This was my first year having new kids after three years of looping with the same graduating class through their high school careers. While I truly enjoyed and appreciate the experience, and I think that I benefited from it more than my students did, I am starting to realize that I may have become somewhat complacent. I dearly love all of my folks from the class of 2010, but I did take some things for granted. For one, they get my sense of humor, my quirks, my personality. How could they not after having spent 86 minutes a day in my classroom for 540 days.
So, the first week with new kids has passed, and with it I have gained a lot of perspective and opportunities for self-reflection. I always spend the first week working on character building, self-discovery, understanding of expectations, and hopefully some full-on confidence boosting. I try to inspire them to want to come to class, which is a feat of epic proportions when working with 18 year old seniors at 7:15 in the morning. We did district policy changes, team and class expectations on Monday, then followed by a crash course in Goal 3 standards and 21st century learning standards and objectives Tuesday. We then wrapped it up with some learning profiles- multiple intelligences, personality profiles, learning style inventories, on Wednesday and Thursday. Finally, something new in my repertoire, an entire day of team building on Friday. I was pleased with the results. Kids left Friday with many wishes for a nice weekend, smiling, eyes shining. What more could I ask for?
Now, to plan for a full week of instruction, differentiate, and figure out how to wrangle a few wayward grasshoppers who insist on testing my limits even before the honeymoon period wears off. The three groups of kids I have are very small, which is a nice change of pace, even though it won't last long. Small classes during the fall term equals enormous classes during the spring term since all 124 seniors must take my class. Even though I have very few students who will take AP Lit, I have an entire class of 9 kids who will do it together, and they are excited. They are also the group who were unable to detangle their human pretzel on Friday. These three groups are also very diverse in and of themselves. I have several second-language learners in my early morning class. Morning classes for me tend to be kids with lower test scores, but all the same, the goal is to get all of them the confidence they need to get where they want to be, and rid them of the fears and idiosyncrasies they have about standardized testing so they can be successful despite these arbitrary, numbered labels placed on them. I really hate the look of defeat that comes across their faces when I say the word "test"- but be that as it may, it is the stick with which the state beats us, and we need to suit up and play ball just like everyone else.
Differentiation will take on a whole new role for me this term. Due to the profound differences in educational experiences of my different classes, the English Honors class I teach during 1st hour and the one I teach during 3rd hour will be vastly different. As such, my 1st hour AP Lit students will experience a more self-paced and self-led course than that 4th hour class which will be 100% AP Lit students. And of course, each student in each of these classes is coming in with individual needs, strengths, weaknesses, and dreams, so I will have to provide them with opportunities for more individualized instruction and opportunities for learning. Ugh! There is so much I want to do with them, and SO LITTLE TIME! Such is the life of an educator. Now, my Everest will be to fit ACT prep, bi-weekly fluency practice, vocabulary, grammar and writing, and a peek into the world of British Literature, blogging, podcasting, project-based learning, background knowledge building, and digital literacy into a mere 7,740 minutes.
I ended class with this on Friday:
Me: "I'd like to extend my thanks to each of you for a great, productive week and congratulations on completing your first week as seniors! Just remember to enjoy every second, there are only 35 weeks to go until graduation."
Student: "O-M-G, there are 35 weeks left of school!"
Me: "Yes, can you believe it?"
Student: "That's a lot, Miss."
Oh, grasshopper, the time will fly and you will be crossing the stage in the blink of an eye.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Today is Palindrom Day!
01022010
A numeric palindrome. Has nothing to do with this blog entry, but just the same, I would be remiss to not mention it.
I just read an opinion piece in the WaPo- "The keys to a successful education system," by Kevin Huffman, the executive vice president for public affairs at Teach for America. It's got me all fired up. And, like many of the pointed arguments made in this piece, what has me fired up goes way beyond what is evident on the surface.
Mr. Huffman makes some excellent points, and he backs himself up with data from published studies and research. For instance, he points out the need for schools to more aggressively recruit the best people for every position, and to make the job of an educator more attractive with higher pay and incentives for performance. As a career changer who comes from a business background, I am all for the incentive pay, but adamantly against paying for the performance of students on standardized tests. We most certainly need to hold administrators more accountable, as well as teacher prep programs, and furthermore, we need to look at and improve the role of people, policies and parents. May I add, another necessary change would be a requirement that all people working in public policy on education reform have current, relevant experience working in a classroom. They need to be educators first, and politicians, economists, public affairs specialists last.
