(Returning to the homework thread for newbies and anyone else who cares.)

A few posts back, I suggested that teachers who were not getting homework back should check to see if the homework’s level of difficulty might be the culprit. Especially if you are not creating your own homework, that homework may be based in an administration’s view of where students ought to be at, rather than where those students are actually operating. While some children who can’t do their homework will seek help, many will not. Adolescents especially may simply stuff offending papers in their locker and go home to play Call of Duty Ghosts™ with friends.

Let’s say that students overall seem able to do that homework, though. They simply did not do it. What’s the next step?

Asking students never hurts. You might have them write a paragraph explaining why they did not do their homework. Did they forget about their homework? Were they too busy with other homework? Were they babysitting siblings? Out with their parents at a baseball game? Did they start gaming with friends and never stop? Did they spend the evening on social media? Did they decide that one assignment was unimportant? That all their assignments were unimportant?

My school last year made homework grades virtually irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Those grades counted for 0% of a report card grade. Report card grades were taken entirely from tests and quizzes. Frankly, I don’t think I would have done homework in those circumstances. I know one of my daughters did not do homework in a high school math class when that homework only counted for 5% of the grade. She figured she could do without that 5% and still get her “A”. (She’s in a doctoral program in math now.) One major reason for homework completion that could be affecting your class: Students don’t think the homework will affect their grade. Or affect their grade enough.

We were involved in a funny fiction last year. Teachers were pretending that homework counted as part of final grades but, in fact, a student could do no homework without losing points toward their final grade. We had been instructed to give homework a 0% weighting in the weighted average that resulted in the final grade. We were allowed to bump students up if they came within 2% of the next grade, but we were not required to do so. That bump was discretionary.

An example may help may this clearer. Using the standard grading scale in which 90% to 100% is an “A”, 80% to 90% is a “B”, and 70% to 80% is a “C”, I had the option to push Maggie from a “C” to a “B” when her overall average amounted to 78%. I could choose to leave Maggie at a “C” if I chose. Homework completion was expected to be part of my decision. If Maggie had been turning in most or all of her homework, she would presumably be bumped up to the next grade. Homework had some effect, but only in the margins.

The school had a plan in place to encourage homework completion. Students who failed to do work could be “zapped” and sent to an afterschool program where they would finish their homework. That program encouraged homework completion — but not homework quality. Zapping was also a fair amount of work, especially when calls home were added to the picture. You can’t keep students after school without warning parents.

I’m cynical enough to suspect that some teachers might have assigned less homework after awhile in order to avoid zapping students. Other teachers shifted homework to classwork, starting and even finishing the work during the class period. Because we had block scheduling, that strategy had a fair amount to recommend it. Teachers could see students going off-course and correct problems on the spot.

Oops, drifting into history here. If you are a new teacher, you don’t need my history. You could probably use advice. If your school has decided to use mastery-based grading with limited or no weight being given to homework, your school has given students an excuse not to do homework. How will you get that homework back then?

You can use classroom incentives. Hand out a treat or treat coupon in return for homework: Ten coupons equals an Ironman™ eraser, five are good for three Jolly Ranchers™. I have gotten a lot of mileage from Jolly Rancher coupons. I suggest coupons, with candy handed out at the end of the day.

Praise good efforts lavishly, as long as you are not embarrassing students. Watch your students’ reactions. Some kids love to be the center of attention. Others loathe it. You can praise shy students one-on-one. Let students know you appreciate their efforts.

Start homework in class. If a student expects homework to be fast and easy, that homework has a greater chance of being completed. A head start makes homework seem more doable.

Emphasize the importance of homework in the learning process. How do students file knowledge in long-term memory? They work with that knowledge. The more points a student plots on the graph, the more likely that student will remember how to plot points when given graph paper the following year. A short lesson about short-term and long-term memory, combined with critical thinking questions, may work for you, at least with some students. Do doctors need to remember many facts about diseases to do their jobs? Can they just look up diseases on their phones? How can they remember the symptoms of diseases?

Call home. Depending on your students’ ages and homework loads, you might create a homework log for parents to check nightly. If students write down the homework in a log and parents check that log, homework completion should go up considerably.

