Alan Lawrence Sitomer

Author, Educator, Speaker

A Mom with a Mouth Full of F-Bombs

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I gotta give kudos to my VP. Earlier this week, I walked in to the front office – by the reception desk, no less – and heard a parent SCREAMING at the top of her lungs.

Dropping F-Bombs like a belligerent sailor.

All while wearing a baby on her back.

I swear, it’s all true.

Let’s start with the baby. It was in a carrying sling, a baby bjorn of some sort. Yet even though the kid was about 8 months old, I’d guess, it was being shuttled around our campus like a biology textbook.

(Note: I didn’t see milk, diapers, a hat for the sun, or wipes. But I don’t want to jump to conclusions. Perhaps there was a diaper bag filled with junk in her car. I’ll cut her some slack for a moment.)

Now Mom was obviously livid. And why? Because her daughter was being suspended from school. Why? Because her daughter popped off to a teacher in the middle of class. Literally EXPLODED on her teacher, dropping F-Bombs like, well… dropping ’em like a belligerent sailor.

Hmmm, I wonder where she ever learned this type of behavior?

Our VP though, was a real pro. She tried to speak calmly. As the mom escalated, she de-escalated. She courteously asked the mom to lower her voice, watch her language and mind the fact that there were 25 other people around including a bunch of students.

“F-Bomb that!” was the reply.

At that point the VP explained that she was going to have to call campus security because discussing complaints in this fashion was not appropriate nor in accord with school policy. (And she did it without the sarcastic bite I probably would have applied.) The fact is, this mom was reckless and almost seemed on the border of violence.

And that’s with an 8 month old on her back! The 16 year old daughter, of course, just stood there next to her mother as if she were the real victim – and her mom was entirely right.

See, the thing is, my school gets run through the mud of the media in terrible ways and if you were to simply read the headlines or view our standardized test scores, you’d think all of us on campus were a bunch of unprofessional oafs who couldn’t teach a fish to swim.

Yet, do the bubble tests measure any of the extenuating circumstances which play a definite role in academic performance? Do the tests that ETS produces take into account a mom with a mouth full of F-Bombs?

Clearly, in my opinion, this lady was on the border of needing social services to intervene. Based on what I saw, I think there’s at least a reason to investigate whether or not this person is actually fit to be the guardian of her children.

Yet my school, we take all comers. If you were to look at this kids IEP I have a feeling you’d find a troubled history in school from way back when. A high school that wanted to elevate its test scores would try and re-route kids like this to “other” institutions. (Trust me, it happens.) But we don’t pull that nonsense. We try to provide all comers with an education. Of course we could do a better job of it – but who couldn’t? Yet, it’s the end of the year and some of our seniors are making plans to go to some pretty heavy-duty 4 year colleges… so at least there’s a path within our school for those who are determined to find it to actually take something from the time they spend in our halls.

Clearly, though, we’re not miracle workers. And even more clear is the idea that there are about a zillion factors that go into “making a student”.

And one day, when that 8 month old turns into a 16 year old, well… we can only pray, right?

These are the kids of our city. And this is what we, the teachers are facing, in trying to educate them. Nope, we don’t bat 1.000. Not even close.

Don’t our students deserve it?

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There’s a part of me that is just tremendously old fashioned.

I believe in the value of hard work.
I believe in the potential of kids.
I believe in saying please and thank you.

Therefore, when it comes to the end of the school year, I really feel as if the professional effort we give to them boils down to one simple question: don’t our students deserve it?

Don’t our kids deserve the right to be challenged these last few weeks of school?

I mean really, aren’t our kids being short-changed enough in these tough times? After all, none of this is really about us anyway; it’s about serving them. (At least, it’s supposed to be.)

Now sure, it’s exhausting. And most of us are exhausted. But as much as we need new tools, expanded resources, more money and heightened brain-power in education, these last few weeks really only require one thing to be successful.

A dedicated teacher who holds the intention of ending the school year with a BANG!

If you want to get something done, you will get it done. And if you don’t, you won’t. At this point, I am not sure how much “teacher effectiveness” can be legislated. Or student participation. This time of year is about looking into your own heart and deciding what type of teacher you want to be.

Sure, you can coast. At this point of the school year, shortcuts seem more obvious and tempting than ever. My advice is to reach down deep and GO FOR IT one more time.

