I’m a slam dunk in basketball; fruit in a jar;
I’m a misfiring gun; improvise on guitar;
Not allowing a signal to get very far;
And I’m bumper to bumper for car after car.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Bronx Richie. See comments for answer.

As we begin implementing the Common Core State Standards this year, many of the schools I advise are having very similar problems with grade-level readiness. This isn’t a new problem, to be sure, but it has become intensified by Common Core expectations. The Common Core standards are more rigorous than last year’s New York State standards, so even students who were on grade level last year have some catching up to do. Also, built into the DNA of the Common Core is the idea of a “staircase of complexity” in which students must master the standards of the prior year before they are ready for the standards of the current year. In other words, they must master the 5th-grade standards in order to become 6th-grade ready.

For example, students in Kindergarten learn to state an opinion (“My favorite book is…”). In Grade 1, they provide a reason for their opinion. In Grade 4, they support their reasons with information, while in Grade 6 they write arguments to support claims with reasons and evidence. In math, students are expected to be effortlessly fluent in addition and subtraction by the end of Grade 2, so they will be ready to begin fractions in Grade 3. By the end of Grade 5, their understanding of fractions is thorough enough to begin algebra in the 6th grade. It’s a well-structured progression that brings students step-by-step from Kindergarten to college and career readiness by providing incremental support based on the learning that has accrued through the previous years of instruction in every grade.

What happens, then, during the first year of implementation? Our students aren’t even coming in on grade level based on the old standards, let alone the more rigorous standards demanded by (and required for) the Common Core. Our 6th graders aren’t coming in having mastered fractions or the opinion essay. Their reading levels do not prepare them to approach the complex texts in the new reading band levels, which themselves are set higher than previous levels by the Common Core (as can be seen in the chart at the bottom of page 8 of the ELA Appendix A):

(Click for a larger image.)

And this problem is even more profound in high school, where the high-stakes Regents Exams are looming, and many students aren’t even prepared to read the instructions.

In a December 2011 keynote titled “What Must Be Done in the Next Two Years” (you can download the transcript here), David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core Standards, addresses the idea of grade-level readiness. He’s a brilliant man who speaks with a persuasive confidence, but he’s on the wrong side of this particular issue.

But for your sakes, the really exciting thing is for the first time there’s a measure in the standards that insists that students at each level are encountering texts of adequate complexity.

Nonetheless, you could nonetheless be defeated, because the most popular instructional practice for students who are behind is to replace their core reading with leveled text at their level, right? So if you were to actually look at what your kids are being given, they are constantly matched in this seeming noble idea that you should match everything they read to where they are today, often called a proximal zone of development, et cetera.

Let me be rather clear. Leveled readers and reading at your own level has a crucial role to play for kids in terms of their vocabulary growth, their love of reading, and has a very important role, so I’m not saying kind of just get rid of it. But what I am saying is the core of instruction, if we want kids to catch up, has to be the deliberate study of sufficiently complex texts, again and – we cannot exclude students from that and expect them to magically catch up. That’s a scaffolded environment, do you get me? Where their frustration – they are expected to be frustrated. That frustration is managed. It’s part of the classroom community, and they engage repeatedly in dealing with things that are more difficult than they can handle.

First of all, it’s the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), not the “proximal zone of development, et cetera.” I’m less bothered by his mixing the words around than I am by the “et cetera,” as if to say “yeah, there was more but I couldn’t be bothered to absorb it.” The ZPD is the range between what a child can do independently and what that same child can do with support. The concept was first described by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky in the 1930’s, and has had a profound impact on developmental psychology and learning science. You can’t be dismissive of the ZPD in one breath, and then go on to recommend scaffolding in the next. The very idea of scaffolding is based on a Vygostkian model of development. The term was introduced by American psychologist Jerome Bruner, and it refers to the supports that we provide students within their ZPD to help them achieve at higher levels. As the metaphor suggests, once students can do these tasks independently, we can remove the scaffolding.

Coleman’s right that there should be managed frustration. If students read texts that are too easy for them, they may enjoy those texts, but it’s not the best way to support reading progress. When students have to read within their ZPD, they feel a frustration we might accurately describe as growing pains. They experience a stretch, and in that stretch, learning can actually help drive cognitive development. If, on the other hand, the material is above the upper limit of their ZPD, they will not experience that productive frustration. They will simply shut down and not attempt to read the material at all. And there is no amount of scaffolding that will make it possible. Think of a weight you can lift easily, a weight that requires some effort to lift, and a weight you can’t budge at all. Which of those three weights would you choose if you wanted to promote muscle growth?