Try to give homework regularly. If you don’t want to give homework daily, then try to create a routine. If students know they always have a weekly packet to do, that packet is more likely to get done. You can ask at the start of class, “How are your packets going? Are there any questions?” Then give coupons for good questions. You might establish a time at the start of class specifically for questions.

Good luck with this piece of the teaching puzzle. Again for new teachers, don’t take homework completion problems personally. Perhaps Mr. Smith last year never cared if the homework came back. Homework completion will be heavily affected by both history and peer behavior.

I keep intending to get back to the homework thread for new teachers, but having added a chart from the Illinois state interactive report card that shows some score adjustments made between 2012 and 2013, I thought I would add two other charts demonstrating the impact of this change in scoring.

These results are from a middle school in northeastern Illinois. If you will click on the above chart documenting passing levels in reading on the Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT), you will discover that the percentage of students meeting or exceeding reading expectations fell from 63% to 26% in 8th grade, and 55% to 20% in seventh grade between 2012 and 2013. I like how the chart adds 17 + 2 to get 20, but I assume that’s an issue of decimals I cannot see. Of note, almost no students exceeded expectations. In some years, none did.

In math, scores fell from 43% to 17% for eighth graders between 2012 and 2013, and made a whopping descent from 61% to 16% in seventh grade. For the years 2013 and 2014, no students exceeded expectations in math in either grade.

These charts raise many questions. They should also raise flags. We are deciding teacher and administrator retention based on these numbers. But what are these numbers? Where do they come from? The fact that a school can change in one year from a passing rate above 1 in 2 to a rate of 1 in 5 speaks volumes about the social-science numbers we are using to document school performance, an issue that too seldom hits the radar. Illinois has a number of other states for company in the production of these volatile and suspicious passing rates. Who sets the passing rate for a state? The state does.

And, on another subject that I consider closely related to this one, who determines the score on a teacher’s evaluation? Evaluations are not “grievable” — which is to say that the union cannot help you if Fred decides to slam your performance. The problem of subjective administrators handing out personally picked numbers ought to receive more public attention. At least the ISAT numbers are based on standardized tests given across a state and should allow for reasonable comparisons between schools. Fred is just making up numbers in his office.

Eduhonesty: The larger problem I see is that we are drowning in fuzzy, social science numbers. Our data and its interpretation are presented as if the numbers represent reality. All I can say is, look at these charts. Which is reality? 2012? 2013? They can’t both be true — not in any objective sense anyway.

The stated goal of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to “support innovation that can improve U.S. K-12 public schools and ensure that students graduate from high school ready to succeed in college.” College readiness has become a rallying cry for educational reformers. Educational administrators know that their positions may hinge upon convincing parents and higher-ups that their particular programs are improving college readiness.

But what does it mean to improve college readiness? When the verbiage is stripped away from reports on this issue, what remains tends to be lists of test scores: ACT and SAT scores, state test scores, PARCC scores*, EXPLORE scores, MAP scores, AIMSWEB scores, ACCESS scores, and other scores are all used to document progress toward college readiness.

Educational leaders keep spinning their stories, finding the data that supports their case and continued employment. If a district takes enough tests, some positive data will emerge. The other data tends to become footnotes in reports.

Unfortunately, scores are not readiness. Scores are not innovations that improve schools. Score not only do not ensure that students graduate from high school ready to succeed in college, they may keep students out of the colleges of their choice. In and of themselves, scores may even be anti-college readiness. The pursuit of scores took around 10% of my last school year, time that might otherwise have been dedicated to instruction.

The meaning of scores may not be straightforward, either. A review of middle school scores in the Illinois state report cards for the years 2012 to 2013 shows a precipitous drop in score results. The state obviously changed how scores were calculated between those years. Scores fell almost across the board – and many school scores fell over 30 points. For example, North Boone Middle school fell from 82% to 51% meeting and exceeding requirements. The whole state fell 23 percentage points.

From the Illinois interactive report card, http://iirc.niu.edu/Classic/School.aspx?schoolId=040042000261001.

