I don’t want to point fingers. I don’t want to step on teachers’ or administrators’ toes as I write this post. But Holy Popcorn, Batman! How did we get all these fidget spinners into classrooms? If this were an alien invasion, and spinners were mind-control devices, most of America’s youth would be marching onto waiting spaceships, pacified and ready to become fodder for cookbook recipes.

How to serve man? I recommend against giving him fidget spinners. Those cute little devices help no one. Oh, somewhere out there, I’m sure we can find a student with ADHD who spins that thing mindlessly and manages to focus better on his mathematics because his hands are occupied.

Now let’s invent a scale. On one side, we will put distractable students who benefit from fidget spinners. On the other side, we will put students who are distracted by fidget spinners. I know what this scale looks like, and to my principal friend who thinks these spinners are better than bottle flipping, he’s right. But when did we decide to enable bottle flipping? Spinners are merely an extension of the loss of adult control that let those bottles fly.

Has education reached a point where students think they can flip water and other bottles in class? Obviously the answer is yes. I wrote a post on bottle flipping some months ago, the last big craze in local classrooms. I saw those bottles for weeks and weeks. I seized those bottles for weeks and weeks. Now I see fidget spinners. At first, I took pictures. I’ve quit now. My phone does not need 300 pictures of random fidget spinners. If I’d asked students to lay out their spinners in the middle schools where I subbed during the last few weeks, I would not have been stunned to hit 300.

Parents may be trying to hold the line but, if so, I have an alert for them: Students are selling fidget spinners to each other. I watched as an elementary teacher stayed and took control of a class where I was supposed to substitute. Her emergency lesson came because one girl sold a fidget spinner to another for $10 but then may or may not have provided the fidget. The seller said she had placed it in the other girl’s locker and it must have been stolen. The buyer naturally wanted her $10 back. How old were these girls? Eight? The new class rule was simple. No selling fidget spinners ever. No selling items to classmates.

But the rule was not, “No fidget spinners!”

These little toys are thieves of time. They are too engrossing to serve as true fidget toys, objects given to students to help them stay calm and focused. For some time now, teachers have been providing fidget toys to students, accepting some students’ need for movement and touch. The first fidget toys arrived in the classroom as part of IEPs, Individual Education Plans, managing to slither in as part of special education and related accommodations, and sometimes they worked. Fidget toys can help students use pent-up energy while focusing on teachers and classwork. Some students do have an easier time focusing on academics when clenching a squeeze ball. They distract the class less when using their fidget toys, too.

Eduhonesty: Many teachers are now seizing these cute, little, spinning devices. Some schools have banned them. But I remain baffled by the sheer number of “fidget” spinner toys that have not yet been banned. Fidget spinners do not help students pay attention; they have exactly the opposite effect. Eyes are drawn to spinning fidget spinners. The metal ones especially make interesting noises. That cream-colored one above glows in the dark. Students threw jackets over my head to demonstrate this much-admired effect.

In the meantime, under the guise of “behavioral support,” fidget spinners are being sold by the local pharmacy, big box stores, and even the local garden center. A little boy next to me today at a wedding reception was spinning his toy while an older sister ignored him, glued to her phone, earbuds blocking out the conversation around her.

I support fidget toys. If someone wants to hand a distractable student a squeeze ball or similar fidget toy, I have no problem with that strategy. The IEPs came up with those toys for a reason. For the right kids, fidget toys make education more manageable.

I DO NOT SUPPORT FIDGET SPINNERS. WHIRLY TOYS ARE TOO MUCH FUN, AND THAT SPINNING EFFECT CAN BE HYPNOTIC. When I subbed on Friday, a kid asked me if I thought spinners helped people concentrate. I told him, “No, students start paying attention to the spinner instead of the teacher.” He agreed with me. A number of students in the class agreed with both of us. A few others missed part of the discussion because they were playing with spinners.

