New Year’s has never really meant that much to me… because, I suspect, New Year’s for me always hits in September.

This January stuff is nice for a few days off and a change of weather (btw, in Los Angeles, the temp dropped to a frigid 62 this week inspiring all of us in Southern California to declare WTF?), but my life is synced to an academic calendar more than it is to anything else. I guess that’s why when the ball drops in Times Square, I am not one of those people with poppers and funny hats ready to dance in the streets of New York.

The rest of the world may be thinking WELCOME 2010 but for me, I am usually more concerned with finishing what is already in motion. I need to get my students back into the saddle and up to speed as quickly as I can. And then I need to make hay because January is a good month for teaching.

February, of course is gonna blaze by — especially since there are holidays that will take away time from an already short month — and before I know it March, the biggest, most beefy teaching month of the year, will be here.

March, btw, is where we make our money. Have a good March and you will have made some real inroads. Have a poor March and you will look back on the year with “Oh, what coulda been.”

See, this is how I think. The year ends in June, begins in September and only muggles really dance in the streets in January — cause they do not understand the true nature of the universe’s actual schedule.

America’s definition of wealth is warped. And the definition of wealth we teach our kids is skewed as well. (After all, I should know. I think the way I have been taught to think about ideas such as “worth”, “value”, “assets” and so on are exceptionally demented being that the monetary association is always my first and foremost barometer for these definitions — when I know in my heart that family, health, service to others and so on are much more meaningful to me once I slow down and count up all my chickens.)

Let’s be honest, in the United States, people use money like a scorecard. We publish the salaries of movie stars, big-name athletes and CEO’s. The higher one ranks, the “better” a person is. And come on, isn’t salary — or lack thereof — one of the prime reasons so many people treat educators in a condescending manner? I tell ya this, a lot fewer people would hit me up with the ol’ ,”Oh you’re a teacher? I really admire the work you do. It must be so challenging yet rewarding,” pity-talk I often get at holiday parties if I was banking an 8 figure salary.

Instead, they’d be schmoozing me up for hot tips like, “Yo, let’s say I was at Bloom Taxonomy level 3 preparing for a unit quiz. Got any sweet “ins” on how I could get all the way to level six without sacrificing classroom management in the process of trying to hyper-engage all the different learning styles in my classroom?”

That’ll be the day, right?

Additionally, to the uber-rich, it often feels like — at least to an outsider looking in — that no matter how much money they have, it’s never enough.

What are they still seeking, I’ve often asked myself. I mean, how big of a steak can one person eat?

Interestingly, I came across this comment from Eli Broad, a man on the Forbes List of billionaires, about what the latest financial turmoil means to the people of our country. Broad says…

It’s not any longer simply about how much money you have, what your assets are worth. The happiest people I’ve found are in science. These people have three times the IQ — maybe I’m exaggerating. They have a higher IQ than I do. They love what they’re doing, they have a good family life, they’re satisfied. People are going to take a look at how we define wealth, and not just in financial terms. They’ll ask, what am I accomplishing? What am I going to leave behind? What am I doing with my kids? How am I going to help my community? I’ve not led a balanced life. If I had it to do over again, maybe I might lead a more balanced life.

Haven’t we all been indoctrinated to believe that by reading the Forbes List of billionaires we are also reading a list of those who are the most happy and satisfied in life? Haven’t we all been served a glass of kool-aid that gets us to believe that the more we possess, the more we are fulfilled?

Are we now at the dawn of re-evaluating wealth? Does 2010 ring in a year when fulfillment is part of the equation in determining one’s “assets”?

Will the ghost of my “level of income equates to my level of value in this world” ever stop haunting me?

Cause that’s the tainted Kool-Aid I done drunk.

I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw right now and on page 305 he brings up a fascinating issue in regards to late bloomers.

Essentially, Gladwell speaks to the idea (I am paraphrasing) that recognizing the brilliance in painters like Picasso is a no brainer. They show their aptitude early and it is so evident that missing it is harder than identifying it.

