Resource Suggestions

Homework
Prompt: I, too, have a request for articles.  My school is exploring the issue of homework at our next retreat.  I'm looking for articles that show both sides of the homework issue (pro and con).  I know that a couple of popular books are out right now, but I'm looking for articles that can be read quickly and then used with a text based protocol.  I also wouldn't mind seeing any articles that give information on how to create "good" homework assignments.

Suggestions
• Alfie Kohn's, "Abusing Research: The Study of Homework & Other Examples," Phi Delta Kappan, September 2006
While it doesn't present a balanced view, anti-homework Kohn cites authors who are pro-homework. Another education list serve I'm on had a good time with this one. As a matter of fact, I showed it to my teaching partner and she has since reduced the students' homework load after considering his arguments.

The Tyranny of the Zero
Prompt: Greetings Colleagues...Does any one have a good article that interrogates the negative consequences for students when they receive 0 points for assignments not turned in? I am struck by the fact that all other grades (a,b,c,d) have a 10 point range while students have a 60 point range in receiving an f. I wonder how much long and short term damage is done to historically disenfranchised students who receive so many of those 0’s.

Suggestions
• “Fair is Not Always Equal” by Doug Reeves and Rick Wormeli
• http://mastersacademyonline.com/article-zeros.htm
• http://www.nmsa.org/Publications/MiddleGround/Articles/February2006/
Article14/tabid/809/Default.aspx
• http://teachers.net/mentors/high_school/topic7795/1.23.07.20.48.58.html
• http://teachers.net/gazette/MAY02/page.html
• http://whatitslikeontheinside.blogspot.com/2005/07/power-of-none.html
• http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20050309/EDUCATION/
103090029&SearchID=73270728706141
• http://www.maa.org/SAUM/maanotes49/84.html
• Lyn Canady has some good research on grading
• “The Case Against the Zero” PDK: http://schools.esu13.org/bannercounty/Documents/caseagainstzero.pdf
http://www.makingstandardswork.com/ResourceCtr/index.php#articles
• research by Tom Gusky, University of Kentucky and Rick Stiggins
• material from Ken O'Connor and Marzano.
• Ed Leadership (Jan 2007) "Improving the Way we Grade Science"

Tracking
Prompt: I am looking for research regarding tracking students - anybody know of any?

Suggestions
• Anne Wheelock's Crossing the Tracks (1992)
• Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, by Jeannie Oakes
Chapter 2, "Unlocking the Tradition," is not an easy read for high school
students, but it includes valuable quotes and analysis.
• Keeping Schools on Track, ReThinking Schools Online, by Anne Wheelock http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_02/tracksi.shtml
• Tackling Tracking, ReThinking Schools Online, by Ian McFeat
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/19_04/tack194.shtml
• Resources for teachers and secondary school students: Rethinking Schools, Summer 2005
• The Students Are Watching By Ted and Nancy Sizer (Beacon Press, 2000).
Chapter 4, "Sorting," is a readable chapter that can be used with students
to reflect on the meaning and consequences of tracking.
• "Testing, Tracking, and Toeing the Line: A Role Play on the Origins of the Modern High School" By Bill Bigelow, in Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and
Justice , Vol. 1 (Rethinking Schools, 1994).
This is the best classroom resource for engaging high school students in a
critical reflection of the origins tracking and testing in schools today.
Molly Schwabe's story, "The Pigs: When Tracking Takes Its Toll," is a
short and engaging reading that tells one girl's tracking story.
• None of the Above By David Owens (Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
The histories of tracking and testing go hand in hand. Chapter 9, "The
Cult of Mental Measurement," is a bit difficult, but prompts students to
think critically about the meritocratic rationale of the first Scholastic
Aptitude Tests, and provides some startling background about the
individuals who developed them.

Professional Learning Cummunity
Prompt: First of all, thank you for your ideas and suggestions for introducing CFGs at my new school—you have given me encouragement and hope that it is possible! The task seems less nebulous and scary now.

In a recent department meeting, I decided to try to find out what the teachers know or understand about professional learning communities. I had them do a think-pair-share, since that is a familiar format for them and I expected the topic itself to be an entirely new one for most, if not all, of the teachers. It turned out well and we had a good conversation. I learned that while a few teachers can imagine what it might look like, none have ever experienced a full professional learning community (beyond talking with a neighbor teacher and sharing lesson ideas) or even heard the phrase. The good news is, most seemed very interested in the ideas others suggested, and wondered what we could do to go further. Hooray!

SO: I’m looking for a good article to introduce the concept of a professional learning community by way of a TBD. Does anyone have/know of such an article?

