This Makes So Much Sense!

I don't know about you, but I've always found the cast of characters subbing at my school to be a casting call from the X-Files. Now I know why!

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NYT:

Announcement Shocks, then Satisfies Education World

Washington --- An announcement from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), confirmed today by the White House, has left the education world in a state of uproar. “I can’t say I’m surprised, technology can do amazing things,” responded California Teacher’s Association president Barbara Kerr, “but no one really expects something like this.”

Kerr was referring to the ACLU’s revelation that thousands of California's per-diem substitute teachers, those who take a day-long assignment when a teacher is briefly ill, are actually part of a massive, classified cryogenics program run under the auspices of the National Institute of Health. The program was part of the NIH’s Center for Allergy and Infectious Diseases and called the Slowed Subject Reintegration Program or, appropriately, SS-RIP for short.

SS-RIP began in the late 1950’s, with the rise of cryogenic technologies. Patients suffering from terminal diseases classified “near-curable,” where a cure was expected within 10 to 20 years, were lowered into a comatose state and then placed in room with temperatures hovering just above freezing. The combination slowed the patients’ metabolic processes, preventing their death from disease and slowing down, but not stopping, their aging.

When their disease was cured, the patients were then lifted out of their comas, medicated, and reintroduced to society.

Which is where substitute teaching comes in.

“Subbing is really the ideal occupation to reintegrate people into society,” commented NIH deputy director Dr. Norka Ruiz Bravo, who oversaw the SS-RIP program for 15 years, before being elevated to her current post this February. “No one expects these people to seem normal, be consistent with current trends, or even teach.”

“Our studies showed,” Dr. Bravo continued, “that patients did much better when they were exposed to children. The children’s tolerance for curious and inexplicably strange behavior is much higher than adults. The patients could be themselves until they found a way to cope.”

Dr. Bravo also admitted to placing mainly in California because, "deviance from social mores and gaps in expected cultural knowledge was more widely accepted."

The SS-RIP patient records remain classified and no substitute teacher interviewed by press time was willing to admit to being part of the program. Many teachers, however, were more than willing to respond to the news of the program.

“This explains so much,” laughed Michael Wilson, a sixth-grade teacher in Santa Clara, California, a county in which SS-RIP admits it placed many teachers. “I always thought the subs were just crazy. Living in the past because they were a few donuts short of a dozen. Now it makes much more sense.”

Veteran teacher Karin Richards, of San Jose, California, chuckled, “I’ve taught 27 years and never encountered a substitute who wasn’t a bizarro. (sic) I often asked myself, ‘Where do they get these people?’ Now I know!”

Dr. Bravo found the revelation of the program to be no laughing matter. “We were a classified program solely for the good of our patients. Losing the ability to quietly and surreptiously help recovering patients rejoin society is very unfortunate.”

Asked whether there were still many patients awaiting medication and reentry to society, Dr. Bravo responded, “That information is still, and hopefully will remain, classified.”

The Pyrrhic Victory of KIPP

I’m down. KIPP, a local high-achieving charter school, is stealing away my favorite fourth-graders. See, I teach fifth grade and our local KIPP starts in fifth-grade. So I got to watch these little bright minds rise, first in my GATE class last year, then in my ELD class this year. I’ve looked forward for two years to the day they’ll be mine, only to have them snatched away to become quasi-robotic automatons of academic achievement. Great for them, terrible for the grade they leave behind. Now who is going to set the pace in my class next year? Now who is going to show the class what achievement really looks like? This frustration is inclining me to spill a little venom onto the page.

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Dear KIPP,

I’m writing to you from a public elementary school in your district. We’ve got one thing in common: we share the extremes, you the highest-performing school in the district, we the lowest. You might remember me, I came and visited your school last year. I learned some great lessons from your school, simple learnings that have made light-years of improvement at my school. Sadly though, the last year has taught me an even greater lesson: KIPP, you’re hurting public education.

It’s hard for me to say this. As a Teach For America teacher, I feel espirit-de-corps-bound to laud you as a great example of what’s right with “The Movement.” But as a public school teacher, I feel an even greater onus to label you the worst thing for public education since Plessy vs. Ferguson. KIPP, you are re-segregating our schools, a sliver at a time. Sorting out families, students and teachers not by race but by predilection for success, always taking from among the best and always leaving the dregs.

At first I thought that your self-selective academies were tolerable because they held up models that real public schools could emulate. Now I realize that your academies are unreplicable so long as you exist. The things that make you successful, such as supportive families, curricular options, extended days, a superior staff of young, life-less teachers ---gosh, did we really need a whole new line of schools to prove those are they keys to achievement--- are currently out of reach for us but they are not impossibly distant. However, KIPP, your academies are only pushing them farther and farther away.

We can change the union contracts. We can acquire curricula that meet the needs of our students. We too can create a culture of achievement among students and staff. But we cannot do this when you siphon off our most invested families, most participative students, and most dedicated teachers.

Certainly, you take only a handful. But a handful is all we need. Elementary schools are not big places. A few families can be the powerful organizers for a whole community of parents. A few students can be the champions of a whole grade. A small group of teachers can change the tenor of an entire staff. Yet, there is no motivation for great families, students and teachers to endure and reform awful schools when they can abandon them wholesale for the comfortably successful world of KIPP.

