Summon(S)ed by a Higher Power?

This year, I have to say that my classes are excellent. Of course, some of my colleagues might say it's not because of what I do, but because the test scores walk in. Nonetheless, even in the classes where the kids aren’t as overtly clever or prepared, they all seem to want to learn. 


I know I will need to remind myself of this post at some point later in the term because I know I will soon be battling the underachieving highly gifted types. I will have to all but ignore their “potential” and instead focus on their "product," which means they will start to resist the work and beg to continue their laurel resting. I might have to get rough, and it will all be tiring. But for now it’s all good. The kids in my classes seem to want to be there and that is always a good thing.  

We are starting the fourth week of school and students are STILL changing their classes and adjusting their schedules because there are five weeks built into the start of every term for them and their counselors to get it right (Um, what does that say about what’s being taught in the first quarter of the term and how far behind will the system allow these children to fall? Not my bailiwick, so I’m not saying anything). 


This continual shifting means I have not YET had a correct roll sheet or grade entry sheet. It means kids can run from me when they see the work load or hear the course expectations. It means I will hear snide comments from administrators who don’t like “tiny” classes of 26-30-- though I have a few with at least 35--when the directives demand 40-45 per room. 


I say if there were no "color in pictures of Hamlet and get an A" classes for the kids to run to, the inequities would stop. Instead an administrator intimated that I must be a terrible teacher if I cannot hold onto kids.This is the same bureaucrat who calls teachers "good teachers" without having observed even a second of these "good teachers" at work. She judges them based on whether they help her meet her 40-45 in a room directives. She certainly has never set foot into my classroom during any class of mine. Institutional logic at work again. 

In addition to the moving and switching from class to class, there have been many classroom interruptions, where student "teacher assistants" bring around these little papers called SUMMONSES where kids are sent to various offices around the campus. The kids are not SUMMONED to these offices; nope, they are SUMMONSED, a non-word that seems to connote something more important than just being called to the office for reasons far more important than learning in a classroom.


Perhaps that is why my Shakespeare class erupted into laughter when a seventh knock at the door was a TA bearing a  SUMMONS for one of my charges that demanded he go to the office in order to receive his locker number. We were reviewing the first scene of HAMLET, discussing the meaning and function of the first words “Who’s there?”; and exploring the various uses and meanings of ghosts; and learning about Renaissance Humanists--but wait, John had to get his locker number, far more pressing business! 


Out he went, far across the campus to the office, and then back he came. The fifteen minutes or more out of class were the least of it. When he returned, I asked whether he had solved his locker problem and he had this to tell us: “Uh, no. . .this was a summons for them to tell me that they were going to summons me later for my locker number because they did not have one available now.”

Fortunately it's early enough in the semester for me to summon up my sense of humor.

Evaluating the Evaluators

Once again, there is much buzz about evaluating teachers based on test scores. The people who advocate this approach believe that teaching is a skill that can be judged objectively with the right objective tool. However, anyone who is actually in a classroom knows this is institutional speak and not the best approach. Tests can be one measure, but certainly not the only measure. Perhaps even more important, this test-accountability issue underscores the small-minded approach to evaluation that prevails in public schools.

The first day of the semester I gave the members of my department a teacher self-evaluation form. I tend to think that when one examines one’s practice closely, instead of perfunctorily, our students will be in better or at least more conscious hands (that said, I am willing to bet that the self-evaluation forms I distributed ended up in the trash). Using the approach outlined in the excellent 20 Principles for Teaching Excellence by M. Walker Buckalew, here is a version of the evaluation I distributed:

EVALUATION:

Please rate each of the 12 teaching characteristics listed below on a scale of 1-9 (9 being the highest level of importance). Then rate your current approach to each characteristic and your three-year goal with respect to each characteristic. In addition, you are to rate your colleagues: assess how they would rate themselves in these areas and assess their range of approaches to each characteristic.

1. Knowledge and expertise which is readily perceived by students  _____

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

2. A drive to stay “current” in relevant fields   _____

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

3. Repeatedly articulated (to students) high standards and expectations for performance and conduct                 _____

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

4. A “results” orientation (overt teaching in planned progression throughout the school year, emphasis on active not passive learning and rigor)                            ______

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

5. A “vision” of the process and the end product (and the ability and willingness to describe that vision to students often and well)                                         _______

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

6. A facility for infusing routine activities with meaning     _______

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

7. A passion for preparation                                                  _______

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____


8.Flexibility, especially in design and evaluation              _________

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____


9. Humaneness, as perceived by students  (“individual equity” as distinct from “justice and fairness”)                                                                         _________

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____


10. A knack for confronting-without-demeaning  (emphasis on “community building”)   _______

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

11. The ability to teach (not merely assign) “responsibility”            _______

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____


12. Constant attention to reinforcement principles (feedback)           ______

Your current approach _____ 

Your three-year goal _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “average ratings” _____

Your estimate of our faculty’s “range of approaches” _____

                                        

What I am hoping stands out in this evaluation is the picture of excellent teaching provided by these characteristics, but just in case forms are not your forte, here is another way to see what is being asked of teachers here:

• Is a teacher knowledgeable and can the students see evidence of the teacher’s expertise in his or her field? 

