Hiring season, and our paucity of options, reminds me of a simple question I have long considered:
Would it benefit education in Title I schools to trade away tenure for a doubling of teachers’ salaries?
My imagination is that this could allow schools, like ours, to clear out the empty-shell teachers and attract high-performing ones to replace them. However, at schools without the marvelous leadership mine has, it could also allow awful administrators to dismiss good teachers, like me, who try to fight the edu-fad rip tides. I can empathize with both perspectives very well.
So the question becomes: When the post-tenure shakedown was done, who would come out on top, achievement or asininity?
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Saturday, April 08, 2006
School Choice Rorschach Test
Future American leader enabled by an achievement-focused charter academy?
or
Poster-child for innocence lost under a regime of highly structured education?
or
Both?
---
This picture came to me in a recruiting email from Uncommon Schools. Sub-text, "If you think all children should look this, come work for us!"
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Red Button Days
As someone desiring to be a "relentless" teacher, some of the most painful times in teaching for me are what I like to call "red button days." Days where, still hours before the end of the day, you can tell that the Kids Are Done. It's nobody's fault, they're not fooling around, they're just not ready to learn. The afternoons of test days, days before vacation, thunderstorming days, days after the networks air a hit movie and everyone stayed up late. It's 1:30PM, they go home at 3, you just want to hit a red button and cause all their parents to come pick them up now. No learning is going to get done, so why struggle and make everyone suffer? Just press the button, end the pain.
Today was the ultimate red button day.
11:50AM, 20 minutes before lunch. A---, who had just been sent back from the nurse because he had no fever, vomits onto the floor. I had tried to station a trashcan near him, but apparently it was not near enough. Within moments, the room began to smell of the foulness.
I called the office and we relocated, but really, how do you come back from that? Mrs. AB, my sage mother and 33-year teaching veteran, said that when it thunderstormed she would refocus the class on the storm. Write poems about the storm, read about storms, talk about storms, do storm math. I don't think you can do that with puke. Likewise, if people get in a fight or something tragic happens, you have class meetings, you let the kids journal, you read an appropriate book to help them see how others have grappled. But again, a class meeting around puke?
To their credit, the kids did surprisingly well. Only moderate, appropriate, even, screaming from nearby students. And fairly respectful acknowledgments of the smell. We quickly went to another room while the janitor cleaned, then to lunch, then scattered to our leveled English Development classes, before returning at 2. I thought we'd just get back to work. No no. A---'s absence became the elephant in the back of the room.
After struggling through a reading for a while, I started to get frustrated, then relented and asked, "Why is nobody focused?" They didn't answer. "The reading is pretty good, right?" (It was a "Magic Treehouse" on the Revolutionary War, hard to beat!) They nodded. "Well, why can't we get focused?" C----, a girl at A---'s table, pointed to the trashcan that A--- had semi-utilized. "Is it empty?" she asked. I finally got it. "How many people are thinking about A--- puking?" I inquired. Admittedly, a leading question, but even the best and brightest's hands shot up. What do you do with that?
I wouldn't use it often, I swear, but boy it'd be nice to have that button.
Today was the ultimate red button day.
11:50AM, 20 minutes before lunch. A---, who had just been sent back from the nurse because he had no fever, vomits onto the floor. I had tried to station a trashcan near him, but apparently it was not near enough. Within moments, the room began to smell of the foulness.
I called the office and we relocated, but really, how do you come back from that? Mrs. AB, my sage mother and 33-year teaching veteran, said that when it thunderstormed she would refocus the class on the storm. Write poems about the storm, read about storms, talk about storms, do storm math. I don't think you can do that with puke. Likewise, if people get in a fight or something tragic happens, you have class meetings, you let the kids journal, you read an appropriate book to help them see how others have grappled. But again, a class meeting around puke?
