The Great Hiatus

Every once in a while I fall off the bandwagon and cannot write for say… 5 months. Recently, (prompted by my mother-in-law) I wondered about my blog hiatus. Like an adept psychologist who tells you that you don’t really want help when you are 5 minutes late to your appointment, I decided to analyze this hiatus and find the core of its being. I have three really good explanations lined up. Some may say they are excuses but they are not, I promise.

Reason 1: Too Summery!

            Anyone who has dealt with a teacher knows about the summer drop-off. It’s a phenomenon that can be well-documented. Apartments across the city go up for summer subleases (July-August 15), teachers go wild and make weeknight plans filing up local bars and eateries with chatter about things other than their students, and computers take a back seat, leaving a void of Facebook statuses about field trip disasters, hilarious classroom antics, frustration with the DOE, snow days and grading papers. I, too, have fallen to these depths.

            This summer, despite my interest in writing more, I actually ended up going outside more, getting some sun, traveling for 6 weeks and generally avoiding my writing. I admit I had a few great blog ideas written somewhere (napkins, coasters, museum ticket stubs, boarding passes, worthless Euro notes etc…) but I failed at actually developing them, because who really looks at those keepsakes within a year of traveling? Stay tuned for some amazing blog topics in the summer of 2012! This was a summer to remember (to forget to write),

Reason 2: Too Whiny!

            I started reading a bunch of education blogs earlier this year, let’s say Spring. Like, real ones. I am put to shame by these people. I read some of my entries that I must have spent hours on only to see that the substance is lacking. I should be linking more, thinking more and making intellectual observations. So I took a long break to read and rethink the direction of my blog. I tried to turn it into something more cerebral. But in the end, I am just not interested in writing what others write about for the sake of intellectualism. I am just not that kind of writer. I think I have come to terms with this.

Reason 3: Too Busy!

                                    Am I seriously coming at you with this excuse?

                                    Why yes, yes I am. I am busy, people.

                                    With what?

                                    You would ask that.

            This year is my 5^th year of teaching. I want nothing more than to be better than I was in the past 4 years combined. I realize that my competitive spirit is seriously hindering my ability to do much else, but I want to be great. I want to get all of my students to move up to grade level, I want to try new things, I want to push my curriculum goals to the limit. I want my students to think back on their 4^th grade experience and say “now THAT was the year I knew I could really LEARN.”             Unfortunately, this takes a ridiculous amount of time. It takes planning and reading and changing and growing. In order to do all of this, I spend time thinking and reflecting on my lessons of the past and making them better. I am learning slowly how to differentiate for my newcomer ELL’s and planning more effectively for their success. I have unearthed some seriously troublesome lessons of the days of yore and re-worked them to grasp at the deeper thinking skills I want my students to practice and demonstrate. My conferencing skills are being pulled at and stretched to make sure that I work with students on an individual level that targets their learning needs. I am energized by the challenges that I am facing and desperately trying to effect change in my own teaching. These are all things that I have been told teachers don’t do very much of after their first two years. If there’s one thing my rebellious side makes me do, it’s prove people wrong, even if it costs me the time I dedicate to my life, friends and blogging. If I don’t push forward, I’ll stay stagnant, and no one wants that.

            In conclusion, the summer is over, I am no longer fighting with myself about the content of my blog and I am busier than ever. My analysis may leave a few wanting more of an explanation. I think I have said enough except this: it’s good to be back.

New Test City

I wrote this post in June. It needed some stewing and simmering  before it could be posted. Now for your summer reading enjoyment, testing, testing and more testing.

Say you are a fourth grader in a dual-language New York City public school. You are classified as an English Language Learner (ELL) which accounts for about 50% of the population in your class. You have just come back from 10 glorious (or not so glorious) days of spring break. Your teacher (me) has asked you to practice for the exam every day of break (school mandate). You struggle to get all of your work done because you know that the teacher in question (me, again) will be looking at what you did and will be conferencing with you/asking you why your homework is missing. Also, your break was ok, I mean, you got to play video games with your cousins but you didn’t go outside much. Getting back to your routine will be good, but boy do you have a mixed bag of fun changes waiting for you when you get back!

