Ahhhh, Monday!
Sashma (welcome to the discussion, Sashma--I'm delighted to have another teacher join in) wanted to talk more about standardized testing. Obviously, the importance of scores from these tests have been greatly magnified in the last ten or fifteen years. When I was in school, I remember having to take the ITBS for several years, and then, as I recall, standardized tests kind of went away until ACT's or SAT's came up in the latter part of high school (I graduated in 1972, for what it's worth). Since then, those tests have grown in focus and importance until, today, they have become the Great Almighty Determiner of the Quality of Education in Schools Today (aka GADQEST, an acronym I just made up). Every state has its version of (drum roll, please)...The Test. Colorado's is the CSAP, and in Colorado, if scores are not sufficiently high in a school district, that district (or a school in that district) can be given what amounts to sanctions in the form of loss of funding, disaccreditatation, etc. Now, to me, that makes no sense whatsoever. Schools in trouble need more help--not sanctions.
The superintendent of our district recently addressed the issue of CSAPs this way: he said that while tests like these do serve a purpose--do have importance--there is no doubt that their importance has been greatly exaggerated; he went on to say that the tests should be used to provide a snapshot to educators that can further be used to start a dialogue about some of the areas of concern in our methods or areas of instruction (which, by the way, is how our high school has always used CSAP results). While I agree with this assertion, I would say that the tests and results have now become the final point of the conversation. Results are being used to prove that education is failing on the whole, a purpose for which I know the tests were never intended, and now believe is part of a fairly obvious agenda put forth by a growing number of politicians and entrepreneurs. There is a tremendous amount of money to be made in the business of education, and there is hardly a shortage of people waiting to exploit this opportunity, even if it means destroying the institution of public education as we know it. Indeed, there's a pretty large number of them who make no bones about that being their goal--to bring down public education as it's practiced today. And they're using standardized test scores to do it. At every level of government, the almighty test score is being used as the be-all, end-all measure of the quality of education in our schools.
Oh, if only it were that simple (never, ever has been, and never, ever can be)! If only someone could design the perfect test that demonstrates exactly what students know and don't know. And here's one of the dangerous pitfalls of that "if only:" the companies that create these tests, under contract from state and federal governments, are now claiming that their tests do function that well, and never mind that everyone within the educational community knows otherwise. We know that there is absolutely no test that can fully measure what a student is learning, that the evidence from these things has to come from a wide range of factors that cannot be accurately measured by a standardized test. And here's the catch: government knows this, too. Eternally frustrated by the infuriating reality that education is not something that can be accurately measured by any instrument they can devise, they have launched this massive effort to overhaul education into something that does fit into their neat little container. But to do that, they first have to convince us of the viability of test scores as an indicator of student progress--wait, check that; not an indicator--the indicator. And this is where we see the federal government inexorably creeping in to areas that are far better left to state and local concerns. The Bush administration's No Child Left Behind is a noble idea (you can just tell it by its noble sounding name!), but it was terribly ill-conceived and based on a mountain of fallacious benchmarks--all of them tied to the nationwide requirement of all districts to meet "Adequate Yearly Progress" as defined by--you guessed it--standardized test scores. Taking this one step further, no one seems to mind that, in essence, it is the school that is being measured--not the students. Test results are based on current school population from year to year without factoring in the vast number of students who come and go in every school district every year (especially in areas that have large militarty populations). This would be like a doctor telling his patient that he has high cholesterol, so the doctor wants him to be tested again next year...but in the event he can't make it to be tested, he can send his sister, and they'll look at her results! Obama has done no better (perhaps I should say here that I voted for Obama). In fact, far from recognizing the inability of federal programs to address educational concerns adequately or accurately (after all, how can you adequately address what you cannot accurately assess?), Obama is throwing billions of dollars in federal monies to those states--and only those states--who can show that they are ready to play the education game his way. He has put states into the position of competing against each other for boatloads of temporary funding; Colorado was one of the finalists for a piece of that pie (only to lose out in the final allocation), and the changes that Colorado made in its legislation governing how teachers shall now be assessed--changes all made in an effort lure that temporary money into our state coffers--has, I predict, done inestimable damage to our state's system of education. Teachers in Colorado are now no longer protected under a tenure system--a system that did have its flaws, but was the only system that allowed teachers the security to do their jobs without feeling threatened by capricious or inexpert assessments by administrators who often hold personal grudges or have differing philosophies about things that do not measure quality of education. With those safeguards removed, administrators now are free to evaluate teachers using--once again--standardized test scores as the primary basis for their evaluations. I absolutely shudder at the implications. It's one of the things that make me believe that I am leaving this profession at precisely the right time. And the Colorado public is buying into it, hook, line, and sinker because they apparently just don't know any better. It saddens me and sickens me more than I can possibly say.