Suggestions
• “A Model for Assessment-Driven Professional Development” by James Kelleher from the June 2003 edition of Phi Delta Kappan.
• On Common Ground, The Power of Professional Learning Communities, edited by Richard DuFour.
• “Professional Learning Communities: What are they and why are they important?” www.sedl.org/change/issues/issues61.html.
• Judith Warren Little’s article “Looking at Student Work for Teacher Learning, Teacher Community, and School Reform”
• DuFour’s “What is a Professional Learning Community” in Ed Leadership May 2004

Standardized Test Research
Prompt: I have a lot of teachers who hold a strong belief that students at my elementary school need to be taught using grade level texts as opposed to working through leveled readers (mainly in grades 3-5) There response to me when I discuss this with them is “Well, they are going to be tested on the standardized test at grade level, so I need to teach them using grade level texts.” I’ve gotten out Allington’s book on Struggling Readers in addition to other books which talk about how students need to read widely at an independent level while being instructed using materials at their instructional level (levels defined by running records.) I think my major concern is all the time being devoted to test-prep using grade level materials that are at frustration level for a significant number of the students here at school.

Do any of you know any articles, books, chapters, etc. which address these type of issues?

Suggestions
• Mosaic of Thought by Susan Zimmerman and Ellen Oliver Keene
• I Read It but I Don't Get It by Cris Tovan and Ellen Oliver Keene

"Boundaries"
Prompt: I am hoping to find a few provocative readings on the subject of "boundaries" in schools. Specifically, I'm interested in readings that discuss the ideas of relationships between students and teachers. This is in support of some learning we are doing this year at my school, where our faculty has an essential question, "what is professional judgment, and how do we acquire it?" The subject of boundaries is not the only topic we are addressing, but one of a number.

One of the things we're learning is that the principle of developing solid relationships with students is one of the more cherished aspects of the school by the kids themselves, the parents, and those who work here- there are some tensions though, because we have so many teachers who are in their formative years in the work, and because we are also a community of individualistic people- we want to explore the sub-question (related to professional judgment), of "how close is too close, when it comes to knowing students well?"

We are by no means trying to nail down a single answer, but to do some reading to inform the other work we are doing on the whole notion of professional judgment in our work.

So..... what have you read that may be of use to us?

Suggestions
• September 2006 issue of Educational Leadership has several articles regarding recognizing students' strengths, and about student/teacher relationships
• Educational Leadership Teaching to Student Strengths issue


Articles to Use With CFGS
Prompt: I am working on a database of good articles to use with CFG's and would love to get recommendations from this list. If you have an article to share, please send the name, author, and publication info as well as a focus question for the CFG, if you have one.

Suggestions
• David Hutchens's Outlearning the Wolves
• Alfie Kohn's article on Unconditional Teaching from Educational Leadership - September 2005
• The Canary in the Mine, Mano Singham
• White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh
• Willing to Be Disturbed, Margaret Wheatley
• The Pedagogy of Poverty vs Good Teaching, Martin Haberman
• Reclaim Time to Think, Margaret Wheatley
• What Achievement Gap?, Chapter one in Teacher Leadership that Strengthens Professional Practice by Charlotte Danielson
• At-Risk Learners - An Insider's Perspective, Donna M. Marriott
• An Indian Father's Plea, Robert Lake (Medicine Grizzlybear)
• Ebonics and Culturally Responsive Instruction: What Should Teachers Do?, Lisa Delpit
• Report from the Directors, Gene-Thompson Grove (There's no date on it, but if you go to the Connections archives, it's the earliest one Gene did.
• Report from the Directors, Fall 2003, Daniel Baron


Books for Professional Library
Prompt: We are building school based professional (educator) libraries in Brookline that connect to our district wide initiative, the Educational Equity Project: Taking Action, Getting Results
http://www.brookline.k12.ma.us/PSB/TEACHING+AND+LEARNING/The+Equity+Project/

Below is a list of books we have created. What's missing? Anything here
that you don't think belongs?