Assign a passion project. Something meaningful. Something meaningful to you (because you feel strongly that kids need to learn “this”). Something meaningful to them (so that the students feel empowered with a sense of self-directed choice).

Indeed, we are on summer’s doorstep. My advice: don’t just survive the school year, finish it!

Finish strong.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong tonight from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

End of Year Ideas

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I love using Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the classroom. There are about a zillion reasons why and a host of research exists on why using PBL is simply, well… good teaching. No need for me to really explain the sound theory behind it all right here. It would take too long.

PBL rocks! Let’s leave it at that.

On a practical level I find that using PBL as the cornerstone for ending the school year is especially effective in allowing me to achieve many of my objectives for this time of year.

Why? Because I want my students, in no particular order to…

  • finish strong
  • work hard
  • demonstrate evidence of their learning
  • have fun
  • stretch themselves
  • create something tangible
  • collaborate and innovate
  • feel as if their time is a valuable commodity in their lives, something not to be frittered away but rather be valued and respected.
  • and on and on. (I fear I am about to digress into edu-babble, politically trite buzzword speak if I continue on.)

Of course, I want most of these things during the course of the year as well. However, having to bow at the altar of NCLB, ETS and their bubble tests while making sure to cover a host of “other things” that are not as PBL friendly for ELA teachers (like punctuating appositive phrases and teaching parallelism within sentences) well… as Mick Jagger once said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

So essentially, before my classes break for the summer, I ask my students to “step up” bigger than they ever have before through the creation of a “project”.

I preface my assignment with a little speech about how, at this very moment, my kids are most probably at the height of their aptitudes. They have never had more schooling, they’ve never been more worldly, they’ve never had more experiences, they’ve never been more ready to deliver something truly great. (Obviously, when dealing with 14-17 year olds, this can almost always be said; they are perpetually at their “height” in a way. Once you get old like me, however, you can’t always say you are “better” now than you ever were before because in 1986 I was a much better basketball player than I am today. However, as English students, they are often “better” than they were two, three or even five years ago. Thus this little warm-up speech.)

All in all it boils down to Envision, Plot, Refine, Build, Tinker, Reflect, Re-Tinker, Finalize, Present.

Ending the year with my students having created “SOMETHING” is my plan.

What is that SOMETHING? It’s really up to the teacher. From expository projects to poetry units to biographical studies and on and on and on, a host of truly great ideas are available.

PBL can be high tech… or not.
PBL can be assigned to both individuals or groups.
PBL can take the form of old school oratory or new wave multi-media.
PBL can be so, so, so many things.

All in all, when it comes to the end of the year, I want my students to have to climbed a final mountain, ascended to a new plateau, and really pushed it one last time before our moments together in my room have passed.

PBL offers me that opportunity. Showing fluffy movies, merely biding your time til the year is over, counting down the days is a freakin’ waste.

Use the time. It’s life’s true currency.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

If I stop teaching, they still don’t stop learning.

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We are always teaching our students. Even when we are not teaching, we are teaching our students. In fact, when we are not teaching is probably when we are most teaching because kids often learn by adult example.

So what is the example you set from the front of the room?

It’s pretty well known that scores of secondary educators in this country will be showing fluff movies over the course of the last few weeks of the school year.

Doesn’t that teach kids a whole lotta stuff we’d really rather not have them learn?

BTW, I am not talking about showing a film like Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful to cap a unit on Holocaust studies. (Trust me, I love the cinema.) But I am quite wary of showing The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift… in Math Class!

So let’s look at some of the things kids learn when two teachers approach the end of the year from different perspectives.

Teacher X (TX) shows fluff movies and does silly worksheets because they are counting down the days to summer and just can’t wait to head for the door.

Teacher Y (TY) works ’em to the end trying to make the most out of classroom minutes over the course of the last few weeks of school but yes, still likes the idea of summer and is excited to take a break as well.

Things that TX is teaching by means of personal example:

  • I don’t care if you learn anything else.
  • This school doesn’t have the means to control me and prevent me from having a bad attitude/shortchanging you. (“Welcome to the real world, punk!”)
  • Professionalism when you are a teacher, matters little.
  • I only pay lip service to the phrase, “Your education matters.”
  • Who says surfin’ ebay doesn’t pay? I am collecting full wages right now.
  • You’ll be out of my hair soon enough.

