Matching Tracksuits

Sept 19, 2017

Our state is no longer using the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment that it has used since I first began teaching in South Carolina over a decade ago. The test was a nationally-normed test that provided teachers with a wealth of useful data about kids’ skills and abilities. And since it was nationally normed, it provided a broad overview for parents (and teachers) about where an individual child was nationally in relation to the rest of his peers.

As a teacher, I was able, at a glance, to see what a student needed. If the national normal for eighth graders in the fall was 220 points, I knew that a kid scoring 210 was fairly far behind the norm, and a kid reading below 200 was reading at something like a first grade level.

Then last year, a funny thing happened: it was announced that the national norm for eighth graders had been re-established at 218. This was the former norm for seventh graders. This suggests that as a nation, we’ve dropped a little over the last decade.

What can the state do about this? It reflects so badly on our schools that we must do something. What do we do? Get serious about holding back students who don’t master content? Implement a serious, statewide program to deal with the behavior problems that correlate (and likely significantly contribute to) this decline? Budget more money to decrease class size?

None of these things. Instead, they dumped the test. The test is showing results we don’t like, so what do we do? We stop using that test. Easy — problem solved.

One key skill a good reader consistently employs is the simple cognitive act of connecting what she’s reading to what she already knows. “Connect to Background Knowledge” says the teacher’s poster of effective readers’ skills. When talking to the district language arts coordinator about skills our students are lacking, this was one that the three eighth-grade English teachers agreed was one of the most critical and yet most lacking skills.

“I remember sitting with my family when I was their age,” I said, “watching the local news at six and the national news at six thirty.” I knew about current events and how they were connected to previous events as a result. I knew about Chernobyl as it was happening (with of course the Soviet propaganda delay taken into account). I watched the fall of the Berlin Wall in almost real-time. I knew about the Tiananmen Square massacre because Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather told me about these events. I was, therefore, constantly building new background knowledge.

“Why don’t we get back to watching the CNN Kids news to remedy this?” the ELA coordinator suggested. We all thought it might be a good idea and decided to talk to the social studies teachers about why they weren’t doing it anymore.

I should have guessed why.

“There was just too much pushback from parents,” a social studies teacher explained. “This one is mad about the network choice. ‘Why CNN and not another news station?'” Never mind for a moment that no other media outlets produce, to my knowledge, the equivalent. “They would say stuff like, ‘Why are you showing our kids liberal propaganda?’ And then there were those on the other side who felt it was too conservative.”

“How about telling the parents, ‘Well, that sounds like an excellent conversation to have tonight at the dinner table,'” I suggested.

Tuesday has very little going for it. It doesn’t have the unambiguous “you have to get through it” feeling of Monday. It’s not hump day. It’s not Thursday (a.k.a. almost Friday). And of course, it’s not Friday. But Tuesdays this year are even more intolerable because of our Collaborative Team Meeting. A weekly mandatory meeting, it’s as bad as it sounds. Occasionally, we get something useful from it, but like so many things these days in education, it just has the feeling of being a report mill for the higher-ups (who usually make two, three, four, or more times the average teacher’s salary) so they can justify their job.

It’s often a day for giving a test. I would have said “A day for testing,” but “testing” now has connotations of standardized testing, and the increase in standardized testing is one reason so many of us are trying not to give tests of our own as much as possible. After all, how much can these kids be tested?

“Why not just use all the tests you have to administer for the district as grades?” Today, for example, we went over our benchmark scores. The benchmark, according to the powers that be, is supposed to be an accurate reflection of the degree to which the students have mastered the standards we are to teach in a given quarter. The only problem: they always include questions from other standards which we are to teach in other quarters!

“How is that a benchmark?” I asked one of our leadership team (another useful bit of jargon).

“Well, it’s also predictive,” came the response.

Predictive of what? I don’t need a test to tell me how well the students are going to do on a standard I haven’t even covered yet.

And the questions themselves — so often a jumble of confusion. We went over one question today (they are allowing us to see isolated questions this year, but only when they were projected on a screen without us taking pictures or copying it in any way — profits over the kids!), and I had trouble making sense of how they were even supposed to answer it, let alone which was the correct answer.

“If I am struggling to make sense of the question, what chance do my students have?” I asked.

“Let’s focus on the things in our control,” came the reply.

When you start your day of with that kind of a meeting, it’s a challenge to regain a positive footing when the kids start coming into the classroom. And had it been last year’s kids that came in after such a meeting, I would have stood by the door as the students entered and daydreamed about simply walking to the front office and saying, “Someone better get in my room — there’s no adult there, and I’m not coming back.”

