I hated Moby Dick. I remember that book as the most tedious experience in twelve years of public education. Being a diligent student in a 9th grade honors English class, I nonetheless gutted my way through the whole testosterone-laden mess. I read about death on Kilimanjaro. I discussed how sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, which may include shooting the family dog. Shane was somewhere in there too.

In college, I complained about those reading lists. Where were the girl books? Where were the girls in the books? The single girl I can remember who was not an essentially passive mom or sister was Scout in to Kill a Mockingbird.

Eduhonesty: This is where my post takes a surprising direction. Years later, I think the local school administrators may have been picking the right books (with the exception of Moby Dick which is irredeemable in my view), given the nature of boys and girls. I am looking at an article on why Johnny won’t read. The research documents a literacy gap in our time, with girls being much more likely to become readers than boys. The article partly blames book choices that appeal to girls rather than boys. As I recall choices in my daughters’ schools, I realize that The House on Mango Street and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter are likely to have little appeal for boys. The Poisonwood Bible and Speak aren’t going to pull those boys in either. In fact, parts of those books can be expected to make boys feel extremely uncomfortable. No middle school boy should ever have to read about rape.

Our boys frequently are looking for role models in this time and while that crazy man on Kilimanjaro may not be the answer, the truth is that perhaps our book lists ought to be skewed toward the boys. The move toward nonfiction right now will help. Boys often prefer nonfiction to fiction.

In the end, my reasoning is this: My girlfriends and I all became readers despite a male-oriented set of reading lists in school. We went to the library and found our personal favorites in our free time. I read out the local science fiction section and moved on to mysteries. Some of my girlfriends devoured romance novels. But many boys may not feel as comfortable finding their niche in the library, especially after enough conversations with friends about how much they hate that book about Mango Street. If reading seems girlie, especially in this time of Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, reading may simply not happen.

At the very least, I suggest we need to be sure that choices for school reading lists are relatively gender neutral like To Kill a Mockingbird or Into Thin Air.

~ Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), An Ideal husband, 1893

We wanted data, we got data. We post it on classroom and school walls. We stick it in computers and manila folders. My high school was using student numbers to post data until some students started using those numbers to hijack other students’ free lunches. Then we were asked to create a new set of secret codes. A plethora of acronyms are used to label data from state, national and for-profit standardized (mostly) tests.

Eduhonesty: Now that we have the data, I feel compelled to ask one question: Are we ahead? We are losing so much instructional time to create and assess this data that I would not be surprised to discovered that data-gathering efforts have resulted in declines in the very scores we are tracking. In fact, I’d put a month of the mortgage money on a bet that those scores have gone down as a direct result of time-loss from data-gathering efforts.

What if you can’t find a bilingual high school math teacher willing to work in your district? Both bilingual and high school math teachers remain in demand. The district had a long-term sub, a good one, but his credentials were expired or something. So now the students in these classes have no teacher. I guarantee the No-Teacher-for-a-Month-or-Two plan won’t work. Those classes were already grievously behind.

Eduhonesty: I don’t want to look for work, but this situation makes me understandably nervous. I happen to have the necessary high school credentials. I don’t want to teach those classes. Middle school suits me much better than high school. I prefer younger kids. I also prefer science, language arts and social studies to math. For the time being, I am safe. No one is going to disrupt my middle school classes in April by transferring me, but next year the Board will be able to redeploy me into the mathematical abyss they are creating.

These facts argue in favor of filling out the standard online application and entering the job market.

Sigh.

“Sometimes we are too busy to stop working.” Rabbinic saying (From bob@lakesideadvisors.com)

Eduhonesty: And sometimes we are too busy working to stop to think. The many small details of daily life prevent educators and administrators from finding the time to step back and ask that most critical question: Is this latest educational strategy actually working?

After I have written my daily lesson plans, created my daily instruction, aligned instruction to test prep and graded my papers, the next week begins. After the Principal has read all those lesson plans (Actually, I’m sure he cannot be reading every single lesson plan from every single teacher. That would be a full-time job.), attended meetings, assessed classroom performance, dealt with major disciplinary issues, attended to present and future staffing, met with the Board, met with teachers, presented the latest test prep requirements, etc., the Principal’s next week will begin.

My Principal and I are putting out brushfires all day.

Often the piece that gets sacrificed is the reflection piece. Lesson plan templates usually put this piece at the bottom. “Reflection” is the box’s title and the teacher is expected to write down his or her thoughts on the effectiveness of that day’s lesson. In-depth reflection requires time, however, time that may not exist. If the box is a requirement, the teacher may quickly type or scrawl something like, “assessment suggests most students understand the main idea but certain students will require extra time. Other students have mastered the material and need supplemental or alternative work.” You can’t go wrong with comments like that. It’s a bit like writing, “Most houseplants need weekly watering, but some require more watering and the cacti will benefit from less.”

