Kids love Snapchat. With Snapchat, they can send pictures, text messages, and videos that will disappear after a few seconds. They can add text, captions, and even emojis. Because the messages simply vanish, Snapchatting feels safe and fun. Mom can’t find these pics. The teacher won’t know what you wrote. That sexy, selfie pose will go away.

But teachers, kids and parents need to realize that not all Snaps disappear forever. Screenshots can capture snaps. So can some apps out there, I’m told.

Eduhonesty: Kids often lack judgment about what they expose in cyberspace. Because of today’s test-test-test climate, we are not spending as much time on whole child education as we did in the past. We ought to be spending more, not less. The temptations of everyday life have been exploding in a technological free-for-all of software and apps.

When your school does the anti-bullying assembly or tutoring period(s) — about the only reliable whole-child education that remains — please remember to work Snapchat-related issues into the lecture. One sideways method to get the idea across: Point out that bullying Snapchats can always be kept as evidence via that screenshot.

“A good listener is usually thinking about something else.”  ~ Kin Hubbard (1868 – 1930). Thanks to Bob at lakesideadvisors.com for this one.

Please pass this post on to newbies.

Some kids are masters of the nod. They track you with their eyes. They may take a note or two while doing so. Their heads go up and down at appropriate pauses in the lecture. Here’s the tricky part, though: A percentage of those kids don’t know if you are discussing the fall of Sparta or Sherman’s March through Georgia. They just have perfected the Nodding superpower. They know how to look engaged and attentive, no matter how far away their minds have wandered.

That’s why lecture absolutely must be broken up by questions. I’d suggest picking the people who DON’T raise their hands at least some of the time. Call on Nayelli when she nods. You don’t want to embarrass or trap the girl. If you can tell right away that Nayelli’s lost, please let her off the hook gently. But students must be made to participate regularly if you want to keep the Nodding superpower in check.

Preparing regular think-pair-share activities will work in some classes. Activity sheets that must be filled in as lecture progresses also help. Regular references to expected, upcoming homework will help.

Eduhonesty: Never trust a Nod.

Fox29.com via the Huffpost Weird News

The girl with the light green shirt was sent home for a uniform violation. Normally, I side with the district on these issues. That girl with the asymmetrical haircut that showed a leopard print on one side? Send her home. But this green shirt thing seems a bit silly. Still, I am going to stand up for uniform policies.

I have been asking readers to share certain posts with new teachers lately. I’d like to suggest that readers share this post with parents.

Clothing is imbued with meanings, some hidden, some not. In major urban areas especially, clothing still may represent gang affiliations. Even impoverished suburbs far from the big city may be battling gang representation. Clothing conveys many meanings and messages. That kid in the Star Wars or funny-math-joke t-shirt wants his peer group to find him. Gamers sometimes wear gamer shirts. Would-be thugs and gangsters sport gansta-rap clothing with hip hop artists and street gang references.

The girl in spaghetti straps with her short, short skirt poses a particular problem for school administrators. She wants to be noticed. She is probably indicating an interest in boys and sex, in a time when too many parents and family members leave houses empty in the afternoon.

If parents wonder about dress codes, codes that did not exist when they themselves went to school, the above examples help explain those codes. In an area with gang problems, putting all the kids in beige and navy blue sidesteps problems created by Insane Vice Lords wearing colors that identify them to King Cobras.

But even in schools that don’t need to manage gang issues, uniforms may be required. Uniforms save parents money. They downplay economic differences between students’ parents. Uniforms can prevent jealousy. Especially in economically-mixed neighborhoods, a uniform policy may help certain students feel their poverty less acutely. Even kids in elementary school often know brand names nowadays. They know that Daniela’s Kate Spade purse cost money that their own parents don’t seem to have.

Uniforms MAY save administrators time managing inappropriate clothing. (Or they may absolutely swamp those administrators as they attempt to deal with students out of uniform.) They help administrators avoid issues from distractions posed by spaghetti straps and too-short skirts.

