Testing

Although I left teaching in June, I went and walked the picket line with my former coworkers this morning.  Most cars honked and waved.  On woman yelled out the window that it is about money.  When someone replied that it wasn’t, she yelled, “Quit being lazy and go back to work.”  We all laughed. There is no way that we could conceive of being lazy people.  It was simply funny being accused of it.  In fact, the teachers I worked with were never lazy because we were idealists. 

Right now, during Chicago’s nationally famous teachers’ strike, so many of issues seem foggy.  I understand parents are mad because this is inconvenient to them.  Unfortunately, that is the point of a strike. 

One big sticking point currently is teacher evaluation.  The evaluation in current use is practically prehistoric.  It is generally irrelevant to what teaching has become in the last 25 years.  It bears little relationship to how we work.  In fact, it is a triplicate form!  Really! 

This needs to be fixed.  Test scores, however, can’t be the majority of the scoring.  Numerous studies support this.  It just isn’t a valid measure of the effectiveness of a good teacher.   There is so much more than a test score.  How do we grade idealism?

Being an idealist isn’t the easiest way to live.  It is much easier to open a book that gives instructions and follow them.  Or open a workbook and say, “Do page 37.”  I tried both of those routes.  Always, I ended up driving off road in about a week.  I mean, in week six of second grade the basal spelling list included coincidence – a word I can barely spell.  Whose idea was that?  Really?  Coincidence?  Many of them don’t even know what the word means.  That’s the other thing, why give them words to spell when they don’t know the meaning.  Most beginning second graders can read the word “din” but how many know what it means.  They usually think they are having a dyslexic moment and that the word must be “bin.”  They know that word. 

So, given a basal, I am rewriting it immediately.  Why were these stories put in this order? Which can I tie into Social Studies or Science?  Can I use the story to teach the comprehension strategy I committed to teaching this month?  Will the students find this story interesting, compelling, and relevant?   How can I teach a story I hate.

I became known for finding stories that tied units up in a bow.  I love literature so searching for books is a joy and passion.  The class either laughs or moans when I hold up a story they haven’t heard before and say, “This is one of my all time favorite books!” 

That is part of the idealism.  Showing them that it is okay to love books, science, poetry or whatever.  That excitement of looking through an index of a book on whales or discovering the pattern of leaves matches the math problem or realizing the poem they love doesn’t rhyme is the bread of a teacher’s diet.  Not bigger paychecks.

Taylor Mali says a teacher knows things are going right when the teacher has nothing to do while students are working.  It’s true.  But that ease comes after much preparation.  If you take the time, sometimes slowly and methodically, sometimes layering lessons, sometimes practicing bits and bits and bits then you can let go and watch them fly. 

I call the beginning of the year Tai Chi second grade.  We review pencils, then crayons, how we store things, how we use them.  Every year someone has to have a friend cut their work out for them because they don’t follow the scissor rules.  (Boo-hoo, cry-cry-cry.  Hmmm! Did you just tell her to cut her hair? or Do you think it might be dangerous to jump up and down with your scissors open?)  It takes weeks to start moving at a medium pace.  By Halloween, however, you can let partners reading at a similar range pick an appropriate Halloween book, tell them to practice a page to read aloud to the class, ask them to make a poster about their story, first a sloppy copy, then a final draft, have them read to the class and show the poster. 

By December, they are writing their own chapter books about whales (They only need three sentence per chapter topic.) They get to chose how to earn 100 points on whale projects.  Now, you are busy, teaching them to draw a whale, showing them how to make a mobile, how to make a planner for their book.  The projects fill the room.  The books bring tears, laughter and thrown out chests. 

By June, during author studies, the children open up the craft cupboard, discuss project choices with a partner, plan, create, clean up, and share what they have created.  They are learning every minute.  It has become who they are as students.  Not just the reading and comprehension, which is important, but the problem solving skills, negotiating skills, the self confidence to make a choice skills.

That is the joy, joy, joy, run down the hall to find another adult to watch what is happening in your room, smile bringing ease that is the pay back for the hard work. I proudly show their first grade teachers what the former first graders a year later has accomplished.  I share with my grade level team.  I drag middle school teachers in to look.  Yes, I taught them but it is their hard work that I am proud of.  I am just as awed by my low readers beautiful diorama as I am by the character scrap book my top students created. 

