A Note Pinned to Your Underpants Suffice?

In the past month I've had the experience of students not turning in project work and having the excuse that they weren't here the day it was assigned. "I wasn't here the day you gave the assignment."  I think this is akin to a toddler who closes his eyes and thinks you can't see him. Invisibility by experience."I see nothing, ergo nothing sees me."

"How could you miss it?" I state in the course syllabus that "students are responsible for missed classes," parroting the school's policy on the matter.  And a project assignment is given at least one week advance notice. These students were in class since "that day." It's an honors class for the college bound senior.

Furthermore to defend my amazement let me say that I distribute all project assignments in writing, mark the deadline on a dry erase board in the classroom, post the same on our class wiki, provide handouts on the class website, and add reminders on Twitter. So I'm a bit snarky in responding to "I wasn't there the day you assigned this."

What about some individual responsibility?  How do you cope? How do we serve students without enabling poor behaviors?

Image: "I See Nothing, Nothing Sees Me." By Lindasslund. 17 Nov. 2008. Flickr. Used by permission of Creative Commons License.

Idealistic, Content, Disheartened? (Or Burnt Out?)

"I don't know whether I believe in teacher burn out," my college supervisor Hilda A. Kring, Ph.D. said to me more than twenty years ago. She called herself a "realistic idealist" when it came to most matters, including the topic at hand. One of her proteges, I would say the same of myself, and as for her comment, ditto.

A recent comment by a reader prompted my consideration about this idea of "burnout." He suggested that I get out of teacher if I'm burnt out. Agreed, but I'm still not sure about the idea of burnout. (And if you're wondering, I don't think I am nor in denial.)

While I was thinking about this, I see a recent study by the Public Agenda has released a report on a related topic: Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today. The study sheds light on what makes teachers feel valued and less likely to quit. It mentions things like:

• offering career paths in education,


• ensuring technology is available to aid instruction,


• and increasing teacher salaries to levels of other professional jobs such as lawyers and doctors.

More interesting to me, the study separates the 890 teachers surveyed into three groups: contended, disheartened, and idealists. When I heard the three monikers, I instantly thought this made sense. Don't we fall into one of the three categories?

Well, in the study 40% fell into the disheartened category, 37% contented, and 23% idealist.

I've already tipped my hand. You know I fall in to the minority--which brings me back to my wondering if there is burnout. Maybe there is such a thing--and dishearteneds are the best ones to ask about it, 77% of those studied who have been teaching for more than 10 years. But this realistic idealist can't see it.

Although I'm "way older" than most idealists teachers recorded in the study (77% of idealists identified by the study are Gen. Y'ers with fewer than 10 years in the classroom), I'll find a path for my career (36% of idealist teachers said this would be in education but outside of the classroom for them), a way to get the tech, and take whatever raise my union can muster.

Drilling Down

This has been a difficult start to another year of teaching. Seems demands are more numerous and trying out new, innovative strategies with technology are paradoxically piling up next to outdated testing pressures. On one hand we teachers are being held accountable by standardized testing and drill down into the data; and on the other hand we are being told that technology, creative, and performative skills are the way to go. It's like trying to get the moon by digging to the Earth's core: as ineffective and as frustrating.

This past month I've been drilling down on a standardized reading test that is sampling our state's standards. Pennsylvania has 3 reading standards with a total of 35 specific skills defined. Of those 35 skills, 12 have been translated to assessment anchors, or ways of measuring a third of the defined skills. Of those 12, the test samples 9. Of those 9, the questions sample 3 skills 3 times as much, while sampling others only once or twice. So as I drill down on 120 students individually--taking 5-10 minutes on each--my mind wanders and wonders if knowing so little about so little is worth the effort, let alone the time: 10-20 hours, if you do the math. Taking into consideration that the student might not have felt well, had had a difficult time that morning at home, or just didn't care so much to take the test seriously and the worth of standardized test scores wanes in my estimation.

So we've headed the wrong vehicle in the wrong direction to the wrong address.

