With Back-to-School season upon us, I ask myself, what is it that we should really want for all our nation’s students this year?

Less bullying?
Heightened meaningfulness in the classroom?
Better cafeteria food?

I think one core answer is growth. We want our student to elevate their aptitudes.

Kids will come into our nation’s rooms this year with certain skill sets. The goal to which we should all aspire is that they leave our classrooms at the end of the year with improved and heightened abilities.

Their growth ought to mean something. If there’s no growth, it’s troubling. If there’s supreme growth it brings smiles.

However, this is exactly why our current system of assessment is so ridiculously dysfunctional. We don’t reward growth. We aim for arbitrarily chosen targets.

For example, I have kids that have come to my room with 4th grade reading skills… and have left the year at an 8th grade level. And yet, when it comes to the 10th grade tests, they paint my kid’s performance that year as entirely inadequate and underachieving. 8th grade skills in 10th grade student mean we are a failing school and I am a failing teacher, regardless of how much improvement was demonstrated.

It’s hurtful to the kid, it’s demoralizing to the teacher and it’s detrimental to the school. (They act as if I had my feet up on the desk reading the newspaper all year. Sheesh!)

However, if we used growth model assessments, suddenly we’d see a lot more happy face emoticons being implanted in the emails the state department of education sends to our school district.

Instead, because of the means by which assessment is measured, we are ostracized.

Does a 14 month old who does not yet know how to walk get ripped by their parents because the “average” 14 month old can walk?

Does the 5 year old who does not yet know how to write their name get shamed publicly because the “average” 5 year can achieve this task?

Of course not. We reward growth towards these target objectives. And, most importantly, we continue to teach – through praise!!

We continue to inspire and encourage. It’s just common sense.

Yet, does anyone in this country right now think our current form of assessment is characterized by words like encouragement, praise or inspiration.

And are not those some of the most effective tools of terrific teachers?

Screw up the bubble tests and you will be humiliated, scolded, reprimanded and threatened. Pass the bubble tests with flying colors and you’ll get a few checkmarks… maybe an “attaboy” here and there.

Is it not time we started to measure growth?

So a kid breaks the school rules by say, ditching class, and what do we do? Suspend them for 5 days.

Oh, that really teaches them.

Maybe back in the old days being suspended from school carried a stigma but for oh-so-many of my kids, when they get suspended, it’s like a vacation for them.

Sure, maybe they get in trouble at home. Perhaps their mother is angry at them or what-not… but what we’re inevitably doing is making a problem that much worse by keeping kids out of class.

I say, when a kid violates the rules and earns a suspension, what they should really earn is School Boot Camp.

That’s right… you have a major infraction, that means more time, not less at school working on your deficiencies of both character and academic ability… and you are going to be forced to contribute to both your own benefit and that of the campus at large.

Obviously, we are talking Saturday School here. (BTW, immediately we have a deterrent. Right now, being threatened with a 5 day vacation/suspension is not any kid of deterrent with teeth at all. But make a kid give up weekend hours and you’ll see a newfound respect for campus law.)

Instead of 5 days worth of suspension, I say we given them a month of Saturdays, from 8:00 – 3:00.

The “suspension time” would be divided up into two categories. Personal enrichment and campus beautification.

I’ll start with campus beautification. That’s a euphemism for grab a freakin’ broom, buster… you are going sweeping.

And wiping.

There’s gum to be scraped, graffiti to be removed, trash to be picked up and bathroom sinks to be polished.

You violate the rules of this community, you need to step up and improve the ambience of this community.

That’ll learn ya!

But there’s gotta be academic work, too. Clearly, there is often a link between low academic skills and behavior issues. How about if the suspended student’s learning profile was taken into consideration and if, for example, they showed a lack of proficiency with pre-Algebra skills, they were afforded the intervention needed to help them raise their mathematical abilities?

I know. Too sensible. Send ‘em home, let ‘em meander and pretend we all don’t ultimately pay for it later on once they are uneducated adults.

When you think about it, school suspension makes no sense.
A kid’s time could be used so much more productively to forge character as well as academic aptitude.
A month of Saturdays is a much better approach to trying to snap a misbehaving kid into shape.
I say SCHOOL BOOT CAMP!

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is about to absolutely rock the Hollywood box office this weekend. And it has been a rip-roaring success in the world of book publishing. As a teacher, when I see this I know that I can leverage the power of an author who has found a way to reach real kids into classroom success for me and my kids.

Here’s how I do it.

