Category: Being a better teacher

The Depleted Tree, and Other Tales of Teaching.

There is a happy ending here, but we need to walk through the dark woods first.

 

Seth Nichol’s post on the Known blog, “Why Teachers Are Walking Out” resonated deeply.

Recently I provided my quick, impulsive insights on The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and why after years of varied, faceted perspectives I just don’t like it. (Note my hypocrisy, however, when I link to my Amazon affiliates page in hopes of earning some revenue so I can purchase books for my classroom.)

One friend made the heartfelt comment that the story is truly about unending resolve and love. And it is. My hardened heart, however, reads an allegorical woman giving everything until she is a stump. (And if she becomes anything like the tree stumps in my backyard, a nest of centipedes, pill bugs, carpenter ants, and rot continue to eat the underpinnings and roots.) Seth Nichol’s post is my bad Giving Tree. It’s about being used up, with little hope of replenishment.

Women comprise 75% of the teaching workforce, and 80% of all teachers are white.

Anyway…………

………

……………….it took a man to write this article for it to go viral.

Not sure how I feel about the irony of that, but he does say what I have been reflecting and contemplating about for a while.

And women everywhere are feeling it. Clearly, we need more teachers of color and more men. We need balance. We need veterans and rookies. Younger and older. A representative biome of awesome. But it’s dang near impossible to do that if the trees keep getting chopped down.

Parts of my job I’ve described as an abusive relationship. For those who have been in actual abusive relationships my deepest apologies–my wordsmith talents cannot seem to find another analogy.  I have known women who have been in literal, abusive relationships. It’s heartbreaking, long-lasting damage impacts more than the couple or their children: every relationship from that circle feels the debris and detritus. (One of my saddest memories is of a Christmas where my aunt sat heartbroken without her own children, while I and my sisters still tried to do normal Christmas morning things.)

A Woman’s Honor

I’ve learned that a woman will do almost anything to prove she’s a good caretaker and nurturer.  The female honor code is, do it for the kids, no matter the cost.  Don’t ask questions or be perceived as disloyal to your children.

And, while each woman should be responsible for enforcing her own boundaries, we should not be systematically violating them, either.  I want the women of my world free to be fiercely loyal mothers and selfless givers, without some manipulative loser-of-a-school system taking advantage of her selflessness.

But we have an underfunded system who keeps pushing and stretching for every free woman-hour and donation it can get from those fiercely loyal mothers and their Boxtops.

The system, in many places, bears a creepy resemblance to an abusive husband.  If she loses “him” [her job], she feels like she would lose everything.  He constantly tells her she’s not good enough, and has spreadsheets with scores to prove it.  He blames her for the kids problems, and offers no real help in fixing them.   But she stays and puts up with him– because she loves the kids.

He is boxing her in, manipulating her, and implicitly calling her loyalty into question every time she doesn’t bend over backwards to appease him and make him look good.

Should we be surprised that she’s finally walking out?

Students suffer when teachers aren’t there for them. That does not mean ‘being there’ is spending every dime, and taking time away from our own care and care for our families. Being there means just that: present in the moment, planning, preparing and learning about who they are, so that with their parents, their families, their friends, they also have one more adult in their world who is promoting their success.

My husband has been telling me for years to consider teaching somewhere else. Whatever got in the way before, whatever excuse, I am now free, free to focus on what I love most: teaching students.

What are my salves, balms, and curatives?

  • Getting started and organized with #ProjectLit
  • Organizing books, binders, and backlogs of things
  • Sweeping nooks and corralling crannies
  • Celebrating my older son’s graduation with dual degrees from the University of Washington
  • Finishing up my ELL endorsement
  • Carving out time to write and create
  • Remembering happiness is a choice, but not to diminish time to heal

For further reading:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-more-men-go-into-teaching.html

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/08/15/the-nations-teaching-force-is-still-mostly.html

Living history.

What, you may ask, is a “DBQ?”

Well– it’s a framework for responding to a question, like a CER (claim, evidence, and reasoning statement) or SAR (short answer response). DBQ stands for Document Based Question.  (Anytime I see a tweet or other social media post that incorporates real-time events and teaching I go a little happy crazy.)

