Why the Balancing Act?

This earlier post talked about two sides, schools of thought, on education.

Here is a summary from one of the education blog reel I read. It emphasizes the human quality of teaching including the following:

I’m concerned with the jobs my students get - especially with the jobs my special education students get. But I’m more concerned with the sort of people they become. And what of the minimalist approach that looks at children and teenagers and thinks first (or only) about their place in society’s economy? I find it insulting to core. It makes me want to heckle public speakers and defend the values I imbibed as a student of the liberal arts.
- Dangerously Irrelevant Blog

For another view on this topic, this blog post by another TFA alum argues for national assessments.

Won't this just take teaching to the test to the nth degree?
Teaching to the test happens when the test doesn't reflect what otherwise should be taught. If teaching to the test becomes teaching students to pass a vital, standards-based, focused assessment each week, isn't that just teaching with a test?
- from the t.f.a. trenches Blog

I do not mean to set these two articles up as mutually exclusive. Instead, I have noticed in my own teaching experience that I struggle to strike a balance between the ideas of giving character and life type education and more formal skill and knowledge type education. There is a finite amount of time in the classroom, and every decision I make moves my students toward some end. With data in front of me and always at the forefront of my mind, I tend to get caught up in how far my students have to go, and how much we need to focus on skills. I forget that there is more to life, more that my students need to experience to be successful.

This is especially true in middle school. I guess my conclusion is that we need national assessments. We need the accountability. Our students are supposed to be receiving a service, a product, and only assessment gives the nation or the public or the consumer/student feedback on what that service actually amounts to. In this push to provide an excellent product, an excellent education however, we educators cannot lose sight of the fact that an excellent education is more than just making a growth goal or making a mastery number for the year or passing an exit exam. We educators must also make choices that provide opportunities for providing decision making abilities, ethics, communication, social structures. We must make instructional decisions that make life possible in our classrooms.

Balancing Act in Action

This post is wrapping up my teacher-talk on planning and NCLB. When last mentioned, a question about "What Ought to be Taught" loomed on our collective horizon.

This question has two sides, as I see it. The first, I shall term Accountability. The Accountability side of the debate centers on, well, accountability. "We need accountability for students, for teachers, for administrators and for schools, and shoot, while we're at it, we need accountability on the policy-makers and politicians setting this whole system up too," might be the call to arms for the Accountability Camp. They might take issue with what exactly should be assessed, but some assessment is better than no assessment, and let's be honest, this is a work-in-progress folks, so they will take the TAKS test, they will take the NY Regents, they will take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, they will call for greater state-to-state alignment and national standards. They will call for merit pay because we should reward teachers who actually, well, teach...well. They will call for high expectations; high expectations for student learning, high expectations for teacher performance. The end game for Accountability is an excellent product; in this case, graduates that are capable of doing anything and everything and contributing to society (I assume.)

The somewhat-opposing view I will label as holistic (Note: I am completely making this stuff up. I am trying to put to words the sense I have of how things work, and I don't know how well it conveys the true nature of things.). This view is that students are Individuals, people. They have desires, needs, dreams, and education should lead them to self-actualization so that they can choose for themselves the path for their lives. As a teacher then, my role would be to help students to understand the world and their place in it, to help them learn to ask and answer questions that they themselves pose, to give the skills they need to relate to the world. Testing does not really fit into this structure.

I don't know that I have ironed out exactly what my view on the role of education is, but I know that Pure Accountability makes me feel empty when I teach, while Pure Holistic denies the reality of the system and gatekeepers that students must pass to advance into college or whatever.

A couple of weeks ago I had a lesson that did a pretty good job of balancing these competing purposes.

The lesson was the first of three or four dealing with the equivalence of rational numbers; this idea that fractions, percents and decimals all communicate the same amounts, parts of a whole, but are written in different forms. The objective for the lesson was for my students to see that all the numbers work the same way, and that we can compare them.

The lesson started with a situation.

"You just got a graduation gift of money. How much money do we have?"
Answers would range from $100 to $600. Surprisingly not one class went crazy on this.
"Okay, we have $500 dollars. We are going to put it in a bank account. Does anybody know why we might want to do this?"
Answers included so that we can write checks, to get a credit card, to save it for later. Roughly 20% of my students knew that bank accounts actually pay interest.
"Well, banks actually pay us to put our money there. If we leave our money in the bank, it will get more money for us and we don't have to do anything. So we have three banks to choose from. They have different savings rates. Which one should we choose?"
Kids knew that they wanted the most money possible. That was easy.

So, I conveniently changed the savings rates to easier numbers (none of this 0.32% crap), and made each bank use a different form of the rational numbers. As a class we went through and computed the first banks interest. As a table (group of 3ish), students did the second bank. As individuals, students computed the third bank. This took about 20 minutes.

"So which bank should we put our money in? Oh yea, Bank 3 gave us the most money! Cool. So let's review. We had a fraction a decimal and a percent, but they all gave us about the same amount of money. Hmm. We just spent 20 minutes figuring that out. Do you know we could have figured it out in 2 minutes?"

Groans echoed through the room. "Mister!" came the call from exasperated students.

I now introduce the idea of comparing rational numbers by changing them to the same form. We change them all to percents in 50 seconds, and have the best account in 70.

It was an early release day, so class was over at this point, but my students left knowing something real about the world (saving money in a financial institution helps me not to spend it AND it pays me money) and the saw something true about problem solving (there are many different ways to solve problems, just some are faster than others) and something content-wise (to compare rational numbers I need to have them all in the same form).

I felt extremely satisfied at the end of that lesson.

