One day at school, the children in class began to identify the flavors of Life Savers by each of their colors:

Red…………………Cherry
Yellow……………..Lemon
Green……………….Lime
Orange …………..Orange

Finally the teacher gave them all HONEY lifesavers. None
of the children could identify the taste.

The teacher said, ‘I will give you all a clue. It’s what your
mother may sometimes call your father.’

One little girl looked up in horror, spit her lifesaver out and
yelled out, “Get rid of ‘em! Get rid of ‘em! They’re ass-holes!”

BTW, it’s Super Bowl weekend. How can ya not pull for the Saints?

How can anyone be expected to manage a situation that they do not really understand?

And how can anyone really understand a situation unless they are actually in that situation?

It is for this reason that I believe ALL school administrators should be required to teach at least one class in K-12 schools.

Yep, the Principal needs to teach a class.
The Vice Principals need to teach a class.
The Superintendent and their cabinet of decision-makers need to teach a class.
The School Board personnel need to teach a class.

If they can, that is.

And by “if they can” I don’t mean “if they can carve out the time in their schedule to do so.” School meets with clockwork regularity. (Most start by 8:15 a.m. I am not even sure if half the people on the aforementioned list are actually working by this hour.) By 9:30 or so they’ll be done and the insight they’ll gain from actually being in a room with real kids — ones they are responsible for “academically elevating” — will trump any study they could ever hope to not read. (Come on, we all know they have people summarize this stuff for them in mono-syllabic terms.)

BTW, I am not even sure if all of these people I mention even hold a teaching credential. Hmm, what does it say about people who sit in positions of policy making power when they do not even have the certification to legally give them the right to do the job over which they lord.

Come on, slum with the plebeians. Let’ em all teach 1 period. Why not?

Are they too busy?
Are they unable to perform?
Are they scared?

And just because they “used to do it” 17 years ago doesn’t mean they can do it now. It’s an iPod, google, hit me on the cellie with a txt message world and these folks think that just because they stood at a chalkboard when Ronald Reagan was president they can still strap it up and deliver real results?

Ba-hum-bug-bullshit!

Make ‘em do what they mandate us to do and watch what they mandate morph.

Cuz ya know that when you have to eat the food that you are cooking, the meal always becomes more palatable.

The other day the Principal and a Vice Principal came into my room un-announced. Why? To do “informal observations”.

I was given no notice, no inkling — didn’t even know they were in this wing of our school.

And still during the middle of 6th period they popped in, each took a position on one side of the room — checksheet in hand — and they observed.

I was at the front of the room at the time just having finished up giving a cloze quiz about the current book we are reading. My front board was kinda blank but that’s only because I needed the space for the next part of class where I’d be using the white board to draw a few things, jot down some of their own notes, and blah, blah… you know, I was just planning on using my board.

Thing was, at the time when they walked in, I wasn’t really using the board.

And the fact is, I can’t say, all that much was going on other than the fact that every kid was in their seat with their head down working.

The P and the VP didn’t say boo to me. And they were really only in my room for less than 7 minutes. They took notes but I never saw them. They “observed” things but I have no idea what they noted. Essentially, they did a fly-by, took a snapshot of my class and left.

Of course, the paranoid person in me thinks, “Hey wait! That’s just a snapshot. You gotta stick around to see this great stuff I have planned for later in the class. And then you have to see how it fits in with this really cool thing I am gonna do next Tuesday. And when you take it in context of what we did last Wednesday and you see how it relates to what I have planned in February, it really will add up to something.”

But alas, all they saw was the snapshot. And I gotta say, I feel a bit cheated by it. I mean on one hand, yes, give me 5 minutes in a class and I can tell a great deal. I do believe that is true. From the sense of classroom management and so on, 5 minutes can “tell” a little bit.

But does it really “inform”? Naw. And when they do this silent, stealthy drop-in, drop-outs, is there a teacher on staff that ever really feels good about it?

What did they see?
Do I need to go explain myself?
Will what they saw be “used against me” at a later date?

Maybe they loved it? If so, it would boost my morale if they let me know.
Maybe they hated it? Well, how might I improve?

But silence? That’s the worst!

