Education Cuts in Washington State

I was mortified when I saw the governor's state budget cut proposal of $1,300,000,000. Wow! What does this mean in terms of existing schools? I knew that seven Seattle schools were on the chopping block, but does this budget cut mean than even more schools will close? Will teachers be laid off? What does this do to my chances of becoming a teacher? Should I expect it to take a few years to find a job in the area, or should I move to another state? One thing is for sure, I'm glad that I'm getting certified through the University of Washington Bothell. I know that I will have the training and experience to make me more attractive in the job market.

To correct spelling or not to correct spelling that is the question..

During my dyad placement I have been watching carefully how the teacher interacts with students with respect to their writing. We talked briefly about this idea of editing and correction in our literacy class and that perhaps you choose one of the traits to focus on. I have learned that this question of when to tell students they have spelled something wrong is completely intertwined with your knowledge as the teacher of the student. You give them advice to change their writing based on who they are as a writer always being careful to build them up while providing adequate scaffolding.

What do Teachers Make?

So far during our dyads, I've heard from some of our classmates that they have spent most of their time pouring coffee, making copies, and grading tests. This video clip is for those that got the short end of the dyad-stick. I am posting a video below to give some inspiration to those students with limited dyad teaching experiences. The video is of a teacher doing slam poetry about what teachers can really do.

Taking it to the streets...

In what ways can we assure ourselves of taking the good things we see into our own classrooms? I know the Sunshine daydreamer and I have experienced a very eye-opening look into the high quality of education that can exist via a private school- can we bring it into the public schools with at least 10 more students in our class and potentially less room for breathing and creativity? Is this question even answerable right now? Why do schools who approach education with group tables versus individual desks considered alternative? Why does the traditional classroom format have to be the standard when so many people appreciate and thrive in so-called alternative settings? Why are there loooooong waitlists to enter into the public schools that are embracing "alternative" approaches? It seems to me that there is support out there for new approaches, not to mention the election of Randy Dorn as the new state Super (although, I have a feeling every single teacher in wa state voted on election day). My question is, where exactly is the resistance to change coming from and why is it so powerful?

Can the classroom embrace more than academics? Can it be a safe place for the student to figure out what life is all about?

Can YOU fit through an index card?

Last week in my Dyad I was faced with a challenged that proved to be a very exciting learning experience and I thought that I would share it with you. There was a student that had been struggling with a paper folding trick that he wanted to bring to sharing. Apparently earlier in the week he had given it a go at least three times before and each time something was going wrong. My challenge: to see if I could figure out how it really worked and then go over it right before he preformed the trick. I was able to find a You Tube video with someone explaining the trick so Prissia and I gave it a shot. When I was done I ran across the hall to show Caroline that it was actually possible to fit through a sheet of paper. I was so excited to share this new skill.....

Using Tests for Assessment

A master teacher has me and the other interns grade all tests and assignments, enter the scores into the grade book, and hand them back. The only way the teacher sees a student's work, is if the student approaches the teacher with a question relating to the assignment. This may make the teacher's workload lighter, but how can she know how well the students are doing? I also have a hard time knowing what learning-challenges certain students may have. I know I might be a idealist because I haven't had to grade as much as an experienced teachers, but I think that a teacher should at least take a look at the graded work.

Has anyone else had this experience?

ELL Students in Science Class

In my eighth grade science class, there are three ELL students that speak Spanish as their native tongue. The teacher had them sitting together in the back of the classroom. These students did not listen to the lessons. They spent most of their time quietly chatting with each other in Spanish. During lab time these students were spit up into separate lab groups. These students sat quietly as the other students completed the labs.

I think that the school and the teachers should focus more on integrating these students. The rationale for keeping them together is that they can help each other understand the material. I think the most important thing these students need is involvement in their school community as well as extra instruction with language acquisition.

As a teacher, I will make every effort to helping the ELL students feel like they belong and are equals with their classmates. I will also help the English speaking students to learn how important it is to accept the ELL students and get to know them. I spoke with one of the lab groups that had an ELL student. They told me that the ELL student didn't participate because he didn't know English. I asked the student if he spoke English and he replied that he did. I then went on to remind the students that even though he may be working on perfecting his English skills, concepts learned in a lab can still be learned even if in a foreign language. I went on to say that the student spoke a very important language that is spoken throughout the world. I told the group that the ELL student was the one with the advantage and that he his language skills will make him more valuable in the job market. The ELL student seemed to sit a little taller on his lab stool that day. Ever since the discussion, the ELL student gives me a nod in the hallways and says hi to me in the classroom.