A Landscape

Nick wrote:

"Which begs the question, should that be the goal of teaching? A standardized test. Or should it be about "learning". In practice, very few students would learn just because that is what education is about. Those are probably already the top students, such as a Mr. Blair as a child. Do the standardized tests help the laggards though? Probably not, nothing probably helps. So you have this middle group. Does it help the middle group? This is not a simple question, and one that I think we can all have opinions to but no right answers. I have teacher friends who loath No Child Left Behind (I have not discussed with Mr. Blair). I don't have a real opinion about it, but I can say with confidence that there was a reason it was created."

I feel so lucky! I have had people actually posting comments on here, and not only that, but the comments are actually thought provoking and interesting and the beginning of a conversation. Granted, pretty much all the comments are coming from one person, who just happens to be a friend of mine, so really I could take this as a sign that we don't talk enough about "important" things...or I could just be glad I have comments.

So. The Goal. Of teaching. I think Nick has been pretty perceptive already with his breakdown of standardized testing; Standardized testing is not (IMO) meant to focus/motivate/assess individual students. It is meant to compare bodies of students. It is like any data metric; an average cannot tell us what is wrong in particular, but it can show the symptoms. I would view standardized testing's role as accountability and information; the tests hold teachers, schools, districts, states, and yes students, accountable for the materials that is 'supposed to be taught' in a given time period. It also gives information about student groups that are being under-served, specific weaknesses in content.

The problem is not that the tests exist. The tests ought to exist. The problem is in their use. First, they are used as a control device by the federal government. Schools are not a federal power, so the only way that the federal government can meddle, or attempt to meddle, is through money, whether bribes or threats. So the tests are attached to money. And this is where the problem comes in; as a teacher in a Title I school, our autonomy and our jobs hang in the balance if our students to do not perform well. If they do poorly, the government brings in oversight, pays for a program that we are forced to follow (this is how you raise your hand, this is what you say at 12:31.4 this is what you should ask, this is your homework), and then they will eventually cut all positions and restaff if it gets bad enough.

That creates a culture of fear and gives power to the test. Also incorporated in this is the very real nature of the tests as an individual gatekeeper; if the tests are being used for accountability, the students should feel some of that accountability as well. Hence we now have pass to advance in (I think) 3rd, 5th, 8th, 11th. Our kids are tracked (somewhat) based on results. More power for the test. More fear.

These are the things that are going on. I know the things my kids and I are accountable for. I know the level of depth we must reach. I also know where my students enter my class; they enter behind. We need to catch up.

As a result I am always balancing competing desires as I write a lesson:

• The desire for my kids to know the material
• The desire to honor and dignify my students as people
• The desire to not bore myself
• The desire for my students to do well on the TAKS test

I might also include on this list "the desire to not spend 100 years planning each lesson", which is something that I feel is both justified and at the same time somewhat lamentable.

There are times when I focus too much on TAKS, and I get fed up, because I am doing a disservice to my kids. And there are times when I focus too much on just knowing the material and having real-life applicability (honoring my kids status as People) and then we have a TAKS question and it is worded weird and my kids can't answer it.

What should teaching be about? Probably 90% the first three and 10% the last one. But my kids just do not cross-apply knowledge well. I don't know why. I can't remember if I had trouble with that or not. So I have to teach TAKS to some degree. The degree is always varying.

Next time: An example of this balancing act in action.

Backwards Design - Planning

Since Nick got me going on Test Creation, I thought I would continue to unleash all of my incomplete knowledge of planning. I aspire to be a cautionary tale, so hopefully this ends up helping somebody.

Here is my current planning cycle:

1. Beginning of the year: Look at all of the objectives that the State of Texas suggests 7th graders ought to know. These are found in the list of TEKS.
1. I then group these objectives into thematic units based on synergistic skills. So I put percents operations together with proportions because I plan on teaching percent operations using proportions.
2. Next I organize the units into a general order so that most basic skills are taught first. This insures that students have all the prior knowledge necessary for whatever unit they are starting. This is called my (cue theme music) "Long Term Plan".
   
2. During the year: Before each unit I read through all of the test materials and book materials for the learning objectives contained in that unit.
1. I go through the test creation cycle described in my other post.
2. I create quizzes that are very similar to the tests, differing only in their length and scope. They still scaffold from ground up to TAKS, but they will only cover 1 or 2 skills, and be limited to 4 or 5 questions total.
3. I look at my Long Term Plan to figure out how long I have to teach the unit. I break out my calendar and fit my test and quizzes onto it.
4. Before I put the rest of my lessons on the calendar, I break down the objectives into all of the skills and knowledge that my students will need to obtain in order to be successful on the tests and quizzes that I wrote.
5. Using this list of skills and knowledge, I fit them into general lessons and assign them to the remaining days on the calendar.
3. During the week: For each day I review what my students need to learn to be on track for the upcoming test/quiz, and review practice materials, previous lesson plans, exceptional lessons (from NCTM or other EduBloggers for example), and textbooks.
1. Knowing what my students need to know for a given day, I write some sort of assessment for that day. Sometimes it is the homework, sometimes it is just a question at the end of the class. Whatever it is, that is the daily progress to goal measurement.
2. With the daily 'assessment' written, the rest comes out in whatever it comes. Sometimes I will have a good idea of the practice I want to use. Others I will have an idea of the Introduction of New Material (the actual teaching) section. The important thing here is that I build gatekeepers into the lesson between INM and guided practice, guided practice and independent practice so that I know my kids will be able to handle the next step of autonomy without wasting a bunch of time.

