We can learn anything ... yes, anything

It turns out that we can learn anything. Really?!? But how?

First of all, we typically hold ourselves back. We think, "I'm not a good dancer," or "I can't sing," or "I can't fix anything."

Nah, while raw talent might help us get started, we can learn that stuff. We just need to commit, do it and practice. It does help to have a guide, and sometimes those guides are called teachers.

Others hold us back, too. Many conversations are full of gossip, judging, negativity, complaining, excuses, lying and dogmatism. For anyone who brings that junk out through their words, I believe they have unresolved issues and need to improve self-knowledge and how they affect others.

I bring all of this up because I am recapping the education section of 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend. We are 50 books into this project, and this past stretch was all my pleasure because education certainly is a passion of mine.

I have realized that most educators are aliterate. They could read, but they do not. I think that lack of reading holds them back because they don't analyze or go deeper into the effectiveness of homework, grading, racial dynamics and a lot of the challenges they face in the classroom.

So here are 10 education books I recommend. My reading and exploration of education will continue throughout my lifetime, and here are 10 that speak to me.

1. Letters to a Young Teacher (2007) by Jonathan Kozol
2. The Homework Myth (2007) by Alfie Kohn
3. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (2017, 20th anniversary edition) by Beverly Daniel Tatum
4. Punished (2011) by Victor Rios
5. Excellent Sheep (2014) by William Deresiewicz
6. In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015) by Fareed Zakaria
7. You Are Not Where You Go (2015) by Frank Bruni
8. Readicide (2009) by Kelly Gallagher
9. Rethinking School (2018) by Susan Wise Bauer
10. On Your Mark (2014) by Thomas Guskey

Many of these books can spark further exploration of the topics, and they did just that to me, especially with Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum. As a white male, I am no authority on race for sure, but Tatum's book sent my down a rabbit hole of sorts of race-related books. Thank you!

The next category of this project starts tomorrow, and that category is "social conscience." Stay tuned.

Grading: Taboo in Education

I have been fortunate enough to try many experiments in my classroom, and some succeed while others don't. However, I have never done anything wildly innovative with grades.

My biggest innovations are to start the grading scale at 50 percent. So the scale goes from 50-100. There are, hence, no zeroes. I also eliminated the D, so students can only receive A, B, C or F.

But I see this fact, day in and day: Grades hold students back.

The grading system doesn't encourage education and learning. Rather, it encourages doing the minimum to get the grade. It's a messed up system that perpetuates the minimum required and hinders growth. I'm a part of this.

I believe educators should question and improve their grading practices, and I highly recommend On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting (2014) by Thomas Guskey as a starting point. The great thing about this book is that it opens the door to mere questioning and does not make official judgement calls. It's open to interpretation, and I think that was a smart tactic because most people, especially educators, don't like to admit when they've made mistakes.

What is the point of grades in the first place? To me, they are a communication device to the student and parent. However, I also question if I would give grades if I didn't have to.

Ideally, grades should reflect learning. In reality, grades typically reward "doing the work" or "remembering the answers." Plus, in many classrooms, learning isn't happening either by design or by accident. It's by design when the teacher sets up a system that rewards going-through-the-motions type of assignments, and it's accidental when the teacher doesn't have a read on a student's starting point and progress.

Of course, let's have some sympathy for our teachers. The fact that they unwittingly participate in ineffective grading practices isn't their fault. Discussion of grading practices often is taboo in schools, and most educators don't realize how arbitrary their grading rules are.

I have probably given less than five F's in my 12 years as a high-school teacher. I pride myself with this because for students below grade level, and believe me there are numerous, I figure out where to meet them where they are and have them move forward. If a kid comes in as a freshman with a fourth-grade reading but leaves with a seventh-grade reading level, that's success. Right?

When I talk to teachers who give a lot of F's, the normal answer why is the student "just didn't do anything." OK, but where are they in regards to the standards? Are they failing the tests? What is the home situation like? Have you been teaching in different ways to help the student? This "just didn't do anything" is a red flag of some sort. What is this particular red flag?

I understand that we shouldn't just pass through students who are scholastically incompetent, but I personally take F's to heart and find ways for my students to learn and earn a passing grade.

A's also are problematic. I have five components to grading. By doing that, students can do poorly on tests and still get a good grade. The problem with my system is that some students figure out how to finesse it and not actually advance as much as they should.

Plus, A's are inflated. When my daughter recently graduated from middle school, she had all A's for three years, and I wondered if there would be a valedictorian or co-valedictorians or something like that. Nah, that didn't happen. Instead, the principal asked any student who received all A's for three years to stand up. About one third of the students stood up.

