Findings

My new incentive system has worked well in one class and not so well in the other. I wish that I'd kept some data of the "before" and "after" (because I don't have enough data to deal with already) because this data would actually mean something to me. I do know that at least three kids who got fifty-fives in the first marking period now have averages of 75 to 80 because they have been doing all of their homework and classwork. I have fewer kids coming late; there are only a couple of holdouts. And I haven't had to give out a pen or pencil; that situation was really making me want to tear my hair out from frustration.

I am not a fan of teaching after lunch. Usually, it would take me ten minutes to get the kids quiet, at least. Then they would be so hyped up that it was hard to get anything done. Now, it's like walking into a different room. Most of the kids have books out and are reading and it's actually quiet. I began throwing bonus points at the groups who did this on their own because they took it upon themselves to make sure that they all had books and began to read as soon as the previous teacher left. And the behavior is also significantly better. Usually the noise would be coming from all over the place, making it hard to pin down which kids were actually talking. Now, I have entire groups that are completely silent while other groups are noisy, so those noisy groups don't get their conduct point. It's been interesting to see which kids have thrived and which kids haven't done as well as I'd hoped. Some of the kids are really stepping up, leading, organizing, supporting the others, and that's really gratifying to see, that they are getting something out of this that might actually be useful in the real world.

It's not perfect, but it's made a huge difference. In the other class, where the idea was less-than-successful, the math teacher and I had grouped the kids by ability. There are about six kids who are really strong academically and they are well-behaved, so they were sitting together. There is one group of kids who are seriously behind, and we wanted them together to facilitate differentiation. But when I tried to move to the new system, only the strongest group did well; the others were a mess. I think they'd been better behaved before. The math teacher gave them new seats, which are slightly better. I'm doing the reward (a field trip to see The Tale of Despereaux and lunch) with those kids on an individual basis. This allows me to exclude the girl who made a point to say loudly, "Mr. Science is the only cool teacher." Because she knew that I am now emotionally mortally wounded over not being the cool teacher. Tomorrow during lunch, I am going to hurl myself dramatically off the roof for all to see. If I survive, then next month I am going to make another attempt with that class to implement my system.

Of course, it's not perfect. Interestingly, I noticed that the two groups who so far have the most points are single-gender. One group is all girls and the other group is all boys. There are two mixed-gender groups who have both had multiple meetings with me (at their request) and at the heart of the problem in both was boy-girl conflict. So I'm thinking about doing something I've never done before: grouping by gender. I am going to keep the successful groups intact but make some changes to the others.

Overall, I do feel really good about the results. It's helped me stay more on top of grading, because the kids are very eager to know how many points they got. As soon as I have a prep, I check all the classwork and homework and it's not hanging over my head. And a couple of kids in particular have really amazed me. I think that they really don't want the other members of their groups to be upset with them, and that's motivating them to do for themselves, knowing that they are helping the others.

If only I could stay in my much-improved bubble all the time...

The Year So Far

I was so excited to teach sixth grade this year. My last group of sixth graders was wonderful; granted, they devolved into snotty, entitled, hormone-charged brats by eighth grade, but when they were sixth graders, I loved them. Generally, I like the age group and I developed several units that they found engaging, units I'd tweak, improve and reuse.

So at this point, with about a quarter of the year finished, I’d say that I’m disappointed. While I do have a tendency to look back with rose-colored glasses, I don’t think I’ve ever been this continually frustrated with my students. Overall, their behavior is not good; calls to parents and lunch detention haven’t helped. They don’t listen at all. I have lost track of the number of times that I’ve asked them to do something simple, like take out materials, hang up jackets, go back to their seat. They look at me and continue doing whatever they were doing and I have to ask at least once more.

Of course some of the kids are wonderful, hard-working and well-behaved. But there are more who don’t fit into that category. As for the parents, they seem to fall into two extremes: helpful or not. I’ve been using an online grading program this year, and it’s been a life-saver. There’s a component for parent access, so I was able to get several e-mail addresses so that I can send them grades and behavior logs. I’m more optimistic about those parents, but then there are parents who know that their kids are struggling, either with behavior or work, and they don’t want to get involved.

