On the Shoulders of Giants
Early this year, after giving the first major writing assignment, I noticed that my 8th grade
students were having trouble expressing their thoughts in writing. In discussions, they showed unusual
thoughtfulness and an ability to respond critically to one another’s ideas. When it came to writing, they were not
afraid to put pen to paper and get started, as some of my former students have
been. Most were surprisingly
comfortable banging out a paragraph (or three) on a topic. At first I was pleased. They appeared to have greater fluency in writing than some of my former classes of students.
Then I read the work.
My students’ voices were completely different in writing than they were
in class discussions. The
thoughtfulness I’d come to expect and enjoy from their spoken words seemed to
fade behind muddled sentences that did not flow, contradicted one another, and
ultimately communicated very little substance. I felt like a doctor who’d just opened up a healthy-looking
patient for a routine surgery and found something completely unexpected. What was going on?
After careful assessment of my students’ writing and some
interesting conversations with them about it, I think I know what's been ailing them. They had not thought of writing as something that starts in the mind and is an
extension of their thoughts and spoken voices, a tool to communicate ideas to
others. Instead, writing for most of my students had felt more like some alien language that comes out of a pen when the teacher asks
for it!
I needed to help the students connect what they think and
say with the act of writing. I applied a method I call Writing Outloud, in which students in speaking in front of the class on a topic, off the cuff, and then write about what they say, or respond in writing to what another
student says. They turn these
ideas into paragraphs, and elaborate on them, both through speaking and in subsequent paragraphs. Then we identify the big idea that each
student has focused on and thinks is significant; we shape
essays around these big ideas.
I now have complete drafts in front of me, and I am happy,
because they are substantive.
Students are writing from real thoughts, experiences, and beliefs about
important, relevant topics.
But there is still much work to be done, and I’m not
comfortable simply commenting on the drafts, correcting errors, and asking
students to rewrite, (though they expect this). I need to teach them to revise. To do this authentically, students and I are going to need
to think a little more carefully about audience and purpose. I want them to stop thinking of me as the audience. Who would they really like to reach in this piece, and how
might they adjust their writing to do it better?
The problem with authentic revision is that it’s going to take us away from formulaic writing. What’s wrong with that, you might
ask? Nothing, except that everything I’ve learned over the years about the standardized test my students
will take in mid-January tells me they need to be able to follow a strict, dry, five
paragraph essay formula to do well on it.
Who is the audience for the essays my students must write on
the statewide ELA test? What is
the message they need to communicate to that audience? The message is a superficial one that
has nothing to do with the content of what they are writing, and everything to
do with proving they can answer a question in a prescribed format.
This sounds startlingly similar to the initial problem I had
with my students’ writing. Their words were superficial and lacked voice and substance. They were constantly looking for a right answer from the
teacher, and if one wasn’t presented, they were trained to make it up and
package it neatly in paragraphs. It was very hard for them to write clearly and
compellingly, because they were not actually writing to communicate.
I’m stuck at that familiar crossroads where I'm sure many other teachers in this country find themselves throughout the year. Teach for the child or teach for the test? If I dismiss my own professional
judgment of what my students need and simply teach the test’s formulas, are they really guaranteed to perform better?
What exactly do they gain from the difference?
It’s November 11, and I’m going to invest some time in
developing my students as real writers, because I just can’t see the logic in
anything else. Some people have said good teaching is good teaching, and the
scores will follow. I’m not so
sure, but I’m willing to take the risk.
Will let you know how it works out.
[image found at http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cassandrapages.typepad.com/the_cassandra_pages/images/2007/07/10/crossroads.jpg&imgrefurl=http://cassandrapages.typepad.com/the_cassandra_pages/2007/07/crossroads.html&h=375&w=500&sz=45&hl=en&start=55&usg=__rMOJjEx6C-njoxyM0awFVLEr5D8=&tbnid=6K7aU9sFSseiPM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcrossroads%26start%3D40%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN]]
The classrooms at my school are equipped with an ancient, mostly
working phone system that allows us to call other classrooms and offices on our
floor--but we hardly ever use it.
