Garret Keizer for President!

I would like to report a fascinating article in the September issue of Harper's entitled Getting Schooled: The Re-education of an American Teacher. In it, Garret Keizer shares his observations on what has changed about being a public school teacher as he re-enters the school system from the vantage point of teaching at the same rural Vermont school at which he also taught thirty years prior.

One thought-provoking point that he makes is that, although he believes as much as the next guy in the importance of public education as an equalizing socio-economic force, there is danger in placing all of our societal eggs in that basket.   Keizer points out that it might be just a little too comfortable to look at a child who is doing well in school and justify the fact that the child was living with no heat in the winter, for example, by saying that a child who is doing fine academically must be doing fine overall. "Hey, a baby sleeping in a stable might grow up to be the next Jesus Christ." Test scores are not indicators of a child's overall well-being or their chances at leading a successful life. (If only it were that simple.)

Public education alone is not a panacea for all the problems facing children, and a school's relative success despite the odds should not be used to assuage societal guilt that children in that school are living in sub-standard or inhumane conditions.  We cannot forget that kids' lives have many more dimensions than their performance on The Test.

Also, in another very resonant part of the article, Keizer writes, "In the increased emphasis on data and the imposed emphasis on standardized jargon and tests...I sense the encroachment of the totalitarian "business model" that has destroyed family farming as a way of life."  A colleague remarked, "I'm afraid the day of the teacher-as-artist is drawing to a close."

My recent tenure troubles would certainly corroborate that.  The Superintendent who denied my institutionalized pat on the back doesn't know me from a hole in the wall, has never met me or seen me teach or been in my classroom or spoken with any of my students or their families or discussed with me any of my ideas about education.  If I'm an artist, then she has never seen any of my art. But what she has seen is a computer screen filled with numbers, and my numbers don't fit into her equation, and that makes it easy and convenient for her to decide remotely who is a good teacher and who isn't. So you see, teachers aren't artists, they're technicians, and students aren't kids, they are data.

But the part of the article that most caused me to pump my metaphorical fist in the air was remarking on
     
"the number of people  that need to believe you love [teaching.]...'I know the pay is not the        greatest," [they say]. 'but you're doing what you love.' -- a sentiment that puts me in mind of the trope of the happy slave... This is not to suggest that contemporary teachers are slaves or that I was ever treated like one, only that I am inclined to distrust people who expect me to work for love, or who need a sentimental mythology to gloss over the impossibilities of my job and the daily injustices it lays bare."

 I totally agree. I feel anyone who claims to love  the job, which Keizer is careful to point out is different from enjoying the job, must be either blind or insensitive to some of the more perverse realities of the job. Maybe it's just the simplistic terminology of "love" that bothers me, because I certainly don't hate the job either.  I have respect for the importance and monumentality of the task before teachers.  I am amused by the more comical and/or absurd elements of the job. I appreciate the chance to connect with kids and colleagues. I feel pride at the positive changes I've been a part of. I feel tenderness for the simultaneous vulnerability and strength of my students.  But the verb "love" doesn't encompass everything I feel about my job.  Because, in a certain light, teaching is like the story of Tantalus, with the fruit tree eternally raising its branches out of reach and the water always running dry, and a big boulder dangling on the precipice above. "To teach with your eyes open in a region like this is ever to be on the verge of tears," Keizer writes. The odds we face are hard to love.

Nerd Alert

Henrietta and I took a trip to the teacher store today which is still a super fun part of teaching for me. Of course, rumor has it that due to budget constraints we will not be getting the $150 Teacher's Choice reimbursement for our expenses that we've gotten in years past. But I think what I bought will be a worthwhile investment anyhow:  I bought supplies to create a LERNO tree!

LERNO is a behavior management system that Sunny started using at her old school. She taught me how to do it and I tried it out at the end of last year when the kids were getting antsy, and it works better and is easier to do than anything else I've tried.

How it works (and the reason why it's called LERNO) is that each section of the tree corresponds with a letter  of LERNO-- at the top, the sky is L, for leadership. The branches are E for effort. The trunk is R for ready. Below that in the roots is N for needs improvement, and the very bottom layer of dirt is O for off-track.

