Changes I would like to see in public education

I have always wondered why politicians and policy makers are the ones who make important decisions about education. Just because they have been through an educational program does not mean that they understand how to administer one. Why are educators and educational professionals not more involved in the decisions that impact students? Part of the reason is that teachers are kept so busy that they don't have time to get involved in these decisions.

If anyone asked me, here are some of the changes that I would like to see in public education.

1. Shorten summer vacation

The first change that I would like to see is a shorter summer vacation. Two and a half months is so long that many students forget things they spent nine months to learn. This can happen in one of two ways, we can treat public education more like year-round schools and have more days off during the school year or we can simply add more academic days to the school calendar. I want summer vacation to be no longer than six weeks.

This is also when the educational gap happens between the low and high socioeconomic students. Generally speaking middle and high socioeconomic parents provide educational experiences for their students during the summer (for example reading programs at the library) but low socioeconomic parents may not. If we want to be serious about closing the educational gap, then we need to shorten summer vacation.

In Japan their summer vacation is six weeks long (mid-July until the end of August), but their school year does not start in August. It starts in April. I never realized the pedagogical implications of this until recently. Imagine completing the first semester at school, leaving for summer vacation and coming back to the same teachers. Those teachers know what you learned and how you learned it and would be the best ones to remind you of what you learned during the previous semester. Teachers would also be more aware of the importance of teaching for long term memory.

2. Start school later

Research shows that adolescents aren't fully awake until later in the morning. My school starts at 7:40, which was an improvement from a few years ago when we started at 7:20. My school goes from 7:40 until 2:15. I wonder why we couldn't go from 8:40 until 3:15. One extra hour of sleep would help my students. I also think that more students would eat breakfast if they had a little more time in the morning.

The only reason that I have heard for not starting later is that it would cut into practice time for sports and other extra-curricular activities. If this is true, I wish that we would value education over sports.

3. Pay teachers more by cutting spending in other places

When I was in college I had very intelligent friends who were studying engineering who told me that they would go into education if they would be paid more. We need great teachers for our students and many potential great teachers go into other fields because of how poorly teachers are paid. I also know that about 50% of teachers leave within the first five years of teaching. The teachers who drop out of teaching are frequently the ones who have the right heart. They do everything they can to help their students but they get burned out and the appeal of getting paid more to do less makes them leave. I would not be in favor of increasing taxes to pay teachers more. I see potential in three places, but there may be more.

First is textbooks. I listened to a podcast where an administrator explained that they paid teachers to work through the summer to develop a curriculum to use the next school year. The administrator used the money that they would have spent on textbooks to pay the teachers. There are many reasons why I love this idea. One reason is that the teachers at the school better understand their demographic of student than the textbook writers. It is true that teacher preparation programs would need to include a class or more on curriculum development, but this would be a great thing for every teacher to understand. If throwing out the textbook is too extreme, I would at least like to see schools purchase only the student edition of the textbooks. I don't know any great teachers who heavily use the supplementary materials with the exception of a test generator software. Teachers don't need the teacher's edition or the workbooks of the other things that commonly come with the textbook. I don't know if I am a great teacher, but these materials just sit on my shelf and accumulate dust. Great teachers pull from other sources.

A second place that schools can cut back is their spending on educational technology. In every school that I have taught in I have seen tens of thousands of dollars (even hundreds of thousands in a 1 to 1 program) of educational products rolled out to teachers with minimal professional development. The honest truth is if you simply give an experienced teacher a new device they will continue teaching as they always have. The interactive white board will replace the white board and marker with little change. The 1 to 1 laptop will replace the computer at home. This money is being pored into education and no one is talking about the fact that educational outcomes, like standardized test scores don't change. I wouldn't be opposed to teachers getting new technology when they ask for it, but I am opposed to dumping technology into a school without the professional development to make teacher's practice better than it was before. I know that this money is usually earmarked for technology, but why?

A third place that I think that schools can cut back is on janitorial services. In Japanese schools they don't have janitors. About once a week the entire school stops and cleans the school. All students and teachers clean desks, bathrooms, pull weeds on their dirt fields, etc. I think students would treat the facilities better if they helped clean them. Also, this would teach students important skills in cleaning that they could use at home, when they are at college or have a family of their own.

4. More professional development and collaboration

If teachers are being paid more, then more can be expected from them. For example teachers could work through the month long summer break. Also as the academic school year is lengthened, teachers could frequently come into work when there are no students. Here is a list of things they can do:

1. Receive and give professional development. This could be as simple as teachers holding classes on things they feel experienced with that other teachers could attend.
2. Work in a PLN to develop a new lesson and then have that lesson taught. This idea is sometimes called Lesson Study. This practice has been used in Japan and over time has improved their level of pedagogy.
3. Prepare lesson plans and then have administrators visit classrooms more frequently.

I would also like to see more collaboration between teachers. I don't mean a forced PLN, but something that happens naturally with teachers who are willing. At the very least I wish that teachers were encouraged to visit other teacher's classrooms to watch them teach and then discuss the lesson with that teacher. 