Things that TY is teaching by means of personal example:

  • I don’t just talk the talk up here, I walk the walk and in life, you’ll come to discover, this matters a great deal.
  • It doesn’t matter whether or not this school has the means to control me… I am still going to carry myself as if I were a professional and do my job in the best manner I know how – as I have been asking you to do all school year long.
  • Habits of quality are not faucets to be turned on and off. You can’t just flip a switch in life. If you want to be excellent at something, you must always strive to be excellent – otherwise you will not be.
  • Learning doesn’t end so why would you ever assume there’s nothing more we should try to tackle in class before we take a summer break?

Obviously, there are so many more things we could add to each of these lists but what seems self evident is that if we really want to forge better character in our kids, we have to exemplify it ourselves via our deeds and not our language.

Phoning it in doesn’t mean you are not teaching; you are teaching things most parents would probably rather not have their kids learn from you.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

Staving off the wolves of educational despair.

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One of the reasons I consider it so important for teachers to try and finish the school year in a “strong” fashion is simply out of self-preservation. The fact is, teaching is tough. And the year is long and hard. And we are not always at our best.

Plus, when you add in a dose of the dire news we are all inevitably going to be reading/hearing about for the upcoming 2010/2011 school year (for example, I just heard rumors we might go as high as 43 to 1 on the student teacher ratio due to budget cuts on my campus), you can get demoralized.

And feel disempowered.

But in a way, this sentiment is an illusion. Sure, there are many things we cannot control in our teaching universe… but there are many things we can as well.

Choose to focus on the things that are within your realm of being able to control. It’s one recipe for staving off the wolves of educational despair.

When you strap it up and work your butt off bell to bell all the way to end of the year, you feel a certain personal dignity that can’t be stolen away from you. And when you work in a chaotic, frenzied, dysfunctional world where up is down and buffonishness trumps common sense, feeling as if you are making a positive contribution matters, despite the events going on all around you.

It actually matters a lot. In fact, it might be all the difference in the world.

Now of course, we owe it to the kids to give them our all, but in reality, a lot of teachers feel dumped on by their districts these days and as a result, they often passive-aggressively take out their own frustrations with their superiors on those that are most easily within lashing-out distance.

i.e. the kids.

My district pink-slipped me? Well, screw them… I ain’t teaching crap for the rest of this year. What are they going to do, fire me?

-Uhm, aren’t you forgetting the needs of the students?
-Aren’t you forgetting your own sense of professionalism?
-Aren’t you forgetting that you are still being paid for a job and just because you can shirk you duties doesn’t mean that you should shirk your duties.

As this year winds down, a lot of “stuff” is going to bubble up. My feeling is that the best defense to preserve your sanity, your dignity and your own personal sense of self can begins with a strong finish to the end of the school year. Refuse to be one of those teachers that just phone it in because at the end of the day, heck, at the end of your life, you’ll be able to look back and at least know that when it came time hey, at least you did what you could.

Trust me, there’s more juice in the fruit of students to be squeezed and wasting it, well… the knowledge that you’ve done so can wear on your soul.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (on May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

I just got a message from Arne Duncan.

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I just got a message from Arne Duncan. An email actually. Here’s what he sent to me:

As our nation observes Teacher Appreciation Week, I am pleased to send this message to recent Teachers of the Year, to make sure that you know how much we at the U.S. Department of Education value your extraordinary commitment and service to our nation’s students.

All teachers deserve honor and thanks on a daily basis for all they do to nurture their students’ academic and personal growth, help them to achieve, and prepare them for the future.

Teachers of the Year admirably represent the entire teaching profession, and I am especially grateful for the leadership and good examples they provide.

I salute you for all of your accomplishments, and I thank you for your enduring dedication to America’s students.

–Arne Duncan

At first, I thought it was a hoax. I thought I was going to open the email and POOF! my computer was going to disintegrate while an evil teen cackled from half-way across the world screaming, “I hate and am not liking subject verb agreement always!”

But alas, it really was from Mr. Duncan. And then, once my initial cynicism subsided, I realized, “Hey, that was pretty cool. Nice gesture, Mr. Secretary of Education.”

I mean the guy obviously can’t be everywhere doing everything trying to meet everyone. But at least he wrote me an email.

Or had a secretary write it.

Or ordered a secretary to have an intern write it.

Or ordered a secretary to have an intern who had a mother who was once a teacher write it. (Look at the proper use of those apostrophes… you know that if you’re gonna send an email out to teachers, as Secretary of Education, you better get both Strunk and White to sign off on that bad boy! However, I think I could take issue with his parallelism if I were to get persnickety but alas, he’s a busy guy so I am not gonna hit him with the fine tooth comb.)

