Story time with TeacherSabrina

We talk a lot in this office about how to get the message out. We talk about constructing narrative, and how the 'school reform' movement has done a good job of constructing a narrative that is simple and clear (wrong, but simple and clear). And we think, "in what ways might WE work on constructing narratives that are effective in telling our story as educators, that can convey to the public a clear message about the 'school reform' movement and its dangers, pitfalls, and problems."

Then TeacherSabrina just goes ahead and does it.

Papergraders loves you teachersabrina. You rock!



Teachersabrina is at FailingSchools

What I am really interested in...

Both M. Shelly and I saw Diane Ravitch speak this past week. It was moving, hopeful and profoundly disturbing. It was great to see someone so articulate outline what many of us practitioners have known in our guts for a while now- the current tide in education is taking us places we don't want to go, and I believe will have profound consequences for education and our nation- none of the consequences being good.

Currently in Colorado we face an initiative that is in pursuit of RTTT monies. SB191 attempts to tie teacher and principal evaluation to student test scores. It would eliminate 'tenure' for K-12 teachers in favor of performance evaluations that don't exist yet and haven't been funded. Sidestepping the question of teacher accountability for a moment, one fundamental problem is that this bill (and others like it- see SB6, recently defeated in Florida) is an attempt to impose a large scale solution with little to no evidence to support the efficacy of its methods. Too much of our education policy right now is being driven by 'theories' that have no evidence to support them. See today's article on charter schools in the NY Times for more.

But that isn't what I really want to talk about. I want to talk about education practice that does work, and has evidence to support it. I asked a colleague of mine to join one of my classes this week to discuss a subject on which he is an expert. It was really great to listen to another excellent teacher engage with my students (I only got to hear his discussion with one section, I was covering his class during the other). And it reminded me that we need more collaboration. The power of working together is so much greater than whatever I can muster on my own. The richness for students of their teachers working in concert is an evidence based strategy that has a profound impact for students across several different measures- and has the added benefit of making teacher's working life even more meaningful and rewarding.

So often though, the structure of schools gets in the way. I had to cover my colleague's class so that he could talk to my students. I didn't mind at all, but I wished for a more flexible structure. Even within my department we are so disconnected that true collaboration happens only as a result of extreme effort or dumb luck. I made this moment happen because I felt it was important and worthwhile, but nothing about the way our school is set up encourages this type of work. I have a tough enough time just having a conversation with colleagues from my own department. Trying to work closely with colleagues from other departments is nearly impossible. And I am embarrassed to admit there are new teachers in my building this year whose names I do not even know. One of the things that would really help us in collaborating is time- more time in the day, more unstructured development time, and support and direction. Frankly, I'd like more time just to get to know my fellow teachers. So often the structure of school has us buried in our own little worlds, ignorant of what is happening around us, or worse, competing against each other for resources and support. Collaborating for the benefit of students is unlikely to happen in such an environment.

To come full circle here, collaboration is even less likely if I'm living in fear for my job. What we do for our students is so much more than what gets reported on standardized tests (thank god- have you seen those tests? I have). It's taking a moment to make sure my students hear from the best sources I can muster- especially when one of those sources is only two floors away. Bills like SB191 are really frightening. Ravitch really hammered the point last week that there are fundamental changes happening right now, the effects of which are sure to be deep and long lasting. I am afraid for the future of my students and my colleagues. If you are reading this and you are a voter in Colorado, please take a moment to contact your state representative or Governor Ritter, and voice your opinion. So I bought Ravitch's book, and I am trying to stay positive by doing positive things. Like sharing my classroom with my colleagues, and my colleagues with my students. Which is what I really want to talk about...

-F. Scott

Invisible yet powerful barriers

For the record, F. Scott and I have committed to posting SOMETHING at least once a week, even if it's just a tweet (you can follow us on Twitter too--look over there on the right).

F. Scott's been tweeting all week. I've been mulling things over in my mind.

I am completely convinced of the need to make some paradigm-shifting changes in the way we deliver education. But there are some significant challenges to doing this within the context where I teach.