This happens formally in some schools in Japan. They are called Research Lessons. The teacher prepares a lesson that focuses on a skill that they are developing as a teacher. Then when they teach that lesson anyone is invited to attend: administrators, other teachers, university students studying education, even parents I have heard. Then following that lesson they hold a formal discussion where they answer questions about pedagogical choices that they made. I would love to see something like this develop in American schools.

5. Standardized Tests should measure students, not teachers

This list would not complete if I didn't say something about standardized tests. I am blessed to teach for the Department of Defense and have avoided many of the stresses of standardized tests. My students take at most two standardized tests per year, the PSAT (9th - 11th graders) and the Terra Nova (only 9th graders). What I think my school system does very well is how the schools use the data. It gives the teachers and administrators information about where we are weak as a school. The data is not paired to individual teachers and no teacher would get fired if their students don't do well. This also means that we don't dedicate any test prep time out of our time to teach content.

If the standardized test should affect anyone, it should affect the students. Right now there is nothing to motive the students besides something external like a pizza party if everyone does well. In Japan the only equivalent to standardized tests that I know about are Entrance Exams. Students have to take an entrance exam to get into college, high school, and sometimes even junior high school and elementary school. Some schools are better than others and everyone knows it. Students want to get into the best schools to prepare them for a better future. I don't think a school system like this would work in America, but I do believe that Japanese students do their best on these exams because it has a direct impact on them.

Final Thoughts

I know that I don't have plans for all of these ideas, but I believe that plans could be developed with collaboration with many educational professional. I also know that many of these ideas would not be supported by most teachers. For example most teachers wouldn't be in favor of losing their summer vacation, losing their afternoons, and having other teachers visit their class. I believe that these changes would be better for students and that is why I would like to see them.

If you agree or disagree with some of these changes or if I missed a change that you want to see in education please leave a comment below.

Japanese Mathematics Vocabulary: "We don't use this word."

I had an interesting experience several weeks ago. I recently finished my Masters Degree in Education specializing in English Language Learner Education and I am now adapting my teaching practice to help my English Language Learners. 

I realized that there was a lot of mathematics vocabulary that I didn't know in Japanese and I was limited when I was explaining something to my Japanese speaking students. So I contacted my friend who is a mathematics teacher at Kanagawa Sogo High School and has very good English. I went thought my Geometry textbook and wrote down most of the vocabulary words and a few others that I felt I would want to know in order to explain Geometry to my students in Japanese. I had somewhere around 250 words.

When we sat down and began going through the words, my friend kept saying "_________ is the word for that, but we don't use this word." I would guess that somewhere around one third of the vocabulary words that I brought, they don't use in their K-12 education. Perhaps some of this is the difference in curriculum. However my friend said that they would simply describe the word. For example we teach the word "colinear" but in Japanese schools they would simply describe the points as being on the same line or draw a picture. The same thing with coplanar, skew lines, exterior angles. and the list goes on. There isn't even a word in Japanese for a linear pair, they simply call them supplementary angles or explain that because they make a straight line, their measures would add to 180 degrees.

I walked away from our meeting wondering why we have so many vocabulary words in Geometry and mathematics in general. Because I will be teaching a Mathematics Lab next year with students from Algebra as well, I asked about some Algebra words. I again found that words like "leading coefficient" and others were not used in Japanese K-12 education. We teach students vocabulary words for concepts that we study for only one or two days. I think part of the reason is the way we were taught, so there is a culture of education that focuses on vocabulary words. 

I think Japanese education is correct when they limit the vocabulary words that they teach to the most important words that will be used throughout the course, not for a few days. Limiting the number of vocabulary words would make the mathematics more accessible to all students. However, I am afraid to do this in my practice because if I do not expose them to these words, then I will be hurting my advanced students when they go to future math classes and their teacher is using a word that I thought was unnecessary. The change has to happen in the curriculum, starting with the textbooks.

Classroom Culture: Too Focused on "The Correct Answer."

American Classroom Culture

Today we had an emergency drill and a half day, so each class was only 25 minutes long (compared to the 85 that we are used to on a block schedule). So instead of doing mathematics directly, I decided to play a game: You start out with 21 beans. Each player can take 1, 2 or 3 beans. The person who goes last, wins. It is a very simple game. I wanted the class to know that there is more to this game than just beans, so I told the students that "There is a winning strategy." and "If anyone can beat me, then I will give them a piece of candy."

As students played this game and challenged me, they were looking for the "correct strategy." Only one or two students per class figured it out, mostly by watching me and analyzing my "correct strategy." Now that I reflect on this experience, I shouldn't have said "There is a winning strategy" I should have simply said "If you can beat me, then I will give you a piece of candy." By implying that there is only one correct strategy made students focus on what I was doing instead of exploring other ways to play this game.

In addition to this, my gut instinct as a teacher is to tell everyone the "correct answer" at the end of the class period. I resisted this urge and most students left class without understanding how to win the game every time.