Allow me to elaborate. I used to believe that standardized tests are a necessary evil of the education world. As I have followed the same class of kids throughout their high school careers to their impending graduation in June, my view on that has changed. They are necessary, and they are reality. It's a reality we all deal with on a daily basis. There absolutely needs to be a point of measurement of student performance and ability. No question there. What I question is what is tested, and how we are testing. As the needs of the workplace change, as technology grows and the need for kids to be collaborative, flexible, critically thinking beings increases, we are testing kids out of context with the realities they face. We know that relevance is an important ingredient in engaging students, so why test them and completely ignore the need for relevant context? Still, this is not something that will change overnight, there is no quick fix, and preparing students for every reality is our job.
What grabbed my attention in this piece was that it opened with an anecdote about the formation of IDEA College Prep High School. IDEA principal, Jeremy Beard points out that their success is not about resources, but about them maximizing on the potential of what they can control. He says they create culture, they let kids feel like they are an integral part of something greater than themselves. Smiles. Warm, happy thoughts. But upon reading further, the points about the need for further data, for replacing the bottom 6-10% of teachers, well, that got me going. The truth is, performance is not always measurable by a multiple choice test, and people, namely kids, should never feel that the measure of their worth is based on a test score.
What I find difficult to grasp here is how this information, all relevant, all valid, is shared. Those of us in classrooms, running school buildings, we see people. Those who sit in offices and make decisions, they see numbers. There needs to be balance. And when the senator, or the parent, or the 19 year old college sophomore reads this, they see an expert laying out a plan that is richly backed by research and statistics. They take that information out of context, and they go out and make decisions that affect our educational system. This type of misinformation, of reading on the surface, is what upsets the balance. But, clearly, the woes of the ed policy world cannot be summed up in an 800 word OpEd piece, and the need for discourse and transparency is abundant, so I don't know what the solution is.
While I find this piece to be somewhat contradictory, even borderline hypocritical at times, I applaud the effort made, the points raised, and Mr. Huffman's undeniable expertise and experience. More importantly, I applaud any effort to raise awareness and start a dialogue. But let me say, in my infinite wisdom and limited experience, that we don't need MORE data, we need to use what we have and change how we look at it. We need to return to the drawing board and re-assess our objectives, rather than trying to put band aids on a broken system. We need to balance how we train kids for tangible, academic performance with the needs of the person who sits in front of us. That is what it's about. It's about rigor, relevance, and relationships. Education is not about the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
A numeric palindrome. Has nothing to do with this blog entry, but just the same, I would be remiss to not mention it.
I just read an opinion piece in the WaPo- "The keys to a successful education system," by Kevin Huffman, the executive vice president for public affairs at Teach for America. It's got me all fired up. And, like many of the pointed arguments made in this piece, what has me fired up goes way beyond what is evident on the surface.
Mr. Huffman makes some excellent points, and he backs himself up with data from published studies and research. For instance, he points out the need for schools to more aggressively recruit the best people for every position, and to make the job of an educator more attractive with higher pay and incentives for performance. As a career changer who comes from a business background, I am all for the incentive pay, but adamantly against paying for the performance of students on standardized tests. We most certainly need to hold administrators more accountable, as well as teacher prep programs, and furthermore, we need to look at and improve the role of people, policies and parents. May I add, another necessary change would be a requirement that all people working in public policy on education reform have current, relevant experience working in a classroom. They need to be educators first, and politicians, economists, public affairs specialists last.
Allow me to elaborate. I used to believe that standardized tests are a necessary evil of the education world. As I have followed the same class of kids throughout their high school careers to their impending graduation in June, my view on that has changed. They are necessary, and they are reality. It's a reality we all deal with on a daily basis. There absolutely needs to be a point of measurement of student performance and ability. No question there. What I question is what is tested, and how we are testing. As the needs of the workplace change, as technology grows and the need for kids to be collaborative, flexible, critically thinking beings increases, we are testing kids out of context with the realities they face. We know that relevance is an important ingredient in engaging students, so why test them and completely ignore the need for relevant context? Still, this is not something that will change overnight, there is no quick fix, and preparing students for every reality is our job.
What grabbed my attention in this piece was that it opened with an anecdote about the formation of IDEA College Prep High School. IDEA principal, Jeremy Beard points out that their success is not about resources, but about them maximizing on the potential of what they can control. He says they create culture, they let kids feel like they are an integral part of something greater than themselves. Smiles. Warm, happy thoughts. But upon reading further, the points about the need for further data, for replacing the bottom 6-10% of teachers, well, that got me going. The truth is, performance is not always measurable by a multiple choice test, and people, namely kids, should never feel that the measure of their worth is based on a test score.
