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.)

We fired a bunch of teachers due to “budget cuts” at the end of last year. And yet, guess what? We currently have a few long term subs in place in some of our core classes — STILL, right now, in the sixth week of school! — because we have job openings for teachers that have not yet been filled?

Hmmm.

And in this story, D.C. is letting go of hundreds of teachers about 2 months into the new school year. I’m sure that’s not going to cause any chaos/demoralization/bitterness/grumbling/chain reaction types of negative impact by-products though.

Now I don’t want to go down the road of “how in the world are schools supposed to thrive in the midst of all this administrative dysfunction” right now, but really, “how in the world are schools supposed to thrive in the midst of all this administrative dysfunction”?

I know for a fact that there are schools all across the country that still do not even have their basic staffing issues resolved yet. And it’s October!

Are the teachers to blame?
What about when some kids get changed into your class 6 weeks into the school year so that you have a room of mix and match kids where a few students have been there from Day 1 and others are just experiencing Day 1?
Will NCLB take this into account this year when looking at API and AYP scores?
Will my “merit pay” evaluation reflect these “considerations”?

Though I have said this before, while it’s easy to blame teachers, aren’t we really having a crisis of leadership in American education? Principals are overworked, school districts are out of touch and parents are kicked to the curb. I mean we have educators around here with over 240 students on their total roster… but it’s going to be the teacher’s fault if we don’t see marked improvement in these English Language Learners this academic year?

What a farce. I mean can you really blame the cook on the Titanic is his lobster bisque tastes like seawater? After all, he wasn’t piloting the boat — just cooking and doing the best job he could at what he was hired to do. Instead of wearing business suits to work, some of these people ought to be wearing red noses.

Is it okay to feel good? Is it okay to be FIRED UP? Do we spend enough time genuinely recognizing the joy that is the teaching profession?

I mean I just got done with an IMMENSE amount of work. Papers, lesson plans, a trip to Jacksonville, Florida where I did a student assembly for a few hundred at-risk middle school kids about the value of school, education and making good choices (a total HOME-RUN, btw… I mean kids are kids are kids and anyone who doesn’t think so, doesn’t really know teens very well at all. They may put up masks, but inside they love to laugh, be inspired and feel validated!).

So does the crappy hotel bed, the 3 hour layover in Atlanta, the fact that every seat on the plane was taken on my way home and I had a dude the size of an NBA basketball player sit in the middle seat next to me for the flight across country bother me?

Well, it does if I let it — but if I focus on how great it feels to have just done a heck of a lot of hard, good professional work as the end of the month approaches, well… there’s value in that. Deep value.

Loving your job is spectacularly important and if you don’t remember to acknowledge and honor the love, and relish in the hard, strenuous, push you to the edge work, now and then, you are gonna burn out.

But if you do, you get forged into steel. Just like metal, the heat of our job can burn the impurities away. Remember what it’s all about. That’s the fountain of our strength!

Another very big study was just published as to what keeps teachers in their jobs — particularly at urban schools.

It’s worth a read if you have the time (click here) but in a nutshell, here is what they found.

The overall story implied by these results is largely similar to what was learned from the OLS analysis: a supportive principal appears to have a large effect on job attractiveness, and an induction program and curricular flexibility have smaller, but substantial effects. The ethnic composition of the school population has remarkably little influence. (note: this is taken directly from page 9 of their report)

Look, it’s not money that drives us. This is why the national conversation about merit pay is so frustrating. Uh duh… if money were the leading reason why people became teachers they wouldn’t become teachers.

We like the work but want to feel supported. It’s really hard to work in a school — especially an urban school. Even exceptionally challenging at times (almost more difficult than anything we imagined). But at the end of the day, as so many studies prove, teachers want two basic things.

1) To feel supported and be appreciated for our efforts by our campus leaders.
2) To have a certain degree of curricular flexibility so as not be micromanaged by scripted programming/textbook pacing plan nonsense/ district overlords and so on that are not responsive to the needs of our individual students as we best diagnose their aptitudes and necessities.

It’s not rocket science. We need to feel as if someone has our back and that the people who have our back trust us and will serve as a resource to us when times get tough. We want input and solutions and help… not castigation, fear-mongering, blame, or abandonment.

Provide these things and we’ll deal with the challenging salary, demands of the job, crazy hours and so on. But take away a campus leader who is empathetic and encouraging and dictate the lesson plans being implemented to the point of us feeling as if it’s more about all bureaucratic nonsense and a CYA mentality than it is about the kids- – kids who are most assuredly struggling — and the attrition rate for folks like me explodes.

No, we’re not monks and yes, we like and need cash as much as the next person. But life, to us, needs to have some meaningfulness embedded in our day-to-day work and if the two elements above are absent, the meaningfulness plummets and we get the itch to abandon ship.