So if you have students who are one or two grades below grade level, it might be worth trying to push them in the way Coleman describes. But students who are four, five, six years below their grade level, aren’t going to be reading on grade level by the end of the year no matter whose philosophical outlook you subscribe to. Nobody is expecting them to “magically catch up.” The idea is to support them in making the greatest progress possible. It is Coleman who is invoking magic when he expects that these students will be able to catch up simply through teacher patience, student frustration, and intense scaffolding.

But if anybody should be a proponent of Vygotsky, it’s David Coleman himself, for Vygotsky provides a clear developmental framework for the Common Core. If learning really can drive development, and I believe it can, then having a rigorous set of standards defined for each grade level organized into a staircase of complexity makes a lot of sense. If we adhere to these standards from Kindergarten, making sure that students receive support in a multi-tiered Response to Intervention system to ensure that they remain on grade level at the end of each year, then the Common Core might actually be a blueprint for making sure that our students are well prepared for the rigors of college and the workplace by the end of Grade 12. Wouldn’t it be a shame if that were all true and the Common Core really is a better way of doing business, but nobody ever knew it because the implementation was so badly botched?

So what can we do? If I were in charge of implementation, I would have had two years of bridge standards before fully adopting the Common Core. If the 5th grade NYS standards say ABC and the 8th grade Common Core standards say JKL, then we develop a logical DEF for 6th grade and a 7th-grade GHI that allow us to incrementally meet the higher standards. Instead, we’re going right from 5th-grade NYS to 6th-grade Common Core, and even students that were on grade level last year are being left behind. The folks at the New York City Department of Education, for their part, seem to understand the difficulties involved, and are trying to make the changes as gradually as possible to support teachers. But no such support is available for students, as the level of rigor expected for them is coming from Albany, and is out of the city’s hands.

I can’t tell you what the statewide assessments are going to look like at the end of this year, but I’m pretty sure the students are going to be expected to read on what is now considered grade level, and this is the problem. What do you do if you have 8th-grade students reading on a 4th-grade level, when you know you are going to be accountable for them passing an 8th-grade test at the end of the year? One option is, as Coleman describes, to give them 8th-grade reading selections anyway, have them read fewer overall texts, and heavily scaffold the texts being read. Another option is to try to give them two years of instruction in a year, committing to bring them from a 4th-grade level to 6th-grade level. Neither strategy will prepare them to read on the 8th-grade level by test time, but I prefer the latter method. It’s better to make meaningful progress in the time that you have than to squander the opportunity by fumbling around with inappropriately difficult texts. I understand, respect, and even admire Coleman’s desire to get everyone on grade level. It’s not going to happen this year.

Given that some of the quantitative targets may not be possible this year, another option is to focus on the qualitative shifts. Give students more exposure to informational texts. Give them more complex texts than they are reading now. Have them read more independently, and give them opportunities to cite evidence from the things they read to support their writing. These are all Common Core-aligned shifts, and can be implemented right away, regardless of student reading levels.

Finally, teachers can make a big difference by differentiating instruction. Some students may have higher upper bounds in their ZPD than might be apparent at first. And if you’ve agreed with me up until now, follow me the rest of the way. It’s important for teachers to challenge their students to the highest extent as is possible for them. Students will push back, but being a teacher means to encourage students to do more than they ever thought they could. Now is the time to do that. Please don’t mistake my nuanced understanding of cognitive development for timidity. I’ve taught Shakespeare, in the original language, to low-performing 5th graders. But to do that, I had to have some confidence that my learning goals were within their Zone of Proximal Development. And when they were, it turned out that it was possible!

As for the end-of-the-year tests, the whole state is in the same bind, so relative success is still very much in reach given the right strategies. Students feel growing pains, and so do teachers. But that pain just means that we’re working outside of our comfort zone, and are instead in a zone that is more conducive to growth.

From Troilus and Cressida:

Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Shame on dodo Congress, dealing us such a dud: a preventable sequester. Huh!

Don’t laugh a guttural laugh and hijack the economy for awkward political currency.

This is the 26th in a series of pop-music parodies for Shakespeare fans.

Enjoy!

