Is the era of great teaching over?

editor's note: the author graduated from high school in 1998 and from college in 2002. Use that to provide some reference points about what he's talking about here.

I wanted to be a teacher from the time I was 10 or 11 years old. I loved making fun of people (some things never change, I suppose). This got me in some trouble as I remember. Let's keep in mind that I was in the 6th grade, so "trouble" meant I probably had to miss a recess. However, my teachers, Mr. Lantz and Mr. Lindgren made fun of us with impunity. I drew the logical conclusion that I would become a teacher so that I could make fun of people. This isn't a heart-warming story of changing lives, I admit, but it is the truth.

I entered Purdue University in the fall of 1998, with a major of Social Studies Education. By June of 2002, college was over, and the fine people at the Indiana Department of Education had issued me a teaching license. In August, I began teaching at River Forest High School, in Gary Indiana. I've been teaching ever since.

You may wonder why I've provided you with this little biological snippet. I mean, you normally come here for rants and observations, and now I spend a rare post talking about me and my life in teaching. First an obituary, and now this? What has happened to the Beloved BlazeBlog? Well, besides anger and teaching, I like to think that the BlazeBlog's other consistent theme is long-winded off-topic introductions; this is just one of those. Even while I was in high school I was watching what my teachers were doing, and college was a more formal extension of that. Clearly I'm still doing it (only because of loyal readers like you!). Those years of observation have led me to this conclusion: I think that I've been teaching in the greatest era for teachers ever. 

Think about it. We have studies that help us to find the best practices. We have time to collaborate. We have the Internet. 

I don't know how teachers before all of these changes managed to teach anything at all. I suppose that they taught more generally, and probably focused more on teaching themes, and the classics (which are things we've largely abandoned). But that's a post for another day. For today, I want to talk about all of the advantages that teachers today have. The biggest of those advantages is what you're using right now: the Internet.

The Internet changed education as we know it. It became a real tool for educators, as nearly as I can tell, in the late 1990s. Certainly by the time I graduated from high school in 1998 the Internet was being used as a powerful research tool by good teachers to let students explore subjects which they might not have otherwise delved into. I know that my teachers gave us access and projects which forced us to utilize the growing amount of information at our fingertips. In most cases it went well. For my unfortunate senior economics teacher, it also led to a semester of suffering for him. I don't need to tell you the whole story, but it involves a website for the Longshoreman's Union and our misguided belief that longshoremen must surely talk like pirates. 

By the time I was being trained as a professional, web sites were springing up to share lessons, to collaborate, to figure out what worked best. Since this was before No Child Left Behind really started to enforce a culture of testing, the web (as hip kids called it then) allowed teachers to really find things that were creative and use them. I know that in my first several years, my classes were consistently using the Internet to research projects, to present their findings and conclusions, and to compete against kids from around the nation in a stock market simulation. It was a powerful tool.

But now, thanks to a culture of testing and accountability, I find that many teachers are doing less and less of that. You see, when you allow students to discover the facts for themselves, it takes a lot longer. Unfortunately, due to the volume of information which must be covered in most classes, the feeling is that you must drive-drive-drive. I know that I feel that way. I find myself doing less projects and less discovery learning because it simply feels like (though they learn things in a way that means they will actually remember) it takes too long to cover that material. 

So, many of my peers (and now that I teach in many rooms, I see more teachers than I ever have before) do things like reading and outlining chapter sections in class, and pure lectures. I'm guilty too. It is simply the easy way out. 

So, is the era of good teaching over? Has accountability and the tests that go with it killed the best teaching techniques in favor of the old method of drill-and-kill, lectures and outlining?

I don't think so. I think that it's harder than it was a decade ago (of course, I'm older, and everything becomes more difficult as you age, as far as I can tell), but that teachers can still inspire students, and allow them to direct their own learning. I think that we just need to trust students. We need to understand that they will, in most cases, do what we ask of them, and learn. But for those of us that have been around for a while, it means that we need to develop lessons and projects with more specific goals and objectives so that students can focus on what the state will assess them on. It's less freedom than before, but more freedom than being chained to a textbook that was published in 2001 (I'm using one of those right now).

