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Teacher Evaluation meets Survivor

heather — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:08:26 +0000

I’m not a big Survivor fan. I mean, I really hate what the people become when pitted against each other. So I don’t watch it…at least not on TV. So when I read Scott McLeod’s post suggesting that school communities vote off their least popular teacher, “dismissal by consensus”, it’s not that I don’t feel his pain, I mean the bottom 10% of any school is enough to destroy the accomplishments of 90%, but I worry that schools are headed to that witch hunt place.

We all know there are teachers out these who shouldn’t be in the classroom, but many of them gave years of great service prior to burning out. Many of these teachers mean well, want to communicate content, but simply don’t have the skills. Yes, some need out, and the process to exit them is inappropriate in its difficulty, but we can’t be after blood.

Our anger should be less about the broken teacher, and more about the broken system. There are cruddy people in every profession, but cruddy teachers are allowed to remain longer, doing damage to the company (the schools) and their product (learning).

This article examines the anger and the levels of importance people desperately need to see the problem solved.

Let us all be warned: we need to be a part of the solution or let the games begin.

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Post tags: 100% accountability, school accountability, teacher evaluation, teacher evaluations

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How to Battle Epic Paragraphing

heather — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:21:56 +0000

Every year my nemesis rears its ugly head: the epic paragraph. Epic paragraphs are those essays comprised entirely of one mega-paragraph with no indentations to indicate transition from thought thought.

I bet you thought your kids were the only ones doing it, eh? But the fact is that tons of students are recruited into its child army. It’s like the swine flu of writing: tons of kids catch it, and authorities freak out when they see it. And it’s our job as educators to battle this plague on our educational houses.

At the beginning of every year, there is a percentage of kids who have had severe cases of knowledge leakage, and we rail at their prior teachers as if they hadn’t noticed the problem, or had chosen not to tackle it. (Don’t pretend you don’t blame the last teacher sometimes. It’s our default reaction when we see silly errors. But fight this urge, because we know this isn’t true).

What is true is that the students sometimes loose the lessons. Sometimes this happens over the summer, sometimes over a mere weekend. And this phenomenon results in the loss of every rule of writing, even something we consider as simple as paragraphing. Which begs the question: maybe paragraphing isn’t so simple.(...)
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Post tags: 100% accountability, 6 traits, ELA, grammar, Think Aloud, TLN, UCI, Writers Project

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The “Sweet Spot” in Interactive Whiteboards courtesy of Robert Marzano

heather — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:06:19 +0000

CUE scored Marzano.

As he began his keynote presentation on Friday at the 2009 Computer Using Educators conference, Robert Marzano confessed that he had been slow on the tech bandwagon, only recently researching enough to see what all the fuss was about. But by the end of test study, after test study, after test study, he soon realized that using certain ed tech strategies resulted undeniable successes in student achievement.

There are four strategies, he says, that are irrefutably changing the future of education, that, without proper adoption, would doom us to be “dinosaurs” in our practice.

But he warned us that while there are “no silver bullets,” there are “silver bbs,” and a teacher must decide “which combination of silver bbs is best for [their] classroom.”

And of the four points he talked about, the leading teaching strategy that Robert Marzano felt was a true breakthrough in education (aside from the use of the internet which he is currently studying), was the use of the Interactive Whiteboard and its Voter-Response Technology.

(...)
Read the rest of The “Sweet Spot” in Interactive Whiteboards courtesy of Robert Marzano (404 words)

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Post tags: 100% accountability, achievement gap, Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, Ed Tech, education, interactive whiteboards, internet literacy, middle school, robert marzano, voting

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Top 10: How to Take Control of Your Teaching

heather — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Occasionally, I repost this article so that new readers can find it more easily. Based on some very enthusiastic feedback, it has since morphed into a book proposal called The Top Secret New Teachers Handbook. I’ll share more as it evolves…

I’ve been developing this Top 10 list of ways to take control of your teaching even in the face of, well, teaching. It’s an advice list on how to encourage respect, and, if necessary, how to demand it as a means to make sure you aren’t being taken for granted.

Let’s face it, if you are feeling appreciated, you will be happier in this difficult job. Consequently, your students will be happier, and quite frankly, if they are happier, they will be more successful. After all, an unhappy teacher’s room has the smog of misery in it, and for a student, it hovers like a stench that affects their own victories. And while it benefits a school to keep its teachers happy, it is a teacher’s responsibility to demand those things that make this challenging job better than tolerable.