So that's the process I've been running with this year. I definitely don't stick to it all the time, even though I should. Some units don't get all of the Unit Plan completed before we start; learning suffers as a result. I didn't start adding quizzes into my up-front planning until the end of November, so that would have helped earlier units. I didn't planning the INM to GP to IP gatekeepers until the end of October, so that definitely hurt instruction.

Backwards Design - Test Creation

Nick asked about assessment. He opened Pandora's Proverbial Box of Everything, so blame him when you start reading this and get bored. In an effort to save all you poor souls from reading, I will give the short answer here, and the long answer in a second post.

"This is interesting. How did you create a target quiz/test score from a needed score on what I expect is a different type of test entirely. Unless these test/quizzes are in the same format as the TAKS examine. Not questioning your methodology. I just wanna know how it was done, so I can use it in other applications." - Nick

There are four released TAKS tests. I also have textbook materials from 4 different publishers that are supposed to be aligned with the TAKS test, although any given learning objective has many interpretations, so there is a fair amount of variability between publishers. With these examples, I know what a specific learning objective looks like (in terms of assessment) for any of the 34 or so that my kids are supposed to know by the end of the year.

For any instructional unit, my assessment will have questions that scaffold from basic knowledge based questions up to the level that TAKS requires. I will have usually 4 questions per learning objective, with at least half of them being TAKS (literally off the TAKS test) or TAKS equivalent questions.

An example:
I have an objective: 7.1A compare and order integers and positive rational numbers.

My students need to be able to compare:

1. Fractions with fractions
2. Decimals with decimals
3. Percents with percents
4. Integers with integers
   
5. Fractions with decimals
6. Fractions with percents
7. Decimals with fractions
8. All 3 at the same time
9. All 3 with integers

So I might ask 1 greater than/less than question for the first 7 items. These will be easy, low-level. Then I will ask maybe four questions with #8 and four questions with #9. Probably 6 of the 8 questions would be TAKS or TAKS equivalent, with 2 being "put these in order from greatest to least".

The end grade doesn't exactly match with the TAKS test because of the easy questions, but it does give an accurate view of how well the student knows that particular learning objective. And really, the goal is not, necessarily, to predict how the student will do, since the type of questions on the test change almost every year. The point is to see what areas the student knows and doesn't know so that I can give targeted remediation to sub-groups of students so that they have the tools to be able to pass regardless of questions.

Tutorial Groups

Yes this is another education post. Be warned.

The second nine weeks ended on Friday. My kids have a four day weekend, so they did not have to come in while the teachers rolled up their grades and made plans for the third nine weeks.

The third nine weeks is pivotal as it leads into the most dreaded time for students: Standardized Testing. Last year did not go so well for my kids (read: "sucked"), and almost all of my efforts this year in planning, in organization and in instruction have been focused on having my students prepared to stomp the TAKS test on April 29th.

Since I want as many kids to pass as possible, and to do well as possible, at some point it becomes necessary to offer some extra practice to certain students that just aren't making it in the regular class time. Therefore, I welcome, tutorials (cue ominous music).

Grouping for tutorials has been particularly hard. I have about 30 kids who are currently not on pace to pass the test, but of that 30, I have 10 who even with the most intense help won't be able to do it this year. Based on where they came in to my class, even if they grew by roughly 10% (I made a growth goal for each of my students this year, based on standardized tests, and then backed out a target percentage for each quiz/test) they still would not pass. So what do I do with them? I decide not to use tutorial time with these students.

Then there is a group of kids who are supposed to make Commended (90%) on the test this year, and for whatever reason (read: boys/girls, sex, hormones, drugs, gangs, home-life, personality clash, boredom) they are not on track to get close. Should I offer them tutorials? They will probably pass already, but I don't want to just leave smart kids behind where they should be either? I decide to make one-day a week a Challenge Group.

I also have a group of kids that are right on the bubble of passing. They will probably pass, but I don't want any surprises. I could take kids that are just below the cut-off or just above. I decide to take just below, which is another 10 out of the original group of 30. This group will also be once a week.

Finally, the last 10 out of the original 30 are shown by their performance this year to be really low, but based on their goal, should be passing. This is my final group. They will need tutorials twice a week.

So how I broke it down:
Monday and Thursday: Remediation Group
Wednesday: Bubble Group
Friday: Challenge Group

Then I have to decide which kids actually get in. There are a lot of kids who could use it. There are a lot of kids who will hate it. Should I take the ones who need it most, even if we don't get along? Will I hate my life if I put one of these kids in the group?

I haven't decided what to do about that yet. Maybe this weekend will bring some clarity. For now, I need to go fix my Xbox360. My life satisfaction has dropped significantly without Guitar Hero 3.

Environmental Activism - Another Soapbox?

That questions is targeted at me. I wonder if I soapbox. Or rather if I soapbox too much. But then I realize that this is my blog and while readership (oooooh so snooty! I might have people who read this, but definitely no readership) is great, well, I'm talking here.

So anyway. I've loved the outdoors for a while now. My family went camping every summer since I can remember, and while I did not really take to the fishing aspects that well (they were kind of boring, and usually really hot), I loved the tent part and the playing part and the trees part and definitely the hammock part. My passion for the outdoors continued in Boy Scouts, where I eventually found myself doing "High Adventures" to places like the Adirondacks and Boundary Waters, and loving every minute of it. I now would describe myself as a backpacker, who aspires to be a rock climber, mountaineer, mountain biker, canoer and maybe kayaker (that's lowest on the list of priorities).

Thus, in the current debate about climate change, I have a vested interest: I want to continue to play outdoors. I can't say however, that I have done anything in particular to *be* an environmentally aware person. I mean this past year I started walking to the grocery occasionally, and using my backpack instead of grocery bags occasionally, and I rode my bike to church once, but that was because I wanted to ride a bike, so that doesn't really count. I have also carpooled somewhat frequently, but again that doesn't count because I did it to save on toll money. But I've wanted to recycle. And I've felt guilty for not.