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Today was my first day of the year of actual teaching--elements of fiction in Creative Writing, foundations of Greek and Roman Mythology in AP English, origins of the English Language in English IV. Lots and lots of lecturing/note-taking--partly by design, since I try to teach my senior-level courses as much like college courses as I can, but partly because I teach best by talking. So this was the first day my students were subjected to the way I teach course content, and they were wonderful. It doesn't take me long to remember every school year that the best part of my job is getting to know these fantastic students. Every year, I bid a sad goodbye to this year's senior class, thinking I can never love a group of students as much as I love this one, and three months later I start falling in love all over again. It might sound corny or contrived, but it's the absolute truth. Year after year, my students end up being some of the nicest people I'll ever meet. Yes, they can be cruel and recalcitrant and petty and inconsiderate, but you'd be amazed at how much they can be just the opposite if you just take the time to engage with them.
I know--this is hardly controversial education issues stuff. But the truth is, I spend most of my time loving my job, and spending the time today with my students just served to remind me why. All in all, a very good day.
I know--this is hardly controversial education issues stuff. But the truth is, I spend most of my time loving my job, and spending the time today with my students just served to remind me why. All in all, a very good day.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Today wiped me out pretty thoroughly...talking, talking, talking all day long, class after class, giving out my policies and rules to kids most of whom I've never met, keeping my radar out for any potential problems I might face in the future with this group of kids or that, trying to remember exactly what I've said from class to class for fear of repeating myself (few things are as embarrassing as leading up to a really, really important point, complete with huge buildup, only to have four voices chirp, "You already told us that!"). My head was pretty much spinning when I left, and then I got a call from my wife telling me news of a family emergency; we just got back from the hospital. Everything's okay, but we're pretty wiped out (my wife's a high school teacher, too; she teaches art in a different district), so this posting will be kept pretty short.
I promised to address the fallacy of using international standardized test scores to compare how we stack up against other countries that allegedly have surged ahead of us educationally. It's really a no-brainer, really, for two separate and very important reasons. First, we're all sharp enough to understand that performances on tests are not truly comparable unless all of the tests are the same. Yes, you can compare the test results, but unless the tests are identical, the comparison is rendered meaningless. So in being told that Japanese high school students, for example, consistently outscore American high school students in terms of test scores, how often have you heard exactly what was being tested? We know that American test scores are based largely on ACT and/or SAT results; what are the Japanese tests? Second, you can't compare test results between two different countries when only the elite students in one country are being tested and virtually all of the students in the other are being tested. In Colorado, every high school student in the state is required to take the ACT test on the same day in April, every year. These are among the scores being generated as part of the basis for comparison with other countries--regardless of the huge range in ability levels, all scores are reported. I'm aware of no other country where this is the case. Suppose we decide to test only our elite students and compare their scores with those of other countries; who do you think is going to win that race? I'll go out on a limb here. I'll put my money on the kids from the U.S.--every time.
I'm too tired to know if I explained this as well as I'd hoped to, but I don't need numbers and statistics to understand how vacuous our "Chicken Little" concern over our standing in the international community is, given the rationale being used to generate the panic. We all need to be aware of when we're being sold a bill of goods. Many of us don't seem to be aware that standardized test scores bear relatively little significance in measuring student performance to begin with--certainly nowhere near the weight they're given by the state and federal governments today. To exaggerate their importance further by using them in comparisons with other countries (where they bear equally relative insignificance) is to add fuel to a fire that never should have been ignited to begin with.
.
