Day 23: What aspects about education are you currently excited for? #sbar

There is a lot to get excited about in the area of education!!  But the thing that I'm most excited about and the one thing that gets my blood boiling the most is...

Standards Based Reporting (sbar) - Face it, people...grades can be manipulated and they have been for a long time. Heck, when I was in high school, you could do enough extra credit to get a B even though you didn't know ANYTHING about the subject you were attempting to learn.

So let me ask you,  what does that grade tell you about what your child knows?  Does an "B" tell you what they can do in English?

Right now, list the skills your child is able to perform around writing.  Can they write a sentence?  Paragraph?  Correct subject/verb pairing?  Can they write a five paragraph paper with a common theme?  Can they properly support a topic?

If I gave your child an "B" in English - how do you know they can do all those writing skills?  What if I told you that they are such an accomplished reader that their reading skills averaged out their poor (below grade level) writing skills to a B?

The point is - you don't.  With standards based reporting - you DO! (And so do next year's teachers...and college entrance boards...and...)

And guess what else happens?  Teachers are held accountable to get your child secure in those writing skills during the course of the year - we don't get to hide behind the grade and neither does your child.

And I'm just going to say it because this is my blog - I can't think of any reason why a parent would fight this unless they just want to brag that their child is a straight A student.  Well, Christmas brag letters be damned...when did education become about the adults?  I thought it was what was best for students.

And yes, I really said that.

Day 22: What did you encounter in your career which you did not expect?

Apparently, I thought there was a tattoo on my forehead that said, "WARNING: New Teacher" when I started my teaching career six years ago - or at least that's was the image of myself and what I based my initial expectations on.  These expectations were based on how I THOUGHT I would be treated by my experienced colleagues, administration and parents - and somehow ended up being very different that what actually transpired.

I did not expect that I would be treated as someone who was knowledgable, but my colleagues sought me out for opinions and review on communication, curriculum, student achievement and organization.

I did not expect that parents would respect me as their child's teacher and take me seriously - and yet they did.

I did expect my administration to micro-manage me and tell me how to teach my classes.  However, I was treated as an adult who could make decisions about how the learning needed to happen for each student...and I was supported.

I am very grateful that I started my career working with people who did NOT meet my expectations - they exceeded them.  This was completely unexpected.

How are you exceeding expectations in your career?

Make it a great day!

Day 21: What was your most enjoyable moment as a teacher?

I was on vacation from blogging...not intentionally, just fell out of the habit.  Funny thing is that I've started dreaming about blogging in the last week, so apparently my sub-conscious is telling me to get back on the bandwagon.

Here we go...

Still working on my 30 day challenge which seems to be expanding into an entire year challenge!!

Today:  My most enjoyable moment as a teacher...hmmm...I have so many, but this one stands out:

Four years ago, I had a student in 8th grade science.  She was a great kid - friendly, smart, rule-follower - you know, your dream student.  Except for one thing - she HATED science.  She never told me this...until the last day of school that year.  She handed me a card which proceeded to explain how she hated science until that year - and THANKED me for making science fun and understandable and how she learned and found out she liked science.

It blew me away.

I wanted to become a teacher to make an impact, but even I was bowled over by this impact.  When you can influence and impact a student like this - it makes the job so worthwhile.

Let those people who have influenced and impacted YOU know about it!  Write them a thank you note, email them or tell them.

Make it a great day!

Things that make you go Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Twitter post this morning from @Education Week:  At 'Exemplary' Dallas School, 3rd-graders learned only math and reading http://t.co/9yYINgnt

Very short synopsis:  3rd graders only learned math and reading - scored above proficiency on state tests.  School found to be exemplary.  Reported grades for all other subjects (science, social studies, music, art, etc.) were fabricated on report cards.  Principal on administrative leave during investigation.

As I read this article (or what I could read of it, since I don't subscribe to the site, my version was shortened), here were the questions going through my head:

1.  Testing is making us so crazy, we're willing to cheat to get the results.  If we do that as adults and professionals, why do we lamblast our students when they're backed into a corner and feel they need to do the same?  What is wrong with our grading systems that people feel the need to cheat?

2.  Does it really take an all day, all year focus on just math and reading to pass these tests - to make us "exemplary"?  How are we expected to get students to proficiency when we get 41 minutes per subject a day for 180 days?  Is it the testing or the learning methods?  What REALLY is the root cause here?

