Friday, November 12, 2010

Transition Words

One of the important moments for student writers is when they learn to use transition words.  I do not mean the way they use them when we scaffold it in elementary school.  My first grader recently wrote a paragraph on her morning routine, complete with misspellings and awkward transitions, clearly inserted by the teacher to make students aware of their existence: 

"First, I wake up.  Next, I eat breakfast.  Then, I get dressed.  Finally I get my backpack and go to school."

Unfortunately, many students in high school have long since forgotten these elementary attempts to make the use of transitions conscious and smooth.  Instead we see a lot of run on sentences, comma splices, and sentences that start with "then."  By the time they reach sophomre or junior year, we can expect the reliably stilted, "In conclusion" to start the last paragraph of any piece of writing.  However, for a student to achieve appropriate, precise transitions that move a reader smoothly through her essay, is a rare and impressive accomplishment. 

All of this thinking about transitions led me to ponder metaphor.  Most things in life lead me to ponder metaphor.  I didn't end up as a literature major and English teacher because I enjoy the linear.  If smooth transitions in writing are difficult to achieve, they are virtually impossible in life.

I race from work to home each day, never feeling I've put out all fires and cleaned up all messes.  It's usually a panicky glance at the clock, followed by a sprint to the car and a quick text to reassure my family, especially the husband part who needs to get to work...now...that I didn't forget to come home.

The transition home is loud.  Granted, most things with five children are loud, and my daily welcome home is no exception:  a chattering hen house of school updates, questions, hugs, kisses, permission slips and exclamations.  Then,  I close the front door and actually come inside.  Despite many attempts to have a few moments of calm before leaving teacher person and putting on the full armour of mommy person, this frenetic welcome home goes unchanged.

My early morning routine isn't much better.  Every life needs a soundtrack and my mornings these days are accompanied by strains of "Chuggington," a colorful animated show for preschoolers whose theme song, for whatever reason, is completely enthralling to my eight month old.  Complete with wobbling head and wonder-filled "o" of the mouth, he sits mesmerized while a cloying children's chorus sings the following: 

"Chuggington.  Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga Chugginton!" 

I know.  It's hard to believe my kids can't get perfect scores on the SAT someday if I just set them in front of this kind of quality programming all the time.  Fortunately, he's only interested in the monotonous theme song.  Afterward, we switch over to the beloved Arthur.  This part of the morning is crunch time-- the transition from Mom to Teacher, from Children to Students.  No matter how early I rise, the last half hour is still, always, slightly chaotic.  I should probably just record my voice shouting the following:

"Did you brush your teeth?"
"You have to wear socks."
"I don't know, check the dryer."
"Did you pack your lunch?"
"Someone pick up your brother."

Weekdays are one thing.  Saturday mornings are another.  Soccer Saturday offers its own transition challenges.  Now, you don't just have to get your children to school.  You must get them there on time for an event involving several other families.  It is a timed event.  It requires special clothing, and sports equipment.  Sometimes you even have to bring a meal for everyone involved.  By the way, if you think the phrase "bringing snack" doesn't sound like a frightening summons to provide a full meal that pleases both sugar hungry mini-athletes and healthy minded parents, you are not a soccer mom. 

I've been a "soccer mom" for four years now.  Four years to know when each of my three children have to be at their respective pre-game warm ups.  Furthermore, this isn't the first week of soccer season when the transition to the routines might have some starts and stops.  It's the middle of the season, so our Saturdays should move like at least a relatively well-oiled machine.  Instead, this was my recent AM:

After an early morning session of chores, cuddling and Cheerios, I was lounging on the couch with said Cheerio eater, my six year old, and a cup of coffee. We were watching "Arthur,"a show I would watch by myself.  I want to hang out with my friends at the Sugar Bowl after school everyday and make big plans with Buster in Arthur's treehouse, and I'm not even sure what Arthur is.  My eldest says he's an anteater; I'm not seeing it. 

But I digress

Suddenly and for no clear reason, I realize the six year old is supposed to be at the field much earlier today.  I check my email for her coach's weekly update (Thank you, Lord, for coaches who email; otherwise I might never find any soccer communication) and realize we are supposed to be at the field in 30 minutes!

Now, considering the drive is about five minutes away, you might interpret this as good news.  However, you would be wrong. Stupidly sunny in your optimism in fact.  Even Superman and Wonder Woman together could not get three children ready for soccer games and two more ready for watching soccer games in that time.  After rousing sleeping Dad to ask if he can bring Child 1 and 2 to the field in two hours, I go to work on the youngest Mia Hamm and the babies.  As a family we enter Red Alert mode where I shout orders, Dad does triage on some blisters and shoes the two year old.  While I pack the bag that will serve as changing and water station, cell phone dock, snack shack, bank and baby toy box, hair is brushed ("I don't know where your purple ribbon is; you'll have to go without it.  I'm sorry."), teeth are brushed and water bottles filled. 

Soon I'm flying out the front door, yelling for older sibs to move car seats from Dad's car to mine, and I begin to think we just might make it on time.  Well, maybe a few minutes late.  We can be those cool parents who think the start time is just too early, so we arrive a bit late, knowing that things at the field never really get going as soon as the coach likes to claim.  Just as my sunny confidence begins to flame, it is quickly extinguished, and I realize I will probably cross that tenuous "fashionably late" threshhold and instead, again be the manic mother of five, racing in late and apologetic.  I hate being that chick.  It's sooo predictable!  Anyway, the source of my new distress comes from this conversation:

Mia Ham (heading out the front door)

Eldest:  Are you wearing one of my shin guards? Mom, she's wearing one of MY shin guards!
Mia (with a slight but growing whine):  I NEED it!  I can't find mine!
Eldest:  They're not YOURS!  I need them, too!  I have a game, too!