Was I just caught with my pants down?

During a class discussion the other day the subject of alcoholism came up. I asked my 2nd period class, “How many people have, in their opinion, an alcoholic relative in their family?”

75% of the kids raised their hands.

“How many people in this room have seen a beer commercial?” (They are 9th graders, kids that are 14 for the most part.)

All hands went up.

“How many people in this room have seen over 10 beer commercials?”

75% of the hands went up.

“How many people in this room have seen over 50 beer commercials?”

A heck of a lot of hands went up. More boys at this juncture. (Watching sports on TV I am presume.) Remember, these are 14 year olds.

So we outlaw tobacco ads on tv and make the tobacco companies pay for their own “Don’t smoke” campaigns yet booze gets a complete and total pass when it comes to direct marketing to our kids? A marketing they do, mind you, with the highest hopes of turning our young people into future, lifelong customers.

Otherwise known as addicts. I mean, alcoholics. I mean, er, responsible drinkers.

Look, I find beer commercials funny and entertaining and even kinda innovative. But the damage that alcoholics do to themselves, their family and society? Not quite so Ha-Ha.

And why do I have a feeling that my kids could name more brands of beer than they could members of the Supreme Court, Congress and so on? Matter of fact, I bet Joe Biden would get pummeled by the suave Dos Equis guy in a face recognition contest.

Bottoms up.

So how did your kids spend their holiday break. Mine, let’s see.

–They slept.
–They ate.
–They watched tv.
–They played video games.
–They were bored.
–They “chilled”.
–They did “too much” homework.
–They did no homework.
–They went to the mall.
–They partied. (This is where my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy comes into play).

A few of them travelled, some of them caught the flu and some of them went to the movies.

All in all, they got to be real people. Fine. Cool. Glad you enjoyed it. But after reading their papers (so sloppily written, I might add) and hearing their words, I am more determined than ever to “bring the heat”.

January is a time when there is so much good work that can be done but I also know that if I spend the first week back allowing a honeymoon mentality to sink in — as so many people often do — I am just wasting valuable class time.

Class time I desperately need.

Yep, we are up and running!

But what scares me is the knowledge that across this great country not every educator in the U.S. thinks this way.

Mentality matters… and it starts with the person at the front of the room.

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?

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 percentage of F’s in a class is it reasonable for a teacher to give? I mean what’s the dividing point between a teacher firmly drawing the line at demanding minimum competency and rigor, and a teacher who is simply not reaching their kids and flunking so many students that we clearly see that the educator is actually ineffective at their job?

If 80% of the kids in a class are failing a class, is the teacher not a part of the problem for the immense amount of failure in the room?

What about a teacher with a 12% failure rate?

A 45.6% failure rate?

Heck, NCLB takes graduation rate into account when it assigns us our AYP and API scores in California so if we do not graduate 100% of our kids, we, by nature, are penalizing ourselves.

Makes a nice case for grade inflation doesn’t it? Or going after teachers who flunk too many kids.

But some teachers are flunking too many kids. Or, I should say, “have too many kids flunking their class”.

So what’s the acceptable number? Is it zero? That seems unreasonable. Is it 79.9%? That seems excessive.

Is there anyone who can provide guidance on this type of thing?

A Bell Curve with 10% A’s, 15% B’s, 40% C’s, 15% D’s and 10% F’s is how they drew it up in the theory class I took once upon a time. But my own classes NEVER balance out like that. Not even close. (And seldom do any of the theory classes offer things that truly measure up where the rubber meets the road.)

So if we want to raise our AYP and API score, the method is simple — flunk less kids.

And don’t think that teachers aren’t having the screws turned to do so by admins who care more about “school ranking and scores” than student learning.

Because in the world of our current educational dysfunction right now, student learning and higher AYP and API scores are often at odds.

So, I ask again, how many F’s is a teacher allowed to reasonably give?

In a “what’s old is new again” type of teaching thrust, some schools are going old school and dividing kids by gender in the classroom. Here’s an article from the L.A. Times about an academy in our city that seems to be happy with the results of separating kids in this manner.

Me, I am not really sure how I feel about this.

