Summer vacation has started and while I am not at school it doesn’t really yet feel like summer vakay.

But it will. (I am determined to make that happen.)

However, right now it just feels like I have a Monday off… but one where I am looking over my shoulder waiting for someone to say to me, “Back to the Salt Mines, Buster! And this time, we’re doubling the importance of the bubble tests!”

Irrational fears always surface when you are coming down off of such a long bender of bubble test mania, no?

Truth is, it usually takes me a bit to detox. I am still all-too-wrapped-up in the stuff I was wrapped up in for the past 10 months when the truth is, those 10 months are now over and I have 2 months to prepare for the 10 months that will follow (you know, the time when Fall will rear its never-ending, marathon-esque head).

Summer, however, is a time to break out of some patterns, reflect on some of the directions I want to take, grab a bit of more human-like sleep, eat some good food, indulge in some oh-so-awesome family time, and try to regain a sense of balance in life.

Cause when you are a teacher, you lose those. From sleep to diet, stress level to family time, being a teacher takes a lot from a lot of different parts of your life in a lot of different ways.

A good novel always helps as well. I’ve currently got 8 books sitting by my bed, 3 in my iPad, and still it feels as if I don’t have anything to read.

Don’t ya just hate that?

Indeed, I will be writing a new book. (Actually, I am working on two of them at the same time right now… while doing some copyedits on two others and cranking out more BookJams… but such is my professional writing life and this is what I love so I ain’t complaining at all.) And when I look at the schedule ahead, I realize how busy my summer schedule actually is.

But in feeling this “to do” pressure (you know, the kind where you spend a lot of time thinking about all your “to do” lists) I am reminded of something I once heard a cruise ship tour guide tell me. (FYI, yes, I love cruises. Matter of fact, might I propose an ECN ning cruise right now? We can take over an entire boat to the Mediterranean and go visit Greece before it defaults on its loans and gets sealed off and turned into a debtor’s prison. Anyway, the cruise guy said to me…)

“You tourist folks come in on Mondays tense about your dinner reservations and walking around with all your agendas… then by Thursday, you don’t give a damn about anything more minor than our captain hitting icebergs. Happens every time we set sail.”

That’s kind of me right now. I start off summer tense and knotted and in the world of “to do” and then in three weeks I am Mr. Friendly neighbor having impromptu Tuesday night bbq’s.

The school year has a cycle… but so does summer vakay: tension followed by a release of tension.

Let that journey begin!

If you haven’t followed the prior few days of my blogs on the notion of evaluating teacher effectiveness you might want to go back and do some prep before you read this next post… cause today, I am going to go to bat for yet another key ingredient requisite to drafting a fair, multi-textual portrait of my professionalism as an educator.

I want the kids to weigh in. Yep, let the customers have their say!

The criticism I most often hear with this idea is that the kids can’t be trusted. I believe the opposite is true. I think the kids often give me the most honest insight into what happens in the rooms of other teachers.

When I want to know how a math or history or science teacher is, I go to my students. And you know what… they tell the truth.

The rigorous teachers don’t get slammed. They may get complained about for being too demanding but they don’t get torched. Kids want to learn and teachers that reach and teach them get love when the teacher is out of earshot.

However, the teachers that don’t teach do get scorched. Of course, face to face, the kids act as if the teacher who lets students “kick it” and not work hard and watch movies and the such, they think they are friends with the students… and that the students have their backs.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The kids do not respect these type of teachers and they get sold out as being “dudes who do nothing, who never do nothing in class” whenever someone asks.

The kids might very well be the MOST honest group of people on campus.

A teacher that works ‘em may not be adored, but they will be respected and when evaluation time comes around, the students will most certainly say as much.

“She demands too much and gives too much work and is always making me do stuff.” To the knowing eye, is this really a bad eval? Even if they say, “And she’s mean, too.”

I think we can all read between the lines on that one. One day, I hope my daughter says this. It’s beats the opposite. “Oh, she’s too easy. I’m bored.”