In one week you will begin the grueling task of bubbling in answer sheets, sitting in rows, having to be quiet and motionless for up to 105 minutes for three consecutive days. You arrive to the class to see that all of the work you have done in ELA is off the bulletin boards, the word wall is down, and there are just bright blocks of colored butcher paper in their stead. Your classmates are all nervous, the teacher is urgently prepping you each day, giving you information about the test.

The ELA test comes and goes. Your regular schedule is completely out of whack. You are used to the regular gym periods and art periods, but somehow, having these at a different time really messes with you. Not having a set schedule is weird, and definitely not what you expected. But that should go away soon, right?

One week, one test down.

Let’s not stop there. After your take the ELA exam, your math bulletin board mysteriously gets stripped. Again, you sit in rows, motionless, for up to 105 minutes but this time you get to take the test for two days, further messing with your schedule. Next week, the schedule will be back to normal! Definitely.

Two weeks, two tests down.

The next week, you are also asked to take a 90-minute “field test” on one day, which ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for your own gain. This is a test to test a new test. Try to understand that fun use of the word test.

Then, you get to take a test that determines your fluency in English for 3 more days. Wait, the schedule is off, and now you have to work with a new teacher while some students are tested and others are not. You are learning new things and making things happen but this is still weird and messing with you.

Three weeks, four tests down.

In the fourth week you are now exhausted. But! You get to take a 90-minute Spanish-language exam that only bilingual schools have to take and which the results are NEVER REPORTED BACK TO THE SCHOOL. All this for what? What is a normal schedule? Why did you like school so much before?

Four weeks, five tests down.

In the fifth week you now have to take the Science performance test. This test is more fun because that’s what it says in the directions (no joke). You perform science experiments and record data in timed trials. You have 23 minutes per experiment. You must perform/record three experiments.

Five weeks, 5.5 tests down.

In the sixth week, it’s back to rows and motionless bubbling. This is the science written exam, 105 minutes of sitting and testing. FUN!

Six weeks, 6 tests down.

How are you feeling now? Have you had enough? It feels like summer outside, you missed most of spring being completely stressed out by testing, schedule changes, and exhaustion of sitting for as long as you did. By the end, did you really care about the tests you took? Did it seem as important as it did on the first day?

Is this the definition of good education?

Do it for the kids.

Recently this blog has fallen off of my radar for no other reason other than I am exhausted and frankly a little overwhelmed by work these days. I am not sure if any of you are living in a hole out there but apparently, there is a bit of a war on teachers going on out there that is raging between people who are not teachers and pundits. It’s remarkable to watch except that under this pile of papers to grade and assessments I have to administer, I can’t seem to find time to pay attention.

I don’t usually say much about my teaching life or my classroom because there’s a wealth of books out there with anecdotes galore about classroom life; go read those! Also, I have been reading about teachers getting in trouble for blogging about students in their classrooms and I am just not ready to go there, you know? Plus, no need to regale war stories or heroic stories, that’s why you have Dangerous Minds and The Freedom Writer’s Diary.

I will however, give you some insight on a recent interaction I had with fellow teachers in a graduate level program because it’s relevant and it stuck with me and this is my blog, so there you have it. For whatever reason, I was assigned to read a book by Sonia Nieto by the name What Keeps Teachers Going? The book was written in 2003 and was the result of an inquiry team research in Boston. While the book itself was unremarkable in my mind, I found the attempt to answer the titular essential question interesting. Unfortunately, this question was and still is unanswerable in a final and resounding tone. The author and the researchers tried to answer it, but really the book concluded with some murmuring about how in the end many teachers simply “do it for the kids.”

No, people. NO.

Look, it’s nice that the kids are part of my motivation and truthfully, I love working with my students, I do. But, it’s this kind of reasoning that gets teachers into trouble. Here are some of the disastrous effects of this kind of thinking.

Disaster 1: Doing it for the kids is a lovely thought, it seems so very very selfless. So much so, that we shouldn’t be paid! I mean we do it for the kids, right? Who cares if we can’t afford a vacation to Zanzibar or even a really nice dinner (with appetizer and dessert) at the Cheesecake Factory? The kids fill our lives! They make us alive! Isn’t that payment enough? I have a life, I do. I like clothes and books and getting my nails done at a salon.  From time to time I enjoy a good night out. I like nice furniture and taking pottery classes. In order to do these things I need money. My job is teaching, where I get paid. If you are a lawyer or a banker and you ask for a raise, you are seen as savvy. If you are a teacher and you ask for a raise you are seen as selfish and as stealing money from the children. I teach because I love it but also because it pays bills. Get over it.

