Today started out so well, but tonight I'm feeling deeply frustrated and burnt out.
I had a great turn out for my morning intervention group and, when promised instructional materials did not appear, EdHelper came flying to the rescue. I got to deliver a great hook through As Quick As a Cricket and at 8:20, ten kids walked out the door knowing simile and metaphor. My daily barrage of test prep materials miraculously copied in time for the first bell and I had my kids seated, hands shook, and attendance in hand by the time the second bell rang. My first two classes demolished their review of fractions; misconceptions were cleared up through heavy heterogeneous pairing and brute force white-board practice. I went to lunch tired from five unbroken hours of direct instruction, but feeling confident that the kids have a solid chance against next week’s CST. Even my nightmare afternoon class, soothed by the reinstitution of the post-lunch read aloud and quieted by the presence of water-bottles in their otherwise unstoppable mouths, started off well. Yet by 3:15, ten minutes after the end of the school day, the principal came in the room to find us still in our seats, staring furiously at each other.
What made this great day go wrong?
Student idiocy and student apathy, mishandled by the teacher.
O--- is a character I have written about sparingly. I don’t have much good to say and I wanted to keep it to myself. I suspect he’s ADHD, but I can’t make that diagnosis nor does it do me any good until someone gives him drugs slow him down. (The newest black market for Ritalin: frustrated teachers. “Good morning. Have some juice!” Warn the feds.) Imagining that M--- simply can’t control himself makes his incessant interruptions and unmanageable lack of focus explicable, but no less disruptive or irritating. Complex chemical imbalance or simple lack of respect, it still makes me want to scream. I have to recognize my own fault in this, however. I learned long ago to de-escalate the situation and just send M--- elsewhere for a break. But in the interest of instructional pacing, his education, and my own pride, I ignored the better option of sending him from the room today. We all paid the price.
I realize that a great part of any teacher’s job is student motivation and that student apathy is, for the most part, my responsibility to eliminate. But after seven and a half months of school, I’ve used up every trick I’ve got. My afternoon class has a host of capable children, like V---, who know they don’t get it, know the test is in a week, and yet still don’t care. At this point, we spend a lot of time in practice, constantly checking for understanding and immediately reteaching. V--- will miss the problem, clearly see he missed the problem, plea “I don’t get it,” and then try and yammer through my explanation. In doing so, he drags down three other students and makes me livid. Three V—s brings down nine students, a quarter of my class. The heart of the problem is that the V---s knows enough about the world to know that dividing mixed numbers is wholly irrelevant to his future life (or anyone’s…) but not enough to know that failing fifth grade isn’t. Again, I have to admit that a lot of this one’s on me. This year, I have clearly not instilled in V--- any sense of the importance of education. Somewhere in the maelstrom of mid-September reshuffling, departmentalization, and kids coming in an extra year behind, I dropped those lessons.
It's amazing to me how easily the downs can outweigh the ups in this job. I don't know how to control that but it's clear I need to learn. The Man offered me this Emerson quote, on a post-it, after one difficult day my first year. I repost it here in hopes I can force myself to subscribe.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Hating, Loving, The Union
My always very mixed feelings about teacher’s unions have recently bubbled to the surface.
First, they came with my own receipt of a permanent contract. It brought a mix of validation and horror. At 25, after only two credentialed years of teaching, my district saw fit to offer me a tenured position. To me, this is crazy. I feel like I am still on such a steep learning curve, not even I know what kind of teacher I will be when it finally levels out. It is really hard to fathom how administrators and unions feel that there can be a sufficient sense of a teacher’s maturing practice to give them tenure after two years. Tenure should be earned, not assured, and it should take many years of excellence, not two years of general competence.