First of all, I know that the state has hired me to teach the content standards. (They clearly say so.) And when they assess my student performance, the material they test is not text specific but rather, standards-based. This means that they are not going to be testing my kids on Kafka, Twain, and Joyce but rather on denotation vs. connotation, theme, tone and so on.

And hey, Diary of a Wimpy Kid uses all of the literary elements of denotation vs. connotation, theme, tone and so on. So why not use Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a text to teach the standards in my classroom?

I do.

Now before I get crucified as being someone that does not revere the GREAT BOOKS of human civilization – a canon blaster, if you will — please take a few things into consideration.

California is a state with 6.4 million students. And 1.6 million of them are English Language Learners. This means that I need to differentiate, accommodate and be responsive to the real literary needs of the students that are sitting in my class — all while still teaching the appropriate grade level content standards.

I am not sure if there is a more accessible book for English Language Learners out there right now than Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

-It’s funny. (And kids will wrestle with text when the reward is material that will make them laugh).
-There’s a lot of white space on the page. (Check the research on the value of that to a student with low literacy skills – especially when English is not their first language).
-It’s relevant and kids relate. (The bumbling, fumbling shenanigans of Greg allow students to see their own lives reflected directly in the text.)

And Diary of a Wimpy Kid (for those who want to take a moment to jump off their high horse of that books in school absolutely must be dense, erudite art) is a good read. Personally, I greatly enjoyed it because it’s an energetic, funny and page turner.

Plus, guess what? There’s a theme. (A few of them, in fact: 1) We learn from our mistakes. 2) Self-image is very important. 3) No one escapes problems in their life. 4) You’ve got to show initiative if you are going to get anywhere in this world.)

And there are examples of denotation vs. connotation.

And the text provides me examples of tone, perspective, hyperbole and on and on.

The same stuff that the standards ask me to teach.

Should Diary of a Wimpy Kid replace Mark Twain? Nope, not even close. But can it be used as a bridge to build capacity? Can it be used as a text to illuminate literary devices?

Can it be used as a vehicle to get 100% of your class to do ALL the assigned reading? (And how often do our classes do that? I mean “faking it” through books has become so ingrained in our culture that there’s a multi-million dollar industry to provide resources as to how to better fake it — Cliff’s Notes, Spark Notes, Pink Monkey and so on.)

Yes, I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid with my classes. And guess what? It was a home-run success and a great teaching tool.

And guess what else?

We had FUN!

Since when are fun and and learning mutually exclusive to one another?

But, don’t worry — keep using those 20th century tools to reach today’s 21rst century kids. After all I am sure Hollywood is going to race right out and make a movie of your classroom textbook any day this week.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid… it certainly can have it’s place in a classroom where students are achieving.

If a kid leaves school without the ability to comprehend Ralph Ellison, well… it pales compared to the consequences of a kid not being able to read their credit card agreement.

Why does that not seem more obvious to people who wield power over the directions of our school curriculum?

Why do we not spend more time teaching “functional literacy” to our kids?

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d say it was because this is how we keep the lower socio-economic class in the lower socio-economic rungs of society. Upper socio-economic parents teach their kids the tenets of managing money, the financial rules attendant to cash. (Well, they certainly try but there are rubes to be taken to the cleaners at all levels of society.)

People who do not know this stuff, however, do not have the ability to teach it to their kids. And worse, they [incorrectly] presume that our public schools will show this stuff to their offspring.

But we don’t. Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into under-buying phone plans so that they end up getting $860 phone bills because they thought txt messages were included with unlimited talk time?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into signing up for one of those “no payments for six months” promotions then fallen victim to the fact that the rate skyrockets to 28% and they backdate the interest owed to all the way to the date of original purchase?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many people have been tricked into buying one of those “gift cards” to a superstore in their local supermarket (i.e. Best Buy, Staples, Target, and so on) and not realized that there is a 4% processing fee so that for every dollar you spend on the gift card, the recipient only gets 96 cents worth of goods.

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, now ask yourself… How many people have fallen victim to all three of the above scenarios?

Uhm waiter, more literary canon please.

Funny but English teachers will go to war to defend the canon. (Just you dare try to remove TKAM or Huck or Gatsby… you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.)

But teach basic day-to-day functional document interpretation. That’s not for English teachers who teach reading, is it? I mean isn’t their some kind of business ed class or home ec book that covers that?

When we teach reading, we teach Reading with a capital R… even when so many of our kids are in desperate need of learning how to read all the lower case r stuff.