So it was interesting when, as I sat in my last day of Curriculum Theory & Development class on Friday, one of the groups presented on recycling and called it "Solely a moral decision." I expected them to say it was a stewardship issue, or an ethical issue (as in 'you should recycle unless you have shoddy ethics'), but it wasn't. It was a personal moral issue. So they said. And their reasoning went something like this. First, there are hidden costs in recycling. More trucks come to pick it up. More roads break down because of the heavy trucks. More tires are wasted. More gas is consumed. Then the recycling begins. Well it might begin if someone wants the materials, otherwise it just gets shipped to the landfill anyway. But if someone wants it then the recycling begins. Well sort of. Because only parts of the material can be recycled. It is not a 100% yield enterprise. You don't get all of the material back as useful new stuff. There is waste. And to top it off, the process is very energy expensive. This means it burns more coal or whatever to power the transformation that doesn't even recycle *all* of the junk.

So, one *could* argue, that in the current environmental and ecological landscape, the ethical thing to do is trash everything. Well, everything that can't be composted. Everyone should have a compost pile. That *was* agreed upon.

The recycling bit was news to me. I hadn't really thought about it before. Although, it is somewhat incomplete, because processes only improve if there is an incentive to improve them. It is almost impossible for the process to improve if no one is recycling at all. So having recycling around might spur more efficient recycling centers. Hopefully. So that is a reason to recycle.

But that's not really the point. The point then, is that the other 2 "R"s of the 3Rs - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, are that much more important, and if you notice, they come first. So, as an individual, I can choose to purchase a huge tub of Gatorade powder instead of the 36 individually packaged Gatorade bottles because that reduces my waste. And then I can reuse the huge tub for...uh...something. Okay, I would still throw it away, but there would be less trash. The point is, people are starting to be environmentally conscious about food production (organic and whatnot) but the packaging is just overlooked.

Then, adding to all that, church today had the author of the book "Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action". The author, J. M. Sleeth, talks about how conservation is a Biblical imperative and that every person can do their part to help preserve the world around us. Then there is the website for his organization, called "Serve God, Save the Planet." It has lots of information, from religious textual examinations to church statements to next steps. Here is a list of questions and hints that he provides concerning a lot of the things that an individual could do to help cut down on their own environmental impact.

More Curriculum...and other stuff

This class is mind-blowing.

Seriously. My mind is blown apart.

The articles and ideas that we discuss just come through as true to me; ideas that make education into a mutual journey, that make it relational, that make it a search for truth, that give such dignity to the student.

An amazing quote that I came across today will explain some what I mean.

"The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between."
- Diane Ackerman

So as an educator, my job is not as some conduit of knowledge, pouring the things I know out like water into the gaping mouths of open, unblinking vessels. The vessels being the students. Instead, I am challenging my students to take risk, to become aware of the beauty that is around them, to challenge them to move in it and through it and become part of it.


This weekend I am up in Traverse City. One of my TFA friends comes up here every summer. I currently sit, watching the wind whip small whitecaps across Elk Lake, feeling the old dry sun warm my face and move the wind's crispness off of my arms, listening to the trees dance some ancient chant and call as they shake shake shake.

Or...

I currently sit
watching the wind whip
small whitecaps across Elk Lake, feeling the old
dry sun warm my face and move
the wind's crispness off of my arms,
listening
to the trees dance
some ancient chant
and call as they shake
shake
shake.

Curriculum Class

I am currently enrolled in, and have now completed my second day of a course at Calvin College titled (why do I want to say entitled? does that even mean anything?) EDUC 580 - Curriculum Theory & Development. I have posted the course description for your perusal.

• Participate in a study of theories and development of curricula for pre-school through grade 12 students in all content areas. In this course, you will become more aware of theories that inform curricula choices and contextual curricular issues, with special consideration of the more practical side of implementing curricular change. Discussions will be grounded in the integration of faith and learning including issues of social justice. (3 sem. hrs.)

So a couple of things jump out, which actual course experience has borne out as well; "Discussions will be grounded in the integration of faith and learning including issues of social justice."

!! Well. The integration of faith and learning bit is not quite up Teach For America's metaphorical alley, but issues of social justice? Come on! Can I guy get an Amen? (Amen. Thanks you in the back).

Furthermore, let's look at "with special consideration of the more practical side of implementing curricular change." Wow. That sounds suspiciously like "The education system is all #$%& up so reform is necessary, but we need to figure out what reforms would be good and how to get them going."

And sure enough, both of these things have formed a vital component to the class so far. It has been amazing! Who would have thought that I would ever write that about an Education course?!

I think the most influential aspect so far has been the reading of One Kid at a Time, by Eliot Levine. This book describes the development, operation and results of a new school model in Providence, RI organized by The Big Picture Company. This organization is starting schools across the country with a truly innovative educational approach that is all based on experiential, interest-based learning. You should check it out.

More TFA Stuff

A brief preface:

A week or two ago I yammered about data. It was exceedingly boring, and after reading it over before posting it, knew that it did not convey what I wanted it to convey. It was sloppy. This will hopefully be a bit more streamlined. No promises.

The real thing:

On Friday I had my Round 2 debrief. For those scoring at home, this was my third one-on-one discussion with my program director. Round 0 occurred before school began, Round 1 went down in September, and now Round 2.

For the actual observation, my PD sat in on about 30 minutes of class and recorded the whole ordeal. The Round 2 was a discussion on what she saw.

