Two days of subbing just passed in chiaroscuro, shades of light and dark that have left me exhausted and slightly stunned. I visited heaven and hell, the two of them only 20.2 miles apart, according to MapQuest. Heaven had air-conditioning, hell did not. I can make a variety of comparisons between the two schools in question, but I intend to stop this post with only one: Air-conditioning dwarfs almost any other difference between these two suburban elementary schools. The money that pays for air-conditioning buys an environment conducive to learning. In those districts that cannot find that money — and I have officially worked in two and have subbed in more —  late blasts of summer heat can make learning challenging or even impossible. When classroom temperatures hit 90 degrees, teachers and students wilt. I remember a student who laid down on the bathroom floor because the tiles were cool.

If you are spending your day in an air-conditioned school or office, I suggest taking a few moments to appreciate your good luck. Many starting teachers find themselves less fortunate, however, and if you are starting your career in one of America’s multistory, old brick buildings without air-conditioning, I have a few tips:

1. Buy fans.
2. Label your fans with your name in indelible ink.
3. Stock water.
4. Work in water breaks for students.
5. Cover windows you cannot open, especially during sunny periods. If your blinds are broken, buy sheets at the Goodwill. Try to make them look tasteful for your students’ sake. If all else fails, find large, inexpensive posters to cover windows.
6. And most importantly, get one of those fan/squirt gun combinations to use on yourself and willing students.  My spray gun saved me during some days in the spring, summer and early fall. Misting students keeps them awake and at least somewhat more alert.

Eduhonesty: As we document, document, document the disparities between our wealthier and less-wealthy school districts, air-conditioning receives almost no attention. Yet air-conditioning has always mattered and now matters more than before. Many schools are pushing the start of the school year back into August and a few are even starting in July, trying to get more weeks in the classroom before the year’s big state test in the spring.

I strongly suspect that rather than a “No Child Left Racing to the Top of Every Student Succeeds” new piece of legislation, America would benefit substantially more from a bill mandating air-conditioning in all schools. I was probably dangerous on the road when I left that second-floor, eighty-some degree classroom yesterday. I honestly felt shaky as I exited the building. My students were squirrelly, sweaty and whiny by day’s end, their classwork irregular and often subpar. Today I left a group of students who had worked all day, listened and contributed to discussion all day, and who had been cheerful and fun as we moved from English to social studies to math. Their papers were detailed, their questions to the point. The extreme contrast between the two groups reminded me of the potent effect of excessive heat on learning. What a difference fifteen to twenty degrees can make!

P.S. Entirely anecdotally, I’ll observe that I’m sure heat affects district staffing. I once turned down an inner-city opportunity not because of the challenging students in the neighborhood or the problematic commute into a high-crime area, but because the interview happened on a hot, August day. I walked into a beautiful, old, brick-and-stone building without air-conditioning and that interview ended before it started, although I politely went through the motions. But new teachers tend to get the worst room assignments. I knew I would never take a chance on having to teach on the third floor of that lovely old building.

“That drift may have nothing to do with your lesson and everything to do with a long night of gaming, followed by a morning with no breakfast.”

Some days you could be hammering gongs while dancing across the front of the classroom, rapping out a brilliant song you wrote about the events that led to the Boston Tea Party, and you still would not have the full class’s attention. “Kendra’s” eyes would droop, her head falling onto her desk, while glassy-eyed “Michelle” tapped Kendra’s shoulder. Michelle’s head would jerk every so often as she started to drift off next to Kendra. You can’t win this one. Both girls got maybe two hours of sleep.

Kendra spent the night texting and surfing the Internet. Michelle did the same, with a few hours of online gaming thrown in. Michelle wanted to know if Kendra was interested in Mike. Somehow they spent an hour on the crucially important topic of whether Mike was still interested in his last girlfriend. They shared details about Tomas and Mari, a doomed romance in Kendra’s opinion. They discussed a favorite reality TV show. They disagreed on whether The Walking Dead was better than Fear The Walking Dead. Etc. The night slipped way in a flurry of quick messages, punctuated with a few pictures of Mike.

According to the Pew Research Center,* “24% of teens go online “almost constantly,” facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones.

Much of this frenzy of access is facilitated by mobile devices. Nearly three-quarters of teens have or have access to a smartphone and 30% have a basic phone, while just 12% of teens 13 to 17 say they have no cell phone of any type. African-American teens are the most likely of any group of teens to have a smartphone, with 85% having access to one, compared with 71% of both white and Hispanic teens.

Electronics can kill best the pedagogical efforts by degrees. An ever-increasing number of middle school and high school students have cell phones. They take those phones everywhere, including into classrooms that technically don’t allow those phones.

