Metaphors and Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching in any Subject
by Rick Wormeli
(Stenhouse, 2009)

Reviewed by Marsha Ratzel, NBCT
Middle Grades Math and Science (KS)
Teacher Leaders Network

Metaphors and Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching in any Subject taught me more than any education book I’ve read in the last 10 years.

This book opens doorways into using metaphors and analogies as instructional tools that I never dreamed of. Rick Wormeli brings both his intellectual insight and his pragmatic understanding of daily classroom instruction to what is an often-overlooked but critical part of effective teaching.

In Chapter 1, Wormeli opens by saying “Little in education has as much influence….as metaphors and analogies to make unfamiliar concepts clear.” He urges teachers not to limit themselves to those “teachable moments” that arise unexpectedly in class – but to make deliberate and purposeful use of stories and examples that help students experience “aha” moments and build understanding.

Chapters 2 & 3 sketch out a plan for teaching students the format of metaphors and metaphorical thinking. Wormeli offers a way to critically evaluate metaphors for their usefulness and to engage students in that process. By internalizing the structure of this kind of analogical thinking, students gain a framework for looking at these comparisons and ultimately finding comparisons of their own.

Wormeli stresses that background knowledge is critical to understanding metaphors. This section of the book is loaded with ways to improve vocabulary and background for all students, including those in ELL programs.

I hadn’t considered how incorporating physical movement amplifies metaphors. It only makes sense now that I’ve read Chapter 6. Wormeli provides excellent examples to illustrate how to power-up critical thinking by adding dance moves, song or art. The following chapter adds visual metaphors. Wormeli explains how to attach an image to the concept you are introducing to make it long-lasting. I hadn’t seen a rebus since my childhood days of reading Highlights magazine, but Wormeli quickly helped me remember how powerfully those images were in making my own learning “sticky.”

Chapter 8 exposes the reader to scaffolds that students can use to create their own metaphors. At the same time, Wormeli reminds us that the kind of conversation that pushes deep thinking happens as students promote and defend their ideas. The chapter called Incubation Stage shows how to deepen and extend metaphors. One of the things I learned was that, at some point, a metaphor breaks down. As it breaks down students come to realize the comparison isn’t literal. It becomes a model they can use for thinking. Once they assimilate the model they will start connecting the “likeness” in unlike things between and within disciplines.

Finally, in understanding all this, students and teachers sharpen their analytical skills. They embrace abstract kinds of thinking and students are able to take their concrete knowledge to the next level –which is where every teacher wants to journey with our kids.

I heartily recommend this book for you and for a book club study group. So much practical advice. It’s worth every penny and more.

Marsha Ratzel teaches middle grades math and science in the Blue Valley (KS) School District, where she has also served as an instructional and technology coach. She blogs at Reflections of a Techie. Marsha participated recently in some discussion of Metaphors and Analogies at the Stenhouse Publishers’ Ning site.

Have you ever noticed that the constant stream of articles about the teacher retention crisis in America's schools never really ends? 

Poke through Google and you'll find bits on attrition in math and science, where candidates can easily move into the private sector and earn significantly more over a lifetime, and on the costs that attrition carries for schools and districts.  You can find reports drafted by national organizations like the Education Commission of the States and the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.  

Ed Week and Edutopia are writing about teacher retention.  So is Cal State University and the Virginia Department of Education.  

And in every case, the voice of practicing classroom teachers is missing!

Download Slide_AmericasPiggyBank  

Sure, if you look hard enough, you can probably dig up a quote or two from classroom teachers in all of these sources---but only after hearing from authors, researchers and various other "experts in the field" who are seen as more knowledgeable on the factors driving people from our classrooms than us teacher-types. 

So let me bring some reality to this conversation, built on nothing more than my 16 years of experience as a practitioner. 