Not so sure I buy into the “objective measure” argument in regards to student test scores being an inarguable method of insight into teacher performance. I mean just because all kids take the same test well, does it really mean that their performance on those tests translate so flawlessly to “windows on the teacher at the front of the room”?.

For example, just the other day a teacher in 11th grade showed me his grade book for his 5th period class.

It looked like it had been shot up by gunfire. Zero, zero, zero… bullet holes everywhere.

He showed me a kid who had perfect attendance and yet had 17 doughnut holes (i.e. “did not turn in work”, scores of zero) in a row.

The kid came.
The kid showed up.
The kid did nothing.

The kid has issues. He is short a zillion credits, doesn’t even bring a backpack to school and certainly doesn’t look like he has much of a chance of graduating.

Conversely, another kid in that same class has terrible attendance… but shows up just often enough so that the school has not yet bounced him off the roster.

Bullet holes in the grade book – for both of them. It’s an entire class like that.

Are either of these kids going to reflect test scores that 1) favor this teacher or 2) prove anything about this teacher’s merit?

Cause this is a good teacher. A guy who tries. A guy who shows up and takes the “lowest kids” because he feels he can reach them.

And he likes to reach them. It’s his life’s work. But nope, he doesn’t reach all of them. Not even close.

Aren’t these kids actually illuminating shortcomings of…
-parents?
-community?
-truant officers?
-administration?
-politicians?
…as much as they are illuminating the shortcomings of educators?

Does this man deserve to be demonized? Who is going to want to take on our most challenging kids, the ones that need the most help, if there are draconian punishments waiting for those who do not “deliver measurable performance”?

Perhaps he reaches all those kids… when they are 22 years old and finally decide that they are gonna stop being a screw-up and listen to Mr. _______’s words — the ones that have been hauntingly careening through their head for the past seven years?

Now, take a guess at what an AP Calculus teacher’s grade book looks like. There might not be straight A’s for everyone but it certainly isn’t bullet holes all around either.

Those kids work. They show up, turn in assignments and even do extra credit assignments when they already have an A in the course.

Whaddya think his scores are going to reflect on the state tests? (Especially since they barely touch on Algebra II in their most challenging form.)

Doesn’t the actual teaching assignment you get directly have a correlation to the test scores your students deliver? At least in a measure that deserves some real weight?

And is any weight given?

BZZZPP!!

No, it is not.

(Because that’s just liberal coddling and buying into having low expectations for our children, I assume. After all, it’s No Child Left Behind by 2014… even if they are leaving themselves behind.)

Just not sure about how apples equal oranges on this front. And I am HUGELY skeptical of the word “objectivity”.

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?

Is there such a thing as “bad” kids?

Walking the halls of school and chatting (as I get to do) with teachers from all over the country, I often hear the term “the good kids”. They are the ones that (this is my own, rough definition here; one I am drawing by assumption) come to class, behave in a civil manner, make an attempt to respect authority, do their work and strive for [so called] “admirable goals” like good grades, graduation, becoming well educated, going to college and so forth.

Good kids are, well… good kids. We all kind of understand who they are.

But if there are good kids, by definition, that must mean there are also “bad kids”, right? It really is a question I am not sure I know the answer to.

I mean, the bleeding heart California liberal in me wants to say, “There is no such thing as a bad kid.” And a part of me wants to truly believe that. I really do.

But to work in an urban, title I school you see kids that deal drugs, commits viscous acts of violence, show absolutely no regard for authority on campus, actively seek to destroy our school through vandalism, graffiti, and so on… and generally show absolutely no interest whatsoever in pursuing any academic aspirations whatsoever. To some kids, school is nothing more than a social venue where they get their kicks causing mayhem, chillin’ with friends and trying to score a little nooky from the hottie they just made eye contact with in the hallway.

And when other campus employees refer to them as the “bad kids” I often find myself biting my tongue. I mean I work hard not to label kids good or bad — in my book, kids are kids are kids and they vary along such a diverse continuum that there really is no way to generalize them with such imprecise vocabulary words. Yet… when other campus employees use the term “bad kids” and are referencing the type of students that demonstrate behaviors like the ones I just listed, is it really unfair of them to call these young people “bad kids”?

I wonder.

And if not, is there even such a thing as a “bad kid”?

Some folks will blame the parents of the child and talk about how they are being raised. Some people will blame the kids themselves for not acting more intelligently, responsibly, properly. Some people will blame the school and teachers for not being able to do a better job of reaching these students. However, this is a different discussion.