I saw the Ah ha moment!

We are almost finished with our dyad placement and I must admit that I feel like I am just now starting to break the ice with both my teacher and the students in the classroom. The "famous person" quality that the students see me as has finally worn off and I believe that they are starting to see me as more than just a new face in the room but someone they can actually depend on and use as a resource.

There was a student in one of my classes who has been struggling with math. I must admit that I think she is just fine in her skills but looking around the room it is apparent that she seems to struggle more, she was always asking for help from whomever was available. Don't get me wrong I think it is great that she was asking for help, but at times it seemed more like an attention issue than an actual "I am stuck on this problem and I need help" issue.

I saw a shinning light this week. We were working on fact triangles and she was having a challenging time with the problems. She did try the first one on her own but then was struggling again. I had been sitting on the floor helping another student with fractions when she came to work right next to me. I gave her a little bit of guidence on the first problem and then let her continue to lean against me while she worked. Every now and then I would glance over her shoulder to check on progress.... I was shocked she was fully focused and getting all of the problems correct.

She was so proud at the end of the activity for all of the work she had done correctly. I came to realize that I could provide a safe learning environment just by allowing her to physically lean on me. Her confidence over the last two weeks has sky rocketed and I have been so amazed.

Treading lightly...

I realize this topic may have already been talked about in class ad nauseum, but well... to bad for you having to read this :). We are in a bit of a fickle place as pre-service teachers aren't we? The class isn't ours, our authority is limited, the response the students have toward us isn't always the same as the response they have towards their "real" teachers... I think all of that is work-able, do-able, just part of where we are at as a student teacher.

So... out of a genuine desire to take responsibility for my own teaching, my own development as a teacher... i feel there may be a number of things somewhat out of our control? ie- subjective reviews, not "clicking" with your teachers, disagreement with classroom management as in what is and isn't acceptable behavior conducive to learning with those who observe... everyone has opinions about everything in education! everyone, from those newbies like us who know just enough to be dangerous to those who've taught for 20 years.... even among the veterans there can be strong disagreement as to who and who isn't a "good" teacher. My goodness if this isn't the epitome of a subjective career, I'm not sure what is. There is even disagreement on what student learning looks like... we can't even agree on acceptable methods of making sure we are affective teachers, let alone agreeing on if we should even be held accountable!

and yet, a huge factor in whether or not we will get a foot in the door to even attempt at being a teacher hangs on review and recommendation.

what a messy messy field we've entered into.

-hux

Rube Goldberg Machines in Middle School Science

My eighth grade science class has be studying energy. We've talked about potential and kinetic energy as well as different processes that transfer energy (chemical, light, sound, mechanical, and electrical). We're rapping up our unit with a Rube Goldberg project. Rube Goldberg was an engineer that turned comic writer. He is known for his elaborately designed processes that accomplish a simple task. If you've ever played the game "Mouse Trap," you know what I'm talking about. We gave the students some wire, a C-battery, a little light bulb, and box full of odds and ends. They're also allowed to bring almost any thing from home. Their job is to build an fun system that uses at least 3 different types of energy transfer, while ultimately causing the light bulb to turn on and stay on. I used a few clips from youtube to illustrate what these kinds of projects can look like. The links are below.

West E! ???

So I realize that perhaps with this posting I am still preaching to the choir a little bit but after class today I was thinking again about: What does it means to be a highly qualified teacher and does a multiple choice test tell who is and who is not?

After taking the test this weekend that is supposed to judge my content knowledge of everything from elementary school I have only been reaffirmed that I believe the test is stupid! Questions were poorly worded and there were many times where it seemed to be more about my test taking abilities than knowledge.

I think that as a teacher I should know about how kids learn, how to deliver information, how to assess learning, and how to provide authentic experiences. I do not believe that I must have every random fact in my back pocket about social studies, science or math. However, I should be held accountable to know WHERE to find this information, and that I must know how to find accurate sources of information.

Today in class we were talking about one of the standards that must be met for OSPI. The idea that we as student teachers must also show documentation that our students from our field placement are learning as a result of our teaching.

To me this is so much stronger and more important than taking this standardized test, which they have not even come up with a common scoring form yet!

I am still waiting for someone to explain why it is vital to take/ and pass in order to become an educator?

BrainPOP

Can you breast feed in class?

Now that I got your attention I can explain.

