Politics everywhere

“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly
concern them.”

~ Paul Valery (1871 – 1945), (credit for quote to Bob at lakesideadvisors.com)

My Facebook posts are filled with reprints of recipes. I don’t cook and I don’t much care about cooking, either. I repost an occasional kitty. I will sometimes tell the world when I don’t feel well.

But I never tell my Facebook friends what I actually am feeling about my job, not on public media anyway. These are dangerous times and jobs have been lost through imprudent posts. I never post my reservations or hesitations. I expect the district is trolling through posts looking for dissension in the ranks. Consequently, we all post recipes. You’d think the teaching profession had barely survived a famine in the last few years. My feed is filled with exciting things to do with cauliflower, punctuated by pumpkin smoothie recipes.

Eduhonesty: Almost every educator I know is keeping his or her head down right now. In staff meetings, it’s fun to watch teachers find ways to answer critical questions without criticizing anything.

Moderator: After seeing the video, in what ways do you think you might improve your own practice?
Teacher: I think I could differentiate more for my students by making more use of student data.
Moderator: Do you disagree with the video in any way?
Teacher: I think the video is excellent. I am not sure I could get all 32 of my students to work in pairs that well. I may need more professional development in this area.

The teacher’s thrown in the key word, “data,” and bypassed the fact that she is actually positive there’s not a way in hell her 32 students would work that well in pairs. For one thing, there’s no camera on her students and no one has prepped them how to behave for that nonexistent camera. She has also asked for more professional development. That always sounds good, whether the teacher believes that development would be useful or not.

I had a colleague who solved the small group conundrum posed by administrator advice. She told the administrator she was not sure how to break her class into groups of four and teach them in a tag-team fashion while keeping all groups on task. She then asked the administrator to demonstrate how this was done. The issue was never raised again, at least by that administrator, who ducked the issue entirely and never demonstrated anything. I recommend this technique. When admin asks you to split the class into seven groups of four and teach them all one at a time while the others do independent, productive work — ask the administrator to model the expected behavior. If any of them actually do as you request, and it works, please contact me.

Eduhonesty: Years ago, I read a book called “Eighth Moon” about life in Communist China during the Great Leap Forward. Life in education today reminds me of that book. We never dare risk criticizing the current regime. We sometimes suggest we need more training in order to fully comply with Chairman Mao’s demands.

I did not used to believe in unions. I’ve changed my position. If there are any teachers out there speaking honestly, I suspect it’s because they trust the union to protect them. As the unions are hobbled or broken, the level of honest speech falls with them. That loss reverberates through the educational community and directly impacts our students, whose teachers are quietly following so-called best practices that they can see don’t work, but are afraid to challenge.

Favorite line from assignments this week

“I want to travel to Arizona and Ireland to see castles.”

At some point, I will wander over and find out what she knows about Arizona. I might be able to clear up a few misconceptions. If not, the impossible castle quest makes perfect sense to me as winter closes in around the Midwest.

Losing Mary Anne

I suffered a shock in the copy room last week. I was standing in the line of waiting teachers, half-listening to the drone of complaints as I waited my turn. “Mary Anne” was ahead of me, feeding papers into one of the machines.

“It’s this () place,” she said, a note of deep disgust in her voice.

I’m not even sure what people were complaining about, but that comment woke me up immediately. Mary Anne?!?? I stared at this stalwart defender of educational best practices, this nearly-perfect, attractive, young teacher who coaches various sports in the afternoons and joins committees without caring if she will be paid. Mary Anne has always supported her Principal. She has always been true to her school.

We are in deep trouble. No school can afford to lose its Mary Annes. The Mary Annes keep our schools running. They are the boots on the ground in American education.

I am no Mary Anne. I remain deeply suspicious of educational “best practices,” hewing to the views of African-American author and economist Thomas Sowell, who once said, “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” Many best practices fall into that category as far as I am concerned, starting with the indiscriminate inclusion that now regularly places students who are six or even more years apart in academic understanding into the same classroom. But this post is not about me.