KIPP, you hire only staff that are willing to meet the needs of your academy. We must change our school only as we can convince the staff their needs permit it. We can never muster the raw investment of time and energy required to meet the needs of our students without the dedication of young teachers. We cannot attract and retain young teachers when your alternative exists. Only two-thirds into my “last year,” I have already begun to receive a barrage of recruiting emails and letters from “achievement” schools like yours. And on the harder days, they are difficult to resist. Why fight against the tide here when I could surf on the waves of your self-selected staff and student body?

Our dream in Teach For America is that “One day all children will have an equal opportunity to get an excellent education.” You bring that dream only so far as “more.” Thanks to you, more children, those fortunate enough to have parents who will attend your meetings and lucky enough to be selected in your lottery, now have that opportunity. But you leave behind the schools they would have attended, the schools they would have helped to change. These schools serve, in total, many times the number in your academies. Serving the few, you leave behind the “all.” You offer us in return only a vague fantasy, made more real, famed and lauded, for you and made more unreachable for us, by the yearly thefts of our best and brightest.

You’ve been taking our students to show us what is possible with a few of them. Now give them back so we can achieve it with the rest.

An Untold Horror of Teaching

There are many things I find difficult about teaching; many grave and serious problems…most of these are well-chronicled in the edu-annals. You know the list as well as I: bad parenting, bad teaching, bad policy-making, etc. etc. But there is one that I feel is off the map, although every serious teacher I’ve spoken too has echoed this experience: the bad teacher-dream.

Mrs. AB, who is now in her second year of retirement after 33 years in the noble profession, says she still endures them. I remember my first occurring before I even got in the classroom! My teacher-friends all report falling victim to them with some sort of regularity. Last night I had one of the worst ever.

I was in front of my classroom, in front of my great class of kids, and someone started tapping a pencil. I echo-located and figured out it was M---, a great girl who’s been acting up lately. I told her to cut it out and went on with my lesson. She didn’t stop. So I put her name on the board and stood by her. But someone else picked it up. Same pattern, ---caught the kid, got them to stop, only to have another start. Soon my lesson descended into chaos as one kid after another tapped, tapped, tapped. I covered the board in names, I covered the names in detentions, I gave the whole class an hour after-school. I could not stop the tapping. It was like Poe’s “The Bells,” ---the tintinnabulation of the tap, of the tap, tap tap tap tap tap tap; or perhaps the “Tell-Tale Heart!”

Ever the professional, I called a class meeting. Tap, tap, tap, tap. I asked what the kids were trying to tell me, what this protest was about. I told them that I respected their willingness to be only mildly disrespectful. They sat in confused silence, unwilling to explain and unwilling to stop. Tap, tap, tap, tap. I ran to all of my most loyal students, none would explain the tapping, some picked it up as soon as I came near. I called the principal and told him, near tears, that my class was in open rebellion. He came and brought our literacy coach and they talked to each kid. As the principal came in the door, a dozen of my best students ran out and I went to chase them down.

When I came back, the literacy coach came up to me with a list of names and began to explain what their complaints were. Momentarily, I realized that she had written down their complaints on my list of detentions, erasing my record of who had been tapping! I went crazy! Then I woke up. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

No! My mind raced to understand why I was still hearing the dreaded noise.

It only took a second. The tap, tap, tap, tap, was coming from a dripping drain pipe outside my bedroom window. It had rained in the night, just enough to start the tap-tap-tapping early this morning.

The worst part of the teacher-dream, however, is that it follows and tires you just like a bad day of teaching. Having woken up just before and just after the dream, I know that the whole experience lasted about an hour! An extra hour of teaching, bad, horrific, awful teaching, all in my own mind, all on my own time! Man.

I Love Science Camp

Our school spends somewhere around $10,000 to send most of the 5th grade to science camp. We don’t charge our families and we don’t burden our staff with fundraising and I would challenge anyone to find a better use of that money. Like few things in this edu-world, I love science camp.

Yes, yes, part of that has to do with the fact that I don’t have to do any of the teaching up here. More of it has to do with the fact that my children, teetering on the edge of the abyss of adolescence, are learning powerful life lessons at the rate of about one an hour. Every time we convene, each meal and meeting in the amphitheater, my kids look a bit older. It’s like psychological time-lapse photography.

C---- slid into a puddle today. He looked up at me, expecting to be chastised or disciplined. I smiled. An hour later, he limped shivering and “gross” into his cabin, realizing that actions have consequences, even when you don’t get in trouble.

M----, a high-status bilingual girl in my class, has made a dozen new friends. None of them look like her or speak Spanish. V----, a loner low-status Vietnamese girl, ran up to me with rare excitement and told me that she has found her “twin.”

E---- told me this morning that now, after our night hike last night, he really believes me that there are billions of stars and that we are just one tiny planet.

Even as I went around to tuck them in tonight, I could see that they had changed. On Tuesday night, I was universally heralded with looks of relief. They were openly glad to see me, glad to fall asleep imagining that there was a reliable adult protecting them in the night and there for comfort if they needed it. Here on Thursday, they so clearly didn’t need me, from the boys who are barely able to contain their plans for naughtiness to the girls who were already sobbing about leaving each other, they were anticipating their friends to get them through the night.