Cruel Shoes

I could go on and on about all the people I met, all the new ideas I got, and all the exhibitors I smiled at as they gave me their spiel, but I won’t. What I will do is write about the things that really got me thinking - those things that I will carry with me in the next days, months, or longer as I contemplate my lesson plans (yes, I’m re-entering the teaching world - as an online teacher).

There were a few different incidents that each provided me with one piece to the big picture of what is weighing on my mind after attending NECC.

My first real experience during NECC (and this was my first NECC, as well), was my Monday morning presentation. I presented a session with 5 co-presenters on “Creating a Personal Learning Network in Second Life”. This was quite an experience and I won’t go into details, but after the session, I had the opportunity to read David Warlick’s “live blog” which he had posted during the session and one of the comments he made really got me to thinking. During my portion of the presentation, I had mentioned that what convinced me of the relevance of Second Life(tm) as a part of my network was one evening when I had the opportunity to talk to a teacher from Brazil. David Warlick’s comments about that statement were that he wasn’t sure that was really enough.

I have to say I gave it a LOT of thought. It matters to me what people think of statements I’ve made, and I have always prided myself on being able to give myself an objective eye when I hear that someone doesn’t necessarily agree with me. So I reflected. What I’ve come up with is that David is absolutely correct. Having an opportunity to talk to a teacher from another country in and of itself is not sufficient evidence for using Second Life(tm) as a part of my network. It does enhance my cultural exposure, certainly, but is that relevant to my classroom? For me, it WAS enough, but only because I was a science teacher who happened to be trying to find teachers abroad who would be interested in collaborating on a weather data gathering project with my class. Information from a class in Brazil would have been massively valuable to my students in rural Texas. That said, I believe a teacher really should evaluate what is valuable to their classroom. Simply having access to a teacher from overseas isn’t enough. What you might be able to do with that access might be.

“Cool” experiences don’t make relevant experiences.

The next thing that struck me was when I attended a paper presentation being conducted by Abbie Brown. In his presentation, he put forth that, in order for us to use Second Life(tm) (and I add, or any other online technology), we have to have a reason why that technology is the only venue for that particular activity. For him, he discovered that office hours were something very beneficial in Second Life(tm). He proposed that the reason Second Life(tm) was better than using email to converse with his online students might be that in a virtual world, where we have an avatar standing with us, talking to us, reacting to us in much the same way as a real person would in “real life”, there is a stronger emotional commitment to the activity and thus, a better retention of what was said. As I head into the world of being an online educator, I will take this into consideration as I plan methods for my interactions with my students. They obviously won’t have access to Second Life(tm) - Abbie Brown’s students are all adults - but I may be able to find ways to make the interactions less virtual and more “real.”

There has to be a reason why a given venue/activity is the venue/activity you choose.

Next, I began to notice, as I met some of the people I had come to revere in the education world, that they aren’t all necessarily what I’d held them out to be. Some of them, like Wesley Fryer, Jeff Utecht, and others proved to be just as personable and sincerely passionate about education as I thought they would be. Others, who I will not name, gave me an eye-opener. First truth I realized . . .

The big dogs aren’t always what they seem.

To be a discerning young teacher, you have to take what they all say and examine it critically. Make sure that they are speaking with a focus on what is best for students, not what is best for their pocketbook.

What I brought out of all of these revelations this week is this - I demand from myself a responsibility to be more discerning. Whether I’m looking at opinions of respected education professionals, planning what technology to use in my lessons, or determining how to go about my own professional growth, I must establish for myself a protocol for discernment. I cannot use technology for the sake of technology, I cannot use technology for the “coolness” factor, and I absolutely cannot forget the reason I’m doing it all — for the impact on my students!

Rice is a nutritional food. It is sometimes considered filler, but it is actually full of sustaining nutrients. Technology should be the same, full of enriching content, memorable experiences, and sound educational results. So . . . as we always do in the education world, I’ve created an acronym for myself to remember: RICE. For me to use it, there must be Relevance - there has to be a reason behind it that is valid, Impact - the product of the activity must deliver a reasonable impact, Cost-effectiveness - in today’s world, I should be able to find an activity that is close to free, and Experience - the experience that lives in my student’s mind must be a positive one, one that they have an emotional bond with, so that they will remember it. If I am teach my students for the short term, I might as well pop a movie in the DVD player.

I am very passionate about technology and its usefulness in the classroom. I do believe it can be used too much, but if used properly it can be the best experience for both teachers and student. That said, I am heavily involved in organizations that promote the use of technology in the classroom.

As a member of ISTE (International Society for Technology Educators), I had the opportunity to present a session this morning at the annual NECC (National Educator’s Computing Conference). It was a great experience! Our topic was “Creating a Personal Learning Network in Second Life.”

As I, along with a panel of five other presenters, did our thing, I watched the crowd of over 100 education professionals (and there were 20 or so watching via Ustream), and was reminded, once again of the power of collaboration and networking.

