Under PARCC, all materials on the wall with any academic content whatsoever are supposed to be removed or covered. My walls were covered in paper.

Eduhonesty: Over Memorial Day weekend, I came back to a larger picture on the issue of walls. I have been adapting, adapting, adapting, until I’ve reached the point where I frequently don’t even notice the changes I am making in order to fit into the New Educational Order. The fact that I did not hang the Twilight posters this year passed without much notice. A few, former students remarked on the barren quality of my walls at the start of the year, but my current students had little basis for comparison. Most had never spent time in my former classrooms. They’d never seen the cardboard R2D2 stand-up I have used to hide cords behind the computer. They did not miss my Harry Potter or Twilight posters. They did not know my Star Trek posters were still wrapped in rubber-banded tubes.

All this year’s posters are academic or character-based in orientation. I support various math facts, the periodic table of elements, and the need to work hard on academics. I managed to slip in a couple of diversity posters. No one can complain about posters of jelly beans or Frederick Douglass supporting diversity. But in response to administration emails and a coach’s negative comment about last year’s walls — “What are those things for anyway?” — I kept the room simple this year. I’ve taped up enough student work to keep the space from looking barren, but I believe my walls are emblematic of the garbage compactor walls closing in on teachers. I’ve tamped down manifestations of my interests and my personality because those manifestations always seems to be wrong for one reason or another.

In this time of no puppies, when Assistant Principals tell teachers to remove their wheaten terrier from any PowerPoints for fear of distracting students from bell-to-bell instruction, I decided the safest move for my walls was no move at all. Other than obvious essentials such as the order of operations, various math facts and the story-problem-solving formula by one of our contracted partners, I mostly left the walls alone. I did create a word wall and another mathematical operations word wall. Toward the end, I tacked up a few laminated writing strategies and snuck in a few pictures. I’ve never had so much empty space in a room, however.

In the past, students always seemed to be enthusiastic about my walls. We made connections over those walls. We discussed the Avengers. We talked about Harry and Ron. We reminisced about Dr. Seuss. We debated Edward versus Jacob in Twilight and the strange attraction that vampires seem to hold. I bought used copies of the books that inspired these movies and passed them on to students.

I recently took a survey for the University of Chicago. That survey asked if I had had time this year to make connections with students. Well, yes. I always make connections with students. But, this year, I was always felt as if I might get in trouble for trying to do so. The words bell-to-bell instruction were thrown at me more than once by the man who wanted the terriers out of the PowerPoints. Those words came up in emails and staff meetings.

I don’t know who these people are who think that twelve- to fourteen-year-old kids will work nonstop all the time through 82 minute periods without break. (We teachers took the occasional class water break or stretch break anyway.) Even adults need breaks. Every time I hear about another school district eliminating recess and taking away more lunch minutes, I wince. Who are these people? Do they remember what it was like to be a kid?

Eduhonesty: For the record, kids are not miniature adults. Anyone who does not recognize this fact should not be working in education. Also, teaching is a relationship game, and student effort is frequently directly related to the strength of the teacher-student bond.

P.S. I looked around my room this morning and I’ll admit it’s not so bleak as the above post would make out. A small, tasteful, Severus Snape magnet is stuck to my filing cabinet. I do have a matted picture of a dragon that says, “It was a dark and stormy knight.” Stuck on the wall near my desk, I placed a small, matted copy of the dead parrot speech from Monty Python. That dead parrot has followed me for nine years now, the green in the photo long faded to shades of yellowish-gray. My room sports a small picture of Darth Vader in Micky Mouse ears, and a Guardians of Galaxy calendar. I hid that calendar during my evaluations. I mean, how can you trust anyone who objects to your using the word “minions” because the word has “connotations that do not convey what we want for our students.” Ummm, my students are unaware of those connotations. They loved Despicable Me and the sequel. They are happy to be my minions.

But I look around the room and I realize that personality and interests will out. I have owned my cinematic favorites, even if I did briefly stash the Guardians calendar. I can’t remember if that evaluation fell on Gamora or Drax the Destroyer, but I’d have had to stash that calendar in any case. It contained weaponry. Admittedly, that weaponry was being wielded by a mutant raccoon, among others, but, as far as the calendar went, I decided it was better safe than sorry.

