Summer Brain - Help! I need you!

I am trying my damnedest to maintain the brain I had during the summer - the brain that automatically turned on the day after the last day of school last year. The optimistic brain, the idealist brain, the creative brain. Well, we have had kids in school for three weeks now, and I am losing it already. I need to get it back.

What is happening? What is the cause of the theft of my summer brain? The culprit is a tie between the implementation of the Common Core in the form of a brand new curriculum that is said to be aligned with that big bad bear, and the kids themselves. It is so ironic because I so love the kids. They are beautiful, funny, interesting, loving - for the most part, respectful. But school is stressful for us all. How to reconcile? 

I am trying to follow this new curriculum as laid out by the teacher's guide. It takes the class at least twice as long as the guide seems to think it should take. And though it looks straightforward, it is not exactly kid-friendly and definitely not language-friendly for English Language Learners. One or two of my students get it in the time allotted by the guide. Most get much of it, but not to mastery. Only a very few are totally out of their element. 

But the thing is, it is worksheet learning. If they don't get it, we are supposed to reteach and give them yet another worksheet. I think this is where the behavior problems come in. It is challenging and grueling. There is too much listening and not enough doing. And when it is time for the doing, it is doing worksheets. It reminds me of teaching "old school" math back in the day. And though it seemed as if they were getting it when I was teaching, when they have to do the worksheet on their own, I hear this haunting chorus throughout the room, "I need help, I need help, I need help." 

The "I do, we do, you do" model becomes "we do, we do, we do" and then time runs out, and still they have not mastered it. 

What needs to be done? The worksheet heavy environment may be what is causing the stress and the disengagement. Dare I depart from the curriculum as it is laid out? Dare I assume that this method of delivering instruction is not going to work with the majority of my students? And if so, what is the alternative? 

I think the first thing I need to do is rather than have the "you do" part independent practice, they can work in partners. The trick there is for students to learn how to share strategies rather than answers. I need to cultivate that sense of accountability. The second thing is to work on a spiral review bulletin board. Though I do review after I have seen their errors, I don't put it on a visual that they can access. The third thing is, assume that they will not get it via the worksheet process, and instead of spending time on it, give priority to active learning first. The fourth thing is, don't be bogged down by the "map" or the meeting "standards." Focus instead on getting students to own their learning. Did you learn something? Do you know how to do something that you didn't previously know? Celebrate that. 

Hello summer brain. Stick around. I'm going to need your optimism and positivity. 

(Photo taken in Seattle at the Seattle Art Museum gift store. Reminds me of my summer brain.) 

Negative ? Moi ?

       I have been told that the reason I am so critical of No Child Left Behind and the public school testing culture in general is that I am a terrible teacher with a negative attitude and I am afraid of being exposed. Therefore, it's my fault (as well as my colleagues at my school) that my school is in restructuring, or whatever term is used as the euphemism for failing. Because I dare to question top-down mandates, I have been accused of being negative. More than once it was words, something to the effect of: Why don't you just do what you're told. Mostly, it's looks that say it all: Don't rock the boat, just do it because we're supposed to, because "they" tell us to. You're wasting time complaining, being negative. 

I must say that my principal has never said these things to me by word or by looks. I so appreciate her because she is always willing to engage in dialogue with me. The other day, she  saw me looking disengaged at a Common Core/ Smarter Balanced Assessment training and asked me if I was all right. I shared my concerns. 

We were given sample questions for English/Language arts from the smarter balanced assessment that we will be taking next year. I teach Math, which was one reason I was not engaged, but it was also seeing the sample questions that discombobulated me.  We were to analyze the questions to determine what the skills and concepts were being addressed and what the instructional implications were. There was one sample that really got my goat.  Students were expected to read an opinion piece and determine out of 4 choices which one was a good revision for a passage in the piece. I totally agree that students should read and write opinion pieces, but why should they have to know which revision matches another passage? Getting them to develop a reasonable opinion is a challenge for a lifetime. As you get older, you have to take on more and more complex issues. This is education. It is our job to help them to help them to make better and better arguments for their opinions. Why should we waste time on teaching kids the ability to analyze whether or not a revision is appropriate for an opinion that they may or probably do not care about.

My principal tried to give me the rationale as she saw it, that it is not about writing as much as it is about analyzing, which is a higher order thinking skill, which is what the Common Core is about. She tried to convince me that there was a valid purpose, and I shared my opinion, disagreeing that this kind of activity is meaningful to the goal of analyzing. I believe we had a respectful discussion. 

