Inequity Sux

Field Trip! I took a group of girls to the local college-prep catholic girls' high school for the 8th grade day, and came back feeling 2 extreme emotions: excitement and anger.

I'm excited because this is an amazing opportunity. Twenty-two girls went today, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of them were accepted to the school. The teachers are phenomenal, the resources are out of this world, and the academic program, with its Social Justice focus, is everything I could want for my girls.

Here's where the anger comes in.

Why should only a few of my girls (and the guys who are accepted to the all-boys school) get these opportunities? The students at my school are no less deserving than those whose parents can shell out $13,500 every year.

I don't begrudge the school or its students the resources they have, especially because they seem to make good use of their location and don't buy or build things they don't need. Their library isn't impressive, but they're just down the street from the amazing 8-floor City/University library.

They should have the lab equipment and darkrooms and art studio.

So should every kid.

They should have the amazing teachers who benefit from worthwhile professional development.

So should every kid.

They should have the interactive curriculum enhanced by local and global trips.

So should every kid.

When I arrived back at school, I discovered a visitor. One of our students who graduated a few years ago was back to say hello, and she described her high school experience. "Some of the teachers are really good, but if they stick you with a bad teacher, it's terrible." This bright, intelligent young adult went on to describe schedule problems, missed opportunities, and trouble that she never would have faced at a private college prep school.

Our free public schools should be well-equipped to prepare our kids to compete. The problem isn't just that we don't have enough money; the problem is misused funding, an inappropriate focus on standardized testing, and a lack of quality teacher training.

And our kids suffer for it.

Went to my classroom today!

Neighbor teacher texted to say she was working in her classroom, so I decided to unload the bazillion boxes of donated USB drives that have been overwhelming my miniscule dining room.

It smells funny.

Not the dining room, or the neighbor teacher. No, my classroom smells funny. My nose was itching within a few minutes of pretend-work-but-really-gossipping, and the trip into my closets to find the elusive but completely worthless grammar teacher's edition made me almost die.

Next time, remind me to go in early, open the windows wide, turn on the fan, and go revisit the In'n'Out that I've missed so much this summer. While I'm at it, I should recruit some kids to come and move desks for me...

As we pretended that we were going to do some real work, neighbor teacher and I discussed the following:

• Summer school.
• How happy we were to be rid of our principal.
• How the former principal darkened our souls.
• How low our test scores were going to be this year because teaching quality went down and nobody really did any extra interventions because we so hated former principal.
• Our readiness to move on from the horribleness that was the former principal.
• Ideas for staff collaboration which is guaranteed to be incredibly amazing because everyone loves each other like the kids on Barney.
• My need for help in figuring out how to improve class, learning, and life for my English Learners.
• My need for help standing up to my teaching team. Wonderful people, but they don't always listen.
• Our frustration with the new 7th grade students' general misbehavior and how it's all the former principal's fault (wait, we weren't going to talk about her again).
• Classroom configurations.
• Sleeping in 4 hours later than normal.
• Summer plans.
• Summer reading.
• Books that have been turned into movies.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and how cool it was when the memories kinda dropped like water into ink in the pensieve.
• and other random frivolity.

Seem like a long conversation? That's what happens when you take two people who are accustomed to talking all day, every day, and give them 3 months without students! Really, I should get a job as a telemarketer or something.

Meanwhile, my classroom looks exactly as it did before my arrival, with the addition of several boxes of USB drives and the removal of the remains of the potting soil that we used for an experiment at the end of the year before last and that I now need to repot my basil plants.

Guess I'll have to go back next week. I wonder if neighbor teacher will be there...

I Quit!

Yes, I quit. Not my job, not my life, not even my endless (unpaid, did I mention that?) hours of planning.

I quit this whole Year in Review thing. If you've read the first few posts, you probably think I'm a witchy monster who hates life.

Last year was so negative and hateful and hurtful, at least outside the classroom, and my memory just isn't good enough to translate all the awesome things my kids did into readable posts.

So, I quit. I'm not going to finish the year in review.

You're probably incredibly disappointed, so I'll make a promise: this year, I'll blog about the good things. I'll tell the funny little stories about the kids, brag about the amazing insights they express, and post pictures of their exhibitions, field days, and artwork.

No more of this raincloud stuff. I quit!

Teacher Stereotypes

My brother hates teachers. Not me, just teachers. He says we talk down to everyone else, don't do our jobs, and are responsible for many problems in the world.

But he's the only person in the world who thinks like that, right? Or do I need to prove that a negative teacher stereotype exists? If you need proof, google "bad teacher."

In the Teacher Magazine article, "Upending the Negative Teacher Stereotype," John Norton discusses responses to a June 6, 2009 Newsweek article by Jonathan Alter. (In order to confuse you further, Alter decided to incite the wrath of teachers everywhere by opening with a controversial quote from Jacques Barzun's Teacher in America.)

While good blog etiquette suggests that I should summarize and write about each response individually, that's simply not going to happen. The number of posts related to this story make such a task impossible. Unless, of course, you'd like to see my head explode magnificently.