For one thing, it's difficult to convince my colleagues that something is broken that we need to fix. By most standard measures, our students are very successful. They test well. They get into colleges. Most of them do just fine. Why on earth would we need to consider changing anything? What's broken?

The answer to this is pretty complex. Within my particular teaching world, students are too heavily focused on grades, the grades they need to get into the colleges that they want. This currency takes precedent over learning. Another problem is that we have many students with unrealized potential--students who come to school because they feel like they have to, but school doesn't offer them anything truly meaningful. They simply go through the motions to get the grades and move on to more interesting things in their lives. And beyond the scope of my school, our world is changing and our schools aren't keeping up.

Making this argument to my colleagues feels daunting; their unshakable belief that what we're already doing is working is one of these invisible yet powerful barriers. Even putting the right words to the argument to help others see it is difficult. But it's something I need to work toward.

The other barrier is somewhat harder to get my head around. It pretty much has me stymied.

I believe in a few powerful tenets to guide my teaching: student choice wherever possible (choice about what they read and how they show me what they know) and de-centering my own ideas and voice in order to make space for theirs. The reading/writing workshop model is a great way to achieve these goals. I teach one section of creative writing right now. On Mondays, students study mentor texts--imaginative writing (novels, poetry, graphic novels, screen plays, etc) that they admire and want to learn from. They choose these texts on their 0wn, and they have the freedom set a mentor text aside if they don't like it. I have one student who has struggled to do much work for me in the senior lit/comp class I teach who has already read four books of his own choosing for creative writing. On Tuesdays, we have some sort of writing activity mini lesson to help students work on some aspect of writing I'm seeing as a need via their polished drafts that come in every two weeks--and then in the remaining time students have unstructured writing time. On block days, we have another writing mini lesson, unstructured writing time, and peer response group meetings. On Fridays, we workshop two students' work on the big screen together. Students read their work to us as they scroll through it on screen and tell us what help they need, and then we talk. The class is moving toward a portfolio assessment at the end of the semester, something that has already been defined so they know what the end goal is. All their work is driving toward that goal.

My students are engaged and excited about their work. I'm totally convinced in the power of this model.

The challenge is how to take a similar model and place onto the other class that I teach. It seems like it would not be a problem to figure out. Students still choose mentor texts, only perhaps with a few more parameters depending on what genre we're working on. Students still have unstructured writing time each week, only perhaps with a few more parameters depending on our current set of writing goals/objectives. Students still work toward some kind of end-of-semester assessment, only structured around the specific outcomes in the curriculum for this course. Students still workshop each other's work. Seems simple, right?

No. It's not so simple. Not at all. My brain is having the hardest time figuring this out. The barriers?

I teach on a team. In my department and school, that means we are pretty much on the same page, at least oriented toward the same outcomes for our students. We're pretty much working on the same (or similar) projects at the same time. We're dealing with the same books. It's all about securing a similar educational experience for students who take that class regardless of who is teaching it.

My department is on a quest to acquire enough copies of the major texts taught in each class so that all sections can teach those texts at the same time. If all eight sections of a particular class are all teaching Gatsby at the same time, for example, where's the student choice? We're literally putting in infrastructures that contradict the tenets that focus on student choice and de-centering the teacher's ideas/voice to make room for the students'. Instead, shouldn't we be building libraries of texts that grab and hold students' attention and challenge them as readers and human beings?

I teach with a group of Language Arts teachers who seem to operate on the notion that our ultimate goal is teaching literary analysis. This means practices that coerce students to read, that dictate how students should read and interact with a text, and that control the ways students write in response to texts. Yes, we do teach many classes that are controlled by the scope of AP and IB exams which do essentially drive toward literary analysis, but even in those courses there is room for practices that remind students that we read because we are human beings and we want to learn more about the human experience and there is room for practices that center on student choice. Conversations that question the practices I listed above are difficult and highly charged; I learned in my first year in the department to pretty much avoid questioning anything.

But maybe I need to start questioning again. I'd love for everyone to read Edmundson's Why Read? and for us to talk about it. He essentially makes the argument that traditional literature teaching methods place theory between students and texts, that we are by default teaching students NOT to engage in literature as a human being. They read like analysis machines. Reading is busywork.

