Contemplating Change and the Student I Couldn't Reach

It’s hard to accept that there are some things in the world that you can not change. Or some things in the world that are not worth trying to change. I used to try to control everything around me, to craft a perfect world that fit exactly what I wanted it to be. Over the course of years though I have come to understand that I can not change everything, and that I should not bother to even try to change everything. Yes, there are things worth fighting for, things worth trying to change, but not everything is a battle to be won. Some moments are about acceptance. 

It is often important to see a person or situation for what it actually is and accept it for what it is, rather than pushing against it to try to change it. One of my friend’s fathers once gave her some sage advice. He told her that when you feel yourself struggling to swim upstream that is the time to consider whether it’s worth continuing in that direction. I think that there is a lot of merit to this idea, especially around the way that I used to approach change. I used to think that moments of resistance were ones to fight through, that the harder the struggle was the more worthwhile the endeavor. But I have learned that oftentimes the result is not worth the effort put into trying to make change.

This afternoon the student who I have been unable to make any progress with this year came into my study hall fifteen minutes late, without a pass, and demanding to go to another classroom. I told him that I would not let him leave the room since he came late and without a pass. He gave me a poorly crafted story to explain where he had been, but I reminded him that I would not let him leave again until I could confirm his flimsy alibi. 

He shouted at me, trying his best to swim upstream against me, protesting that he was “behind” in the class he was in, and that he needed to go there or he would fail. I did my best to remain calm, to be cool water to his struggle against the current. I suggested that since he is in the same situation in my class that he might want to get started on some of the English work that he was missing in the meantime. I suggested that if he needed to he could always and use his lunch time to go to the other class. He turned to me, looked me straight on and told me that it was “pointless” to do any English. Muttering that he was "too far behind to bother".

I recognized that he was challenging me. That he wanted to see what kind of resistance I would put up against him. The old me would have taken on this challenge. The old me would have fired back. The old me would have escalated the situation, even though I know well enough that the end result would have been the same no matter what I did. Nothing would have been accomplished by pushing him, except I would erode my own well being and push us each a little further away from one another and into the corners we have both established for ourselves. 

Instead, the calmer, wiser me, the one who has accepted that I can only change myself and encourage others to change themselves, took hold. Rather than raise my hackles, I instead dug into the calm part of myself. I responded quietly that he “might be right, but that he won’t be able to know without trying”. I then reminded him that he had a choice of how to use his time, but that I still would not be writing him a pass without confirmation of his whereabouts. He stood with his back to me, staring out the window for a while, but eventually he took a chair and a computer. He produced nothing of substance, but he did not fight either- a small victory, but one that I will gladly take in a school year that has gone on too long and is still a week away from ending.

Sometimes, change is about acceptance. It is about seeing a student in the last few days of the year, one who has failed to thrive all year long, and accepting that you can not change them. They are who they are. You are who you are. Your disparate agendas will never mesh, and the best you can do is to do no more harm.      

Writers are Made by Writing

“Teaching the writing process does not make writers. Experiencing the writing process makes writers."

For the past few days, my seventh graders have been working on their final exam for English class. Each day they are given a new key word that hints at a thematic idea. They then engage in 25 minutes of free writing, an expressive exercise to see where their writing leads them. So far they have contemplated the terms "wonder", "risk", "change" and today, "self". Tomorrow, they will revisit this writing, whittle it down and revise it into a celebration piece to show off their best writing. While there will be a product for this assignment, this activity is far more process driven than a typical final exam. 

Writing expressively, in this open ended way is a change and a challenge for my students. Most of them are extremely skilled at writing when they are told what to write, when they are given a question to answer, a transaction to complete. We have trained them to do this early on in school. But once we open things up, once we refuse to involve ourselves in the transaction that is where there is discomfort. All week I have watched my 8th period class struggle with this change. I have watched them flounder around for confirmation that they are doing it (by “it” I mean simply writing) “right”.

I have watched them struggle to be affirmed. I have watched them struggle for approval and an indication that they are approaching the assignment correctly. I have had to put on my best ignoring face, pretending that I am so absorbed in my own writing that I can not see a struggling student, so that I am not tempted to come to the rescue of a student who believes themselves to be impossibly stuck. I have had to refuse to read writing, sending frustraed students away from my desk. I have had to answer a student asking me if their writing was “good” by quickly glancing at the computer screen and telling him that it was “perfect because there are words on a page”. I know that not dropping everything to affirm a student and stroke their writing ego is the right thing to do, but sometimes I feel like I am not being compassionate in these moments. Even though I am uncomfortable, I know that in many cases I am doing what needs to be done to push kids towards independence.

The reason I will not read Martin’s writing in the middle of writing time, or answer Meredith’s question about the direction she is going in, or address Jason’s waving hand is simply because even though they don’t trust it, they do not need me. I know that they have everything that they need to be successful with this task inside of them, they just don’t realize it. They haven’t learned to trust their own voices yet. For some of them this is about inexperience- they simply have not spent enough time struggling through the act of writing to learn that the only way to write well is to write a lot and see what happens.

For others they have done all of the practice, they have put in the time, but they are stuck in the point of needing control. They need to hold tight to their words. These are the students who  over think the process, searching for writing that will earn them a good grade. These students will make successful high schoolers, and even more successful college students, but will they ever really learn to discover a new idea? Will they learn to break the rules? Will they learn to tap into their own brains in a way that can break something new out?

Even though many of them indicate a desire for affirmation from me, I know that adding my own voice does not instil the trust in oneself that a true “writer” needs to write well. It does little to help them access their own thoughts, it only serves to help them try to unlock the puzzle of what they think I want to hear. I worry about students like this, those who are more concerned with pleasing a teacher’s voice than with listening to their own.

