Lazy days of summer

I've been out of school a week. As usual being relieved of the daily pressure to meaningfully fill three ninety-minute classes with engaging activities, read and respond to student work, contact parents, sit in on meetings, yadda-yadda-yadda has resulted in a burst of energy to get my own agenda out of the way.

What agenda is that? Read ahead for the two new courses I have to teach in the fall for one. (Already read or re-read and done my own assignments on Seamus Heany's Beowulf, Waiting for Godot, The Elephant Man and part of Robin Hood) started The Book Thief for fun, piled up three or four professional books I want to get through, read through 350 AP listserve emails and gleaned three new techniques (gonna try Interrupted Reading in the poetry unit - always looking for a way to get kids to think their own thoughts), wrote the outline of the syllabi for AP Lit, cleaned and repainted my office, tossed out papers, sorted piles and piles of books.....and mentally began designing a student newspaper and functioning student team...whew.

That's week #1 and just a partial list.

Summer is the time when many teachers reconnect with their personal lives too. I always count on the summer to get myself back into good health and make exercise a priority - visit with family, take a trip to somewhere I've never been (that starts tomorrow).

Then there's the push to get ready for the Writing Project summer institute. That will mean loading a truck and physically moving into a space we'll occupy for five weeks - then moving out again. Teachers are professional schleppers.

Lake Woebegone

So everybody's up in arms about teacher evaluations - all above average it seems. Jonathan Alter says "we already knows what works" but he doesn't say much about how to get'r done (which I think is to spot fund the programs George Miller is championing - hard to tell from this editorial more bent on pointing fingers than solving problems) The New York Times says its time to Tell the Truth.
Now that we (The BAD Teachers of America) have your attention for the nano-second that counts for media coverage these days, LISTEN for a minute.
There are some programs that actually identify and support effective teachers. All of those programs have the same hallmarks: they put teachers at the center of the work of evaluating each other and their own practice - where the evaluations occur in a collegial climate that develops sustained growth based on reflection, continued study, and goal setting.
The gold standard of teacher evaluation is the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Its rigorous, reflective, and peer evaluated. Even veteran teachers quake at the idea of putting their practice on the line for review.  But it proves that teachers CAN and SHOULD be the ones in charge of evaluations. 

Ask any NBCT.  Its tough and it changes teachers in the process.
What happens in most districts?
An already overburdened administrator jumps into a teacher's classroom for a few moments, fills out a check sheet, may - or may not - meet with the teacher later and moves on to put out other fires. 

Administrators are the least effective evaluators for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is their own personal survival. Can't go around firing all your teachers, can't take any more time to 'teach' the teachers, can't sit down to revamp an entire school all while parents, school board members, testing schedules are pounding at the door. Administrators may be passing on teacher effectiveness because holding on to a teacher serves some other interest
So why aren't the teachers in charge?

This kind of work takes time out of the day.  (The time that no one is afforded - see administrator work load above - because time is money.)

But, though initial start up would seem costly, investing in teacher evaluation would pay dividends in the long run.  Professionals in charge of their own work tend to a) work harder and b) find more satisfaction in their work and stay for an entire career.  (Another great peer-to-peer program, the National Writing Project, has proven this in their legacy study.)

The other dirty little secret neither Alter nor the Times mention in their effort to tidy up the edges of the big education pie is that teachers are leaving in droves every year before they even begin to understand the scope of the job.  And proven, effective teachers are retiring just as fast. Evaluations won't matter at all when teaching is a revolving door profession.  (Could you even call it a profession at that point?)  

New teachers will only have to know how to get kids to turn on the computer, fill in the forms, and then lock up for the day.  

And evaluating those employees will be easy enough.  

Just check to see if they have good attendance.

"If I had a million dollars...."

Even though nobody's asked, I have a opinion on how to spend the stimulus dollars some of us may never see... Here's my proposal.

Punctuation

People communicate primarily through metaphor because it draws attention to the patterns we see in our world.  "Hey!  This......looks/feels/smells  like...."  We can't help ourselves. We are comparison machines. 

I think humans learned to talk and write so they could find a way to stop pointing at everything, always yelling out to each other, "Look!  Look!"  My little granddaughter (that's her two posts back on Mom's day) does this all day long: point! point! point! look! look! look! When the words come it'll be one comparison after another that we'll scrabble to write down because of their adorable truths.  

That's just the way we roll.

Here's a metaphor I start thinking about this time every year:  Ritual as punctuation marks. About ten years ago I decided I really like the ceremonies that center around big moments - a wedding, a funeral, a baptism, a graduation.  They are the  punctuation marks of our lives.   And if a funeral is a period (.), then a graduation is an ellipsis (...)

I've lost count of the graduations I have been party to - as participant, observer, interested relative.   There have to have been over 30 by now.