Instead, most teachers and administrators keep their cell phones on them
throughout the day and text whenever necessary. It’s much less disruptive than having to pick up a phone in
the corner of the room, look up a room code, dial, and wait for someone to pick up, then talk while the entire class listens. Texting is also more reliable, because most staff and administrators do
not stay in their rooms waiting by the phones all day.
Finally, you can send a single text message to multiple people at one
time and receive an answer from any or all of the recipients.
Every day at work, I wear a small,
black fanny pack, which holds white-board markers, sharpies, post-it notes,
keys, and of course, my cell.
Here are a few examples of texts I sent or received last week
during my school day (pseudonyms
will be used for students’ names):
Me to Ms. P, Dean of Discipline at 9:31 am: Adam cursed multiple times. I told
him he’d have detention for it. He
walked out the room.
Ms. P at 9:33: ok
[Adam returned to my room about 10 minutes later with an
apology note]
----------
Ms. P to all 8th grade teachers at 10:18: Hey
guys! Considering suspending steve for throwing a book. Doesn’t seem like he gets in much
trouble. I can give him a few
detentions instead. Thoughts?
Ms. R at 10:30: I
think we should give a day suspension--same as we’d give another student.
----------
Ms. P at 1:46: Can
u please send Kris to me? Thanks
Me at 1:50: I
don’t have him, I think Ms. S does.
----------
Me to Ms. O, Principal at 2:41: Where is the department
meeting?
Ms. O at 2:41: my office.
----------
Ms. S to me at 1:50:
Kahlia with you? Tell
her that her Dad is coming for ptc (parent teacher conference) be at my room
3:30.
Ms. S to me 1:51: and can u print the progress
reports? Sry to bug u.
Me at 1:51: Yes!!!
Ms. S at 3:06: Kahlia’s father here. Tell her to go to office.
Me at 3:33: I have the other 3 progress reports but am
stuck at the office in a meeting.
Send someone to get them?
[Ms. S comes by for the reports a few minutes later]
----------
Ms. S at 3:07 next day: Alicia came in here to tell ppl that Kahlia told Steve
he looks like a monkey’s “$$”
Me at 3:08: Thanks I’ll be speaking to her.
---------
During a double period ELA practice standardized test on Friday...
Me to Ms. D and Ms. S at 10:23: are they finished?
Ms. D at 10:24:
Ms. H (AP) said I could
take them out early
Me at 10:24: 803 is ready to go. When r u going?
Ms. D at 10:24: now
Ms. S at 10:26: Yess!!!! We going now. putting up chairs! Nice
Ms. F, guidance counselor, who was administering read aloud
questions to Special ed. student with testing modifications at 10:57: u
outside?
Me at 10:57: yes!
Ms. F at 11:02: Just dropped Shawn at bball court
Me at 11:02: thanks
----------
My point in exposing the inner workings of a team of texters
(hope u enjoyed!!) is to highlight the efficiency of our communication, especially
around logistics. Effectively managing large
numbers of students with different needs involves making many quick
decisions. It's very helpful to be able to coordinate with and get input from the team in a way that is sensitive to the immediacy of the situation. It also enables us teachers to make many practical decisions on our own without relying on an administrator to manage all the details.
My only question is when will the DOE catch up to the
power of wireless communications for teachers? When will we stop having to pay for work-related texts? Are there additional ways we could be using wireless technology to do our jobs better and more efficiently?
[image credit: littleenoch.blogspot.com/ 2008/06/texting.html]
Thanks to the Teacher Leaders Network, last week I had the wonderfully unusual opportunity to sit around a table at a meeting at Ford Foundation with the purpose of discussing and making sense of the issue of teacher retention in urban “hard-to-staff” schools. I was elbow-to-elbow with a diverse group of professors from various universities across the country, people from the Ford Foundation and Annenberg Institute, education economists and policy makers. I was the only practicing classroom teacher present at the meeting.
I was a little nervous going in. How would my comparatively limited experience be valuable to these important players in the field of education? I had to check myself on that insecurity, though, because the answer is that the experiences of practicing teachers are not limited, once we dig into them a little bit; realistically speaking, we educators ARE major players in the field of education. Take us out of the equation and everyone else is just talking! (Okay, I’m exaggerating a little and don’t mean to devalue the work of the non-teacher leaders in education…thanks for letting me get on a high-horse for a moment, though; I needed that!)
