I Got Told Yes

That's a heck of holiday from this blog.

But I did get told yes. I'm now in the leadership position for which I interviewed last spring. I'm learning quickly how many curveballs comes toward one who is a high school department chair. I'm learning how much weight others put on your words, and how one must therefore measure one's words. I'm learning how there is a limit to how much one can do in one day, and I'm learning that quantity time with others is important, just as quality time is.

All is well. More later.  

So, what if I get told no

Then I guess I need to re-examine how I invest my time rather than spend it.

• It's about my kids at home. I minimize the days I stay late. I look for a place closer to home to work. 
• It's about the kids on my roster. I'll dedicate myself to making myself an inspirational teacher. The kids will walk from my room saying, "Wow, that man knows how to teach." The kids will walk from my class feeling like it's possible to fall in love with a discipline or subject area. 
• It's about supporting my colleagues. So I'll continue to offer advice, materials, perspective, wisdom, and courtesy. I will also work to establish a gossip-free culture.

So, I have to painfully say no to a few things next year. Perhaps I won't be organizing any after school clubs. Oops, there I go with "perhaps." 

Is it impossible for me to not give more than is required as a teacher? 

Do I ask for my letter of reference right away? 

Do I write a letter of resignation? 

Do I appeal to the assistant superintendent asking for a way I can go somewhere that I can exercise leadership? 

Seriously, what do I say no to next year? Anything that doesn't address one or more of the three bullet points above. 

Just logging

In the interest of dispelling notions that teachers don't work enough hours, I offer a bit of an inventory of what I am doing in the interests of being a better teacher with my summer days. Today . . .

• E-mail communication with colleagues regarding teaching AP Macroeconomics
• E-mail communication with a former student 
• Professional Development materials preparation 
• Course mapping for AP U.S. and AP Macro in 2012-13

Lessons from a Long Year

My school year ended yesterday. It was a long one, though not quite as long as last. My classes were wonderful, filled with earnest and intelligent young men and women. But it was a year in which adults didn't always play nicely with one another, myself included.

Our outgoing chair left us with schedules that made hardly anyone happy. I'll have wonderful classes, though I'll have to work hard (more than 90% of my schedule is Advanced Placement). One colleague will pick up a challenging course he's never had before, in addition to the already challenging course he teaches. Another lost a course she invested a great deal into. Another got a back-handed compliment like mine.

The schedules were the fruit of a war of attrition fought between that outgoing chair and many in the department who never sufficiently bent the knee. Wait, that's cynical. Many in the department never offered the respect due the position. Relationships weren't there allowing adults to reasonably discuss good options in the best interest of the kids. As a result, we're left with schedules that reward friends and chastise enemies.

Sigh. In today's climate we need to be grateful for jobs, for jobs with wonderful kids, and for jobs with outstanding colleagues.

So, what have I learned (or re-learned) from 2011-12? The lessons go like this:

1) Relationships matter.
2) Small difficult conversations marked by candor and honesty make large impossible conversations less likely.
3) There is much more cost than benefit from discussing colleagues.
4) A shared set of values matters. I know this from working in an absence of them. Are we here for the kids? The program? The school? Or ourselves?
5) Making everyone's happiness a goal is to set oneself up for failure.

Romney and Class Sizes

Okay, time to commit some blasphemy: The Republican candidate for president might just be right when he says that class size doesn't matter. I'm a teacher, so I'm supposed to disagree. I'm a teacher so I'm supposed to vote Democratic. I'm a teacher so I should seek a refund for the $25 donation I made to Governor Romney's campaign. His class size comments don't make me regret doing that (his comments on pay for public employees is another story).

My best teaching came when I taught an extraordinarily large class, a 34-student section of AP U.S. History. If one measures my teaching of them to other AP U.S. classes by way of AP Exam scores, it would seem like we didn't achieve as greatly. But the sample size isn't big enough to draw that conclusion. More importantly, the tone that I established in that class, as I deduce from anecdotal evidence, set those kids up for greater success down the road. Many of them translated the skills and habits of mind I taught there toward high achievement in other elite classes. A colleague who taught many of these kids in an AP English class this year had a similar experience.