This is why students like Korina are able to fill two to three pages in 25 minutes, or why Rafe always has some wandering prose that both amuses and mystifies. They have learned to trust their own voices. They know themselves as writers, and they trust that something will come out. Sure, sometimes that something is off the wall, or far away from what others would come up with, but that is the point. Even as they wander around in their thinking and writing they are doing it right, in that they are losing control and letting the writing happen to them rather than forcing the writing in a direction it does not want to go.                 

This self trust is the hardest thing to teach in that it is not a thing that can be taught. The best I can do is create the conditions that force students to figure out how to develop this on their own. I guess it’s a step in the right direction that in the absence of teachers affirming them, they seek out affirmation from one another. I almost like that I keep seeing kids pass computers back and forth, that they are checking in with one another and sharing their writing with one another, though there is still a distrust there, and underlying belief that “even if I think my writing is good, I can’t trust that it is good until someone else tells me it is, until someone else confirms what I am too insecure and self-conscious to confirm myself.” It’s the same writers who wanted me to read their writing instead of just trusting themselves and going for it.

If I can only share one more thing with my students in these last days before we leave for summer it is this: there is no room for fear and self-consciousness in writing, those insecurities will lead you nowhere productive. They will lead you only to stilted, inauthentic writing. Instead, to be a real writer, one must simply write and trust themselves in their writing.

The First Slice

I decided that this year would be the year that I introduced the Slice of Life challenge into my writing workshop. We had been bouncing back and forth for years, trying to find the perfect balance between assigned topic writing and personal free choice writing, and this challenge seemed like the best way to do it.

We brought everyone in to class, completed the homework collection and upcoming assignment minutia, and started to introduce the idea of writing about the tiny moments of our lives. We examined an example, pulling apart the details of what made the writing work. We took time to visualize a moment, and then we set to the task of writing. I held my breath for a second before my pen hit the paper. What would happen? I wondered internally. Could this group handle finding their own topics, or would they start resisting, playing, or worse yet, just not doing. But my worry was for nothing because for the very first time all year everyone in the room was silent as words got into notebooks and stories started to develop.

We wrote for 10 minutes, and in those ten minutes amazing things happened. We wrote and wrote, and as soon as our timer went off, people needed to share. Alex needed to tell his stories of eating cherry tomatoes plucked fresh off the vine when he should have been weeding in science class. Gil regaled us with the story of Michael's first ever home run. Ravi entertained us with his covert mission to procure a comb, and Pamela and Kosette's friendship was sealed by a returned glue stick.

In only 10 minutes we got into the slices of lives, and the writing was good. I was amazed at how much magic could happen in such a short time. Pleased with how much potential we have to grow as a community of writers, and sure that next week's slices could only get better.
 

Settling In

Our start of school calendar was organized very differently this year. Most years, our first week of school comes right after Labor Day. Teachers arrive on Tuesday, 6th graders are oriented on Wednesday, and then on Thursday everyone attends school for two days. This first week always had a rhythm to it. Thursday and Friday became about rules and syllabi, and students spent inordinate amounts of time in their homeroom reading student handbooks, attending assemblies, and getting more information about more rules and syllabi. Kids were squirrely since sitting for six hours hadn't been part of their routine for months. By the end of that first week everyone was exhausted and ready for the weekend. Those two days are a big part of the reason why I dislike the first days of school. Those days feel artificial. They feel like a waste of time. My students and I end up too busy waiting for school to really begin when we begin this way.

This year, due to Jewish holy days, things were organized differently. 6th graders attended a full week last week. 7th and 8th graders came for four days starting Tuesday. Homeroom time was spread out over four days, and classes were almost as long as they will be on a normal day. This forced us to rethink things and really reflect on how we wanted this year to start for our students. Instead of the usual introductory slide show, we spent time talking as a group, introducing ourselves, mingling, and sharing reading choices. Instead of telling students the rules, we had them work in groups to create presentations explaining the importance of rules. We were up, we were active, and students were running the show by day two. Instead of wasting time treading water, we jumped right in to the deep end, and our kids all swam! We used that first week to set a tone that our classroom community is one where we work together. One where we solve our own problems instead of relying on the teachers to solve them. And one where you will be held to a high standard. 

We still have a long way to go this year, but I can already feel how this different start is going to make all the difference. By the end of last week I already knew the names of about 85% of my students. I know who the natural leaders in each class are. I know who is willing to take big risks, and who my shy students are. I know who will need more support in managing their time and who will need more support in the social interactions that make up so much of the classroom experience. In short, I already know my students in a way that I never would have on our old schedule. And the best part of the whole week was that by Friday I was energized instead of drained. I couldn't wait to jump back in this week and continue to build on those first experiences.       

First Impressions

Yesterday I had a chance to meet all four of my new classes of seventh grade. Even though I had been working in school for nearly a week, the new year did not become real until that first group of students walked through the door.

By the end of the day I was completely exhausted, the strain of being "on" for so long after a summer of being "off" coupled with a barrage of new and challenging names had my brain completely overloaded. And my feet were hurting something fierce by about noon! But, we all survived, and had a lot of fun.

Each class definitely had its own culture, and each group seems very different. I know that finding the style and flow with each class is going to be one of the best challenges of this year. This group left some strong first impressions, and there are some things that I want to remember to think about this year as we move forward.

Period 4 has a gentle, go with the flow kind of feel. Students were willing to participate, a few were eager, but none showed that first day energy that warned me that there was a personality that might need to be molded a bit to fit the community. This group will be great to help test out new lessons and to set a pace for the rest of the day.