As it turned out, the participants at the meeting were very much interested in and respectful of what I had to say. I found that they also had a lot of thoughtful points about the nature of teaching and learning and how education policy could better support it. My favorite moment had to be when, Lisa Delpit (whom I admire and whose work I count as an important influence) said in the middle of a discussion of what might be leverage points for retaining quality teachers, “Ariel, how many years have you been teaching?”
“Five,” I responded.
“I see,” she said. “So, we should all really be interviewing Ariel.”
I felt very validated! (and yes, I am shamelessly bragging ☺ )
Being a teacher leader means sharing and representing relevant and key ideas of our work as teachers in contexts beyond our individual classrooms so as to improve the education of our students and our ability to provide it for them. Here is what I was able to share about this at the meeting:
--Teachers should choose to teach in hard-to staff schools, not only because of a desire to promote social justice, but also because of a desire to become truly quality, top-notch teachers.
--A quality teacher is a one who is continually developing a pedagogy that responds to the specific context and needs of the students he or she serves with the purpose of preparing them to meet the demands of the larger changing world.
--In hard-to-staff schools, the learning environment is constantly threatened, because of insufficient resources and instability, both within the school and within the home lives and communities of many of the students. At the school level, unprepared teachers and high turnover rates (often in the form of ongoing teacher vacancies) threaten the viability of the learning environment.
--For those of us working under such conditions, it is easy to slip into “survival mode,” where our main goal is to make it through the day. The same is true for our students.
--Teachers in hard-to-staff schools need help shifting our focus from survival to quality teaching. We need support and motivation to invest in our own practices rather than simply responding in the moment to all the challenges that come to our way until we are too tired to think of anything else.
--In the first few years, research shows—and I’d agree—that teachers who stay in hard-to-staff schools are teachers who feel effective in their classrooms. (Later there are other factors that come in to play.) In order to feel effective, one has to constantly combat the notion that what we do as teachers in our classrooms doesn’t really matter. Research--and by now, for me, experience—shows that it matters very much what teachers do.
--We need significant opportunities throughout our work days and weeks to get serious about what we are doing, down to the little details, share with others, and investigate and reflect on the results of our work. We are continually experimenting, and we need supports that make this a rich, rewarding, even enjoyable experience.
--Though at the Ford meeting, we mostly agreed our country’s education system probably needs a complete overhaul, one participant suggested we consider which “thread” or two of the knot we could “pull on” and hope to see some significant movement toward developing and retaining quality teachers in hard-to staff schools. He suggested increasing adult face-to-face time. This sat well with me, given my experiences in a teacher residency program through Bank Street College, and now in a collaborative team-structured school, as well as in the Teacher Leaders Network forums. Though many salient points and possible moves came up, it seemed as though our conversation kept circling back to the idea of providing time for teachers to work together, and share and build on one another’s strengths.
--Another participant, who works as a district superintendent lamented, half-joking, "You can't penalize a teacher for not bringing joy into the classroom!" But you can create a collaborative, intellectually stimulating school environment where the joy of teaching and learning spreads naturally.
[image found at www.mdp.state.md.us/ images/front.jpg]
This week the New York Times published an article about Bloomberg’s attempt to run for a third term as mayor and the question this brings up about mayoral control of NYC public schools, which he has controlled since 2002. Many people were quoted on the issue in the article, including Geoffrey Canada, chief executive of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which runs its own charter school. Strangely, there was not one comment from an actual teacher (or anyone from the NYC Department of Education) in the article.
Instead, Randi Weingarten, president of the UFT, spoke on behalf of teachers with regards to Bloomberg’s appointed Chancellor Joel Klein: “There are some very deep negative feelings about the chancellor from teachers,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They don’t feel like he is on their side. So they see all of this in that lens. They are very concerned about not feeling any kind of respect from him again.”
