Lessons Teachers Learn in Their First Month of Teaching

So your first weeks of teaching are wrapping up.  At times you've struggled to recall why you became a teacher.  But in the past few weeks no doubt you and your students have learned a great deal already.  Still nothing could ever have prepared you for the past month.  The lessons learned are too numerous to recount.  So the TU will recount ones that people might find humorous.

#1 To survive as a teacher you cannot be bothered by having people call your name at least 100 times a day.

#2 You have become aware that anything you draw or sketch on the board will, to those entering the room or when you look at it later, resemble either a body part or an obscene act.

#3 Despite claims to the contrary and the fact you cannot admit it publicly there are actually stupid questions.

#4 Regardless of how bad you have to use the restroom...you can in fact hold it.

#5 The last 5 minutes of class only take about 30 seconds.

#6  No matter how smart a student is they will require a minimum of 5 minutes to pack up their book bag at the end of class.  Efforts to delay them from doing so are seen as quite rude.

#7  Chewing Gum can be used to make a surprising variety of sounds.

#8 Teachers new to the profession must realize quickly that they teach students, not a subject.  Fail to learn this and odds quickly turn against you surviving.

#9 Kids may not even be able to spell their own name but are quick to point out your errors on worksheets or on the board.

#10 At least one student in your class will enjoy drumming.  The band plays at all times by the way.  When they arrive, moment of silence, while you talk, during a quiz...the beat must go on.

Easy Targets

Answer quickly, do more Americans die each year from homicide or suicide?

Which city has a higher crime rate, New York, NY or Aurora, IL?

Most of you would say homicide and NYC.  Most of you would be wrong.  Some things just stick in our brains more vividly than others and affect our judgment for the worse.  Often, these vivid cases are not just easier to remember, but perpetuated through our conversations, personal experiences, and the media.  I'm sure all of the news reports on murders and crime shows set in NYC affected your judgment on these questions as well.

Education suffers from the same problem.  The images and memories of those terrible teachers stick out in our brains.  So-called reformers find a vast resource of collective memory to evoke in the public to spur initiatives to disrupt a supposed broken system.  Ignored are the consistent images of caring teachers engaging students in the day-to-day business of learning.  Nothing as inspiring as Mr. Keating or Mr. Escalante, but certainly not the caricature of Ferris Beuler's Econ teacher. 

The "bad, boring, dull" teacher trapped in a "monotonous, dull, rigid" system is quite overrepresented in our collective imagination of what education is.  Because of this over-representation, teachers and public education in general finds itself on the receiving end of quite a bit of unfair and caricatured criticism.

Alfie Kohn recently wrote an article for Education Week titled "Corridor Wit: Talking Back to our Teachers."  Usually I find Kohn quite on target.  His arguments against homework are thoughtful, and while I don't completely agree with him I appreciate the thought that he provokes.  I greatly appreciate his understanding of standardized testing's impact on education.  His recent post humorously quotes some of what he considers "the overused and underthought pronouncements that reflect truly reactionary views of education and children."  Following each quote he proposes the witty response he wishes he'd been able to deliver in retort as a student.

Here is a sampling:

I need all eyes on me, please!


Mrs. __________, I appreciate your honesty in admitting that your periodic requests to look at you are really about what you need. Obviously it isn’t necessary to look at you in order to hear what you’re saying. More important, neither looking nor listening is the same as learning. In fact, real learning is more likely to happen when we students are doing most of the talking. But, hey, if your need for attention is so pressing, I’d be glad to stare at you some more.

Eyes on your own paper! I want to see what you can do, not what your neighbor can do!


In other words, you want to see what happens when I’m deprived of the resources and social support that characterize most well-functioning real-world environments, rather than seeing how much more my “neighbors” and I could accomplish together? Why?

Take everything off your desks except a pencil.


Wait a minute. If you’re giving us a test, but forcing us to put away our books and notes, then you’d mostly be assessing rote recall. Surely you’re more interested in knowing our capacity for thinking than how much stuff we’ve crammed into short-term memory, aren’t you?