Period 7 is a class that I am really excited to teach. The majority of the class are not native English speakers and there is a very varied level of English proficiency. This class already has a culture going, many of the students have already bonded through the shared experience of being in a new school where we speak a new language. This class will force me to slow down and focus on skills. They will need more intentional vocabulary and writing mechanics instruction- two areas that I normally gloss over relying on student's prior knowledge. All four sections will benefit from this intentionality.

Period 8 is a wild bunch! Yesterday we saw five or six kids trying to outshine one another. They have energy, but they are also supportive. It's hard to chide a student for calling out when they're shouting supportive comments to their peers, right?  These students will challenge us to always keep class interesting, to keep them engaged and motivated in fun, active tasks. We'll have to be creative to keep up with them. If we can do that, I think we'll be able to direct all of that energy towards a really fun and productive community.

Period 9 is challenging. It's the end of the day, and it is our most heavily needy population. Luckily, we have three teachers to support our students. In this class I can already see a great diversity of skill. It's amazing how a skill as minor as reading procedural directions on the first day can throw up red flags around a student's skills. I think this class may have a few non-readers, but they seem to be a class of workers. They will "do" as long as we make sure that every one of them knows how. This class will probably need a less exploratory approach than we're used to, and structured differentiation will be our friend.    

I can already see how developing lessons and curriculum to meet all four groups where they are is going to take a lot of work, but it will be beneficial. Each group has strengths and some challenges, but I believe that the approaches we will take to meet those challenges will benefit everyone. I think it's going to be a great year!

What's Your Mission?

This morning in day 14 of our 15 day Summer Institute we started exploring our own ways to reform education. We examined the issue from a variety of perspectives. We looked at the rhetoric of the national agenda, from the fiery mission of angry teachers, and through the academic lens of teacher researchers. We asked a lot of questions and came up with some actual answers. 

Through the care of my colleague I was actually asked what I would do if I could change the entire system of education. The question was provocative, and led me to realize that I am thankful to not have to answer the question. I came up with more wondering than answering, and I realized that I only know how to change what I can control. Focusing on large scale reform feel futile because of what I know about what I don't know.

I don't know what would work best for every student, every teacher, and every school in the country, but I do know that a one size fits all approach will not work. I know that great teachers are highly trained, highly educated professionals, who devote their entire professional lives to becoming the most effective teachers and mentors they can be. I know that great teachers care deeply about doing good work, that we are not lazy, and that we go above and beyond the perceived duties of our jobs. I also know that test scores do not show the entire picture of a school, a student, or a teacher. I know that too much is being put on the plates of schools, that we are being expected to solve problems well beyond our reach, and that each new reform further ties our hands. I know that the stress created through reform last year was damaging to schools, teachers, and most importantly to children.

So, if I were in charge I would loosen the reigns. I would stop protecting those teachers who are just in it for the summers off and the early end of the work day, and support those great teachers who do great work. I would really examine the data comparing our students to students in the rest of the world. I would consider the populations we compare our students to, the methods others go to to get their results, and the effect of poverty, compulsory education with college and career readiness standards for all, and a pervasive practice of social promotion on our own test scores. I would act with the knowledge that teacher accountability, and high standards is only one small piece of the education reform puzzle. And I would openly and freely admit that as long as we continue to ignore the devastating consequences of poverty we will never be able to "fix" education. 

There are so many parts of this that are beyond my control as a classroom teacher, but I also know that I gave up part of the power of what I can control through this year's ed reform initiatives. This past year I was pulled out of my classroom for reform related meetings, trainings, and work sessions for 9 school days. In my classroom I spent the equivalent of 8 class periods focusing entirely on test preparation that was out of the context of authentic learning. I administered 690 minutes worth of high stakes testing in my classroom alone. That means that 22 hours of my 120 instructional hours was spent on educational reform. That is 18% of my student's class time being devoted to these tasks. 

That is unacceptable!

So, for this year I am on a mission. Here is my teacher mission statement:

I am a highly skilled, thoughtful and passionate professional who has been given the opportunity to change the lives of my students, but I only have 180 days to do that in. Every moment of those 7,200 is critical. I vow to make every one of those minutes count. I refuse to have that time wasted by anything that is not in the best interest of the students that I have the honor to teach. They deserve my attention, and my presence; for that there is no acceptable substitute!      

So, what is your mission?

Psst...Can You Keep a Secret?

In the last three weeks, I have been forced to sign two highly intimidating confidentiality agreements. These agreements have been a pre-requisite to my responsibilities at my job. Although I have not wanted to, I have had to pledge that I would not share any of the content I was presented in my tasks, or even speak about the tasks I had been asked to complete. I essentially agreed that once the task was complete I would metaphorically erase all knowledge of the experience to protect the integrity of the task. In fact, by even just publicly mentioning that I have signed these agreements I have probably already broken them, and could be held legally liable for my actions. You’re probably thinking that I have some high level government job, or that I work in a health care field where I am entrusted with protecting the confidentiality of my patients, but that is not the case.

I am a public school teacher who was recently forced to administer and score the New York State Common Core exams for 2013.       

By now you’ve probably seen the myriad articles criticizing this year’s high-stakes standardized testing. You’ve probably read about the problems associated with the test: the lengthy reading passages about arcane topics, the grammatical errors within the readings and the questions, the convoluted multiple choice questions with more than one reasonable answer, the lack of adequate time for students to complete the tasks they were given. 

Maybe you’ve heard about the anxiety and health concerns brought out by the high-stakes testing. Record numbers of school nurses have reported symptoms of dehydration during state testing, since schools will not let kids have water during their 90 minutes of testing for fear of accidental destruction of a test. There are reports of kids crying, and vomiting during the test. In fact, some states have had to formalize their official policy for what to do when a child vomits on the test. In my school we even had a student who had such a severe panic attack they had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. 