Yes, I am an idealist.  I get frustrated by some decision made by some non educator saying I will be evaluated be a test taken on one day.  A standardized test is only as good as the student and that test on that day. What are we honoring?  Test taking or creative learning.   How focused you can be answering questions or how well do you problem solve with others?

My test

1.       Who do you think should earn more money?

          a.  Innovative creative types

          b.  People able to regurgitate facts.

2.       Would you rather work with someone who can:

          a.  creatively collaborate?

          b.  sit focused and regurgitate facts?

3.       If you encounter a difficulty with a task, who would you ask for help?

          a.  Someone who has the resources to problem solve

          b.  Someone who has memorized the manual

When I was getting my teaching certificate, I had a professor who said a teacher has to make a positive difference in every student’s life or else they don’t belong in teaching.  I thought at the time that seemed a little pie in the sky. 

Ten years later, I was torn up by a very challenging class.  In many ways they were a train wreck.  I had 27 students.  By the end of the year ten of them were in some variation of special education.  There were others who were “good students” but were bullies.  I had 7 students diagnosed with ADHD and one of them was on medication.  The class whined, they cried and fought. In the middle was this core of wonderful, sweet, funny students.  They were as frustrated as I was.  I’m tough, bossy, straight shooting and hard nosed and I pushed the group.  I was able to teach but mostly I felt I just was able to manage the group.  It made me heartsick at the end of the year to think I hadn’t helped everyone of those children in a visible way.  I had to remind myself, often, numerous times a day, “You may never know what you said or taught them that will help them down the line.”  I had nightmares about it for months afterwards. I still do.

Test scores in that group would have hurt my evaluation.  It wouldn’t matter that I rearranged the room numerous times to help the class function, that I taught what to say to the mean girl, “You forgot we’re friends and that isn’t how to treat a friend.” I got a family to stop giving their eight and half year old son a baby bottle at night.  I kept my top students reading at middle school level as challenged as my nonreaders.  I got everyone excited about whales, Alexander Calder and balance, the solar system.  

I’ve had teachers I’ve worked with or who taught my son and daughter who I thought could do a better job.  My son’s high school physics teacher at one of the best high schools in the state told me he thought my son was bored. My son had put his name on the scantron, not answered any questions and wrote at the bottom, “When will we study quantum theory?”  Yes, bored.  Very bored.  He was reading books on light and matter and quantum theory at home.  Couldn’t this teacher have encouraged him, engaged him, rescued him from his boredom?  On standardized tests, my son blew everyone out of the water.  Using testing as the teacher’s evaluation would have rewarded a teacher I believe was mediocre at best.

My mentor teacher once said, “You can be the best teacher someone ever saw or the worse teacher ever seen.  It just depends on the moment they walk in the room.”  In a lot of ways this is true.   We do want what is best for the children.  If you walk in the room often enough you can see, however, who we are and what we accomplish.  It is not just measured by that test. It is an intangible measurement.

Teachers are humans.  We care deeply.  We are dedicated.  We don’t want to be striking.  We would rather be in our classrooms. We do not believe, however, that teaching testing is going to make good citizens.  While our negotiations may include pay raises, it is much more than that.  It is about being able to give the students the best tools and environment for learning the skills to have a full life.  A great teacher is just a tool for that end result.

The First Day of School

     This is the first day after Labor Day in over 20 years that wasn’t the day back to school for me.  First as a parent, then as a teacher.  It is poignantly sad, strange and freeing.

     I left my job last spring after teaching second grade for 13 years.  I loved teaching.  I left for personal reasons that were burning me out.  I will admit there were things within the system that made me crazy.  My love for the teaching and the kids made me hesitate for at least a year longer than I should have.

     This year, as school starts, a teachers’ strike is looming.  I voted to approve the strike last spring, joyfully.  The system needed to know most teachers agreed with the union.  No one wants a strike but the administration needs to know the teachers need to be part of the deal.  