Dad and I quickly realize that we have three soccer players and only five shin guards.  It's kind of like the time-honored dryer conundrum where two socks go in but only one comes out.  What happens to the other sock?  Coincidentally, the T.V. show "Arthur" has a cute episode that explains the sock mystery: 



At any rate, I am now clearly one shin guard shy of soccer Saturday.  I refuse to race to the store to buy more shin guards.  My six year old has the chronic habit of losing everything she wears that falls below the knee.  We are often reduced to tears before school, before church, before birthday parties because she can't find socks or the other shoe or any shoes that fit.  Today is just the latest in this predictable and frustrating habit.  While I might want to dwell, wallow even, in the misery of this realization, I must forge ahead. 

Soccer waits for no mom! 

Please tell me this sad shin guard sharing is not the pathetic experience of just my soccer family.  Do shin guards go missing in your house, too?  Probably not.  You're probably a super organized working mom who has special wicker baskets with canvas lining that match each child's team uniform color.  After each Saturday, you dutifully wash the uniforms and socks and lovingly fold and place each uniform along with its cleats and shin guards in the basket for each child.  Are their water bottles color coded as well?  Of course they are.  You are the master of soccer Saturday, and your essays all have delightful transitions.

Meanwhile, back in the increasing H-E-Double Hockey Sticks that is my Saturday, we charge out of the house and into the car.  Dad's executive decision is that they will share their shin guards because only two of them play at the same time.  I realize no one has had breakfast, so I throw a granola bar back to my soccer star (Yeah, that will fuel her until almost the half) and a bag of goldfish crackers at the two year old, whose total devotion to me is sealed with this immensely cool breakfast choice.  No oatmeal with sliced bananas.  No pancakes with flax seed.  No scrambled eggs with broccoli and cheddar cheese.  She gets "Fishy Crackers?!" 

Predictably, we are to late to warmups, but luckily there is another Mom who arrives slightly later than me.  Victory.  Everyone plays.  Only one daughter wins her game, and yes, we keep track of these things in our house.  Don't get me started.  It's another blog unto itself.  They collect their snacks.  We trudge to the car, and when we get home, we're far too exhausted to do anything but collapse en masse on the couch. 

Dozing with the baby on my shoulder, I sense the two year old is grazing on the snack leftovers from her sisters.  The six year old kicks off her cleats and socks which are almost immediately inhaled by the couch, hider of all needed things.  Soccer uniforms end up in one pile or another, but they don't go into the wash for at least two more days.  Let's be honest, they may still be dirty somewhere next Friday.  I'm not even sure I own any wicker baskets.  I know my five children have nothing color coded.  All of this will either make them resilent and calm in a crisis, or at the very least, it will fuel some productive therapy sessions when they reach their late twenties and realize I am to blame for everything.  Either way, Saturday is waning and relatively successful, and I still haven't learned how to transition from Mommy to Soccer Mommy. 

Tomorrow, there will undoutedly be at least some chaos between home and church.  Even though I am a veteran working mother and a teacher who can guide students through any number of good choices to create smooth transitions in writing, my shift between home and work on Monday will undoutedly still be difficult.  Transitions are hard.  Smooth transitions are almost impossible to achieve, both in the classroom and in life as a

Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching

 Transition Words Handout

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Merit Pay

Merit pay. Isn't pay supposed to reward merit? Doesn't it do so in other professions? The automatic $138 per month raise each year in my district is little consolation for watching Joe Mediocrity lecture from literally yellowed notes, and pass out the same mimeographed vocabulary assignment he first made in 1981, all while making the same pay as I do. Actually, he makes more than me merely because he has been physically occupying space here longer. Truthfully, he makes much more than me because my union has been consistently building up the salary and benefits packages for these admirable elder statesmen in the district while young, dynamic teachers, still humming "Eye of the Tiger" on their way to work, can't pay their deductibles and vacation at the local park populated by tweakers and stray dogs.

The Washington state teachers union was widely credited with killing a bill in 2009 that would have simply swapped out a years of service pay structure in favor of rewarding "teacher competency."  In defending the actions of WEA, union president, Mary Lindquist, illuminates the very problem unions create.  She claims: 

"There’s some good reasons for our existing salary schedule. I think it’s one that has stood the test of time. It’s a clear, transparent, predictable way of paying school employees and I think by and large they’re pretty receptive to the current system. I don’t see a lot of need from inside the education community to change that.” (Jenkins, Austin, "Washington Teachers Union Kills Merit Pay Proposal." OPB News. March 23, 2009). 

This is precisely the problem!  Of course there isn't a need from inside the education community.  After decades of knowing you will get an automatic raise, no matter what kind of teacher you are, where's the incentive to suddenly be held accountable? 

While I do not usually agree with the teachers unions who claim to represent my interests, they do have a point when it comes to concerns about merit pay.  Its implementation is daunting.  If we tie the third grade teacher's pay to her students' test scores, what about the teachers before her who prepared those kids?  Furthermore, why should teachers in the poorest, urban districts have their pay tied to test scores that result from socio-economic factors largely beyond their control, while those who live in affluent districts reap the rewards earned by good parenting and high economic status?  Should base salaries be derived from merit based criteria or only bonus money?  Furthermore, is our only measure of successful students the results of their multiple choice tests at the end of the year, or do our claims to educate the "whole child" mean anything?  How do we quantify success?  As teachers, we all know it usually cannot be recorded on a scantron, no offense to you math teachers out there.  Despite legitimate concerns about how best to implement merit pay, the answer cannot be merely to reject it outright.

