When I write about the slimy chicken and tasteless rice and vegetables, some teachers always look mystified. They eat their school lunches. Those lunches will never win culinary awards, but the food tastes O.K. In some schools, the food even tastes pretty good, as kids choose between sandwich bars and the pizza stand.

But financially-challenged districts face budgetary hurdles that other districts do not, and the food contract goes to the lowest bidder, who then has to try to produce lunches that will make that bidder a profit. Those bidders make elaborate promises, but in the end, the food will not be produced with love or with an eye to getting back a repeat customer. Those student-customers are like citizens in the old Soviet Union in search of shoes. You have your choice of the brown, brown or brown or you can go buy the same brown shoe down the block.

In the absence of love, cooking can still taste fine when the right ingredients are thrown into the process. But in lowest of the low-bidder cooking, these ingredients are the cheapest ingredients available. Eat one of the apples, if you doubt me.

The new, healthy school lunch menu: A great idea in districts with money.

I want to put something on my readers’ radar for after the break. A colleague of mine was complaining to me yesterday about the fact that all kids in her school get the same lunch — whether they are in 1st grade or 8th grade. They all receive the same lunch.

She also complained about the slimy, skinless, steamed chicken, but that complaint’s old news to me. I’ve eaten that chicken. We are serving versions of that chicken all across America. One saving grace is that the chickens who sacrificed their lives to deliver that pale imitation of food were at least tiny creatures. You don’t have to eat too much of that chicken, even if they give you two whole pieces.

But enough of the chicken. If you want to read more, put “lunch” in the search bar. Or go to September 4, 2014 to start.

I never worked in a K-8 building, only middle schools and high schools. So I never considered age and portions. But my colleague is right: Giving the same food to a first grader and an eighth grader simply seems wrong. I can’t imagine they have the same needs. I know my kids did not eat as much when they were little. I know some eighth grade kids, especially athletes, who act ravenously hungry on a regular basis. I remember an older father who once expressed concern about a teenage boy in his household.

“He’s a glutton,” he said to me, looking for advice on how to stop the nonstop, near-inhalation of food.

“Is he gaining weight?” I asked.

He wasn’t. I explained that if the kid was not adding pounds, then he appeared to be eating about the right amount of food.

Eduhonesty: Readers in K-8 schools, if your school is serving the same lunch to all, maybe you should have a conversation with the administration. I’d provide data to back up what you want to say. Maybe you should eat those lunches for a week or two. Write down the estimated calorie count. Check on recommended caloric intakes for different ages.

But try to rescue the older kids if they need your help. Right now, I am convinced school lunches are not helping America’s obesity problem. I’ve talked to students about this. The first thing they do when they get home is to raid the fridge and the cupboards because they are starved, looking for snacks, leftovers and quick noodles. That can’t be helping America’s young to learn to eat healthy food.

In poorer districts saving money on that school lunch contract, we are probably promoting overeating, rather than teaching improved nutritional habits. Slimy chicken, unbuttered rice and unsalted vegetables will never lead our kids in the direction we want them to go.

I suspect a rare phenomenon may be unfolding. We may end up with a cultural reference in the near future that nearly everybody understands. All across America, I expect to see classrooms where every single child in the room has seen the new Star Wars movie. The film’s a true tribute to the original Star Wars, and the plot, casting and directing are spot-on, reminiscent of the original trilogy.

If I were teaching English, language arts, or social studies, I would leap on this opportunity. So many lesson themes might use this film as a launching platform. Discussions of power dynamics, family dynamics, and friendship spin easily out from the new Star Wars. Depending on where I was at in the curriculum, I might ask students which character in the film they most identified with and why. That could be a short answer question to open the class or you might flesh it out with further questions and go for a full essay.

Finding common experiences has become more of a challenge lately due to the proliferation of games, shows and movies in our expanding, media universe. I’d seize this chance to discuss a film that is likely to become a shared experience for whole classrooms. Have fun!