To their credit, the kids did surprisingly well. Only moderate, appropriate, even, screaming from nearby students. And fairly respectful acknowledgments of the smell. We quickly went to another room while the janitor cleaned, then to lunch, then scattered to our leveled English Development classes, before returning at 2. I thought we'd just get back to work. No no. A---'s absence became the elephant in the back of the room.
After struggling through a reading for a while, I started to get frustrated, then relented and asked, "Why is nobody focused?" They didn't answer. "The reading is pretty good, right?" (It was a "Magic Treehouse" on the Revolutionary War, hard to beat!) They nodded. "Well, why can't we get focused?" C----, a girl at A---'s table, pointed to the trashcan that A--- had semi-utilized. "Is it empty?" she asked. I finally got it. "How many people are thinking about A--- puking?" I inquired. Admittedly, a leading question, but even the best and brightest's hands shot up. What do you do with that?
I wouldn't use it often, I swear, but boy it'd be nice to have that button.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Clarifying the Anti-KIPP
Unsurprisingly, my fellow TFAers don't like people to hate on their charter wonderchild. Can't we just get 5-10% of our "all children" to college and call it a day? Maybe go write some policy before we pen our memoirs? Now that the boiling blood has cooled, I'm happy for the chance to clarify my perspective on KIPP and kids.
In a recent antagonistic comment, an anonymous writer waxed hard-core:
If I had a choice, all my students would be in a KIPP environment, burning the midnight oil until 5pm so that they could have the chance to raise their skills.KIPP is the full realization of TFA ideals... burn hard and you'll make a difference.
Allow me to say that I agree with him completely. I too want all students to be in a KIPP environment. That's why I want to keep the students, parents and teachers at my school who will help turn it into a KIPP environment. Sending kids to charter schools makes it, yes, LESS likely that all kids will get into a KIPP environment.
(Pride demands th next paragraph: As for me being selfish, I'm satisfied by reminding the gentle readers that if I was so desperate to teach the GATE / KIPP kids, I would just go teach at KIPP. I already teach their hours and offer my phone number for homework help. Save for my soul, I would lose nothing in the change. The very same parents choicing away from my inexperienced TFA teacher self, ironically, would have me as for their kids' teacher.)
Another anonymous writer suggests:
My thought is that you may be one who has a difficult time motivating students building positive relationships with their families. Otherwise, my guess would be that you wouldn't need to depend on higher-achieving students to do so. And if you look more closely, I'm SURE that you'll be able to find success stories and growth in other students who are not top level for which to point out as motivation.
My relationship with the parents is never the limiting factor in my students' performance. Is it exemplary? No. I don't speak Spanish and that makes it awfully difficult to have the continual communication that I think would be characteristic of an excellent teacher-parent community. My parents know their students are failing to learn math or English and they want them to do better, but that urgency is not what focuses 10 year-olds, it is not what convinces them to ignore everything else in their world and focus on a lesson. Classroom culture does that, and that comes from the kids.
I'm bemoaning the loss of a few gifted students not because I don't know how to teach and depend on smart kids to do it for me, but because I'm a good enough teacher to recognize the tremendous limitations of the adult figurehead in front of the classroom. I've also seen, this year, the immense power that a strong core of academically focused students can have on a whole class. They set a higher expectation than I can possible aspire to, they tangibly exemplify the success that I can only preach about. Why do we teach collaborative learning? Why do kids novels so frequently star kids? Why do we care about a multi-cultural curriculum? People learn best from people who seem like them. Kids learn best from kids.
As for other students rising, there are only a handful of students in each grade who are on grade-level. It is naive to imagine that when they are absent other students will suddenly start producing grade-level work. The top student in a 5th grade class cannot be struggling with multiplication if that class is going to succeed in math; likewise, he or she cannot be struggling with writing a paragraph or reading a chapter book if that class is going to succeed in reading and writing. Some student must show what is possible, it cannot simply be me, or their parents, telling them.
In the end, I hope, on this count, to be wrong. I hope that a class can pull itself up by its boot-straps, as that is the situation KIPP has left me with next year.
