Teaching the 4th R, Respect

I wasn't surprised when I came back from my end of the year meeting with my principal, and found my students, as per usual, had gone wild in my absence. My few troublemakers never miss an opportunity to, you know, make trouble the second I'm out of the classroom. Still, I was surprised to find the teacher who had been covering me so upset and emotional.

"I have watched Mr. Brosbe teach you about respect all year and he makes time every week to teach you about respect, and I feel very disrespected right now."

And that sums up the problem pretty nicely. Despite devoting numerous lessons this year to respect as part of what I call "The Peacemaker's Program", many of my students still show no signs of truly grasping the concept of respect for others. In addition, my school unveiled a school-wide initiative called Respect for All. This is on top of the existing anti-bullying efforts my school had in place.

So, suffice it to say, my students have had a few opportunities to learn about respect, talk about respect, and roleplay respectful behavior. Nonetheless, problems with respect persist. There are times when they don't respect property. There are times they don't respect each other. And there are times they don't respect teachers. Is teaching respect an impossible task?

I would like to think it isn't. I've always thought that respect, just like arithmetic or writing, needs to taught explicitly. The key, I believed, was getting my students to understand the concept of the Golden Rule. Since children are inherently self-centered (I don't mean this as a judgment, but rather that young kids don't instinctively think about others views or feelings), I thought if they could just make a connection between their own feelings and the feelings of others, then they might just act more respectful toward others.

What's puzzling and frustrating, is how articulately the students can explain why certain actions or words are hurtful, but then they continue the same behaviors. I'm wondering why. Is this behavior just a part of "kids being kids"? Is it just a few kids whose behavior overshadows a general culture of respect? In the case of other teachers, is it a lack of classroom management? Is it a lack of character education at home?

While some or all of these theories may be true, I still believe that character education is an important part of what a school and a teacher should be responsible for. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find the time and energy to really teach it, model it, and reinforce it, rather than just lecture on it in response to the most recent incident. From what I saw today, and many times before, if we want kids to really understand and exhibit respect, rather than just explain it, finding that time may not be a choice.

A Good Night's Sleep

A strange realization occurred to me the other day, walking around my neighborhood on a sunny weekend afternoon. Almost every night since I started teaching, when I went to bed my mind was racing. I would fret or fixate over a student with behavior problems or a student struggling to read. I would replay the events of the day, or anticipate the next day's lessons anxiously in detail.

Until recently.

This was my startling epiphany, that at some point in the recent months, I was going to bed, and not obsessing over my work. I'm not sure of the cause of this change, or what it means for my teaching, but I'm grateful. It doesn't mean I'm working less or caring less about my kids or my lessons, but somehow without meaning to, I figured out how to let go and give myself a rest when it was time.

Better Late Than Never: I Finally Try Lit Circles

Today my class started literature circles. It's something I've always wanted to try, but haven't until now. In my first two years, it was a mix of fear of letting go of so much control and in the last two years, it just felt like there was never enough time. Luckily, the last days of school provide the perfect freedom for experimentation.

We spent the last week or so practicing each individual role of the literature circle - Discussion Director, Summarizer, Story Connector, Real Life Connector, Word Wizard and Illustrator - so the kids would be ready. These roles vary a bit depending on your resource, but they're more or less universal. I used these worksheets from Super Teacher Worksheets, my current favorite web site, when the kids practiced, but today the students used their reading notebooks.

I can definitely understand my hesitation toward literature circles after today. First of all, it requires a fair amount more planning than a typical lesson. You need to group the students by level, and possibly by interest depending on the students in your class. Then you have to find an appropriate text for each group and multiple copies of each text. That was a tricky step for me, because my school's library didn't have many group sets of books at second and third grade reading levels.

In addition to the planning, you have to make sure the kids are familiar with the roles and protocols of lit circles. I tried to set this up over the past week, but still spent some time today reviewing the roles, establishing the protocol and brainstorming lit circle rules with the students.

After all this we were finally ready to go. I was nervous at first, because my students had been held in during lunch because they weren't listening to the lunch aide. Were they ready for lit circles if they couldn't even line up quietly long enough to go outside and play? Knowing that my management is a little tighter than the school aide's, I opted to forge on. In spite of my worries, the kids did pretty great.

One of my higher level readers was of course overly talkative, and didn't want to do his assigned role. Two of my lower students got confused about their jobs, because they weren't listening carefully during the three times I explained the jobs and asked if anyone had questions. And of course, The Scowler aka Living Inertia, didn't get any of his work done as the Story Connector. All of these were expected bumps in the road though, considering this was the first attempt at lit circles for the students and me.