I have been stormchasing for years, finding and following the tornados falling down out of the modern educational skies. Soon, I’ll lose access to the stories provided by one of the most academically-challenged districts in Illinois. I still love kids and I still love teaching, but I don’t think I can teach the kids I want to teach within the current educational climate. I’ve given my last unreadable, incomprehensible required test. I have to go.

I don’t think the kids are better for my departure, but I know I will be. I worry I’ve left this retirement too long. Teaching has impacted my health in the last few years. I’ve fought too many no-win scenarios. From the 304 or so textbook pages I was required to cover in Spanish I a few years ago to the I-have-no-idea-how-many-nonsensical-tests I was required to administer this year, I’ve struggled to meet irrational expectations that seemed to do more harm than good when looking at the big picture.

I think it’s time to catch up on my leisure reading.

Eduhonesty: I am not planning to vanish, however. This blog will continue. Many children are being used as test fodder in reprehensible, academic experiments. I hope to be a voice for those children.

“Ms. Q, Ezra is bullying me. He took my pencil!”

“Ms. Q, Chris is bullying me. She talked to my boyfriend at gym and at lunch!”

“Ms. Q, Micah is bullying me. He’s breathing my air!”

Students are often grinning as they throw out these verbal salvos, enjoying the brief disruption they create. These students recognize true bullying, but sometimes they just want to see if they can make an adult jump through hoops. I try to keep us focused and balanced as I manage silly pencil dramas. I try to remain alert to actual bullying, possibly disguised as a joke.

This post helps explain the following post. By middle school, students know what teachers want to hear. They know the buzzwords that will get a reaction. Bullying guarantees a response. So does any intimation that you might not want to go to college. Students know when to talk the party line and when to deviate from that party line to get attention.

Teachers often begin talking about college before kids can have any real idea what college represents. Some have been on field trips to colleges before they left elementary school. In some classrooms, a teacher can ask students if they intend to go to college and every hand will go up. An honest discussion may reveal that many of those hands are tentative and some are outright lies. But students know the correct answer to the question “Do you plan to go to college?” and mostly they’d rather duck the lecture that follows when they say no.

That’s why I am so worried about the fact that many of my students are outright telling me that they don’t know if they want to go to college. Some are telling me they know they don’t want to go. If I thought they wanted me to coax them back on track — if I thought they were looking for attention, in other words — I’d be less concerned. But I don’t think that. I think I have tested the hell out of these kids, week by week, following a scripted curriculum in which I had very little input and, as a result, these kids have decided they don’t like school any more.

This year, for the first time, I have a number of students who have told me they intend to drop out of high school. I’ve never heard this admission before. Historically, I have always known a number of long-term bilingual students who chose not to walk the high school stage, but I’ve never had a group so ready to admit they wanted out. Work sounds better than school to these kids.

I tackled my problem with hard math. Glassdoor.com provides salary information for a variety of jobs. A student wanted to know how much he could make working at McDonalds for 32 hours a week — a perfect launch platform for the discussion we needed to have. Positions at McDonalds generally paid $8 something per hour. We ran the numbers for a 32 hour week, subtracting for taxes, social security and FICA. I noted that McDonalds might not let my student have 32 hours if 32 hours obligated them to provide health insurance. I talked about the people I know who can’t get health insurance because employers deliberately keep their hours below the health-insurance threshold.

We looked at other McDonalds’ positions, such as IT and business interns, and corporate managers. Those positions paid reasonably well. The interns were making around $20 an hour and many managers were making over $100,000. I explained those managers went to college; many probably have MBAs. The interns are probably attending college. McDonalds is checking them out to decide whether to hire them after they graduate.

In contrast, my student’s 32 hour job had the potential to pay less than $13,000 per year.

I hope I made some headway toward keeping my students in school. What worries me most about the situation is the fact that a number of students told me they wanted out of school as soon as possible. How many are actually planning to drop out if about one-quarter the class will admit to that plan?

I’m afraid a year of required, inappropriate tests and bell-to-bell teaching to those tests may have pushed at least some of my guys out the door, too. While I can hope that academic successes in the future may result in reconsideration of the drop-out plan, hope won’t pay for my students’ rent, food, medical costs or car repairs. The student who wants to quit and go to work at McDonalds has had a rough year of fail, fail, fail. He is far from alone.