Three Caskets
sung to the tune of “Four Minutes”

(With apologies to Madonna, Justin Timberlake, and Timbaland)

I’m on the spot
And gotta choose from three caskets,
(Fricki, fricki) three caskets. Hey!

Hey, come on, Portia.

Come on boy,
I’ve been waiting for somebody
To come pass this test.

Now, don’t waste time,
Tell me the rules,
Let me prove that I am the best.

Read each inscription,
Choose the right one,
And then open the lid.
Inside one, I am hid.

Girl, I can solve this test,
Just gotta show me where they are.
I’ll do as you have bid;
You’ll be glad that I did.

If you choose now,
You could lose now.
Take some more time;
No harm in pushing it back.

If I pick right,
And, hey, I just might,
This ordeal ends,
For now I’m living on the rack.

Choose the right box.

Gotta choose from three caskets to win the girl.

Loose the tight locks.
You’re my man!

You’re my world!

Choose the right box.

Gotta choose from three caskets to win the girl.

Loose the tight locks.

Gotta choose from three caskets, uh huh, three caskets.

Come, give it up.
No need to be so shy, lock.

You gotta read my thoughts:
(pick lead, pick lead, pick lead)

That’s right, come, give it up.
No need to be so shy, lock.

You gotta read my thoughts:
(pick lead, pick lead, pick lead)

Remember, this suitor test
Was my father’s invention, yeah.

So the Silver one holds what I deserve,
And then the Gold
Has what all men desire.

All that glisters isn’t gold, I should mention, yeah.

But if I choose the Lead,
It means I would give and hazard
All that I have for you.
Which I’d gladly do.

If you choose now,
You could lose now.
Take some more time;
No harm in pushing it back.

If I pick right,
And, hey, I just might,
This ordeal ends,
For now I’m living on the rack.

Choose the right box.

Gotta choose from three caskets to win the girl.

Loose the tight locks.
You’re my man!

You’re my world!

Choose the right box.

Gotta choose from three caskets to win the girl.

Loose the tight locks.

Gotta choose from three caskets, uh huh, three caskets.

Come, give it up.
No need to be so shy, lock.

You gotta read my thoughts:
(pick lead, pick lead, pick lead)

That’s right, come, give it up.
No need to be so shy, lock.

You gotta read my thoughts:
(pick lead, pick lead, pick lead)

Time to choose, yeah.

(pick lead, pick lead, pick lead)

Gonna choose the Lead casket… and there’s the girl.

I’m a fancy dress dance where the debutantes go;
When a batter won’t swing at a bad pitcher’s throw;
I’m the fun time you have; where the foot meets the toe;
And the Lucy we loved on that old ’50’s show.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Asher. See comments for answer.

Is it just me, or is all of the rhetoric about gun control getting a bit overheated?

If there are two sides – pro-gun and anti-gun – then I’d have to put myself on the side that favors more control than we have now. But the spectrum of options available to us as a society is wide-ranging, and the changes we are talking about are relatively small. There’s no serious movement to ban and confiscate guns. Nobody is proposing allowing citizens to own biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons. Where we come down is going to be somewhere very much in the middle of these polar extremes, and pretty close to where we are now.

You wouldn’t know it by listening to the bombast coming from the right, though. It’s as though all of the issues from the 2012 election have faded away, and conservatives have decided to concentrate their efforts over the one issue where they feel like they’re on solid ground. Their arguments range from absolutist interpretations of the Constitution to catchy slogans to actual threats of violence. The threats of violence in particular seem an odd strategy for convincing us that they should keep their guns, but it’s hard to stay rational once the panic sets in. When the only tool you have is a TEC-9, the whole world looks like Call of Duty. I will admit that some of the slogans use some nice wordplay. “The only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Nice use of antithesis with parallel structure! And then, there’s the Constitution…

Just as the First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre, the Second Amendment doesn’t give you the right to turn a traffic jam into the end of a Quentin Tarantino movie. It is true that the founders gave us the right to keep and bear arms so that we could protect ourselves from government tyranny. The only problem is that the people currently making that argument are the same people who screamed that the Affordable Care Act was government tyranny. So, Freedom-Protectors, at what point are you planning to break out the arsenal? And when you fantasize about protecting our freedoms with an assault rifle, precisely who is it that you imagine yourself gunning down? American soldiers? Uniformed police officers? Elected officials? Federal agents? Protecting our freedom sounds pretty messy.