• Is the teacher still taking courses relevant in some way to his or her subject--is the teacher a learner too? 

• Does the teacher teach a rigorous course that demands critical thinking (and in many instances critical reading and writing too)? 

• Does the teacher take the students through logical relevant steps to achieve class objectives?

• Does the teacher provide and see the results of rigorous teaching in the student’s culminating work? 

• Does the teacher provide meaningful work and assessments rather than busy work? 

• Is the teacher able to adjust his or her methods and plans to meet the students’ needs and to more helpfully provide feedback? 

• Can the teacher see his or her students as individuals with individual needs in order to teach everyone in the class? 

• Does the teacher give meaningful, helpful, constructive feedback often and in a timely manner? • Is the classroom a safe place for students to succeed and to fail? 

• Does the teacher inspire student accountability?

As I see it, this evaluation seems to base all other characteristics on the teacher’s knowledge of his or her subject because without that knowledge the rest of these characteristics are impossible.  One cannot adjust methods; respond to and provide for differing levels of ability; establish rigorous goals and clear, meaningful steps to reach those goals; or give meaningful feedback if one does not really have a comprehensive grasp of the subject.

Yet most public school evaluations usually ask perfunctory questions like these: 

1. Are the students “on task” ?

2. Are the students aware of the specific standards they are being taught? Has the teacher posted  that standard on the board or indicated it in another way? (It it is presumed by those in charge that if a student knows the standard, then the student will learn that standard. This notion clearly ignores the fact that several standards are often interwoven into class activities and assignments, and knowing the standard does not mean students’ gain mastery as much as it adds to their experiencing tedium!)

3. Does the teacher perform bureaucratic duties (grading, attending meetings, taking video tests on child abuse and blood pathogens, to name a few) in a timely fashion?
4. Does the teacher sign in (which seems to be the only method for determining whether we show up to school on time)?
5. Is the teacher collegial? 

6. Does the teacher show evidence of teaching strategies like “scaffolding” and “backwards planning” and “vertical teaming” ? (How’s that for institutional thinking?)

In the Sunday, September 20th, 2009, LATIMES, a journalist quotes a local high-school principal (and let us not forget administrators are people who opted out of the classroom), who says his school has “made gains” despite what most of us still in the classroom would call untenable class sizes (40 or more students to one teacher), a problem he ignores:  

“ [Mr. __] said [his school] has made gains by focusing on what he described as fundamentals, including training teachers more about the ‘how’ of teaching than the ‘what’ of course content. He said he has also introduced ideas about how the brain works and how students learn.” 

This principal (think about that word, which means PRINCIPAL teacher) seems to believe the “how” and the “what” are separate and distinct elements of teaching, and to add insult to injury, he believes the "HOW" is MORE important.  He must have earned all A’s in his education classes!  Naturally, the writer of the article did not ask a single teacher at that school what he or she thought about this principal's "philosophy." 

No wonder the powers that be include teacher meeting participation and attendance as a key part of the teacher evaluation. Any competent teacher, struggling to impart information to students while engaging them in the rigors of a lively, thinking classroom, would immediately see Mr.___’s confident boast of making gains by focusing on training teachers more in the HOW of teaching as shortsighted nonsense, to say nothing of how low it sets the bar! 

Let’s not forget the people who have risen to the top of the institution, in most cases because they have successfully internalized this kind of institutional thinking (I know that there are always some exceptions to this rule), are the people who evaluate teachers. 

Does anyone else see a problem here?

One Down--Thirty-Nine to Go. . . .

The first week,  brief as it was, is over and the dust seems to be settling. I have an AP class problem that has become more clear to me: these students write fairly clear sentences with relatively few errors; and that mechanical edge, in addition to the fact that they are well-behaved, may be what earned them the B's in class, despite their fails on last year's AP test. These are the kids who are the welcome break from the kids who swing across the room, Tarzan yelling all the way, and the kids who text incessantly and the kids who backtalk and roll eyes and  generally protest every product of  a teacher's good intentions. That said, these kids' resistance to reading compels them to invent meaning instead of read carefully; and they settle for translation instead of analysis, repetitive reporting instead of the conscious shaping of an argument. An ed-biz professional would say that these second-rate "habits of mind" seem to have been rewarded. Fortunately, critical thinking is a teachable skill and experience dictates that once their eyes open to the workings of figurative language, the rest should follow.

