Fixing tenure is not going to fix our schools. Will it help? Yes. To what degree? I’d suggest not a great one. There are at least 3 other things I’d much rather have in my back pocket before busting tenure or giving merit pay. And in no particular order they are…

1. School readiness so that kids enter classrooms with the skills and knowledge they need to be in that room. Grouping kids by age and using social promotion as a vehicle to shuttle kids on through the educational factory that is U.S. schooling whether or not they have learned anything is an abysmal failure. How come no one rips this to shreds in the major media? Kids fail 6th grade and they go to 7th. They fail 7th and they go to 8th. They fail 8th and they come to high school without one element of merit to their being on that campus other than the year in which they were born. Ridiculous.

2. Parent accountability. Do I really need to go on here? I mean how many blog posts have I already written on the need for America’s parents to step up? This is not about race, socio-economic-status, region of the country, urban or rural, black, brown, white, yellow, or green — it’s about the crisis of parental ownership we are seeing day in and day out as it plays out in a destructive typhoon that ruins the lives of our students. Hard for me to get a kid to care about their schooling if their own parent doesn’t dive a damn about it. And giving a damn is measured in actions, not words All parents pay lip service to this idea that they care — but not enough of them are rolling up their shirt sleeves to do the work necessary to create a framework in which their children can be educationally successful. The opportunities are there. I mean I teach in Lynwood, California — spitting distance from Compton — and yet scores of kids ARE taking advantage of the opportunities available through public schooling, going to college and becoming citizens of this country which make me darn proud. And what’s almost always the driving force behind them? Parents.

3. Growth model assessment. Haven’t we yet recognized that bubble sheet tests are so narrow, so off-base, so 20th century in a 21rst century world that to continue to worship at their altar is literally praying to a false God at this point. Sure, they are the most convenient and the most cost effective form of assessment. But if they suck, what’s the point? Is there a teacher in the country that feels the state tests accurately measure either their students’ most real, most authentic abilities or their own professional aptitudes as a classroom instructor working with kids on a day-to-day basis? It’s hogwash built on hogwash perpetuated by folks who are making a financial killing off of the testing industry. For all you conspiracy theorists out there… follow the money.

Hell… I can’t stop at 3 — so here’s a bonus!

4. Resources. Anytime we’re ready to join the 21rst century and actually allow our kids to use this great new invention called a cell phone that’s connected to the internet in order to participate in class, the practical, prudent, pragmatic world is ready. We can provide a kid with hundreds of pounds of textbooks which they absolutely loathe at the start of every year but the idea of giving them one tool that they will actually enjoy and eagerly use and stuffing it full of open source content in all of their subject areas, well… TOO REVOLUTIONARY!! Can you say deja vu? It’s hogwash built on hogwash perpetuated by folks who are making a financial killing off of the textbook industry. For all you conspiracy theorists out there… follow the money.

And if I suffer from a mysterious poisoned blowdart while keynoting my next conference, at least you’ll know from which direction it was fired. LOL!

One thing to really ensure that you nail the standards is to start with them. Don’t start with the methodology (as many educators do), start with the language arts standard, figure out the assessment and then determine how you will teach it. This is how you really lock in and make sure you hit your academic objective dead on.

For example, most teachers start with the methodology (i.e. they are going to teach a book like Dracula) and then they figure out what they are going to teach (i.e. they’ll teach symbolism) and then they figure out how to assess (i.e. I’ll give a quiz or project on symbolism.) As a Professor of Secondary Methodology in the Language Arts at Loyola Marymount University, I had to learn to teach teachers that when you teach kids in this manner, it’s not really the ideal way to make sure that you, as the educator, are drilling the core content standards the way you ought to.

Best to go…
1. Standards
2. Assessment
3. Methodology

This way you will know what you are teaching and you will know how you will measure whether or not you successfully taught it before you determine the materials you will use to do the teaching. (And this is why the standards are not text specific — more on that in a minute.)

Let’s look at it…

1. Decide to teach CA Language Arts Standards 3.7 (10th grade): Recognizing and Understanding the Significance of Symbolism in a text.
2. Have students identify, re-create (through a drawing, clip art, magazine pictures, and so on) and present a symbol from the text via the original creation of an independent poster board project.
3. Read Chapters 1 – 4 in Dracula and utilize this material as the basis for the assignment on symbolism.

Or you can use Twilight. Or you can use Monster. Or you can use Speak, The Outsiders or Freak the Mighty.