P.S. And see the film before too many spoilers get out there.

(For new teachers and anyone who is interested.)

We are over a decade into the NCLB testing experiment now with precious little or nothing to show for those efforts. I believe that part of the reason has been a shift towards “student-focused” classrooms — not that there is anything wrong with focusing on students. But what ought to be a thought-out approach to classroom education sometimes now becomes the equivalent of a faith-based approach. Teachers are told to avoid whole-group instruction in favor of small groups. Often, this approach will work best, but NOT always. When no one in the class can add fractions, whole group instruction is wholly appropriate, and whole group instruction saves time. Teachers are told to create groups with the goal of having stronger students help weaker students. Mostly, this idea has merit, but sometimes those stronger students don’t exist — or they are not strong enough. Teachers may be discouraged from giving homework because “the latest research does not favor regular homework.” Whose research? In what subject area? Does that really apply to mathematics? Does that even make sense?
Teachers are told to give 50% credit for assignments that were never turned in. The research suggests this prevents students from becoming discouraged, we are told. Well, yes, students almost can’t lose under that system. Of course, you can’t win either, unless you actually do the work. The work is a prerequisite for learning.

Eduhonesty: This post is especially for new teachers. I want to suggest you treat the various techniques you were taught in education school with skepticism. I am not saying those techniques are wrong. I am saying that they almost never fit all situations or student groups. Each class has its own character. Regular, small group work may work well in one class and hardly at all in another. If students in your classroom can’t wander the room on a gallery walk without losing focus, then you need to lose the gallery walk. Or reformat your approach so that fewer students are up at one time.

Too many studies conducted in education have led to sweeping pedagogical declarations without enough scrutiny being given to whether the conditions of the study can be duplicated. If you are teaching a different population than the study population and if you do not have a teacher’s aide and cooperating special education teacher, unlike that teacher in the study, don’t be surprised when a recommended technique does not work. If I study bird watching behavior in cats, I can’t automatically apply my results to dogs or snakes. The real world will intervene often in our lives. If our “cooperating” teacher does not cooperate, the fact that he or she technically exists is irrelevant.

I’d like to suggest a radical approach: Do it your way. If the computer program you were handed is above everybody’s head, find another, more appropriate program online. Or do one problem at a time from your assigned program and then create a worksheet to review different versions of that one problem until students understand what they are doing. Watch out for current educational theory. That theory is too often misunderstood and misapplied by administrators who view children as interchangeable parts.

I have gotten some negative feedback from the post of a few days ago regarding our efforts to make engaging lessons. Teachers naturally come back to say that all lessons should be as good as the teacher can manage. I am not disagreeing with that. These are young lives in our care and we owe them best efforts.

Let me see if I can better articulate what I want to say.

I’d like to take a specific wham at that “engagement” piece. Yes, our students should be engaged by our lessons. But if you are convinced that that engagement is your responsibility, Id say you need to take a step back. That engagement should be a shared responsibility.

If Manny does not like your lesson, he needs to suck it up and learn the new material. He needs to take responsibility for his own learning — because no one else can do that learning for him. You can help. You can show Manny how to organize materials. You can remind him to write down assignments. You can provide targeted interventions for problem behaviors, and you should do so. But if Manny keeps leaving his backpack in his locker despite your best efforts, that’s on Manny. If Manny is not listening to the science PowerPoint that you spent five hours creating the night before, that’s on Manny. If Manny is distracting his group during the day’s enrichment activity, that’s on Manny.

Eduhonesty: Teachers should not be forced to take responsibility for behaviors or outcomes they cannot control.