Mary Annes hold up our schools. They cut out giraffes and monkeys into the wee hours of the night. They run the school store before and after school. They volunteer for extra, unpaid cafeteria duty. They stand shivering outside at the end of the school day, shepherding students safely into parent cars while directing driveway traffic. They prepare clever hallway decorations using student handprints as turkeys on Thanksgiving. At Christmas, they organize and set-up the toy drive. They chaperone Valentine’s Day Dances in gyms filled with red and pink crepe paper that they themselves had hung up hours earlier, before setting out the red and white cupcakes and cookies. They store Pop Tarts in their desks for hungry students. They take Spanish classes to learn to talk with their students’ parents. They diligently review YouTube videos on symmetry, reflections and rotations when these skills are added to the curriculum. They religiously attend professional development activities. Afterwards, they write up their insights to share with the whole staff, recommending the new cross-curricular XYZ Vocabulary Game in fervent emails, as they zealously prepare extra XYZ Boards for other teachers to use. Mary Annes don’t doubt their colleagues will benefit from the new XYZ game.

Mary Annes are painfully sincere. I saw “The Fugitive” some years back with a cousin who has deep streak of Mary Anne in her. At one point, when Richard Kimball was inside a charity hospital in his search for the one-armed man, my cousin leaned to me and said, “It must be so hard for him to be in that hospital with all those people who need help when he can’t help them.” That thought would never, ever have come to the forefront of my mind.

So my planet tilted ever so slightly in its orbit when Mary Anne put down her own school. I have taken multicultural awareness with this woman, who found my slightly cynical viewpoint sometimes unappetizing. Mary Annes tend to believe that efforts can always improve bad situations. The fact that current efforts to raise test scores might be having the opposite effect, might be doing irreparable harm to the self-esteem of some of the kids at the bottom of the test pool, has escaped many Mary Annes. These are the teachers who believe what they are told about best practices, who believe what the state representative says about the need for higher accountability, who trust that their leaders are making decisions to provide long-term gains, even if evidence for this future improvement seems to be lacking in the short-run. Mary-Annes often read the summary of the research study, or the distilled summary in popular magazines. They hardly ever investigate the methodology behind a study. They trust people.

If an authority figure in a professional development meeting states that large numbers of green plants combined with nature sounds and lavender incense will improve student performance, the next time I walk into Mary Anne’s classroom I may find myself ducking around overabundant greenery while listening to chimpanzees and elephants as I gag on the residue from lavender smoke. Data walls improve performance? Mary Anne will have data all over the walls. Red pens harm self-esteem? All of Mary Anne’s corrections will be done in a cheery, purple Sharpie possibly with encouraging side notes added to even the sloppiest work.

I gave my own Mary Anne a hug a few minutes later, after listening to her frustrations.

Hugs R Me. I am making a conscious effort to try to hold up friends and colleagues. I added my Mary Anne to the list of people around me who need support. I also shifted my view of district reform efforts. When reform alienates the Mary Annes of a school, reform can’t be going well.

Eduhonesty: Mary Annes are the backbone of America’s educational system. I am being slight unfair to my colleague who has spoken up in the past, offering a number of insightful moments. She’s sharper than I have made her out to be. But that sincere belief in the goodness of people and in the expertise of administrators? My Mary Anne has always exuded that belief, that sense of being a solid team player.

Mary Anne matters. She is a woman who will coach for a pittance and work on projects for free. She keeps up on best practices. She tries to deliver what administration wants, whether those demands are feasible or not. She works endlessly. Will she be here next year? I’d say the odds are good that this energetic, dedicated, young woman will find another post. Our loss will be some less-frantic school’s gain.

I’d also give admin somewhere close to that proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of replacing Mary Anne with anyone capable of filling her boots.

Where the time goes

Early adolescence has many challenges. If you wonder why your child’s teacher or dean always seems to be working, part of the answer can be found in the little events that suck time, minute by minute by minute. Here’s the text of an incident report. Incident location: lunchroom.

“They are taking pictures of me without asking me this is happening during lunch time every single day.” The girl then gave three names of photographers. She reported this to a teacher who had to deal with the issue, an issue that had to be passed on to a dean, who had to investigate the possible bullying.

Where does teasing end and bullying begin? The answer to that question’s not simple, and that answer varies depending on the kid. If the girl making the report had just made a few funny faces, the problem might have vanished. As soon as she looked upset, though, she set the train in motion. We take possible bullying seriously. That results in a lot of discussions with teen-age girls and boys who can’t tell where teasing ends and harassment begins.

