The snow hit yesterday, so attendance was light. Some parents came. One stepdad came with his girl, gathering information for her dad in hopes that dad would quit buying the girl new phones and shoes until her academics improve. I sense a battle for the girl’s affections and a future filled with new shoes, whether this student does her work or not. At least someone is trying to keep her on track. Stepdad seemed like a lucky draw, one I hope the girl will eventually appreciate.

Students with stronger grades outnumbered their counterparts. That’s always true in conferences. The students who most need help often manage to keep their parents home on conference night. The students who know they are academically in good standing will remind mom and dad about conferences, eager for their moment in the spotlight. In the larger scheme, I’m sure that this attendance pattern contributes to the results I see in my classroom. Conferences reinforce the need for continued academic effort.

I wish more struggling students had made it to last night’s conferences. I hope a few will come this morning. Grades this semester are very low, in part due to the scripted master plan provided by the strangers now running my school. I keep having to give tests I did not write that are years above the academic operating level of my students. Some students are seeking out extra help and tutoring. Others are staying in their cabins as the Titanic goes down. I need to talk with many parents, but day conferences are almost always much lighter than evening conferences. Contrary to preconceptions about the lazy poor, most of my student’s parents work. Many work two jobs. They are the working poor, putting in 50 hours at slightly over minimum with no benefits because their employers hold them below the threshold for benefits.

Eduhonesty: I have to put on my high-heeled shoes now, going off into the snow to visit with moms and dads. That day of evening conferences runs long. I worked twelve straight hours yesterday, gulping down coffee and Dunkin Donuts egg white flatbread in the short break between my regular day and conferences. I enjoy conference days, though. Moms and dads are my strongest allies, shoe-and-phone-dad notwithstanding. Sometimes they can get the homework done. They can make a student understand that schoolwork and school behavior matter. I give a lot of talks, but parents walk the walk. When they step out into a night where the air hurts their faces, and white ice crystals cover the road, they tell their children how very much school matters.

Education is filled with catch phrases. I like this one: Whoever is doing the doing is doing the learning.

Eduhonesty: All the confusion about the benefits of homework aside, I’d say this phrase supports homework. It supports student-led activities, graphic organizers, quick writes, and project work.

That said, I’d like to put in a vote for the much-maligned worksheet. You can’t do a worksheet without doing.

I’d also like to observe that group work always includes students who are not doing. My daughters used to hate group work because they often ended up being the doers, while other students rode on their coattails. We teach strategies to teachers that are designed to make sure all students are involved in group strategies. Honestly, many of those strategies don’t work. If a kid drops his or her ball, more motivated students simply step in to fill in the gaps. Especially when work is done outside the classroom, Ursula’s absence from group meetings likely will end up with her team mates doing “Cuba” for her in order to fulfill the requirements needed for a good grade.

We are heavily pushing student-led work and group work. Frequently, this work sounds better in theory than it works in real-life. How well these activities work varies from class to class, subject to subject and student to student.

Teachers should not be required to do frequent small-group work in order to look good to administration. My first period can work much more effectively in small groups than my last period. The student mix in the classes varies enough to affect results. My first period students are significantly more academically advanced than those in my last period. First period also has more natural leaders who value their grades.

Admin has been telling me what to teach and when to teach what they require. Here is my observation: The administrative plan seems to be working much better in my first period than my last period. I’m not sure I need more flexibility in choosing activities for my first period. The students in that class are not quite drowning as they attempt the requirements created by the outsiders who are running my school. My last period is drowning.

I wish I could take the helm. I can’t. Admin has already verbally savaged me for going off the official lesson plan. I won’t take a chance on that happening again. I march in lock-step with the others, watching my last class sadly. They deserve better than they are getting. But I don’t think I have the courage to make a stand. Any time I try to explain, my principal just barks, “No excuses!” Apparently, there are no explanations either.

Eduhonesty: Whoa, this post went sideways. I started with a cheery maxim I like. My maxim works with my first period. I guess where this post decided to take on a life of its own was that last, final class, where doing isn’t doing much good, because my students in that class can’t do what the East Coast consultants expect of them. To adapt my maxim: Whoever can’t do the doing can’t do the learning.

Sigh.

(I was tempted to scrap this post because it did not end where I intended to go. I’m leaving it, though. This much truth should not be expunged from the record.)

My last post raises an issue that more and more often disappears from the radar. We talk about differentiation and addressing individual learning styles. Too often, though, we don’t look at individual kids. Too often, we don’t recognize the myriad factors that are outside our control. Mabel likes me more than she likes some other teachers. It might be me. It might simply be the fact that I am a woman.

