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.