I think we need to look at class sizes a bit more flexibly. At the elementary level, we should pour in the resources to keep class sizes small. I don't think there's a place for classes larger than 24 before adolescence. In fact, we should keep class sizes there until high school (9th grade). But once we get the students to high school, is it necessary. Maybe it would do the kids a service to assign them to one or two sections that were more like 40 or 50 students in size.

The adults are doing too much to own the problem of lackluster student achievement at higher grade levels. I think it's necessary to closely monitor the underperforming 6th or 7th grader: they're too young to weigh the consequences of not completing their work and not focusing. However, a 10th grader is ready to begin experimenting with the consequences of willfully underperforming, even if it is at risk of not graduating on time. We have a duty to keep kids on track and doing everything possible to guarantee proficiency until high school. Yet in high school I think it's time we let kids court danger, and even occasionally have to repeat a class or grade level. For the high school student graduating on time is a great motivator. Repeating a class when one is 16 or 17 is a lot better than getting to age 20 and floundering in a college program for which one isn't ready (and when there is no support network).

So, I guess I'm advocating that we, as teachers, start to make concessions at the upper grade levels in the interest of flexibly meeting students where they are. Class sizes should start to vary in size, the school day might need to go beyond 3pm, and we might need to let the students fall so that they have the chance to get back up. I'd rather see a system in which teachers are there to help the kids who take the initiative to ask for and commit to that help than a system in which we work feverishly to make sure a kid passes but doesn't necessarily have the learning that the credits would imply they have learned.

Taking Pieces of a Good Idea

A friend who works in staff development sent me an article about how one can approach the school house once a bring-your-own-device policy has been enacted.  It's worth reading.

I have a tendency to sometimes jump too aggressively on an idea without really absorbing what pieces of it work and which don't.  I was close to forwarding this to my own principal when I decided to re-read it.  I'm glad I did, for while the author has good ideas, some I think are impractical in our situation.  I don't, for instance, like her idea that teachers should engage in conversations via text message with students.  The advent of a technology doesn't necessarily mean it's time to breach the formality that should characterize the adult-child relation.  Also, one of the blogs to which she refers advocates teachers taking cell phones from students engaging in misconduct, something we have been told is legally out of bounds.

Instead, it's worthwhile mulling over the provocative point she raises that it's time we revise our classroom management practices.  Students aren't going to learn how to courteously conduct themselves in an academic setting if we don't take the time to teach, model, and reinforce mature expectations. 

Are we afraid the cell phones are going to be more interesting that us?  Are we afraid the cell phones are going to be more interesting than our lessons?  If so, can't we and our teaching strategies win most of the battles with the cell phone?  I think we need to accept the dare. 

- - -

Another good read I had recently was from a Chicago area English teacher who called for ditching the five-paragraph essay.  You can read this essay by Mr. Salazar here.  Again, I was ready to jump all over his idea, but then I wondered about the role teaching the five-paragraph form plays in the formative years of a writer.  Coaching a fifth- or sixth-grader to do this seems quite appropriate.  Building a middle schooler's ability to write it seems appropriate to.  I propose that teaching the five-paragraph form is critical to nurturing functioning skills as a proficient writer.  Where we make the mistake is when we fail to stretch the kids beyond that form in high school.

And with that I need to pat myself on the back, for I've been waging war against the five-paragraph form in high school for years.  I just didn't know it.  For years I've been teaching my AP kids to do more with the introduction and summary than they are accustomed to doing.  I've been coaching them to write two-part arguments in five-paragraph form.  I've been teaching them to go beyond the ABC thesis to create ones that are compound and complex.  I have fought many of these battles in my academic classes as well. 

Perhaps to sell myself it's critical that I find kernels in what others write, and sometimes seek vindication and articulation for practices that I have already adopted. 