Family relationships spill over into school. When I smeared my eye make-up, applying it at some stoplight in the dark, a boisterous student came in and immediately quieted and said, “Oh, Miss, did your husband hit you?” (Some days, you should skip the make-up and listen to the music.) He sympathized even as I told him, no, I just messed up my mascara. I’m not sure he believed me. This student had difficulty being told what to do, but worked pretty well when asked politely. I understood that women weren’t allowed to tell you what to do, but you could be nice to them if they approached you with respect. His sister was extremely quiet. She never made demands. She never raised her voice. I talked to the counselor about these two students. I never had cause to call child services, but I can make some guesses about that household.

Eduhonesty: Culture matters. I know when I call home there’s a good chance my student may be physically punished. Parents have given me specific instructions to hit their kid when he or she misbehaves. But if we wonder why impoverished or urban schools have more physical violence, a fact documented in government literature, we need to look at home life. All the literature about the harmful effects of spanking? It’s read by readers. Many of the mothers in my district had two children by the age of twenty or even eighteen. They may have four or five children by the time they turn up for parent-teacher conferences. I always have coloring books and crayons in my room during conferences. These mothers are fighting to stay afloat. They have little time to read.

She’s mouthy, stubborn and loud. She stands up for the underdog. She sasses the guy across the hall on principle, I’m not sure what principle. Maybe she just doesn’t like his teaching style. I think she’s great, but she’s a handful.

She’s also listening in math. She’s filling in potholes fast. Why? Maybe because she knows I think she’s great.

Eduhonesty: I suspect she is working for me right now. I hope she’ll start working for herself. But in the meantime, I’ll take what I can get. She’s caught the math wave. It’s times like these when I really enjoy my job.

How do they reach the age of twelve without learning that sentences start with a capital letter? Why can’t they spell the name of their own state? What makes six times eight, or even six times five, so hard? When did they miss the math bus? Who taught them — or did not teach them — to add fractions?

These are a few of the mysteries that middle school teachers encounter on a regular basis.

Part of the art of teaching becomes filling in the potholes. What critical material did Jasmine or Jeremy miss? Teachers try to patch the missing pieces together all the while chugging forward with the curriculum for their grade. At this point, I can’t even slow down since outside “experts” have determined exactly what material I need to teach, when it needs to be taught, and when I need to give the assessment created to go with the material.

It’s a daunting task. Every kid has an individual set of potholes.

Eduhonesty: Teachers can’t remediate without knowing where remediation is needed. A common solution offered by administration consists of tests, tests and more tests. But often those tests are pitched somewhere near the putative grade level of the students being evaluated. Testing at that level provides little useful information. I need to know where third or fourth grade went wrong. I don’t need to be told that my student does not know the middle school curriculum.

I’ve got news for some particularly clueless administrators: I figured out how far behind that kid was by the time we had finished our third or fourth quick write. I had the same information in math after I gave my informal placement quiz on the first day of the year. I didn’t need to waste days in testing. A standardized test often provides me with less information than I can get by sitting down with a student for an hour or two after school, especially when the test does not match or even approximate the academic level of the student.

Check this out: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/11/18/355129803/secret-lives-of-teachers-bored-of-education?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2043

Rapper I.C. Will is Ian Willey, the assistant principal at KIPP Washington Heights Middle School. If that mouthful of a link does not work, google I.C. Will Bored of Education rap. I loved watching this video.

Eduhonesty: I burn CDs for my classes regularly. Music does add a little complexity to class with whining here and there, plus the occasional girl crying because “that was our song!” Some songs have too many memories to be played in class. But my minions love the music. I like it too. Yesterday I was dancing a little as I went around the room. The right music at the right time improves all our days.

Tip for teachers: Letting them pick from the internet is too dangerous. You can’t be playing explicit lyrics when the Principal walks past. I pass around a list and let them write down songs they like, making it clear I have to like the song too. “I won’t buy Skrillex,” I tell them. I also review the lyrics before I make any purchases. The process takes a bit of time, but my music library is richer for their suggestions. I also get a great deal of good will for my purchases.

In the last two days, meetings took up 360 minutes. This number’s quite exceptional, a relatively rare occurrence. But still, I was struck by an irony during one of today’s meetings as we read a piece about two difference lessons, one a PowerPoint with an accompanying worksheet and the other a complex review of the past involving realia and primary source material. The second was clearly the better lesson for many classrooms. The second also required time-intensive preparation.