As is always the case, we teachers make the worst students, and what do we see in our students when the bar is low and "predictable"?  Most rise only to the low standard.  If you raise the bar in the classroom, the limbo party stops and students stretch themselves beyond what they perceived their capacities to be.  Competition is healthy!  It's true in the classroom and in our profession.  Excellent teachers are not afraid of merit pay.  In fact, many great teachers welcome the chance to be both held accountable by their profession and rewarded for their hard work.  My master teacher told me many years ago that the best teachers constantly doubt how well they are doing, reflect upon their teaching and search for ways to improve.  Those who don't probably aren't doing a very good job.  As a teacher, if I don't want to question my own practice or challenge myself to improve, why would I be calling for the people writing the paychecks to do so?

The rewards in public education are always intrinsic in the current system, and that just doesn't encourage greatness.  When a teacher takes on outside tutoring, advises one or more clubs, or designs curriculum that requires students to engage in higher level thinking and rigorous work, the rewards should not just be an occasional grateful parent phone call or a superficial, "Keep up the good work!" and insincere chuck on the shoulder from the principal.

People often speak of teaching in elevated, moral terms, like it's a religious calling. Certainly there is truth to that. In fact, students, parents, and administrators should rejoice in that reality -- most teachers are in it for all the right reasons. People often cynically assert that we're in it for the summers off, but that's like saying young men and women volunteer to serve in the armed forces for those great "Welcome Home" parades. The fact that becoming a teacher requires a bit of self sacrifice, perhaps a bit of a calling, doesn't mean the job does not deserve compensation.  If this were truly a religious calling, then our housing, food and expenses would all be paid for by the church, and I wouldn't have any children to feed because of my vow of chastity and poverty.  Just because we want to inspire out students, just because we didn't seek fame and glory in our career choice, doesn't then mean that we should be shut out of financial reward or compensation for a job WELL done, not just a job done.

Don't get me wrong--I love the Facebook message from a recent grad who thanked me for her senior English class. She said it was clear I put my heart into my teaching and that despite my reputation for being "mean" or "hard", she quickly realized I just wanted to prepare them for the proverbial "real world".  I treasure the flowers and card I received last June from a senior girl who wanted to thank me for helping her when she was being bullied as a freshman.  I'm tickled by the 19 year old boy working at the local smoothie shop who bemoans how much he misses "this place" when he comes by to visit. Those are the carrots that keep teachers moving forward, no matter how heavy the burdens we bear. But those don't pay for soccer or Disneyland for my kids. They don't repaint my house or fix my car when it suddenly decides it won't get me two miles to my job one morning. However, just increasing teacher pay won't make public schools suddenly and uniformly successful anymore than Oprah's generous checks to a few successful charter schools will save the system.  Furthermore, charter schools, while often wildly successful endeavors, still aren't the pillowy manna from heaven we might wish them to be.

The link below is to an interesting article that points out how limited a mere focus on merit pay is.  The problems in public education are geographical and local, socioeconomic, and complex.  Can merely paying teachers more create widespread success?  Probably not.  Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C. has made bold attempts at reform and been met with Oprah celebrity and union scorn.  A pilot program in Denver that has been mandatory for new teachers and voluntary for veterans, has been fraught with controversy and ambiguous results. 

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=is_merit_pay_a_distraction_in_the_fight_for_meaningful_education_reform


Merit pay can't be the only solution to the systemic problems in public schools.  My argument is not the traditional teachers-need-higher-salaries mantra. Instead, an entire shift needs to occur in public education.  We need to reward models that work instead of politicians and yes, teachers unions, denigrating any movement toward compeititon.  We need to liberate districts, allowing more local control over how their funding is dispersed.  The recent film Waiting for Superman presents the terrible angst of parents living in low performing districts, just hoping to win a random lottery slot for their children in a successful charter school.  Instead of opposing charter schools, as many unions and traditional schools have, why not see them as a way to change what doesn't work in all public schools?  Why tie the hands of administrators with rigid rules about how money can be spent?  California is one of the worst offenders there.  Merit pay is only one element of reform, and the influx of homeschoolers and charter schools in the last two decades demands that traditional schools change or become obsolete. However, once Oprah moves on to discussing her favorite new scarf and Julia Roberts's latest comedy, once the public school question again can't be fixed by a two minute slot on CNN, we in education will again be left with these problems to solve. 

I'm not sure how to fairly achieve merit pay; implementation is fraught with peril. However, just because we aren't sure how best to reach our destination, doesn't mean we just give up on the journey.  Do you tell your struggling students in danger of failing to just forget about graduation and give up when they come to you deflated and ready to quit?  No, you don't.  Physician, heal thyself!

Monday, September 27, 2010

Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching

Yes, it's true.  My district officially rehired me on Friday afternoon!  It is not in my previous position, but it is full time.  I will be working in alternative education at two different sites in the area.  It will be a new challenge, and I always like those.  I do not know yet how to juggle teaching seven subjects, but I am excited about the opportunity to help students one on one, and as a mother of five, I'm really looking forward to working with teenage moms, recent and soon-to-be.  If you are in alternative ed. I'd love to hear your stories and advice!