I think that finding those tricks or strategies to keep in your pocket is important in any career; but in education you need them even more so. Otherwise, the day-to-day duties of the job will eventually grind your enthusiasm to a halt and it won’t just be you who is affected, your students will be affected as well.

I will be expanding on each of these over time, but in a nutshell, here’s my TOP 10:

(...)
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Test Prep-Bubbling Power

heather — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:23:06 +0000

So I looked at my 8th grade students’ scores after they took the MMA and sighed. Their scores sucked. (...)
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NewsHour with Jim Leher: Michelle Rhee

heather — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:31:56 +0000

I recently watched John Merrow’s interview with Michelle Rhee on the NewsHour. Michelle seems like a real mixed blessing for education. On one hand, she’s willing to clean house, and education does seriously need it. On the other hand, however, and much like the sweeping policies of NCLB, she’s a bit of an all-or-nothing authority. (She’s also known as a Chancellor, which gives me a mental picture of a Lilliputian bearing a sash and gold medal, so sometimes it’s hard to shake the image even while listening to her policies.) (...)
Read the rest of NewsHour with Jim Leher: Michelle Rhee (601 words)

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Sesame Street: Word on the Street

heather — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:37:52 +0000

OK, so as I write this I’m watching Sesame Street with my 2 year old. This big-feathered muppet just announced that the Word on the Street is, get this…Struggle. I kid you not. I guess times are tough even on Sesame Street. (...)
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But what if the child does everything in their power to be “left behind?”

heather — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:43:20 +0000

The Boston Globe is reporting that some students deliberately “shoot themselves in their own foot.” Some of the reason is that trying hard is frightening. Now, don’t get all uppity. Let’s face it; even the most mature of adults may have postponed reaching for their dream out of the effort it might take to reach it or for fear of failure. (...)
Read the rest of But what if the child does everything in their power to be “left behind?” (400 words)

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Post tags: 100% accountability, 2008, achievement gap, ASCD Brief, ascd community, k-12, k12, metacognition, middle school, MMA, obama, Title I, TLN, Writers Project, writing

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The snail wins the race…with RSP

heather — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:11:59 +0000

Just a brief post of victory to share:

At the beginning of Sept 2007, I gave a pre-assessment to my class in order to learn their levels and begin the process of differentiation. I looked through the results and my gaze halted on one essay in particular. Thus began my fight to get help for a nice young man who was placed in my mainstream 7th Grade Language Arts class. This kid was sweet, respectful, earnest, and tried so hard with everything…until everything had its way with him. (...)
Read the rest of The snail wins the race…with RSP (376 words)

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Post tags: 100% accountability, 2008, blog, btsa, Character Education, differentiation, Ed Tech, education, k-12, k12, middle school, new teachers, rsp, special ed, tween, writing

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Should a free education be unconditional?

heather — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:25:19 +0000

So you know when you get your group of kids on the first day, there are those who immediately set off your alarms? Well, that definitely happened to me on my first day.

I have a student who clearly needs help. His peers are weary of him already and his confrontational style seems not as intentional as inherent. The startling comments and “seething anger”, as his last year’s teacher put it only three weeks into the school year, seem uncontrollable. This same teacher recorded that he asked if her windows were bullet proof. I wasn’t, of course, given this information up front. I had to seek it out.

His first quickwrite of this year centered on cussing out his last teachers and cranking them nightly on the phone. His pride in his violent video games is apparent.

Like children with Asperger’s (of which he has not been tested to date), he seems unaware of cues or the goings on around him: calling out with inappropriate comments, walking in front of me while I talk to the class, handing me items while I’m in the middle of instruction. Annoying, yes, but harmless.

He also will not make eye contact (could be cultural, but this seems different than others of his ethnicity and nationality) and walks robotically, stiffly, without movement in his shoulders. Strangely enough, and I’m clearly not a diagnostician (though I play one on TV), the few students in my career who have had symptoms like this seem to also come with apparent sinus problems. His eyes are puffy with nasal issues, he is sniffy, and I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection.

