teachingdc

Frustrating

On Friday, I sat through a really interesting training for the Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math programs, which my school apparently bought and wants to use as a supplement to Houghton-Mifflin and Everyday Math.

The AR and AM programs seem really interesting and really helpful - especially individualizing instruction for students who are behind or ahead, and filling in holes that Houghton-Mifflin and Everyday Math leave.  The thing that frustrates me is that AR and AM both assume that the teacher using the program has a working, networked computer hooked up to a laser printer, and space to store files and the scantron scanner machine.  In my classroom we have computers that can go online (a huge improvement from last year) but we do not have any extra space for anything (I don’t even have a desk or anything) and as for printers, if you can find me one in the school that is hooked to a computer, I’ll give you a cookie.

These half-assed kind of solutions are what makes me so angry at the school, the system, everything.  Great curriculum!  But we are so unprepared to actually implement it.  So not only did we waste all our money on the curriculum that we will probably never use correctly, we also wasted an entire two days of training, and we will probably fluff around about the AR and AM curriculum and get like half of the supplies we need before actually moving forward teaching with what we do have.

Maybe it’s just because it’s Sunday night but I hate this kind of bullshit the system pulls on us.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now: do it right, or don’t do it.  

Hermit Weekend

Due to an injury, I’m stuck at home for the weekend.  I’m just hoping that my forced hermit status is going to lead to some nice introspection and maybe some good lesson plans.  But so far, all I’ve done is listened to This American LIfe and Studio 360, developed an obsession with Spore and determined that the Stock Market and Quantum Physics are similar in that in the Stock Market you can buy and sell stocks without the actual stocks, and in Quantum Physics you can only determine the velocity or the location of a particle but never both at the same time, which leads to some confusion as to whether or not the particle exists in the first place.

Both the experts from the Stock Market and the Physics Labs assure me that the stocks exist, as do the particles, but we just don’t understand how. I really just think that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal reminds me mostly of my students: I might know where they are in space, but the more I know about WHERE they are the less I know about where they are GOING. The more I know about where they are GOING, the harder it is to pin them down where they actually are. This is best illustrated when trying to round them up after recess.

A few thoughts on vouchers and charters…

My dad, a pretty open-minded conservative, emailed me an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal titled “The Greatest Scandal” in support of school voucher programs back in July asking for my thoughts.  I immediately dashed back a quick reply off the top of my head, which follows below:

I don’t agree that vouchers are the answer.  If school choice and vouchers helped improve the SYSTEM, we would have an improved DC system (we have both school choice and vouchers at play).  Instead, the vouchers divert funds that could improve the entire system and instead only benefit 1,900 students, which does nothing for the rest of the students left behind.  It seems to me that the two parties are not really debating vouchers and choice vs. maintaining the status quo —- the two parties are talking about different things entirely: individual success vs. system success.

McCain and conservatives prioritize what is best for individuals while attempting to maintain the highest level of group success.  Help 1900 kids get a better education?  Great for those 1900 kids, too bad we can’t help everyone.  Obama and liberals, I think, aim to prioritize what is best for the group/society/the system in general while attempting to maintain the highest level of individual success.  

Vouchers, for sure, are a viable answer to individual success.  However, vouchers will do nothing to help the public system improve.  The people who make the case FOR vouchers as a way to help clean up the SYSTEM have never been inside a school that is losing its students to privates and charters.  Teachers stop caring, the Principal stops caring, you basically feel forgotten.  As a teacher in one of these schools, my windows were missing panes for the entire year.  I had 8 kids at the end of the year and still lacked basic supplies for teaching.  We didn’t have specials (music? PE? we did it all in our classroom, even Art was lost by the end of the year) and the morale was so low by the end of the year.  The bottom line?  My kids who moved and went to the privates and charters are now much better off.  But the kids who are left?  Please, come to my classroom, look them in the eyes, and tell them not to worry, that really, this is better for them in the long run.  There is no way the article’s author can convince me that the students left behind are going to be better off because of vouchers.  They do not “inspire” change and they do not “scare” teachers/principals/admins into improving.  Vouchers essentially pit a broken public system against a private system that is completely unequal to them, and say “well, why can’t you just improve and be like the private schools?”  It is like taking one child who is severely behind academically and saying to them “well, why can’t you just be more like your sibling” (who happens to be gifted).