Eduhonesty: If Kendra has been nodding off, I strongly recommend you share your problem with her parents as soon as possible. Many parents are sleeping as all this electronic activity unfolds, resting in the arms of Morpheus while their kids are Snapchatting the wee hours away. You can’t solve the problem of the desktop computer in the bedroom maybe, but you and your students will be light-years ahead if you can get parents or guardians to seize those phones at night.

Adolescents often don’t know when to turn off the phone. Many kids would probably be happy to be hardwired to those phones.  When students too often walk into class with that glazed look, I’d recommend calling home to suggest that parents confiscate their phones at night.

Sleep and food make or break more lessons than clever slide shows ever will.

*Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015, Amanda Lenhart,

Many teachers are perfectionists. They dream of giving that pitch for the angels, the lesson that their entire class raptly absorbs, ignoring the upcoming end of the day, oblivious to the arrival of busses. These teachers work hours and hours to prepare the perfect Google Doc or PowerPoint. They create or find what they believe are exactly the right reinforcement activities. Perhaps they spend their evening preparing posters for a gallery walk where all students will travel in groups from poster to poster, adding critical thinking questions to expand on their teacher’s theme.

That’s teaching. If you can’t dream that dream anymore, it may be time to move on. But, admittedly, the dream’s getting harder to put into operation nowadays, as data, testing and other paperwork requirements suck up the time that might have been used to prepare posters for the gallery walk. Expectations are also rising — sometimes unreasonably. Like it or not, Belinda may not be ready to create critical thinking questions on the day’s topic.

When data keeps sucking up the poster preparation time, and at least some students keep missing your point, what then? I’ll start with one suggestion: Let go of that desire to be perfect. Unattainable goals are self-destructive. You don’t want to regularly leave school at the end of the day feeling ashamed that your lesson did not produce the  results you desired.

I suggest coming up with a few catch phrases to keep up your morale in the demanding world of public education. Examples might be, “I am doing the best I can,” or “We can hit this target. We just need to review fractions a bit more.” Positive self-talk will make the year much easier.

You can’t win them all. You can make yourself nuts by trying, too, especially when paperwork demands become so onerous that they interfere with lesson preparation. Sometimes something has got to give and that something may actually be your lesson. Scour the internet for free PowerPoints and activities. Buy a lesson from Teachers Pay Teachers. When meetings and data requirements steal your time, do what you have to do to get the job done. That may involve paying Mary Sue in Omaha to get a lesson plan that matches the day’s Common Core expectations.

Yes, American education has taken a wrong turn when lessons become subordinate to data demands, but individual teachers can rarely or ever stop the data train. Additionally, some kids will just drift away on you even when you are able to chisel out the time you need and are planning lessons furiously. That drift may have nothing to do with your lesson and everything to do with a long night of gaming, followed by a morning with no breakfast.

Eduhonesty: Practice self-compassion. Remember teachers are incremental learners too. Each time we present a lesson, we get a chance to learn what works and what does not work as well. We get a chance to perfect our lessons. But cut yourself a break.

“Perfect” may not even exist in teaching. No one can hold the complete attention of thirty adolescents through an entire 90 minute block of mathematics. No one I’ve ever met in my lifetime anyway. If administration insists you do twenty-some hours of paperwork in a week, your lessons will be less robust and detailed. You probably can’t change that fact without cutting sleep. You will be better off lesson-plan light and wide-awake than you will buzzed on a 24 ounce coffee while frantically trying to remember where you put the worksheets.

Spanish has the potential to open so many doors today. In Illinois, for example, you can get provisional teaching certification based on your language skills. I became a bilingual teacher essentially by passing a language test, after I decided to exit larger, high school math classes. I liked smaller classes and younger kids, so I switched. Changing teaching assignments proved effortless. Many bilingual positions in Illinois remain unfilled as of today, weeks into most districts’ school years.

One of my favorite colleagues found himself unable to get a position as a history teacher — a common situation — and decided to learn Spanish. A couple of years later, he took a position as a bilingual social studies and language arts teacher. I loved the part where he worked part-time in Denny’s Restaurant so he could practice his growing language skills.

In my bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, people of all ages and differing experience levels were studying ESL specifically because they could not find teaching positions. ESL will help with finding a position, but the area of screaming need is currently Spanish. If you can speak Spanish and acquire related certifications, you will have excellent odds of finding a job and keeping a job. I was riffed the first three years in my last district, but I never worried, except during one particularly desperate year. The bilingual director assured us we would be back in the fall and, due to the shortage of bilingual teachers, no member of our department expected to actually be let go. During that one problematic year, I knew that I could find a position elsewhere if the district did not manage to scrounge up more funding.