Okay, now on the positive side - if I were teaching Language Arts or Social Studies, I would focus on the writing and speaking aspect of arguing for their own opinions based on reasonable evidence. If I knew I did this, and I knew that my students could do this and understood what it was to base your opinion on evidence, I would feel I did my job, whether or not it translated to a good test score. 

The Common Core and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium development and implementation was top-down. For Hawaii and other Race to the Top awardees, we had to accept it in order to "win" the competition. If it was helpful and truly for the common good, like seatbelt and drunk driving laws and speed limits, I would be okay with it. But based on the sample questions, I do not know if this is literally a "smarter" "balanced" assessment or just another tool to discredit public education by creating unreasonable questions.

I will continue to look for evidence one way or the other. Our time with our students is precious. We must guard it as much as we can with meaningful and engaging work. We don't have time for less than that. 

Diving into Common Core Math - Finding No Water

        Another one of the humongous changes being foisted upon Hawaii teachers and students is the implementation of the Common Core State (sic) Standards (I will refer to it as CC, from now on).  Here is another one of those onerous reforms that we have been told we need for the "sake of the children."  The talking point is that these standards will make our students "college and career ready." Who could be against that? If you criticize the CC, you subject yourself to being guilty of the "soft bigotry of low expectations." On the other hand, the CC itself claims to be about critical thinking and argumentation. So, we implementers need to look at these standards critically. These standards have not been field-tested and there is no proof that they will prepare students for that laudable goal to be "college and career-ready."  This full implementation is the field test and we need to tell the truth of it as we implement. Why? For the sake of the children.  

I gave my first common core math lesson today; this standard on place value is to be mastered in one lesson. As opposed to our previous hands-on, conceptually oriented curriculum, our new program is not fun and not games. This is not good when the ONLY way I have found for math to be engaging is that it be fun. According to the new CC-aligned program, you go from direct instruction, to independent work. And if they don't get it, you reteach. There is no cooperative learning, peer teaching, collaboration, games, dialogue. They seemed to understand when we worked together as a class. But when given independent work, which is worded differently from the teacher lesson, most of them bombed. 

So tonight, I am planning for how to approach this tomorrow. The reteach lesson is yet another boring worksheet. I looked high and low all over the Internet for lessons on this standard. The way that the Common Core states it, is not only different from what we, at our school, have taught before, I discovered it is different in the world of elementary school mathematics. I could not find resources that would help me to teach kids to understand that as you go from a lesser place value to the greater place value next to it, it increases by ten times. And inversely, as you go from a greater place value to a lesser place value, it is 1/10 as much as the greater place value. There are lots of resources about identifying place value, but I could not find one on this specific standard.  

I ended up making up a game and a game board and a story to go with it. Yes, that is what creative teachers do. I love being creative. That is the kind of teacher I want to be. The problem is time. It will take kids a lot longer to get these tougher standards. It will take me time to learn this curriculum and adapt it to be more kid-friendly if I need to. I need to keep focused on what is important, which is students learning. The standards can not be the goal, especially since they are intentionally set higher than the sky. Learning has to be the goal. 

Tripod, 7Cs, 52 students, and me

We have two bright, energetic, compassionate vice principals at our school this year. I get from them that they want to ease our fears about the new Educator Evaluation System. After a training, one of them sent out a link to us in case we were interested in learning more about the developer of the Tripod Student Survey, Dr. Ron Ferguson, of Harvard. I did. 

One of the agreements made with the Hawaii DoE when we ratified the contract was that the evaluation tool would be fair, transparent, equitable and comprehensive, that there would be recognition that there are factors affecting student achievement that are not within control of the teacher, and that the evaluation be based on multiple, valid measures. As we embark on the implementation of this new system, we will need to determine whether or not these agreements are being honored. 

Experiencing the ill effects of No Child Left Behind, I have long  been skeptical of attempts to "reform" public education. I always said that it hit us from behind when we weren't looking and that we need to keep our eyes wide open so that we don't get hit again. I was livid when I read our Race to the Top application and had to be assured that we, HSTA, did not necessarily agree to the details of the application, we just agreed to be part of the process, which included agreeing to a new evaluation system.

