Have we not brought this on ourselves? Truly, it’s our own fault we are mired in this whole “measuring teacher’s effectiveness” mess anyway.

And why? Because we, as teachers, have run amok.

We had a chance to police ourselves, we had a chance to be our brother’s keeper, we had a chance to self-regulate in a way that resembled sensibility.

We had decades to do so. But we got ahold of too much rope and now we have hung ourselves. Our negative fringes need to be reigned in, our performance needs to be recognized as something that is not above improvement nor reproach, our sense of team is being torn asunder by the “I’s” who think they are above having to be a part of a team, and we need to do a better job at our job — like all aspects of American education do.

We can point the figure at every other quadrant of public schooling: parents, community, societal values, administration, the federal government, the budget and on and on… and be right about the blame we lay!

Yet still, that does not change the fact that we must take ownership over our own shortcomings and figure out a way we, as teachers, can better serve the needs of the next generation of student.

And if it comes with some professional uncomfortableness, so effin’ be it!

Teaching is NOT about us, the teachers; first and foremost it’s about the students. In our field we know this, we see this, we bleed this.

We live this.

But not all of us of do. And a small cancer has spread to the point where it’s no longer small.

Clearly, the campus duds must be de-dudded and we gotta start bringing better game to the table. All of us do.

(BTW, NCLB is not even worth mentioning to counter this argument because NCLB has been a farce and you’re not gonna find any love from me for the calamity that this exercise in folly has wrought for us all.)

Now the thing is, people get uproarious about feeling accused. Chill out because if you are reading this, you probably are not one of the people at whom I am pointing the finger. Those folks rarely, if ever, read blogs on nings seeking out answers on their own time as to how to improve their craft or stay up to date on the latest policy measures (much less looking for a means whereby they can improve a lesson plan).

But if we can’t acknowledge that something is rotten in the state of Denmark then we have absolutely no chance in hell of ever improving it.

It begins with us taking a look in the mirror and being humble (and realistic) about the fact that we can get better.

We all seem to believe, as teachers, that good assessment is an asset to improving our ability to elevate student learning in our classrooms. How do I know what a kid knows unless I assess what it is I am seeking for them to be able to prove they understand and can do?

And once I assess and reflect on the student’s performance, I can chart a new path for extended growth.

Because growth never stops in education. There is no end line to any of this.

However, if you take away my ability to assess my kids (no formal measurements at all) I believe I will be a lesser teacher. By a lot! Nope, I am not Socrates. Or Jesus or Buddha or whatever other person you can think of that was able to turn student water into wine without formal feedback. (Unless Socrates actually gave 5 paragraphs essays that I didn’t know about. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate egg on our face — Socrates assigned hamburger essays on truth, beauty and nobility — the documents were just misfiled amongst the ruins. Yikes!)

No, I am just a high school English teacher in Los Angeles, California and I use multiple measures to gain insight into the knowledge and performance of the kids in my class.

Why can’t the same be applied to us as teachers on the whole?

No one measurement in my class ever gives the whole story to me as to a kid’s learning anyway. (Which is why high stakes tests don’t really strike me as the cat’s meow.)

I use multiple measures. From quizzes to personal contact to project-based learning projects to traditional summative assessment tools, I use multiple approaches to gain the knowledge I seek.

And I find that knowledge valuable because it better enables me to figure out ways to teach my students.

And giving an F is always the last resort. (As firing would be in the plan I envision.) But i do give some F’s. (And we do need to fire some folks.)

But I give a lot more A’s and I work exceedingly hard to recognize good work much more so than I do at demonizing poor work.

Why can’t we transpose these ideas to our own profession? We certainly have, in my estimation, proven the need to do it.

And if we want to point fingers at who has demonstrated this need, collectively, it is us. We have proven the need for our effectiveness/job performance/professional impact to be measured/assessed/evaluated/judged – choose whatever language you want – ourselves.