For my family this means I no longer need to know the daily balance of my bank account and the dates when the water and garbage payments deduct automatically.  Well, let's be honest--I'm still a teacher, so I may need to know some of that, but I may not feel my heart racing as much when the recorded voice at the bank says "Your available balance for use is..."  Those words can feel like a terrible, frightening reversal of a game show finale where I do not win the beautiful dinette set [what the hell is a dinette? Does it just mean small, cheap dining room?].  Instead the automated voice finishes her phrase with some number much lower than my worst guess, and I still can't figure out how the bank makes a computer voice sound more judgemental and condescending depending upon how small my balance has become since I last called.  When there is a recent deposit she sounds positively chipper, almost as if I'm more worthy of allowing them to house my paltry income. 


So, while the title of my blog may not be the most accurate one anymore, it still works I think.  After all it is plural, and, as you know, there are still way too many teachers not teaching right now.  Too many of us who did everything right.  We valued education.  We obtained college degrees, dedicated ourselves to a difficult, oft-maligned profession, and didn't put financial gain ahead of helping others.  Despite that, many of us are still losing our homes, facing bills we can't pay, and a bleak immediate economic future for our families and our school systems...especially in California.  Therefore, I will leave the title unchanged because there are still many teachers not teaching, even though I am again lucky to count myself among those who are.  Furthermore, I am learning not to trust the security of any job.  The chilly winds of March may yet find me "pinked" and pushed again into the same spiral I just weathered.  Only time will tell.


For now, I am grateful, thankful and counting my blessings, and I don't care if those are all the same thing--this kind of moment needs redundancy.  As the Lord has shown me in every period of my life:  He wants us to trust Him and know that He will provide, even when it seems most disheartening and difficult to do so.  I think I'm doing really well, then I lose hope and begin to become frustrated and impatient.  Then, He makes me wait a bit longer before coming through gloriously and with the kind of out-of-nowhere gifts that can only be attributed to Him. So, I'm humbled again...in every sense of that word.  I don't seem to learn the lesson very well, so I keep having to experience it again and again! 


I have a dear friend who has been teaching for many years in Oakland, California.  She and I have enjoyed Giants games and Christina Rossetti poetry together.  We have debated whether or not the conclusion of Jane Eyre is really happy or a sad compromise for a woman who would have been better off as a missionary than as the wife of a blind liar..albeit a dashing, terribly rich blind liar.  I admire her talents in the classroom and cherish her friendship.  You probably have similar friends, those you turn to when prayers are needed because they always have your best interest at heart.  She texted congratulations to me on Friday and quickly sent a second text saying "Keep blogging tho."  I shall take my old friend's advice and continue.  I hope you will be there, too.  I like knowing you are out there.  It has helped me enormously the past few weeks, and I'm sure it will continue to do so in my new role as a

Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching*

*My ten year old demands credit for this new title.  It was entirely her idea.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Half Full or Half Empty: At Least I Still Own the Glass!

I've been thinking a lot these past few weeks about the benefits of my new unemployed status.  Let me correct that:  I'm now underemployed.  I believe that is the official term for someone like me who currently works fewer hours than I desire.  All the platitudes have been running through my head.  When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!  Whenever God closes a door, He opens a window!  Those phrases are so life affirming, albeit hackneyed, when applied to others.  Being laid off is a grand adventure!  New opportunities are just waiting to burst forth!  Have you seen the handbills?  Jobs and money all over California!  Let's head west! [I apologize for the overuse of Steinbeck references.  I'm a native Californian high school English teacher for crying out loud!  What do you want?] The sunny optimism seemed reasonable when it was advice for my friends laid off last year.  That's because it came while I sat comfortably behind my desk, students in front of me, salary directly depositing once a month like it had for the past thirteen years.

Today, I must deliberately force myself to see the positive.  I have to actively push aside terror-filled thoughts of what will happen next year if my district still has no job for me.  I cannot focus on tomorrow; I must only see today.  Tomorrow is frightening and unknown.  Today, at least, I can control.  Well, let's be honest, as a mother of five thinking I have much control over anything is probably naive delusion, but you see my point. 


Here are some blessings I would not have in my pocket today, if I was still teaching full-time:

  • This morning I had time to make fried eggs and toast with my two-year old.  While the baby slumbered, we dipped our toast in the sunshine yolks and talked.  I learned where each scrape on her knee originated, and she learned that when I was little I ate eggs just like she does.

  • Last night I collapsed on the bed at 9:30 PM and didn't even bother to set an alarm for 5:00 AM.  No alarm needed!  I could still begin my day with relative sanity, even if I didn't rise until 6:36 AM when my eldest daughter said, "Mom, do you need to get up?"  That's right.  I had a human alarm clock this morning, and it wasn't followed by abject panic at the thought of thirty-five seniors waiting at a locked door while I yanked copies out of the jammed machine, cursing and sweating as the late bell rang.  I was frying eggs when the late bell rang, thank you very much.

  • When my husband goes to the hospital on Friday to have a "routine procedure," I will be there.  I will not have typed any detailed sub plans trying to duplicate what I do for my replacement.  I don't need a replacement.  My current self can just be where she needs to be without enlisting a Mommy-doppelganger, or a wife-doppelganger to do the work I cannot do.  No matter what the doctor says afterward, I will be there to hear it.

  • I have made brownies, oatmeal cookies with raisins, and three new recipes this month, and I have not driven my children to a drive-thru in quite some time.


  • When this year's soccer practice schedule started coming into focus, I did not hyperventilate.  

Child #1:  "Mom, I have practice on Monday and Thursday from 2:30-4:00.  
Child #2:  "Mine is on Tuesday and Friday from 4:30-5:30."  

I don't know when Child #3 has practice yet, but I remain calm.  I can do it because I do not have any meetings or papers to grade or lessons to plan.  My children can have my undivided attention whenever they need me.  

