I'm Sorry I Asked

Maverick, in his usual endearing way, whined, "I hate social studies. Everyone hates social studies." As I passed out an assessment on the American Revolution.
"Just because you hate social studies, doesn't mean everyone hates social studies," I sighed.
"Yes they do!" Maverick insisted.
"Fine, let's check with the rest of the class. Raise your hand if you hate social studies. Be honest, I won't be mad."
20 hands go up. Woops. I can know only draw one of the following conclusions:
1. I have been teaching social studies in a thoroughly horrible way.
2. Asking students if they like a subject while passing out a test on said subject will not elicit a positive reaction.
I've been trying to make social studies (and every subject I teach) engaging and fun. Just during the past unit alone students debated whether or not to fight the British, they created protest posters against the various British taxes, and we shared a read aloud of the Magic Tree House: Revolutionary War on Wednesday. So either I need to reevaluate my teaching of social studies, or the kids don't realize that these lessons were in fact social studies. In the future I guess I should also be careful asking questions I don't know the answer to.

22 Days.

Arrgh. 22 days. 22 days. 22 days.

This countdown is simultaneously driving me insane and keeping me sane. On the one hand time is running out to teach my kids, and there's a lot left I want to teach them. Many of them still can't handle basic multiplication and division facts. I also want to cover social studies in some basic and deeper ways (50 states, exploring the 3 branches of government, doing a report on family history and immigration...). Writing a 5 paragraph essay was another goal I set for myself in August.

Then again, when 4 of your students get in a fight in gym, that can be pretty frustrating. Dealing with the same 4 kids all afternoon while trying an activity exploring symmetry that should be fun, is even more frustrating. By the end of the day I had used a Tibetan temple's worth of deep breaths and the mantra repeating in my head was 22 days, 22 days.

Sigh, It's Funny Because It's True

According to this report from The Onion, "teaching disabilities" are on the rise:

The study, which surveyed 2,500 elementary and high school level instructors across the country, found that nearly one out of every five exhibited behaviors typically associated with a teaching impairment. Among them: trouble paying attention in school, lack of interest or motivation during class, and severe emotional issues.

Sound like anyone at your school? Hat tip to GothamSchools.org.

Debunking "The Harlem Miracle"

One of the scariest aspects of the main planks of the current education reform movement is a call for more charter schools. Clearly, Obama, Klein, et al, say, charter schools are getting results that public schools can't. The obvious solution then, is more of them. Never mind the fact that these schools only serve a fraction of the student population in the cities they operate in. These schools are nothing short of miracle workers.

Or, maybe there's more to the story. It's actually no big mystery. It just requires a bit more than the lazy thinking that charter school cheerleaders looking for a silver bullet are willing to expend. How do charter schools get their unbelievable results? They're simply not teaching the same students that public schools service.

Don't take my word for it. Check out InsideSchools report, bluntly titled, "Most Vulnerable Students Shut Out of Charter Schools." The report explains what most people in education already know. The secret behind many charter schools' too-good-to-be-true test scores is the fact that they don't cater to most difficult students to teach, those being students who are homeless, English Language Learners or have special needs. Not to mention it helps to have the luxury of kicking out any student with behavioral problems, no questions asked.

It's not that there aren't charter schools doing exciting new things and making exciting progress. I'm just fed up with the rush to coronate charter schools as THE ANSWER to America's failing schools. Before we get even close to that, we should probably look a little deeper at exactly what sort of results they're getting and how relevant it is compared to the populations of all other public schools.

Big Hat Tip to GothamSchools.

Please Shut Your Mouth

File this under "Be Careful What You Wish For." Brainstorming ways to deal with The Biter's behavior, I fantasized about duct taping his mouth closed. It's probably not allowed under the DOE's discipline code, but it would be highly effective in stopping his outbursts. But, returnig to reality, I moved on to other ideas.

What did The Biter bring to school today? A roll of duct tape. What did he do with it? Tape his own mouth shut. Why did he do it? Among other reasons (including some sort of ill-advised revenge plot against some hostile 5th graders) he wanted to stop himself from shouting out inappropriately.

