A fellow teacher asked me to define excellence in education. I’m not exactly at a loss. I am more overwhelmed by the possibilities. At my most excellent, I am prepared, fun, and excited by my job. I am a version of that proverbial boyscout:

•Trustworthy,
•Loyal,
•Helpful,
•Friendly,
•Courteous,
•Kind,
•Obedient,
•Cheerful,
•Thrifty,
•Brave,
•Clean,
•and Reverent.

At this point in the holiday season, thrifty may be in serious doubt. Maybe I should return a few of these presents. Obedient has always been a struggle. But mostly, I can nail that scout creed.

Still, not all of those characteristics are needed for excellence. In these test-obsessed times, as we pursue the One-Common-Core Curriculum to rule them all, a lack of obedience may even be a virtue. Sometimes the only chance to provide necessary remedial instruction comes when we step off a pre-established, curricular path. For that matter, I have known excellent teachers who were not friendly, cheerful or even kind. A few former military colleagues come to mind. What these teachers lack in friendliness, they make up in clarity of expression and careful planning. Our toughest teachers often become our most memorable teachers, once we appreciate how much we learned in their classes.

Excellence will never be one size fits all. The mathematics professor who taught me linear algebra remains a fond memory. Decades later, I easily passed the algebra portion of the Illinois teacher’s certification test with little study and less practice. He was other students’ nightmare, though. He gave extraordinarily tough tests. Some of us loved him and those wild tests. Other students dropped quickly. I don’t know that I could term that tall, quiet Norwegian algebraist excellent. He taught math, not students. If you happened to love a mathematical challenge, he was your man. But if most the class failed his test, I’d say he regarded that failure as the students’ fault, not his.

So how do we identify excellent teachers? I would say that excellent teachers teach students — not a subject. If I am an English teacher, my responsibility will be to add to my students’ understanding of English language and literature. The more I succeed at this mission, the more excellent I am as a teacher. The subject merely serves as a vehicle. Learning is our destination.

As I blog the story of the transgender girl in Palatine, I confront issues that don’t often hit the educational radar. Many parents and educational constituents see districts almost exclusively as providers of education. Yet school districts are economic entities. They create budgets. They issue bonds. They prepare annual financial reports. They may have lawyers on retainer. They are sometimes forced to hire lawyers. When districts must address economic issues such as the need to redo a locker room, they begin juggling numbers. As in the corporate world, all expenses carry opportunity costs. Money spent on Crisis A cannot be spent on Crisis B. There’s only so much money and deficit spending has long-term consequences.

In concrete terms, I worked in a district that often ran in the red. We also ran out of paper. Every year we ran out of paper. Teachers were used to buying their own paper, even their own ink cartridges if they were lucky enough to actually have a printer. Until a few years ago, we were running with borrowed overhead projectors in many cases, buying our own bulbs. We finally received smart board technology a few years ago, but I still bought all my own construction paper and art supplies for the year, those students did not buy.

Eduhonesty: Too often, government bureaucrats seem oblivious to the financial ramifications of their demands on districts. Those demands are not irrelevant, however. Lack of money affects districts in quirky ways. Lack of money may also affect instruction. I can assert from experience that homework printed on regular, white paper makes its way into the inbox noticeably more often than problems students write down for themselves. That printed homework is also much easier to read and grade. That’s why I kept buying paper.

But not every teacher is paying Staples to provide paper for their schools. Those teachers who aren’t? I’m sure they are getting less homework back. I am also sure that their students are sacrificing instructional time to the need to write down questions. A minute here, a minute there, and pretty soon we are talking real instructional time.

My guess is District 211 has plenty of paper. The area’s not poor. But money spent on lawyers has necessarily been taken away from other possible uses, many of them likely more educationally productive in character. Time taken to talk to the lawyers, study the budget, plan solutions and reallocate resources has also been taken from other uses, also likely more educationally productive in character.