Simultaneous with this, I have been closely watching our district handle a school mired in its fourth year of Program Improvement, the phase where the school plans for its serious restructuring and alternative governance. Rebuilding the school’s staff and leadership is an option under the law and, in my opinion, often a good one. The union, however, is contending that the law is superseded by the district’s contract (yes, you read that correctly), ---failing teachers cannot be fired or forcibly moved from this school no matter the mandate of Congress. I find this ridiculous. At some point, and following six years of failure seems like a very reasonable point, someone must be able to powerfully intervene at a failing school. At some point, the walls must come crashing down on teachers who continually underserve their students. Professionals should be protected by procedures and processes, certainly, but those processes cannot end in their invincibility.
Finally, though, the last couple days have given me a powerful reminder of the necessity of unions, contracts, and tenure in our schools. A friend of mine was recently the subject of a ludicrous accusation. While her sensible principal saw through the allegations to the mother’s real concerns, a better placement for her special needs child, many other administrators would not have. The situation was ripe with potential for escalation and serious consequences. Teachers, often alone and often the face of many different sources of frustration for students and parents, are constantly at risk of facing false, angry accusations. The contract, with its guidelines for handling such complaints; the union, with its mandate of advocacy for the teacher; and tenure, with its protection of teachers from dismissal for parental/political expediencies; all were suddenly reaffirmed for me.
I’m left with the same frustrations as when I began, but a better appreciation for the depth of the impasse we face. We, as frequently inadequate professionals, are not at a point where we can be trusted with lifetime, invincible positions, but we, as an often irresponsible and selfish society, are not a point where we should leave our teachers without those tremendous protections.
First, they came with my own receipt of a permanent contract. It brought a mix of validation and horror. At 25, after only two credentialed years of teaching, my district saw fit to offer me a tenured position. To me, this is crazy. I feel like I am still on such a steep learning curve, not even I know what kind of teacher I will be when it finally levels out. It is really hard to fathom how administrators and unions feel that there can be a sufficient sense of a teacher’s maturing practice to give them tenure after two years. Tenure should be earned, not assured, and it should take many years of excellence, not two years of general competence.
Simultaneous with this, I have been closely watching our district handle a school mired in its fourth year of Program Improvement, the phase where the school plans for its serious restructuring and alternative governance. Rebuilding the school’s staff and leadership is an option under the law and, in my opinion, often a good one. The union, however, is contending that the law is superseded by the district’s contract (yes, you read that correctly), ---failing teachers cannot be fired or forcibly moved from this school no matter the mandate of Congress. I find this ridiculous. At some point, and following six years of failure seems like a very reasonable point, someone must be able to powerfully intervene at a failing school. At some point, the walls must come crashing down on teachers who continually underserve their students. Professionals should be protected by procedures and processes, certainly, but those processes cannot end in their invincibility.
Finally, though, the last couple days have given me a powerful reminder of the necessity of unions, contracts, and tenure in our schools. A friend of mine was recently the subject of a ludicrous accusation. While her sensible principal saw through the allegations to the mother’s real concerns, a better placement for her special needs child, many other administrators would not have. The situation was ripe with potential for escalation and serious consequences. Teachers, often alone and often the face of many different sources of frustration for students and parents, are constantly at risk of facing false, angry accusations. The contract, with its guidelines for handling such complaints; the union, with its mandate of advocacy for the teacher; and tenure, with its protection of teachers from dismissal for parental/political expediencies; all were suddenly reaffirmed for me.
I’m left with the same frustrations as when I began, but a better appreciation for the depth of the impasse we face. We, as frequently inadequate professionals, are not at a point where we can be trusted with lifetime, invincible positions, but we, as an often irresponsible and selfish society, are not a point where we should leave our teachers without those tremendous protections.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Theme and Variations in School Reform
I spent the last two days at the California State Title I Conference. Its expensive, and costs valuable pre-test-crunch instructional time, but I highly recommend it nonetheless. Its sessions feature teachers and principals from school after school that dispel the myth, ---high-ELL, high-poverty, and high-achieving neighborhood schools. It’s like seeing yourself, only validated and successful, ten years from now. Not a vague vision but a workshop: the dream-you stands up, tells you what you did over the last ten years, gives you a packet, and then you get to ask yourself questions at the end.