I need to do something. A few weeks ago my husband mentioned an article in the New York Times sports section about Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s brother, who is a college basketball coach. The article mentioned Robinson’s policy of punishing late players by making the whole team run sprints. He said that they were all punished to remind them that they were accountable to each other.

It got me thinking about accountability, and these kids, and how they’re really not accountable to the system. Their parents aren’t either. Teachers are the only ones who really get the heat when the scores are bad. And that’s a problem for a lot of reasons. Granted, the kids get bad grades, but most of them don’t seem bothered by them. They know they will go to summer school and get passed on to the next grade, especially the kids who are already multiple holdovers.

I thought about making the whole class do lunch detention the next time a few kids were bad. Then a light bulb went off in my head, reminding me of how pissed I get when my school implements things on the fly, and in a half-assed way. So for the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about how I can make these kids accountable to each other.

I think I’ve hammered out a decent plan. It still needs tweaking, and I won’t bore anyone with details, but I have hope. Instead of the whole class, the kids will be in small groups of four or five kids, and they will be accountable to their group for work, behavior and punctuality. They’ll get points for doing what they’re supposed to do. I know that I’ll have to build in some lessons about teamwork and what to do about the kids who absolutely won’t come on board. They will all be working towards a point goal instead of competing against each other. I’m aiming this more at those middle kids, the ones who aren’t doing terribly but aren’t working to their full potential. So far this year I haven’t taken any trips, because the kids just haven’t deserved them, but trips will be the monthly reward.

Once the ELA is over I think I will also enjoy myself more. I’m about to cast everything aside and do nothing but test prep until the test. I don’t feel great about it, and it will bore the shit out of all of us, but I feel backed into a corner. It’s pretty clear that test scores are the only thing that matter. Thank goodness that at least a few of my kids really do have genuine curiosity and a desire to learn. I’m sure as hell not cultivating it. By my standards, I’m not doing the job I want, but if the kids pass the test, at least the Tweedians will be happy with my performance.

Today

I have a student, Jay, who has been a perpetual thorn in my side all year. He’s pretty bright, but makes it a point to not do his work. This in itself is obviously a concern, but his behavior is also a problem. There have been times when the principal and assistant principal have been in the room to talk to the class about something, and he just goes on as if he’s the only one who matters. Their obvious anger with him doesn’t seem to bother him. His mother was also just in on Monday.

On Thursdays I have an eighth period prep, and with the way our school’s extended day is structured, I sometimes don’t have any kids then either (shh…don’t tell Joel and Mikey!) Thus I have a good chunk of uninterrupted time where I can work in the relative peace and quiet of my room, something I don’t get too often. But today, I was so angry with several of them, including Jay, that I didn’t let them go to their last period tech class, which they love. And since detention, or punishment, or whatever the hell it’s called, sometimes turns into a free-for-all, I gave them a “reflective essay” to write. Very New-Age of me, don’t you think? I should buy a Yanni CD to play during writing time.

This is what Jay wrote
The reason why I do not do my work is because I do not have a lot of self esteem and I know I can do my work but I chose not to. Another reason is because I don’t know why I don’t pay attention it is not because I am mentally slow or anything. It’s just some teachers don’t give me enough credit.

Another kid, DJ, wrote:
The things that make me act up in my life is I’m hardly around my father. I live with my mom only 2 days each weekend and I can’t keep still. It’s hard for me to control myself…I don’t know when it’s time to stop playing, I’ve been like this since I was in 2nd grade and I am still like this I just can’t help myself.

Jay and I talked for a few minutes; all the kids who were there talked about what they’d written. It makes me feel bad that so many of them have such difficult situations in their lives that they don’t want to discuss. I never press things but it really does explain a lot. Those kids, who’d made me see red just a few minutes before, had me feeling a lot of empathy for them. Most of us who work in city schools regularly ruminate about the problems these kids have in their lives, which are often brought in to the classroom, but, for me anyway, it’s easy to let that awareness fall to the side. Especially when the word of the day, every day, is “test.” Or, really, “test test test test test test.”