I keep seizing spinners, putting those spinners in my little cross-shoulder bag. The bag gets heavy by the third or fourth spinner. I’m lucky. I look trustworthy. When I promise to hand the toy back at the end of class, students believe me, so I don’t have trouble. As a sub, I am not going to do much more than put these toys out of reach during class. If schools had hard policies, I might do more, but what I am coming across is, “It’s up to the teacher.”

Here are a few questions that beg for answers:

Why are administrations weaseling? Why should any object toxic to learning be “up to the teacher”? Why not ban fidget spinners — now that we have seen their effects? No student needs a fidget spinner. Many less troublesome fidget toys exist.

And a few more questions:

When did we hand control of the classroom over to the students? Why didn’t we throw every water bottle out on the spot? Why are we not seizing those spinners and making parents come in to pick them up? Are we being too nice, trying to be our students friends? Or are we just too swamped with meetings, data and testing to keep calling all the parents we would have to call to shut down the spinner invasion?

If a class loses 6 minutes to watching spinners per day, that means 1/2 hour of instruction was lost at week’s end — or 18 hours of instruction will be lost by year’s end. What if that time loss occurs in multiple classes? Fidget spinners should not be regarded either as unimportant toys or as helpful coping mechanisms. Mild distractions cannot be ignored in education.

Theft of learning time has never been a victimless crime.

(Click to enlarge and get clearer view.)

OK, there are far too many tests. The number of tests has gotten completely out of hand. They keep coming to classrooms where I sub to take students out for MAP^TM testing right now, everywhere I go. I consider MAP^TM tests among the most useful tests we are forced to give, but they are one more test in what can be a sea of testing in some districts.

I liked this sign. I liked the fact that tests were acknowledged, but buried on line four between ‘sorrys’ and ‘laughter.’ O.K., we do lots of tests but we do laughter and mistakes too.

Teachers can’t stop the tests.  Endless assessment is now part of the fabric of education.  This sign puts tests in their place and, as an added perk, should forestall whining. Why are we taking another test? Because that’s how we roll. See our sign?

Why not make your own personalized version for the classroom with lines like, “We do exciting science experiments” or “We discover America” ?

We laughed hard about this highlighter in the teacher’s lounge, a teacher appreciation gift that had been passed out to all the teachers in the school. I photographed it and sent the pic on to my daughters.

The younger one replied, “That is so rude of them … at least you have a highlighter as consolation.”

“Oh, I did not even get a highlighter,” I answered. “I was only a retired teacher who subs. You have to be a fully certified, full-time teacher who has worked a whole year to earn your very own yellow highlighter!”

This post is for the clueless, for organizations and administrations who mean well but are strapped for cash.

Eduhonesty: Buy food. Go to Dunkin Donuts and put a few dozen donuts out for teachers. Even the ones on diets will appreciate the gesture. In the teacher’s lounge, one teacher suggested that another possible item to use with the word “brighter” might have been a package of Skittles. Skittles would be cheap and cute.

Highlighters… Ummm, no. No. Just no. I still have highlighters from when I retired. I have highlighters from back when I was taking continuing education classes in college before I retired. Any Great Highlighter Shortage is a myth.

A package of dry-erase markers might be appreciated. Teachers crank through dry-erase markers. A package of colored pens might also brighten a teacher’s day.

But if funds are short, a sheet cake that says, “Thank you for all you do!” will work. It’s the thought that counts. Last year, I worked a long-term subbing position at a school whose administration hosted breakfast and passed out carnations at the end of the year. I would happily work for that administration anytime. My carnation sat in a bud vase, a reminder throughout the week that all my work had been noticed.

The men and women on teaching’s front lines deserve to know their efforts are truly valued.

A quick share for my teacher readers. I thought this was a great idea, right out front on the classroom door.

Note: Most Sherlocks should never be coaches or teacher-leaders — no matter how well they understand educational theory.