I love my union for protecting my contractual rights as a teacher, but I must say I feel misrepresented by this quote. I feel neither respected nor disrespected by Joel Klein, because I have never met him, and therefore I do not see “all of this” in that lens. That lens sounds all too personal to me and not sufficiently professional. The debate over whether or not Bloomberg should get to run for a third term as mayor, or—more to the point—whether he and Klein should remain in control of city schools has little to do with whether or not, deep inside, either one respects teachers (though that could be an interesting conversation, some other time).
Joel Klein should not remain Chancellor of education, and Bloomberg should not remain in control of schools, however, and here’s why. While I believe that both Klein and Bloomberg honestly have sought to improve the city’s schools, neither is or has ever been an educator. Each man profoundly misunderstands the nature of teaching and learning, and this is evident in the policies that have come to define New York City’s public schools over the last six years. These policies all reflect one basic, failed, premise: if you test kids more, and hold kids, teacher and principals accountable for the results, then kids will learn more, and all schools will become quality schools. If only it were that easy.
Klein and Bloomberg have put taxpayer money into these policies, which employ companies to create high-stakes tests, practice/predictive tests, and test prep books; pay for the scoring of tests; fund data systems and people to analyze and present these to the public; pay children, their families, and their teachers bonuses for good test scores; and grade schools and hire and fire principals based on a variety of performance categories on the same standardized tests. Sadly, all of this does not amount to increased student learning. It amounts to teachers feeling pressured from all sides to narrow the curriculum so as to prepare students to take outdated tests that measure only those things that are easy to standardize—this means critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration are not measured, and therefore not valued.
There is little emphasis on quality instruction under this system. In fact, in the Empowerment Zone, where most schools elected to be after the mayor did away with regional supervision of schools, as far as I can tell the only requirement of schools in terms of instruction is to demonstrate improved test scores. Instead of consulting with educators or researchers who have dedicated their lives to education about how to improve schools, Bloomberg and Klein jumped quickly and whole-heartedly on the NCLB bandwagon of high stakes testing for all—and nothing more. To achieve their desired results, they’ve employed a business productivity model based on punishment and incentives. But children don’t learn like bankers bank.
In addition to the damage done by arranging our entire school system around high stakes testing, Bloomberg and Klein have failed to do many positive things for our schools. They have done nothing to improve class sizes in classrooms across the city, for which teachers and parents have advocated for decades. They’ve not supported or improved after school education, arts education, social studies and science education (which are practically nonexistent in many elementary schools), physical education, nutrition in schools, integration of technology into k-12 education, or the improvement of school building facilities. They have not created policies to support new teachers, improve teacher retention rates in high needs schools, or improve teachers’ access to resources needed for teaching. With impending budget cuts to city schools, because of the corrupt collapse of Wall Street, entire school communities are likely to feel even more strapped in all of these areas.
Klein and Bloomberg should move on—not because they're not on the side of teachers, whatever that means, but because their oversight of New York City’s schools has been misguided and wholly inadequate. Perhaps their swift systems of accountability should be put to good use on Wall Street.
[Image credit: www.casita.us/images/ bloomberg-Klein-605.jpg]
I have written before about my struggles with grading in general, especially with grades that don’t tell much about a student’s learning. I started my career using a school-wide grading schema with 5 categories, each making up 20% of a student’s quarterly grade: Homework, Class work, Projects, Tests/Quizzes, and Class Participation. It seemed sensible enough, and it worked okay at first. I’ve since tweaked the categories and weight of each one to better suit my class, and I’m half-way happy with them. The one I’m grappling with right now is that classic, vague, class participation grade.
Just what is a class participation grade? How is it calculated? I’ll come clean and say that I’ve mostly been making mine up. I do this based on how frequently a student contributes to class discussions, lessons, and group work, and I include my perception of the quality of those contributions. Class Participation is also influenced by how frequently the same student disrupts lessons, discussions, and group work.
I recall a teacher telling me that in his school, a student walks into any classroom with a 75% for class participation. He or she can either increase the grade by participating positively, or lose points by misbehaving. Some teachers keep intricate tally charts during class of how many times students raise their hand to speak, and how many times they interrupt. Some teachers say all students start with 100%, but lose a point every time they interrupt a lesson. Still, what do any of these grades tell you about a student’s learning? What is the objective here?