Teacher retention depends on three easy-to-address factors that no one seems to take very seriously:

Involve us in conversations about reform BEFORE cooking up new ideas: 

I'm always amazed at just how under-informed education's decision-makers really are.  They sit in offices thousands of miles from real classrooms imagining teaching utopias that are not only impractical, they're downright impossible to pull off! 

They wax poetic about how important it is to meet the multiple intelligences of every child and to collect data that can be used to develop plans for remediation and enrichment.  They push for a greater focus on individualized instruction and on incorporating technology into the 21st Century classroom.  They stress that reading and math skills matter, insisting that we find ways to integrate across the entire curriculum.

And they want it all done at once!  To put it simply, these guys and gals are dreamers----and they are creating teaching environments that are completely overwhelming to those of us responsible for implementing their visions. 

The solution:  Don't make ANY decisions without savvy classroom teachers at the table.  We can use our understandings of schools today to help to bridge the differences between what's desirable and what's doable.  

Now don't get me wrong:  I'm not arguing that all teachers should be involved in every decision before moving forward.  That would lead to instructional gridlock.  But as things currently stand, teachers are so far removed from important conversations that we are spitting out impractical policies every year---and impractical policies push teachers out of the classroom.

Give us opportunities to advance: 

Let's be honest:  We don't really want to retain EVERY teacher, do we?  I mean, is anyone really that upset when the building curmudgeon or the screaming banshee on the third grade hallway hang up their chalk?

The teachers we should care the most about are usually super motivated high-fliers in their fifth or sixth year who have a passion for students AND a passion for education.  They're intelligent, thoughtful practitioners who leave students AND colleagues inspired. 

And they're flocking out of classrooms because they want to advance in their profession but they realize that the top rung on teaching's career ladder was also the bottom rung!  There's no such thing as a classroom teacher who has "been promoted" because we've done such a poor job creating hybrid roles for motivated teachers to fill. 

Point in case:  Two of my best friends approached their principal a few years ago about a job-sharing idea that they'd had.  They wanted to split a class of students---one teaching language arts and social studies in the morning and the other teaching math and science in the afternoon.  During their free time, they wanted to serve as instructional resource teachers, supporting other educators in their buildings. 

Great idea, isn't it?  Most schools already have instructional resource positions that principals can allocate in almost any configuration that they'd like.  By splitting the position, the principal would have gained two motivated teachers with different skill sets and different spheres of influence within her building.  She would have also retained two phenomenal classroom teachers. 

The answer was a short no.  "I just don't know how that would look in action," they were told.  Both left the classroom before the end of the school year.  

The solution: Let's start being inventive about teaching positions. 

Why can't teachers working in year-round schools serve as professional development providers during their track-out sessions?  Why can't job-share positions be created that allow teachers to keep one foot in the classroom and one in the professional world beyond the classroom?  Why can't part-time advisory positions be created for classroom teachers who aspire to something more but who hate the thought of leaving what they love the most:  Daily interactions with students? 

A little creativity in district staffing departments could create the kinds of conditions necessary to hold on to the most motivated members of our profession who often leave the classroom looking for new opportunities. 

Find us the best principals you can lay your hands on:

I won't lie:  I want to be paid more for the work that I do.  I struggle to make ends meet for my family, and that drives me nuts.  Shouldn't America be embarrassed by the fact that teachers have to work multiple part time jobs to support their own children?

But I'm also a realist:  There's NO WAY that significant pay increases are possible for classroom teachers.  There's just too many of us for across-the-board raises to happen without crippling district and state budgets. 

And I also recognize that my gig has a ton of advantages that workers in other professional fields don't get.  My pension gives me a measure of security after retiring that carries a value I can't explain.  I've got months off every year, and I love the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of children.

What I don't understand, though, is why we do so little to invest in the principals leading our schools.  After all, principals make-or-break most buildings.  Survey after survey here in North Carolina reveal that school leaders play a greater role in teacher satisfaction ratings than any other factor---ranging from salaries to release time. 