Naturally, I warn all my students of the rigors ahead, and naturally, upon hearing my warnings and after my showing them what works and what doesn’t, several run to their counselors bubbling and blathering that they need a "better" teacher or a lower-level class. When the counselors tell me not to scare the students away, I have to shake my head. My goal is to have the kids read and write analytically, and I don’t think that settling for the bad habits they seem to have acquired is doing them a service. If my pushing hard is anathema to them, then I cannot promise I will not scare students. Learning is scary in the same way that the truth hurts: both demand action that we may or may not be ready to take. If they choose not to face the challenge, I cannot change that. 

I remember calling a parent last year after a girl left my honors class for a basic class so she could be with her friends (let’s just say they were girls with more social than academic interests). This girl was academically up to the challenge and should not have switched, but her mother said, “She needs a social life too.” Okay, I guess I can see that. . .

. . . Now that my classes are settling down and the kids’ needs have clarified my goals. I myself need to figure out how to keep my life more social (a daily Scrabble move in the endless tournament I am playing with my high-school pal might not cut it). I also need to figure out how to cut my workload but still give kids enough practice to move them ahead. Having 39 or 40 students in an English class (no longer the case in AP, but my 10th graders, Shakespeare, and Creative Writing students are sitting on the floor) is simply untenable. 

When all is said and done, I must say that I marvel at those few teachers, whose classes must also be overloaded in this the current climate, who leave school everyday at 3 pm sharp with only a cell-phone in their hands.  . . . Maybe I should talk strategies with them?

DAY 1: 09/09/09

The new school year’s hit most of us hard. Some new teachers are digging out from under the dusty remnants of the 30-year careers of retired teachers. Others are grappling with a gross lack of technical support--no copiers, no internet, no keys. Still others are overwhelmed and disheartened by the enormous class sizes. Teaching positions have evaporated, but the students have not, and we who remain now take up the slack--more students packing fewer classes; more work for teachers, less pay. 

For me it was no surprise to see I am facing the continuing decline of standards, no matter how many “standards” we write on the board when evaluators come into our rooms, and no matter how well the students can report which standards they are learning. I have an AP Literature class full of students who read not a page, not a line this summer even though there was assigned summer reading. Their essays are devoid of shape, thinking, purpose, and many took AP Language last year only to fail the AP test. Yet I would bet those who failed the test earned A’s, B’s, maybe C’s, in their AP classes. This institutionally sanctioned disconnect--AP access for everyone despite their basic skills and mild work ethic--makes the job very difficult, especially since other than the AP test graders, I seem to be the first to tell these students that they are not even close to ready for a truly advanced class. Getting them to trust me after they have known mostly false praise is a struggle I am not eager to face. Then there are the couple of students who actually are ready for AP, so here is the quandary: do I turn the class into the basic class most of the students seem to need or do I leave the majority in the dust and focus on the few true AP students? 

In all, the chaotic first day--an ironically orderly date, 9/9/09-- was particularly bad for me mostly because I wore closed shoes for the first time in two months and had to run around the campus hunting for paper and working copiers. Experience tells me that the chaos will subside, only to be supplanted by the routine, signified by the ringing of bells. As in Hamlet it's not the action, but the thought between the actions that matters; in my room, it's not the bells that matter, but the learning that happens between the bells. 

Separation Anxiety?

A friend of mine has decided to resign from the LAUSD.  In addition to being an excellent science teacher, she is a licensed personal trainer and fitness expert who recently realized that working part-time in her field would pay more than what she would earn as a teacher. She had initially aimed to go part time, but when she looked at her incoming student rosters and realized that in the current budget situation she would have more students than she did when she taught full time--for much less pay--she decided to call it quits.  Wellness Spa, soothing fountains, and soft voices, here she comes.

My friend mentioned that she thinks of the job the way one thinks about relationships. Would she stay with a man who exploited her? Uh, no. So why stay in a job that demands she work hard and suffer certain indignities for pay that would barely cover living expenses. Teachers work for those we serve and ignore what’s best for us, but the District often creates policies that make our ability to serve impossible. After all, it is almost a sin to suggest that what is good for the teacher would probably be good for students.

