fun in threes, sometimes fours
education and teaching
It took me four years and two principals, but I finally succeeded in my brilliant plot to take control of and completely redesign the web site for my school. It went live today.
The district decided a year later that WordPress had such significant security issues that they couldn't continue using it. Funny, Washington Post, Time magazine, and the New York Times all seem to feel differently since they use it, but what do for-profit companies know about using secure software?
We'll be starting school in a week, meeting (some) students in two days, but today, the faculty gathered to do two things: deal with the myriad administrative announcements and clarifications that make up the bureaucracy of public education, and get caught back up with colleagues.
Last year we faced the stress of a new principal: what will change? What will stay the same? After a year with this man, who has done an excellent job at transforming some problems at our school as well as keeping everyone on their toes, we know that we're in for more of the same this year. It's good and bad. I have this lurking fear that changes we know are coming are going to make me let go of some of my most prized pedagogical possessions -- lessons, units, techniques that might not work with the new approach (educational fad or not? too early to tell) well be taking as a faculty. Yet change is often good. Still, on this end of it, it's a bit daunting.
It’s far too late for this little girl to be heading to bed, but in these last few days of summer vacation, we’ve grown lax.
We kneel for evening prayers, and I think of something Father L said to me today during confession, and it gives me an idea.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son,” we begin, already falling into that rhythm that shows we aren’t really thinking about what we’re saying. We begin, and as we pray “Thy will be done,” I stop L.
“What’s something you can do to help make this come about, to help bring about God’s will on Earth?” L shrugs, so I clarify: “What is God? He’s love, right? So to fulfill God’s will, we must love. So what’s something you could do to help fulfill that?”
She thinks for a moment. “Not yell at E,” she replies confidently. We all do it: we get frustrated or worried with what the little two-year-old bundle of fascination and excitement is about to do, see potential disaster (or sometimes actual disaster), and call out, “E!” He heads for furniture with a drill: “E!” He snaps the head off a doll: “E!” So L and I talk about how we should all take that to heart.
Returning to the prayer: “and lead us not into temptation.” Time for reteaching: “What are we sometimes tempted to do, something that really goes against God’s will of love?”
“Yell at E.”
That seems to be the key to meaningful prayer for a seven-year-old: connect it to real life, make it simple, and reinforce. Sort of like teaching in the classroom…
Sure, I’m just basing this claim off anecdotal evidence I’ve experienced in my own classroom, but I’ll make the claim nonetheless: today’s kids just don’t have the imagination of past generations. I base this on the experience of students in creative writing classes having nothing to write about, and when given help with discovering the wealth of topics that surrounds them, they usually wrote about video games or thinly veiled remakes of various films.
The scene that greets me almost every day arriving at school goes a long way in explaining this, I believe.
The Girl, at this point, doesn’t suffer from such a lack of imagination. She’ll take a blanket, old sheer for window treatments, and heavy winter gloves and declare herself the queen of England.
The chocolate treats we sent L’s teachers were such a hit we decided to do the same for E’s teachers. And when I say “we” in that sentence, I mean K.
They come in as strangers, and by now, their reactions and behavior are almost predictable. I have only a few more days with these students who've undergone so many transformation in less than a year, and then soon, they'll be strangers again. One or two will send an occasional email, that's certain; I'll see one or two here or there every how and then. Some have younger siblings, so I'll see them at awards nights in the future or in the car line if their sibling is the first dropped off. The rest, though, disappear for all intents and purposes, as I repeat the process next year, learning new names, new faces, new habits.
How do I know if it's been a successful year, though? What metric allows me to make this determination? Is a letter from a student enough? Are test scores enough? (Our principal informed us that our End of Course exams for high school credit courses were the best "in a long time." Is that a good metric?)
Someone -- the administration I would assume -- has put the kids up to writing end-of-the-year notes to various teachers.
The next day, I told her, "That's about the sweetest thing any student has ever done."