I was very happy to see that many of the important features of reform presented at the conference were efforts we have already initiated at my school. All of them are still works in progress for us, but it’s reassuring to hear we’re working on the right elements. I also got to hear, for the first time, honest talk about the time it will take to turn our school around: five to seven years. The seemingly glacial pace of change at my school often gets me down. It still bothers me that a whole generation of students will go kindergarten to fifth grade at our school before we can offer them the education they deserve, but it appears to be a necessary time frame.
Making the conference even more helpful, from workshop to workshop, the presenters always say pretty much the same thing. To use the musical analogy, it’s just variations on a theme. For your use and enjoyment, here’s the theme:
1) Change the Culture
This is the step my school most needs to work on. This is where almost all the presenters started. Teacher expectations, for the students and themselves, need to change. Blaming the parents, the poverty, or the language, must come to an end, and a “whatever it takes” attitude must rise instead. The focus must shift from teaching to learning, from teachers “making it through” the curriculum to teachers assuring students’ mastery of the standards.
2) Prevent, Then Differentiate, Last Intervene
My school deals out a lot of targeted intervention and that’s good. I learned at the conference that it’s not enough. Successful Title I schools avert the need for massive extra-curricular intervention with stronger “prevention” activities in the primary grades: parent education, pre-k academies, and extended-day kindergarten, to name a few. They also use ability-leveled workshops and tutoring centers, starting in kindergarten, to offer strongly differentiated instruction and remediation within the school day.
3) Best Practices in the Classroom
Last year, many of our teachers spent dozens of hours in training on Explicit Direct Instruction. It’s clear to me now that was only a start. Successful Title I schools are continually undergoing professional development to improve their practice. Both “the way it’s always been done” and “the way we’re supposed to do it,” are not enough. Successful teachers are always seeking out the best way, the way that works for each student, and they know it’s right because if it’s not, they’ll find a new way.
4) Collaborate and Be Consistent
This is something I know is gaining momentum around the district and at our school. All the successful Title I schools that presented are utilizing extensive grade-level collaboration. Planning and assessment, at the very least, are uniform. Often homework, discipline and much of daily practice too. This lightens the workload, enabling teachers to focus on improving their practice and reaching more students.
5) Get and Use Good Data
This is one place I think we’re doing very well. District-, even state-wide, benchmark tests enable us to track our students progress against their peers. It is a strict standard, the bar graphs don’t change with our excuses, and thus it is a stern motivator. We constantly refer to our data in formulating action plans, building groups, and changing instructional foci. It made me glad to hear even the successful schools express frustration about the curricular, rather than standards, focus of the SCOE/Reading Lions tests. This is the most common assessment set for CA Title I schools. Once these measures are improved, the data will be even more valuable.
6) Eliminate the Weak Links
Never on the PowerPoint, this was a consistent undertone to every presentation and each element within them. Every principal-presenter spoke about recalcitrant teachers, who maintained negative attitudes about the students, who insisted on utilizing ineffective materials, who would not attend any sort of professional development, who would not collaborate with their peers, or who continually ignored data. Many times it seems that these teachers could be convinced to at least passively participate in the new practices. Every presenter also spoke about teachers finding the reforms intolerable and leaving, getting out of the way. This is something we need to work on at my school, too.
I was very happy to see that many of the important features of reform presented at the conference were efforts we have already initiated at my school. All of them are still works in progress for us, but it’s reassuring to hear we’re working on the right elements. I also got to hear, for the first time, honest talk about the time it will take to turn our school around: five to seven years. The seemingly glacial pace of change at my school often gets me down. It still bothers me that a whole generation of students will go kindergarten to fifth grade at our school before we can offer them the education they deserve, but it appears to be a necessary time frame.
Making the conference even more helpful, from workshop to workshop, the presenters always say pretty much the same thing. To use the musical analogy, it’s just variations on a theme. For your use and enjoyment, here’s the theme:
1) Change the Culture
This is the step my school most needs to work on. This is where almost all the presenters started. Teacher expectations, for the students and themselves, need to change. Blaming the parents, the poverty, or the language, must come to an end, and a “whatever it takes” attitude must rise instead. The focus must shift from teaching to learning, from teachers “making it through” the curriculum to teachers assuring students’ mastery of the standards.
