30 years in the desert

Over the summer I joined the "World's Largest English Department," a social-networking Ning begun by Jim Burke, author, practicing teacher, and titular head of said English Department. I've only used the Ning sparingly, but I'm glad to have it there because I know I will turn to it often.

I have a long history (if 7 years can be considered long - and I suppose in the electronic world that's practically a century) of relying on my digital friends for support, education, feedback, humor, support, resources, technology training, support and - oh, did I say, support?

More than anything, I value the voices of my peers to shore me up during the storms of educational reform. I value the voices that keep directing our efforts to what matters most: making sure students are continuing to achieve and find pleasure, growth, and relevance in our classrooms.

I have waited most of my career to have the System of Education endorse--through the allocation of resources--the most valuable development of my skills and knowledge as a teacher: working with other teachers.

I came to this resource accidentally, in my third year of teaching in 1981, but it was like water in the desert.

At that point in my career I had gotten over the "what will I do tomorrow?" phase of learning how to teach and was beginning to look at what I was accomplishing with my students.

Not much, is what I thought. I felt like a failure.

My students weren't responding and the veteran teachers around me seemed much more capable and self-confident. I taught lesson after lesson that only seemed to get through to a few. I'll admit that I began looking for clues to what my colleagues were doing by "stealing" their mimeographed tests and quizzes from the workroom. In those days no one shared anything. On top of that, the curriculum did not always match my students abilities. (Should I be teaching persuasive essays when my students didn't seem to know - or even care - what a sentence is? Augh!)

In 1981 I took a course through the Northern Virginia Writing Project called Writing Across the Curriculum. In that course our coordinator, Marian Mohr, broke us into writing groups. She had us writing for each other and for our own purpose. She brought in classroom teachers who shared a best practice and - for a novice teacher, the truly helpful part - those teachers shared student work. And that student work looked familiar: Veteran teachers had students who needed lots of help "getting it" just like mine did.

The doors of other classrooms were flung open, and I found that my struggles were shared by all the teachers in the room. I wasn't alone! We were ALL trying to get students to care about sentences or literature or the lesson-du-jour. We talked about what worked, what didn't, our frustrations. We were encouraged to try something different, something that didn't look like the room down the hall. Then we came back together and shared what worked, what didn't, all over again.

That year I went from potential teacher drop out to a comrade-in-arms. It was a marvelous bonding experience that fueled me for a long time. It modeled a professional relationship that our department sought to recreate in our shared work space.

Ever since, I have hungered for the voices of teachers, but that goal often is hit or miss, depending on the leadership. Or I had to find it independently on my own time. Creating the atmosphere of sharing has been a personal goal wherever I've worked. I need the community of my peers. Without it, the work of a classroom teacher can be a joyless stab in the dark.

And, sadly, its been nearly thirty years since I discovered the wealth and power of talking with fellow practitioners, and this is still not a job-embedded expectation for every teacher in every school. Teachers must find their own communities as an "add-on" when they are finished all the other demands of the job.

The electronic world has made PLC's more accessible. Jim Burke's Ning is the latest incarnation of electronic voices that have evolved from listserves to the web 2.0 world. (My first electronic community was the JEA, Journalism Education Association, listserve and a lifeline for teachers who are the "only one" in a building. I am forever grateful to my colleagues across the nation who held my hand through some scary professional arguments over student first amendment rights.)

We have PLC's in our building now. I embrace the idea.

But the implementation is leaving much to be desired.

The goals are being set from above rather than generated by the teachers themselves - which is where the real power of a community is built.

If you doubt that teachers can and will set their own agendas, just visit the English Companion Ning and read the voices of those who are pursuing their own questions without any interference from supervisors. Teachers desperately want to be effective with their students.

My second complaint about the adaptation of PLC's is that the goal seems to be to generate lots of paper in order to verify that teachers are actually working. Our group works quickly through the mandated goals of the division so we can pursue tools and strategies to help our students achieve. We've already worked together on reading workshop, a grade level vocabulary unit, handouts for teaching reading competencies, and sources to make use of our smartboards, computer carts, and adolescent literature libraries.