So the Tripod Student Survey is 10% of our evaluation, the least of our worries, I guess.  Tripod refers to content knowledge, pedagogic skill, and relationships; these components of our professional practice are to be exposed by student responses to surveys. 

(Photo below is a moment of cooperation.) 

  On the surface and listening to teachers' stories in the pilot schools, it seems ridiculous. How in the world can students accurately evaluate their teachers? One of the stories I heard was from a kindergarten teacher who scored low on one question: "Does your teacher push you to succeed?" The kids all said no, because their teacher never pushes them. 

The article written by Dr. Ferguson, in Kappan, an education journal, describes the components of the student survey. He claims that the correlation between the results have been validated by the Measures of Effective Teaching Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That, in itself, shouldn't be a reason for discrediting the research (although that is my knee-jerk reaction), but it does send up red flags. I am not convinced that the research is valid and reliable. Just because someone says it is doesn't mean it is, even if the names Harvard and Gates are attached to it. There has been criticism of the Gates MET report by others more qualified than me. ( http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-MET-final-2013 )

However, the basis of the survey is not nefarious - IF there was a way to be certain that the survey does in fact measure what it sets out to measure. What it sets out to measure are good things, called the 7 Cs. Yes, I want to be the teacher who Cares, who can Control her classroom, who can Clarify and clear up confusion. I want to be a teacher who Challenges students, who can Captivate and engage my students. I want to be a teacher who Confers with students and encourages them to speak and ask questions; and I want to be a teacher who knows how to Consolidate my students' learning so that they remember what they learned. I agree that these are admirable qualities of my professionalism, for which I do have room for growth, of course. 

I see two problems. One, I don't believe that it is validated by research. Therefore, I don't have faith that it will give an accurate accounting of these qualities. However, I will still aim to be this  ideal 7C teacher. Two, I am not convinced that any teacher who gets rated high on these measures will be able to do much better than me with some of my most challenging students. I do have some challenging students. I care about them, but it is a challenge controlling them. I am open to someone who thinks they are masters at control to come into my classroom and show me how they would handle them (and at the same time have a handle on the other 6 Cs and teach to the "standards"). 

The saving grace about this piece, is that it is only 10%, which was less than what the Department had wanted (or so I've been told). Dr. Ferguson does recommend that the Tripod, or any evaluation measure, be a part of multiple measures, otherwise high stakes will tend to distort the results. So, Hawaii teachers, we do have multiple measures, which is why we have multiple trainings on them. But whether or not it's all good, or even mostly good, is yet to be determined. Multiple invalid measures are still invalid. 

Superheroes and Monsters Lesson

So, ever since I have been teaching upper elementary (4th - 6th), students have had a problem with subtraction with regrouping. I think it's psychological, a repulsion to "taking away." Last year, I started calling it the "subtraction monster," and it did make the students more aware of the problem, rather than deliberately give the wrong answer. On the day after the last day of school this past summer, I had this idea for a classroom theme. They could overcome their "monsters" (not just the subtraction monster) - anything that kept them from being successful in school. It could be the lack of focus monster, the chatty monster, the forgot-my-name monster. The way they would do this would be to be a superhero. They would need to identify their superpower, something that they are good at, that gives them confidence and power. And with this power, they would be strong enough to "tame" their monsters. The goal for the year is to identify their monsters and "tame" them, to strengthen their power and give them more confidence to tame their monsters.

So that's the plan.

Today, I had my first pencil eraser throw of the year. This kind of thing was a big problem with this same set of kids last year (looping with them). So, I had the boys identify the monster that they had to "tame" - the wasting school supply monster and the playing around monster. I hope this works! 

(Names blacked out)

First Day of School Questions

I loop with most of my students from 4th grade to 5th grade. We are in the 5th grade phase of the cycle, which is nice. There are only 3 or 4 students in each of my two classes who are new. It is so nice to know everyone's name and a lot about their interests, strengths, challenges, especially when doing the Monsters and Superheroes lesson. I'll write about that lesson a little later. 

After getting all their supplies, binders, tool pouches, and book boxes organized, we finally got to do a "lesson." I had arranged the room differently this year and there were things on the boards and in the room that were not there last year. We passed out paper and I asked the students to look around the room and notice anything different or interesting, then write down questions about what they noticed. 

I was doing this lesson when our new vice principal came in and sat down to do an informal observation. Wow! That never happens on the first day. He was there when I gave the assignment, as I went over putting their names and dates in the right corner of their papers, as I tried to encourage them to write, as they asked the questions, and as I answered them. 