But kids will tell you the real deal. “All we do in that class is copy the problems from the textbook and the teacher doesn’t do hardly nothing,” or “All that teacher does is check their FaceBook page all day long” and on and on.

What should we not trust about this? Are we worried that kids will conspire to collectively lie to try and railroad a teacher? Well, in the anonymous system I propose (see earlier post from a few days ago) I believe kids will tell the truth. (Frankly, I’d be more worried about department wide conspiracies to oust someone by the teachers than I’d be worried about all students buying into a prank to screw over a good educator — and I already addressed that concern as not too legit a concern at all. The Atticus! argument).

Plus, all evals would be viewed over time. 3 years minimum.

Year 1 filled with THIS TEACHER STINKS! evals, well, hey, that could be an anomaly. Year 2 filled with THIS TEACHER STINKS! evals, well, this could be the start of a pattern. But three years in a row of THIS TEACHER STINKS! evals?

And then we look at the peer evals.
And then we look at the admin evals.
And then we look at the, hold your breath, students achievement levels via test scores.

And if all of them point to a “Whoa, this person is a bottom dwelling lemon in every category we consider,” well, that’s when the consequences of not measuring up on the teacher effectiveness scale do seem to have a bit of credibility, don’t they?

Let the kids speak. They will take the evals seriously (for the most part) and they should have a say if for no other reason than it’ll be quite honest.

Multiples measures for measuring teacher effectiveness will continue tomorrow… post is growing too long.

Obviously, I am some kind of addict that needs an intervention. My break from blogging lasted a whole 2 days.

Wow, huh?

But there’s just so much buffoonery in our midst that to let it go unchecked, well… it simply feels un-American for me to do so.

Plus, it’s all about the kids. I mean that’s where I retreated. And while I had a score of “This is your life” type emails from folks telling me about how much they enjoy my blog or were sad that I had been driven into the cave of despair by campus bozos or how I had spoken to them in a way that caused them to spit coffee through their nose while laughing or made them want to punch their computer screen in rage, all in all it boiled down to me recognizing my own truth about why I do this through a piece of literature that I just brought into my own classroom yesterday.

It’s called THE TWO WOLVES… and if you are not familiar with it, please read on. (Though it might be one of the shortest pieces I bring into class, it also might be one of the deepest.)

Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside all people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride,
superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

And so my blog will now make sure to try and feed the wolf which makes the most sense to nourish. It’s a good lesson for all of us, no?

I saw Jim Burke at CATE the other day and he mentioned how nicely blogging works within the scope of all the other writing he does.

And he particularly likes the groove he’s fallen into with it as of late.

Funny how I greatly enjoy blogging as well. Truth is, many people told me I should “blog” (whatever the heck that meant) as far back as 2007… but I wasn’t really into it. Wasn’t sure if I’d have anything to say or be able to stick with it or find any joy in it or what not.

Truth is, now that I have been at it for well over a year, I am a bit amazed at my ability to be prolific without really sacrificing any other meaningful part of my life.

Heck, I don’t know what I was doing before I was blogging – probably sleeping (LOL!) – but nowadays I find blogging to be a tool which keeps me sharp as a writer. After all, I must crank out almost 2,000 words a week just for blogs alone — and they can be about anything I want them to be about.

I’ve blogged about politicians, farts, assessment, writing, violence, books, dysfunction, friends, and on and on and on.

Heck, I’ve now even blogged about blogging.

If I do the math of it all, I see this: 2,000 words per week for at least 45 weeks this year is 90,000 words — that’s a 500 page novel I’ve written, easy! (A 500 page novel that I am, btw, not publishing. I mean who’s gonna want to read a book about farting politicians as they dysfunctionally craft policy for school assessment? I know, I know, I’d be surprised.)

The point is, more people should try it. Blogging keeps me sharp as a writer. Muscles that are used stay in better shape than muscles which are too well-rested.

I should know. I just finished yet another new children’s book which my agent read last night and loved… another notch coming in the belt, it looks like.

Blogging doesn’t come at the expense of other writing… blogging, ironically enough, seems to liberate writing.

Whoudda thunk-it?