Christmas for the Critics

When I started at a “Reading First” school, or better yet, attended my “Reading First” training, I got the feeling that I’d stepped out of academics and entered a political or religious indoctrination camp. I was subjected to propaganda pieces likening whole-language teaching to tossing babies into the water to drown, to countless videos of model teachers and happy students offering me a picture of what life could be like, reading and re-reading the gospel of a single prophet of linguistics, and all the while listening to the exhortations of trainers/priests promising success/salvation for me and my students if we teach the system like it was truly intended. It seemed as though there was a vast Direct Instruction conspiracy working to “re-educate” the teachers, do away with the evil Whole Language empire and restore peace and phonics to the land.

But I felt silly seeing it this way. These are professionals; I’m just taking my critical University of Chicago perspective and applying it in the wrong context, I told myself. I wrote one of my senior theses on McCarthyism and it had biased my views. We’re all on the same side here. We’re all working for a common goal: success for our students.

Apparently, I was right to be suspicious and wrong to assume a level of professionalism of my policy colleagues. According to the Inspector General’s report, there was, in fact, a vast Direct Instruction conspiracy who viewed Whole Language instruction as educational heresy, one step short of polygamist idol worship. They were, in fact, in charge of granting enormous and irresistible sums of reading monies. Allow me to quote a few emails from the Reading First director, the federal chief in charge of disbursing billions of federal dollars.

First, in reply to a query about stacking the panels with pro-DI experts: “‘Stack the panel?’...I have never *heard* of such a thing....[.]”

Second, in reply to a query about why the panels are stacked: “You know the line from Casablanca, ‘I am SHOCKED that there is gambling going on in this establishment!’ Well, ‘I am SHOCKED that there are pro-DI people on this panel!’”

Last, on the attempts of non-Direct Instruction programs to be included in the federal grants, where the congressional mandate said that no curricular bias should exist. Notice the high-minded focus on students’ success and learning.

Beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in a way that will stand up to any level of legal and [whole language] apologist scrutiny. Hit them over and over with definitive evidence that they are not SBRR, never have been and never will be. They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.

It’s like Christmas, back when Santa could read my mind. I couldn’t have imagined any better (though in this case, worse) than it already is.

Ironically, however, today marked the first visit to my school by our district’s new consultants, a team very closely tied with, you guessed it, Reading First. Did these shocking revelations change anything? Not a bit. Admittedly, I don’t expect them to change the curriculum just because it was adopted under unethical, possibly illegal, circumstances. But it’d be reasonable to back down a little from their ideological fervor. Instead, what is their answer to our school’s problems? Be more faithful to the curriculum. It’s like someone espousing a war after it’s been proven to them that no cause for it exists. Oh. Wait. I guess the fish stinks from the head down.

Tough Talk from The Man

On Wednesday, we finally received the news of how the district would be handling our under-enrollment. We would eliminate two positions, losing a fifth grade and kindergarten class. I will now be teaching a fourth-fifth combination class, which is not as big a problem here as it is elsewhere. Cynical it may be, but when all the students are between a first and third grade level, it doesn’t really matter to me if they’re in fourth or fifth grade. We’re working on subtraction tomorrow.

Although we knew this was coming, it was deeply saddening to lose the two teachers we did. They were bright spots of energy and competence in a dismal landscape of apathy and incapability. The union contract dictates that we are “excessed” by seniority, and although both teachers were excellent instructors and dedicated professionals, far more so than many others on our staff, we had to give them up. They were immediately snapped up by other schools in our district and I suspect we’ll never see them again.

What gives me hope, though, is that our principal finally put this painful reality on the table. At their good-bye meeting Friday morning, The Man concluded by asking for volunteers to take the place of the teachers being excessed and asked us to acknowledge that they were leaving because none of us were willing to go. He spoke of their dedication and competence, and said that it made him sad to see them leave while looking at what was allowed to remain in our classrooms. He recognized his own fault in not being tougher on the less competent teachers on our staff and said that this experience was going to help him change. He encouraged all the teachers to weigh their own efforts and abilities against these two great teachers we were losing, and if we could not match them, considering resigning or retiring to allow them to stay.

