Above: The book. Click on the picture to get a good look.

Below: A representative student paper.

Please don’t blame me for the lack of understanding in the above paper. It’s difficult to jump four years of math in a single bound, especially when you are in bilingual classes because you speak relatively little English compared to many peers. I drove an hour on Saturdays to provide tutoring. I tutored for free in school and in McDonalds. I taught furiously. But I had kids coming in at a first grade level in English-language acquisition. The majority of my students were at a third grade level in math. Some were lower.

I was required to give this test to all my students, exactly as written. Any modifications to the test would have “compromised the data.” Data ruled. Students did the best they could. I was also required to base 100% of their grades on tests since we were doing mastery-based grading.

Eduhonesty: Best move for anyone trapped in this situation: Retire if possible. If not, change districts. If you can’t change districts, consider changing professions. Because giving the student who wrote the above pizza answer that particular math book and that common-core-based test can only be termed lunacy. In fact, I’d say mandatory use of that test qualifies as educational malpractice.

I recommend reading my Aug 20, 2015 post before reading the following.

This post provides an additional take on the “I-love-how-you-did-this-but-why-did-you-do-that-when-you-should-have-done-this” management approach.  A young colleague just got bludgeoned by this approach as part of a professional development activity. No doubt her principal meant well, but her reaction was to say, “I got lambasted.”

This colleague has a perfectionistic streak, and the “I-love-how-you-did-this-but-why-did-you-do-that-when-you-should-have-done-this” approach does not work as well for that set of teachers as it may with other groups. Like students, teachers vary in their sensitivity to criticism and I-loved-this-not-that statements inevitably carry a degree of criticism, sometimes one that can even be interpreted as an attack, especially if the rigid use of this approach leads to a stream of negative comments.

Eduhonesty: My colleague said something to me after she was “lambasted” that struck me.

“It’s not a conversation. It’s a transmittal of information,” she said.

I found that to be a true characterization of the I-loved-this-not-that approach that’s currently in vogue, although I am not sure I recognized that I was not conversing at the time. I kept trying to communicate. As the year went on, I tried less and less, because my take was that no one was listening. I put that down to the people I was trying to reach. One was young and inexperienced* and the other was… well, the engine was running but I often doubted that man was sitting behind the wheel.

As I read the previous post, I think readers must have grave doubts about my taste. It’s not that Cops and Snapped are favorite shows of mine. But they are perfect shows for grading. If I miss a few minutes, I don’t have to wonder what happened. In theory, I guess I could push the back arrow to find out, but so what if I missed the final details of some miscreant’s arrest? And only the last few minutes of Family Feud matter. I usually take a break to try to guess the best answers as the family tries to win the $20,000 or the car.

Favorite shows I actually WATCH include zombies, NCIS agents, and blasts from the past. I always enjoy tuning into the United Federation of Planets, and new and old Doctor Who.

Are you hopelessly bored by grading those hundred-some math homework papers with all their peculiar, fascinating, never-before-seen mathematical operations? Try Cops. Or check out various options on the Food Network. You don’t have to watch them running around trying to make cupcakes. just look up to see the final wildlife-themed display.

In grading, as Mary Poppins said, “just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

This post will be so personal that I have doubts about sharing. But authenticity requires honesty. Besides, I desperately need to get organized and disentangled, and a blog I already pay for seems like a perfectly good site for that effort. Maybe someone else will benefit from my efforts to get myself together.

I read that line and think “Aspiring Life Coach Alert! Emergency! Everybody to get from street! Emergency! Everybody to get from street!” For those who have never seen the movie “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” here’s a fun link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El03KPUeQc4.

So what am I realizing as I relax and write in the blue room, or Marianos, or the hospital bed, or wherever? The fact that I am ADHD to a high degree does not come as any lightening bolt from the cloudless, clear, blue sky. I knew that. What I did not realize was the extent to which my job protected me from that fact. As the literature indicates, many ADHD persons are capable of what is called “hyperfocus.” To steal a definition from the internet: “Hyperfocus is the experience of deep and intense concentration in people with ADHD. ADHD is not necessarily a deficit of attention, but rather a problem with regulating one’s attention span. So, while mundane tasks may be difficult to focus on, others may be completely absorbing.”

Well, ummm… yes. I always did my homework in loud restaurants, beaches or other public venues when possible. The more noise, the easier it seemed to concentrate. I still work to music and the TV regularly. “Cops” helps me concentrate. I can’t think how many papers I have graded with Cops, Family Feud or Snapped in the background. My attention span seems to benefit from excluding background stimuli. I can sit for longer when the world’s less quiet.

I am frequently at my best in a crisis, at least the right kind of crisis. Problem-solving mode kicks in and, damn, do I enjoy solving problems. Critical thinking under pressure suits me. I think that’s why I chose the job that seemed to mystify many of my friends. Why do you teach there? They would ask.

