hope...

Right now the kids and I are reading "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Meyers...I really like this book. I'm able to see parts of myself in it. I'm hoping the kids are too. I'm hoping they are able to make connections to it...that they see that all authors aren't perfect....that they can tell their story and it not be perfect.

I try to get my students to see that teachers aren't perfect either and that we have our own stories. I tell them things - I want them to understand that when they feel they are angry all the time, feel like they struggle constantly, and don't seem to have a purpose sometimes...that it will get better....that we, as adults have had this struggle too. I try to explain to them that their words mean something....the way they speak will effect others. Using the "n" word in the halls is not ok...in whatever form they use it...that calling something "gay" - isn't ok either. I often find myself on my soapbox hoping that what I say is making sense to them. And also give it to them from my far from perfect life....

So, let me explain this. First of all, I grew up in a small town where I was the minority population...ok, there was one other girl in the town that wasn't white...but we were both adopted. My family is almost completely white...with the exception of one cousin, who was also adopted. I grew up thinking I was white. I know what you're thinking, "What?! How can that be? Didn't you ever look in a mirror?!" Yes, I did...and physically I knew I wasn't white, but in my mind's eye...I looked like everyone in my town and family.

When I turned 18 and went to college - I found out I was Asian! It was a big eye opener for me. I found out what racism was and experienced it on a first hand basis. It was a crazy time. There were some funny instances...my first weekend on campus I had a girl approach me and ask me if I knew where I was going or if I was lost...you know in that very loud, slow voice? She assumed I couldn't speak English. I had some not funny instances - ones that hurt not only my person but my soul. I came back from class one day to find racial epithets on the board outside my door, I was called names by white students on campus and was told to go back to my home country once from an open window as I walked on campus.

These things taught me that no matter how long I will live in this country, I will never be seen anything more than a foreigner in, what I believe to be, my own country. It also taught me to be open-minded to people that are different than me...to truly listen to those who have an opinion...to try to see the different sides of conflicts. I know that's probably not what you were thinking, but I've also learned that people react to what they perceive is the truth until they are convinced otherwise.

Don't get me wrong...I totally fought injustice in my own way in college....and most of it was physical. I believe that my aggressive and sometimes violent way of teaching people that I didn't appreciate their ignorance wasn't the best way of educating them....but sometimes it takes maturity to get there.

I've just been frustrated lately. The students aren't being taught to respect adults. They show no respect when they tell us to "f-off" and are just told not to say those things....they don't show respect when they stand there rolling their eyes and looking bored as we try to educate them how not to run down the hall like a screaming banchee....they don't show respect when they make fun of their peers and adults and don't expect to called out on their imperfections....they don't show respect when they degrade other genders or their own gender by using names to describe that person.... We're starting to become a generation of people that don't know how to interact kindly with others.

I'm hoping that when I talk to students that I teach, that they see things I've had to learn is something they may have to learn as well. I hope that maybe having me tell them again and again will hopefully rub off. I just keep hoping....

Tuesday...

Tuesday was a pretty good day. Ok, it was AWESOME! Our school got to play host to Rami Even-Esh aka Kosha Dillz. Rami gave 9 - 30 minute workshops with most of the 7th grade. He looked really tired by the end of it...but then gave a 30 minute concert to the kids. He has tons of energy!

The kids seemed to like it and the school has gotten a lot of positive feedback and questions. I'm hoping we can do more stuff like this.

Michelle Rhee

In my humble opinion...most education reformers today are "band-aiders"...the ones that think they can fix the problems of education by putting a band-aid on it, thus "fixing" the problem. These people look at education and say, "well, that's easy, here's what you do....". And viola! It's done!

Michelle Rhee wrote an article in the paper this week. The more I hear about her, the more I'm starting to think that perhaps I should run far away screaming from her brand of reform.

In her article this week she, first makes education seem like a means to an end...just a way to get people educated so they can just get a job. Personally, I believe we do more than that. Teachers don't just know their curriculum. We are the listeners. Kids actually come to us with issues and problems. We help them talk through their thoughts and issues...we sometimes try to make them better people. We understand that these guys are just pegs we're trying to put into holes...they are complicated and have issues just like any other human being.

My second issue with the article and the biggest issue, is with her belief that teachers should be paid based on students' performance on tests. I don't know how I can get people to understand how ridiculous I think this idea is. I still have not yet found a universal analogy that helps everyone understand this idea...so I just stick with one from the past. "Why hello, Doctor So-and-so! It's so nice to see you. We called you in today to let you know that as of next year, we will be basing your pay on how many of your patients have above average teeth (or blood sugars, or cholesterol or blood pressure). Have a wonderful day!" I'm sure the that medical profession will be happy to just turn over their pay raises to their patients.