We had mentor programs in the past. Mentor programs were pretty straightforward. An experienced teacher picked up a little extra money helping a new teacher learn to manage a classroom. The mentor might teach other skills as needed, such as workload control. I support mentor programs. I love mentor programs. I think we might open them up, too, so that teachers who would LIKE  advice can ask for a mentor even when they have considerable classroom experience. We can all improve.

That said, I’d like to voice a few concerns about the money are we spending on academic coaches and teacher-leaders in a time when many districts are cash-strapped. Where are we finding these people? I spent my last few years before retirement being coached off and on by three people. I give one an A, another a C-, and the third a,”You have got to be kidding me!”

Hello? I cannot be the only one out here thinking that coaches ought to have at least three or four years of solid classroom experience before we inflict them on experienced, working teachers. The absence of any experience in special education or bilingual education ought to disqualify wannabe coaches from “improving” teachers within these areas, too. Surely our coaches and teacher leaders should walk the walk before we cut them loose to carve large swaths of fear and distress throughout a school. For that matter, if enough teachers are tearing up in meetings, maybe we should just drop these putative coaches and leaders. I hugged too many crying teachers during my last years in education.

Just because coaches and teacher-leaders are in fashion, must districts automatically find bodies to thrust into these roles? The right coaches and teacher-leaders represent positive forces for the good in education. But I am certain some positions ought to be left unfilled. If a district could not find a person who knew geometry, administrators would not go out to grab a random guy off the street to teach geometric proofs.

I’d like to make a  suggestion to educational administrators and teachers advocating for themselves. As part of any coaching program, staff members should regularly evaluate the effectiveness of their coaches and teacher leaders. The coach/teacher relationship should be a two-way street. 

I would happily have given one of my coaches five out of five stars. She was experienced, insightful and dedicated to her craft. Her suggestions helped and she knew how to manage people.

I could have suggested improvements for another, much younger coach who was copying her fellow coaches as she tried to figure out how to do her job. This coach had moments, but she was not improving the school climate. She also could not answer simple questions such as, “What if they cannot read the test?”

Favorite quote from this young coach from when I suggested giving teachers a few more excellents on her long checklist, just to help boost morale: Find praise, I said, even if it’s the room set-up or the clarity of the standards written on the whiteboard.

“I don’t do that,” she replied. “I am still learning how to do this job and none of the others do that.”

This young coach had potential. Her observations seemed sound, even if her people skills were a bit scary. She meant well.*

But inept coaches help no one. ????Bad coaching is worse than no coaching. Coaches can add to a workload while adding little or no insight whatsoever about what is going on in the classroom. Teachers can identify these coaches. They should be given the opportunity. Given their impact on a school, coaches and teacher-leaders should not be lightly scrutinized. They should be continuously evaluated.

The process does not have to be demanding. A simple, short form should suffice. Ask teachers, “How did the coach help you?” Ask them to rate the usefulness of the advice they received. Ask them why they agree or disagree with advice received. Etc,

Well-intentioned does not necessarily equal helpful.

Eduhonesty: I recommend we watch the watchers.

*Anytime I write a phrase like ‘she meant well,’ I wonder if I have gone Fluffy Bunny. Fluffy Bunnies try to make excuses for people because they don’t want to be mean. Too Fluffy can quickly become dishonest. The truth is that girl made my heart sink every time she entered the room. Even when I won, education itself mostly lost. Watching games made her happy because students were “engaged.” Watching instruction made her pick out every kid who was not listening to the 7th grade Common Core math I was required to present, whether kids were operating at a second or fourth grade level mathematically or not. My best tactical move might have been endless Jeopardy etc. games, especially since that was the only format where giving remediation did not risk getting me in trouble. If I explained items off the common lesson plan, such as the order of operations that some needed to review, I risked trouble for deviating from the grade’s common plan. But if I buried that lesson inside a game, I was safe. My best bet that last year just might have been a forever classroom Jeopardy marathon,

From the preceding post: “ESSA also requires new data to be reported about school “climate” and safety, including data on school suspensions, expulsions, violence, and chronic absenteeism.”