Therefore, I'm going to invite you to read the article and comments, and then return to this page to see if I have anything worthwhile to offer. I know, that's a risky proposal; you're all too likely to follow the links, get lost in the discussion, and forget to come back here and comment. I suggest opening the links in a new tab or window :)

Norton's article, along with its pleasantly insightful comments, offers endless topics for discussion, but two major obstacles jump out that permit negative stereotypes to endure:

• People in general seem to differentiate between "MY school / MY teacher" and "teachers and schools in the USA."


• Teachers, politicians, and the general American public all seem to maintain differing views regarding teacher effectiveness.

Norton mentions the common "American-schools-are-bad-but-my-kid's-school-is-OK" stereotype. We see examples of this view everywhere. Jay Leno harangues teachers night after night, and it's become an old not-so-funny gag that every joke that starts with a teacher will end with statutory rape, but he praised his own teachers when he returned to Andover for a hometown event. On The West Wing, the smartest TV show in way too long, Jimmy Smits' character makes education a huge part of his election campaign. In one episode, Santos (the character) is explaining his education plan to potential fundraisers, and they show irritation when he gives that old line about getting rid of bad teachers. "My sister is a teacher." His response? "And I'm sure she's a great teacher, but..." This idea is pervasive, even ubiquitous, but it's still just...silly.

When we separate our own schools and teachers from the general population, we allow ourselves to retain our simplistic views on the state of education. If my teacher is the only one who works hard, then the rest of the teachers are just "out there." If none of the teachers "out there" are worthwhile, then we can justify the view that American Education just needs to be turned on its head. Then we leave ourselves with naive solutions that don't work.

Instead, we need to examine what we have. A superb educational consultant in Northern California recently commented on the "pockets of excellence" in an underperforming district. We could extend that appellation across the country. What's working in American schools? WHO is working? What are they doing? What best practices could be adapted to other learning communities?

Which brings us to the second point: How do we define success? Politicians (and yes, I'm using the term loosely) have spewed nonsense about accountability, trying to run the public education system like a business. However, one significant difference separates public education from businesses, charter schools, and private schools: public schools admit all students. Even small schools of choice admit students randomly, not based on grades or behavior. We can't "counsel out" students, as KIPP is rumored to do, or expel kids for any but the most severe infractions. (For more about our admission policy, read this post). The problem comes when teachers try to explain why we sound so excited about achievements that sound terrible to those outside the profession. When we list the reasons why a 40% proficiency rate or 85% homework turn-in rates are wonderful, we sound like whiners. We sound like we're just making excuses, and the world mocks us for it. While you're thinking about success, and commenting on your ideas, open this article in a new window.

Teachers need to work tirelessly on several fronts to assuage the negative teacher stereotypes. We need to be willing to adopt the best practices from other teachers, schools, and states; or, as Harry Wong says, "Steal, steal, steal!" We need to define success in terms that people in other professions can appreciate.

Oh, yeah, and we all need to work freaking hard to follow Abraham Lincoln's advice: "Whatever you are, be a good one."

A Year in Review: July 08, Aug 08, June 09

Although we technically have a week left of school, and that week contains important activities like teaching and reviewing for finals, I've found myself pondering the meaning of life and wondering what this year has really been like. It will take more than one blog session to complete any sort of real analysis, but here's the start.

June 2009: Why do we learn new things right at the end of the year? I had two meetings on Friday (yes, the last Friday before the last week of school) that would have been helpful at the beginning of this year. The first was an IEP, and we got the results of pretty extensive testing. By the way, this was my first experience participating in an IEP meeting with both a competent psychologist/special ed teacher and a willing, educated parent. The test results made sense and we could connect them to what we saw at home and in the classroom. I also learned some real strategies that went above and beyond the typical useless mumbo-jumbo that under-trained special ed teachers usually spew like vomit. I really don't hate special ed teachers - it takes a better person than I to go into the field. However, it is a difficult field, and many of the teachers I've met who go into special ed are more idealistic than realistic, and more touchy-feely than intellectual. I've wasted many an hour in IEP meetings only to be told that "Kidsname needs more personal attention and visual reminders." That sort of advice isn't helpful.

The second meeting turned out to be more of a family conference. I've been frustrated because, all year, I haven't really found a way to get through to this kid. She doesn't relate to people like a typical 7th-grade student, although I suspect that her social awkwardness comes from a higher level of thinking, rather than some social disorder. However, I learned a lot about her in this meeting, and I think she may have seen that I really do care about her and want her to succeed. We created a plan for next year that, if properly implemented, should help to lead her out of this phase she's going through.

In both of these meetings, I experienced a gargantuan stab of "teacher guilt." Anyone with a dose of reality can tell you that, despite the idiocy of some old white male politicians, the teacher is only one factor in a kid's development. Unfortunately, the irrational megalomaniac constantly claws at me, telling me that if I were more careful, involved, or intelligent, these kids would not find education so difficult.

