Hi, my name is Whit Little and I have hacked Alan’s blog today to talk to you about this most important of seasons.

The season of data.

See, as we all know it’s coming up on testing time and in my role as the DDVP (Data-Driven Vice Principal) I want to make sure that you are properly placing all of your energy into the singularly most important area of a child’s education: their standardized test scores.

• Are your students prepared for the tests?
• Have you pre-tested the test material in order to make sure that your students are test ready?
• Have you generated data which can give an indication as to the data that will ultimately be generated from your students’ test data?
• Have you had the requisite amount of conversations about the importance of these tests to your students? (i.e. Twice a day on M,T,F and and three times per day on Tu, Th as per Ed Code Section 6ZL9TH.90L87M-B)
• Has your faculty engaged in enough meetings about the importance about upcoming tests?
• Have you done your “How to properly administer this test” workshop? (And don’t give me any of that, “But I’ve done this for years, why must I attend the same ol’ meeting yet again?” nonsense. It shows a lack of respect for the tests and of the importance of the data that these tests will generate.)

This time of year is no joke and we hope you understand the gravity of these tests. Please report all suspicious peers who display a cavalier attitude about the importance of these tests – or the data – to me, Whit Little. (You can just leave a comment below.)

And if you think it’s unethical for me to hack into Alan’s blog in order to relay the importance of the upcoming tests, might I remind you that the powers being granted to me, the DDVP, are currently growing in scale and scope to an unprecedented level.

Rightfully so, too. It’s a new era and this is but one of many changes to come in the near future so get over yourselves.

And yes, there will be a test.

A few days ago, a major league umpire blew a call and cost a pitcher a perfect game. Being that the “perfect game” is such a rare feat in baseball, this was a big deal to many in the sports world.

But what struck me about the whole incident was how quickly and completely the ump owned up to his error.

He blew it. He said he blew it. He felt terrible about blowing it and if there was a way to make amends for screwing up the call beyond apologizing, he made no bones about saying he would have done it.

“It was the biggest call of my career, and I kicked the (stuff) out of it,” Joyce said, looking and sounding distraught as he paced in the umpires’ locker room. “I just cost that kid a perfect game.”

This, to me, is a great reminder as to why I often try to bring in “pieces” I find from my random readings into English class. The language arts standards are easy to teach. Aspects of being a high quality human being, much tougher. (And being that the bubble tests don’t even bother to pay lip service to this aspect of a student’s education – beyond the threat of DON’T CHEAT ON THE BUBBLE TESTS, that is – we are sledding up an even tougher hill on this front!)

An article like this is a great way to end the year. Why? Because at the end of the day, kids need to know that no matter what they do, no matter how hard they try, no matter where they work, how much they make or who they partner up with, they are going to one day “screw up big time”.

And how they respond to their errors will determine much more about their lives than most kids really ever give any thought to.

I know I’ve screwed up a lot this year. (School ends next Friday, June 11 for me.) I am sure there are students to whom I have seemed insensitive, peers to whom I’ve seemed self-righteous, admins to whom I have seemed intractable and readers who think I am a bleepity-bleep.

Heck, sometimes when I read what I have written I think I am a bleepity-bleep so how can folks not?

What can I say but, “Hey, I am human… I screw up.” And just like this baseball ump, when we do foul up – and admit it – I find that most people are pretty quick to forgive us and think we are better people for admitting that we have shortcomings. Matter of fact, the people who own up to their mistakes are the type of people with whom most of us would prefer to be associated with.

Do you know anyone who always thinks they are right?
Do you know anyone that perpetually refuses to apologize?
Do you know anyone who feels that they are entitled to behave the way that they do because of… gulp… who they are?

Drive ya crazy, won’t they?

Umpire Joyce, you can call my ball game anytime because I am much more wary of the folks who claim they are not at fault than I am of the folks who own up to matters and say they are when they are.

In life, as in baseball, no one bats 1.000

There’s an entire industry out there promising to “teach you how to write”. And you know what? None of them can deliver.

Now sure, they can help. How much? Whose to say? But can they “teach you how to write”? Nah.

Of course, I learned this through firsthand experience. I have spent lots of time, effort and energy exploring all sorts of stuff. (And money, too — let’s not forget that.)