I promised to address the fallacy of using international standardized test scores to compare how we stack up against other countries that allegedly have surged ahead of us educationally. It's really a no-brainer, really, for two separate and very important reasons. First, we're all sharp enough to understand that performances on tests are not truly comparable unless all of the tests are the same. Yes, you can compare the test results, but unless the tests are identical, the comparison is rendered meaningless. So in being told that Japanese high school students, for example, consistently outscore American high school students in terms of test scores, how often have you heard exactly what was being tested? We know that American test scores are based largely on ACT and/or SAT results; what are the Japanese tests? Second, you can't compare test results between two different countries when only the elite students in one country are being tested and virtually all of the students in the other are being tested. In Colorado, every high school student in the state is required to take the ACT test on the same day in April, every year. These are among the scores being generated as part of the basis for comparison with other countries--regardless of the huge range in ability levels, all scores are reported. I'm aware of no other country where this is the case. Suppose we decide to test only our elite students and compare their scores with those of other countries; who do you think is going to win that race? I'll go out on a limb here. I'll put my money on the kids from the U.S.--every time.
I'm too tired to know if I explained this as well as I'd hoped to, but I don't need numbers and statistics to understand how vacuous our "Chicken Little" concern over our standing in the international community is, given the rationale being used to generate the panic. We all need to be aware of when we're being sold a bill of goods. Many of us don't seem to be aware that standardized test scores bear relatively little significance in measuring student performance to begin with--certainly nowhere near the weight they're given by the state and federal governments today. To exaggerate their importance further by using them in comparisons with other countries (where they bear equally relative insignificance) is to add fuel to a fire that never should have been ignited to begin with.
.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Today was our district’s last “quiet day.” Teachers and other staff have been meeting and preparing the last two days—longer for new teachers—for our first day of classes. Based on registration figures, I will have 152 students this year, spread out over six classes. The largest class will have 34 students, the smallest 19. I will be teaching “regular” English to approximately 75 seniors, Advanced Placement (college-level) English to about 50 seniors, and the remainder will be in a Creative Writing class, grades 9-12—my only elective class. In addition to these classes, I will meet once a week with my “advisory group” (something somewhat similar to Homeroom when I was a kid), comprised of about 15 kids. So—it’s time to take a deep breath and dive in. We’ll be coming up for air again in late December. That might smack of sounding a bit melodramatic to the average reader, but teachers will certainly understand the sentiment. I predict that my postings will become considerably shorter after this week (after I finish posting a few things I wrote last week to get the blog started), but I hope that won’t keep people from responding. So now, as promised:
Myth Number One: Public Education in the United States is failing.
To begin with, we must establish that the United States’ model for public education is as unique as its Constitution. No other country in the world dares to undertake what we attempt—to offer the same level of education to every child in the U.S., regardless of any extenuating circumstances such as innate talent (or lack thereof), level of intelligence, or ability to concentrate for extended periods of time on anything . Remember—we are offering this to everyone—for 13 years, mind you—and that offer is precious to us, for it sets us apart from every other country on earth. But to think we can successfully deliver an equal education to every citizen is disingenuous at best. Those mitigating circumstances do exist, and they are compounded by the fact that, like their students, not all teachers are created equal, either. And that reality exists for all teachers, including those who are truly dedicated to doing the best job they possibly can, every day of the year, every year of their career. Even for those who possess that dedication (and , I contend, that’s the vast majority of us), the truth is that some teachers are better at reaching kids than others. And while I truly believe that most—most—teachers are doing at least yeoman’s service to their craft, the sad truth exists that some teachers have no business being teachers. For whatever reasons, ranging from uninteresting personalities to a dislike of children, they are not effective at what they do. But in the majority of cases, those people don’t last long in the profession; they couldn’t possibly. Either their failure is discovered through the tenure system early on (more on that later), or they leave the profession out of their own sense of failure and frustration. Either way, they don’t last long. And that leaves a very tiny minority of inept teachers who have managed to fall through the system’s cracks and who remain in public education for an entire career. And then, on the other side of the desk, there are all the myriad factors that affect student learning daily; home life, amount of sleep, the abovementioned factors concerning ability level, personal relationship distractions, peer-pressure, self-esteem and insecurity issues, nutrition, tardies and absences, classroom interruptions—all of these and much more affect what goes on in every classroom every day. Add to this the sociological factors that exist in every region of the country (ethnicity, socioeconomic levels, religion, etc.) and the increasingly prevalent expectation that our schools must be all things—parent, nurturer, provider of nutrition, imparter of principles of moral decency, and above all, babysitter—to all who enter our hallowed halls, and you’ve thrown some enormous monkey wrenches into the idealistic notions behind our public education goals.
