Category: TIK365

Things I Know 94 of 365: My reading has an epicenter

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

– Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Yesterday, I wrote about the first vignette I wrote in a serious to make up my reading autobiography. I’m completing my G11 students’ benchmark project along with them. I went back to the vignette today and revised and edited. It’s close to where I want it. I’m sure it will be made stronger in the soft places when we take it to writer’s workshop. For today, though, it is what I know.

Where I Started

The chair’s gone.

I’m not sure when it left us. My grandparents have never had a garage sale and my uncles were all well beyond the age when they lived in college housing collecting furniture when the chair departed.

All I know is it’s gone.

My last memories are of the shiny brown leather beginning to crack on the recliner’s arms.

Decidedly thrifty, but never one to appear the pauper, my grandmother must have decided the advent of these cracks heralded the chair’s demise.

It was a recliner stationed in the corner of the living room or family room (I’ve never learned the difference).

Though I was read to frequently and in many places as a child, this chair was the geographic center of my literacy.

Before bedtime, my grandfather would say, “How about a book, Zac ole pal?”

Footy-pajamaed, I would crawl into his lap as we read about the elephant in the bathtub, the poky little puppy or the monster at the end of the book.

I knew my grandmother would be reading to me again once I got to bed, but that didn’t stop me for pleading for “one more book.”

Grampa knew Gramma would be reading too, but acquiesced, “Alright, bud. I suppose we have time for one more.”

“Oh, Ted,” Gramma would say in that tone that let me know Grampa and I had gotten away with something.

In the echo of memory, propped up by family myth, I remember when my Grampa asked if I was following along with him as he read.

Though not new (books, like the Lincoln Logs and Light Bright were hand-me-downs from my dad and uncles), the book we were reading was one new to the chair’s regular rotation.

“Are you reading along?” he said.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Well, what’s that word?” he asked.

I read it.

“Well, I’ll be. Jean! Jean, Zachary’s reading.”

Perennially drying her hands with a dish towel, my grandmother entered the room.

“Good for him.”

I had no knowledge that that moment would signal the end of the chair and Grampa and me reading before bedtime.

Sometimes, I’ll be visiting and my Grampa will be reading with my cousins or my little brother. In those moments, I want to warn them to stay quiet, not to let on that they’re following along.

But that would be mean.

Instead, I leave them to the elephant in the bathtub, the poky little puppy and the monster at the end of the book.

Things I Know 93 of 365: I should do as I ask students to do

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

– Oscar Wilde

I laid across a bean bag chair in my room today trying to conjure up a memory.

My G11 students are writing reader autobiographies as their quarter three benchmark projects. The assignment calls for them to write from 7 to 15 vignettes inspired by moments of their readerly lives.

As it’s been a while since I’ve written a vignette, I committed to completing the assignment as well.

Thus, I was sprawled on a red pleather bean bag at the end of the day.

My first vignette was about the brown leather recliner in my grandparents’ living room. It was the chair where my grandfather would read to me before bedtime when I was little.

I tried to pull that memory to me through the years and carefully mold it back together on the screen. I attempted to make it something someone would want to read.

As I was typing, one of my students, Luna, was in the multi-colored bean bag opposite me. Having difficulty framing her first vignette as a single literary photograph because it took place over a stretch of time, Luna kept asking me to look over what she was writing.

Her vignette detailed a span of her middle school years and I offered suggestions and feedback a few times as she was composing.

After each piece of feedback, I returned to my writing, attempting to convey the image of footy-pajamaed me learning to sight read as my grampa read “just one more book.”

Finally, toward the end of the class period, I got it where I wanted it. Well, I got it as close to where I wanted it as I could hope of a first draft.

I had that feeling of one who has created – that need to share.

And so, I turned to Luna and handed her my laptop. I didn’t say anything or preface her reading with any comments. I handed her my laptop and asked her to read.

I’ve had students read pieces of my writing before. I’ve shared journal entries. This was different. I’d written a memory in all its first-draft roughness and turned and shared it with my student.