Each student gets a leaf that corresponds with their class number-- (Sunny's version is stars in the sky.)  At the beginning of the week the kids start in the middle on "ready" because everyone is expected to come to class ready to learn. If they behave well, they get to move their leaf up, if they misbehave, they move it down. If they have a bad day, they get to reset back to "ready" the following day. The kids keep track of their scores for the week on a paper that goes home at the end of the week and must be signed by their parents.

Also, if they are in the dirt for more than a day or two, I contact the parents.  If they are in the branches or sky for an entire week, then they earn a prize.

It's cool because it's a visual reminder of where they stand, and the cluster teachers or subs can use it too, so the kids are accountable for their behavior even if I'm not there. Sending the LERNO charts home is a good way to communicate regularly with the parents about behavior so there are no surprises come report cards. Plus it's a regular way of giving positive feedback to the kids who are always doing what they're supposed to.

Cool, huh?

Look what I made!

Groundbreaking News

Just woke up from my first school dream about the first day. Two weeks until, the dreaming's nothing new.  The groundbreaking part is that, in a refreshing spin, it wasn't a disaster. It was actually kind of fun. I'll take it as a good omen.

One thing I'm really excited about going into this year is that the kids don't seem anonymous to me, not at all! This year is special because, as a fifth grade teacher, I will be teaching some of my original first graders that I had my very first year, month, day as a teacher -- you might remember them as the ones whose lives I was sure I had ruined. 

I'm excited first off, because they appear to have recovered from whatever damage I may have inflicted in my inexperience, and also because I already know them!  For example, Johnny, from when he used to roll around in the coats, and of course Georgie is memorable both because, adorably, he could never pronounce the "g" sound until about a year ago, and also because he is the sponsor of my #1 teaching gross-out story: a snot-rocket launched inadvertently directly onto my face. Left cheek, if I recall correctly...

Anyway, I'm sure they'd all be horribly embarrassed if they knew I was telling you about all the things they did when they were little.  They are big tall fifth graders now, arriving in my threshold in just a couple short weeks, bound to outgrow me by this time next year!

I also know Jono from after-school, a big, sweet, galumphing kind of guy, and I also know TT Cakes, a darling Burmese transplant who is fascinating because he is an excellent writer and has a very good command of the English language, but he doesn't talk, at all. Everyone speculates some kind of trauma, but no one seems to know for sure. The only exception to his silence was my friend Cassie when she was his ESL teacher -- apparently, in a mousy, tiny little whisper of a voice, he passed right out of the oral examination for ESL, with flying colors, of course. Cassie also wouldn't let him win Bingo until he said it out loud. (The nickname TT Cakes is an homage to to Cassie. For her, everyone is a something-cakes or a love-muffin or a darling dumpling. But not in an annoying way.)

So I'm excited.  Trappings of teaching be damned, I'm excited to know, to love, to reach out to, to understand these precious people I get to borrow for a year. This is my first responsibility. Please remind me of this later if it seems I'm starting to forget. 

Un-breaking

"We are born broken. We live by mending." -Eugene O'Neil

Shorty thinks that's a dark way of thinking about life, but I think it's a relief, like falling for the first time while ice skating, or getting the inaugural dent in your new car. If it's already imperfect, you don't have to worry so much about ruining it, and that means each step towards unravelling the original tangle is progress overall.

I've been away, in many senses. There were quite a lot of things distracting me from my teaching and also from writing in the year that has passed since I last wrote with any regularity: a new love (that was a big one) and moving in with my new love, and then an unexpected and devastating death in the family.

Recently, while working at summer camp as I've done almost every summer since graduating high school, I received a rather literal wake-up call with regards to my teaching. My principal was on the other end expressing gently but matter-of-factly that the results were in on this past year's state tests and my class as a whole did not do so hot, especially in comparison with the other fifth grade classes. And, he said, as a result, the Superintendent was denying, or, euphemistically, "postponing" my tenure for the second time, despite his best efforts to vouch for me and my teaching. And he said he likes me as a person and as a teacher and wants to work with me this coming year, and certainly wants me to stay and teach at our school, but could I come and sign the paper work at the end of the month as it's out of his hands.