But this year, I have such wonderful kids. Sure, some are disruptive and a little argumentative. Many are immature. Several are chronically lazy. But there’s not a kid about whom I could say, when he’s absent, “Well, thank the heavens for small mercies.” There’s not a kid that I just dread working with because I know she’s going to turn every single thing into a confrontation and make me thing it would be more productive to bang my head against the cinder block wall for the entirety of the period than to work with that kid. And trust me — I’ve taught plenty of kids like that. But this year, not a one.

So it’s easy to reign in the frustrations of a meeting and put on a positive face when such a great group of kids comes in. But it makes all the uselessness of all bureaucratic nonsense all the more acute.

I was discussing with my principal how I’d like to reward the class (fourth period) that had absolutely no NHIs for the whole quarter. That means every student turned in every assignment. Seems basic, mundane even. To put it in context, one class had 57 NHIs for fewer assignments.

“I’d really like to reward them, but it would be great to be able to do something really big for them, like buy everyone lunch. But we’d need a budget like the Department of Defense,” I said.

“We are the DoD,” he laughed. “Those people out their have no idea what we’re saving them from…”

We’re starting a new unit at with the on-level eighth graders this week, and as I always do, I consulted the district pacing guide to see what the recommended teaching topics were and how much time we should spend on each topic.

It’s a unit on horror fiction (because of Halloween, I suppose), and the first piece in the textbook is a relatively short literary analysis called “What Is the Horror Genre?” — it’s short, but not easy for eighth graders. Nor is it what we could call a high-interest text. The piece in its relatively short entirety:

Many people define horror by its subjects. We all think of creatures like Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and the wolfman as monsters in the horror genre. Each one of these creatures has a history and developed over a period of time. But we also know that horror covers more than just these monsters. We could all make long lists of the kind of creatures we identify with horror, especially when we think of films as well as literature. The minute we would start to make such a list we would also realize that not all monsters are alike and that not all horror deals with monsters. The subject approach is not the clearest way to define this genre.

Some students of this genre find that the best way to examine it is to deal with the way horror fiction is organized or structured. Examining the organization of a horror story shows that it shares certain traits with other types of fiction. Horror stories share the use of suspense as a tactic with many other kinds of literature. The tension we feel when a character goes into the attic, down into the basement, or just into the abandoned house is partially a result of suspense. We don’t know what is going to happen. But that suspense is intensified by our knowledge of the genre. We know that characters involved in the world of horror always meet something awful when they go where they shouldn’t. Part of the tension is created because they are doing something we know is going to get them in trouble. Stephen King refers directly to our anticipation of horror. In Salem’s Lot Susan approaches the house which is the source of evil. “She found herself thinking of those drive-in horror movie epics where the heroine goes venturing up the narrow attic stairs . . . or down into some dark, cobwebby cellar . . . and she . . . thinking: . . . I’d never do that!” Of course Susan’s fears are justified. She does end up dead in the basement, a victim of the vampire

If the horror genre uses the character’s search for information to create suspense, it controls when and where we get our knowledge. Because we are outside of the situation we usually know more than the characters. Our advance knowledge creates suspense because we can anticipate what is going to happen. The author can play with those expectations by either confirming them or surprising us with a different outcome. When suspense is an important element in fiction we may often find that the plot is the most critical part of the story. We care more about what happens next than about who the characters are or where the story is set. But setting is often considered a part of the horror genre. If the genre has traditional monsters, it also has traditional settings. Only authors who want to challenge the tradition place events in bright, beautiful parks. We expect a connection between the setting and the events in this genre. We are not surprised to find old houses, abandoned castles, damp cellars, or dark forests as important elements in the horror story. Some people make further distinctions based on how the stories are organized. We can divide stories into different categories based on how we come to believe in the events related and how they are explained to us. Stories that deal with parallel worlds expect us to accept those worlds without question. We just believe Dorothy is in Oz; we accept Oz as a parallel world separate from ours. Other times events seem to be supernatural but turn out to have natural explanations: the ghosts turn out to be squirrels in the attic, or things that move mysteriously are part of a plot to drive someone crazy. Sometimes the supernatural is the result of the way the central character sees the world, as in stories told from the point of view of a crazy person. But at times we are not sure, and hesitate about believing in the possibility of the supernatural. When I first read Dracula I seriously considered hanging garlic on my windows because I believed that vampires could exist. This type of hesitation, when we almost believe, falls into the general category of the “fantastic” (Todorov 25). Often horror has its greatest effect on us because we almost believe, or believe while we are reading the book or watching the film, that the events are possible.