If I had to guess, I’d say the vulnerability in that moment is close to the vulnerability my students feel each time they submit a piece of work in class. For that reason, I’m glad I’ll be writing my remaining vignettes and submitting them to my students.

I should be doing more of that. While grading, planning and the rest of being a teacher often prevents me from completing every assignment I ask of my students, crafting these moments and embracing the vulnerability of sharing them with my students is a stiff reminder of the openness I ask of my students each time I ask them to write or share in class. It’s a reminder I’ll use next time I’m tempted to breeze through a stack of assignments for grading.

If I’m going to ask them to share their ideas with me, I need to remember (and experience) all the rawness inherent in that sharing.

Things I Know 92 of 365: Bringing equity to schools will take more than an Act of Congress

A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.

– George Soros

In my first year of teaching, my friend and colleague Darlene explained to a class of eighth grade students the difference between something being equal and something being fair. “Equal means we all get the same thing,” she said, “Fair means we all get what we need.”

Writing for the Huffington Post Thursday, Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) announced he would be introducing the Fiscal Fairness Act and the Student Bill of Rights Act to the House as a means of taking steps to provide more equitable educations to the nation’s children.

Perhaps because of that lesson from Darlene, The Fiscal Fairness Act (FFA) caught my attention.

According to Fatah, the FFA would strengthen Title I by “requiring districts (1) spend at least as much per student from state and local funds in Title I schools as non-Title I schools before receiving federal dollars, (2) count and report all school-level expenditures, including actual teacher salaries, and (3) report per-pupil expenditures and make the information available to educators, parents and community members.

According to the good folks at Ed Week, the FFA also limits the school-to-school difference in state and local funding from 10 to 3 percent.

This sounds great – on the surface.

Yes, ensuring state and local resources are being distributed equitably to all schools within a district is ensures greater access to resources for historically disadvantaged populations.

It also ensures the schools now receiving greater resources will see those resources diminished and then be asked to do as well or better by students while working with fewer resources.

Do more with less.

The spirit of Fattah’s bill, offered as an amendment to the reauthorization to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is well-meaning. In practice, I worry it will mean robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I’m not criticizing Fattah. State and local governments should have equalized spending in Title I and non-Title I schools when the ESEA was signed. Instead, many governments looked for loopholes and made Title I a way to continue spending where they were already spending and use Title I to fill in the gaps – poorly.

It was a risky decision going against the spirit of the law if following the letter.

Fattah’s proposed amendments also bring teacher pay into the equation. Historically, resource-poor schools have had high student-to-teacher ratios and failed to attract higher paid veteran teachers. The FFA would require districts to take teacher salary (approximately four-fifths of a school’s budget) into consideration when accounting for how state and local dollars are spent. Currently, salaries aren’t part of the equation when districts report how they’re allocating funds among Title I and non-Title I schools.

The best consequence of this idea would be that districts incentivize the move of veteran teachers from resource-rich to resource-poor schools within a district. This, combined with the hiring of more teachers in resource-poor schools to reduce class sizes would result in more experienced teachers and smaller student-to-teacher ratios in historically disadvantaged schools.

In considering an idea, we must also ask its worst consequence.

It is highly doubtful state and local governments will allocate funding equivalent to what is necessary to fund the teachers that would bring all districts receiving Title I funds into compliance.

In order to equalize state and local spending, districts would more likely begin to terminate the employment of the least experienced teachers within resource-rich schools. This would increase student-to-teacher ratios to levels comparable to resource-poor schools.

Not only that, it would prevent collaboration between experienced veteran teachers who have spent years amassing wisdom in the classroom and younger teachers who have often been most recently trained in new teaching practices as well.

Fattah’s proposed bill (along with Sens. Michael Bennett (D-CO) and Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) companion bill in the Senate) must be measured so as not to become an unfolding mandate that weakens educational quality.