This is why the standards are, once again, not text specific. Find a book that engages your students and the standards can be a very valuable tool to make sure that you are focused like a laser on real classroom objectives while teaching high interest literature at the same time.

Oh how I wish someone had taught this to me when I first became a teacher. It’s made my life so much easier — and my classroom practice so much more effective.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, the standards are, for me, like a northern star, my unwavering compass as I try all kinds of crazy, far-reaching stuff to stretch my students’ minds.

Spring Break is here — and goodness am I feeling twisted. (Thus the picture.) But isn’t my mental exhaustion, physical wretchedness, and gross inattention to the mundane elements of life like the dry cleaning, the cable bill, the tax man (D’oh!) and so forth really just a sign of a healthy, productive classroom? I mean, I should be spent, worn-out and needing a break right now. It means I’ve been working my tail off.

And that’s a good thing!

Hard work is, to go all puritanical pilgrim on you for a sec — good for the soul. I don’t want to end this segment of the school year with gas in the tank. I want to end this section of the school year knowing I pushed myself and my students hard. I mean, the fact is, there is simply not enough time to do all the things we aspire/need/hope/want to do in the course of a single school year anyway so with the time I have, I should feel wrecked right now. It may look and feel ugly to an outsider but on the inside I know, it’s a sign of productivity.

Yes, when you burn the candle at both ends, like I do, it catches up to you. But when you play it safe, lay-low, save some reserves and tip-toe to the finish line, you may have saved some wear-n-tear on yourself but sadly, the kids will have gotten much less. That’s an inescapable trade-off. I mean I have 10 days off from Lynwood High School starting tonight. Isn’t the implicit agreement that I’ll get 10 days off for Spring Break because I’ll need 10 days off because I work so damn hard when I am on?

(BTW, yes, I am under contract for some writing due to my publishers but that’s a separate issue — I’m a freak sucking the marrow out of my career while there’s still breath in my bones. It’s a personal choice to make hay while I can because well, ya never know, right? Besides, I have a tendency to be a derelict when I am not being productive, calling big wigs in State Departments buffoons and things like that. Better to be cranking out a few thousand words a day on the Mac for a publisher, right?)

And so, Good Friday is here, thus kicking off a no-alarm stretch of time in a regular ol’ schoolteacher’s life. T.S. Elliot was wrong when he said April is the cruelest month. Not when I am going to wake up and get a chance to tickle my daughter, it’s not.

Happy Passover!
Happy Good Friday!
Happy Easter!
Happy Teacher!!!

I don’t think it’s any great Einstein-ian insight to say that public education is dependent on the community in many, many ways. And when the community surrounding and supporting public education is dysfunctional, flawed, lacking, and so on, it’s really hard to be productive, excellent, amazing and wonderful in our classrooms.

Not that it can’t be done, but it becomes exceptionally challenging.

It’s almost self-evident that the first ally in our aim to excellently educate the students of this country is always the parents. For a kid that comes to first grade knowing how to write their name, read, identify letters, shapes, colors and has been socialized to working in classroom environments by having attended pre-school, teachers and schools can be rightfully expected to well educate that child. However, for the kid who did not have the “at home” pre-instruction to instruction, the kid who can’t write their name, doesn’t read a lick, struggles with elementary numbers and has no b.g. with books nor has been socialized yet to the demands of working well in a classroom environment, our schools are just not set up well to serve that kid — especially when mixed with other kids that are both above and below their individual level.

And then, as these students move up in grade level, the gap in skills and competencies — as all the data shows — grows and grows.

So yes, we need institutional change and yes, “there is something fundamentally flawed with the structure, management and compensation of the labor force in the public education system,” as was mentioned in another post on this ning but school readiness and community support are adding fuel to the fire and lots of us are quite sick of the fact that we’re viewed as if it’s all “our dysfunctional fault” that public education is in the state it is in.

We need better support! No matter how we are organized or re-organized, until we are better supported by the parents and community we are going to be extremely hard-pressed to meet our objectives because this lack of support is very much a weight on our back, an almost insurmountable albatross in many ways. Without real support from outside the school walls and halls, it’s spectacularly difficult to create the kind of wholesale change we’d all like to see. Sure, anomalies and success stories will always disprove any sweeping stereotypes but on the whole, turning around Washington DC, Oakland, Philly, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and so on is going to take the communities of Washington DC, Oakland, Philly, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and so on. Without the parents, without the local business owners, without the support of the alumni and the local governments, schools are going to be hard pressed to achieve the results that we all want to see.

When Barack said “parents” during the campaign, he knew exactly what he was talking about. We need the parents to be more involved, dedicated and committed.