  • I will not overhear my two year old this year saying what her older sister said a few years ago.  Back then, my eldest was "playing school."  She was the teacher, and her little sister was the daughter.  In her best, exasperated imitation of me, she said, "I can't help you now!  I have to grade all of these papers!  Please go play in your room right now!"  Ouch.  I can still feel my stomach lurch and my chest tighten with guilt.  Working Mom guilt.

The lack of Working Mom guilt is a blessing beyond measure.  Its absence is ironic since I'm still working almost everyday.  However, you teachers who are teaching know:  our job is not like other jobs.  It is a flurry of executive decisions, putting out fires, manic talking and constant interaction with close to two hundred other human beings.  It's that for at least seven hours a day followed always...always...by prep and assessment work that needs our attention.  We are either attending to it, or we are distracted by the thought of it.  We are surrounded by stacks of ungraded papers, or they are resting ominously in our teacher bag near the door like some heavy, simmering beast with bad breath, just seething there, attempting to get our attention.  

No such beast currently resides in my home. 

  • I mean, I braided hair and read Olivia and Dora books at bedtime more than once this week people!  My six year old has had, not one, but two pre-tests on her spelling words!  Pre-testing was not pre-empted by backwards mapping for sophomore English.  
  • I know my eight year old didn't write D'Nealian "k"s on her homework and had to do it over at recess.  [It is a sign of my high school teacher status that I had to look up the spelling of said cursive style--elementary teaching is a whole wonderland of things I do not know!]  I also do not know the current boyfriend status of any of the junior class girls, let alone their penmanship struggles, and I'm fine with that.  
  • My beginning flute player daughter is concerned that she can't also take choir because it coincides with her Thursday soccer practice.  Working Mom probably wouldn't know that until she had been reminded of it at least three times, but I only heard it once yesterday, and it's still in there!   No parent phone calls or department meetings have taken its place.  

  • I will leave this campus today and calmly go pick up my children at school down the street with only my purse in my hands, and I will not return here late tonight after the baby falls asleep to make copies for Friday's sub, so I can leave for the hospital with my husband on time.  I will not lie awake worried about the boy who seems angry all the time, going over what I said to him today in case I added to his melancholy.  If I lie awake, it will be to worry about my husband, or my daughters, or my baby boy.  I may even worry about the nation's economy or the lack of world peace.  Why?  Because I can!  

This optimism won't last long.  It's quite possible that I have only $3.62 in my checking account right now.  I haven't received a paycheck since the end of July.  Eventually I will have to deal with the fact that my ten year old wants an iPad for Christmas but isn't at all worried about the expense because--and I quote-- "It's okay Mom, I'm just going to ask Santa for it."  Oh, good.  Glad I don't have to worry about that then!   By next summer I may cringe when the phone rings because I will know it is my mortgage company, and I do not have what they want. 

However, those are not worries for today.  The glass can be half empty tomorrow or the next day.  Today it is half full, half full of orange juice leftover from a breakfast with my daughter because I'm a...


Teacher Not Teaching


Recipe for Eggs in a Hole

Monday, September 13, 2010

A Problem Like Maria


How do we improve public education?  Strains from The Sound of Music fill my mind..."How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?"  The answer depends on who you ask.  A public system, dominated by a union system that protects mediocrity and discourages excellence is the problem.  An administrative structure that too often protects its own power at the expense of other stakeholders is the problem. Helicopter parenting is the problem.  Ineffective discipline resulting from a culture that wants everyone to have a trophy and no one's inner child to be wounded is the problem.  And yes, bad teaching.  Lazy teaching.  Exhausted, overworked educators who are dispirited and all-too-often compromising their own high standards because the system won't reward it anyway.  That's also the problem.  It doesn't happen to all of us.  It certainly doesn't always happen to most of us.  If you are a teacher, the day chronicled below will be familiar, and hopefully illustrate the complexity of the systemic problems we face in educational reform:


8:17 AM, an American classroom
Papers are piled up in precarious towers on your desk.  The angry red light flashes on your classroom phone.  You know it contains at least one parent who has to speak with you urgently, and if it has been 24 hours since the first call, that same parent may have already left three messages and called the principal by now because "You don't return phone calls!" 

Your email inbox has seven new messages in the past hour because your district has now linked your gradebooks to all students and parents.  Unfortunately, the same district has not educated parents about the codes in your gradebook system.  Therefore, you will be explaining to the first of three parents that the zero in his son's column is not counting against his grade and isn't even a zero really because you just haven't finished grading the essays.  It's just listing the assignment.  He should know this, but the projector for the Powerpoint presentation by the principal on Back-to-School Night wasn't working properly, so the parent doesn't know not to worry.  He logs on to his son's grades, sees zero,  and hits send before he exhales.   God bless him.  He cares.  The system doesn't.   

But emails and phone calls must wait because Danielle Drama in first period has broken up with her control freak boyfriend yet again, and while her friends comfort her in the bathroom, you have to quickly email her parents (divorced, so two emails) and set in motion a CPS report because her sister told you before class that Danielle mentioned wanting to kill herself  last night.  She won't.  She's just sad, confused, and in love with a guy who texts her seventeen times before first period.  She'll eventually dump him when she goes to college and realizes she deserves better, but for now she's weeping in the bathroom stall and texting everyone she knows that she "just can't take it anymore...she'd rather be dead." 


As a teacher you don't have the luxury to ignore this.  Drug use, violence, suicidal thoughts--these things have to be reported.  You must do a Tag-You're-It on someone else in the system.   It's not just school districts that get sued, but individual teachers personally get sued, and as a colleague of  mine likes to say, "I'm not losing my house for you or anybody!" 