American education requires a system that brings equity to funding and improves the education and learning of all students. The Fiscal Fairness Act may make things equal, but it doesn’t make them fair.

Things I Know 91 of 365: I should be simpler

We have spent too much money we don’t have on stuff we don’t truly value and it has left us a huge mess. Call it the three-legged stool of American-style consumerism: debt, dissatisfaction, and debris.

– Dave Bruno

I’ve been thinking a lot about less lately.

Three weeks ago, I was in Barnes & Noble waiting for a friend when I saw Dave Bruno’s book The 100 Things Challenge. Briefly scanning the book, it struck me as interesting. Thinking that buying the physical object felt contrary to the spirit of the Challenge as I understood it from the book cover, I pulled my Kindle out of my bag and ordered the book on Amazon.

The short version is that Bruno spent the better part of a year pairing down his possessions to under 100 things and then spent a full year never owning more than 100 things.

I struggled as I read the book. Over and over I sneaked into the back room of my brain to ask myself if buying the book meant I too needed to undertake such a challenge. That felt like the case. Why spend the time a reflective how-to manual on minimalist living if I had no intent of living minimally myself?

It started to feel like literary voyeurism.

Because I have a basement that houses a portion of my possessions, I know I own more than I should.

While I consider myself globally aware of what Bruno calls American-style consumerism, that awareness doesn’t always stop me from consuming, only feeling guilty later.

A quick scan of my latest bank statement shows the purchase of only two tangible non-food items in the last month – a pack of ink pens and a new set of headphones for running. So, while I might not be down for the buying of stuff lately, I need only look around my house to realize the too much of the stuff I have.

I love the T-Shirts of threadless.com. When the good folks a the Chicago-based company send me an e-mail alerting me to their latest sale, I often find myself browsing their inventory and confirming my purchase unthinkingly. No one should own as many T-Shirts as I.

That gets me to the other idea with which I wrestled whilst reading.

This is all an intensely First World Problem.

I’m angry and ashamed that I live a life that prompted me to buy a book (even electronically) about how to own less stuff.

I’m out of town this weekend. Throughout the next few weeks, via donations, eBay and craigslist, I’ll be minimizing.

I’ll be asking myself what I need, what I don’t and what I didn’t remember I had.

I’ll also be reading more about minimalism. It’s an idea that makes sense to me. I’m not sure whether this makes sense, but having less stuff makes me think I’ll have more to give.

Who wants a T-Shirt?

Things I Know 90 of 365: My brain is fried

I am thrilled yet overwhelmed.

– Nancy Green

I know two things at the moment:

1. My brain is fried.

2. This is where I want to be.

For number two, I don’t mean the couch in the house my cousin shares with 4 other undergrads in Boston. It smells like stale cigarette smoke and post-modern angst.

No, #2 refers to the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Until today, the only time I’d spent on Harvard’s campus was the admissions meeting I scheduled early last August when applying was a nascent idea.

Today was the open house for a chunk of those newly admitted to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

For an indication of the day’s activities, see #1 above.

I should have known what I was in for as soon as Maria Curcio, Director of Admissions, listed the demographic info of the accepted class:

  • 44 states represented (28 present today)
  • 72 percent female (do the math on the male)
  • 29 percent students of color (as they self identified)
  • 4.3 years of professional work experience

That last one stuck with me for a while.

By the end of this school year, I’ll have 8 years of classroom experience.

I still remember the deal I made with myself before I started my first year of teaching, “You wen’t to school for this, you might as well give it a year and then decide what you want to do.”

Throughout the day, when I’d introduce myself and we’d exchange biographical pleasantries, whoever I met would respond with some variation of “whoa” when I told them how long I’ve been in the classroom.

I can’t decide if I feel wizened or just plain old.

For now, I’m going with wizened.

Speaking of, I’m wiser now as to my intended sequence of study for next year. It’s amazing how that becomes clear when you’ve got someone to explain the requirements to you.

The Ed Policy and Management program requires 8 courses. Interestingly, it has no core or required courses.

