That exists between what the socalled education reformist talk about and how they drive the news cycle and what is actually going on. In my book, education experts are politicians economists, we rely on increasingly to explain to us what is the value of the teachers are adding to our daily lives. Those are philanthropists and state officials. And when you listen to them talking about education and they really do drive the news cycle. What you most likely hear about common core standards standardized testing. You might hear about that we need more accountable more teacher evaluations and we also need to copy more things from countries like finland and china. But when you actually spend time with students and teachers, the conversation is really different. So, for example in my chapter one, i profile a student named maria from el salvador, and she moved here in 2008 and when she entered Mission High School, she struggled. She barely spoke english. Didnt know how to multiply. Really struggled with multiple choice questions and yet by the 11th grade i watched maria get in front of the classroom and present her 12page Research Paper on the war in iraq and presented it with confidence and poise, and at the same time celebrating letters to college and when i asked maria what contradict contributedded contributed to her sunday she talked about how the greatest teachers didnt look at her and look at the test scores and grades. They really saw her for who she was. They saw her strength, they saw her intellect. They saw her interests and they gave her challenging assignments despite all of her struggles. And in chapter 2 i profile a student named george. He is from china and george is struggling in multiple choice questions at all. And yet when i was talking to him about how Mission High School contributed to his success, and he said he is at uc berkeley. He told me the greatest thing about mission high and quality education is that instead of the things that allow him to extract mention from letters and words and theres a lot of talk about math. The loved math, and talked about math and said how in previous classes in china he would spend a lot of time learning how to get to the answers quickly and become really good at it and at mission, the teachers pushed him to understand what is behind this number . What is behind these equations . What does it actually represent in the real world . And when george talked about math, he would say things like i can really visualize it. I could really feel math and so excited about it. I never heard anyone talk about math like he talked about math. So i talked to hundreds of students in the last four or five years and the common theme is the have to do with the same thing. Students always talked about teachers who engaged their intellect, that to see where they are in their learning trajectory and can give them the exact things they need to progress and that is not exactly what you ever hear about in the news. And at Mission High School when you talk to teachers, that means that they do talk about standards and do talk about but the priority of their time is spent on individual needs of their performance. So instead of looking over multiple choice questions and standardized testing and figuring out who is failing theyre looking at marias work in small groups of people, and they look look at it and ask how can we teach writing to maria when she is struggling. How to teach math to everyone in a way that is engaging and accessible. What should we do if our advanced math classes have only white and Asian American students how much do we disrupt these patterns in our school some what does it mean when mike brown happens and theres an anniversary and theres people arrested and people are shot. How do you talk about it in our classroom . How can we talk about it from a white teacher standing in front of a classroom where all students are students of color. These are the conversations that happen in many schools like mission high across the country. Theyre completely invisible but yet at the same time these are the conversations and the mechanisms through which we close the achievement gap and that what i wanted to highlight through the voices of students and teachers. And the second thing i wanted to say is that even though Mission High School is a local story its in San Francisco and i chose it because its in my backyard. I can walk to it. I can see it from the window of my house. Its also a universal story. I talked to i reported for many schools croat the country talked to many students and teachers readers write me all the time saying the exact same thing is happening in our school. So its a universal story and similar struggles and conversations that the teachers at Mission High School are having theyre happening all over the country. So it is a story about San Francisco and also a story about urban schools in chicago, new orleans, seattle and new york. So with that, i wanted to thank you for coming and i do have to say one thing. I am reading the blackboard right now and if youre interested in education highly, hively recommend it. Highly recommend it. Its a gorgeous, deep meditation on the classroom and all of the invisible things that happen in a classroom that contribute to building amazing human beings, and were kin dread spirit kindrid spirits that we focus on the same things things and eye hily recommend and so honor evidence that somebody who knows book stores and the classrooms has a great [applause] i dont know how good i am at balancing. The great joy of reading this book is the amount of time that kristina spent at Mission High School and with the students. And how she takes the really larger issues out of that out of all the great details. So what i wanted to start with today, and ask you is it is very clear in reading the book that educational policy in this country, which is exceedingly more federal and nationwide than it used to be, used to be more statewide, why you think that educators and students are