Japanese Classroom Culture

Several months ago I watched two classes solve a simple question. The first class was an 8th grade class and the second was a 7th grade class. The question was if you cut a cube diagonally, what is the shape of the cross section:

image from: The Electronic Journal of Mathematics and Technology, Volume 2, Number 1, issn 1933-2823. 

Retrieved from: http://lib.znate.ru/docs/index-134315.html on Sept 24, 2014

In order to solve this problem, you need to use of the Pythagorean Theorem. The 8th grade students had learned about the Pythagorean Theorem, therefore many of them figured it out. However there were groups who did not figure it out and the teacher did not give the answer at the end of the class period.

The 7th grade students haven't studied about Pythagorean Theorem. Very few students in this class solved the problems, but the teacher did not give any hints or give the answer at the end of the period. But the students still worked until the end trying to solve it.

"Correct Answer" or Process

From watching these Japanese lessons, I realized that I am too "correct answer" focused. I knew going into our bean game that I wasn't going to tell the entire class the strategy. The reason is, if students know that they will get spoon fed the answer at the end, then they loose the incentive to solve it next time. It is the process that we are more concerned about anyway, right?

Japanese Research Lesson

On March 21st I was invited to visit a junior high school in Wakoshi of Saitama-ken. A "research lesson" was being taught by two different teachers. So we saw the same lesson twice. Once with eighth grade students and then with seventh grade students.

Previous Lesson
The lesson prior to this lesson the students were given this picture. It is a cube. Points P and Q are the midpoints of the sides.

The students were asked "What kind of quadrilateral is PQGF?" The students used nets to think it through. I wasn't present for this lesson so I don't know the details of this lesson. It turns out that PQGF is a rectangle.

This Lesson
Then in this class, the students were given this picture. Points P and Q are the midpoints of the sides.

The question that was asked to the students is "What kind of quadrilateral is DQFP?" The students were given time individually to think about it, and then the teacher asked students to raise their hand based on what shape they thought it was. The common answers were square and rhombus, but there were students who thought it was a rectangle, parallelogram. I was impressed that no student was concerned of the social implications of their initial guess. I think that if I asked this question to my students, many students would vote how the few "smart" students vote. I was impressed that students felt safe enough to voice their thoughts, even if they were the only ones.

After students made their initial guess, the students got in groups of 3 in their han. (Their han is a grouping of about 6 students. These groups are set at the beginning of the year and are the same throughout the entire year). Since students had different opinions, they were to discuss their reasoning and as a group decide on what shape they thought it was and why. The students were also given the following net:

As they were reasoning, they were invited to use that net. Some students drew the shape they thought the lid was and then cut it out to see if it matched. For example the groups that thought it was a square constructed a square on the net and then cut it out. Or I saw one group who thought it was a rhombus, construct a rhombus of two equilateral triangles and see if it matched. Neither of these worked. I saw another group cut out the net as shown, then place the lid face down on another piece of paper and trace the top.

At the end of the lesson the teacher didn't announce what the shape is. I was really impressed by this. If I was teaching this lesson I would want to wrap it up and say what the answer is. The truth is, if the teacher did give the answer at the end a two things would happen:

• The students would stop thinking about the problem. If the teacher doesn't announce it, there will be students to continue thinking about the problem on their own and may come up with an answer or other connections.
• The next task that the teacher presented, the students would be significantly less motivated to attempt it because they would know that if they wait until the end of the lesson, the teacher will tell them the answer anyway.

My Reflection
I loved this task! It was very simple to understand, but very complex to solve. I loved that it was open on how to answer the question.

I love research lessons! I wish that I could find more lessons like this to use in my class, with my students.

Grades in a Japanese School

On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 Dr. Doug Corey of Brigham Young University (when I was an undergraduate at BYU, I was one of Dr. Corey's research assistants) and Dr. Ninomiya of Saitama University and one graduate student came to my school and observed three lessons. After those lessons we sat down and talked about Japanese Education. I was really inspired by how grades are used in Japanese schools.

Students grades seem to be largely dependent on a few things:

• End of term exam
• Attendance and participation
• And sometimes homework assignments, other tests or quizzes

But students aren't given grades until the end of the semester, which has some very powerful implications, including motivating students, eliminates labeling, shifting the focus to concepts, and it forces students to retain their learning.

Not knowing what your current grade is highly motivating

Students want to know their current grade as an indicator of if they are doing enough, either enough to get an A or enough to pass. Once students grade has received that feedback, they will continue in their current path for the rest of the year. But what if you didn't know if you were doing enough to get an A or if you were doing enough to pass. Would you do more or less? I think most students would do more, to ensure they get the grade they want.

Eliminates student labeling

I think that grades become a label for a student. Many students have been labeled by themselves or by their parents as A students. They, and their parents, expect them to get As in every class. Other students are looking to get a B, or C, or just enough to pass. I believe that this labeling mentality would be eliminated if students didn't carry their grade through the semester, every semester.

