There are many parts to the educational equation and if any of them are out of balance or not functioning well, all the balls that are in our academic air risk tumbling. Here’s a Top Ten List of What We Need in order to be effective as an American institution.

We need good teachers.
Simply put, it’s absolutely beyond refute that America needs high quality teachers leading our classrooms. The data proves it, the kids know it and only someone who is trying to sell you something would try to diminish the importance of an awesome educator at the front of the room.

We need students who are open and hungry to learn.
Give me a kid who is eager to learn and I can teach them how to punctuate an appositive phrase. Give me a kid who ditches class, shows up unprepared (or on drugs or seething with anger from emotional issues in other areas of their life which are eating their soul) and I am going to struggle to get that kid to do squat, just like most every other teacher there is. You can lead a student to water, but you can’t make them think.

We need parents to be involved.
Parent involvement can take a vareity of forms. Providing a quiet space for homework, storming to Board Meetings to advocate for the students, reading to toddlers so that they come to school with a few fundamental literacy schools, showing up to Back to School Night, and so on. But parents who cede the education of their children to public education with a “now go teach my kid” mentality are leaving a void no one in a child’s life other than a parent can really fill. To our credit, schools will try… but we often will not be very successful.

We need administration to properly support us.
I know a heck of a lot of administrators and the truth is, they are being kicked and worked over and abused about as badly as anyone in the world of our schools. While teachers get cut slack in some corners of the world (i.e. he’s a great math teacher, she really is a wizard at getting those kids to learn science) administrators are so often the punching bag of almost everyone. That being said, they need to support us, empower us and take a step back and let us do our jobs as if we really were professionals. Micro-managing and hyper-legislating a classroom from an ivory tower (or cubicle without a window) simply doesn’t work. The best administrators I know view teachers as an ally. The worst view us as the problem, an enemy, an unruly gaggle of tenured miscreants that need to be tamed.

We need kids to be in possession of certain skill sets before they come to our classrooms.
Is it just me, or should kids not be expected to know their multiplication tables before they show up to an Algebra 1 class? Or how about knowing how to indent a paragraph before, say, high school English class? Social promotion is a policy which is failing our nation. We need gatekeeping and we need checkpoints and if kids do not have a certain set of skills in 4rth grade and then 8th grade, they should not be granted access to 9th grade because chances are too low that those who are deficient in both 4rth and 8th will ever graduate and we are trying to do too much recovery work in high school when the opportunity to be more effective avails itself to us much earlier on in the process of public schooling.

We need the community to support our schools.
When is the last time our business leaders actually came into the local schools and said, “How can I help?” I mean, they are the folks who are going to need the talent a few years out we are currently nurturing. Internships, mentorships, and so on. It’s not money we’re asking for — though that’d be nice as well — but the currency of their intellect is valuable and sharing it with the local kids would go a heck of a long way.

We need the politicians to make intelligent policy.
Do I need to even address this point? I mean we see how the policies of Dubya have taken schooling into a dark and dreary place. Politicians matter — and it’s really tough to admit that since they are so problematic in so many ways to try and support.

We need great teaching materials.
Handing out 5 pound books six times over to kids during the first week of school (and then measuring their intellectual growth through inane bubble tests) is the foremost means by which we “educate” many of today’s kids. Throw both of those two things away and then let’s see how far we go, that’s what I say. But whether you believe that last statement or not, it’s simply a sad fact of life these days that most teachers are being provided with low quality materials. Great chefs use great cookware. Teachers are, by and large, being given crappy tools. We need to reinvent our teaching materials because many of them are simply not effective. (And isn’t that the ultimate barometer of a tool?)

We need reasonably sized classes.
Ever try teaching at 41 to 1? There’s not a person in the world who can sell me the argument that class size does not matter. 20 to 1 versus 40 to 1 is an immense difference and if you extrapolate it out over the course of either an educator’s career or a student’s trip through our school system, there is little doubt that the numbers will not add up to favor the student/teacher who gets to operate in a world of smaller classrooms. Not that all these layoffs are really going to matter or anything, though.