In some ways I regret not doing this earlier as a teacher or earlier in the year. At the same time, this was a perfect way to help the students establish some independence and try something new for our final days together. I was proud to see the kids staying focused, following directions, doing their different jobs, and most of all, having fun.

Looking for Lessons When Your Students Fail

With our school days down to that nice round number 10, it can be difficult to focus on anything other than the light at the end of the tunnel that represents summer vacation. While the students are definitely antsy, I don't think they fully grasp how soon the year will be ending. We teachers don't have that luxury. So in the meantime, I'm fighting two very conflicting and equally strong impulses - throw my hands up and kill time or pack in as much as I can into two weeks.

Today I wasn't given much choice over how to spend the day. Yesterday we were told which students met the cut-off scores for the state exams, and who would need to attend summer school. That meant today I had to assemble promotional portfolios for these students. These portfolios are meant to show that in spite failing the ELA or math exam, these students are still at level 2, i.e. approaching grade level. Unfortunately, this just isn't the case for most of my kids who failed, since the majority are ELL's, including several newcomers. While all the students in this group made significant progress, most are reading at an early first grade level.

However, there were two surprises. Two of my students who I consider "high 2's" or even 3's didn't mean the cut-off. It's these students for whom the promotional portfolios are especially important. So setting my shock aside, I set out on getting their portfolios ready.

At the end of the day I'd put together eight portfolios in all. The process of assessing the students individually and organizing their work while keeping 26 other students occupied was exhausting and stressful. At the end of the day I read over one of my lowest student's writing piece, a girl who will most likely repeat the third grade.

This is a girl who has been in my school since kindergarten, and while her reading improved from a level B to level G this year (from kindergarten to first), she still hasn't grasped phonemic awareness. This makes her writing difficult to understand, but I could make out the general idea of her piece which was about our classroom.

"I love school and learning and school is awesome and Mr. Brosbe is the best."

It felt like a punch to the stomach. One of the most amazing parts of teaching elementary school is the practically unconditional love and trust of the students. If you keep them safe, show you care, and help them learn just a little, you're their favorite teacher ever. Until they move on to their next teacher, and the next. It's cute and endearing, but in this case, juxtaposed against my failure to do more for this girl, it was heart wrenching.

I hope that I can take some pride and consolation in the knowledge that I've instilled a love of learning in this girl that I hope will last. I hope that by advocating for this girl to repeat third grade, I'm advocating for her best interests, and giving her a chance to catch up.

This time of year is tough, because even as we as teachers seek a nice happy ending to provide closure to months of tireless effort, life sometimes interferes with unpleasant realities. Sulking or self-flagellation will not get us far though. We can only take these truths along with the many points of pride, and use them to do better.

Trust and Feedback: Finding the Balance for Teacher Evaluations

My first year of teaching was a constant struggle. Classroom management was my biggest problem, but I struggled with many of the other fundamentals of teaching. While I often look back at that first year as a personal failure, I know that I ended the year a much more effective teacher than I began. This was due in part to constant self-reflection and assessment, but I owe most of my improvement to my mentor, my instructional coach from my masters program, and working with an AUSSIE literacy coach.

The extra pair of eyes, paired with many years of experience, that each of these women offered, gave me an opportunity to analyze my strengths and weaknesses with a fresh and helpful perspective. My mentor, a fifth-year teacher taught me many basics of classroom management and lesson planning. My instructional coach helped me understand what differentiation meant in terms of classroom practice. My AUSSIE coach helped me get a better grasp of the workshop model and guided reading.

Each of these relationships were focused on observations of my teaching and conversations about how to make it better. They were also all predicated on trust. I knew that each of these people were coming to my classroom to help make me a better teacher so I could help all my students learn.

I can't help, but juxtapose these experiences with the formal evaluations I had during my first year, and since. I had two formal observations in my first year of teaching, both rated satisfactory, and with minimal actionable feedback. In my second year I had only one formal observation, rated satisfactory, but without a post-observation. At the end of that second year, I had to rely heavily on my own assessment of my abilities based on my own reflections, student test scores and general feedback from peers. Based on this inexact measurement, I felt I was doing a pretty good job.

When I landed at PS 310 after being excessed, I realized quickly how many gaps there were in my self-assessment. PS 310 had a very different culture with regards to observations and feedback. I had the entire administrative team in my classroom about once a month for learning walks (extended visits with a specific focus, i.e. math investigations, in mind) or snapshots (brief, low inference observations). My AP came through occasionally for informal observations in addition to the three official observations she carried out throughout the year.