Shifts the focus from grades to concepts

Conversations with students aren't about grades, they are about concepts. Students won't come to their teacher and ask the question "How can I get an A?" or "How do I bring up my grade?" Their grade isn't in the forefront of their mind, the content of the class is.

Students are forced to continue working and retain what they learn

Because tests and quizzes aren't given throughout the semester, students understand that a major factor of their grade is a cumulative assessment. This alone has important implications. For example

• Students with strong grades will not "rest on their laurels" and not focus for the exam. These students will work especially hard on these exams. I think we do our students a disservice when they have such a high grade, that their end of semester exam won't change their grade much.
• Students need to remember all of the major ideas and concepts until the end of the term. I have found myself trying to test students right away "before they forget" because I assume that they will. If they know that they won't be assessed for several months, then the expectation is that they will remember.

If you disagree with any of my above implications, please comment below. Or, if you have more implications that you would like to add, please comment below. I would love to have a discussion about these.

How will this affect my teaching?

There is currently a school policy that one grade must be put in the grade book every week. I would not be allowed to have an empty grade book for a quarter, give a quarter test, and then put in two or three grades. If any student failed, then I would face major problems.

On the other hand, this mentality does lend itself nicely to Standards Based Grading. I am not an expert on Standards Based Grading, but I like the idea in theory. My fear is I don't know enough high school math teachers who use Standardized Based Grading, so I am cautious to use it. It is such a mind shift for students and parents. Maybe one day in the future I will look into this.

If you have any other suggestions on how these ideas could be implemented in American schools, please let me know.

Japanese Feedback on My Teaching

On Friday, February 21, 2014 I was invited by Dr. Doug Corey of Brigham Young University (when I was an undergraduate at BYU, I was one of Dr. Corey's research assistants) and Dr. Ninomiya of Saitama University and several other graduate and undergraduate students. Please see my blog post about that "research lesson." (coming soon!)

Then on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 Dr. Corey, Dr. Ninomiya, and a graduate assistant came to my school and observed three lessons. Two that were using the Flipped Mastery model, and a Geometry lesson about Translations and Reflections. After that 85 minute lesson we sat down and talked about the lesson. Since graduating from BYU about five years ago I have never received such though provoking feedback a single lesson.

Kadai (underlying deeper mathematical idea)

The first comment that Dr. Ninomiya made to me was describing mondai (pronounced moan-die) and kadai (pronounced ka-die). The mondai are the kind of problems or questions that are asked to the students. The kadai are the underlying deeper mathematical ideas. The goal of the lesson is not for students to solve the mondai, but to think and learn about the kadai. The kadai is sometimes a phased as "Let's think about ________". The kadai isn't specifically shared with students, but teachers will talk about the kadai as the goal of the lesson with the students. This is especially true at the end of the lesson, with a summary of what students have done by solving these problems.

Dr. Ninomiya didn't understand the kadai of my lesson... because there wasn't one. American curriculum is a collection of separate topics and problem sets, it doesn't lend itself easily to underlying big mathematical ideas. On the other hand, Japanese curriculum is more focused and builds upon a single mathematical idea over several lessons. As I progress as teacher through my career, I have been thinking of pulling away from the textbook (not from the Standards). I don't know how valuable remember types of problems are in the long term. This seems like a topic for another blog post. At the very least, I can work on framing the lesson within a kadai.

Notes and Summaries

Another topic that we discussed was students effectively using their notebook. In my class, the students watch a 10 minute video, take notes, and then write a summary. Dr. Ninomiya liked the idea that I had my students write a summary. He said that many teachers want their students to do lots of problems, but it is better that students are asked to summarize what they learned. It becomes a synthases exercise.

In my class, for about an hour, we do problems from the textbook. The students write down the answer on individual white boards. I do this because:

1. Students enjoy it. At the beginning, the students loved the idea of using white boards. Even after using them everyday for months, they still enjoy it. Maybe after using paper and pencil so much, they like the change.
2. Because students are writing with a large white board marker, it is very easy for me to scan the room and see what all of their answers are. I then know what mistakes have been made and the kind of thinking my students do.

Dr. Ninomiya commented about the fact that students don't have a record of what they did in class. Once they erase their white board, then it is gone. They can never go back to that problem and look at it. Notes have several purposes:

• Record of what they, the student, did: The textbook isn't always what they did, but their notebook is a record of what they did. (By the way, because textbooks are so small and thin, students are encouraged to bring, not only their textbook to class, but all of their math textbooks from junior high school or high school to class.)
• Notes remind students of what they did last class: Teachers ask students to review their notes from last class, so they can continue the ideas from last class and build onto the previous class period's discussion.
• Notes are used to study: Studying for semester exams are very important, and a student's notes are very useful when preparing for these exams. These notes are for their future self.

I don't think I am ready to give up white boards, because of the above reasons, but I think students could add things to their notes as we are doing problems on white boards.

