We’re looking for new ideas right now in education, right? Well, how about this one: You can’t be an administrator with decision making power over a teacher unless you have once been a teacher yourself.

In the army, you can’t be a general without ever having been a private. In the world of airlines, you can’t be a pilot until you’ve been a co-pilot. In the world of professional coaching, until you’ve been an assistant coach, you can’t bethe head coach.

But in education, the hallowed halls of decision making are littered with people making decisions about our classrooms who have themselves never been in charge of a classroom.

Mr. Arne Duncan, far as I know, has not even spent one year as a classroom teacher yet he is the number one most important classroom policy decision maker in our nation. Sorry, sir, you may have been appointed the U.S. Secretary of Education but from a basic common sense point of view… you are under-qualified.

Cathie Black just recently stepped down as chancellor of New York City schools. (They say she had her hat handed to her.) But Cathie Black came from the world of publishing as an executive. And get this, she had to request a waiver from the state to even accept the position in the first place because she didn’t hold any education credentials.

And we’re shocked that this didn’t work out? Perhaps it didn’t work out because she wasn’t up for the job in the first place… because she was under-qualified to do the job in the first place.

I don’t know if the erasures at Noyes Education Campus which coincided with test scores rising in an explosive, heralded manner and being celebrated by Michelle Rhee with national fanfare, financial bonuses and the such were the result of cheating (but if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…), and while I don’t always agree with Rhee on things, at least she was a classroom teacher, so when she says some of the things she does, it comes from a place of having real perspective as gleaned far from the lights and clean offices of off-site administrative buildings.

Michelle Rhee once ran her own public school classroom. To me, that is the minimal threshold level of qualification one must have in order to have administrative decision making power.

Are the people determining classroom policies actually well-versed in what it’s like to have your own classroom? There’s only one way to qualify: have had your own classroom. If not, then they don’t have the stuff it takes.

IMHO, you gotta walk a mile in a teacher’s moccasins before you can dictate the educational road.

Feeling good about the work one does is not an option.

It’s mandatory. I do not believe a person can ever be authentically excellent if they are not greatly enjoying the effort they spend on tasks.

This transposes itself to the world of students quite readily. Does a kid who couldn’t give a poop about an assessment ever step up and really rock the house in terms of their performance? Sure, if the material presents little to no academic challenge for them. But if the assessment asks a kid to reach deep and the kid isn’t internally driven to reach deep because they just do not care about what is being asked of them (and they don’t feel threatened enough by the consequences of not giving their all) then you’re never going to see stellar performance.

To wit, I cite project-based learning (with a self-directed inquiry based approach to the work) as compared to bubble test assessment. At which task is a student most likely to “give more”? At which task is a student more likely to really care about their performance? In which do you think a teacher better sees the true abilities and competencies of a kid?

It’s a no brainer. Meaningfulness matters.

This is true of teachers as well. Is a teacher who feels oppressed by administration, demonized by the media, and much like a rabbit in a den full of coyotes in the lunch room best positioned to prosper at their job?

Doesn’t a teacher who shows up to school with a bounce in their step and a ton of eagerness in their hearts to get the day rollin’ because of all the exciting, awesome, challenging, interesting things on tap perform better at the job of being a teacher than one who shows up merely trying to get through the day and bide their time until the next three-day weekend?

Before competency comes feelings and attitude.

And (yep, here I go with my Mr. Happy Talk spiel) positive attitudes matter. Much more than many people often think. For without them, the ceiling of achievement is limited. That’s a condition of humanity, almost a truism.

Kids who are eager and excited to learn learn more than kids who are not. Teachers who are thrilled and energized by teaching make better teachers than those who view it as a “mere job”.

Yet, we already know this. The touchy-feely aspects of learning matter a ton. Even widgets, I am sure, like to be massaged.

Gut check time: How’s your own sense of positivity about your work measuring up these days? Me, simply by giving it voice, I already feel better.

You only live once. Don’t trudge.

Why do I choose the books I choose for my class? Me, I always spent a lot of time thinking about the choices of text for my students because, well, for one… I could.

Unfortunately, teachers today are seeing more and more and more micro-management of their curriculums/books/texts by people who do not actually ever have to work face-to-face with any of the real kids in the room.

It’s kind of like going to Web M.D. for medical treatment. Sure, there might be some highly qualified folks who are posting very high quality material there, but only a fool would remove a face-to-face visit with a real doctor from the equation should someone actually fall ill.