Uniforms can be used to create school spirit. When everyone wears the same set of Eagle or Cougar t-shirts, that sense of being part of a group is reinforced. Uniforms help pull a school team together.

Eduhonesty: This post is for parents especially. Please don’t let Myra shave off half her hair if the school code forbids that shaving. Please don’t send her in a pink shirt if the code says white, navy blue, or black. That restriction may seem silly to you and Myra may look great in her pink shirt. But when Myra turns up in that shirt, a teacher has to talk to a Dean or another administrator. Myra can’t be left to wear that shirt because, if she does, pink shirts will start popping up all over the place, like a flower garden bursting into bloom in the spring. Fighting to maintain a dress code can begin to suck up huge blocks of time once all those pink flowers start proliferating.

Five minutes dealing with holey jeans here, five minutes there, and pretty soon hours have been spent on the jeans — and other, more important issues may never have been touched because the jeans question is immediate, whereas planning a spirit assembly can be postponed. If enough time gets taken by pants, that assembly may never be planned.

Educational resources are always limited and are much more limited in some districts than others. When the Assistant Principal becomes buried in disciplinary issues — and uniform violations are a category on disciplinary referral forms — some other useful planning and discussion will never happen. Or that planning may take on a shoddy character as that Assistant Principal tries to shove 16 hours of work into a 10 hour day.

Among civil liberties issues worth fighting, I’d include appropriate class placements, appropriate testing, limiting testing, fairness in student and teacher evaluations, fair allocation of educational funding, and the need for financially-disadvantaged students to receive access to technology. At least, those are the issues that came to mind immediately.

Parents and students may believe those cute pink shirts and holey jeans represent a civil liberties issue. Or they may simply be out of laundry detergent. They may be tired of fighting with Myra about that new pink shirt she keeps putting on and trying to sneak out of the house. Whatever the reason, sometimes parents will be tempted to ignore the dress code. Please don’t. When Ana comes in holey jeans, then the school has to respond. If not, the next day, Ana, Myra, and Shaun will ignore the code and turn up in holey jeans.

Allowing children to ignore inconvenient rules also provides poor preparation for life later. Not dressing according to corporate expectations may not result in loss of employment, but that choice of too-casual clothing has definitely cost some people promotions. At worst, a cavalier approach to corporate rules ends in loss of employment and unfortunate job references.

I recommend laying in as many pairs of khaki pants and navy blue shirts as you can afford. Then ask the kids before bed, “Have you laid out your clothes for tomorrow?” You can add that question to the ones about homework. “Is your homework done? Have you put it in your backpack?”

Uniforms may seem unimportant, but in aggregate those uniforms matter greatly. A school that has lost control of its uniform requirements has lost disciplinary control generally. When students know that a school cannot enforce one rule, other rules start falling. Disciplinary paperwork and policies start stealing educational minutes as teachers struggle to manage continuing, expanding infractions of school rules.

To put the issue succinctly, uniforms are the horseshoe-nails in educational conduct codes, and like that proverbial horseshoe-nail, they matter.

I’ll offer a counterargument to my own previous post. No doubt a few readers reflected that the Danielson Rubric is all about defining good teaching. As such, learning the rubric ought to offer some insights into good teaching. I don’t deny this.

Nonetheless, a quality PD (professional development) needs to be more targeted than the average explanation of the Danielson Rubric can offer. Asking, “What does proficiency in Domain 2d, Managing Student Behavior, look like?” may provide some insight to teachers. For the unfamiliar, proficiency in Domain 2d is described as follows: “Teacher response to misbehavior is appropriate and successful and respects the student’s dignity, or student behavior is generally appropriate.”

Asking, “How does “proficiency” in 2d differ from being “distinguished” in this area?” may also provide some insight. Distinguished 2d, Managing Student Behavior, is defined as follows: “Teacher response to misbehavior highly effective and sensitive to students’ individual needs, or student behavior is entirely appropriate.”

