Introduction to this Site
My name is Jack Farrell. I am a retired High School Advanced Placement English Teacher, Teacher Mentor, and School Board Trustee. My district, the Conejo Valley Unified in Ventura County, California, began its Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) Program in 1999 with the hiring of 5 full-time released teachers to support 75 incoming new teachers. I was one of the 5 teachers hired for this position.
In supporting 15 first year teachers, I was expected to observe one lesson per week and conference one hour per week with each teacher. It took me only a couple of weeks to decide to throw out everything I had ever done in the classroom and start over after I returned to the classroom, so impressed was I with all the new technologies and strategies these beginning teachers were employing.
However, later I began to notice some troubling consequences of current lesson design. There are very strong teaching standards in California and teachers do a remarkable job utilizing them. But there are no corresponding standards for student learners. Carol Jago, at the time the Advanced Placement English teacher at Santa Monica High School, once described schools to me as "places where young people go to watch old people work." What I was observing in nearly all classrooms, in all disciplines, was that Teaching is Talking and Learning is Listening. I vowed that when I returned to the classroom I would not only throw out everything I had ever done, but would also try turning the lesson plan on its head. I would begin with independent practice. I would return the job of engaging the reader and activating his prior knowledge to the writer. I would honor the sacred communication between writer and reader. I would support the process and offer scaffolds, but only to those who needed them, and only for as long as they needed them. I would test continually for independence. The new lesson design called for Text before Talk. I began to refer to Common Practice as Forward Teaching and what is now Common Core as Teaching Backwards.
I define Forward Teaching as a set of compensatory strategies for delivering content in the absence of any actual textbook reading by students. Teaching backwards, then, is a strategy for reversing the lesson plan, re-establishing the primacy of text, and emphasizing the role of the writer in the learning process.
I began writing and circulating articles about this new theory. On this site, these early articles appear under the drop-down menu Articles. If you read nothing else on this site, read at least the initial article I wrote in 2001 "The Student Who Read Everything Twice."
You can access it here: The Student Who Read Everything Twice.
This article captured the epiphany that has led to everything else. Keep in mind that this was a few years before the ACT conducted the research that led to the College and Career Readiness Standards, which, in turn, led to the Common Core Standards. What I speculated about student reading was later confirmed by the ACT Research and described in their publication Reading Between the Lines. You can access this ACT document and download it in PDF form using the link at the bottom of this page.
After my three year rotation as a Consultant Teacher, I chose to return to the classroom at Newbury Park H.S., primarily because they were on a semester block schedule. Teachers taught three 95 minute blocks and covered an entire year's curriculum in a semester. I thought this structure would work very well with what I was attempting to do with lesson design. While in the classroom for two years I wrote a series of blog posts, which you can access under the drop down menu Articles by clicking on the submenu Classroom Blog Posts.
After two years back in the classroom I was re-hired for another 3 year rotation as a Consultant Teacher and continued to observe and write. I retired after that rotation, but continued to mentor new teachers an additional 8 years for the Mono County Office of Education after re-locating to Mammoth Lakes, California.
In 2010, the Assistant Superintendent of the Mono County Office of Education asked me what I thought of the new Common Core Standards, which had just been released in draft form, but not adopted yet. I read them and was immediately struck by how close they aligned with the instructional design I had been advocating since 2001. Make no mistake, the Common Core Standards are reading standards and a direct result of the ACT findings that students were ill-prepared for college and career because they were largely unable to navigate a staircase of increasingly complex text.
During this initial period of public comment I began posting blogs on these new standards and the challenge they presented for professional developers and teacher training programs. You can access these blogs posts under the tab Common Core Blog Posts.
I was elected to the Mammoth Unified School District Board of Education in 2008 and just left the board after serving 10 years. During this period, while I was still mentoring new teachers, I felt it inappropriate to broadcast my ideas for fear that teachers would feel pressure to practice some of my lesson design theories, which, I clearly admit, run completely counter to what they learned in their teacher training programs.
Now that I am off the board, I feel no such constraint. I am just a retired educator with my own opinions. This blog site, which has been largely private, I now make public and invite you to read any of the articles and posts that interest you. Perhaps it can initiate a debate or two in departmental meetings.
Feel free to navigate this site and open any articles of interest. And one article may lead to another. But I have some recommendations for those who don't know where to begin.
*As I mentioned above, all readers should start with the seminal article: The Student Who Read Everything Twice
*If you want a succinct explanation of Forward Teaching vs. Teaching Backwards click on this link:
Summary of Findings I wrote this brief article at the request of Rich Simpson, who was the Assistant Superintendent, Instruction, in the Conejo Valley District. He had been reading my posts and requested a succinct version. Since the adoption of the new standards, it will help if you substitute Common Practice for the term Forward Teaching, and Common Core for Teaching Backwards.
*The Common Core Standards cannot enter the classroom without re-thinking a new lesson design. Click on the link to this article to see a possible revision: A New Lesson Plan for the Common Core Standards. Again, substitute Common Practice for forward teaching, and Common Core for teaching backwards.
*It will be difficult for the Common Core Standards to enter the classroom unless Teacher Training Programs are completely re-structured and administrators are trained to collect evidence on what the students are doing as well as what the teachers are doing. This blog post sheds light on the dilemma for administrators: How Visible are the Common Core Standards? For a deeper look, here's a link to a follow-up article: The Challenge for Supervision and Instruction.
California's emphasis on the Standards for the Teaching Profession in teacher training, new teacher induction, and teacher evaluation, has unintentionally skewed the relationship between teacher and students in classrooms. The Common Core Standards cannot enter these classrooms unless the teaching standards are re-written and there are corresponding standards for student learners adopted. For a draft look at such a set of student standards, follow this link: The California Standards For Student Learners.
*The Common Core Standards are critical reading standards. But they are not meant only for language arts classes. Here is a link to an article about Math classes and how the Common Core can enter such classes: The Math Formula.
Feel free to comment on any article or blog post. Also, feel free to email me directly with comments, observations for questions. [email protected]
Reading Between the Lines | |
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