I worry about my next dozen years or in the classroom, not because of the future, but my past. Before teaching I was in advertising, first the creative end and then the business end. I couldn't stand the marketing numbers. So then I worked for a family run book retailer which emphasized the love of books and knowledge. But they sold they went public and became a national corporate concern--and the concern was price points. I got out and returned to my first love--teaching. Now after 20 years of the testing movement and despite the call for 21st century skills, a dinosaur of data-driven decision-making is starting to bang at my classroom door. Is it time to move on? Or face the dragon? A lesson life keeps presenting might be a lesson worth learning.

Image Credit. "Free Mixed Numbers Texture for Layers." By D. Sharon Pruitt. 18 Nov. 2008. Flickr. Used by permission of Creative Commons License.

Technology Never Promised to Take Less Time

Technology never promised to take less time. Well, if it did that was back in the '70s when we thought 2001 would never come and by then we'd all be wearing white zippered polyester suits a la Star Trek. This week I spent four days doing with Web 2.0 what used to take ten minutes the old-fashioned way.

Okay, now, to do it again, I could probably accomplish it in two-days, given what I learned in the process.

My students had made what I call "Beowulf Tapestries," panels of muslin fabric on which the students depict a scene from Beowulf on each panel. Together they roughly make up a project in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry, which we study as well. Each panel is to depict a moment from a particular canto and quote text. Then students identify themes that resonate from this scene.

In my early years, I would stitch the panels together for a wall hanging. One year I had a panel for each of the hundred-some cantos. Lately, I've stapled them together on a bulletin board for a similar effect. This year I decided to go digital.

Rather than present their work in the room, I had my students snap a picture with the web cams in their laptops and maneuver the file into our PB Works wiki for an online ensemble. No sweat, right?

No. . . sweat! Computers didn't log on. User names were mispelt. And my students had never played in a wiki space before. So it took four days and we learned along the way. By the third day I realized that I should have started by having everyone make a sandbox page first. This facilitates them all working at once and uploading their files simultaneously--a huge time saver. They also can "play" in their sandboxes! while waiting for others to finish.

All in all the project turned out. My students and I have a few more digital skills in our respective repertoires and Beowulf is still our hero.

Insert Key to Overwrite -- Baby Come Back!

Okay, I'm slow on the uptake. I see blogs from two years ago discussing this. But it's been only a few weeks that the school where I work updated to MS Word 2007. I purchased the application for my home office shortly thereafter and soon learned that the Insert key no longer functioned to overwrite text.

If I was dismayed to find this out, I was shocked to find bloggers celebrating this change and--further insult!--suggesting that MS dispatch the Caps Lock button next! I happen to find both Insert (to overwrite) and Caps Lock PERFECTLY USEFUL! As a teacher, I am frequently titling worksheets with capital letters and renumbering alternate versions of tests with the insert to overwrite function. I didn't take well to having to cursor over type to overwrite it. Well, fortunately on other online sources, I learned that all was not lost despite such calls for anarchy. If like, me you like to use the Insert key to overwrite, here's the fix.

I quickly tapped on the MS Office button, located the discreetly embedded Word Options button at the bottom of the dialog box, clicked Advanced, and then ticked the box for Use Insert key for overtype mode.
All again is right with the world. And don't worry, Caps Lock, I'll come back after you, too, if need be.

The Market Price

An article in The Wall Street Journal reporting on recent speeches given by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan notes a plan that seems as blind to the causes of the financial crisis as irreverent to the effects it would have on education.

Some may doubt the Obama administration's belief in market forces in other areas, but Mr. Duncan clearly believes those forces can work to his benefit in pushing change in education. He is taking $5 billion of that stimulus money and establishing a Race to the Top Fund that will go to states that show they have both a record and a plan to push the kinds of changes the Obama administration seeks.