Now for the next challenge: BYOD

We took a decisive step toward the 21st century today by inaugurating a bring-your-own-device policy to the school.  From this point forward, students will have access to the wireless internet service at our school.  Use of cell phones, tablets, and laptops will be permitted.  I think it's been a long time coming.  It's a good change, filled with a lot more good than bad.  I can see our challenges being as follows:

• Bandwidth and other infrastructure limitations: I don't know if the grownups of schools realize how video-rich the content our students use is.  Even with legitimate school projects, students are accustomed to video rather than straight text.  Also, a lot of our kids might rely on their devices to stream Pandora or Spotify as they work.  I think we're in for a shock as to how much our kids will consume.  
• Modeling how responsible grownups use technology in a social setting.  Of course, we don't really have a firm set of rules for ourselves.  We trial-and-errored it throughout our own 20s and 30s.  The presence of kids' devices in our classroom will force us to think deliberately about what habits and manners we want to see. 
• The divide between haves and have-nots.  We've moved toward the laptop being an essential item for an adolescent.  But many of our kids come from households than cannot afford this accoutrement.  Those without the devices are going to feel like a lonely minority.  Inevitably, there will be a low-cost device kids can buy, rent, or borrow.  But it's a few years until we'll see it as a merit good, an item for which all are deserving.

But, again, there's so much more potential for good here.  I'll be able to move toward a paperless classroom.  I'll be able to more flexibly assign work and guide research.  Further, I'll be able to have students send me that work that somehow doesn't get through from home.  This really could clear up a lot of problems. 

Career Goals

Does this make sense?

Three interrelated career goals for the intermediate term: excellence at teaching history, elevating the craft of my colleagues as a staff developer, curriculum leadership.

Developing presentations and workshops for . . .

• teaching research skills
• alternative unit assessments
• teaching writing in the content area
• incorporating current events into the classroom

So, what I do outside the classroom must . . .

• elevate my craft in teaching history 
• serve my colleagues as a staff developer
• further my credentials, experience, and knowledge base as a staff developer

The troubled 2011-12 school year has given me time to reflect on my need to focus and specialize.  Jacks of all trades are useful.  I'm looking to become valuable.  

.422

It's been a long school year.  But I can tell that I'm moving beyond the personal and career frustrations that dogged me for much of 2011-12.  Recently, I've started to re-think my mood for school and it dawned on me the privileged nature of what I do.  I teach in a school where students largely behave.  I teach students who are literate, intelligent, and generally well-mannered.  I have a paycheck that I receive consistently.  I have colleagues who are intelligent and good-willed.  It's a privilege to teach in such a setting. 

I'm reminded of how older men and women, when talking about the good old days of the Greatest Generation, discuss how work was considered a privilege.  I think it's helpful for more of us to look at our occupations in that way. 

Now, if I could just extend that philosophy to my students.  Today was the Monday following the senior prom.  Attendance: 42.2% in my classes. And that 42% includes an AP class where more than half the kids were present.  My two academic classes: only a 30% attendance. 

So, let me offer this point of view to my students (and their parents who condoned their absences):

• Though attendance is supposedly compulsory in the U.S., going to school is a privilege many kids in the world do not get. 
• You get the privilege of coming to a school where your safety is not threatened.
• You have teachers who are trained, talented, intelligent, and kind-hearted. 
• You are in one of the highest-achieving schools in the state, the region, and the country. 

Millions upon millions of children would give anything to have the educational experience you have by right of birth, citizenship, and residency.   If these millions knew that you had blown off this day, they would likely laugh at, scorn, or resent you. 

A Credo

I'm working on a code to guide my conduct at school . . .

I need to offer my students an experience in class that cannot be duplicated.  A class is something that cannot be simulated by someone else.  And when one misses a day in class, they will miss out on something that was unique and personalized to who was in the room that day. 

To these ends . . .

• I will use video in only the most judicious and careful ways.  Why show the kids a film they've probably seen.  If I show a video resource, it will be something the students otherwise wouldn't have found on their own or have learned from the way they'll learn from it in my room.
• My presentation of information will be centered on visuals, concepts, patterns, and quotes.  The day of the text-heavy slides are done.  Slides can be rich in content without being laden with words.  
• I will personalize the experience for my students.  They will feel like the teacher likes them and knows them.  They will know the teacher cares about their growth.  
• Content comes before skills.  The students have a unique opportunity to be in my classroom.  They get the chance to tap into my considerable wealth of knowledge about history.  They get the chance to engage with an adult who diligently keeps track of the news.  Every day they have the chance to know more that helps them make sense of their world.*
• Skills have a place.  We practice skills while mastering content (rather than use content to master skills).  
• I'm an important model.  From me kids can learn the integrity, honesty, and courtesy that poised adults demonstrate.  I show them the role passion plays in igniting the intellect and objectivity plays in making sense of our contemporary world.  I show them how one can find meaning in great works of literature, great works of film, and the great figures of our past.

