Teachers in the trenches often worry a great deal in these times, especially if they work in a school that is failing to deliver the government-mandated numbers. Big details and little details may come to administrative attention. The extent of oversight has become off-putting, at the very least. Still, for all the teachers out there who are annoyed by the degree of interference from above, I’d like to offer a defense for administration.  Administrators are under the gun too. The following is an email from my principal:

All,

Just a gentle reminder we will have visitors from ISBE (the Illinois State Board of Education) visiting us all day tomorrow. Please wear a (district) or (school) shirt if you plan to wear jeans or dress in business casual attire.

 Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in this.

 Kindly,

 (My dedicated principal who has been trying so hard and doing so well that I have decided to like her despite the fact that she sometimes shoots before she knows what she is aiming at)

I am certain that my Principal was no happier bringing large groups of state visitors into my classroom than I was to see them trooping through the door.

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
~ James Thurber (1894 – 1961)

When I wrote about the small-group shibboleth, I entered a larger area of education called “best practices.” In teaching, many options exist for presenting material. This leads to studies to find the most effective teaching techniques, techniques that then acquire the label “best practices.”

The problem with best practices is that they are too often taken out of context. Presenting material first in a long block in English and then in another block in Spanish, with limited moving back and forth between languages, is considered a bilingual education best practice. Giving instruction in English and then switching back and forth is called code switching, and the research sensibly suggests that many students will tune out the English and simply wait for the translation. That does not mean that material should always be presented in these long blocks, however. It depends on the class. Everything depends on the class.

If a bilingual class consists of students who speak almost no English, then the English block will need to be simpler and shorter. If the class is staring blankly at me, I may choose to code switch rather than leave my students lost while continuing my English lecture. I am the teacher. I can see the confusion. I usually can sense when to change languages for clarification purposes.

If a bilingual class consists mostly of students for whom English is their dominant language — surprisingly often true in Illinois anyway, given that placement is based on an English test and no one may be checking for Spanish understanding — then the English block will need to be much longer. Frankly, sometimes the Spanish block can be dropped entirely, although I prefer to teach dual-language classes as much as possible. But if I am cornered, with immediate tests and quizzes scheduled all around me, I may abbreviate that Spanish piece considerably for time reasons.

I have to know my class to know how to proceed. What I will choose to do will not always look like best practices. I will select the strategy that gets me the best results.

Eduhonesty:  I may get in trouble for my choices, though. Administrators may ding me for not using alleged best practices, even administrators with limited teaching experience and limited understanding of those best practices. Too many people have read the synopsis of the study’s results, and not the study itself.

Too many people are failing to ask critical thinking questions such as the following: If the teacher in the study was instructing 22 economically-advantaged students with a full-time teaching assistant when she conducted her action research, will the same results apply to a teacher in an impoverished, urban neighborhood with high absenteeism, no aide and an average of 32 students per class? If not, what accommodations will be necessary to make the new strategy work? Can this strategy actually work without that smaller class size and full-time aide? Would another strategy be better, given the constraints posed by class size, lack of resources and chronic absenteeism?

One size never fits all. Some fashions fit almost no one, such as those long, tight, slinky sun dresses with the horizontal stripes. If those dresses look good on anyone except models, I’ve yet to meet that person. And any study that takes place in a room with under twenty-five students and a full-time aide may only work in small classes with aides — a vanishingly small percentage of regular classrooms in many districts.

I’ll throw down the gauntlet: I think small-group work, while sometimes valuable, has become seriously overrated. All small groups all the time seems pretty close to malpractice to me, not because groups don’t work. They do sometimes. I have a few outfits with horizontal stripes that fit me fine. But the evidence for the benefits of large-scale, unrelenting use of small groups remains tenuous at best. Where is that evidence? I’ve looked for it. I haven’t found it yet. Fashion should not make us make stupid choices.

I don’t want my previous post to sound like an indictment of small groups. Small group work has its place. Especially when some of a class knows a topic well, some slightly and some not at all, small groups are extremely useful pedagogically. Depending on the class and student dynamics, knowledgeable students can be used to help academically lower students. Different material can be presented to different groups, fpcusing on individual needs.