Let’s consider two students. Student A is generally quiet in class. He almost never raises his hand to participate, nor does he interrupt lessons or discussions. Sometimes he appears to be paying attention; other times he seems to be daydreaming. He earns a class participation grade of 75. Student B participates frequently in discussions and lessons; however, she often forgets to raise her hand and calls out. On occasion, student B also strikes up a conversation with a classmate, disrupting a lesson. She also earns a class participation grade of 75.
If the purpose of having a class participation grade is to promote order in the classroom, there are many other, probably more effective strategies to improve students’ behavior, besides grading individual students on a quarterly basis in a somewhat random and convoluted way. But if the objective is really to teach and assess a student’s ability to make meaningful spoken contributions to class discussions and group work, then why don’t we teach and measure this as we would any other learning objective?
During an English Department meeting early this year, while working on a vision statement for our department, my colleagues and I found ourselves looking to the state standards which emphasize reading, writing, and speaking as the areas covered by English Language Arts classes. I thought, “Hey, one of my graded categories is reading and another is writing. Why don’t I have a graded category for speaking?” And now, as I rip apart my less than useful practice of making up class participation grades, it occurs to me that I should just get rid of it, and create a new category for speaking. It makes me a little nervous for some reason (change…? Will something be lost?), but it makes more sense the more I write it out.
I have many assignments that are designed to build and assess students’ oral language skills, and even rubrics that make explicit what’s being graded. Yet I’ve struggled with which category to place them in! So now they have a home, and my grading is more aligned with ELA standards. I still need to figure out a manageable way to assess students’ participation in lessons…suggestions welcome!
[image from starbulletin.com/ 2007/07/15/news/art4bx.jpg]
I have spent some time writing about why teachers should be involved in education policy, and by that I’ve usually focused why policy makers should include us in their conversations. This has required some imagination, because teachers largely are not involved in the writing of such policies. Today I am very excited to share that I can now clearly—and without extensive use of imagination—see how teacher leadership can look at the school level. That is because the school where I work is a living example of teacher leadership in action.
Founded four years ago, the school has always had teacher leadership built into its structure. Each grade team, consisting of four content area teachers, one special education teacher, and one school support staff member (such as a social worker or guidance counselor), has a team leader. Team leaders from grades 6-12 all convene with the administration team one afternoon each week around school-wide policies, initiatives and concerns, and receive per session compensation for this time. Team leaders create the agenda for grade team meetings, called “common planning time” or CPT, which happen every other day for a one-hour period. These meetings can focus on anything from grade-wide locker policies or how to address students’ inappropriate use of gum in the classroom, to planning grade-wide field trips, parent nights, or setting out goals for the year. One CPT per week is devoted to “kid talk,” where we focus our conversations on our concerns about specific students and make decisions on how to intervene. The team leader serves as a facilitator for the team meetings, and liaison between the team and administration, but not an authority figure.
This year, under the school’s new leadership, and due to widespread demand from teachers, we now have content area departments, which meet after school during DOE-mandated professional development time, and have the option to meet more often for per session compensation. Each department has a department chair, which is a teacher. (In the case of the math department, the chair is a fulltime math coach, who was a teacher at our school for a number of years.) Each department has been working collaboratively on its own vision statement, refining its scope and sequence of curriculum across the grades, and designing keystone projects in each grade, which will be used for bi-annual portfolio assessments. In the English department, we’ve also been sharing best practices and identifying school-wide areas of need and making plans to address these. Both departments and grade teams manage sizable budgets.
Finally, this year our school has created a mentoring program for new teachers, also something staff members had requested year after year. Each mentor is paired with one new teacher, observes him or her teaching once per week, and meets with the mentee once per week to help plan curriculum and offer advice.
The administrators at my school know how to invite teachers into important policy conversations and know how to share responsibility and leadership with staff members. The wonderful thing about the teacher leadership opportunities at my school is that they truly allow teachers to solve problems and guide the progress of the school. Teachers have so much input and autonomy that there is amazingly little resistance to progress. There are no outside people condescending to us, telling us what to do, and meeting with that classic teacher response (which is often conveyed only in a facial expression), “Why don’t YOU try doing that in my classroom!?”
