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Today, July 1, I officially don’t work as a school teacher or with my district anymore. As such, this will be my last post onto this blog. That is a really weird statement to write for those that know me personally, as I have a certain fondness for the TeachFor.Us site. And then there’s probably the thought, “But there haven’t been many posts to the blog this year anyway.” You’re right, but there’s a reason. This past year, the projects that I have been working on for my school and my district are so public and well-known that mentioning them here would have very quickly made my identity more public than I desire. Those projects consumed me, so to have written about teaching but to have not written about what was really going on would have stifled my writing. In retrospect, I wish I had written posts and made them private, but that’s in the past.

So many great things have happened to me as a result of my experience the past three years. My life is completely changed. I am now very steadfastly working on Education (yes, big E). My next role will be with an education nonprofit focusing on some of the issues that I believe lie central to moving forward with reform.

Funny enough, just the other day, while riding in the car with a new friend, he asked if I ever planned on returning to teaching. I joked that some day I probably would because it was so much fun and that I probably should because I think I was good at it. He laughed at appeared to be immodesty. What I explained, though, is that despite the honors I have received, leadership roles I have had, innovations I have made, and specific examples of impacting my students lives I will cherish for the rest of my life, it’s only within the past few weeks that I’ve been able to verbalize that I believe I was a good teacher.

I once wrote about this dillema by saying “I’m so teacher-action focused about what is wrong that I’m not necessarily able to step back and take a glimpse of what is going right.” I bring it up here and end this blog with it in hopes that other teachers and especially new CMs don’t travel the same path as me. There were, for sure, several very real things that I should have been doing better in my classroom in my role as teacher, but on the whole, I spent a lot of energy feeling that I was failing my students, feeling that I was somehow not giving them every fiber of my being. Especially teaching 8th grade, I felt the stakes were ultimately high for putting the students on paths in high school that would make them competitive for college versus just being college ready versus ready for productive work versus not ready at all. I feared nothing more than, for the student who wanted me to help, missing the moment of opportunity for them. But, now that I’m leaving the actual act of teaching, I have the benefit of perspective on the situation because I no longer have the emotional burden of being in it. Here are my two take-aways to share:

• Don’t waste your precious and limited amount of energy on battles you can not win. With 100+ students in the secondary level, it’s just not realistic to “save them all.” As such, it is a poor allocation of resources to try to save the student that is doing anything and everything to be a failure. This is a very non-TFA idea… to abandon a child. But I know that this past year I poured myself into trying to help a student who was very smart. I told him this within the first week of school. I told him he couldn’t be playing the game if he wanted to make a better life for him. But ultimately, he chose to join the gang. Ultimately, he chose to bring a knife to school and then physically assault me when I found it and kept him at bay for security. Ultimately, he is the one that, even though we allowed him to sign hardship transfer paperword and we spent money on a cab each morning to pick him up at his house on the wrong side of the city that decided to play around the neighborhood instead of coming to school. Ultimately, he was the one who started multiple major fights. Ultimately… he had made a choice. I should have accepted this sooner than I did so that other students could have benefitted from my attention.
• Your students “get you,” don’t worry. I wanted to join Teach For America to make a difference. I didn’t expect to change the world, but apparently the two-year vision was so idyllic to someone that my grandmother that she openly challenged me at a family breakfast during my first few months. I remember during my first year feeling the need to “set the record straight” with my students that, just because I was white and from a different place and went to college and … a whole list of things that made me different, it didn’t negate the fact that I was choosing to do what I do in order to make a difference for them because I believed that everyone deserved a good teacher.

  This year, I had one of those girls that you could have pulled from my school and plopped into any school in the country and she would have done just as well. She exudes “college bound” despite her personal story that would lead many to believe that she would not be able to achieve. She is mature and self-aware. I tell you this because I had to ask her to write a recommendation letter for me this year. When I read it, it just floored me. She got why I was teaching the way I was teaching. It was the first time someone was describing me in their own words like I was teaching like my hair was on fire. I had made a huge difference in her life, the kind of difference that makes her remember that crazy science teacher she had in middle school for the rest of her life. The kind of difference that makes me remember certain teachers from my secondary education, the same ones with whom I’ve had contact since starting three years ago.

