For newbies and others. At first, I thought I was writing to new teachers. Upon reflection, I am writing to and for a great many colleagues, even some who are nearing retirement. Please, experienced teachers, reach out to mentor the new teachers who can use your help and wisdom.

For new and aspiring teachers, the professional demands that do not directly involve instructing children can be the biggest surprise during those first few weeks of school. Testing has been spiraling out of control for years. We are only now beginning to rein in the testing monster. Data demands are still out of control. Principals demand data walls, data rooms, shared google data docs etc.

Elementary teachers should find these demands less onerous than their middle school and high school counterparts. Ironically, higher-achieving districts may require less data, too, since they are already succeeding at the data game. Compiling that data may be simpler in those higher-achieving districts; often, their systems have been in place for years, so experienced teachers will be able to help you with expectations. In contrast, my low-scoring, financially-disadvantaged district had a history of changing/adding systems and software every year in desperate bids to find cheaper products and solutions while simultaneously pushing up state test scores. Figuring out the new software and data requirements became an almost annual ritual.

I became very good at figuring out new software.

Are you starting in a poor district, newbie? The odds are good you are. After the first year or two, teachers tend to leave tough districts to take easier and/or more lucrative positions, opening up positions usually filled by newly-minted teachers.

Don’t let the chaos overwhelm you. Ask for help. Find mentors if you have not been assigned a mentor. Find mentors even if you have been assigned a mentor. The mentor you are given may not be the mentor you need. Hunt down coaches, but be careful. Experienced teachers often know a great deal more than young coaches, who may be regrettably lacking in classroom experience.

Last bit of advice: Take a deep breath, then another deep breath, and relax. Then data as fast as you can. Slap that wall up. Up the size of your McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts coffee. Don’t bog down in small details. Finish that google doc so you can get on with what matters.

You may well be thinking, “But I can’t do all this extra stuff! I have to get my lessons ready! I have to get my classroom ready! I need to call these parents! I need to get someone to fix my doorknob!” Your mind may be roiling with instructional imperatives that seem to require your immediate attention.

Eduhonesty: Here’s where education has been getting rougher of late. You are a teacher. You naturally want to teach. All these data-based and other activities that interfere with the preparation and delivery of instruction may seem extraneous and aggravating. You may be looking at the opportunity costs of your non-instructional demands and thinking that all those shared Google Docs are nuts. You may be right, too. But principals are surviving based on numbers nowadays, and your principal may have to generate those numbers to keep his or her job.

The fix required to get you and your principal out of the hole we have dug cannot be accomplished during August or September. America desperately needs that fix, but you cannot make that fix happen right now. So dispatch those data requirements as quickly as possible, and get on with your real job —  teaching children.

When you can breathe a little, I will suggest you go looking for professional organizations dedicated to bringing sanity back to the teaching profession. Go find BATs. Go find other local, education organizations. Become a voice for the children whose educations are suffering from well-meaning plans run amok.

During August and September, though, consider adding a new deep breathing or relaxation app to your phone, and just keep moving. Get to know your kids. Have some fun. Jeopardy and Kahoot! games can be great ways to find out what knowledge your students are bringing into the classroom.

One step at a time.

Hugs to my readers everywhere.

P.S. I am absolutely not against data-driven instruction. I am in favor of rational use of available time, however, and an annual benchmark test combined with class test, project and quiz results ought to be enough data to use to prepare quality, differentiated instruction. You can always look into the cum folder, too. Does the cost of gathering data above and beyond those benchmark tests and classroom assessments justify the time loss? I’d say hardly ever. We need to address this concern. But for now, new teachers, just speed-staple the borders around your data displays and keep going. The objective is to clear the maximum amount of time for actual instruction and preparation of instruction.

Hi newbie! Or established reader. Or alien exploring Earth’s mysterious culture. Hello to all my readers.

I’d like to start today by quoting from the eminent sage, Fred Rogers, gone but not forgotten in a time when Fred Roger’s neighborhood is a reminder of soft songs, puppets, and quiet messages about kindness, compassion and sharing.

“The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile,” Fred once said.

What does it take to feel worthwhile? I’d ask. In other words, what does it take to develop self-esteem? We debate nitty-gritty details, but in the end I have come to believe that most kids’ self-esteem will stand up to challenges when a student feels lovable and competent. We can work to make our students feel lovable, but that piece will seldom provide resilience by itself. Students need a sense of agency, a sense that their actions can change their lives and world.

That’s what poorly-handled testing can take away. If your administration demands that you regularly administer tests that your students are “failing,” based on common lesson plans, the Common Core, a fierce desire for ever more benchmark data, or whatever — you MUST do damage control. What can you do?

1. After emphasizing they must do their best, tell students they are taking a diagnostic test to find out what students in the grade know so that instruction can be prepared to teach them what they don’t know. Emphasize that not knowing answers is fine. The questions they miss will tell teachers what to teach.
2. Have students make a note of what they don’t know that they especially wish to learn, if appropriate.
3. Create the tutoring time necessary to get at least some students ready to pass. If that time does not exist in school, try to come up with a library, McDonalds or similar afterschool plan. Call parents. Get as much buy-in as you can. Sometimes a few extra weekly hours of tutoring may do the trick. In my experience, kids who will not go to the library will go to McDonalds.
4. Give extra tests or projects that you know students can do. You may be drowning in required tests, but that extra Martian calendar project can be a win for students who are never winning. You have to create wins — and real wins that represent genuinely successful academic efforts. What those wins might be will depend on student ages and the content you teach.
5. Never miss a chance to praise a successful academic effort.

For some readers, this post may not apply at all. But I lived through the year of six benchmark tests combined with unreadable tests written by an East-Coast consulting firm based on math years above my students operating levels, and mandatory quizzes based on those mostly deadly tests.

Should the inappropriate tests be coming too thick and fast, please, new teachers do what you have to do to make sure your students hang onto the sense that they are worthwhile. Make sure they get regular chances to produce worthy efforts of which they can be proud.

P.S. I admit the McDonald’s plan has nutritional drawbacks. You could do this in the classroom with healthier popcorn and water. That would be cheaper, too. Kids mostly bought their own McDonalds — and tried to buy mine — but I sprang for the occasional treat. If you came, you did not go hungry. Food is one of your best weapons in the meet-me-for-tutoring arsenal.

Some kids just can’t let go. Why can’t we go outside. Mr. Smith’s class is outside. Why can’t we use markers instead? Why does Erica get to be line leader? Why can’t we listen to music? Why can’t I use my phone? My phone has a calculator! Why can’t we go to lunch early? Mr. Smith always does. Why do I have to sit in front? Why can’t I sit by the window? It’s too hot here. When will you change the seating chart?

Whining can get exhausting if you don’t shut it down quickly.

Tip for newbies for the day: DON’T ENGAGE. IT’S NOT A DEMOCRACY OR EVEN A VILLAGE HALL MEETING. IT’S YOUR CLASSROOM. YOUR RODEO. YOUR RULES.

Maybe you will put together those classroom rules as a group. That’s great. You want to be able to say, “We agreed on these rules.” You want buy-in — and class participation helps enormously to get that buy-in.

But you can lose hours over the course of a month if you always try to explain the rationales for your requirements. Especially those new teachers who are not yet parents may struggle to lay down the law of the classroom. Most of us plan never to say, “Because I told you so!” to our kids. We intend to explain our reasoning and get our children to agree with us for the right reasons. When there’s time, I favor that approach.

But time is of the essence in teaching. Whining eats minutes like a voracious dog in a Kibbles bag. Whining also can exhaust a teacher, who has a lesson plan to get through and who is juggling who knows how many administrative requirements with extra paperwork. I just finished a state-required module on asthma and I am a retired teacher. But subs must do the modules too. I have at least five more to go.

New teacher, you are probably going to be crazy busy. You don’t want to be discussing phones or seating choices. Prepare a set of quick lines to move the discussion along.

“No changes to the seating chart. I will make changes later this year. But we need to develop our routines together right now.”

Then point to the sign. Change the subject. Don’t let yourself be redirected back to that seating chart. If you say, “We will switch when we get to the next unit, you will have waiting students demanding their new chart as soon as you go from chapter three to chapter four. Avoid anything that sounds like a promise, although it’s reasonable to assure students that their chart is not fixed in stone. YOU will want to fix your chart after you see where the problems begin to crop up.

Your class. Your rodeo. You are in charge.

Ignore Mr. Smith. Some kids are experts at using dad to get around mom and vice versa. Heck, maybe you were one of them. That should help you as you teach. The Mr. Smith ploy will be used on inexperienced teachers especially. Sensing that you are still insecure, students will take advantage and tell you “Mr. Smith allows phones/early recess/candy in the classroom” etc. Remember:

1. Mr. Smith probably does not allow the free-for-all your students are describing.
2. Even if Mr. Smith allows those phones and fidget spinners, you are not Mr. Smith and you do not have to do anything Mr. Smith does that seems to disrupt or slow down your class.
3. As soon as you do allow an activity based on Mr. Smith’s class, you will be hearing about that Smith guy until you want to hide in the closet at the mere mention of his name.
4. You don’t want to change horses in midstream very often. Can you change a rule? Yes, if that seems wise. In a school with a great deal of broken technology, you may want to sign off on short periods of phone usage. The phones are computers and sometimes any search engine in a storm will do. But be aware that changes beget demands for more changes, and all those demands suck away time.

The “NO WHINING” sign can be a winner. When you want to shut down a discussion, repeat the rule or expectation and point at the sign. If a student attempts to continue, in a calm, firm, teacher voice, say, “No whining!” Then redirect.

“It is too soon to change seating charts. Please go back to your seat.”

Eduhonesty: Having given this advice, I now have to backtrack a bit. Please always listen to students. And follow your gut. I worked in difficult schools and I sometimes broke my rules. This almost always caused me trouble, but sometimes rules must be broken. When “Analilia” asked to take “Dana” with her to the bathroom because she did not feel safe going alone, I looked at 85? pound Analilia — and I broke my “only one person goes to the bathroom at a time” rule. But Analilia seldom asked to go to the bathroom and those bathrooms had been the source of some recent, ugly disciplinary issues. Safety first. For days, I heard, “But you let Analilia and Dana go!” Honesty helps in this situation. Explain your reasoning, because you can’t ignore rules and then not explain why. Not explaining will lead to a perception of favoritism that’s potentially deadly to classroom atmosphere. Kids can understand “very little girl, scary bathrooms.” They don’t understand unexplained favoritism.

Questions of bullying related to seating charts also should be addressed immediately.

Always err on the side of safety and student support.

Eduhonesty: No one said this job was easy!

Maybe this is a wacky post. This part of August should be about encouragement. But this is another version of the eclipse post from a few days back. Sometimes we have to seize moments. Not everything can be done tomorrow.

Do you love your job? This post is not for you. But if you kind of like your job or are beginning to have serious doubts… or if you have even reached the point where you want to hand the current administration cursed objects to make them go into hiding in Omaha for no reason, then I want to reach you.

Any principal out there who has a position posted is desperate. I got my first job teaching in late August. I was hired to teach Spanish even though I had done my student teaching in high school mathematics. But I had the Spanish credits and I was able to conduct a conversation in Spanish with the head of the bilingual department, who did not need a math teacher, but had a scary hole in his Spanish schedule. Two temporary principals shook my hand and the deal was done. I did another August change years later, when I took a bilingual position in August. No committees, no lengthy interviews. One man determined I appeared sane, healthy and probably able to speak Spanish — even though he could not check this — and I was hired again with a handshake and a deep, relieved sigh.

The next few weeks are a great time to look for work. You never have to take a position you do not want. Why not see what is out there?

Carpe Diem!!

Lately, I keep hearing about getting classrooms to manage themselves. Can it be done? Yes, and men have left their footprints on the moon as well. I would like to see a few women step on the lunar surface before my life’s over, but progress comes in steps. I’m still crossing my fingers.

Hi, new teacher! Semi-new teacher? Curious regular reader? Whoever you are, welcome. Love you guys. I recommend last August’s posts. I created posts for new teachers that I hope will be helpful to newbies and others.

I taught middle-school in a tough area, an area of high poverty and low test scores. I know classes can manage themselves. I created a few of those classes. I also know some classes will never manage themselves. So let’s start with the understanding that self-propelled classes will always be a work in progress. Even when you get there, that day may come when your self-directed Mercedes drives straight into the river while following it’s nav system. Life, software and the reality of teaching can fail to cooperate with the best of plans.

Eduhonesty: This is my first post for newbies for the year. I want to offer a little reassurance in advance. You have likely been told you should climb all sorts of mighty mountains. You may be expecting to create that classroom that manages itself through the use of routines, regularly enforced expectations, engrossing lessons, and teacherly wisdom. Heck, you may succeed.

But you may not. Some districts are tougher than others. Some rare, individual classes in the best of districts are tough enough to make experienced teachers quit midyear. My younger daughter was part of a gifted class that sent subs out in tears, one poor woman who had been hit in the head with a flying book. Every group of kids has its own dynamics and not all of those dynamics will be within your control.