America is overdue at demanding some of this information. Numbers on chronic absenteeism should be nailed down. Chronic absenteeism causes many academic failures, especially in urban and rural areas. Strategies for tackling the problem of those empty desks should move to the forefront of attacks on the achievement gap.

I’d like better violence numbers as well. The government has already documented that violence rates are much higher in larger and urban schools. We might benefit from understanding why loss of learning from violence has become heavily clustered within certain locations, school types and demographics, at least if we could honestly own up to the conclusions we drew — like “you should not put 42 urban high school students in one classroom” or “you may need to pay attention to probable gang affiliations in scheduling classes.”

Eduhonesty: But I don’t like the insistence on data on school suspensions and expulsions. A couple of days ago, I subbed in a class where I sent one student out twice during the day. The Principal came to get him both times. Apparently, this boy interrupts his classes rudely and regularly. I don’t know him well enough to say for sure, but I’d consider the possibility that he suffers from oppositional defiant disorder. The class told me the boy always causes trouble. As defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), oppositional defiant disorder may be diagnosed in a person who has a recurrent pattern of angry/irritable moods, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness lasting at least 6 months. In my personal experience, we may be talking a lifetime, if a short lifetime, of defiant behavior that responds only occasionally to interventions.

After the second time I called in the cavalry, I broke from the lesson plan to give a short lesson on the latté effect. First we ran specialty coffee numbers. I showed students that one $5 coffee per day might not seem to be much money, but that coffee cost $25 by week’s end if we only stopped on weekdays on the way home. By year’s end, we had spent $1,300 dollars, somewhat more if we also went out for coffee on the weekends. Then I moved into minutes. If we lost 20 minutes per day listening to “Wilhelm” rant and refuse to do his work, while sometimes making random noises simply to disrupt the class, we lost 60 learning hours per year, which might be broken down further into 12 school days, or 1/15 of the school year. (Yes, the school day runs a bit longer, but I discounted art, P.E., lunch and passing periods.)

That 20 minutes per day no longer seemed so trivial when we were done. A few kids were staring seriously at those numbers, obviously aghast. I presented the case for ignoring Wilhelm, which might extinguish at least some behaviors, but then I had to leave this class to spend the rest of the year with the boy who had been hijacking their learning daily.

America has many Wilhelms. My concern with data on suspensions and expulsions is that I foresee pressure to prevent those suspensions and expulsions. The shift is already occurring. Offenses that used to net suspensions and expulsions now may receive lunch in an in-school suspension room. Data showing that regularly suspended students or expelled students tend to drop out of school and fall further behind due to missed school has led to a movement to keep students in the classroom as we attempt to salvage their learning. Teachers are then expected to keep these students well-enough managed so that other students learn in spite of the student regularly disrupting or trying to disrupt their classes.

Let’s add to this the pressure to present a good picture to state bureaucrats who are scanning the data under ESSA to identify problem schools. Many educational leaders and teachers are running scared now, afraid to tell truths that may put them in a spotlight leading to possible mandatory improvement measures. If 20 suspensions seem like “too many,” will nervous principals and administrators opt for lower penalties that stay off the radar? Will Wilhelm receive a check-in/check-out form instead of a suspension, a behavior form for all his teachers to fill out daily, so that no tick mark has to be put in the suspension column of data intended for the state? When sent out, will Wilhelm receive another lecture from his Dean that amounts to nothing more than a break from class? Will the teacher keep Wilhelm in class to avoid upsetting that Dean, who may be getting steadily more stressed as he or she tries to avoid suspending or expelling students who ought to be suspended or expelled?

Well-meaning but fuzzy-headed leaders have been trying to rescue our Wilhelms, and they have my sympathy. I can see the good in Wilhelm. I can see the potential. But I also remember an old saying that gets forgotten too often. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said  “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

Wilhelm’s regular attempts to disrupt his classroom(s) are not victimless crimes. At 20 minutes a day, this kid can steal 1/15 of an entire school year away from every student he distracts for that length of time. He is stealing learning from everyone around him, day by day by day.

