Ideas for Next Year

It seems that every year around this time I start waking up in the night with ideas for things I want to change about next year.  I guess the time is here because this is the second time in two weeks that I’ve woken up with an urge to “Go write this down so you don’t forget it by the morning!”  This is good because it helps keep my teaching fresh all the way to the end of the year because I’m flooded with new ideas.  This is bad because it impacts my sleep.

I’m thinking about one major change in my English 8 class, and this is primarily in the way I assess my students.  I have never felt like the regular “each assignment is worth X points” and “you lose X percentage if assignments are late” is the best way to assess, even if the assignments are designed to assess skills. That way of measuring student growth puts so much in the hands of the teacher and so little in the hands of the student.  What happens when a kid doesn’t learn the intended skill of the assignment, or (gasp!) the child learns that skill through an experience in another class or through an unintended experience in mine?  Shouldn’t they have the opportunity to make the connection that they have learned something important?  Reflection and self-evaluation are key for kids to make sense of their own learning, but they are sometimes left on the back burner.  I do a good job of asking students to reflect on their writing process, but I don’t do enough daily and weekly reflection.

 I haven’t had enough experience in teaching to really consider assessment and shaking up the entire process until now.  Coincidentally, we are interviewing principal candidates right now, and the one who we spoke with yesterday mentioned that he thinks teachers start really developing in terms of assessment during years 5-7, which is where I am.

What I’d like to do next year is really move toward portfolio-based assessment in a way I never have before.  This is my basic idea for a grade breakdown:

1. 70% (or so) of their grade comes from their portfolio.  This is how I would structure portfolios (on paper or online):
1.  As the year begins, I’ll share all the objectives I have for them throughout the year.  I plan to use the Iowa Core standards next year as a test run to see how it works in the classroom as I serve on our district literacy committee for implementation.  (Our curriculum in English is so inconsistent in my district I don’t think this will be a problem.)  I think I’ll divide the goals into quarters as well so they are manageable both for students and me.
2. I will share the intended skill objectives for each assignment, and assignments will have due dates like they always have.
3. For each skill in the curriculum (which will correspond with separate grades in the grade book), I imagine that kids can demonstrate “competency” or “excellent” or something like that.  I think that competency would earn them 8.5/10 points or similar to “B” range, and excellent would earn them 10/10.  I’m not sure I like the idea of offering different levels of “meeting the skill” but I can picture work in my head right now that meets the lowest skill objective and work that surpasses it.  I think there should be a difference though I still want the emphasis to be on mastery and learning.
4. Every 2-3 weeks, students will look at the work they’ve completed and write reflections justifying how the assignments in their portfolio justify that they’ve met the goals.
5. Students can demonstrate that they’re meeting the skill objectives at any point throughout the quarter.  Then the question becomes—what do kids do when/if they show mastery of all the skills early?  But that is something to hash out another time.

2. The remaining 30% of the grade would come from “Responsible/Desirable Student Behaviors” or some similarly phrased term.  This is where I can communicate with students and parents how the kids are demonstrating responsibility and good work habits.  I envision the grade book to have between 5 and 10 categories each quarter, the largest of which comes from turning in work on time.  This category would start out with full points (so every kid actually starts with an “A”) and is a bank from which I deduct points for late and missing assignments.  There would be some formula for this that I will determine at a later date.  Other categories I’ve been thinking about are collaborating in groups, organizing materials, taking notes at opportune times, and taking risks that value learning over grades. I’d like to look at research this summer that helps me figure out what the most important things in this category are, and by second quarter, I’d like to have students defining a couple of these categories for themselves based on what they know they need to work on.  It would be awesome to reward growth in these categories rather than have all work in this area be punitive and tacked on to other skill-based work. 

Some real strengths I see in this system are the information it gives kids and parents about their learning and the way it puts some of the “behind the scenes” parts of teaching out on the table.  I think having to share with kids why they are doing what they’re doing on a daily basis will help me make sure I’m using time wisely and connecting all of our work back to the overarching goals.

I see problems in the system as well, and the largest is time.  This system will take time to implement and time for kids to reflect on their learning and how what they’ve done demonstrates that they’ve learned something.  I believe it will be time well-spent, but I know there will be times in the school year that I don’t want to give the time necessary. 

Teacher friends/parents/interested parties—what do you think?  What would you have liked/disliked about this type of assessment as a student?

A Few Rough Ideas...

