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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles
“Teacher Action Research … in Action”Teacher Action Research … in Action is the headline of one of my recent Education Week columns. Educators not only consume research, they take part in the processes in their daily practice. Here are some excerpts:
     A Look Back: Implicit Bias Training Doesn’t Seem To Work – So What Should Teachers & Others Do, Instead?For the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2020.
In the wake of recent murders of Black citizens, like George Floyd, and subsequent protests, there has been a lot of attention being paid to the concept of implicit bias and how to combat it. There seem to be far fewer people questioning the existence of implicit bias than when Mike Pence was very confused about it at the Vice-Presidential debate. You can see tons of resources about how it affects teachers at We Should Be Obsessed With Racial Equity. The typical response to dealing with implicit bias in most professions, including in teaching and in police, is through having implicit bias trainings. Unfortunately, research has been pretty clear that any positive impacts of these trainings are all very short-term (see ‘Implicit Bias’ Trainings Don’t Actually Change Police Behavior and Making people aware of their implicit biases doesn’t usually change minds. But here’s what does work). Researcher Anthony Greenwald and famed educator Gloria Ladson-Billings agree on one thing that can work: Greenwald says: I think that a lot can be achieved just by collecting data to document disparities that are occurring as a result of bias. And maybe an easy example is police operations, although it can be applied in many settings. Here’s what Ladson-Billings suggests: You have to be able to look at your specific and local context, so for these teachers in Green Bay, I told them, “Well, why don’t you guys do this? Why don’t you go back and just pull your data, look at your suspension rates and who’s being suspended, look who’s being assigned to special education, look who gets into advanced placement class, look who’s in honors — just document that, and then share that with each other and say, ‘How do we explain it?’” In the same interview, Ladson-Billings continues by saying: People’s explanations will help you understand why certain things are happening. If their explanation is, “Well, you know, we have all these poor kids,” OK, the poverty is not gonna stop next week. Are we saying because the children are poor, they are incapable of X, Y or Z? Greenwald, on the other hand, moves in a different direction with what he calls “discretion elimination”: This can be applied when people are making decisions that involve subjective judgment about a person. This could be police officers, employers making hiring or promotion decisions, doctors deciding on a patient’s treatment, or teachers making decisions about students’ performance. When those decisions are made with discretion, they are likely to result in unintended disparities. But when those decisions are made based on predetermined, objective criteria that are rigorously applied, they are much less likely to produce disparities. I’m not sure how well Greenwald’s suggestion would work in a K-12 environment – we’ve seen how a lack of discretion can result in harm to children with “no-excuses schools.” And the dangers in education of being “data-driven,” instead of being “data-informed,” are well-documented. And we’ve also seen examples in education of where there has been discretion elimination (for example, restricting suspensions when data shows that African American students are suspended more often), some schools then have just faked data. And others have just called suspensions something else. If there’s agreement that teachers, particularly White ones, have implicit bias, and there’s agreement that implicit bias trainings aren’t very effective ways to deal with it, and there is agreement that analyzing data to identify how those biases “play-out” is an important next step, what do you think are effective institutional processes to use in order to then act on that data? What are strategies to then have useful conversations about what the data shows? At our school, under the leadership of our English Department Chair, Antoine Germany, we’ve been analyzing the data and starting those conversations, though COVID-19 interrupted them. I’m sure we’ll re-engage later in the summer and in the fall. I’m all ears to hear your thoughts. Addendum: VIDEO: COULD CREATING “FRICTION” HELP US WHITE TEACHERS COMBAT OUR IMPLICIT BIASES? Using Data to Advance Racial Equity is from Edutopia. Training Bias Out of Teachers: Research Shows Little Promise So Far is from Ed Week. A Simple Way to Self-Monitor for Bias is from Edutopia. A Simple Exercise to Help You Check Your Biases is from the Harvard Business Review. It includes some pretty loopy ideas, but also a couple of good ones. Guest Post: What Schools Could Do Instead Of Anti-Bias Trainings This Idea of “Micro-Inclusions” Is A Good ADDITION TO, Not A REPLACEMENT OF, DEI Efforts  All Student Handouts From Our Latest Book Are Now Available For Free Without Any Required Registration
All student hand-outs from our latest book are now available for free on our book’s website. Just go to the site and click on the “Related Resources” area circled in the image, and that will lead you to them. If you click on “Excerpt,” you’ll be able to download the entire first chapter of the book. If you like the book, we’d appreciate your considering writing a review on its Amazon page. You can download hundreds of others from our previous books here.  This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom geralt / Pixabay
At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM: YouTube to Blog will create a blog post from any YouTube link. TikClass lets you create a “gamified” online course. Top Coloring Pages is yet another AI tool for…coloring pages. How AI Can Build Inquiry Skills in the Classroom is by Mary Beth Hertz. To Detect AI Writing, Look For This Sentence Structure is from Fast Company. 
Project Unicorn is thrilled to introduce you to Uni, a custom-built AI assistant designed by Project Unicorn. Uni is specifically trained to help educators, IT directors, and policymakers navigate the complex world of K-12 education technology and data interoperability. Unlike a generic chatbot, Uni’s knowledge base is carefully curated from trusted sources, ensuring the guidance you receive is not only accurate but also relevant to real-world challenges in the field. Writers and Artists Need a Way to Label AI Use: Here’s What That Could Look Like Teach anything. Chatbots For Education lets any educator create a … chatbot. I’m adding it to The Best Tools For Creating Chatbots. You Can’t AI-Proof the Classroom, Experts Say. Get Creative Instead. is from Inside Higher Ed. I’m adding it to The “Best” Strategies For Creating AI-Resistant Assignments.
AI Twin: Enhancing ESL Speaking Practice through AI Self-Clones of a Better Me  Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL
Eight years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention. You might also be interested in all my Best lists on teaching ELLs. Also, check out A Collection Of My Best Resources On Teaching English Language Learners. In addition, look for our latest book on teaching ELLs, The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox 2.0. Here are this week’s choices: Persuading the Peculiar: a Speaking Game is from On the Same Page ELT. ELL students could watch these videos and then talk/write about what they saw:   
The Effectiveness of Scramble Technique to Teach Reading Skills on Descriptive Text of Seventh Grade Students is a new study. I’m not sure how good it is, but it also refers to other studies on the same technique, and I haven’t seen much research on it. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Creating Sentence Scrambles. Can Apple’s AirPod Translation Get You Through Tokyo? We Tested It. is from The NY Times. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM. Looking Back Before Looking Forward is from A Journey In TEFL. I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Help Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Succeed. AI Translation Breaks Down Language Barriers in K–12 Schools is from Ed Tech Magazine. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM. January Reset or January Damage? – Common Mistakes Language Teachers Make When Returning After the Holidays is from The Language Gym. Federal English-Learner Grant Returns This Fall Under New Oversight is from Ed Week.  More Recent Articles |