*Is this particular credo arrogant?  Perhaps.  However, I think more of us in this profession need to start adopting an intellectual swagger to our time in the class.  

The Imagination of Teaching

I heard recently of some student teachers from a program complain that they had had too little coursework on instructional techniques.  They complained that they felt they went into the classroom with an empty toolbox of techniques for teaching their students.  I didn't have the heart to answer them honestly. 

Their comments worried me because they might be right that they're not exposed to enough ideas on how to engage students. 

Their comments worried me more because they might not be accustomed to thinking creatively about solving a problem.  There is a tendency toward standardization and script-reading in my line of work.  There has been a de-emphasizing of teacher creativity in instructing teachers-to-be.  The instruction now seems to be more about essential questions, enduring understandings, and dense, script-like lesson plans.  The desire to capture a spark or pursue a teachable moment is downplayed.

Their comments worried me the most because, when desperate, one can hopefully fall back on memories of how great teacher solved problems.  Might these young teachers not have such great examples to fall back on?  Was there no one who inspired them like I was inspired by that constellation of great high school and college teachers? 

Do they feel gun shy about just telling the kids about the past?  About our government? 

Are they afraid of delivering a lesson that might flop?  Are they so fearful of the error part of trial and error that they won't give a possibly good idea a try. 

I'm worried that the newest teachers coming into the field have not been pushed or mentored to look for the moments of this job that are creative, awesome, spontaneous, and messy. 

A sad but sincere wish for the best

Yesterday a student left my school.  At a meeting with administration before my class started, he was informed that he would not graduate on time.  His parents therefore withdrew him from school.  The boy visited my classroom on his way out of school.  I assumed that he had had "the meeting" but played dumb.  When he said, "See ya later, Mr. Johnson" I replied "But it's not 2:30 yet."

Some thoughts . . .

There are some lessons I can't teach.  There are some learnings I can't guarantee.  I surmise this boy is fighting addiction to drugs (he betrays some of the mood-swing tendencies and honesty issues I associate with junkies).  I've known him since sophomore year, and he took an extra year just to get to senior year.  I've known that he is troubled for some time.  He was passing my class at the time of his departure - it was problems elsewhere that prompted his removal from school.

I'm rambling.

I don't disagree with my administrator's decision to prompt his removal from school.  I feel sad because I just saw a boy take a turn onto another road.  It's a sad road he's traveling.  A harder road, through his choosing and his parents' choosing.  I wish him well, though I think the best case scenario is that life goes well only after something scary takes place.  In other words, I don't think he's hit rock bottom yet, even though yesterday he got word that he won't be earning a diploma, and that his admission to his college (yes, he was accepted to a college!) is in jeopardy.  I don't think yesterday's conference changed that.

- - -

Note my tortured wording regarding the boy's status.  Did he drop out?  Technically I don't think he did.  Did he fail to graduate?  Technically I don't think that's true. I think he voluntarily withdrew.  And I think at graduation we will hear once again that 100% of our seniors graduated.  I know this boy is not the only who had a "Dear John" conference yesterday.  What kind of a shell game are we playing with graduation statistics in public education now?  For years we've graduated "college-ready" students who couldn't hack college and who couldn't graduate within six years.  I think that's been a problem we have deferred dealing with for years and years.  I think it's bill is about to come due.

- - -

A high school diploma isn't an entitlement.  It's a privilege to be earned.  The right to earn it is an entitlement.  Though sad, I think the students' withdrawal yesterday serves a valuable purpose.

- - -

I'm wondering if my reply to the boy was too weak yesterday.  I surmised he had been "kicked out" but I never said goodbye to him.  Never grasped his hand and said good luck.  Then again, was he deserving of that.  Maybe my hand-grasp-good-luck is for the kid who earned a diploma but is worried about the next step. 