I admit, it's funny, but on some level I find it offensive.  Here's why:
 
1) There are times when I do need all eyes on me.  I do bear some responsibility in your learning and with twenty to thirty of you surrounding me in a classroom, eye contact is the best short-term method for me to monitor your understanding.  I know that real learning happens when you start talking, but not if you're just talking about the game last night.  Students need some direction (ever read Lord of the Flies).

2) As a teacher, I get lots of support from my peers.  Then I go into a classroom and conduct lessons on my own.  If I want to buy a computer, I talk to friends and do some research, then I evaluate the options and make my own decision.  Here's another point-- Is the population of Argentina greater or less than 2 million?  Go ahead and make a guess about the population.  Do you believe that your answer would have been significantly higher if my first question said 200 million instead of 2?  Sometimes I do want to know what my students think and know.  I want to minimize the effect of outside factors and distractors.  I want them to learn how to participate in a "well-functioning real-world environment" by learning to think on their own and then bringing their collective knowledge to the table with informed understanding and openness.

3) Is short-term memory a bad thing?  Sure it isn't everything, but it is a cognitive skill that requires practice.  And enough practice will lead to long-term recall.  No, it isn't the only thing that I'm going for in class, but when my students find themselves in a real-world situation, they certainly won't have the textbook and if they can't use the right search words the internet might not help either.  So every so often, yes, take everything off of your desk except for a pencil.

I agree with most of the other criticisms in Mr. Kohn's post.  Commenting to a tardy student "how nice of you to join us" is a simple attempt to shame or guilt a student into better behavior.  But this out of hand criticism takes the hard work of teaching every day and reduces it to a caricature.  To assume that teachers don't reflect on their homework policies, class procedures, and grading policies demeans the individual educator on whom the structure of our public school system is built.  It unfairly demeans the system by oversimplifying the cause of some of it's biggest flaws.

I don't think that Mr. Kohn meant any harm, in fact, I sincerely believe that his work supports the movement toward quality education and away from corporate-driven reform efforts.  But, I do think that teachers have become too easy of a target and caricatured posts like this further pigeonhole the lot of us as unthinking, standardized, slave drivers wedded to the status quo of mediocrity.  The reality of day-to-day life in the public school classroom is far different than this.

Are We Really Going There?

D.C. Schools Prepare for Nation's First Sex-Education Standardized Testing

Go ahead, click the link.  That title's not a joke.  Our capital's school system plans to use multiple choice standardized testing to gauge student knowledge in 5th, 8th, and 10th grades on a number of health related topics.  Officials created the test to comply with a recent policy enacted by the D.C. City Council.

Officials said that the test, which will also include questions on nutrition, mental health and drug use, is based on a provision of the Healthy Schools Act of 2010, which the D.C. Council passed to address health issues in the 75,000-student system.

But the legislation’s sponsor, council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), said the law requires only that the District produce an annual report describing progress on student health concerns. It does not mandate creation of another standardized test.

As silly as this sounds, every time the citizens of our nation sit back and allow passage of what appears to be reasonable education policy our schools take one more step down the slippery slope of insanity.  Did you hear about the 52 new standardized tests last year in Charlotte-Mecklenburg?  To implement the new Pay for Performance systems students took standardized tests in nearly every subject, including Yearbook!

Now, Virginia is among the bandwagon states that want to link teacher evaluation to student "growth and performance."  Here's the catch.  Can anyone argue that teachers should be rewarded for promoting student growth or assissted when they don't/can't?  Not at all.  Whether you refer to "growth models" or "value added", the idea that teachers should be judged on how much a student learns in a given year can't be refuted.  So no one pushes back against legislation that tries to enable this.