We are not exactly inventing numbers but we are not presenting enduring truths either.

Yet the solutions presented for our numerous, complex educational challenges seem to mostly involve new and better test preparation methods designed to get higher scores. I am reminded of the joke about the man looking for his car keys:

A cop walking his beat one night finds a man down on his knees, searching for something on the street.
“What are you doing?” The cop asks.
“Looking for my car keys,” says the man.
The cop helps him look for awhile without success, then says, “Think back. Where were you when you last had your keys?”
“I don’t know,” the man answers. “Down the block on the other side over there, I think.”
“Then, why are you looking here?” the perplexed cop asks.
“Because the light is better under the streetlight,” the man answers.

This hackneyed joke fits today’s educational climate perfectly. Current strategies usually involve forming committees and discussing the problems that are keeping test scores down – without regard to whether or not test scores are actually the problem. These groups then brainstorm ways to improve test scores. No one asks whether raising test scores is the best or right strategy. We are told the higher test scores are necessary to prepare students for college. We are told that all students must be made college ready.

Rather than forming multiple committees and launching into lengthy debates about where the test went wrong, though, and why not all of our students are ready for college, I know what we ought to try first: Take 20 students at random from a failing school and have each student try to read one page of their science book aloud. Then check for understanding. A lot of students can pronounce words that are pretty much nonsense syllables to them. Repeat this page-reading exercise in other subject areas. This is so basic I feel stupid writing it down, but many people who ought to be smarter seem to miss a large point nowadays: If you can’t even understand the simplest paragraphs in your textbook, learning new material becomes hard — or even impossible.

Students who cannot understand their books are not going to succeed in college, no matter how many points we add to their scores.

*Except the PARCC scores still don’t seem to be back. Where are those numbers? I suspect the fail rate was so high that the persons responsible for this test can’t find any way to spin the results.

My September 2nd post on drop-out rates is long. If you don’t want to reread that whole post, I certainly understand, but I have made a number of clarifying additions to what I wrote. If nothing else, I would suggest reading the new ending.

From Randi Weingarten:
When Chris Christie said that our union deserves “a punch in the face,” I was appalled but not surprised. When Scott Walker compared union members in Wisconsin to members of the terrorist organization ISIS, I was disappointed but not shocked.

In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President

Eduhonesty: I remain baffled by attacks on unions. A small percentage of substandard teachers may have received extra protection from being fired because they were tenured union members. But the fact that I have healthcare, a pension and a living wage — that’s the union. Far too many Americans today are living paycheck to paycheck, unable to quit working and terrified at the prospect of getting sick. We need to fight for our unions. While we are at it, we should also help service industry workers and others to unionize. Too many of my students parents’ are working two part-time jobs with no health insurance in order to meet ends meet.

I listen to Chris Christie and Scott Walker and I am absolutely sickened. Teacher-blaming has to stop.

(Another post especially for newbies in challenged and challenging districts with a few thoughts for us all.)

So you are part of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) in your school. Your school has developed a curriculum for all to use and your PLC is busy creating lessons to use across your grade. All the science teachers are sending home that same fill-in, homework sheet on solids, liquids and gasses. You explain the assignment and send everyone out the door with that homework, hopefully after reminding them to put the sheet in their folder and their folder in their backpack where they can find it.

The next day, five kids bring back the finished homework. Twenty-two do not. Most have not started, but some did a few problems. A number have no idea where that homework has gone. What to do next?

Extending the due date is a bad idea. Unless a tornado passed through the area and cut off power, or another cataclysmic event occurred, the kids just blew off your assignment. They can’t earn a reward like an extension for that behavior.

Getting upset with the class probably should be a last resort, too, unless you are positive that the class could all do that worksheet. If you know without doubt that your homework was doable, raising a little hell is a perfectly acceptable option. So is calling home to enlist parents in getting the homework done.

I am going to suggest that you try something else first, though. Make another set of that worksheet. Then give students that sheet in class during testing conditions. No talking, no sharing, no helping. See if your students can actually do that homework by themselves while using their textbook. If they can’t do the work, that homework should never go home.