Now this may have been his true intention, but what ended up happening was just another ridiculous call for attention. This time creating fart noises by blowing out against the duct tape attached to his mouth. Frustrating, to say the least. But at least now I know how my plan to use duct tape would have played out if I'd actually tried it.

Um, How Do I Respond to This?

One of the fundamental rules of teaching is "pick your battles." In general, engaging a student who talks back or makes a smart-alec remark doesn't do anything to help your own standing. At the very least you undermine your own position, and in the worst case scenario the situation escalates into a really nasty confrontation. It hasn't been easy, but I've learned to ignore some of the more trivial comments from angry or misbehaving students.

Then there are situations like today. In spite of my best efforts, there are certain comments you can't quite ignore. It started out with "The Biter," a student who was transferred into my class about two months ago, making comments about bacon balls and cheese balls. He was getting the desired laughs from most of the oh-so-mature gentlemen in my classroom. But I decided to focus my energy on the kids who were laughing, rather than The Biter.

The Biter, losing his audience, decided to up the ante, keeping with the same "balls" motif, but now bringing "your mother" into the situation. I decided this wasn't acceptable, pulled him out of his seat and brought him face to face with the classroom rules. I thought maybe a firm reminder of our class's rule about appropriate language might be in order. How did he respond? I can't repeat what he said, but let's say he didn't get the message about appropriate language.

I'm not sure how I could have responded differently. I definitely lost my cool, but there inevitably comes a moment in a classroom where you have to draw a line and say enough is enough. It definitely won't produce the change I need from the kid, because if it was that easy he wouldn't have been kicked out of one class already this year. This once though, I don't think I'll second guess my decision. It could be a mistake, but at this point, I'm entitled to stand by it.

ELA Goals Revisited

Before the school year began I set the goal of helping every student pass the ELA with a 3. Even though I've always had my doubts about the reliability of the state tests in assessing student performance, I do believe that a kid who can read at grade level should be able to pass the test with a 3. So in setting my sights on 24 or 25 3's, I was essentially saying I wanted to get all my students to grade level by January.

This may have been a reach since 2/3 of the kids coming into my class were reading 1-2 grades below level. But this was the goal I set, because I believe there is no time to spare in helping students like mine catch up to their peers in better funded schools. I also saw this goal as a chance to set myself apart and prove that I had fully developed as a teacher. I wanted to be beyond competent. I wanted to be excellent.

Looking at the scores of my students with disappointment, I can still see progress for myself and them. But it seems excellence will have to wait at least another year. In the mean time, I'm looking at the scores of my grade-level peers, and seeing that I too, am "approaching the standard" for the grade, and not yet meeting it. This was the most frustrating disappointment of all, because of how much I feel I've grown since last year, and the amount of positive feedback I've been receiving since September.

In spite of all that, it looks like I have much work to do. I plan on keeping the same goal for myself and my students provided I continue to teach a testing grade next year. The goal of every student attaining a 3 for me is not about testing skills, but just shaping them into competent readers, and that's a worthwhile goal for me. I didn't decide to teach to produce marginal gains. I want to know that when my students leave my classroom, I have made a profound difference. For the time being, I'll have to assure myself that I've had a positive effect, just not one that was measured on this year's ELA.

And the Results Are...

Inconclusive. I spent the last few weeks waiting for the ELA scores to come in. I was prepared for a major disappointment, but I was hoping for a major success. What I didn't prepare for was ambiguity. Most of my kids improved, but almost the same number declined. 4 students went up a performance level (from 2's to 3's), but 3 went down a performance level. And while overall my class improved, it doesn't feel like much of a victory.

What's most frustrating is how little the numbers tell me. We're talking about a test that was taken in January. So the data doesn't really even speak to the students I'm currently teaching. The data doesn't really speak to anything at all, because it isn't dissected in any way to show strengths in needs in specific areas such as vocabulary, drawing conclusions or writing. All I have are numbers, numbers that in many ways contradict what I know to be true about the reading and writing abilities of my students.

Of course all this is inconsequential, because even if the test was flawed, or too easy (the whole city went up 20%? Really?), those flaws apply to 4th grade students (and their teachers) universally. So while I might begrudge problems with the test, I cannot use them as excuses for my students' scores. And whatever problems there may be, that won't keep the state from using these numbers to assess my school, my students and myself. Ultimately, I know my students should have done better, because pretty much everyone else did better. So, now it's time to figure out what went wrong, so I can get it right next year.