When I show up, I'm exhausted. I have gradually become sicker and sicker as the day wore on; so much so that by fourth period I barely left my seat. I arrived unprepared; I left the two items that I was supposed to bring at school in a cold, headache, exhaustion infused-haze.

Brooke starts out with the normal kind of stuff. Brooke's my PD.
Oh you are working really hard.
I can tell you are planning.
I was surprised at your self-grading, I think you are higher than this.

You know, buttering me up so that she can lay on the hard stuff.
And lay she does. She shows me the following cycle, saying "This is what I observed in your classroom. You are the expert there, but going from what you wrote in your reflection and the things I saw, I think it is fairly accurate."

The Cycle:

Looking at the cycle, I was faced with thoughts I had been avoiding since Thanksgiving; I think that I am failing my 7th grade students. I feel like I have tried everything I can think of to try to get my students to be engaged and learn the things that I *know* they can learn. So yea, there is definitely some low teacher motivation in regards to trying to get my students to succeed; everything I have tried hasn't worked! And, when I have asked other teachers at my school about it, they basically answer with "You should have lower expectations."

I wanted to cry. I almost did. I feel overwhelmed by my desire to succeed and the apparent futility of that desire. And the futility is purely born from my student's nonchalance! It is *not* that they cannot learn the material. It *is* that they choose to stare at the wall instead of watch how to do the things they are supposed to know how to do.

But, somehow, the conversations shifted to have a positive ending.

First, I took a walk. For five minutes.

When I returned, we talked about things that contribute towards the depression I feel every time I see/taste/touch/hear/smell or think about my big goal (80% mastery of all grade objectives). We talked about how this number is only that, a number. It is *not* a big goal.

A big goal must inspire. It must be a vision. And for me, 80% is not a vision. It is a big bold red line that I am woefully short of.

So I am going to form a new big goal. One that moves me. Because once I am moved, I can move my students (in theory).

I am also going to look into dealing with my frustration. I get extremely frustrated when my students ask questions saying "I don't get it", when I have seen them asleep at their desks or goofing off. So I am going to read a book that I think will help deal with these situations in a more productive manner.

I guess the point of all this is to say that teaching is really difficult. I am struggling constantly, and feel like a failure a large amount of the time. But the reality is that I am capable of improving and I am capable of reaching my kids (I AM THE INSTRUCTIONAL LEADER OF MY CLASSROOM!), and that will only happen if I am willing to *try* to improve.

I pray that in whatever situation we find ourselves, we would remember these moments, when we have tried and failed. I pray that we would have strength in these moments. And I pray that we might persevere, be picked up (through the help of our friends and God), and end up succeeding.

TFA and a Happy New Year to you

It is January.

In case you haven't checked.

I think resolutions are lame. But if forced to make one, mine would be to blog at a regular rate. I was chastised by countless (2) friends for not updating my blog often enough. Apparently waiting a month between posts is just unacceptable.

My goal will be two a week.

I want to decompress my vacation on here but I am not yet in the mood for that. Instead, here comes some TFA brilliance.

TFA is a data driven organization. Following their mission of making a service organization that is attractive to the top college graduates and can compete with wall street type companies, TFA adopted the business model of these same wall street firms in terms of their goals, operation, processes etc.

What this means for me, as a corps member, is that I have regular performance reviews (called Round X observation) by my program director. Between these reviews, I am continually planning, teaching, assessing, reflecting and improving in a endless cycle.

The data comes from assessments. A master teacher ought to assess students knowledge before a unit/lesson to see what basic knowledge or gaps already exist, during the unit to see how the students are progressing and after the unit to see if the students did indeed learn what they were supposed to learn and to find what areas need to be retaught.

So. I have all of these tests that I have written or acquired or whatever. And I give them to my students, when they have finished a unit. They take the tests, and I record their 'mastery' in this giant excel file that I am somewhat ashamed to say excites me. And I am supposed to use this data to "inform my instruction".

I am good at collecting data. I enjoy it even. I like seeing the progress my students have made, what areas they have done well in, and those that need more work.

What I suck at, is the dissecting of this data. I am supposed to be looking for 'trends'. Do all the students failing sit in one area of the class? Are they all males? Are they all females? Are they all black? Are they all Hispanic? Do they all skip homework? Do they all write left handed?

I am supposed to look at this spreadsheet of numbers and figure this out.

And I can't.

Not only that, but my goal as a teacher (in Teach for America) is to make "Significant Gains" for my students. We are trying to put our students on a different life path, one that is dominated by education and opportunity and not by minimum wage/lack of choice. Because TFA wants this to be a measurable accomplishment (that way we can publish pretty statistics...and we can improve ourselves) there are two choices for achieving these gains: 80% of students master grade objectives (as determined by the state) or 2 years of growth in a specific subject.

And for me, significant gains is impossible.

Rather, *showing* that I have significant gains is impossible.

My school system has no way of assessing years of growth. So I have to use 80% mastery as my significant gains measure.

My students still add with their fingers.

My 7th grade mastery numbers are 29% and 35%.

TeachForAmerica - Institute Day 16-20

Busy week. Here's a summary...

Day 16,17 (Tuesday and Wednesday)
On both of these days my third grad class was taking the TAKS test. This test is a high stakes test as part of the No Child Left Behind initiative (which I basically think is a load of crap, but I digress). The kids were *very* nervous about the test. They were required to come to summer school because they did not perform well on the TAKS the first time they took it this year, and they might be required to repeat the 3rd grade if they did not perform well on this go around. While I think that the school administration generally shies away from holding back students based on test scores (they favor the 'social promotion' mindset), the option is still very present in the minds of the students, and is a recourse available to the administration.