Eduhonesty: My problem is not with the idea of grouping. Group work and group projects enhance learning when used correctly. My problem is with the idea that evaluators MUST see group work in motion when they walk in.  My problem is with being criticized for the absence of group work when nobody in the room knows the material I am supposed to be teaching. At times, whole group instruction can be wholly appropriate.

Especially when every student in the class has been thrown into the deep end of the pool and they are all in over their heads, the teacher should decide when and how to group — or whether to group at all.

Why were my Assistant Principal and I at such loggerheads this last year? The reasons are complex and interwoven, but one reason stands out. He would never listen to my rationale for lesson choices. Small groups were seldom working for me and I did not think that the reason was my lack of understanding of small groups. I get small groups. But if nobody in the class knows the material, they are seldom the best use of instructional time. I could never convince my Assistant Principal of this. He had been told that “best practices” included these groups and he had not taught long enough — or in the time of small groups — so he did not understand the limitations of those groups. He also did not understand why a group of bilingual students could not always be doing exactly what the regular students were supposed to be doing. He would not listen. He would just say, “No excuses.”

As I’ve said before, where there are no excuses, there are no explanations. I had good reasons for my instructional choices, but I was never allowed to explain any of them. I got criticized for using materials other than the materials used in the regular classes: In my defense, I thought the ability to read one’s assignment might be relevant in the larger educational scheme, but that only led to a reiteration of his contention that I obviously lacked faith in my students. I would contend that I had reviewed their individual reading test scores. For that matter, I had sat down to work with all my students so I had a pretty good sense of what they could understand and what would be so much gibberish to them. In the meantime, I kept losing time to artificially creating groups, time that I could only recoup after school or on week-ends, but many students would not come in after school or on week-ends.

In the end, I delivered the test scores that my administration desired and they seemed pretty happy with me by May. I did finally learn how to efficiently teach to tests. I learned how to do nothing EXCEPT teach to tests. I just hope my students hold on to what they learned. We went quickly with scant time for review. The next test was almost always four days away or less. That left few available minutes to reinforce past concepts.

Why I quit: That idea that regular, special education, and bilingual students should be doing the same lesson plans and taking exactly the same tests? That was my school’s policy. That was an administrative requirement. And it was completely goofy. Many of those bilingual and special education students couldn’t even read the math story problems they were supposed to answer.

I fear this year’s summer learning loss will be a bloodbath.

Eduhonesty: Still processing here. It takes awhile to get the big picture. The interesting part of my processing is that I am growing more and more convinced that I spent the year participating in an educational experiment that was batshit crazy — at least for the population of students I was serving.

I honestly believe this experiment benefitted many students at the top of learning pyramid in my school. For students lacking English-language skills or battling other more serious educational deficiencies, though, the one-plan-to-rule-them-all ensured a long, mysterious and demoralizing year. Nothing in educational theory justifies those unreadable tests. Nothing in educational theory justifies the opportunity costs created by those tests, with special education teachers spending (losing) a whole week’s instructional time to prepare students for a test they can’t read requiring math they can’t do.

In the end, my genuinely competent principal had realized that the scores at the bottom were not moving. Next year, I understand adaptations for special education and bilingual classes will be allowed. I won’t be there, though.

Someone else will be carrying the “Better than Batshit Crazy” banner for me.

My husband wants to know why we have all these Dixie cups. Why do we have a stack of Styrofoam plates? We have extra plastic forks and spoons, too.

The reason is simple: We had bell-to-bell instruction without parties all year until the very end. We were never supposed to give students food not provided by the company that made our lunches, except after school. My only social events this school year were a couple of movies after school and a quick Christmas feeding before school at the start of winter break.

I had stocked for a regular school year and a regular year in my past included a few Friday fun times after tests were finished, especially the big tests of the year. We used to celebrate the start of winter break, too. Since I taught bilingual classes, we would pause for apple soda and snacks during Cinco de Mayo. Over Halloween, we might have lunch in the classroom with caramel apples. I guarantee readers that I was running way too scared of my Assistant Principal to even ask for that caramel apple day at the end of October. At that point, I was actually thinking seriously of quitting because of his nonstop criticism of damn near everything I ever did.

