GET THEM TO WHERE THEY NEED TO BE!
Best presentation I’ve heard in years! Dr. Huggins is saying what every teacher has been too scared to say out loud for years!! @researchEDCan
Drew Alexander retweeted
Disruptive children are not heroic rebels with an ‘anti-authority’ streak, courageously resisting an oppressive system. Romanticising their behaviour as some form of social justice is intellectually dishonest and profoundly damaging. More often, these are children who have been denied the boundaries, discipline and structure necessary to flourish.
Schools should be institutions of learning and character formation, staffed by teachers who care deeply about the children entrusted to them. Yet failures in parenting, compounded by decades of permissive educational thinking, have left some children unable or unwilling to respect authority, exercise self-control or recognise the rights of others. The answer is not to celebrate their defiance, excuse their behaviour or dismantle the very structures they so desperately need.
Parents who reject school rules are free to educate their children at home and indulge whatever behaviour they consider acceptable. What they are not entitled to do is impose the consequences of their choices on hundreds of other children, or demand that teachers and school leaders accommodate persistent
disruption, intimidation and disorder.
A child's right to an education does not confer a right to sabotage the education of others. Nor does compassion require adults to surrender their authority.
Discipline is not the enemy of children. It is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. The real injustice is allowing the behaviour of a few to compromise the education, safety and opportunities of the many.
As a kid who was suspended constantly, but is now a teacher, I want to comment on this story. And no, this woman is not a terrible mother.
Traditional schools, especially high-performers like Success Academy, often have a "zero-tolerance" policy for behavior
The schools and teachers place the rights of the classroom above than the rights of the individual
BUT, this is not the only way.
Before we discuss what's coming next, enabled by AI, let's discuss why schools like Success have such strict policies.
A zero-tolerance approach helps the school focus on instruction and on serving the 80-90% of students who are more obedient or conscientious.
A single "disruptive" child (like I was) will legitimately hold back the rest of the classroom. It is unfair to force those 80% of kids who are quietly working to watch as a frustrated teacher reprimands the trouble-maker.
Watching the teacher's frustration grow, directed at their classmates, reinforces an adversarial relationship between the teachers and students. The cultural effects have an impact far beyond the 4-5min lost to the interaction.
Given this, Success Academy is behaving in a moral and rational way; if your job is to help give kids an amazing education in a classroom of ~25:1 using traditional classroom techniques, you must accept this "zero-tolerance" policy.
BUT, this is not the only way.
I work in schools where I meet students like this constantly. They are wonderful kids who have an anti-authority streak. They have a greater sense of independence and are often some of the most courageous leaders in their class. The same traits that make them potential leaders is the trait that forces them to rail against the rigid school structure that ignores individuality.
In the last 5 years, a new technology has emerged that will allow us to change the structure of our schools to work for all students, rather than just those who don't have trouble sitting still or listening to instructions.
We do not need one teacher in the front of the class leading students along a group-assignment anymore.
Kids can now have significantly more choice in what they learn, largely because AI can take unstructured data and turn it into structured data.
That change alone will help kids like me to participate better in school, because they won't have to rebel when they feel the lesson is "stupid" or "pointless". They can simply do something else.
As this technology emerges, it also means that the physical structure of classrooms can change. We don't need desks in rows facing the front. Classrooms and schools can start to mimic great work environments like libraries or well-designed offices with chairs and couches and desks.
Teachers can stop worrying about making sure that every student is writing down sentences to the same question at the same time, and instead can start worrying about whether the student is intellectually engaged, whether they feel excited for their lives, whether they have confidence in their abilities, and whether they know how to work on teams alongside other kids.
Success is a great school network, and I am very glad it exists. I hope to build a school for those other 20% of kids like me who don't fit into the traditional system. Once this school exists, I think we'll find all kids prefer more independence, creativity, and collaboration.
And I think we'll find our workforce is remarkably more competent in this new age.
Drew Alexander retweeted
I've looked up the sources of some the excerpts in our HMH textbook.
Imagine trying to slog through these boring texts everyday as an 8th grader.
Here's a thread 🧵
Drew Alexander retweeted
Apparently “preparing students for the jobs of the future” doesn’t include teaching them to read.
Drew Alexander retweeted
People don't believe me when I tell them that curriculum companies and educational consultants are actively undermining teachers' attempts to teach novels but here you go.
2-3 WEEKS to teach an entire novel is absurd!
heinemann.com/blog/a-student…
Drew Alexander retweeted
Just registered! How about you? If you are interested in using the science of learning to inform your instruction, this is where you want to be come the evening of November 5th.
📚 Register here: zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/po…
Drew Alexander retweeted
Another strategy that should be buried in a chest and thrown into the ocean: removing the whole class because one student is being disruptive. Only in the most *extreme* circumstances should this be considered. In all other cases, the student should be exited. Otherwise it teaches them they have huge power over others.