Statement From High School District 211 Superintendent Daniel Cates In Response To OCR Communication Today

(OCR — Office for Civil Rights)

PALATINE, Ill., Nov. 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — The OCR has informed Township High School District 211 of its allegation that District 211 has violated Title IX by not providing a transgender student unrestricted access to the locker room. We do not agree with their decision and remain strong in our belief that the District’s course of action, including private changing stations in our locker rooms, appropriately serves the dignity and privacy of all students in our educational environment.

The solutions proposed by District 211 included multiple privacy stations in the locker rooms designed to provide privacy to any student while ensuring the full integration of transgender students in educational programs and activities. Individualized, supportive approaches such as the ones proposed by District 211 have been implemented successfully in other schools.

District 211 has long recognized and been responsive to the needs of our transgender students, dealing sensitively and effectively with the challenges they face. OCR has even recognized this and found that the District treated Student A consistent with her gender identity in all respects except unrestricted locker room access. These actions include changing both name and listed gender on school rosters; supporting participation on sports teams of their identified gender; and providing access to the bathrooms of their gender identity, because bathrooms have stalls that protect everyone’s privacy. The District also provides private bathroom accommodations, if requested. Whenever requested, transgender students and their parents have access to a support team with extensive training in addressing the identity development needs of adolescents.

District 211 is not excluding transgender students from their gender-identified locker room. Though our position has been inaccurately reported, a transgender student may use his or her gender-identified locker room simply by utilizing individual measures of privacy when changing clothes or taking showers.

The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy. Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms – where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities – for a reason. The District is encouraged that OCR acknowledges that the District must respect the legal rights of all students, including privacy rights.

We recognize that this is an emerging and critical matter for school districts nationwide. The policy that OCR seeks to impose on District 211 is a serious overreach with precedent-setting implications. District 211 continues to believe that what we offer is reasonable and honors every student’s dignity. While the District will continue what have been productive settlement negotiations with OCR, the District is prepared to engage in all avenues of due process to determine whether our position of honoring the rights of all the students is within the law.

We celebrate and honor differences among all students and we condemn any vitriolic messages that disparage transgender identity or transgender students in any way. We believe that this particular moment can be one of unification as we strive to create environments that ensure sensitivity, inclusiveness and dignity for ALL students.

SOURCE High School District 211

Eduhonesty: I kept this lengthy quote in its entirety. It’s so damned sensible. One person’s rights end where another person’s toes begin. I support this transgender girl. But I also support her classmates. They should have a right not to change in front of someone who has the physical appearance of a boy. Everyone should be permitted privacy to change, just as they are given privacy to go to the bathroom.

The government needs to take a step back here. Having endless funds and presumably a fair amount of free time, the Office of Civil Rights can keep hammering away at District 211. Unfortunately, District 211 does not have endless funds. They are trying to create a working compromise. If the district totally redecorates the locker room, those efforts will take money away from other infrastructure work, materials and even instruction. The curtains that will fill this locker room might have been new books or improved computer technology, for example. That Superintendent also might like time to evaluate his schools’ instructional effectiveness, for that matter, but I’d say he’s locked into budgetary discussions in the immediate future. He will be asking people: “What line items in the budget can be changed to meet the new government requirements? Where can we find the money?”

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the government’s desire to get this girl unrestricted access to the locker room, but the girl herself was willing to use the privacy curtains. I am afraid the only win I see here will be a whole lot of privacy curtains, a giant tent fort in the middle of the school. Regardless, District 211 will likely have to capitulate on the issue of unrestricted access, given the amount of funds the feds are in position to withhold from the district.

I wish this issue had not hit the federal radar.

I’d bet this transgender girl and her classmates feel the same way.

(This post is for teachers, administrators, school librarians and parents.)

I’d like to recommend that schools look objectively at book fairs they may have in place. Is your book fair promoting literacy? Is that 10% to 25% of sales that you will receive for putting on the book fair compensation enough for the class instructional time lost? Do you want students to be exposed to all the TV shows and movies that are part of book fair merchandise? Could you make money more effectively by putting on your own book fair with local merchants? Most importantly, can children without money get books at your fair?