Perhaps I remember only the good, of my education and of my work. I hope that is true. I believe that good teachers can make a difference, even in a world of high stakes, and that we can still be good teachers. I just worry that the sheer numbers of those willing to settle for second best will begin to overwhelm us. Solidarity!

Teamwork? A title in progress

One of the upsides, from a comedy standpoint, of the increasingly influential movement to run schools like businesses is the influx of acronyms. In fact, our esteemed co-founder of the BlazeBlog, Dr. Dick Johncock, has even written on this phenomenon. One of the newest and most powerful buzzwords, which comes to us via the tech sector and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is "collaboration".

Collaboration has become a massive buzz-word in education today. It's almost as though we've shifted our paradigm from talking about being standards based to being data-driven in professional learning communities.

There are two kinds of collaboration: planned and unplanned. Educators don't talk about that. We talk about library collaboration and parking lot collaboration.

"Library" collaboration is planned and scheduled. Some schools plan it into the day. In fact, a school I used to work at has built what might be the world's worst schedule so that they could build in planned collaboration time. This time can be very useful, provided there is good guidance from the administrators. Many schools have boosted student achievement with the so-called PLC model. PLC is an acronym for "Professional Learning Communities," and many states have begun to mandate PLC time for teachers. In California, every Wednesday is shorter with kids by 30 minutes, and we use that time as a PLC.

So many teachers could become better teachers simply by collaborating with their peers. If they were given the chance to talk, in a relatively open and free forum about what they're doing and what works. The problem is that many administrators fear open time, and think that it would be wasted. Since they are under pressure to prove that they are working to improve scores, they want to prove that the PLC time is being used well. To that end, they (in the BlazeBlog's humble opinion) over structure the time. They have teachers fill out forms, and jump through hoops, and then they say, "Tada! We did PLCs! Hooray! Our test scores are sure to rise!" (or words to that effect).

I currently work at a school that uses PLC somewhat differently. We were given certain tasks, and we do fill out a form so that they can track what we're doing, but they don't give us super-specific tasks. Then, miracle of miracles, they let us be professionals and work on tasks which we think are important. We create common assesments, we write pacing guides, we talk about resources we have, and how we might use them in the classroom. We collaborate.

It isn't perfect. Many people might be forced into PLCs with people who aren't really interested in growth. But, as this New York Times article points out, no profession is populated entirely with high performers. On the whole, I find this type of collaboration, when done in a relatively unstructured way, is pretty useful. 

The second type of collaboration in what yours truly calls "parking-lot" collaboration. I, and many educators I know, find this type of collaboration more cathartic than planned collaboration. I don't know if it's more useful or not, but it often feels like it. Parking-lot collaboration is unplanned. It happens when you run into somebody in the mail room, and your conversation carries over into the parking lot. It's one of those conversations where you're solving the world's problems.

The key to the success of unplanned collaboration is that it is totally open and unsupervised. There are obvious pitfalls with this. On occasion, it descends into a bitch session. However, the openness of it, the lack of accountability provide a framework in which really really creative ideas can pour out. I think that some of the biggest innovations in education probably have their roots in the parking lot.

Further, since informal collaboration takes place outside of the pay structure and contract day, it allows teachers to do something which they are very good at, but which tax-payers tend to oppose. A really good parking-lot collaboration session will require relocation to an establishment where adult beverages can be consumed. Once inhibitions have been sufficiently lubricated, the good ideas really start to fly. In fact, I'm almost certain that this very blog was inspired by a sketch on a napkin in the dark confines of a bar. 

And if nothing else ever gets accomplished because of collaboration (and depending on where it takes place, that may be the case), I hope we can agree that if it helped to create the BlazeBlog, it's a good thing.

Perhaps we can meet sometime, and collaborate on how we could make the BlazeBlog better. You pick the time and place, I'll bring the beer and the ideas.

Embrace The Job You're Given

Hey there, welcome back to the BlazeBlog.

I would've written something sooner, but I've been hard at work. Tonight, however,  it's Friday night, and we don't have a home game, birthday, bar mitzvah, or Ice-Capades show to go to, so I could knock this out for your reading pleasure. Or for you to used as an "enhanced interrogation technique". Whichever you want.