On Thursday in my dyad there was a mom in our class that comes in to help out during language arts class. She was there with her toddler who is the younger sibling of one of the students in the class room. The situation was this, the toddler was cranky and was running around the room not listening to his mother. The mother then scooped up the child and sat with him while she was writing with other students during a shared writing experience. At one point I looked over because I noticed that a few students around the room were distracted from their work. I realised at this point she was BREAST feeding her child while sitting 5 inches away from other students.

It is not the act of breast feeding that bothered me. It was the location. She should have in my opinion moved away from the students, go to another part of the room or in the hallway. I asked my teacher about this incident at the end of the day. She mentioned that she did feel it was inappropriate but that she thought the mother was just so used to the school and the act of breast feeding that she didn't even think it would be a distraction.

Reactions?

Article review

The following are excerpts of an article published in the online version of The Atlantic. It is an interview with the new chancellor of the Washington DC public schools, Michelle Ree. I actually just cut and pasted some of the points that I thought to be most interesting, but the interview overall was very good and I'd recommend following this link to read the whole thing. Its very lively, and she is straightforward in her answers. I actually don't really know how to respond to many of her points. Part of me wants to say "yea! right on", and another part of me gasps at what I see to be a fairly judgemental attitude. I'm excited someone so young and passionate has been given the chance to be at the helm, but she also closed 23 schools, restructured 26 other and fired 46 principles and vice principles. Yikes, the gal sounds like she was on a war-path. But, DC is a horrible place for schools, so maybe that is just what was required. Beyond that, as you'll see by the questions I've cut and pasted, she talks some about bringing "professionalism" to the profession, and yet, makes no bones about the fact that she is not interested in ever returning to the classroom. Her responses to creating avenues for growth and advancement, but also staying in the classroom as a teacher are ridiculously lame as well. They amount to increasing a teachers responsibility in the school... she's adding on to the teachers plate"stuff" that is pretty hollow and very time consuming. She isn't creating a growth trajectory for a teacher who desires to stay in a classroom, but not follow the path of an administrator. I almost got the feeling that her attitude is one of: "I kicked ass in the classroom, and if 18 hour days is what it takes to do this, then this is what you'll need to do. Pay sucks, and you don't get any respect, but this is what will be required of you as a teacher, or your not good enough to be a teacher.... oh and by the way... there is no way I'm ever going back!" I think she is going to have some seriously burnt out teachers on her hands in just a couple of years.
Tell me what you think!

-hux

Michelle Rhee, the young chancellor of the D.C. public school system, talks about her career path, what makes a good teacher, and her efforts to transform a struggling school district
by Rachel Brown

Today, Teach for America recruits from among the best students at top colleges and universities, and an Urban Institute study last spring found that high school teachers in the program were actually more effective than veterans with longer experience. Risen draws a distinction between the new generation of educators and the old, writing that “traditionally, a good teacher was considered to be someone who had trained in education schools, been certified by state boards, enlisted in unions, and committed to a lifetime career—elements tightly interwoven with any district’s political structure.” Rhee has set out to change those structures, beginning with her proposals to tie teacher pay in D.C. to student performance, rather than the existing seniority-based scale defended by the teachers’ unions. To her, changing the way teachers are paid and are held accountable is an essential part of making schools better, and those who support or oppose the plan are largely split along generational lines. - Michelle Ree

Ok. One thing that I did want to get into is that teaching tends to be a fairly limited profession in terms of advancement opportunities. But a lot of young college graduates want their careers to be on a trajectory that will keep moving up. It’s something that I definitely confronted and that some of my younger colleagues confronted when we considered leaving teaching. Is there a way teaching can allow for career growth, without assuming that growth means becoming an administrator? (bold type is interviewer Rachel Brown)

I think there are a lot of ways. There have been programs across the country piloted to show how teachers can take on more responsibility within their own schools. Without moving out of the classroom you can become a mentor teacher to new teachers coming in, you can take increasing responsibilities with extracurricular activities, serve on school improvement teams and that sort of thing. You can take a free period off to direct a particular project in the school. So I think there are various ways that we can actually continue to push teachers to develop their skills outside of the curriculum and the classroom—to give them the sense that they’re learning and gaining new skills.

I guess the downside of that might be that a lot of times it seems like we take the best teachers out of the classroom, with top teachers being tapped to become administrators. Why do you feel like there is that assumption that a good teacher will make a good administrator?

I think that’s the case in any profession. When I was running The New Teacher Project, when we wanted to promote we always promoted from within, and we looked at the best site managers to make them partners and that sort of thing. So that idea is not specific to teaching and education. Any field that you go into, you take the best people who are at the lower rungs and you develop them and promote them up.