The solution:  Pony up some serious cash---both to attract motivating leaders to the principalship and to better prepare those individuals who are currently serving as school leaders.  We've got to move beyond the idea that teacher retention starts and ends with a focus on teachers simply because any effort to change the work life of 6 MILLION people is going to cost too much to make sense.

But investing in principals seems doable to me---and investing in principals will result in positive working conditions for classroom teachers.  Good principals allocate resources intelligently, maximizing educational impact while minimizing workload and burnout.  Good principals inspire talented teachers, resulting in motivated faculties willing to work together on behalf of students.  Good principals create systems and structures that organize the work of buildings.

Crazy isn't it?  A classroom teacher arguing AGAINST increasing pay for teachers and FOR increasing pay for principals?  Maybe, but good teachers care more about working in schools with synergy than they do about making a heaping cheeseload of cash, and good principals are the key to creating that synergy.

So there you have it:  Three tricks to retaining teachers that are informed by nothing more than classroom experience.  And while I may not have the "professional qualifications" of some of the other talking heads wrestling with teacher retention, I teach, and that has to count for something.   

Any of y'all have tricks you want to add to the list? 

A Sense of Belonging: Sustaining and Retaining New Teachers
By Jennifer Allen
(2009, Stenhouse Publishers)

Reviewed by Marti Schwartz
Teacher, Novice-Teacher Educator (Rhode Island)
Teacher Leaders Network

I loved this book! When I began reading it in early September, I approached it through the lens of a coach/mentor for a group of novice teachers who spent a week with me in a seminar this past summer. From that perspective, I found the subtitle intriguing and hoped for good advice.

Shortly thereafter, in a moment of optimism, I agreed to come out of semi-retirement and signed on for a totally new professional experience: after 32 years of elementary teaching, I was suddenly facing urban high school students on a daily basis — as a quasi-novice!

These two roles — new-teacher mentor and rookie high school teacher — kept me reading Allen’s book, when I could find time to breathe. As each chapter unfolded yet another piece of the support plan under which Allen operates, I found myself wishing that I could magically whisk away and live in her town and work in her school, under her guidance.

The program that Allen and her Maine district (Waterville Public Schools) has established is one that sounds so reasonable and supportive that one can only wonder why this isn’t being practiced everywhere. If, as Allen says, “almost 50 percent of all new teachers leave our profession after only five years,”(research cited on p. 3), then our educational system is wasting a tremendous amount of time and energy by not supporting novices everywhere more fully. To keep retraining new recruits while five years of experience walks out the door is just plain foolish.

Allen makes it look simple: set up a routine that supports teachers with monthly meetings, assistance in planning, time to observe others, and guidance in teaching their own classes. She makes no mention of how this is all funded, and one wonders how, in these difficult times, the district is able to support each of these pieces. And, though she offers many inspiring stories of those novices, she does not offer any data about the retention rate of the new teachers in her district. But these are peripheral issues; the blueprint she offers is one that seems sound, replicable and intriguing.

Writing in a collegial, inviting style, Allen offers many stories of her own past experiences as a new teacher as well as examining the athletic adventures of her children and herself through the lens of the teaching and learning that takes place in the hands of a gifted coach. Her stories are spot on — we can easily grasp the guidance and wisdom being offered, even before she points it out.

The plan of teacher support is frequent, intensive, individualized, and brilliant. As a literacy coach Allen works, first, to build relationships with new teachers even before the school year begins (just as many of us try to connect with our students mid-summer, to ease their anxiety and generate their enthusiasm for the tasks ahead). Once a month new teachers are released for the day — spending the morning observing in classrooms, and the afternoons debriefing and planning, with guidance and support.

Allen works “in a first-year teacher’s classroom three times a week for at least 45 minutes, and supports them in their second or third year at least once a week or as needed.” (p. 6) This gives her the opportunity to get to know the students (and their demands or quirks) on an immediate basis, and allows the novice the chance to see a seasoned teacher work with her own students — sometimes experiencing the same challenges that she herself has faced. In partnership with a well-prepared coach, the novice can learn multiple ways to handle those challenges from a practitioner who has dealt with many, many challenging students and classrooms in the past.

