Diversity at its best

I feel like I've been really negative lately. No surprise, really; I am a purebred cynic.

However, I'm going to really, really try to use this as less of a forum for bitching and instead use it as a forum for ideas and successes. Like, for instance, this one. It is quite a step for Gay Rights Advocates. While sexuality really has nothing to do with education, tolerance does. What is school for, if not to teach tolerance? So I feel like this article is extremely relevant to education.

Just kidding...

regarding the last post. It's called TWITter for a reason... call me a cynic, but that is just too ridiculous; I can't stand it. So, yeah, deleted my account. I don't care how much of a luddite it makes me.

Anyway... time for posting articles. Quite a few good ones this week: this one for the hopeful, this one for regurgitation of testing "results," and this one, which is my favorite, and calls out former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Yaaaaaaaaaay.

Le siiiigh...

I have caved. Again. To the Twits.

I tried Twitter once before, very briefly, but deleted my account because it seemed pointless. It still does, mostly, but I joined this time for one reason, and one reason alone: this. Maybe it will be useful. We shall see.

In other technology news, I had to submit my "technology portfolio" to the school ITC to make sure that I know what I'm doing. Except it was rather ridiculous (which he admitted). Out of date, precursory knowledge. But at least it wasn't an inordinate amount of work.

Grades do not equal achievement.

When will students, parents, administrators, and politicians realize this?

At the staff meeting this week, the principal informed us that there was a small percentage of students with D's and E's compared to students who had earned C's and above. His comment in response was, "This tells me that you all are doing incredible work" when it comes to helping our students achieve. Ummmm, ok... really? Just because a kid gets a C doesn't mean that he understands the material. Even a kid who gets an A hasn't necessarily mastered the material. I have students who have D's who are putting in more of an effort than kids with B's and C's; they may just not be as naturally bright. Personally, I would rather have a class of dummies who work hard than a class of smart asses who do no work. Apathy really, really bothers me.

Also, kudos to the principal for giving us accolades, I suppose, but how about giving some of that credit to the kids? After all, teachers always talk about how we don't "give" grades, but rather, how students "earn" them themselves.

Anyway, the end of the quarter was yesterday, which means we're halfway done!

Yes!

Midterms are in the works right now. Assessment after assessment, with a dash of curiosity and creativity thrown in (hopefully), is constantly happening. But how much is getting through? How much can the students take? Heck, how much can I take?

On a related note, I really enjoyed this article. The subject was briefly touched upon in grad school, and is never, ever discussed among the staff. Withhold praise? What!? But I think it makes a lot of sense. Especially since students need to get used to never being praised in the working world. Let's face it: even the most successful students will miss the praise they were awarded (sometimes undeserved) a hundred times over in high school. But real life ain't that.

Man... sometimes I think I'm way too cynical (realistic?) to be a teacher.

Of course he does...

(Regarding the headline that discusses our illustrious Virginia governor and his "education" policies.) Read more here.

Although to be fair, some of his ideas are good. Like repealing the rather meaningless King's Dominion Law, which states that schools cannot begin for the fall until Labor Day. I also agree with him on decreasing the amount of choices of high school diplomas offered, though I would bet good money we have different reasons for wanting to do so. Three other initiatives he is proposing (Literacy, Tuition Tax Credits, and Youth Development) sound great in theory, but I wonder how he plans to initiate them. These are ambitious (and costly) plans. Call me a cynic (please!), but I have my doubts about these programs...

However, what I detest most is his contemptuous idea about eliminating teacher tenure. To quote the latter article, by Emma Brown, McDonnell "shrugged off the suggestion that tenure is necessary to protect academic freedom, saying that it ends up protecting bad teachers." We have heard this argument time and time again from multiple people on both sides of the aisle. This argument will never go away.

But I think Strauss puts it well when she states that there are evaluation systems in place that are effective, in which "bad teachers are removed even though teachers have tenure....teacher tenure... cannot protect an awful teacher, unless administrators fail to take the steps necessary to remove said teacher from the classroom."

While this problem will not be resolved any time soon, I think it is important to pay attention to this last point, which people too often ignore: That one should blame administrators who are not adequately evaluating their employees, rather than blaming the system itself. It is people who are accountable, then, and not organizations (*ahem* corporations *ahem*).