Whys that I might implement these ideas in the future:

• Require more from the summary: Right now my student's summaries are very simple and are only two or three sentences long. I want to look into Cornell Notes and other AVID materials and see what they say about summaries.
• Use their summaries at the beginning of the lesson: Occasionally have them switch notebooks with someone around them and have them read each other summaries. Are there any important ideas that this person left out?
• Add to their notes during the lesson: My students usually don't write down the example problems that are in the videos in their notes. They just don't see value in them. (This is one reason why I been shortening the videos by removing about half of the example.) I want to change this perspective. I want my students to work out a problem or two, in their notes, show their work and write down explanations.
• Add and clarify their summaries at the end of the lesson: At the end of the lesson, the students need the teacher to remind them what they did that day. This also gives a teacher a chance to summarize the lesson and, by example, the importance of summarizing the lesson. By the way this is called the matome (pronounced mah-toe-mei) in Japanese education. The students will then add or clarify what they have written from the summary.

Another visit to a Japanese High School

Today I returned to Kanagawa Sohgoh High School with two math teachers from my school.

We observed three math classes and a technology class. During first period we watched two different teachers teach the same lesson. They were sophomore level math classes. We were in the first class for 45 minutes and then switched classes to the other teacher for the remaining 45 minutes. The most amazing thing is that they were teaching the same lesson on the same day at the same pace. We walked into the second class almost exactly where the first teacher left off. I don't think that this is common, but it was amazing!

Curriculum

I am continually amazed that on the surface, Japanese schools and American schools don't look much different. The teaching styles are similar enough that most people wouldn't notice huge differences between Japanese teaching and American teaching. American teachers would categorize Japanese teaching as very traditional. What is drastically different is the curriculum.

Again, we watched a sophomore level math class (Math I) and they were studying Number Theory. Specifically they talked about:

• Categorizing according to divisors and reminders. For example categorizing numbers according to 3k, 3k+1, and 3k+2, where k is an integer.
• Proved theorems that involved categorizing numbers. For example proving that the square of any odd number minus 1 is a multiple of 8. Or proving that multiplying n consecutive numbers makes a number that is a multiple of n!.
• Finally they proved and then used the Euclidean Algorithm to find the Greatest Common Divisor.

I didn't learn the content that they were learning until I was half way through my undergraduate mathematics program. Not that American students couldn't learn this material, it just isn't found anywhere in our curriculum.

The third class we attended was a senior level class. There were a total of five students in this class and they were preparing for College Entrance Exams. They played math games for the first half of the class and then reviewed one very challenging math problem during the second half of the class. This problem involved triangles, circles, inscribed angles, area formulas, trigonometric identities, and vectors. Even if the problem was written in English, I don't know if I could solve this problem. This again shows how integrated their curriculum is, and I admire them for it!

I found out today that there are many different levels of textbooks. The mathematics textbooks that are used by Kanagawa Sohgoh High School are some of the hardest textbooks offered. This may explain why the content was so challenging. There is a lot of talk in American schools about Standards and about the Common Core. The Japanese school system does have content standards, but they value the textbook over the standards. This works very well because their textbooks have a very demanding curriculum.

 

Games

This third class played a number of games during the first part of the class. They were very interesting. I will share them with you.

Game 1: Police and Thief

One player starts as the Police and the other player as the Thief. The Police get to go first and they can move one space. The Thief can then move one space. Through playing the game the players learn that the triangle at the top is a very important part of this game. If the thief goes in there, then they will be caught. Otherwise they won't be caught.

Game 2: Two Groups of Stones

The game is played by drawing two groups of stones one with 25 stones and the other with 18 stones. The first player can remove as many stones of the same color as they want, the second player can remove as many stones of the same color as they want, and it returns to the first player. The goal is to be the last person to take a stone.

I won't tell you the strategies of how to win this game. The trick is to play it several times and begin to notice patterns. What I will tell you is that one of the players (player 1 or player 2) has the advantage. But I won't tell you which. If you have any guesses, please leave them in the comments below.

Game 3: Three Groups of Stones

A third game is a similar game about removing stones. The rules are the same, two players alternate turns by removing stones of the same color and the player to remove the last stone wins. But now there are three groups. The first version has 3 stones, 2 stones, and 1 stone. Like this:

Another is with 7 stones, 5 stones, and 3 stones. Just like the other stone game one of the players has an advantage and will win, unless they make a mistake. I won't tell you which player has the advantage. But if you think you know, please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Games

I was so glad that I watched this class play games. These games are very different than the games I have ever played in American schools. These games still required critical thinking and problem solving, and it took some mathematics understanding to understand the strategy.

Student Presentations

I wanted to mention some of the things that I saw in the technology class. The students were giving presentations from PowerPoint that they prepared on technology in the future. For example they talked about designing Smart Phones so they can be used by blind individuals, 4D televisions (including things like smells), food that can be stored in data and then reproduced at will, and a way of finding lost items using a Smart Phone. The students had three minutes to present their ideas and they were graded by their peers by answering 13 yes or no questions, and overall score, and comments. These kinds of things are not uncommon in America, but I was very impressed by these presentations.