When teachers request ideas for content, sometimes I get a little…something. The world is right there, right now–happening. In real time. We are this moment in time, in history, affecting outcomes and futures.

If you’d like to use DBQs, CERs, SARs, etc. fantastic! Looking for what to talk about is the easy part. Agreeing and objective…now that’s where the fun is!

Overview of Short Answer Responses and Funnel Paragraphs:

It matters.

Since last summer I’ve participated in the WABS/STEM Fellowship program (Washington Alliance for Better Schools).

On May 22 the cohorts presented their Problem-based learning units, and we enjoyed delicious food and riveting speakers. My cohort consisted of one other man, Steve, from my district, a sixth-grade teacher (who’s amazing), a teacher, Gaylynn, from Northshore (also–amazing), a young University of Washington professor (who couldn’t attend the event) and a man, Jim, from Boeing. Steve and I invited our principals, but they didn’t make it. I wish they had because if there was ever an evening to see how much representation matters, this was it.

Through working with this team for a few hours every month, we have definitely bonded, and I knew what we were doing is important work. But what I didn’t know until that night how much of a big deal this all really was. It gave me so much hope for our students, and then on Thursday this past week, I shared some important words of hope I haven’t felt in a long time. In fact, I shared with them how much I’ve been struggling to stay positive in our current political and economic climate–how I could help them reframe their definition of the American Dream.

Wow, that got heavy fast.

But promise: there is hope.

IMG_7566

Our keynote speaker was Dr. Lonnie Johnson, known as the inventor of the Supersoaker. But as we all learned, that was just a means of funding his other passions, primarily finding ways to get ourselves powered up. Sitting there listening to his story, I wished with all my heart that my students were there in the audience, too. That speaking to a room of adults is all well and good, but my middle school students needed to hear him. (I learned later he went to speak at one of the district’s high schools, and that’s great, but dang…middle school kids!!) He was introduced by Damien Pattenaude, the Superintendent for the Renton School District. Dr. Johnson’s story of making a robot from spare junkyard parts and winning his high school science fair made a huge impact on me: what we, educators, have to rebrand as “makerspaces” in order for our administrations and districts to allow us to do and justify, the world is leaving us behind because we’re trying to catch up with the past.

LonnieJohnson_001-235x300

I can’t recall the Boeing representative’s name, but I do remember his message: there will be jobs. There will be jobs for all types of people–from skilled machinists to artists, coders, designers, engineers– everyone.

IMG_7555
These are designs from 5th-grade students–cleaning up space junk!

Our unit is on multitasking. Gaylynn’s students already understand that they can’t multitask. My and Steve’s students didn’t. The difference? Socio-economic backgrounds. (But that’s an exploration for another day–just something I noticed.) But I do know that representation matters. It matters a lot. We’ve had some amazing speakers at my school, but many of them have been white the past few years. Prior to this administration, we had speakers of color. And it matters. This year, one of my favorite colleagues who changes the world by walking in a room, had a panel of speakers, from our superintendent to one of our beloved PE teachers, speak at our Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The contrast between the students’ behavior when the (white) speaker presented at another assembly and this one was marked. The students were respectful, engaged, and in awe — and not of our superintendent, but of our PE teacher. (She is pretty awesome.)

I shared with my students all of what I saw and heard, and that I did this for them. And that I understand hearing it second hand from me is not the same. But they did listen. Later, walking to the back of the room to check on something I noticed several students had Google’d Lonnie Johnson’s name and were reading about him.

It matters.

 

And I’ll be exploring these ideas next:

As Dr. Jackie Gerstein recently wrote, Failure is for the Privileged, we must caution our expectations and falling toward glibness when it comes to risk-taking, and move toward fostering defining success:

Not everyone “gets” to fail. If you are a student of color you have to be perfect. Think about the standardized test that plays an over-sized role in determining an accelerated or remedial course. You better not fail. Think about the rates of suspension and expulsion. You better not fail. Think about use of force incidents on campuses. You better not fail. Think about using a word the teacher doesn’t know. You better not fail. Think about hiding the fact your parents are undocumented. You better not fail. (Failing is a Privilege)

Let me tell you about my boat.