The criticism is not just anecdotal. Critical articles seem daily fare for the education sections of news outlets. The criticisms started before the tests had even been administered, and have not slowed since (Parents, teachers, and students have all spoken out. These are just a sampling of the responses that have been published in the past three weeks). And the problems are not limited to New York. In Indiana, Oklahoma, and Minnesota criticism of the actual test is being overshadowed by the reports of critical computer problems that made taking the exams impossible.

Any one of these complaints is reason enough to take a close look at our current obsession with standardized testing, but I want focus on the idea of the secrecy involved in the entire testing process. New York has signed on to a 5 year contract with Pearson Education, a contract that has cost the state $32 million dollars. One of the conditions of this contract is the these exams be "secure tests". The testmakers have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that not a single word of these exams be leaked to the public. The tests are kept under lock and key until 1 hour before administration, teachers and test administers sign confidentiality agreements at every turn, and students as young as 8 years old sit through daily readings of a list of the contraband electronic devices they must surrender during the test. The concern over the security of these tests does not seem to relate to cheating, if it did wouldn't there be some demand that students be seated in rows, or that tests be administered in gymnasiums (like the SAT or other college entrance exams)? As it stands, students are still allowed to test in their classrooms or other "well-lit, well-ventilated areas", and test administers are simply given a charge to monitor for and report potential cheating to their principals. No, we are not trying to secure the student outcomes, we are trying to secure the actual test. We are not protecting student interests, we are protecting Pearson's interests.

Creating a rigorous, reliable, high-stakes exam that combines multiple stand alone and paired reading passages of authentic texts, multiple choice questions, short writing questions, and text based essays is no easy feat. First there's the actual test creation, followed by "field-testing" of exam questions to determine how the plan will fly when put in front of live children, and then the creation of scoring materials that use actual student responses to create a complex series of "anchors" so that live scorers can "align their thinking" and provide reliable scores. Each test presented to students in New York this year contained a number of actual assessment questions as well as built in "field test" questions, so in essence while Pearson was creating a high-stakes testing environment for the assessment of students and their teachers (as per the new APPR requirements that link student scores to teacher outcomes) they were also creating a lab where students were serving as guinea pigs for future tests. Only Pearson knows which questions were "field test" questions and which were actual questions. Based on the quality of what was put in front of students this year, teachers can only hope that about half of the questions will be thrown out as failed field test questions, but we'll never know, and thanks to our confidentiality agreements, we can't even talk about those questions.

Providing specific feedback on any reading sample or question, even for the purpose of helping to create a better exam in the future is in breach of the agreement.

I usually try to keep my cynicism in check, but in this case there is something suspect in this secrecy. To pilot an entirely new plan, or to "cross a bridge while we are still building it" as one key figure in ed reform has said, while simultaneously eschewing feedback on the process, product and long-term implications, feels disingenuous to the goal of free-thought and public education. Instead we have a system where protecting the interests of a corporation is trumping the protection of the interests of an entire generation of children. And that makes me tremendously uncomfortable.

Pearson has a lot riding on the success of these exams, $32 million in New York alone. And the response to this first attempt is lackluster. We can only hope that next year's plan fixes some of the problems that were brought out this year. But if it doesn't, it won't matter, since we still probably won't be able to talk about it.

Why I'm Standing By the Core

     I've spent a lot of the past two years being very skeptical about the Common Core and the ad hoc full force shift that education in our nation has taken. At times, I've been miltant and strongly opposed, at times I've been panicked and guided by fear, but I am starting to break through all of those reactive stances to be able to bring myself to a place of really evaluating what we're facing and determining whether I can support what is being presented. I still have moments where my personal pendulum swings from skeptical to irrate on subjects like APPR, the flood of new testing that Common Core is ushering in, and what I see as the barely veiled agenda to deteriorate the public education system of America in favor of a for profit model dependent on charter schools and big business. But, when it comes down to the fundamental question of whether or not I can support the new Common Core Learning Standards, the answer is yes.

     Here's what I have experienced in my own classroom this year as a teacher trying hard to adapt the Common Core to best meet the needs of my students. The work that we do is extremely focused. Before the Common Core, my curriculum was a mass of almost 200 disjointed performance standards. There seemed to be little to tie any of these ideas, strategies, and skills together, and the result was a kind of "teach by the wind" style that was fun, and worked most days, but never really lent itself to the opportunity to come back and do in depth work with any one idea or skill.

      But the Common Core has changed that for me. I appreciate the clarity of a skills based approach to learning. By stressing the most essential skills for students to be successful, and then building on those skills grade by grade, I can see how to focus my teaching to get the most out of every limited minute. Every day in English class, we work on the same skills. We work on reading closely and carefully. We work on writing clearly and coherently, we work on bringing our reading lives and our writing lives together. This was what I wanted to accomplish as a teacher before the Core. The difference is that before I couldn't figure out how to put all of the pieces together coherently, and now I feel like I have a roadmap for how to do that.

     One of the biggest concerns I hear people voicing about the Common Core is a fear that the core will standardize education so much that we will lose the art and skill of teaching in the work. I can understand this fear. With school districts quickly adopting modules, canned programs, and data tracking devices this is a valid concern, but one that I have not seen coming from the Core itself. Maybe I am simply lucky to teach in a district that is not shoving a program onto my teaching. That seems to be a failure of leadership rather than a flaw of the Core. The new standards are not a new curriculum, they are not a new program, they are simply a framework of skills that we expect students to work on. I have been able to adapt these new guidelines to help sharpen my teaching. I haven't abandoned my philosophy or my best practices. My students still write to learn, they still read voraciously of their own choice reading, they still engage in self-directed writing workshops, they still develop interesting research questions, but what they get from me is more intentional teaching. This is an improvement that I stand behind wholeheartedly.

