What Are We Doing Today?

Things have changed a bit since the debauched days that followed my first year of teaching. As evidence, here's how I spent my first day of vacation so far... Cleaning my desk. Cleaning my entry hall table. Cleaning out my closet (I'm sorry mama!). Then I took a nap. Now I'm off to Goodwill then the gym. I apologize if anyone fell asleep reading this...

Surprisingly I've realized that sometimes I don't need to go crazy to enjoy the freedom of vacation. It's nice just to have a second to breathe and get around to unclutter the piles of books, tests, papers from the administration and unopened junk mail that accumulate during the frenetic pace of the school year. Don't worry though, as soon as I get back from the gym I foresee at least one ice cold beverage in my future.

The Year's Anticlimax

Not sure if anyone realized this, but there's only three days of school left. It's really impossible to believe. The process of frantically trying to clean and pack up the classroom has begun. Meanwhile I'm hoping to get the kids to publish one last writing piece, create "summer survival kits" and rehearse a play for tomorrow. As I remarked last year, I'm doing more teaching in my last days of school now, than I did at any point my first year. In light of that progress, in spite of the challenges of this year, I feel good.

At today's meeting with my principal to discuss the year and my students' data I had nothing but positive statements about the year and I had data to support that. Not the state assessment data. No, looking at those scores all one would notice are 4 "Did not meet criteria" labels out of 19 students. But looking at the other meaningful measures of progress I have, I could point out that all of my students made a year's growth or more in reading and math. The only point of regret I made was that in my class, most of the students needed more than a year of growth to "catch up."

Still, in spite of this positive moment of reflection, overall, the end of the year has always felt like an anticlimactic time. Yes, the classroom gets totally disassembled and wiped clean. Yes, there will be pizza parties and a final class meeting. But, the best and worst part of teaching as that no matter what the results of your year, there is no final product, no tangible outcome. The students are a work in progress, one that you must pass on and hope for the best. If you're lucky you'll keep in touch with a few of them, but for most of them, especially elementary school kids, the end result remains an unanswered question.

What's surprised me most lately is how ready I am to go back in the fall. This wasn't the case as recently a few weeks ago. But a dinner with some friends of mine from my Teaching Fellows cohort allowed me to reconnect to the original idealism and passion that brought me to the classroom. One friend described the "addictiveness" of teaching, and I can't disagree.

Even though I won't get a chance to continue working with the same students, and try to "finish what I started" (as if that were possible in the fourth grade), I am anxious for the chance to teach another year, another class, and do things better. This relentless pursuit of improvement is what inspires me when I see it in the best teachers around me. New lessons, new methods of differentiation, new centers, new projects, even new methods for sharpening pencils! A new year offers limitless potential to fix the mistakes of the past one. That is a truly addicting idea.

So maybe the school year doesn't end with a perfect sense of closure. I will wonder and worry about my students over the summer, and whether their gains will be erased by two months of PlayStation and DSi. But, anticlimactic nature of a school year's end is also maybe the most exciting part of it. The possibilities are endless.

The Return of Play

Our school recently cut the ribbon on a brand new playground. It was one of the more joyful occasions of the entire year. The kids anticipated it the way they anticipate birthdays and Christmas, which may seem a little absurd at first, until you realize they've been kept inside all year.

Of the many injustices I've witnessed in just three short years in one of the country's poorest communities, it's the playgrounds that somehow hit me hardest. They seem the perfect symbol of the contrast between the haves and have-nots. And while I've made my peace for the most part that American society is built on this inequality, it doesn't seem right that kids should be subjected to such a system of inequity. Having a chance to play is a vital part of childhood, if not the defining part of childhood.

Sadly, the students at my former school only had access to this integral part of childhood half the year (weather permitting). The students at my new school have had no playground all year, because the yard was under construction. In the end, for their sacrifice, they were rewarded with a beautiful new playground, but I can't help but wonder, would schools on the Upper West Side or Upper East Side permit their kids to languish in the auditorium for months on end? No, I imagine accommodations would be made.

In any case, that's not necessary for my students anymore, and watching them while I eat my lunch on the park benches has been informative. In some ways the experience of playing seems strange and unfamiliar to them. I can tell that some of them are almost at a loss at what to do. They run around aimlessly, on the verge of some version of tag that never seems to manifest. Looking out at the yard after school, when unsupervised the kids mostly just wrestle and fight.

I worry that the kids may be losing some of the most positive, socializing effects of play because they haven't developed the skills and habits of cooperative and imaginative play. Even so, any play is better than none, and I'm happy it is now a regular part of my students' school day.

The Moment of Truth, or Something

Today I was told which of my students passed the NYS ELA and Math exams, and which students will be attending summer school to get a second try. Unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps) we didn't get exact scores that would allow me to see exactly how well my students did and therefore how well I did as a teacher. Rather I got two copies of my class roster with each student labeled either "Met Promotion Criteria" or "Did Not Meet Promotion Criteria." Somewhat unsatisfying, no?

The Good News
While 10 of my students scored 1's in the fall ELA simulation, all but four of them met the criteria, even in a year when the criteria were supposedly tougher. In math, all but two met the promotional criteria. Considering my students were acknowledged to be the lowest performing class in the school, I'm pretty proud of the class as a whole.

The Bad News
Of course the other side of this story is that four of my students didn't pass the test. That's certainly more than any other class and while I know my students and their limitations, that won't matter when I'm judged against my peers. Worse still, the results included one big surprise, a student who is currently reading at a late 2nd/early 3rd grade level. Meaning he should/could have passed the test. He passed every simulation we took. But he never really showed any true interest or effort, and I blame myself for never finding a way to spark that in him.