I think the one-size-fits-all, go-for-broke academics of the year have worked for some students. I am pretty sure that the net effect of this crazy testing year has been a win for the kids at the top of the academic ladder. We owed those kids a win, too.

But the effects of nonstop, unreadable, incomprehensible tests on the kids in special education and bilingual programs may not net out with the results the district desires. Kids at the lower end of regular education classes may not benefit from that testing regime, either.

Eduhonesty: We talk about differentiating instruction all the time. When all students are taking the exact same test at the same time, though, that differentiation is not happening. True differentiation requires adaptation of materials. Rumor has it that the administration has decided to allow for adaptations of materials next year for special education and bilingual.

To those mysterious subscribers to this Blog of Gloom and Doom, thanks for reading and I apologize if I sound repetitive here. But I’m worried when thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys think that flipping burgers sounds better than high school. I’ve never encountered this before. I’m used to unrealistic dreams, to dreams of the NBA and NFL, for example. I’m not used to dreams of fast-food, drive-in windows.

I picked these tests at random, essentially the top tests in a stack. They are entirely representative of the group. These are samples of the “bubble tests,” as the kids and I call them. Written by an outside consulting firm, these tests are being used for … more benchmarking? More data? Spreadsheet practice? On the plus side, the bubble tests don’t count in their grade. I tell them to take the bubble tests seriously; The results are being recorded in spreadsheets that may be used for later class placement or something. It’s best to take all tests seriously whether you know why you are administering them or not.

Coaches bring me bubble sheets already labeled with individual student names. I pass the sheets out to the appropriate students. I give them copies of the inappropriate tests that go with these copies. How do I know the tests are inappropriate? Well, for one thing, my students never pass these tests. I ought to check to see if someone snuck through on one. Some pictures will help show what I mean. I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. The whim to take photos came at the last minute before I was supposed to turn these tests over to academic coaches. I wish I’d taken more pictures, but these are representative of the whole. I will take more pictures of the next batch.

There’s a spreadsheet somewhere. O.K. I’ll try to find the spreadsheet.

I will observe that some of these kids could do a better job today. They’ve made progress. My classes pretty much all understand stem-and-leaf plots now. Their MAP (Measures of Academic Progress, a benchmark test) show significant growth overall. Admin appears happy enough with my scores and admin is frantic to get school scores up. They would have done better if we could have spent more time on measures of central tendency. But outsiders have created the curriculum and pacing for the year. We were not allowed that time. Given that these kids entered my class scoring from a 1st to 5th grade level in math, according to MAP scores, with most of the group in the middle of that range, these questions were wholly inappropriate, especially for a group of bilingual students with English challenges. They were also inappropriate for the grade’s special education students who had to take exactly the same test. To be clear, I did not cherry-pick this group of tests. I just grabbed a few from the top of the stack.

I wasted my time and their time administering this test. We have a great deal of remedial math to cover, as the tests make evident. The bubble tests may be reasonable instruments for many students in regular classes, but they are not helping the students who wrote the answers above.

On the plus side, grading these tests is absurdly easy. Also on the plus side, the students will never see these tests after they complete them. I grade the problems they write out and hand the answer sheets to coaches who grade the multiple choice section. Then the tests vanish except for red ink in a spreadsheet that I haven’t bothered to look at for months.

In the real world, a test should be based on material that has been taught — and not blasted through at light-speed because the whole grade has to march in lock-step to some pie-in-the-sky curriculum — with ample study opportunities provided beforehand. Then that test should be reviewed shortly afterwards so that students can see where the test went right and where it went wrong. Tests can be excellent learning tools when used correctly.

I’d say a bonfire is the only practical use for the tests above.

“The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.”
~ Jon Stewart via bob@lakesideadvisors.com

My Facebook is jammed full of notes, too many to read. It’s replete with recipes. I know many disgruntled teachers, but almost none of them are telling their stories in social media. Districts are known to spy on social media accounts. So I go in to find the latest ways to make banana bread and … let me check. I found some sort of green vegetable smoothie, lemon bundt cake and peanut butter cheesecake bars, not to mention a great many dogs who need forever homes. I am told that in case of a blackout, a crayon will burn 30 minutes. Sex on Malibu Beach calls for a red, sugar-rimmed glass and making homemade ginger ale looks like fun.