The question is, is there such a thing as a “bad kid” when you work at a school.

And are we ashamed to admit that “yes, there are” out of a fear that we will be transgressing some sort of “moral spirit of what a teacher ought to be” if we do indeed cop to the idea that some kids are just “bad”.

So what is to be done when a student farts in class?

Hey, don’t laugh, this is a serious academic issue.

The way I see it, there are a coupla options.

1) Try to pretend it didn’t happen. Of course, if it’s stinky one, the boys sitting in and around the — let’s pretend I teach in a church — the boys sitting in and around the “pew” are gonna keep disrupting whatever progress you want to make in your lesson with commentary and insights about the aroma.

Of course, when you try to actually teach an ELA lesson on the need to use precise, descriptive, vibrant vocabulary in English class, you get papers back that lay flat and are filled with bland vanilla. But let a kid break wind and all of a sudden, the vocabulary being bandied about the room would make a lovelorn poet from the Romantic era proud of its richness and poignancy.

2) Scold the perpetrator. Now for me, this one would never work. First of all, I am still immature enough to find farts kinda funny so to actually try and castigate a kid would probably result in me cracking a smile in the middle of trying to keep a stern face. (Note: I think there is a fart joke in almost every book of young adult fiction I’ve yet written. And the new books that’ll be out next year, well… let’s just say it doesn’t look like the streak is in any danger of being broken right now.)

3) Pretend nothing actually happened and keep pressing on with the lesson. Probably the best route, when all is said and done, but meta-cognitively, an educator must know that for up to 180 seconds after student cheese-cutting, a teacher shouldn’t relay any truly valuable academic information — or else you will need to make a plan to re-teach it. After all, one good blasting of some backdoor breeze from a kid in class is enough to render even the most diligent of AP kids out of sorts for a while.

I guess the question I, as the teacher, have to really ask myself before I go down the road of condemnation for public flatulence is, to what end am I going to reprimand a student for this stuff? Am I going to send a kid to the Dean? Am I going to give the kid detention? Come on, let’s be honest, the more I keep the main subject of the classroom on student gas, the more tickled the kids are that we are 1) talking about this and 2) not talking about things like appositive phrases. I mean I have boys that would gladly engage in a 20 minute analysis on the type of wind currents able to be generated through the human digestive tract — the tone, the pitch, the pungency, the types of foods best suited to achieve optimum results — and if I were to give fart homework, I have a feeling my some of my most reluctant students would suddenly turn into verifiable scholars.

You want student engagement in the classroom? Try a Socratic Seminar on bottom blasts from the big brown horn. Guaranteed participation from all kinds of kids.

You want to teach vocabulary? Use farts. They’ll never forget the definition of turgidity again.

And not to be sexist, but how come I’ve never once had a freshman interrupt class with the declaration, “Ew, Kimberly farted!”

I get, “Ew, Michael farted!”
I get, “Ew, Joesph farted!”
I get, “Ew, both Michael and Joseph farted!”

But never the girls. Hmmm… worth more investigation.

The Conundrum of Student Farts… in my opinion, it’s an issue that needs more high level discussion.

In the second part of this series, I am going to chat about Why the “best” teachers are needed to teach our “best” students.

NOTE: This was a questions raised in Part I: which students deserve our school’s best teachers?
(Coming soon, an argument for Part III: Why the “best” teachers are needed to be teaching the “middle level” students and an argument for Part IV: Why the “best” teachers are needed to be teaching the “challenged” students as well as Part V: A review of the discussion and a exploration of what I think I’d be forced to do if I were a principal trying to figure out which teachers to assigned to which classes.)

Why the “best” teachers need to teach the “best” students.

If you think about it, why should the kids who demonstrate the highest commitment to school and most value their own studies and education not be provided/rewarded with a school’s best teachers? Haven’t they earned it?

After all, which teachers are”best” equipped to challenge these most advanced, most ready, most eager to learn young minds? And which teachers are best prepared to get them ready for the demands of education at the next level of their lives?

Which teachers do we want preparing our next generation of leaders because, truthfully, the top kids in our classrooms today show the highest likelihood of being the “top” leaders/discoverers/innovators in industry, science, medicine, politics, law and so on tomorrow?

It may sound like a silly cliche, but these “best” kids (and I use best in an academic sense, not a sense-of-worth-as-a-human-being sense) represent America’s best chance for tomorrow — and don’t they deserve the best of what we’ve got to offer them right now in terms of our nation’s best educator’s being made available to them today? On these children we are all, in a way, pinning our hopes.

