Link archives, Fall 1999

Creating a place of learning

As students, most of us dreaded an “invitation” to talk with the school principal. However, Michael Hartoonian, professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and Dean Steve Yussen welcomed the opportunity this fall. They joined five Twin Cities K-12 public school principals to talk about how we create a true place of learning—of scholarship and community—given the challenges facing today’s public schools.

Participating in the discussion were Robin Carlson (M.Ed., ’77, English education; specialist certificate, ’90, secondary education) from Richfield Middle School; Carole Gupton (Ph.D., ’86, educational policy and administration) from the School of Extended Learning in Minneapolis; Penny Howard from Edgewood Middle School in Mounds View; Louis Mariucci from Jackson Magnet Elementary in St. Paul; and Joanne Ventura (B.S., ’68, elementary education; M.A., ’74, educational administration; specialist certificate, ’80, special education) from Randolph Heights Elementary in St. Paul.

The discussion was inspired in part because of Hartoonian’s work around the issues of ethics, education, and economics and their integration into a democratic republic. In his article, “Education for Sale: What’s a (Democratic) Principle Worth?” he writes: “Because we fail to remember the civic purpose of education, the issue of the public school’s place in contemporary society—and its fundamental worth to the nation—is growing ever more problematic. We have become a people motivated by the gratification of individual concerns, making it no mystery why techniques and practices such as vouchers, charter schools, and tax-credits are so popular. But if people and policy-makers think of our schools as serving only the private interests of parents and their children, why not make all schools private and be done with it?

“How did we come to think this way? When did it happen that so many students would go to school without learning respect for scholarship? When, why, and how did it occur to us that our children are consumers rather than citizens in the making—and that money can buy the best education?”

These and other questions about the role of public education, the ways we measure our efforts, and the need to build community in our schools were used to help guide the evening’s discussion. What follows are excerpts from the conversation.

Beyond the Little Red Schoolhouse

Robin Carlson: School used to be a different kind of place, a place where everybody went and learned some basic things. There were some commonalities in terms of expectations, offerings, and outcomes. Now we’ve become so specialized that we deal with talented kids in one way, disabled kids in another way, average kids in still another way. We’ve lost that continuity in curriculum, in understanding and values that we used to transmit to kids through education.

We've lost that continuity in curriculum, in understanding and values that we used to transmit to kids through education.
- Robin Carlson

Penny Howard: I’ve noticed some differences in the last few years with parents turning to us and saying, ‘you set the expectations and then we’ll try to follow through at home’ or ‘thank you for saying that my child can’t come to school dressed in that attire because I can’t tell him or her differently.’ They are looking to us to be the primary developer of culture and expectations.

Louis Mariucci: I flounder when people ask me about the role of public education. I’m not sure there’s one answer. If you ask [the group of people gathered here tonight], they will tell you one thing; the government will have another definition; parents will have yet another. If we can’t define what it is we do and why we do it, we’re going to produce people with no more of a concept of who they are or what it is they’re after than they had coming in.

We’re so much under the gun [because of pressure to meet certain district-determined standards] that our role has become even more narrowly defined—our role right now is to make sure that our MAT7 scores in reading, math, social studies, and science increase by at least a certain percentage. We’re going to hang or die on those scores.

If we're asking teachers to change how they teach, then we need to give them permission to stumble a few times before they get it right.
- Penny Howard

Carole Gupton: I think public schools over the years have been very efficient and not necessarily very effective. And we have bought into the efficiency. Sometimes we use efficiency to assure ourselves and others that we’re being effective. Grades [and other similar standards] are wonderful for measuring efficiency. I don’t know if they necessarily show we’re effective in what we’re trying to do with kids. Now people want effective, too. And we don’t know how to do effective.

Penny Howard: When you require effectiveness, I think that’s the point where the staff feels very vulnerable. They are good at what they do and have been measured on how well they deliver their knowledge. If they cover the curriculum by the end of the semester, then they’ve done a good job. We’ve never really looked to see if what we’re delivering is really making a difference [with the students]. If we’re asking teachers to change how they teach, then we need to give them permission to stumble a few times before they get it right.

Looking at ways to measure success

A few days prior to the discussion, 11 St. Paul public schools were put on academic probation by the district superintendent because of their poor showings on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT7), a key standardized test used to evaluate basic skills. Dean Yussen asks: Can educational leaders have an honest conversation about the true purpose of education given the demanding accountability framework that school districts are under?

By the time our kids get to fourth grade, if we haven't built a relationship between what they're learning and why they're learning, the test scores start to go down..
- Carole Gupton

Carole Gupton: I think until recently we weren’t as concerned about the fact that some kids just weren’t learning. Now, as the population continues to grow, it is no longer acceptable. I’m not sure if it is because we really thought about what it is to create a democracy with everybody in it equal or because in the market sense we can’t afford to have such a large group continue to fail and still succeed as a nation.