Yes, this is an open letter. I hope it’s read, and understood with the best of intentions. It comes from a place of love.

Dear 7th Administration Team Coming to My Building in 13 Years:

You won’t know me, except maybe by reputation. I’ll be in a new building with a new team next year, the first time in my current twelve-year career. However, three of the four administration team is not only leaving the building, but leaving the district, as of today. Some teachers cried today, uncertain of their own professional futures, and being one of the veterans of the building, like some scrappy old sea captain, assured them they would weather this, too. And they will.

Nonetheless, it is quite a talent drain, caused by upheaval and uncertainly of the district and school board’s plans. (Whatever those may be. We, the staff, parents, and community members speculate daily.)

So: you’ll be the next crew. The seventh generation of administration in thirteen years.

But if the truth was known I may not have left. I work with some of the best educators in the world. There is a major upheaval in my district, and I am grateful beyond measure for my new opportunity in a new building. I am going to work in a building, by all accounts, that is a supportive, welcoming and healthy atmosphere. So when you come to my current building, never doubt for one minute that I was not an excellent teacher and my students over the twelve years thrived. And they thrived in spite of the leadership changes.

And I know others who’ve left my building experience ‘survivors’ guilt’ because not all schools are as challenging as this one, and students may not have the layers of trauma and effects of poverty, I will not have that same experience. There is no guilt for me: I don’t believe I am abandoning my students, for the simple and purest of reasons: my colleagues make that school amazing. There is nothing to run away from.

If there is one thing –one important, critical thing–I can advise any new admin team is my school is not broken.

It does not need to be fixed.

The staff isn’t there because they’re second-rate or floundering.

I know in last goodbye emails the staff is recognized as one of the most dedicated staff there is, but they’re not just that.

They’re world-class educators: they are global. They are larger than life. They are intelligent and please:

do not get in their way.

Let them show you the way.

Your instincts might be to come in and get the lay of the land, and then slowly, build your empire. You’ll hire people you know. It may even borderline on cronyism. You may hire people in your own image, or your ideas of what the perfect teacher is. You may institute new rules and protocols, which is your right, but please consider what institutional knowledge comes with the staff already.

It is vast and deep.

So please: when you’re about to put down that first brick of your empire, stop.

Allow the tribe of my school to embrace you, and share the culture of the school with you. You are not there to change the culture. You are there to embrace and bask in the climate.

Allow the teams to continue.

Trust in their professionalism.

These are adults. They are not assets to be managed.

Allow for open collaboration and dialogue.

Be transparent.

Be honest.

Admit your strengths, and what you bring to the table. Weaknesses don’t matter. Truly. Nor do the staffs’ minor weaknesses or foibles.

This is such a great staff you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. To lead this group of educators you need only to listen and share your expertise when asked. Be interested in what they’re doing. Support the nooks and crannies, not just the big fields or the big rooms. The joys of working here is in a thousand tiny moments. Let the staff share these, and marvel at their enthusiasm.

They are not the walking wounded or victims of some prior poor leadership. They move with their own volition and purpose. They are educated, curious, and did I mention intelligent? Intelligent with a fervor and ferocity that may be unmatched by many other staffs.

Remember, you are joining their crew. They will welcome you with open arms and perhaps a dash of healthy skepticism. Show them you understand the true definition of a leader is someone whose strength comes from humility.

The staff is going to love you. This will be the best gig you’ve ever had.

Mrs. Love

 

PS If you appreciate my love of Wes Anderson films, you’ll also appreciate many of my colleagues, too.

 

 

 

Dowry.

Back in April 2015, Love, Teach wrote a blog post that has been widely circulated, What I Wish I Could Tell Them About Teaching in a Title I School, and it is solidly one of those I wish I had written.

My district is in flux now, and I don’t know what exactly is going to happen next. I am learning that in times of chaos babies do, indeed, get thrown out with the bath water. (Forgive me, Sharon.) I’m resigned to whatever happens as long as I can keep teaching. I have invested in myself on behalf of my students, and I want to keep a positive net balance.

So when I move ahead, sideways, or upwards, what will I bring with me?