Individually, you may not feel you need it but holistically, when it comes to American education at large, this need is glaring.

The only real question left for me is, why do I feel so alone when I type this?

Let’s face it, I am at a HUGE disadvantage when it comes to names.

First off, there are about a ba-zillion new ones I need to learn. This always takes a lot of effort and a few weeks. Kids, they have about 6-10 new names they must learn at school at the start of a new year — the names of their new teachers. Me, I have scores and scores and scores of them I must learn.

It’s a challenge every year… learn all the names as fast as you can. However, at least I learn them!!

See, I just realized I used the word “must” above. However, as other teachers often prove to me, what I find to be a “must” is not really a “must” when it comes to public education. I mean how many teachers are there out in our school systems this year that will just never even bother to learn all their students’ first names? (More than you think, that’s for sure.)

They just simply put kids into alphabetical seating order and spend the rest of the year looking at their charts to see who is who — but they don’t really know the kids. Wouldn’t know what to call them if they saw them at lunch or in the halls or what not. And let’s face it — the kids know when you do not know their names.

This is why I view learning the names of my students as a must — because how in the world can you expect to be an effective educator if you do not even know your students’ names?

Even if there are 43 kids in your 2nd period class (with only 36 desks)?

(Those are rhetorical questions, BTW… you really can’t, IMHO.)

So I learn names. All of them.

However, I still haven’t figured out a way to handle remembering the names of all my former students. I mean, I teach teenagers and these kids change and grow and lose their braces and cut their hair and pierce their faces and color their hair and gain weight and lose weight and on and on an on.

So when a semi-quiet kid I had 2 years ago in 4rth period who has become taller by 2 inches, grown a mini-mohawk, gotten contact lenses and is now deeply into goth comes up to me and says, “Hi Mr. Alan,” a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look sometimes crosses my face. I mean I know I remember the kid… I just don’t quite remember their name.

It’s that tip-of-the-tongue thing that never comes.

And they sense it. And they take it personally. And I feel bad. But I am struggling with names in the month of September. Struggling badly. My focus is more on learning new ones than recalling old ones anyway and the fact is, I think the memory card between my ears has storage space limitations that inhibit me from remembering any more than I already do.

I mean how many names can a teacher possibly be expected to recall?

For example, I betchya that last year in the month of June I knew the first names of 500 people on campus. Kids, teachers, administrators… yep, 500 seems like a solid guess. And yet, there were probably at least 1,000 people that new my name if not more. (We were over 4,000 at our high school in enrollment, or thereabouts.)

But do I get any credit for the ones I remember? Nope… but I feel terrible for the ones I forget.

Never mind the fact that I have 4 Juans, 5 Marias and two students named Jesus this year (one’s a boy and one’s a girl — go figure). It’ll all make a person bonkers.

So what do I do when I get hit with a former student saying, “Hi, Mr. Alan”?

I play the “Uhm, Hey… Dude” Name Game.

But if there’s a better way, I’d love to hear about it.

Is it okay to have limitations?

Is it okay not to be the most cutting edge, 21rst century tool wielding teacher on the planet without having aspersions cast on my professionalism?

Is it okay to not be the most phenomenal teacher of persuasive writing, expository writing, autobiographical writing, compare and contrast writing and creative writing ever to hold a dry erase marker?

Is it okay to feel hurt when my kids feel hurt by the budget cuts, impacted classrooms and the sense of facelessness which my kids all-too-often feel in the halls of state’s schools?

Is it okay to feel sad when the fights break out?

Is it okay to feel triumphant when Jesus shows up for class three days in a row… and even has his homework for a change?

Is it okay to feel regret about the dismissal of the Year 2 teacher that got laid off just when it seemed she was starting to really get a handle on this whole “teaching” thing even though there are educators in our midst who should have hung up their spurs long ago to make way for a new crowd of eager, excited and talented young guns?

Is it okay to feel “stung” by the inanity of weight being placed on bubble tests?