My school has thought "outside th box" to allow me to be a fulltime eighth grade English teacher, as well as English co-department chair, eighth grade team leader, and new teacher mentor. I have been relieved of lunch duty, as well as advisory to clear room in my schedule to fulfill these three leadership roles. So far it is working. I get to use my energy in a variety of ways throughout the day, all of which I believe ultimately benefit students. My only concern is that the New York City Board of Education does not recognize the leadership roles my colleagues and I assume at my school; but I am hopeful that if we can demonstrate success, that too will change.
[teamwork image found at http://www.liemur.com/images/teamwork_small.jpg]
I was recently interviewed by TeachersCount, an organization that provides online resources for teachers and is based in New York City. I discuss how I've developed a progressive practice, based on the training I received at Bank Street College, in high needs NYC public schools. Since there is no comment function on their website, I thought I'd invite discussion here.
It was an exciting piece to work on, because I feel so passionately about this topic. I also felt somewhat vulnerable publishing it, because it is so close to my heart; as a teacher, progressive education is what I live and breathe. At times I've had to fight for it, because I believe the student-centered classroom is the one that will have the greatest positive impact on kids. "Failing" schools and and the teachers and students in them are so often confined by very rigid, teacher-driven programs. The vast majority of the time I've seen this really kill students' motivation to participate in their own learning, as well as the teachers' inspiration to teach in such schools.
In many ways, the interview tells my resistance story. I'm sure I'm not the only teacher out there who has attempted to teach progressively in a traditional system. What are your stories? How do we position ourselves so that everyone wins--students, teachers, and administration?
During the summer, I live on my own time and bask in that luxury. I wake at 11am, sleep at 2am, fix myself something to eat when I’m hungry, read when I feel like it, and so forth. But from September through June my schedule belongs to the DOE…at least 7 hours of it. The rest becomes a chaotic and never-ending game of catching up.
It’s been four years since I started teaching fulltime, but I’ve always felt like I’m flying by the seat of my pants to get everything done all school year long. I don’t manage to eat at the right times, sleep at the right times, get things done in advance, or leave the house on time. I take my job very seriously, but the truth is, I still wake up at the last minute, leave the house without eating breakfast, arrive to school almost as students are arriving, or in time to wait in a hectic line at the copy machine at school, have to run out during lunch to buy food and waste half of my precious 40-minute period. I spend an hour unwinding after school, picking up the loose ends of the day, debriefing with my colleagues, and then bring home a pile of student work to grade. But I’m exhausted when I get home and have to figure out what I’m going to eat for dinner and make sure my plans are ready for the next day. Right before it’s time to go to sleep, I might pull the papers out and start reading through them, so I know where my students are with the material. But I’m too tired to grade, so I bring the pile back to school the next day, still un-graded.
This dysfunctional lifestyle was something I never gave much attention, because I’ve always been a person who prefers to focus on “big ideas”. The details have now become a new big idea for me. I’ve realized that managing time is a necessary part of life, and managing my time well can make me a happier person and more effective teacher.
I went on vacation this summer with my best friend from college, who is also a teacher. I told her I was still struggling with waking up on time in the morning, even though it's been my new year's resolution numerous times to stop getting to work at the last minute. On the other hand, I knew I didn’t I didn’t have any actual sleep disorder, because I never overslept so late that I missed a class or anything I considered essential. I made sure that the only person who suffered because of my lack of discipline was myself. What I was really struggling with was taking my own personal needs seriously.
My friend and I compared notes on our schedules, which largely had to accommodate the same kinds of activities. It turned out she had a very different routine from me, which allowed her to do all of her teaching related work and still have a satisfying personal life. She helped me to create a new routine for myself.
The New Weekday Routine
5:45 wake up, stretch, shower, dress, eat breakfast, make coffee for the road, bring lunch bag
6:30 drive to work (beat morning traffic, cutting 30 minutes off my commute)
7:00 arrive at school, full hour of prep time
8:00 school starts
3:00-3:30 school over; unwind, debrief with colleagues
3:30-4:30 grading
4:30-5:15 drive home
5:15-6:00 check email, unwind
6:00 cook dinner Tues & Thurs
Mon & Wed my boyfriend cooks, and I can go to yoga class or work on blog and other writing
7:00 eat dinner, put leftovers in plastic container for next day's lunch
8:00—10:00 relax (or prep, depending on need)
10:00 pick out next day’s outfit; go to sleep
Note: Grocery shopping for the week must be done on Sundays.