Another reason why vouchers and school choice fails as a system reform is because privates and charters can expel “difficult” kids back to their boundary (home) schools.  Every year, around October, the worse off schools suddenly get BACK really difficult, behaviorally challenged kids.  As a boundary or home school, you are legally required to take back any child expelled from another school.  But to expel a child from his boundary school is nearly impossible, especially with NCLB and IDEA (edu legislation), it is reminiscent to trying to get an ineffective teacher fired in DCPS.  Therefore, the privates and charters can keep the successful students, send back the kids who are troublemakers, and … be heralded as the solution to public education reform?

There is no question that the system is broken and needs major reform.  However, I disagree with vouchers and school choice (at least the way it is implemented now) because I don’t think it benefits the system, and ultimately is not best for all kids.  It is great for the lucky few —- but only the lucky few.  Not the system, not all children.  I don’t think it’s wrong for those lucky kids to have a good education (I don’t think we should take back the vouchers or send them back to their home schools) but I reject the notion that the voucher system is working for the system.  I think Rhee’s idea of paying teachers like real professionals is a great way to boost student achievement, raise morale, and inspire great change within schools themselves.  Money talks.  I think we just need to give it to the right people.

Early mornings

Whenever I get really frustrated at having to get up early for school, I like to think that at least I am not up as early as Steve Inskeep.  He starts at 4am, whereby allowing me to wake up to his pleasant voice at 6.  Although I often knock my clock radio across the room in a grumpy display of aggression, it doesn’t last long.  Thanks, Steve, for helping me hate life slightly less.

long day

you know it was a long day the day before when you wake up on friday morning with a pen still stuck in your ponytail.  and blue ink on your pillowcase.  weeeeee.

Fourth Day

Feels partly like attempting to herd feral kittens… partly like scientifically-based creative cognitive developmental exercises.

And I’m completely exhausted.

But, I’m recognizing the need for structure and consistency for my students.  It’s difficult, though, because the school itself is unstructured and inconsistent in its policies and procedures.  Then again, the system, in its entirety, is the epitome of disorganization and empty policy.

Although in the midst of the confusion, I found this link that might be super helpful:  New Pacing Guides for DCPS.  I know a lot of people are anti-textbook or anti-standards or anti-pacing guides.  But when we are teaching children who have not necessarily learned or developed the skills they need for their grade level, the standards/pacing guides do give us a framework within which we can plan effective lessons.  I don’t like Houghton Mifflin (and don’t even get me started on Everyday Math and the uselessness of the curriculum when I don’t have all the manipulatives or materials).  But by using the Pacing Guide as a reference, and the standards as an outline, and using Houghton Mifflin when needed, and using other resources when needed, it is surprising - it actually works.

This is not to say that I won’t stop mid-lesson to have a conversation about how Obama was not exactly elected president last night (I can understand the confusion!  Looked like it was a party on TV, people were saying “our next President, Barack Obama!” etc…).  I love the spontaneity that exists in my classroom.  I love that my students are not afraid to ask questions or take risks in their learning.  That kind of confidence does not come from completing Student Practice Book pages each day.  It comes from the genuine desire to find out more and experience more and being supported in their learning and their development.  I believe that support comes from more than the texts, and that the curriculum should include standards that are not limited to the children’s (standardized-tested) academic development.  

Coming down off my soapbox, now.  Off to plan and maybe even do laundry.  The little things…

News Blips

Not enough time to really get into these issues, but here is a good link to an article that summarizes the news from DCPS: DCist

The drama going down is intense.  It is no wonder my students have trouble sharing, taking turns, and showing respect.  The adults in the system are not very good models!

That being said, I say YES to the new contract.  

Happy New Year!

Exhaustion.  Food deprivation.  Possibly zapping my ovaries from the large amounts of Xerox copying.  Staple-in-hand bulletin-board fiasco.  Losing my voice from explaining procedures 8 thousand times.  

Totally in robot mode: shower, dress, chug coffee, brush teeth, run out door.  Then School.  Then home, run, eat everything in sight, plan, drink glass of wine, plan, pass out on couch, crawl into bed, zzzz. 

First week of school!  Zing!