My final issue with Ms. Rhee is her belief that charter schools are the end all be all. Studies are beginning to come out about how well charters are doing. For the most part, their outcomes are no different from the public schools. I'm sure that there are some exceptions to this...but most of the testing scores aren't any different and it seems that these are supposed to be the "savior" of the educational system. To me...they're just more expensive.

I'm still waiting to hear something coming from reformers that makes me sit up and take notice...not just shake my head and think, "here comes another one"!

YAY!

So - our new unit is in full swing. We've got kids rotating through all four of us and we're working with ALL the kids. I've been really happy to meet the entire 7th grade and find out new things about all of these kids. We still have some things to work out and hopefully next year, it'll be even better when we do this.

Right now we have some good things coming through the building and school. From January 17th to the 30th, we are hosting a Holocaust exhibit addressing the group of Jehovah's Witnesses and their persecution in Nazi Germany. It's a cool panel exhibit and we may even have the capability to skype with one of the people the exhibit talks about. I've been able to get some publicity for this and have been really happy with the response from the media. I even had my 15 seconds of fame by being interviewed on tv.

We've had a student panel come in and talk to the students so these guys could practice interviewing skills. All of the panel were former students that had gone to Meredith and Hoover. The kids liked this because they could relate somewhat.

We just recently - this week - had two people (Adam and Mary) come in from our city paper, the Des Moines Register. The two journalists spoke about how to write a good feature story - leads, hooks, etc. The kids got to hear how these guys come up with stories and why they chose the career they did.

Next Tuesday - the 24th - we have another person coming in. Rami Even-Esh is a Jewish rapper and hip hop artist. He's going to work with the kids in 30 minute workshops and then do an assembly. We were even asked by another school if they could send some students and teachers to see what is going on.

I'm so excited about all the stuff we're doing together as a Literacy team. I've been really appreciative that I work with such a group of creative people. Yea, I'm pretty lucky.

oh boy....

So, I'm still wondering if our governor is actually listening to us or just doing a really good job pretending....I believe it's the second option. He's really not doing a great job of that though...kind of reminiscent of his prior term as governor. On Friday he dropped his plan of how he is going to help the state of Iowa become better in education. There's a lot to this plan...so, I won't cover it all, but just a few things that popped out to me.

First, the teacher training program. I actually find this to be the best part of what he's talking about. It's a way to really train those that want to be teachers to the best of our ability. My one question is how to fund a year of student teaching. If we could set it up like an internship - students could possibly afford the full year it would take to do the student teaching. Otherwise having the state possibly fund half of it could also be a possibility. Now for the weird part. After talking about how there needs to be a rigorous teacher training program, he mentions an alternative certification program. This seems to be the exact opposite of what he's proposing. Why make it easier to obtain the certification if we're wanting strong teacher candidates....?

The second part that I thought was interesting was the Educator Evaluation. I think it would be interesting to see how the "scaled" evaluation could be used instead of the "meets/doesn't meet" evaluation that the administrators administer now. But it's going to come down to the administrator. As it stands right now, I'm still not sure if all administrators are correctly using the evaluation process. When I was being trained on this for my Administrator Masters, I thought it was pretty clear. But we have those administrators that either "go after" the staff or don't seem to have clue one on how to correctly use the process to help their teachers.

The last piece was the "Value added Measures"...isn't that just a fancy way of saying Assessment Based Teacher Pay? I still wish people would understand exactly what this is. It's like saying to a dentist, "your pay next year will depend on the cavities of your patients". I wonder if dentists would go for that.... Sometimes I wish people would realize that I don't sit in my room just drinking coffee and hoping that the kids will just get their education out of thin air. Also, and maybe this is just me, but I don't really think that Terry's daughter, who teaches as well, said, "you know what dad, that's a great idea! Make my salary based on how well my students do on a test!" If she did, we need to forcibly transfer her to Des Moines Public Schools and she if she still believes the same way after a few years here.

This year I am again getting frustrated when giving a pretest to see what skills the students have before we start a unit - I have a student write on his test..."this is just a pretest....I don't care". It tells me that we're testing these kids a lot. They're frustrated and not really wanting another test to tell them that they can't do something.