Maybe some do brush off  these comments, but you know, conscientious teacher that you are, you couldn't live with the guilt if you were wrong.  You also know your district would (after consulting with their lawyers on speed dial) dump you like a hot, uncaring teacher potato if you knew she said the "S" word and failed to alert Mom, Dad, her counselor, the school psychologist, and the campus police officer.  Paperwork must be filed even if she and Bruiser are already back together again next period. 


Oh wait, the counselor with the immaculately clean desk (except for her heel marks and Starbuck's ring) has just sent a new student to your class of 38.  This student comes highly recommended:  a 1.3 g.p.a., an expulsion hearing scheduled, and here in mid-September, he has already missed seven days of school.  A quick glance at his current schedule shows that he has two "academic" classes in a schedule of seven.   He hands you the schedule change and slouches into the last empty seat in the back row with Spicoli and the cast of Half Baked.  You've not been given a courtesy call about this new arrival ahead of time, so you must now stop just as your class starts to share examples of how they use ethos, pathos, and logos on a daily basis without even realizing.  The art of persuasion is important when they want something from parents, teachers, or friends, and it doesn't hurt that it's also California Content Standards 2.1 and 2.6.


You were listening to the sweet girl in the third row who usually doesn't speak.  She says she only makes logical appeals with her father when she wants something because pathos wouldn't work on someone who thinks it's weak to cry at funerals.  We learn more than parents realize.


Listening to her must wait.  You will now have to send Newboy out for his textbook which requires writing a hall pass.  If you don't write a pass, the campus security agent in his shiny electric golf cart will drive Newboy right back to your doorstep and demand answers.  "Why didn't you write a hall pass?"  In the time it takes to return him, question you, wait while you write a pass, and return to the goft cart, Newboy could have gone to the library, checked out The Grapes of Wrath and already be heading to the California border with Granny's corpse tied to the jalopy.  This logic wouldn't reach golf cart security, so you won't bother to demonstrate the art of persuasion for your class. 


However, you will use this incident right after the golf cart leaves to return to your class discussion of ethos, pathos and logos.  After all, even the most frustrating moment is a teachable moment.  But that will have to wait; you can't even send out your newest arrival to the library just yet.  You must first try to put in a quick call to the counselor, who never answers her phone,  in order to discover the careful, logical reasoning for adding a 39th inmate to the insane assylum that is your class today.    You leave a voicemail, and just as you're about to return to Sweet Girl, Row 3, the phone rings. Parents are usually (not always) prevented from calling you during class, but anyone in the front office can ring through to your room.   

Counselor (in a sunny voice, feet firmly planted on desk):  "Hi, sorry to interrupt you.  Can you talk for a minute?"

The next moment is crucial.  Wait, no it isn't.  The next moment is endlessly variable.  And the moment after the next moment is completely predictable.  No matter what you say:

A.  You (voice dripping with sarcasm):  "Why sure, I can chat!  This is a great time!  I mean I'm just doing this thing called teaching.  You've heard of it?  It's the reason for the building you're sitting in with the clean desk upon which you're resting your feet."

B.  You (voice strained with increasing frustration):  "I can't really talk right now.   After the interruption of the new student you sent without warning, I now have less than twenty minutes to convey the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos to my class, so they will understand how to mark examples in the article I am giving them to read for homework.  It must be read for homework if I have any chance of getting them ready to write their scheduled in-class persuasive essay by Friday's long period, which they must write because it is the glorious "Benchmark Day" that occurs to the fanfare and flourish of the administration.  In fact, I also need that day, so I can have one solid hour to grade three or four essays in the Leaning Tower of Pisa on my desk, in order to complete progress reports due to my principal by next week for all of my 205...no, wait for it...206 students! I can't talk right now! The educational clock is ticking! Can it wait?"  [I do realize the irony of chewing out Clean Desk Counselor after telling her I can't talk, but there's only so much a girl can take.]


C.  You (calmly, but back to sarcasm):  "Oh, no problem.  Let me just discuss the unannounced student here in front of him and the other 38 while they silently stare at me through our conversation.  I'm sure no one will figure out who I'm taking about, and I'm sure I'll feel completely comfortable asking questions about his g.p.a., expulsion hearing, and personal life."


It doesn't matter.  A, B, or C will all be followed by this response, or something almost like it:  



Counselor:  "Oh, well it will just take a second.  I know your class is huge, but he really has nowhere else to go in his schedule.  He was in Mr. _____'s class, but you're so much more easygoing, and they had kind of a personality clash, so I just thought this would be best for him."


Counselor-with-feet-on-desk (that's her Native American name, don't laugh) is no dummy.  It takes years of practice to achieve the sheen on that empty desk. 


She knows you won't use the f-word in front of students. 


She knows you love students, so you won't pitch a fit about the fact that they are slowly dying from lack of oxygen due to the number of bodies exhaling in here.  It's quite possible mating is going on.  You wouldn't know, as there isn't any space between bodies anyway. 


She knows you will swallow your anger and save it for an email later that she can just delete. 


She knows that you know that Mr._____ of the personality clash fame deliberately clashes in order to shrink his class size. 


She knows you do not engage in this practice. 


She knows it's often the lowest g.p.a.-pot-smoking-anger-management-needing-heading-for-multiple-felonies losers who are your favorite students when all is said and done. 


She knows you are a squishy mommy-person at heart who may howl and roar, but in the end who will acquiesce for the sake of the kids.  (Think:  Reverend Lovejoy's wife on The Simpsons:  "Think of the children!").