Arne, I agree with you on one hell of a big point: our schools need to change. And I do salute the fact that you are a person who believes that if you’re going to make an educational omelet, you gotta break some schoolhouse eggs. (BTW, if you ever need a fire and brimstone speechwriter, I can be bought!)

Now of course, I might quibble over the eggs you are choosing to smash – or not choosing, as well (like bubble tests!) – yet, at the end of the day, I think the jury is still out on you. Being that you’re still relatively new at the job, and still learning the ropes, I think you deserve more time before you become the next marshmallow on my blogfire.

And you’ve done some good already as well. Those coupla billion you scrounged up to keep the universe afloat while Wall Street was playing 3 card monty with our national banking system really did prevent a calamity.

Yet, we ain’t out of the woods yet. Please don’t forget that.

All in all, thanks for the note last week – and right back at ya, Dude! Teacher of the Year wnners do work hard. But please know that there are hundreds of thousands of teachers in California and millions of teachers across the country that would really like to feel your love as well.

Now sure, some teachers stink and should be run from the profession, but their numbers are infinitesimal as compared to the number of those who simply do right by America. Remember, more time out of the Beltway will always be a good thing to show you just that. And if you want to come to Lynwood, we’d love to have you.

Oh yeah, feel free to bring Barry, too. It’ be a genuine honor.

Let’s just pink slip the tests instead of the professionals.

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So here’s an article where the doomsday scenario of teacher cuts is illuminated in big, bold print for all the world to see. We are talking about, by some estimates, 100,000 – 300,000 educators losing their jobs (those are Arne Duncan’s words) in the next few months.

In California, we pink-slipped something like 22,000 teachers. And everyone is befuddled as to an answer to help stave off this nightmare scenario.

I blogged about it last week, but let me suggest it again, this time with some math behind it. Let’s just pink slip the tests instead of the professionals.

In the state of California, for example, bubble tests are everywhere. I mean everywhere. Approximately 5 million students will be taking the CST exam for NCLB over the next month.

How much do we pay for each test? (I don’t know, but I wish someone would answer that for all of us.)

I’ll low-ball my guesstimates just to make the bigger point (i.e. of let’s just pink slip the tests instead of the professionals.)

I’ve heard there are over 6 million kids in California schools. Let’s toss out a million of them and posit that we’re only gonna pay ETS for 5 million tests.

How much does each test cost? According to the College Board website, the SAT costs $45 per test.
The College Board charges $86 per test for the AP exams, according to their site.
Being that the CST is for English, Math, History and Science – and being that I want to give the test makers a fair shake, let’s say they only charge 2/3 of the cost of an SAT for a more complex, longer, more broad in scope CST exam.

By that I mean, I’ll do the math at $30 per kid tested. (If AP are $86 per test, I find it hard to imagine that CST’s for NCLB are a 1/3 of the price for something that requires differentiation at every grade level, but like I said, let’s be fair and try to underestimate the fee they charge our schools for testing.)

So I underestimate the amount of kids taking the test at 5,000,000 and I underestimate the cost per test at $30 and that means that when I say that the number is $150,000,000.00 to test our state’s kids — that’s 150 million dollars — I think I am being conservative.

And we test them year after year after year. To put it in perspective,4 years of high school = 600 million dollars in testing.

So let’s say we actually took that $150 million for next year’s tests and put it on the table and asked ourselves, “Where could we get more bang for our buck?”

And by bang for our buck I mean, where will the money best be spent directly helping the kids of the 2010/2011 school year?

Should we spend $150,000,000 on bubble tests for our students or should we spend $150,000,000 on teachers for the students in the classrooms?

The answer to me, well… it seems self evident.

Don’t ya just wish that somebody would just stand up and shout APRIL FOOL’S!!

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Don’t ya just wish that somebody would just stand up and shout APRIL FOOL’S!!

Remember when we said we were cutting 5 instructional days off of this year’s academic calendar and 7 day’s off of next year’s academic calendar so that your students would a lot less time in class when really, we all know that they need more?

APRIL FOOL’S!!

Remember when we told you that pounding all your students with poorly constructed bubble tests would give us insightful assessment data that we could use to better direct classroom instruction?

APRIL FOOL’S!!

