School Year Update

We are now four weeks into the new school year, and my feelings about my school year have not changed since my last post about it. I have introduced flair into the lives of my little sevvies (7th graders, for those of you who are not middle school teachers) and have grown to love my job again.

I love teaching seventh grade. I wish I had known how much I would love it 14 years ago when I started working here. Eighth graders are like little high school wannabes. Something happens over the course of the summer between 7th and 8th grade that turns kids into younger versions of the high school drama queens that I escaped so many years ago. With 7th graders, though, I can still reach them. Some of them have already gone that very ugly transformation, but I can still overcome their negative influence just by standing next to them. It's nice being 6' 4" sometimes.

One of the main differences between 7th and 8th graders for me is their acceptance of my nerdhood. I took down my Detroit Tigers corner back where my desk sits this year, and brought in some of my Batman collection, what remains of it after selling it off to help pay for Sera's adoption. I've made my theme this year, "What Would Batman Do?" That means when a kid sits in his desk for 40 minutes not doing anything and I finally get around to asking why he's not participating, and he responds, "I didn't have a pencil," I simply ask, "What would Batman do?" and he gets up to go get one. I like to add, "Batman wouldn't have waited 40 minutes, either."

One of the tougher things to get used to about teaching 7th grade, though, is dealing with the staggering amount of stuff that they simply don't know. I have to dial back my vocabulary a lot. I can't reference R-rated movies (the innocent parts, mind you) because for the most part, they haven't seen them. It might surprise you, I suppose, how many 8th graders have. But one of the most amazing things to me is that some of these kids don't know anything about 9/11. In social studies this week, they were watching a documentary about it, and kids were coming to me, explaining how amazing this movie was about a plane hitting a tower, and then another one doing the same, and they had no idea of the significance of the event. Then, I realize, they were two or three years old when it happened. Wow.

This is also the first time that many of them have been in school where they move from teacher to teacher every hour of the day. Some of them are a little overwhelmed. I've been trying to get them accustomed to the idea and getting them organized. I don't have to worry about the same content as the other teachers, so I can take the time to get them to the point where they can keep straight everything that they're doing each day. It's rewarding being an important part of kids' lives again, instead of some kind of halfassed academic standard transfer machine.

For the past four weeks, I've been able to do pretty much whatever I've wanted to do in my classroom, and it's been a refreshing change. Monday, however, I have to begin using the cookie-cutter curriculum. I'm not looking forward to it, but my consolation is that on Fridays, I'm doing the fun math that I've been doing all along. It will give me something to look forward to each week, and I hope that's enough.

Office Space

I haven't written in my blog very much during this school year, and with good reason. The stuff I would have written about probably would have gotten me fired, and while it might have made a good point about how tenure really doesn't give a teacher a job for life, I didn't really want to put that to the test.

Suffice to say that the turnover in our main office this year is now complete. At the end of last year, we lost our principal, our only assistant principal, and one of our two counselors. We also lost our head custodian to retirement. During the course of the year, our head secretary/office manager retired. And now, with the end of the school year coming, we're losing our other counselor to another school system. The writing, it appears, was on the wall. So now, we go into the 2011-2012 school year with an entirely different administrative/counseling staff than we had a year ago, when our test scores actually improved so much that we jumped up two levels in Indiana Public Law 221's ranking model. It's probably not a coincidence. One staff member (not me) was heard to say, "They've taken what we've built over the past five years and destroyed it in nine months."

I've felt what others have felt, that I have to look over my shoulder. Things have been reported about teachers in our building that are patently untrue as if they were documented fact. When the teachers in question were confronted about it, the source of the information was quickly deduced and confirmed by an independent source. Then, another backstabber was identified through direct quotes. I was also singled out in a most unprofessional way earlier in the year for, heaven forbid, raising my voice.

The curricular changes that we have experienced this year in tandem with teacher accountability models approved by the state haven't helped, either. Let's put it this way: We are supposed to be using these new curriculum materials to support the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), but the evaluation tool being used to determine our pay is based on the Indiana Academic Standards (IAS), and that will remain the case until 2013-2014. So, we were told to teach to standards that won't be tested for two more years, and to not worry about the IAS that are not included by the new curriculum. I mean, our evaluations will be based up to 50% on test scores yielded from an entirely different set of criteria. It's only our paychecks and our job performance rating. What's to worry about? The textbook series that was adopted last year is so egregious, that it has actually driven innovative teachers to retire. In one meeting last year, a math teacher I greatly respect was told that an activity that he had created, very similar to the one presented in the new text, could not be used and that the textbook material had to be used verbatim, like it was some sort of holy writ. This was his last year, and he could have retired some time ago.

Meanwhile, at mid-year, our new principal made our school part of the 8-Step Process, by which windows of standards are taught and assessed every three weeks. This three week schedule was made without communicating any detail to the staff. Unfortunately, the curriculum we were handed is made up of eight books that take at the minimum, four weeks to complete. The 8-Step Process aligns with Indiana Academic Standards, and the curriculum doesn't. We ended up reteaching one of our 4.5 week units for three more weeks before the high-stakes test, and left out a lot of critical instruction that students needed to move on to high school.

Just a short while ago, I posted how happy I was to be getting free of that curricular nightmare with a new opportunity for next year to teach problem solving. The joy was short lived. The next day, I attended a meeting where I was essentially handed three units of the new curriculum to teach to each semester class. I was warned I might have to teach "one or two" units of it and I agreed to it. That turned into a hard number three in less than 24 hours and was told that I could simply deal with it. When calculated using the suggested timeline for those units, that left 10 days each semester to implement my grand plan to really teach kids math that they could use and would enjoy and remember. That's not in any way what I signed up for.