Disaster 2: For some reason, the fact that my students motivate me, or the fact that they make me smile everyday means that my job is simply fluff. I mean no one should LOVE his/her job, right? When I utter the words “my students” people immediately tune me out. Why? Is it because these supposed people are so miserable at their jobs that they want everyone else to be? Could it be that they are so deluded as to think that doing it for the kids is anything less than admirable? I actually think that it is because they think that if I love what I do it is magically easy. Wrong, people. Loving what you do and it being easy are completely unrelated. Also, stamping envelopes is easy work, but I never hear anyone raving about it. Just because I get to see a smile or a scowl at the end of the day that somewhat melts my heart does not mean that I am in any way less fierce, stressed or dedicated than a banker, lawyer or doctor.

Why do I keep teaching? In the end, there is no singular answer. Doing it for the kids is one aspect of teaching, but as a teacher I know better than to hinge all of my hopes and fears on that one very unreliable factor. Kids are unpredictable, and that's what makes them great and challenging all at the same time.Sometimes I think I teach because of the challenge, because in one hour I have to make more decisions than most people make in a week. Then, I think I do it because of the hilarity of it all, because it lets me laugh at myself more than pushing paper does. Other times I comfort myself by saying I do it because it’s serious work, there’s no dilly-dallying about. Sure, I do it for the kids, but I would never let that be my only reason, because kids come and go and somehow, I keep going. 

Education = Business?

             Many people in the education reform world have decided that the best way that they can help education is to get an MBA. Now, I think that continuing your education is important and I think that getting an MBA will help you to run a business well. I have to argue, however, that getting an MBA will not make you a better educator or educational leader. This does not mean that if you get your MBA you cannot lead a school. Clearly the budget side of things desperately needs a savvy numbers person to balance the cost and benefit of each school purchase. And you got your MBA, which means you probably have great work ethic and you are probably fairly intelligent! But when it comes to leading teachers, unless you yourself have taught before, you will have a very hard time being an instructional leader. Simply put, a school is not a business.

            I wonder about the way in which we are viewing education and whether or not our view is setting us up to fail. Business is about products. It’s about selling an idea or a product to someone. Preferably, you make your product cheaply and then sell it at a marked up price. The more people you sell it to, the better your profits. If you miss one too many sales, your business is on the chopping block. You will constantly apply the laws and principles of business to an institution that is not designed to be as such. And you will constantly run in to failure. Those kids might pass the tests, but at what cost?

            To get concrete about this I want you to think about education being a product, like car tires. I (the teacher) am the seller of car tires (“education”) in my classroom/store. My clients are my students. They are all in my “store” to be convinced to buy my amazing tires. The only caveat is that not all of my students need tires, because maybe not all of them have cars (cars=basic needs are met). It’s also possible that a few of my students have cars with special tires (special education needs) that can only be sold in a different store. Or maybe someone previously sold them tires that didn’t fit or didn’t work in the past and they are just not feeling spending any more time or money on the tires that I am offering. Now, I can diversify my tire line; sell fancy ones and basic ones and even monster ones! My inventory can only grow so much because I am only given the resources that my supplier (the DOE) provides. Getting new tires could take months, because I have to make a case for each new tire type and brand (special education, speech, counseling services, ESL services, etc…). Sometimes the new tires I need are sold out (no more room in programs or no availability of programs due to budget cuts). Then my clients are just sitting in my store, and I am working to give them tires that simply are not fitting the bill.

            Sadly though, I can only sell tires. It’s the product I have been told to sell. Some kids don’t need tires and those are my lost sales. If only I could change the tires so I could sell something that would work for the kids without cars, like Metrocards. Remember though, I am only licensed to sell tires. If I got my Metrocard license, I could sell Metrocards and tires, but that may not reach my entire population. I’d still have lost sales and frankly, there are only so many different products I can be an expert in.