However, identifying the brilliance of people such as Cezanne is another matter entirely.

As Gladwell says, “Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forbearance and blind faith.”

And then he continues with what might be my favorite part of the entire book. Gladwell writes, “Let’s just be thankful that Cezanne didn’t have a guidance counselor in high school who looked at his primitive sketches and told him to try accounting.)

It seems as though Cezanne was a classic late bloomer, a person who did not step into his own until he was much, much older. And of course Gladwell simply takes it for granted that our schools are just so terrible at recognizing late bloomers that the power of our own inability as educators has undoubtably tainted the lives of scores and scores and scores of kids.

Oh, not a whiz at the 5 paragraph persuasive essay by the age of 16? Nah, AP science classes couldn’t possibly be right for you. Why don’t you take oceanography for woodworkers instead?

I mean come on, isn’t that our mentality?

Gladwell continues…

“Whenever we find late bloomers, we can’t help but wonder how many others like him or her we have thwarted because we prematurely judged their talents.”

How many F’s have our schools given to kids before they turned the age of 18 that have stained their own self-belief to the extent that they believe they were always doomed to be “F type students” for the rest of their lives.

How many Cezannes have we squashed? Or worse, how many more will we continue to squash until we find a way to validate the late bloomer?

A-HA!! I finally figured out when the madness of NCLB will end. Now I am not sure I know how to to do the math properly, but I think it works out to something like this:

There are 26 letters in the alphabet. If you multiply 26 x 26 that means there are 676 possible two-letter combinations of acronyms to which they can ascribe names of punch-drunk policy.

This means that once NCLB hit the 677th clownish matter of educational legislation that requires an acronym, the system shuts down and we, the teachers are freed from this buffoonish dungeon.

Unfortunately, NCLB is a 4-letter acronym which means that they actually have 456,976 potential matters of acronym-al policy to work through before we are all free. (26 x 26 x 26 x 26). There’s good news and bad news in that.

The bad news: we still have a few hundred thousand more clodhopper mandates to work through before we are off this preposterous hook.

The worse news: sometimes they use 5 letter acronyms so we’re gonna have to multiply it again by another 26.

The good news… well, there ain’t much because I think they’ll start incorporating numbers once they recognize this flaw in the system… so just like the web gave birth to web 2. so too, will we one day be faced with NCLB 1.5 — it’ll try to be twice as good but it’ll fall half as short.

The only guarantee: it’ll be 1.5 times as maddening. Cubed! (That’s 3.375 times as loony if you multiply 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5. — which is really the only guarantee in the whole post.)

While perusing the web, I ran across this article which claims studies prove that taking the SAT in a crowded room is a detriment to student scores and performance.

They call this the”the N-effect.” Basically, as the article says, the larger the “N”—the number of participants involved in a task—the worse the outcome for the individuals who are participating.

Hmm… really?

So if a 4 hour stretch of time in a crowded room is detrimental to test scores, WHAT ABOUT LEARNING IN CROWDED CLASSROOMS OVER THE COURSE OF AN ENTIRE YEAR?!

Kindergarten with 29 kids per class.
Middle schools with 38 kids per class.
High schools with 41 per class.

Does anyone care to do a study on this? Matter of fact, I am sure there are scores of them. But then again, isn’t this simply self-evident stuff? I mean teaching at 39 to 1 versus teaching at 22 to 1 is an immense difference… and one sure way to improve the quality of the educator is to reduce the amount of students on their roster.

A fair teacher is a better teacher with they are not forced to teach in impacted classrooms.
A good teacher is a better teacher with they are not forced to teach in impacted classrooms.
A great teacher is a better teacher with they are not forced to teach in impacted classrooms.

A bad teacher — well, even they are able to be less bad if they have less kids. Or at least they negatively affect less kids when they have less kids so there’s even some benefit in that, right?

Just remember, every time you hear the term “budget cuts” one thing that surely follows is larger class sizes… and that’s not good for anybody.

So how in the world can we affect the N-effect in our classrooms?

With school on break for a couple of weeks I get a chance to wear but one hat and be a writer for a wee bit. I love it!