We're beginning to learn this year in Albemarle County about our new Teacher Performance Appraisal system.  We've started changing the system to comply with state requirements that at least forty percent of a teacher's evaluation is based on "student growth."  So far we haven't fallen prey to the testing craze, we don't have to specifically link all of our "growth goals" to standardized testing.  It's going to be hard.  Administrators will have to ensure that teachers set reasonable and rigorous enough goals.  They will have to make sure that standards are applied equally across the division.  Some teachers will have specific data to include (with SOL testing) while others can be more creative (music, art, Psychology, etc.)  In the end, it might look easier to just give the kids a test see how they do.

Standardized testing for Sex ed?  Really?  Wake up America.  Republican or Democrat, education policy isn't working, and until more people stand up and expose the consequences of current education policy we're likely to see more of the same until we finally break this system and start over from scratch.  That idea might sound good to some, but for the millions of students who are being broken down along with the system that is supposed to support them, that is not good enough.

What Republicans Think About Education

Thursday night's Republican Presidential Debate included a question about education.  Candidates were given thirty seconds each to respond. (Does that say something about the value of education?)  We've included the question below, candidate responses, and a brief commentary from the Teaching Underground for each.  Enjoy.

QUESTION: I've taught in both public and private schools, and now as a substitute teacher I see administrators more focused on satisfying federal mandates, retaining funding, trying not to get sued, while the teachers are jumping through hoops trying to serve up a one-size-fits-all education for their students. What as president would you seriously do about what I consider a massive overreach of big government into the classroom? Thank you.



FORMER GOV. GARY JOHNSON, R-N.M.: I'm promising to submit a balanced budget to Congress in the year 2013. That's a 43 percent reduction in federal spending.

I am going to promise to advocate the abolishment of the federal Department of Education.

The federal Department of Education gives each state 11 cents out of every dollar that every state spends, but it comes with 16 cents worth of strings attached. So what America does not understand is that it's a negative to take federal money. Give it to 50 laboratories of innovation, the states, to improve on, and that's what we'll see:

dramatic improvement.

Abolish the Federal Department of Education?  That sounds pretty Anti-Education to many folks, but maybe not.  If Johnson is right, it's costing more than it's worth.

FORMER SEN. RICK SANTORUM, R-PA.: Yeah, 20 years ago, the federal contribution to education was 3 percent. It's now at 11 percent, and our schools are doing worse, and it's exactly what Gary Johnson just said. It's because the federal government's meddling.

The bottom-line problem with education is that the education system doesn't serve the customer of the education system. And who's the customer? The parents, because it's the parents' responsibility to educate the children.

It's been that responsibility -- from the moment they were born, they began the education of their children. And at some point, we have-- the government has convinced parents that at some point it's no longer their responsibility. And in fact, they force them, in many respects, to turn their children over to the public education system and wrest control from them and block them out of participation of that.

That has to change or education will not improve in this country.

I can't say that I totally disagree, but we have a public trust.  Sometimes parents will not live up to their responsibility and with this attitude I fear the children suffer.  How do we adjust education to make sure we're responsive to parents?  I must say, I don't think the feds can do much for us there.

FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, NEWT GINGRICH: I think you need very profound reform of education at the state level. You need to dramatically shrink the federal Department of Education, get rid of virtually all of its regulations.

And the truth is, I believe we'd be far better off if most states adopted a program of the equivalent of Pell Grants for K-through-12, so that parents could choose where their child went to school, whether it was public, or private, or home-schooling, and parents could be involved. Florida has a virtual school program that is worth the entire country studying as an example.

I'm always a little leery of the baggage associated with vouchers and choice talk.  And technology should facilitate education, but this virtual school example sounds too much like technology as a solution to education problems.

REP. RON PAUL, R-TEXAS: If you care about your children, you'll get the federal government out of the business of educating our kids.

In 1980, when the Republican Party ran, part of the platform was to get rid of the Department of Education. By the year 2000, it was eliminated, and we fed on to it. Then (inaudible) Republicans added No Child Left Behind.

So the first thing a president should do is -- the goal should be set to get the government out completely, but don't enforce this law of No Child Left Behind. It's not going to do any good, and nobody likes it. And there's no value to it. The teachers don't like it, and the students don't like it.