It was by far the toughest speech we had heard from him yet, but I think that our school will never attain the level of excellence our kids deserve until we have much more of it. For reasons I do not understand, teacher competence seems off-limits for serious discussion. Language and home obstacles are only so great. When three-quarters of my 5th graders cannot fluently subtract, there needs to be frank talk about how we, the teachers, are failing our students. We need to take the next step. We need to name names. We need to make our failing teaches face up to their litany of Fs just as we heap those marks upon our failing students. Firing teachers for incompetence is difficult but it can be done. Creating a climate where the incompetent are not welcome is much less difficult but it must be done.

15 Days in September

When I first got a peek at my class list, 11 days before the start of school, my eyes bulged. There were only 23 students. Perhaps, especially if you’re reading this in Vermont, that doesn’t seem all that strange to you. But here in California, after 3rd grade, classes just don’t come that small. 33 is a more common figure. To make matters worse, on the first day of school, 5 students in the other 5th grade class didn’t show up, bringing our whole grade level to 41.

Obviously, this isn’t going to fly. We knew right away that 25 kids were not going to appear, having suddenly realized that it was September and they needed to be in school. But our district, in fine form, has made what I consider to be the worst possible decision. Take a moment to imagine...A combo class that makes teaching the standards next to impossible? Reassignment of a successful teacher to another school? Elimination of a position well after the hiring season is over? Transfer of an entire class from a different social milieu, creating a year of strife for all? No! Trumping all of those poor plans: our district has done nothing at all!

Nothing.

They summoned our principal for a half-day meeting during which they informed him that “our numbers are low.” Gosh! You don’t say. I thought it was a little bit quiet but I couldn’t put my finger on why.

The district told us from the beginning that they want a “warm-body count” for 15 days before they make their decision. 15 instructional days! Students don’t just appear and disappear! Students were actively unenrolled from the district across the course of the summer without new ones coming to replace them. We knew this in the weeks before the school year started, and yet, we act as though this is a surprise.

15 days is about 8.5% of the days most students are in school, or as administrators like to see it: 15 days is about 4500 instructional minutes. We are pressured to, every day, start our reading instruction within 15 minutes of the start of school and constantly reminded that every minute of instruction counts… but let’s compare the minutes to 15 days… 4500 minutes is enough time for me to do 25 minutes a day of art or music. It's enough time to Read Aloud and Morning Meeting (which I do anyway, because I work for a great principal, but most teachers cannot.) It's enough time to let each child in the class take a meaningfully turn on the computers, at least once a week.

Don’t get me wrong, teaching 20 kids is wonderful and we’re using every minute to try and account for the fact that only 2 of the 41 kids in the grade level can fluently subtract and maybe 3 can read over 60 words per minute. However, we know this won’t last and we know the change will be dramatic. I could be teaching 1st grade in a week, or I could be teaching 18 entirely new faces alongside the ones I have now, or I could be teaching 33 of the current 5th graders with our 8 last enrollees shipped off to Timbuktu. I try to make each day meaningful, but I don't feel like I can really start my year with, at best, only half my class.

Our time with these students is precious and any teacher will tell you that a good beginning is key. What is it about becoming a district administrator that seems to take away a teacher’s sense of urgency? These kids have so many obstacles standing between them and a good education, how do we justify adding more?

Teaching Perks

Forget performance bonuses, free gourmet meals, an employee gym or a company car. All we young hard-working teachers really need is a school-emblazoned hoody and we're pretty much satisfied. Mmmm, so warm.

Two Days in May

Where did Mr. AB go? Well, first I moved apartments (May), then the year ended (June) and I GLAD and AB466 trained (July), then I went to New York, Dubai, and on an African safari (August), then I came home and frantically got ready for the school year to start.

Now I’m back and ready to blog. I miss my writing and I’m resolved to blog at least once a week this school year.

Before I start writing on the new year and the new crop of kids, however, I have to reflect on an aspect of the old that still haunts me.

Fair warning: this will be a bit of a edu-technical post and there's more then a little bit of own-horn-tooting. But since we don't have perfomance bonuses in education, own-horn-tooting is going to have to replace my Rolex.