I don't know when it happened this year, but at one point I just wanted to watch "Office Space." When my brother first introduced me to this movie almost 10 years ago, I remember thinking how lucky I was not to have a job like that. When I watched it again this year, I thought, wow, now I have a job just like that. No one listens. Screwups advance, while people who toe the line and work hard go unrewarded or even punished. The people to whom teachers report contradict themselves and each other with alarming regularity. There's no motivation to work harder, because all it will lead to is the promotion of the administration. Let me put it this way: I've had six principals in my building in 14 years. Many of us feel like we have footprints up our backs. We're just a stepping stone to high school administration. It's made me as cynical as Peter Gibbons and on Friday I was about ready to start cleaning fish on my collaboration reports. I even went so far as to put a red Swingline stapler in my Amazon wish list to put on my desk next year. It was really frustrating to feel that way about the career that I've loved since the first day in my classroom.

These feelings all came to a head last night. I was at Barnes and Noble with my friends Eric and Rob, and as we were leaving the store, I spotted it. The Office Space Kit. It comes with a little red Swingline stapler, an Initech coffee cup just like Lumbergh carries around, some flair, and TPS report cover sheets. I thought about it, decided against it, and walked out to the car. As I sat there, I reconsidered it. I could just see myself, thumbing my nose at authority, my private little in-jokes mocking the situation. And then, believe it or not, the words of Yoda came to me: "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." I started up the car and went home, resolved not to do that.

I'm not going to break. Not now, and not ever. I am going to do what I set out to do next year. I'm going to teach kids how to solve mathematical problems. I will adhere to both the Common Core State Standards and the Indiana Academic Standards, but I'm not following slavishly the poor textbooks with which I've been saddled. I found a little passage that Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett sent me in an email yesterday that opens the door:

Due to the emphasis on the Standards for Mathematical Practice, the cluster design of the standards, the increased depth of the CCSS, and the grade-level content shifts from IAS to CCSS, curriculum planning teams will need to evaluate their current instructional materials. This is true for schools who have already adopted instructional materials, as well as those who will adopt materials aligned to the CCSS. In either case, chapters and lessons may exist that do not meet the full expectation of the CCSS, and others that do not meet the full expectation of the IAS. School corporations will very likely need to exclude certain lessons or chapters in order to focus on what is required of the standards. They will also need to determine which chapters or lessons should be used to teach the required content to ensure coherence in the curriculum. This will likely require teachers to teach out of order from the textbook and only use the lessons needed. It will also likely require teachers to develop gap lessons and to adapt lessons to meet the full expectation of the standards.

Yes, you read that right. If the book doesn't do the job required by the state, we have to pare it and supplement it. And that's just what I plan to do. I'm going to approach this next year with renewed vigor. I'm going to create "gap lessons" like you wouldn't believe. I'm going to Lowe's tomorrow to get a big sheet of bulletin board to mount on my basement wall to organize the lessons around the standards that the awful textbook doesn't hit. And every one of those lessons is going to be my flair. And there's going to be a hell of a lot more than the fifteen minimum pieces of it, let me tell you.

Next year I'm going to express myself, and I'll never, never have a case of the Mondays.

My New Job

I'm still teaching in the same school and hopefully that will never change, but after 14 years of teaching 8th grade math, I'm getting a new job. Beginning next year, I'll be teaching 7th grade math problem solving. What this means is that I'll have my own course pretty much outside of the normal curriculum, focused on solving more complex problems. I took extended coursework in problem solving several years ago, and developed a math laboratory at my former school. I'm looking forward to the challenge of writing a semester's worth of curriculum (the course is taught twice per year) and essentially designing a course from the ground up.

One of the great things I'm planning for this course is for students to go outside. Our school grounds are vastly underutilized and I want to make up for that. We are going to measure buildings, both directly and indirectly, and estimate the cost of painting them. We'll find the height of the flagpole by measuring its shadow and setting up a proportion. We'll measure off the softball field and use the Pythagorean Theorem to find out if second base is in the right place. We'll use the U.S. system. We'll use the metric system. Kids will write about the advantages and disadvantages of each, and it won't be some arbitrary writing exercise. They'll have practical knowledge of both systems to inform their opinions.

This is going to be fun!

So Far, So Good...

Well, it's a new year and nothing catastrophic has happened to us yet.

That sounds a bit on the negative side, but if you had been in our position for the past 18 months, you would be a bit more understanding. It's been nothing but one disaster after another, financially, healthwise, and otherwise. The one saving grace for Magi and me has been our wonderful daughter, Sera.

It's almost been like having a fever for a year and a half, and just before winter recess (Christmas break to us old folks) the fever broke. I finally sold off the inventory of my comic book business, as well as the bulk of my personal comic book collection.

I worked all summer long, like I usually do, and then with 12 days off between summer school and the beginning of the normal school year, I used the time to prepare to sell comics at Wizard World Chicago, the large comic book convention that used to be the Chicago Comicon. I had part of a large booth, and I brought every box of comics that I have had in my garage for the past five years. Unfortunately, for the first time in over 20 years, the convention was going to start after my school year began. I had to take two personal days during the first week of school, something I never wanted to do, but I had no choice. It was either that, or be out all of the money I had put down for the booth space. So, on the day in question, I loaded a rented U-Haul with 60 boxes of comics weighing about 50 pounds each, and drove to Chicago. I unloaded all 60 boxes of comics and then re-stacked them all like a fortress of boxes at the booth. So, basically I moved 9,000 pounds of comics in about three hours.