Check out this story about the coming tsunami for education that was splashed today. They literally titled it, “A ‘tsunami’ of Boomer teacher retirements is on the horizon.”

Of course, just because we know about the problem, doesn’t mean we are going to do anything about it. America has turned — much to our discredit — into a nation of reaction instead of proactivity. (I blame George Bush’s short-sighted mentality about proper management of things for much of this right now. To wit, I cite the pouring ga-zillions of dollars into a red-herring chase for drummed-up charges of WMD’s in Iraq instead of recognizing that we had things at home that could have been proactively dealt with before they became a calamity like the housing crisis, banking mess, Wall Street rapaciousness, Louisiana levees, deteriorating schools, the need for green energy, and so on. Anyway…)

Right now, it seems to me that we have to find a way to get our best and brightest to actively choose the profession of education. Currently, the top — and even the middle range of college graduates — are heading into things like business and law, jobs that chase the money (and feed the rat race). I’ve said this before, but when is the last time the Harvard valedictorian stood up and said, “I am going to be a middle school English teacher for the next 35 years.” And meant it.

The crowd would groan conveying the sentiment, “But why? You could be so much more.”

This stigma is very dangerous. People view the profession of teaching as a second rate career. I, for one, will disagree to my last breath but still, how do you change the perception of a culture?

Boomers are retiring. God bless them for their service. But it’s clear that we need an infusion of new educators and I think it’s going to take a national bill — like the GI Bill or something — because American education needs an overhaul. In many ways, we are looking like GM, once the model and envy of the world, now a… well, I’ll let you fill in the blank.

Check out my sweatshirt today. It’s Spirit Day, purple and gold for the Lynwood Knights. How many folks are actually proud to be an American teacher these days? I am, but when I travel the country and speak to others, so many, many of them seem demoralized.

We have to CHANGE THE GAME, FLIP THE SCRIPT, TURN THE PAGE… and avoid cliches as we do so.

I just saw the best 30 minutes of television I have seen in years. A true 100% thumbs up. This show will open your eyes in so many ways to kids, poetry, literacy, multiculturalism, education and, dare I say it, hope for our future.

It’s HBO’s new season of Def Poetry Jam, the tv show by Russell Simmons. And this season, they are covering the work of youth poets. Specifically, they are are tracking the regional finals all across the country as a variety of teams make their claim to be the National Youth Poetry champs of Brave New Voices.

It’s off-the-charts in a way like you almost never, ever see on tee-vee. The first 5 minutes of the season begins with the New York team, a group of ferocious teenage poets who year in and year out bring heat like almost no other city in the nation. (I’ve been lucky enough to see them do their stuff in person a few times. The electricity is freakin’ crazy! If you are in New York, their outfit is run by one of the most cutting edge, sharpest poet/educators in the country right now, Micahel Cirelli, the executive director of Urban Word NYC. Look him up and bring this stuff to your kids — it’s unreal how many lives they are reaching right now under the radar. Well, not anymore.)

A sold out Aplollo theater in Harlem. A sold out San Francisco Opera House. A prime time show on HBO. For those of you who have lost faith in the next generation pull up a chair — these kids are doing stuff that’ll make your hair stand on edge.

I’ll say it again… YOU GOTTA WATCH THIS!!! When they said the revolution will not be televised, they had no idea that Russell Simmons was gonna catch glimpses of it and pipe it out for all of America to see on HBO.

Check it out! It’s available On Demand, it’ll be re-running all week and it’s also right here, right now, one click away.

Get comfy and be blown away.

Wow, SoMIRAC was in the house! (For those of you not in-the-know, SoMIRAC stands for the State of Maryland International Reading Conference — a heck of a satellite for IRA.) Talk about a bunch of revved up reading teachers doing it to it in Hunt Valley, Maryland. From the young authors who read from their work to a line-up that included Smoky Daniels, Janet Allen and Sara Holbrook to the hundreds of great teachers I got to meet and speak with, it’s just such a shame that the media makes America’s teachers out to be good-for-nothin’ unionized lazy-bones who simply want to live off the fat of the tenured land.

That is just so NOT THE CASE!!!

It’d be nice to see more teachers and educators portrayed in a positive light, don’t ya think? If there is one benefit to doing all the things I strive to do, it’s that I get to see up close, firsthand how there are scores and scores of people out there on the front lines working with our nation’s kids that make me feel proud of this profession.

If you love books, literacy, reading and teaching, IRA is the real deal.

Truly, educators ROCK! And SoMIRAC rocked the house.