And yet—and yet—the majority (in many regions, the vast majority)of students who go to our schools graduate with a high school diploma, which means essentially that they are prepared at the very least to enter the workplace and take their places in society—or to continue their education in our trade schools, colleges, and universities. Politicians point out that our inner city schools are not sufficiently providing education to our minorities, and they are right. But this failure is due to sociological issues—not to the failure of the educational system, as so many politicians claim (or, at least, count on the public to infer). And it isn’t difficult to see why they deflect the blame. When we’ve shown such a marked inability to repair our socio-economical inequities overall, it becomes politically more convenient to point fingers at a symptom of such failures than at their roots; when a nation faces the social issues we face, the failures of our schools to provide equal education to minorities and the poor are symptomatic of a much larger problem, not the cause of the problem, and our schools cannot be expected to bear the burden alone of solving our social ills. This becomes even more apparent when we factor in studies demonstrating that children’s patterns of thinking are firmly established by the age of seven. Thus, a child’s potential to develop holistically is dependent on the home environment, which we already knew. And still, politicians include these socio-economical factors to indicate that public education is failing our children. One needn’t be a student of logic to see the fallacious nature of such thinking. The question we should be asking is, “Failing at what?”
Besides the aforementioned socio-economically driven “failures” of public education, you’re likely to hear that we are failing to “keep up” with other countries in the way we prepare our children for an ever-increasingly complex world and that we are not preparing every student for college. The greatest flaw in the latter part of that criticism is the notion that any country prepares every student for college, or even deems it necessary to do so. Practically speaking, what society on earth could possibly believe that a college-level education is necessary for every citizen to attain success in his or her occupation? Not everyone is cut out for college, nor does everyone need to be. Then, using international standardized test scores as indicators, detractors go on to say that we are clearly being outpaced educationally by an ever growing number of foreign countries, resulting in us no longer being prepared to “lead the world” in technology. In tomorrow’s posting, I will try to demonstrate the fallacy in that line of thinking. In the meantime, I will merely reiterate my contention that, given the idealistic nature of our model of public education and the enormous challenges that such a model is inevitably going to encounter, the United States public education system—far from being a failure—is remarkably successful. I am by no means alone in believing that it’s still by far the finest education system on the planet.
Tomorrow: Myth Number Two—the fallacy of using standardized test scores for global comparisons.
Myth Number One: Public Education in the United States is failing.
To begin with, we must establish that the United States’ model for public education is as unique as its Constitution. No other country in the world dares to undertake what we attempt—to offer the same level of education to every child in the U.S., regardless of any extenuating circumstances such as innate talent (or lack thereof), level of intelligence, or ability to concentrate for extended periods of time on anything . Remember—we are offering this to everyone—for 13 years, mind you—and that offer is precious to us, for it sets us apart from every other country on earth. But to think we can successfully deliver an equal education to every citizen is disingenuous at best. Those mitigating circumstances do exist, and they are compounded by the fact that, like their students, not all teachers are created equal, either. And that reality exists for all teachers, including those who are truly dedicated to doing the best job they possibly can, every day of the year, every year of their career. Even for those who possess that dedication (and , I contend, that’s the vast majority of us), the truth is that some teachers are better at reaching kids than others. And while I truly believe that most—most—teachers are doing at least yeoman’s service to their craft, the sad truth exists that some teachers have no business being teachers. For whatever reasons, ranging from uninteresting personalities to a dislike of children, they are not effective at what they do. But in the majority of cases, those people don’t last long in the profession; they couldn’t possibly. Either their failure is discovered through the tenure system early on (more on that later), or they leave the profession out of their own sense of failure and frustration. Either way, they don’t last long. And that leaves a very tiny minority of inept teachers who have managed to fall through the system’s cracks and who remain in public education for an entire career. And then, on the other side of the desk, there are all the myriad factors that affect student learning daily; home life, amount of sleep, the abovementioned factors concerning ability level, personal relationship distractions, peer-pressure, self-esteem and insecurity issues, nutrition, tardies and absences, classroom interruptions—all of these and much more affect what goes on in every classroom every day. Add to this the sociological factors that exist in every region of the country (ethnicity, socioeconomic levels, religion, etc.) and the increasingly prevalent expectation that our schools must be all things—parent, nurturer, provider of nutrition, imparter of principles of moral decency, and above all, babysitter—to all who enter our hallowed halls, and you’ve thrown some enormous monkey wrenches into the idealistic notions behind our public education goals.