But only a "limited number" of states will get funding, Mr. Duncan says, and they will have to compete to win grants. "We're going to work hard with states, but they're going to have to work with us on reform," he says. "The federal government has never had $5 billion to fund excellence....This isn't rhetoric. This is billions of dollars that are at stake." (Gerald F. Seib, reporting for WSJ)

Now, I'm no economist, but market forces seemed to play upon the the lowest natures of humankind. I may be an idealist in thinking that education, especially K-12 plays upon some of the noblest aspirations of people. And call me a cynic, but I am appalled at the idea that government will play a game of carrots (after 8 years of a playing a game of sticks) with school's in the U.S. Can we expect that greed and corruption will not overtake education till we have teacher who care less about fostering the growth of a child and more about boosting scores on a test report (for the margin of profit in paycheck)?

Yes, we need standards, but we need less, not more of standardized testing. I've already seen the loss of more than 180 curricular days go to testing by the time a student graduates high school he or she has missed a full year of hands-on participation in learning staring at bubble sheets and inauthentic writing prompts.

Of course, test scores have gone up over the past two decades. We are reluctantly teaching to the test. It's easier to do, when the testing cartels are lobbying their white-papers to politicians who want a simplified message to wave before the electorate. Teachers are busy professionals with little lobbying power compared to big business of test manufacture. As standardized tests and curriculum to prepare students for them become the main, the professionalism of teachers will become as perfunctory as that of clerks.

If I wanted to games of risk, I would have lost my shirt in Wall Street already. Now, with more than 15 years ahead of me in teaching, I wonder if I will loose my mind (and those of my students).

Perpetual Beta: Does It Mean Mediocrity?

It's been quite a while now that I've resigned to the concept of perpetual beta, the idea that technological change is occuring so consitently and with such frequency that resistance if futile or at least frustrating to getting on with teaching and learning.

Though I can't resist rapid change, I wonder if I must resign myself to mediocrity. Working through problems--such as trying to get all of my students on our classroom wireless at one time, or logging on to an essential site for instruction only to find it is blocked by our school's filter or wracking my brain to remember the control "switches" between PC and Mac--and thus taking twice as long to get to the nugget of learning seems counterproductive.

It not limited to lack of competence in using all of the latest tools in the planned course. This month I've noticed systemic breakdowns in websites, rental car stores, retail chains, and don't get me started about my Sprint Instinct mobile phone. Companies and institutions gleefully brag about their twenty-somethings running the technology. Yes, what the geek squad can do is wonderful, but what "the kids" as Apple, calls these uber-underlings, all to often don't have is experience, people-to-people diplomacy, and a "customer is always" right mentality.

So I'm wondering if I am colluding with society that accepts a shoulder shrugged "system's down" excuse for how things are. I have been compelled to accept papers late because of the technical glitches ad nauseam at the nexus of student user and online paper submission system. My "dog ate it" has morphed into a parental note "please excuse this because our computer was not working last night." Hmmmmm. I think I liked the dog excuse better, for the lessons I'm afraid we are teaching our students as we "hang in there" till we're back online.

Image credit: Vingette of "Bulldog." By Pleple2000. June 2007. Wikimedia Commons. 25 Jan. 2009 <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buldog_angielski_000pl.jpg>.

Good New and the Bad News Is . . .

It's the close of the year and the close of the Winter Break. So it was time to pull out my bag and mark papers. I had plenty. But I figured the time-consuming ones, the ones that would really take some thought, were going to be my honors students' research paper outlines. I sighed as I thought about how I had work but I had given all of my students a work-free holiday. Poor me. As I went through my freshman papers, my Brit lit projects, and some other homework sheets from my honors students, the task ahead was looming. Or was it. Turns out I must have left the pile at school and will have to wait for another day. The good and the bad news is I can't grade them today. Enjoy what's left of the holiday. Happy New Year!
Image: remix from a Microsoft graphic.

Booby Traps Are Low Tech

My last post garnered a request to talk about how I booby trap my day with joy. As I mentioned, I took this on the advice of Bob Berner, a prof in the Special Education department at Slippery Rock University who presented on "The Seven Secrets of Effective Teaching" to a group of fledgling teachers sixteen years ago, myself among them.

Dr. Berner told us that he learned the idea from a retiring teacher of fifty years in the classroom. He asked her, "How'd ya do it?" "Booby traps," the vet replied.