And with three books coming out for me in the next 18 months (2 of them already written, one due by the end of next summer to be released a year later) this is really the time to “get ahead while the gettin’s good”.

However, part of being an author is understanding that so much of the work you do will not see the light of day til well over a year after you actually write it. In some cases it’s closer to two years.

That’s just the way the world of book publishing works.

Between manufacturing, marketing, copy-editing, cover design, and so forth, there are scores of people that work for extremely long periods of time to get a book from my computer to the nation’s bookshelves… and the process ain’t a quick one.

This is one reason why I adore blogging: the immediacy. I write. People read. People respond. I respond back. Tomorrow is a new day and the blogging process begins anew. Just as actors talk about how much they love live theater performance over film and television because of the immediacy of the audience, so too do I find blogging to share the same benefit for me as a writer.

And funny enough, I was going to take a blogging break for the holidays. Just sort of shut it down and resume again in January once school is back in session.

But then I realized that I blog for the same reason I write books — I just love it. It’s not a chore to me. It’s not “work”. I don’t wake up and think, “Ah jeez, and today I have to blog.”

I mean my holiday should be spent doing the things I enjoy doing — the things that recharge my batteries and make me feel good about the world.

Family
Friends
Sleep
Exercise
Read
See movies
Laugh
… and write.

Yep, write. See, writing — both books and blogs — they “do it” for me. They fill my inner well. And as a teacher, I know that if I do not actively seek to fill my own inner well – especially during my breaks from class – my school will suck it dry… for no matter what I do as a teacher, it’s never enough. By that I mean there’s always more. Always more kids to help, parents to contact, fellow teachers to support and on and on and on.

We must be our own well-fillers. Thus I write — with great excitement that I get to do it while only wearing my favorite pair of neon green speedo undies, nipple tassles and pilot goggles.

What, you think I don’t have peccadilloes?

LOL!!

What do you do to fill your inner well? And whatever it is, make sure to do it these next few weeks. January will be here soon enough.

I took a weeklong cruise once — LOVED IT — and clearly remember talking to one of the “boat hosts” about how people change over the course of the trip.

On Day 1 of the cruise, people are itchy to check their emails, their blackberries, their “messages”… and the “news” from the world back home as well. They think about their jobs, their problems, and all sorts of day-in and day-out stuff like that.

By Day 3 they are doing the Macarena and talking about how Vanilla Ice wasn’t really such a bad musical artist after all.

It’s called vacation and while right now I am still knee deep in thinking about my students, the work coming up in January, the new projects I am going to try, the practices we are going to share as a department in order to improve our school-wide performance, and on and on. But by Wednesday of next week, don’t be surprised if you hear me talking about how intellectually stimulating I find the tv show The View and my new addiction to TMZ.com.

Stephen Covey calls it “Sharpening the Saw“.

And who doesn’t need it right about now?

Let’s be honest… it’s really hard to give a damn about a kid’s grades when a kid doesn’t give a damn themself.

I know I am supposed to be mature, compassionate, professional and perpetually hopeful and encouraging but wow, sometimes it is just so hard when you are being asked to care about the performance of a student at a level that exceeds their own concern. I mean after having just done grades and participating in a school-wide dialogue about “low performing students”, I feel like very few people want to acknowledge a hard truth about being a teacher in this day and age.

We are being asked to care at a level that exceeds the caring shown by 1) the student themself and 2) a host of “other” adults in many of these students’ lives.

I think we all know what I mean when I say that it’s supremely challenging to care about a kid’s grade when they themselves couldn’t give a flying fudgesicle about their own academic performance. This aspect of our job is almost self-explanatory.

But who else is supposed to care… besides me?

To the administrators and the district, every F I give is more a piece of data than it is a real kid. Same with the politicians and such. I mean they know there are real faces behind the grades — and they pay lip service to the idea that these are real people — but at the end of the day, they see trends and charts and graphs and data much more than they see real people.