Giving and interpreting assessments and using student work to guide instruction are key learning goals for novice teachers under Allen’s wing. Again, teachers are given two days out of their classroom (for fall and spring assessments) to administer, score, and analyze the assessments. For those of us who have tried to balance such work while teaching at the same time — this seems like heaven!

“The second and third years of teaching are an opportunity for new teachers to define themselves as educators. I see these years as an opportunity for new teachers to refine instructional practice and put together the pieces of the curriculum,” states Allen (p.59), noting that she continues “to support them in a way that nurtures them to become the teacher they want to be.” While Allen certainly has some ideas as a literacy coach of what “best practice” looks like, she seems wise enough to enable teachers to discover what it looks like for them.

Allen supports her teachers in other ways: providing them with student-sized dry erase boards, microcassette recorders, mentor texts, books to add to classroom libraries, writer’s notebooks, and other classroom supplies. Having spent 30 years in a suburban public school system, I must report that almost all of those supplies came out of teachers’ own wallets. But we also didn’t have a literacy coach, or someone who so passionately, wisely, devotes her time to ensuring that good things are happening in ALL classrooms, not just a chosen few. Should your own school experience be less supportive, reading through A Sense of Belonging will give you many concrete ideas about ways to improve your own literacy instruction, begin a study group, or venture into the realm of classroom visitations.

What Allen has given her novices is the gift of time: time to talk, reflect, observe, share, grow and learn, all with gentle, appropriate support. Additionally, the time is built into the novices’ teaching lives — professional growth does not require that precious moments be stolen from their non-existent “free time.”

What Allen has given to all of us is a powerful model of strengthening the practice of novice teachers, in a book that is enjoyable to read and inspiring to emulate. “New teachers are establishing lifelong habits of collaboration and reflection…” (p.91), she writes. And I have to agree: her novice colleagues, their students, and the educational system of Waterville, Maine, will surely reap the benefits for decades to come.

In this interview with author and professional learning teams expert Anne Jolly, you’ll learn at least three things:

• Details of a new edition of her book Team to Teach, a practical guide to organizing and sustaining PLCs and PLTs that promote continuous professional growth.

• Jolly’s eight secrets of PLC success.

• Her answer to the question: If you were asked to create a school reform design, what would its chief components be?

“Effective PLTs are teacher leadership hothouses,” Jolly tells us. “They’re places where teachers increase their professional knowledge and leadership skills – and they can also serve as perfect vehicles for teachers to begin to put leadership into action at several levels.”

NSDC describes Team to Teach as a “step-by-step book…written
in plain, easy-to-read language.” Jolly provides backgrounders that set
the stage for each of 10 chapters designed to familiarize teacher teams
with a proven process that can help them become high-functioning
working groups. The book also offers a comprehensive set of tools that
facilitators will find useful along the way.

Anne is a
second-career teacher who began life as a lab researcher and evolved
into an accomplished middle grades science educator — and Alabama’s 1993
Teacher of the Year. A charter member of the Teacher Leaders Network,
Anne continues to consult with schools and districts interested in
translating the learning-community concept into a viable vehicle for
everyday school improvement. We invited her to talk about Team to Teach and the current state of PLC development in American schools.

Continue below to read our conversation and learn more about Team to Teach.

Author Anne Jolly: Team to Teach

Since its first publication as a regional ed lab product in the early 2000s, the “Facilitator’s Guide to Professional Learning Teams” has been an underground bestseller in schools and districts across the U.S. A few years after its initial release, as the PLC movement caught fire, the National Staff Development Council wisely selected this spiral bound how-to guide (subtitled “Creating On-the-Job Opportunities for Teachers to Learn and Grow”) for distribution through its web-based bookstore. Sales were brisk.