In a recent antagonistic comment, an anonymous writer waxed hard-core:
If I had a choice, all my students would be in a KIPP environment, burning the midnight oil until 5pm so that they could have the chance to raise their skills.KIPP is the full realization of TFA ideals... burn hard and you'll make a difference.
Allow me to say that I agree with him completely. I too want all students to be in a KIPP environment. That's why I want to keep the students, parents and teachers at my school who will help turn it into a KIPP environment. Sending kids to charter schools makes it, yes, LESS likely that all kids will get into a KIPP environment.
(Pride demands th next paragraph: As for me being selfish, I'm satisfied by reminding the gentle readers that if I was so desperate to teach the GATE / KIPP kids, I would just go teach at KIPP. I already teach their hours and offer my phone number for homework help. Save for my soul, I would lose nothing in the change. The very same parents choicing away from my inexperienced TFA teacher self, ironically, would have me as for their kids' teacher.)
Another anonymous writer suggests:
My thought is that you may be one who has a difficult time motivating students building positive relationships with their families. Otherwise, my guess would be that you wouldn't need to depend on higher-achieving students to do so. And if you look more closely, I'm SURE that you'll be able to find success stories and growth in other students who are not top level for which to point out as motivation.
My relationship with the parents is never the limiting factor in my students' performance. Is it exemplary? No. I don't speak Spanish and that makes it awfully difficult to have the continual communication that I think would be characteristic of an excellent teacher-parent community. My parents know their students are failing to learn math or English and they want them to do better, but that urgency is not what focuses 10 year-olds, it is not what convinces them to ignore everything else in their world and focus on a lesson. Classroom culture does that, and that comes from the kids.
I'm bemoaning the loss of a few gifted students not because I don't know how to teach and depend on smart kids to do it for me, but because I'm a good enough teacher to recognize the tremendous limitations of the adult figurehead in front of the classroom. I've also seen, this year, the immense power that a strong core of academically focused students can have on a whole class. They set a higher expectation than I can possible aspire to, they tangibly exemplify the success that I can only preach about. Why do we teach collaborative learning? Why do kids novels so frequently star kids? Why do we care about a multi-cultural curriculum? People learn best from people who seem like them. Kids learn best from kids.
As for other students rising, there are only a handful of students in each grade who are on grade-level. It is naive to imagine that when they are absent other students will suddenly start producing grade-level work. The top student in a 5th grade class cannot be struggling with multiplication if that class is going to succeed in math; likewise, he or she cannot be struggling with writing a paragraph or reading a chapter book if that class is going to succeed in reading and writing. Some student must show what is possible, it cannot simply be me, or their parents, telling them.
In the end, I hope, on this count, to be wrong. I hope that a class can pull itself up by its boot-straps, as that is the situation KIPP has left me with next year.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Failing the Daily Quiz
They say teachers make more meaningful decisions per day than any other professionals. One of the benefits of being a second-year teacher and a graduate of "Ed School" is the ability to know very quickly that I made those decisions wrongly and to know very well what all was a better route.
Could you do a better job? Somehow I think so. Take this quiz and see! I scored a 0 for 4 today.
1. D---, chronically ill-behaved at the start of the year, has been coming in to school every day and launching straight into disruptiveness. He pokes kids with umbrellas, refuses to expeditiously do what you say, and can often be found crawling through your stuff. Worst of all, he is always there before you, waiting at the door.
a. Using your morning-meeting-derived knowledge that his parents are fighting, you offer him a way to contribute meaningfully to the class while getting him out of your hair. Satisfied that he can do right somewhere, he gets back into line.
b. You have no time for his lack of seriousness, chastize him all day, giving him the attention he wants and adding to the stress you hate. Finally you lose your cool and yell at him, only then recognizing that that is all he wants.