  • A robust classroom library I’ve spent years curating and refining.
  • A process of planning instruction that meets the needs of the students with forethought and deep reflection, in the moment, and processed over time
  • Binders full of lessons, units of study, scope/sequence curriculum maps
  • Technology skills galore
  • Ability to connect with students and parents
  • A love of working with teams of teachers to collaborate
  • A strong mentoring background to help new teachers
  • Deep devotion to teaching writing and helping students find their paths
  • Strong and innate desire to support the administration and colleagues
  • A supportive PLN across the country, and world
  • A sense of humor

And I’m also taking and knowing everything Love, Teach wrote, too.

As well as cups full of pencils.

I belonged in my building when I belonged: there is no gauzy film of nostalgia over my years in my first teaching job: it was and continues to be hard. Now, perhaps I don’t belong or am included. And that’s okay. I’m not going through the growing pains many newcomers experience in a tough school such as mine. When I was a new mother, I didn’t want the advice from older women, I just wanted them to tell me I was doing a great job.

And even though the difficulties and challenges, however, have shifted, the students still need the same from me: someone who knows them and cares about them and likes them enough to set high expectations grounded with deep empathy.

How do I know I’m helping? When a student asks me three tough questions about police violence and #BLM for her passion project. When a student is having a bad day and then brings me a flower the next day because I was kind. When I tell a student that dangerous behavior is first my problem, and he says, “too bad for you,” and then I tell him, well, now you know, so it’s your responsibility now….he got it. It’s not all on my shoulders, and that’s heaven: when colleagues I know and trust share the support and love for our students, I know we’re doing it right.

I still have a lot to learn, as do we all.

Why Took Much Experience Can Backfire by Francesco Gino, in Scientific American:

By contrast, when we’re reminded that the more we know, the more there is to learn, experience opens our minds to the fact that there are multiple ways to approach the same decision or task—even those that start to feel monotonous over time.

Consider views that do not align your own:

As Porter has found in her research, it’s an important realization: Higher levels of intellectual humility are associated with a greater willingness to consider views that don’t align with our own. People who have higher intellectual humility also perform better in school and at work. When added experience is accompanied by awareness that we have more to learn, we are more apt to see that the world keeps on changing—and that we’ll have to change along with it to thrive.

 

Careful.

One a walk with my husband the other day, we came to the conclusion that neither of us has much charisma. And by and large, that hasn’t been a problem for us.

I think.

Not sure.

We’ll see.

Both of us are similar in our questioning/challenging of issues that affect us personally, locally, and nationally. (Globally, too, but our area of effect diminishes.) And, those who perceive themselves with unwarranted authority may push back or act in retributive ways. However, we both would agree that those true leaders, who are collaborative and inclusive, use their charisma well to garner support and common effort.

Our challenges are too many and difficult to expect anything less from each other. Be careful.

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/how-to-tell-if-your-school-district-is-infected-by-the-broad-virus/

Such Bountiful Assessments

Just in time, during our ELL Endorsement class yesterday, we reviewed various assessment protocols and terms. They weren’t unfamiliar, but a timely reminder. Funny, that.

Two, at the top:

  • Reliable.
  • Valid.

As the man said, “Houston, we may have a problem.”

Is the SBA test, or Smarter Balanced Assessment, actually Smart, Balanced or a valid/reliable Assessment? Here are some resources for you to draw your own conclusion, with a dash of my own observations.

From the Department of Education, ESSA page:

 

Ensures that vital information is provided to educators, families, students, and communities through annual statewide assessments that measure students’ progress toward those high standards.

Yelp. About that. I was told I was ‘teaching to the test’ when I offered my resources about the brief write rubrics so we could help students grow as writers, the resources I wanted to share did not find a forum in my building last year (or this year, either.) But okay–it’s still good stuff, and there are many ways that the Common Core and SBA have some challenging and rigorous questions. I just wish it wasn’t all at once, in secret, but little assessments over the course of the year (i-ready doesn’t count) that show growth.

Think about it: instead of a minimum of four days, with three-hour testing blocks during the month of May, there were smaller assessments, open, transparent, and available for PLC discussions, to show student growth? And what if—WHAT IF — Federal dollars weren’t tied to the scores? If accountability is the order of the day, I would wager most teachers have no issue with accountability as long as their professional judgment and expertise drive the assessment and continuing instructional decisions.

