"Eich" Turns the Page on Her Mounds View Schools Music Career

"Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible-- a refuge, a magical world where anyone can go, where all kinds of people can come together, and anything can happen. We are limited only by our imaginations." 

Watch & listen to  an Eicher-led kindergarten graduation.

Buffie Eicher's education career for Mounds View Public Schools is testament to the idea that mottos matter.  Over 35 years since joining the Bel Air Elementary staff in 1976, Eicher has expanded the musical horizons of students, colleagues and community members in her employed and in her spare time-- be it by helping elementary schoolers advance through a series of 17 belts on the Recorder Karate or by recruiting tenors to round out a local community choir.

This 2010-11 school year will be her last working for Independent School District 621 as she transitions to retirement.

Students & staff first describe her teaching style as one involving crystal clear expectations, and second, as "fun and awesome." Eicher also masterfully uses music instruction as a vehicle for teaching concert etiquette, everyday communication skills, and you might say--- helping students not develop the Midwestern malady of being "all work and no facial or physical expression" through music instruction.

In a society that features more than its share of professionally-produced & digitally-delivered sound, people can either forget, or be intimidated by, the notion of creating their own song.  Buffie Eicher's classroom, however, is one where everyone participates.

"Whether I am walking into her room, or just walking by her class, I am immediately pulled into any activity she has planned," said Todd Durand, Island Lake Elementary principal regarding the approach of the school's music specialist.  "I have hopped, skipped, sung, and danced with students from Kindergarten to fifth grade due to Buffie's insistence that music is a participatory process."

The musical activities of Eicher's classroom include singing, dancing, playing assorted percussion instruments, studying the art forms of The Nutcracker, and the student-motivating Recorder Karate competition.  Influencing that instruction is a set of musical preferences ranging from the serious & classical to the playful a capella of Tonic Sol-fato ...  artists as comfortably old as Elvis and as contemporary as the multi-genred Grant Dawson. 
  
Veterans Day Concert Tradition

 Eicher will support future Veterans Day Concerts in a new role.

Eicher's shining example of viewing music as a participatory process is the annual Veterans Day concert she organizes and leads for 4th and 5th graders.  In a tradition that grew from her service as the Mounds View High School choir director, this signature effort accomplishes various things: recognizing the unheralded work of veterans from the six military branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, and Merchant Marines), giving students performance opportunities in singing and speaking, and supplying edifying history lessons to students, families, and friends.

The 2010 edition of the program, for instance, provided a set of speakers who took time to explain the story behind Yankee Doodle, which originated as a British song written to ridicule Americans for the quality of their dress when compared to the finery of the Brits.

During this section, concert attendees learned the answer to the song's entirely explainable question: "Why did Yankee Doodle stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni?"  Turns out, macaroni is not "what you thought it was." Rather than being the culinary variety, macaroni was a dandy style of British fashion the song lyrics pooh-poohed the Colonials for not having. The frontier folk did get the last laugh when they co-opted the song to celebrate their country-bumpkin look after finally turning back the British forces.

Above all else, the Eicher-led Veterans Day productions have been about 'seeing the sacrifice' of the 24 million veterans of the United States Armed Forces, 1.7 million of whom are living. To that end, the effort involves a research project for Island Lake students who survey their familial connections for veterans, 500 of which were identified in the last concert.

"She believes strongly in making sure students understand the responsibilities they have as citizens of The United States of America," said fellow teacher Mike Lundberg, who is on the Island Lake specialist team with Eicher.

"Her Veterans Day concert was phenomenal ... and though we were touched by how much it affected our Veterans, I was always struck more by how much our students learned about our country, history, patriotism, service, and gratitude," added Anne Nelson, whose information technology instruction crosscut with Eicher's work.

Eich's Teaching Stops

After graduating from Mounds View High School in 1972, Buffie Eicher, known by "Eich" to some colleagues, obtained a music education license from the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities in 1976.  From there, her career journey wound closely around the place she had always called home.  In addition to the Masters Degree she also earned from the University of Minnesota in 1984, stops along the way included: 

Bel Air Elementary 1976-1981
Chippewa Middle School 1981 -1982
Island Lake Elementary 1982 -1983
Pike Lake Elementary 1984-1992 
Chippewa/Highview Middle School 1993
Highview Middle School 1993-1996
Mounds View High School 1996 - 2001
Valentine Hills Elementary 2001- 2002
Mounds View High School  2002 -2004
Island Lake Elementary  2005 - 2011

Of these, her final stint was perhaps most meaningful.  Buffie herself attended Island Lake in grades K-3, and her two kids were students there as well.  Just in case you don't believe it can get any more heartwarming than that, consider this reflection from Island Lake teacher, Jacki Harren, a current colleague of Eicher's who sends her fourth graders to Buffie's music class every week:

"I was one of her fortunate students back in 1976 at Bel Air Elementary.  During her first year there, she encouraged me to join her choir.  This encouragement sparked a love for music and I have enjoyed singing in choirs ever since!  Later on, I began MY teaching career with her at Pike Lake and now it has come full-circle." 