Teaching our daughter to share has been a constant challenge, as I'm sure it has with most parents. L likes and even expects others to share with her, but getting her to return the favor -- that's always been a trick. A few events of the last few days, though, makes me think we've made real progress.
Friday, we were to meet a friend of hers from her first grade class at the end-of-the-year school party, a carnival with a few rides and some games scattered about the school ground.
"We're supposed to meet at six at the silly string!" she told us, countless times.
We arrived at the silly string area -- a roped off portion of the field where kids ran about spraying aerosol string on each other -- at the appointed time, but no friend. We got a ice treat, went on a few rides, and then suddenly discovered L's friend, also Lilly.
With her mother's blessing, Lilly went off with L and me, but before long, she'd run out of tickets.
"Daddy," L said with a grave expression. "Give me the rest of the tickets. I want to slip them with Lilly."
The second episode: today, during L's preparation time before ballet portraits, I sat with E at the table to do his albuterol breathing treatment, but he was having none of that.
"No! No! No!"
No amount of cajoling, explaining, or begging could help.
L came to the rescue, offering the Boy use of our family Nexus so he could play his favorite game, a vehicle-based shape-matching game.
He sat patiently for the treatment, playing his game and clapping furiously whenever he finished a round.
"Bravo!" he cried, as did I, though for both L and E.
Finally, in the evening, mowing the yard after almost two weeks' neglect, I came upon a patch of matted grass, so I headed in for the dethatching rake. As I returned, I noticed a curious patch of dry grass with bits of gray about it. I walked over, pulled the grass aside, and found a burrow of baby rabbits.
L came over to get a peek, and Papa brought the Boy over.
"What an odd place to burrow," I said. Indeed, for it will be a disaster if our cat finds it, which is not as likely as it might seem given her age and general laziness.
Still, I'm happy to share our yard -- for once, it's an animal that seems harmless.
In some ways, it's an unbelievable irony. I spend the entire school year answering students' questions, encouraging students to ask questions so I can answer them, begging students to ask questions. I sometimes have to teach students how to ask questions or even when.
"If you just blurt things out, you're creating a problem instead of a solution," I say. I know the kid has heard this a thousand times; I know, because I've told him at least 974 of those times. Still, I say it again: after all, it was a legitimate question. Wasn't it?
Sometimes the questions stump me. Sometimes humorously: "Mr. S, why do they call a grapefruit a grapefruit? Why don't they call grapes "grapefruit" and grapefruit "big citrus ball"? Sometimes seriously: "But why doesn't that appositive have commas?" To the first type, I just laugh; to the second, I reply honestly: "I don't really know. I'll do some research and let you know tomorrow."
But no matter the topic or the nature I (mostly) live for questions. They're little signs of motivation, indications that the students are thinking, are trying.
And then today, after testing -- the state-required SCPASS that measures my success as a teacher and my students' success as students, or so they say -- I get a question.
"Mr. S, what does X mean?"
It's at the end of the day; I'm tired. Test violations and test rules are not even close to considerations; heck, I'm not even thinking about why the girl asked the question.
I answer her.
She asks another.
I catch on.
"These are from the test today, aren't they?" I ask sweetly.
"Um..." she smiles.
"You know I can't discuss this. I've told you guys a hundred times. We can't talk about it. Period."
"But why?" she insists.
Indeed.
The nature of standardized testing makes them completely useless as pedagogical devices. Assessment is meant to drive curriculum: you take the results of the test and decide where to go from there. Do I need to reteach? Did they catch it all? What topics give students the most trouble?
But these standardized tests are exceptions to that rule. I won't know the results until next fall, when there's nothing I can do with it except to use it to set my goal for improvement next year I can't discuss it with students after they take it so that we can fill in the gaps the test exposed. It's just an enormous time suck that seems to have no other purpose than bureaucratic harassment.
But I give the straight answer: "It's just the rules."
"That's stupid."
True. I guess in a way it was a test protocol violation. The real violation, though, came much earlier, in the design and implementation of these protocols.