I don’t, for one second, suggest letting them slide when they do wrong, but I think talking with them more regularly in a “risk free environment” (gag) might help. I’ve been all but banging my head against cinderblocks, trying to think of ways to get them to behave. I call parents, lecture them, request conferences, do lunch detention, take away the few-and-far-between fun things that come up, to no avail. Today felt like the first time I made any headway with a couple of them.

Naturally, I was feeling especially good about the progress I made with Jay, which means that he inevitably left the room with the rest of the class and pushed another kid down the stairs. Now I think I see him more as a master manipulator, because he did have me feeling badly for him and guilty that I hadn't tried the kinder, gentler thing earlier in the year. From all smiles to assault in just a matter of minutes.

How to piss off a loyal fan...

I became a fan of Morning Joe on MSNBC back when I was on maternity leave. Since we had today off, and Beany got up before the sun, I was able to see the show. There was a clip with DC Mayor Adrian Fenty talking about school reform, and afterwards all the hosts engaged in a little teacher-union bashing. Inherent in that, of course, is teacher-bashing. Finding myself super-pissed, I devoted some of today to writing this response, neglecting the pile of dirty laundry that probably rivals Sarah Palin's entire RNC-funded haul.

I wish, before you and your co-hosts launched into your diatribe about evil teachers’ unions, that you’d done a little more research, and maybe you could have talked to a real teacher or two. For brevity’s sake, I can only scratch the surface of my experiences and thoughts, but I know that there are many educators who would agree with me.

I am a veteran New York City teacher who has worked in the South Bronx since 1996. While admittedly I only caught a snippet of your interview with DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, I am well versed in the reforms that Chancellor Michelle Rhee is attempting to implement in that city’s schools. The regime of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein has been attempting to make similar reforms, with mixed results (but don’t tell them; they are masters at spinning numbers to make it look like our kids are doing better than they really are.)

The public (and journalists and politicians) love to point fingers at unions, at teachers, to explain the abysmal performance of our schools. Unfortunately, blame and accusations take up time and energy that could be better invested in our kids. The reality is that the blame is on all of us: teachers, administrators, parents, even the students themselves. Unions protect bad teachers; there’s no doubt about that. But in my experience, most of us work very hard every day under challenging conditions. It’s hard, but not impossible, to remove bad teachers. Our teacher’s union has a little-used plan that works with teachers who need to be out of the profession, helping transition them to other careers. Unfortunately, principals rarely follow through on the process, though to be fair, they are overworked too.

Teacher unions are not evil. There have been a few years when I have had 36 and 37 kids in a class; during my first year, I had 40 bilingual students, no materials and no qualifications to teach bilingual kids. The UFT is constantly fighting to lower class size, as smaller classes are proven to be a factor in success. I can’t say I had the kind of success I wanted when my students and I were crammed into the room like sardines, with kids sharing books.

Since Joel Klein became Chancellor, we are constantly judged on test scores, which is unfair. I am an English Language Arts teacher. The test my students will take in January will be given over two days. These two days will inform the media, the parents, the kids, the administrators, if I am doing a good job or not. Ironic, isn’t it, that I’m not the one taking the test? Yet in the past I have had to answer for less-than-stellar scores while kids and parents have not. On any given day, I have about 10% of my students late or absent. I have several children who come to school without pens and pencils. This year I have eight sixth graders who are reading two to three years below grade level. Though I will do the best I can, the reality is that I can’t get them to make years of progress in a few months.

At some point, the parents and the students themselves have to step up. My school of almost 500 students has an average of ten parents at every PTA meeting and half of those attending are the organization’s officers. At our twice-yearly parent conferences, I see fewer than half of my students’ parents. The parents who I really need to see the most are often the least likely to show up.