In 2008, the time came for a completely new edition. NSDC invited author Anne Jolly to revise the guide, incorporating her learnings from nearly a decade as a PD consultant working with school-based learning teams in the southeast.

The result — published just in time for the NSDC annual conference last December — is Team to Teach: A Facilitator’s Guide to Professional Learning Teams. We began our conversation with some background about the book itself.

Team to Teach is subtitled “A Facilitator's Guide to Professional Learning Teams.” Tell us something about its potential audiences.

I wrote Team to Teach for those who are directly involved in setting up professional learning teams and making them work, and for those who are involved in enabling and supporting the teams. This includes teacher leaders, principals and other school staff, and central office administration.

Think about it this way: Educators often leave conferences and workshops revved up and excited about establishing professional learning communities in their schools. They understand the value of teachers collaborating on their work and they know what needs to happen. But when push comes to shove, the key to having successful PLCs is knowing how to implement the learning teams and make them work. Educators often don’t have much experience working together as adult learners on the “big stuff” of effective teaching and learning.

It's one thing to agree you need to establish teams and that these teams need to research, reflect, implement, redesign, etc. But unless you are able to organize yourselves effectively and move forward in ways that anticipate the common problems of collaboration, the initial excitement often begins to fade. In a nutshell, this book is written for the people who need to make successful teamwork happen. And that includes principals!

Would you describe your book as more theoretical or practical? And who is the "facilitator" in the title?

This book is definitely a practical guide. Each chapter addresses a different stage in building successful teams. Each chapter begins with a background section for the facilitator that builds knowledge about what needs to happen during that particular stage of implementing and sustaining the teams. The remainder of the book consists entirely of a selection of tools that may be used during specific stages and actions. I’ve included suggestions for how, why, and when to use those tools. There are over 100 pages of just tools in the book.

The facilitator mentioned in the title is primarily the person who will work directly with team members — training them, guiding them, troubleshooting, and sustaining team momentum through times when the old way of doing things as individuals seems so much easier. That person may be a teacher in a leadership role or another educator from inside or outside the building.

The book was first published in the early 2000s. Tell us something of its history and how you came to write it.

In 1999 I taught in a brand-new middle school that used a teaming approach. I was in a team of five teachers who taught the same students and had a time set aside each day for teachers to work together. We even had our own team meeting office in the center of our circle of classrooms.

All of us were excited about the possibilities. I'll never forget our first team meeting. We all came in, smiled as we poured cups of coffee from our very own coffeepot (we had scrounged an old but usable microwave for our office too) and sat down around our new, circular table in reasonably comfortable chairs. We looked at each other expectantly. Then it slowly dawned on us. We had no idea what to do.

We each taught different subjects, so where should we start? What should we accomplish? Like most other teacher teams in our school, we soon fell into familiar patterns of discussing kids, test scores, grades, and discipline. We did share ideas and put together an interdisciplinary unit, but this didn't result in changes in our classroom instructional practices.

Likewise, each month teachers across all grade levels in our school met together in department meetings. We talked about department business. The meetings were useful, but none of them actually resulted in teacher learning that led to improved instruction. How were we supposed to do that? We didn’t really know.

The "How to" idea loomed large in my thinking. I began contacting educators like Shirley Hord and Carlene Murphy who were working on teacher collaborative learning. They talked with me about the ins and outs of establishing successful teams. I read books on professional learning communities by Rick DuFour and others engaged in this work. I read research by Linda-Darling Hammond, Karen Seashore Lewis and others. And gradually a pattern begin to emerge on how this process might be laid out.

 
At this point, you must have been eager to put what you were learning into action.

You’re absolutely right. And I was fortunate to find funding that allowed me to work with two middle schools full time during the following year to establish effective teams. I learned a lot from these early attempts. My action research diary of that year's work relates all the ups and downs, sometimes in graphic detail. You can still read it on the Web, if you don’t believe I mean that!