What is required, though, is one class each in policy, management, and research. Additionally, students must choose one A and one S course. A courses refer to those courses specific to the program. S courses refer to those courses offered school-wide.

That leaves three courses of choice .

Those three courses are a considerable draw for the EPM program. Students are allowed to cross-register in courses at Harvard Law, The Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

As a sizable portion of my personal statement was dedicated to the idea that those responsible for education should learn cross-disciplinarily if they’re to tackle the most complex of issues, the ability to cross-register provides just that.

I’m not entirely certain what courses I’ll find myself in or in which school; that will be decided by need.

Luckily, as I learned today, the Career Services office has a program in the summer called the gap assessment which helps students work through their resumé while mindful of their employment goals and then aids students in their selection of courses to fill those resumé gaps.

More than a brain BBQ, that was what I got from today – it filled the gaps.

I can see next year. It’s not crystal clear yet, but it’s starting to come in to focus.

Things I Know 89 of 365: It’s the testing holidays

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

– Albert Einstein

Used to be it took a proclamation from Congress to create a holiday. Though education reform initiatives over the last decade haven’t exactly been proclamations, they’ve certainly created a holiday. A month-long holiday.

For SLA, the holiday season started last week with the advent of Pennsylvania’s standardized tests, the PSSA’s.

Math and reading were last week, writing finished this week and we’re looking forward to the science test in two weeks as a break from teaching.

When I met with one of my G11 classes today, we actually took a couple of minutes to greet each other and catch up as the testing schedule has kept us apart over the last few weeks.

We took separate vacations.

And while the tests have meant a break from the meaningful and authentic learning our G11 students engage in at SLA, some schools treat the testing holidays as though they are the time of year when their students do any real work.

Phone calls are made home to remind students to show up to school. Some schools cater breakfasts for students.

Students know they will be rewarded with the educational equivalent of Christmas bonuses if they’re shown to have made top gains when the testing results come in.

And while G9, 10 and 12 students at SLA attended classes as usual (with some room switches), in other schools the testing holiday looked like a real holiday for those students not being proctored.

Oh, the proctoring.

Again, treating the holiday season as though its more important than when actual learning is taking place, proctors face rooms of testees with attitudes that are, well, testy.

Looks of scorn and dictatorial attitudes are assumed in an effort I can only assume to frighten the smarts out of the students.

I guess I missed the study showing stressed students preform better.

On the other hand, there’s a way to treat students like people – even during the testing holidays.

Talking to kids as they enter the room, providing them with peppermints, smiling, treating to them the same way you treated them before the break and the same way you will treat them when classes resume.

If we must test (and for now we must), let’s treat it like school.

I know it’s not – not the best versions of school, anyway.

Still, let’s pretend so we can avoid those humanity gaps that we know can occur over breaks in learning.

Things I Know 88 of 365: We’re about to have some great discussions

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the second half of the semester, I open my storytelling class to greater student choice and control. This could be intensely dangerous considering the class is populated with students with eyes fixed firmly on graduation.

I operate under the assumption greater choice and control will help make our class relevant.

The guiding questions for the assignment I rolled out today are simple:

  • What is a text you connect with strongly?
  • What causes that connection?
  • How can you help the class understand that connection?

I suppose anyone else in a class about story would collect a set of stories from the Western Literary Canon and proceed with the indoctrination.

They’ll have college for that.

My goal is more to work toward the type of deeply curious conversations about texts that will equip them with the tactics to pull apart those dusty canonical behemoths later on.

The assignment is simple:

  • Pick a text that means something to you. Prep a whole-class discussion that will help us all learn more about the text.
  • For the purposes of the assignment, I put myself in the role of Mr. Chase as English student rather than Mr. Chase as English teacher.

Students are responsible for preparing copies, online materials or video clips as necessary. They must also prepare pre- and during-reading activities to prep their peers (and me) for at least 30 minutes discussion.

Last year’s initial launch of this assignment brought some amazing moments.