Remember, when we told you that we were going to bring equity to classrooms across the country by fairly funding schools across the nation so that we could provide the proper resources you need to do your jobs well?

Okay, we never told you that…but if we did you’d know to shout out APRIL FOOL’S!!

Methinks the Fools doth believe they are not acting as such — and that makes them not just April Fools but ones that wear this badge of honor all year round.

Don’t say “We never told ya so.”

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We all know that bringing in young, energetic, enthusiastic teachers is critical to the success of American public education – especially in the future. Why? Because the law of nature dictates that nurturing youthful seeds is the way to eventually build healthy, well-developed gardens.

And yet, America is dropping the educational ball on this front. Egregiously.

When the pink slips get distributed and the ax chops, who are the first to go? Our youngest teachers. Why? Because in school today we value duration of service over quality of service. (And no, I am not usually a union basher but on this matter, they don’t really make the best case in my opinion. Quality of service should count more than years of service and it’s a falsehood to automatically equate one – time spent teaching – with the other… excellence of teaching.)

Furthermore, let’s look at some of the more practical aspects of working… like the paycheck one takes home.

Last year my district cut our pay by 3%. Next year they are talking about us taking another 10% pay cut.

A 13% pay cut in two years? Not the best way to either retain or attract talent, I’d say.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. What would most people say to the Harvard Valedictorian if they informed the world that they were going to become a middle school English teacher? Not an esteemed professor. Not national leader. Not even a wretched, ink-stained author. (The most reprehensible of ’em all, when you think of it – LOL!)

The answer would be, “A mere middle school teacher? But why?”

It’s getting harder to answer that question these days and if you re-read this blog post in the year 2020, well… don’t say “We never told ya so.”

I just got spit on. That’s right, spit on. By a student.

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I just got spit on. That’s right, spit on. By a student.

And no, they did not catch them.

See, this Saturday we are going to have a campus beautification day. Our school has been hit by a flood of graffiti as of late and the truth is, we need more than just the custodial staff to improve the campus environment.

So the administration or ASB or somebody came up with the idea of having a campus beautification day whereby we get the students, the staff, the parents, the community to come and paint and plant flowers and so on. Me, I am even planning to bring my 3 year old daughter down to help out.

So, in order to really “sell” the idea to my kids, I planned a whole lesson around this day. We wrote and chatted about graffiti, about why kids tag up campus, about the implications for those “good kids” who don’t want to be known for attending a “ghetto school” (their words, not mine) and so on.

And then, in order to bring a little more of the the lesson home, we took a walking tour, as a class, of campus.

Our school is an open-faced three story building designed by architects who absolutely had NO IDEA how to intelligently plan for an urban campus. There are nooks and crannies, blind corners and “hiding spots” everywhere. The school’s design plagues our school security personnel like mad.

Anyway, while standing in front of a “COMPITAS” piece of gang script — it must be a 15 foot piece of tagging in one of the central corridors of school — I was leading a thoughtful discussion with the students on the destruction we saw before us.

It was a fantastic lesson. 100% engagement from 100% of the kids in my class with plenty of vigorous debate as to the reasons for – and the implications of – what we saw in front of us.

That’s when a kid from either one or two stories above (I don’t know, I never saw him) spit on me. Right in the middle of my lesson.

And to boot, I was wearing a white shirt. Crisp, clean, bright. It’s ruined.

I can’t even begin to express how badly I feel/felt. Makes me want to quit. Literally, it makes me want to walk away.

I think everyone has a breaking point and the fact that I while I am out of class working to bring a lesson to life in a way that is unique, meaningful and important to a HUGE group of kids and… well, I get spit on by kids that are ditching, well… is that what teaching is today?

Is this the humiliation a person has to endure?

Is this some sort of symbolic event that I am too freakin’ stupid (or thick) to be able to read the tea leaves on?

Is this really what my job is?

You wanna know how the budget cuts impact our campus? We have less security which means we have more kids roaming free which means that we have less control over campus which means that teachers who actually do come to work and try and give their all to the kids get spit on.

Tough day. A day when I saw/see/feel my breaking point.

We all leave our jobs at some point. Retire. Move up. Move on. This is not the way I want to go out but at some point, enough is enough.

They are paying me 3% less money this year to do more work than last year. And next year they are about to offer me up to 12% less money to do even more work next year. But are those the things that break me? Well, they push… no doubt.

But I am 43 years old. Does retaining a bit of personal dignity not, at some point, matter?

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