Eduhonesty: I’m still processing this year. But if readers are curious, that’s why we have a few months worth of Dixie cups in my cupboards.

The largest school district in Kansas has chosen not to participate in a federal program for free meals to all students at no cost to their families. I offer the following from the article I read:

“The logistical problem that comes into play is adding this massive amount of paperwork to the already massive enrollment process,” he said. “So what happens is, sometimes parents refuse.

 

“What’s their incentive for doing this paperwork when they’re going to get free lunch anyway?”

 

Last year’s form “looked like an IRS form or something, with real small type and tons of information,” Kipp said. “So I could understand the apprehension.”

Taken from the Yahoo feed:

Screening teens for obesity may not help them lose weight

By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) – Weight screenings in high school were not enough to get overweight and obese kids on track toward a healthier weight, a recent U.S. study found.

Eduhonesty: Duhhh. I guarantee readers that America’s students are almost all aware of their weight and where they stand with regards to the standards set by public media. If knowing my weight was enough to get me to diet, I’d be dieting right now. I’d have been dieting for years probably, and my weight isn’t that far off the acceptable norm, which has a bad habit of changing every so often — just like that pesky food pyramid, which recently demoted wheat. In fact, my BMI is 24.5 — acceptable according to almost all sources. A few years ago, though, my numbers were too high according to my doctor, even though I weighed less than I do now.

I’d like to suggest that districts stop sending home letters to tell parents their children are overweight. I could support a letter that included weight expectations for certain heights and ages with appropriate caveats related to muscle mass and body frame. I could support school nutrition and exercise programs designed to help students learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Given America’s growing weight problem, I think this change might be overdue, although the honest truth is that restoring daily P.E. would go a long way toward this goal without any extra layers of instruction. We have gutted P.E. at a time when videogames have taken over as many students’ main afternoon activity.

According to Nielsen, the average U.S. gamer age 13 or older spent 6.3 hours a week playing video games during 2013. That’s up from 5.6 hours in 2012, which was up from 5.1 hours in 2011. In addition, “U.S. console gamers are diversifying the devices they play on, as 50 percent say they also play games on a mobile or tablet device, up from 35 percent in 2011.”

From the New York Times on the topic of P.E.:

Despite Obesity Concerns, Gym Classes Are Cut

More than a half-century ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower formed the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, and today Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Michelle Obama are among those making childhood obesity a public cause. But even as virtually every state has undertaken significant school reforms, many American students are being granted little or no time in the gym.

In its biennial survey of high school students across the nation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in June that nearly half said they had no physical education classes in an average week. In New York City, that number was 20.5 percent, compared with 14.4 percent a decade earlier, according to the C.D.C.

That echoed findings by New York City’s comptroller, in October, of inadequate physical education at each of the elementary schools that auditors visited. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found just 20 percent of elementary schools in San Francisco’s system were meeting the state’s requirements: 20 minutes per day.

(I decided 2012 was an acceptable year for a source since, if anything, our problem will be worse today. P.E. time is not increasing while videogame time has been climbing, cutting into outside activities that might help compensate for the ongoing lack of physical instruction.)

Returning to my topic, I object to letters from the nurses office that say “Maria” is overweight. The odds that this letter will result in Maria promptly dieting down to her optimal weight are extremely slim. But like the test scores from inappropriate standardized tests, that weight letter may flatten poor Maria’s already faltering self-esteem. Those letters are more likely to create girls and boys who stick their fingers down their throat while loudly running water in the bathroom than anything else.

To put it simply, shaming seldom works. The emotional fall-out from shaming can be devastating. We can’t change behaviors by sideswiping them with one negative note from the nurse’s office. Until we offer real help to our out-of-shape students, those ham-handed, ineffective letters and studies related to student weight need to stop.

A few days ago, I wrote about free range children circling blocks in the fading summer sunlight. As much as I like the idea of kids enjoying their vacation evenings, I observed that we live in a tricky times. Let me add another note to my concerns.

Gang activity has become entrenched in various neighborhoods across the United States. In other areas, gangs are getting footholds and parents may not be aware of the risks these gangs pose.

