A Teacher Poem

The New Ideal Teacher - A Poem

The New Ideal Teacher
By David Lee Finkle

The new ideal teacher
Is driven by data,
And kids become points
On her test-score schemata.
Winnie is a "1" and must be forced to make a gain.
Theo is a "3" and that's a score he must maintain.
Freddy is a "5"; there's no more room inside his brain.
The new ideal teacher
Wants things she can measure;
If it fits on a chart,
Then it's something to treasure.

For the new ideal teacher,
It's shame or it's merit.
She's caught in between...
Well, a stick and a carrot.
The scores control her destiny, for better or for worse.
If scores are high, then there could be more money in her purse.
If low she might discover her career is in a hearse.
The ideal teacher's wallet
Is empty or padded
Depending on value
Deducted or added.

The new ideal teacher
Does not plan her lessons.
Her classes are all pre-
Fab learning-gains sessions.
Today is lesson thirty-seven; tomorrow's thirty-eight.
Page by page the pacing guide ensures she won't run late,
Just like the teacher down the hall and in some other state.
Original thought
She's been taught
To self-censor.
She pops lessons out like big Pez dispenser.

The new ideal teacher
Doesn't question or query.
She does as she's told;
She's compliant and cheery.
When someone says, "It's best for kids!" she'll never even blink.
When she is told her pay's been cut, her spirits never sink.
When buried under new reforms, she'll never raise a stink.
She'll teach critical thinking
From a book off the shelf,
But she never would think
She might think for herself.

The new ideal teacher
Can prioritize:
She puts first things first,
And she won't compromise.
Good test scores are number one; they lead to higher pay,
Which, of course, is number two-- more money makes her day.
Fidelity is third: give her a script; she'll never stray.
The new ideal teacher
Is stalwart and steadfast.
The system comes first,
So her students come dead last.

The Real Mr. Fitz

Do Principals Create Bad Teachers?

What if a Principal Allows Teachers to be "Bad"?

The rhetoric about "bad teachers" may never go away -- in part some teachers will always perform poorly, act irresponsibly, and so on (just as there are poor performers and irresponsible people in all professions and fields). That said, what bothers me most about the rhetoric is that it continually oversimplifies the problem. Too many commentators seem to assume that bad people magically pop up in schools to torture principals and belittle children. But reality is more complex.

One situation that has arisen in numerous anecdotes I've heard from teachers is that a Principal will allow selected teachers (often their friends) to behave irresponsibly or worse. Examples include showing up late, parking illegally, dressing inappropriately, eating meals with the Principal instead of teaching, leaving other people in charge of their class while they run errands, and, in at least one instance, abusing children.

Are "bad teachers" a problem in these schools? Absolutely -- and they should be dealt with -- but not following the script we normally read (teacher is bad, principal wants to fire him/her, union steps in). In these cases, the story I hear is that a "bad" principal allows a few teachers to do as they please while the rest of the teachers stew in outrage and cower in fear.

Did the Principal in these situations make these teachers bad? It's not quite that simple. But these Principals have certainly negatively impacted the performance of a few teachers while subsequently damaging the climate and performance of the school as a whole.

Situations like these are why I worry more about the extent of the damage done by irresponsible Principals than I do about the damage done by irresponsible teachers.

What's Wrong With Public Schools? Principals!

This memo, from my principal a year ago, shows just how the process works for diagnosing and getting services (assessment; the other kind) for a student who may be in need. I have redacted (like the government) the principal's name and initials, as well as some other identifying material.

Note how the principal makes sure to include the instruction to teachers: "It is not appropriate to say, "I think...""

Well, I do think, so that's going to be a bit difficult, no?

My hand-written question was merely rhetorical.

No, she never established an online anything.

Should Kids Think Or Endlessly Engage?

The Importance of Solitude

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 28, 2009

A favorite canard in education is the one about Rip Van Winkle waking up after one hundred years’ sleep and easily recognizing a classroom. It’s probably more accurate to suggest, however, that if old Rip were suddenly jarred awake, it would be due to the noise from a nearby elementary school, with its incessant hum of group work, collaborative learning, and nonstop “turn and talks.”