During this unit my literacy team is trying something different....I talked about it in the post before this one. I can say our first week was kind of rough...but I think it's going to work out. The students like being able to move around, seeing how other teachers teach and having time to get up a couple of times in a 90 minute block of sitting. I think when we're done and have the projects done - it'll be very cool. I'm still very optimistic about how this unit will turn out and our interactions with the kids and each other. I'm trying to also be optimistic about the educational system in general - but the more we try to fix it...the more tired I get.

Anyway, I need to go back to my cushy job...the one where I've been grading papers for the last hour, only to take a break to blog. I still have about 2 more hours left....

new year...

Tomorrow we're starting a new year. We're also starting a new unit in Literacy. In this unit we're all finally working together as a Literacy team. This has been a want/need of mine for most of the year. The actually feeling of all being on the same page, working together and even grading together.

Each of us gets to play to a strength of ours. One of us is doing the writing part of the unit. Alicia is a whiz at using writing frames. She differentiates so well when she's teaching writing. I love what she can do. She's able to push me in different ways when we're teaching writing. She and Justean will be such a great team together.

Terry will be working with fluency and vocabulary. He has a such a big vocabulary himself that I believe he'll do a great job working with the kids here. Because he's such a wealth of knowledge, I've really wanted him to really work with us in doing rotations and collaboration.

I will be working with the comprehension of the stories...in some way. I have already gotten our novel unit done...questions and all. I'm still working on projects that these guys can do that we can display and show what they know and how they're doing.

I'm really excited about this year. The first two months should be really good. I'm hoping that at the end of the week or the month, I can report back and say some truly positive things.

political gobbleygook...

In light of all the things that are going on in Iowa today with the GOP and the press descending into my neighborhood coffee shop and the fact that I spent an hour listening to the governor this morning, I decided I needed to blog...something more thought provoking than the past two blogs which was pretty much a complaining session.

So this morning I went down to listen to the governor and Deputy governor at a townhall meeting to discuss the governor's new Blueprint to "fix" education in the state of Iowa. The first 15 minutes was spent listening to introductions, some words from both the governor and our deputy and then came the "feel good" video. Branstad spoke about the Educational Summit this summer, his job in his first term, his job as president of DMU, and how his daughter was a teacher and how he knew exactly where teachers were coming from...then questions were asked from the public.

All the while I listened to this, I wanted to hear something that would make me feel alright...something that would make me think, "maybe this isn't so bad". I found one....the blueprint will do one thing that is a really great idea. It will give education majors more hands-on time in classrooms. It will give them time with a master teacher to really see what it's like to teach and the type of students they will be teaching. I love this idea. I'm totally on board. I think this will truly weed out those people that maybe just shouldn't go into the profession. I'm hoping that it won't discourage those that are...but I believe it will make these people better teachers.

The rest of the it....ugh. Other countries were spoken about and how they are doing much better than we are...I wonder if people understand that students in many of these countries are tracked. Students take a test as they get older to figure out if they should even go into university or not. We don't do that here...I mean formally. We don't walk up and crush the idea of college to anyone - but educators do understand that everyone isn't headed to higher education.

When questioned about what the blueprint will do for URBAN families...his response was that there were programs...United Way, in fact, that were in place. Yeah, United Way is there...in fact I give part of my check to continue these services...but it's there for people that actually use them. Many families don't....again, what do we do about these families? Most of what he's proposing sounds really good....but not for urban families.

I was not surprised to hear that he had planned several of these townhall meetings....but NOT in Des Moines. He had to be almost petitioned to have one in our state capitol with those teachers who understand that this blueprint doesn't fully help the neediest of our state's students. In fact today when families were brought up...his response was that they were meeting with parents....IN WAUKEE. What does that for our low income families...? They're NOT in Waukee!!!

Another thought, is in reference to what I wanted to do...which was to invite our governor and deputy and anyone else to come into my room...especially Legislators....it was offered by someone in the crowd. The response...we've been in classrooms... For me...I mean go into an urban classroom and not one in the suburbs. Go to schools that are struggling...with behavior, test scores, and have populations that we're talking about. Go to talk with urban families and find out what low economics means for them...because I'll bet you it means something COMPLETELY different to them than a rural or suburban community.

Finally - it was requested that teachers need to start being respected. Real respect. If we're talking about other countries, if you say that you're a teacher, you garner respect. The teacher asked for it...in this blueprint, in public, by the governor, by the Legislators....just in general. I agree. I'm not sure when educators became the dumping ground for the problems of education, but I'm done with that. Education should be everyone's responsibility, not just those that are associated with the field.

As 2012 rolls around and we are inundated with the political junk, I'll be interested how they refer to those in education field and education in general. I hope, in the end, I'll have someone to put my vote towards because I'm not very hopeful right now....