Living in the neighborhood

I used to be of the opinion that living in the same neighborhood as my students was a dangerous and overwhelmingly negative thing. Talking to people at my old school who lived in the neighborhood of the school, they would tell me it causes some lifestyle changes, and threats. For example, my current principal lives in the neighborhood, and some students have vandalized their home.

In my mind I was never too concerned about students vandalizing my home. The students have never actively disliked me. Students either greatly enjoyed me as a teacher, or were indifferent. The role of a teacher does not lend itself to creating enemies. Annoying a kid sometimes, sure, but never hostility.

For my first few years of teaching I was also enjoying living downtown. Being able to walk down the street to any store of my choosing, sit on the patio of a bar and enjoy a pint or three, or revel with friends late into the evening on the front porch. Privacy was important in those moments, and living in the neighborhood of my school would not project the same image to students that I worked hard to create in the classroom. 

Get off my lawn you damn rapscallions!

This was heavy on my mind when I purchased a dwelling, within the boundaries of the school. Ever since, I have been seeing my students all over the place. And, them seeing me. Every one of those encounters has been positive, or humorous. Whether it be at the grocery, the big-box store, the park, or on the street, the students are really happy to see one of their role models living in their community. A common question is "Mister, you live around here?" "Yes, over there on the other side of_______" (vague pointing).

An added bonus is that it allows me to harass them to finish their homework, ask them a question, follow up on a concern, crack a joke or bond with them, or talk to mom/dad/grandma. In their mind, it also legitimizes my place at their school as a member of their community, and for some, almost a neighbor. It was great to use this with students when they start to misbehave.

"Deon, do I have to pick you up in the morning to make sure you get here on time?"
"No, Mister..."

The classic "I know where you live," but used appropriately and humorously is enjoyed by my students, and their peers. There are two boys in my first period that used to give each other the look of terror, of "Oh no, Mister is going to come to our house, we better get to work" while other students would laugh at them.

Now, I've realized living in the boundaries of my school isn't bad at all. In fact, I greatly enjoy seeing my students, and being seen outside of the school environment. It helps me be a more effective teacher because students want to see you as part of their neighborhood, not as someone coming from outside their world. It really only causes one change in lifestyle.

Keep the beers down low, gentlemen

Test Scores: Beating Expectations

Standardized tests, and all-district exams usually struggle in two important ways, validity and reliability. Meaning, is the test a valid way to assess and measure our students, compared to what they have been (or need to have) been learning. And, Is the test a reliable measure of what the students did learn. For example, if we taught the students how to take multiple choice tests, deduct unlikely answers from probable, and teach exactly the content covered on the exam, yes they would be valid and reliable. However, when the students need intensive shock therapy on writing and reading, no the exams are not valid, nor reliable.

The district exams seem to be unable to make up their minds. Those exams contain a mixture of both multiple choice (memorizing), and short essay. The lines given for the short essays are spaced for a third grader, and are only 5-6 lines long. Not what I would call a short essay. The problem arises when you intently teach students how to write a short essay (10-12 lines) using and citing evidence, and working them away from a culture of lowered expectations and trivial skill usage, to an exam on which they will be judged that expects little of them. The students try to revert back to old and comfortable habits. Students who could write you a proficient short essay in class are suddenly writing 4th grade sentences again.

At my prior district, they at least formatted their district interim assessments in a way that was somewhat challenging. Those focused on skills of interpreting documents, and using them in a short-lengthy essay in addition to your background knowledge. Much like a DBQ. I was in the habit of crushing those with 100% of my students, or near to it, proficient and advanced. At the new district, the results I achieved are below.

My goal for this year was to beat expectations. Those expectations were to be slightly worse than the district average. That was our tradition as a school, and our students are more often unsat or exams. For example, my students started the year on their pre test (BOY) at 57% unsat (fail), and only 4% proficient. District was at 50% unsat, and 7% proficient.

Although I have great disdain for the test, I do take great pride in knowing my students crushed the district on the final exam. Most importantly, my students' growth was far beyond expectations. District average had a 56% growth in terms of moving students out of the unsat category. I had an 82.5% growth rate, in terms of moving students out of the unsat category. I started with more unsatisfactory students, and had drastically higher growth, and ended the year with more proficient students as a percentage of the student body. On top of that, I was the top scoring teacher, beating out my co-worker.