Could use some help here, dad!

A few weeks back, I had students interview their parents about school. This is for any parents out there: If your kid comes home with a similar assignment, the correct answer to the question about your favorite subject should be something like math, science, English or social studies. The correct answer is not soccer. I am having enough trouble motivating your kid as it is.

A small funny

Despite my entreaties to please, please, put your name on your paper, I regularly receive mystery papers. I have one here that just made me sigh. It has a name alright. It has MY name in two places. One says my name with the words “the best” below it. A smiley face has been drawn near my name. I’m happy for the positive feedback, but I have no idea where to put these points in the gradebook.

Moving math down, down, down

The following is offered as an example of the push to raise mathematical standards and improve American math performance.

From http://www.math.umt.edu/tmme/vol1no1/tmmev1n1a1.pdf, “Teaching Symmetry In the Elementary Curriculum,” by Christy Knuchel: According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics grades 3-5 should be able to apply transformations and use symmetry to analyze mathematical situations. This includes predicting and describing the results of sliding, flipping, and turning two-dimensional shapes. They should also be able to describe a motion or a series of motions that will show that two shapes are congruent, and identify and describe line and rotational symmetry in 2 and 3-dimensional shapes and designs. The Montana State Standards for Mathematics are in line with NCTM’s standards indicating that by the end of grade 4 students will be able to identify lines of symmetry, congruent and similar shapes, and positional relationships.

Five teachers down now

Did they leave of their own accord? Were they pushed? Most likely, we are looking at a combination of both. We are a small school, too. The tiny pool of people willing to sub in our school has become fully occupied replacing the fallen and filling in for special education teachers with IEP (Individualized Instruction Plan) meetings.

Sidenotes:
1) Even when regular classrooms cannot find subs due to the disorder — and even chaos — that can break out in impoverished and urban classrooms, subs will usually work special education classrooms due to the smaller number of students. Six to twelve students are manageable. They had better be manageable, or it’s time to give up subbing or teaching altogether.

2) Many teachers who depart are well-liked by students. That guarantees a rough transition for almost all newcomers who take over their classrooms. A few years back, an angry principal moved a special education teacher who taught students with emotional and behavioral disorders, letting her know about her reassignment to another school on a Friday and ensuring she was gone by Monday. (The staff thought the teacher was doing an impressive job.) On Monday, students broke out the glass in the classroom door, and otherwise vandalized their classroom. Students tend to roll with maternity leaves, especially when they expect their teacher to return, but almost all other staffing transitions during the school year create trouble. We are a school of transitions, filled with students who have seen too many moves and changes. I try to call disconnected numbers regularly. Some of our students are sick at heart from the turbulence in their daily lives, wearied by too-many moves, too-many step-dads or -moms, and too many transitions in general. Classroom teachers often serve as anchors for these drifting students.

Eduhonesty: Admin has driven away almost all of our subs with performance demands that resulted in these teachers choosing jobs in other districts. When regular staff starts walking out the doors as well, perhaps admin should take a look at the plethora of small demands they are adding to the school day. I have a resignation letter waiting in my backpack for the day when I say, “That’s all folks!”, and I am pretty sure they will never find a sub with my unusual credentials to fill out the rest of this school year. I plan to stick out the year for my kids, but even my love and dedication come with limits.

“First do no harm,” the motto says. At the point where I feel the demands of my job are harming me, or the demands I must make of my students are harming them, I may join the exodus. Other teachers are talking about quitting around me, or counting the days until they can retire. A few of these teachers probably should go. Unfortunately, others are hard-working, talented professionals who know their job and their students.

‘Nuff said.

One Track to Rule Them All

Tracking has been out of fashion for years. Districts spurn tracking because of its reputation for holding students back, especially minority students and students from difficult family backgrounds. Tracking was part of that era where self-contained, special education classrooms were the norm, where some students might be channeled into vocational or technical education, an era that has fallen into disrepute even if its students performed significantly better on standardized tests than today’s students do.