Recently, I've been struck with massive mood swings. Some days, I'm happy, content, and loving my life. Other days start well, but by the time I get home I'm in full on "I hate teaching" mode. Some Most days I don't want to get out of bed (I would note that this has nothing to do with my mood, and everything to do with the obscenity of the hour, and the effectiveness of my wife as a bed-warmer.)

My wonderful wife has taken the brunt of my anger and frustration, which is unfair to her. Wednesday night, after I had something which approached a melt-down about state testing (another post for another day, but lets just say educational experts are falling all over each other about the recent SAT scores to once again decry the culture of testing), she basically told me to embrace the things that I was worried about and to just teach. 

When you think about it, that's the best advice I think any teacher could get. Sure, we live in a high-stakes testing world. Sure, classes are getting bigger every day, and the money is getting smaller for school. Sure, there is an expectation that every single kid will be engaged and learning at every moment of every day. Sure is easy to look at all of that and think that teaching has lost it's luster, that it just isn't worth it. 

Sure, I have 4 sections of 38 freshmen each. Sure, I don't have a single class that is special, like an AP or elective course. Sure, I don't have a room, or a desk that I don't share with a dorm fridge, or a staff ID. Sure, I still don't know where everything is. Sure would be easy to just stop going in, to throw in the towel, to decry the work as too hard.

Sure, you have the world's worst schedule. Sure, you have a principal (or Decider) who is a bombastic fool. Sure your district is headed to hell, and sold the handbasket. Sure is easy to see all that negative and forget all the positive. 

The solution isn't to give in to the negative, it isn't to quit. The solution is to go back to work. 

I don't mean stroll in and do what you've done before. I don't mean break out last year's lesson plans and do the same things that you did on this day last year. I mean work like it's your first year again. And yes, young grasshopper, I know that I'm asking you to do something hard (which is the same thing Mrs. BlazeBlog asked me to do).

I think you'll do it, if you're not already. You'll do it because you never believed that this would be easy when you signed on the dotted line. You knew what you were in for. I know that it's harder than it's been in a long time, and getting harder, and the reward seems like even less than it was yesterday. 

But the wife knows what she's talking about. You just need to look at the challenge, find a way to solve your problem (I have some great stories about her solving other people's problems), and get to work. You won't think it's fun (I know I didn't), but by facing the problem head on, you will make your teaching better, and that's fun. 

Sure, I don't have fun in the ways I used to (and you don't either). I'm working harder than I have in a long time. But the flip side is that I see kids starting to think, which is something the testing has drummed out of them. And if you've forgotten, seeing a kid actually think is pretty freaking awesome.

Yeah, you have to fight the exhaustion, fight the powers that be, fight the status quote. However,  you have to embrace the situation you're in, because until we reach a tipping point of ignorance, legislatures full of fools will continue to force us to comply with policies that do not help students learn. 

You, dear public school teacher, are the last line of defense. Sure, you could give up, you could drill-and-kill, you could embrace the vocab worksheet, you could go back to the old days of rote memorization. But you're not going to. You care too much. You might be jaded. You might be bitter, but you haven't bolted to sell insurance (or public relations services) yet, which means you want to make a difference (no matter how deeply you've hidden that fact away. 

Embrace the fight. Embrace the job you've been given.

Because a wise man from a famous center of learning, er, Bon Jovi says:  you live for the fight when it's all that you've got.

I'll let you make the jokes about printing tests on "the fight" since it's all that you've got....

Final Exams

So, diligent readers of the BlazeBlog, we've reached That Time of the Year Again. It's finals season. Now, many of you are collegians, and you're hopefully already done with your finals (good belated luck, by the way).


However, the BlazeBlog is dedicated to "Random Ramblings on Public Education", and since I still (for the next 3 1/2 days anyway) work in a public high school, we're just starting our finals schedule.

Finals are an interesting concept.


They exist, we are told, to provide an assessment of how well students have learned the subject material they were expected to learn for the year (or semester, as the case may be). To make sure that students take these tests seriously, they often carry disproportionate weight to the number of questions. As an example, in my district, teachers are encouraged to weight a final at between 15 and 20% of the final semester grade.