I’m not sure about the looks of this former coworker’s soup, but I bet it tastes great:

Oops. Getting distracted here. Let me wander back toward my actual topic.

I always happy to seize a real, paper note nowadays. I like the idea that students are writing to each other even if I have to deprive them of scraps of paper with somebody’s latest romantic adventures. Sometimes I correct the note’s spelling and grammar if the contents are not too personal. (That discourages notes!)

I’ve raised a flag in my PARCC posts, though, that I want to keep in the picture. The other bilingual teacher and I are the only 7th grade teachers in my school with easy access to laptops on a regular basis. The Bilingual Director used bilingual funds to ensure that her teachers had Chromebooks before the rest of the school. Other classes still fight for access. They share, negotiate and, during testing, do without. For that matter, bilingual had to do without during testing due to bandwidth issues.

This issue exacerbates the divide between the haves and have-nots in our educational system. Students in wealthier districts have more technology, usually both at school and at home. A recent post showed my many printouts of student work. I print because they can’t print — not at school or at home. We don’t have paper for the school copiers, much less for the computer labs which historically have hardly ever had paper anyway. The two computer labs are often unavailable, or their associated printers are unavailable.

My students do have internet access through their phones. The number of technically impoverished kids with iPhones sometimes astonishes me. One of my students has the same first name and the same phone as me. These kids do reach Facebook and social media, and I keep hammering home those lessons on the dangers of inappropriate posts.

But my students struggle to type on a keyboard. They are barely conversant in PowerPoint and Googledocs. They hardly know Microsoft Word or Excel at all since they are living in the land of Googledocs. Many holes in their practical, technical knowledge need to be plugged.

Eduhonesty: Looking at pictures of puppies and kitties who need homes and memes about school are no substitute for knowledge.

But where will new technology money come from? I’m afraid the Board might lay off music and art teachers to find further funding for technology. In a snapshot, I believe America’s technology gap cries out for reforms in school funding. Zip codes should not determine access to computer-based learning.

Teaching can suck every minute of every day. When the lesson planning, grading and other paperwork gets done, there are parent calls to make, flipcharts to create, and the many, other random Post-It notes or phone memos to handle. The note near my keyboard reminds me to see about pay for a recent Saturday development opportunity. My phone tells me to go to the Board office to pick up a copy of the Board’s acceptance of my resignation. Post-It notes and memos proliferate, carrying tiny details about subs for field trips and disciplinary conversations with the Dean.

I used to get up, make my coffee and toast, and head straight to the computer, cup and plate in hand. I began work not long after the tea kettle finished whistling. I had mail to read, papers to put into the gradebook, handouts to print, or some other task that I’d cobble together while petting the cat and talking to the dog. I quit that breakfast routine awhile back, though, and this post is a recommendation for teachers or anyone else with a long day: Don’t work during breakfast. I sit in front of the window in the kitchen now and eat in peace. I try to leave my phone in the charger so I don’t start playing games or looking at memos. I may read the Economist, but I try to simply watch the world out the window. I also meditate for a few minutes during the day when time allows.

Eduhonesty: Teachers run academic marathons, year after year. I recognize the rhythm of the years now, that point in October when people begin to feel winded, the brief respite that is Winter Break, lifting spirits into January. In February, teachers lounges turn gloomy, a snappy, sometimes lugubrious, weary mood that will slowly begin to improve in March, as temperatures rise and days grow longer. By March, student academic growth provides a renewed sense of purpose that helps sustain teachers through those last few months.

Teachers are better teachers when they leave time for rest and play. Marathoners must pace themselves. So must teachers. Whether a mosaic class, a daily work-out at the gym, or a regular break to watch basketball, we need to find mental escapes and refreshments. My quiet breakfast eases me into the day, reminding me to take care of myself while I am attempting to take care of everybody else.

Apparently a day or two of make-ups remain for the new, national standardized test called PARCC. We’ve been at this for weeks. The school itself is pretty much back to normal, as normal as we get anyway. I am saving unused, previously printed copies now so I can print on the blank side. We discussed time demands for PARCC at lunch. Apparently, our lengthy test window has been necessary in many districts. Districts that did not have enough technology for PARCC had been planning to use paper and pencil copies but then discovered that those copies were exorbitantly expensive. Computer testing saves money. Since many schools don’t have the hardware or bandwidth to test all at once, though, they end up taking turns. We tested grade by grade. Some schools have had to test group by group, classroom by classroom. I can’t even imagine what a mess that must be.