       Today I got into a discussion with a social studies teacher who was chafing at the idea of stressing the need of text based evidence and appropriate citations in every piece of writing that students do. He thought this the antithesis of authentic thinking, and didn't think it appropriate or necessary to be done on a regular basis. He could see the sense in something like a research paper, but hesitated to bring the expectation into regular practice. He expressed fear that teaching this way would create automatons incapable of independent thought beyond the text.

       I get this, because I've been there. I've had those same fears, that a highly skills based approach will stifle creative thinking, but I've shifted my thinking. We owe it to our students to give them all of the skills they need to be successful learners. That means training them to think creatively and critically, but also teaching them to follow the rules of being a successful student. As I see it, the content, ideas, and big thinking of a curriculum are the nails, while the skills, just like those stressed in the core, are the hammers. One without the other is pretty useless.

       I have a lot of clarity right now on the Core and the expectations it puts on teaching and learning, and personally I can stand behind it. We have work to do, and many of the effects of the Core are ones that I think it essential to examine, but from where I sit I can see with good sense and sound professional judgement how this plan could benefit education.

SOL 14: Happy Pi Day!

This day, March 14th (or 3/14 for the more visual) is one of my favorites in my school. Since the irrational number Pi is a new concept our students need to master in 7th grade it's the perfect day to collaborate and celebrate all things Pi. Today our students will work their way through their general schedule but each class will have a Pi theme.

In social studies students will work on the history of Pi.
In math they will compete in a Pi memorization contest to see who can remember the most digits (last year's winner was in the 400s!).
In science they will do probability experiments that rely on Pi.
In music they will compose Pi songs and finalize Pi themed musical skits.
and in English we will write Pi poetry.

The day will conclude with Pi performances, a Pi poetry reading, awarding the Pi memorization winner and of course, a slice of actual pie baked by our students in FCS. The day is always a little chaotic, but a lot of fun.

SOL 13: March Madness Idea

   
 The other day, my team and I were brainstorming ways to make our work with "Authors of Substance" more visible. We already have kids reading, talking, and blogging. Our librarian has devoted space in the library to the question, but we still want to do a bit more.

     That's where the idea of a March Madness Author's Bracket came in. We are devoting an entire bulletin board to setting up a giant bracket pitting current children's and YA authors (those who published their work after 1980) to "classic" children's and YA authors (those who published before 1980- I know! It makes me feel ancient too!). On Friday, we'll ask kids to create two top five lists to submit their authors. Those with the most votes will make the Sweet Sixteen.

      Right now, my top five lists would look something like this:

Top Five Classics:
Judy Blume
Madeline L'Engel
Harper Lee
Roald Dahl
J.R.R. Tolkein

Top Five Currents
J.K. Rowling
John Greene
Suzanne Collins
Maggie Stiefvetter
Meg Cabot

Who would be on your top five lists?

SOL #11 We Threw a Conference!

        

          This weekend, months worth of work finally came to fruition in the form of a two day conference on the importance of writing. We had great food, interesting presenters, and despite my biggest fears, an audience of engaged adults willing to get themselves out of bed early on a Saturday.

         My workshop on using expressive writing as a tool for thinking went very well. people were kind and excited, and so easy to work with. I watched teachers' lightbulbs turn on and beamed a little myself as people shared those moments where my ideas were clicking for them. My colleagues shared some great ideas as well. Every workshop I presented gave me something that I can use in the upcoming weeks of teaching.    

         The overwhelming theme of the day was gratitude. Participants were grateful for the ideas we were sharing. Presenters were grateful for the participants who came and shared. Everyone was happy to be thinking about their classrooms in a meaningful way.

          This is rare though. Usually my experiences with professional development don't end this way. I think the key element to the success of our day, as opposed to full day school district events, or after school PLC meetings is the idea of choice. Throughout the day we built in choice at every step, but that is not the choice I am talking about. Everyone who came to our conference had chosen to be there. Nobody had been urged by their principal. Nobody had been contractually obligated to go. People came for one reason- they wanted to spend the day learning. I don't know how to bring that energy back into school, but I wish I did.

SOL #9 of #31: Saturday Morning

Even though it's a Saturday, I am still awake to my alarm, going through my work day motions, and getting ready for a day of teaching and learning. My National Writing Project site is hosting a full day regional conference on writing today, and I am a presenter. 

I usually LOVE this kind of day, but today I did not want to get out of bed for some reason. 

Sharing my teaching with adults used to make me nervous, but I've done it a lot and it is no longer butterfly inducing. I have all of my materials ready to go, and I have a solid, simple idea to share. I'm all set.

Then why was it so hard to get out of bed this morning?  

I hope it was just the new sweats,

or the flannel sheets,

or the two blankets.

I hope my hesitation to jump out of bed a sieze that day was simply just the desire to be comfy and not a sign of a hard day.

I put on cashmere just in case.

SOL#4 Making Citation Fun

We just started the new research unit in our seventh grade classes that I wrote about the other day. Our students will be reading books by an author of their choice, and doing research into that author to answer the question of whether this author is an "author of substance", someone who will become a classic, or just a quick trend. We're excited about the project, and it has been amazing to have students come in every day proudly holding a book that they read in one or two days, and asking to go to the library to see what else we have by their author.

Yesterday, we took on the tedious task of working on citation skills in class. Our students will need a works cited, and we have decided to do it bit by bit as we go instead of trying to reconstruct a works cited at the end of the unit. Searching the publication page for information has never been a fun lesson, until yesterday when my co-teacher came up with a great idea.