Careers of 35 years can sure contain amazing private stories ... Here are Eicher's public sentiments on her time at Island Lake:

"Some of my favorite memories of Island Lake include our all school holiday sing alongs, the World’s Largest Concerts-- which included having our 2005 school year fifth graders included in the national broadcast-- the excitement of Recorder Karate, and of course, the Veterans Day programs."

What's Next?

While out birding, Eicher framed an Osprey during a recent trip to Duluth.

Retirement should bring no crying for Buffie Eicher :-)  She plans to continue her involvement in musical endeavors par excellence, as she is already at work planning a joint production of Island Lake musicians and the adult Two Rivers Chorale for the 11/11/11 Veterans Day production this November.

The next phase should supply plenty of time to don the maroon & gold (her second favorite set of school colors to Mounds View's) as she is a staunch Minnesota Gophers fan, particularly women's volleyball and tennis.  New to her set of favored institutions are DePaul University and the University of St. Thomas, where her daughter & son attend.

Her post-employment years may also provide more opportunity to practice her great sense of humor, and to move from the music hall into nature's sanctuary, where she enjoys spending time as a "birder."  Last fall, she adopted a peregrine falcon at Hawk Ridge in Duluth, which enabled her to tag, release and receive feedback about the bird afterwards, shared one of her new retirees-in-arms, Brenda Washburn, who worked alongside Eicher as a paraprofessional at Island Lake School.

And when not birding or playing her own game of tennis, Buffie just might be able to carve out some time for snowbirding at a Texas golf course community with her husband Gordie.

A Hearty Congratulations goes to Mrs. Eicher for an outstanding Mounds View music career!

"I hope that you will continue to keep music in your lives, because music really IS good for you! Play an instrument, go to concerts, sing along in the car, dance and revel in the beauty that music brings to our lives." --Buffie Eicher's parting note to Island Lake families.

The Twists & Turns of In-School Technology

7/5/11 Turn: All of Korea's Textbooks to Go Online by 2015

6/9/11 Twist: Steve Nelson, Head of the Calhoun School in Manhattan, shares his digital reservations in this Huffington Post piece.

5/26/11 Twist: Check out Chronicle of Higher Education's 'Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online'? for more fodder on the subject of appropriately matching courses to online learning offerings.

Judging from a recent Superintendent's Report provided by Mounds View Schools' Dan Hoverman about a twin city-wide Superintendent Technology Leadership Academy, Minnesota educators & students are living in "interesting times" with respect to the advance of technology in the state's public school classrooms.

According to the Association of Metropolitan School Districts leader consortia efforts Hoverman referred to, the day may soon arrive when online textbooks are common, hybrid classes are prolific, and handheld devices like iPADs and smartphones are encouraged-- not disallowed-- in schools' student codes of conduct.

In case you've been out of school for awhile, it's only taken about one generation for most classrooms to go from being technology-free to the juncture where superintendents are considering whether technology should be omnipresent in our schools. The first round of instructional monitors mounted in the classroom corner is long gone (deemed a failure by most) and have been wonderfully supplanted by a family of projection & interactive devices known as LCD monitors, DOC cameras, and Smartboards.  In addition, the "computer lab" has evolved from being hard-wired and location specific--  to a mobile set of laptops--  to one with WiFi zones that may soon allow student, staff and guests alike specially-authorized access into a school district's various data systems.

Interesting times, indeed, and based on educational leadership sessions like those of the Association of Metropolitan School District's Education in an Online World, the proverbial train is being thoughtfully guided from the instructional station of online learning.  But given the financial realities schools face and a system everyone at least complicitly agrees is "stuck" in an agrarian model with a school year shorter than those of most countries, might the times be a bit too interesting for our school communities' own good?

A "Wait a Minute" from Mr. Postman

Neil Postman hit the nail on the head in his 1995 book The End of Education. In a treatise all the more prophetic since most people had barely constructed their first email message at the time of its publication, he wrote:

The role that new technology should play in schools or anywhere else is something that needs to be discussed ...  In particular, the computer and its associated technologies are awesome additions to culture ...  But like all important technologies of the past, they are Faustian bargains, giving and taking away, sometimes in equal measure, sometimes more in one way than the other.  It is strange-- indeed shocking-- that we can still talk of new technologies as if they were unmixed blessings, gifts, as it were, from the gods.  Don't we all know what the combustion engine has done for us and against us?  What television is doing for us and against us?