Yet, removing the power of the teacher to be a “professional diagnostician” of the literacy needs of the actual kids sitting in the classroom is not only how we operate (all too often), but it’s a wave of tomfoolery that way too many school districts in America have bought into hook, line and sinker because they wrongly believe curing literacy shortfalls in kids today can actually work from afar.

It’s as if the solution to “fixing” our kids can be purchased in a box. Great tools can come in a box. The craftspeople who wield those tools cannot.

Teachers, when I really think about it, have almost been backed into a corner in far too many schools whereby they are supposed to be executors of curricular decisions; not parties to the crafting of the curriculum itself.

And so, how do I decide which books my kids will read? First, I made sure to grab the power to do so.

My feeling was always, “Hey, you hired me to do this job, now I am going to actually do the job,” and no, I am not saying the means always justify the ends. But I am saying that if I hire a contractor to build an addition on my house, I’d be a bozo to stand over them the whole time saying, “Okay, now use the hammer. Okay, now use the saw. Okay, now I want you to use the tape measure, the wrench and then the level – in that order and at these intervals.”

The person who is doing the work needs latitude in order to smartly and effectively do the actual work.

Do teachers have the latitude to make book choices for my their own classes in this day and age. class? Do you?

The teacher as “professional diagnostician”. Our importance in the classroom of today (and tomorrow) – despite the false appearances in the media – is on the rise. The question we all must face is, “Are we up to this challenge?”

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?

Look, let’s be honest for a minute. If you have been reading me for any length of time at all you have probably noticed that the past wee bit has seen a more cynical, jaded bite — a sharpened, more cutting blog-edge tone, if you will.

I admit it. I’ve darkened.

But the thing is, well… there are a few things. For one, if we are going to be really honest, this freakin’ job is freakin’ hard. And between the budget cuts and the bastards and the buffoons, it would take a saint not to get rattled by the crap we all face at both my school and in public education on the whole.

And I ain’t no f*&%kin saint.

This stuff is meaningful to me, this stuff hits me hard and this stuff impacts my life and the lives of my kids – and peers – in deep, significant ways.

My students get one chance to be teenagers in school and SO, SO, SO many consequences that will resonate throughout the rest of their lives are being manipulated by puppeteers that seem to have no shame about doing what is in their own personal, best, self-interest before considering what is in the best interest of the students we have been hired to serve.

My cynicism is a by-product of naiveté some might say… cause I believe I can change things – or at least impact things for the better – and I get really frustrated when I lay it all on the line and still, things roll downhill.

If I could be more zen-like, I’d be much better off. All I can say to that is, I am a work in progress — so please don’t submit final grades just yet.

However, I also know that things are cyclical in a school year and right now, we are in the thick of the jungle in a whole host of ways. Stress runs high during times like these and when you work 90-100 hours a week and still feel as if you are spinning your wheels, it gets maddening.

But we’re gonna get out of it. And this too shall pass. There are more fart blogs in me. Yes, I will write 800 words on “The booger-pickers of 4rth period”. (Note to self: Hey, that’s a good book title.)

The joy, the laughs, the ridiculous smiles, it’s all still there. I guess I just take this all-too-seriously in some ways, sometimes. See, I bought into the propaganda hook, line and sinker. I believe in kids, I believe in teaching, I believe in education, and I believe in serving the greater good of society. (And all that other nonsense.)

When you care about things, you open yourself up to being hurt. That’s just a law of the universe or something.

If I just wanted a job for the sake of pulling a paycheck, I would have become a lawyer. Really. Then again, knowing me, I probably would have become a bleeding heart, public defendant, still working for the government rambling on about pillars of the Constitution because a leopard doesn’t ever really change their spots, now do they? (Truth is, I have immense regard for some lawyers. My dad and grandfather were both barristers; sounds more high fallutin’ when you say it that way.)

So know this. I may be down and gettin’ kicked around in the mud right now but that’s because nobody in our field (that I know of) escapes that aspect of this work.

And I don’t trust people who pretend that it’s never like this — or sell you perpetual rose-colored glasses. It’s just untrue.

So me, when I am down at the bottom of the barn rollin’ around in professional pigshit, I kinda relish it. Why? Because I guess I figure if you are gonna rise to great heights in this world, it seems as if you must also plumb some pretty low depths, too.