We need safety on campus.
Without discipline, without order, without a sense that school can be a place where students are not fearful of their own physical and emotional safety, we are fools to think any real between the ears strides are going to be made in our classrooms. Kids who are worried about being jumped in the halls don’t concentrate in class. This is probably the greatest difference between so called high achieving schools and low ones: the levels of violence on campus. Without safety, kids will not academically perform at a consistently high level and we are lying to ourselves if we believe that our lowest performing schools are not also our most violent houses of learning. Without discipline on campus a school can’t function. Without discipline in a classroom an educator can’t really teach. Schools need to feel like places where the adults are in charge — not the kids.

Well, that’s 10. I have a feeling I could find a few more. (Love to hear other thoughts.)

Oh, BTW, this is not in any kind of order.

Do Students Even Want to be Tested? I’d say the answer is an unequivocal YES.

That is, if the assessment is an evaluation of something they want to have done.

When we do project-based learning in my class, when we make enhanced podcasts, 30 second pieces of propaganda (in the form of commercials) and the such, my students absolutely LOVE assessment day. They have worked hard, they have been thoroughly engaged, they have been self-determining to a large extent and they have blended fun, rigor and creativity in a way has provided them a form of self-expression which is honest and meaningful and beneficial to their future (because they have attained and expanded “skills” along the way).

My kids are proud of their work and they are eager to show it. As one of my great teacher friends says, “No kid ever wants to see C work up on the big screen.” So they work for A’s, they give A effort and overwhelmingly, they reach their goals.

Tests of their project-based learning acumen are a chance to be celebrated and feel a wonderful sense of heightened academic and personal self-esteem — which, btw, has come from “standards-based schoolwork”.

Now think of the state tests. Do any of the aforemementioned elements apply? I mean even our nation’s best students pretty much loathe the month of May when we shut down most meaningfulness in the classroom and hammer them with bubble test after bubble test after bubble test for 3, 4 or even 5 days in a row. (Only to tell them the feedback on their performance won’t be available for many, many months.)

The entire connotation of the word test carries so much negative baggage in this day and age it’s absolutely bonkers. Students, when they do great work, hard work, meaningful work want an audience. Even the most shy kids want to be validated, acknowledged and recognized. It’s “da bomb” for them.

And to not understand this about students is to not understand students at all. Kids are eager, willing and ready to perform.

For years and years we have had an immense tardy problem on campus. Literally, the bell to start 1rst period would go BOING at 7:30 but if you stood at the front gate of school you would see hundreds — I mean HUNDREDS of students, not 10 or 20… like 300-400 — just kinda lazily sauntering in. Even at 7:38, you’d still see the same thing.

So me, I would go Draconian on my students. While the rest of the high school did whatever they did, a tardy to my class got you 1 warning and then meant 6 hours of Saturday school and 25 demerits. And if you were tardy twice within 2 weeks, I tripled the fine, 18 hours worth of Saturday School and 75 demerits. 3 seconds, 3 minutes or 30 minutes, all the same to me. Tardy is tardy.

Like I said, Draconian.

But it worked. While the rest of Lynwood High had kids who just sort of loafed without any sense of urgency to get to their classrooms, kids in my classes would literally run.

The fact is, you just can’t run a great operation if people think they can show up whenever they want. We start at the bell. And if I don’t enforce the rules, it makes folks who do show up on time look like suckers for having done so because there are no consequences.

Another reason I go so psycho on tardies is because it sets the tone for classroom management in regards to everything else I do. If they think I am a freak about being 18 seconds late to class, God only knows how bonkers he’s gonna go if we do things like tag up the walls in the room and nonsense like that, they think.

It’s the broken window theory as applied to behavior. And the truth is, it’s worked remarkably well. (NOTE: If you are not familiar with the broken window theory, read that link — it’s GREAT!)

Well, this year we have a new principal and he came to me asking about how to improve behavior during lunchtime and I told him, the problems didn’t start at lunch — they started first thing in the morning. I mean the message we are sending kids from the moment school starts is that, “Look, Lynwood High has rules but we don’t really enforce them too enthusiastically. So when it comes to behavior on campus, you get a lot of leeway. You can kinda do what you want.”