At the very least, we need to discuss what we will lose if computer technology becomes a sole source of motivation, authority and psychological sustenance.  Will we become more impressed by calculation than human judgment?  Will speed of response become a defining quality of intelligence?  If the idea of school will be dramatically altered, what kinds of learning will be neglected?

These are serious matters ... and they need to be discussed by those whose vision of children's needs, and the needs of society, go beyond thinking of a school mainly as a place for the convenient distribution of information.  Schools are not now, and never have been chiefly about getting information to children. 

(End of Postman excerpt)

There are those who would rightfully "counter" Postman by asserting schools are not chiefly about creating more information access for students, although that is unquestionably a major product of the technological change schools may soon be endorsing.  In the estimation of many, schools are primarily about providing the constructs & inspiration for students to take charge of their own learning.  Programmes like International Baccalaureate are founded on this very precept, although principals, teachers, counselors, librarians and parents already know the huge challenge of transferring the responsibility for academic progress to students.

To the credit of educational developers behind Six Technologies Expected to Change Education, some of its near, mid, and long-term technologies are designed with the self-guided learner in mind-- particularly the learning analytics and personal learning environment tools.  But since educators and parents alike have been challenged enough in creating passion for learning with old-fashioned person to person communication, this question is worth asking: will all the time & expense that goes into the sophisticated learning analytics systems be well spent?

Wendy Kopp's Tale of Two Philadelphia Schools

As the founder of the Teach for America program that began in 1983, Wendy Kopp knows a thing or two about hoeing hard rows in the field of education.  In a book titled A Chance to Make History, Kopp chronicles the journey that the "Teach for America" corps has led in turning around urban schools across America.  Among her most telling anecdotes are two Philadelphia schools that are at opposite ends of the technology spectrum-- and the student performance index-- with the successful school being the one that is most technologically primitive.

Philadelphia's School of the Future-- Upon opening in 2006, a team of founding experts trumpeted this school as a revolution in education, with an approach that included laptops for every student, innovative scheduling, "21st century" course design, and online courses and resources.  But as Kopp asserts, at least one important thing was forgotten-- the failure to prioritize human capital that accounts for high-performing schools in low-income communities.  For when the school's 2009 Pennsylvania assessment results came out, the school's students registered dramatically lower scores in math, reading and science.  Kopp believes this state-of-the-art facility failed to outperform the schools it was meant to replace due to the absence of a transformative mission & the leadership, culture, effective management, and student supports to act on that mission.  To this state of deficiency, technology made matters worse by diverting the school's leaders from the core work that is responsible for creating strong schools.  And rather than moving the school environment in a direction more focused on learning, technology ended up increasing the chaos in an already under performing institution.

In a similar high-poverty location during the same time period, however, Kopp tells of an alternate educational enterprise:

Philadelphia's Mastery Network has transformed  previously low-performing, impoverished districts by dramatically outperforming districtwide averages & producing college-ready graduates-- and with little attention paid to technology.  In 2006, it's Shoemaker campus was a failing institution with abysmally low standardized scores in math and reading. But soon Mastery remade its mission, recruited new leadership & staff, created a system of roles & responsibilities for students, and built a network of support services into the school.

With these efforts, test scores increased 50 points in every subject, closed the school's achievement gap in reading, and resulted in 100% of its graduating class gaining acceptance to college.  Hear Scott Gordon, the network's founder: "Why are so many schools NOT focusing on talent development, great management, and clear goals? ... we have such a hard time doing what we know works."

In the view of Mastery's leaders and others, what works are the basics, and not an emphasis on technology.  Since they achieved such success in an environment similar to School of the Future's during the same time span, their example shows-- at a minimum-- that massive infusions of technology may not be for everyone.

A Conclusion

Do the Philadelphia examples mean that schools everywhere should abandon all forms of technology?  Of course not. What they do illustrate, however, is that the incorporation of technological devices is one can easily turn a do-able mission into a  managerial minefield-- first in the day-to-day function of the school in the form of fragmented attention spans, student equity and teacher training issues, and-- second in the difficult-to-maintain horizontal and vertical curricular designs that-- like it or not-- will always require a buffer to accommodate the latest idea De jure from "higher" educational authorities.