The encroachment of cynicism on my writing — it’s there, but it’s not permanent. Not as long as I still find joy in the farting booger-pickers of 4rth period it isn’t.

Cause when that joy is gone, so am I.

Whenever any other adult walks into my classroom, things change. Why? Cause classrooms are fishbowls and when a new species enters the tank, the environment changes.

Sure, in some ways, things will revert back to normal. Especially if I, at the front of the room, keep an even keel, and keep rolling on with business as usual. (Which I usually do. I have sort of given up on dog and pony shows a long time ago… but when you are a young teacher and you think that your job is on the line when a “boss” walks in, you get tense and start ascending Bloom’s taxonomy as if climbing this academic Kilimanjaro was the only thing ever that you were hired to do. What? The VP is coming? Quick kids, start to SYNTHESIZE!!! It’s such a joke.)

However, kids who are normally energetic and enthusiastic will clam up and in my experience, the “high end” of class gets lost – or at least tamped down. Sure, a few of the most bubbling personalities will still participate and share their “voice” with the room but most kids will — especially when there are people in suits or business attire in the class — remain in their own little quiet, one-word response bubble.

Classes where the teachers don’t have classroom management though… they are often exposed. I mean a teacher that can’t get Jimmy to sit down when the principal is not in the room is a teacher that feels embarrassed and threatened when the VP is in the room watching Jimmy defy classroom protocol.

But the thing is, the VP’s often look at the teacher as if it’s “the educator’s” fault that Jimmy won’t sit down, be quiet and do some work. Why the VP doesn’t enter the room with the attitude that, “Hey, this is my school and I am here to support the teachers and if Jimmy won’t get on the bus, I need to do something about Jimmy,” is beyond me.

Uhm, maybe, the teacher could use some back-up?

But no, VP’s enter the room looking for “our” problems… as if the problems they see in their teachers’ rooms are not “their” problems as well.

Goodness how I’d love to see the tables turned on this one though. I mean how great would it be to see the entire school board walk into my VP’s office? I wonder if she would carry on in the same way as she would if it was just a P.E. teacher who had popped by.

And I wonder if they had only spent 7 minutes in her office (with a check sheet in hand, of course — the rubric for good Vice Principalling… I mean who hasn’t memorized that?) if she would feel as if she was being fairly evaluated and assessed by her “bosses”.

No notice. No prior awareness of what was even on the check sheet. Just BOOM! a surprise little visit. In, then out, then gone… the only lasting impression being an air of slight disapproval from each of the Board Members.

Of course, this folly bleeds upwards. Why? Because instead of supporting her, they come in with an attitude of “looking for her faults”. And she thinks to herself, “If you know so much, then you trying doing this damn job!”

Don’t you just love how everyone feels as if they can do your job better than you can do it yourself? Parents, principals, kids, they all think, What schmoe couldn’t do a better job than the schlub they currently have in room 6213?

And when I look at the work my school board does, my VP does, the science and math and history and P.E. teachers do, I pretty much think the same thing, don’t I.

Yep, I am a hypocrite. Don’t judge me but I will judge you.

Ya gotta love school mentality, right?

I genuinely do believe in accountability.

I think this message of mine gets lost when I rip on the bubble tests as being the end-all, be-all of assessment in public education.

Yes, I do want elevated academic performance.
Yes, I do want high student achievement.
Yep, I am a big fan of improved classroom work.

However, I think the measures we use to gage accountability in education are flawed… and when flawed measures are used to evaluate my job performance, it makes me want to cry foul.

Of course, it’s inarguable that accountability is not good for the kids. (Poor of a sentence as that may be.) We really do need to know that teachers are doing their jobs. And unfortunately/tragically we all know that there is a segment of our teaching population that takes incredible advantage of “the system”. They are not doing their jobs and it hurts us all.

I loathe those teachers. Truly.

So how do my bosses know if I am teaching my kids if my kids can’t “achieve” on their assessments?
Take my word for it?
Trust me?

They aren’t buying that. And really, I am not so sure that they should… at least not hook, line and sinker.

Yet from my perspective as a teacher, if you are using a flawed means of assessment (i.e. narrowly constricted bubble tests) to evaluate me, you are not really being fair to me.

A classic Catch 22 thus confronts us. Use knowingly deficient accountability measures to enforce higher educational standards which result in collateral damage being done to the classrooms of teachers who are very much doing a solid job in their careers (as I feel is being done to me by literally mandating I “raise my scores or lose my job”) or allow the lemons to hide behind false fronts and continue to dodge professional bullets.