Serving the needs of the top students with our best resources reminds me in a way of the 80/20 rule. Essentially, the 80/20 rule postulates that “20 percent of something is most always responsible for 80 percent of the results.”

I know around my school, the top 20% of our students absolutely carry our test scores. Take them out of the equation and we are looking the state taking us over as an entirely failing institution. We’d be toast! (And what school wouldn’t be?)

The top 20% of our students are also the ones most likely to attend a 4 year college and considering that we have over a 45% dropout rate (from freshman to senior in terms of non-matriculation), these students can also make a heckuva claim that they are the ones most in need of rigorous college prep at the pre-collegiate level.

And who better to prepare a kid to face the SAT’s and the AP exams than our school’s “best” teachers? I mean those tests are tough and a great educator can certainly make a great impact on student performance. (Not that tests like these are the end-all, be-all — and if you are familiar with my disposition, you probably know my feelings of BLARFF about bubble tests but still, low SAT’s = virtual exclusion from top-flight universities so let’s not be Pollyannish about the significance of honors and AP classes.)

In yesterday’s post, I divided school educators into 3 categories:

• Best teachers
• Average teachers.
• L’s (the L can stand for “Low” or “Lemons” – fill in your own mental blank).

If we put the L teachers at the front of the room of the AP classes, are we giving our top kids the best chance we can for them to be competitive in a hyper-competitive “get accepted to a university” culture?

If we put the “average” teachers in the front of the room of these classes, are we really cultivating the best and brightest minds in our schools in the most advantageous way we can? I mean how often do “average” teachers create outstanding results?

A school’s “best” students are the ones most likely to do all of their homework, dive most deeply into extra-curricular activities, show an overt thirst for academic challenges and demonstrate a willingness to go over and beyond the “normal course of student duties.”

And you’re going to tell me that kids like this aren’t most deserving of being placed with a school’s best teachers?

Plus, if you are a parent of an “honor” student and you find out that the “best” teachers on campus are not being made available to the “best” students because the school has a philosophy that dictates that the “best” teachers are going to be put with the “lowest” performing kids, aren’t you going to say, “Well, that’s great for them… but then I am going to send my kid to a different school, one where they get the “best” that can be offered to them… because, darn it, my kid has proven they deserve it — and they need it in order to excel later in life.”

The argument states that our best deserve our best. And if you are a school principal don’t you most probably agree? Paying short shrift to our “best” students by not providing them with the “best” teachers, well… how is this “best” for the whole school? What, are you going to put a first year novice teacher with the school’s top students when you have an opportunity to place a veteran with a strong track record in that very same class? Are you going to put a “tenured, worksheet-based, newspaper reading, leaves the moment the bell rings every day” teacher with the top students when you can put in “a hungry, lives for this job type of educator” who constantly seeks to advances their own professional capacities and takes leaderships roles in a variety of capacities of their own volition?

Dangerous as this is to say, there is a very solid argument to be made for why our best deserve our best if you are an administrator that is forced to choose.

And they are all being forced to choose.

(NOTE: Before you blast away at me, please remember that I am going to post in the next few days an argument as to why the “best” teachers are needed to be teaching the “middle level” students and an argument for Why the “best” teachers are needed to be teaching the “challenged” students. This is just Part I of a series — but all thoughts, comments, personal attacks on my intellectual inferiority and moral repugnance are welcome.)

So I gotta hand it to Arne Duncan cause the man is not afraid to use pointed words and ruffle some feathers. His latest spear is aimed at teacher training programs. (BTW, I do not say “spears” in a condescending manner because when you look at the state of education today, you gotta admit, we need some “new stuff” and unless you are willing to break some eggs you’re not going to be able to make a new educational omelet — so a part of me salutes Arne Duncan in a BIG Ol’ WAY simply for calling a pink elephant a pink elephant.)

Check it out, Mr. Duncan is letting ‘er rip against our teacher training programs.

He calls for “revolutionary change”. On one hand, it’s a bit of a political platitude but on the other hand, he’s right. We do need MAJOR change. And why? Well, as Arne points out, many, many new teachers, “…say they did not get the hands-on teacher training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high-needs students.”

I am not sure if there are going to be too many folks that disagree with this statement. I mean look, right now we pretty much throw new teachers to the wolves (that’s a figure of speech, btw… well, kind of… kidding!) and the ones that survive the first three years are the ones that get to be part of the “club”.

And the ones that shuffle away, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes, are the ones that got body slammed one time too often in the WWE of NCLB and the DOE.

