Preserving Magic in the Rush for Accountability

In many classrooms, one casualty of the nationwide push toward higher academic standards and more school accountability has been the “teachable moment.”

A teachable moment is a wondrous time that many teachers live for, when children demonstrate that they are ready to learn something right then and there--though not necessarily what the teacher had in mind. A student’s impromptu question might lead the class down an exciting, unexpected path, with the teacher serving as eager facilitator and co-learner.

For far too many educators, however, seizing that moment of readiness is a luxury they feel they can ill afford, pressed as they are to teach rigorous curricula in too few school days and to boost pupils’ scores on standardized achievement exams.

Luckily for my 7-year-old daughter, Nora, teachable moments are alive and well at Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, a laboratory school for kindergartners through sixth-graders on the UCLA campus.

Throughout Nora’s two years in Room 11, opportunities for spontaneous learning have bubbled up from the well-used rug where 21 kindergarten and first-grade pupils pop questions and advance theories.

Lisa Rosenthal, Nora’s nurturing teacher, has chosen to run with the kids’ ideas more often than not, aided by math teacher Doris Levy and assistant Rick Lee.

A vivid example of Rosenthal’s willingness to let pupils sometimes lead the way will be in full bloom Thursday evening, when the children and their compatriots in Room 15 put on their musical play about the life cycle of plants, “Nature Must Go On!” This bilingual extravaganza sprang from the idea of two of Nora’s classmates.

The 43 children have written the script, composed the music, made the costumes and sets, written autobiographies for the playbill and created their own percussion instruments. With lyrics like “To be or not to be pollinated, that is the question,” it promises to provoke chuckles and tears from the family-packed audience.

Did I mention that these are 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds?

For two years now, I’ve had a parent’s-eye view of the progressive teaching practices that make Seeds UES a one-of-a-kind institution. Established in 1882, the school has as its mission improving the quality of elementary schools, particularly in urban environments.

The student body, which spans the socioeconomic spectrum, is primarily white and Latino, with smaller segments of Asian Americans, African Americans and others. Families pay tuition on a sliding scale.

Even as many beleaguered big-city schools embrace highly scripted, “teacher proof” curricula such as Open Court and Success for All--which, to be sure, often work wonders with struggling readers--Seeds UES gives its teachers much freer rein.

If highly scripted programs are anathema, academic goals are not.

Throughout the frenzied weeks of developing and revising their play, the students have been meeting academic standards in painless fashion. They have done scientific research about everything from flowers to bats, bees to butterflies. They have used measurements to build sets. They have written autobiographies and formed bees from clay.

Realizing That Their Ideas Matter

One morning, mindful of the percussive “music baskets” they have assembled for the play, they got a lesson in sound, touring an echo chamber and its opposite, an anechoic chamber where all sound is absorbed in the walls and the floor, with a UCLA physicist who is also the dad of one of the pupils. Unlike most of their parents, they have thus experienced the “sounds of silence.”

The pupils have approached every exercise with cheerful determination, and Rosenthal thinks she knows why.

“When children come up with these ideas, there’s so much more of an investment,” she said. “The teacher becomes a guide who takes the children to the next level.” Meanwhile, these little social creatures also come to realize that their ideas matter and that they can learn from one another.

Rosenthal, 43, who describes herself as “not your standard kind of learner,” said she had a difficult time in school, drumming up enthusiasm only for big, creative projects and zoning out on everything else. In her 20s and 30s, she taught dance and movement before moving to rural Nicaragua, where she organized farmer-peasants and headed international relations for the farmers union.

After returning from Central America, she spent five years in the education program at Cal State Northridge, with the aim of providing the sort of compelling educational experience that she was denied. She has taught preschool and kindergarten-first grade for eight years.

Teaching experts say it is unusual to find the combination of adaptability, flexibility, creativity and responsiveness needed to take advantage of teachable moments.

“To know a teachable moment, a teacher has to be secure,” said Seeds UES Principal Margaret Heritage.

“You must figure out how to make the child’s interest and the curriculum come together,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor at Stanford University who directs the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

With more uncredentialed novices standing in front of California classrooms and more emphasis being put on standardized, multiple-choice tests, many teachers and principals complain that their efforts to create progressive learning environments are being undone. Will young, unseasoned teachers be able to grab onto one child’s curiosity and bring the others along while still keeping things on track? That’s a tall order, experts say.

“You can’t be concerned about the teachable moment when the important thing is not learning but a test score,” said Jacqueline Ancess, associate director of the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching at Columbia University.

Neophyte teachers often welcome the structure of a program such as Open Court, whereas their more experienced counterparts can feel stifled.

Darling-Hammond said she fears that California “is going too far in the direction of overprescription” of standards and curricula that often depend on too much memorization of information rather than the creativity and critical thinking needed for the Information Age.

“In some ways the accountability movement is going to make public schools worse,” Darling-Hammond said. “Parents will flee to private schools that can still offer [spontaneous learning].”

In a different environment, I wonder whether my shy Nora would have experienced one of her proudest moments. In January, after Rosenthal read to the class a book about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a long discussion ensued about civil rights. Many in the rainbow-hued class said they could not imagine a time when anyone would have been forced to ride in the back of a bus.

My daughter, who was born in China, raised her hand to suggest that the class write to King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, to tell her how much they admired her husband’s efforts to end discrimination. After the class completed a packet of drawings and a heartfelt letter, Nora stood before a school assembly to show it off.

This is a child, mind you, who suffers from terminal stage fright. Yet there she was, claiming ownership of her idea in front of hundreds of children and adults.

Whether, come Thursday, Nora will spout her two lines (“Be gentle with our wings” and “Here we go!”) or retreat to the shelter of my lap remains to be seen. The play, by the way, features a magical plant growing out of the roof of a haunted mansion and a bevy of pollinators, including Nora as a butterfly, that want to help it reproduce.

No matter what, I know that the process that led to the play has already worked a great deal of magic. My little butterfly has learned to spread her wings and fly.