To wit, I said, look at all the tardies in the morning. Then I explained to him the broken window theory.

3 days later we started The Purple Crush. At the first bell — and each and every other tardy bell during the day — we do a huge sweep and all the kids that get caught up in it have to sit out on the bleachers for 119 minutes. (We are on block schedule.) No talking. No eating. No nothing. Just bleacher detention.

And let me tell you, it looks miserable.

The first 2 days we had scores of kids sitting in the bleachers moaning and hating life. Now, there’s but a handful. Kids stride purposefully towards class at 7:55. Teachers LOVE it! It’s changed the school. And what happens? Kids sent txt messages to the media and they do a story on The Crackdown. Check it out — IMHO, they kinda paint us as a bunch of unfair, tyrannical beasts that need to be reigned in like we are at the edge of violating The Bill of Rights.

Kids are going to class, the Purple Crush has improved our campus greatly and ABC News takes us to task. Geesh, can you ever win?

I am hopeful. I am fearful. I am exhilarated. I am mortified. Why? Because the first in what is sure to be a long line of heavy salvos is being fired at the textbook industry with Amazon’s new Kindle, designed especially to take on the status quo in the textbook market.

I am hopeful because the entire textbook industry needs to change. Simply put, it’s outdated, outmoded, and terrifically expensive to the point of being sheer lunatic.

I am fearful because I know there is going to be years of iniquity which will befall America while some classrooms smoothly make a transition to the digital delivery of educational content while other schools operate like the modern day classrooms which still use cassette players in class. (Don’t laugh. A heck of a lot of schools still use cassette players for instruction. Forget CD’s — which are already a outdated medium of content delivery — they are using CASSETTES!)

I am exhilarated because open source can’t be too far behind meaning that the stranglehold these behemoth corporations have on our classrooms is going to crack. The vice grip such a small group of folks have had over hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students in terms of curriculum is sheer foolishness and if they are looking for someone to help shovel dirt on this grave so it can be buried faster, I — as well as a heck of a lot of other teachers I know — would be glad to lend a hand. Textbooks, in their current incarnation, are pretty weak and all the best teachers I know use them as supplements at best — and never (like me) at worst.

And I am mortified. MORTIFIED!!

Why? Because when I read quotes like the one below by a guy named Bruce Hildebrand, the executive director for higher education for the Association of American Publishers, which represents several big textbook companies, I am shocked by the airs he puts on.

He said, and I quote, “… publishers are “absolutely agnostic” about how their content is delivered, so if costs like printing and shipping were removed, the companies could charge less.”

Bull pies!! As my friends in Kentucky might say, that dog just don’t hunt.

Agnostic? I mean come on folks. The textbooks have been drinking at the public trough of education funding for decades. They are multi-multi-multi-million dollar businesses. And how’d they get to be that way? By holding an iron grip on the market. If a teacher wants chapter 3, 4, and 8 she has to buy chapters 1,2,5,6 and 7 and there are literally less than 10 options whereby they can turn to shop. (We all know that’s it’s pretty much down to 3 big textbook publishers right now but I’ll grant them a wee bit of latitude and avoid going down the road of hurling accusations of collusion at them — they have enough problems.)

Well, not anymore bay-bee!!! If I only want the content of chapters 3, 4 and 8 then that’s all I am going to have to buy. And the amount of people offering high quality material on how to effectively and intelligently teach Chapters 3, 4 and 8 is going to balloon immensely. I mean why should I only turn to you, Mr. Textbook Publisher?

Because you have been so good to us throughout the years? Because when times were financially tough you went easy on our purse strings? I am not so sure how much goodwill you have built up over the decades.

Don’t believe me that’ll I turn somewhere else or demand customization of my eduational items either? Maybe you ought to check out a small little phenomenon called iTunes which has taken me from having to buy every song on an entire album to now being able to buy only the specific tunes I want. (To wit, I cite the Bee Gees. I don’t want songs like Tragedy, I want tunes like Jive Talkin’ You Should be Dancing, and, of course, Staying Alive for those teacher lesson plans I create in my underwear every now and then while blow drying my hair to keep it real.)