I say this is off topic because it is a post that is more reflective than informative for new teachers. However, as with most things I write about, I can find the cross-over. Here is is …..

If you are going to survive in teaching, you need a network.

Whether you get it with real-life interactions in a group of like-minded educators, online in a webinar, or in Second Life - you need to use the resources you have available to you in the “seasoned” teachers you can find if you look past your room.

I’ll be blogging during this week from NECC. Don’t worry, the Big Questions and Teaching Truths haven’t gone away, they are just on hiatus while I’m doing my thing! Stay tuned!

I got tagged by Terry Shay on this and after giving it some thought, decided to post my response and keep the meme going. I actually figured out a way for it to fit into the nature of this blog, as well.

First, the question: Looking back on your life, what was the “worst job” you ever had that ironically helped prepare you to one day become an educator?

Next, the reason I think it fits this blog: Sometimes the only way to keep your sanity as a new teacher is to reflect on and evaluate the reason you became a teacher in the first place. It can be a rejuvenating experience to remember the event or series of events that led you to education. This is usually how it was for me. I would remember the times I felt like a real teacher . . . meaning I’d gotten through to somebody.

Which brings me to the last thing I’ll do with this post, which is to answer the question and keep the meme alive. As I contemplated the question, I tried to really pinpoint some magical event in my life that told me I was meant to be a teacher. The first time I remember wanting to be a teacher was about second grade or somewhere around there. Prior to this time, I always said I wanted to be a nurse, just like my mom. However, one of my big sisters destroyed that dream for me when she pointed out that part of nursing school was having to change the dirty diapers of babies. (as if she really knew what nursing school was all about). It was later that same day that I focused my dreams on being a teacher. Little did I know that someday I’d be changing the dirty diapers of babies without the benefit of learning a trade . . .

Off and on through my education, I encountered teachers who made me start to believe I really did want to be a teacher. These educators were the ones that were really great teachers and remain my examples of what a teacher ought to be . . . Polly Potter (4th and 5th grade), Mrs. Keast (8th grade history), John Brown (9th grade Earth Science), Mr. Ratzloff (9th grade Life Science), Janice Smith (10th grade English), Sheila Lisman (11th grade English), Del Knauer (12th grade English), Gary Hughes (12th grade Government and Russian History). It was interesting, each year I had a teacher like this, I decided that was the grade I would teach when I grew up.

Lots of things happened as I became an adult and my dream to become a teacher didn’t materialize for quite some time. It wasn’t until I was going to college as a non-traditional student that my Biology instructor, Joyce Selsor, saw in me the potential for becoming a teacher, that I began to really pursue becoming a teacher. By that point in my life, I had become cynical and all of my hopes to become a teacher had long since diminished.

Even after Mrs. Selsor encouraged me, I wasn’t sure. I think that what convinced me was the “worst job” part of the question. I was a Supplemental Instruction leader for General Biology during my sophomore year of college. This meant that I planned short tutorial-type lessons designed for small groups of 5-8 people. I took my job seriously. One day, towards the end of the school year, a group of three students who had been very dedicated to showing up to all of my sessions approached me. One of them, apparently the designated spokesperson, said, “we just want you to know that you really helped us. You are a good teacher.” To which I thought . . . “Can someone pull this hook out of my mouth?” and as they say, the rest is history.

The truth is, although I’ve left the classroom for the moment, I’m finding that it is exceedingly difficult to stay out of the classroom. Before you make any decisions about whether or not to remain a teacher, reflect on what got you here and ponder what it really means to you to be a teacher.

I’m tagging a few people, Lee Kolbert, Tom Turner (where are you, man?), and Marie Coleman. You’re it!

I was sitting in my car on my regular commute - well not-so-regular in that I was going home early enough for the commute to last about 30 minutes instead of 65 - but I digress. Anyway, I was sitting in my car, thinking that maybe Cruel Shoes needed to go on hiatus over the summer when it occurred to me that I actually still had something to say this year which would actually be very timely right now.

Recently, as the school year ends, I’ve heard a lot of reflection from the teachers in my network. Now, one of the most important things a new teacher can learn and do is reflection. If we get too immersed in what we did and not on what we accomplished in the doing or what more could be accomplished in the revision, we become ineffective teachers (in my opinion). I’ve also heard from several teachers who, like me, have decided to leave the teaching field (or have they? - but that’ll have to be another post).

I read an entry on Teaching in the 408, which is a great blog by a teacher who was very effective and a great teacher, but who didn’t think, at the end of the day, that he had been the teacher he wanted to be. This set off a little bell in my head, reminding me of how I felt during my last weeks of teaching as I reflected on my performance. What had been my goals? What goals had I succeeded in attaining? In what goals had I miserably failed?