The problem with reporting expulsions and suspensions as part of a government mandate: I foresee schools declining to issue those expulsions and suspensions in order to look better to their state. But I was in that classroom. I assure readers, that kid had to go. He wasn’t going to let me get a word in edgewise. He wasn’t going to let me present the day’s lesson in any continuous fashion. He loved making random, loud noises just to try to break my flow. He had to go.

And I kicked him out. But I was the sub. I never had to return to that classroom again. I didn’t have to care what the Principal thought of me. The Principal in question is an old-school guy and I am guessing he did not think less of me for my decision. He probably approved. But if I were a first- or second-year teacher, would I have had the courage to make those calls? Educators are running scared. Educational administrators are running scared.

“Too many” suspensions and expulsions will undoubtedly look bad to bureaucrats in state departments of education. But too few will ensure that. for the sake of a few defiant kids, whole classrooms end up knowing far less than they might have known otherwise. That’s the conundrum, and that’s why I’d like to return local control to schools, rather than add a few more data categories to NCLB under the new name ESSA, while ensuring that legions of state bureaucrats get to keep their jobs.

The bottom-line must be learning. If Wilhelm is making learning impossible, he needs to go. It’s too bad about Wilhelm’s lost learning. The plan where we let him sink the ship with everyone else in it, however, seems only slightly dumber than my kickstarter to build an elevator to the moon. I prefer the plan where we make Wilhelm the Captain and only occupant of his own ship, and send him home to deal with the consequences of his actions.

I am open to Plan B where we create a learning environment within the school where Wilhelm can have an in-school suspension with continued academic demands and opportunities for learning. In fact, I prefer Plan B, but I am also aware that some struggling schools may not have the staff, space and money to put Plan B into action right now. Those schools should not have to be afraid to send disruptive students home.

(Click to enlarge. We will need to add a few categories for ESSA.)

The more I read about ESSA, the more I mutter under my breath. We SO needed a new law that adds MORE data requirements for districts and then throws the creation of new exact details of testing to the states. ESSA touts the idea that educational control has been returned to states. Yes, and when the kickstarter campaign for my new elevator to the moon launches, I hope everyone believing that ESSA fiction will toss a few thousand dollars my way.

Taking a quick tally, ESSA did not decrease the number of tests required in public schools, although a few potential substitutions are allowed. ESSA did not decrease reporting requirements; in fact, the law added new categories to separate out such as homeless students, students in foster care, and students whose parent(s) are active duty military members. Additional reporting requirements for English learners have been added, in apparent hope of forcing schools to adopt more demanding performance expectations for their EL populations. ESSA also requires new data to be reported about school “climate” and safety, including data on school suspensions, expulsions, violence, and chronic absenteeism. Various other snippets of addittional data will be required as well, such as preschool enrollment.

Students are still expected to test in mathematics and English/language arts in grades three through eight and then once in high school. National assessments such as ACT or SAT will be allowed for high school testing provided these tests can be shown to adequately measure the required state curriculum. This data-driven requirement should shut down most or all attempts to create alternative assessments. Science will still be tested once in elementary, middle and high school.  ESSA has kept the requirement for breaking down results by subgroups, as well as the requirement that 95 percent of students participate in state assessments, with student participation assessed as part of state report cards. Overall, the testing picture has changed little, a few brushstrokes at most.

Schools still must be identified for improvement. Specifically, schools where any student group* is consistently underperforming must be identified for targeted support and improvement. While states have allegedly been given flexibility in defining “consistently underperforming,” schools identified for support and improvement must create a plan to file with their local educational agencies (LEA). Schools can be identified for support and improvement if they 1) get Title I funds and score in the bottom 5 percent of a state’s schools, 2) Have a high school graduation rate below 67 percent, or  3) Despite lengthy time on a targeted improvement plan, still have one or more student group performing in the bottom 5 percent of a state’s test.