Teachers in NYC and DC are under attack from politicians who are bent on reform at any cost. Unfortunately, in NYC, Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg chose to implement their reforms against teachers, instead of for children. Children should come first, but teachers are the key to making that happen, and our input was completely cast aside. And when I say input, I don’t mean more time for coffee breaks; I’m referring to input on curriculum and instruction, on assessment, on behavior management. Expectations are high for us to raise scores, but support is nearly non-existent. Many administrators are so intent on keeping their jobs that they resort to threatening and bullying staff and students. Obviously, respect for us is at an all-time low; I don’t even have the right to park my car in front of my school anymore, so some of the time I used to use for planning is now spent driving around, looking for a space.

Since Joel Klein became Chancellor, we have been working a longer day and longer year, something we agreed to in our contract. And while we got more money, most of us don’t consider more money for more time to be a raise.

Every group has its bad apples. There are teachers in classrooms that don’t belong there. However, the constant attacks upon those of us who try to do our best do not serve to motivate us. This is something that Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have not figured out either. And the unions, with their power, seem to have lost sight of their true purpose: to fight for teachers so we can make things better for kids.

A week ago today I voted for Barack Obama with pride and excitement that I have never experienced. I hope that he includes real teachers in these crucial conversations that we need to have. I hope, in the future, that you do the same.

Note to Self: C.Y.A.

I want to do a good job, I really do. But it seems like the universe wants to chip away at my motivation until there is nothing left. The year began with promise, smaller classes with kids who were behaved enough so that I could build on that and move on to the real business of teaching. After three weeks, I got several more students, who are, for lack of a better term, unclassified special needs students. I can work with the kids who are academically behind, but the kids who don’t know how to behave are a different story. I have already talked to and met the parents of the most difficult students, and while a couple of them are showing some improvement, the ones I had the most trouble with have not improved at all.

I have two choices: I can continue to invest time, effort, more discipline, whatever I have, into these kids, into trying to get to know them and understand them in the hopes that I will somehow reach them and motivate them. Or I can put the time into carefully documenting all the bad behavior and the lack of work, making sure to give copies of everything to the principal, the assistant principal, the counselors, the parents.

Now that I am going to be rated on my students’ performance on their standardized tests, I am obviously going to chose the second option. There’s no time for actual interest in the problem kids, no time for actual interest in any of the kids. It has been reduced to a numbers game, one I have to play.

The idea of saying to hell with real teaching and plunging full-time into test prep is very, very tempting. It doesn’t matter if the kids learn; it matters that they are able to take tests.

Joke's on me...

I recently wrote about my relucatance to put in writing any goals related to test scores.

Silly me. I should have known that 'lil Joely and his minions (this means you, Randi) would find a way to get me anyway, along with everyone else who teaches math and ELA to fourth through eighth graders.

The Story

I don’t know what I prefer: the rudeness that characterized last year’s eighth graders or the immaturity that so far describes the sixth graders. I wish there was a “none of the above” option. So much time is devoted to navigating ridiculousness:

“He took my pen!”
“No I didn’t! She took MY pen!”
“She touched my desk!”
“He touched my desk first!”
“He’s looking at me!”
“No I’m not! She’s mad ugly!”

And so on.

This is the sort of thing I have been dealing with since Day 2, and it came to a head on Friday, which was the most difficult day I’ve had all year. That’s an ominous thought after only nineteen or so days of school (I only know this fact because I had to talk to a student about her attendance, and point out that she’d already been absent for half the school year. She didn’t understand why I thought that was a problem.)

My morning was not terrible, though I was surprised at the number of kids who were absent. We were working on the second draft of a writing activity. I’d collected the first drafts from the kids who’d finished, and told the kids who did not finish in class to finish at home. After I returned the drafts, six kids complained that I hadn’t returned their drafts. I panicked, and went through all my other folders, went through my binder, everything. I didn’t find any additional drafts, and I got pretty upset. Organization is still something I struggle with, but I very seldom lose anything, which is a big reason why I have little motivation to change. I function well within my dysfunction.