A bi-product of the TAKS testing on Tuesday and Wednesday was an inordinate amount of free time to observe other classrooms, work on teaching skills, review curriculum, and hone lesson plans. On Tuesday I got to travel to Edison Middle School for observations. At different times, I sat in on 6th, 7th and 8th grade math classrooms. It was great to see the age group that I will be teaching and to see some of the curriculum that I will be responsible for. One of the classrooms had exceptional classroom management and decent student engagement and participation. The second class was middle of the road in terms of classroom management, but student investment was pretty high. The third class was a disaster on both accounts.

Day 18,19 (Thursday and Friday)
While I was supposed to be teaching Writing this week, Thursday marked the beginning of TFA Summer School and the end of Title 1 Summer School. Practically, this meant that the Title 1 teachers were no longer teaching Math/Lit hour and Math, leaving both of these previously unassigned subjects to the TFA teachers. So I switched to Math. On one day's notice. And had to write 2 extra lesson plans, prepare a lesson that I had not finalized and 'waste' 3 Writing lessons I had prepared (these were all transferred to collaborative members, so it was not a total waste). In general though, this has been the standard Operating Procedure for A+ Thompson, so I took it in stride.

In fact, my math lessons were something I had been looking forward to, prepared very thoroughly, practiced, and subsequently gave, with great success. On Thursday we reviewed the writing of numbers in word and numeral form (11,203 = eleven thousand two hundred and three), and placed it in the context of writing checks. "Imagine that you are graduating from college. You are one of the top math students in the entire country. Everyone wants you to work for them. Microsoft wants you to make up computer programs. The Government wants some codes. They are all offering you this piece of paper with numbers and words on it. Is this money?"

Friday's lesson plan went really well also, and the kids got so excited about winning points in Around the World, even though the points did not go towards anything (other than self-satisfation).

Other Big News
I am signing a lease for my apartment tomorrow evening. I will be living one roommate (Adam), in a pretty convenient location on the west side of Houston.

I also got a job this week! I was offered a yet-to-be-finalized position at ALIEF Middle School as a math teacher. I will either be teaching 8th grade, or a 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Intervention class for students who failed the TAKS during the previous academic year. Either position would be very cool. The principal is also excited about me playing basketball for the staff in the student vs staff basketball game. I don't think she knows that I was a swimmer. :^)

TeachForAmerica - Institute Day 15

I taught writing today.

Well, I don't know if what I did would actually constitute as 'teaching' per se. Really, I just stood in front of the class and tried not to freak out all hour.

This was the 4th day in front of my students, and I think they were really looking forward to Thursday. There is this weird thing about the summer school I am teaching at. For the first 4 weeks of the summer, or however long it goes, there is Title 1 summer school, which basically means that the kids who failed the Texas standardized test are required to be at school. That period ends with a retaking of the TAKS test on Wednesday. All students are officially done with school for the summer at that point Wednesday afternoon when they complete the test.

So, for those of us teachers (TFA cough cough) who have classrooms that continue past Wednesday, the reality we are facing is a total lack of interest, a focus on leaving (as is natural) and a foreseeable drop in attendance by large numbers. I am guessing that at least 50% of my class of third graders decides to opt out of the TFA summer school. And that is depressing.

But back to the writing debacle. TFA is big on pushing the idea that all student actions can be tied back to a teacher mindset or belief. The progression has some fancy name which now slips my mind, but the stages look something like this:
1. Teacher's mindset and beliefs influence the...
2. Teacher's actions and behaviors, which shape the...
3. Students' actions, which dictate the...
4. Students' achievement.

As a result, I look at Mr. Harris who was acting out today in class and got sent to the principal's office and while I initially think "Man what is his deal?", this eventually builds into "What am I doing that is causing/contributing to Mr. Harris acting out?" And then even further, "What do I believe about Mr Harris that is causing me to act this way?" This line of thinking ends with me being very impatient, wanting so desperately to be good so that my kids can learn. It is a hard place to be in.

TeachForAmerica - Institute Day 9-12

Thursday:
preparation for the last day of the week ran the gamut of emotions. At the conclusion of the day in our CMA groups, the outlook for potential completion was not good. The assignments that were expected of us depended firstly on the curriculum objectives chosen as lesson focus for the rest of the summer.

Choosing objectives is a tenuous skill at best, and our Unit Calendar was further complicated by an uneven distribution of academic goals. Some subjects that were pivotal to the summer program, like writing, were only allocated 3 hours of "Target Objectives" that needed to be taught, while others like math, have 900 minutes of Target Objectives while only 490 minutes are available for classroom instruction. This disconnect is simply insurmountable if all the lesson objectives are kept, so I was forced to adapt. Through collaboration of all the 3rd grade corps teachers, a schedule was eventually drawn up, but this was merely the starting point for the nights work.

Objectives form the backbone of lesson planning because each day's instructional growth only serves as true 'academic achievement' if it is directed toward a specific goal. Backward planning from the desired outcome is the only way to insure that lessons are building cohesively, constituting a true body of knowledge, emblematic of an "academic school year". The objectives move verbatim onto the individual day's lesson, focusing that teaching and conveying the information that had been deemed important from the lens of the objective framework.

Daily lesson plans for Monday and Tuesday are due on Friday for the subject concentration of responsibility. Next week I teach writing. This next week also marks the introduction of the Math/Literacy hour into my collaborative's work load. Thus the onus of administering and planning 2 lessons per day that focus on math and literacy skills at the academic of the student begins on Thursday the 29th. The three collaborative members will divide the class into tiers so that each group can have differentiated teaching directly in line with their current ability level.