And the way that they are slashing budgets and cutting services and resources and programs and personnel (and on and on and on, geesh, what aren’t they cutting nowadays?) it’s hard for me to buy into the idea that many of these folks really care about kids the way I believe they ought — or care about them more than I do.

What about the parents? (I am not even going to go there right now because it’s a can of worms that I don’t even know how to properly address. Just SO complicated.)

Now some teachers relish giving the F, as if it’s their own little revenge on a semester filled with grief and aggravation. “Ha!” they think. “You may have tortured me, but with this F, I get to throw a wee bit of gunk into your future karma… SO TAKE THAT YOU LITTLE PUNK!”

Other teachers feel sadness about giving an F to a kid that demonstrates no concern for their own academic well-being. They give F’s with a, “This F is gonna cook you in a way that you don’t even realize and I hate to do it but you’ve boxed me in — there’s no other way.”

And then, once you have been doing this long enough, you hear about how as a teacher, you shouldn’t take it home with you. How it is just part of the gig. It’s part and parcel. You learn the Q-TIP principal.

Quit
Taking
It
Personally

Well, I am still waiting for the point in my career when that actually happens. And when it does, isn’t that also a signal it might be time to leave the classroom?

Our latest problem is that kids are coming to school with Gatorade bottles… filled with vodka drinks. Does every next generation of teen have to take the level of prior “defiance” of school rules and cultures to a new level? I mean once upon a time it was unheard of to chew gum in class. Now kids are swigging berry martinis in the middle of math class making a mockery of, oh… just about everything.

Of course pot has been an issue forever. The other day I joked to a colleague that I taught on Weed Hall. Then again, as TIME Magazine points out, smoking wacky tabacky is up. (Though cigarettes are down.)

We don’t even have the budget to do small things like hire a school nurse, staff a school librarian, and so on… and now we need people to screen through all their Jonas Brothers lunch boxes? (That’s a joke — Megadeath, Slipknot, The Game and so much more how my students roll — boy bands get very little play around here.)

Really, think about the kid that comes onto campus with a Tequila cocktail. Do you think they also have their homework? Do they also have an eye towards being well-prepared for the SAT?

Are they not an inevitable anchor on our school test scores so that when NCLB slams us for being an “underperforming high school”? When folks blame our campus teachers for being a bunch of lame-O’s are we allowed to say, “Well, I tried to teach to the difference between literal vs. figurative language but my student was too sloshed from the rum and coke they sucked down at lunch?”

If we caught any of the teachers drinking on campus, they’d be fired in a heartbeat, their professional reputation tainted terribly forever. But the kids? They just get a few days of slap-on-the-wrist suspension where they — I assume — just go home and drink.

I mean it ain’t like we expect them to be doing homework, right?

Students: we want them to take a deep drink FROM THE WELL OF KNOWLEDGE. Some are drinking, but they are missing the point.

What kind of teacher does one have to be to show up at a professional development meeting on a Saturday morning.

When it’s raining and cold.

And it’s one week before school lets out for the Winter Holidays?

And there is no “mandate” to attend nor is there extra pay. Just simple, free high quality PD. (Well, I certainly work my tail off to make it so.)

See, that’s the question I asked myself last Saturday. After working at Lynwood High all day — and just having a BOMBING DAY with the kids in class, wall-to-wall work and madness, I went straight to the airport from school, caught a flight – which was delayed due to bad weather – ate dinner by myself at an LAX airport (Spago’s it was not) and arrived at a Holiday Inn around 10:45 pm on Friday night looking to check in and shower. Then I was up again preparing to speak by 5:45 am.

But I was being paid and I could always have said no so there’s no complaining from me. I knew the terms before I ever accepted the invitation.

However, as I looked out at the teachers, literacy coaches and admins in the audience, I had to ask myself, “What kind of educator does one have to be to show up at a professional development meeting on a Saturday morning, when it’s raining and cold and it’s one week before school let’s out for the Winter Holidays and there is no “mandate” to attend… nor is there extra pay.

And just now the answer appeared for me.

The kind of teacher I want teaching my own kid.