Matter of fact, there are droves of these body-slam victims. I can’t tell you how many people I know that hung up their spurs within the first few years absolutely baffled by the reality of being a teacher — even after having earned a graduate degree to pursue this professional aim.

It’s absolutely crazy. Too many teacher programs have devolved in far too many ways into mere classes on theory where book study and hypothetical scenarios are the foremost way an aspiring teacher learns about their craft.

You wanna learn what it’s like to be a teacher in a “high needs” school — and come on, we all know that the phrase “high needs” is a code word for low income, under-resourced, quite often high minority population institutions with all kinds of serious problems going on — then you have to step inside a classroom.

There is simply no other way to prepare for the job of working in a “high needs” school without actually working in a “high needs” school.

This reminds me of one of my favorite Mike Tyson quotes of all time. Once, in his heyday, when asked to respond to the apparently smart and well-thought out pre-fight strategy illuminated by a forthcoming opponent (i.e. the guy had laid out his very tactically sound plan to defeat Iron Mike when Tyson was in his prime) Mike Tyson glibly responded, “Look, everybody’s got a plan until they get hit.”

And ain’t that how it is for these new teachers? They come in with seating plans and behavior management plans and disciplinary plans and lesson plans and all sorts of plans… and then they get “hit”.

• “Hit” by the reality of kids dropping f-bombs in the middle of class.
• “Hit” by the reality of having 39 kids in a room with only 33 desks.
• “Hit” by the reality of being charged with raising the literacy levels of students that come into their 10 grade classes with 4rth grade reading levels.
• “Hit” by the reality of low socioeconomic home lives, transience, absenteeism, violence, alcohol, sex, drugs and so on.

That’s why I just love Iron Mike the philosopher… “Everybody’s gotta plan until they get hit.” Well, in “high needs” schools they do get hit…and nobody is properly preparing them for the inevitable kidney punches.

Come on, basically we are sending in an army of coddled, young, idealistic theorists into these “high-needs” places under the delusion that if a kid talks too loudly or profanely in class, you can actually send them to the principal.

HA!

Wait til they call a parent to discuss how “the poor linguistic choices of a student can be rectified” and the parent starts using more profanity than the kid ever did and thinks you, the teacher, are the real problem in the equation — and not their little angel.

It’ll make your head spin… especially if no one warned you (back in graduate school during your teacher training, of course) that it was coming.

Give a kid a book on riding a bike and have him study and study and study… it’s not going to matter. Until that kid actually rides the bike, he is not qualified to call himself a “bike rider”.

It’s why the GRE’s and such are simply preposterous. Has anyone looked at the subject area test for the GRE’s lately? (I’ll save that for another post.) Lu-di-crous!!

But ETS is on the job so no worries folks, right? (Garsh, do they irk me — the tail that wags our educational dog on so many fronts and yet, who calls them out on it? Sheesh!!!)

look, you have to find your own sense of inner balance, whether it’s bike riding or teaching — and without real time in a real classroom saddle to do so, it’s no wonder our national attrition rate in these “high needs” schools are so astronomical.

I just wonder why it’s taken so long for Washington D.C. to recognize what appears to me to be a pandemic problem?

However, let’s be honest — to properly train new teachers we are going to have to elevate spending. The fact is, professional development is under seige at the same time that classes are swelling, money for academic resources are dwindling and teachers, who already struggle to make ends meet financially in their personal lives, are taking pay cuts all across the country. Me, I took a 3% cut this year and some furlough days… to work with more students with less supplies… but you can see why people would be beating down the door to jump on the this career train right?

Fact is, people become teachers because they want to give and because they want to teach. Educating others is a form of service to the community and dorky as it sounds, it just feels good for the soul. I mean if money was the foremost reason these people were in grad school, they’d head to Wall Street instead where a person who loses billions for their company gets rewarded with hundreds of millions in pay. (Because there’s a limited talent pool, of course, for people with the deft skills to keenly navigate such elite waters. HA!)

I’d love to see a reinvention of teaching training programs because when I look out on the horizon and see how these places operate, I see that they are filled with scores of good, smart people who are fossilized and politicized.

Who is putting the kids first? And since so many of our “high needs” school can’t seem to do that, why in the world did we ever expect to look up and discover that our farm system for teachers (the teacher training programs) were doing it excellently well?

I applaud your intent, Mr. Duncan. But platitudes don’t feed the bulldog. We are gonna need to see action.

What we need are programs that are, first and foremost, about the K-12 students