Any how, it's because of these barriers and others that I'm sure are yet invisible to me that I'm having such a hard time figuring out how to make the shift. In essence, it's a paradigm shift from the idea that every student needs to be doing the same thing at the same time (reading the same book, working on the same paper, etc) to the idea that students will actually be more engaged if they are able to make choices to drive the focus of their work. I'm certain that the approach to have every student doing the same thing at the same time is about efficiency and managing lots of students in a day, but this model holds back students who would soar if given space and it doesn't provide the extra support others need who feel like they are constantly struggling to keep up. There is certainly a better way.

I just need to figure it out, despite the invisible yet powerful barriers that seem to come up and get in the way of being able to see the solution clearly.

Real change?

I'm supposed to be writing a paper (the same paper I've assigned to my students to show up in rough draft form tomorrow). Procrastination sets in so I'm writing, but here instead.

In conversations with colleagues over the last few days, I've gotten to a place where I feel somewhat stuck. Or maybe overwhelmed.

It's one of those times where I feel like I just want to shut my classroom door and do my own thing despite what the rest of the school is doing.

But unless there's some way to enact real change in the rest of the school, I will not be able to realize the hopes and visions I have for my students.

See, I really truly want to figure out what it means to teach language arts to high school students in ways that will meaningfully prepare them for success in our ever-changing, complexifying world. The jargon for this is 21st century skills. What does it mean to create a 21st century high school?

I am willing to chase this question, even if it means I have to throw out everything I've done before and remake my classroom and my teaching.

But I'm not sure my colleagues are equally willing.

When I get little glimpses of what is possible--of cool ways to integrate technology to get students more engaged, of interesting potential for doing cross-disciplinary work, of the options that begin to surface when we consider putting aside the daily/weekly schedule that currently rules our lives in the traditional American high school--I get excited.

But these are changes on the level of paradigm shifting.

Paradigm shifting is really, really difficult.

For now, I feel somewhat stuck within the boundaries created by the ways the community where I teach defines the purposes and practices of school. There are definitions about these things--about what students do, about what teachers do, about what is supposed to be happening in classrooms, about what a day at school is supposed to look like--that we all share and buy into, that we live and exist within, that are as invisible (yet omnipresent) to us as the air we breathe. So within that context, it's really hard for me to make the real change that I would like to move toward.

So there is where I feel stuck. It's such a daunting prospect (paradigm shifting--questioning the air we breathe) that I don't even know where to start.

Signing off (to write that paper I need to write)--
M. Shelley

Out of the office, into the classroom

A great moment today at work (in a day that REALLY needed a great moment).

I was writing a paper to use as a model for my students in a fairly traditional 11th Grade class. They are working on an assignment in which they have to analyze a passage from a play by Shakespeare. So I chose a passage from a different play (one of my favorites- yes I am a literature geek). I wrote a paper (about 750 words- these are very short papers), and handed it off to my teammate to give it a read. We were sitting in my office and my office-mate (M. Shelly) joined in the conversation (I wasn't trying to cut her out, we just don't teach the same classes). Soon we were all involved in a conversation about not only my paper, but what we thought a paper like this should look like. What qualities made a paper like this good? We were, in essence, fully engaged in a writing conference, with my writing as the center of attention.

It was a really interesting experience from several different perspectives. First, writing this paper was tough. And I am a professional in this field, I know the play I was writing about, I know the passage cold (mostly have it memorized), and most days I am a pretty good writer. Even so, this is a tough assignment. It isn't tough to think about the passage, but to convert that thinking into a cogent, articulate and extremely focused piece of writing was really challenging. It was a good reminder that what we ask our students to do every day is hard. Even for our good students (and most of my students are very good at being students).

Second, it was interesting to have my writing worked over in the same way that I do my student's writing. I am serious about both writing and thinking about literature. I am a veteran of writing workshops, have my own committed writing practice, and have the toughest editor I know close to hand (I am married to her). It is tough to take criticism, even from people I know like and trust, in a neutral setting! And I really trust both the source of the criticism and the nature of the comments. I have no doubt that following my colleague's advice will improve my paper, and I still wanted to fight about it.