I often think that the best I can do for a student in turbulence is to play it straight.  This boy is probably facing down an ugly addiction, but isn't at the point yet where he admits to needing help.  I think I do my best when I play my role as the stable, honest adult.  Earlier this year I learned of a girl on my roster fighting a terminal illness.  The girl never brought it up with me.  I decided I'd never bring it up with her.  Nor did I excuse her from expectations for the class, though I was very flexible with deadlines.  I'm not doing her a favor by giving her something out of sympathy rather than giving her the chance to earn it.

The Theater of the Classroom

Nearly a year after the fact I found out that my inspiration retired.  He taught me English in my freshman and senior years of high school.  He profoundly shaped me in two ways: he taught me to write and he showed me the role passion can and should play in the high school classroom.  I model much of my teaching on what I saw from him, and most of what I teach my kids in efforts to elevate their writing comes from him. 

In an interview with the high school paper before he retired, he offered an interesting response to the question what do you like most about teaching.  He said: "The absolute drama and fun of the classroom.  Adults who think they know me well don't know me unless they've seen me in the classroom.  In that respect, kids probably know me better than most adults in my life.  I feel most fully myself when I'm in front of a class."

Well, it showed in his teaching.

I don't know if my answer would've been the same, though I feel similarly.  He's right in that my students see a more vibrant and passionate man than the adults outside of my family see.  I thrive on the role out in front of a young group.  I find the adrenaline rush of performing in front of more than a score of hopeful skeptics a powerful motivation still.  If anything, the theater of the entire school is what I find especially fascinating.  I guess when one gets 1,500 adolescents and 125 effervescent adults in one building at one time, it's impossible to not have some theatrics.

Had I been asked that question, I think I would have answered that it's the puzzle of a classroom that intrigues me the most about this job.  Each class is a personality, shaped by the characters in the room, the time of day, the investment in the class, and the energy of the teacher.  Each class needs to be "solved," or reached on a consistent basis.  Some classes are more puzzling than others, and therefore take longer to solve.  But there is a rush to solving a class that defies easy answers.  

Specializing

The last month or so has been humbling. I have taught only classes I like to teach. I have taught students who were nothing but remarkable. However, the teaching schedule wore me down more than I can remember being worn down, and with eight weeks left I feel as tired as I normally feel after a whole school year.

To make a long story short, I taught AP level classes in two fairly different disciplines within Social Studies. In so many ways, spending a whole with AP upperclassmen is a remarkable pleasure and privilege. Yet the challenge of preparing for the intellectual rigor in those two areas was fatiguing. And the experience makes me wonder if I need to make a tough call: specializing in one of those topic areas, forfeiting the privilege of teaching the other.

My whole career I've avoided teaching the same subject or class throughout a whole day. Some teachers strive for that, I found it tedious and boring. So as often as possible I have requested schedules that avoided that sameness. Perhaps I need to push for sameness and push for ways to become very, very good within consistency rather than fancy myself as an Advanced Placement utility infielder.

Deciding to specialize involves taking risk. It involves deliberately taking one fork in a road, and forfeiting the opportunities that might come from proceeding the other direction. Have I been postponing a decision I should have made long ago?

A dilemma with a career like this one, where the ladder up which one advances is nebulous (one is a teacher, a department chair, or a principal . . . there aren't too many other rungs), is that the signs of when one is stalled or when one is advancing are hard to discern. There aren't too many guides for the fifteen-year veteran teacher about what paths to take.

Efficiency

I had a chance to sit in the board meeting room recently. It was my first time there since the district had done some modest remodeling of that space, namely to post new vision and value statements around the top of the walls. It gave me a chance to see a new part of our mission statement, to be efficient.

Though I value the need to be efficient in our daily conduct I deplore it held forth as a central value or mission of a school. I wouldn't have a problem if we were to instead dedicate ourselves to prudent stewardship or wise use of resources. Efficiency sounds like a mantra for quality control. Efficiency sounds like using byproducts in such a way that there is no waste, such as in a meat processing facility. Efficiency sounds like using every last physical and mental talent of the people you work with so that not a minute is wasted.