The Slightly Reassuring News
While I'm not happy that any of my students failed, I wasn't surprised by the results (except for one student I mentioned above). In a strange way the results were slightly reassuring, a sign that the test isn't completely invalid. Three of the students who didn't pass the ELA are reading at a level E or lower (that's kindergarten). Two of those students are the two who didn't pass the math, largely, I believe, because they can't read. Based on where they are, in spite of the growth they have made, they should not have been able to pass the test. Their failure represents a glimmer of hope for the legitimacy of these assessments.

In addition, the two lowest performing students who failed both exams are SIFE (Students with Interrupted Formal Education). One of them attended kindergarten at my school and then left, only to return in May of last year. The other student has left midway through the year, every year, until this year. So, it's not totally unexpected that they aren't performing at grade level. In the end it might be good for them to be held back or at the very least to attend summer school. They certainly won't catch up otherwise.

The Frustrating News
I understand why the official performance scale scores need to be delayed. And I'm hesitant to attribute it to any sort of conspiracy theory. The tests were later, so it makes sense the scores will be released later. Still, the NYSED and everyone involved with the exams at the city and state level are doing a disservice to teachers, students and themselves by even allowing a hint of wrongdoing to hang over the tests and their scores. They should be bending over backward to make the process as transparent as possible.

I imagine the process of translating the raw scores into performance scores is pretty benign and boring. Allowing the media or some third-party organization to monitor the process would instantly erase any shadow of malpractice from the state exams. As far as I can tell no such monitoring is taking place. Instead, while we all wait for the binary "met promotional criteria"/"did not meet promotional criteria" to be magically transformed into familiar numbers, we have to wonder how exactly it's getting done, and why it's being done without any openness.

Lost in the Shuffle

When I initially heard that the state exams were pushed to April and May I was excited. It seemed like a good move to give teachers more time to prepare their students and therefore it'd provide a more accurate assessment of the teaching/learning accomplished in a year. With 14 school days left though and no sign of test scores coming in, my enthusiasm's waned a bit. The best we can expect (any day now!) is the cut-off scores, a simple list of who passed and who failed. The release of the actual performance scale scores (i.e. 2.19 or 3.76) have been delayed until late July.

This all wouldn't be such a big deal if these scores weren't the sole basis of whether my students pass or fail. And therein lies the problem. Because I'm supposed to be preparing promotion in doubt folders for my students who didn't pass the test, and I don't know who these students are. For those who don't know, promotion in doubt folders are extensive folders of student work that provide evidence that they deserve to pass even though they failed the state exams. Which brings me to the second major issue. Several of my students don't deserve to pass.

Now it's not for lack of effort on their part. And it's not for lack of progress. All of my students made at least a year's worth of progress in reading and math. However, when you're starting the third grade reading at a kindergarten level, a year's worth of progress doesn't prepare you for the fourth grade. In fact, it doesn't even make you ready for the third grade. With little regard for this reality, it's been made clear to me that nobody plans to hold any of my students back if they help it.

This has been the pattern at the end of every year since I started. In spite of glaring shortcomings in student performance, and in spite of the fact that Joel Klein declared social promotion dead in 2004, schools still refuse to hold students back, because it reflects poorly on them. If somehow, my students (yes students, plural!) reading at a kindergarten level are all promoted, it will be a true disservice to them, in spite of their hard work and progress. As long as the system penalizes schools for doing the right thing, these kids will be pushed forward, while they continue to fall behind.

I Want to Go Home

I used to laugh earlier in the year when some of the kids would say things like, "I wish we had school til 5 everyday," or "I wish we stayed at school til 10!" I wasn't totally sure they were sincere, but in any case I admired their enthusiasm, feined or otherwise, for learning. I wasn't laughing today though when one of those same students grumbled during our math block, "I want to go home."

It's not the first time I've heard these words, but it's the first time I've heard them in a long while. In my first year of teaching I heard it constantly. Most of the students let me know several times a day they wanted to be anywhere but in my classroom. I couldn't blame them, I pretty much felt the same way.

But my classroom today is a completely different place than my classroom during my first month of teaching. Sure it's June, and my classroom resembles a sauna, but we all seem to be having a good time anyway. So it hit especially hard when a student who used to be one of the most "school-crazy" pulled a 180 on me. It seems to be part of bigger trend in the student's attitude and effort, so I'll try not to take it too personal. At the same time it's worth trying to see how I can incorporate more games, art, and music into our final weeks of learning.

The Dog Days

"There's nothing new under the sun." Isn't that what Ecclesiastes said? It definitely seems partly true the longer I stay in the classroom. Without a doubt every kid has a very distinct personality, back story and skill set. But the overall ebb and flow of a classroom through the course of a year seems to follow a universal pattern.

June, is one of the most challenging periods in this cycle. On the other hand you can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, the tunnel is 86 degrees with no AC and packed with fidgety eight-year-olds. The Stanford Prison and Milgram experiments taught us a fair amount about the ugly side of human nature, a sweltering third grade classroom in June has plenty of lessons to offer as well.

It's that time of year when students finally overcome their incredibly short-term sense of time and realize that yes, in less than four weeks, they will in fact be free from the classroom. Add to this testing fatigue and the heat and the students are less than attentive and less than respectful to one another. I would like to wrap up the year by helping the kids reflect on their progress, the community we've built and the goals they have for the future, but the kids seem generally tired of it all.

Of course, Ecclesiastes is also known for writing, "For everything there's a season." June will always be a natural part of the school year, and for all of its challenges it's also filled with rewards. This is the time when I get to take a final measure of my kid's progress and my work as a teacher. Throw in a field trip and a publishing party here or there and overall June's not so bad after all.