Eduhonesty: SIX HOURS OF MEETINGS in two days. Who is going to do the preparation for that second, better lesson? I haven’t even had time to catch up on my grading for the last two days. It’s a damn good thing that we are preparing canned lesson plans as a group. I can’t get through that lesson plan in the time allotted, generally speaking, and I end up triaging, as I figure out what parts of the lesson I may have to sacrifice due to time constraints. But if other people didn’t tell me what to do, I’d be in more trouble. Every day, I hit the ground running somebody else’s play and go as fast as I can until the next meeting tackles me and knocks me to the ground.

These meetings are also filled with minutiae. Periodically, tasks are assigned to me. I can’t keep track of them all, whether they’re in googledocs, notebooks, smartphone notes, or email. You might say I need a better system, and I do, but I am simply overwhelmed with tiny details. Sometimes the words just wash over me like ocean waves as I lay in the psychic surf of my exhaustion. I can barely key in on the topic by the end of the hour, much less the exact date when the bowling incentive has been scheduled.

I figure the most important tasks will get done.

In the meantime, I am keeping lessons simple since I don’t have time for anything else. We’re lucky we managed to look through the microscopes a few weeks ago. And I bless all those nice folk in Idaho, Ohio and the United Kingdom who are preparing PowerPoints for me to use to stay afloat. I always leave their names and give them credit.

“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly
concern them.”

~ Paul Valery (1871 – 1945), (credit for quote to Bob at lakesideadvisors.com)

My Facebook posts are filled with reprints of recipes. I don’t cook and I don’t much care about cooking, either. I repost an occasional kitty. I will sometimes tell the world when I don’t feel well.

But I never tell my Facebook friends what I actually am feeling about my job, not on public media anyway. These are dangerous times and jobs have been lost through imprudent posts. I never post my reservations or hesitations. I expect the district is trolling through posts looking for dissension in the ranks. Consequently, we all post recipes. You’d think the teaching profession had barely survived a famine in the last few years. My feed is filled with exciting things to do with cauliflower, punctuated by pumpkin smoothie recipes.

Eduhonesty: Almost every educator I know is keeping his or her head down right now. In staff meetings, it’s fun to watch teachers find ways to answer critical questions without criticizing anything.

Moderator: After seeing the video, in what ways do you think you might improve your own practice?
Teacher: I think I could differentiate more for my students by making more use of student data.
Moderator: Do you disagree with the video in any way?
Teacher: I think the video is excellent. I am not sure I could get all 32 of my students to work in pairs that well. I may need more professional development in this area.

The teacher’s thrown in the key word, “data,” and bypassed the fact that she is actually positive there’s not a way in hell her 32 students would work that well in pairs. For one thing, there’s no camera on her students and no one has prepped them how to behave for that nonexistent camera. She has also asked for more professional development. That always sounds good, whether the teacher believes that development would be useful or not.

I had a colleague who solved the small group conundrum posed by administrator advice. She told the administrator she was not sure how to break her class into groups of four and teach them in a tag-team fashion while keeping all groups on task. She then asked the administrator to demonstrate how this was done. The issue was never raised again, at least by that administrator, who ducked the issue entirely and never demonstrated anything. I recommend this technique. When admin asks you to split the class into seven groups of four and teach them all one at a time while the others do independent, productive work — ask the administrator to model the expected behavior. If any of them actually do as you request, and it works, please contact me.

Eduhonesty: Years ago, I read a book called “Eighth Moon” about life in Communist China during the Great Leap Forward. Life in education today reminds me of that book. We never dare risk criticizing the current regime. We sometimes suggest we need more training in order to fully comply with Chairman Mao’s demands.

I did not used to believe in unions. I’ve changed my position. If there are any teachers out there speaking honestly, I suspect it’s because they trust the union to protect them. As the unions are hobbled or broken, the level of honest speech falls with them. That loss reverberates through the educational community and directly impacts our students, whose teachers are quietly following so-called best practices that they can see don’t work, but are afraid to challenge.

“I want to travel to Arizona and Ireland to see castles.”

At some point, I will wander over and find out what she knows about Arizona. I might be able to clear up a few misconceptions. If not, the impossible castle quest makes perfect sense to me as winter closes in around the Midwest.

I suffered a shock in the copy room last week. I was standing in the line of waiting teachers, half-listening to the drone of complaints as I waited my turn. “Mary Anne” was ahead of me, feeding papers into one of the machines.

“It’s this () place,” she said, a note of deep disgust in her voice.