            What happens if most of my class is in the lost sales category? My failing business will get shut down! Not because I didn’t try to sell it, but because it’s possible that forces beyond my control didn’t allow me to sell it. Don’t worry though, my shop will close and new tire shop will appear. Perhaps this one will have newer models of tires, but it will serve the same clientele. The same problems will exist, and the overall business plan will remain the same.

            No one wants to be in a failing business. Everyone wants to diversify and sell their product to make it useful and necessary to the mass market. How do we do that with education? Instead of demanding the impossible, let’s start dreaming up ways in which we can succeed, and not continue the trend of failure.

            No excuses here, but we need to pay attention to social forces on our students. Ignoring the fact that some our students are poor or abused and demanding that they get through their work, so they can get out of their situation with no support is absolutely wrong. It’s like screaming at a child that the symbol they see on their paper is an “a” when they don’t even know what a paper is so they can look at it. The sooner we can incorporate scaffolds and coping mechanisms for these students, the sooner they can concentrate on their academic pursuits. How about we make resources available, add choice to the menu, lower the amount of wait time and serve our clientele. Stop ignoring the clients who need different products. We need to make education a service and not a business. We need to spend our resources wisely and not rip off our clients.

Teachers: Sinners or Saints? Sinners Edition

So, today is Sunday, the proverbial day of rest! It’s 10:15am. I woke up at 8:00, worked on some report card comments, emailed about some school-related items and got out of bed to make a cup of coffee. I opened up my email and my various news sites to get a look at what the day will bring only to find that the world has decided to talk about teachers and thus, they have decided to talk about me! I am more famous than (insert celebrity name here)! How enchanting! Before I settle in for about 8 hours of grading, commenting and planning, I would like to address this lovely turn of events.

            Sadly as I read on I see that while I may be feeling pretty special about this, the rhetoric is quite confusing. Are we, teachers of American students, sinners or are we saints? Depending on whom you talk to, we could be on opposite ends of the spectrum. Let’s get to it, shall we?

As you watch the situation that is going down in Wisconsin, in particular what some may call the inevitable taxpayer’s revolt against fat-cat teachers, you may wonder about how sinful we truly are. Teachers that are part of unions (as I am) are protected by certain contractual agreements. My contract is pretty ridiculous, and I’d wager to say that most teachers are not fully versed in the current version of their contract. Not because we don’t care, but because the document is so long that really, we skim to get the general idea.

Now, Fox News is really well versed in the contractual agreements of Wisconsin teachers. They’ve crunched the numbers and added all of the money together to show how teachers are way overpaid. Without focusing too much on their hypocrisy involving the amounts of money they are paid to research poorly and then bloviate on screen for 24 hours a day, I would say we make a nice chunk of change. To the average American, we look like fat cats with our average wage of $51,000 plus benefits, which somehow put us at $91,000 for our net wage. But, we are not average Americans.

Teachers in New York are required to have in hand a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree as well as pass a bunch of ludicrous exams in order to teach. Recently education policy has mandated that we set goals and document how we are achieving these goals in a binder, which will then be sent to the state for evaluation in order to be approved for tenure. We teach Americans how to read, write, crunch numbers (looking at you, Glen Beck), and think.

In my teaching tenure I have wrestled with cockroach and mouse feces encrusted classrooms, shortages of supplies and largely ignored populations. I have fought to give a voice to the voiceless and I have worked tirelessly to avoid teaching to the test so that my students may begin to love school. I have battled with tired, hungry, abused and neglected children to get them to a better future, so that they may also inspire their children to do the same.

I have one question for the people that feel that I am a fat cat, how much are you willing to spend on the future of this nation? You get what you pay for, and frankly, you haven’t been paying enough.

Testing. 1. 2. 3.

I have been wanting to post something intelligent to this blog for over a week now. I feel as though I am letting myself get too wrapped up in my own thoughts. Oh, and there’s the endless amounts of testing that we have been administering and grading over the past few weeks. As if I have nothing better to do, like say, actually teach my students the content that they need to know to take the exams in May. Testing. Testing. Testing.