Friday evenings are for happy hour and/or dining out and/or collapsing from exhaustion
I don’t know why it’s taken me four years to reach this point, but I am proud of myself for owning up to my weakness and doing something about it. Of course the real work starts now when I put my plan into practice. Just like with my middle school students, I have to be relentless about my routine. If I give myself an inch, I’m likely to take a mile! On that note, it’s 10:00 and I have to go to school tomorrow for meetings and classroom setup. So…goodnight!
[image found at www.nowandzenlodi.com]
I was tagged by Richelle for this great meme, started by Nancy Flanagan at Teachers for a Strange Land. Hmm…what do I want policy makers to know?
1. My classroom is unique. So are my students. So am I! So…you can’t clone me or any other teacher!
Policies that attempt to create uniformity in classroom teaching don’t work; they actually aggravate us teachers, because they make us feel that our work and our needs are misunderstood. Instead of trying to create clones, increase our opportunities to see great teaching in action, give us time to share best practices and collaborate with other teachers, and put accomplished practitioners in leadership and mentor roles. We will use these opportunities to grow and problem solve in our own unique classrooms.
If you’re worried some of us won’t use these opportunities to improve, create an evaluation process that asks us to demonstrate what we’ve accomplished in a year’s time and how we did it. Just don’t limit our use of “evidence” to standardized test scores. Using these as absolute measures our effectiveness is another push towards uniformity, when test scores capture only a small percent of our work.
2. The physical aspect of a classroom environment is a lot more important than you might think. Schools compete with all the other environments—real and virtual—where children spend time. The values of school often conflict with the values students come to know at home, in their neighborhoods or on the Internet. Most kids will not easily buy into the notion that “school is good, because it promises a good future later,” especially students who have experienced empty promises already in their short lifetimes. School needs to be a compelling environment for kids here and now.
To compel students, schools should be aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. Spacious classrooms, nice furniture, cushioned seating, rugs, pleasant lighting, and working equipment send a strong message to students that school is an exciting place. The usual dingy paint job, ugly uncomfortable furniture, outdated non-working or nonexistent equipment, hard surfaces that reverberate noise, fluorescent lighting all day long, and overcrowded classrooms do not make a very strong case to students that school is the key to a bright future. Teachers are hard-pressed to find ways to compensate for this widespread weakness, and they usually have to come out of their own pockets.
3. Stop threatening principals with termination based solely on test scores of students. A scared leader creates a negative climate for staff and students. Especially in schools that serve high-need populations, staff and students already work under some very difficult conditions. I do encourage policymakers to look closely at the work of principals--but look at the whole picture of what they are doing and find ways to help them lead effectively.
4. My middle school students need physical activity and time to socialize. They cannot and should not sit in chairs from 8am til 3pm. If we don’t provide a variety of physical and social activities during the day in an organized way, they will find their own ways—which we won’t like so much! The push for “more time on task” to counteract the low performance of middle school students nationwide is laughable, unless we open up our idea of just what a valuable task is. Supervised social time with opportunities to run around (a.k.a. recess) is valuable for children and should be considered time on task. In addition to developing the valuable skills and understandings of their disciplines, special subjects such as music, art, drama, physical education and shop class provide interesting opportunities for physical and social engagement that are invaluable for early adolescents. With more variety in the types of tasks middle school students are expected to engage in throughout their day, I have no doubt they will become more focused and cooperative, and achieve at higher levels.