Community colleges will be a relatively inexpensive place to start refreshing or acquiring your Spanish. Sometimes districts will pay for the classes, too. Libraries carry CDs you can use to practice in the car. Subtitles on DVDs provide practice with pictures to help you understand what you are reading. As you improve, you can switch to dubbed Spanish with English subtitles. I recommend buying translations of favorite books and reading those at bedtime. As an added bonus, until you become proficient, you are likely to find that reading a foreign language puts you to sleep.

Yes, acquiring a language will take time. Spanish will be a journey of 1,000 miles or more. But you can do this one step at a time, in trips to work, reruns of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and nights of Stephen King chapters.

That journey of 1,000 miles? You could begin today by looking for Spanish classes offered online or at a nearby college.*

*If you are teaching, check with your district about reimbursement policies before you sign up. Sometimes you need pre-approval to get reimbursed.

O.K., I acknowledge my last post had an element of snarkiness. To readers who were unhappy with my tone, I apologize. Nevertheless I will stand on that post.

The big words and lingo are getting out of hand. Language should be for communication. Inventing an eduspeak does carry one advantage: We can immediately identify the people who are continuing to attend and listen to professional developments. But Eduspeak has disadvantages as well. When parents have to ask teachers and administrators to translate, to explain what they are saying, we have taken the lingo too far. I had to ask that preschool teacher yesterday to explain a couple of terms when talking with her. She’s a dedicated teacher and she knows her pedagogy. The fact that I need clarification should be a big, red flag, however. I have a Master’s Degree in Secondary Education, one of two master’s degrees. If I need help with the lingo, what about the average parent? I have a guide here somewhere that’s maybe 10-12 pages long explaining various special education terms in language parents should be able to understand. When that many pages are needed for parents to know what teachers are saying, maybe we have taken professional lingo too far.

Our medium should not interfere with our message.

We need to slow down on embracing integrated proficiencies through the use of  jargon. Too many of us are simply inclining our cranial cavities as we disaggregate impactful interfaces within our technical documents, trying to figure out what the damn things mean.

Nobody, nowhere, nohow should “problematize” anything.

(This tip may be useful to some established teachers as well as newbies.)

The teacher said to me, “At 1:15, we have gross motor.”

She teaches in an official, district preschool. This attractive brick building is filled with kids who need extra help with language or other skills necessary for elementary school. Some of these kids are in diapers.

The school doesn’t have recess anymore. Neither does its elementary counterpart. That might imply that America’s children are not working all the time. So we go to “gross motor,” where the kids play on the slides and crawl through tunnels, or sometimes just chase each other in circles.

We don’t have playtime, either. We have small groups. In small groups, children do fine motor work in the sandbox (i.e. pour sand from one receptacle to another while the teacher tries to keep the sand in the box), build walls with cardboard bricks, set up wooden train tracks, then run trains along the track, put farm animals in plastic barns, etc. Small groups requires exceptional teacher alertness. Fights over puppets can start at any time.

I am waiting for snack time to be labelled “nutritional awareness.” Teachers may be told to use that time to add calories. Why waste an opportunity like snack time? Three- and four-year-olds could be trying to add up the calories in their milk and apples.

Sigh.

Eduhonesty: But I am serious about my tip. Education is filled with jargon nowadays. This tip is for newbies and established teachers. In many schools, learning and using Eduspeak will help establish you as up-to-date. If everyone in your school is doing a “criterion check,” you don’t want to be “finding out what they know,” — even if the two are equivalent concepts. Your lesson plan will sound better if you are using “manipulatives.” not “blocks.” If everyone is doing, “do-nows,” you should probably stay away from “bellringers” or “openers.”

Use of technical vocabulary and the established terms and acronyms of your district has become significantly more important for teachers than in the past, as job security evaporates and educational fashions become de rigueur in the hands of desperate administrators. How do you determine if you need to add jargon to your lesson plans and communications? Identify who is rising in the teacher hierarchy. Who just became head of the math department? Who was told to apply for the newly opened teacher-coach position? Find those people and ask to look at their lesson plans and other appropriate official communications. Are these plans and communications filled with Edulingo? If so, it’s time to start filing away new acronyms and phrases.

Want to have some fun with this? Visit http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html and generate some jargon of your own. We should all maximize holistic strategies through the collaborative process at times, as we engage hands-on proficiencies with a laser-like focus on competencies, reinventing emerging professional learning communities through high impact practices.

Or something like that. 🙂