As currently practiced, the typical book fair involves the librarian and others, who set up displays filled with often expensive books, shiny pencils, decorated erasers, movie posters, posters of Justin Bieber and other modern heroes, plus candy and tiny plastic toys, DVDs, video games, posters, and even key chains. Students visit the book fair, filling out wish lists to take home. Schools receive a percentage of total books and merchandise sold.

In practical terms, a teacher sacrifices instructional time as she shepherds students into the book fair so they can fill out wish lists. The teacher makes reading suggestions, even as she watches to make sure that pencils and erasers do not disappear into student pockets. Students fill out lists with books, posters and toys. Nobody ever writes down erasers or pencils. In financially disadvantaged districts, though, they buy a lot of erasers and pencils, along with plastic spiders and other cheapies, because those items are all many kids can afford. More class time will often be sacrificed to make purchases.

A large percentage of the books sold at a typical event may be linked to a movie, television show or video game. Personally, I think selling the Hunger Games, Divergent or Twilight may promote reading, so I am not as negative on this aspect of book fairs as many of my colleagues seem to be. Any book that walks out the door is a win as far as I am concerned.

Unfortunately, too few books walk out that door. Few students in financially-disadvantaged districts can afford hardcover books and even paperbacks are becoming pricey. Six dollars might as well be twenty dollars if all you have is $1.87. Some students have no money and are simply standing around looking at books and toys they know they cannot afford, while watching other students make purchases. Even kids with money make bad choices. The boy with $5.00 may return home with flexible pencils and a Star Wars poster. Teachers can encourage books, but the school gets a cut of the flexible pencils, so those pencils return, year after year.

I have watched the faces of those students with no money as they looked longingly at different displays. A roving Facebook post on the Scholastic Book Fair contains thousands of entries, quotes like “True story! I would go look and make my list take it home and i’m pretty sure it went in the trash!” or “All i could afford were erasers and bookmarks…. That i never used. Haha” or “I never had money for a book. Now I make sure my kids have money so they don’t feel like I did.” The pathos in those many posts hurts my heart, as I read toss off lines from adults who still recall the pain of book fairs, and who feel that pain acutely enough across the years to add their thoughts to the post.

Information can be found on the internet about creating a book fair that provides books without all the commercial tie-ins, toys and geegaws that are now sold at these fairs. A good place to start is CCFC’s Guide to Commercial-Free Book Fairs at http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/resource/commercial-free-book-fairs.

Eduhonesty: Anyone out there up to taking on a dragon? The standard book fair has become a well-oiled machine, an easy, quick way to raise a little money and supposedly promote literacy. Frankly, a field trip to the library would do much more to encourage literacy. Book fairs often encourage consumerism more than reading. But those fairs are easy. Other people do most of the initial work. The librarian gets stuck with set-up. After the displays go down, the school receives a percentage of total $$ sales.

We can do better. If we want to promote literacy, we ought to try to make arrangements with local bookstores or civic organizations. We can create book fairs that celebrate books. As part of this local book fair project, we should find a way to get at least one book into the hands of that sad kid who has no money.

Let’s get the plastic spiders, flexible pencils and Justin Bieber out of our schools.

Let’s make our book fairs celebrations of books, our own versions of those midnight Harry Potter new release parties that drew adults and children of all ages into bookstores, many wearing their burgundy and gold Gryffindor scarves and feathered McGonagall hats.

Let’s create reading adventures.

(See preceding posts to get the backstory.)

How I know I am a teacher by calling:

I can see the large, social issues in play in Palatine, Illinois, as the government, the ACLU, and the school district fight over locker room privileges for a girl who was born a boy. I am most concerned for the girl in the middle of this mess, however, and for her classmates. I would like them to have a less tumultuous school year than I believe will be possible now. I hope that learning does not become derailed by this mess.

Eduhonesty: Hugs to the kids. They are having a wild year. I hope they will emerge having learned the expected academic curriculum, as well as how to compromise and adapt in the face of rapid societal change.