I’m not even sure what people were complaining about, but that comment woke me up immediately. Mary Anne?!?? I stared at this stalwart defender of educational best practices, this nearly-perfect, attractive, young teacher who coaches various sports in the afternoons and joins committees without caring if she will be paid. Mary Anne has always supported her Principal. She has always been true to her school.

We are in deep trouble. No school can afford to lose its Mary Annes. The Mary Annes keep our schools running. They are the boots on the ground in American education.

I am no Mary Anne. I remain deeply suspicious of educational “best practices,” hewing to the views of African-American author and economist Thomas Sowell, who once said, “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” Many best practices fall into that category as far as I am concerned, starting with the indiscriminate inclusion that now regularly places students who are six or even more years apart in academic understanding into the same classroom. But this post is not about me.

Mary Annes hold up our schools. They cut out giraffes and monkeys into the wee hours of the night. They run the school store before and after school. They volunteer for extra, unpaid cafeteria duty. They stand shivering outside at the end of the school day, shepherding students safely into parent cars while directing driveway traffic. They prepare clever hallway decorations using student handprints as turkeys on Thanksgiving. At Christmas, they organize and set-up the toy drive. They chaperone Valentine’s Day Dances in gyms filled with red and pink crepe paper that they themselves had hung up hours earlier, before setting out the red and white cupcakes and cookies. They store Pop Tarts in their desks for hungry students. They take Spanish classes to learn to talk with their students’ parents. They diligently review YouTube videos on symmetry, reflections and rotations when these skills are added to the curriculum. They religiously attend professional development activities. Afterwards, they write up their insights to share with the whole staff, recommending the new cross-curricular XYZ Vocabulary Game in fervent emails, as they zealously prepare extra XYZ Boards for other teachers to use. Mary Annes don’t doubt their colleagues will benefit from the new XYZ game.

Mary Annes are painfully sincere. I saw “The Fugitive” some years back with a cousin who has deep streak of Mary Anne in her. At one point, when Richard Kimball was inside a charity hospital in his search for the one-armed man, my cousin leaned to me and said, “It must be so hard for him to be in that hospital with all those people who need help when he can’t help them.” That thought would never, ever have come to the forefront of my mind.

So my planet tilted ever so slightly in its orbit when Mary Anne put down her own school. I have taken multicultural awareness with this woman, who found my slightly cynical viewpoint sometimes unappetizing. Mary Annes tend to believe that efforts can always improve bad situations. The fact that current efforts to raise test scores might be having the opposite effect, might be doing irreparable harm to the self-esteem of some of the kids at the bottom of the test pool, has escaped many Mary Annes. These are the teachers who believe what they are told about best practices, who believe what the state representative says about the need for higher accountability, who trust that their leaders are making decisions to provide long-term gains, even if evidence for this future improvement seems to be lacking in the short-run. Mary-Annes often read the summary of the research study, or the distilled summary in popular magazines. They hardly ever investigate the methodology behind a study. They trust people.

If an authority figure in a professional development meeting states that large numbers of green plants combined with nature sounds and lavender incense will improve student performance, the next time I walk into Mary Anne’s classroom I may find myself ducking around overabundant greenery while listening to chimpanzees and elephants as I gag on the residue from lavender smoke. Data walls improve performance? Mary Anne will have data all over the walls. Red pens harm self-esteem? All of Mary Anne’s corrections will be done in a cheery, purple Sharpie possibly with encouraging side notes added to even the sloppiest work.

I gave my own Mary Anne a hug a few minutes later, after listening to her frustrations.

Hugs R Me. I am making a conscious effort to try to hold up friends and colleagues. I added my Mary Anne to the list of people around me who need support. I also shifted my view of district reform efforts. When reform alienates the Mary Annes of a school, reform can’t be going well.

Eduhonesty: Mary Annes are the backbone of America’s educational system. I am being slight unfair to my colleague who has spoken up in the past, offering a number of insightful moments. She’s sharper than I have made her out to be. But that sincere belief in the goodness of people and in the expertise of administrators? My Mary Anne has always exuded that belief, that sense of being a solid team player.

Mary Anne matters. She is a woman who will coach for a pittance and work on projects for free. She keeps up on best practices. She tries to deliver what administration wants, whether those demands are feasible or not. She works endlessly. Will she be here next year? I’d say the odds are good that this energetic, dedicated, young woman will find another post. Our loss will be some less-frantic school’s gain.

I’d also give admin somewhere close to that proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of replacing Mary Anne with anyone capable of filling her boots.