2. C---, usually a good student, continually puts on her hood in class. You tell her to take it off. She complies, but 5 minutes later it's back on.
a. You have no time for her lack of seriousness, and feel justified in assigning her increasing consequences. After getting a detention she checks out for the rest of the day, leaving you to question whether that was the right decision.
b. Using your knowledge that her parents' recent divorce and her problem-filled home-life leads her to be a bit over-emotional, you pull her aside and talk to her about the hood. You find out that it's about more than hair and give her permission to wear the hood, if you can see her eyes the whole day.
3. D---, a smart kid who's constantly disruptive, drives you and every other teacher up the wall. A textbook ADHD case, you get the paperwork from his doctor to have him tested. His parents lose the completed paperwork but promise to get you more soon. Months go by.
a. You know his parents don't live with him and so you pester them constantly on the phone to bring in the paperwork. Eventually, they tire of your phone calls and get the forms. Medicated, he achieves his full potential.
b. You have no time for their lack of seriousness. You create a workaround whereby he is taking about an hour of breaks from the clasroom a day. While this lowers his disruption, he learns next to nothing.
4. R---, an argumentative but smart kid can't seem to control his calling out. It's messing up the flow of your lessons and leading other kids to join him in disruption.
a. You are quick and consistent to remind him to raise his hand. Recognizing that the usual discipline process will quickly max out with him receiving an hour of detention every day, you create a small, simple separate system to challenge him to track and reduce the calling out.
b. You have no time for his lack of seriousness. You warn him, inconsistently, about calling out before moving him through the discipline process. He winds up with an hour of detention everyday. Later on, you find that he doesn’t even mind the detention because he doesn’t want to go home to his empty house.
Could you do a better job? Somehow I think so. Take this quiz and see! I scored a 0 for 4 today.
1. D---, chronically ill-behaved at the start of the year, has been coming in to school every day and launching straight into disruptiveness. He pokes kids with umbrellas, refuses to expeditiously do what you say, and can often be found crawling through your stuff. Worst of all, he is always there before you, waiting at the door.
a. Using your morning-meeting-derived knowledge that his parents are fighting, you offer him a way to contribute meaningfully to the class while getting him out of your hair. Satisfied that he can do right somewhere, he gets back into line.
b. You have no time for his lack of seriousness, chastize him all day, giving him the attention he wants and adding to the stress you hate. Finally you lose your cool and yell at him, only then recognizing that that is all he wants.
2. C---, usually a good student, continually puts on her hood in class. You tell her to take it off. She complies, but 5 minutes later it's back on.
a. You have no time for her lack of seriousness, and feel justified in assigning her increasing consequences. After getting a detention she checks out for the rest of the day, leaving you to question whether that was the right decision.
b. Using your knowledge that her parents' recent divorce and her problem-filled home-life leads her to be a bit over-emotional, you pull her aside and talk to her about the hood. You find out that it's about more than hair and give her permission to wear the hood, if you can see her eyes the whole day.
3. D---, a smart kid who's constantly disruptive, drives you and every other teacher up the wall. A textbook ADHD case, you get the paperwork from his doctor to have him tested. His parents lose the completed paperwork but promise to get you more soon. Months go by.
a. You know his parents don't live with him and so you pester them constantly on the phone to bring in the paperwork. Eventually, they tire of your phone calls and get the forms. Medicated, he achieves his full potential.
b. You have no time for their lack of seriousness. You create a workaround whereby he is taking about an hour of breaks from the clasroom a day. While this lowers his disruption, he learns next to nothing.
4. R---, an argumentative but smart kid can't seem to control his calling out. It's messing up the flow of your lessons and leading other kids to join him in disruption.
a. You are quick and consistent to remind him to raise his hand. Recognizing that the usual discipline process will quickly max out with him receiving an hour of detention every day, you create a small, simple separate system to challenge him to track and reduce the calling out.
b. You have no time for his lack of seriousness. You warn him, inconsistently, about calling out before moving him through the discipline process. He winds up with an hour of detention everyday. Later on, you find that he doesn’t even mind the detention because he doesn’t want to go home to his empty house.
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