She started the lesson with a complete works cited on the Smart board, and asked the students to make observations. As students shared their observations I identified and labeled their observations using the same techniques we've been teaching for close reading. Once we knew that kids had a good bit of background knowledge we moved on to a shared citation.  

She had brought in a big container of Gummi Bears, and told us all that, "If we can cite the Gummi Bears we can cite anything!" We used our citation cards to list the important information imagining that the Gummi Bears were a book:

Author: Daniel Wegman

Title: Gummi Bears

Place "published": Rochester, NY

"Publisher": Wegmans Food Inc.

Date "Published": 2013

All of this information was right there on the label, and kids were easily able to find it when we brought the container to their tables. We then guided the students through converting their information into a citation, paying close attention to punctuation:

Wegmans, Daniel. Gummi Bears. Rochester: Wegman's Food Inc, 2013.

At this point everyone had two good models, and we set them off to independently practice by creating a citation for their own book. Once they passed inspection, and had two perfect citations they were rewarded with both reading time and GUMMI BEARS! By the end of the period, even our most struggling students had completed the task successfully.

The lesson was fun, creative, and highly motivating. I will never go back to teaching citation any other way. Thank you, M.S. for sharing such a wonderful lesson with us!

SOL #3: Let's Celebrate

Yesterday was a rough day in many ways. It jump started cold when I left a before school meeting just as the first bell rang, raced across the building to find that someone had unlocked my door for my class then left them unsupervised- mayhem!  Both adults and students posed challenges throughout the day. And I feel like I'm buried under a mountain of tasks this week.

But instead of focusing on any of that, I want to take a moment to celebrate. Yesterday we introduced a new unit of study. We'll be doing a research unit on "authors of substance" asking ourselves the question: 

"Will we still be reading, insert any author you want here, in 2050?" 

And the conversations started almost immediately.

Tolkien- obviously!

Meyers- a unanimous probably not.

Rowling- we're pretty sure.

The energy of intellectual curiosity filled the room. Students quickly got themselves paired up with an author that they either already know and love, or a new author that they get to experience for the first time. When one of the small minority of students who admit to not reading complained that they've "NEVER liked ANY book" others in the class took it as a challenge, tossing out title after title for the curmudgeon to look for.  

So, I could have let my day be ruined by outside forces. but instead, I spent my day matching kids to books, and it was wonderful. This is by far the best part of my job, and one that I want to celebrate this morning. 

SOL #2: Teaching and Activism

This year I have noticed a troubling trend in my teaching that links up with a certain professional opportunity I became a part of. For years I have been hearing other teachers who I respect greatly rave about an ongoing literacy PLC hosted through our BOCES. They have talked about how transformative it is, and how much the discussions have led them to great teaching.

So, naturally I jumped on the opportunity to join this community when the latest group started. However, I quickly found that the focus of the group had changed. Instead of being a great collaborative environment where everyone was able to share best practices and have real discussions about great teaching, the group has become a training ground for what I am referring to as the "Common Core Army". 

It make sense naturally, the group facilitator is our regions' connection to the state. She understands the new demands, and willingly embraces them. She wants to train us to be leaders in our schools, and since this is (seemingly) the only thing that matters in schools right now, she wants us to be as skilled as she is. 

But I have my doubts. I doubt that the Common Core is the way for every student. I doubt that the Common Core will actually make a difference. I doubt that the modules developed through the Gates Foundation are not homogenizing teaching. I doubt that drinking the Common Core Kool-aid will help students learn or schools grow. I doubt that the link between CC and APPR will result in anything except the disillusion of free and public education. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I have my doubts. I am far from a good little soldier in the Common Core Army.

      I've tried to be compliant, and test the techniques from the group in my own classroom, and I am not pleased with the results. Most of the things I try leave my most competent students bored and my struggling students frustrated and anxious. When I come back from these meetings and start teaching "Under the influence of the Common Core" things stop feeling authentic. My teaching and my classroom lack the spark of creativity that has kept me teaching and constantly revising what I do.

This morning I went back and read an old post from Two Writing Teachers where Stacey was sharing some advice from Lucy Calkins about teaching as a form of activism. The idea that stuck out the most is this,

We need to be able to teach according to our beliefs. If our teaching doesn’t represent our best current notions about what matters in classrooms and in life, if our teaching doesn’t represent our most cherished hypothesis about education, then how can we hold ourselves responsible for and learn from the results of our teaching?   

For the rest of the month and the rest of the school year I am making a commitment to teach every day to my "most cherished hypotesis about education". 

For me, that means resigning from the Army of the Common Core, 

getting back to an authentic workshop classroom, 

and not signing up for year two with the BOCES community.

Slice of Life #1: Realizations

This month the ladies over at Two Writing Teachers put out the Slice of Life Challenge. A challenge to write and post something every day for the month of March. (Those who start today and link up every day will be eligible for a prize too!) I am desperately in need of some writing inspiration, so I decided to give the challenge a try.  

This weekend I went to the first meeting of a monthly professional writing group. The group ended up being small, just me and one other teacher who I work closely with. When we realized that nobody else was coming (it was a cold and nasty early morning) it would have been really easy for us to pack up early and go catch lunch, but instead we sat and committed ourselves to writing. Not so amazingly, it worked!  

I've been struggling this year with finding some balance in my professional life. Early in the year I took on a new leadership position at my school. My work with the writing project, and the success of my sabbatical last spring had left me feeling like it was time to move up in my school and take on more of a role as a teacher leader. A retirement in my department left a position open, and I was honored by my peers when I was elected to the position over someone with more seniority. I had toyed with the idea of changing paths and making moves to transition out of the classroom into a professional development  position, and this seemed like a good first step.