This issue has zip code written all over it. My best advice would be to call local law enforcement and ask what gang activity has been taking place in your area. Even in rural areas, recruiting may be going on under parents’ noses. Both Lake and McHenry counties, for example, exemplify comfortable, collar counties outside Cook County and Chicago. Many suburbs in these counties have great schools and middle- to upper-middle class neighborhoods. Nevertheless, both counties are battling gang activity.

One other important note: While African-American and Hispanic males may predominate in gangs, white kids and girls also join gangs, especially in rural areas. The site http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/demographics contains some membership breakdowns, such as the chart below:

In addition to talking to the local law, I also recommend a conversation with the kids.

“Are there any gangs in your school?”  might be the first question.

In these times, I guarantee that kids will receive little instruction on nutrition. The “healthy” lunches of our time — often lacking in necessary calories, in my view — do not come with explanations or instructions. The curricula don’t leave enough time to teach handwriting or geography, much less nutrition.

My own kids learned about nutrition at home and I am going to suggest adding this to summer learning projects. When my kids were little, my husband and I would play a game at dinner where everyone had to guess the nutritional information on cans and boxes. How much fat? How much sat fat? How much sodium? How many carbohydrates? How many calories per serving? How much fiber? How much vitamin C? One person would hold the noodle box and the others would guess. Parents played too. We didn’t hammer home a set of rules. We just played a guessing game.

Some good critical thinking questions come out of games like this, such as the following: What do you think the serving size will be for this number of calories? Why do you think they picked that serving size? Is that what people really eat? Why do “sugars” and “carbohydrates” end up being almost the same numbers? Why doesn’t this have fiber? Are the beans in the bag healthier than the beans in the can?

We played this game for some months. Eventually, boredom set in when we had mostly mastered the numbers for the products found in our home. The kids learned a lot. We managed to have conversations about healthy eating without preaching. The game provided a jumping off place for short side discussions about topics like the role of fiber in diet and why too much sat fat could be unhealthy.

Eduhonesty: Nutritional awareness ought to be taught at home. Kids may not get this instruction in school, or may receive such an abbreviated lesson that the information will not stick. I don’t care if my kids eat ice cream sometimes — my parents seem to be living on it in their old age — but I do want them to understand why they need to throw some fruits and vegetables into the mix and why they will benefit from a variety of foods.

The food game can also help kids learn to ask questions about the world. Any family game that gets kids to ask questions about why or how things work has to be a win. Questions without obvious answers can lead to family internet searches that teach search strategies, allowing kids to learn how to learn — a skill that will prove invaluable throughout their lives.

We barely teach geography anymore. Even teachers who want to teach geography may be unable to find the time, given the burgeoning math and English curricula that must be finished each year. Another common loss, sacrificed to the focus on standardized test scores, has been telling time. Specifically, I keep getting middle-school students who cannot read analog clocks. Other teachers report the same.

Parents, teachers and grandparents:  We are dropping important topics in education today, but I don’t see that problem being solved or even addressed in the near future. May I suggest taking time this summer to work on telling time? Specifically, kids need to understand analog clocks. They need to know how the big hand and the little hand work. Once America’s children would have learned this skill in school, but now the clocks are not expected to be on the test so students quite possibly will never work with those “old-fashioned” clocks. Even math problems that add and subtract time likely will use digital clocks, leaving the more traditional clocks of the past — still quite prevalent in society — untouched.

Eduhonesty: As we gut our curricula, at least in terms of breadth, parents and family will need to do more home schooling. Our kids should know the states around them. They should be able to find Africa and South America. They should recognize the import of a big hand between the three and the four along with a little hand on the six.  I’d like to ask parents and family to help with these missions.

Please check your boy or girl’s background knowledge. Ask questions. And if you find too many questions without answers, complain to your local school board and principal. I have taught multiple students who entered my classes thinking they lived in the country of Waukegan, students who could not tell South America from North America or a continent from a country.

We owe our students much better but, in the meantime, if the school’s are failing as they scramble for higher test scores, we parents must pick up the slack.

Clocks should not be a mystery.