Speaking of the Affordable Care Act, one of the heartwarming things to come out of the gun-control debate is to see the right starting to call for better mental healthcare in the wake of the school shootings. Yeah, someone should get on that. I’m thinking some kind of public option, or even a single-payer system. What say you?

So, really, most of the pro-gun arguments I’ve heard are pure nonsense, and are embraced largely for their favorable conclusion: we should be allowed to have guns. The good news for gun enthusiasts, though, is that they don’t actually need to make a case to protect guns. In a free society, the burden of evidence is on those of us who would take rights away. And most people who are in favor of guns largely have positive experiences with them. They go hunting on the weekends, or they take their kids to the shooting range. Maybe they like to do a little skeet-shooting at Camp David. Everyone has fun and nobody gets hurt. They aren’t bothering anybody, and don’t understand why they should have to make any changes in their lifestyle just because some lunatic decides to go on a rampage in a school or a movie theatre. I agree.

What we’re talking about, though, is just some simple common sense reforms, such as requiring background checks or restricting assault weapons. We regulate cars better than we regulate guns, and yeah, you can have as many cars as you want. One of the weapons under discussion is called the Street Sweeper. Whoever named that gun had a pretty good idea about what it was primarily going to be used for. We should take notice. That doesn’t make a good fundraising pitch for the NRA, though, so they talk about the government coming for your guns, a scenario that doesn’t even make practical sense let alone political sense.

Ultimately, the actual changes being proposed are slight and incremental. We can have reasonable discussions about whether or not we should do them, but doing them won’t necessarily bring about major changes in gun violence in this country. Nor will they amount to an egregious violation of civil liberties. At this point, the heat generated by the argument is mostly about culture. There is one culture that wants an armed society, and another culture that doesn’t. We’ll argue it out and then we’ll vote through our elected representatives. But in so much as it is about culture, it’s worth giving some thought about what kind of country we want to live in.

Which side are you on? The litmus test is not the Sandy Hook school shooting. It’s not Aurora or Tuscon or Columbine. We’re all against random shootings of innocent people. The real litmus test centers on the events of February 26, 2012. That was one year ago tonight. That was the night that George Zimmerman shot and killed Treyvon Martin.

That much is certain, but the details are still murky a year later. That didn’t seem to matter so much at the time. People on both sides of the debate rushed to judgement before all of the facts were in. Did a trigger-happy gun nut racially profile a black kid and then shoot him? Or, is it true that a vigilant neighborhood watchman bravely defended his person and his community from a dangerous thug who attacked him without provocation? Or is the truth somewhere in the middle? Where it always, always is.

In the examination of this particular incident, it matters a great deal. This is a real case. One person is dead, another is on trial for his murder. A jury will have to weigh the evidence and make a serious deliberation to make sure their determination is just. But in a more general sense, it doesn’t really matter what happened this one time.

There is a more generalized version of the incident that has played out in the media and in the imaginations of everyone who has a purely political stake in the outcome for the past year. In the real case, we want to know facts, details, evidence. In the imaginary case, these things are a distraction. They take the case further away from what we need it to be. Because when the case remains general, we can imagine all of the possible angles and discuss how we feel about them. It’s not hard to imagine each various interpretation of this one incident being true in another similar incident. What we’re really arguing about is the sum total of all of the possible permutations of the event. What we’re really arguing is about the next time. I can’t tell you what to think about that, but I can tell you what I think.

I’m not really afraid of bad guys with guns. Maybe I should be. Studies show that people who tend to be more fearful skew conservative, so maybe they feel like they really need to protect themselves against bad guys with guns. For my part, I feel like there are so many other things out there that are going to get me first that I really don’t put it high on my list. So, I don’t live in fear of bad guys with guns. What terrifies me beyond belief is good guys with guns.

Good guys come in all shapes and sizes, and I don’t like the idea of them all carrying guns. There are so many more good guys than bad guys, and with a wider range of skills, judgment, and common sense. Some people carry a gun hoping they will never have to use it. Other people carry a gun with a hope that they will. And then there are the mistakes. Recall the vice president who shot his friend in the face while hunting. Recall the heroic athlete who fired four shots into a bathroom door. Choose your favorite statistic about guns kept in the home. It turns out that introducing a new gun into a situation is almost always a bad idea, unless you are well trained and have strictly enforced rules of engagement.