Is it okay to want to close my door and just spend some time working with my kids serving their own best interests as I best interpret them based on all my years of experience and study without having to answer to a VP who doesn’t seem as if he could teach my class nearly as effectively as I teach my class should he ever be charged with the task of doing so?

Is it okay to simply recognize that wearing the hat of parent, friend, mentor, coach, teacher, social worker, and task-master — all at different times, without much rhyme nor reason to the order upon which these demands will be thrust onto me — is kinda hard without sounding like a whiner? (And kinda sets me up to not always be “incredibly great” 24/7?)

Is it okay to do the best I can… even when the best I can doesn’t feel like it’s good enough to solve all the problems I hope to solve?

Is it okay to even give voice to these fears — or am I to pretend that “I always have it all under control”?

Is it okay to show concern for the fact that California has just sliced its education funding in a historically unprecedented manner?

Is it okay if I still want to remain optimistic about what I do for a living despite the tenor of this blog because I know that without hope, faith and belief in the future, I am all too aware that I should hang up my own spurs, if for no other reason than the good of the kids?

Had an exceptionally interesting conversation today with my literary agent about the need for an interesting villain in fiction. He spoke quite eloquently about the idea that the strength of a hero is really predicated on the force of opposition that your hero must face. After all, a weak villain doesn’t require any great, spectacular heroism to conquer — and this a problem with a large majority of the slush pile fiction he sees almost on a daily basis.

And to walk into his office and see all the manuscripts, all the aspiring writers, all the folks who are hoping to pen their way into the canon of our literary imaginations, well… let’s just say it’s remarkable how many books every year people were only hoping to publish… forget all the legions of books which are being published.

Obviously, as a writer, I know this. And I work at this. The better the bad guy, the better the hero must be… and therefore the better the book should be (theoretically) because, as Aristotle, Egri, McKee, Vogler, Campbell, and so on talk about — audiences crave heroic triumph… and if the odds aren’t bleak and the forces aligned against your protagonist aren’t insurmountable and phew, how in the heck will they ever be able to handle THAT curveball solid… then people have better things to do with their time. They will lose interest, tune out and walk away.

Now of course, I’ve read all the heavies… but our students most often have not. And a cool thing I like to do — especially when it comes to really engaging reluctant readers — is to celebrate the bad guy. To view the villain through the prism of admiration. Change perspectives and celebrate the devious for their unabashed lust. Good guys, we see them all the time. How about examining a complicated villain?

Lady Macbeth is a gimme for almost all ELA teachers. Inevitably, it’s where all discussions of Macbeth go. And it’s because she’s a great villain, a heck of character with a lot to be admired if ambition and power hungry manipulation is your thing. And as heartless folks go, Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist certainly shows an admirable coldness that deserves some celebration for just how ruthless he can be. Iago is one of my favorite characters in all of literature and come on, Dr. Jeckyll ain’t got nothing if he don’t have Mr. Hyde.

There are all kinds of good ways to get into books with your students. How about a little love for the bad guys? If the Socs aren’t such jerks, the Greasers aren’t so admirable. If Andy “It” Evans, isn’t such a date-raping senior dirtbag preying on susceptible freshman, then Speak doesn’t creep you out nearly as much. If white people weren’t so psychotic, Roots isn’t so gripping.

When it comes to stories, antagonists make the piece. And the badder, the better.

Yet, to be truly bad, you must have some good. Something admirable. Something that doesn’t allow us to put you in a convenient mental box of “it’s all black and white and they are the black”. Seeing the white, that’s what makes us twist. Villains who are black and white are boring. But interesting villains, they’ll keep us up late at nights, turning page after page wondering, what is this person going to do next?

Think about Satan… Jesus doesn’t resonate nearly as much without him.

If your students are going to branch into fiction, the cardinal rule is, “Show some love to the bad guy… they are the reason why heroes are forced to shine.”