2) Prevent, Then Differentiate, Last Intervene
My school deals out a lot of targeted intervention and that’s good. I learned at the conference that it’s not enough. Successful Title I schools avert the need for massive extra-curricular intervention with stronger “prevention” activities in the primary grades: parent education, pre-k academies, and extended-day kindergarten, to name a few. They also use ability-leveled workshops and tutoring centers, starting in kindergarten, to offer strongly differentiated instruction and remediation within the school day.
3) Best Practices in the Classroom
Last year, many of our teachers spent dozens of hours in training on Explicit Direct Instruction. It’s clear to me now that was only a start. Successful Title I schools are continually undergoing professional development to improve their practice. Both “the way it’s always been done” and “the way we’re supposed to do it,” are not enough. Successful teachers are always seeking out the best way, the way that works for each student, and they know it’s right because if it’s not, they’ll find a new way.
4) Collaborate and Be Consistent
This is something I know is gaining momentum around the district and at our school. All the successful Title I schools that presented are utilizing extensive grade-level collaboration. Planning and assessment, at the very least, are uniform. Often homework, discipline and much of daily practice too. This lightens the workload, enabling teachers to focus on improving their practice and reaching more students.
5) Get and Use Good Data
This is one place I think we’re doing very well. District-, even state-wide, benchmark tests enable us to track our students progress against their peers. It is a strict standard, the bar graphs don’t change with our excuses, and thus it is a stern motivator. We constantly refer to our data in formulating action plans, building groups, and changing instructional foci. It made me glad to hear even the successful schools express frustration about the curricular, rather than standards, focus of the SCOE/Reading Lions tests. This is the most common assessment set for CA Title I schools. Once these measures are improved, the data will be even more valuable.
6) Eliminate the Weak Links
Never on the PowerPoint, this was a consistent undertone to every presentation and each element within them. Every principal-presenter spoke about recalcitrant teachers, who maintained negative attitudes about the students, who insisted on utilizing ineffective materials, who would not attend any sort of professional development, who would not collaborate with their peers, or who continually ignored data. Many times it seems that these teachers could be convinced to at least passively participate in the new practices. Every presenter also spoke about teachers finding the reforms intolerable and leaving, getting out of the way. This is something we need to work on at my school, too.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
I wish this was an April Fool's Joke.
We’re entering the final five weeks before testing. Schools around the state, like mine, are entering the final kick of test prep. Letters are going home inviting students to attend classes before and after school, even on Saturdays. Disturbingly, many students, especially the lowest performing students, are not receiving such invitations. Here’s what their letter would look like, if the system were honest.
---
Dear Parents of ************,
We appreciate your concern that your child is being denied a place in our before/after school intervention classes. We wish that we could offer these services to all students, but the very nature of small-group instruction dictates that we cannot. Unfortunately, your child has been deemed Statistically Insignificant (SI) or Unlikely to Achieve Proficiency. (UAP) SI and UAP students have been barred from extra-tutoring classes because they will not help our school achieve its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals set by the federal government. For the next five weeks, achieving AYP has become, over the education of some of our most needy students, our top priority. The sacrifice of SI and UAP students is, regrettably, a necessity.
UAP status is based on the accountability system set up by the No Child Left Behind Act. After examining last year’s scores, even if your child were to dramatically improve, it is doubtful they would cross the threshold into proficiency. As far as the federal government is concerned, any improvement short of proficiency is worthless. Therefore, as far as our school’s scores are concerned, your child’s improvement or decline is irrelevant.
SI status is based on ethnicity. Those students who are of a slight ethnic minority within a school are inconsequential to the school’s important sub-group scores. It thus behooves the school to exclude your student from extra-tutoring and make more places for students in statistically significant ethnic groups. Obviously this is illegal, but it is highly unlikely that you will sue us, so we will do it anyway.