For almost an entire class period we debated the appropriateness, theme, and intended audience of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.

In another discussion, the debate over the narrative structure of OneRepublic’s “Say (All I Need)”.

Aside from checking in with students to make certain they’re finding texts and offering suggestions for planning their discussions, I stay out of things as much as possible.

I know the texts, but I haven’t read many of them.

There’s an element of trust there, I suppose.

It’s why I ask that the texts be important to the students sharing them.

“If you bring in something you don’t care about, it’s more likely that we won’t either.”

This is likely why I have such trouble teaching The Great Gatsby.

Some early possibilities this year include an excerpt from the film version of For Colored Girls, a cross-medium analysis of a quotation from The Kite Runner, deconstruction of Hamlet’s most famous of soliloquies and a Rage Against the Machine song.

Aside from Hamlet, these will be texts with which I am largely unfamiliar. While this adds an air of novelty to the process, the greater benefit is my not having a preconceived notion of how a discussion should play out. I’m learning along with the rest of the class.

This year’s iteration of the assignment includes one major adjustment. Aside from the 30-minute minimum, the students and I are building the assessment criteria for the discussions together.

Before they’ve built anything, we work to answer the questions, “What should a great version of these discussions look like? What should we expect as help in our thinking? What is the role of the discussion leader?”

Before they graduate from high school, I want them to graduate to owning class and their thinking.

Things I Know 87 of 365: Pres. Obama, Rhee, Gates and Sec. Duncan should support the NWP

So our goal as an administration, my goal as President, has been to build on these successes across America…

…We need to put outstanding teachers in every classroom, and give those teachers the pay and the support that they deserve…

…A budget that sacrifices our commitment to education would be a budget that’s sacrificing our country’s future.  That would be a budget that sacrifices our children’s future.  And I will not let it happen…

…Let me make it plain:  We cannot cut education.  (Applause.)  We can’t cut the things that will make America more competitive…

– Pres. Obama 3/14/11 Kenmore Middle School, Arlington, VA

We’ll fight against ineffective instructional programs and bureaucracy so that public dollars go where they make the biggest difference: to effective instructional programs.

– Michelle Rhee 12/6/10 Newsweek

Great teachers are a precious natural resource. But we have to figure out how to make them a renewable, expandable resource. We have to figure out what makes the great teachers great and how we transfer those skills to others. These are vital questions for American education.

– Bill Gates 11/19/10 Council of Chief State School Officers

The plain fact is that — to lead in the new century — we have no choice in the matter but to invest in education. No other issue is more critical to our economy, to our future and our way of life.

– Sec. Arne Duncan 3/9/11 Senate Testimony

For 20 years, the National Writing Project has received federal funding to help teachers across the nation improve their practice and improve the learning of their students. The research bears this out.

The NWP is in danger. Twenty years of success and grass-roots professional development are in danger. Contact your congressperson – daily. After that, contact the offices of each of the people quoted above. If they truly believe what they say above, they will have no problem speaking out in support of the NWP.

Things I Know 86 of 365: Sometimes I need to put on the teacher hat

Friday, one of my G11 classes was having a class discussion. I gave them 7 minutes to find an interesting news story, pull out the main details, state their opinion in one sentence and draft a question to spark conversation.

If a particular topic lost steam, whoever brought that topic up called on someone else to inject a new topic into the conversation.

One student introduced the proposed fair schedule changes to SEPTA, Philadelphia’s mass transit provider.

As soon as the name left the student’s mouth, the class was awash in groans.

Philadelphians love to hate SEPTA. Cheesesteaks, Rocky Steps, booing our own sports teams, and abhorring SEPTA – in these things we find our brotherly love.

Once the topic and the proposed fair schedule were introduced, the expected flurry of slanderous complaints started up.

Each student took his turn to talk and called on the next.

“I know SEPTA’s not perfect,” someone said, “But, when you think about it, SEPTA can get you pretty much anywhere in the city of Philadelphia without much of a problem.”