so much left out of that discussion . Guest well a Perfect Place to start. Theres policy aspect and the cultural aspect, and has to do with the fact that american teachers have greater teaching loads than teachers in almost any other industrialized country. For example in teachers have about 615 hours a Year Spending teaching stuns and in the u. S. Its 715. And then when it comes to time that spend doing work away from the classroom so preparing lessons, co lab breath with their collaborating with colleagues or talking to media educating the public about teaching, in the u. S. Teachers have threefive hours each week allow thed for this kind of thing, and then in a country like finland, south korea or singapore, teachers have 15 to 20 hours a week to do this work. So right there its a policy thing that gets in the way of teachers having enough time actually come out and have these conversations. And the second thing i think is a cultural thing and its completely relates to the policy. I grew up in latvia and go back to Eastern Europe all the time and western europe, and teachers are respected there loot more than they are here in the United States, and theyre paid more, and i think theres something really fascinating for me to read the history of education in the United States and theres this sort of current of treating teachers like theyre basically a Delivery System and then test proctors and the other countries theyre treated more like academics like intellectuals, and i think thats one of the major differences and why youre hearing from the socalled education experts who never taught and rarely are actual practicing teachers. Host to go to the art of teaching you refer notice the book as the beauty and complexity of the art of teaching. And i think that standardized testing is incapable of measuring anything that is both beautiful and complex can you tell us more from your experience about your witnessing that the beauty and the complexity of the teachers at mission high and what theyre doing. I would say my favorite part of reporting on the book it doesnt when you walk into a classroom, you dont see it immediately. You cant appreciate it. All that is so invisible and so much of it has to do with what teachers do before they enter the class and what they do after the class as they pour over student work together. But i love this at some point in my reporting two years into it this incredible teacher that i profile in one of my chapters, she had been teaching for 27 years. She told me in a completely blew my mind. She told me that at some point in her teach are career, about eight years she started seeing teaching as this complex threedimensional jigsaw puzzle and all these different pieces that go into it, and how they all interact and reinforce each other, and once she saw how the she had been studying for years, she got it. She started feeling confident before the what she was doing. And it took me years to figure out what those differences are and some of them are about a great lesson plan. A great lesson plan is a work of art. You have content teachers work so hard to go beyond the textbooks. Its about content. About teachers talk about the rhythm of the class and the rhythm of the class has to do with how you piece together different activities, not just standing there lecturing. Students get bored 15 minutes into it. Its about a quick lecture and maybe individual practice and then book groups and discussion. So you really think about how youre going to beat this together so theres a good rhythm to the class and creates this energy in the classroom. They talk about the pace. So you dont do anything too slow or too fast. And then they talk so much about how you look at the students. Are you are you looking at them as an empty do you really see that individual . Are you looking for that. Light youre going to engage . They talk about the culture the relationship with the student. Not a topdown relationship. Its about a relationship. They do know more than the students but at the same time the student also is a very important part of that relationship. So that just 5 of everything that goes into it but just to give you a case of how incredibly complex and beautiful and fascinating it is. Host we hear a lot about behavior issues in the classroom, and we have all seen youtube videos of classrooms out of control teachers being tied to chairs, and teachers losing their temper, and that seems to be put on the teacher but really fascinated by some of your anecdotes about how about why that behavior gets so out of control. And how then, those teachers deal with this. Guest that so true. Think so many stories in the media have to do with classroom management and when stories about manage. Have so much to do with behavior but the way teachers talk about classroom management and at mission, very little to do with behavior of the kit. Usually because that sort of blames the kids. Puts responsibility on the kids. They look at the intense focus on the prosecution so, why are kids disengage it or why are they bored or why are they confused . Maybe you didnt structure your class properly to explain the assignment and then give explicit instructions on how to do it. Maybe theres the scaffolding is missing so helping a student go from a point a to point b. Theres so many things that teachers at Mission High School talk about that has to do with content and academics before they talk about behavior. And i heard teachers say over and over again to new teachers they coach when a classroom is out of control theyll say ali youre going to get some of your content. Behavioral issues have to do with academics. Were going to figure it out. Youll get them with your content and they spend most of their time working at that. Host in 2004, 2005, thensuperintendent of schools for San Francisco mr. Wilaass said in an interview that schools are like a business. And this book is really contrary to that. You make a point of saying that the school, any school, is a community, and