What our classrooms have lost, writes Diana Senechal in an Education Week essay, is badly needed quiet time for thinking, reading, and problem solving. “It is not at all good to be visibly ‘engaged’ at every moment,” she notes. “One also needs room to collect one’s thoughts and separate oneself from one’s peers.” She wonders why there is so much emphasis on socialization in education and so little on solitude, when both are important to learning?

Solitude should not become a fad; that would make some of us wish we had never brought it up at all. The shift toward solitude should be subtle, not screeching. Don’t abandon group work, but take it down from its altar. Make room for quiet thought and give students something substantial to think about. The children will respond. Also, recognize teaching as a thinking profession. There is no reason for teachers to sit in groups filling out Venn diagrams during professional-development sessions when they could be doing something more interesting on their own.

It’s an excellent point. Now, turn to your neighbor and tell whether you agree or disagree…

Diana is a teacher at a Core Knowledge school in NYC. And if you haven’t been reading her thoughtful guest posts for Joanne Jacobs over the past week, take a look.

I am pretty sure folks like Einstein and Feynman would say a person needs time to think.

h/t The Core Knowledge Blog

I Now Officially Teach The Test

That's right. In staff meeting today we were treated to a discussion about how we are going to prepare our 2nd graders for the upcoming CST (the California version of the high=stakes test) test. We discussed the fact that the test items are beyond many's grasp, some of the test items are not even part of our standards in 2nd grade (recognizing paragraphs), and the test actually tests the teachers, not the students. And since this is the way it is, the principal indicated, in so many words, we'd better get on board and figure out how to make the test meaningful, not an exercise in panic, and just shut up about how useless and damaging it is. Ok!

The principal was concerned that the kids may be emotionally unable to cope with all the bubbles, and the stuff they have never seen. We said, Why yes! How true! Then the principal asked how we could ameliorate that sense of fear. I said that I tell my kids that the test is actually to test how well the teacher is teaching, so don't worry about it. The principal both liked it, and made a disgusted face. I think her duplicity is causing great cognitive dissonance for her (though it may simply be confusion, as ascribing cognition to her seems silly. She doesn't think, she reacts.)

What makes me mad, angry, enraged, is the fact that we teachers know the test is not a measure of student achievement, especially this young, yet we still (well, not me!) all seem to stay close-lipped about our outrage.

Unless and until teachers take a stand, the reformers and their systematic takeover of public education will continue, unchallenged.

Stand up! Rail against the unfairness, shallowness, narrowness and danger of "The Test"!

Test What They Know

I think this might be a very good idea. Here is the problem stated in the article:

These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.

In fact, I think testing the kids reading comprehension by making them read stuff they learned about in class might even be fair to the kids! Imagine, a testing idea that might just test something relevant!

h/t edwise

Teacher Evaluations: A Crock

Teacher evaluations are dubious for a couple reasons. The first is the fact that principals, in my district at least, evaluate based on 3 observations in the classroom. These observations do not really provide enough evidence of teaching or not-teaching, unless the principal is predisposed to evaluate you in a certain way--positively or negatively. In that case, they can point to just about anything they want, and leave out anything want, to make the evaluation appear any way they want.

The second problem, related to the first, is the fact that the principal does this alone. There is no other person there, observing the same thing, to compare notes with. Perception is not always reality, and 2 people looking at something may just see things very differently.

Because of the way teacher evaluations are performed, teachers, unless they are on good personal terms with the principal, must live in fear of the baseless negative evaluation for which there is no recourse because it is the principal's word over the teacher's. As we know, management tends to win these battles.

I have many, many letters of appreciation from parents of students, and have had master teachers and principals tell me I am a fantastic teacher. I have been asked--by my current principal!--to be math leader (I said no), disaster coordinator (I am currently), tech leader (was until we got a new teacher who used to be tech guy for his district--he knows way more than me!), and am in charge of whole-school outings. Yet, because I push back, my principal gives me negative evaluations. This year is the first year I have ever received a negative evaluation. My teaching has not changed; indeed I feel I have gotten better having been left in the same grade for 4 years in a row (something I have written about before).

I would like to see teacher evaluations done by fellow teachers in conjunction with principals, and I would like the written notes of all evaluators to be included, with equal weight, in any final evaluation. This would be more informative and much more fair than the way it is done now.

For all you "unions protect the bad teachers" folks out there, the union can do nothing about a principal hell bent on firing a teacher; we teachers don't have any mechanism to expose the nonsense; union negotiations see to that (we lose, always).