George Zimmerman was supposed to be a good guy with a gun. Whether he turned out to be or not depends on your culture.

This is the 25th in a series of pop-music parodies for Shakespeare fans.

Enjoy!

End It Well
sung to the tune of “Gives You Hell”

(With apologies to The All-American Rejects, and everyone else as well…)

I’m watching your work, Shakespeare,
With some tension in my face:
It’s one of your lesser-known plays.
Your heroine is risking
Her life on this rash chase;
I wonder how well that pays.

When you plan your plot,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.
When you write that play,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.

Now that part all worked out, though
The men have now gone to war,
And I’ve seen this plot before…
But still I’d really like to know
What this play has at its core,
Before I watch any more.

It’s better with a wedding.
It’s better than them dying.

When you plan your plot,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.
When you write that play,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.

If they sing a song,
As they dance along,
That would be swell.
Even if they don’t,
It should end well,
Hope you end it well.

I hope you end it well!

Bertram now thinks Helena is dead.
That’s often a very bad sign,
But it could still finish fine.

It’s better with a wedding.
It’s better than them dying.

When you plan your plot,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.
When you write that play,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.

If they sing a song,
As they dance along,
That would be swell.
Even if they don’t,
It should end well,
Hope you end it well.

It’s a “Problem Play.”
This could go either way.
Hope it won’t end like Tragedies;
They cause me dismay.
I’d try out a Romance,
Give a History a chance,
But I much prefer those Comedies you end so well.

When you plan your plot,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.
When you write that play,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.

If they sing a song,
As they dance along,
That would be swell.
Even if they don’t,
It should end well,
Hope you end it well.

When you plan your plot,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.
When you write that play,
Hope you end it well,
Hope you end it well.

If you’d end Act Five,
With them still alive,
That would be swell.
Some epilogue
Might end it well,
Hope you end it well.

When you end your play, I hope that you will end it well.

All will be well, as long as you will end it well.

I’m a place for a boat you would merrily row;
To watch TV online without saving the show;
How a stray beam of light in the darkness can glow;
A prevailing direction; or tears as they flow.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Asher. See comments for answer.

This is the 24th in a series of pop-music parodies for Shakespeare fans.

Enjoy!

Valentine
rapped to the beat of “Back in Time”

(With apologies to Pitbull, and the Men in Black franchise…)

Please excuse me, lady.
Oh, yeah you, lady.
Now, let’s do Shakespeare, lady.
Yeah, let’s stage a play here, lady.

Please excuse me, lady.
Oh, yeah you, lady.
Now, let’s do Shakespeare, lady.
Yeah, let’s stage a play here, lady.

The Two Gentlemen.
Of Verona. In Milan.
At the Duke’s palace,
Proteus, Valentine, now it’s on.

Julia, oh Julia,
Oh, Julia, my sweet Julia,
You’re the one!

Milan equals doublet and hose, knee-length socks,
With a tanned leather belt to tie; I’ve got it!
Puffy sleeves, fancy shoes, a high stiff collar, and a feathered cap.
Like Valentine or Thurio, impress Silvia if they could, okay.
I’m tryna be reptilian with a friend pretense,
Underhanded, no-good,
I’m a liar, a cheat, a fabricator, and a
Falsifier, equivocator, out of hand a
Trickster, dissimulator, as I planned a
Way that I can consummate her.
To wrong my friend this way, much shame will be mine.
But to satisfy Proteus, I have to cross Valentine.

Silvia, oh Silvia,
Oh, Silvia, my sweet Silvia,
You’re the one!

I got the girl, yeah, out in the wood,
To win her over, any way I could.
That’s when you came.
Two Gentlemen, we meet again.
I professed my love. It wasn’t enough.
And then I just lost control, got a little bit rough.
I’m glad you came and intervened.
I hope that I can still be redeemed.
You know I’m sorry, I couldn’t fool ya,
And Sebastian’s identity learned: it’s Julia.
To behave this way, much shame has been mine.
But to reconcile Proteus, I have to love Valentine.

Julia, oh Julia,
Oh, Julia, my sweet Julia,
You’re the one!

For portraying Mike Brady, I’m fairly well-known;
But I’m also the actress who played Donna Stone;
I’m a straight stalk of grass in the fields where I’m grown;
And a thin strip of cane that gives woodwinds their tone.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Bronx Richie. See comments for answer.