After I settled in and the show opened, I was selling comics for $1.00 each, but I soon discovered why business wasn't more brisk. Another dealer was selling at 5 for $1.00 on the very first day. It was pretty much the same stuff I had, so I was forced to lower my prices far sooner than I planned to. I hadn't seen so much as a quarter box at that show for about five years, so this came as quite a shock. I planned to economize as much as possible. I had a discount hotel room that I shared with a couple of friends that cost me $120 total for all three nights. It even included a free continental breakfast, which I took advantage of. I brought canned and boxed food and my own bottled water to eat and drink at the convention so that I wouldn't have to pay $7.00 or something for a sandwich and $3.50 for a bottle of water. The only thing I splurged on was $20 on both Friday and Saturday nights for a nice dinner out with new friends that I made at the show.

It was a long four days, as the dealer across the way from me was like a carnival barker. He kept shouting about how they were going out of business after 30 years. It's an old trick, and it was not the truth. He ended up going home with virtually the same number of boxes that he arrived with. He bought stuff left and right from people.

I ended up lowering my prices again and again, until on Sunday, I was literally giving away the unbagged bulk comics that no one wanted. I had rented the U-Haul truck for a one-way trip and Magi and Sera came to pick me up on Sunday. At the end of those four days, I was so happy to see them that I teared up. And the bottom line at the end of the show? I lost $100.

The good news was that on my way out, I met a convention organizer who took an interest in Sera, who was dressed up as Wonder Woman. He was now working to acquire comics for another venture. We struck up a conversation while Magi took her to the restroom, and when I told him I had sold 60 boxes but had at least that much better stuff at home, his eyes lit up. He was interested in buying it all! He told me he'd be there at the end of the week, and I worked nights to get the stuff ready. I went through it in detail, so I'd know what I had and what to ask for. I organized comics all week, and at the end of that week...he didn't show. He had even called and said that he was out of small bills and asked me to go get $40 in twenties for his tolls and he'd bump the check up by $50. Now this guy is well known in the comics world. I'm not a sucker. I knew he was good for it. I stayed up until midnight waiting for him to show up on Friday night, and then he called. His truck was full and he didn't have enough room for it. But he promised he'd be by in a few weeks to get it. Meanwhile, our air conditioner had stopped working and we didn't have the money to fix it. We'd used our mortgage money to get the car fixed and we were in a bind. Medical bills were starting to pile up too and then I had a scare with what doctors thought might be an aneurysm. One $3700 test later, we knew it wasn't, and the doctor suggested that it might be stress related. I said, "Hmm, I think it's possible."

We were getting promises from the guy to come and buy all the comics, but he kept reneging. These promises came and went every week. He said he'd be there, and then he'd have a reason why he couldn't come. A trip to China. A sudden illness. Then the promises were once a month. He'd make an appointment and cancel. I'd return his call because he'd always call when I was in class and couldn't answer. And when I'd return his call, his voice mail would pick up and the mailbox was full. It started getting ugly. So we scrimped and started paying off stuff as fast as we could. Waiting for this guy was looking dimmer and dimmer. Well, he finally showed up in mid-December. He paid far less than what I would have liked for the rest of the comics and tried to pull the "Well, these will sell for only a dollar" stuff on me, but I knew better and said so. I finally got him up to a fair price, almost double what he had intially offered, and breathed a sigh of relief. We were able to at least catch everything up, pay our medical bills, get reimbursed for our flex spending accounts and buy a few Christmas presents for Sera and the rest of our families. I had my first vacation since spring break during the first week of April, and did it feel great! The stress was gone, thank goodness. I still owe Magi's dad and stepmother for the inital outlay for the comic collection, but I can make progress on that during summer school.

Just after we went back to work, Magi got some great news. She got the Culinary Arts instruction job at the career center that she had applied for in October! This is her dream job. I am so happy for her, I can't begin to say. It was a struggle to get the people who interviewed her to see that she was the best candidate that they were likely to see, but after meeting her at the school, they have already learned things that they didn't know about her that show them just how perfect she is for this job.

When I returned to work, I found a fresh perspective on things. I'm not using the nightmare of a textbook that our corporation adopted for math. We are teaching the Indiana standards, like we should have been doing the whole time, and have been released from the cookie cutter recipes of the Connected Math Project. We can use whatever materials we'd like to get the job done, just like we should have been able to do the whole year. Some damage has been done to the kids by forcing that text on them early on, but I'm confident we can target their weaknesses now and vary our instructional strategies beyond fake context that they can't relate to.

I'd really been down on the teacher bashing that's become part of the national conversation for some time. Reviewing some of my blog posts from last year, it was getting ugly. My solution was to stop reading it. I made the mistake today of reading a presentation by state superintendent Tony Bennett, and I slid backward. I only read it because it was embedded in an email. I won't make that mistake again. Instead, I'm working on my comic book project, which will be published shortly. I will at least have an ashcan printed by C2E2 in March, with a full-color, actual comic book done by Wizard World Chicago in August. The next time I go to the convention center in Rosemont, I won't be carrying thousands of pounds of boxes. I will be sitting in a whole different section of the convention floor, carrying the hope for a brighter future for my family and me.

This is going to be fun!

Priorities

What does it say about us as a nation when, on Huffington Post, a story about what Sarah Palin said about Michelle Obama garners 5,000 comments in a matter of hours, and the top education story of the week can barely muster 1,000?

Tenure

I have always, since the first time I stepped into my own classroom, loved my job. I have always looked forward to going to work. I have loved my time with my students. I have appreciated people's comments about my having answered a noble calling. I have accepted, with gratitude, discounts given to me because I am a teacher. It has truly been a great profession.

Until now.