My research and concentrated efforts to continually develop and revise this PLT work has really been ongoing since 2000. The first draft of the book emerged in 2000, as a part of some coursework for an advanced degree. After I finished my degree, I began working with SERVE — a regional education laboratory from that era that served six southeastern states. During my years with SERVE, my work was almost totally focused on researching, designing, and developing professional learning teams. SERVE put out the first published version of the book in December of 2004 and NSDC began distributing it in 2005-06.

The most recent edition, Team to Teach, was published with a new look and format by NSDC in 2008. I'm now happily "retired" and heavily engaged in working with professional learning teams. The power and the potential of teacher collaboration totally captivates me.

How has the book evolved in terms of content and target audiences over several editions?

The target audience for this book has never changed. It still speaks to the person or persons responsible for establishing, guiding, and facilitating successful teams of teachers. And the content hasn't really changed in terms of basic mission. The book continues to focus on establishing successful teams of teachers who engage in ongoing professional development to ratchet up their instructional practice in areas where their students need them to be better teachers.

In your articles, webinars, and talks, I often see you link the work of teacher learning communities and the roles of teachers as leaders in school improvement. Tell us about that.

When I was the Alabama Teacher of the Year, back in the mid-nineties, my field of vision gradually expanded beyond the issues facing my classroom and local community. I began to sense that schools across the nation had similar problems and that we teachers were the people who held the ultimate solutions. Teachers were the ones with the passion and energy to make real teaching and learning happen. And we were the ones who generally had less opportunity for real input into policies and procedures that either allowed or threw up barriers to good teaching and learning.

When I was at Cranford Burns Middle School in Mobile, Alabama, I had a principal who valued and encouraged teacher leadership. This school was fertile ground for me to begin my initial work on designing effective teams, and my principal was my biggest cheerleader. He encouraged my leadership inclinations and supported me in building my skills and taking the lead in developing teams in the school.

Effective PLTs are teacher leadership hothouses. They’re places where teachers increase their professional knowledge and leadership skills — and they can also be perfect vehicles for teachers to begin to put leadership into action at several levels.

 After nearly a decade of doing this work, what have you come to understand about what it takes to make PLTs function effectively and contribute to school success?

Well, let me just list a few of these with minimum elaboration.

1. The principal is the key to the success or failure of professional learning teams. The principal must understand the process and provide teachers with training and support. He/she must personally offer appropriate feedback to teams on a regular basis, and allow teachers to be risk-takers.

2. Team members must understand that these meetings are about professional learning and growth. I suggest that teams keep a visual reminder of this in front of them at meetings to prevent them from drifting back into old meeting habits.

3. Teams must set a clear purpose and goal for their work together. Otherwise they'll never get anywhere

4. Setting norms is often short-changed but it's critical for effective teaming. It generally works best when teachers set norms following discussions of behaviors they value in other team members.

5. Sharing teaching ideas is an important part of teamwork; however, team members are more likely to incorporate needed changes into their professional practice if they examine research and articles on instruction to broaden their knowledge base, and work together to develop and collectively implement new strategies.

6. Teams can be successful whether they are voluntary or mandatory. In either case it's important to provide the necessary help in terms of support structures and incentives. In the case of mandatory teams, it's especially important to roll out the initiative correctly and provide thoughtful and consistent follow-up.

7. It can take up to 3 years for professional learning teams to become ingrained as a way of doing business in the school. When this happens, the culture of the school begins to shift and teachers begin to support one another as professionals. In fact, team members begin to take responsibility for the success of each other as teachers.

8. There is no "one size fits all" in establishing a successful teaming process. Mechanically following suggested procedures in the Team to Teach book will not bring about magical results. The school leadership must be knowledgeable about successful teaming, committed to establishing collaborative teams, and understand how to tailor this process for the faculty.

Thinking a bit more broadly, after years of working with teachers and principals in many schools, if you were asked to create a school reform design, what would its chief components be?