And maybe I can finally stop having to pay for material that’s already in public domain, too. Really, how many times have the ninth grade English classes of America paid Textbook Company X for the play Romeo and Juliet? Think about the cash we have spent over the past 50 years. Well, guess what Mr. Hildebrand, that text is now free. (Always has been for you — now it is for us. Goodness, how much do I love the idea of not having to use my school funds to pay you for something which you yourself do not have to pay for when teachers at my school are being laid off due to low funds?)

But now, Mr. Agnostic, all you will be able to sell me are the accompanying study materials to R&J. This brings real competition to the game. Like have you seen the materials this little known group called the Royal Shakespeare Company offers? Or do a search on Web English Teacher for R&J? If they are offering all of this great stuff, can you go toe-to-toe with them? And even if you can, can you match their prices — which are sometimes totally free?

But you, a guy who presides over an industry that rakes in monster bucks selling 100 dollar per kid per subject area textbooks isn’t sweating the idea that schools which adopt these new Kindles might threaten your revenues?

Besides, don’t you still have to digitally develop all the content you plan to sell, make it customizable, individual, accessible and functional for e-commerce delivery? I doubt that’s an impending expenditure of a few clams against your bottom line, really I do.

But no, you are agnostic.

Well, what I think you are, if you have any common sense at all, is terrified. And rightly so. The world is changing and all the millions you have in the bank of our school money isn’t going to be able to stop this from happening.

With a little luck, maybe we’ll be able to hire a few teachers back with the cash we save, too. Oops, there go our free backpacks during textbook adoption season.

I think we can live with it.

I spend a good deal of my time traveling the country trying to help reduce a problem that I believe holds much more of a “pandemic threat” to our national health and security than any sort of airborne flu bug mistakenly giving the pigs of North America a bad name.

Matter of fact, I am in Minneapolis, Minnesota right now getting ready to speak tomorrow at the IRA Annual conference to a few hundred folks about what can be done to assuage this very real “epidemic” and how we ought to go about doing it.

IMMEDIATELY!

To what am I referring? America’s dropout crisis. Check out this article ripped right from today’s headlines on CNN.

Here are a few stats:

We lost 6.2 million students in 2007. (The year I was named California Teacher of the Year, mind you. Obviously, I wasn’t as effective an ambassador for staying in school as I aspired to be. Increasing YA literacy and reducing the dropout rate — for those of you who are familiar with my work — was my tentpole platform. But unfortunately, California had the most dropouts of any state: 710,000. I wonder if they want their plaque back.)

Most of the dropouts were Latino and Black. (Obviously, this illuminates America’s polarization as schools like mine, where there’s hardly any white kids, are suffering HUGE losses whereas students in the quite tony La Jolla area of San Diego probably aren’t seeing quite the same hasta-la-vista factor. NOTE: This is not meant to disparage La Jolla — I mean who wouldn’t want to live there. I’m just making a point about the iniquity so clearly apparent in public schools. But we shouldn’t be bringing La Jolla down… we should be bringing Lynwood up! As the article says, the “absence of new funding at the federal and state level since the 1980s has led to decades of disinvestment…”)

The report also says, “In the current global economy, having at least a high school diploma is a critical step for avoiding poverty, and a college degree is a prerequisite for a well-paying job,” the study says. “The costs of dropping out of high school today are substantial and have risen over time, especially for young men, who find it almost impossible to earn an adequate income to take care of themselves and their families.”

Do I even need to go on? Of course not. We all know the numbers. We all know the data. We all know the stats and implications.

So why don’t we do something. I mean we all recognize the collision course we are on for society if we keep these numbers up, right?

Sometimes, I simply feel like a little boy putting my finger in a dike.

Saw this story in Newsweek magazine (well, the online version) called The Principal and The Paddle. Being that my school is a “struggling school” and that I LOVE to bring reading ripped right from current headlines into class, I let ‘er rip.

And goodness did it. I mean a virtual tidal wave of energy and enthusiasm. Class was simply roaring — all because of a simple question.

Should we paddle students in the Lynwood Unified School District?