Teachers are under attack from all sides. The issues are aplenty. Tenure, pay structure, unions, accountability, test scores, the length of the school year, curriculum, virtually every facet of public education is being deconstructed by people who have not the first clue how public education actually works.

Today, I'll talk about tenure.

On Oprah Winfrey's recent show with Davis Guggenheim, director of "Waiting for Superman," the hostess uttered these words: "After two years you have a job for life and you can't be fired! Who does that?"

Uh, no, Oprah. That's not what tenure is. But it's not surprising that you think that. I've read it in dozens of places recently, including from your "Warrior Woman," Michelle Rhee. What tenure does is that it guarantees due process rights to teachers so that they can't be fired without cause. Here's a source you might actually want to read.

Congratulations, Dana

My friend and colleague, Dana Homo, is retiring this year. Here's the speech I gave yesterday to honor him:

"When I came to Pierre Moran in 1997, I was placed into the ultimate middle school teaching situation. Dana Homo, Dave Walker, Laura Bultemeier and I were a team. We were in a block system then, and we were block 8B. It was amazingly successful, and in no small part it was thanks to Dana’s leadership. It was the only time that it was ever appropriate to call Dana a blockhead.

"Dana is by far the smartest person I know. He exemplifies the idea of lifelong learning. His mastery of the language is second to none and the sheer number of books he has read is beyond compare.

"Dana has been an innovator. His ideas led our block to use the middle school concept to its full advantage. We created interdisciplinary units that involved all four core teachers at the same time. Under Dana’s guidance, our students hunted mammoths and wrote about the experience. He spent hours setting up game tables with prehistoric settings and painted figures that the students then used to simulate a hunt. Using a game system that he devised, our students were part of Pickett’s Charge, both on the Union side as well as the Confederate side. He engaged students and inspired generations of them. I don’t mean that figuratively. He was teaching his third generation of some Elkhart families this year.

"I wouldn’t trade those eight years we were teamed for anything. It was the most rewarding experience of my career. I will forever remember them as the good old days and will probably regale younger teachers for a long time of those days just as Dana always regaled us with tales of the Halcyon Days of Brookdale. I think that I know more about those times now than anyone else who never worked there. He knew he was part of something special when he worked there, and I am thankful that he shared that experience…over and over again.

"What most people don’t realize about Dana is how much he did behind the scenes for Pierre Moran. He served on numerous committees and quite often was the most vocal advocate of not only Pierre Moran’s students but also its staff. He saved us many, many times from unreasonable people trying to do unreasonable things. One of the benefits of his long experience was his ability to recognize old concepts dressed up in new clothes. He would often deconstruct new terminology and buzzwords before the author of the latest educational fad had time to explain it to those of us who hadn’t seen it before. He kept presenters honest with tough questions and preserved the integrity of Pierre Moran’s educational programs.

"I know many of you will miss Dana. I won’t. Because I’ll still see him. We’ll still make our trips to Detroit to see ball games and we’ll still eat at great restaurants together and we’ll still meet in his pole barn to play games together. I only wish I could have granted his one request about my speaking about him today. He asked me to keep it short. Sorry, Dana. This is the best I could do and you deserve no less."

Fire the Doctors!

Paraphrased from USA Today:

Under President Barack Obama's new plan to reform health care, the USA's lowest 5% of hospitals — about 5,000 — will be required to take drastic steps to improve, including firing their chief administrator and, in some cases, at least half of their doctors, as happened last month at a Rhode Island hospital.

Shocked? Now replace the words "health care," "hospitals," "chief administrator," and "doctors" with "education," "principal," "schools" and "teachers," respectively. Does it sound acceptable now?

If you base the hospitals' performances on survival rates, where do you suppose those lowest 5% are going to be? I would guess that they'd be in the same neighborhoods where the lowest 5% of schools are.

Worrisome Things

"But there is also worrisome things, as I understand in the blueprint." --Former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, commenting on President Obama's new education plan.

A Lesson from Mark Twain

"Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog."--Mark Twain

NCLB Not Working? You're Kidding!

This article from NPR tells the story. Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch changed her mind about the law, saying exactly what teachers have been saying since the passage of the law: "The basic strategy is measuring and punishing."

Give me accountability. Test them when they come in and test them when they leave. If they don't gain a year's worth of growth, I'll tell you exactly why. If you have data that proves me wrong, fire me. That's accountability I can believe in. But don't come in and think that a kid who can't reliably multiply 8 X 7 in his or her head when entering 8th grade is going to magically be able to graph and manipulate quadratic equations just because you threaten to close my school, transport all the students elsewhere and fire the whole staff. And that's what I've been hearing since 2002. Yes, I'm mad. It's about time someone with a platform was heard on this matter.

No More

“Why you talkin’ shit?”

That’s what one of my students said to me when I reprimanded him for throwing paper at another student. It’s not the worst thing ever said to me in school. It’s not even close. That would be, “Get your goddamned hands off me before I break your fucking glasses.” I had told that particular student to report to the office and he walked the other way. I had audaciously placed my hand on his arm to gently guide him in the right direction. Before I tell you what was done to these students, I want to you think carefully about what would have happened to you when you were in 8th grade if you had spoken to a teacher in that way. Do you have it in mind? Good. The paper thrower was suspended for one day. The would-be glasses breaker was sent to class (not mine) without punishment.