When this position started I was excited, but I have quickly started to see the hidden demands of the position. I went into the position hoping to be an active agent of positive change, but instead I am finding myself pulled into every meeting under the sun and filling my time with tedious administrative tasks. I don't mind doing some of these things, but more and more often I am being pulled away from my teaching to do these things. The number of days I am being asked to leave my classroom is piling up, and I am starting to feel resentful.

So this weekend I wrote about what I really want, to try to figure out if this is a midwinter blip or a real problem, and I discovered a few things. The most important one is that I LOVE being a classroom teacher and that I do not want to change that. For years I had been thinking that I needed to "move up", and seeing being a full time teacher as a stepping stone to something else. Now I know that I don't want to move into a role that would keep me out of the classroom. I did not get into teaching to become an administrator, I came into it to be a teacher.

That is what I want to do! That is enough for me!

Amazingly enough, as soon as I made that realization, a whole creative outlet opened up for me. I was finally able to make some headway on a chapter I have been struggling to write in the book about my teaching. I was excited to tackle the pile of papers I had to grade this weekend. I was excited about teaching, writing, and spending as much time with my students in my classroom as I can. Now I just need to figure out how to reclaim some of that time when others want to pull me away. I need to work on saying no more often.

Culture is the key

Hi Kathryn,

I attended a TST BOCES training on the new curriculum modules purchased by NYS to be aligned with the Common Core on Monday.  Not only was there a huge storm blowing off the east coast while I sat in the building, there was also a huge storm brewing in my mind.  I was attending a full day training on these "modules" available to us as 5th grade teachers.  Beth D was trying her hardest to captivate a room of 5th grade teachers, and to break down the 400 plus page document into a few highlighted sections.  A program called Experiential Learning (EL)created these modules and NYS bought them for millions of dollars to help teachers align their curriculum to the common core.

 Here is the ironic part about the whole thing.  The EL model is to go into schools, meet with the teachers and talk about what the kids need.  They then work with teachers, administrators, and parents to design a model for the school that will work for the students.  They design instruction and their day to empower students to be independent learners, thinkers, and participants in their learning.  EL provides coaching, and ongoing professional development for these schools.  Therefore, the curriculum modules were designed BY teachers in this really collaborative way.  HOWEVER, NY State has paid EL millions of dollars to "roll out" these modules and in some cases, teachers are being forced to teach them.  Doesn't that defeat the whole point of the process?  Just because you pay for something does not make it effective.


What I want to talk about is culture.  It really became clear to me that is the missing piece in all of this. What makes a successful school successful?  What makes schools have students who do amazing on these tests?  It's not a certain way of teaching or one implemented module, it's culture.  Schools that value teachers, and students and participate in a collaborative learning environment will have higher test scores.  Schools that create a positive educational culture and really encourage and teach to the person, not the test, will ultimately have higher test scores.  Any school that is successful, is due to a shift in culture and strong leadership and partnership between teachers, parents and administrators.

The fact that NY State thinks they can buy a program designed is this amazing way, and then force it on teachers with no regard for the culture of design is infuriating to me.  Luckily, I work in a district that does have a positive educational culture.  Our district values teachers opinions and voice.  We have collaboration and buy in.  We don't have to just adopt these modules at face value.  However, it is an issue that NY State continues to miss the point.  I was on board for the Common Core because I can see the value in it.  I was even on board with the SLO's because I could use it for my own data tracking.  I will probably get on board with some aspects of these modules and knowing what to keep and what to pitch.  I am not on board with the lack of creative problem solving and addressing real issues from the state.  I'm tired of being treated like an idiot. I'm tired of having politicians think that I can't think for myself. I'm tired of having everything dumbed down for teachers.  Put us in a room together and give us time and we will create wonderful modules for our own students.  Why are you paying a group to give us 400 pages of lessons?  

Thank god for the writing project.  It's a safe place where teachers are valued and we have time to sit and think, write and share ideas with each other.  I don't know what I would do if I didn't have the writing project.  I'm also very grateful for you!  Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,
Danielle

Why I Resent The Common Core

About half of my students come to me as "readers", those who carry books with them through their daily lives, visit libraries, and escape into reading before bed. Many of them come to me as former "readers", those who enjoyed books as littles, but lost the bug once reading for recreation became more challenging than TV watching, video game playing, or just living out an overpacked schedule. 5 weeks into the school year the majority of my students are playing the part of "reader", choosing books that motivate them, reading every night, and writing and talking about that reading in and out of the classroom. They have wide and varied reading tastes, but for the most part they have one thing in common. They are lovers of stories. Most of them read fantasy fiction as their preferred genre, and when asked why they think fantasy is so popular, many write wistfully about loving to escape into impossible worlds. It is impossible to not encourage this love fest my students are having with reading.

A few years ago, this would have been an amazing testament to my teaching superpower, but in the past few years my job description has changed. I have been told quite clearly that these beloved stories (or "narratives" to use the domain specific vocabulary) must only be 1/3 of the puzzle. I am told that I must find an authentic and true balance between stories and more academic reading pursuits, as if stories are non-academic. While I understand the motivation behind the CCSS, and feel myself being pulled by the challenge of finding great informational and argumentative texts to support my teaching in an authentic way, I can not let go of the fact that I teach an English class, the one place where students have traditionally been encouraged to focus on narratives. The rule follower in me feels guilt that I have yet to be able to balance these three types of reading. In my classroom the narrative is still king because my students still revere it, and the fact that I am supposed to discourage that makes me resentful.