You are establishing habits at the start of the year. Homework helplessness leads to homework noncompliance, a habit inimical to long-term student success. If you absolutely must use the your group’s required assignments, but you know students cannot do these assignments on their own, start the assignments in class as classwork. Do the toughest problems while you are present to help. Then send home the easiest problems to finish.

You can’t let students begin regularly skipping homework. The homework habit has to be established early in the year. But as a previous post observed, students who cannot do the work will not do the work. (Or they will cheat.) Make sure the homework is doable. That’s the place to start.

More on this topic later.

One dirty, not-so-secret fact has too often been ignored: While the U.S. dropout rate has been declining, the pace of that decline remains glacial in many zip codes. For the year 2013, the U.S. government estimates that 5.1% of whites dropped out of high school, 7.3% of blacks, and 11.7% of Hispanics.* (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_219.70.asp) The government defines drop-outs as “16- to 24-year-olds who are not enrolled in school and who have not completed a high school program, regardless of when they left school. People who have received GED credentials are counted as high school completers.” These percentages should be viewed as approximations. Standards of error in the chart vary considerably. GEDs don’t work as well as diplomas for future employment purposes. Most importantly, school reporting has historically suffered from over-optimism that could be said to border on fraud. Schools have been known to count students who are moving or dropping out as graduates when those students told administrators that they intended to get their GED later, for example. My district used to do this. For all I know, they still do. The government has tightened reporting requirements, but historical data will always be suspect.

Admittedly, the U.S. drop-out rate has become one area in education to see real progress. The 2013 drop-out rate for all races in the government charts totaled 6.8%, a decline from 9.9% ten years earlier. If increased government scrutiny and regulation has led to any wins, the falling drop-out rate must be counted among them. Despite our disproportionate drop-out rate among Hispanic and African- students, America has whittled down a rate that stood at 14.1% in 1980 to less than half that amount today. Even if these percentages are fuzzy numbers fed by sometimes questionable data, a real decline in the drop-out rate has occurred. More students and parents are acknowledging the long-term importance of a high school diploma.

I’d like to focus on that 11.7% or Hispanics and 7.3% of African-Americans, though. We are marketing the most important product that anyone will ever try to sell these students, yet many still walk away from high school on the first day they are legally allowed to exit the premises. We are doing this in a time when any kid who is not living in a closed bomb shelter understands how tough America’s job market has become. Why are these students leaving school? What are we doing wrong?

At least in some cases, I would like to suggest that students are leaving because of fictions created by educational leaders, starting with the idea that students can leap huge chasms in their background learning levels if only we push hard enough. Last year, I was required to give my bilingual students exactly the same tests and quizzes as the regular classes in their grade. The special education teachers were also required to give the same tests and quizzes. Materials presented were essentially undifferentiated. It didn’t matter if you were a life-time special education student, a new arrival from Honduras, or the kid with the highest state test scores in the grade. You received the same tests and quizzes as everybody else. Then teachers shared data. Failing students were entered in red. My classes were often a sea of red, especially if a quiz or test had many story problems.

When I first learned about this educational experiment, I made a prediction: The kids at the top would benefit, hard-working kids in the middle would sometimes benefit, and the kids at the bottom were about to be clobbered. The data eventually proved me right. Why does this concern me? Aside from the fact that students should never receive test questions they cannot even understand, and aside from the fact that a student should be able to succeed at any fair test or quiz with a reasonable amount of studying, I have become convinced that we are setting up a subset of students for failure.

Research has identified characteristics associated with dropping out (http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Staffingstudents/Keeping-kids-in-school-At-a-glance/Keeping-kids-in-school-Preventing-dropouts.html), 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, and especially failed math and English classes. By middle school, we can do an excellent job of predicting whether a student will stay the academic course: Any one of the following traits suggests students have only a 10 to 20% chance of graduating on time:

• Attending school less than 80 percent of the time
• Receiving an unsatisfactory Behavior grade/demonstrating mild but sustained misbehavior, or
• Course failure (particularly in math or English/reading)

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

Yet despite the fact that failed tests and classes are big predictors for dropping out, we are rapidly reaching the point where our educational “product” consists mostly of standardized test preparation, combined with classes specifically pointed toward a possible university education. We prepare for those tests by taking more tests, sometimes tests that students cannot even read. For the student who never does well on tests, we don’t have much of a product to sell. For the student who has no aspirations to climb onto the college track, we don’t have much to sell. For the student who struggles and often fails the many tests and quizzes in the year’s pipeline — tests and quizzes possibly linked to a curriculum that is neither realistic nor age-appropriate for that individual student – today’s school has become a depressing place, punctuated by frequent failures that mark the year’s best efforts.