Reflection may be the most vital piece of the picture, but reflection becomes the piece to be sacrificed. Lesson planning for the next day trumps reflection. Reflection is also a strategy for the future. In this Common Core time, no one is certain that they will be able to repeat any given lesson in the future.

Big picture strategy or small picture strategy, many of us aren’t finding the time to reflect.

The cost of our haste is unquantifiable. How do you calculate learning losses from substandard plans and approaches? As a bona fide high school math teacher, I could find a method to calculate this number, maybe even a somewhat valid method. But the information would be useless. Who could find the time to read and reflect on my findings? No one in my district. They are all too busy stomping out flames.

I’ve written versions of this idea before and I will return to the theme.

I lecture.

There, I’ve said it. By the year 2015, I’ll probably be required to enter a 12-Step Program for Lecturers or at least job remediation of some kind. Lecturing is almost as out of fashion as the plaid polyester leisure suit.

I flash to a discussion I once had with a Principal who explained that she wanted her teachers to spend no more than 10 minutes lecturing. The rest of the time, students were expected to participate in group activities such as Think-Pair-Share, Numbered Heads Together, Walk and Talk, Four Corners or Stand Up Hand Up Pair Up. These students were on a block schedule, too, with about an hour to misinform each other after that short snippet of lecture finished.

I don’t want to explain the above strategies. Anyone who is interested can look them up on the web. Any new teachers reading this post ought to look them up. They are useful activities, at least once students have learned something well enough to communicate their knowledge to fellow students. They also break up a block of 90 minutes, providing students an opportunity to talk, move and clear their heads without bringing instruction to a full halt.

Eduhonesty: If we have reached the point where we believe our students cannot handle more than ten straight minutes of instruction, we might as well give up now. The developed world is already kicking our butts educationally. With plans like the 10 minute instructional block, many of our students are likely to be sharing math and language scores with the war-torn neighborhoods of Somalia in the near future.

One of my girls was sad today. She was crying when she came to class and two of her friends went to help her. I put the rest of the class to work on an opening activity and took the three girls into the hall. We all gave the sad girl a pep talk with some advice on how to deal with people who say mean or thoughtless things. The other girls were giving good advice: Just roll your eyes. Act like you don’t care. Say, yeah, whatever, and walk away. You can’t let them know you care. The comment that stood out for me was, “Yeah, and don’t start cutting yourself. That doesn’t help.”

Later another student handed me the crying girl’s notebook. I read enough to know that I will be seeing one of the social worker’s tomorrow as soon as I can run her down. Is she cutting? That level of self-loathing might go in that direction. If so, she would be known cutter number three.

Eduhonesty: She’s pretty and she does alright academically. She’s sweet and good to the people around her. That’s not how she sees herself, though, so I will have to try to find some help. It’s normal for teenagers to be emotional and volatile, especially in the middle school years. I keep running into levels of self-loathing that seem inexplicable however.

I wonder to what extent school demands and unassailable tests are contributing to these views. There’s no way this girl can understand she has average intelligence. We keep handing her tests she can’t read, having been raised in a Spanish speaking household, and results that show her at the bottom of the pile.

Like that kindergarten teacher who resigned a few days ago, I understandably wonder if school is doing this girl more harm than good. Too much rigor and I’m afraid we might send this very sweet girl right over the edge. Obviously her problems extend beyond mere school, but I don’t see how these new Common Core demands are making this student feel anything except lost, sad and stupid.

Most of the students in my school receive free or reduced price lunches. Their parents don’t have extra funds for education after high school. Traditionally, athletic opportunities have offered one path to college for our students.

Maria can’t go out for track, though. She has to go home to babysit her little brother. She offered to give up her Saturdays, but track does not work that way. Many students in my district go home to babysit daily.

Eduhonesty: Babysitting has been a real factor in some student failures in my past. Kids who go home to take care of younger siblings hardly ever get their homework done regularly. I don’t see a fix for this except dedicated homework time in school, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of homework. One reason for the gap between where I live and where I work is that kids where I live regularly do multiple hours of homework in the evening. Kids where I work often don’t or can’t hit that target. They are too busy making dinner and cleaning up the house.

In case you missed the following story, I offer the following from businesseducation.com, although the story is making the rounds of the internet.
From Corey Adwar, Apr. 4, 2014, 2:54 PM

This Teacher’s Alarming Resignation Letter Shows How Much Schools Have Changed Since You Were A Kid