That title probably captured your attention! I actually found this article on Web MD. Quite probably, people are inserting other people’s poop into themselves for personal medical reasons. Read the article if you are curious. Here’s the URL: http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/news/20151209/diy-fecal-transplant?page=3

I believe this article. I also believe that the Superintendent in Los Angeles and the Mayor should hold their ground. This evening’s news was filled with silly analysis of the closure of Los Angeles Public Schools due to a bomb threat. The closure is receding into the past even as I write this, and I hope we don’t see similar incidents in the near future. In the meantime, you can’t change the past. That closure was a good-faith effort and I, for one, would not want to be the Superintendent who decided the schools were safe because “Allah was not capitalized,” a point used to support the idea that this bomb threat was obviously fraudulent. We need to keep in mind that Los Angeles and San Bernardino are close neighbors. Emotions are running raw in Southern California.

I lived through a bomb threat some years ago. My then-Principal used two fire drills to get students outside. The local police swept the school for bombs while students stood outside. That was a year of false alarms and students remained oblivious to the drama. We live in exciting times.

Eduhonesty: To close or not to close, that was the question. The answer was to shut the doors, and are we honestly going to object because no bombs went off? America needs to stop second-guessing honest efforts to do the right thing.

Unless grades are due tomorrow or you are certain you must work on those grades to meet a deadline — quit. O.K. you might have to write a quiz or something, but if possible — Stop. Read a book. Go to bed.

Teachers sometimes end up sick over break because they try to do it all. With all the outside demands on time in December, you can easily wipe yourself out. I recommend taking the advice they give new mothers: Nap when you can. Rest when you can.

Eduhonesty: If those cups of coffee keep getting taller and darker, consider putting on your jammies, making some cocoa, propping up a few pillows and pulling out a good book. If you are feeling like you can’t get it all done, then DON’T. Some items, like finals and the grades, are not optional. But if the your classroom’s not quite as neat as you’d like and your plans for next semester remain hazy, give yourself a break. Let it go.

With or without a McMuffin, you deserve a break today.

Teaching evaluations have been called dog-and-pony shows for years. Those dog and pony shows may have masked unfortunate changes in the educational climate of our time. Yes, we always hyperplanned those short hours, with spiffy visuals, auditory back-up and manipulatives to sideswipe any kinesthetic learners who had somehow missed our point. We prepared sets of questions designed to demonstrate how cleverly we steered student conversation and how much our students were learning.

No one expected every day to be a dog-and-pony show, though. Most especially, the kids knew that most days were not going to include all pieces of the teaching puzzle, neatly bundled up for their entertainment. My post from two days ago captures a slice of today’s classroom life. Students expect classes to attempt to entertain them now. They expect the glitz and glamour of computers, games, and gallery walks through classrooms and hallways.

I remember three years ago when I had the temerity to suggest students make flash cards so they could work on their vocabulary together.

“MAKE FLASH CARDS?!?” The voices held disbelief.

Where was the spiffy computer program? If they had to use cards, where were their cards? Make cards? You would have thought I’d told them to clean the parking lot with toothbrushes. I ran into that roadblock every so often in the Spanish 1 class in question. Memorize lists of words? What??

“I am going to get Rosetta Stone this summer so I can learn Spanish,” one boy told me. He was pretty upset that after three months of Spanish, he could only say a few words and phrases. If he had done what I suggested, he might have known considerably more, but I doubt I could have satisfied that boy. He wanted it to be easy. He wanted it to be fast. He wanted to be regularly entertained. He did not want to work, however.

Eduhonesty: I am not against “engaging” lessons. I am not against trying to make learning fun. I love to try to make funny PowerPoints, actually, when I can get my laughs and still get my lesson across. I like games. I support using computer programs to reinforce learning — though, I think those programs are much less effective for introducing new material. But I am afraid the engagement pendulum may have swung too far. Learning cannot always be condensed into sound bites. Students should not feel they have a “right” not to be bored. When confronted with work, sometimes now I see students becoming petulant, sulky at the thought that they might have to give up their trip to the mall or evening’s texting and gaming to do homework. Disappointment would not bother me. I felt disappointed when my plans were interrupted as a kid, when I realized that I was going to be stuck doing math for an hour or more, and I am sure the teacher could see that on my face.