And finally, our mandated PLCs are now add-ons to already overburdened teachers -- not embedded practices that could include common planning time, opportunities for classroom visits, or lesson studies. Meetings occur after school. The required reports fall on someone's shoulders to complete after the daily work of shepherding students through lessons, grading, posting grades to electronic boards, posting work to school web sources, etc. etc. Rather than feeling exhilarated, teacher morale is low. In a time of budget cuts, larger class sizes, and the ratcheting up of NCLB AYP benchmarks, adding more work to the day is crushing us.

If you want your faculty to reject a very good idea follow these easy steps:

• Require more work.
• Provide no additional time to complete the work.
• Apply no additional compensation.
• Reject teacher voices as a beginning point for problem solving.

Unfortunately, I fear that add-ons will only add to the number of teachers leaving the profession rather than build the kind of community that is ready to take risks to ensure student achievement. I WANT a PLC but I really want to do it right.

Mythbusters

The Washington Post Sunday opinion page has Five Myths about Paying Good Teachers More. This is the second time in recent memory that the Sunday Op-Ed has featured school reform in its "5 Myths" feature. The last time was Five Myths about Education Reform back in February.

This week's author is Thomas Toch, the executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington.

His take? Earlier stabs at merit pay didn't really work. One reason: the higher pay was not all that much higher, and two, decisions were made by somewhat arbitrarily by school principals. (Still a very bad idea in my estimation. Too political. Too ripe for abuse.) He adds that basing higher pay on narrow standardized test scores is a poor plan indeed if we want to turn out kids who can think and problem solve.

What does work? Teachers who were polled would forgo a pay raise to work in a building where the administration supported them.

Yeah. I'm for that.

These two Myth columns taken together provide a pretty good overview of the issues in education reform for an uninitiated public.

Giant Pool of Data

I downloaded a podcast of This American Life which is

a.) cool

and then listened to it as I ran my daily jog which is

b.) double cool.

Don't know why it took me so long to glom on to this.

The first episode I received is titled The Giant Pool of Money, explaining the economic meltdown once again. Much of it I'd heard in general outlines: Money changers want money, little guy is played for willing patsy. Whole mess fails. Little guy holds the bag.

Yadda, yadda.

But this time Ira goes into more detail and starts explaining how the whole industry fooled itself by its heavy reliance on data. Data that kept saying everything is 'cool.' We can keep handing out mortgages to people without assets, or even a visible income, and it won't really hurt the investor's bottom line too much. Data which defied common sense.

Data.

The education community always lags behind the business community and now this love affair with data has invaded every level of our school systems.

Call me old fashioned, but when it comes to humans, I much prefer narrative over numbers.

The tests say: "are kids is learning" -- but at what cost?

When I invest my energies into making sure my students pass a multiple choice reading test, and they pass it, but I know they will have a hard time reading important documents like credit card agreements or a lease on an apartment have I done my job?

Data says yes! Gut says no.

Michelle Rhee

The Washington Post Magazine launched a new look this week and chose Michelle Rhee as the cover story for their unveiling. She probably agreed to an interview with WP to repair her own look after the disastrous Time magazine cover featuring a stern looking Rhee wielding a broom.

After years of teaching The Crucible, I have a knee-jerk reaction to images of women with brooms... Ouch. Not good.

I took particular offense to the many witchy images of Hilary Clinton during her recent campaign, but after reading Rhee's mimicry of classroom teachers, making them sound like whiny complainers, I was inclined to see Rhee's portrait in the worst way.

She comes off a little better in this article.

Of course, she has a monumental job. It's clear that the white and middle class have abandoned the public schools of DC. Resurrecting schools that primarily serve impoverished children reveals the true extent of the charitable, dare I say Christian, inclinations of this nation.

You have to give Rhee props for trying. Too bad she chose to first lay all the blame for failure at the feet of the teachers, rather than including a public that continues to dole out a Darwinian justice.