And yet—and yet—the majority (in many regions, the vast majority)of students who go to our schools graduate with a high school diploma, which means essentially that they are prepared at the very least to enter the workplace and take their places in society—or to continue their education in our trade schools, colleges, and universities. Politicians point out that our inner city schools are not sufficiently providing education to our minorities, and they are right. But this failure is due to sociological issues—not to the failure of the educational system, as so many politicians claim (or, at least, count on the public to infer). And it isn’t difficult to see why they deflect the blame. When we’ve shown such a marked inability to repair our socio-economical inequities overall, it becomes politically more convenient to point fingers at a symptom of such failures than at their roots; when a nation faces the social issues we face, the failures of our schools to provide equal education to minorities and the poor are symptomatic of a much larger problem, not the cause of the problem, and our schools cannot be expected to bear the burden alone of solving our social ills. This becomes even more apparent when we factor in studies demonstrating that children’s patterns of thinking are firmly established by the age of seven. Thus, a child’s potential to develop holistically is dependent on the home environment, which we already knew. And still, politicians include these socio-economical factors to indicate that public education is failing our children. One needn’t be a student of logic to see the fallacious nature of such thinking. The question we should be asking is, “Failing at what?”
Besides the aforementioned socio-economically driven “failures” of public education, you’re likely to hear that we are failing to “keep up” with other countries in the way we prepare our children for an ever-increasingly complex world and that we are not preparing every student for college. The greatest flaw in the latter part of that criticism is the notion that any country prepares every student for college, or even deems it necessary to do so. Practically speaking, what society on earth could possibly believe that a college-level education is necessary for every citizen to attain success in his or her occupation? Not everyone is cut out for college, nor does everyone need to be. Then, using international standardized test scores as indicators, detractors go on to say that we are clearly being outpaced educationally by an ever growing number of foreign countries, resulting in us no longer being prepared to “lead the world” in technology. In tomorrow’s posting, I will try to demonstrate the fallacy in that line of thinking. In the meantime, I will merely reiterate my contention that, given the idealistic nature of our model of public education and the enormous challenges that such a model is inevitably going to encounter, the United States public education system—far from being a failure—is remarkably successful. I am by no means alone in believing that it’s still by far the finest education system on the planet.
Tomorrow: Myth Number Two—the fallacy of using standardized test scores for global comparisons.
Monday, August 23, 2010
OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER: Before continuing with today’s post, let me confess that I have never done anything remotely like blogging before, so I’m just beginning to scratch the surface of learning how this works. So when I mess up, I hope you’ll forgive my neophyte-ness (and that’s a real word…I know, because I just made it up).
