The Principal’s Multiplication Challenge is now over. D---, unfortunately, never passed. After clearing 70% correct (see D--- Triumphant), he never even approached that number again. In discovering the possibility to succeed, D--- simultaneously found the pressure to do so. People were watching, people were paying attention, and D--- couldn’t handle that. Week after week, I watched him start the test and, two or three minutes in, start to think he was going to fail and begin to tear up. Soon he was looking at me, looking at the principal, and sobbing instead of finishing the test.
But now that multiplication is over, division has begun. Somehow, this has brought D--- hope anew. At first, he believed that he couldn’t do division. Over and over again, I had him write complete division problems and tried to help him see that it was just the opposite of multiplication. About a week ago he got it. Every day this week, ten times a day, he came rushing up to me with news that twenty-seven divided by three is nine. On the playground, before school, or during class I heard that nine divided by three is three. D--- has begun to believe in himself again.
I have said little, this time. I did not have him race around to the other teachers to talk about his 40% on the last division test. I told him he did a good job, but said little more. I talk to him about how he has until the end of the school year to pass the test. It would be easy, given that he already has an IEP, simply to add that he needs more time for tests and I probably will. But I’ve also realized that there is a greater lesson for D--- in these tests than math. Life is filled with stress and pressure, if D--- is to find any sort of independent existence, he will need to learn to deal with them.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Word Power
When it comes to education reform, I’ve discovered that all I really want is a word, an adjective to be precise.
Every once in a while, my Beginning Teacher Support program sticks me into a seminar with teachers from all around the county. I learned quickly that many of these teachers have a completely different job than I. Their kids do not come in years behind, without academic language, and psychically unready to learn. They do not have the curricular mandates from the powers above nor the underperformance of the grades below that define so much of my work. They manage the complexities of over-involved parents and I the opposite. I don’t want their job and I suspect they don’t want mine. I would like to make it clear that our work is very different, but language does not offer me a way to do so.
To the general public, as well as to educational policy makers, teachers appear to be teachers, whether we teach in Compton or Cupertino. This is simply ridiculous. Doctors have specialties; teachers should too. A pediatrician and a trauma surgeon both have M.D.s and both work towards the larger goal of patient health, but their work is so different as to require distinct terms. The same can be said for teachers of students whose families can offer every privilege and opportunity and for teachers of students whose families speak a different language and live in abject poverty.
I will be honest: I want this partially out of a prideful desire for more social status. Every time someone asks me what I do, “elementary school teacher” doesn’t seem sufficient. “What I do” is change lives and fight injustice, making posters and chanting about stars are just means to an end. I want to trumpet loudly that there is meaning in my work that compensates for its famously poor remuneration. Our society offers occasional images of teachers as heroes but, generally, we put teachers down at every turn. For every champion who calls on kids to “Stand and Deliver” there are a dozen or more images of teachers saying, “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…” How do those of us in the trenches publicly ally ourselves with Jaime Escalante and not Ben Stein?
Part of TFA’s success in attracting Ivy Leaguers, and part of its obnoxiousness to veteran teachers, is that it offers a high-status way to the classroom. TFA participants don’t have to be merely “teachers,” they are always called, “corps members.” TFA, usually well-intentioned, probably meant for this to show respect, recognizing that these untrained and undedicated college kids are not professionals, but I have always felt the effect to be the opposite. To the outside world, “TFA” is becoming the adjective I seek but within the profession, instead of standing for a dedicated professional working to transform lives and society, it stands for “Teach For Awhile.”
This brings me to my second point: I also want a term for the work I do because the profession needs it, internally. Teachers in high poverty and high ELL schools like mine should not be picked, prepared, and paid like the teachers in Cupertino. I, as an intern teacher, should not have been allowed in a classroom where the students’ needs were so great. First-year teachers should be inflicted on students who need a good teacher the least, not the most. I, now with an almost-clear-credential, have also seen how woefully inadequate preparation classes are, even at a good program like mine. A one-semester course on teaching English Learners might be sufficient for classrooms where there are two or three ESL students, but not thirty. A one-semester course on Psychology is fine when the kids can afford their own therapists but not when we are their only access to mental health services. Finally, only by recognizing the great demands of these high-needs classes can we bring ourselves to appropriately compensate , and thus retain, those who can meet them.