The biggest change was that I had put the desks in groups of 4s. For the last couple of years, I had arranged the room in 2 sections - the front of the room and the back of the room. This was so that I could break the class into 2 groups; one would be doing the math lesson for the day and the other would be doing math work on the class laptops. We would rotate half way through the period. When I did science, I would still do mostly groups of 4, but they would fit into the existing arrangement. So, the question was: Why did you change the desks around? 

Now, remember - the vice principal is in the room. I told my students the answer, and I am posting the answer on this blog. There are a lot of witnesses. The answer: so that the room would be set up for science. Dun dun dun. Putting it out there helps me to be committed to be the teacher I want to be. I chose to be a math and science specialist years ago because I love inquiry science. And I love inquiry science because kids love inquiry science. But science is not a priority when math test scores are. Science gets minimized in a test-focused world. But this year I want to be the teacher I want to be. This year, I am committed to give science more attention. 

(I think I should apologize to the vice principal. I think he wanted to talk to the kids, but he didn't interrupt the lesson. Oops.) photo: last year's volcano eruption.

Monsters and Superheroes

I discovered this app at the beginning of the summer and used it to record my idea for a classroom theme. I will write more about it in another post. 

http://www.haikudeck.com/p/upoiHjvCXv

As the Year Begins

It was so nice to have 4 days before school started to get ready for the year without kids. Granted, two of those days were in meetings and mandatory trainings, but compared to the chaos of last year, it's a noticeable improvement.

I had a sense of that teacher I want to be on Saturday after the last day of school this summer. I had ideas about a classroom theme (Monsters and Superheroes, will write about that later); I got inspired to write a grant (for science, and got it in before the deadline).  During the summer,  I went to see Parker Palmer, one of my author heroes, who wrote Courage to Teach, and was re-invigorated to be true to myself, and the teacher I want to be. My hope is to maintain that summer optimism and idealism as much as possible.

 I spent a few hours in my classroom on this weekend before the kids return. Some may wonder whether or not I have a life, and my answer is yes - this is my life. Life should be synonymous with joy, as much as possible. I actually enjoy being in the classroom planning and prepping. It is like my summer brain. I have ideas, I have hopes, I am optimistic. The challenge is to take that summer brain, that empty classroom brain, and make it come to life when it's show time. That's an apt metaphor for me. As a playwright, the big thrill is seeing your ideas come to life on stage. Here's to that!

By the way, I do have balance in my life. I also went to the beach, went to a graduation party, made potato salad, wrote a story, read half of a graphic novel, fished for guppies in the anchialine pond for my class aquarium, and did some chores. Oh, and started this blog.

My Hopes for this Blog

My previous blog, Outstanding West Hawaii Educators, was supposed to have been a blog about that. What I found out is that teachers are generally humble and not comfortable with talking about the good they are doing in their classrooms and schools. I mean, they'll talk about it, but they don't want to be written about. I ended up writing about the challenges we were having in Hawaii, as well as some reflections I made about my own professional life. I will try to expand the other blog, but unless I can figure out how to get teachers to let their light shine, it may be slow going.

 This year, I am toying with the idea of retiring. If I do, it will come with penalties. I have to tell you this to give context for my frame of mind.

For this one, I hope to use it to document my successes as being the teacher I have always wanted to be. I remember I was very close to that before No Child Left Behind.  Cooperative Learning, Multiple Intelligences, Critical Thinking, Work Sampling System, Inquiry Science. These were exciting developments for me.

For the past 10 or so years of top-down education "reform," my job satisfaction has gotten progressively worse. If I ever feel good about anything I do as a teacher, it's because I do something that goes against the grain, rather than with the grain. This happens mostly in science, which always takes a back seat to math.

Since I  am thinking of retiring, I want my last year or years to be the best of my career. I want to be the teacher I want to be, rather than the teacher I find myself being turned into -ruled by the "test," by "standards," by other people's goals for me and my students, rather than what is right and good for the students.

So, this will be my goal and intention. The test still looms heavily, even though it's based on growth, rather than a single best score in relation to a "proficient" cut score. We have new standards, the so-called Common Core State Standards. We have a new educator evaluation system, which is being piloted this year. I will be writing about all these trials and tribulations, I'm sure.

But, tonight, the night before the first day of school, I have hopes for a good year, the best of my career.  Hope you will follow my journey.