Even apathetic stoner boy with the 1.3 g.p.a.  needs someone to stop shuffling him along and just teach him already!  Therefore, your response is equally predictable.  You sigh dramatically and make some sarcastic remark about needing more desks, but you laugh, so your colleague doesn't feel too uncomfortable.  You politely end your conversation in favor of returning to Sweet Girl in Row 3.  You do this because it's easier. 


Because that counselor's desk will always be swept clean.  Because you really want to hear how Sweet Girl used logos to convince her Dad to let her go to the midnight showing of Twilight last Friday.  Because you want your students to have a relatable example to tie to this abstract Aristotelian concept.  Because you want them to understand their homework, write well-argued, polished essays on Friday, and, most importantly, persuade others when necessary.  Because you want them to enter adulthood with competence and confidence. Because what happens in this stuffy, overcrowded, chaotic, room is important!  It's the beating heart at the center of democracy's most important system, and you are too busy keeping the heart beating to do much else.  You just let it go, like you have to let so many things go in favor of the faces in front of you.

Because Danielle Drama has returned, puffy-faced and hiccuping loudly for attention, and she needs to know that you think what she does here is important.  She needs to know that she is important, that her thoughts and persuasive skills matter.  She might need them when her hovering jerk-of-a-boyfriend tries to convince her in a few months that she's nothing without him and that no other boy will ever want her.  She will need to know logically why that doesn't make sense.  She will need to know emotionally why this is unfair, cruel, and simply not true.  She will need to realize her own ethos...the expertise, trust, and value she has to offer the world, so she can dump him once and for all. 


Stoner boy may never rise above his g.p.a. and achieve great success.  Sweet Girl may never volunteer to speak in class again.  Danielle may marry her boyfriend and live happily ever after with unlimited text messaging service.  You don't know. 


You do know teaching in a public school in America may not be humanly possible...at least to the standards you expect for yourself, the standards the students deserve.  The problems are systemic.  Would a phone call to stoner boy's Dad about his recreational activities help?  Probably not, especially since another teacher at lunch will inform you that his Dad is in jail on drug charges.  Ahh, the proverbial apple and tree.  Would a rational discussion about unprofessional choices change the Personlity Clashing teacher or the relaxed counselor with not much work?  Nahh, they are who they are.  It is what it is...That, by the way, was a staff motto where I work, coined by the leadership, no less.  That, and "Suck it up!" and "Do more with less!"  It's morale boosting mottos like these which make me wonder why more people don't go into education. 


 It's a terrible, wonderful mess of a place, my profession.  I don't have the answers, but ask any teacher, and we know the problems, whether we're in the trenches today or temporarily a...


Teacher Not Teaching



Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Sub? Credential Up? Would You Like Fries with That?

I used to joke about the fact that I'm a teacher and therefore have no marketable skills.  Other teachers who have been lawyers or in business--they could return to the private sector, but I was stuck in education.  It was funny to say because of course I had no desire to be anywhere else.  I wasn't "stuck"; I loved my job.

Now that I've joined the ranks of the millions of unemployed teachers, my former joke is just not that funny.  A job posted on http://www.edjoin.org/ (California website for jobs in case you are on the hunt, too) is quickly gobbled up.  District paper screening has now become a wondorous exercise where administrators can choose from among hundreds of qualified candidates before they ever have to schedule interviews.  Staying within my district for at least a year or two after my layoff seems to make sense; at least they know me here.  If I move to another city or state, I will line up behind the hundreds they have laid off, the teachers they know and mostly love.  What are my chances then? 

So what do we do, oh teachers not teaching?  Some of us apply to everything and wait for the phone to ring.  Others, like me, have begun substitute teaching.  I will have to write more about this later.  The combination of liberty and humiliation that accomany subbing in your former school deserves its own blog. 

Another option is to "credential up", as I've been calling it.  I don't have lesson plans to write or papers to grade, so I may as well study for other credentials.  Last year, when I knew my layoff was looming, I attempted to stave off the snarling, wretched beast by arming myself with the CSET in Social Science. Taking the first two parts before giving birth to my fifth child and the last part just after returning from my eight week maternity leave, I felt I might make myself invaluable.  My logic was that if they had to cut sections from my department again, then being a utility player made sense.  Unfortunately, my district apparently doesn't have the budget of the New York Yankees.  If they cut in English, they also cut in Social Science.  Last year the cuts were deep enough that cobbling together a two-department schedule didn't happen. 

"I'm sorry, we're putting you on waivers, Mrs. Weigel.  We just don't need someone with a gold glove and a .327 average."

My theory might have made it into practice if my administration had made different choices, but that, too, is another blog...or another legal brief...I haven't decided.  My principal now likes to remind me that I didn't officially have my social science credential until after the March 15 deadline for layoffs. He's actually right about that.  The third test was scheduled the Saturday after my Monday c-section on March 8.  I'm such a slacker. I mean isn't that why they have morphine?


Whatever my hopeful plans were, doubling my credentials failed to save my job.  However, I will not be deterred!  Give me more #2 pencils!  Point me toward the community college testing center!  I am now embarking on a multiple subject credential.  This quest is more daunting considering I haven't given math much thought in the past twenty-three years.  My worthy and formidable opponents--Geometry and Algebra-- may be my downfall.  I already sense a cold fear when my ten year old queries, "Mom, can you help me with my math?"  It's unlikely that I would apply for a job as a fourth grade teacher who has to teach math.  Cold fear on a daily basis just isn't a positive work environment.  However,  I might want a seventh grade core class where I could teach social studies and English, so it's back to my Kaplan review book and prayers:  repeated, desperate, humble prayers that the Lord will just mercifully allow me to pass. 