3.  Why is the left hand not talking to the right?  Why can't we figure this out?  Why can't we really know if we're proficient in something?

4.  WHO gets final say on learning and proficiency?  The student?  The parents?  The teachers?  The government?  The employer?

Things that make you go 'hmmm', 'huh' and 'what the hell is going on here'?

Day 20: Describe yourself during your first year of teaching and discuss how you've grown.

I almost laughed out loud when I read the title of this blog day.  I have to say that I am so thankful that I was 40 years old when I experienced my first year of teaching instead of 23 when I was just fresh out of college and student teaching.  I don't think I would have survived if I started at 23.  Honestly...

I've never been in a job where you are expected to know (almost) everything there is to know about the job in the first year.  Welcome to teaching.

My first year can be summed up in one word...survival.  Thank goodness the State of Iowa requires first/second year teachers to have a mentor.  I think I would have survived my first year without a mentor, but because of my mentor, I had a very successful first year. 

My first year of teaching, I was very lucky to have had 1st period as my plan period.  My mentor was a science teacher (like me) and so I would go to his room, watch him teach the lesson for that day, write down key notes and then go back to my room and teach it exactly how I had watched him teach it.

Over the course of the year, of course, I found my own style and started building my confidence and in my second year, I found my voice and started contributing to curriculum and lesson changes.  I also started working with grading changes.  My third year, I found that I was leading our PLCs, being more vocal on curricular changes and being a part of district curriculum meetings.  During that third year, I went back to school myself and added an endorsement.

For my fourth year, I switched curricular areas and restructured the curriculum based on expert research from Wormeli, O'Connor and the DuFours.  I started mentoring a first year teacher (science) and volunteered for more leadership committes in my building.  I continued working on yet another endorsement.

I am currently in my fifth year of teaching - still mentoring, still contributing to curriculum and I am co-coaching the Advisory program in our building.  

The growth has been amazing - the found confidence, the new experiences and the new learnings right along side my students.  I can't wait to see what the next five years will bring!

Just a Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Grief Go Down...

You know, people told me that I would have moments of sadness about my dad.  I believed them, but I don't know when I was expecting those moments would happen.

Well, ok, I thought that it would be when I looked at a picture of him or when a particular holiday or birthday was approaching - something very pointed and sentimental.  I'm finding this is not the case.  In fact, when those pointed, sentimental opportunities come along and I find myself saying to myself, "I wish Dad was here - or he's missing this event" only to be reminded that he's probably not - just watching from a different dimension, and I find that I am not sad at all, much to my amazement.

Grief hits when I least expect it to from very unsentimental sources - or so I think and it hits me fast and hard.  Here is a classic example that just happened a couple of days ago:

I'm folding laundry in the bedroom and channel-surfing to find something to watch while I fold.  I land on the movie "Mary Poppins" because that's what you do when there's nothing else on TV.  (Besides I love the movie.)  Anyway, all in an instant, I'm taken back to when I was 6 or 7 years old and Dad took me to the Plaza Theater in Cedar Rapids to see "Mary Poppins" for the first time (it had been re-released in theaters).  I remember after the first showing of the movie I begged him to sit through the second showing (back when you could do that...) and he said that was ok.  Granted, he slept through the second one!  I remember being so excited and the movie was so AWESOME and we got to see it twice!  The memory still so vivid 39 years later and I realized in that instant that I hadn't thought about it in years.

All of this took place in about a second.  And as soon as I remembered, the tears flowed and continued to roll as I continued to fold.  And I couldn't turn the movie because I didn't want to lose the memory and just when the movie was over and the channel was turned, the tears and the grief vanished.

That's the crazy thing about grief - it's here in a moment and then it's gone.  It's like popping through a chalk painting or snapping your fingers or a change in the wind.

Day 19: How would your coworkers describe you?

I have no idea.

I'm sure some like me, some don't.
Some think I'm a good teacher, some don't.
Some think I'm funny, some don't.
Some think I leave too early, some don't.
Some think I don't have as much to do as they do, some don't.
Some think I teach the 'right' way, some don't.
Some think I am overbearing and bossy, some don't.
Some think I should be back in the corporate world, some don't.
Some think I am too easy on kids, some don't.
Some think I teach a curriculum that is 'fluff', some don't.

What do you think?