Teachers

A learned a few more things about Japanese teachers. First of all many high school teachers don't have degrees in education, they have degrees in their content area and then get a teaching certificate later. They also teach about two out of the four 90 minute periods each day (not three like is common in America). So the teachers have much more time to plan and collaborate.

Finally their school is divided up into committees. We have this at my school as well, and I am guessing this is not uncommon. But in case you are interested here are the committees at this school:

• Research (look at how they can prepare their students for entrance exams, decides how many home room classes to have, and fills out reports).
• School Management
• Career Advisory
• School Activities
• School Behavior (discipline)
• International (this school has several sister schools around the world and their students travel all over the world)

I just thought it would be interesting to compare the kinds of committees at this school and your school. Also there are between 5 and 10 teachers on each committee. Committees between 8 and 10 are the most common.

Differences between Japanese Education and American Education

I am continually fascinated by Japanese education. It is just interesting to see another education system, especially a successful one, and look at the similarities and differences. The more I talk about my experiences and things that I am learning, people want to know "Why is Japanese Education better?" and my answer is "I don't know." Anyone who is involved in education understand that it is very complex and connected to the students that we serve, so it would be impossible to research and find the that make Japanese education work that American education is missing. That is the wrong question to ask. But I do want to point out some differences:

1. Children are left behind

The responsibility of learning information is set squarely on the student's shoulders. Teachers come to class, they lecture, the students take notes, and speak only when invited to by their teacher. In fact, Japanese high school is more like American college than American high School. The students know that if they don't study well, they won't pass their next entrance exam and therefore won't be on a track to get into a good university. But it is their choice to learn or not. I have seen multiple students with their head on their desks sleeping during class. The teacher doesn't make any comments about it, as long as they aren't disturbing the class, it is fine.

2. No Differentiating

Differentiated Instruction is a hot topic and a discussion among American teachers, but not Japanese teachers. American teachers strive to adapt their teaching to meet their kinesthetic, auditory, and visual learners as well as meeting Garners Intelligences. Japanese teachers stand at the front of the room and lecture and draw diagrams on the chalk board. From what I can tell, they may not even know their student's names, let alone their learning styles. When they call on a student they are usually looking at a class list.

3. Not Standards, Curriculum

I have limited working knowledge of Japanese curriculum, but it is an area of interest. There are national education standards approved by the Ministry of Education. But in talking with Japanese teachers, I have never heard them say anything about standards, but they do talk a lot about textbooks. There are only a few textbooks that are used in Japan and they are all approved by the Ministry of Education and therefore you don't deviate from them. The examples that the teacher gives are the examples that are printed in the textbooks. Very little is done that isn't directly from the textbook.

4. Teacher Observations

American teachers are not used to being observed. In my entire teaching career of about four years, I have only been observed about three or four times. I have only had two individuals come into my class and watch me teach. This is very different from Japanese teachers. During a few months of the year, there are open lessons where anyone can come and observe a teacher. So each teacher may have one open lesson a year where the principal, other teachers, or parents are welcome to come and watch them teach. I have also heard that the first full year of teaching is done with an experienced teacher assisting them. Usually in the back, but providing feedback.

Conclusion

I don't know what will fix the problems that we are seeing in American Education. It is my opinion that the American Education system is too complex for simple solutions. Slow and gradual progress is the only way that we will improve our schools. I have highlighted some areas that are very different between Japanese Education and American Education. I find them interesting, I hope you do too.

Japanese perspective of American Teaching

On December 18, 2013 I invited two Japanese teachers to my school. One was a math teacher and one was a "society" teacher. The math teacher and I watched three math classes and talked about American teaching styles. I was very intrigued by what he found interesting. These things highlight differences between Japanese and American education.

1. Similarities

The thing that this math teacher found the most interesting was how similar American school and Japanese schools were. He had the perception that in every American classroom, everyday, students sat in groups and had discussions. I believe that there are classes like this in America, but it isn't the common method of instruction. He was surprised that he saw many teachers in the front of the class delivering content and the students were listening to (or in Japanese receiving the) lesson just like as is common in Japanese classes.

2. Technology

The math teacher that I talked to also taught a few technology classes, so he was very interested in the technology that was used. My school, like many American schools, has worked very hard at increasing the amount of technology in the classroom. My school is a one-to-one laptop school and every classroom has a SmartBoard. In every class that we visited there were students using the laptops appropriately and 2 of the 3 classes had teachers using a SmartBoard for instruction. I think it would surprise most American educators to learn that the most high tech device in a Japanese classroom is a chalk eraser vacuum.

This teacher was surprised that all of the students that he observed were using their laptop appropriately. He said that in Japanese schools they would be afraid that students would be looking at other things during class. I didn't want to tell him that this is a constant struggle. He attributed this to the high expectations of American students. We had this discussion in a Flipped Mastery classroom, where students were expected to watch videos, complete notes and practice problems, and then take quizzes. I feel that these expectations are high for typical America classes, but especially when compared to Japanese classes. In many Japanese classes there is no homework, no quizzes, and a few tests. In the American paradigm this would be seen as having low expectations. But to balance this, Japanese schools have very rigorous entrance exams. Students study hard to pass entrance exams so they can go to a good junior high school, then to a good high school, then to a good college, and then have a good career. I think there are pros and cons to both systems.