Git Up In My Shit!

I was looking over my 11 year old son's poetry packet today for his 6th grade English class. Among the poems, copied from very old, 12th generation handouts, were some poems and song lyrics. My favorites were the lyrics from Ghostface Killah's joint, Black Eyed Peas rant, and the lyrics to some other song talking about shit and poppin' caps was very enlightening as well.

I also appreciated the exposure to gang vernacular and the seedy side of life in poverty, glorified, as it so often is in rap, to the confusion of children who don't yet understand the subtleties of life in a racist country.

I suppose I should thank my son's teacher for keeping it real, but I feel more like she is polluting their young minds as opposed to exposing them to controversial, yet aesthetically important works. I am not sure the Black Eyed Peas and Ghostface Killahs are works that deserve study, at least not in 6th grade.

Now, is it just the protective father in me, or are these types of offerings from an English Teacher to her 6th grade charges just waaaayyy out of line?

Give Teachers The Autonomy They Need

The New Teacher Network always has a tasty post up. This one hits home:

Blogs and Wikis: Changing Professional Development?
Posted February 22nd, 2009 by Peter Henry

Well, looks like the rest of the world is starting to figure out what some of us have been saying--and doing--for awhile now: the Internet has the power to transform learning, not only for students, but especially for teachers.

Here is a great quote from Richard Elmore of Harvard University's educational leadership department:

As expectations for increased student performance mount and the measurement and publication of evidence about performance becomes part of the public discourse about schools, there are few portals through which new knowledge about teaching and learning can enter schools; few structures or processes in which teachers and administrators can assimilate, adapt, and polish new ideas and practices; and few sources of assistance for those who are struggling to understand the connection between the academic performance of their students and the practices in which they engage.

So the brutal irony of our present circumstance is that schools are hostile and inhospitable places for learning. They are hostile to the learning of adults and, because of this, they are necessarily hostile to the learning of students. (pp. 4–5)

Schools are, or should be, primarily "learning institutions"; that is, at every point in the organization, learning is held up as the basis and very "raison d'etre" for the schools' existence.

Yet, as we all know, there is no one more isolated, more in the dark, more out of the loop in education than the classroom teacher. Why? Because their head is in the task of teaching kids for 5 hours a day, and that is totally engrossing work that keeps that teacher from being able to learn, explore, reflect on other aspects of the profession, their own life, reality, you name it.

So, that is the problem, and one that we have been aware of for a long time. Believe it or not, this website is an attempt to combat the isolation of teaching by connecting, especially new teachers, across time, geography, experience, departments, etc. I'm not sure how successful it has been, but then again, never a week goes by without someone signing up at this website.

Yet, I wish--it's my hope really--that more teachers, more people, begin to post blogs, comments and generally use the connectivity of this site to feed the movement of greater learning, sharing and collaboration. You certainly can't compel that, but only invite. And the invitation is out there.

I say: Come on in, the water is fine. Where are you? What is your story? What questions do you have? How can this large, diverse, amorphous community help you become a better teacher?

Let's Get Education Right

Good, simple article on the reality of schools. This kind of stuff can not be expressed enough: The reformers are shooting themselves in the feet.

Control? Or, collaboration?
By Peter Henry
Created 02/14/2009 - 10:34

Lot's of fulmination right now as Obama takes office and people like Arne Duncan, his new Secretary of Education, begin to flesh out what approach they will take in their new positions.

Duncan is saying some of the right things. Too much testing. We need to improve dramatically. This is our moment to get it right.

But, he's also saying some things [1] that could continue taking us down the path of top-down, authoritarian control over the learning of children.

Duncan also wants states to adopt academic standards that are more rigorous and aligned with those of other leading nations. "The idea of 50 states doing their own thing doesn't make sense," Duncan says, referring to the current patchwork of standards and tests. "I worry about the pressure because of NCLB to dummy those standards down."

At this point, I hope teachers realize that when people use the word "high standards" and "accountability" and "achievement gaps" they are in fact engaging in political speak, not a policy or philosophy of education. What will work in education, in our nation's schools, are actual policies, programs and philosophy, not more political jargon and posturing around "getting tough". After two decades of increasingly pitched and uninformed political rhetoric about education, we have gone backwards on the track of figuring out how to bring young people into the world of learning.