My students are worried about being 'right,' worried about what I will think of them, worried about what their peers will think of them, and all too often they don't really understand why I care about their writing, because they don't. They just want a grade and to move on. Or they want to know how to get to the 'right' answer- and that is tough when studying literature. For many, English class is a perennial mystery, where they never really get a grip on what it is we are doing, no matter how hard my colleagues and I try to make it transparent (yes, I know that there are just as many who love this class, but I am not as worried about them for immediate purposes). What must it be like to have a conference with me?

And third, in the middle of a really engaged conversation about my paper and papers like this in general- a thought struck me. I said to my colleagues, "Wee need to stop doing this in here (here being in our office) and do it in our classrooms." We need to model what it really takes to get good at writing, which was all the things we had in play in my office. I was genuinely committed to the writing (my geekiness knows no bounds), my colleagues we genuinely committed to helping me, and we had the freedom to have a real conversations because we had an already established relationship of trust and respect, making the office a safe place to float my writing.

So I guess the tough question is really, how do I get students to that place. That, of course, is a pretty complicated question. It would be great if the intertube out there had some answers. I am not sure it does. We did talk about how to arrange our schedules so that we could model these kinds of discussions for our students. That is a start.

I am actually not going to show my students a revised draft of the paper, at least not right away. I want them to see it in its raw first draft, without the benefit of the revision process. I took some notes, and Shelly wrote some things on the back of my draft, and I think I will take some suggestions from my students as well.

It was, far and away, the best part of my day.

F. Scott

Professional Development

I think we should have some- don't you?

An observation that struck me recently is this. Often what we do under the rubric of 'professional development' is anything but. Yes, we may have some outside expert, usually in a hotel ballroom with five hundred of your favorite people with you, tell us all about a new way of thinking about some aspect of our jobs. And some of those 'talking head' types can be great. But rarely are such experts presented as a cohesive vision of improving classroom instruction. And there is almost no follow up at all. 

The rest of the time, professional development time is filled with a lot of things that are certainly useful, often necessary, but not at all related to improving teacher's skills. The truth is, that in this industry, the time resource is in such short supply that we are always robbing Peter to pay Paul. During time allotted to PD, we are doing all the other stuff that is necessary to running the institution, department or district, but not actually allowed for in the structure of our working lives. So we need to do that work (curriculum development, team planning, department and committee work), but again, very little of it is concerned with making any of us better at our jobs. 

And that's okay, because meaningful improvement for teachers doesn't really start on days when there are no students in the building. Real professional development is better termed 'instructional coaching.' It starts in classrooms with actual students and real teachers. Yes, there probably needs to be some understanding of the learning goals , and some framework for methodology, but after that it is a pretty organic process. The main problem is that once you engage real instructional coaching, it is time intensive. There needs to be time in the classroom, time for reflection on what happened in the classroom, development of new strategies and the translation of those strategies into actual activities, the deployment of the new strategies in the classroom, gathering of data on the efficacy of the new strategies, reflection, and repeat. 

Other than the time in the classroom, there is almost no allowance in our working day for the rest of the process. Teaching five classes a day, the rest of my working time is spent meeting with students, pulling together material for future lessons, working with colleagues on a variety of issues, all of which are important and need attention, and oh year, grading (which eats the lion's share of my non-classroom working time). I do, of course have wonderful, rich , meaningful conversations with my colleagues about our work, but they tend to haphazard. Stuck in between all the other things. If improving student learning is really our goal (and I think it is), then maybe we need something different.

The last key element is that it can't happen in a vacuum. At least not for me. The word 'coaching' is key in this model. Even Tiger Woods has a coach. No one laboring to improve in their chosen field does so without some assistance, some feedback. We need coaches who really understand teaching and learning, and who appear in our classrooms for meaningful amounts of time, for the express purpose of observing our work, in order to give us feedback that will help us to continue to improve. Those observers need to have a wide base of knowledge, both in teaching strategies, pedagogy, and (at least in my context, high school) a high degree of knowledge specific to the subject at hand in a give classroom (very tough to assess a math teacher if you really don't understand math).