After too many such failures, academic efforts may sputter to a sad halt, replaced by “unsatisfactory Behavior grade/demonstrating mild but sustained misbehavior.” Why does a student who started on track in elementary school fall into sustained misbehavior in middle school or even earlier? Hormones are sometimes blithely thrown out as an explanation, but many excellent students undergo identical hormonal changes. In my experience, one of the best predictors of misbehavior is being out of sync academically with peers, especially for students who have fallen behind.

I believe furious attempts to raise standardized test scores ironically create misbehaving, failing students in some cases. As we stuff classrooms with students ranging from a third-grade level to a ninth-grade level academically, and then hand those students common preparatory materials chosen because those materials are expected to provide optimal test preparation, we create a group of lost students who simply are too far behind to succeed with the material they have been given. A student reading at a second grade level and doing math at a third grade level cannot do seventh grade work on any regular basis. Period. That student is unlikely to sit quietly staring at activity sheets that might as well be written in ancient Greek.

The kids at the bottom know they are at the bottom. Even if we can create a safe-learning environment — which should always be a top priority in an academically-diverse class — those kids can see that they have fallen behind most of their peers. Frequently, those students feel embarrassed. To avoid feeling embarrassed, they may act out. The class clown is frequently deflecting attention from the fact that he can’t do his classwork, much less the homework.

In yesterday’s post, I also discussed the problem of inappropriate curricula and materials. I believe we are creating at least some of the difference between our Hispanic, African-American and white drop-out rates. My students all came from homes where English was a second language. They were all behind in reading. If you can’t read the book, you can’t do the work. If you can’t do the work, you may be unable to pass the class. If the only book we give you is the book directly aligned to the standardized test for your grade, you may be, to quote from yesterday’s post, overwhelmed. Demolished. Smashed. Disintegrated. Incinerated. Annhiliated. Obliterated.

Or we could simply say nuked.

When the focus of instruction becomes almost solely the content of the state standardized test expected in the spring, students who are unready to access that content are necessarily left behind, short of valiant tutoring efforts that these students may be unwilling or unable to attend. Even with tutoring, students who are too far behind mandated materials may be unable to catch up. In my experience, after awhile less resilient students give up.

Eduhonesty: Students who enter school with substantial English-language deficits should have longer school days and a set of curricular goals based on their need for English-language acquisition, not on their need to pass the year’s standardized tests. This includes English-speaking students who speak a dialect in the home that does not fit the dialect of tests and students who simply lack vocabulary. Words are the tools these students will require for long-term success. Skipping ahead when students have not acquired the language skills they must have to succeed is nothing short of pedagogical malpractice.

* No offense to those who find the terms black and white to be overly simplistic. Those are the terms used in the government’s charts.

Last year, I was expected to teach this book to a group of bilingual students with limited English skills. In one class, all but one student was testing at a third-grade level mathematically. Overwhelmed does not begin to capture my struggles. Try blasted for a description. Or demolished. Smashed. Disintegrated. Incinerated. Annhiliated. Obliterated. We could simply say nuked.

In these times of canned curricula, when both special education and bilingual classes are sometimes supposed to be on the same learning plan and even using the same materials as other classes — I sincerely hope readers are working in saner districts, but I know from experience that some will not be — you may come up against a challenge like this one. If you do, please remember that impossible remains impossible, no matter what rabbit holes administration seems to have fallen down.