Would you like a cup of NCLB with your new law anyone? States are allowed to make changes to NCLB and NCLB-based provisions — but within a familiar test-centered agenda. Would you like more data with your endless data?

A few quick positives: Preschool funds have become more available. ESSA permits adaptive testing, such as the Smarter Balanced test, and will also accept out-of-level testing for high school mathematics in eighth grade. ESSA also makes changes to charter school policy designed to improve accountability in the authorization process.

Eduhonesty: More data = more lost time = greater opportunity costs. Data gathering is not teaching, but data gathering requires teachers’ time, time that cannot simultaneously be used to construct new lessons. Data gathering never planned a spirit assembly but data gathering has undoubtedly prevented many administrators from creating those assemblies or other student bonding activities. One fundamental problem with government educational initiatives has to be the stunning lack of concern for the time required to institute those inititatives, time that bleeds away, never to be recovered.

We might just close the achievement gap if we used the time we spend crunching numbers for spreadsheets to teach America’s children instead.

*In NCLB fashion, subgroups are broken down into major racial or ethnic groups, economically disadvantaged students, English learners, or students with disabilities.

Research has identified characteristics associated with dropping out of school^[1] such as a history of being held back in school, attendance difficulties, lack of family or peer support, becoming a parent, inability to balance employment with school responsibilities, low grades and test scores, Hispanic and African-American ancestry, and especially failed math and English classes. By middle school, we can do an excellent job of predicting whether or not a student will stay the academic course: Any one of the following traits suggests students have only a ten to twenty percent chance of graduating on time: ^[2] 1) Academic failures, especially in English or mathematics, 2) Missing more than one out of five school days and 3) Regular unsatisfactory behavior.

If the idea of missing more than one in five school days sounds improbable, let me point readers to an article on USATODAY.COM titled, “Study: 7.5 millions students miss a month of school each year” which can be retrieved here: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-05-17/study-chronic-school-absenteeism/55030638/1. I should add that we have fallen down the fuzzy number rabbit hole here. Other sources provide somewhat different numbers.

The Importance of Being in School: A Report on Absenteeism in the Nation’s Public Schools

As the article notes, chronic absenteeism is not the same as sometimes being absent. Chronic absenteeism means missing 10 percent of a school year — one in ten or more days when somehow a student never makes it into that school desk. We don’t have the data to break this down well, either. Only six states give us solid data on chronic absenteeism: Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island. These states don’t use identical algorithms so their data will not be exactly comparable, but we can get an idea of how large our problem may be in some locations. I’ll refer readers to the article for a more exact picture.

Our six states have reported chronic absenteeism rates from 6 percent to 23 percent, with urban, high-poverty areas unsurprisingly reporting that as much as one-third of their students regularly choose to stay home or hang with friends rather than enter the classroom. The problem is not exclusive to urban schools. In some rural areas, one in four students skip a month or more of the school year. Chronic absenteeism tends to be a pattern, repeating across the years. Over five years, a student may manage to miss more than a complete year of school. There’s almost no way back from an academic morass that deep.

Interactions between our drop-out predictors remain underexplored. All those missing school days lead directly to a number of those failed math and English courses. In turn, those failed courses provide one more justification for letting the bus go by while watching Hansel and Gretel Get Baked. Depending upon the student, effects on behavior from missing school may be considerable. Many “students” who regularly miss large percentages of the school year naturally fall into sustained misbehavior. They can’t read their texts. Sometimes they can barely read at all.  Academics come at them like blows to be deflected. Our chronic absentees may lack social resources for support. They usually end up on the periphery of a school’s social life.[3] When they are not ignored, they may be bullied because they are outsiders.