Time wise, Wednesday and Thursday were simply overwhelming. My normal schedule which included some personal time in the form of athletic activity was thrown out the window due to a daunting list of deliverables. These two work days followed this schedule:
5:45 - 6:53am: Wake, shower, dress, pack lunch, eat, get on bus.
7:00am - 4:00pm: Setup classroom, prep, teach, Curriculum session, Work session
4:00-4:30pm: Ride bus back to Moody, change.
4:30-6:45pm: Find reading books, revise lesson plans, start deliverables, eat dinner
7:00-9:00pm: Attend evening Curriculum session
9:00pm-12:30am: Write rough drafts of lesson plans for next week, finalize tomorrows lesson plans.

I slept 11.5 hours last night.

I am ready for a nap.

TeachForAmerica - Institute Day 7 & 8

Teaching Day 1
- The Associated Blair, Houston, TX

Due to unseasonable amounts of rain, all Houston area schools of the HISD school districts were closed today due to flash floods and flood warnings. Thompson Elementary was cancelled as early as 6:00 am, before the Teach for America Site Director even arrived on location.

The Teach for America staff scrambled to implement impromptu educational sessions in lieu of an actual site work day. While it took some time to get the Institute setup at Moody Towers, relocating the 550+ corps members from their 8+ school sites, the staff performed a near miracle in communication and organization by having classes running by 9:30 in the Moody Commons and RFC cafeteria. The daily schedule was a far cry from the one most corps members planned for, but the extra 2.5 hours of free time in the morning, and the cancelled evening sessions left most corps members recharged after a late night prep session.

The Associated Blair interviewed one corps member for his thoughts on the proceedings. This is what he had to say:
"I don't know about the rest of these folks, but I was ready to go to school today. Yea, of course you get excited when school is cancelled, I don't think that ever changes, but this was the first day ya know? Anyway, I guess more preparation couldn't hurt. Plus I needed a hair cut."

More rain is expected over night so it remains to be seen if TFA Institute Day 9 will turn out to be Day 1 of teaching, but the TFA Corps Members are getting anxious, as they are penned up in the Moody Towers. These dedicated individuals are here to enact significant gains in alleviating the education gap in this country, and that can only happen if they get in the classroom. This reporter for one, hopes that tomorrow will be the day.

TeachForAmerica - Institute Day 5 & 6

Week one is officially complete.

On Friday morning I turned in lesson plans for my portion of Monday's and Tuesday's teachings. The whole lesson planning process is completely new to me but the system that TfA has introduced seems like a logical one. TfA is definitely a process driven organization, and while part of me (that would be the corporate side) thinks that their devotion to the almighty Process is a waste of time, the current reality is that their processes are really improving TfA for the better. I have heard lots of stories already about how much better Institute is this summer than in past summers.

Anyway, all of the lessons for the first week had been prepared in advance for every subject and grade level that any corps member might teach. Basically, veteran TfA teachers collaborated to make a summer curriculum that included very specific lesson goals, and the first week went so far as including a break down of exactly what the lesson would look like. In this situation, our actual "lesson planning" really took the form of inserting and classroom procedures that we were using, and tweaking things based on our specific classroom materials.

Since I am teaching reading during the first week, my lessons revolve around...yea, reading. Big surprise. To correctly prepare my lesson plans, I had to go choose two different books to use in my 5 step lesson plans. Below is a brief description of a 5 step lesson plan:

Opening - This section provides the 'hook' or motivation for the subject material and relates the material to the broader class scope. Ex. "Yesterday we learned about the Prediction. Today we will learn about another aspect of a story, the story elements. These are a very important part of being great readers."

Introduction to New Material - This section is Teacher Centered, where the teacher actually presents the new information. Ex. "The four story elements are Character, Setting, Problem and Solution. The definition of these story elements is..."

Guided Practice - This section begins the shift from Teacher centered to Student centered. The teacher general does examples with the class, or asks specific class members to do parts of the lesson. Ex. "Now that I have broken down this story for you, let's do one together. I'll read Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears and you will raise your hand when you think we have a new story element."

Independent Practice - This section completes the shift from teacher to student centered instruction. The student uses this opportunity to master the skill or information of the lesson. Ex. "Please read the story by your self and complete the graphic organizer, just like we just did as a group."

Closing - This section summarizes the new material, and reconnects it to the larger picture. Ex. "Now that we know the four story elements are character, setting, problem and solution, we are going to be much better at reading stories and understanding them, which is important for our Big Goal."

So yea. That's some of what I have been learning, and doing. TfA has fit all of *their* lessons into the same format, so they are continuously modeling the 'correct' behavior to us in informational sessions.

One other thing. On Friday afternoon, a significant amount of our school time was devoted to collaborative time to work on classroom materials. My collaborative developed most of our bulletin boards (pictures to come). After that group time, there was a school meeting in the cafeteria for all TfA staff and corps members. The staff passed out popsicles, played the Jackson 5 "A B C", and presented us with our 'diplomas' and 'teacher name', documenting our graduation from the first week of institute.

Monday is my first day in the classroom, so this weekend will be filled with sleep, practice, and lesson planning/prep. Mr. Blair will be ready.

TeachForAmerica - Institute Day 2, 3 & 4

On Monday I talked a bit about my disconnect with the methods that TfA was using in 'encouraging' or motivating me or whatever. SOOOO much has happened since then...well here are a couple of stories, and then I'll drop some interpretations down at the end.

On Tuesday, our classroom sessions focused on Planning, Rules and Consequences for our classrooms. Obviously these are extremely important aspects of teaching, but our classroom sessions were basically a restatement of the pre-institute reading, except with some examples, guided practice and independent practice. Our independent practice was the development of some rules that we might be using in our classroom.