Putting aside motivation, and the dearth of high quality informative or argumentative text available for adolescents, there is the simple factor of time to consider. I see my students for 40 minutes a day. That works out to 72 hours a year. In Readicide, Kelly Gallagher shares a frightening statistic that the average 15-24 year old does 7 minutes of recreational reading. If you do that math that works out to 114 hours a year that have the potential to be filled with ANY reading, let alone a healthy mix of reading. When put through that lens one can see that we are fighting a losing battle with reading, a battle that I am trying to fight with any weapon I have. For now, the weapon of choice is stories, and I am not going to feel guilt over that.

A Grading Philosophy

Hi Danielle!

I know you've heard me brag about how much I love my team of teachers that I collaborate with. Working with them challenges me in the best possible ways. We may not always agree on everything, but we're always willing to talk, read, write, and research to try to find the best outcomes for kids. Today we had a pretty intense debate over grading philosophies, in an attempt to standardize our practice across curriculum areas. You know that developing a grading philosophy that matches my teaching philosophy has been a priority of mine for the past year, so I wanted to share some of what we were debating.

This whole discussion started as a result of one speaker at our school district's summer institute who presented an argument for grading based on achievement only. He had some convincing graphs and charts, and many of us bought his argument wholeheartedly. We came back to the school year ready to completely upend our grading system, though some levelheaded colleagues urged us to take a step back and really examine what that would mean. Through some discussion, my team came to an agreement that we wanted to try to start with smaller changes, and look at the way we report grades. What we decided was that at the end of each marking period we will report a traditional percentage grade, just as we always have, but then break down that grade into three areas in the comments section of the report card. We all agreed to try a system that codes all graded assignments under one of the following three reporting categories:

• Achievement- tests, quizzes, writing assignments, projects
• Effort- homework, notebook and material organization
• Participation- contributions to class and working on behaviors of successful students

I know that many might question the validity of having things like organization and participation contribute to a grade, especially with a national push towards measuring only achievement, but I have a few reasons why I strongly support developing a grade this way.

I teach a wide variety of students. Many are competently skilled and right on grade level. An achievement only grade would be fine for these students. But what about my other students, the smaller but extremely significant population of students who simply do not yet have the skills to succeed at grade level in my class? These students range from the newly immigrated ESOL student with enough skills to pass an entrance exam, but who does not actually speak, let alone read or write, in English to the classified inclusion student with a heavily modified curriculum, to the student who has difficult stuff going on outside of school that is a bigger priority in their life than studying for a test. An "achievement only" grade would hurt these students, and it would undermine the message that hard work is a major indicator of success.  

By explicitly including effort and participation in my grading plan, I am already starting to see a significant impact in my classroom. Students are motivated and making strides towards participation. Student distractions are minimal, and the reminder of weekly participation grades is enough to straighten out any stray distractions. More students are doing their nightly reading homework than ever before. The effect is simple to explain. Now that they are being held accountable for their effort and participation, they are working harder and participating more.

For me, one of the keys to successfully switching to a more holistic system of grading is having extremely clear expectations. My students were introduced to a weekly participation rubric in the first week of school. They complete weekly grading reports, where they log all of their assignments for the week on Friday and they receive their current average and a breakdown of all of their grades on Monday. They reflect on their learning at the end of every week, and set a new goal at the start of every new week. Does this take time? Yes. Does this create more work for me? Yes. It is worth it? Absolutely!

I want to communicate that student success is part of a whole package. It's not just about being smart and able to rock a test or write an amazing essay. Those things help, but for those students who struggle in those areas I want them to see that hard work and sustained effort to improve are also important. I want them to understand that when you take an active role in your own learning you learn more, and by default achieve more. I wish that kids could do that without the carrot of a grade, but the reality is that I work with middle schoolers who need carrots. In my opinion, a more well rounded grade earned through hard work, participation, and achievement is a better carrot than a jolly rancher, a shiny sticker, or a threat of lunch detention could ever be.

SLO What?!

Hey Danielle,

I've been thinking a lot lately about Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) and the upcoming workshop we're leading on them. I feel awesome about the work you and I have been doing on creating teaching goals that really reflect on the needs of our students and reaching meaningful outcomes. I feel more prepared to start a school year than I ever have before. That's awesome!

But I went to a meeting yesterday where the topic of SLOs came up. We got notes from a powerpoint that tried to outline the percentages that each goal is related to and what the expectations are. I was thoroughly confused by all of the info presented and then a piece of info came out that made me pretty uncomfortable:

Every middle school teacher in my entire district is going to have the same SLO!    

Each department will have it's own version of the SLO, but they will all focus on ELA, and essentially the goal will be the same. The ELA will be the benchmark pre-assessment, and we should just "roll with it" (even the math teachers who don't get to have a math related goal should follow suit!). The argument for this is that the admins hope it will be "easier" and "more efficient" to get through writing SLOs if we do this. I questioned whether efficiency through standardization was really best practice, but I don't think I got too far with the idea.  

So this leaves me with so many questions. Maybe you can share what you know from your district to help me wrap my head around this.

1. What is the actual goal of a SLO? Is it about student learning or is it about checking boxes on an evaluation form? 
2. Are other districts approaching SLOs this way? Do all of the 3rd grade teachers at your school have to have the same SLO? Do all of the math teachers at your high school have the same SLO? Is it the same as the SLO the science, English, art, or foreign language teachers have?
3. Can content area teachers create a SLO related to their individual content? My principal is under the impression that any SLOs not focusing on ELA or math will be "rejected by the state".
4. Can the state really reject an SLO? Who is sitting in Albany checking every SLO for every teacher in the state?
5. How does our workshop goal of "developing an SLO that is meaningful to you" and "developing an assessment plan that works for your classroom" match up with a district wide mandated SLO? Did we miss the point?  
6. Have I stepped into crazy town?

You always seem to "get it" when we're talking about state mandates. Can you help me understand?

Your confused friend,

Kathryn