I’m not saying these PDs are useless. I am merely noting that they represent a suboptimal use of PD time. New teachers would benefit more from targeted PDs that directly teach classroom management techniques, for example. Special education teachers would benefit more from learning the latest research on autism than from group discussions on 2e, “Safety and Arrangement of Furniture.”

If my PD in no way improves my pedagogical skills but takes me out of the classroom for the day, my students lose. PDs about teacher evaluation systems and new Common Core state standards are necessarily losers for students left behind. Learning the new Common Core standards may improve eventual state test scores, but I would counter that a day — or sometimes more — of instruction just went out the window. Even if test scores come in a little higher for the year, overall learning undoubtedly came in lower.

For  non-teacher readers, a bit more information may help here. School districts pay for seminars and other presentations called professional development or simply PD. Districts may also offer their own professional development. Rarely, a teacher might stumble on a free, outside professional development opportunity, but few free seminars remain. Many consultants make their living offering PD activities and seminars. PD requirements vary from state to state and district to district, but mandatory PD comes with the teaching territory.

You can get a sub for PD during the school year, assuming a sub is willing to take your class. Some development occurs during the summer.

One article I read yesterday related to wasted PD opportunities. I’m afraid it made me laugh. Wasted? As far as I am concerned, I completely squandered almost all my PD from the last three years. Except for three brief interludes of one day apiece, when I learned theory and new practices for bilingual education, nearly every single minute of PD I experienced involved either the Common Core or the Charlotte Danielson rubric. What is the Common Core? How can you align to Common Core standards? HOW WILL YOU PREPARE FOR COMMON CORE TESTS? Interspersed with these test-focused PDs, I had Danielson Rubric PDs. The Danielson rubric is the teacher evaluation rubric in Illinois and some other states, with its 22 sections and 76 subpoints (or whatever, the numbers are something like that) which the Danielson group has now rearranged into 6 clusters since the first version of that rubric was “unwieldy,” to quote one Danielson speaker, if we want to speak diplomatically. I’d say “unmanageable” might better describe that rubric. The Danielson rubric was hammered into me during PDs, day after day, afternoon after afternoon, sometimes while subs took my classes.

I would  love to be able to go back in time and steer Charlotte Danielson — a very well-intentioned lady, I’m sure — away from education and into archeology or some similar, more harmless field. Anthropology? Etruscan pottery? European architecture?

Let her dig bones or classify shards of pottery. Just, please, please, please, get all these  arbitrary numbers out of the evaluation system. Too often, assistant principals and others are just making up numbers in their offices.

I am certain I spent more than a full teaching week during the last couple of years just learning the Danielson system. We paid their group to give off-site presentations even. That last time, a few teachers were in the audience whose Danielson rubric numbers put them in risk of termination. A couple had been told they were not going to be called back. I remain astounded that those teachers attended. (One was hired back anyway, after going through the hiring process from scratch, another moved to a better job in a nearby district, and a third retired. I am sure others I did not know were sitting in that crowd. I hope they are all doing well.)

Eduhonesty: I suspect some teachers in that room never saw a PD in the last year or two that was not either centered around Danielson or the Common Core. The best part of those repetitive PDs may sometimes be the lunches. That’s not merely sad. It’s outrageous. While we flounder around learning new curricula and new evaluation systems, who is teaching our kids? Subs. The idea behind days lost to PD is that lost class time will be made up later as teachers use newly-learned instructional techniques. But when all those teachers learn are new curricular standards and their own evaluation system, I’d say we can count these PDs as a net loss of instructional time during a period when tests are attacking that time like ravenous barracudas in a test-based feeding frenzy.

One last Danielson observation: No new teacher evaluation system should take weeks to explain. No any-evaluation-system-ever should take weeks to explain. No evaluation system should be sucking time out of the school year, as this one has been doing for a few years now.

Pseudo-data is running amok. We have become enamored of data. But data should not be an end and data should not even be a means — unless that data represents real values. The classroom time lost has become appreciable and the benefit remains completely undemonstrated. If we are going to use test scores to show progress, where are those test scores that demonstrate progress?