I live in a district that has some of the best schools in the nation. The high school where I live does track students, in the sense that the district looks at past performance to pick future classes. Strong mathematicians receive a chance to go beyond calculus in high school. The district where I work has far less money. That district also doesn’t have the tiers of strong students that might populate true, upper-level classes. Indiscriminate inclusion thus becomes the norm, with sporadic attempts made to funnel stronger students into classes together where possible. Districts with less money and fewer teachers can’t afford to create separate classes in which students of similar academic levels are placed together.

The district where I work has been lumped in the bottom few percent of the state of Illinois, based on standardized-test scores, for years now. As a result, we have been obliged to bring in experts to help solve our test-score problems. These consultants are responsible for creating the current system. All teachers in a grade are required to present the same material at the same time, using the same tests to check for understanding. This is true for regular classes and for special education classes. Very minor tweaking is allowed, but no one’s quite sure how much tweaking. The left hand of administration cannot be trusted to agree with the right hand.

I expect this system to work. Why? Because we have created the correct track. We are demanding that all students master the material on the Common Core test for their grade. Students in special education are hopelessly baffled by much of this material. Bilingual students often can’t read the material. But those students near the top of the curve are receiving challenges. These are the students who can master part or all of the material presented in those common tests. These are also the students best equipped to deliver real score increases. I expect us to win this game.

Eduhonesty: I’m glad for the kids at the top. They have deserved this break for awhile. I wish I could be equally happy for the children on the bottom, the thirteen-year-old students who are testing at an early elementary level and who are confronting test after incomprehensible test that they cannot pass or can only pass with multiple repetitions that do not necessarily indicated understanding. By the third time students take the same test, some of them probably have memorized that number seven is “C,” for example. Teachers are supposed to differentiate to make this all work, taking special time with groups of lower students. But when a student does not know the value of 3(4 + 2), no differentiation exists that can make 4x + [–1(–2x – 1)]2 intelligible, not without more small group and tutoring time than exists under the current system.

One track to rule them all, that’s what we have created, with administrators aggressively advocating that we group students based on their level of understanding so they can somehow be pushed up onto the track, even if that track stands five years above these students’ overall academic level. Good intentions abound in this scheme. I suspect more cynical administrators have climbed on board the train as well, knowing that score improvement is likely even if lower groups will be unable to fully participate when they can participate at all.

The problem I see here is that no one at the top seems to be considering the cost to the kids at the bottom. What is the cost of failure after failure after failure? What is the cost of losing all your fun activities to do bell-to-bell instruction from books you can’t read? The cost of always being the kid in the group who doesn’t get what is going on?

When you can only differentiate instruction, but can’t choose the actual materials presented, you are hardly differentiating at all. The cost of that lack of differentiation will be paid by this latest generation of No-Child-Left-Behind kids, the lost kids who don’t fit on the One Track. These kids deserve better. These kids deserve a comprehensible education.

You take the high road, and I’ll take the high road…

And I’ll flee to Scotland before you.
Cause me and my math class will never meet again
On the bonny, bonny shores of lucidity.

Hmmm… I can probably find a better closing word, but I captured the idea.

We’re all on the high road. We’re all teaching the material expected to be on the seventh grade test. The scariest administrators in the world will most likely serve us our entrails on a platter if we don’t. But I have a class where every single student except one tests at a middle elementary school level. One student tests toward the end of elementary school. I don’t know what went wrong in elementary school.

I know what’s going wrong now. Today I will continue presenting material required by the one-size-fits-all-but-of-course-you-are-expected-to-differentiate lesson plan. I found some nifty word problems online that I can use for the story problem section of my lesson plan. According to this website, these problems are actually for eighth graders, but they are exactly what I am expected to be doing. So that’s what we will do.

Confusion will be extremely high, of course. The high road is proving a daunting climb for my class, but I am not allowed to offer any reasonable alternatives. I’ve reached the point where I’m afraid to speak, in fact. If admin told me to teach my poor minions calculus, I’d probably just buy a Calculus for Dummies book and start trying to figure out how to make some of the material manageable. Any attempts to slow this train down just swing the spotlight in my direction. I’m avoiding the spotlight at all costs. Let the scary people run things the way they want. They’ve tried to intimidate me. They’ve succeeded.

Eduhonesty: Weirdly enough, I expect what is occurring to produce at least some of the results admin wants. I’ll explain why in my next post.