We would all benefit from finding ways to be more efficient in what we do as public school teachers. But efficiency can't be the most important principle, or even one of the most, when dealing with children and adolescents. Their quirks and needs defy efficiency. They grow at different rates. They possess different abilities. Dealing with them "efficiently" means dealing with them superficially and impatiently. In the case of students with disabilities, dealing with them "efficiently" is illegal and often inhuman. Efficiency is not what we really want to be doing with students.

No posts in a month. Sigh

Let it be a testament to what March does to teachers. Teachers and accountants must be the busiest and most un-fun people imaginable that time of year. I'm glad to be through it.

Current Events

As a high school teacher I've become accustomed to very closely following the news so I can avail myself of an opportunity to take something abstract (boring) and spice it up with a connection to the news (which gets students out of "learning" and wastes class time).

But it's frustrating to come across a news story that's rich with implicit lessons yet would probably get me fired (okay, a stern talking to) if I brought it up. Which leads me to the current kerfuffle that won't die regarding birth control. The media calls "culture war" . . . no, make that "CULTURE WAR!" . . . and all I can think about is using the story as an example of merit goods, externalities, and inelasticity of demand.

An excerpt from a local paper. The topic: a town hall meeting between the superintendent of a district, a PR professional, and a parent.

One issue discussed was whether parents are allowed to volunteer in their children’s classroom. Parent Karen -----, whose children attend ----- Elementary School, said that she was under the impression that parents could not volunteer in their children’s classroom or even the same grade, except for parties or other special occasions.“ It’s not part of our policy,” said Christine -----, manager of school and community engagement. But she said the current policy is under review. In the last 13 years the number of people volunteering has dropped from more than 1,000 to around 700. There can be confidentiality issues. . . . The teacher should pick and chose their resources,” said [parent]. She noted that parents used to come in and help kindergarten teachers with kids’ writing but that is no longer allowed. And in a first grade with 23 6 year old children, there’s “a lot of Bandaids and untied shoes,” she said. Teachers need additional help at times, she said. "A lot of parents who are home want to volunteer,” said [the parent]. She helps out twice a week with laptop computers, she said. Both women agreed that parents are more likely to want to volunteer in their own child’s classroom.

This friendly exchange makes me thing about two problems we see right now in our schools. The district's reluctance to let parents volunteer in the classroom strikes me as administration while scared. So many decisions made by schools now are reactive and driven by concerns about a lawsuit or liability issue that might possibly happen in the future. It's a mental model that I have already seen squelch a lot of helpful communication between professionals about what to do with students. I have seen it in principals' reluctance to inform teachers of problematic behaviors with students on their roster. I have seen it in broader funding decisions about what will possibly happen if a district is generous with its resources.

A second problem: apparently this district has for a long time relied on parent volunteers to help teachers do their jobs well. On the surface, I like seeing this kind of cooperation between well-meaning parents and appreciative teachers. Yet such generosity is necessary when a district insists on relatively large classrooms at the elementary level and progressively commands that the teachers' instruction includes more and more content and skills. If class sizes were around 18 rather than around 24, might parents not be needed to fill in the cracks?

Gate vs. Thread

I'm among the 75% or so of teachers who has been threatened with a lawsuit. When it happens, it's devastating. Usually the threat is empty, or it's baseless. And I've found that people often argue the most intensely when they know their position is indefensible. Yet it happens a lot in this profession.

Teachers spend large amounts of time in front of students with no immediate supervision. In those times with students, it's easy to say something that will offend. When tired, it's easy to forget exercising good judgment when sharing details or perspectives with students. And sometimes youth becomes so shrill and obnoxious a teacher can be tempted to lose his or her temper. There are so many opportunities to make a mistake.

Then one thinks about the quirky matters that can trip up a whole career: leaving a sharp tool out where someone can use it, not properly accounting for the costs of a student or school activity, abusing copyright protections when copying materials for class, leaving a classroom to pick up a set of photocopies only to have something bad happen in one's absence.

But if I get to the interaction with students, students thrill to watch teachers flirt with "the edge" and it's tough to remember to be the professional. Students giggle when you say a bad word, or engage in double meaning. Students often want to talk about controversial issues that appear in the news. And though a teacher should never engage in bad-mouthing peers, students will seem to enjoy it when a teacher engages in it.