I'd put a group of principals together and give them this challenge:

Imagine that you have freedom to design your school to operate anyway you want it to, and that you will be provided with sufficient resources do implement the design.

• What will your teachers be doing from the time they walk in in the morning until the time they leave in the afternoon?
• What would you (the principal) be doing during the school day?
• How would you like the school day to be structured?
• What types of meeting rooms, student learning rooms, laboratories, classrooms, and other space would you like to have in this school?
• What clerical positions would be needed? What would clerical staff responsibilities be with respect to facilitating teaching and learning?

In my best-case scenario, a good school reform design has teachers focusing exclusively on teaching and learning during the school day. The principal also takes a leadership role in the instructional process and involves teachers in helping him/her make instructional decisions.

The school day is structured so that teachers have two hours a day to work together to address student strengths and weaknesses and improve instruction. Teachers have comfortable and relaxed surroundings in which to work together. They have access to technology and a high comfort level in using it. School firewalls have been altered so that students in the school can access and create wikis, blogs, social bookmarks, rss feeds, and other digital tools when useful for learning.

Teacher class sizes are never so large that teachers are unable to give students the individual guidance that they need. Students who consistently disrupt learning for other students in class are temporarily placed with a smaller group of similar students within the school where trained teachers work with them in academics and behavior modification. There's plenty of opportunity for hands-on learning, projects and problem-solving. There's an attitude that if kids — as they did in my last teaching position — look out the window and see an environmental mess made by construction of
the new school they're attending, they can get their hands dirty doing something about it.

The school has enough clerical staff to handle non-instructional paperwork, and non-teaching staff monitors students at lunch, during class changes, and at other times when students are not engaged in instructional activities. This frees up extra time for teachers to meet with parents, attend IEP meetings, and prepare for classes.

Teacher leadership is viewed as a necessary role in the school. Opportunities are provided for teacher leaders who wish to remain in the classroom to expand their responsibilities and be rewarded financially for taking on more leadership roles and responsibilities.

Those are a few components I'd include.

What's next for Anne Jolly?

Other professional work I'm involved in today includes writing engineering curriculum for middle schoolers that addresses student science and math objectives while helping them apply this knowledge. I’m doing this with the Mobile Area Education Foundation in a system-wide initiative called Engage Youth in Engineering. It's exciting to be asked to design curriculum that is bound to engage kids – and to do it in my content area, where I still have a great passion.

I'm also exploring ways teachers can use digital tools to collaborate, save time, and help in their own learning and student learning. I'm working with a colleague, Skip Olsen, on this project and we find it endlessly fascinating. We'd love to have input from schools and teams that find digital tools to be useful and have had some success with them. If any readers would take time to give us input, please send ideas to ajolly@bellsouth.net. We are interested only in free digital tools, not vendor tools.

And, last but certainly not least, I'm still learning more about successful teaming. I'm compiling what I believe is an ever-stronger base of tools and information for facilitators. I’m also beginning to focus some of my work directly on principals as the linchpin people when it comes to enabling successful teamwork.

Other than that, I plan to keep flunking retirement!

Until November 10, 2009, you can view (at no charge) a recent Education Week webinar featuring Anne Jolly and Nancy Fichtman Dana as they discuss how to create the framework and establish ground rules for building successful professional learning teams.

[Photo of Anne Jolly by Joe Songer, for Teacher Magazine]

Not long ago, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel (aka: Ol' Denny) took some time to wax poetic about his first days as a classroom teacher in Iowa.  He wrote:

As I entered my first classroom in Iowa, I recall the anticipation, anxiety, and fun in store! The learning curve was steep—I remember feeling overwhelmed by all the paperwork and forms. And there were 160 students counting on me—quite a culture shock from my student teaching days.

So I jumped in with both feet.