Back to the Grindstone...

I go back to school tomorrow after a nice long break. I guess writers and policy makers have taken some time off, too, because there is not a whole lot to report on that front. Except for this. Le siiiiiiiiiiigh.

Standardization baaaaaad... Curiosity goooooooood

Every month, the English department (like every other discipline) has a dept. meeting. Invariably, the meeting entails reiteration of what the county and/or principal wants us to implement, and then there is the requisite whining. This week, there was a raucous ruckus (see what I did there?) about the new grading policies that will most likely begin next September. Currently, we can basically weight the grades however we want, as long as homework is not a ridiculous amount (I think 15% is the max). However, the administrators on high in their infinite "wisdom" have declared that now, homework and classwork together can now not count for more than 20% of a student's grade. Which means that 80% comes from tests. What happened to all their bitching about not wanting us to "teach to the test"?

On the one hand, I can see where having a student's grade based primarily on their knowledge makes sense, and the practice with which to master this knowledge counts much less. However, students will quickly realize with this system that they can do little to no work in class and at home and they can still most likely earn a passing grade. But what they will fail to realize is that they can only master the information on tests if they spend enough time practicing. Therefore, students who just care about grades and not learning skill sets (which, let's face it, is how most of them think, as do their parents) will not be motivated to ever attend class unless there is a test. (Just like many college students... but that's another subject.)

Furthermore, as one colleague pointed out, this will mean we have to "test the shit out of these kids" in order to get enough data for sufficient grading, which will make them even less engaged in school and more apathetic toward learning in general. Another teacher pointed out that in the city in which he taught before he came here, these standards were implemented, and because of them, teachers had to have a specific number of homework assignments, tests, seminars, etc., and because it was almost impossible to fit all this in and not make themselves (or the students) crazy, teachers ended up randomly calling a classroom activity a test or project, and thus the categories lost all meaning.

Yikes.... I could go on, but I won't. Sooooo glad it's the weekend and there are only four more days of school before Winter Break. Before I sign off, I thought I would share this, with which I agree 100%. That's where we should be headed, not prescribing random percentages to classroom procedures.

Mental Health Day

I'm taking today off for two reasons (though perhaps only one is legitimate). Firstly, and most legitimately, I am in the process of moving, and I would like a day to get things done, unpack, call banks about address change, etc etc. Secondly, and perhaps less (or not at all) legitimately, I need a break from my freakin' seventh period.

Seventh period is by far my most challenging of the day, but things were getting much better. I had a system, the kids were into it, it was working. But right after Thanksgiving, everything changed. I got a new girl who just made everything ten times worse (who I found out Friday was a foster child and has been popped around from school system to school system, which probably accounts for her discipline issues). She was absolutely uncontrollable. I essentially went off the deep end and my students know it. I lost authority over them for three minutes. But those three minutes, like all minutes in the classroom, are essential. I was shaking when the dismissal bell rang (from pent up anger, embarrassment, stress, and a sense of failure) and went to see an administrator about the situation. He was completely understanding and told me later he had dealt with the problem child accordingly.

For some reason, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter Break are the most hellish of the entire year, for both students and teachers. Earlier that same week, I had an issue with a different student from the same class who I suspected of being mentally unstable. I asked a fellow teacher if I should report her actions directly to the school psychologist, or tell her counselor first. He suggested that, since she had verbally threatened me, I tell the administrator and then the counselor. Whoa.

Ug... only eight more days of school, then a much deserved break.

Words are Hard...

I went to a training today that dealt with teaching English Language Learners. They are obviously at a disadvantage because they're learning both language and content at the same speed that native English speakers are learning the content, so the county has decided to educate its teachers about how better to serve this group. Most suggestions they had, perhaps obviously, can serve all populations of students. But what I found most interesting was that we wrapped up the session with a reading selection from an old SOL test. I have no idea what grade level it was for, but holy crap it was difficult for anyone other than a high achieving (not average) Junior native speaker. It was ridiculous. There is no wonder ELL students have a difficult time passing standardized tests. I'm not saying we should dumb things down, but I'm saying we should expect them to perform at a specific level which may be lower than their peers, because words are hard, man.