Those occasional expressions of petulance are another matter, however. Underneath some pouty faces, I can see entitlement peeking out. Students should not feel that their teacher owes them a good time in class or a free evening for gaming. Our students are taught early about rights, and by middle school many can advocate for their rights with passion and conviction. Where did so many of students get the idea that they have the right to be entertained, though, while not also understanding that they have a responsibility to learn new material — and that responsibility does not somehow vanish because the new material’s presentation does not meet student standards?

Again, we are failing to prepare some students for real life. When they get to college, that visiting professor from Korea may lecture nonstop, without stopping for a fun activity during the whole semester. When they find employment, they will not be able to skip taking inventory because they don’t like tedious, detail work, not if they want to keep their job or get ahead. They will find their taxes are not optional and whining won’t make their taxes easier. If they opt for the EZ form, they are likely to be giving away money, especially when they start to climb the economic ladder.

The unluckiest students will continue to do just well enough to keep their jobs, while whining their way out of possible promotional opportunities. They will sulk their way out of marriages when the going gets tough and then wonder why they are alone. They will walk through life with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, not realizing that the world does not owe them entertainment.

Many driver’s education courses in the public schools are gone now, victims of budget cuts and test-score concerns. Driver’s ed never improved any school’s test scores, unfortunately. My local schools still offer driver’s education but, in many areas now, the only options are private, for-pay schools. Still, a few, hearty driver’s ed teachers are still hitting the road in our public schools.

They get into the car with adolescents who sometimes have zero experience behind a wheel. For that alone, they deserve a medal. (Either that or maybe a psych evaluation…) Nerves of steel or no sense at all, they are the people who launch many of America’s teen-age drivers. They sit patiently while cars jerk, jump and bounce over curbs. They provide advice about using mirrors to students who appear to be relying on telepathy to tell them the location of nearby cars. They emphasize the need to brake to students who instinctively hit the gas. They sit patiently while other students tap, tap, tap and sometimes nonstop wham, wham, wham that brake.

The push toward online learning has created online driving courses. In the end, though, our young drivers have to get behind the wheel and find their gas pedals. While I am writing this post, I’ll salute the parents and private driving instructors who nervously sit, strapped and trapped in passenger seats, as sixteen-year-old kids take the helm and head down the road.

I talked to a driver’s ed teacher for awhile yesterday, an attractive Hispanic woman who was sharing a hospital waiting room with me. She’s not in the public school system. She works for one of the small schools that teach driving to kids and adults who are not part of the public school driving curriculum. She talks to young adults all the time. They tell her that school is boring. They don’t enjoy their Spanish classes. They don’t enjoy much within the walls of their school.

I believe she is accurately sharing the opinions she hears. I have two very different responses to comments like these:

1) Who said it was supposed to be fun anyway? No wonder so many kids are having trouble keeping jobs and moving away from home. Young adults quit positions because, “my job wasn’t any fun,” or “my boss was too hard on me,” leaving themselves with no income and no back-up plan. I’m sure that’s not a lesson that schools intend to teach, but we may be inadvertently contributing to a lack of employment staying-power.

The idea that lessons should be entertaining crops up in education classes all the time. University professors emphasize making lessons “engaging.” Engaging and entertaining are close cousins. Newly minted teachers are encouraged to throw in that entertainment piece, the enjoyable activity that will somehow drive the lesson home. I am afraid we have been trying to “engage” our students for so many years now that students have come to feel they are owed a good time by all.

2) Our push to teach to tests really has sucked the fun out of school. When teachers don’t step off the track, but do bell-to-bell teaching of the core curriculum, we can turn students off by the lack of variety, even when we manage to work that fun activity into the lesson. Fun activity #34 for learning fractions may be 29 fun activities too many, given in too short a time. Breaks and variety do help to maintain student attention.

If items one and two above don’t exactly fit together, well, that’s the conflict in my response.