The funniest and saddest part of my friend’s resignation is her having to fill out the Confidential Separation Questionnaire, where one is asked to check the reasons for the decision to “separate.”  Here are some of the best:

paperwork/record keeping

too many duties in general

take home work

too many non-teaching related duties

many meetings

unmotivated students

unsupportive parents

student discipline policy

personal safety concerns at school site

lack of support from administrator in general. . .

communication flow at school. . .

salary. . . .

District’s policies and/or goals

Lack of input into school policies

Lack of input into curriculum. . .

And my favorite. . .SIMPLY TIRED OF WORKING!

Why are these common District working conditions examined only when one is ready to quit? Does it seem strange that the LAUSD, test purveyors extraordinaire, cannot seem to get this one essential last test right, given that the BEST answer is not CIRCLE THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON but ALL OF THE ABOVE! Perhaps if the concern about these conditions, so obvious and pervasive that they are printed on this form, came way before someone was actually moved to fill out this form, the District would not lose many of their good young teachers.


AMEN and best wishes to my friend, I say!

The First First Day

When I first entered the hallowed halls of public school, I had a sense of what was in store. In the 50s my mother had been a teacher at a pretty rough New York high school for about six months until she married and was rescued, but that has never prevented her from telling me about the rigidly inadequate system, the indolent teachers, and the angry students that she was so happy to leave behind. Being the detritus of the feminist generation, I knew I would not be twirling in my apron while making roast beef and apple pie for a husband anytime soon, so I took the first steady job offered to me, heeded my mother’s warnings, but hoped that things would be at least a little different so many years later.

I started mid-year but had spent the first two weeks of the semester at the district offices getting the paperwork and the signatures straight. This meant I got to hear the substitute who covered for me say, “I know you are going to miss me, kids, but I am hoping that Ms. __, will do as good a job as me.” Of course, the kids immediately booed me, and, of course, I noticed her grammar.

The first year is always legendary for leaving the new teacher shell-shocked and mine was no different. I was asked to teach all my classes in different rooms, several of them at the adjacent community college because our school was too packed. Now this would have been okay had there been an office with a desk and a little storage, but the college model does not play in public school, so schlepp I did.

As a first-year teacher, I had to attend meetings with the “mentor” I had been assigned, where we would role play parent phone calls and clichéd teaching situations. She was an English teacher with a high-pitched voice that bordered on whiny, and she punctuated most of what she said with a laugh that sounded more as if she were gasping for air, as if she were emphasizing the irony of what she had just said for an audience larger than just me. The fact is she was always earnest, never ironic, the laugh, irritatingly confusing. “You got the new text book from the book room? (laugh)” or “ You teach in five different classrooms, several of them at the college? (laugh).” When she came in to observe my class, she documented every minute I spent. Her biggest warning? That I not use my sense of humor. No laugh that time. In fairness, she did advocate that I teach in only one room the next term.

Clearly she and I were not a match, but fortunately, as a new teacher I made the time to observe other teachers that year and was able to fine-tune my thoughts on what worked in the classroom. I saw teachers whose classes were regimented to the last second and teachers who allowed a free-for-all in their classrooms while claiming they liked the noise. I saw teachers who lectured without room for discussion or who allowed endless and unfocused discussion. I saw teachers who would shrug and roll their eyes at their students after they ran out of things to say, and I saw teachers who always had clever questions in mind to keep the conversation growing. I saw teachers whose rooms were covered in entertaining and instructive images, but whose classroom was tortuously tedious, and I saw teachers whose rooms were a mess, but the kids were in line and on point.

It wasn’t until I walked into a classroom filled with kids, many with shaved heads and oversized white t-shirts, who were listening so intently to their teacher, that I realized I might have actually found a mentor. The teacher repeated the question, “Synecdoche?” One of the t-shirted fellows nearly jumped out of his seat to raise his hand and the teacher responded, “Ok, Mr. ______, you think you have the answer now?”

“Yes, Mr. __!”

“Okay, then. . .”

“When you use the part as a metaphor for the whole; you know, like get your butt over here or what you said, ‘All hands on deck.’ Right?” It was hard not to smile at the neighborhood-specific singsong in the kid’s voice.

“Very good, Mr. ________,” said his teacher. With that, the teacher and the class cracked up at his examples, and the student, Mr. ________,  reveled in being right and in amusing his teacher. The teacher continued with other literary terms and the examples that made the terms understandable and useful. They all wanted to get the right answer and to think of examples on their own. This was my mentor, that was how I was going to teach.