Eduhonesty: I’d like to raise a large flag here. What happens when a kid cannot see any benefit from learning the latest day’s material, when “Daniel” believes education itself may be nearly pointless? Misbehavior happens, for one thing. Sometimes the best piece of luck for the classroom will Daniel’s absence. Adolescents seldom sit still for an hour when forced to work on tasks that do not interest them — or worse, tasks they cannot do even when and if they try.

I have taught these absentee students. I have sent our versions of truancy officers out after them. But sometimes I knew I was locked in a losing battle. After too many lost years, students no longer expect remediation to provide benefit. They probably received a great deal of remediation as they fell behind, and that remediation did not catch them up. It’s quite possible it made them feel stupid instead.

If we are going to push, push, push to make kids stay in school, we have to make school seem worth their time. Our students do not need to see pots of gold at the end of the educational rainbow, but when they do not believe they might be able to buy a better car as a result of their efforts, we are all in trouble. That’s why the Dreamers need a path to citizenship. That’s why inner-city kids have to believe they will be able to find a decent job in return for their efforts. That’s why we have to take time to try to walk a few miles in our students’ shoes.

Eduhonesty: I’d like to lay out the problem in three words and ask readers to reflect on those words.

Children without hope.

How are we to teach these children? How are we to manage these children? They are often frankly disruptive as all hell on a bad day, and even as I manage behaviors, I feel profoundly sorry for them.

I also wish to guarantee readers that the problems that led to our children without hope mostly have nothing to do with classroom teachers, pedagogical skills, tests, or faulty academic standards. We will not be able to attack these problems with “improved” teachers and “more rigorous” standards.  In and of themselves, more rigorous standards will likely make the problem worse. The best teachers with the most carefully constructed standards can’t make up for missing 50 out of 180 school days. They can’t fix the hopelessness that eventually results from those missed days.

This would normally be the paragraph where I exhort readers or schools to take some course of action to fix our problem. But I don’t know what to do. What can you do when a child refuses to get out of bed and no one steps in to make that child get up and get dressed? Which domino causes the other dominos to fall? Where can we intervene? How can we intervene?

I know teachers make a difference. Phone call after phone call, and sometimes attendance and work slowly get better. Positive reinforcement gets many children to stand shivering at the bus stop more often. But I also know chronic, extreme absenteeism is like cancer, and teachers dealing with this absenteeism are their own versions of oncologists. You win some.

But we still lose far too many.

[1] See http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Staffingstudents/Keeping-kids-in-school-At-a-glance/Keeping-kids-in-school-Preventing-dropouts.html for a quick snapshot. Last retrieved March 21, 2017.

[2] Edutopia. “Middle School’s Role in Dropout Prevention.” August 21, 2012 http://www.edutopia.org/blog/dropout-prevention-middle-school-resources-anne-obrien

[3] Kids are quirky, though. The right kid can miss weeks for years and still be popular. Good-looking, witty and well-dressed compensates for many academic deficiencies. That dashing boy who failed two grades may be one of the most popular kids in the group when he bothers to arrive — which is a fat packet of trouble in and of itself.

P.S. Because of the number of big issues in this post, threads have necessarily gone unexplored. I picked one thread and ran with it. This post reminds me why I sometimes call this blog “The Secret Blog of Gloom and Doom.” I’ll try for a happier post shortly. I have amassed a fair amount of information lately on the ubiquitous spinner fidget toys. If those toys were aliens, neither Jeff Goldblum nor Will Smith would be able to save us now.

This post is especially for new teachers who are feeding children regularly. You probably aren’t working for a wealthy district. The kids in wealthy and middle-class districts often carry snacks in their backpacks, while kids in poor districts may not have that handy Tupperware container of apple slices or pretzels, or the ubiquitous bag of Takis.* You are probably making less money, maybe much less money, than teachers in those more financially-comfortable districts. One of the ironies of teaching I have observed: Those who make the least frequently spend the most for their classroom, or at least a greater percentage of their incomes, since poor districts often provide little or no money for classroom supplies.