id love to hear you talk about that in terms of what happens within the school and also where that school is in the larger community. Guest that a big lesson for me. Just spending time at Mission High School. It was before i entered Mission High School, they didnt quite understand, and i think never spent time in american high schools before i spent what kind of diversity that is and how you think that makes a cookie cutter approach, which is what you call it in the book to education, to national education, a real problem. Mission high school is one of the most different schools not only in our city but in the country, and the incredible thing for me, a kid from latvia, i feel like i traveled all over the world in the last four years. I learned so much about Different Countries and schools in Different Countries and cultures and Different Countries, its incredible. At the same time it also when you spend time at mission you somewhere theres some kind of ideal system that we can figure out and scale up and then we can sort of export to every school in the country. This is is a studied history has been the recuring them of education reformers. Theyre always looking for some sort of utopian system that were going to put in every school and you hear it in the news today as well, a lot of folks who created specific Charter Schools. They do think this is the best way to educate all urban youth across america and the lobby and advocate for it, and this seems cleat completely absurd. The best systems serve the needed of the students and the teachers are the best professionals to understand what the needs are and how to serve them best. We hear an awful lot of talk about the achievement gap in education. Id love to hear you fine that for us define that for us and tell us what the dangers are. What kind of students fall into that gap and why. Well, in our country the human gap is in the public debate define very narrowly and very much to do with usually with test scores and Graduation Rates and one of the things that the issue scholars are raising today it sort of blames the students and the teachers and shifts or attention away from what they call opportunity gaps and sort of have to do with what kind of inputs and what kind of investments are you making in all these schools. For example Mission High School this is really a kind of trial. California is the wealthiest state in the union and we rank at the very bottom, 2014 at the very bottom on funding for students. So the result, Mission High School gets about 9,000 per student, in a school in palo alto pool with more resources gets 14,000 per year, so, Mission Students are already at a disadvantage. Theyre supposed to take the same tests and when they and also teachers also at Mission High School get paid when theyre starting out 10,000 less than a teacher in palo alto. So you just the basic input to start out at a disadvantage and supposed to reach the same markers at the same time, and when students struggle, we blame them and we blame the schools and the teachers rather than talking about the investments that have not been made in schools. Host theres apoignant anecdote about maria who you spoke about earlier who was told that the scores for the school had come in, the and the school was doing poorly. And she said, i think to you how can i be successful if the school is flunking . A lot of us missed that connection that if a school is doing poorly based on the tests then all the students are doing poorly. So an achievement gap is the kids who are really succeeding in them. Guest exactly. A narrow everything that Mission High School does, and i think sort of highlights the absurdity of it. If you look at standardized test scores as one of the most then you look at any other markers, college accept appearance 0 of student are accepted to college every year, 75 are enrolled. These are the numbers that you see with higher income students. Incredible numbers. When you look at then theyre grade graduation and look at the gap in grades and students satisfactory experience, when you walk through the school it becomes very clear that this very difficult to call it a failing school. So its a major problem how we define the achievement gap. The good news is a lot of states are moving in the direction of defining success. Host so, what is the answer, then . [laughter] host not to put you on the spot. Guest i think that in my analysis i feel like in the last 13 years under the no child left behind, we put all of our priorities priorities and funding into designing and redesigning different accountability systems, teacher evaluation forms, debating standards and different tests what kind of tests should they be, should there be more of them or less of them and were completely ignoring the most important thing which has to do with the craft of teaching and those small the struggle and that teachers are having at Mission High School i try to illustrate and those are the mechanisms through which theyre closing their gaps. Were completely ignoring that. Were not funding that. Our policies not prioritizing that. Not sending enough money that way, and i we reduced the amount of testing if we reduced our insistence on external measure. S and push off the stage all of the education experts and allow teachers to talk about it in their own words and more, i really believe that we would begin to close our achievement gap. Host one other startling fact that comes out of series of facts out of reading this book and we all suspect it we see a lot of money getting poured into schools and most of that money stops at a certain place. It goes into new testing procedures goes into new bureaucracies, play may go into the school in form of computers and technology but rarely makes it to the level that kristina and myself feel is the most important level the teacherstudent interaction in that classroom. Id love to hear you talk a little bit more about what a teachers life is like, because we all suspect that they work too hard and don