What can we take away form these results, in terms of how we can positively influence our students? I have always focused on skills: reading, writing, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, graphing, and academic language. Using those skills to teach the content gives the students what they need, the ability to be critical thinkers, and read/write proficiently in social studies content. When you get bogged down in teaching content removed from skill, in order to teach to the test, you put on blinders and forget importance. If skills are taught, the test tends to take care of itself. Knowing that it is these results that drive the judgement of my admin, I will continue to teach those skills, and continue to crush the district. We are a turnaround school, and hopefully continued growth from my coworkers and I will help our school survive the many threats now coming at us. More details on that in the future.

ASVAB

You're in a room with 75 freshman, sitting in rows in a lecture hall. It is the afternoon, after the students have had a fresh sugar injection from lunch. There is an above average clowner:serious student ratio. Upon arriving, the students are told they didn't "have to" come today. But, don't tell them you have to try to keep them there because then it counts for the school as a legal contact day. Tell the students we didn't know what to do with them while the Juniors took the ACT, and this was the counselor's uncreative answer this will help them be college and career ready.

Your job, give the students the military ASVAB test, which has no connection to their studies, is riddled with multiple choice questions the students don't know, and broken up into 8 grueling sections, with no break. Try not to show agreement with their complaints at being given a military test. Do not let the students take a bathroom break, get water, use their phones or iPods. The test mimics the stresses of military life. They don't give these in middle class suburban schools, those students get real college prep. Try not to cringe or speak out when the test administrators from the military give directions like an autistic 8 year old, but scream like a drill sergeant in a student's face when they start to act out, you're just an observer.

Work the room, use those relationships, build new ones to keep it all from exploding. Only two hours left. Hey, where's those other teachers that were supposed to be here too? Lesson planning.

But hey, it was worth it. Seven students in the freshman class passed, not.

Teaching on 4/20

There are a few days a year that teachers dread "teaching" on. Among the most hated are Halloween, Valentines Day, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day, and 4/20. Each day provides the opportunity for students to misbehave or ask inappropriate questions with an illegitimate but mistakenly accepted excuse.

Shockingly, many parents and people in the schools accept what happens as normal and to be expected. Especially in an inner city school with no systems set up for discipline or consequence kids get away with what would have gotten me expelled when I was in high school, which was not long ago.

On Halloween students showing up dressed as pimps and prostitutes, gang bangers (real), and various masked villains in obvious flagrant breach of dress code. You should not have students coming in their gang colors pretending it is a costume. Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick's Day brings horrid attendance, and drunk students escorted back to your class by security after vomiting in their last class, and given a sobering meal in the office. Valentines Day can be sweet, but with no consequence, takes over your class.

I am not a fascist enforcer of policy, but I do know that consistent enforcement of basic expectations is necessary to maintain an academic culture in a high school. Also, when teachers are expected to enforce those basic expectations, and are held accountable to the achievement scores, it is criminal to undermine their authority by relaxing rules and allowing an "anything-goes" atmosphere because it would be too difficult to enforce rules on holidays. Support staff exist to support teachers, not teachers to support policies of support staff.

For 4-20, attendance was probably near 65% in the morning, and 50% in the afternoon. I started each class by sarcastically thanking students for understanding how clocks work, that 4:20 is a time that occurs after the school day. My stoned students would giggle wildly, thus giving me the opportunity to speak with them independently later during class, reminding them of expectations. I did mess with a few.

The students that ditched and went to the park were rounded up with bullhorn wielding AmeriCorps volunteers and brought back to class. The leader gleefully told me how great it was they were bringing kids back. I responded with a simple "Oh, so now I have classes full of stoners?" Enforcing rules is tough. Why do it? Teaching is tough, fuck it, movie day.

I know the justice system is not the answer to what occurred yesterday, but there must be standards. If a kid ditches or is stoned, detentions, Saturday schools, no prom, parent meetings, behavior contracts could all be used. It is unfair for me to be held accountable for my results, but cannot control the culture, reading level, or sobriety of my school.