This isn’t a recent development. In my career I have seen things that would make the average person cry. Once, in my first three years of teaching, my colleagues and I were coming back to school from lunch. We were walking from our cars to the front door, when we found a student lying between cars, bleeding profusely from his mouth, his nose, his ears, and his eyes. He had been “beaten into” a gang. At that same school, I often encountered evidence that students had defecated in the stairwell. Students would have to walk through puddles of urine to get to class because someone had relieved themselves in the hallway. I remember a mother coming in to my classroom to find out where her daughter had been after school every day. When she found out that the daughter was taking an after school class to get an extra math credit, the mother punched her daughter in the face. Two students, both innocent bystanders, were shot at graduation because they happened to be seated between two thugs who started shooting at each other on sight. There was one time when an assistant principal’s voice came over the intercom, calling for a student who had been shot to death earlier in the school year to report to the main office. I sometimes joke that I called security once in 1989 to come get an unruly student who refused to leave the classroom. When I left that school in 1997, I was still waiting for the security guard to show up.

This is an example of what teachers face today. These are our clientele. Sure, we have good kids. Sure, we have students who are going to be doctors in our classes. Those kids do well under our tutelage. But some days, we face an uphill battle maintaining discipline and motivating students to take a more active part in their learning. How do you appeal to the hard core banger, the kid with 13’s drawn all over their notebooks? What’s that? You don’t know what that is? Google “Sur 13” and come on back. Aren’t you glad you looked? What can a teacher do to change that kid’s mind about the horrible situation that is his or her life? What can I, an individual who has clearly won the education game, offer this kid when ALL of his peers pressure him to not do well in school? Oh, yes, the pressure is there. It is a violation of protocol to do well—heck, to do anything in class. And yet, I keep hearing about how 51% of my evaluation is going to be based on my students’ test scores. If I lose my job over that, good luck finding someone who wants to replace me. This isn’t a picnic.

In 23 years, I have broken up at least 100 fights. I have been personally attacked and have had to defend myself. I have had my property destroyed, stolen, marked with graffiti, and my car has been vandalized in the school parking lot. Despite this, I have put thousands of dollars of my own money into my classroom, with the purchases of dry-erase boards, markers, computers, document cameras, VCRs, DVD players, LCD projectors, and last but not least, batteries for an insulin pump. No, I do not have diabetes. One of my students did and I didn’t want her to have to report to the nurse and miss class just because her pump needed a new battery, which happened frequently. I have given out my home phone number so that students could call for help if their parents were not able to help them. I have volunteered my time in innumerable committees, such as the school improvement team, the homework committee, the climate committee, the PL221 (look it up) committee. I have coached sports, sponsored events, hosted talent shows. You name it, and I’ve done it to help my students learn and to help my school improve. And I, by the way, am far from unique in my building.

I am sick and tired of the constant teacher bashing I see in the press and on television. You want to assign blame for the failure of students in today’s public schools? Look somewhere else. I’m not having any. Not today and not ever.

More Education Fun from the Indianapolis Star

Another great article with supportive comments on education in the Indianapolis Star. I love my job! Here are some of the highlights from the comments section with my commentary following. I don't have a large platform, but at least I have one from which to pontificate:


"Tell me why class sizes can't be increased. We should start by quadrupling the size of history, geography, and English literature classes. Not only would that save money, it would make them more "college prep"."

Because studies link class size with student performance. College students are assumed to be well-motivated already.

“What the 'educators' really meant by what they said- ‘If you force us to make more cuts, we (the Educators) will hurt the kids’.I think their threat is serious, and disgusting.”

No, what they meant was that when you cut payroll and jobs, class sizes go up. It's really not that complicated, but if the malicious teacher conspiracy theory works for you, go for it. Why is "educators" in quotes, anyway? Are you quoting from somewhere?

"We set up a system such that 'educators' are created by sending them to school to learn the process of teaching (we're still banning people from teaching who focus on the subject matter)."

No one has banned anyone from teaching anymore than I've been banned from practicing medicine. There is a necessary component of education courses that goes with practicing the profession. This comment will also come in handy further down.*

"Spoken like a true union socialist! Like out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.....spread fear to the populus! ALL OF US MUST MAKE REDUCTIONS IN SPENDING FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO THE PUBLIC CORRUPTOCRATS!!!!! They have liked hgh on the hog from the public trough! They can make the cuts but would rather scare the parents. This is evil! These union thugs want to keep their golden egg and not reveal all of the excessess in the budget like the travel to vacation oops...education conferences (what a joke)."

Yes, because we teachers are all about the travel to education conferences. In 23 years of teaching I've been to one. It was in Indianapolis and I had to provide my own transportation without reimbursement. They're onto us. Bwahahahahaha!

"(Governor Mitch) Daniels went to North Central High School in Indianapolis which is a public school. He knows the quality of education found in many of our public schools."

Governor Daniels graduated from high school in 1967. Things have changed a little bit since then.

"Everybody wants to nip here, and tuck there, but nobody is talking about the ultimate, and only real workable solution to a failed public school model. Like the politicians in Indianapolis and DC, THEY ALL GOTTA GO! Parents are responsible for the education of their children, always have been, always will be. But the EDUCATION-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (EIC) has co-opted that parental responsibility over the past one hundred years, one small step at a time, so that it's now the mantra of the EIC "Only WE, the professional educators, possess the knowledge and skills necessary to educate children. Parents are incompetent buffoons who do not deserve this "highest" of callings." Besides hi-jacking parental authority, they (EIC) have also hi-jacked the curricula at all levels. Our kids have become goons to the progressive ideas of the past 100 years. Got a kid in school? Organize with other parents at your school and sue the corporation for funding to be paid directly to you."

Time to change the tin foil in which your head is wrapped.