This is the draft of a piece I've been working through to articulate some of the ideas I've been thinking about regarding teachers unions and administration.

I try to instill the power of words in my students every single day.  Whether we’re reading and discussing a character’s motivations and what we can learn from them or working to articulate our own ideas, the gift of communication and what it can do for human beings is front and center in our classroom. 

            As a young teacher, I’ve been in this business for only five years, and in each of those years the politics prevalent in public education overwhelm, invigorate, and flabbergast me.  I can’t get too close to these politics, because they make me feel sick and they take away from my work in the classroom.  I’m also drawn to the politics because so much of it impacts my daily work with children.  At any rate, the more I learn, the less I understand about why teacher’s unions and the administrative side can’t better communicate.

            We are in bad budget times as I write this, which certainly heightens the tension.  Our district is looking to cover about $500,000 they are short to fully fund next year’s budget (they have about $4,000,000 in cash reserves, but that’s a topic to delve more deeply into at another time).  The good news is that there are few teacher reductions.  Unfortunately, cuts have been handed off to others: associates for general education classrooms and school nurses.  Our district is looking at outsourcing our school nurses to public health to save $60,000-$70,000 a year.  That’s the salary and benefits of one long-term teacher.  In the long run, this doesn’t seem worth it.

            What makes less sense is that if our union and our administration can’t agree on a settlement by Wednesday, the bargaining will go to arbitration.  I don’t really understand what that means, but I know that lawyers get involved, and according to our chief negotiator, it will cost the district $60,000-$80,000 a year.

            Um, what?? Common sense tells me that if the two sides don’t go to arbitration, we could save our nurses.  Our chief negotiator said that if the district will give us 4%, this won’t be necessary.  I said, “What if you go to 3%?” 

            He said, “I won’t.”  This, to me, also doesn’t make sense.

            Ever since I was a kid, I have been able to see the gray in nearly everything.  I can never make a decision because I can see too many sides and too many perspectives.  I feel that way now.  I see Sam’s point of view that if the union settles too low, we’ll lose the ability to attract quality teachers to our area.  If we drop all family insurance coverage for our teachers who are the single earners in their family, we’ll lose good people too.  There’s a union mentality that if you give a little one year, you’ll never get it back and you’ll always settle for less.  I also wonder what the district would be able to do, and what they would do, if we settled a little lower.  Would we save nurses?  Would we buy more computers for our kids?  Or would administrators earn big raises?  The trust is so broken between teachers unions and administrators that no one knows and no one will believe the other side is acting in the best interest of the students.

            Because I’m young and naïve and the teacher in me has always wanted to see the best in people, I believe both sides are acting in what they believe is in the best interest of the students.  I have to believe this, because I can’t physically work in an environment where I believe the leadership is greedy and manipulative. 

            Teachers unions are getting a lot of bad press these days, and some of it is deserved.  Some of it isn’t. I’d really like to write about the complexities of all this in a way that brings folks together and helps them understand the other side’s point of view. 

            Sam wants to step down as chief negotiator after this year, and I thought maybe I would be a good negotiator—I can see all the sides of problems.  That’s what ACTUAL negotiation is.  But I would be terrible in that role—I’d give in to a pay cut assuming my kids would have a consistent nurse in the building, my members would be pissed, the administration would spend the money on something else because you can’t actually bargain to save jobs, and kids would end up worse off because their teachers wouldn’t feel valued.  Epic fail as chief negotiator would be my legacy.  That’s the little scenario that plays out in my mind.

            So, how can I negotiate?  How can I contribute?  With the power of words that I teach every day.  I’m throwing this piece (it’s rough, I haven’t fully developed ideas or thoroughly revised) to the small world of people I care about on my blog because I want to make it a public goal that I write about this.  I have these ideas floating around for chapters in a book, how I can make it fit together, what research I need to do, and while I’m not sure what the timeframe will be or what roadblocks there might be, I need to articulate this goal and share these ideas while they’re so fresh and I’m so fired up. 

            I would appreciate any feedback or points of interest or questions you have that would fuel the fire.

Silly Goals...

I always have to laugh at myself when I say things like, "I plan to write a post five days a week," and then I don't even maintain that for the first week.

I know that I still need to put up pictures of the dining room.  I will, promise.

I'm coming up from the craziness that is parent-teacher conference week and feeling really good and really inspired by teaching and life in general.  (Oh yeah, my job is safe for next year.)