What I find difficult to grasp here is how this information, all relevant, all valid, is shared. Those of us in classrooms, running school buildings, we see people. Those who sit in offices and make decisions, they see numbers. There needs to be balance. And when the senator, or the parent, or the 19 year old college sophomore reads this, they see an expert laying out a plan that is richly backed by research and statistics. They take that information out of context, and they go out and make decisions that affect our educational system. This type of misinformation, of reading on the surface, is what upsets the balance. But, clearly, the woes of the ed policy world cannot be summed up in an 800 word OpEd piece, and the need for discourse and transparency is abundant, so I don't know what the solution is.
While I find this piece to be somewhat contradictory, even borderline hypocritical at times, I applaud the effort made, the points raised, and Mr. Huffman's undeniable expertise and experience. More importantly, I applaud any effort to raise awareness and start a dialogue. But let me say, in my infinite wisdom and limited experience, that we don't need MORE data, we need to use what we have and change how we look at it. We need to return to the drawing board and re-assess our objectives, rather than trying to put band aids on a broken system. We need to balance how we train kids for tangible, academic performance with the needs of the person who sits in front of us. That is what it's about. It's about rigor, relevance, and relationships. Education is not about the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Random Musings
This year, the newspaper staff began publishing a serial column entitled "Random Musings." I always keep a running list in my drawer of random musings, mostly heard from kids, and some taken out of context, but that's how I heard them and also why they were funny.
Here is the list I recently published on my facebook to celebrate the end of the school year.
On the eve of the day that herd of yellow, diesel burning buses carry our little darlings away for the summer, I thought I'd share with you a list I've kept throughout the year. This is a list of things I never thought I'd hear in my classroom. Sometimes these are headscratchers, and other times, they happen at the darndest moments and provide a well-deserved laughable moment. Feel free to add your own!
"Miss G, you have a yummy floor."
"Happy Purple" (one of my faves, and a fave of the PX staff)
"Why would I bring a pencil, I like pens." (Do you have a pen?) "NO!"
"What's a verb again?"
"You verbed my pronoun, you rat bastard!"
"SQWAAAK! Shhh... you're scaring my pterodactyl."
"Why would anyone give me an award, I've done less this year than in my entire academic career combined!" (But, I think it's all relative to what the award giver sees.) "What's that got to do with the price of butter......mmmm... buttttaaaahhh..."
"I hate my parents. They are making me get my driver's license."
"Miss, do you have pretzels?" (No.) "I know you have pretzels, where are you hiding them, I can smell them."
"Miss, a bug just flew into the window. I think it's still moving"
"Who needs pants?"
"Are we doing anything in here today?"
"There's a toilet in the bathroom."
"Outline, what's an outline?"
"Weren't there any Mexican Puritans?"
"The Cold War? Was that like in the Ice Age?" (followed by...) "Ice Age, you mean like the movie?"
"Miss, was Yoda an ewok, or was he like half and half?"
Here is the list I recently published on my facebook to celebrate the end of the school year.
On the eve of the day that herd of yellow, diesel burning buses carry our little darlings away for the summer, I thought I'd share with you a list I've kept throughout the year. This is a list of things I never thought I'd hear in my classroom. Sometimes these are headscratchers, and other times, they happen at the darndest moments and provide a well-deserved laughable moment. Feel free to add your own!
"Miss G, you have a yummy floor."
"Happy Purple" (one of my faves, and a fave of the PX staff)
"Why would I bring a pencil, I like pens." (Do you have a pen?) "NO!"
"What's a verb again?"
"You verbed my pronoun, you rat bastard!"
"SQWAAAK! Shhh... you're scaring my pterodactyl."
"Why would anyone give me an award, I've done less this year than in my entire academic career combined!" (But, I think it's all relative to what the award giver sees.) "What's that got to do with the price of butter......mmmm... buttttaaaahhh..."
"I hate my parents. They are making me get my driver's license."
"Miss, do you have pretzels?" (No.) "I know you have pretzels, where are you hiding them, I can smell them."
"Miss, a bug just flew into the window. I think it's still moving"
"Who needs pants?"
"Are we doing anything in here today?"
"There's a toilet in the bathroom."
"Outline, what's an outline?"
"Weren't there any Mexican Puritans?"
"The Cold War? Was that like in the Ice Age?" (followed by...) "Ice Age, you mean like the movie?"
"Miss, was Yoda an ewok, or was he like half and half?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)