It seemed to work last time when I took the World Civ. portion of the CSET after spending the night before the test hosting a birthday party for my eight year old and four of her friends, followed by my two year old's vomit fest -- Performances every twenty minutes!  Midnight till 6:00 AM!  No Cover!  I went bleary-eyed with no caffeine to my test.  (Nursing that newborn, remember?  Sheesh!  Keep up!)  The fact that I passed is simply more evidence that there is an all-powerful God who is merciful because I didn't study.  I didn't sleep.  I didn't follow any of the sound test-taking strategies we all lecture about to our students.  I didn't even eat breakfast for crying out loud.  I was the Standardized Testing "Don't" Cartoon with a black box over my eyes, and I still passed.  Thank you, Lord.

While I pray for Divine Intervention again, I also study math long-forgotten.  I review the parts of the cell, research child development, and remind myself again about phonemes and morphology.  I do it all because I need a job, any job, and it will probably be in teaching.  It's hard to sell yourself for a marketing position by explaining that you've been "selling" curriculum to judgemental and apathetic teenagers for years.  Do I have "management experience"?  Well, I've been managing 175-200 people everyday for 180 days per year.  And my clients are not easy to manage!  The skills are there, but they are in such a foreign context for the business world that it's difficult to make a career jump fourteen years later.  I'm "credentialing up" because I have to.  I love to teach.  I want to teach, but for now, I'm just subbing, studying, and embracing my new normal as a...

Teacher Not Teaching

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Mom, what's for dinner?

It's Saturday, so if you're a teacher, you might have had a hearty, delicious dinner with your family.  I mean soccer season isn't in full swing, so you weren't at a field somewhere all day, right?  Not teaching has allowed me to reflect upon how poorly I plan for dinner.  You might think that after five children and a decade to become a working mom diva, I might be able to fix dinner regularly.  Alas...

Yet unemployment has also meant no excuses.  I can't say I have papers to grade, or that a needy parent had me on the phone after school.  There are no staff meetings (let me just pause and allow the bliss of that reality to wash over me like a cool, refreshing spring).  Therefore, when my two year old pipes up at 4:00 PM with "Mommy, what's fo dinnow?"  I should have an answer. 

For the past two weeks I've managed to compile a weekly menu for dinner.  Yes, Teacher X, after taking roll and passing out that oh-so-meaningful worksheet, I planned meals. 

How did I do it?   

1.  My own, poor brain.

2.  My husband's wonderful cookbook of family recipes, lovingly compiled over the past ten years.  Someday I'll convince him to publish it, and we will finally retire wealthy, well-fed and satisfied, but for now, it just helps.

3.  http://www.allrecipes.com/


4. http://www.foodnetwork.com/ :  Giada and Alton, if you're out there, will you marry each other and become my family's Alice?  We'll build a room off the kitchen.

5.  Refusing to turn into the drive-thru line, either by sheer force of will, or by guilt upon recalling the articles on child obesity and fast food marketing that I forced my senior classes to analyze. 

These have helped me actually know what's for dinner and stick to it.  Also, I had to stick to it because I bought the weekly groceries at one time.  Some of you are thinking, "So what?"  For me, this is a minor miracle.  I like to joke that we enjoy shopping like Europeans, but really I'm at my local grocery store everyday because I haven't planned ahead.  I'm trying to leave behind the relaxed, no-structure attitude of my twenties...

I left the body, the freedom, and the red wine behind, so why not the slacking as well? 

Time will tell if I can continue this small, sweet structure of knowing what's for dinner.  Until I'm teaching again, there may be hope. 

What do you tell your two-year old?  What's fo dinnow at yo house?

Friday, September 3, 2010

39 Months and Counting...

Thirty-nine months.  That's how long I have until my district, the one I've devoted myself to for the past eight years, formally ends my layoff package and wishes me a sad farewell.  That's a long time, but it's perhaps not long enough to recapture the students lost to the competing charter school (read: we'll give your kids a laptop and not require that they read anything, so come on down!), not long enough to generate jobs in a local economy of fast food, retail, and...what the heck do people do for a living here?  People certainly don't open new businesses in the 65% of retail space currently unoccupied in our small town.
 Therefore, those thirty-nine months may not be enough time for my superintendent to call me one fateful morning with those words I long to hear, "I have good news.  We'd like to invite you back."   However, thirty-nine months is plenty long enough to watch Bank of America politely take back my house, and to see my family migrate like modern-day Joads in the opposite direction, in search of work and a new home.  Ah, California schools.  Livin' the dream. 

It's probably obvious this is my first blog, but I have time on my hands, so I thought I'd give it a try.  If you are an unemployed teacher, join in!  Commiserate!  If you are still holding onto your job, this blog will make you appreciate your sick leave and prep period, and envy the fact that I'm blogging and not grading poorly written essays about the symbolic significance of card games in Of Mice and Men.  Yes, high school English teacher; you got me.  You may be surprised to find that this California teacher has just as much frustration for my union as for my administration.  The "Public School Question", like "The Woman Question" in 19th Century England is complicated, and the answers won't be simple.  But, if you're reading this, you already knew that.

I'm currently subbing in my own district, so after fourteen years of teaching, an M.A. in Education and endless hours of meaningful curriculum development and assessment, I am reduced to taking roll, pushing "Play" on the DVD, and passing out worksheets.  You know we can't be trusted.  I understand.  I was once you, but now I'm just a...

Teacher Not Teaching.

Regret

Asking teenagers to write about what they regret will not elicit much depth. It is not, as you might imagine, because they have not lived lo...