The DreamKeepers - Gloria Ladson-Billings
Crossing Over to Canaan - Gloria Ladson-Billings
Young, Gifted and Black - Claude Steele, Asa Hilliard, Theresa Perry
The Light in Their Eyes - Sonia Nieto
Closing the Achievement Gap - Belinda Williams
Unfinished Business - Pedro Noguera
Taking It Personally - Berlak and Moyenda
Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males - Alfred Tatum
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? - Beverly Daniels Tatum
Race in the Schoolyard - Amanda Lewis
Other People’s Children (updated edition), Lisa Delpit
The Skin That we Speak, Lisa Delpit
White Like Me, Tim Wise
We can’t teach What We Don’t Know, Gary Howard
Through Ebony Eyes, Gail Thompson
Fires In the Bathroom, Kathleen Cushman
Intellectual Character, Ron Richhart
The Essential Conversation, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot

Suggestions

• Pauline Lipman: Race, Class and Power in School Restructuring
• Gilberto Conchas: The Color of Success: Race and High Achieving Urban Youth
• Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
• Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males by Dr. Alfred Tatum
• The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Friere
• I Won't Learn From You by Herbert Kohl
• Too much schooling, Too Little Education by Dr. Shujaa
• Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop by Dr. Imani Perry
• Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson
• Because of the Kids Facing Racial and Cultural Differences in Schools, Jennifer Obidah and Karen Manheim Teel
• The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois
• Iron Cages, Takaki
• Blacked Out, Fordham
• Class, Race, and Gender in American Education, Weiss
• Aint no Makin It, McCleod
• Beyond Silenced Voice, Weiss and Fine
• Going to School, Lomotey
• Minority Status and Schooling, Gibson and Ogbu
• City Schools and the American Dream, Noguera
• Ghetto Schooling, Anyon
• A Kind and Just Parent, Ayers
• Educating Esme, Codell
• Empowering Education, Shor
• The Dialectic of Freedom, Greene
• To be Popular or Smart, the Black Peer Group, Kunjufu
• Power and Ideology in Education, Karabel and Halsey, eds.
• Official Knowledge, Apple
• Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, Frank Wu
• A Hope in the Unseen, Ron Suskind
• Strangers from a Different Shore, Takaki
• Ways with Words, Shirley Brice Heath
• Made in America, Laurie Olsen
• The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap – Stephanie Coontz
SYNOPSIS: Evergreen State College professor Stephanie Coontz offers an extremely readable and meticulously documented journey through American family history, debunking myths of American family life and replacing those stereotypes with intriguing doses of reality.
• Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice - Paul Kivel
SYNOPSIS: All too often, white people think racism is about people of color, and the remedies to this social problem lie solely within those communities. In gentle, yet forthright terms, Paul Kivel's book dissects this myth, placing white people front-and-center in the struggle to dismantle this nation's legacy of racial domination and injustice.
• America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines – Gail Collins
SYNOPSIS: From the colonists of New England and Virginia to the resurgence of the feminist movement in the 1970s, America's Women artfully examines women's roles during more than 400 years of history in 450 pages. Told chronologically, America's Women explores not just the political and social movements in which women participated and led, but also the everyday realities of their lives, from what women wore, how they dated and married and what work they did to who reared whose children. Using historical and first-person accounts from rich and poor, famous and unknown, rural and urban, young and old, Gail Collins brings to life the many ways women have helped shape our nation, and the many definitions of what being female in America has meant.
• How to Stand With Those Targeted By Hate - Created by the National Conference of Community and Justice, St. Louis, and used with permission.
• Teachers' Guide to Talking with their Students about War - The National Center for Children Exposed to Violence offers useful tips.
• Teaching About the War - Rethinking Schools has a new guide to teaching about the crisis in Iraq.
• The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health - Paul Campos
SYNOPSIS: Paul Campos draws on many years of reviewing medical studies and interviewing doctors, scientists, eating-disorder specialists and psychiatrists to debunk major myths about obesity. Campos, a professor and attorney, outlines his argument against fat hysteria with eye-opening statistics and compelling commentary about: How media sources consistently misinform the public about obesity; How the film industry's portrayals of fatness sheds light on the relationship between racial- and body-based prejudice in America; and How the thin and elite's anxieties about overconsumption are projected onto those who are poorer and heavier. Most importantly, The Obesity Myth exposes the irony of the nation's unhealthy obsession with weight and thinness.
• A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling: Status Quo or Status Queer - Eric E. Rofes
• Standing out, Standing Together: The Political and Social Impact of Gay-Straight Alliances - Miceli Melinda
• School Experiences of Gay and Lesbian Youth: The Invisible Minority - Mary B. Harris (Editor)
• Diverse Sexuality and Schools: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary Education Issues Series) - David Campos
• Open Lives, Safe Schools - Donovan R. Walling (Editor)
• Understanding Gay and Lesbian Youth: Lessons for Straight School Teachers, Counselors, and Administrators - David Campos
• Status Quo or Status Queer: A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling (Curriculum, Cultures, and (Homo)Sexualities Series) - Eric E. Rofes
• Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son: A Memoir of Becoming a Man - Kevin Jennings
• Gay and Lesbian Students: Understanding Their Needs - Hilda F. Besner
• Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat