My God! That’s like if you tried to make scrambled eggs and instead you caught syphilis! ~ Todd in the Shadows

A few days back, I paused to offer praise for the idea of using objective measurements to capture academic falls. I am not against “data.” But I do join many, many other teachers in finding data a threatening force in today’s academic environment.

I wish to start by observing that schools have always had data. What were all those grades and comments on report cards? We kept the report cards in cumulative folders — and still do — so that teachers could get snapshots of past performance. Our data might not have been exhaustive or perfect, but grade point average usually revealed a great deal, and a review of teacher comments and past state tests added to the picture.

That lack of perfection in the data may not have been a flaw, either. Children should not be boxed in by past academic efforts. If “Isidro” had a weak year in math before he entered my class, I want to find out what has been going wrong for him, but I am not going to assume that Isidro can’t now have a great year in my classroom. Today, I worry that the many tests we are making Isidro take throughout the year. combined with the past data we are saving, will influence teachers more heavily than those past report cards. If Isidro bombed six math benchmark tests, corporately-designed evaluative unit tests, and his state test, will teachers conclude that Isidro is mathematically challenged? Expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

More importantly, even if Isidro’s teachers can manage to keep open minds, can Isidro? We tend to ignore the effect of data on children. Why? Do we think children don’t care? Do we think children are not drawing conclusions about their abilities? You don’t have to be a mathematical mastermind to grasp the idea that if your state test scores put you at the 22 percentile in your state, you surely blew the math portion of your test. Younger children often see the world in black and white. They still  play cops and robbers (although probably not in all neighborhoods), and young kids see their cops as “good” and their robbers as “bad.” They also tend to classify themselves and others as “smart” and “dumb.” Educators try to control for this unfortunate desire to categorize people, but we don’t always win this fight.

“I’m just dumb,” multiple, middle-school students have now explained to me when I asked where tests and quizzes went wrong.

I leapt in to combat those ugly images, but I am not sure how much progress I made. Once a kid concludes he or she is dumb, they may also conclude that their protesting teacher is just being kind. Kids have trouble distinguishing lack of knowledge from lack of ability.

Test-related classroom placements can contribute to a demoralizing self-view. While subbing last year, I asked a bilingual student about his math skills.

“What do you think?” He answered. “I am in this class. Of course I am not good at math.”

I have more to explore here, but I am going to stop. Teacher views of data should be my next stop, but I don’t want to take away from this one question above, as we give test after test in our quest for data: Do we think children are not drawing conclusions about their abilities? Of course they are. And the further that test is positioned away from what our students know, the more badly that test goes, the more likely our students will say to yet another, future teacher, when explaining their struggles:

“I’m just dumb, Miss.”

Eduhonesty: Our children are not data. They are children.

We can make our children feel like data, though, and in the process we make many of them feel lost and stupid. Those sources of data, otherwise known as children? Sometimes our tests or “measuring instruments” make them cry. Some of them are skipping school to avoid tests. Some have absolutely given up. They are not even bothering to read the question on the test before they pick an answer.  The research suggests more students are cheating, too.

Keeping it real out here.

If I can work a happy thought about today’s education into the end of this post, I will, but I think I am about to take my rocket in another direction. This post will be about real kids.

So there I was, with my last year before retirement stretching out before me. While I had not planned to retire early, I had landed in one of those magic years where retirement might make sense, and as the months went by, retirement made more sense by the day.

The state had taken over my district, and desperation was running rampant. District leaders were standardizing my schools’ 7th grade curriculum to match the 7^th grade Common Core curriculum. Teachers were expected to give mandatory tests and quizzes based on the Core, using materials chosen to match that test-determined curricula. We had shoved the bar dramatically upward. In concrete terms, I was expected to teach 7th grade mathematics to bilingual students in classes that were averaging a 3rd-grade level in mathematics and sometimes an even lower level of English-language learning.

What tutoring time I had was skewed heavily toward expected test content. I was meeting students at McDonalds on Saturday mornings for extra tutoring and quiz retakes – so many quiz retakes. How did students pass their classes? They could retake quizzes. And they did. They retook and retook quizzes until they finally got them right. But were they learning what they needed to know? Could they apply the specifics of problem number six to a broader use of probability, for example? In some cases, the answer to that question might have been yes. In others, well, “Diego” had finally memorized problem six.

In the meantime, essential remedial instruction was not occurring. Teachers in lowest-level classes did not have close to enough time to fulfill Core requirements. Where was time for remediation going to come from? I worked that remediation in as often as I could, and sometimes got in trouble when I was caught remediating. But that’s another story.

Too few educational leaders have been asking critical questions: What if our students are unready for a chosen curriculum? What if their own test scores show they are four or more years away from being ready for the year’s standardized test or the chosen set of tests and quizzes for the year?  What if the tutoring they require has nothing to do with their new weekly tests and quizzes, or that annual test, a test coming at them like a proverbial freight train, a large, resounding failure to finish their school year? How will these students learn the desperately needed fourth, fifth and sixth grade mathematics they previously failed to absorb?

America has many, many students testing below grade level. Some middle school and even high school students are taking benchmark tests whose scores place them at early elementary school levels. I want to highlight effects we shove aside and ignore as schools push to meet test targets: For the student who struggles and often fails the many tests and quizzes in the year’s pipeline — tests and quizzes linked to a curriculum that may be neither realistic nor age-appropriate for that individual student – today’s school has become a profoundly depressing place, punctuated by frequent failures that mark the year’s best efforts. After too many such failures, I have seen academic efforts sputter to a sad halt, sometimes replaced by mild but sustained misbehavior.

Why does a student who started on track in elementary school begin regularly misbehaving in middle school or even earlier? Hormones are sometimes blithely thrown out as an explanation, but many excellent students undergo identical hormonal changes. In the academic research and in my experience, one of the best “predictors” of misbehavior is being out of sync academically with peers, especially for students who have fallen behind.

Falling out of academic sync with peers may not cause misbehavior – although I am convinced this is sometimes the case – but I can safely say that research shows a strong correlation between misbehavior and academic failure. Whether failure leads to misbehavior, misbehavior leads to failure, or some combination of the two, with or without additional challenges thrown in, misbehavior and academic failure go hand-in-hand as we tease out factors that lead to overall educational breakdown and dropping out or failing out of school. Why are we graduating students unable to write a college paper or figure out a loan? Because those students “dropped out” — even when their bodies kept occupying desks.

Moreover, I have become convinced that furious efforts to raise standardized test scores ironically are creating misbehaving students, often in tandem with the additional one-two punch of course failures or near-failures in English and mathematics. As we stuff classrooms with students ranging from a first-grade level to a ninth-grade level academically and then hand those students common or nearly-common preparatory materials chosen because those materials are expected to provide optimal test preparation for a specific set of grade-level tests, we create a group of lost students who simply are too far behind to succeed with the material they have been given. A student reading at a second-grade level and doing math at a third-grade level cannot do seventh grade work on any regular basis.

Period. And the sooner we face this fact, the better off we will be. Remediation is not optional. Time for remediation cannot be taken away and replaced with “higher standards.” Those standards should be taught. But if we want to teach those standards, we will have to provide students with more than a 7 1/2 hour day and a 180 day school year.

How can we close the achievement gap? I see only one possible path to success. We have to provide more instructional time to the students who have fallen behind. A few extra hours of tutoring after school or on Saturday will not accomplish our goal. If those hours could work that much magic, we’d have many more success stories to point to today. Students can’t cover four years of missing material in a few extra hours a week. They might have a shot with an intensive, obligatory summer program, however.

Our students don’t need more rigorous, new standards. The old standards are usually more than rigorous enough to prepare them for college and life. What they require is a school year that provides enough time to catch up to the standards they previously missed and are still missing.

Yes, my solution will be expensive. I suspect that’s why we keep trying Plans B, C, and D, the plans that can be most easily effected with the funding available. But B, C, and D have not worked. The achievement gap has barely budged. I’d try obligatory summer school next or an all-year school year with obligatory school during intercessions throughout the school year for those students whose data shows them to be cripplingly behind.

Half-baked, stop-gap measures are not working, and in the meantime we are making many kids feel like absolute crap with our half-thought-out solutions. I got so tired that last year I taught. I kept picking kids up psychologically and dusting them off, working to keep them in a game we all knew only a few of them could win.

I can work incredibly hard. But I can’t work stupid. And now I am one of many, many former teachers who left the toughest schools in America to make tomato risotto and write, taking advantage of my abundant spare time. I watch highly talented former English teachers sell lipstick and mascara. Some of us substitute teach. Others rewrite resumes and tutor ACT students. Some just sip piña coladas on Florida and Indiana beaches, a few years earlier than expected.

I am sad for all that wasted talent. I am sad for those men and women who are counting days until they too can retire. Mostly, I am sad for students who are being cheated by plans that no one seems to have thought through. We are teaching critical thinking as part of our curricula today. In educational administration, though, sometimes critical thinking seems lamentably thin on the ground.

Eduhonesty: Stay with me to get to the platypus.

Except for squishy balls and other silent fidgets, schools should be bringing the hammer down on activities that distract other students. Distractions are not harmless. If five minutes per student are lost by students watching other students with their fidgets, in a class of 30 students that’s a loss of 150 minutes, or 2 1/2 hours. Fidgets should be silent or nearly so, and boring viewing for nearby students.

Today the one child in my church’s early service was spinning his fidget spinner throughout the service. Better than an IPAD, I guess… But pacification is not training. Fidget spinners teach time diversion, not time management.

But enough of this topic — probably as appealing as Trump Tweets to many teachers! I threw in platypuses above so my audience would not throw me in the mental discard pile immediately.

I owe you some platypus facts. The below source was found at http://www.activewild.com/platypus-facts-for-kids/ and invites social media sharing. I love sites that freely share facts. Kudos to the authors here:

Platypus Facts For Kids

“You may have heard of the platypus, but did you know that this strange-looking Australian animal is venomous? This incredible mammal is truly unique and has several other unusual characteristics; we’ll find out about these further down the page. This article contains platypus information and pictures, plus a list of platypus facts for kids.

Oh, there’s also an awesome video for you to watch!

This page is part of our Australian Animals series.

If you enjoy finding out about the Platypus, feel free to share this article on social media using the buttons above!

Platypus Information: Introduction

The platypus (scientific name Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a highly unusual animal. Not only is it venomous, but it is also a member of a group of curious mammals called the monotremes.

Rather than giving birth to live young like other mammals, monotremes lay eggs!

There are only five species of monotreme: the platypus, and four species of Echidna. (You can read about Echidnas here: Echidna Facts)

The platypus is found along the eastern side of mainland Australia and in Tasmania. It lives near freshwater streams and rivers and is highly adapted for its semi-aquatic lifestyle.

As we’ll see further down the page, it has a useful trick up its sleeve for locating food.

Description

At first glance the Platypus looks like a strange mixture of several different animals: it has the webbed feet and brown coat of an otter, the flattened tail of a beaver, and the large bill of a duck.

The large bill gives rise to the animal’s other common name: the duck-billed platypus.

The platypus’s bizarre appearance caused much confusion among early naturalists. In 1799, Dr George Shaw, a keeper at the British Museum, was presented with a dried platypus skin. The animal’s appearance was so unusual that Dr Shaw was suspicious that the museum had fallen victim to an elaborate hoax.

Believing that someone had joined a duck’s bill to another animal’s body, he used scissors to try to separate the parts. The marks his scissors left on the skin can still be seen today!

The Platypus’s body and tail are covered with dense, waterproof fur. This traps a layer of warm, insulating air close to the animal’s body.

The platypus’s legs are attached to the sides of its body, rather than underneath. This gives the animal a reptile-like gait.

When walking on land, the platypus walks on the knuckles of its front feet to protect the webbing between its toes. There is less webbing on the hind feet.

How Big Is A Platypus?

The platypus’s weight varies considerably from individual to individual, ranging between 0.7 and 2.4 kg (1.5 and 5.5 lb).

Males are larger than females, averaging 50 cm (20 in) in total length. The average body length of females is 43 cm (17 in).

Venom: A Little Known Platypus Fact!

The platypus is one of the very few mammals that are venomous.

The male platypus has spurs on each ankle that can deliver venom powerful enough to kill small animals such as dogs. While not lethal to humans, the venom can cause excruciating pain.

Female platypuses are also born with spurs, but they drop off within the first year of life and are not venomous.

The male’s venom production rises during the breeding season, suggesting that it is primarily used as a weapon by rival males to establish dominance.

What Does A Platypus Eat?

The platypus is a carnivore, and eats worms, insect larvae, freshwater shrimps and crayfish, all of which are found in its freshwater habitat.

The platypus hunts underwater, using its cheek-pouches to carry prey to the surface before eating.

The platypus needs to consume around 20% of its body weight in food each day. This means that it spends an average of 12 hours per day looking for food.”

The article itself goes on to further describe the platypus. For teachers not locked into a strict curriculum, I could see this providing a great platform for biological discussion about animal characteristics and categorization. The platypus offers a quick picture of the complexity involved in sorting and classifying lifeforms.

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My eduhonesty positive for today: We are becoming more sensitive to time lost in dribs and drabs. Our coaches work on transitions, for example, trying to pare away those minutes lost as groups shift activities. We are less and less tolerant of dead minutes and classes killing time while waiting to move on to the next activity. We now see those “few” minutes for the large time loss they may potentially become.

(Continuing my recent set of “positive” posts.)

Sometimes I worry about my ability to write happy posts. I look at the above title and I think it’s a version of “We will find a vaccination before the Zombie Apocalypse  completely destroys the human race.” Unqualified sources of happiness seem hard to identify in the greater sphere of American education.

But I am going to praise data, even as I think of the caveats that ought to be added, given the opportunity costs created by our current obsession with data. When spreadsheets preempt lesson planning, tutoring and parent contact, we are going awry in our attempts to improve education. When data is used without an understanding of the lives and characteristics of the students generating that data, we are going badly awry. GIGO — or Garbage In, Garbage Out — should be a focus at all times as governments and administrators demand more numbers. Poorly-understood data has too often been used as a weapon against teachers, especially in under-performing school districts.

That said, using data to plan and execute instruction has benefits when intelligently implemented. Let’s face it: Some kids are masters of the “nod.” Yes, Ms. Q, I understand, their body language says. Nod. Nod. They may be talented crammers, able to pull together the test or quiz that supports that body language. One challenge posed by academic nosedives comes from the ability of some students to fake their way through confusion for at least a year or two before the extent of that nosedive becomes clear. Yes, alert teachers will catch the dive eventually, but if too many months have gone by, catching up may prove difficult or even impossible.

Teachers hate the word impossible, but impossible is possible. No matter how hard I am willing to work, if Lonnie will not work with me, Lonnie may be unable to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. If I have 40 students in my classroom, I may not realize how far behind Lonnie has fallen for some time, and Lonnie may not bother to inform me, especially if he would lose his lunch or afternoon gaming time by asking for help.

Catching the fall sooner is always better. Data helps catch those falls. What do the MAP scores say? What trends can be identified in the spreadsheet? Sometimes the right question at the right time — Why do you think that test caused you trouble? — can start the interventions before a true crisis begins. Data can flag the quiet kids especially, those kids who hardly ever call attention to themselves.

Eduhonesty: Data makes me think of that proverbial two-edged sword. Spewing out more data does not always serve the greater good. But when implemented properly, data-driven instruction can clear away wisps of wishful thinking and unmask our nodders. We can start interventions sooner to pull kids back onto the track. We can make special education placements sooner, too.

I’ll offer the push toward data-driven instruction as another example of one more recent educational fashion that — when implemented by people who know what they are doing — often benefits America’s children.

Nevertheless, I add the last caveat:

Returning from a delightful vacation in Mexico City, I will continue my series of positive posts:

“How are you going to reach ALL learners?”

A coach might leave a note like this on a lesson plan. We expect teachers to understand they have auditory and visual learners in various combinations. Some students benefit from kinesthetic or even musical reinforcement depending on the age and subject material. Some students need extra help because their attention wanders or stress blocks learning.

The old days of Ms. Jones lecturing from the front of the classroom while everyone took the same notes are pretty much done and gone. Whole group instruction may be viewed with suspicion even when that instruction is appropriate.* Teachers are expected to attempt to reach all their students. “Freddie” does not get shoved in a back corner because he is slow. “Sadie” does not get written off because she has trouble focusing. Administrators and teachers work to make sure students do not become marginalized because of their struggles.

Yes, the system fails sometimes. Yes, some teachers don’t do as well at including everyone as they might. Yes, some efficiency may be lost as we try to keep all our balls in the air. But compared to those days of lectures and notes, we have made considerable strides toward including everyone in the classroom, instead of just those few whose hands are always in the air.

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*We do have occasional struggles with trying to find the one-style-fits-all teaching approach. One-style never fits all. Teachers should be left to determine what their classes require based on the students in those classes. My student mix and its match to the curriculum should determine my instructional approach — not some Board Office Master Plan.

Politicians historically have paid attention to voting classes that might help get them elected, and ignored marginalized voters. They fought for the local vote — whatever their version of local might have been. Maybe they fought for your vote, too, in election seasons if you were part of “their” constituency.

A great many people got thwacked up the side of the head HARD recently. Please don’t dump this blog en masse, but I’d like to say maybe that’s NOT such a terrible thing. Maybe we needed this election. Democrats needed to realize they were losing large chunks of the union vote — and for good reason I’d say. If these guys are the unions’ friends, I’d hate to see our enemies. Right now my Facebook feed is full of posts from desperate teachers who are hoping to receive their pensions, pensions they paid for year by year, paycheck by paycheck.

I was not nearly as surprised as many friends when election returns rolled in. I’d thought the election would not follow the numbers expected. Did the democrats honestly expect people in Flint, Michigan, and other nearby Heartland areas would stay in their corner? Why? The sitting government systematically poisoned their children. For that matter, when Donald Trump asked the inner city African-Americans to vote for him and said, “What do you have to lose?” I thought he had a point. I live less than an hour from South Chicago. A few years ago, I served on a jury that convicted a man of murder for a gang action down there. That gang action had been revenge for a previous killing a few days before. Lately, papers have been pointing out that Chicago’s murder rate is not as bad as implied because other cities also have high murder rates. Ummm…no. The fact that we are shooting each other all over the place does not diminish the problem in Chicago. For one thing, we need to focus on who is getting shot. Chicago’s problem is mostly a south-side problem located in gang territories, and those kids getting shot tend to be African-American kids because of the de facto segregation in that city.

Who will help those neighborhoods? So far, no one has. That’s unacceptable.

Eduhonesty: I have been trying to write happy posts and this post took an unexpected turn. But I did intend to point out a positive and I do see one. More and more focus is falling on South Chicago. And a great number of stunned coastal democrats have realized that the Heartland has been suffering, losing jobs and hope, blow by blow, until those voters decided to try to take the whole system down and blow up the status quo.

When that many people become so desperately unhappy, the time for soul-searching has arrived. Now that the election is over, I talk to many people involved in that soul-searching. What happened? Why did it happen? How can we fix this mess? Millions of people suddenly came awake.

For South Chicago and the world, that newfound awareness may turn out to be exactly what people needed. The oh-it’s-sad-but-I-have-to-get-to-my-pilates-class mentality has shifted. People are taking trains to protests instead of cars to coffee shops. We are energized and motivated. Now we have to learn to talk to each other and LISTEN. But I believe that can happen. That’s part of being a teacher. You don’t give up. You communicate. And communicate. And communicate. You keep going until you get somewhere. You fix what you can.

My positive for the day: I have friends who have gone out for rallies this last year, many of whom had never spent a day inside the political scene before. Activism is rising. New voices are demanding that government respond to their needs.

Democracy will be the better for these startled, new voices.

(I would love to own this car. What’s your car craving?)

On Wednesdays, the mean girls may wear pink. But U.S. schools mostly take bullying very seriously. When a former student used an internet photo to pressure another girl in school, she was put out of school for the rest of the school year. If she’d had any disciplinary track record, she would have been expelled.

Our efforts continue to be uneven. We still have a few old-school “boys will be boys” superintendents out there. Most of the time, though, if a student complains about being targeted by another student or group of students, schools respond today. They help.

They also take a proactive stance toward the problem. We discuss bullying. We offer protection to the bullied. We separate students and talk with them to resolve problems. Deans do informal counseling, while counselors sit down with students to teach conflict-management strategies. We work to make our hallways safe.

The fight’s not finished and never will be. I suspect mean is written on some kids’ DNA. Others get hit and decide to hit back, and since they feel they can’t go after (or to) parents or guardians, they search out vulnerable fellow students.

Let’s take a moment, though, to appreciate the fact that most schools have been stepping up to the bullying plate with vigor and purpose. We are aggressively pushing kindness and civility, and as I talk to various students, I realize that we are winning. Those odd kids out? Many of them are doing just fine, and when they have problems, other students step in to help them. Mimicry tends to get shut down fast, for example. With coaching, kids learn to be protectors and defenders.

As I write this, I remember an autistic boy who leapt onto stage while I was subbing in a middle-school drama classroom. He came up right next to me and demanded to know my age and the year and make of my car. I answered factually, then looked at the class. They were amused, but they helped the kid when he climbed back down into the class. They were kind. We went on as if car makes and models were a natural test for all new subs.

Eduhonesty: Today, I want to celebrate Random Acts of Kindness, found everywhere in schools when we watch for them.

I have a book from Mayo Clinic on how to live stress-free. I’m afraid that the only way to live stress-free is to die and become a zombie or sociopathic vampire, but that’s not the topic of this post. We can use a few positives right now. I’d like to share one happy thought about America that has always impressed me.

We are wonderfully generous about letting people into college. A person can take classes forever. The loan scenario gets tricky, but careful people who don’t dig deep financial holes get to peacefully go on learning throughout their lives. Americans who want to become teachers or nurses in their forties can switch careers, often without quitting their day jobs. My evening education cohort included three people definitely over forty as well as that smattering of thirty-somes and the “kids.” We spent two years of frequent, long evenings together, but mostly that experience felt like fun. For that matter, if you are looking to learn for the sake of learning, check out Coursera.

So many options, so little time. Local community colleges tend to be affordable. Sometimes employers pay for classes, too.

Overall, the world tends to be less flexible, but America generously hands out second, third and fourth chances to men and women who decide they have laid their last tile, fixed their last burger, or raised their last kid. We seldom close the gate for chronological reasons. We love comebacks.

Eduhonesty:  “Help will be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” The same tends to be true at America’s local colleges and trade schools, as well as many universities.

P.S. Unfulfilled dream or two, reader? Why not lay out plans for making those dreams happen? If your plans look too demanding, you can shelve those ideas for awhile, but change may be waiting right around a corner. Sometimes all we have to do is put on our walking shoes.

P.S.S. Here’s a wild story for today. I had a friend years ago who was avoiding paying student loans by staying in school. I lost track of her, but I found out last week that she has been taking at least six credits per semester to defer her student loans for around 40 years now. I don’t know if she is brilliant or crazy. She has no husband or kids so only her own credit is on the line. If she dies, I guess taxpayers will pick up those guaranteed student loans.

I am told she is getting a Masters in Software Engineering at the moment.

Imagine — all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips. The only cost? You never get to stop taking classes. Like I say, brilliant or crazy… I don’t know which. Maybe both?

I am off in the land of no Internet myself, visiting family. I am visiting old friends, eating salmon, and helping elderly parents. I try to convince my elderly father that he can go to Jack-in-the-Box without a coupon. I travel back-and-forth from Tacoma to Seattle in gruesome traffic. I buy books.  If you are ever in Tacoma, the Tacoma Book Center down by the Tacoma Dome is one of the best used bookstores anywhere in my view.

Thought for today: if you are taking a road trip, maybe you want to work in a university or two,  depending on the age of your kids. I did the junior-year college driving tour around the East Coast, but it occurs to me that junior year may be late for that effort. We want our kids to visualize themselves on campus. We want them to have some idea of what sort of campus would feel most comfortable. Late elementary school is not too early to start. I am not talking an extensive campaign, and I’d keep any lectures or explanations very short. But campuses often have fun little museums and college towns can provide the best barbecue or ethnic food anywhere. I would reminisce and let the questions come naturally.

The problem with that big tour is sometimes at the end it can be like, “now, was that one Middlebury or Williams?” Too much comes too fast. It’s overwhelming.

Why not spark the middle-school imagination while cruising some back roads in enforced family time?

Hi, teacher readers! Please share this with anyone you think might benefit. Almost all of you are off now. I have friends doing a last week here or there, but mostly the grades are done and the classroom cleaned. If you are lucky, you managed to leave most your items waiting for you in August. My condolences to those who had to move classrooms, those who have been relocated or those who do not know where they will be teaching next year.

If you are in a Title 1 school and have been riffed, I’d like to reassure you that I was riffed five times and always got recalled. Still, you have the best of all reasons to get out and look for another, better position. Principals know that great teachers get riffed simply because they have too few years in the system. They like to rescue the riffed sometimes, too.

Summer is here! Maybe we technically have a few days to wait, but the pools are open and the iced tea and lemonade are everywhere. No more homework to grade unless you opted into summer school. No more behavior to manage. Relatively few or no meetings to attend. If you decided to help the Curriculum Committee or some other summer group, kudos to you for your concern and dedication. I did a few curriculum summers.

What now?

Now I strongly suggest you take time off. If you have to plan a curriculum or teach English, fine. But you need to recharge too. May I suggest treating yourself? Let the house go. This is your chance! Go swimming. Pick up the books your favorite authors slipped by you. Find or buy the television you missed. Catch up on Colony or Game of Thrones. Go for a walk in a state park. Enjoy a museum without having to count heads and keep children off exhibits. Make hot chocolate with sprinkles. Create the perfect Arnold Palmer. Do a jigsaw puzzle. Write a haiku. Write a book. Take a ceramics class. Hug people you love.

And put all the pressure down. The grades are in, the papers home or in the trash. You may still be running, because running becomes a habit. Working all day and night can become a habit. Teachers! If your habits have you cleaning the basement, please put the Windex back in the bucket. Take the kids or just yourself to Dairy Queen instead.

Embrace the summer.

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.” ~ Bil Keane