So I approached the counselors who know me as a real student advocate and as a teacher with a somewhat effective antenna. I don’t send kids to the office. I handle my own discipline issues, which are few. So when I come in, they listen. The afternoon after the first day of school I walked in and said, “So, what’s up with X?” They pretty much flopped the file onto the desk, a file the size of our Language of Literature book.(...)
Read the rest of Should a free education be unconditional? (363 words)

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Kelly Gallagher’s Golden Line

heather — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:42:03 +0000

Kelly Gallagher, educator and author of Teaching Adolescent Writers, came and spoke to the UCI Writing Project on Friday and his focus of the presentation was a Golden Line: The Goal in Education is “Everybody Improves.”

Duh, you say, isn’t improvement always the goal of education? Actually, no. When you consider AYP scores, for instance, the goal is to hit a benchmark, not the level of improvement you made to hit it. (...)
Read the rest of Kelly Gallagher’s Golden Line (723 words)

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NCLB? How ’bout B-studentsLB

heather — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:14:36 +0000

I’ve been reading a lot of headlines lately about NCLB leaving out the over-achievers and potential leaders in our schools. Joanne Jacobs mentions it in her article, “What About the Smart Kids?” and the NYTimes and the Common Core blog both have touched on this latest Fordham report that claims that the achievement gap is closing, but from the bottom up.

Nobody can deny that this is happening, but there is also another symptom of NCLB that has slowly passed like a plague of yore over our schools, the disappearance of electives from the schedules of the middle-ground students. (...)
Read the rest of NCLB? How ’bout B-studentsLB (354 words)

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D is the New F for North Carolina

heather — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:22:23 +0000

I commented recently on an article for The Core Knowledge Blog about bottom of the line grade inflation. They reported that one North Carolina district was in discussions to make 61% the lowest grade rather than 50%. That is, in an effort to help failing students not feel like such failures, D is now the new F. We see the path this is taking, do we not?

However, it does come from good intentions. The fact is that failing students who do chip away at their work cannot earn an increase in their grade if we don’t massage the current system. Without positive ends, why would they struggle through the means?

I commented as follows:(...)
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Don’t Knock the Less Experienced Teacher

heather — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:41:59 +0000

Look, we all know the statistics. Many of the hardest-to-teach classes are being taught by the least experienced teachers. According to Education Week, a study was recently conducted in Philadeliphia evaluating 9th graders, “the make-or-break year for many students on the path to dropping out of school” which found that “students are more likely than their upper-grade peers to be taught by inexperienced, uncertified teachers.”

While I understand the argument, I also know that these young teachers have an advantage that I will not have years down the line: energy.

When I was in my early years of teaching in my mid-twenties, I was hired to teach at an inner city school. It was, in fact, the under-funded alternative school for those students kicked out of the other schools. We had broken glass in the halls, police tape from the weekend still strewn over the kindergarten yard come Monday, and no textbooks. A classic Michelle Pfieffer/Hilary Swank/Morgan Freeman movie in the making.

I actually jumped into the deep end of the pool, and there wasn’t any filter, so there was moss on the top and calcium deposits coming from the cracks in the bottom, but it was there that I learned to swim. (...)
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The Triumvirate of Success

heather — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:51:06 +0000

The New York Times (3/23) reported, “Connecticut Schools Confronting Proficiency Demands,” But I say this: “3 is a Magic Number.” Our government cannot successfully run without the Judicial, Legislative, and Executive Branches and their success is definitely not 100%. My health is made up of the proper workings of the Brain, the Body, and the Heart and I definitely succumb to the temptations of the occasional BigMac. But the policy makers on The Hill are in denial about the triumvirate that makes up a successful student.

For a student to truly succeed (if 100% of anything is even possible), all three elements must be in place: the home life, the school, and the student. Each branch holds a level of responsibility; and without each one being held accountable, the goal cannot be achieved, in this case, a student’s success.

I’m ready for a brave presidential candidate to hold all three influences to the flames of accountability. (...)
Read the rest of The Triumvirate of Success (241 words)

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Post tags: 100% accountability, education, k-12, New York Times, Proficiency, teaching

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Education X-Prize

heather — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:41:56 +0000

Maybe it’s time that education outsourced our brainstorming. Maybe it’s time that we listen to people outside of education brainstorm what to do inside of education. Check out The Opinion page of USA Today for February 13. In it, various authors debate the merit of merit pay. Look, I ultimately believe that teachers and administrators need to be in on the decisions, but I think that new, fresh ideas might just come from the dreamers who aren’t shackled by the reality of our past practices. (...)
Read the rest of Education X-Prize (595 words)

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