Actually, that wasn’t how I started. To begin, I framed the lesson by having students write a well-executed paragraph citing three ways our Vice Principal could improve student discipline on campus. (This throws back to the pot smoking in the halls from last Friday before I left for the weekend per my previous blog post.)

Not a darn one of them suggested “paddling”. And when I tossed this idea into the mix, all of them were 100% against it. Literally, ALL of them. This made it really fun for me because I got to play devil’s advocate during the ensuing discussion — not that I am for physical discipline in our schools but it’s quite a kick to wear the black hat and defend a POV simply for the sake of stoking some student fires.

Then we read the aforementioned article.

Next we did a re-read whereby I asked my students to take copious notes, underlining, finding evidence, and so on. I told them that no one would get to talk unless they could include a textual citation from the Newsweek piece to support the point they were about to make during our forthcoming “debate”. Re-reading is something it feels like my kids are rarely asked to do — yet how much better is their comprehension improved by taking a second pass? When you are not the world’s greatest reader, small strategies like this often make HUGE dents.

Suddenly, after the re-read and the note-taking, I had a class full of damn lawyers bombing me (and one another) with well-supported evidence. Whoa! Suddenly, the level of argumentative competition in the room had changed.

Then we shifted gears whereby I slightly altered the question to:

Should we paddle elementary school students in the Lynwood Unified School District?

Time to write a new paragraph citing three reasons for their belief, pro or con. (Note: This is why writing is so darn valuable. The old question of, “How do I know what I really think until I see what I have to say?” is never more true. Kids think they know how they feel but it’s often muddled and fuzzy. Writing brings clarity and prepares them to be thoughtful participants in a class debate… instead of mere, “toss some stuff off of the top of my head and shout it really loud when I want to add emphasis” contributors. It’s a world of difference.)

BLAM! The fireworks began. Immediately, I went from the only one arguing for paddling to merely facilitating and moderating a heated debate. Opinions were flying on both sides of the aisle and lots of intelligent support was being evidenced from all angles. It was great!

At the end of class we took a vote. The decision:

LET’S PADDLE THEIR BUTTS!

(Tomorrow’s lesson: an exploration of mankind’s hypocritical nature revolving around the quote, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” LOL!)

It’s rare that I feel ashamed to be a teacher but after reading this article it makes me feel like I am a no good lout who is living off the fat of the tenured land idling away my time at the great expense of our nation’s kids.

Good work, L.A. TImes. Another form of “If it bleeds, it leads,” I guess.

I mean I want these people out of the class as well. But how I come this article makes me feel as if my whole profession is filled with nothing but louts and scumbags? And just in time for the statewide California election in a few weeks when people are going to vote on school funding. Only like 9 billion dollars on the line.

Do enough bad apples not spoil the perception of the whole bunch?

School is but weeks away from being over. And like every other year, this divides our faculty into two camps.

The first is the camp of faculty members who are counting the days until summer, a time when there will be no work, no assignments, no students and no kids smoking weed in the halls. (I threw that last one in because I just walked through a cloud of sensie bud to get back to my classroom. It’s Friday, lunchtime, and a few students seem to have already started the weekend. However, to be fair to my school, I am sure there are kids in Oakland, Miami, Portland and Peoria who took a hit of weed on campus today — rich or poor, black, white, brown or green, it doesn’t matter. Teens smoke pot on America’s middle and high school campuses all across the nation and folks who don’t think it’s happening their backyard remind me of the line in Casablanca when the police captain is, “Shocked. Shocked to find out there is gambling going on here.”)

Anyway, I literally had a teacher inform me in the restroom earlier today as to the exact amount of teaching days left until we were “free”.

I just faked a smile.

Why a fake smile? Because for me, there’s a sense of, “WAIT!” I have too much more to do. There’s this I still want to do and that I still need to teach and this I was hoping to tackle and that I have a great idea for. That’s the second camp: the folks who feel threatened by the lack of time left to really make manifest all the bubbly aspirations we held for this school year way back at the start of the first week of the school year.

Yet, time is is almost cruelly democratic in that no matter which camp you are in, the clock ticks the same for all of us.