I took seating charts home every night and by the end of the first week of school, I had memorized every student's name. I was more tired after my first week of teaching than after working 2 full-time jobs all summer. It's a tough job, but it's also where I loved to be.

Today, I work in new surroundings as NEA President. But I still get the same rush from being part of such a unique and awesome profession. My new experiences will be special in their own way.

But those "first days" are always memorable!

Beautiful, ain't it?  Ol' Denny almost brought a tear to my eye. 

Heck, I could almost smell the chalk as little Hawkeyes pounded classroom erasers trying to please their heroic teacher, who sat smiling behind a desk littered with apple knick-knacks and graded papers sporting enough "You're Just Plain Super!" stickers to make an entire grade level beam with twelve-year-old pride.

  by  House Of Sims 

You'd have to be a cold-hearted soul NOT to love warm reminiscences from a school teacher, right?  Especially when that one-time teacher now leads the most powerful organization representing educators in the nation, right?

Wrong.  You'd just have to be a first year teacher in districts like mine in 2009.  Faced with almost impossible budget numbers, schools across the country are cutting the contracts of non-tenured colleagues----including those who are the newest to our profession---faster than the Little Ceaser's guy preparing $5 pizzas in Munchietown. 

Don't get me wrong:  We can't blame school districts for letting people go.  After all, state revenues provide the bulk of revenue for schoool districts and most states haven't got two nickels to rub together.  Budgets simply have to be cut----and like most knowledge based service industries, cutting budgets in education almost inevitably means cutting people.

It's just that schools cut people so freaking carelessly!  

Take my friend Lucy---a REMARKABLE first year teacher here in North Carolina who found out the other day that her school hasn't got a teaching spot for her next year.  She had a first year that could easily have rivalled Ol' Denny's.  Her lessons were amazing, her kids were learning, and she completely loved what she was doing. 

She'd impressed her colleagues and her principals completely, but she's getting deep-sixed for no other reason than she's got one year of experience in a district that has to cut almost 700 teaching positions in order to balance the budget. 

Those first days ARE always memorable, aren't they Denny?!

For teachers like Lucy, though, first days send an incredibly disheartening message that goes a little something like this: 

"Gosh, that was great, wasn't it kid?!  You sure did a bang up job.  Got a real taste of the ol' apple-dust, didn't ya?  And dagummit, you're a natural!

"But that don't matter, see.  We're sorry and all, but you're getting canned because we ain't got the cash to keep you around.  It ain't nothin' that you did, though.  You were incredibly competent.  It's just that competence don't matter in this profession.  Heck, you could be Superwoman, but you'd still be Superwoman with one year's experience.   

"Instead, we're going to jack up class sizes a bit and give your position to someone who's been around here for awhile.  And here's the real kicker:  We KNOW that the person who gets your job might just be a miserable old fart making three times what your making who doesn't give two rips about kids and who beats the busses out of the parking lot. 

"But one thing's for sure:  That miserable old fart is going to have more years in the system than you.  I guarantee it!  

Good times, Denny.  Good times indeed.  

Do you really expect young, intelligent educators like Lucy to wait around for another TEACHING job? 

If you do, you must have been mainlining chalk dust for just a LITTLE too long.  Lucy's already told me she's done with a backwards profession that refuses to recognize merit.  "I was willing to work forever for next to nothing," she told me, close to tears over a career that she loved but that didn't love her back.

In the end, Lucy will get hired by some company or another that recognizes that she's a heckuva bargain.  Business tends to see talented young workers as the best of both worlds, don't they?  Sure, their rolodexes might be thin, but they often bring twice the passion while working for half the paycheck. 

And we'll be left with a handful of overpriced retreads working towards retirement. 

How does this make sense for kids?  How does this make sense for advancing our profession in the eyes of the general population?  When will we get to the point where EDUCATORS begin to insist that staffing decisions be made on merit rather than years of experience?

Tough questions, huh Denny. 

My answer:  Not soon enough. 

I'm tired of losing Lucies.