So I guess it's fair to say that we often hang by thread as teachers. We show up for work knowing that we have approximately 5 or 6 hours of time in front of a live audience where anything said or done can appear at the dinner table or become the subject of conversation at soccer practice.

However, when this job is done right, it resembles a downhill skier just barely missing the gates as he navigates his way down a slalom course. I remember being at a church where a preacher was able to do just that, and I would marvel at how close he would seem to come to words that broke the fifth wall of spiritual message, but then would turn back to the gospel right in time. It was something I marveled at. When we do our jobs well, kids can marvel at that as well.

Sometimes you have to wait to see how something plays out . . .

So a colleague told me today that some of her students were elated that they were starting my class later that day (our semesters switched). Many of them had me in 10th grade, and many knew me by association. What an awesome compliment. It's also a great vindication of an approach I took that year.

2008-09 might be my proudest teaching year. Something moved me to embark on a whimsical but positive approach that year. I had a mammoth section of AP students. I resolved that with them I would never use their first names, referring to them as Mr. and Ms. I resolved to never complain about their enormous class size. I also, for practical reasons, simplified my gradebook dramatically, only collecting nine, ten, or eleven major assignments a marking period.

Meanwhile, settled into a really positive groove with some standard sections that year. I remember even promising myself that I would pretend to like a set of boys whose jib struck me wrong (and I ended up liking them as a result). That was the class where a student paid me the ultimate history teacher compliment ("With you, the important things seemed important.")

So, now I receive some dividends from that year. I'm interested to see how this plays out with seniors and seeing if I can elevate them to something higher than just playing out the string.

Colleagues

A fantastic day recently reminded me of the wonderful colleagues I have. Great teachers, great people.

Few professions offer the richness of human contact as does this one. On my grumpiest days I need to remember how good it is to work in a profession like teaching where one is surrounded by so many talented, genuine people and where one gets so many chances to connect with them.

Free Knowledge

In its protest against SOPA Wikipedia shut down their site, offering visitors a line that I found truly obnoxious - "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge." An economist would quibble with the idea that the knowledge one gets is free. Someone worked to gather it, interpret it, write it. At the very least it cost someone time. Perhaps I wouldn't have been bothered as much had it said "Imagine a World Without the Free Exchange of Knowledge" but perhaps I am guilty of hair-splitting.

Wikipedia's attention-grabbing line, however, illustrates a challenge teachers have reaching and engaging the current generation of students. Information has always seemed free to the boys and girls in my class. Previous generations of students (including myself) had to labor more to get knowledge. Students today have always had Google which, of course, nearly always generates Wikipedia among the first hits for any topic researched. It seems like students grew up looking at finding answers as an eater views an all-you-can-eat buffet, while back before the 1990s we had to cook (even if early web applications offered us the researching equivalent of a microwave).

Okay, bad analogies.

Am I being too hard on Wikipedia's boast? Perhaps. After all, public libraries appear "free" to the public. For some reason I find their cause more noble than Wikipedia's, though it's easy to see the digitization of information, the free exchange of ideas, and the publication of ebooks might all seem as noble of efforts (in the long run) to elevate human understanding.

I fear that we're beginning to lose a grasp of the protocol that comes with writing good non-fiction accounts of what has been said or did. Historians and journalists follow a code by which they triangulate evidence and credit the sources of that information. Done well, the works of those professionals reliably contribute to our understanding. Done poorly or sloppily, even with good intentions, a lot of myth-making happens.

It is hard to move students toward an appreciation for creating something deliberately and purposefully than just posting it. And these students will someday be the teachers themselves.

If you had asked, I could have told you to expect this (January Edition)

This feels a bit like a Bill Engvall "Here's your sign" moment.

So, let's say we have a school that places one limitation after another on when teachers may and may not assign tests. Let's say this school has basically marked off the whole last week of the marking period as a maze of "no test on this day" dictums, and let's say that week is after a three-day weekend. Wonder what will happen . . .

. . . nearly every teacher assigns a whopping test on the Friday before that week. Yep, could've seen this one coming.

On a miserable day it's good to . . .