Plus sides (with caveats)

  • It is essentially a reading comprehension test, even for many of the math questions. If we continue to build strong literacy programs with this focus, that is a plus. However, literacy does not need to mean solely text: it should include multiple pathways and access points for all learners and abilities.
  • There has been a huge increase in the resources available for educators. Many of the questions are aligned with Common Core.

Drawbacks:

  • Currently, it is one of the few measurements for Federal dollars.
  • It’s expensive in terms of instructional time, financial, and stress for students, parents, and teachers. And administrators.
  • It may not be reliable or valid. It’s chock full of inaccuracies.
  • Educators may not be accurately helping students prepare for it. (And this could lead to further undermining of teachers as professionals, implementing more canned or scripted programs.)
  • It is not transparent. This goes against everything Hattie, et. al prescribe for student and teaching effectiveness: know the targets and criteria for success, and allow students to monitor and reflect. This style of summative, opaque assessment flies in the face of that research and best practices.

Some previous posts on this topic:

Theatre of the Absurd

Tomb Raider

http://prezi.com/1ellu5vq58bz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

 

My own conclusions? More of a wish list, I suppose.

I wish…there are more collaboration instead of isolation about assessment.

I wish…there were alternative pathways for all students with varying abilities and needs to have access to assessment and instruction that challenges, celebrates and is based on growth.

I wish…much, much time and money were spent on this.

For further reading:

Disrupting Boredom.

I’m bored.

And that’s a good thing.

Because creative folks like me (and I believe we’re all creative) shake things up when we’re bored. (We sometimes get in trouble, but if we do too much cost-benefit analysis  we will never break the cycle.)

This past week, the week after break, I gave my students space and time to work, clean up assignments, and it’s working well. But I couldn’t help feeling something was missing. It’s tough to look at curriculum I created, like a painting or sketch, and know it’s not done, it’s not good enough, and it needs more. I have little guidance, or opportunity for dialogue, and am professionally isolated this year. (More about that when I analyze Call-Out Culture, losing my tribe, and being sent to the metaphorical solo igloo.) Rest in peace, Jean Briggs. I feel you. It’s sure darn cold and lonely when you’re iced out of the group.

And very timely, the gentlemen at The Great Handshake wrote the essay I needed:

The Great Handshake, “Disrupting April” —

My co-blogger Adam always says that great teachers are really just about making moments. Those kind of moments form memories by disrupting the normal blur of the school day, and those memories connect to some kind of learning for the students in our classrooms. Unfortunately, we often forget the great gift of memorable moments. We tend to let each day pass without noticing, and we fall victims to the seduction of forgetting. It seems kind of nice not to think, but before we have taken notice we are bored and miserable.

Those words, ‘memorable moments.’ There are a hundred of them every day. The student who says, “I love coming to this class!” with no sarcasm or cynicism, the ELL student who wants to keep writing on the Digital Dogs post, the colleague who says a kind word, or the young thinker who uses the digital tools to create something new and solid, and supports my instructional efforts.

The best teachers and educators recognize this tendency that we all have to slide through our days without any meta-cognition, and they become masters of disruption. They have the ability to build fences, around huge spaces where kids can feel secure and creative, and then within that space, they disrupt, ignite and engage.

The thing is–and I am not alone–we teachers live in fear so we falter, freeze and fail. Our nature as educators is to meet and exceed standards: and if those standards are subjective and punitive, we stumble Sisypheanally up a mind-numbing hill. If we are to empower and engage our students, we must look to our own engagement and empowerment first.

What this looks like may not fit into a subjective checklist. It is now my mental challenge to get over that, get beyond it, and not allow it to stifle this process.

Thank you for the reminder, gentlemen.

 

 

Three more for the road…

Spring break is over today, and while it was magnificent in many delightful ways, I’m fighting off the “Sunday” feeling. If I were choosing an overarching theme for this year it would be “Contradictions & Paradoxes: The Professional Dilemmas of Mrs. Love.” Wait, that’s a title, not a thematic description.

Oh well. Whatever.