"Make parents more responsible for their children by making them drive their children to school in the morning and picking them up when school is over. Just think if IPS got rid of the busing how much money would be saved. No more need for bus drivers, pensions and benefits; and no need to purchase buses, insurance, fuel charges, maintenance, parking lot facilities, and other sundry expenses with owning and operating the current system. How do the private school kids get to school? They do not have buses!"

They generally have two parents at home, one of which can drive them to school.

"There were 36 in my 6th grade class, and the teacher was 75 and wore a leg brace because of a childhood bout with polio. Somehow she managed to keep up with us, and we even learned, because there was nobody standing around telling us we couldn't possibly.Typical Ed Professional move here, hold the knife to the kids' throats till they get what they want."

And I walked to school in the snow, uphill... both ways!

"Just one real quick way for the State to raise MILLIONS of dollars each month is to outlaw the Teachers Union and take the money they are stelaing and put it ot good use. It's that simple!"

Um, I give my money freely to the teachers' union. They provide me with liability insurance in case I get sued for breaking up a fight. I think that's a pretty good use.

"I getting a little tired of the "hurt kids" angle from the educators. And educator I know pays 7 bucks a month for COMPLETE health insurance. I understand they don't want to lose cash, but the hurting kids angle is getting a little old."

Wow. I pay $5,000 a year in premiums and my school system kicks in another $8,000 for a policy with a $4,000 deductible. I want that guy's health insurance!

"A 10% across the board cut in teacher and administrator salaries and benefits would easily take of the problem with no impact on students."

Well, except for the people you will drive out of the profession because it's no longer feasible for them to work for such a pittance. Good luck finding those highly qualified people to replace them.

"Unfortunately, some teachers will suffer by any budget cuts, but that blame lays squarely on the shoulders of the Friggin union."

Because...why?

"Wish I could make $50,000 a year with summers off, Christmas break, Spring break, Fall break and every holiday off..."

Me, too. After 23 years, I finally make $50,000 but I have to work summers to do it.

After that, it started getting political:

"If we cut more funding for these libs, they will,,,well maybe possibly have a real job like most of us. I say we cut another 25% from school budget and give it to small business to help create local Indiana jobs. How's that?"

Sounds perfect. Who's going to teach your kids?

"But then techers would have to work hard and teach because the money would not flow as freely for them to spend and waste. Schools and Obama have the same liberal/Progressive agends, 'make others pay for me'Any one refuting my feelings can just go pound sand."

Well, I can't argue with that logic, except for the part where I spend and waste money. As a teacher I have no control over what money is spent or wasted. I guess I need to go pound sand.

"My kids are grown up now, but I remember the ridiculous mindsets of most of the educators. The teachers somehow believed that all parents held jobs like theirs----you know, where you get off work well before 5p.m. and get three months of paid time to get refreshed over the summer months. I'm not sure teachers are in touch with the real world of work. I wish they'd just quit pretending to know what it's like to have professional work demands."

Yes, I get off work well before 5 p.m. I also get to work before you even wake up to go to your 9-to-5 job, you pompous idiot. Three months of paid time in the summer? In what universe do you live?


"Simple solution to education costs. Treat teachers like sales reps.Base pay $10,000 per year. Maximum bonus to $40,000 per year.To achieve bonus to get to $50,000 per year, teachers must graduate a certain number of students to the next grade level or from school at graduation.So many kids equals so much bonus etc etc The state ( only Republican/Conservatives in power) assigns monitors to judge testing of the kids to assure that they were given an education.If the teacher graduates 85% of kids, they get a small portion of the $40,000 bonus. The maximum bonus of $40,000 kicks in when 100% of kirs are graduated to the next level.I bet there would be a MASS EXODUS of teachers who are lazy and Liberal because they can't teach,(like it is now). Easy solution, budget cut is effective and Indiana saves money and property taxes go down. How's that?"

Well, as long as it's only us lazy liberals leaving, that's okay then.

"WITH NO TEACHERS LEFT, WE COULD DO AWAY WITH THE NEA AND START OVER WITH qualified new teachers YAYYYYY"

Can't argue with that and wouldn't try to.

"All Children, no matter what their Religion should be taught the truth, the Bible, Sara Palin understands this and will be our next president. We need more Conservatives in the school system!"

I agree. There are too many of us liberals who think that poor people should have the same access to education as the wealthy.

"I think pro-creation by anyone Liberal should not be tolerated. They have mucked up our government, mucked up our schools and mucked up out Constitution. I declare open season HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA"

I feel safer already.

"So? Who cares WHAT fund it comes from?If you don't have to budget $50 million to build a football field that's $50 million you can allocate to a different fund, or $50 million YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND IN THE 1ST PLACE.Saying it comes from a different fund is just an attempt to muddy the water."

No, the law says that the money in the general fund and the money in a capital projects fund cannot be mixed. *Sorry, that's just those unnecessary education courses I mentioned above kicking in.

This is just a sample of the backlash we educators are facing every time an article on education is published in the newspaper. Yikes.

UPDATE: Here's a new one this morning:

"increasing class size is what the teachers already did to damage the kids. we need to disban this evil teachers union and allow the thousands of great school teachers to get jobs who now can't. cut teaching pay to be market rates, which would be 50% of their current costs. subs today are paid 75 bucks a day and they are thrilled with it. union teachers doing the same days work get 400 a day in pay INCLUDING BENIFITS !! the benifit package for a union teacher, is more per day than the wage cost of a sub teacher !!!! this is a horriable waste of our kids resources. teachers have driven the cost up to 10,400 bucks for a 180 days of teaching. end the union and help the kids, our kids suffer because of these teachers."

Let's see, $75 x 180 = $13,500 per year with no health insurance. With health insurance and taxes withdrawn, I would make about -$2,500 per year. Bonus!