Students in each class asked me what I thought about 4/20. I replied by telling them that it could be a legitimate day of protest over drug policy, but that too many people use it as an excuse to act like an idiot. The 50% of students who were still in class nodded their heads in agreement.

Why did this take 6 months?

Finally! They're ready. My freshmen are ready for 9th grade.

All year I have been working with the students on their writing. I am a firm believer in the power of writing, and the doors it can open for students regardless of what they eventually want to do. In the past, I have had tremendous success all by myself bringing student's scores up, and helping ELL students gain access to writing. Last year my students showed the most growth out of any other teacher.

My work with the students thus far has been very straightforward, but has been agonizingly slow. The students were apt to forget all progress one week after they had learned it.

First, their ability to organize a coherent thought and write it in a non-fiction paragraph using grade and content vocabulary started at about a 6th grade level. The English Department and I worked with the same organizer forcing students to write topic sentences, concrete details, and commentary. After the eighth one, the students only take one period to create an organizer. Still too long, but better than the two hours it took before.  I also have to be blatant with vocabulary, using "Use the following words: smart growth, infill, and spatial inequality"

Next came the sentence stems. Showing students what grade level writing looked like required basic starters, such as:
"For example_______________________"
"This is important because_________________"
"This shows_________ is _____________________"
"The evidence shows______________________"
"As compared to_________________, ____________ is ___________"

And finally, full quote outlines that show students how to introduce, use, and explain a quote from a primary source.

The last and most agonizing step was the annotated reading. The students just wanted to absentmindedly read, absorbing nothing. The annotation forced them to slow down, react to their reading, and then use a graphic organizer for the content, before the writing organizer.

On top of a bunch of other literacy supports and ELL strategies, using reading, writing, verbal, and getting the students to speak using grade level language the students are now ready. Do this for six months, and eventually the students learn how to go through the writing process without the structure and organizers. 

Most teachers would call this far too structured. According to some, students are not demonstrating what they know and can do when given that much support. I would say the opposite, that only with those supports are the students able to show their ability. Yes, it needs to come from them, but if the students can't do that by 9th grade, major intervention is necessary.

Most other Social Studies teachers would never do this because the amount of time devoted to content suffers. I don't care. I've realized some things about teaching hard to serve students. They don't care about content any more than normal students, and they are used to failure. When they can see and feel success at something, it motivates them. At that point the content takes care of itself. Plus, I would love it if my students left as historians, but what is most important is helping to open those doors where they have the ability to choose their destiny, instead of being limited by their abilities. Yes, I do half the work for them to start with, but by the end they are independent and near/at grade level.

I never wanted to teach middle school level English. It is maddening. Half of the battle of motivation and celebrating the small steps we take for granted. The students love it though, and are finally starting to come around. No longer am I just another teacher who keeps failing them. Hopefully the trend continues and the culture in the classroom and school continues to improve. Yeah, I'm barely in the rejuvenation stage, but it feels a lot better than disillusionment.

What's wrong with our schools part III

I havn't written about education for a long time. I've shot off the random bitch, or posted a link, but in terms of education policy, ideas, and battles, I havn't had the heart. After some introspection, I find myself very disillusioned, and the new job overly taxing. I knew what I was getting into, but perhaps I vastly over estimated my zeal, patience, and ability. Drunk on success from last year, I find myself wallowing in the hangover at my new surroundings. It seems as though I'm still attempting to process what the hell just happened and why my job now feels so different.

This oddly accurate and cheesy graph must have been created by some veteran teachers. It does feel like I've started my first year all over again

Between my years as a classroom aide, a quasi-teacher, and at my prior school that went from dysfunctional to moderately operational, and now into a black hole I feel I have seen, experienced, and can pontificate on what makes school's functional, and what makes them dysfunctional. I've been pondering many of the root causes of failing schools and have come up with a list of basics, which if in place, can get a school into mediocrity. I will expound on these in greater detail in the future, but here is the short and sweet.