Judgment Day

Today I got the news that I will get my ELA scores at tomorrow's grade level meeting. The best I can say is that at least the waiting will finally be over. In the mean time, I'm pretty damn nervous about the results. Going into the year I set a goal for myself that all my students would pass with 3's. Now I'm confident that 24 3's will be nothing short of a miracle. Instead I'm just hoping not to see any 1's.

In any case, this will be the first year that I was confident in my abilities as a teacher, so I'm interested to see what translates in terms of test scores. It will also be interesting to compare and contrast those scores with what I know to be the abilities of my students in the classroom. For example, I may be pleasantly surprised by the number of 3's, but that will tell me more about the worth of the state exam than my student's academic aptitude. We'll find out tomorrow...

ELA Scores Are Out

The verdict is good for my school. What happened with my class specifically remains to be seen. As for what this means for the future of instruction, I'm anxious to see. Will this validate a culture of high stakes test sophistication or will alleviate pressure and make some room for content area studies and actual learning. I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

Creating a Joyful Classroom

Yet another result of my recent reading of Letters to a Young Teacher has been utter disenchantment with test sophistication. I've always despised it, but also held on to a bit of belief in it as a necessary evil. It helps that the tests are behind me now, but I'm also just frustrated at how learning gets transformed into "drill and kill."

The obvious consequence is that classrooms and schools become joyless places, where learning becomes synonymous with direct instruction and rote bookwork. As much as I've worked to avoid that fate, even when doing test prep (i.e. creating an "operations race" we played in the gym), I do think the tone of my classroom has suffered from the pressures of the tests.

Another factor in the joylessness of the classroom could be behavioral issues. The kids in my school bring a lot of baggage into the classroom. So often the planning of seemingly simple activities must account for a dozen possible scenarios. Teachers, myself included, get to thinking that fun equals problems, so why risk that? I know I have planned plenty of fun lessons that involved some combination of the arts, physical play or group work, only to have them fall apart into arguments or tears. This has turned me into a pretty humorless guy at times. And I don't like it.

Of course, the end result is counterproductive. The ultimate outcome of all this is that kids don't like school, and when they're unhappy to be at school that just feeds into the behavioral problems. And the whole experience is even less enjoyable for the teacher.

What worries me the most though is that kids get turned off the whole idea of school at such a young age. And in all the talk of the achievement gap that focuses on test scores, people rarely discuss the environments themselves beyond materials and infrastructure. The fact is, most of our country's poorest kids spend their days immersed in tedious and rigid environments that middle and upper class parents would never allow their kids to experience. The result is a deficit in social experiences and emotional developments equally profound as the academic achievement gap.

But let's end this all on a high note. Today I had a chance to try out the alternative. The kids were asked to turn what they'd learned about the water cycle into a poster, a play, a song, a dance or a story. The results were great. The kids were creative and they got the information right. Most importantly, they had fun. I'm looking forward to having more of it over the next two months.

Why Isn't This Working?

Last year there was plenty that went wrong, and plenty of reasons why. At the end of a frustrating day (not unlike today) it wasn't hard to look back and pick out a few major mistakes and figure out what could have gone differently. Now this year things are far from perfect. But, I definitely know I've come a long way since last year, and each day I apply countless lessons that I learned last year. In spite of this, some conundrums persist.

Let's take homework. Last year I couldn't get my kids to finish their homework. I checked it every day, which is definitely the first step. Toward the end of the year, and since the beginning of this one, I implemented Earned Free Time (EFT) at the end of the week for kids who completed all their homework. In addition to that kids who finish all their homework can choose one weekend assignment to skip. So I've established reinforcement and yet this morning only 5 out of 22 students had completed all their homework.

So I huffed, and I puffed, but it's unlikely it'll change a thing. Whether it's laziness, apathy or home life responsibilities I can't dream of, most of my kids seem thoroughly unwilling or unable to complete their homework. During lunch time I was complaining about this to a veteran teacher who asked if I had some sort of prize for those who did all their work. When I explained my system, she joked, "You don't need me anymore." To me, that goes to show both how much I've learned, and how little it matters with certain problems.