Now first, let me say that I was able to teach an all-girls English class and and all-boys English class two years ago in an attempt to see if breaking kids into this type gender-based class alignment actually offered any benefits. (NOTE: we had a teacher that had been doing it for almost 30 years — a woman I greatly respected; an educator who swore by it — and she was retiring so I decided to take over the idea for just two of my sections.)

For me, it worked out really well… for the girls. That class blazed. Really, the girls were just on fire that year. It was amazing! I mean I never had so many kids do homework… so consistently.

And do the reading. WOW! We blazed through so many books it was remarkable. We did projects, had debates, almost NEVER had classroom management problems… the girls just tore it up.

The boys… not so much.

Now I am of the opinion that, in general, today’s girls are very often kicking the butt of today’s boys in school. I see it with my own eyes every day. More boys drop out. More girls go to college. More girls are at the top of the class whereby more boys seem to be barely scraping by. Of course, these are generalizations but if you’ll allow me to speak in generalizations, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the efforts of the women’s rights movement, feminism, birth control, call it what you want… have not only brought a healthier degree of equity to the role of gender in education, but the scales have actually been tipped in favor of the young ladies.

Girls today are leading the charge in our schools and personally, I have no problem with this. (BTW, this phenomenon is also part of the subplot of my book The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez. Having a proactive, strong female protagonist who valued her own schooling and was determined not to become “dependent” on a man plays a solid role in the novel and hits, I believe, a very true note with today’s teenage, girl readers.)

Yet, I didn’t teach all boys/girls classes again the next year. And why? I think it’s because I discovered that the boys needed the girls… much more so than the girls needed the boys. I mean we are definitely having “issues” with boys in our schools today — especially in Title 1 schools like mine — so for all the benefits I found the girls were getting, well… a part of it felt like they were coming at the expense of the boys. The boys found a pecking order. There were leaders, there were followers and there were wallflowers… and for sure there was a bit of the Lord of the Flies aspect to their interactions. But most troubling was that boys, once they found their pecking order, didn’t seem to feel any drive to break out of their roles once they had settled into them. It was as if once they all became socialized to a certain means of operating, they stayed within those confines no matter what I did to shake it up.

The girls perpetually pushed one another… and they supported one another (for the most part) as well. But the boys… well, like I said. The class was kind of like a kite that never really took off and flew the way I had hoped and the reason why – at least to me it seemed, the reason why was, in part, due to an absence of girls in the class.

Maybe it makes sense to divide kids up by gender? Maybe there is a bunch more I need to learn about teaching in a single-sex class? Either way, it’ll be interesting to see if this type of gender-based classroom assignment will catch on more in the future, that’s for sure.

So when I read a story like this, about how students who have repeatedly struggled with a “core class at school” (i.e. they didn’t pass) being able to use computers for credit recovery so that they can graduate, I like the idea.

And I do believe that there is a place and space in public education to address this need in this type of way.

But I also gotta question one basic thing: How do they know the student doing the work online is the student who is getting the credit? I mean, why not just cheat?

Have your brother do it, your sister do it, a cool aunt or uncle. I mean if we are talking about the difference between a relative being able to earn a high school diploma or not, blood’s a little thicker than water on the “please help me front”.

And kids can barter. 10 car washes for an Algebra Class. 6 wash-the-dishes for an English paper. 8 let-me-borrow-your-car for some academic love on the American History front.

Really, where are the safeguards? And though I am sure they are in place to some small extent, let’s be honest, huh? I mean I use online banking but come on, in the back of all our minds we all know that each time we log in we might discover that every freakin’ penny to our name has been absconded with by some Russian hacker with laptop and a bottle of vodka.

If Chase, Bank of America and CitiBank struggle with online deception — as they mightily do, pouring miliions into it every year, fending off thousands of attacks every month — you don’t think America’s alternative high schools and credit recovery departments aren’t going to see a wee bit of fraud?

Of course, the girl in the article certainly seems like she did her work and benefitted from an online learning opportunity. This is no way meant to disparage her. Like I said, for some kids, this is gonna be good stuff.

But at what point does it simply cost a kid 7 “mow-the-lawns” for an Algebra I credit in this country?