Previously we had talked about the fact that I use video to deliver my instruction. During our lunch break, we went to my classroom and I showed him how I use my SmartBoard and a laptop to record lessons of me teaching and then upload it to the internet. This seemed hard for him to grasp. I am sure it is a stretch for a teacher who usually uses colored chalk, erasers, and a cardboard roll as a pointer.

3. American Classrooms - Desk Configurations

In Japanese schools the students stay in the same room and the teachers move. Teacher's prepare their lessons in shared work spaces, so I was interested in what he would say about American classrooms. The thing that surprised him the most about American classrooms is desk configurations. Since Japanese teachers share teaching space, the desks in every class are the same. Columns of individual desks. He was very surprised that in all three of the classes that he visited the students were in clusters of four. I explained that this was to encourage students to help each other and work together. He said that he was interested in trying different desk configurations.

He also commented about the walls of classrooms. Again, since teachers share teaching space, the walls in Japanese classrooms are bare. He liked that there were posters and student work posted on all the walls. I was surprised that he didn't say more about the differences between American classrooms and Japanese classrooms.

4. American Math Textbooks

The last topic that we discussed in detail was American Textbooks. Japanese mathematics instruction is very textbook driven. The textbook is approved by the Ministry of Education and you don't deviate from the textbook. At first this teacher was trying to follow along with the teacher in the textbook, but I had to explain that the examples that the teacher was using are different from the printed textbook. This is never done in Japan.

He was surprised that he didn't see American students reading and studying the textbook and asked if students did this at home. I had to explain that most American students don't read the textbook unless they can't do a homework problem. He commented on the colored pictures and the detailed step by step examples with explanations. He kept saying that it was a waste that American students don't use their textbooks more because they are so good.

Another thing he commented about American math textbooks is that there are problems that are based outside of mathematics. I never realized that every problem in a math textbook in Japan was pure math, there were never word problems about two students, or problems related to science. He thought that this was very good.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed talking with this teacher and American education and noticing what he found to be interesting. Many things that were surprising to him were things that are emphasized in American teacher training and professional development like technology use and student desk configurations. Even though we complain about professional development, it does shape our education system for the better.

Test Them Before They Forget

I am still reflecting on my visit to Kanagawa Sohgoh High School last week. As I have reflected I am impressed at how the Japanese education system encourages students to retain and remember what they learn. I feel that in many ways the American education system indirectly encourages students to forget. We have a “Test them before they forget” mentality. First, we have frequent quizzes because we are afraid that they will forget. Second, we review the content before tests because we have assumed that they have already forgotten the material and we need to remind them before they take their test. Third, the curriculum that students are being exposed to is disjointed enough that they really can forget what they learned after the test. Finally, our summer is two and a half months long and students will forget much of what they learn if they don't use it for this long of a time period.

How the Japanese Education System Encourages Retention 

1. Integrated Curriculum: I mentioned in my last post about how integrated the Japanese curriculum is. If you are constantly pulling in previous ideas, you will not only remind students of these ideas, but through more connections the ideas will be deeper and be seen as more important to remember.

2. The teacher that I talked to only gives one test per semester (they have three semesters per year). Therefore the students are expected to remember and retain what they learn for many months instead of a few days.

3. The summer break is a few weeks long, not a few months. I don't know what the exact length is. But when I mentioned to a fellow Japanese Science teacher that we have two and a half months off in the summer his jaw dropped.

My Reflection

From the first point, I am going to find ways to integrate my curriculum. Not only within units, but also within the curriculum and past year's curriculum. This probably means that I will need to pull away from my textbook because it doesn't provide enough of this kind of integration.

This second point is really interesting. I don’t know if I am ready to adopt this assessment practice. I am embarrassed to say that I spend almost as much time reviewing and assessing as I do teaching. If I tested less often then I would be requiring students to retain and remember the material longer and I would also have more time in class to not feel rushed through the curriculum and time to make connections.

How Math is Taught in Japan

Today I did something that I have wanted to do for over six years; I visited a Japanese high school. When I was doing my undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University I helped a Mathematics Education professor with his research. The data set was collected on the island of Shikoku in Japan. From this data set and my research I learned a lot about how mathematics is taught in Japan, but I wanted to be there. About four years ago I was offered a job to teach at Nile C. Kinnick High School, located on the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. As soon as I knew that I was returning to Japan, I made it a goal to go to a Japanese high school to see how mathematics is taught. Today that came true. I went with a fellow teacher and 16 of our students to Kanagawa Sohgoh High School in Yokohama.