They don’t exist. Given all the effort we have put into pushing up those numbers, the lack of real, tangible academic advancement seems scary to me. Could part of that lack of advancement stem from wasted development hours? I’d say absolutely. When a sub takes my day so I can learn how my evaluation system works, I just wasted a day’s learning opportunity for my students.

We need to reclaim professional development and redirect that development toward improved teaching for our students.

“Tag ban lifted on Mercer Island; school playgrounds return to normal”

Originally published in the Seattle Times, September 25, 2015 at 4:34 pm | Updated September 25, 2015 at 6:39 pm, Paige Cornwell, Seattle Times staff reporter

The Mercer Island School District has reinstated the game of tag following an outcry from parents.
…
“Tag, as we know it and have known it, is reinstated,” the school district said in a prepared statement Friday.

That reversal came after parents objected to a new “hands off” policy, which required students to keep their hands and feet to themselves at all times, including recess.

Parents first learned about the policy at a meeting with the principal at Lakeridge Elementary, one of the district’s three elementary schools.

“The new expectation was made with the best of intentions,” Superintendent Gary Plano wrote in a message Thursday to parents and the district community. “Our hope has always been and continues to be an expectation that students respect others’ personal space and respect their individual and unique differences.”

Along with objecting to the ban itself, some parents also were upset they hadn’t been consulted about the change, said Kelsey Joyce, whose two children go to Lakeridge. One parent started a Facebook group called “STAR MI (Support ‘Tag’ At Recess in Mercer Island).” The group had more than 400 members Friday afternoon.

“The kids had been told not to play tag, and I think they were really bummed,” Joyce said. “To be honest, kids get hurt on the playground. It’s an unfortunate part of life, but part of learning and growing.”

They weren’t the only ones upset. The ban, originally reported by local media earlier this week, soon made its way to national outlets like The Washington Post and became a heated topic on talk-radio shows.

The district said there were isolated incidents last year stemming from games involving student contact, where unstructured play “deteriorated into name-calling, fighting and injury.”

At first, the district responded to the outcry by saying that it planned to come up with alternatives to tag.
…

On Friday, the district sent out another message, clarifying that tag will be allowed.

Other districts around the nation have banned contact games and, in some cases, balls and other playground equipment, as education officials try to balance safety with playtime, said Jonathan Blasher, executive director of the nonprofit Playworks. In 2006, some Spokane elementary schools prohibited tag over concerns about student safety.

“I think a game like tag is wonderful,” Blasher said. “You can play it almost anywhere, it’s universal. It’s important for kids to have that free-range play, where adults aren’t micromanaging, but there is the need for assurance that the kids have a basic understanding what the expectations are.”
…
The return of tag is good news for Joyce’s children; her son and his friends play four different types of tag, including a version involving a hot-lava monster.

“I don’t even really understand that one, but it’s great they are fostering creative development of thinking,” she said.

 

Like taking away early elementary recess to make way for more math, this craziness provides an almost perfect operational definition of micromanaging the lives of our children — and of forgetting what it’s like to be a kid. Yes, tag is not always fair. Some kids “tap” too hard. Some kids fall when running. Some kids are more likely to win than others. At worst, some childhood games end in name-calling and fights.

Those games teach kids a great deal about life, which certainly isn’t fair either. They can help kids learn to manage negative emotions and to avoid conflicts. Games let kids manage themselves and create play for themselves, inspiring initiative and creativity.

Games like tag also provide exercise. We have too many morbidly obese elementary school children who desperately need to run around fields more and twiddle their thumbs on controllers less. I blame at least part of America’s growing childhood obesity problem on the lack of real, spontaneous, outdoor play.

Fears of inappropriate touching while playing tag concern me even more. These are elementary age children. We can create an atmosphere where touching is easily misinterpreted. When we ask leading questions about how one kid touched another, we have the potential to create concern in the mind of a child being questioned. Suddenly, sinister possibilities enter into a game that had only been intended for fun. Adult fears can steal away students’ childhoods.