That’s O.K.! Try to win them all, but be prepared to lose some days. Be prepared to make multiple seating charts. Even the perfect chart can unravel as strangers become friends we had not met yet. That self-managing class? It’s a great goal and a class that knows its routines and requires little assistance with transitions should be one of your goals. But if you reach October, November, or even April and your class still does not manage itself, don’t feel bad. The Principal kept visiting the gifted class that threw the book. He never managed to get control of that class.

Hmmm… I can see readers thinking, “I don’t want any more reassurance, thank-you.”

Let me quantify things a little. In my last ten years of formal teaching, I had two classes that tended to go left whenever I wanted them to go right. But that was out of a little less than sixty classes. I also had classes of twenty-some bilingual students who barely needed their seating chart. They listened. Procedures and classroom hours flowed. We got the work done and we had fun.

All the research says the first two years of teaching tend to be tough. Teachers learn an enormous amount on the job. Frankly, I am not sure that crowd control can be taught any other way than to control crowds. Education classes can give tips to future teachers, but every teacher must find his or her own way. What works for one person may not work for another. What works in one class may not work in another class, for that matter.

So don’t beat yourself up if that self-managing classroom remains elusive. Year by year, you will get better. Professional development can help. Colleagues can help. Books can help. But time will help you most of all. You will stumble on techniques and tricks that work as you go, and you will learn the routines and phrases you need to make your classroom work. Trust yourself.

And if your classroom drives itself into the river, just haul it out, dry it off, make a few modifications to the nav system — and get back on the road.

As the artist Alex Noble once said, “Success is not a place at which one arrives but rather the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey.”

The date is August 21st of this year. A path of totality will cut from South Carolina to Oregon. Southern Illinois will go dark in the afternoon. I’m sure many readers are aware of this fact, but with so many schools starting so early nowadays, I thought I’d push the eclipse today.

Can you arrange to be in the path? You would need special glasses and all those protective warnings accompanied by close supervision. But what an opportunity for those in the right locations! This could be the field trip of all field trips. You’d have to act now to make arrangements, I’m sure, if your district would even allow for the possibility. If the field trip is impossible, this is a great week to brainstorm the lesson plan.

I am posting this today because the eclipse could easily get lost in getting ready to start school. The sun and moon picked an awkward day with that August 21st.

I went to a relatively poor high school in South Tacoma, Washington long ago. I had my choice of Spanish, French, Latin and I think German. But my high school was intent on delivering a solid Classical education. What are we delivering today? If the answer is college and career readiness, I’ll submit I was far more college and career ready than the vast majority of students from the test-factories of today. I could easily write an essay and calculate a mortgage. I also graduated high school able to speak Spanish and a fair amount of French. That senior year in Latin classes proved surprisingly useful too. I’m a top-notch word guesser.

Most importantly, as I look back, I can say that my high school experience was both FUN and educational. My teachers often seemed inspired by their lessons and materials, materials they themselves had created to match ideas they wanted us to learn. Not all my classes were fun, but I loved languages and people left me alone to learn them at the end of my high school career. No one worried that my test scores might suffer. I’m sure my scores suffered, especially that year when I skipped a section to hang out with friends in the park. But I have two master’s degrees and an absurd number of college credits, especially when extra teaching and endorsement classes are added.

I strongly believe that if we teach love of learning, learning will take care of itself.

I also believe those teachers were lucky. They got to teach in a time when they were expected to write whole portions of the script instead of reading someone else’s sometimes unfortunate — at times even incoherent — lines. Does incoherent sound too strong? When our parents need special tutoring classes so they can help their children with elementary school, Common Core math, incoherent seems to me to be the word of choice.

According to Education Week, only 20% of U.S. students are currently learning a foreign language, according to an article at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/06/21/just-20-percent-of-k-12-students-are.html. Education Week adds that, in at least two dubious states, “fewer than 10 percent of students are studying a language other than English.” The census now has nearly 1 in 5 Americans speaking a language other than English in the home, but you’d never know that from looking at the American foreign language curricula.

That one fact taps into an educational crisis that has been flying below the radar, eclipsed by our focus on English and math scores we attempt to close — or at least narrow — the achievement gap. Foreign language teaching ought to be thoroughly integrated into our curricula. It’s not. Many elementary schools have no language studies or only the most rudimentary Spanish. In middle school especially, often today it’s “Would you like to take Spanish, Spanish or Spanish?” Spanish is now the sole language taught in the high school in the district from which I retired.