1. Teacher morale

The number one affect on a teacher's ability to perform their job with zeal and passion, is morale. As with all careers, happy employees equal productive employees. The number one effector of teacher morale is whether a teacher feels successful, and supported by administration, instead of on an island, persecuted or under siege. There is a reason most people leave the profession within 5 years (Teach For America included). We are professionals, respect our judgement.

2. Behavioral consequences

When a student is chronically tardy, habitually disruptive, disrespectful, breaks teacher's noses, or any other behavior within the student's ability to control, there is a clear due process based, non-confrontational consequence. When there is no structure, students exploit, and the teachers end up being put in the role of mentor, and enforcer, two that do not go together. Often, the enforcement is nonexistent and empty due to no support or system.

3. Academic consequences

If a student cannot complete grade level work, do not pressure teachers to pass on students to the next grade level. When teachers are partially evaluated on their fail rate, it sends the wrong message. Some teachers fail students because they expect grade level work, not last minute assignments. Standards based grading does precisely this. When students are graded on their ability to fulfill vague "standards" of education, they no longer have to be productive, except on a test. Other gimmicks like "No Ds" cause grade inflation and contribute to the growing problem of college remediation courses.

4. Community support

Do neighborhood kids go to neighborhood schools? School "choice" is leading to wage based segregation. Schools for poor kids, and those for the lucky. When communities quit disparaging their public education, and instead play a role in it, rising tides float all boats.

5. Administrative support

Career administrators, with strong classroom backgrounds who want to move from teacher to administrator in the same school should be courted, compensated, and rewarded. Recruit the best and brightest. When a district sets up a system of yes men/women, who expect an advancement every two or three years up the ladder, their is no commitment, investment, or relationship with staff, community, or school. Or better yet, eliminate most administrative positions and let the teachers run the show!

6. Parental support and accountability

We are not your babysitter. Give your contact info to the school. Feed them! Ask about their day, even if you work the night shift and just got home. Ask about their homework. Come in and meet their teachers. We often see them more than you, and a completely different side of them that you should be aware of. Oh yeah, when they don't have passing grades, send them to summer school.

7. K-8 preparation

It's hard to point the blame at other teachers, but when whole classes of students arrive that are below grade level, I wonder what the previous teacher did. Don't inflate grades. Make a student pass basic skills tests to move on to the next grade, otherwise districts should provide mandatory summer schools to prevent students from falling behind. That costs more money, but if a student still reads at a 4th grade level by grade 9, something has gone terribly wrong.

8. High expectations

It never ceases to amaze me how low the expectations of rigor, effort, and skill the students are held to. Every year the students seem lower and lower. Systems should be put in place to correctly place teachers in their position of strength on a vertical alignment, so that freshman to senior teachers can communicate clearly, and share lessons and ideas, so that students are ready for each grade.

9. Teacher's contracts are honored

I am yet to work at a school where teacher contracts are honored, and the principal actively seeks counsel from teachers. When districts break our contract it tells us we don't matter, and that decision making will be top down, not with those who actually teach.

10. Monetary support

It took all semester to get the textbooks for my AP class. Enough said.

11. District interventions

This incorporates all that have been said above. Community and administrative support, accountability, summer schools, money, contracts, and ensuring students are prepared when entering a new level of K-12 education. If a student enters college and needs remediation, the school has not done an adequate job.

Although not perfect, this list does allow a school to move from dysfunctional to mediocrity. I plan to address each point in their own post. For the time being, it will allow my "disillusionment" stage to take more focus, and perhaps, some "rejuvenation."

AP and cultural bias

Around this time last year I wrote an entry detailing my dilemma about teaching half-truths, and having to give up the real value in history for basic content. Now, in a new school, and teaching AP(advanced placement) courses to students who are in no way prepared, I find myself hitting a similar wall. My new dilemma reminds me of my old district's attempt to get us to teach about jingoistic militarism from the Medal of Honor curriculum, which I also wrote about.

This time, I found myself in an AP Saturday institute, learning the ins and outs of the curriculum to be taught. It became very clear to me that the expectation was a watered down, worthless and uninspiring curriculum. It was rote memorization, learning test taking skills for the one AP test, and reactionary bias. I found myself sitting amongst a bunch of other well intentioned white teachers, discussing the validity of Andrew Jackson and his love of "democracy".