5. I’ve worked exclusively in high needs schools in New York City. My students regularly experience or witness the effects of urban poverty, violence, lack of health care, unemployment, crime, drug addiction and trauma. A number of students each year enter school with high emotional needs that require a kind of attention most teachers are not equipped to give any one student. In my untrained opinion, many such students would benefit from a period of intensive counseling and limited time in the classroom, while they work on how to cope with the crises in their lives. But most middle school students with high emotional needs are in mainstream classrooms and receive voluntary counseling once a week—if they accept it. Meanwhile, such students commonly express their anger and frustration in classrooms and hallways, which disrupts the learning and sometimes safety of other students. Eventually, such a student usually builds up a disciplinary record, gets a long-term suspension (which may include a criminal record) and lands in an “alternative learning site” with other students with similar records. Usually, there is still no counseling. Upon return to my school, there is often no discernible change in behavior.
I worry a lot about students like this; I’ve literally lost sleep thinking about their situations. Sometimes I have a breakthrough with a particularly troublesome student, and I have the immense pleasure of knowing I’ve changed the course of that student’s life, at least to some degree. Other times, painfully, I have to let go of that student, because I have fifty others who need my attention, and I simply do not know what more I can do. Short of eliminating poverty and all its effects, I would like policy makers to recognize that most schools are not prepared to serve severely at risk students and begin to think seriously about how to put stronger systems in place to help them before its too late.
["Attack of the Clones" image found at politicomafioso.blogspot.com]
Even though there is an obvious logic to it, I’ve been trying to work out for myself exactly why I think teachers need to be involved in education policy. I am moved by the Open Letter to NBCT’s (even though I’m not one) in the recent Teacher Solutions report, because of its call, by teachers, for teachers to question the direction our profession is taking us, and “to find our voices and hone our core messages.” (p.9 of Executive Summary) Teachers have historically been denied a voice in policy matters, expected to passively accept and transmit whatever directives come our way. But teaching is anything but a passive act. The traditional means of enacting education policy—standardized and hierarchical--contradicts the very nature of real teaching.
Much as we want to simplify it and mold it into something else, teaching is at least 50% art. The other 50% is probably science, and somewhere in there we need to add psychology/counseling...(This breakdown is certainly up for debate.) But I want to take some time to look at teaching as a creative act. That is what drew me into the profession and what keeps me here—the essential process into which I pour my heart and soul as I design learning experiences in response to the gifts and needs of my students.
Yes, teaching involves skills, conceptual understandings, and bases of knowledge, too. These are like the canvas, brush techniques, different qualities of paint, and technical exercises in perspective and scale, light and shadow (the things we seemingly can control). But the colors and shapes themselves would have to be the students, their variety and subtlety immeasurable, the way they interact, blend and contrast, never twice the same. The experience of the whole class—learning in concert, reaching new levels of understanding, balancing differences, highs and lows, within the confines of time and space—is the artistic work that teachers create over and over, differently each time, in their own unique ways.
Policy makers will probably never understand this and prefer to avoid thinking about it, because recognizing the art of teaching would make their jobs much more complicated. Imagine writing “policy” for every professional sculptor in New York, for example. (Good luck!)
What makes policy for art difficult? Compare it with science: the validity of a scientific model depends on whether or not it can be replicated elsewhere. Good art, however, can never be replicated. The outcome depends on the particular interaction of the artist, his or her experiences, vision, materials, the time, and the place. Teaching is much the same way.
In our quest to accurately measure student learning, there is pressure within the teaching profession and outside it to view our work as purely scientific, where there are certain truths, patterns and rules (or characteristics of effective teaching) that do not depend on the specific individuals involved. But these patterns reflect only half of the reality of teaching; the other half is saying, “Every moment is different and holds infinite possibilities. Go ahead, break the pattern, and set something new in motion.” This spontaneous, intuitive, risk-taking side of teaching can be genius at times, and other times messy. But kids need to be exposed to artful, experimental teaching, so that they might develop their own unique visions and learn to risk messiness to make them reality.
Teachers need lots of support to be able to do our work well. Sound policies can help provide this; just as easily, they can stifle us. For example, like artists, teachers need to be exposed as much as possible to other great teachers. Policies that promote collaboration and mentoring will help to meet this need. Policies that promote isolation and competition lessen our potential.
Teachers have to get involved in writing good policies, because who else fully understands the dynamic, complex nature of our work? Who will advocate for the space and support to practice our particular art, if not us?
[image of Paul Klee's "Shapes Colors" painting fouund at www.superstock.co.uk]