I don't know about you, but no such system exists in my building, or as far as I know, my district. But I do know a boatload of people who are qualified to do this work. One of them shares my office with me, and this blog. Several of them are right down the hall. Several more of them are also administrators in my building. They are the people I talk to every day about teaching- its up and downs, our struggles, the student's struggles, the challenges of the particular material we are working with. I already trust these people because I work with them every day. 

We need to be our own instructional coaches. This may be blindingly obvious, but how often is it really happening? I hear about some schools and districts that have positions like this, at the building or department level, but not very often. My experience has been that after the probationary period, no one has been watching my teaching very closely. As long as my kids don't light the room on fire and no parents are complaining, the system seems to be happy with my job performance. I'm sorry, but that isn't good enough for me. I took this job because I actually care about it. I am not a teacher because I had nothing better to do. I had a professional life before this one (and it paid better). I don't want to spend the next twenty years teaching the same lesson over and over again and blaming the students when they don't learn (we all know someone who fits that description). I don't want that for me, my students, or my own child. 

So what would it take to have meaningful instructional coaching in my building? Not that much actually. It would take time, and that translates into money. But not an inordinate about I think. Especially when measured against all the things that money is spent on that don't actually improve student learning. It would take structuring some time into our day when we could sit in each other's classrooms, some time to work together reflecting on the observations and collaborating on new strategies, and ready access to some pretty low tech gear (a video camera being first in my mind). 

It's not too much to ask is it? Seems so simple. Makes a lot of sense- at least to me. 

So, why exactly can't we do it?

Wishing for time...

F. Scott

An interesting week

We had one of those weeks last week that seemed like it just wouldn't end.  A late night at school, and just being plain old busy took its toll. Yet in the midst of that, I also had a week of having some really amazing conversations with colleagues. 

Note: while this post was sitting here doing absolutely nothing as a draft, my partner beat me to the trigger by posting on the lack of time. We return you to your, now redundant, originally scheduled post.

The point is, none of the conversations were planned or scheduled, but they produced some amazing ideas about teaching. We are having these conversations continually, but it always feels so haphazard, so last minute. When I do get to translate some of these great ideas into my teaching (and I do try), I don't have the time to really reflect on how they impact my students learning. It's hurry up and get to the next class, next meeting, next whatever, with a never ending pile of papers waiting for the in-between moments. I know plenty of people have demanding jobs, that doesn't bother me. But don't we want our kids to have a bit more?

Teaching is often, though not entirely, a performative job, at least in the context in which we are working (big high school, too many students in the class). Where is the built in time to think? Shouldn't we be doing that? 

The dean of a nearby  college of education, in an article appearing in a forthcoming book, pointed out that the other two performative professions, acting and law, have ratios of preparation to performance far higher than ours. Actors will spend hundreds of hours preparing for tens of hours of performance time (the ratio increasing the more professional the troupe). Lawyers will spend thousands of hours, working in teams, so that one of them can stand fro some hours in the courtroom. In my working day I have 255 minutes of class time, and 153 minutes of non-class time. There is also 35 minutes of passing period time, which for me is talk to students run to the bathroom time. So thats about 4.5 hours of working with kids in class, and about 2.5 hours to do everything else- plan, grade, meet, conference... No built in time to work with colleagues or collaborate, which are the most productive development activities we know of. And lest ye think my day sounds short, I average about 10 hours per week outside of school (read- unpaid) continuing the planning and grading, often much much more (unlike the lawyer I get no bonus for working harder, and unlike the actor, there is no fame for getting good at my job- believe me). Many weeks its much more than that. I am not complaining (well, maybe a little), I just want the time to figure out how to do my job better. But, in an effort to do all the things we are asked to do (which my partner just listed), we never get to the good conversations about teaching and learning. Bummer.

The flip side is that I work with some really amazing people, and we all know that we have the potential to do some amazing things. If we can just get this crazy system to make some room for us to actually be teachers.

Trying to find time to think...

F. Scott