The combination of my record of not losing things paired with what I already know about the specific kids who claimed that I had their work made me suspicious. So I sat down with those kids, one at a time (because, you know, I had nothing better to do) and made them go through all their stuff. All the kids but one found the drafts that “I” had. And the one whose work I didn’t find claimed that it was collected by another student, who is not one of my collection monitors. I assume he lost his. Do I need to say that I was furious? I’d felt so guilty about the possibility that I’d lost their work and I spent a lot of time going through all the work I had, and I had to spend a lot of time with each of those kids to find the work that they claimed I had. And of course none of them had made a dent in the assignment.

As frustrating as the morning was, the afternoon was much, much worse. I really don’t know why anyone has to teach on Friday afternoons. It’s so hard to accomplish anything. The time could be spent better on team-building activities or technology projects or…anything else. If I didn’t have a husband and child, I would be willing to allow the students to perform practice lobotomies on me. But that would really only get me through one Friday afternoon; the upside is that afterwards I really wouldn’t give a shit anymore, would I?

The class I have on Friday afternoon is my most talkative, and it also got most of the students from the dissolved class. I got tired of trying to talk over them to explain the activity, so I moved all the quiet kids into one corner, got them started, and went around and gave zeroes to the rest of the students. Once I’d issued the zeroes, they started working. Not the best approach, but I didn’t know what else to do. I refuse to raise my voice; I think less is more.

Naturally, a spat broke out between a boy and a girl, and it got physical. There were no punches thrown, but they were tussling back and forth. My AP walked in as it was happening and was obviously not amused. After the class I called both parents, plus the parents of two other students who are doing no work and causing disruptions. There are many more parents that I need to call, but I think I need to deal with just a couple at a time. It’s hard enough to confer with parents since they often show up when they can, as opposed to when we have preps. So I end up with one foot in the hallway and one foot in the classroom, and it’s not effective. Though I do think I need to bring up to administration that something has to be done about the way we meet with parents. The kids get really antsy when no adult is in the room, even when multiple adults are in earshot. As a result I often wonder what goes through the parents’ heads when they see these other kids and I wonder what they think about my ability and effectiveness.

I am not looking forward to tomorrow, not that this tidbit is surprising. I’ve been looking at websites on character education, and I think tomorrow I am going to backtrack and not do my usual lesson. Instead, I am going to see if I can put together an activity that focuses on respect for fellow students, because I think this is a huge part of my problem. The kids have no respect for each other; they have no respect for themselves, so they are not going to respect me or the learning that needs to happen.

The Latest

Yesterday I wrote my “goals” for the year. We were expected to explain in detail what we wanted to accomplish with our students this year, including specifics about scores, and how much we were going to raise them.

I really, really thought about writing something snarky because I don’t think anyone’s going to read it. In June we had to write year-end reflections, and I wrote some pretty scathing things. Well, maybe scathing is an exaggeration, but I’m a reforming wimp, so it took a lot to make some of those comments. Nothing was ever said to me. So I was thinking about writing, “My goal is to make better use of time. This means that I will discard anything that remotely reeks of bullshit, like ‘my goals for the year.’”

So, I decided to be professional. But committing to raising scores in any measureable way is not something I feel comfortable with even though it was strongly suggested that we do just that. There’s no way I was going to write something like “My goal is to raise each student’s ELA scale score by ten percent” or “I will move all the Level 2 students to Level 3 and maintain all Level 3s or move them to Level 4.” In my mind, I DO aspire to these things for my students. But in the current climate I’d have to be an absolute moron to put in writing anything that could be held against me later on. I decided to aim for having all the kids read 25 books by the end of the school year because there is a more tangible result, one that the kids can see month to month. And it’s something feasible for me too.

Actually, I did resort to a teeny, subtle bit of snark. I explained that my goal was feasible because it was one that I could accomplish with the students, but without additional support. My other justification for not committing to anything score-related has to do with the help, or lack of, that I've had in the past. Last year I asked for support on several occasions, and got nothing except criticism about the lack of increase in the scores at the end of the year. Relevant, useful, professional support is really lacking, so I have to plan on really being alone in this. Most of the meetings we have seem to center on materials and what we're doing to assess the kids. Assess up the ass, that's our motto.