The screws of accountability are being turned right now and it hurts. As I said, I have no problem with people measuring my performance, assessing my professionalism, or holding me to a high — or higher — standard. Actually, I’d be honored if you did. Come on down to room 6213 at Lynwood High any time.

Yet, by having reduced the essence of the work I do to solely that of standardized test scores, I just don’t feel it paints an accurate picture.

All in all, I am now a teacher focused on test prep. This is what the “accountability monster” has created… irrationalism. You can’t push one thing without pulling something else.

As I have been talking about all week, we are faced with the very real threat of having our school district taken over by the state with lots of people terminated in the process. Test scores are the first box on the check sheet they will look at. You either have good ones or you don’t.

And so I must raise them or “go gently into that goodnight”. (BTW, that’s an allusion to a philosophical reference which will not be tested on the bubbles so whether or not my students ever grasp this “ideal of living” is, I guess, superfluous. English Language Arts is about properly identifying the gerund phrase in a sentence these days… or nothing at all.)

Look, I could rail on and on and on about why I believe it is entirely appropriate to throw a HUGE bash at NCTE to actually celebrate students.

But instead, I am going to let a student do the talking. (Please know that she is but one of the young poets you will see on Saturday night at NCTE in Philly if you come to the event… and when you are done, I’d ask you to reflect upon the question, “Isn’t it about time we did a better job of validating the aptitudes of our kids in our schools?”)

Remember, I was only allotted 50 tickets to attend the bash. Please email Beth at beaton@recordedbooks.com if you would like to be considered for the tix lottery for Saturday night.

Beth has requested that you please include your name, job title, school, state, and email address — and please make sure to put ‘BookJam Bash’ in the subject line. thx.

With a little luck, this will become an annual tradition.

For those of us with students who don’t think they’d ever want to consider a career in writing, this article might be an arrow in your quiver to help inflate a student’s sense of why knowing how to properly punctuate a sentence is a skill that they might want to have in their professional, job hunting arsenal.

After all, who’s going to want to read reviews about sensie bud from a person that doesn’t even know how to correctly incorporate a lucid and illuminating appositive phrase?

That’s right, a new day is here with new, 21rst century jobs out there for the taking and as marijuana clinics boom all over the country we now find ourselves in need of weed connoisseurs.

The day of the critic has arrived. Don’t laugh, because just as cars need reviewing, restaurants need reviewing and wine needs reviewing so do the multitude of different styles and offerings of the wacky tabacky!

Wanted: Pot Critic

Experience Required:

• lots of smoking
• lots of toking
• having visited lots of laser light shows while blazing out of your mind on Thai Stick a plus.

Skills Required:

• joint rolling
• bong loading
• pipe stuffing
• able to self-edit manuscripts because your bosses will probably be too high to actually read what you write.

Hours:

• whenever, dude

Okay, I jest. But the thing is, the city of Los Angeles has seen an explosion in “medical dispensaries” this year and they have become so popular that there is a very real job out there to be a Bud Critic. (Read this article and be amazed: 966 clinics are now open in L.A.) I mean from what I have heard some of this pot will hit you like an elephant gun and some will simply give you a “mild, light buzz, you can still remain semi-coherent” buzz. Users want to know what’s what and what to expect.

Imagine not knowing the difference between having two beers and having two shots of Arkansas moonshine. This is where the erudite dope folk come in. They will have sampled the goods, smoked the various strains, and done their “get high as a friggin’ kite homework” in order to be a guide, a judge and a navigator for other users journeying through this very green forest.

Do we turn our noses up at wine critics? Will weed experts be welcomed into society with the same open arms? Will there be a stigma to be a stoner or is this just a new brand of cultural connoisseur?

Either way, the job requires a person to be able to write… and do it well.

And really, look at those hours.

As Joseph Campbell once famously said, “Follow your passion!”
As the military once famously said,” “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”
Or, as Cheech and Chong once famously said, “Hey man, how am I drivin?… I think we’re parked man.”

(BTW, that pic above shows a map — as identified by little red marijuana leafs — where all the pot clinics in L.A. currently are open. The explosion is so large that there are now two of them within walking distance of my house… each open less than a year. Can’t say I’m the biggest fan at all of the ubiquity but then again, I never even bother to count the bars. Fodder for another post, I guess.)