Mathematics Curriculum
There are many similarities to how math is taught in America and Japan. There were still teachers who were giving the students problems to do and the teacher worked out almost all of the problems on the board while they are explaining how to do it. But the kind of problems presented are very different.

1. Their math classes are Math 1 (10th Grade Math), Math 2, (11th Grade Math), and Math 3 (12th Grade Math). They don't have Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calculus, or Calculus topics. Their curriculum is very integrated. For example in the Math 1 textbook there are four units. The first on adding, subtracting, and multiplying polynomials. The next unit is one equations of lines, translations and reflections of functions. The third unit is on trigonometry, like the law of lines and cosines. And the last unit is on histograms, box plots, and scatter plots. One unit doesn't build on the previous one like American textbook do. This requires students to remember what they learn, because they come back to the ideas repeatedly.

2. Each until is broken down into a number of sections. Each section starts off with a very basic concept, and simple problems. The problems then build on each other and connect to other ideas. For example I attended a Math 1 class on using the Law of Sines and Cosines. The first problem covered in the lesson was using the Law of Cosines to find the cosine of an angle, then converted to the sine of that angle, then plugged that into an area formula. The next problem was finding the area of a quadrilateral inscribed in a circle. The quadrilateral was cut into two triangles and the same procedure was done again, but was also connected to inscribed angles and solving quadratic equations. The third problem that was presented was finding the radius of a circle inscribed in circle. The students were introduced to an area formula that used this radius, and they connected this idea with the idea of using the law of cosines to find the area of the triangle. It was clear to me that the problems built on each other by connecting to a variety of new and review concepts.

In my undergraduate research I heard that American curriculum was wide and shallow, where the Japanese curriculum was narrow and deep. I don't know about narrow, but it definitely was deeper than American curriculum.

3. As you probably noticed the level of complexity in the problems stated previously are much more intense than the problems that American students are exposed to. From the three math classes that I attended today (taught by three different teachers) there were only between 5 and 7 problems that were discussed during the 90 minute class period. The Japanese philosophy is to do fewer problems, but do harder problems that connect to more ideas.

4. The last thing I noticed about the mathematics curriculum is it is very textbook driven. Even more than American schools. The problems that the teachers present come directly from the student's textbooks. The teacher uses the exact same problem as the example problem in the textbook. He then asks the students do a "challenge problem" that is printed in the textbook. This "challenge problem" is a very similar problem (changed numbers), but there are only about two of these problems. The teacher teaches through the textbook. Where the teacher ends one class is where they will start next class. There is no homework for students, but they are expected to read their textbook and to study for tests.


Japanese Teachers
Japanese teachers don't have their own classroom. There is are classroom sized rooms that has desks for 5 or 6 teachers. I think all the teachers in one room are in the same department. The teacher then travels to a room to teach, similar to university professors who travel and teach in different rooms at different periods. Japanese teachers also teach about two of the four 90 minute periods a day.

I asked one of the teachers about "Lesson Study." It is an idea that I learned about in my research. What this teacher knew about lesson study was very different from what I learned about in my research. Once a year (I think, I didn't get a clear answer on how frequently this happens), all of the math teachers attend a lesson taught by one of the math teachers. Then after that lesson they discuss the lesson and the things the teacher did well and the things that this teacher can improve on. I loved this idea! I personally think I would get better feedback on my teaching from other math teachers than from the principal. The other math teachers have studied how mathematics is taught, the principal usually has teacher experience, but probably in a different discipline.

Very connected to the idea of "Lesson Study" were "Open Lessons." During the month of November there was a schedule and every period there was one class that any other teacher or student was welcome to go and observe if they want. I also thought this was an interesting idea.

I also asked one of the teachers about grades. He said that he is busy because he is teaching 5 classes, so students grades are determined by the midterm exam, their summer homework, and their attitude in class; that was it. I got the sense that the grade was largely determined by their grade on their midterm exam. He said that there were teachers who assigned and graded homework and gave tests and quizzes, but he didn't have time for all of this.

The last thing that I will point out about the teachers, is every math class has a chalkboard. The teacher brings with them different colored chalk and they color code their teaching. Variables have different colors and those colors are consistent through the lessons. Their writing on the chalkboard is very neat. My students were amazed at how perfect their chalk circles were and how straight their lines were. In my research I learned that part of their lesson plans were a plan for the chalk board. It was fun to see a lessons where I could tell that this was planned out.


Japanese Students
There are a few things about Japanese students that I noticed. First of all every class was set up the exact same. There were about 5 lines of chairs with 5 or 6 chairs in each row. The students were silent through almost the entire class. They never raised their hand, but were called on by the teacher. This was either done in order from the attendance roster, or at random by the teacher. About once a lesson a student was invited to write their answer up on the board. They showed all of their work and then sat down. The teacher then used their work to explain how to do the problem.

One of the teachers also explained that some students only take 2 or 3 classes. Especially seniors may only have classes a few days a week. This freedom would not happen in America.

I also found that there wasn't much that was done by way of discipline. I noticed on student who had her head down on her desk for almost the entire period. Nothing was said to this student.