Now THIS is an Education Blog!

Here is one of the cleverest ideas for an education blog I've ever seen. This teacher eats the school lunch every day for a year and writes about it. Bon appetit!

We Have a Winner!

La Porte's Michael Beach gets it. Most of the commenters at the bottom of the section clearly do not:

"U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Indiana Superintendent of Public
Instruction Tony Bennett's visionary plans for improvement and accountability in
education have far-reaching possibilities for effecting positive change in other
areas.

Although the education of our children is of utmost importance,
what could be a greater priority than our own health? It's a life and death
issue. I propose a Race to the Top for health care.

National standards already exist for individuals' weight, blood sugar,
cholesterol and blood pressure.

Physicians would be evaluated every year, with
more than half their annual review based on how well their patients met their
health goals. Physicians would be sorted into four categories, from highly
efficient to inefficient, with bonuses for the best performers.

Physicians in the lowest categories could be targeted for dismissal. New
physicians who are still rated inefficient after six years would lose their
medical licenses. The plan would allow Indiana to take over the lowest
performing physician groups, give them to a private management company and
eventually offer them the chance to return to their original medical groups or
become a charter group.

Under the plan, medical schools could risk
losing their accreditation if their graduates don't perform well.

The same process of measured performance and accountability through consequences could be applied to other vital areas as well, such as social services."

Paranoia

I know, I know. I'm going on and on about this. But wow, from things I'm seeing around the state, it needs to be said.

Recently, Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White decided to start school on the Monday following the Super Bowl on a two-hour delay schedule. Why, you ask? Because in 2007 when the Colts were last in the Super Bowl, so many bus drivers called in sick the following day, classes had to be canceled. Kids couldn't get to school. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett thought that it was a bad idea to use the two-hour delay in such a manner, so he instructed Dr. White not to do it. The compromise reached was to begin school one hour later, followed by a dismissal half an hour later than usual.

I thought that Dr. White's idea had merit. 75% of the bus drivers for Indianapolis are employed by a contractor. It's not like he can fire them directly if they don't show up for work. But the backlash in the Indianapolis Star's comments section made my jaw drop:

"I am not sure I would want my kids being taught and opinionated by educators that cannot get out of bed and get to work after a football game. Simple, fire them and get teachers that have their priorities where they should be. This is not brain surgery. The right thing is for the kids to be in school....no excuses."

"It's time to get rid of the UNIONS-they are the ones destroying the educational process."

Wait. What? The whole situation is created by bus drivers not reporting to work, and it's the teachers and our union at fault? Wow. We have more power than I thought. I find it interesting, too, that the Indianapolis Catholic schools just gave their kids the whole day off. No mention there in the comments section about that.

In an article from yesterday's local newspaper, it was reported that the governor is okay with pushing the start of school into September, no earlier than the day after Labor Day.

Um, okay. Why? To preserve summer vacation for families and to reduce cooling costs. Okay, I've taught in mid-June and I've taught in mid-August, and I have to say, there's no significant temperature difference that is going to save any appreciable amount of money. And as far as preserving summer vacation, are two weeks in August more desirable than two weeks in June? I would think if there really was that much of a temperature difference as they claim, they'd want to take vacation in early June rather than late August. But that's just me, thinking again. Oh, yes, and then there was the backlash against teachers in the comments section:

"Personally, I think they should add a week or two to the school year to give the kids more time to master skills or at least make the school day longer. If there is a budget issue to cover the longer school year or hours than maybe the schools should cut costs like they do in private industry--cut the educators' health benefits--make them pay higher premiums, higher copays and less benefits."

Okay, really? Did someone give me a "gold-plated Cadillac" health insurance plan when I wasn't looking? I am currently paying $5,000 per year in premiums with a $4,000 deductible for a family health insurance plan. That means I will pay $9,000 per year (nearly 20% of my gross salary) for my family's health care out of pocket before insurance covers a single penny. My insurance right now is only there to cover a catastrophic health crisis. Seriously, what the heck?

It's also interesting that when we had ISTEP+ in the fall, the calendar got pushed back, back, back into August to give students more time in class to prepare. Now that the test has been moved to the spring, do we really want to push the beginning of school forward so that students have fewer days of instruction before the high-stakes test? Why would the governor be interested in doing that? Shouldn't we try to actually control the variables that affect our students' test scores? You know, the ones that we can control?

Something smells here. Cut the education budget by $300 million when you have a $1 billion surplus. Try to pass legislation which would include a $49 million unfunded mandate to retain third graders who are not at reading level. Change the school calendars across the state unilaterally so that kids have two fewer weeks of instruction before the high-stakes test that determines whether public schools are passing or failing.

Are you still paranoid if they're really out to get you?

Just When You Thought it was Safe to Go Back into Education...

The Obama administration announced proposed changes to No Child Left Behind today. Gone would be the idiotic--sorry, "utopian"--idea that all children would be proficient in all subjects by 2014.

According to Bloomberg News, "The Obama administration wants to revamp the law to 'support dramatic improvements in the quality of assessments to measure complex skills and help teachers identify and respond to students’ strengths and needs.'

I would love to say that things are going to be better now, but I have exactly no confidence in that. Our state has cut the education budget by $300 million, and our school system now faces a shortfall of almost $4 million. Since 90% of our budget is payroll, guess what? Jobs are going to be lost, class sizes are going to skyrocket and the financial outcome looks bleak for the next few years. We're looking at renegotiating the labor agreement now, and that means pay cuts. We already took a hit this year, switching to a set of health insurance plans that feature a minimum $4,000 deductible for a family plan, but try explaining that to people who don't have jobs.