Come spring, your first move should be launching a job search. Prepare questions that will help you determine whether or not a prospective district will allow you to appropriately differentiate instruction. Check the materials you will be expected to use and find out what supplementation is allowed. Don’t complain to prospective employers about the challenges you faced, but make your exit to a better-run district if possible.

In the meantime, you have a school year to finish. I recommend tutoring before and after school if you can make that work. I met with groups on Saturday mornings at McDonalds. However you have to arrange your time, your goal is to avoid nuking your students. If everyone is failing the quizzes and no one can do the homework, find out what your students know and then present them with the next level up. To pacify administration, you can teach more challenging, required material in bits and pieces, one story problem, short story or novel at a time.

Eduhonesty: Students who are trying to succeed absolutely must be given a chance to win. Your best bet will be parallel instruction. You can teach the appropriate and inappropriate material at the same time, grouping to make this work more efficiently.

I am sorry to have to even write this post, but I know some new teachers out there are about to get hit up the side of the head with these inappropriate curricular demands. One clue can be found in homework compliance. If kids can’t do the work, they won’t do the work. If most of the homework is not coming back and the quizzes are coming in with low scores or obvious cheating, you need to try parallel instruction. Do the MAP™ or other scores suggest your eighth-grade student is operating academically at a fourth grade level? Find that student fifth grade work and push hard. You have a lot of catching up to do, but that catching up won’t happen if a student can’t even read his or her assignments, let alone answer any questions.

That fellow Lev Vygotsky from your education classes? No one has ever proved him wrong. Students learn best in their zone of proximal development. In concrete terms, that means when a student finishes fourth-grade math, the next math that student sees should be fifth-grade math. A student reading at a lexile level around 500 can be pushed to read a book at a lexile level in the 600s or 700s, but not a book in the 1200s.

A few kids can make giant leaps, but those kids are exceptions.

Good luck. What I’m suggesting is not easy. As the title of a good book says, “Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire.” You can do it.

(I wrote about not taking student criticism personally somewhere in a previous post, but thought this idea deserved space of its own as part of the recent classroom management for newbies series.)

You spent hours the evening before looking up the details of the Nitrogen cycle. You found a plant to bring in, maybe even created a cut-out cardboard box. Your PowerPoint has exactly the right number of slides. You timed it. Those slides are colorful and well-labelled. Your drawing activity will make great notes.

Christopher is looking with contempt at your admittedly scraggly plant. He pretty much ignored the PowerPoint, talking to Owen some of the time. They have barely started drawing and those drawings aren’t labelled. When he sees you looking at him, he glowers back. He’s been looking surly since the start of class.

“Christopher, you need to get started on your drawing,” you say.
“This is stupid,” he answers. “Nobody cares about this dumb stuff anyway.”

What next? If you are unlucky, Owen will agree with Christopher. Other students may get involved.

Eduhonesty management tips:

1) When a student walks in with an obvious bad attitude, you will be better off going over to his or her desk to try to talk quietly. You want to minimize outside involvement.
2) You can’t let this go now. “Stupid” addressed to you, even if it’s about your PowerPoint, requires an immediate response. But you are on tricky ground. You probably need a real consequence, but maybe not a take-this-referral-to-the-Dean’s-office-right-now consequence.
3) Recognize this problem may have zero to do with your lesson. Yes, you worked hard to create a clear and compelling explanation of what you were teaching, but problems in Christopher’s life may overwhelm your best efforts.
4) If this behavior represents a real change for Christopher, ask him to talk to you in the hallway.* Find out what’s wrong. He may need a referral to the social worker, rather than a consequence.
5) Let the source of the problem determine the consequences.

If you find out Christopher got no sleep the night before because he was gaming all night, you can tell him you are sorry he feels so grumpy but, especially if Christopher has any track record of mouthing off, you should probably write a referral to the Dean or administration. At the very least, Christopher’s earned a classroom consequence. An afterschool detention in which he finishes his drawing would be perfect. You should call home. For one thing, his parents need to know he spent the night gaming. You might also put together a short lesson on the importance of sleep for the next day or two.

