Here's my slideshow for "You say you want this, so then why are you doing that?" This is my Minnesota version.

1. You say you want this...
so then why are you doing that?
Joe Bower
www.joebower.org
@joe_bower
joe.bower.teacher@gmail.com

2. Abigail is given plenty of worksheets to complete in class as well as a substantial amount
of homework. She studies to get good grades, and her school is proud of its high
standardized test scores. Outstanding students are publicly recognized by the use of
honor rolls, awards assemblies, and bumper stickers. Abigail's teacher, a charismatic
lecturer, is clearly in control of the class: students raise their hands and wait patiently to
be recognized. The teacher prepares detailed lesson plans well ahead of time, uses the
latest textbooks, and gives regular quizzes to make sure kids stay on track.
-Alfie Kohn from The Schools Our Children Deserve

3. What’s wrong with this picture?

4. There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is
a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that
we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common
sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer
even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us.
-Alfie Kohn from Punished by Rewards

10. Rethink School

11. When do we stop blaming the kids?

12. Can we admit:
•school can be improved
•to improve school, we need to change school

13. We tend to parent the way we were parented,
and teach the way we were taught.

14. If you never change your mind, why have one?

15. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get
what you’ve always gotten.
-Anthony Robbins

16. Insanity is continuing to do the same thing
over and over and expecting different results.
-Albert Einstein

17. Can we agree:
•we want children to become lifelong learners

18. It ain’t what we don’t know that gets us
into trouble... it’s what we know for sure
that just ain’t so.
-Mark Twain

19. However beautiful the strategy,
you should occasionally look at the results.
-Winston Churchill

20. We need school to look a little less like school

21. What if kids who hated school became teachers?

22. standardization
homework
grading
discipline
honours
rewards
punishment
lecturing
hand raising curriculum
multiple choice
competition lesson planning
testing

23. Rethink Discipline

27. The more you use power to try and control
people, the less real influence you’ll
have on their lives.
-Thomas Gordon

29. The hardest kids to like are the ones
who need us the most

30. What has made you feel so bad in
your life that you feel someone
has to share your pain?
-Sean Grainger

33. Rethink Assessment

34. Assessment vs Measurement

35. Measurable outcomes may be the least
significant results of learning.
-Linda McNeil

37. Grades cause an emotional reaction -
either positive or negative.
Feedback causes you to think,
which is reflective learning.
-Dylan Wiliam

38. Reducing children to a test score is
the worst form of identity theft we
could commit in schools.
-Steven Covey

39. Never grade students while they are still learning
something and, even more important, do not reward
them for their performance.
-Alfie Kohn

40. A mark or a grade is an inadequate report
of an inaccurate judgement by a biased
and variable judge of the extent to which
a student has attained an indefinite
amount of material.
-Paul Dressel

41. Students should experience success
and failure not as reward and punishment
but as information.
-Jerome Bruner

42. Every rubric I have ever seen involves the use
of a fixed measurement scale.

43. I once had a student tell me that at her school
they do formative assessment on a 4-point
scale...

44. Gather ------> Share

45. Collecting information doesn’t require tests,
and sharing that information doesn’t
require grades.
-Alfie Kohn

46. We must constantly remind ourselves that
the ultimate purpose of evaluation is to
enable students to evaluate themselves.
-Art Costa

47. Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it’s a conversation

48. There is no substitute for what a teacher
sees and hears everyday while working with
students while they are still learning.

51. Everybody is a genius. But if you judge
a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it
will live its whole life believing it is stupid.
-Albert Einstein

54. The greatest trick standardized testing ever pulled was to convince the world it
resembles anything we do in the real world.
Standardized testing is what constitutes an amazingly contrived and unrealistic form of
assessment.
Standardized testing has almost nothing to do with education and almost everything
to do with politics and profiteering.
Standardized testing tells us about learning as much as reality TV tells us about reality.
Standardized testing is as much for the kids as the Running of the Bulls is for the
Bulls.

55. A correct answer on a test does not necessarily
signal understanding, and a wrong answer does
not necessarily signal an absence of understanding.
-Alfie Kohn

56. The bane of reducing learning to a symbol
is that it inevitably overvalues whatever
can be quantified and undervalues
what cannot.

57. Not everything that counts can be counted
and not everything that can be counted
counts.
-Albert Einstein

58. There is a big difference between measuring
what we value and valuing what we measure.

59. Rethink Curriculum

60. Learning should be done in a context
and for a purpose.

61. It is simply double-talk to ask children to take
charge of their own learning and at the same time
order them to “discover” something that can have
no role in helping them understand anything they
care about or are interested in or curious about.
-Seymour Papert

62. The Common Core
Bore

63. When children have trouble learning this should be seen not
as a problem with the child, but a problem for the curriculum
to solve.
-Mary Drummond

70. The passion of learning is not something you
have to inspire kids to have; it’s something
you have to keep from extinguishing.
-Deborah Meier

74. A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to its job.

76. Why waste time proving over and over how great
you are, when you could be getting better?
-Carol Dweck

78. gaofen dineng

79. gaokao

80. zhuangyyuan

83. zero sum

84. Success should never be artificially
scarce for an arbitrary few.

85. Competition is for the strong.
Public Education is for everyone.
See the problem?

86. Peers become obstacles to your own success

87. We can teach kids about competition without
immersing them in it.

88. Two tales of technology and personalization
Bill Gates
Rupert Murdoch union busting
Arne Duncan test score analytics
Michelle Rhee marketization of our children’s minds
Technology becomes a trojan horse
carrying an army of economists and
In this story, technology uses the learner. shadow industries who have been
stalking public education for a very
long time.
In this story, the poor get a computer,
while the rich get a computer and a
teacher.
In this story, technology and
personalization isn’t about learning --
it’s about profits.

89. Two tales of technology and personalization
Sir Ken Robinson
Alfie Kohn excitement and engagement
Linda Darling-Hammond creativity, curiosity and citizenship
Diane Ravitch intrinsic motivation and a love for learning
Yong Zhao
Will Richardson In this story, even when supplying
children with their own computer
becomes cheaper than providing
In this story, the learner uses technology. them with a teacher, we have the
courage to give all kids both.
In this story, personalization isn’t
about technology -- it’s about learning.

90. Which tale is this?
QuickTimeª and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

91. Are the learners using the machine
or is the machine using the learners?

93. If we simply reconcile to the status quo and spend
all our time getting our children to accomodate
themselves to it and play the game, then nothing
will change and they will have to do the same with
their children. As someone once said, realism corrupts;
absolute realism corrupts absolutely.
-Alfie Kohn

96. The most important attitude that can be formed
is that of a desire to go on learning.

97. If we want to make things better for our
children, we need to start questioning what
we consider to be the obvious.

98. You say you want this...
so then why are you doing that?
Joe Bower
www.joebower.org
@joe_bower
joe.bower.teacher@gmail.com