The featured image of our district’s calendar says there are ten more weeks of school. “Normally” I would be ending the voyage, the journey with my ELA students by argumentative writing, onto memoir, and bowing out by saying, “See? I told you that would go fast!” and they would look at me in amazement at my sorcery and augur skills.

But I’m teaching semester classes this year, and it’s a bit disorienting. I have to make connections faster, and it doesn’t give a lot of time to build history and the ‘inside jokes’ but we’re doing all right. I can’t shake this feeling that other teachers are passing me by, and I’m still bogged down by unimaginative and muddied conversations.

There are some ideas I want to capture, though, three big ones from readings:

I. This is a long article from KQED/Mindshift, but worth the read.

How Do You Know When A Teaching Strategy Is Most Effective? John Hattie Has An Idea

A Model of Learning
From: https://www.nature.com/articles/npjscilearn201613/figures/1

Here is my warning*:

Too often educators apply an incredible concept and then try to truncate it and make it fool-proof. Paradoxically, this ends of doing more long-term harm to students and teachers.

myth

Examples:

Grit.

Growth Mindset.

Learning Styles.

And maybe Hattie’s Success Criteria:

For Hattie, most learning rests on student understanding of the success criteria for a learning task. Hattie calls this a “prelearning phase” because if students don’t understand what it will take to be successful, they often act blindly and without motivation. He says that students who are taught the success criteria are more strategic in their choice of learning strategies, and thus more likely to encounter the thrill of success that will lead to reinvestment in learning.

Success Criteria are magnificent as assessments. As Hattie states, it’s a pre-learning phase, which means pre-assessment. They are an ASSESSMENT. Repeat: AN ASSESSMENT. They are not guarantees of learning the first time. If they were, then a computer could write them and score students, and they’d all receive 100% every time. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? For some administrators, writing the success criteria is tantamount to its first name only: Success. But the second part, Criteria, is where the learning and teaching happen.

They can be used as:

  1. A student’s self-assessment
  2. A teacher’s assessment and information on instructional steps
  3. A means to articulate a goal or process
  4. A reflective tool: see Caitlin Tucker’s work: http://catlintucker.com/2018/04/ongoing-self-assessments/ (I have years’ worth of student self-assessment and reflective pieces, but this is really good, too. Share and adapt!)

“Too often students may know the learning intention, but do not [know] how the teacher is going to judge their performance, or how the teacher knows when or whether students have been successful,” Hattie and Donoghue write in their article. When students understand how they will be evaluated they can also self-evaluate more effectively, a metacognitive skill that can help students become more independent learners.

How students gain initial content knowledge that they can then manipulate has long been a discussion among educators. Some argue students need to learn basic information before they can begin to use it. Others say students will learn information when it is critical to a problem or project they are trying to understand.

The Hattie/Donoghue learning model dives into that discussion, describing learning strategies that work best at the surface level, and those that help consolidate surface learning, as well as those that develop deep learning and work to consolidate deep learning. Lastly, Hattie and Donoghue deal with the idea of transfer, which broadly means being able to identify similarities and differences between problems and effectively apply previous learning to new situations.”

I have often wondered if our overemphasis on Learning Targets and Success Criteria stunt students’ true growth, that if they can parrot what they are, many students remain stuck at the surface level of learning. This is Hattie and Donohugh’s caution to us, and we should take heed. If the learning isn’t transferrable, then it’s not learning.

II. Jackie Gerstein Fills My Teacher Heart With Joy:

Just read it.

https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2018/04/15/educators-as-active-listeners/

III. Cult of Pedagogy to the rescue (again)

4 Ways Microsoft is Making Learning More Accessible

Since we are a Microsoft-centric district, I shared this with the staff, too, and more importantly, will be sharing it with students.

 

P.S. And someday, I dream of this level of collaboration and professional growth:

Be The Change

but for now, I’ll just keep on keeping on.

 

*Warning is too strong. How about one of these?

 

auguring, augury, forecasting, foretelling,predicting, prediction, premonition,presaging, prognosticating, prophecy (alsoprophesy), prophesying;

 

apprising,informing, notification, notifying, tip-off;

advice, counsel, guidance,recommendation, suggestion, tip;

announcement, declaration