My job was a perpetual crisis of one kind or another. On some level, I liked that. I liked swerving around the glass in the parking lot. I liked talking down hysterical students in hallways. I liked helping kids who genuinely needed my help, and North Chicago was filled with struggling kids who needed an advocate, not to mention a whole lot of remedial math and English. In many ways, the job was perfect. Even the grade level might have been perfect; when you are looking for trouble, finding a seventh grader has to be good place to start.

But I am realizing now that I relied on that craziness to keep me organized. Ironically, managing 12 tasks seems much easier to me than managing 4 tasks. The job forced me into hyperfocus, where I was at my best, or at least my most efficient. I am dropping balls now unintentionally and postponing tasks that are not urgent. I am scattered. Where is that stupid charge card? Why do I have to pick up the phone charger from the hospital?

Eduhonesty: I am going to have to create a more efficient system for managing my daily life, filled with lists and phone alerts, until I get a handle on the new routine. Then I strongly suspect I will turn off the phone. Or I will lose the file and/or paper on which I have recorded my new system. I may just neglect to look at that file as it sits waiting for me on an electronic device somewhere.  I am pretty sure daily routines are not me.

But I could use a few more of them. Work made those routines necessary. I did not appreciate that advantage to my position until recently.

Posted on every door of the early childhood school I subbed  for before I started my maternity position at the middle school, I asked about the signs. Most classes had serious or even life-threatening allergies. In my middle school, maternity position, I opened a white notebook of accommodations and medical conditions to find EpiPen after EpiPen, along with notes about how mom had to go on any field trips as well as instructions to immediately call 911.

The world  is shifting under us. Whether in response to environmental toxins or other horses of the apocalypse, like climate change, I submit these allergies represent a change that can no longer be explained away by “better data.”

In the meantime, this post is for parents. When they send home that list of food restrictions, please take it seriously. Even if your child has no problems, those allergies out there are real. Kids share or swap food all the time, and sometimes no adult is watching. Kids just naturally slime the area around them, too.

Eduhonesty: When in doubt, please toss suspicious items out of that lunch or snack. I keep getting trained to use that EpiPen, but the thought of plunging a big load of epinephrine into some little kid’s thigh scares me. I have not had to go there yet, but America has reached the point where some districts even require mandatory EpiPen training for subs.  Every time the nurse demonstrates that orange-capped device, I honestly cringe.

Ummm… This pic makes a nice sound bite, but I do not agree. Yes, a 2.0 student can definitely know more than a 4.0 student. Bright, disobedient students can be experts at hiding knowledge and understanding.

However, I feel compelled to observe that there are damn few 4.0 students who are not ahead of most of their peers academically. Low grades may not reflect true understanding. But a consistent accumulation of high grades over time does reflect understanding. Even if a few teachers in the mix don’t have high standards, or reward quantity over quality, “A” after “A” after “A” across the years can be used as a reliable measure of academic excellence.

When we stop trying to measure and define academic excellence, we will have truly fallen down the rabbit hole. Grades don’t determine intelligence? Of course, they don’t. Grades are merely a measuring tool. But grades remain one of our best tools for determining understanding, despite their flaws.

I’d also like to observe that obedience in a classroom may serve the common good, even if that particular behavioral trait has inexplicably fallen out of fashion.

My last post refers to a girl assaulted in a bathroom. Here’s the thought I did not include in that post; I am sure many similar stories exist but they never have hit the media radar. That radar is all about ratings. Where are the ratings? Right now, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are great for ratings. We know all about what they are doing. Chris Christie could be meditating in an ashram in Nepal for all most of know, however.

I am sure those assaults in bathrooms have been occurring. But unless someone was seriously injured or killed, such a story would not have qualified for air time. As mores change and the landscape shifts beneath us, similar stories may acquire traction. Suddenly bathroom safety has hit the fringes of the news. Whether these stories get bumped to the head of the line will depend on the ratings from similar stories.

That makes a solid month of periodic PARCC library closures to allow for PARCC tests and then later PARCC make-up tests where I am teaching.

Sigh. This is Batsomething, that’s for sure.

Click on the pic to enlarge it for a better view.

At a meeting to thank the many teachers who have helped with extracurricular activities throughout the year, the Principal uttered one line that deserved to be blogged:

“I really appreciate the many people who helped us get ready for PARCC for the last two and one-half months.”

How much time has been lost to the testing process? Who knows? How many teachers were preparing for a test rather than preparing lesson plans? The test itself sucked up the better part of a month, but the test is only the culmination of a process that involves a tremendous amount of preparatory work and training. I just thought I’d put that “two and one-half months” on the table.