Last night over drinks I discussed some aspects of education with some wise teachers who have been at this for a while, and I have some interesting ideas for some new pieces to write, which will question the adversary between teachers and administration, how it got that way, and how it continues to impact kids negatively while neither side will budge.  I'm very curious about this and interested in exploring it.  I'll try to share along the way.

How clearly you see everything...

I've been thinking along these lines, from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, one of my favorite books:

"The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day. What had Gramma Mary Rommely said? "To look at everything always as though you were seeing it for the first or last time: Thus is your time on Earth filled with glory."

There are more significant clues this week that my job might change or be eliminated for next year.  Sad.  It's quite interesting how knowing time is/might be limited can make any circumstance more beautiful, including eighth graders right before Spring Break.  Lessons to learn from Gramma Mary Rommely.

Making Time to Think about Teaching

In an earlier post today, I wrote about how I'm waking up in the night about teaching.  It seemed to be the first thing I should tackle for self-improvement in 2010.  (Yes, I did get my thank-you and birthday cards written, and I'll write about my health improvement plan tomorrow, so there's more than just this, but still.)

I've been making lots of excuses to myself about why I'm not teaching to the best of my ability.  Yes, I'm busy.  I have other exciting things to work on (wedding) along with sometimes not so exciting things (13-15 page literary analysis).  The truth is, though, that I'm not working very smartly when I'm at school.  I'm wasting lots of my planning time and study hall supervision work time because my mind is moving in too many directions of things I need to complete (do you see a pattern here?), and then I avoid.  In early December, I decided that what I needed to do was to schedule my time for all of these "open" time periods in my day, so I would make it a priority to do some of the things I wasn't doing.  This afternoon, I made a list of all the tasks in an average day/week, and then I placed them in a chart of when I was most likely to be successful accomplishing each of them.  Some of them are daily tasks, or ones that will be best done a couple times a week.

I'm not able to import my chart due to my lack of skill with Blogger (or perhaps Blogger's limitations--I'm not sure), but I feel pretty excited to try it out this week and see if it improves my productivity.  If I find a way to display it, I will.

I'm also excited this week about introducing my students to a Book Pass they lead instead of writing essays this month about their independent reading books.  I've been working with them on writing about their reading, in part to understand their own thinking better, and in part to share their reading with others.  This will make the sharing the most important part, and I look forward to it.  If you're not familiar with a Book Pass, you basically set out high-interest books in small groups of students.  They pass the books on a scheduled timeframe (about 30 seconds) and make a list of the ones in which they are interested so they have an idea for what they'd like to read next.  Asking the students to contribute their favorite books of the semester will ensure the inclusion of high-interest texts.

Finally, I feel prepared to re-visit The Diary of Anne Frank.  I'm working with my students on developing questions more deeply.  We worked on it the week before winter break but it didn't go very well at all, and I was ready to abandon my original idea for something that would go more smoothly.  We had a couple professional development days before we went on break, though, and we read an article about what employers are looking for in our students today.  One of them was the ability to ask questions so they could anticipate problems to solve.  It reinforced the idea that I need to stick with the concepts and skills that I know kids need to learn, even when it isn't easy.  If it was easy, they probably wouldn't need help with it.

I also found a new mantra for the school year, on thingsweforget.blogspot.com:

Sometimes I forget to build foundations for my kids to get to those castles I build in the air.  Sometimes at this time of year, I'm tempted to relax my expectations, and this reminds me to just build better foundations.

Classroom Set-Up

Tonight is a short post, because I am tired from first day with kids (went great!) and first day of grad school class (I have to read 35 chapters of Moby-Dick by next Wednesday...). I thought a lot about my classroom environment this summer, and how I wanted to change things to make them flow smoothly. After reading some Nancie Atwell, I decided I wanted to make "conference corners" kids could go to for peer conferences, so the inner part of the classroom remained quiet for kids who need that. So... the tall shelf at the front of the room and the file cabinets at the back of the room are not for "naughty corners," even though they look like it. I actually love how organized and neat my room looks right now. It won't be that way for long, so I have to enjoy it.

The top image is taken from the front opposite corner, where you can see my (clean) teacher desk in one corner and the other makeshift conference area of file cabinets in the other. Our school is not the prettiest (we're beginning remodeling right now), but I look forward to having the kids help decorate.