Um… Real world, anyone? Spanish is handy and I love it, don’t get me wrong, but we can say the same about potatoes. Potatoes are marvelous, but who would serve an endless diet of nothing but potatoes? Who is planning the foreign language menu?

Eduhonesty: America needs to cultivate speakers of Middle Eastern languages. Languages like Arabic are rarely taught, despite the fact that these languages have become critical to national security. In the real world, as of 2014, Arabic has become our nation’s fastest growing language, seizing that spot from Spanish. We still have more Spanish, Chinese, French and Vietnamese speakers, but Arabic has been gaining fast. Arabic trails behind Spanish as a source of English-language learners in our schools; we have over 110,000 students in the U.S. who call Arabic their home language.

Where are the courses in Arabic then? Many more students in this country are taking Latin than are taking Arabic. (Not that we are teaching much Latin.) Still, we are teaching students how to write translations of “Marcus Tullius Cicero goes to the forum” in a dead language that nobody’s sure how to pronounce, when instead we need to teach

Less than 1/4 of one percent of America’s students are learning Arabic. That’s shortsighted and foolish. Perhaps the POTUS has contributed to this crisis with his anti-Muslim sentiment, but the problem of our paltry foreign-language offerings existed long before the POTUS. In August 2015, Houston residents protested against a planned Arabic Immersion School funded by the Qatar Foundation International. The very word “Qatar” scares many Americans, at least those who follow the news, and understandably. But NOT learning about Qatar and its language will NOT help the United States.

We are more peaceful with the idea of learning Mandarin Chinese, admittedly a small bright light in today’s language offerings. The US-China Strong Foundation aims to have 1 million Americans studying Mandarin by 2020, and the study of the world’s most commonly spoken language is rising. Nationwide, we now have over 200 Mandarin dual-language programs in K-12 schools, a reassuring increase over 2009, when only about 10 such programs could be found.

I have recently alluded to the opportunity costs created by our test- and data-oriented discussions. While we debate tests and data, foreign language offerings fall off the table. Music takes a plunge. Pottery shatters and even the American Revolution gets shortened into some brief skirmish with soggy tea.

What are we sacrificing as we focus on the numbers?

P.S. The issue that never got off up the floor and onto this particular table — lucky students in wealthy districts may have five or more languages to choose as electives. America’s less-financially-fortunate students too often have to hope that the funds for languages number two or three have not been diverted into extra benchmark tests or new software programs designed to provide more standardized test practice.

Education has been awash, indeed swamped, in buzzwords for years now. Educational pundits demand rigor and accountability, backed by data-driven and test-driven instruction. Teachers work on student “grit,” helping students grapple with and fix “fixed mindsets.” They provide “bell-to-bell” instruction emphasizing mathematics, English, STEM, STEM, STEM, not to mention HST, an acronym for Health, Sciences, and Technology, not Harry S. Truman or the Hubble Space Telescope.

We are told we must provide the technological education necessary to prepare students for innovative new “jobs that don’t exist yet” — whatever the heck those are. Personally, I want to make my students “college and career ready” for jobs as suicide hotline counselors to the first Martian colonists. Within a few months of hitting the red sands of Mars, I am certain a number of our plucky astronauts will need moral support. Mars may sound great while sitting in a bar in Naples, Florida, but once the margaritas and pats on the back wear off, a sympathetic ear will be essential. Maybe I will make my students ready to open pod bay doors. If I say, “Open the pod bay doors, Hal?” how many of America’s students will know what to do? Aside from calling the administration and running to get the nurse for me, that is.

Buried in buzzwords, we get busy trying to learn to talk the talk and walk the walk. That growth mindset bulletin board? I’ve seen some beauties while subbing this year. Change your words, change your mindset, the mantra goes. I don’t disagree with that mantra.

But the sheer number of buzzwords has begun to mess up my mindset and have unfortunate effects on educational effectiveness in my view. Educators’ focus can become scattered, and not all these buzzwords mesh seamlessly. Scaffolding and differentiation in particular deserve more scrutiny than they receive. Scaffolding refers to instructional supports that help facilitate learning, especially when students first encounter new subject material. We often scaffold without even thinking about scaffolding itself. Teachers intuitively understand the importance of modeling an activity before letting students loose with the scissors and glue. We display appropriate graphics, share useful related websites, KWL our way to activating prior knowledge — nonteachers, that stands for “know, want to know, learn,” not the airport code for Guilin, China or the waterworks in Leipzig, Germany. We employ other motivational techniques to get students involved. I’ve always like games myself.