School district to reconsider transgender locker room deal
Associated Press
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
20 hours ago

CHICAGO (AP) — School officials in a suburban Chicago district said Friday they may back out of a newly minted deal with the U.S. Department of Education allowing a transgender student to use a girls’ locker room, over a dispute about a hypothetical: What would happen if the girl decided against using the privacy curtains she’s agreed to use?

Less than two days after school board members approved the settlement, Township High School District 211 Superintendent Daniel Cates issued a statement angrily condemning a top federal official for how she portrayed his description of it.

Cates had said if the student doesn’t use privacy curtains when changing or showering, she won’t be granted unrestricted access to the locker room. Federal officials countered that the agreement does not require her to use a privacy curtain, although the student has said she will do so.

District officials “are outraged by the mischaracterizations in the press by Catherine Lhamon of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and her blatant disregard for the facts of the negotiated agreement,” Cates said.

The office “acted in bad faith,” so the district will convene an emergency board meeting to discuss actions, “including the potential retraction of the agreement,” Cates said. The meeting has been scheduled for Monday at Conant High School in Hoffman Estates.

Apparently, the anonymous student, who was born male but identifies as female, filed a federal complaint when she was denied unrestricted locker room access, kicking off the whole brouhaha. The district had installed privacy curtains in the locker room as a compromise, curtains that any student seeking privacy is to be allowed to use, but federal officials decided the curtains violated the student’s rights under Title IX. The student seems to have since said that she will change behind the curtains, probably because she is getting flak at school. I imagine the social pressure on this girl has become intense.

Here’s the significant line from the follow-up article on this controversy:
“Until the settlement, the district had been at risk of losing millions of dollars in federal funding over the issue.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is representing the girl.

Eduhonesty: I am sad that this has become an issue worth millions of dollars. I am sad that this school district will now be diverting funding that might have gone toward education into some law firm somewhere in order to answer the ALCU. I am sad that a compromise appears to be coming apart.

What should the district do? They might try scrapping the whole idea of gym clothes. Some districts don’t require a clothing change. The correct dress code can ensure that students are adequately dressed for physical education. My plan would eliminate locker rooms altogether. That solves the locker room problem.

Of course, the ‘anonymous’ transgender girl will get the blame for my plan — or any other plans that might be created. I hope the ACLU, government and district will remain aware of this girl as they push their larger agenda. I guarantee that girl is not anonymous in the hallways of her school. She may now feel that she has a tiger by the tail in the purest sense of that saying.

I hope she has lots of friends. Given the agendas unfolding around her, I suspect she will need those friends.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Suburban-School-District-OKs-Transgender-Students-Locker-Room-Access-360432641.html

CHICAGO (AP) — A suburban Chicago school district has approved a deal allowing a transgender student a separate changing area in a girls’ locker room.

The Township High School District 211 school board in Palatine met for hours Wednesday, hearing public comments and then meeting in closed session.

The vote came after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights ruled last month that the district violated federal law by not permitting the student — who was born male and identifies as female — full access to the locker room. But with the settlement, the student has agreed to use the private areas to change and shower.

The district had proposed the compromise allowing access to the locker room but requiring the student to change and shower in a separate area.

The Department of Education said Thursday it had entered into the resolution agreement with the district.

Eduhonesty: Oh, my. We are living in Complicated Times. This sticky situation has lawyers underpinning every move, even as students and administrators try to find an answer for all. I’d like to commend this girl for being willing to use a separate changing area within the greater girls locker room. If she’d insisted on being treated exactly like all the other girls, we could be mired in lawyers.

We get to decide and declare our gender nowadays. I strongly hope parents are providing help and counseling with this transition. According to a study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute, a full 41% of transgendered persons will try to kill themselves at some point in their lives, compared with 4.6% of the general public.