I hear a lot of talk among reformers about how teaching should be a “prestige profession” like law or medicine. What are the obstacles that you think may be preventing teaching from having that status, beyond the obvious differences in compensation?

I think that as long as we have a profession that does not at all differentiate people by what they’re producing, whether it’s through compensation or evaluation or certification, then we’re never going to be a profession like medicine or law. That’s the bottom line. You know, anybody can become tenured. And everybody does become tenured. There’s no aura of selectivity—there’s no gate that you have to pass through.

One thing that I’ve encountered personally in talking to a lot of veteran teachers is this idea that programs like Teach for America or the D.C. Teaching Fellows de-professionalize education. They see it as a kind of glorified internship.

I’ll tell you what de-professionalizes education. It’s when we have people sitting in the classrooms—whether they’re certified or not, whether they’ve taught for two months or 22 years—that are not teaching kids. And whom we cannot remove from the classroom, and whom parents know are not good. Those are the things that de-professionalize the teaching corp. Not Teach for America, not D.C. Teaching Fellows. That, I think, is a ridiculous argument.

Do you think that teacher prep programs—traditional ones, like what you see in schools of education, are even necessary? Or maybe just elements of them, like student teaching?

I wouldn’t say I think they’re necessary, though I think it’s fine to have programs like that. It’s also fine to have faster tracks, like Teach for America or The New Teacher Project. I’m much less concerned with the front-end pieces and much more concerned with ensuring that we have effective teachers in the classroom and being able to measure that in a meaningful way, early on in someone’s career.

Parent from Hell

Ok, so it turns out that Laid-back ol' me, may actually be the embodiment of the parent from Hell. I am experiencing, for the first time, serious dis-satisfaction with my own daughters education experience, and now am very aware of the motivation behind many of the scary parents we see (or hear about). There are strong emotions, a lot of worry, the feeling that you may be the only advocate your kid has, and alot of uncertainty as to what the right thing is.

So, trying to pull something good out of this experience... here are some thoughts.

Leave the door open to your room and make the parents feel as welcome as possible. I've seen this at work at my dyad, and I believe the position of being a parents ally is much more firmly established. I think there is a power in being open and allowing the parents see what happens in the room, it builds trust and understanding.

When you discipline a kid severely, fully explain why to the parents.

Be personable, when you communicate (emails or letters home) don't merely relay the data of the educational targets hit in class, but go into lively detail explaining what happened and what the kids enjoyed.

Understand, that most of the time, the parents aren't merely being meddlesome/ignorant/difficult, but they do have their childs best interest in mind.

I mean really, does this look like the face of a girl who need to be sent home with a demerit?


So anyways, what are some strategies you've noticed your teachers use? Do they seem to work? What are the attitudes your Master Teacher has toward parents when the door is closed?

-hux

What is your dream cookie?

On Wednesday I taught fractions with chocolate chip cookies to first and second graders! Fractions, I am pretty sure that I did not learn about them that young, but maybe we were introduced to them it was just later in life that I finally got to the point that I grasped the understanding of a fraction being only part of whole.

So I decided to do a lesson that I totally made up from scratch. I knew that the unit this month was fractions so they had at least thought about it a little bit this month. This was also the first large group lesson that I had done with the students besides a read aloud. Finally, I was being observed for the first time. Needless to say I was a bit nervous about what to expect. This could be a totally crazy lesson, there was no way to tell except to just think about it for a while and then just jump in.

It was so much fun. The craziness of the lesson just added excitement, there were a few times when it seemed like there was not much control but I think the students loved it. The main thing I learned: It was crucial to have an activity in my back pocket to give students who finished the investigative part of the inquiry lesson. I had a sheet called “Create your dream cookie” and it was a blank sheet with an outline of a frame. This was key because it allowed the group of students who were still grappling with the inquiry piece of the lesson to have time to think it all out, while the other students were completely engaged in cookie creation.

think about it

So, now that we’ve all been formally “observed” for our first time, does your perspective of yourself as a teacher change? I was talking with my Master Teacher about two schools potentially closing in the Edmonds School District. So, not only will there be 35 students in our program looking for a job this summer, there will also be two school’s worth of teachers who need to get placed somewhere too. It is difficult for me to consider myself a competitor in a situation like this because I don’t know much about my competition.

It’s interesting that we do activities in class with people who are interested in teaching the same grade level. We are supposedly a group collaborating together, but when it comes down to it, that’s our competition. Will we be applying for the same job at the same school? Who would win? It is a legitimate concern, because we all live and desire to work in relatively the same areas and thus strive for the same positions. Game on.