And that's an incalculable waste. Sad beyond belief. And, we will pay for it. We're paying for it now.

I saw the other day where the person who replaced Arne Duncan in Chicago as schools chief was the current Transit Commissioner [2]. So, to run a school district you need experience in running trains and buses?

That is, the job of education is one of management, of running a tight ship, of making sure that people follow orders and obey the leader.

I can't say this strong enough, and I don't have time to lay this all out in a single blog entry, but here it is:

The truth about success in education is that it is all about collaboration, not control.

What we have seen in the last several decades in education politics, is this idea that we have to exert more and more control over kids, over teachers, over schools. Only by having more control, more dominance, more of the iron fist, will we ever make progress.

Word from the wise down below: It ain't working. And more. It will never work. We cannot force young people to learn. We cannot scare them to study harder. We cannot order them to do better on exams.

And the same is true for teachers. We can't force them to get their student's test scores up. We can't order them to spend more time grading. We can't require them to say certain words in a certain order on a certain day.

Though this doesn't keep the people in power from trying. And, they will continue to try.

But, as many, many teachers will patiently explain: too much control never works. It will never liberate a student's sense of spirit; it will never get them to enjoy learning; it will never allow them to value the importance of truth and meaning. Nor will higher test scores solve our society's problems, make teachers feel better about their jobs, nor keep young people from screwing up or falling by the wayside.

We essentially have only two paths open to us, as teachers, as superintendents, as politicians: We can try harder and harder to control the outcomes that we want to achieve -- and use data to micro-manage every aspect and strategy for better control. Or, we can realize that the best outcomes come from collaboration, from trust, from understanding that setting a high bar for success is about encouragement, support and facilitating far more than it is about threats, fear and punishment.

This goes for the classroom, this goes for the boardroom, this goes for the legislature. We either have to learn to honor the best parts of the people that we want to lead, or we continue to put them in shackles, demand more and say "Mush".

We have been on an authoritarian spree for over two decades, in our schools, our companies and our politics. It isn't working.

Mr. Duncan is saying good things about learning, about collaboration, about building something dramatically better. It has to start with understanding that trying to "control" young people, teachers or workers is the precise problem that is running us into the ground. The time for collaboration is here; it was always here.

Are we brave enough to actually believe it?

Education Research: Silly Season

I have written before about education research, and the near uselessness of much of it. Here is a fellow blogger who also has issues with education research.

What is Scientifically Based Research?

A nagging little pamphlet from NIFL appeared in my teacher mailbox the other day. I’d been hopeful that the government’s fetish for experimental reading research design would go into remission with the new administration, but that seems not to be the case. Always curious about government propaganda, I read through “What is Scientifically Based Research?” instead of grading papers or running the copy machine to generate more papers to grade.

Page 1 says that “educators need ways to separate misinformation from genuine knowledge,” and we should be wise consumers of education research to help us “make decisions that guarantee quality instruction.” Looking for the punch line, I continued reading, drawn to riveting passages such as, “Teachers can further strengthen their instruction and protect their students’ valuable time in school by scientifically evaluating claims about teaching methods and recognizing quality research when they see it.” Translation: Good intentions are not enough. Teachers may be misled by educational hucksters. I’ve had those same suspicions myself, but the target population isn’t limited to the teaching profession.

The main point of this document is to give us the “federal perspective” on scientific research, which:

* Progresses by investigating testable problems;
* Yields predictions that could be disproven;
* Is subjected to peer review;
* Allows for criticism and replication by other scientists;
* Is bound by the logic of true experiments.

It reads like the introduction to a sixth-grade science textbook. Nothing on that list, however, is evident in our national school reform policy. But federal education reform is political, not educational. And since this is the age of double standards, I’ll let that go for now, and write it off as another example of how, when you write the rules, accountability is for everyone else.

What interests me at the moment is the federal perspective on curriculum and instruction. Principally, how much weight should be given to teacher observations in instructional decision-making? We often hear that innovation is a good thing, but it’s hard to imagine how new ideas are propagated in a standardized environment that myopically focuses on a single measure of success.

“What is Scientific Research?” tells us that teachers should “look for evidence that an instructional technique has been proven effective by more than one study,” cautioning us to be aware there are different stages of scientific investigation, and that we should “take care to use data generated at each stage in appropriate ways.” Then comes this attention grabber: “For example, some teachers rely on their own observations to make judgments about the success of educational strategies.”