Improving the scores is going to get harder tomorrow anyway. It seems that my lovely small classes will no longer be. I should have known that it was too good to be true, even after I cornered my principal to grill him about the possibility of getting more kids. He promised that it wouldn’t happen, and I know if it was up to him this would remain the case. It turns out that he has to add another special needs class, even though we have almost twice as many kids as the other school in the building, a school with more physical space and roughly the same number of teachers. This school is led by a Principal’s Academy person. It defies logic why we have to do this. Each of my classes will get about 5 more kids.

I’m so upset. I’m going to do my best to make these kids feel welcome, but even the smaller classes were a challenge because the kids are so chatty. Lunch detention does not seem to be helping; calling parents doesn’t seem to be helping. At least one of the kids I’m getting back cursed out all the teachers pretty regularly last year. If and when that happens, I decided that I am going to throw the fit of all fits because I just let these things get heaped on top of me. I understand that many of these kids have problems; I’m guilty of making excuses for them too. But I’m a teacher, not a counselor, and it seems like more obstacles keep getting thrown in my way.

California, Here We Come

We had a faculty conference/professional development the other day. The main feature was the California Standards for the Teaching Profession, which we are now expected to incorporate into our teaching practices. Apparently, this is going to be the “next big thing” in New York City. After all, we have a great union, small class sizes, an abundance of materials to engage the students, and supportive administrators and parents. So it makes sense that we seek to further improve our practice by following the lead of a state that elected as governor a quasi-articulate ex-bodybuilder.

I engaged myself with a Sudoku puzzle and tuned out, but when the time came to evaluate the session in writing, I had total recall. I questioned why we were investing time in this when there were so many other needs. For example, and since I am in the mood to beat a dead blog horse, how is it that we have a coach AND a lead teacher, but we have no real curriculum or month-to-month plan?

As of now, nothing was said about what I wrote, and I even put my name on the sheet. I have, for now anyway, quelled my urge to wage verbal destruction in favor of expressing my anger in a professional manner. I resisted the temptation to write a very bad word somewhere on my evaluation because I wonder if anyone’s even going to read it. What bothered me the most was someone's comment that "these are things that you are already doing." So why put the time into it?

Several years ago, as a beginning teacher, I attended a workshop at the UFT office on reading activities and strategies. I left with several hands-on ideas, I’m pretty sure that I started using some of them immediately, and I even use some of them now. And I’m a little sad to say that I think that’s one of a small number of meetings I’ve attended where I’ve left with something I could immediately adapt to the needs of my kids.

During the two “lost years”, when I had the misfortune of being the literacy coach, my main criterion in planning PD was the “hands-on” factor. It was important that the teachers leave with something they could use as soon as possible. My motto was “Theory? What’s that?” (Of course, one person did complain that I was not featuring enough theory in my sessions.)

Of course, I was “encouraged” by the ReBots to present certain things for PD, and being the dutiful little soldier, I complied. So I understand that the coaches and LTs have their marching orders. But I also think that effective coaches and lead teachers have an obligation to the teachers to be aware of what we need. Neither person ever approaches me to ask how things are going in my classroom, or what I’m doing with my students. Neither one ever comes into my room to see how I do it without textbooks, without my beloved overhead, without photocopies. Instead, I am handed vague documents to put in my “assessment binder”, another sore subject worth its own post.

Now that we are an Empowerment School, we don’t have people up our behinds on a regular basis. We used to call them “seagull managers” (a term coined by someone much more clever than I.) because they’d fly in, make a lot of noise, crap on everything, and leave. So there’s no accountability on them- they don’t have to worry about someone walking in and asking them what the teachers are doing.

I would happily trade my clandestine Sudoku sessions for a few meetings where I had the chance to collaborate with my colleagues, to share ideas, to do work that means something.