Perhaps it's time to call grades what they really are — meaningless at best and stifling at worst.

We must constantly rethink our schools

Maybe I'm lucky because both of my daughters are "into school." They talk about things they do there, get all A's and hardly complain about their meaningless homework. But what if that weren't the case? Then what?

For so many kids, school as we have it does not work. They may have special needs that aren't met. They may not want to comply with the constant rules. They may be too advanced to get any real education from school. Then what?

In Susan Wise Bauer's book Rethinking School (2018), she questions many practices in our schools, provides reasonable arguments and, ultimately, promotes homeschooling as a viable option.

I agree with so much of her arguments, and I believe homeschooling is an option in certain cases. But for my kids, I am not a proponent of homeschooling because I do not have a social circle in which they would be able to socialize and develop social skills that I see necessary in life. I also believe going to school promotes diversity, and that's hugely important.

If we believe that school is solely for book education, which I believe it isn't, then homeschooling is an option. Really? Well, someone once asked me why I'm against homeschooling, and my answer was this: "You got to meet people from different walks of life. You got to understand them. You also got to learn to deal with a**holes. You will encounter a lot of those in life."

I do not mean to diminish Bauer's book or even her reasoning for homeschooling. But I just felt as a public-school proponent, I was inclined to explain my homeschooling stance.

Public schools often have a one-size-fits-all approach, and why is this? I know that the model, curriculum and activities are outdated, and I believe students and parents need to understand this. Bauer does an excellent job at pointing this out.

Students and parents have the right to opt out of high-stakes testing, and they need to understand this. Why do we give our students so many meaningless high-stakes tests? In my world, at least the California Department of Education has released a dashboard of eight components of successful schools and made testing count 1/8th of what makes a good school.

But even with the state explaining how testing should be valued more properly, schools and educators are just so used to the testing, they still overvalue this mania of testing. So the big takeaway from Bauer's book is to question, question, question and don't accept the unacceptable. Schools and parents are a partnership; it's not one versus the other.

Yes, it's true that schools are mightily outdated in many regards, but good educators know that if they ran across a parent like Susan Wise Bauer, then it should foster an excellent relationship of someone who is brilliant at understanding education and caring about their kid's education.

We admit: Admissions are batty

In the 21st century, the college admissions process officially has gone bonkers. Kids are stressed out. Adults tie importance, and even identity, into colleges, and then the price tag on many colleges is astronomical.

In a college-admissions world gone batty, it is hard to stay sane, and Frank Bruni's book Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be (2015) makes sense of the culture.

The irony with me is that I am an educator and highly value higher education. However, I'm not so sure higher education is even education nowadays. So many of the majors are career paths or vocational training of some sort that I just don't see a lot of the hullabaloo at colleges as even educational.

In Bruni's book, he addresses fundamental questions and the admissions mania. One point that stood out to me was this: "All in all, the harder a school is to get into, the more worthy it is deemed. Why?"

So many myths bounce around about colleges that I just have to laugh. Are you really getting a better education at an Ivy League school than a state university? Or do you just envy the brand name of the Ivy?

Bruni interviews various successful people who did not go to majorly elite colleges. One interview that sticks in my mind was with famous author John Green, who went to Kenyon College, which I once visited when my friend Alex went there. In many ways, it was like the opposite of my Ohio State because it was so tiny and white. It only has 1,700 students, and today, it is 78 percent white, based on its website.

Green's story is that he tried to get into a writing class and was rejected, but the professor took the time to talk with him, explain the reasoning. Green was trying to sound smart and academic and did not sound authentic. That professor put him on the path to the writing superstar he is today.

So a point about Kenyon is that it was so small that the professor was more prone to give Green individual attention. What I see that most elite students are looking for is status, status, status.

But the thing about status is that it's just tacky. Right? If someone name drops he went to Yale, that's lame. Right? If someone drives a Mercedes and does the same thing, that's lame. Right?

I've learned that the folks obsessed with the status of college brand names and car brand names are stuck in small thinking — especially when we're talking undergraduate degrees. Bruni's book is chockfull of excellent stories and tidbits, and another memorable scene had a mom who said this:

"It's like we're mass-producing robots posing as kids. ... They have no space to be kids. They're not feeling that the work they're doing is their own. They're succeeding, but it's not coming from within. And they're having a lot of psychological problems because of it: obsessive-compulsive disorder, freaking out because they're not perfect."

That quote came from a mom in New York City whose son was denied admittance into a prestigious preschool.