I learned most of what I know from Mr. ___, and if it weren’t for him, I might not have gone back for my MA in English. He reinforced my instincts about the idiocy of education classes and relying on the ever inadequate “Teacher Editions” of text books. After all, doctors don’t take doctor classes; they study medicine; lawyers, the law. Following that rule, English teachers, should study--ENGLISH! So I did, and it wasn’t long before I found ways to dash entirely the increasingly pictorial text books from my curriculum, except for grammar and other mechanics exercises,  naturally. Instead, I just went for actual texts or anthologies of texts in order to get the kids to read and write smartly, rather than look at pictures and answer questions correctly. Not that all these endeavors are diametrically opposed, but the latter does not always lead to the former, that is for sure.

That first year was the first of several first years, all equivalently challenging despite my growing experience, but I took from them the lessons that have made me the teacher I am today, and I hope to share them with you here.

A Retiree's Vision

Since weekends and summer are meant to be time well spent, away from the cares of school, it is odd that much of the time I have spent has been with teachers--current and former colleagues, dance teachers, writing teachers, deans, retirees. I guess the job really is in my blood. How embarrassing!

That said, this past weekend I got to spend the day with a woman who taught English with me at my first public school roost and has long been retired. She has had a house up at our lake since she was a child and reminisced about spending summers working at the small local post office or at one of the lakeside estates answering phones and planning her sabbatical. What a concept--a sabbatical. I have never had an opportunity to even consider the possibility of a sabbatical in my 23-year employment as a teacher.

As we tooled around the lake, we caught up on all the gossip. My friend is part of a group of retired teachers who attend a luncheon the first day of school each semester to celebrate the fact that they no longer suffer the tyranny of bells, papers, tedium. She had no trouble remembering that as an English teacher, particularly one who ran an outstanding newspaper, she was working all the time. She remembered the feeling that the paper work would never end, but it was clear that the nearly unendurable paper load she described had become a fading memory for her, which was a hopeful sign for me.

We reminded ourselves of the interminable “inservices” we withstood at after-school meetings, and I told her of the new ones we still face year after year--all with magical names given a district-wide importance designed to support their theory that just willing something makes it true. Boy, did we have a good laugh.

She remembered the inservice where a “Language Acquisition” expert came in to tell us how to “effectively incorporate vocabulary into our daily lesson plans.” This particular inservice trend led to ill-conceived vocabulary relay races and other equally insulting endeavors antithetical to the design of a rigorous classroom (but then again “Rigor” had not become the trend yet). As the “expert” spoke, the faculty sat in silence, some surreptitiously and some not so surreptitiously grading papers, doing crosswords, reading books, knitting, and I sat roiling in my naivete. The presenter began by suggesting we use the word “contesserate”(a word I had never heard before or since, for that matter) and then offered her suggestions for teaching such a complex word: “Have the children "air write" the new word on their palms and feel how the word sounds on their lips; then have them write all the things they think the word means and go over why they think it means these things.”

ALL RIGHT! THAT’S IT!

Despite the warning hands of my friends, pressed firmly into my shoulders to keep me seated and quiet (they knew me), I arose, “DO YOU THINK WE HAVE ALL DAY TO TEACH ONE WORD? AND DO YOU THINK WE ARE IDIOTS?”

At this memory, my friend laughed and laughed. She did not remember a word of the inservice itself, but she did remember this outburst of mine, “DO YOU THINK WE ARE IDIOTS?” and then laughed and laughed at how obtuse I must have been not to realize that that was exactly what the “experts” think of teachers. She knew that such a misuse of our time was to be expected and not taking it in stride was a waste of valuable personal energy. Meanwhile, I still fume at the notion that these “experts” have opted out of classrooms to spread the gospel of excellent teaching tactics to those of us doltish enough to continue the struggle, yet most of them show no evidence of actual and substantial reading, and some mangle the English language themselves. In one instance, after a series of budget twists, our own “literacy expert” was cut and in my sympathy for her--she was one who cared deeply and had the smarts to make her effective--I worked hard to get her a job I knew of at a local private school. Though she said she would take the job when it was offered, she waited most of the summer before realizing that she should not take the job because actually getting back into teaching, prepping, grading, classroom managing felt like just too much for her. Hmm, what does that tell you?

I then told my friend about one of the inservices I attended my first year back in public school after years in private schools where those in charge treated us teachers with something called respect. This time the magical term was “Backwards Planning.” After she and I finished roaring at the name of this ingenious strategy, I told her what I thought it meant: Focus and clarify your teaching goal first, then carefully plan accordingly all the steps you need to get there. She broke up again, and said, “Isn’t that just PLANNING?” Ah, once again the obvious stated obviously.

After our day on the lake and a leisurely dinner, I asked her how she survived such a lengthy career in this school district. She said, “I remember only the good times.” I looked at her puzzled, and she continued “Well, the time with friends, of course, but really the time in class with the kids.” That’s the right answer.