I suggest teachers who are passing out pretzels join Costco or Sam’s Club. My membership always paid for itself easily, especially since I bought Costco gas and made full use of my benefits. Vacation rental cars alone have saved me hundreds of dollars over the last few years.

Those big containers of pretzels, baked chips, cereal and Harvest Snaps® have carried many students through a tough morning when they missed breakfast and had no food in the house. The jars of Twizzlers®,** jelly beans, Jolly Ranchers®, Skittles® and more make good Jeopardy or Kahoot rewards in schools that allow candy. In classrooms that allow nuts, the big jars of nuts always get a grateful response. Kids love this healthy snack and most years I was lucky enough to be able to bring in nuts as a special treat, lacking allergic kids and a school-wide rule.

Eduhonesty: Taking a short break this morning from the mega-issues.

*I hate Takis. Those flaming red chunks can’t be good for anybody. Can something this color be food? Maybe I am getting old.

**Yes, I will sign off on candy rewards. While I acknowledge the nutritional concerns, I also know that the intervention period where I gave out Jolly Ranchers® for improved typing speeds led to the most dedicated typing practice I had ever seen. Does that reward burn out eventually, losing its effectiveness? Yes, but for some kids, I never reached that burn-out point all semester. Most importantly, a kid who starts at 7 words per minute and “burns out” at 35 words per minute has reached lift-off. The foundation has been laid at 35 words per minute and practice alone should carry the rocket up from there.

In a time of many macroconcerns, I went micro with this post, but my ** paragraph above brings up a huge issue. Teachers are told constantly what supposedly works and what doesn’t work. Sometimes that information should not be trusted. Big, blanket rules often do not fit smaller situations. For example, the candy burn-out concern has solid data behind it. Reward, reward, reward and the rewards lose their impact. But for a short-term goal like launching typing skills, rewards can work wonderfully. For any skill that can be achieved quickly, rewards may be helpful. The achievement of the skill allows for a natural end to the reward, too.

An observation; I had a wild ride in a classroom last Wednesday — a lot of 3rd grade kids who wanted to test the sub’s limits. I had to push back, and the whole day required considerably more effort than usual. Kids stood up and walked around without raising their hands. Kids talked while I was explaining new ideas. A few kids insulted each other and I forestalled at least one fight. They mostly did the work, but they ignored a set of rules they knew well, including “Make your dear teacher happy!” Love that rule, but that rule along with “raise your hand to talk” seemed to have gone out the window. On reflection, I believe I started out too nice with a tough crowd, one of the toughest of the last few years.

That said, they were also the crowd that kept coming up and hugging me. Kid after kid wanted a hug. Even kids who pushed limits wanted that hug. The most challenging groups can be the neediest groups. They wanted to have all sorts of conversations about shoes, phones and life, although math and English seemed to be off the table.

Eduhonesty: It is what it is. Every so often maybe we should stumble into a day that makes us reflect and reminds us not to run on auto-pilot. While many classrooms can be approached gently, a few require a sterner tone from the outset.

I blew that one.

I’ll blow another one, too. One great part of subbing is you can just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, review what went wrong and go out to do better next time  — without having to worry about next week or next month with the same group of kids. You don’t have to sweat administration much either. You don’t want me? Districts all over the area do.

But this post is for teachers who had a bad day last week or even a bad week. It’s for teachers having a rough year. Pick yourself up. Watch some funny YouTube. Have a glass of chardonnay or a caramel latte. All teachers have bad days. You can’t let them spook you. Just figure out your next plan. Whose seat should be moved? Whose mom will you call? How can you make a better version of the water-cycle lesson that went wrong? You can always improve.

And if you seem to have landed in a Twilight Zone episode, one in a post-apocalyptic world, remember that this episode too shall end. Another episode will begin. That episode may be filled with happy, twinkly spirits trying to make the world around them a better place, We never know the next episode. Part of the great adventure of life comes from the fact that we have no channel guide, no info buttons to push. We just go forward.

Eduhonesty: Trust yourself.