Yet another way of categorizing works of horror is by the source of the horror. Some horror comes from inside the characters. Something goes wrong inside, and a person turns into a monster. Dr. Frankenstein’s need for knowledge turns him into the kind of person who creates a monster. Dr. Jekyll also values his desire for information above all else, and creates Mr. Hyde. In another kind of horror story the threat to the central character or characters comes from outside. An outside force may invade the character and then force the evil out again. The vampire attacks the victim, but then the victim becomes a vampire and attacks others. Stories of ghosts or demonic possession also fall into this category.

We can also look at the kinds of themes common to horror. Many works concentrate on the conflict between good and evil. Works about the fantastic may deal with the search for forbidden knowledge that appears in much horror literature. Such quests are used as a way of examining our attitude toward knowledge. While society may believe that new knowledge is always good, the horror genre may question this assumption, examining how such advances affect the individual and society.

Not exactly a thrilling read for eighth graders. I make an argument before we begin: “Think of this as practice for all the times you’ll have to read a text in the future that really holds no interest for you but is important for this reason or that — job, education, whatever it might be.” But why should be subjecting reluctant readers to something so dry and boring? Why do I do it? The short answer to the second question is simple: the district requires it. Hardly a compelling reason. As for the first question — I don’t have an answer. The situation is simple, though: no one wants to read it because it’s not terribly interesting and it’s at a reading level that’s overly challenging for them. I don’t want to force them to read it because they’re reluctant readers as it is: forcing this shit down their throats only makes them less interested in reading. But the state adopted this textbook which included this piece; the district made the pacing guide; administrators require us to follow the pacing guide; and we teachers are left with the unenviable task of trying to get kids to read this.

As for the pacing guide, we’re to spend four days on this. Day one has four options for the learning target.

(A few words about “learning target.” Education is obsessed with jargon, and the experts at the district and state levels seem to think that changing the name of the jargon and slightly altering how we word the jargon will make qualitative and quantitative differences in the students’ education. Our district used the “Essential Question” as the framing device for each lesson. We were to put them on the board and use it to frame our planning and instructional delivery: the kids at the end of the lesson should be able to answer the question. It might sound like this: “How do I analyze how supporting details contribute to the development of two or more central ideas within an informational text?” Now we’ve got a new silver bullet: the learning target. How would the learning target differ from the essential question above? It’s a radical difference, one that has revolutionized my classroom. “How do I analyze how supporting details contribute to the development of two or more central ideas within an informational text?” becomes “I can analyze how supporting details contribute to the development of two or more central ideas within an informational text.” It’s made a big difference in my classroom. Formerly disengaged learners have come up to me afterward and explained, “Mr. Scott, when we had those essential questions, I felt so lost. I really didn’t know what was going on, and all learning just seemed pointless. With theses new learning targets, though, everything has changed. I’m a new boy! My attention is more focused. My desire to be disruptive has disappeared. And I even do my homework now! Thanks, learning target!”)

The district pacing guide suggests four possible learning targets for the first day:

1. I can analyze how supporting details contribute to the development of two or more central ideas within an informational text.
2. I can analyze how supporting details contribute to the development of two or more central ideas across informational texts.
3. I can summarize the most important ideas and content from grade-level texts to enhance comprehension.
4. I can paraphrase content from grade-level texts while conveying the same meaning to enhance comprehension.

What are we doing for day two? The district suggests this learning target: “I can edit to use a comma or dash to indicate a pause or break when writing compositions.” So we’re going to make it through this challenging text in one day? Really?

Still, I guess I can see how we could do focus on commas for a while after we finish the text. We might spend some time looking at how the article used commas (Did it really make use of commas? There are a few.) or dashes (Did it really use that many dashes? Not a single one.) and then the next day, we could perhaps do some independent practice with commas. That would be a logical day 3 learning target.

Day 3: “I can identify and revise inappropriate shifts in number when writing compositions.”

What the hell is this? We’re just supposed to suddenly change to another grammar-based idea out of the blue? What happened with comma practice? Are we to get all instruction and all practice done in one day? With squirrely eighth graders? And just what, pray tell, is the connection to our anchor text (another lovely bit of jargon)? Surely day four is going to continue with this subject/verb agreement lesson of day three.

Day 4: “I can use appropriate parallel structure in words, phrases, and clauses when writing compositions.”