For schools, the immediate problem comes from student histories, I believe. If James decides to become Jasmine, she still has been James to all her classmates for years. Eventually, those classmates may relate to her as Jasmine, but for the first year or two of her new identity especially, she still carries the scent of James with her wherever she goes. And I can see where girls would not want to change in front of the boy from their fourth, fifth and sixth grade classrooms — to change in front of the girl who will remain a boy in their heads for at least awhile.

I’d say those girls should have some civil rights here, too. Frankly, I found changing for gym traumatic at thirteen years of age and beyond. I hated it. My body definitely did not meet my standards. I had enough trouble with other girls seeing me. If I had thought the boys could see me too, I think I might have done an eighteenth century swoon, fainting just to get out of the room. If I were this transgender girl, I would not want to change in front of all those male eyes, either.

As I say, kudos to the girl for compromising, for being willing to have her own changing area in the girls locker room. Kudos to all the players here who came to a mutual agreement that protected adolescent rights at a sensitive time in life.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-bullying-kids-autism-parents.html#nRlv

(The story of a blond, little boy with a great mom…)
Bullying harms kids with autism, parents say

January 11, 2013

(HealthDay)—Nearly 70 percent of children with autism suffer emotional trauma as a result of bullying, according to a new study.

The study also found that many children with autism fear for their safety at school and that those with autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or depression had the highest risk of being bullied.

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by social, communication and behavioral difficulties.

Researchers surveyed the parents of more than 1,200 children with autism, and found that 38 percent of the children were bullied over a one-month period, and 28 percent were frequently bullied.

Immediate consequences of being bullied included emotional trauma (69 percent) and physical injuries (8 percent). Nearly 14 percent of the children who were bullied said they feared for their safety.

Eighteen percent of the children with autism were triggered into fighting back after being bullied, and 40 percent had an emotional outburst that led to school disciplinary action.

Eduhonesty: Schools work relentlessly to try to contain bullying, but they sometimes lose that fight. Something in the species seems to spur students, especially students of middle school age, to try to establish social totem poles. Kids work to get on top of the social hierarchy. Unfortunately, some kids can never climb that totem pole. Social interaction is key and autistic kids struggle with social interaction. That’s part of how we identify suspected autism.

That 40 percent outburst that led to disciplinary action particularly pains me. How much stress do we expect kids to take before the tantrum erupts? Somehow kids recognize the weakness in their autistic, ADHD and depressed classmates, and I believe they often react unthinkingly, isolating these kids and leaving them to feel alone, leaving them to feel like the kids in the Echosmith song:

“She sees them walking in a straight line, that’s not really her style.
And they all got the same heartbeat, but hers is falling behind.
Nothing in this world could ever bring them down.
Yeah, they’re invincible, and she’s just in the background.
And she says,

“I wish that I could be like the cool kids,
‘Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in.
I wish that I could be like the cool kids, like the cool kids.”

Eduhonesty: Sometimes, we can win this one. My daughter had an autistic classmate in elementary school. I’m a little hazy on the details now, but I know that mom went into the classroom and explained to the class that her son had a brain problem and needed their help. My daughter’s class was no collection of sweet, little fluffy bunnies. Down the line, they would throw a book at a sub’s head and send a sub out of a gifted class crying. They could be sarcastic and mean. But that class treated the autistic boy in their midst pretty well. They seemed to protect him. He eventually graduated from high school among friends.

This post will work best for elementary teachers. Having mom or dad come in to talk with the class may be a good preventative move to prevent future bullying. Younger students can often be persuaded to help the less fortunate. I suspect it helped that mom threw great birthday parties in elementary school. What that mom did, though, was to ask kids for help. They responded to that earnest appeal.

By middle school, I doubt this approach would work. But in a self-contained elementary school classroom, a teacher might be able to make an autistic child’s whole future easier by creating the view that “Allan” or “Madison” were classmates who should be helped and protected, thus setting up a shield to forestall or diminish future moments of meanness.

I have visited this topic before, but I return to it sometimes because I see a larger problem reflected in foreign language studies that ought to be on the table.