  I have never really liked science until now. From my elementary science teachers to my 6th and 7th science teachers would just pass the textbooks out and say “Read pages 13 to 21, and answer the thinking questions”. Mr. G is the first science teacher I actually learned a whole lot of science from, got it stuck in my head, and had some fun with it.

  I know this doesn’t quite move you in the way it makes me tear up a little, but remember, this is an 8th grade student, and this is only the end of the letter.

So, I’m about to hit the publish button, which is essentially the end button. It’s really strange. But this is a good, more-than-symbollic gesture. And for those that continue to find my blog because of the science notebooking, don’t worry… I’ll still send you the files.

Thank you to everyone who supported me during the past three years. Thank you.

Principals,
Please convey the following information regarding the new Academic Stimulus Plan to your staff no later than Friday noon. It will be addressed in the Board meeting this Thursday so if you could do it by then that would be even better as it is likely to hit the papers on Friday. Please share with them an overview but ensure that they are aware of the following:

• Individual Academic Plans – Each student will be placed on an Individual Academic Plan to ensure targeted instruction. At the elementary level his is merely an expansion for many of you as a result of having Summerbridge students and if you have done it with the Bubble students in your building. Middle Schools have been requested to do this so this will come as nothing new. Feel free to share a sample of what the Individual Academic Plan will look like for your grade levels.
• Winter Break Homework Packet – This will be going home after the letter is sent to parents. Teachers will be responsible for ensuring its’ return, grading them and then re-teaching items that data indicates students have not mastered.
• Monetary incentives – pending Board approval there will be a monetary incentive for teachers with the highest return rate of packets. Please speak only in generalities about this as the amount has not yet been established and all of it depends upon Board action.

Let’s handle these one by one:

• Individual Academic Plans – Of course, the way to fix instructional issues is by adding more paperwork that has to be filled out and requiring more time of the already busy literacy coach checking that we’ve completed important demographic information and test-score tracking that should have just been put into our student information system by the various downtown departments for our easy access
• Winter Break Homework Packet – I love the idea of this one. Standardized homework for all students in the district. I am anxious to see what gets delivered to our doorstep.
• Monetary incentives – Who cares if kids learn? We apparently just care if they fill out worksheets. Well geez, I should just give my kids a kickback of whatever I incentive is being offered to ensure I make the minimum cut, right?

Come on SLPS. This is NOT evidence of a new era.

Update: After further review about this issue with a colleague, I discovered the best part about this mandate. The emails to principals had the following subject line: Please review and give feedback asap.

Though I was not alive at the time, I do have a particular connection to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Al. Having been there, having seen the community, having confronted first-hand the hatred and violence, I am amazed that we have reached this moment. I am a usually optimistic person, but I would venture so far as to say that I am amazed we have reached this moment in my lifetime.

The pundits on TV will tell you over and over that “a new electorate” has been energized and engaged. Accepting this, what else has been able to transcend the issues of race to become more important to the American people?

Does this election signal a shift in priorities for the people? Are we going to value action instead of idealism of past from either political party that merely promoted a different and better future?

How much of the overall status quo is about to be redefined? Both candidates this year stressed the need for change. The president of the National Science Teachers Association is travelling the country describing how “the times, they are a changin’” for science education. In St. Louis this week, the eighth person ascended to the post of superintendent since 2003 vowing to change the way we do business in our public schools. Are we actually ready to change the way we define America in our own eyes and the eyes of the world?