But if Christopher’s parents screamed and fought all night so he could not sleep, that’s a wholly different call. You might actually let this one go, telling the class that Christopher had a rough night so you plan to drop the issue. Don’t spell out details of your private hallway conversation. Christopher will most likely share the story with friends later. Kids appreciate being understood and cutting Christopher a break at the right time may ensure that Christopher’s future behavior will be better, not worse, because of that dropped consequence.

Compassion won’t hurt you — if you are careful. You can’t let too many excuses lead to too much compassion. If you do, you will be listening to long, sob stories all year. You will also be teaching students to use excuses to get out of trouble. It’s a short step from making excuses to whining, too. You most emphatically don’t want to teach that.

6) Any situation calling for a compassionate exemption from consequences probably calls for a discussion with the social worker as well. Christopher may need help.

I’ve skewed towards the practical here, but I wanted to provide support for an intangible as well. That lesson you thought was great? You were probably right. When you put twenty-some or thirty-some adolescents into an audience, you will always have days when your best efforts go wrong because of nothing you did and nothing you could have predicted. That’s life. That’s teaching.

Your students know you care when you cut out that little cardboard box with its scraggly plant. Just keep cutting. And planning. And pulling out the colored markers. And stapling student work on the walls. Al fin y al cabo**, teaching has to be one of the most fulfilling jobs in the world, but it’s one fulfilling roller coaster of a ride.

*With luck you will have a window in your classroom door but, if you don’t, you don’t want to step outside and leave students on their own. If you cannot talk to Christopher and watch the class, talk to Christopher after class or get someone to cover for you while you step outside. Students should always be under supervision.
**Al fin y al cabo — in the end

The above title lists three names for the same activity. Educational jargon is a moving target. I don’t understand how we teachers all suddenly seemed to know that an opener had become a to-do, but we did. Maybe the aliens used the techno-ray on us, as my young daughter might have said. In any case, your school will have a name for that 5-10 minute opening activity.

To-dos matter. The government is tracking student attendance. Low numbers invite scrutiny and even sanctions. There’s $$ in those numbers, too. Many administrations are keeping close watch over attendance figures. You want to put attendance in within the first ten minutes of class. I recommend against the first two or three minutes. Too soon and you will have to remember to fix the tardies you have marked absent. You definitely don’t want to get attendance wrong.

The right opener makes taking attendance easy. Conventional wisdom now seems to push five-minute openers, probably because of our feverish preoccupation with maximizing text scores and increasing available time for bell-to-bell instruction, but I personally prefer to run a little longer sometimes. As long as students are productively engaged, why not give yourself 7, 8 or even 10 minutes? The problem with the five-minute opener — oops, to-do — lies in the increasing time demands that are being placed on teachers. I am convinced that science experiments declined in my district last year due to these demands. Our prep periods always ended up being filled with meetings and attempts to enter student data into new spreadsheets, creating a tendency to avoid activities in lesson plans that might require a possibly nonexistent prep period.

Let the lesson plan determine the to-do. Slightly-longer to-dos may allow you to set up more complex lessons involving manipulatives, for example. Your target should be to use the shortest time you can get away with while still gracefully getting ready for class. As time and content expectations grow ever more demanding, teachers can sometimes end up seeming rushed or even frantic. Students don’t respond well to rushed or frantic, at least not as a regular occurrence.

Take the time you need to get set up and still enjoy your students. You want a minute or two to ask Daisy how her new, little brother is doing, for example. You want to be able to help Travis get organized. The first few minutes of a class set the tone for that class. Yes, you need to do the attendance piece, but you also want to create a class ready for learning.

Eduhonesty: That said, if administration turns up, you need to get out of your to-do quickly. The short to-do has become a best practice and you mess with best practices at your peril. Best practices will affect or even be used to determine your evaluation numbers.

To-dos should always be activities students can do without you. If students come up to you for help, find classmates to fill in the gaps. The right seating chart can help, allowing you to pair helpful and struggling students. If too many students come up for help, a to-do should be dropped or turned into an exit slip instead.

I have been known to holler, “Abandon ship!” and pass out a back-up opener. If you misjudged class readiness, you don’t need to slog through the growing confusion. Make a joke or two, pass out something easier and come back to the failed opener later.