What I won’t miss about teaching

1. The crazy acronyms and the crazy projects that go with them.  I hated all these acronyms.  I never could keep the letters in the right order.  Worse, the frequently contained another system to teach.  Not really new material but a new way to keep track of it.  I hear there is one called WTF – where’s the funding.  Someone just needs to be slapped.
2. No air conditioning, no temperature control.  Classrooms in the city are notorious for being the wrong temperature.  You want the kids to learn? Every room should be air conditioned.  My room was one of 4 at my school that wasn’t.  It was over 80 degrees when I arrived in the morning and just went up from there.  Who is going to learn in that?  Who wants to be with the crabbiest teacher who hates the heat?  The winter wasn’t much better.  We had this goofy engineer who would come in the room, wave his hand around and say, “It’s cooling off.” 
3. Letters from the Superintendent saying things like: Good teachers agreed to extend the school day.  They care about your children.  Ha! Those teachers were largely coerced by their principals who received incentives from the board for breaking union voting rules.  So, I’m not a good teacher by following the rules I agreed to? 
4. Documentation.  I understand the importance but how do you teach and keep track of everything each child you are concerned about does? One year I had documentation on 12 of my 26 students.  I have seen teachers walking around with tape on their pants to tally whenever a child did a certain behavior.  It is crazy hard to do this and teach.

I could keep this negative list going but I hate it.  It never was who I am.  (I hope.) 

A better list.  Here is what I will miss:

1. The first day when the students come in looking so nervous.  Some cry in second grade.  Some are busy talking to friends from last year.  The room is new, the teacher is new, and the desks are strange – taller than last year.  What you see mostly in their faces is: "Will my teacher like me?"

2. The chance to sing silly songs.  Anytime, anywhere.  I never missed a chance to sing a name, a spelling word, a penguin song.  Oh, I loved when they groaned about it.  They knew they were mostly love songs to them. 

3.  The eagerness to do something new.  Seven year olds yearned for new things and to be experts.  If you taught the way to do something new correctly, they became experts.  They loved it.

4.  My calendar with everyone’s picture on it holding their number.  Those September pictures of toothless Alice Akers holding number 1, Betsy Bottoms with bangs holding number 2 and Calvin Cisco with a shaved head holding 3 and so on. Later in June the calendar numbers were given back to Alice with teeth and Betsy with all her hairs swept back into a ponytail and Calvin with a fauxhawk. They had lived nearly a seventh of their lives as second graders and now were ready for third.

5. Teaching moments that showed up suddenly.  They were so perfect because they were relevant and that is when they learn the best. 

6.  Reading Daniel Pinkwater’s Wempires, or Louis Sacher’s Sideways Stories from the Wayside School, or Cookies: Bite Size Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal or anyone of my hundreds of favorite stories.  Laughing and teaching at the same time made life very sweet.

7.  The moving and rearranging of seats, everyday at first, and tweaking all year.  Who can work with whom?  How can I quiet this bunch down?  Who will motivate little Johnny without doing his work for him?  Life is fluid and so is seating.

8. Freaking second graders out about fire drills by telling them in pretty graphic detail the story of the school fire at Our Lady of Angels in 1958 where 87 students and teachers were killed.  I took fire drills very seriously because it might save their lives one day and their lives are very, very precious.  Probably thousands of lives were saved in the World Trade Center on 9/11 because most of the people practiced fire drills as a kid. 

9.  The quirky moments when a student came up to me to tell me something important to them.  Sometimes it was funny and sometimes sad.  A joke, a story about their dog, tears because they fought with their mom on the way to school or their grandma was going back to Mexico.  The self-knowledge of their abilities and inabilities: You’re lucky to have me because I’m a really great reader or I wiggle A LOT!  Some shed tears daily at minor disappointment. Sometimes the floodgates burst after months of stoicism.  Then it was a privilege just to hold them in my arms and let it pour.

10. The sweetness and vulnerability of each one.  I taught hundreds of second graders.  Each one had the desire to be loved and wanted to do their best.  Some had that desire wrapped on their exteriors, hearts on their sleeves as it were.  Some had to hide that desire for hundreds of reasons.  I considered it my job to make sure they each one made progress, to let that desire rise to the surface.  Movement.  Regardless if they were reading at 7^th grade level or kindergarten, they all needed to learn something.  I will miss those pops of light bulbs that happened when all of a sudden it made sense.  That is what I taught for.

So teachers, go ahead and strike.  I believe we are striking for respect towards the giving of our souls everyday.  Not money or benefits or any of the other stuff because if we were respected the rest would follow.