As someone who believes that we must publicly confront the problems of our education system in order to ever realize change, I hope the answer to many of these questions is yes. I think your answer can be yes regardless of political persuasion. To say yes signals we are ready to do what’s right rather than just pay lip service to ideals. Sadly, it’s been business as usual in this country since the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not since then have we been at a tipping point for our country. Not since today do we have a chance to say, “Maybe it’s time to rethink what it is to be American.”

I do hand it to two girls today who were at least trying their hardest to get the words even though they had no idea of the definition. In trying to describe sublimation, the first girl says to the other, “You know those $5 footlongs? It’s the first half of the word where you get them from.” Similarly, when they switched and the other girl had no idea how to explain condensation, the other girl says to the first, “It’s like that soup. Like condensed soup. The first part of that word.” At this point, I just burst out laughing.

On one level this was certainly humorous, but on another, I’m laughing more in the frustrated sense that this is where my students are 12 weeks into school. Why is the material not getting through to them? I think they think that what we’re doing really is just fun and games. Maybe it’s time to pull back on the fun and crank up the old-style fill-and-drill methods.

This year I instituted use of interactive science notebooks in my classroom. This is instead of a well planned and never-able-to-be well executed binder system. I provide the notebooks to the students for free (I made them for free through our district copy shop). I have publication kits in my room, which is basically a plastic tub with crayons, markers, glue, scissors, pencils, and any other random stuff related to doing work.

Each day, students must bring the notebook. If they don’t have it, they automatically get lunch detention — even if the notebook is in their locker and they go get it. This has made the “are you prepared for class” fight so much easier.

The science notebooks help solve the problem created by the fact that I don’t work directly out of our textbook. In fact, the first quarter just ended, and we haven’t ever opened the textbook. The notebook becomes our textbook. We glue in anything and everything that can not be written into the pages of the notebook.

This system has made it so incredibly easy to do visual checks of student progress. Additionally, it has reduced my burden of catching kids up on items missed while absent… there is a whole grade of students that have the same exact notebooks from which they can get the notes! Even grading the notebooks is a super cinch with a student-led grading system. I LOVE THIS. (And, almost as important, the kids do, too.)

Interactive notebook strategy is derived from brain research about students’ needs to have multiple chances to process material presented in class. The right side page of every two-page spread is the input (teacher driven) page. The left side page is the output (student driven) page that usually consists of some sort of processing activity for the material presented that day in class.

This notebook system has been so effective, easy, and fun that another teacher on my team instituted a version of notebooks in her classroom. I say this fully-knowing that if this were not true, she would give me the evil eye tomorrow since she reads the blog.

I don’t have much more energy to write about science notebooks, as I gave an extensive session on them this weekend. But I felt it necessary to chronicle this aspect of my classroom for the world to read.

If you’re a science teacher and want the full details to get you started, search for “Interactive science notebook how-to kit” on the Resource Exchange. If you’re not a TFAer and want the materials, leave me a comment with your email (which will only be visible to me).

I recently had another project funded through this amazing organization. It’s such a good example of what’s right about people and how, when given the chance, they’ll often times do good even for people they don’t know.

If you’re reading this and you’re a teacher in need of something to expand your classroom or school, consider participating.

Retired and traveling
Having trained as a journalist in college, I can say that my experiences with my journalism teacher in high school were formative. We have stayed here-and-there in touch — enough such that she knows what, how and why I’m involved in education. I had recently emailed her with “I need to write, don’t let me forget.” Needless to say, I forgot, but she wrote me. It was so nice to be able to hear from her and hear how she is doing now that she has retired. She told me about traveling, she told me about grandchildren, she told me about how many papers she graded last year before retiring (1,976… high school English assignments). I just finished writing her back. It was a sickeningly long email all about me, but it was good to be able to share what I’m doing with her and do so in a personal way.

Going places, I hope
One of my students is currently eligible to attend the very prestigious John Burroughs School. She asked me to be one of her two recommenders. This student is one who I would have no reservations about making a recommendation. While is she is not leading our school in academics, she has the very clear determination and resolve to make something of herself. After receiving my recommendation letter, the student wrote me a thank you note. Inside she, of course, thanked me, but she shared with me her ambitions to become a medical doctor. She took the time to share with me — through writing.