But there are other things that the federal government can do, and that is give tax credits for the people who will opt out. We ought to have a right to opt out of the public system if you want.

O.k. Ron, I'm with you on decreasing federal involvement, but you lost me at "business of education."  It's not a business, and we need some form of government guarantee of access to education.

GOV. RICK PERRY, R-TEXAS: There are a lot of good ideas here on the side and whether it is cutting back on the Department of Education, making those types of reductions.

I happen to believe we ought to be promoting school choice all across this country. I think school -- the voucher system, charter schools all across this country. But there is one person on this stage that is for Obama's Race to the Top and that is Governor Romney. He said so just this last week. And I think that is an important difference between the rest of the people on this stage and one person that wants to run for the presidency.

Being in favor of the Obama Race to the Top and that is not conservative.

Tell us what you think about education Mr. Perry, not your opponents.  I'll slam Race to the Top right along with you, but you need to tell us more about what you're for than what you're against.  Once again, the voucher and choice talk can mean many things, and too often on this side of the isle it means harm to public education.

FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS.: Nice try.

Let me tell you what I think I would do.

One, education has to be held at the local and state level, not at the federal level. We need get the federal government out of education. And secondly, all the talk about we need smaller classroom size, look that's promoted by the teachers unions to hire more teachers. We looked at what drives good education in our state, what we found is the best thing for education is great teachers, hire the very best and brightest to be teachers, pay them properly, make sure that you have school choice, test your kids to see if they are meeting the standards that need to be met, and make sure that you put the parents in charge.

And as president I will stand up to the National Teachers Unions.

You're dead on about state and local control Mitt, but you've fallen for the teacher union myth.  Do you really think that a group of average income teachers paying dues to a union has more clout than the multi-million dollar multi-national corporations like Pearson and Rupert Murdoch's educational ventures.  I want a president who will encourage governors to work with Teacher's Unions (who represent the folks who deal with students day in and day out) and stand up to the corporate interests who are driving school reform today.

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN.: We need that to do with education what has always worked historically, and that's local control with parents. What doesn't work is what we see happen right now.

I'm a mom five biological kids. We've raised 23 foster children in our home. The reason why I got involved in politics was because of the concern I had about our foster children and the education they were getting. What I would do as president of the United States is pass the mother of all repeal bills on education. I would take the entire federal education law, repeal it. Then I would go over to the Department of Education, I'd turn off the lights, I would lock the door and I would send all the money back to the states and localities.

Maybe not a bad idea, but again, we do need a government to at least guarantee that localities and states are living up to their responsibility to educate the children of America.

HERMAN CAIN, BUSINESSMAN: A lot of good ideas, I won't repeat them.

All of the programs at the federal level where there's strings attached, cut all the strings. We have got to encourage parents to take advantage of choices, but provide those choices and we must find ways to empower the students. This is how we are going to improve education, but primarily get the federal government out of trying to educate our kids at the local level.

Sounds great to me.  I'd like to know more specifics.

FORMER GOVERNOR JON HUNTSMAN, R-UTAH : This is a key question, because it has so much to do with our nation's competitiveness. I feel like I've run my own clinical trial in my home, raising seven kids. We've seen every option. We've experienced everything out there. But as governor I learned some important things. I signed the first -- or the second voucher bill in the United States, Carson-Smith. I've actually done something about this.

We actually worked on early childhood literacy. If you can lock in the pillars of cognitive development around reading and math before age six, you are giving those kids the best gift possible as they then proceed through education.

Finally, you've got to say no to unfunded mandates coming out of Washington. They are totally unacceptable. No one loves their schools more than parents and local school boards, and local elected officials.

Again, not sure about vouchers, but kill the unfunded mandate.

There you have it folks.  The republican take on education in thirty seconds or less (per candidate).  Here's to informed decision-making and an educated electorate.

(thanks to Fox News for transcript details from the debate)