A word is needed to catalyze these changes. A word could truly have such tremendous power as it could break down the monolithic perception of teaching, offering policy makers and practitioners alike a cognitive pivot point from which to see the tremendously different demands of the job labeled “teacher.” Simply put: a differentiation in terms is required to enable differentiations in thought and practice. Meaningful reform does not begin with a new piece of legislation or another heap of Scientifically Based Research, it must begin with an adjective.
Any suggestions?
Every once in a while, my Beginning Teacher Support program sticks me into a seminar with teachers from all around the county. I learned quickly that many of these teachers have a completely different job than I. Their kids do not come in years behind, without academic language, and psychically unready to learn. They do not have the curricular mandates from the powers above nor the underperformance of the grades below that define so much of my work. They manage the complexities of over-involved parents and I the opposite. I don’t want their job and I suspect they don’t want mine. I would like to make it clear that our work is very different, but language does not offer me a way to do so.
To the general public, as well as to educational policy makers, teachers appear to be teachers, whether we teach in Compton or Cupertino. This is simply ridiculous. Doctors have specialties; teachers should too. A pediatrician and a trauma surgeon both have M.D.s and both work towards the larger goal of patient health, but their work is so different as to require distinct terms. The same can be said for teachers of students whose families can offer every privilege and opportunity and for teachers of students whose families speak a different language and live in abject poverty.
I will be honest: I want this partially out of a prideful desire for more social status. Every time someone asks me what I do, “elementary school teacher” doesn’t seem sufficient. “What I do” is change lives and fight injustice, making posters and chanting about stars are just means to an end. I want to trumpet loudly that there is meaning in my work that compensates for its famously poor remuneration. Our society offers occasional images of teachers as heroes but, generally, we put teachers down at every turn. For every champion who calls on kids to “Stand and Deliver” there are a dozen or more images of teachers saying, “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…” How do those of us in the trenches publicly ally ourselves with Jaime Escalante and not Ben Stein?
Part of TFA’s success in attracting Ivy Leaguers, and part of its obnoxiousness to veteran teachers, is that it offers a high-status way to the classroom. TFA participants don’t have to be merely “teachers,” they are always called, “corps members.” TFA, usually well-intentioned, probably meant for this to show respect, recognizing that these untrained and undedicated college kids are not professionals, but I have always felt the effect to be the opposite. To the outside world, “TFA” is becoming the adjective I seek but within the profession, instead of standing for a dedicated professional working to transform lives and society, it stands for “Teach For Awhile.”
This brings me to my second point: I also want a term for the work I do because the profession needs it, internally. Teachers in high poverty and high ELL schools like mine should not be picked, prepared, and paid like the teachers in Cupertino. I, as an intern teacher, should not have been allowed in a classroom where the students’ needs were so great. First-year teachers should be inflicted on students who need a good teacher the least, not the most. I, now with an almost-clear-credential, have also seen how woefully inadequate preparation classes are, even at a good program like mine. A one-semester course on teaching English Learners might be sufficient for classrooms where there are two or three ESL students, but not thirty. A one-semester course on Psychology is fine when the kids can afford their own therapists but not when we are their only access to mental health services. Finally, only by recognizing the great demands of these high-needs classes can we bring ourselves to appropriately compensate , and thus retain, those who can meet them.
A word is needed to catalyze these changes. A word could truly have such tremendous power as it could break down the monolithic perception of teaching, offering policy makers and practitioners alike a cognitive pivot point from which to see the tremendously different demands of the job labeled “teacher.” Simply put: a differentiation in terms is required to enable differentiations in thought and practice. Meaningful reform does not begin with a new piece of legislation or another heap of Scientifically Based Research, it must begin with an adjective.
Any suggestions?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