At this point, I feel I should apologize to the choir. Teachers know their buzzwords, but parents and persons outside education may be hazier on our many terms and acronyms. I am about to define differentiation — and only some version of H.G. Well’s time machine would allow me to find a U.S. teacher unfamiliar with this term.

Differentiation stands for adapting instruction and materials to meet the needs of all the children in a classroom. In these times of inclusive classrooms, when the most challenged and the most gifted students may be placed in identical classes, differentiation demands care. Differentiating instruction has the potential to help special education students participate, while also allowing general education students and the gifted to meet curricular targets. Differentiate well and everybody may win. A teacher can differentiate by task, outcome or amount of support.

Educators regularly argue over exactly how to define and describe differentiation. Or they used to anyway before they started endlessly discussing testing, test prep, data requirements and the proliferation of meetings. I’d like to note that differentiation is hardly ever a slam-dunk. For example, I am not sure that any classroom exists with a range of academic levels of eight years where “everybody wins.” The only question becomes the number of losers in the room. Better teachers make sure that all students are engaged and learning. Better teachers minimize losses.

Losses occur especially in financially- and academically-challenged districts when data-driven, test-driven districts demand rigor without considering student background learning levels. Teachers can work on “grit,” and “growth mindsets” all they want, providing nonstop “bell-to-bell” instruction emphasizing mathematics, English, technology, and other STEM categories. If the material they are required to teach has been pitched too many years above their students background knowledge, teachers and students are likely to fail. I may be able to haul a student testing at a fourth-grade level up to a seventh-grade level — it’s unlikely but not impossible — but I will not manage to get a student who is testing at a second-grade level up to a seventh-grade level.

My odds of being the first suicide prevention counselor on Mars are probably about the same as my odds of closing that five-year gap. If the student was my own child and I could spend every hour of every day bonding and working with him or her, maybe we could make the leap. But I have seven hours, 180 days and 27 other students. The necessary time simply does not exist. And when “rigor” and “data” requirements force me to teach fundamentally inappropriate material, I am in far worse shape than I would be without any guidance at all.

Eduhonesty: We have so many buzzwords now that our buzzwords run into each other. I can’t give identical tests and quizzes and differentiate effectively. Yet that was the demand my administration made during my last year, even as my students failed matching multiple-choice test after matching multiple-choice test. Data-driven instruction and accountability nuked differentiation, even as I worked frantically on grit while everyone in the room kept failing around me, as they encountered material they did not understand on mandatory, undifferentiated tests they could not even read.

Ummm… STEM was in deep trouble. Those failed tests did not bode well for STEM. Rigor was killing STEM. Test-driven instruction was knee-capping grit, and not doing much for growth-mindsets. When a student always fails the tests, “mistakes help me improve” sounds suspicious and “I’m on the track” just sounds silly. The always-fail-all-the-time-track? Oh, yeah. That’s a winner for sure.

Eduhonesty: You can’t “raise the bar” without providing substantial supports to those students who are failing to jump the lower bar. Grit won’t solve that problem and rigor will likely make it worse. You can’t give and gather identical multiple choice tests designed to provide valid and reliable data while also differentiating instruction — at least, you can’t do it very often. When you insist those tests be used to determine student grades, you strangle differentiation and take regular whacks at all the mindsets of all the students who don’t know what bubbles to pick.

How about instead of trying to cram all sorts of disparate concepts together into one incoherent mishmash of an educational policy or philosophy, we simply try to teach students instead? I recommend we start by finding out what standards students do not know and teaching them whatever comes next.

Or we could continue forcing utterly mysterious ideas on students because some bureaucrat has decided all 14-year-olds must learn “X” in September. Personally, I like my idea better. When Joey finishes the fourth-grade math curriculum, why don’t we cut him a break and give him fifth grade material instead of expecting him to leap three years in a single bound?

P.S. Don’t get me wrong. I favor working on growth mindsets and I am impressed by the work in the picture above. But a prerequisite for growth mindsets is a curriculum that can be accomplished without extraordinary grit or parents who can afford outside tutors.

^{By CopySix at Imgur: http://imgur.com/gallery/Re6Rh.}

Just for fun. Made me laugh.

The Fidget Spinner: Marketed by Mordor, I’m sure of it.

If only teachers could dematerialize our ubiquitous spinners and beam them straight into the fires of Mt. Doom. Or the depths of the Marianas trench. Or maybe just the Oval Office? Maybe we should fill the Department of Education with these things. Something must be done.