Teachers are taught to emphasize information retrieval skills using available technology. They are taught to use critical thinking questions to stimulate making connections between disciplines. I would like to observe that these approaches do not work well in early foreign language studies, except as an occasional visit into language roots and interconnections. Learning languages requires drilling and memorization.

Yet drilling and memorization are trumpeted as examples of older, outmoded pedagogical methods that show a teacher is not up-to-date on the latest best practices. To say a teacher uses drilling and memorization as part of class expectations has become a criticism of that teacher, proof that he or she is not creating a “child-centered” classroom. Pity the poor classroom teacher who has students seated in rows memorizing words on paper if an administrator walks in nowadays. He or she will certainly receive criticism, even if that criticism comes in the form of helpful suggestions about creating group work or gallery walks. A gallery walk is a discussion technique in which students walk around the room looking at pictures or writing on posters. I like gallery walks. Students need to get out of their seats sometimes. But flashcards — alone or with a partner — will be more efficient for my purposes when my goal is to teach new vocabulary.

Putting a word into long-term memory requires repeating words over and over. The amount of repetition will vary depending upon the student, but that repetition is not optional. How does a person become fluent in another language? A bit of magic comes into play in language-learning. Students practice until suddenly, one day, words begin popping onto their tongues and those words somehow keep rolling.

Eduhonesty:

Modern education theory has created a climate in which too many students consider memorization an imposition. Students want learning to be a game and I am sympathetic to them. I would like all learning to be a game. But language learning goes much faster when students deliberately memorize words.

By all means, students should play online language games. But we should force them to work on flashcards alone, too. They need to make their own cards for words that cause them problems. After the game is over, they need to learn to write lists and definitions, covering either the word or its definition and and working their way down their lists in a memorization exercise. Asking friends to practice new vocabulary in pairs or groups is great — but, in the end, we learn a great deal of language alone, from books especially. Students who are taught to regard learning as a social exercise will always fall behind students who read and consciously work to learn new words.

I believe that teachers must explicitly explain this aspect of language learning to their students. Drilling and memorization will quickly improve vocabulary. We do our students no favor when we always try to make learning fun and easy. Students then may reject learning opportunities that lack entertainment value — and, in the work world, that strategy mostly proves a huge, long-term loser.

Obviously, no one needs physical cards today. Many sites such as http://www.studystack.com/flashcard-1269248 are available to provide practice. A search on (Whatever — Polish, Korean, Spanish etc.) language flashcards will get would-be language learners all the resources they need to get started.

(Another post for newbies and anyone interested.)

You brainstormed with your class. You created the list of rules for day-to-day operations. Students maybe even made the class poster, decorating that poster with hearts, multicolored dots and stickers. But somehow the rules keep falling by the wayside. That poster does not appear to have captured the hearts and minds of at least a few students.

What’s next? You have to tighten up. Your students understand the rules. Now they have to understand the consequences.

You might try a version of the following. Note that my rules have been laminated, the better to discourage graffiti. Printed on simple 8″ by 11″ colored paper, this represents a quick fix. Let your class know your chosen nonverbal signal. The refocus form can be a canned sheet, a creation of your own, or a simple assigned essay designed to help a student reflect on the behaviors that are complicating learning and instruction. The student should acknowledge problematic behaviors and specifically write out solutions to prevent repeating those behaviors. I recommend separating that student from the class to fill out the refocus form. Continued isolation for the remainder of the class period may also reinforce your point.

Consistency will be vital to making your consequences system work. Students must know that the nonverbal cue puts them one step from refocussing. Don’t accept substandard refocus forms, either.

For example, do not take, “I was bad. I will be better.” When a student hands you the form, look at that form. If the specifics are not there, that student needs to start over. You may hit some resistance at first. But perseverance will improve class conduct for the rest of your year. Reflection often does improve misbehaviors, especially thoughtless ones such as talking to friends in class.

Frankly, if nothing else, isolating a problem student improves the class atmosphere. Kids mostly hate to be located away from their peers. They will often pull themselves together simply to rejoin the class.