These tests, I believe, hold value for both students and teachers alike. I don't know that they should be worth 20% of a grade, but I do believe they should be given. However, I'm in favor of giving teachers some flexibility in the way they give their finals. Right now, in many schools, teachers are expected to give an actual test for their exam. Why not allow a project, a presentation, or some other form of letting students demonstrate their mastery of a subject? (well, how about "their competence"? That's probably better, since I'm not a huge fan of mastery learning.)


Further, many schools go to a special schedule for finals. Again, this makes sense. However, many of those schedules have standard or even abbreviated class periods during finals. A test which is worth 1/5 of the total points in a course is given in one class period. Further, schools (the ones I've worked in at least) want those finals graded quickly so that they can determine who passed classes, and who needs to re-take them.


So these two factors lead teachers to design tests which are easy to administer and grade. What's the easiest to administer and grade? Multiple Choice. Never mind that Multiple Choice is a terrible way to determine actual knowledge. Never mind that even the best test developers in the world no longer place much emphasis on pure Multiple Choice. It's easy to make, easy to take, and quick to grade, and that's what matters.


What's that you say? You're pointing out that early on I defended finals as a "valuable tool" to help determine what students had learned and what teachers might need to change? I did. But those were theoretical finals. In the real world, finals are Scantron-tacular. Why? Because it's the easiest way to get to the end of testing and the year.


It's all a part of the culture of compliance. Central offices, colleges, parents and alumni all think that finals are important. So high schools give them. That doesn't mean that those tests are doing any good, does it?


Well, maybe it does. Allow me to propose a defense of final exams:


Finals are, whether we like it or not, the reality in many post-graduate programs of learning. Colleges and universities (and yes, there is a difference, look it up) almost all use final exams. Many of those exams are worth as much as 33% of a semester grade. Most vocational programs require students to take a test at the end of the program. When you apprentice, you are required to demonstrate competence when you finish. Think about it, when you learned to drive, you had to take a written test before you took your driving test. When was the last time a cop gave you a written test while you were pulled over?

By making students take finals in an environment where we model how to prepare for a final, we help them prepare for later in life (which should be our goal overall). But to make that experience really work, we must develop better ways to evaluate students' learning.  We have to break the Scantron Shackles that keep us bound to tests which are ineffective at telling us anything meaningful about what students have actually learned.

I realize that this post has been a bit of a rambler, so let me try to consolidate my thoughts into a convenient, bulleted list:

• Finals are high stakes.
• Finals, in many places, are weak Scantron tests because of requirements for timing and scoring in a short amount of time.
• Finals are valuable to evaluate the effectiveness of classes and classroom instruction, as long as they aren't the finals in the point before this one.
• Finals, even in their bad form, are good, because the "real-world" often presents the same type of testing.

I would come up with a witty ending, but I just don't have the energy, I'm too busy writing and grading finals

The Culture of Compliance

Yesterday During Spring Break, I was listening to the radio before I took my wife to lunch. Now, because I'm classy (and because I can only hear Katy Perry so many times before I want to punch myself in the head) I was listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation. The topic for the portion of the show I was listening to was an Op-Ed piece written by Eva Moskowitz which ran in the Washington Post on the 27th of March. In that piece, Ms. Moskowitz (a charter school administrator in New York City) raises the interesting idea that class size might not be the answer to as many questions as liberal reformers think it is.

I have thoughts on the correlation between class size and success, but I'm saving those for a rainy day. (Or I wrote it first. Whatever.) Instead, I'm going to focus on a short exchange that came at the end of the hour, right before Talk of the Nation switched topics to the nuclear disaster in Japan.

Here is the short exchange that got my synapses up and firing:

"I have two classes of 24 kindergartners. Those classes aren't bad, but doing the paperwork to track 48 students is bad enough that I'm looking at an early retirement" - Random Wisconsin teacher

"We have become a compliance driven system" -Eva Moskowitz

I know that this seems like a throw-away line at the end of an interview, but it provides deep insight into a problem in schools that I don't think we've done a very good job of addressing over the years.

That problem?

We've essentially added so much paperwork, without really adding additional staff, that teachers now teach, grade and plan as they always have, but they also have to keep track of reams of data on how those students are responding to that data.

Let's use my teaching experience as an example, shall we?