Warren Buffet is quoted in the article. The captain of industry maintains that the only hope of reforming public schools lies in outlawing private schools.

Now there's a man who know the true root of the problem.

Money talks.

What does testing test?

In the junior and senior year of high school we are awash in testing. The juniors take the whole alphabet soup: PSAT, SAT, ACT, SOL, AP etc. etc. But what is being tested? In the Washington Post last week, the Answer Sheet explored that question in regards to SAT testing. It's a pretty interesting conversation with an employee of Princeton Review, Edward Carroll, who sits for the tests regularly so he can better design the tutoring sessions.

I've always been interested in this one: what exactly do we know our students know when we are done with the testing? He says, what I've thought, "If you're brilliant but slow, you'll only get an average score." Every year I have several students who fit this description. And yet, all of the important college level testing situations come with a time limit.

Here's what I wonder: Do we want fast thinkers?

In terms of innovation, I don't think we do. Who is going to come up with the truly new ideas if we continue to reward speed?

In terms of EMT's, physicians, soldiers, police officers, we need fast thinkers. Or at least we need our technicians - who work within a finite information system - to respond quickly and efficiently.

The Answer Sheet does a great service in educating the public about the limits of the tests our students take. If parents want a real picture of their students' academic abilities they should consult with their teachers.

My daughter's kindergarten teacher was a highly experienced woman whose opinion came with far more weight than the standardized test she shared with me. She counseled me once to ignore my daughter's tests results, because she had observed her in the classroom and knew how she had thought herself beyond the limits of the readiness test. Now that was a well-rounded evaluation I could value.

A Blogging Hiatus

I'll admit it. I've been ignoring my blog. I have failed in my self-imposed assignment to write at least once a week. I give myself a 'F.'

Here's why I've avoided the weekly summing up: It's been depressing out there in the world of political wrangling over health-care and education in the midst of a bleak economy.

In health care, I want it all: public options. For personal reasons as well as professional.

I want my son, a new father who works hard every day, to be able to have the peace of mind that health care brings. He's a breadwinner who has NO safety net. AND he works in a physically threatening job: landscaping.

I want my under served students to be able to eat and stay healthy. Their families should not have to choose between good health and food on the table or a roof over their heads. Those are pretty basic needs that our country should be able to offer. Many of the families I serve live under the stress of that threat daily.

In education, I want REAL reform. Not a new test, but a whole new way of looking at the work of teachers.

Following the political debating from day-to-day has been depressing. I needed a break.

But in the weeks of watching the arguing, I have found a parallel in the health-care/education realms.

It's all about the love.

I listened to doctors explaining how the corporate world of health-care for profit has changed the landscape of their daily work, and it reminded me of teacher complaints. We are in the same business: making people's lives better. How can wall street profit from that?

And yet, in both education and health care, other interests are making demands on our time. Doctors' work is translated into less time spent with patients (dictated by the cost formulas of insurance companies).

Teacher work is carved up into testing graphs, CFA's, curriculum maps, all to serve outside bean counters. Time is continually robbed from students by shifting teacher attention to work outside the classroom.

One doctor, at the end of a 45-minute documentary I saw about changing the focus of the entire medical profession back to the patient, expressed it as love.

In essence he said, "What we are really offering is love, not a product. When one person gives of himself to help another that is the basis of love. That is what healthcare is all about."

That is what teaching is too.

I had that notion confirmed today in this Washington Post review by teacher Nancy Schnog of Bel Kaufman's 1964 book Up the Down Staircase. I never read the book but I will have to get my hands on a copy. Bel, who Schnog had the opportunity to meet this summer, still says that all of teaching happens in the human connections.

The rest is just window dressing.

School's in session...

Yay! The kids are back and we are off and rolling. The beginning of a school year has to be the quintessential season of hope and promise. Everybody can see that an unsullied notebook full of fresh paper is where anything can be written. Nothing gives you another clean shot at recreating yourself like the first day of school.