I must confess some of mine are by most standards cliche and corny. Some are not. Personally, you go with what works. I suppose it's my low-tech Thoreauvian answer to this high-tech teaching world. Basically the "boobies" are rewards and "get-to's" (as opposed to "have-to's," though I've come to understand that it helps to think of the "have-to's" as "get-to's," too!) And they change over time. They're "traps" only in the sense that you put them in your way, so you can't miss them. Bam! a positive moment, an instant reward, in a sometimes tiring professional day.

Nowadays, I start with my thirty-minute commute: booby trapped with "Awakened Mind" or "Creative Mind" recordings by Jeffrey D. Thompson. Great for waking up and focusing the spirit. And now there's the morning cup of java to be followed up with one in my second period prep. That much usually gets me through to lunch, along with an occasional pep-talk of "have fun, I'm teaching after all."

I remember, during my first few years of teaching, taking my lunch alone in my office--a bookroom actually--and enjoying the view of a mid-sized tree. Watching that tree everyday, through the seasons, for a couple of years, got me through. Yep, it was just being a tree, but in its simplicity and constancy, I had found another booby trap of joy to sustain me.

Of course there's the afternoon of a schoolday, and the multi-multi is multiplying, when a teacher really needs to be booby-trapped. I've got a few items on my desk that serve as triggers of restoration of powers: a glass paperweight with Emerson's "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm," a mini-book Seize the Day! Enjoy the Moment! by Helen Exley (corny, I know), and a photograph of my mother-as-first-year-teacher, standing in the back row far left, and pictured here with her first charges in a one-room schoolhouse.

The paper weight is a quick fix. The mini-book is for a mid-afternoon boost. And the photograph, well, that's a cure-all. As I look at the faces and think of the ones I see in my class, I notice the strident poise and positive expression of my mother and reflect on what is was for her in 1937 to teach grades one-to-eight at once. The faces of the students get to me, too. I guess I have a "Dead Poet Society Moment" and I'm trapped. No way out but in. And up.

P.S. Oh, did I mention the box of chocolate Nips in my bottom-right--hey, I'm not telling where! My custodian likes 'em, too.

This Lane Open for Multi-Multi

As Curriculum Facilitator for the English Language Arts department of 19 faculty, there come times when several colleagues need me as badly as the students. The line begins to form and some in the queue don't have eight items or less and I wish I had a "this lane closed" and could say "tell the next customer I'm closed."

My job is "multi-multi," a term I learned from NYU's Marlene Barron years ago and was reminded of when I heard her speak at the American Montessori Conference in New York last month. To hear Marlene talk itself is multi-multi. She's very postmodern in that way, interweaving references, allusions, contexts, circumlocutions. As best I can follow, it has to do with simultaneity, and doing (and thinking) many different things many different ways all at once. Sort of living a life with ADD as a normative state rather than a maladay. It's they way we--or at least our students--think.

Today I found myself reading an email from an art museum education specialist, while writing an unrelated one, while creating a PO for a field trip, while checking the school newspaper's budget, while directing a student-teacher on logistics for a poet-in-residence program two weeks out, while answering a student's question on Beckett, and researching software that captures video and insert it into a PowerPoint. I really needed that sign. Lane closed.

It's amazing what one can get done in a minute or two that way. It keeps me young, while making me old. Multi-multi.

Can I balance these moments with ones of quiet reflection. As I thought about entering a blog entry tonight, I almost hit "sign out" from Blogger.

My friends and family wonder "who has time to blog?" I shrug it off and wonder myself. But I do believe in the positive return on investment on reflection.

Reading others' blogs inspires my practice; creating my own posts helps me put it all in perspective, and pass on an idea or two.

Likewise, no matter how multi-multi my day becomes I find a minute or two to open a little book on my desk of favorite inspiring quotes and favorite poems. Bob Berner, of Slippery Rock U, quoting a teacher of 50 years in his research, taught me to "booby trap your day with positives." It works. And I can keep my lane open to all comers.