Some teachers?!

At this point, we learn that “observations have limited value” and that scientific observations must be carefully structured to make determinations about cause and effect. Well, maybe so. But experimental evidence has limits, as well. We’re cautioned that, “In order to draw conclusions about outcomes and their causes, data must come from true experiments,” and “Only true experiments can provide evidence of whether an instructional practice works or not.”

So, teachers, don’t get any funny ideas about evaluating your own effectiveness.

Just to make sure we understand they don’t have every little detail quite worked out, we’re reminded that, “In many cases, science has not yet provided the answers teachers and others need to make fully informed decisions about adopting, or dropping, particular educational strategies.” No kidding.

So, what then? My teacher perspective is that all knowing is personal, classrooms are not sterile laboratories in which the variables can be tightly controlled, and doing experiments on children is still frowned upon in our society.

Coincidentally, The federal perspective on education research received some attention in Elaine Garan’s recent article about sustained silent reading in The Reading Teacher. Garan reminds us that the “medical model” is not well-suited for education research because messy human variables such as motivation, emotional difficulties, and other human qualities can contaminate the results. She argued that a lack of consensus among researchers converges with common sense, recommending that students have time to read freely each day, despite the National Reading Panel’s failure to find any evidence in support of the practice. If there is “no evidence” in support of a particular practice, it may have everything to do with the research methodology, and nothing to do with what is true about the real world of classrooms that researchers have awkwardly tried to shoehorn into a narrow view of reading instruction.

I’ll have more to say about free and voluntary reading some other time. It’s working out remarkably well for my students this year. That’s my observation, anyway.

Mom! Look What I Found!

Many lay people wonder about all the horror stories they hear regarding students and their home life. Some stories are horrible, and believable. Others are too horrible to be believed, and some are too silly to be believed.

On Monday, a student handed me two small packages she had found on the floor near the backpack hooks. As she was walking towards me, arm outstretched with the packages in question shining in the fluorescent glow of classroom lights, I could see what they were. This is the point where all your skills as a teacher of young children comes in.

She handed them to me, said she found them "over there" near a certain child's backpack. I then proceeded to hold them up and ask the whole class, "Whose are these?" to no response.

So, I put them in my pocket. Today I found them in that pocket (as I go from couch to bathroom and back again--bad medicine day) and decided to take a picture and write a little thang about the experience.

So, see what I brought home in my pocket....

Die, Creativity! Die!

So, we chase Asia's test scores:

Whereas U.S. schools are now encouraged, even forced, to chase after test scores, China, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan—all named as major competitors—have started education reforms aimed at fostering more creativity and innovative thinking among their citizens. China, for example, has taken drastic measures to reform its curriculum. As the United States raised the status of standardized testing to a record high in 2001 with No Child Left Behind, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued an executive order to significantly minimize the consequences of testing (2002). As the United States pushes for more centralized curriculum standards, China is abandoning its one nation—one syllabus tradition. As the United States moves toward a required program of study for high schools, China is working hard to implement a flexible system with more electives and choices for students. As the United States calls for more homework and more study time, China has launched a battle to reduce such burdens on its students.

What do we do now? Go read Fixing The Wrong Things.

A Teacher's Dilemma

I want to take my kids on a field trip to the zoo. I want to because I found out that one of my second graders has never been to the zoo! That's right, never. He lives no more than 10 miles from the nearest zoo, and no more than 20 miles from a really big-city zoo. I can get it done, no problem. I have some money (? mom2015) for the bus, and probably enough for admission; I hate asking parents for money.

In order for a zoo trip to be any fun for the kids, I need parent volunteers to come with me so I can break the kids into small groups, facilitating easy access and transit to and from display to display. I am sure I will get enough parents, and I will make it clear that any extra parents will need to pay their way. Also not a problem, usually.

Now the dilemma: I am pretty sure one of the parents who will want to come is a tweaker, a methhead, a drug addict. The grandmother (bless her) is raising the kids because mom is in and out of rehab. She happens to be out this month. I cannot give her a group of kids at the zoo. I cannot make that obvious to her, or her kid, or the other kids. It's a dilemma.

Have a nice day!