I don’t want to seem to diminish or put down concerns about potential abuse, but my friends and I played tag and many other outdoor games for all the years of my childhood. I never came close to a situation I interpreted as abusive and I never heard that any of my friends did either. I usually lost and I skinned a few knees, but those kids trying to tag me at Jennie Reed Elementary School never once seemed to have ulterior motives. They wanted to win a game and show off how well they could run. That’s all.

In my case, I mostly wanted to avoid embarrassment since I knew I would never be one of the faster kids. But I still played and I was still happy to join in the game. I went right into that circle of kids who gathered to plan the game when somebody yelled, “Let’s play tag!” Or I ran away and yelled, “You can’t catch meee!”

Eduhonesty: We need to let children play in peace and put the social agenda away, at least during recess.

(This post is mostly for high school teachers, though some middle school teachers will relate, and it’s definitely for newbies.)

“I am just tired,” Oliver will say. “I did not sleep well.”

“I was crying,” Jeannie may say.

You look at their red eyes. Maybe you catch a whiff of something smoky and herbal on their clothes. You watch their fingers fumble with the pages in their book.

“Turn to page 72,” you say, and you watch them start working their way from page 41 to 72, slowly, one page at time, bending some pages as they go. Friends may lean over to help.

After a minute or two, one of these bloodshot students may ask, “What page was that?”, struggling to articulate that “s” sound.

Unless smoke is curling out of your students pockets, though, I suggest you roll on with your lesson. You won’t gain by shutting down class. If you have morning classes, there’s a good chance all the contraband is at home. I’d recommend you pass a note on to the Dean’s office or administration. Get someone to come to you and step briefly out of the classroom to explain the situation. Tell them you don’t want class interrupted. Locker and backpack searches should be handled by security and people in authority who understand the rules and procedures. Do your best to distance yourself from searches and other happenings. You want to stay off the front lines of this problem. You will spend the year with these students. If you get one or more suspended or even arrested, you may have a long, gruesome and academically-challenging year. Kids hate snitches. You may not be able to stay out of the line-of-fire. But try your hardest to do so.

You just entered the “Between the Rock and the Hard Place” Zone. You don’t have a win here. You are trying to minimize losses. In a suggestive situation, where the clothes don’t smell and the pages are turning fast enough and well enough to pass for normal, I’d begin by walking by and giving quiet warnings.

“Your eyes are red. I am concerned about that,” you might say. “Is everything alright?”

It’s possible the kids told you the truth. A call home to ask why Oliver is not sleeping or Jeannie is crying would be a good move. Mention the red eyes. Listen to parents. See what you learn.

Talk to the social worker in your school. Share your suspicions. Make sure appointments are set up with that social worker. Check to make sure they happened.

I will go out on a limb here and suggest that if you are working at a zero-tolerance school, you might warn your class. At a neutral time, when nothing has raised any flags in the recent past, have a “theoretical” discussion. Remind them what will happen if a locker search does not come out clean. Ask them: “Do you want to leave your friends behind to go to an alternative high school?”

Good luck. Substance abuse clobbers adults who know better. Kids can get lost quickly.

Eduhonesty: Teachers naturally want to help. Unless you have special training other than your academic and education classes, though, you should pass this one on to the social workers and counselors. They will know about help and resources in your area. You don’t want to get in the middle of a substance abuse problem. It’s too easy to place yourself in a situation where you may have to violate a student confidence.

But you also want to follow up with the social worker to make certain this ball does not get dropped. In a busy urban school, when Oliver skips his appointments, he may not be tracked down. You want to be sure that a qualified adult is helping him, even if you sometimes have to walk him to that appointment.

(For newbies and others)

American educators have leapt on the technology bandwagon. We love interactive computer programs and webquests. We enjoy teaching students how to most effectively search for information. Especially in financially-disadvantaged districts, the arrival of Chromebooks and internet access can become a giddy and even inspiring event.