These observations gave me opportunities for specific feedback I hadn't really had before, even with all the extra help during my first year. I was encouraged to receive compliments on my classroom management, my pacing, and use of accountable talk. I also received several specific points of improvement, for example creating more process charts that would support student learning. I had gone from a famine of feedback to a feast, but it wasn't necessarily easy.

As is always the case with classroom visits and feedback, there needed to be a mutual trust between me and my observers. After two years with minimal administrative involvement, the open door policy of my new school took some getting used to. I had to maintain an open mind, and at times I know I let my ego get in the way of being more responsive and proactive when given recommendations. Ultimately however, I was grateful for the observations, formal and informal, because I realized they gave me opportunities to improve that I was deprived of for two years before. I know the feedback from these observations made my class environment more supportive of ELL's, my guided reading more focused and consistent, and helped me differentiate more effectively for my lowest and highest students.

It's these experiences that convince me of the need for a better teacher evaluation system in New York City. Over the four years I've taught I have felt a mix of emotions toward my teaching. At times there's been frustration and disappointment, and other times pride. Too many times however, I've felt uncertain. A lesson may have felt successful, but the kids still struggled on the assessment. Or a lesson I thought was perfectly planned, crashed and burned unexpectedly.

A teacher knows without a doubt when a lesson fails. And a teacher can tell when a lesson has really engaged students and allowed them to grasp a new concept or skill. Still, it can be sometimes difficult to analyze our own work critically. Regardless of whether a teacher is a novice or a master, another person's perspective is an essential part of improving as a professional.

New York State and the UFT have already agreed on the need for better, more substantive evaluations. According to the new state law, 40% of teacher evaluations will be data-based, so that leaves 60% available to create a powerful new system. It's my hope that our new system will create a climate of trust, similar to the relationship I enjoyed with my mentors and coaches during my first year. I also hope that the system will establish more consistent and authentic opportunities for feedback, similar to the school community I've been a part of for two years. These two components are essential, and I don't believe a teacher evaluation system can succeed without either.

The work I did as a member of E4E's teacher evaluation policy team was an effort to advocate for such a system. Our proposal suggests including observations from an outside observer. This will be an improvement key to safeguarding against malicious or inept administrators. Contribution to school community will reward teachers who participate in intervisitations and lab sites, lead professional development or grade-study meetings, or help out in a number of other ways that are beyond the basic requirements.

The student surveys, which will only work if they are creating in a way that is meaningful and authentic for children of all ages from kindergarten to 12th grade, are my favorite suggestion however. The students, who spend far more time in our classroom than any adult, should be heard, and their voices could provide an invaluable context to the other components of the evaluations.

Over the months that the policy team worked on these evaluations, we never set to create the "perfect system" that we could impose on New York City. Rather, we studied existing systems and surrounding research and asked ourselves, how would we like to be observed? We disagreed on many points, some small and some large, but we were united in our vision of a system that ensured high expectations and fairness for teachers and students. I hope whatever the final outcome for new teacher evaluations in New York City, we end up closer to making that vision a reality.

Where Did the Year Go?

Is it really June already? It seems almost impossible to believe. The school year always has its ebbs and flows, its points where you can't see an end in sight and points where it seems the year is flying by. In mid-June, it feels like a little bit of both.

At this point in the year, teachers and students are literally counting the days to summer. Meanwhile, teachers are in a rush to get final assessments and all sorts of clerical work completed. On top of that, it's our last chance to cram in a couple of projects, rush through that last one (or two) math units and get our kids ready for next year. So we're in the awkward position of wishing the year was over, but wishing we had more time left.

As I've completed my E-CLAS assessments (a standardized reading test) it's given me an opportunity to reflect on what I've accomplished this year, as I marvel at how quickly it passed. Last year, I felt I had a lot to be proud of. All of my students made at least a year's worth of progress. In most cases, my students made approximate gains of a year and a half. This year, the results are much more mixed, and therefore disappointing. The mixture of emotions takes me back to my first and second years of teaching.

It's this sense of disappointment that makes these final weeks all the more important. While I don't expect to move up any of my students significantly in their reading or math skills in such a short period, I can hope to prepare them for the long summer and next school year. With that in mind, I'm doing my best to focus on the basic skills many of my kids are still struggling with. Throughout the year, the emphasis on getting students ready for the test means that fundamental skills like mental addition and subtraction are passed over in lieu of giving students other strategies to multiply or divide.

Besides basic skills, I hope to create a sense of closure to the year focused on a running theme of my teaching, loving learning. I want these final 13 days to be focused on project-based, interactive learning. My students will have a chance to reinforce some reading skills through literature circles, compose social studies and science reports, and conduct two week-long math investigations. If we can end the year in a challenging, but enjoyable way, I hope my students will leave the classroom with some momentum for next year.