Later that day, our group got a chance to work on our Management Plan, which is basically a overview of how the Rules, Consequences, incentives and everything fit together. My collaborative group and I were discussing possible themes for our classroom, alighted on a Construction Theme, and decided we could name our 'mascot' FWBR, the acronym for the rules we had developed. I started looking around for my rules sheet, since I remembered developing these rules. But I couldn't remember *when*. It took me a couple of minutes that it had only been 2 hours since developing those rules.

On to day 3 our core member group had a session on Diversity, Community and Achievement. The session was entitled "Life Map". The task for this lesson was to draw a map, or write or whatever we wanted to do to express the major stages in our life that brought us to our current place at Institute with TfA. We were given markers, paper, pencils, whatever, and put to work. Once we were all done with our efforts, our Corps Member Advisor (CMA) asked for volunteers to share their life maps.

The first person to share was Bernard. Bernard grew up in Texas, and was exposed to race and class based disparities for his entire life. When he applied to and was excepted to Rice, everyone in his high school attributed it to Affirmative Action. In subsequent, turns a woman who married a Hispanic man talked about the insults and isolation put upon her children, and the turmoil that caused her in turn. Disha talked about how her parents moved to the US from India, and she grew up being friends with everyone, but then went back to India and witnessed the poverty and shameful teaching practices (beatings for wrong answers in class).

Today our classroom sessions focused on the implementations of classroom Procedures and the benefits the can yield. We went through the development of a procedure, and continued learning about lesson planning. We had a lot of working time to prepare a large set of deliverables for tomorrow morning at 8 am. In fact, I put in a 6 hour session this evening locking down my contribution to these deliverables, including the development of 2 procedures (a listening posture and call&response) and 4 reading lesson plans (I will be teaching about predictions, cause and effect, and story elements on the first two days of class).

And now for the decompression: I am exhausted, first and foremost. This entire process seems as if it is almost more a test of will than a test of learning ability, but maybe that is the point. Two of the 5 behaviors that TfA is emphasizing is continuous improvement and relentless pursuit, and how can those be taught and emphasized if we are given a cake walk of a school? Secondly, in these diversity discussions, I end up feeling like my story lacks significance. In the words of my Diversity text, I am from the "Power Culture". I am white. I am affluent (middle class, but affluent in the world's perspective). I am male. I am Christian. I am heterosexual. These are the dominant norms of this US culture, and as a result I have *always* been given the benefit of the doubt. It is hard to expose my story in the midst of ones that seem so much more relevant to the issues that this society faces, and ironically, I am afraid that I will be judged because I come from a 'Power' background. But then I share anyway. And I guess that I know that my story does have meaning, and that I am doing the things I do not because of some debt that the Power culture owes, but because it is the responsibility of *all* people to act in the service of society. And in the mean time, I will do what I can, currently TfA, to change the disparities that are oh so real, and I can come along side Bernard and Disha and Christina and my heart will break hearing the pain they suffered, and I will shed tears with them.

I hope I can handle this.

TeachForAmerica - Institute Day 1

I relocated to Houston driving over 2000, passing through 11 states, and burning 6 quarts of transmission fluid and 2 quarts of oil. I wasn't really all that nervous about things, even when I spent 16 hours in South Carolina working on my Pre-Institute reading material and still wasn't done. It was only when I was driving into downtown Houston, on Wednesday, June 7th for my Houston Induction, that the nervousness overwhelmed me, nearly causing a U-turn.

Luckily, I did not turn the car around. Luckily, I continued to the Houston Crowne Plaza Hotel, where I spent 3 days and 4 nights getting acclimated to Houston, the mission of TfA, the Houston Corps and the expectations I have to look forward to at Institute. And after making friends, meeting tons of people, sitting in on numerous informational sessions and eating lots of food, I moved over to the University of Houston campus for Institute on Sunday, June 11th.

Today I woke up at 5:20 am. School starts promptly at 7:00 every morning, and depending on where your summer school is located, you could have between 5 and 45 minutes of commute. I am located at Thompson Elementary, the closest summer school location. My bus leaves at 6:53 am every morning. If I arrive at 6:53 and 30 seconds it will have already left. The five minute ride takes us into the middle of a old residential district, where Thompson Elementary has been located since its founding in 1949. Thompson has had a long track record hosting TfA corps members (over a decade), and so the transition for this summer is pretty seamless. My fellow corps members and I are welcomed by Michael C. (I forgot his last name) who is our Site Director, and challenged to focus on the immense challenge before us: We must learn to become excellent teachers of students, but we must also help the summer school students achieve significant academic achievements *this* summer.

Today mainly consisted of 'get to know you' type material, and a review of the first two behaviors of our Teaching as Leadership text; Setting Big Goals and Investing Students and their Influencers. All corps members have already read these texts, and have completed reflective exercises to help connect the central ideas of Teaching as Leadership to our own experiences, but TfA is reviewing it none the less. And we review all day. We finish up at 4:00 pm.

So far this experience, learning to be a teacher, has been a challenge of mental outlook. In many of the required readings, and in some of the motivational talks that I have been exposed to, I found myself resenting the emotional strings that the writing was playing. The stories were real, I am confident, but at the same time it felt as if they were trying to get an emotional response from me, and I resented it. I had to remind myself time and time again that I *believe* in the mission of Teach for America, and that the educational injustices in this country are *reason* for becoming impassioned.

And then I am okay. Because I do believe in the mission for Teach for America. The more I hear about the racial and monetary injustices perpetuated by the educational system, the more I want to go FIX it. So that's good.