But I never tire of them.  They are the most hopeful days of the year and a chance to celebrate with our students a major transition in their lives.  Our jaded high school students get weepy and then turn to the adults in their lives to give honest thanks.  And even though none of us are ever out of contact anymore thanks to non-stop twittering, texting,and facebooking, they begin to act as though they will never see each other anymore.  I remember one class clown declaring, "This has to be the saddest thing I've ever done!"

But we do see each other.  And this is the gift most teachers cherish.  If you live in the community where you teach, you see the whole continuum.  Students move on to the other phases of their lives: parenting, working, often serving their former teachers in health care, the armed services, or other public service.  Many don't forget their teachers and years later the teacher is surrounded by good friends - people you have had the privilege to help develop.

Its graduation week.  Time to watch another group head off to enrich the fertile fields.

On testing...

OK.  Like I promised.  Here's my take on the day long scoring of student portfolios.  

• I liked doing it because I wanted to learn the process so I'd understand it from the classroom side - especially if I were to have to collect for a portfolio myself.  (I picked up a number of time saving tips from looking at various methods.)
  
• I'm glad teachers were the scorers.  We all learned about our students and the teachers who work with them.  We all will be better at evaluating and collecting work down the road.
  
• A lot of money was spent that day.  
  

There were about 30 teachers, some of whom worked the whole 8 hours.  All of whom had to go through mandatory training prior to the scoring day.  All of whom had to be paid for the training time and scoring time.  (Hey, I don't mind making a little extra money....)

There was a lot of material provided by the testing company.   More money.

There was a computer program for collecting, checking, aggregating the scores.  More money.

And then all those computer collected scores go on to be verified at the state level. More...you got it.

I kept imagining the program being reproduced all over the state and the money spent kept piling up in my imagination.   

And this is just a small part of our end of year evaluations. There are End of Course tests in most classes that my students sit in - and all of those tests have to be bought and paid for. (Note to self: upon retirement check job availability at Pearson or College Board.)

Is this the best way to spend our education dollars?  

In the old days we trusted our teachers to evaluate students.  Were teachers different then? Maybe yes, maybe no.

I know teaching and learning was different then. (I've got my old report cards to prove it. We spent years of class time on handwriting in elementary school.  It was called Writing and had nothing to do with essays.  It was penmanship. We've got other things to teach these days.)

Ironically, as we sorted through the samples of student work the one comment that kept coming up was that student work was always easier to score when A TEACHER wrote a comment of her/his own on the paper to describe what was observed.  Hmmm, narratives by teachers - still the strongest bits of evidence.  

Like December all Over Again

In the Ed world, May is a crazy month.  Almost as crazy as the run up to the winter holidays.  And so my weekends - writing time for me - have been crowded with other activities.

One weekend - scoring portfolios.  More on that in another post.

One weekend - visiting. A luncheon, a shower, a graduation party.

One weekend - memorials of all sorts.

And on the weekdays there are things to be tidied up for the year. Preparation for big end of course tests, presentations, dinners, awards banquets, meetings over next year's schedules, and preparation for the Summer Institute.

Mom's Day

Sunday is Mother's Day.  A new group I stumbled across came via an email that turns your favorite mother into "Mom of the Year" in a CNN-style news video.  Pretty cool technology. 

You can make your own here and send a personalized greeting to the mom of your choice.  I sent off a bunch to my favorite moms.

The video is fun and one of those times where I conclude that computers totally rock!  

(The day I really fell in love with computers occurred when I was able to choose a wedding present for a friend in Florida while still in my local Virginia J.C. Penney's, pay for it with my credit card, and have it wrapped and sent from the local Florida store!  Awesome! That transaction took a half hour vs. the previous shopping, wrapping, packaging, mailing that would eat up the better part of a day/week.  I try to remember these happy  moments when that annoying paper-clip guy in Microsoft interrupts my powerpoint to ask me what I'm doing!)

The group producing the video is Mom's Rising.  And since the video might just go viral its a great vehicle for getting the word out.  

I hadn't heard of this group before even though, according to their website, it's been around since 2006 and came out of the Moveon.org model. 

But I am with them on their issues, listed as: Maternity & Paternity Leave; Open Flexible Work; TV & and After School Issues; Health Care for All Kids; Excellent Childcare; Realistic and Fair Wages; Sick Days Paid. (Look! The issues spell MOTHERS)

The marginalizing of mothers through policy ultimately affects all of us - and schools and their effectiveness.  Here are a few facts from the site:

- A full quarter of U.S. families with children less than six years old live in poverty. 

- Nine million children are without healthcare coverage and many more are under-insured.

- Women without children make 90 cents to a man’s dollar, but mothers make just 73 cents, and single mothers make even less -- about 60 cents to a man’s dollar.

- Fourteen million children are unsupervised after school. 40,000 of these are kindergartners due to a lack of affordable afterschool programs.

Check it out for yourself.  

And this year really honor your mother by making her more than a second-class citizen.