Joanne Ventura: I think when the heat is on it creates a greater sense of urgency to determine what you’re about, where you’re going, and what you’re going to do. I’ve liked the emphasis over the last several years that the schools have been under fire. I really see it as facing reality—we’re failing too many kids and we have to do something about it. Maybe that’s the hard truth, but now we’ve got to pull together whatever resources and new ways we can to do this job more effectively.

Teachers need to be validated for working really hard and being committed. Yet, it’s not a matter of us or them not working hard enough or not caring enough, it’s a matter of all of us needing to do some things differently.

Carole Gupton: We not only look at test scores, we look at surveys and anecdotal evidence from kids about their experiences during the past year to get a sense of what worked and what didn’t work. Then we can connect the test scores and the anecdotes together to get a relationship piece that we can use to build learning. It’s not enough that we’ve drilled the information into them and they’ve done well on the test. By the time our kids get to fourth grade, if we haven’t built a relationship between what they’re learning and why they’re learning, the test scores start to go down.

Robin Carlson: We test kids on the language that we taught them relevant to our expectations in our school culture and when they don’t pass, we say they’ve failed, but actually they have only failed in that one area. They may be very successful in other areas. How can we make an evaluation of students’ ability to learn, ability to be interested in the rest of the world if all we’re looking at is this little piece of the world that we provide them?

Creating a sense of community and safety in our schools

According to Hartoonian, successful schools are those that create a deep sense of place by combining the following attributes: aesthetics, civility, ethics, conversation, security, stewardship/public responsibility, and individual liberty. When we conceive of school as space, rather than place, we focus on “getting through it” as quickly as possible. Place, like a home, is something we nurture, something that, in return, protects us, and something we love.

Joanne Ventura: I truly believe that in creating a kind of community where kids are valued, where there are opportunities for individual expression, their scores will improve, and I don’t think you can do it just by skills alone. I think if you broaden performance, you do it by creating community, by trying to keep the kids in your school.

When we talk about what kids need, more than anything it is that sense of community because they don’t have it in many ways. Many of our children don’t have it in their neighborhoods, their churches, their families. If we create that sense of community in our schools and give kids some roots, I don’t think we’ll see as many kids who feel alienated and isolated, which I think is what brings about tragedies like we saw in Littleton.

Robin Carlson: Creating that sense of community is difficult when you’re dealing with a 30-percent turnover in the student body each year. How do we establish a sense of understanding of community values and responsibility and even a responsibility to the place called the school, the building itself, when the kids are there for six hours a day and then they get into a car and go to another community where they live? And then in a couple of years, they move from that community to another, and the cycle starts again.

I think if you broaden performance, you do it be creating community, by trying to keep the kids in your school.
- Joanne Ventura

Carole Gupton: Our turnover rate started at more than 80 percent and now we’re at 27 percent, which is unheard of considering the population I serve. Of course, we have 10 hours of their day, which allows us to become a central infrastructure for our students. But I think it’s more than that. We’re building families and we’re building relationships and the kids want to come back.

Penny Howard: It’s hard to get the staff to buy into the notion that we need to be collectively assenting in our beliefs about our values and purpose as we present them to students. Too often teachers and staff see themselves as separate entities who are there to do a specific job. ‘I teach math, this is what I do, and this is all the impact that I have on my students.’

Robin Carlson: At Richfield, we devote the first few weeks of school every year to cultural definitions. ‘This is how we get along, this is what we do in school, when you are here this is a neutral area…we’re going to make this a place where we all share a common language and where we understand and respect each other.’ Culture-building becomes almost the most important part of what we do and getting the kids ready to pass the eighth-grade test is moved to the back burner. It has to be because we can’t get to that if we don’t take care of the other stuff first.

One major change we made this year was turning off all the bells. Everybody said doing so would create complete chaos, how would everybody know where to go, etc. We’ve now been in session four days and not one kid has been late for school and none of the teachers has fallen asleep in the lounge and forgotten to come back out. Everything works. It works because people in the system feel that they’re responsible for making it work, not just the teacher, but the kids, too.

They walk through the doors in the morning and we care about them. It's important to show them that, too.
- Louis Mariucci

Michael Hartoonian: There’s an old proverb that says ‘the beginning of wisdom is the ability to know what is in place and what is out of place.’ It is the beginning of the intelligent mind to know, for example, what language is appropriate here, what dress is appropriate here, what behavior is appropriate here. Students may act one way at the Mall of America but when they come to school it has to be made clear to them that this isn’t the mall and you don’t behave in school like you do in the mall. That is really the beginning of an intelligent mind, this ability to discriminate different rules in different places.

Louis Mariucci: I think that somehow every student needs to connect to some aspect of their school—some individual, some group, something. Someone has to make a connection with that student. Ironically, my greatest connections are with the kids that require the most discipline.

Joanne Ventura: It’s probably more important to have a relationship with those kids than with some of the other kids who have other supportive relationships outside of school.

Louis Mariucci: They walk through the doors in the morning and we care about them. It’s important to show them that, too.