As educators, we are deeply opposed to depriving the most needy of our students of the help they desperately need. We realize that this policy will result in your SI/UAP child being passed on throughout elementary school, and probably then on to middle school, without the skills they need. However, we also recognize that federal sanctions will only worsen the educational opportunities for all students at our school. We will be forced to abandon dramatically effective programs most appropriate to our students in favor of stricter adherence to inadequate curricula. Further, we will have to spend our school’s precious resources on ineffective consultants, tutors, and meetings that will do little to improve education for anyone. Finally, our school may be shut-down, our staff reassigned, and our leadership fired.
Fortunately, in 2014, schools will have to achieve 100% proficiency. At that point, even your UAP/SI student will once again become important to us. Until then, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact your local congressional representative. Trading an educationally sensible growth model for rhetorically powerful "100% proficiency," they put your child into this situation. Now, only they can get them out of it.
---
A disclaimer: The invitation, or non-invitation, of "SI" students was an actual subject of discussion at my school, where the leadership is as morally/ethically responsible as can be. Despite our desperation to avoid sanctions, we easily decided not to allow ethnicity to preclude a student from invitation to extra classes. However, I can only imagine in horror what the reality is at schools where the administration is not so principled and the situation even more desperate. Am I the only person who sees the irony of this all coming from a law called "No Child Left Behind?"
---
Dear Parents of ************,
We appreciate your concern that your child is being denied a place in our before/after school intervention classes. We wish that we could offer these services to all students, but the very nature of small-group instruction dictates that we cannot. Unfortunately, your child has been deemed Statistically Insignificant (SI) or Unlikely to Achieve Proficiency. (UAP) SI and UAP students have been barred from extra-tutoring classes because they will not help our school achieve its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals set by the federal government. For the next five weeks, achieving AYP has become, over the education of some of our most needy students, our top priority. The sacrifice of SI and UAP students is, regrettably, a necessity.
UAP status is based on the accountability system set up by the No Child Left Behind Act. After examining last year’s scores, even if your child were to dramatically improve, it is doubtful they would cross the threshold into proficiency. As far as the federal government is concerned, any improvement short of proficiency is worthless. Therefore, as far as our school’s scores are concerned, your child’s improvement or decline is irrelevant.
SI status is based on ethnicity. Those students who are of a slight ethnic minority within a school are inconsequential to the school’s important sub-group scores. It thus behooves the school to exclude your student from extra-tutoring and make more places for students in statistically significant ethnic groups. Obviously this is illegal, but it is highly unlikely that you will sue us, so we will do it anyway.
As educators, we are deeply opposed to depriving the most needy of our students of the help they desperately need. We realize that this policy will result in your SI/UAP child being passed on throughout elementary school, and probably then on to middle school, without the skills they need. However, we also recognize that federal sanctions will only worsen the educational opportunities for all students at our school. We will be forced to abandon dramatically effective programs most appropriate to our students in favor of stricter adherence to inadequate curricula. Further, we will have to spend our school’s precious resources on ineffective consultants, tutors, and meetings that will do little to improve education for anyone. Finally, our school may be shut-down, our staff reassigned, and our leadership fired.
Fortunately, in 2014, schools will have to achieve 100% proficiency. At that point, even your UAP/SI student will once again become important to us. Until then, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact your local congressional representative. Trading an educationally sensible growth model for rhetorically powerful "100% proficiency," they put your child into this situation. Now, only they can get them out of it.
---
A disclaimer: The invitation, or non-invitation, of "SI" students was an actual subject of discussion at my school, where the leadership is as morally/ethically responsible as can be. Despite our desperation to avoid sanctions, we easily decided not to allow ethnicity to preclude a student from invitation to extra classes. However, I can only imagine in horror what the reality is at schools where the administration is not so principled and the situation even more desperate. Am I the only person who sees the irony of this all coming from a law called "No Child Left Behind?"
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