One of my goals for this summer will be to find the happy medium between my foolish messiah complex and backward ambivalence. I can certainly be more careful about my students, checking in on them, clarifying misunderstandings, practicing necessary skills, teaching time management, communicating with parents, and so on, but I'm no Ron Clark. I can't make myself sick or sacrifice my family in an effort to improve life for my students. So, as I create my plans, I'll be setting up a time schedule and working to find or create a better way to keep track of my students and tighten the seive so that fewer problems slip through.

Going back to the beginning of the year...because it makes sense...

August...:

no, not yet.

July 2008: The frustration from last year spilled over without a break into this year. July, that middle ground, saw further attempts by the district big-wigs to crush our successes so that their priorities could succeed. Instead of scheduling new principal interviews so that our teacher representative, who was one of the founders of our school, could attend, one of the district minions made frantic phone calls two day before interviews were to begin and could only contact me, one of the less-capable spokespeople for our school. I convinced her that I could find someone more qualified to be on the panel, but after a day of searching, I could only contact one other teacher who was only a slightly better choice. As it turned out, her voice didn't even matter - I could have easily been the token. The interview panel comprised just one teacher, one parent...and seven district lackeys who had obviously been instructed not to choose whomever our people preferred. As a result, we were assigned a principal who did not understand our vision, showed no interest in learning, and brought with her a terrible reputation for being inflexible and belligerent. Despite all this, the teaching team decided that we would do everything in our power to enable the success of our new principal, because if she failed, the entire school would suffer.

I decided at that time that I needed to educate myself so that I could be a useful advocate for our school.

August 2008: After rushing through the last of my online classes, jumping for joy when I found that I had passed all three sections of my 5-hour certification test on the first try (a rare accomplishment), and flying back from standing up in my friend's incredibly stressful wedding the night before summer school began, I arrived at the school at 7:30 on a glorious sunny morning on the unfamiliar campus we had borrowed for summer school to set up for my first day teaching in the new year.

Nobody was there.

I wandered the campus, looking for a custodian. I called other teachers. I tried to track down our new administrator.

Nothing.

I greeted the few students who started arriving early, and explained my wanderings to the other summer school teacher who drove in a few minutes later.

Finally, and I forget how, we were let into classrooms: I got the library, and she was parked in a classroom way across campus.

Then students started arriving, and the two of us quickly began exchanging worried glances. These weren't the right students!

When we had first planned summer school, we had planned on having more teachers and smaller classes, so we had created a list of incoming 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. District policies being as foolish as they are, we quickly learned that our beautiful plan was not acceptable, so we created a 7th-grade-only alternative. Then our principal was yanked from us (in an attempt by the big-wigs to squelch innovation wherever possible), and the new principal was instated as previously described. The now former principal passed on the documents to the now current principal, instructing her specifically to use the new summer school list when sending out notifications. Yeah, she didn't do that.

That beautiful late-summer morning was quickly turning into a nightmare, and it was a perfect opportunity for new principal to prove herself. Yeah, she didn't do that either. Rather than swoop in, sort out the details, and apologize for her mistake, she crisply informed us that she had an administrative meeting at the District Office and was much to busy to come and assist. We were to teach the students we had, and we could meet at the end of the day to work everything out.

Have I mentioned yet that this is a 5 day summer school? By vamping through that one day, we lost 20 percent of our teaching time. Of course, we did our very best, as mature professionals, but we were fairly irritated by the time we made it back to our school site. Our hopes for a mature, professional reconciliation were quickly dashed. The principal asked us (I think it was just me by that point - the other teacher had another meeting) to "be creative." I proposed a wide variety of solutions. The principal could call all of the affected students and make corrections so that the right students would show up the next day - I would even help with the calling! No, that wouldn't work. No explanation as to why it wouldn't work, but I've since learned that this individual has a habit of going to ridiculous measures to avoid taking blame. I also suggested that we could keep the students who were currently attending, but we would need to be compensated for more prep hours, because we had already spent a considerable amount of time planning an intense, rigorous course of study for these 5 days. No, that wouldn't work. Again, no real explanation as to why it would work.

That was when I learned that "be creative" means "shut up and find a way to do what I told you to do." What an incredible difference from the student-centered, team-led environment I had enjoyed for the last two years! It was starting to sound like my first two years of teaching, except now I knew better, and was determined not to be blindly obedient like before.

Still, I, with the rest of the team, tried to be helpful and make things work. When the principal left a calendar meeting to go set the schedule with the monster school, with whom we share a campus and who typically tries to run over our needs because they're bigger, I quickly printed her a copy of the schedule WE HAD ALREADY AGREED ON in our June planning sessions, the notes from which I knew she had a copy. We all cheered for her when "she" convinced the other school to agree to that same schedule, and we were kind when she failed miserably to reach satisfactory arrangements in other areas. In my attempt to become a stronger voice for the needs of our students, I started hanging out so that I could be around to help and know what was happening, bypassing the solitude of my classroom and the luxury of the pool to plan amidst the chaos of the office.

School started just a few days before the end of the month. It was the easiest, smoothest first week of school ever! This was my first year looping with my students, and I already knew everyone's names, had a seating chart arranged that avoided problems, and had created lessons and a homework assignment that were appropriate for their needs. Despite the storms we could already see coming, this was going to be a good year!