Now don't get me wrong, I've never given a rat's ass about being "tenured," which if you have it basically means it would be excruciatingly difficult to fire you, and you're more or less guaranteed a job in the school system forever if you want it. That's never made a whole lot of sense to me, nor has it especially mattered since I haven't intended to be a lifelong classroom teacher from the get-go.

And I also have sworn up and down not to give a rat's ass about test scores since I believe standardized tests are not a valid measurement of true learning, or of the overall quality of a teacher, and I don't think they measure what everyone seems to insist they are measuring.

But I found out from the gut-punch feeling that settled into my stomach after I hung up with the principal that, indeed, part of me did care about these things. I cared because tenure and high test scores are this job's equivalent of a smiley face sticker and "great job" scrawled across the top of your report. I cared because, according to a very widely accepted definition, I had failed. I had tried and tried and cared and cried and ate, slept and bled and breathed caring about this job, and stayed late and really really thought I was getting better. And I had still somehow managed to fail.

In addition to a deep sense of insolvency, futility and doom, I was also pissed that my real life had managed to penetrate and shatter the protective bubble of summer camp, where the day's lunch menu and whether or not the evening activity will get rained out are supposed to be the deepest extent of our existential concerns. And a slightly petty side of me was also pissed that they chose my tenure year to start imposing actual restrictions on tenure candidates, when up until then you could pretty much get tenure if you managed to breathe and walk upright.

So I cried and seethed and cried some more, but ultimately couldn't deny what the various, annoyingly veracious voices of reason in my life kept reminding me, that it's only failure if you don't learn from it. So I thought long and hard about the year behind me and the year ahead, and I did what public school teachers are supposed to do best: evaluated the data and set some learning goals.

#1: Time management.

If I confront the hard truths about my teaching, I see that, much as in life, I am usually behind schedule. That means that I end up rushing through important things, or skipping over some entirely. I need to plan my time realistically and stick with the times I have set. I am also a chronic procrastinator. I wait to complete things until I have no choice but to rush through and half-ass them. So that has to change. Also, I end up wasting a ton of time looking for things I have lost, so I absolutely, unequivocally MUST get more organized.

#2: Saying no to things.

It is my knee-jerk impulse to say yes to every opportunity that arises. Yes to working after-school four days a week, yes to 60 additional hours of planning to do a professional development for my colleagues, yes to staying out until 11pm on a weeknight to celebrate a friend's birthday... And I realize it is my tendency to think I can do it all and then end up spreading myself too thin. If one teaches from 7:30am to 5pm, it should not come as surprise that one is wee bit tired at the end of the day, and perhaps not interested in staying two more hours to plan. If one has only had five hours of sleep, it also shouldn't be surprising that one is not at the top of one's game, and even a tiny bit irritable. So I need to pause when someone invites me to do something, think about the other things I have already committed to doing in that time frame, take into account my human limitations, and evaluate what the best answer would be.

#3: Enjoying the kids and my job.

I spent far too many days in the last year overtaken by dread and feeling miserable at and about my job. I realize, too, if I am honest, that these feelings often came from being underprepared for the day, and that my under-preparedness was a result of my over-extendedness. So this year, I will not be distracted by other assignments outside the classroom. My students will be my first priority. I hate to admit that at times in the past they weren't, but having been spread in so many directions, I'm afraid that may have been the case. I also hate to think that I was becoming complacent, but maybe I was. "Good enough" isn't good enough. And even though I think being a teacher, at least of this kind, will not be my ultimate destination, it is where I am right now. My classroom and my kids will be where I pour my attention and focus.

Once I stop enjoying the kids, and let all the other headaches and frustrations of the job creep in and overshadow the joy of being with kids and knowing them as people, I become the very type of teacher I have always despised: miserable, grumpy, jaded, hopeless, negative.

So I am making a promise to myself that I will not leave school until I have planned at least one thing, no matter how small, that I am excited to teach or share or enjoy with the kids the following day.

Finally, #4, I will begin blogging again. Writing about my life as a teacher has been a good way for me to reflect on my day-to-day. And, knowing that the people whose opinions I value most in this world will read it helps me to not ostrich away from my fears and problems, but to seek solutions. So welcome back, kids - here's Teacher Creature 2.0.