I observed that maybe PARCC would serve as a useful wake-up call. Schools might realize that they were short of necessary technology. A music teacher quickly objected that districts would probably eliminate music and art teachers to try to buy those missing laptops and laptop carts. I suspect she’s right. We all know how important computer literacy has become today. If districts don’t have computers, most likely they can’t afford to purchase that useful technology with available funds. Few districts have waiting piles of unused money sitting around.

Eduhonesty: Testing testing testing. I gave a required math quiz today, one that all seventh grade math classes had to take. In the next two days, I have to give a math and a science final. I had better drop this blog and print more notes for my classes.

I have printed about an inch worth of notes tonight, the science and math student notes from the week. I’ve got a fair number of pages yet to print. Only a couple of kids in my classes have printers at home. I have great difficulty printing at school, a point that’s moot now that there’s no paper. I’d have to send a job and then run my personal paper across the school, or put my paper in the copier, go to my room to print and then risk my paper being used up by another teacher. I could try to use the computer in the copy room. That has been known to work but it’s a time-consuming and iffy process. Actually, printing from my room virtually never works even on the best of days due to issues with teachers cancelling jobs in the queue. That was true even when the district had paper.

Another teacher who works in a distant, Washington D.C. charter school said, “How do you run out of paper?” (She meant my district, not me personally.)

I have no clue. If we had been given an allocation and had used that allocation up, the paper crisis might be understandable. But this “Oops! No paper!” thing falls into another category– Exponential Ineptitude might be the Jeopardy title.

That teacher and I discussed my conviction that homework has fallen to new lows since people are not willing to use their own paper to print homework. The Washington D.C. teacher observed she absolutely would not be using her own paper to print homework, especially given the low pay in my admittedly impoverished district. I shrugged. They don’t do the homework they copy from the document camera nearly as often as they do homework on clean, white printed sheets.

I liked the suggestion of a former teacher: Have the students take their notes on their bodies in washable ink. That would save my paper and the kids would love it.

In washable markers were cheaper, I might think about his plan. Maybe I could march my class to the Board Office. Those notes on Mercury and Venus running down forearms would make an impressive protest.

Not every district needs to increase the length of their school day. Where I live, student test scores show kids at the top of the state charts. One of our two high schools made a U.S. News and World Report list of top 100 high schools in the United States. Students in local schools are doing fine with a 180 day school year, and a school day of average length.

The same can not be said for the high school in the district where I work. Those kids are in the bottom 10% of the state. Many of them never make it to college. A substantial percentage never graduate from high school.

I can identify one vital difference. The kids where I live do a great deal of homework. My children and their friends frequently had homework. They expected to do that homework, too. Where I work, the homework load is much lighter and problems with lack of completion dog teachers and administrators. We are supposed to identify those students who are not doing homework and issue Friday detentions in the school where I teach. An elaborate system has been put into place to force homework completion. Yet I still hear teachers in the teachers’ lounge complaining about low rates of homework completion. I know teachers who give little homework for this reason; they never expect to get most the homework back anyway. Another reason for lack of homework has been the district’s lack of paper. When you have to buy your own paper to make copies and less than one-half of those copies come back — many only partially done — a real disincentive exists for the assignment of homework.

(If you are new to this blog, please read back for recent posts about the paper crisis.)

Eduhonesty: Homework problems argue for a longer day where I work. If the work does not get done at home, the work should be done in the afternoon at school. I would suggest required, daily homework in core classes, with a 3:30 to 5:00 mandatory tutoring period during which students were expected to finish their homework and then read age-appropriate books from classrooms or libraries.

As America’s schools become more diverse, we need to start thinking outside our traditional boxes. If a district can’t deliver results in a 180 day year with students going from 8:00 to 2:45, then maybe that district ought to try a 200-day year with school days that end at 5:00. More instruction and more homework time can only help underperforming students.

Changes in school funding might be required, of course. Any extended school day and year will require increased funding. As it stands, ironically, the districts that can most afford to lengthen school days and years tend to be the districts that have no need for those extra hours and days.

I’ve heard reports that these better-funded districts even supply teachers with paper.