. . . do a re-cap of my favorite teaching moments:

Year 3: Taking students to see a classical music concert inspired by World War I

Year 4: Having students transcribe a Civil War soldiers' complete correspondence

Year 7: The culture I built with that legendary ninth grade class, a relationship so solid I could announce a topic to them and give them the choice how we covered it

Year 8: 1st period throws me a party when Sam was born

Year 10: turning around a student teacher and an honors class that lost their groove

Year 12: making a class of 34 in a section of AP U.S. actually work

Year 13: helping a colleague through an illness and seeing some of my kids rise to the moment by learning how to teach themselves

Year 14: Jazz Tuesdays

Children or Adults

So I have arrived at something of a dilemma. It's a good one, though.

My career was greatly influenced by an administrator at my first building. The man frustrated me at times. Yet he was a principled advocate for the students, and I could not have navigated some of my most frustrating relationships without keeping lessons from him in mind. This administrator had a purposeful habit of using the word "children" whenever he referred to our students. Never "kids." I remember one time that he remarked on the devastating power of thoughtlessness or mean-spiritness to our students: don't forget that we might be the last adult they every talk to. A bit macabre? Perhaps. But he came by it honestly.

Even teaching seniors the past six years, I've kept in mind that they are children. Someone's children. At times awkward children. Children who, with mixed results, are trying on the language and mannerisms of grown ups. Children.

In the past year, however, I've engaged in dialogue with my old choir director, and when I complimented her on how I was impressed at how she was a teacher of children more than a music director, she responded that she never thought of herself as a teacher of children, but a teacher of adults-in-training, and that treating her students like adults was what motivated her to do what she did.

Now that I'm entirely with upperclassmen and now that I'm wrestling with frustration at the demeaning attempt by my leaders to water down and make less rich the students' experience, I'm wondering if I need to shift to my choir directors' mindset.

I remember two years ago I taught a large (34 students) section of AP sophomores. As a gimmick to elevate the atmosphere of the class, I never used the students' first names, referring to them instead as Mr. or Ms. It was the best relationship I ever built with a class.

So, when semester two starts, marking the 2nd half of my juniors' high school odyssey, I think I'm making the switch to Mr. and Ms. It's time to deliberately show them that I am treating them as adults. But I'll be lying, because the whole time I know they're children, and that all I do for them must be guided by the conviction that they are children. I'm interested to see how the shift goes.

Today's Moment Worthy of Banging One's Head Against the Wall

So today I get an e-mail from one of my higher-ups containing details for the final exam of a course I don't teach. As part of the students' final exam they are to write an essay (about five paragraphs in length) responding to a prompt they have seen before. I'm stunned, however, as to the extent to which we have watered this task's challenge down. To wit:

• The students know of the prompt at the beginning of the course.
• The students are typically allowed a whole 90-minute block to write the essay.
• The students may use previously-prepared notes to write the essay.
• The students' notes may be in the form of a graphic organizer teachers prepare delineating how topic deserves its own paragraph and should include a definition and example

Fourteen years of teaching at the secondary level tell me that sophomores are capable of succeeding at a more rigorous academic challenge than this. Properly guided by teachers, students could master this task with more challenging conditions.

I once heard an individual claim that a great crime against disadvantaged kids, against minority kids in struggling schools was to hold them to a low standard, to expect them to fail. I think the phrase was "the soft bigotry of low expectations." I can't say that AJHS is engaging in bigotry, given the predominantly white nature of our students and predominantly white nature of our teachers and staff and administration. Perhaps its a soft condescension. Or a soft enabling.

Either way it's damning the students residing outside the AP-level courses at AJHS to a high school experience that may not be sufficiently rich for them to achieve greater things later.

First Day Back

Ah, so tomorrow is the first day back after six school days away (and ten real days). What to do . . . what to do. I know, splash the kids with the cold water that is 45 minutes of wall-to-wall teacher-instructed goodness.

Seriously, trying to conduct dialogue on a day like tomorrow is hopeless. Time to just teach. Oh, if only I had the courage to write "Just teach, dammit." in my lesson plan.

One more day off . . .

I'm happy to have one more day off before returning to the January stretch. Still, a problem with being off from the job is that one is away from the kids, and the kids keep me focused on the most rewarding aspects of the job.

By the way, a clarification: the kids = my students, of whom there are right now 78 on my roster

my kids = the two at home