            I think that if I give my students one more test they might attack me and give me hundreds of paper cuts. Seriously, I can’t plan lessons or think about instructing my students because there are 75-minute chunks of time eaten up for 3 consecutive days for testing in my room. And that’s just ELA! I also have to give a Math exam! Three more days, 75 minutes a day. Oh, and did I mention that I am also responsible for grading 40 essays, 80 short response paragraphs and 200 math problems? One more thing, I don’t actually have a scoring guide, so I have to use one from a previous test to help me create one for this test, as if I had all the time in the world. Oh! And I also get to make a nifty excel sheet that will help me to group my students. That god I have these exams, otherwise I would never know how to group my students!

            Little do non-teachers know that the standardized testing in schools might actually be the worst part of teaching. I don’t mean this because I am worried about accountability. Check out my student’s scores! Do it up! I also don’t think it’s because of all the extra work, I mean, whatever, I’ll make my own scoring guide.

            I think it’s crucial to have a level playing ground and standards really changed how and what we teach all students (especially in impoverished school districts). The tests keep us accountable and make us push harder for student understanding. We need to see what’s going well and where we need interventions, this is what any good operation looks for. Find the successes and flaws in the system and then tweak something to make progress on both ends of the spectrum.

            On the other hand I think it’s insane to have one score determine the quality and progress of student work. I also think it’s insane to have a multiple choice test determine my school’s budget, my effectiveness as a teacher and my students’ abilities. With so much riding on these test scores, is it still a wonder why some teachers teach to the test? The pressures of making the grade for the school might just push any teacher over the edge.

            Beyond all of this, I can’t seem to understand why a nation with such high standards wants us to constantly have “students on task” while stealing away 225 minutes (per content area test) of valuable classroom time to administer practice tests. I mean, if the kids don’t practice then how can we predict how they will do on the test later on? Hmm… maybe we use all of the other assessments, conference notes, reading levels, writing levels, unit tests and classroom work to help us with that? Well, that is if we have time to assess students in a meaningful way.

            And please, don’t forget test prep! Students need test prep! You want to start an after school science club? No way! We can only do test prep! You want to enrich students with a mathletes program? Ha! Elementary school age kids just need test prep! Seriously people, when will we get kids to love learning? After the test?

            With this much time dedicated to testing and prepping kids for a multiple choice exam that will be changing dramatically over the next few years, it’s no wonder we are sliding in world rankings. To all of the test lovers out there I have one thing to say, if you let me teach, my kids will obliterate that test. Because, when given the chance to learn interesting things, my students will rise to the occasion. You just have to give them that chance.

Why teaching is awesome… but also stressful.

            If I haven’t said it before please allow me to say it now, I love what I do. Sure, there are days when I feel so overwhelmed that I have to dig deep (into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s) and find the nuggets of good (delicious ice cream coated chunks) in my day. And yes, the pressure of teaching is constantly pushing me to think around issues as well as turning my hair shades of grey, but in the end if I have to evaluate my accomplishments I must say that teaching has afforded me a perspective on humanity that I didn't have before.

            Regardless, there are teachers out there who do not like what they are doing. This post is dedicated to them. I will explore some of the ways in which teaching can be amazing and how those same things can actually drive you nuts. Unhappy teachers are around, and they are not bad people. They are not weak. They are not ineffective. They are unhappy, which means that something is up. It’s important to explore why they are unhappy and what needs to be done to find them happiness. In cliché terms: some things in teaching are double-edged swords.

I get/have to interact with children on a daily basis!?

           

            Children, although raised by their parents, rely heavily on interactions with adults in the school building. I have the luxury of being an elementary school teacher so my students come to me at a young age so I technically get to mold their thinking and impressions (poor little kids, they never had a chance). Let’s explore our student population shall we?