The next image is taken from the back corner of the room by the door. I like to start students out in rows so the environment feels pretty structured at first. I'm a fourth-year teacher, so I think my youth means that I must start out friendly but strict, and I need the classroom structure to support that. You can see the conference corner at the front of the room. I am always interested in how a physical classroom environment plays a role in kids' attitudes toward learning, and I'm dying to know if these conference corners will really help with volume in my writer's workshop. Time will tell.

How Trying to Love a Pet Rabbit is Like Teaching a Struggling Writer

This is the second draft of a piece I started this summer. I've been working to revise it to submit it to NCTE's National Gallery of Writing. I'm not sure I'm totally satisfied with it, but it includes good thoughts to think about at the beginning of a new school year.

Prey animals at heart, they are skittish. Bunnies have a natural instinct to run away, to escape the fox or hawk or human. As a group, they combat their weakness by reproducing rapidly, but as individuals, they are constantly afraid of what harm will befall them. Even in the safety of the basement, my rabbit, Clark, darts from cover to cover, quickly grabbing a treat between his teeth before hopping away to eat it in a safer location. I’ve been giving him daily food and water, along with auxiliary treats, for two years now, and he’s still afraid I might suddenly make him into a stew.

My classroom experiences with struggling writers have been the same way. I don’t think most teachers intend to prey on young writers, but experience with my bunny tells me that vulnerable beings may perceive a real danger even when it isn’t there. It may come sometimes from the wrong “helpful” comment on the wrong day, or several poor grades on essays they worked on intensely, but I think for my most reluctant students, it’s a feeling of failure that builds up over time. By the time my students come to me in eighth grade, writing has made them vulnerable so many times that they want to run or hide or not give a true attempt: if you don’t expose yourself, you remain safe.

There remains joy in watching a bunny, just as there is sometimes immediate joy in teaching. Clark will dig an imaginary den in a pet carrier with an intensity that reminds me not to give up. When he gains speed and has a sudden burst of energy, he jumps and twists simultaneously, in a gleeful motion that makes me laugh every time. I experience this genuine joy in the classroom, too, when a kid asks a gutsy question that restores my hope in the future, or a student’s kindness toward another child gives me a new ideal to work toward. Reading student work often reminds me how challenging adolescence can be or trains me not to drink or eat while reading, because I’ll sometimes choke on a giggle.

But there are times when my enthusiasm for these two areas of my life goes terribly wrong. What humans see as affection, bunnies see as threatening. When I try to pick up Clark, he is afraid I am going to kill and eat him. He kicks his feet and tries to scratch me—anything to get away and thump his little foot to show his anger and fear and reinstate a boundary I didn’t have permission to cross. When a young, vulnerable writer hands me a piece, I feel the same hesitation in the air. Just as touch sends a warning signal to bunnies, feedback on writing is something that has many times burned struggling writers in their pasts. They are told to be honest, to take a risk, to care. And every time I read too quickly, fail to listen, and respond too strongly with my own intentions, the desire to shut down grows. In my struggling writers, I see a reluctance to accept even praise, because they simply don’t believe it. They have been offered this carrot in the past, just before the list of suggestions and errors comes out.

Progress is made. After several nights of sitting on the basement stairs with Clark, telling him stories about my day (without trying to touch him), he’ll warm up. He’ll hop over and let me softly pet the spot he likes in the center of his nose. But I will read too much into it, and let my excitement carry me away, and the next night when I spontaneously reach for him (even when I know better), he sprint-hops away and thumps in a cupboard. I was uninvited. When I think about Mark, a writer I worked with this year, I made the same mistakes. We would make a little headway: Mark would ask me a question or share a piece of writing, looking for feedback. Working from what seemed like a good place, I would push too much or say too much, in a language that was comfortable to me. Mark would return to his seat, distancing himself from his piece and from me, rebuilding his shell.

There are lessons to learn here, from Clark. I know he’s ready for a little human-type affection when he comes bumbling over to me (especially if I don’t have a carrot in my hand). I remain patient, and I am sensitive to the differences in the ways we show we care. When he runs away, I recognize his prey-animal tendencies. I don’t take it personally or assume he’s not trying his best. I take it a day at a time, and I take responsibility for forging and repairing the damage to our relationship, some for which I am not responsible and some in which I must recognize my role. I can strive for the same understandings with kids like Mark: waiting for them to make the first move, showing caution in my words, not becoming too eager. It’s easy to forget that even when two species speak the same language, they don’t always understand each other. I must do better if I want my reluctant writers to see me as something other than another predator.