Anyway, when speaking of these myths about public education, it’s hard to know where to begin—there’s just so much involved here. Compounding this difficulty is my determination to make all of this accessible to the lay person; so much misinformation exists out there, and, let’s face it, very few people are truly invested in fighting through that misinformation when the alternative involves learning something foreign from an entirely different perspective. It’s sort of like when we undergo some sort of serious surgical procedure; we understand the experience from having endured it, but in all likelihood we don’t really have any idea of the complexity of the surgery from the surgeon’s point of view. Education is similar in the sense that nearly all of us have experienced being educated—at least to some degree (pun intended)—but very few of us understand everything that goes into the educational process unless we are participating in it from the educator’s side of it. So it’s very easy to address education issues from a politician’s platform, because politicians understand that very few people can discern between the truth and myth, and many of us are all too willing to accept “bumper-sticker” slogans as truth. For example, several years ago, as I was driving to work, I heard a sound-byte from a speech by Elizabeth Dole, who was campaigning to represent her party in the upcoming Presidential election. In her speech, she promised that if she were elected she would “give [public] education back to the parents, where it belongs.” This was met with wild cheering and applause from her audience. I was thunderstruck by the ease with which she had presented this wholly fallacious idea to such a wholeheartedly approving public. None of the listeners, it seemed, were truly thinking about what Dole said—they just decided that it sounded good. The first part of the fallacy, of course, is that to give something back to someone, someone would have had to once possess it to begin with, and then lost it. Public education has never been in the hands of parents. Secondly, why would we want parents to decide the crucial issues about the education of their children when they have, generally, very little understanding of what the process of educating their children entails? This would be like a parent, in the above example, instructing the surgeon as to how exactly the surgical procedure should be performed on his/her child. So it becomes obvious that in matters concerning the education of our children, parents are asked to exhibit an inordinate amount of faith and trust in a process about which they know very little. They’re being asked to leave the whole process of educating their children to the experts. And, I think, most parents accept this gracefully. But the axiom about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing holds true here. I contend that a lot of what the public is being fed about public education is full of half-truths (at best) and fallacious conclusions; and this has led to public education as an institution now facing complete transformation, thus demonstrating the truth in the message of one of the most memorable bumper stickers I’ve ever seen: “The motto of the U.S. Government: If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.”
So to dispel these myths, we have to begin with the granddaddy of them all, the myth from which all of the others have sprung.
Tomorrow: Myth Number One: Public Education in the United States is failing.
Anyway, when speaking of these myths about public education, it’s hard to know where to begin—there’s just so much involved here. Compounding this difficulty is my determination to make all of this accessible to the lay person; so much misinformation exists out there, and, let’s face it, very few people are truly invested in fighting through that misinformation when the alternative involves learning something foreign from an entirely different perspective. It’s sort of like when we undergo some sort of serious surgical procedure; we understand the experience from having endured it, but in all likelihood we don’t really have any idea of the complexity of the surgery from the surgeon’s point of view. Education is similar in the sense that nearly all of us have experienced being educated—at least to some degree (pun intended)—but very few of us understand everything that goes into the educational process unless we are participating in it from the educator’s side of it. So it’s very easy to address education issues from a politician’s platform, because politicians understand that very few people can discern between the truth and myth, and many of us are all too willing to accept “bumper-sticker” slogans as truth. For example, several years ago, as I was driving to work, I heard a sound-byte from a speech by Elizabeth Dole, who was campaigning to represent her party in the upcoming Presidential election. In her speech, she promised that if she were elected she would “give [public] education back to the parents, where it belongs.” This was met with wild cheering and applause from her audience. I was thunderstruck by the ease with which she had presented this wholly fallacious idea to such a wholeheartedly approving public. None of the listeners, it seemed, were truly thinking about what Dole said—they just decided that it sounded good. The first part of the fallacy, of course, is that to give something back to someone, someone would have had to once possess it to begin with, and then lost it. Public education has never been in the hands of parents. Secondly, why would we want parents to decide the crucial issues about the education of their children when they have, generally, very little understanding of what the process of educating their children entails? This would be like a parent, in the above example, instructing the surgeon as to how exactly the surgical procedure should be performed on his/her child. So it becomes obvious that in matters concerning the education of our children, parents are asked to exhibit an inordinate amount of faith and trust in a process about which they know very little. They’re being asked to leave the whole process of educating their children to the experts. And, I think, most parents accept this gracefully. But the axiom about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing holds true here. I contend that a lot of what the public is being fed about public education is full of half-truths (at best) and fallacious conclusions; and this has led to public education as an institution now facing complete transformation, thus demonstrating the truth in the message of one of the most memorable bumper stickers I’ve ever seen: “The motto of the U.S. Government: If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.”
So to dispel these myths, we have to begin with the granddaddy of them all, the myth from which all of the others have sprung.
Tomorrow: Myth Number One: Public Education in the United States is failing.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The purpose of this blog on a very basic level is to celebrate—and chronicle—my 25th and final year of teaching in a public high school. After 24 years of trying to demonstrate the beauty of the English language to 9th through 12th graders, I’m finally hanging it up at the end of the 2010-2011 school year.