Screw it — I give up. I just give up. I understand why this is in there — parallel structure is one of the eighth-grade standards. But it is such a relatively esoteric compositional idea that most adults in the building (other than English teachers) wouldn’t recognize a parallel structure error let alone correct it. I could teach this to my students, but it would take at least a week, and even then, I’m not sure how long they would retain it. And for what? Maybe one question on the beloved end of the year test? (And if it is on the end of the year test, it won’t be worded using “parallel structure.” Instead, it will have a sentence that has a parallel structure problem and the question will be, “What is the best way to revise this sentence?” Getting them to that point? It’s not going to happen.)

I long for a district that says, “We trust your professional judgment. We believe you can quickly assess where your students are, design lessons to improve their reading and writing, and implement those lessons without us telling you all the whats, whens, whys, and hows.” I long for a state department of education that thinks improvement is more important than reaching some arbitrary standard. If I worked in a state and district that required all the people working in administrative positions to spend at least half their day in the classroom themselves so they can see how their policies affect students and teachers, that is exactly the kind of state and district we’d have.

We’re working on poetry in my honors classes, and being halfway through the unit, we’ve turned our attention to one of the most difficult things to do in the class: determine the tone of something. Our something was Billy Collins’s (rightfully) semi-famous “The Lanyard.”

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Afterward, we listen to Collins doing a reading. The laughter surprises them. Who would think poetry could be funny? Their homework: graph the laugh. Today, we go over it.

It’s an example of perfect comedic timing. Collins builds the anticipation with the first two lanyard references, which come quickly one after another. Then he goes several lines focusing on the mother before reminding us about the lanyard.

The anticipation is such that the audience even chucks a bit at the line “here are thousands of means” and a little less at “here is clothing and a good education.” The anticipation appropriately high, Collins then hits us with one of the best lines of the poem: “And here is your lanyard, I replied / which I made with a little help from a counselor.”

The kids always find it amusing later, but none of them ever laugh the first times we go through it.

Some day…

Some day…

I don’t think anyone knew what to expect when the students returned to school today. Our eight days out of school were unlike virtually any “break” we teachers had ever experienced, and that surely would be doubly true for the students. There was one “break” it called to mind, the “vacation” we dare not speak of. Still, the similarities were undeniable: we left suddenly; we knew not what devastation the future held for us and those we love; we had no idea when we would return.

During our faculty meeting during yesterday’s teacher work day, our principal reminded us about the potential fragility of the situation. “We have no idea what our kids have gone through. We don’t know what trauma each individual child experienced. We don’t know what stresses await the children when the return home. Go easy on them. Love on them.”

Many of the kids would likely have said they were not happy to be back, that they would have been thrilled to hear that they would never have to return, but our experience of the lockdown would belie such sentiments, as did the students’ faces this morning as they walked down the corridors for the first time in days. There was a palpable sense of relief in each of my classes: things were returning to normal.

Events like this shouldn’t be the only thing that reminds us of the inherent frailties in many of our students’ lives, shouldn’t be the only thing that reminds us to go easy on them. The more I teach, the more I realize this gentleness is the key to students’ hearts and souls, and once a teacher has those things, she can lead the students — even the most recalcitrant or incorrigible — just about anywhere. Or in the jargon and memes of teaching, “They have to know you care before they care what you know.”

It was a good day to be a teacher.

These three kids are among my best workers. Z, the boy in the middle, wasn’t the best worker last year.

This year, he is. When I told the seventh-grade administrator about the change, she threw her arms up and proclaimed, “Hallelujah!”

English I students continued with their parts of speech review, getting out of the traditional order and skipping from adjective to prepositions in order to help students identify prepositional phrases. This will help them with all the other parts of speech, especially since we’re going to be covering active/passive when we get to verbs later this week.

English 8 students continued with the district-designed unit on argument based on the newly adopted textbook looking at argumentative writing. We’re looking at a second article dealing with automation and employment: this article makes the opposite claim as last week’s article “The Automation Paradox.”

In English 8, we’re off to our next set of required readings. I have very little say in what I teach English 8 this year, and a lot of the materials are too difficult for my students and too — quite frankly — boring to get their interest. Our piece is called “The Automation Paradox,” and so we did a little pre-teaching today so kids know what a paradox is. To that end, I introduced them to Zeno’s Paradox. We did some measuring, completed a little math, and I convinced them that the math was solid: the arrow should have never hit Zeno.

So then we tested the theory with a ball. Which students took turns throwing at me. I was fairly sure they would hit me quickly, but I failed to take into account the light weight of the ball and the tendency of smooth light balls not to travel in a straight line. So most of the throws missed.

But the point was made. And the kids had a blast throwing that silly ball at me.

This is what makes middle school so fun: they’re cognitively developed enough that we can get into some abstract thinking and still childlike enough to enjoy being silly.