I love those Chromebooks. I love go-at-your-own-pace math programs. Students using technology maintain their focus for longer.

That said, I’d like to put in a vote for paper and glue.
https://balancingmodes.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/interactive-notebooks-set-up/86/

The advantages to the paper, paste and glue interactive notebook remain true even in our technological times. The internet is never down. The notebook is always charged. These notebooks are easy to show parents. They hang around long after computerized documents have been archived or buried in piles of similar documents. They allow for more movement than mere keyboarding. Cutting, coloring, writing, gluing and pasting utilize different kinesthetic skill sets than keyboarding. For a subset of kids, our kinesthetic learners, notebooks like the one above make excellent learning tools.

I suggest mixing the old paper and paste with the new Chromebooks.

As one of my seventh graders said to me last year, “Even big kids like to color. Everybody likes to color.”

I know I do anyway

P.S. Tips for new teachers:
♦ Find a place to store the colored pencils and glue in the classroom if possible. This can be a challenge in middle and high school, but you don’t want to waste time with locker requests. If supplies are in the room, you will save hours by the end of the year.
♦ Watch those glue sticks. They do lend themselves to mischief.
♦You want to keep track of caps, too, so tubes of glue don’t end up dried out and wasted.

(Returning to tips for newbies and anyone else who is interested. Please pass this on to new teachers especially.)

Your school may have the whole website picture laid out for you. Many schools will steer you directly to the software you need. Colleagues can help you get set up. If not, here’s a good website to look at: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/04/10-excellent-platforms-to-create-your.html.

If possible, I suggest tabs at the top or bottom so that students and parents can flip between pages. Because eduhonesty.com began life as a journal, I’ve kept my structure simple, but a functional teaching website will benefit from tabs. If you have a tab for grading and another tab for rules, students and parents can quickly find what they need. I also like tabs because they keep a website from becoming messy. As a teacher, you have so much to share that your website can easily become a bewildering data dump unless you create at least a few separate pages of cyberspace to wander through.

Making a website has become amazingly easy and fun. You may find yourself messing around with formatting for awhile, but you can have your site up and running within the day and sometimes within hours. Canned templates for teachers make life easier if you are short of time and don’t want to take a full day for another project. What teacher isn’t swamped by this time of year?

What you may wish to include in your website:

1) Assignments and due dates! Posting homework eliminates so many excuses.
2) A short welcome to my website statement. Include contact information.
3) A cut-down version of any syllabus you may have. The goal is to let students and parents know what students will be learning over the course of the year. You can add this to your welcome statement if space permits.
4) The grading policy. For clarity’s sake, I suggest putting grading policies on a separate page. You might also want to go over this page in class while showing students an example of how grading will work. I would put my make-up policy in large, bold print. I suggest you also avoid being overly specific. Especially if this is your first year teaching, you will find routines don’t always cooperate. You want your website to reflect the classroom as accurately as possible. I’d avoid “Every Friday we will have a quiz!” because that may prove to be untrue.
5) I recommend a separate page for class rules. Those rules should be posted all over the place. The clearer and more consistent your rules, the easier your life will become.
6) You might want to include a section about who you are and how you became Smith Middle School’s new Spanish teacher. What’s your history? What are your accomplishments? What do you like? You can create your own tab/page for this and I’d suggest adding a few inspirational quotes and/or a cartoon or two, as well as a family photo. If you have pets, I’d definitely include pictures.

These are the basics. At http://www.techlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=100&entryid=6414, I found a list of other possibilities you might want to look at that may fit your classroom, from Guest blogger Michele Vance at the Tech & Learning site.

I’d like to add one last cautionary note: Keep it simple. You don’t want to have to do much more on a regular basis than post homework and upcoming events. While your website should be a go-to for your students and parents, you are likely to be too busy to play with the site often.

P.S. Watch out for cheap deals on for-pay sites. Yes, they will give you a website for $1 per month, but that site won’t cost $12 next year. Renewal fees may be jarring. I’d say stick to the freebies.