Add to these the complexities of how best to include families (who will likely be paying for the devices schools will be taking advantage of) as partners in opening up the widest learning horizon possible for their students.  Decision making accompanies ownership, do you copy?

On top of the age-old "he who has the gold makes the rules" issue, these devices will be used to help create more student-driven, beyond-the-classroom learning.  As educators everywhere legitimately cry foul of the forces attempting to create more narrow curriculum, the argument that students & their families are increasingly being left to advance student learning in the social & natural sciences, arts, home economics, and vocational subject areas grows stronger by the day.  It remains to be seen whether students will dedicate their technological devices to these ends during out-of-school time.

Yes, these are interesting and important times for technology. And considering the level of technological shift schools are poised to embark on, the swing between potential educational gain and loss has never been greater.

Let's just hope that enough people can shape the right policy to prevent our schools from hurtling headlong into a technological abyss.

He Fought the British But Couldn't Claim Freedom Until He Could Read

National Geographic & Capella U Join Up for 'The First Grader'

Click here for a theater and date near you

Assessments 2.0

As Minnesota students complete their year-end Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments and Northwest Evaluation Assessments (aka MAP diagnostic exams), it is important to celebrate the success of the 2011-12 school year.

But since endings often leave voids as to "what's next", readers of this blog would likely appreciate hearing of what the future of educational assessments holds.

A good synopsis of that direction is:

Beyond the Bubble Tests: The Next Generation of Assessments -- Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks 

Should you lack the time to go there, here are the main points of the linked US Department of Education page above.

A. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cited September 2, 2010 as the day marking the beginning of the development of a new and much-improved generation of assessments for America's schoolchildren-- Assessments 2.0.

B. There are two primary educational consortia-- the  PARCC consortium, or Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, that have been working with states to develop more comprehensive sets of student assessments.

C. By the 2014-2015 school year, the assessments developed by these two winning state consortia will be in use in any state that chooses to use them-- EVEN STATES NOT PARTICIPATING IN A CONSORTIUM ARE FREE TO USE THE ASSESSMENTS.   These are not pilot projects. These are not discrete tests, cobbled together. The winning consortia will be designing and implementing comprehensive assessment systems in math and English language arts.

D. This new generation of mathematics and English language arts assessments will cover all students in grades 3-8 and be used at least once in high school in every state that chooses to use them.

E. All English language learners and students with disabilities will take the new assessments, with the exception of the one percent of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.

F. In Secretary Duncan's view, these assessments will:

(1) help millions of schoolchildren, parents, and teachers will know if students are on-track for colleges and careers--and if they are ready to enter college without the need for remedial instruction.

(2) give teachers the state assessments they have longed for-- tests of critical thinking skills and complex student learning that are not just fill-in-the-bubble tests of basic skills but support good teaching in the classroom.

(3) help set a consistent , high bar for success nationwide-- instead of misleading students, parents, and school leaders into thinking students are ready for college, when they are not even close.

(4) provide teachers with timely, high-quality formative assessments that are instructionally useful and document student growth—rather than just relying on after-the-fact, year-end tests used for accountability purposes.

(5) make widespread use of smart technology, and  provide students with realistic, complex performance tasks, immediate feedback, computer adaptive testing.

(6) better measure the higher-order thinking skills so vital to success in the global economy of the 21st century and the future of American prosperity. To be on track today for college and careers, students need to show that they can analyze and solve complex problems, communicate clearly, synthesize information, apply knowledge, and generalize learning to other settings.

Secretary Duncan called the transformation occurring in assessments a "sea-change" from where things are today, and he noted that the "quiet revolution" known as the Common Core State Standards Initiative is largely responsible for ushering the testing transition in.

Scenes from 'National History Day in Minnesota'

7/4/11 Piece: See History Classes Might Be Taking a Back Seat in Minnesota by the Star Tribune's Norman Draper.

6/14/11 Addition: A just issued  NAEP (National Association for Education Progress) Report
suggests students might benefit were National History Day participation to be required.

Students from around the state shared their renditions of stories past as part of National History Day in Minnesota at the University of Minnesota's Coffman Memorial Union on May 1st.  In an atmosphere with all the triumph and dejection of an athletic contest, a dance competition, or a chess tournament--  scores of students wrote papers, built exhibits, created websites, and gave performances about a chosen theme.

The embedded video represents my attempt to recognize and make known some of the amazing work done by Minnesota students.  It really only scratches the surface of all that is part of the experience.   Suffice it to say that the learning curve associated with just the taking in of  History Day is gloriously steep.  But if one person gains an insight or has his or her imagination fired by this work, it will have been worth the effort.

For more information on what the event entails, visit MHS State History Day .