In reality, what all students need, and especially mine, is a history curriculum that promotes activism, assertiveness, and social awareness. I know for a fact, that the curriculum last year, which was heavy in social history and activism, gave my students the confidence to protest my principal, stand up to power, and catapult them into a life of social activism. That is what all social studies teachers strive for. With AP, the opposite seems to happen. The chart above should be alarming. The problem with AP is that it is supported, created, and perpetuated by those who go through the program. The curriculum, though unintentional, become self-serving.

For example, the suggested curriculum being pandered by the College Board requires US History to be covered from "Pre-Columbian Societies" for one week, to Jacksonian Democracy and "The Early Republic" for two weeks, and all the way to "The United States in the Post-Cold War World" for two weeks. Realistically, you cannot cover the depth of US History in such sweeping breadth. The curriculum is sanitized by its immense scope.

The curriculum is further sanitized by those who create and perpetuate the test questions and course syllabus'. An attached model syllabus from AP includes:

Jacksonian America (2 weeks)

In order to understand the development of evolution of democratic institutions in
the United States, the student will be able to:
A. Characterize the rise to political prominence of Andrew Jackson
B. Evaluate Jackson's domestic and foreign policies
C. Analyze the issues involved in the elections of 1836 and 1840
D. Explain the causes and results of reform movements in the United States during the early to mid-nineteenth century

While on the other hand:

Manifest Destiny and Sectionalism (1 week) (emphasis mine)
To recognize the importance of westward expansion and the looming issue of slavery in the United States, the student will be able to
A. Identify the causes and results of American settlers' moving west
B. Discuss the causes and results of the Mexican-American War
C. Analyze the issues involving slavery and potential disunion during the late 1840s and through the decade of the 1850s

As in life, all decisions come with an opportunity cost. When you choose one action, another possible scenario is never realized. To teach about Jackson, but neglect the trail of tears. To spend double the amount of time on the facade of emerging democracy (read: now includes white dudes without property) than on the most undemocratic institutions in our history, imperialism and slavery, where one in ten Americans was owned by another American is not only negligent, but is downright white-washing (pun intended). Is the data to the left at all surprising?

Students in AP not only have to deal with a fast paced, uninspiring curriculum, but at the end of the year the cultural bias of the curriculum is transferred into the test. The test has 80 multiple choice questions. For example:

Alexander Hamilton's economic program was designed primarily to
A. prepare the United States for war in the event Britain failed to vacate its posts in the Northwest
B. provide a platform for the fledgling Federalist Party's 1792 campaign
C. establish the financial stability and credit of the new government
D. ensure northern dominance over the southern states in order to abolish slavery
E. win broad political support for his own candidacy for the presidency in 1792.

I made bold all of the words and phrases that my students would not understand. Not only is the curriculum rather irrelevant in the lives of everyday Americans then, as now, but the nature of the question favors the business and economic minded well read students with high vocabulary. Guess where they go to school? The test is designed for students with privilege to get a discounted college education, while the opportunity cost for poorer students is high.

Last year, my students were unable to think independently or critically. By the end of the year they were the highest scorers on district tests and politically active. This year, I have this to start with this.

The AP test does this student no favors. Although unintentional, the AP test is culturally biased and does nothing to help out students who have not had the privilege of a stable home, middle class income, and other opportunities people like myself have been fortunate to have. To change this, we need to stop pandering poor curriculum choices for our students.

I am under pressure to make sure that the student who's work you see above gets a passing score in the AP test. It won't happen. When you read at a 6th grade reading level, write at a 5th grade level, and when the entire test is set up for a 12th+ level with culturally irrelevant information, how on earth can I lie to that student and say that they can do it. I'm a decent teacher, but I'm no messiah.

It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive movements of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.
-Howard Zinn

That is what inspired my students last year. It inspires all students. Why destroy that? I am struggling again this year. How can I inspire and teach such a culturally repressive history?

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

-Howard Zinn

That is what I need to teach, but I don't know if I can keep my job and do my job at the same time.