• Have I told you lately that I love you? Some students bring you apples and want to please you. They tell you that they want to be teachers when they grow up. Their hands are always first in the air, waving at you, sometime accompanied with “Ooo! Ooo!” noises and various contortions of their bodies for you to call on them. They always do their homework, and sometimes they do extra homework to impress you. These go-getters are the highlight of your day. They love your every move despite the fact that sometimes you are wrong. They act like a second shadow… that you kind of wish would go away (groundhog style). I mean, it makes me feel like I am Justin Bieber surrounded by screaming teens (and 40 year olds). That feeling is just not for me, you know? A note to you lovely bringers of apples: keep doing what you do but remember your teacher is a human being and can definitely make mistakes. When that happens don’t turn on them, just keep bringing apples but keep the perfect ones for yourself, I like mine with spots.
• Love stinks! There are cases where students come in withdrawn and scowling at you. Lucky you, good teacher, you get to crack the shell and bring them out of it! How fun! These students will walk away from you when you talk to them, they will refuse to do work and they will interrupt your class. You will be expected to draw up behavior contracts, talk to parents who don’t trust your judgment and drag them through lessons. You will spend most of your time with these students, and that can drive a teacher to go nuts. It’s unfair that they get the most attention from us, but they also need it more than anyone else. Sometimes, you see a breakthrough and that student really thrives and you feel great. Sadly, you can’t get them all to change and it weighs on you and discourages you from trying again with the next withdrawn student. This is a reality that teachers face, but when you are expected to change the world, sometimes these interventions or lack of them can stand in your way. Without them these students cannot succeed. However, the percentage of success with these interventions is unknown. Each student reacts to them differently. You might unlock their hearts, only to find another challenge behind the next door. The long short of it is, teachers have this extra job of reaching students who are untouchable. Success is unpredictable, the rewards are abundant but failure is crushing. Motivating unmotivated students requires a lot of energy and patience. A note to teachers in these situations, don’t forget to take care of your self. You need to be at 110% to work with these and all of your students that that is a tall order for such an important job.
• Stuck in the middle with you: The last category is all of the students in the middle. These students raise their hands when they want to, they engage in activities without going the extra mile and sometimes they give you hilarious anecdotes with their occasional bursts of brilliance. I personally adore the kids in the middle. They are unpredictable, funny and authentic. I am definitely not saying that the others are not, but the middle kids are just kids. They have problems and they have support networks at home and in school. You can see them getting things on their own, and they thrive on being left alone to work independently and then given a moment to share their results. It’s the best of both worlds! As we were packing to go yesterday a student asked what books she should take home, one of my middle kids suggested that she take her “math book, reading book and facebook.” I was into that joke.

I get/have to see my students progress, whether they want to or not!?

            Keeping in mind the populations that you have seen above, teachers are expected to demonstrate their students’ progress. You, wonderful educator, have to contend with the battles of everyday teaching and skillfully winning the hearts and capturing the minds of students in order to teach them anything! I mean, this is the crux of the job, the whole reason you are there. It’s amazing to see students learn. They have the light bulb moment where they think really hard after you asked them a question and they go “OH! I get it!” and you practically float with joy over to your desk to write down the brief anecdote on a post-it to be placed in your binder of conference notes.

            Recently my students had a hard time grasping the concept of what a country is and what states and cities are in relation to countries. This is a common misconception. So as part of our fun Friday rotation of games, I added a map puzzle of the United States. On Friday, they put it together in a mob of 7 kids and then they started discussing where they wanted to go. One wants to go to Hollywood (because you can be so fashionable there), several want to go to Orlando (OMG Disney World) and  one wanted to go to the Dominican Republic. Why was the DR not on this map of the United States? Two other students explained that the DR is not part of the United States and that it can be found in the Caribbean, but that it has it’s own laws. Again, I grabbed a post-it note and jotted down the whole conversation. It was crazy to hear my explanations coming out of these students. We spent like, MONTHS on this concept. Good thing a few of them got it!

            There’s the stressor, some kids didn’t get it. After months of teaching and showing and conferencing and reviewing and group work, they were still confused. Managing each student and getting them all to be on the same page is the most difficult skill to learn as a teacher. In this age of no child left behind, the pressure is on to make sure everyone gets it. But! You also have to keep to your pacing calendar, because they have to be ready for the test! (At this time I want to thank the common core standards for being so much more interested in depth versus breadth; see you later pacing calendar, hello conceptual awareness!)

            The answer to all of our ills is of course differentiation. This is a big word for “create three to six different lesson plans at different levels with the same teaching point so that all students will get all of the material.” This is a complicated thing that we are being asked to do. Managing this is crucial to seeing progress, but the research and proven strategies on how to differentiate vary from person to person. With all of the conflicting evidence and suggestions, it’s like I need someone to differentiate for me in order to differentiate for my students. Weird.

            This post has gotten out of hand. I will pare it down a little next week. Perhaps even post more than once to keep the length at bay. Please comment, leave a little thought or story of your own. I’d love to read them. And, of course, have a great week, see you at the other end!