Unhappy with our district’s adopted math curriculum (Saxon), I wrote my own long term plan last year and taught it, my design and instruction informed by Burns, Van De Walle, and a brilliant math curriculum professor. I used a lot of manipulatives and about nine weeks of remedial lessons to try and rebuild students’ conceptual foundation for operations, fractions and place value. I used a variety of math workbooks to get practice pages but wrote most of the topic-specific homework by hand and used EdHelper to generate practice pages. I loved planning and teaching the plan because I felt like it was all mine. I felt like it was the most authentic teaching I did, as I knew what I expected out of each unit, week and objective. By the end of the year, I was pleased to see that most students had mastered most or all of the objectives. Some students had come from a lack of proficiency in basic skills to master multi-step operations with fractions.

This is where our story takes two paths.

When I came back to school this fall, I found that 60% of my students had achieved proficient or advanced on the state test, double their performance the previous year. The average student gained 46 points (About 15%) and only two students declined. Five students gained over 100 points, two over 190. My pass rate was second in the district, behind a school serving a non-Title I population, and well ahead of the state average.

I was not alone in teaching the plan, however. Another teacher, at a neighboring school almost identical to our own, with a population as close as conceivable to our own, had a diametrically opposite result. Although coming in from stronger 4th grade teachers, only 15% of his students passed, a reduction by almost half from their prior year performance, and the majority declined.

If this teacher were incompetent or careless, or had simply taken my plan and gone off on his own, such results would be easy to dismiss. But he did not. Mr. CD, let’s call him, implemented my plan with as much fidelity to my intentions as could be imagined, --- mostly because he and I are virtually the same teacher: He and I attended the same TFA institute, were counseled by the same CMA, went to the same Math Curriculum class for our credential, and even had about the same SAT score in math! We lived together for two years and planned and prepared most of the time in the same room, at desks about four feet apart. We are both tall and have similar attitudes in the classroom, we have both been given kudos for our talents as instructors. He has even been filmed by our teacher’s college as a “model math teacher.”

On Thursday, we sat down and talked about what we did that was different. There are four factors, none of which seem significant enough to lead to such a vastly different result, but perhaps in combination they could do it.

Basic Skills Emphasis: My school started a Multiplication Challenge in the middle of the year. Every two weeks, the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes competed to see who could have the highest number of students ace a 100 problem time test in 5 minutes. I had my students make and use flashcards and we occasionally had a flash card or skill building time on Fridays. To keep the top students into it, we added a time portion, trying to find a student who could beat the teachers and finish the test in under a minute. Although without the competition, Mr. CD’s students, were similarly proficient in basic skills by the end of the year.

Focus of Reteach and Method of In-Class Practice: I focused my reteach energies on the bulk of my class, students scoring below basic and basic, rather than my handful of far below basics. Mr. CD focused on his “1’s,” the lowest of the low. In class, I used individual whiteboards to allow each student to answer each question, and retaught the whole group in response to common mistakes. I would regularly pair struggling students with my top math students who could reteach in Spanish but did not “pull” groups. Mr. CD gave the students practice problems to work on independently, while he answered questions and did reteach in the back of the room.

The Top Kids: I had a number of really star math students, students who came into their own last year and went on to nearly ace the state test. (My top three students missed, collectively, nine problems on the 70 question test.) While Mr. CD’s class had similar scores coming in, he did not feel like he had such great exemplars in the room.

The Ugly One--- Test Prep: My school deeply emphasized preparing the students for the specifics of the test and our principal paid teachers to spend time generating iterations of the released test questions. I selected a handful that I felt were particular easy to do and particularly hard for my ELLs to read and had them practice them over and over and over again. Mr. CD also knew and used the released test questions, and familiarized his students with them, but to a significantly lesser extent.

At the end of the year, the average student in my class had a 2.8 out of 4, and the average student in Mr. CD’s class had a 2.6. At the end of our conversation, we reflected that we both felt like we had created a class of students who were now functionally capable in math. To our administrators, however, that does not speak louder than the two days in May. Mr. CD’s principal forced him to return to teaching Saxon, while I am now teaching math to the whole 5th grade.