A postcard from home
Yesterday, before going to the art fair being held in my neighborhood, I checked my email. I found a note from my 8th grade English teacher! I was floored, to say the least. As a teacher I can attest to how the students flood by. There are so many, and I get new ones each year. While I, of course, remember this teacher, the fact that my interactions with her nearly ten years ago still remain clear enough that she would not only write but reference some of the things I did while in middle school is really special. It was funny that the way she found me was by doing a Google search for my name. This definitely validates the time I take to ensure I am clearly identifiable on the Internet and also emphasizes the need for me to make sure I continue to update that information! Much like the high school journalism teacher, it is so thrilling to share with them how they helped make me into what I became.

The point here is that I’ll try and be better about writing. I recognize that there are several people that I know and don’t know who read my blog. I should take the time to write and share what’s going on.

This past week we capped off our horrendously tedious learning about metrics experience with a chance to actually use metric units. What does 58 cm really look like? Now my students have a better idea.

Right now, DonorsChoose is running a blogger challenge. One of my projects was chosen by the popular blog TechCrunch to be featured in their challenge. This is certainly very exciting news. My project is raising funds to help turn one of our newer computers into seven computer terminals with use of a special piece of hardware. The per computer cost is only about ~300!! Click into the challenge page, and you’ll be able to see my project in full detail.

Much of the effort of the professional development planned and executed both by Teach For America and by my school district for new teachers focuses on becoming a better teacher. The premise is that it takes much time and effort on the part of both the system and the teacher to develop the skills of a self-reflective practitioner. Skills, knowledge, mindset and time are needed to continually increase effectiveness in the classroom.

Today’s schools, on the whole, suffer from a vacuum of leadership. When a highly qualified teacher comes to practice who also happens to be a highly qualified leader, the tendency is to maximize the new resources available to the school. As such, the new teacher must accept roles as a leader. This takes away from the cycle of growth and improvement of that individual as a teacher. So instead of experiences that build one’s arsenal of teaching strategies, the experiences at the beginning of the career are driving the qualified teacher/leader into a long-term leadership role.

This is my third-year of teaching. While I recognize that I seek out professional development experiences that may have advanced my teaching skill more quickly than others that I know, I am baffled to think of all the things I have been given to do or have reason/opportunity to take on that fall outside the role of being a beginning teacher. Please know I am not complaining. However, I have considered this week the possible outcomes if my energy were not so often diverted from my teaching duties to tasks that might otherwise be described with words like supervising. When I think about the defining aspects of what I’ve achieved for education while in St. Louis, most of it would consist of effects outside my classroom. The more I exist within this system, the further away I get from reflective-teacher modalities being at the top of my priorities. Do not mistake that I imply that I am a poor teacher as a result, it is just that other duties seem to be placed first before my responsibilities as a teacher.

Again, I accept that I function a certain way within any given system — a way which makes me me and makes me valuable for whom I work. Nonetheless the opportunities which I’ve had are a a result of a system so starved for leaders that I am, in essence, being sucked away from the classroom into the nebulous void of administration and systematic decision making. This is ok as per my personal outlook and how I see myself working on education in the long-term. But this is not ok when given as a diagnosis of what’s going on. Teach For America preaches the teacher as leader, but the teachers who can be leaders are being pushed, pulled and stretched within a matrix of different needs all the while overlooking that we do so at the cost of cultivating good classroom instructional leaders who stay in the classroom. I am starting to believe that one can not be both teacher and leader. Like Heisenberg’s principle, I think it is more true to say that we must be teacher or leader; the more we are of one, the less we are of the other.

There is no solution proposed here, I know. It’s just scary to be witness to a process that is further diminishing the human capital of the teaching profession.