I teach in a school of about 1,000 students. I think that this size is very good for a high school. Obviously, middle and elementary schools should be smaller. My school has a teaching faculty of about 60 full time teachers. We have 5 full time special educators (and I think 5 para-professionals). We have 1 half-time RTI person.

What does all of this mean for paperwork? That's a good question. If a Special Ed student has 8 classes, and there is a meeting coming up for that student, that means that 8 teachers are filling out progress reports on that student and submitting them. The Special Educator is then compiling that information, and looking at accommodations, and planning the meeting. This seems entirely reasonable, doesn't it?

Sure, but let's suppose that 10% of our students are Sped students who have reviews this year. That means that there are minimum 800 pages of progress reports. We have 5 people to handle and compile the data for those 800 pages. That's more than a ream of paper. That's somewhat insane, considering the fact that we have limits on how much paper we can use for things like, you know, teaching class.

It gets worse. Now, as we attempt to make sure that No Child Is Left Behind, even non-sped students have paper trails longer than they are tall. Every phone call home, every late assignment, every adaptation to allow alternative assignments or due dates must be documented. For kids that might be Sped, but aren't yet, there is an RTI form that asks what interventions you've tried with the student. You are expected to go through a 100 page catalog of interventions to find the ones you've used.

Once you'd figured out which of the interventions you've used, you then are expected to fill out a form about the kid and submit that. One poor soul who's teaching English half the time spends the other half of her time compiling those records, and having meetings with those kids to figure out why they aren't being successful. Amazingly, none of the options are "I'm a lazy turd eater."

Heaven should forbid someone actually fail a class and you haven't documented 15 calls home. As an added bonus, parents now know about all of this, and when they suspect you haven't documented something, they start to throw around words like "lawsuit" and "sue" and "non-compliance". It takes less paperwork to get a passport in this country than it does to get out of kindergarten. Seriously. Here's the passport application. Six pages and a picture. Here's the KINDERGARTEN report card. Plan on four of those a year, plus any testing paperwork. There is an entire department at the State Department dedicated to passports. Teachers end up teaching and filling out these absurd amounts of paperwork.

But teachers aren't the only people punished by the culture of compliance. It bites counselors too.

I asked a former co-worker who's in counseling what compliance had done to counselors. She gave me the following, and yes I know how long it is, that's why I broke it down bit by bit:

On the process to change a 504 plan (this is a plan for kids with medical issues that require accommodations, though it has become a work-around IEP for many kids)

When teachers, counselors, and administrators have to follow 19 specific steps just to complete a 504 review (and I just counted - took off my socks and everything!), it takes more time to complete the check boxes, send emails, re-check boxes, etc than it does actually having the 504 review. (This assumes that I even have ACCESS to the documents, folders, files that I need to do my job properly without having to wait three months to have my username added to a permissions list, but I digress.)   Which part of this process serves the student and family better?  Yes - teachers need to know about any changes made to a 504 and parents should have a copy of their student's 504 as well.  Of course.  Because that makes sense.  And it's something that I would do even if the next step in our "504 Procedures" list didn't tell me to.  Maybe I'm just being defensive, but if you need to tell me to distribute 504 docs to teachers and make sure a copy goes in a student's folder, it makes me feel kind of insulted. 

This is a random break so that you could digest what she's saying and then move on. Take a breath. Stand up and stretch. Ready? Ok, let's get back to talking about compliance!

Now, multiply this 19-step process across almost every part of education - Special Education, sports eligibility, the AP course application process, going on a field trip, etc.  It's easy to see where the majority of my day could easily become paperwork and marking off items on numerous to-do lists rather than actually educate and teach.   

I'm going to end with probably the most insightful thing in the email she sent me. She tossed it in there as a random though between two paragraphs of rambling. But I think she has hit the nail on the head when she gives the following assessment of how teachers and other educators are now being judged:

Assumption that being compliance driven = care more 

Assumption that being compliance driven = do your job better

I think she's trying to say that not just being compliance driven, but actually having complied must mean that you care about kids and do the job well. So teachers, more and more under pressure to meet score standards and show growth, spend less and less time actually figuring out how to reach kids, and more time filling out paperwork to prove that they are actually figuring out how to reach kids.

But, as long as you're filling out the right forms, you're teaching kids, right?