A lone voice against the tumult. One brave villager against throngs of pitchforks and torches.

“Sure, sometimes they’re late, but most of the time they’re on time.”

“What bus do you take,” someone asked?

The lone voice answered.

“Those are white people buses,” the questioner scoffed his reply.

The conversation took a turn.

In the moments the class was snickering at this half joke, I had to decide how I was going to be a teacher once the laughter subsided.

“Hold on a sec,” I said, “I need to be your English teacher right now.”

“I need to unpack that statement because you said a lot more than what you said.”

It was one of those great moments where I got to use real language as the object of study. I talked about the mixture of humor and seriousness in that moment and suggested the humor might obscure the deeper point of the statement.

Then I pulled attention to the embedded implication that only black people in Philadelphia lived in poverty or that white people’s experiences in poverty were less valid. Briefly, I touched on the possibility that the statement also could have been construed as a weapon meant to make others positioned anywhere on the class spectrum feel guilt over their socioeconomic status.

Another student said she agreed the comment was inappropriate, but insisted their was a difference between bus service across neighborhoods.

We talked about the truth of that statement and started to play with the complexity of the whole idea.

I stopped to clarify that I wasn’t angry about what had been said, but that I would have been remiss in my duties if I didn’t take the time to pull it apart and start to consider the multitude of meanings.

I know there were probably a million ways I could have handled the whole conversation better, but that’s how I handled it Friday. Next time, whatever the next time is, I’ll do it a little bit better. And, it was loads better than some similar conversations from my first years in the classroom.

Then, as always, I tried for the same things:

  • talking, not yelling
  • eliciting conversation not compliance
  • respecting whatever opinions are on the table
  • challenging the untested opinions
  • speaking with authority, not as an authoritarian

Though it’s un-Philadelphian of me, I’m thankful for SEPTA for inciting the conversation.

Things I Know 85 of 365: It’s time to share the funny

A joke is a very serious thing.

– Winston Churchill

It’s difficult to be funny in China. I know, right? All those people, and you’d think it would be easier for a viral case of the giggles. Evidently not.

I’m a little worried the same may be true for the teaching profession.

A few days ago, I wrote about a faculty volleyball game at SLA. The comments I received about the post both on and offline led me to wonder and worry a little that educators aren’t bringing the funny as much as they should.

We have to laugh.

In my second year of teaching, the middle school team I taught on had lunch together once a week in our team prep room. Every once in a while, we would order Chinese food.

The kid of the team, I imparted some cultural wisdom to my colleagues as we finished our meal one day.

“You know how to read your fortune, right?” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“You read it aloud and you add ‘in bed’ to the end.”

Everyone on the team saw me as young and impetuous. If they didn’t see me as their son, they saw me as their little brother. I was to be humored.

One teacher on our team was all business. She was there to teach and the children were there to learn. Anything else during class time was to be corrected. What’s more, the rest of the teachers and I knew very little about her. “Touchy feely” was certainly not a phrase we used to describe her.

We began to open our fortune cookies. I was trepidacious as we grew nearer and nearer her turn.

Finally, the moment arrived.

“You will be lucky in many things.”

Nothing.

Such a buzzkill.

Two second later.

“…in bed.”

And we were ruined. For 5 minutes, this stoic pillar of order and reason laughed uncontrollably, her face beet red. And we all joined in.

It was a rare moment of total levity.

We needed it.

In rest of my time on that team, every once in a while, I’d pass a colleague and have to stifle a giggle as they whispered “…in bed.”

Whether it’s the jokes section of Reader’s Digest or the Onion News Network, funny must be injected into the day if your’e going to make it in teaching and be able to relate to people in any kind of way that makes them want to relate to you.

So here’s my question – Where’s your funny? I’m serious. Where do you look for the humor during your day. Is it a book or a website?

We can and do share our daily trials. We share how our students make us proud. We share frustrations with our administrations and the newest tools we’ve found. Take a moment, today, and share the funny.

I’ll start it off.