On a much deeper level, though, I hope to use this blog to generate a discussion about issues facing public education and, even more, to offer a glimpse of what we as teachers experience from the inside of the profession to readers whose only experience with public education, really, is that they went to school. I became aware very early on in my career that I had chosen one of those “mystery” professions which can only be truly understood from the inside; policemen, firefighters, and nurses are among those who will understand what I mean by this. Indeed, most professions are like this to some degree, but there are several things that set teaching apart from any other profession.
My plan is to post daily (every school day, at least) throughout the year. I’m sure there will be days that I’ll miss, for one reason or another. But that’s the plan, anyway. I welcome comments from anyone who can contribute to this discussion.
To provide a bit of context through which to view my comments, I probably should provide at least a brief biography. I came to teaching somewhat late, having started college when I was 27. It took me that long to figure out that this is what I wanted to do. I have taught at the same high school for my entire career. The school district has only one high school, one middle school, and three elementary schools. We are a rural district, although the community in which I teach is known to be a satellite community—a “bedroom” community, if you will—of a much larger city nearby (where, as it happens, I reside). We are located in the mountains of Colorado. I spent my first ten years as the “new” language arts teacher, since there was no turnover in my department. During this time I learned the ropes of my profession and found myself in the position of being the “at risk” teacher; for whatever reason, students who either had learning difficulties or behavioral problems (or both) responded to my teaching style, so our Special Education and Alternative Education teachers typically enrolled their students in my classes. I taught mostly freshman and sophomore courses during those years. Then, as some of my colleagues retired or moved to other districts, I sort of looked up and realized I was no longer the new kid in the department. A huge change in the direction of my career came when our longtime department head, one of the most respected and dedicated teachers I have ever known, indicated to me that she was a year away from retiring and wanted me to take over her position—not as department head, but as the head of the Honors English program. Throwing my protestations aside (truthfully, I was afraid that those “smart kids” would know more about my subject than I did!), she spent her final year team-teaching two Junior Honors English classes with me. In my first year after her departure, I taught—terrified as I was—our school’s very first AP class of any kind. We now have many AP classes, but I continue to teach the Senior AP English Literature & Composition class. A couple of years ago, I realized that I have seniority over everyone in my department—indeed, third-most seniority in the school—and have somehow achieved what I laughingly (and with no small degree of astonishment) refer to as a sort of Yoda status to some of my colleagues. I have never aspired to be anything more than a teacher, and I have always tried to avoid—mostly with success—the inevitable politics that exist in every school in every district. Other than Teacher of the Year at our high school one year, I have never received any awards for my teaching; but I appear to have won over my students, as they have voted me to be their keynote speaker at graduation eight times over the years—the greatest honor I could ever receive. And, to date, I am in contact with over 700 of them through the magic of Facebook, and that number grows every week. Oh, and my Master’s degree is in teaching the Humanities.
So—why should anyone pay any attention to what I have to say about public education today? After all, I’m just a teacher—a professional educator—and not an administrator or a politician or a businessman or an entrepreneur who studies education for the purpose of making money from it. And that’s why what I say should carry more weight than what any of those others will tell you. I have no other agenda. I am just a teacher—one who has spent over 180 days a year with your teenagers for the last twenty-four years. This above all makes me inherently better qualified to comment on the issues facing public education than an army of administrators or politicians. Given the high level of scrutiny under which public education is held, and given the high level in which politics—from the local level to the feds—influence trends in public education, I hope to shed some light on what really goes on in this crucial profession, from the trenches, so to speak. For it seems to me that there’s a lot being said about education, a lot of questions being asked, a lot of charges being leveled, and a lot of general hysteria being generated; but when it comes to trying to figure out what’s best for our kids, the ones being left out of the discussion most often are those who are best qualified to contribute the most to it—the teachers. So maybe this blog will serve to provide a different perspective on what goes on in classrooms all over the United States, one that will not only provide a view of the problems we face, but to share glimpses of the enormous victories that too often go uncelebrated; and maybe along the way, we can shatter a few terribly misinformed (but, of course, politically convenient) myths that have evolved about public education.