If you had ever considered education as a career, reconsider. It's not safe in these waters.

I guess things are tough all over.

Et Tu, Roger Ebert?

In Roger Ebert's new blog post, he blasts public education, tenure, and teachers' unions all in one breath:

"Tenure is a sacred concept in higher education, attained after years and
rigorous peer review. In primary and high schools, it comes automatically after
as few as two years. Tenured teachers have a job for life. They cannot be fired
for proven incompetence. The American Federation of Teachers and other unions
fiercely protect their jobs."

Here we go again. If Roger had bothered to do a five-second Google search, as I did, he would have found a dozen articles refuting this particular claim. I have been a teacher for 23 years and I can be fired for a thousand reasons as easily, or more easily than anyone else I know. He goes on to say that his eighth grade knowledge from St. Mary's Grade School surpasses that of most high school students. To that I say, hogwash. Roger was in 8th grade in about 1956. We do stuff in 8th grade math now that would have curled his toes like the Wicked Witch of the West. This is just another example of someone speaking out of complete ignorance about public education. I think it should be a requirement for someone writing on public education to at least go to a public school and see what the teachers face as everyday challenges. Better still, I think that a person writing on public education should have to be a substitute teacher for a day. Just one day is all it would take to at least give them a hint of understanding, which would be far more than they present right now.

My Man Mitch

The governor of my state is Mitch Daniels. I love Mitch. He's always good for a laugh. He recently said in his State of the State address that he wants an end to social promotion for third graders who can't read: "Sending an illiterate child on to higher grades is unfair to the next teacher, damaging to our state's future, but cruelest of all, disastrous to the life being blighted by that failure." If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that our governor is not concerned with what is fair to teachers.

But when confronted with the reason that it happens, the governor was stunned:

"Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was stunned that his proposal to hold back third-grade students who can't read well came with such a large price tag that a key lawmaker said it shouldn't pass this year. Daniels told reporters Thursday that his proposal to end so-called social promotion shouldn't cost a cent. He and state Superintendent Tony Bennett, a fellow Republican, say schools are already getting paid to teach students how to read, so the plan shouldn't require more cash. 'The fiscal (impact) of that bill is zero dollars and zero cents,' Daniels said. "

That's right, Mr. Daniels. We've only been passing them along because we're flush with the funds to give them the extra time outside the normal schedule to get them to where their parents should have had them before they ever started school. That was before you cut our budget by $300 million. In virtually the same breath, Daniels has asked teachers to take a pay cut and take an increase in class sizes and then to do more with less. Make that a lot more with a lot less. How are we supposed to accomplish this?

In the same article, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett "suggested schools could provide that 90 minutes (for extra help with reading) during the existing school day by having students skip recess or fine arts classes or by making other arrangements. He said parents, volunteers or community mentors could help teachers working with retained students and that local principals and superintendents could find creative solutions."

If we had sufficient numbers of "parents, volunteers, or community mentors" to pull this off, the kids wouldn't be illiterate in the first place! And cutting recess has already been done in several elementary schools, and guess what? Studies show that kids do better with recess.

The thing that really burns me about this is that I read to my daughter every night. She loves reading with Daddy. She is motivated to identify words and is already sounding them out (reading phonetically). She will be reading when she is four years old at this rate, long before she starts school. Why does it fall solely on teachers to motivate students to read? Because we can be legislated and parents can't. What happened to that personal responsibility that we're always hearing about? Do you really think that it's teachers who are sending their kids to school unable to read?

About eight years ago, my school system made a new policy that any middle schooler who didn't pass all of their four core subjects (math, language arts, social studies, and science) would be held back unless they passed their failed subject in summer school. Those were the two best years of my entire professional career. Everyone tried to pass and additional help was given to the few who just couldn't manage it with reasonable class sizes in summer school. Why didn't we keep that policy? Was it because it wasn't working? No, because it cost too much. We really need to take a good look at how much that program cost now, and see if we're going to be paying more by losing students to transportation costs, moving them to "successful" schools, while penalizing the schools that need the funding the most.

This constant attack on teachers and public education in the media lately is going to drive a lot of good people out of the profession. It's going to drive out the very people whom the profession needs desperately. It's going to drive out the innovators, the people who go above and beyond the call of duty to inspire their students to learn. Quite honestly, I would be making plans to leave right now if I didn't have so many years invested in my retirement plan. My only question is who in their right mind is going to be lining up for these teaching jobs that are going to be vacated? I'll tell you who. The positions will be filled by people who want to follow cookie cutter guidelines and recipes. The profession is going to be filled with line cooks who love to follow unimaginative instructions to the letter. It will be filled by people who have not one creative thought in their heads. It will be populated by people who don't push the envelope and don't try to use the most current technology. It will be loaded with folks who don't rock the boat. Well, I'm done with waiting for the boat to sink. It needs to be rocked. Something needs to be said, and I'm going to say it.

Teacher Evaluation and Test Scores

Bob Herbert talks in his column today about what is becoming more and more common: "The president of the American Federation of Teachers says she will urge her members to accept a form of teacher evaluation that takes student achievement into account and that the union has commissioned an independent effort to streamline disciplinary processes and make it easier to fire teachers who are guilty of misconduct."

I don't have a problem with firing teachers who are guilty of misconduct. It's the other part that is not going to work.

I'll accept my evaluation and pay being based on standardized test scores when dentists are compensated based on the collective health of their patients' teeth. Dentists can clean their patients' teeth regularly, repair faulty teeth, send them home with a free toothbrush, and when the patient fails to do their part, their teeth are going to rot no matter what steps the dentist takes.

It's pretty much the same for teachers.