From writing retreats to college classes to books on the craft of writing to writer’s groups and on and on, I’ve spent years and years and years as a student of writing.

And the only person that has taught me “how to write” is… drumroll please… me.

Don’t believe the hype. (Or the advertisements in the back of Writer Magazine for MFA’s and the such.) Only you can fashion yourself into a writer.

This is because writing, in a way, is a lot like cave diving (a.k.a. spelunking). Until you get down in there and start exploring, you have no idea what you are going to discover about both the cave and about yourself.

People can describe it to you. People can sell you the gear. People can offer guidance, insight, inspiration, tools and maps but until you’ve strapped it up and spelunked you are not a spelunker. And once you become a splelunker, it’s natural to want to help others spelunk… but in your heart you know that until they actually do spelunk they will not be a spelunker.

And as we all know, you can’t make anyone spelunk.

(Gosh, what a fun word!)

Of course, by taking the classes, reading the books, surfing the websites, attending the conferences and wearing the special glittery underwear essential to the craft (hey, whatever works, right?) I’ve picked up critical bits and pieces all along the way.

And it’s the accumulation of all those bits and pieces that make for the writer’s education. But they don’t come from any one source and they certainly don’t exist in any “buy this one fantastic product now” type of package.

So yes, buy the books, take the classes, subscribe to the RSS feeds and sport the hot pink, lace writing thong… but also know that you will never be able to buy the act of being a spelunker.

School budgets need to be cut! But you better not shortchange MY child’s education. This is the schizophrenic mantra being shouted by policy-making parents today.

On one hand, when they put on their bean counter hats, they see the excess, the fluff, the areas which can “justifiably” be scaled back. On the other hand, when they wear the hat of a being a parent and they look at the education that their own flesh and blood are getting in our schools, suddenly it’s a whole different tune we hear being sung.

Art and music are expendable, non-core luxuries when policy decisions are being made for other people’s children. But when it comes to their own kids, if they don’t have flutes, paint, percussion, and piano, they bark the accusation, “What kind of Neanderthal schooling is being provided by you philistines!?”

If only the folks that made the decisions as to what’s best for other people’s kids viewed these decisions through the prism of how they would evaluate the very same questions when applied through the lens of “What would be best for my own kids?” things would be so much different.

When we start to educate our kids as if they really are “our” kids — and not the kids of “other” people — we are going to make a heck of leap forward in national education policy.

Teaching kids who are not motivated to learn wears on you. Sure, Hollywood movies make it all seem as if being in a job where a large amount of kids who are not motivated to participate in their own education simply requires one simple “epiphany” (either by the teacher or the students) in order to right the ship and send everyone off into a bright, bold and bountiful future… but the reality of it is much different.

Much.

It challenges you. It frustrates you. It makes you call into question why you even bother to do this kind of work. And anyone who does not pay heed to these ideas doesn’t know what it means to be on the front lines, what it means to be working in a school with an outrageous dropout rate… what it means to try and care more about a kid’s education more than the kid (or the parent of the kid) does themself.

To take liberties with an old cliche’, “You can lead a student to knowledge, but you can’t make them think.”

Indeed there are days where I feel like the Pied Piper, where no matter what I do with a class of students, they are on the bus, all in, eager, excited and fired up to go push our boundaries into a whole host of new, exciting intellectual directions.

But there are scores of kids who just don’t play ball floating through our American schools. Their attendance is horrible, their homework is non-existent and their sense of actually wanting to take an active role in their own education is horrifically low. And then, when they show up at the end of the year, having missed 8 of the 14 prior days of class, without even attempting to give a half-hearted effort at turning in a final project, what do you do?

It wears on you.

I’ve already spent so many of the arrows in my quiver. I’ve yelled. I’ve cajoled. I’ve been soft and cut slack and I’ve been firm and drawn lines in the sand. I’ve tried to get other people at school to join forces, I’ve made attempts to work with parents… what more is there to do? 7 days of school left and there is no way for this kid not to get an F… and I am sure that my class is not the only one like this for this student.

And then NCLB comes in and paints me and my school district as if it’s our fault that these kids are under-performing.

Is it the dentist’s fault when a patient gets a cavity?