Tomorrow: Myths? What Myths?
On a much deeper level, though, I hope to use this blog to generate a discussion about issues facing public education and, even more, to offer a glimpse of what we as teachers experience from the inside of the profession to readers whose only experience with public education, really, is that they went to school. I became aware very early on in my career that I had chosen one of those “mystery” professions which can only be truly understood from the inside; policemen, firefighters, and nurses are among those who will understand what I mean by this. Indeed, most professions are like this to some degree, but there are several things that set teaching apart from any other profession.
My plan is to post daily (every school day, at least) throughout the year. I’m sure there will be days that I’ll miss, for one reason or another. But that’s the plan, anyway. I welcome comments from anyone who can contribute to this discussion.
To provide a bit of context through which to view my comments, I probably should provide at least a brief biography. I came to teaching somewhat late, having started college when I was 27. It took me that long to figure out that this is what I wanted to do. I have taught at the same high school for my entire career. The school district has only one high school, one middle school, and three elementary schools. We are a rural district, although the community in which I teach is known to be a satellite community—a “bedroom” community, if you will—of a much larger city nearby (where, as it happens, I reside). We are located in the mountains of Colorado. I spent my first ten years as the “new” language arts teacher, since there was no turnover in my department. During this time I learned the ropes of my profession and found myself in the position of being the “at risk” teacher; for whatever reason, students who either had learning difficulties or behavioral problems (or both) responded to my teaching style, so our Special Education and Alternative Education teachers typically enrolled their students in my classes. I taught mostly freshman and sophomore courses during those years. Then, as some of my colleagues retired or moved to other districts, I sort of looked up and realized I was no longer the new kid in the department. A huge change in the direction of my career came when our longtime department head, one of the most respected and dedicated teachers I have ever known, indicated to me that she was a year away from retiring and wanted me to take over her position—not as department head, but as the head of the Honors English program. Throwing my protestations aside (truthfully, I was afraid that those “smart kids” would know more about my subject than I did!), she spent her final year team-teaching two Junior Honors English classes with me. In my first year after her departure, I taught—terrified as I was—our school’s very first AP class of any kind. We now have many AP classes, but I continue to teach the Senior AP English Literature & Composition class. A couple of years ago, I realized that I have seniority over everyone in my department—indeed, third-most seniority in the school—and have somehow achieved what I laughingly (and with no small degree of astonishment) refer to as a sort of Yoda status to some of my colleagues. I have never aspired to be anything more than a teacher, and I have always tried to avoid—mostly with success—the inevitable politics that exist in every school in every district. Other than Teacher of the Year at our high school one year, I have never received any awards for my teaching; but I appear to have won over my students, as they have voted me to be their keynote speaker at graduation eight times over the years—the greatest honor I could ever receive. And, to date, I am in contact with over 700 of them through the magic of Facebook, and that number grows every week. Oh, and my Master’s degree is in teaching the Humanities.
So—why should anyone pay any attention to what I have to say about public education today? After all, I’m just a teacher—a professional educator—and not an administrator or a politician or a businessman or an entrepreneur who studies education for the purpose of making money from it. And that’s why what I say should carry more weight than what any of those others will tell you. I have no other agenda. I am just a teacher—one who has spent over 180 days a year with your teenagers for the last twenty-four years. This above all makes me inherently better qualified to comment on the issues facing public education than an army of administrators or politicians. Given the high level of scrutiny under which public education is held, and given the high level in which politics—from the local level to the feds—influence trends in public education, I hope to shed some light on what really goes on in this crucial profession, from the trenches, so to speak. For it seems to me that there’s a lot being said about education, a lot of questions being asked, a lot of charges being leveled, and a lot of general hysteria being generated; but when it comes to trying to figure out what’s best for our kids, the ones being left out of the discussion most often are those who are best qualified to contribute the most to it—the teachers. So maybe this blog will serve to provide a different perspective on what goes on in classrooms all over the United States, one that will not only provide a view of the problems we face, but to share glimpses of the enormous victories that too often go uncelebrated; and maybe along the way, we can shatter a few terribly misinformed (but, of course, politically convenient) myths that have evolved about public education.
Tomorrow: Myths? What Myths?
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