“'Did you ever get fed up?' I said. 'I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?'” or SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS

In my last entry, I posted my version of the 95 theses that have me fed up and ready to start a new movement, or, in my case, move to a new job, away from the deeply embedded institutional complacency.

But, one of my peccadilloes, which is as much my strength as my weakness, is my need to offer solutions to any problems I see. I admit I suffer the limitations of an English teacher’s perspective, and I have a touch of pie-in-the-sky syndrome, but somewhere in this list is a way to fix things--again, at least, as I see it:

a culture that allows middling teachers to present mind-numbing, misguided in-services designed to pander to the promoters of standardized tests and the bogus data these tests generate

SOLUTION 1:
Observe teachers, know their strengths and weaknesses or establish a team of teachers to do this, and “differentiate” "professional development" (usually a misnomer!) around more general departmental “directives.” 

If the directive is to examine data--departments and administrators should take a HARD look at what teachers are asking of their students to see whether expectations are clear, whether the assignments are appropriately stimulating, rigorous, and relevant to the course of study, whether the students skills meet the  requirements of the assignment, and whether the teaching aligns with these requirements.

a culture that uses “data” as if  that data were sacrosanct, objective, and instructive, when it is most often skewed and misleading

SOLUTION 2:  
The data needs to aims higher, so the teachers will aim higher. 

1. All teachers should have to turn in a legitimate syllabus that shows what they are expecting to teach in their classes week to week and what students are expected to do.
2. The department must take a look at the "scope and sequence" of the literature that should be taught from grade to grade and the kinds of assignments we are giving at various levels in each grade. 
3. Go back to Solution 1 to determine if the teaching matches what's assigned and expected.  

a culture that blithely hires sows ears and spends all its resources trying to turn them into silk purses (at great expense to those who were silk purses to begin with)

SOLUTION 3: 

1. No more in-services that patronize teachers by teaching them how to do what they were supposedly hired to do. If you have to give a teacher a script, if you have to teach a teacher to break down a reading or an assignment, if you have to teach a teacher how to read or analyze a text, if you have to teach a teacher when to jettison poorly written, picture-filled text books in favor or more quality readings, then you need to be observing those teachers, writing them up, and getting them OUT!
2. Learn where your strengths reside. This is where the rubber meets the road, as the expression goes: with the excellent teachers and use those teachers effectively.
3. NURTURE GOOD TEACHERS by allowing for and working with their strengths. But you will have to KNOW them first (See Solution 1--again observe them and see what they are teaching, expecting and receiving from their students). 

a culture where enormous class size kills the ability to offer class variety 

SOLUTION 4: 
Be brave! Offer tried and true rigorous courses to tried and true rigorous teachers, even if the classes are small. Show that you are pandering not to the lowest but aiming to teach everyone to aspire to becoming the best! 

It it's only about money, CUT STANDARDIZED TESTS, WHICH GENERATE AN ENDLESS STREAM OF NONSENSICAL IN-SERVICES AND MEETING AGENDAS, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE CREATION OF THESE TESTS IS OUTSOURCED FOR A SMALL FORTUNE AND THE GRADING OF THESE TESTS DURING FACULTY MEETINGS  IS MORE OFTEN THAN NOT A DEMORALIZING WASTE OF TIME.

a culture that doesn’t understand that enormous classes will mean that either the lowest or the highest performing kids will be left behind 

SOLUTION 5: See Solutions 1- 4.

a culture where so many kids who have no interest in education get to oppress, practically with impunity, anyone who dares take the enterprise seriously

SOLUTION 6: 
THIS SHOULD BE CAMPUS WIDE AT THE START OF THE SCHOOL YEAR:  ZERO TOLERANCE FOR DEFIANCE. 

1. Early in the term defiant students should be sent to the office immediately, not with lengthy notes that take a teacher’s time, but with a bright colored pass (like a library or nurse pass), and they must REGISTER as an offender with the counselor or dean and be put on a list. This way a paper trail can begin. If the student has been asked to “register” by several teachers, we will see the pattern immediately and know where to put our attention, just as we do for IEPs.

2. Determine how many students are really the problem. Is it a few in each class who move from class to class? Once true numbers are determined, solutions can be tailored. 

a culture where rude kids don’t know what rude means

SOLUTION 7: See Solution 6

a  culture that tolerates back-sniping teachers whose professional jealousies and unchecked inadequacies ruin any hope for collegiality and change

SOLUTION 8: An administrator must never allow a “witch-hunt,” where teachers can air out their personal feelings about any specific teacher to an entire department (or to any student for that matter). 

Here’s how to prevent this:

1. GO BACK TO THE TEXT, as I tell my students. The teachers with the problem and the teachers being attacked should be asked to take out their work; then all should look at what they are doing in their classes, asking of their students, and getting from their students. Try to find the common ground based on what the teachers are producing or trying to produce in the classroom.
2. Insist that teachers cut down tension and stay focused on the issues and NOT the personalities.
3. If the problem turns out only to be personal, just as a meeting with parents must stay focused on teaching methods and reasons for students’ success and/or failure--and NOT on a teacher’s personality--personal condemnations should be prohibited.

a culture where standardized testing eats into so much class time it’s really testing the testing instead of  teaching and learning

SOLUTION 9: 
JUST SAY NO TO STANDARDIZED TESTING. There are already outside contractors like the COLLEGE BOARD, who offer good enough standardized tests for all students. 

To further help our students, we must create our OWN benchmarks, but this goes back to Solutions 1-4: 
Presumably we provide these benchmarks in AP classes, and this same mentality should govern every class: we need good teachers, clear and consistent scope and sequence, and consistent and equivalent practices and rubrics for those practices, so that teachers can effectively grade one another’s papers and exams in each grade at each level by using the same standards.

a culture that is willfully blind to its tendency to defend and promote only the status quo

SOLUTION 10: See all above

a culture of mediocrity and enforced enervation

SOLUTION 11: See all above

a culture where isolation rather than collegiality is the route to survival

SOLUTION 12: See all above

a  culture bent on moving towards teacher accountability, a meaningless pursuit since teacher standards vary so widely 

SOLUTION 13: 
Departments should create consistent department-wide rubrics based on clear goals that all teachers understand, that all teachers understand how to teach, and that all students understand.

a culture that believes self-esteem is generated by empty praise instead of hard work and genuine accomplishment

SOLUTION 14: 
Consistent and equivalent syllabi, rubrics, classroom standards. The A grade must be as justifiable as the Fail!

a culture that can neither praise nor punish

SOLUTION 15: 

1. Recognize the only goal of any teaching institution is to NURTURE GOOD TEACHERS SO THEY AND THEIR STUDENTS CAN THRIVE, and notice and handle everything and everyone that obstructs that goal! (See all above!)
2. "Differentiate” teacher professional development, which means presumably to treat all equally by attending to their different needs with the same goals in mind. 
3. Let the students have a voice and INSIST on student evaluations that ask the hard questions about teaching practices (as in the 7 C' --a teacher's caring, controlling, clarifying, challenging, captivating, conferring, consolidating) to discover whether a teacher’s work is in line with the simple goals of teaching kids to read and write independently, analytically, and intelligently!

a  culture that, to borrow from the late coach John Wooden, mistakes activity for achievement

SOLUTION 16:  

1. Meet only when necessary; have a tangible and relevant goal that relates to students writing and reading independently, analytically, and intelligently; craft a clear plan for how to reach that goal; and make the focus of each meeting a clear step towards that goal.
2. Teachers and students should never be asked to do busy work!
3. See All Solutions Above