Seeing the world through my own eyes, I always thought I had been an ineffective teacher. I felt like I had set out to be a teacher who could make a difference in a kid’s life. I felt like I had set out to be full of information and excitement and could pass that on to my students. I felt like I had dropped the ball - opting for classes where I would follow the questions of my students into a territory not planned for, though just as scientifically relevant as what I HAD planned for. If my students came in asking me about what alcohol does to their brain, then I spent a class (or two) having frank discussions with all my students about what it really does to a teenage brain, peer pressures, parent misconceptions, etc. Did that follow the state-prescribed formula for a successful science student? No. Because of this, I constantly felt like I was a fraud and that if someone walked into my classroom when I was showing a video of a girl crying about how she’d lost a friend to a drug overdose, I’d be booted out because it wasn’t on the TEKS (stands for Texas Wants You To Teach This) for the science I was teaching.

I also keep remembering an episode of Twilight Zone that had a retiring teacher on his last day reflecting on what a miserable teacher he had been. Former students long gone and deceased (usually because of some heroic action) miraculously appeared in his classroom to tell him all the lessons learned in his class that had made them the heroes they became. We can’t truly know how we did until years later, if ever.

Now that I’m out of the classroom (or am I?) I realize how much I WISH education could be about discovering new things because we WANT to. About finding out what makes a student’s brain engage and catering to that miracle to stimulate them into lifelong learning, rather than cramming enough information about many things into their brains in the hope it will stay with them long enough to pass a test.

What is Teaching Truth #7?  Good or bad isn’t in YOUR eyes, it is in your students’ eyes.

Listen to what your students say. Listen to what other teachers tell you your students are saying about you. Don’t worry so much about what the state has to say, or even what your administration has to say. Teach like you mean it.

Why did I call this a Big Question? Because I want to hear from you. What do you think makes a good teacher or a bad teacher? Help all of us to understand where we stand.

I recently found myself with a few minutes of leisure and wandered over to my RSS feeds where I found that one of my favorite bloggers, Lee Kolbert, had been really busy since the last time I wandered over to RSS Land. One of the articles she’d written really hit a chord, so I’m taking up her challenge, writing my thoughts, and tagging a few people to get their opinions.

Lee’s post was inspired by a tag she’d received challenging her to state what she believes. Since the spirit of this blog is all about truths, I thought it would be appropriate to follow her lead, so here goes .  .  .

What I Believe

I believe that education needs a complete overhaul. I’m not talking a simple change in pay scales, additional training for teachers, or new support positions being created. I’m not talking about having tiers of teaching positions so that teachers can have more opportunities for leadership roles. I’m talking about the entire education community stopping EVERYTHING, pretending like we’ve never taught before, and coming up with a NEW PLAN.

I believe that students deserve to enjoy their education. I believe that teachers deserve to enjoy teaching.

I believe that standardized tests set students (and teachers who have high stakes in them) up to fail.

I believe that if I teach science the way I really want to teach science, instead of teaching to a standardized test, my students will learn and retain far more knowledge than if I “drill ‘em and kill ‘em.”

I believe it is more important for a student to get excited about a content area than for them to memorize information that can be easily found in a journal, dictionary, or manual.

I believe “assessment” can be a dirty word.

I believe educators who focus on the words rigor and relevance or scope and sequence instead of focusing on what they MEAN to a student have missed the boat.

I believe there is such a thing as too much technology in the classroom. Having students complete an assignment involving technology for the sake of technology is wasted time. Using technology as an integrated tool to expand a student’s knowledge is imperative.

I believe teachers should focus on what they know, intuitively, to be the “right” way to teach. Most of us become educators because we have an amount of natural talent in the area of imparting knowledge on others. If we let ourselves be herded into the cookie-cutter “ideal” that our principal or district thinks is the way to go, then we have eliminated our usefulness.

I believe teachers like STAR Discovery Educator, Diana Laufenberg, who instills in her students a true love of nature and thus, the science and history behind it, do more on one weekend field trip to impact their students’ success than many other teachers manage in a full school year.

I believe that it is okay to hug a student who needs to know someone cares.

Okay, I’m realizing that I could go on and on, so I’ll stop and let YOU comment here with what you believe - or post to your own blog and tag this one. I’m also going to think about who to tag, so be warned!

Whenever I would tell someone I was a teacher, the frequent response was, “Oh, I always thought that would be so fun . . . and you get summers off, too!” In order to be completely honest with you, I must confess that I, too, thought the same thing before I became a teacher. I thought it would be the coolest job, envisioning the classrooms of my favorite, cool, teachers as my own. My students would come back to visit me when I was gray, and every year would be like I’d started a new job, because I’d have just had three months off to travel the world, relax on the beach, or get lots of work done around the house.

I thought I’d write a little story about my typical summers as a teacher. I’ll try to make it as light-hearted as possible, but there is truth in this little story, and as you progress through your life as a teacher, you’ll realize just how much of it is true . . .

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Once upon a time, there was a little teacher. She had looked forward to becoming a teacher since she was a young girl, and sure enough, one day, she realized her dream. The first year was hard, harder than any job she’d ever had, but confident in the knowledge that this was meant to be, she trudged through. A wise old teacher had warned her at the first of the year just how hard it would be and she was grateful, because there had been many times she thought about throwing in the towel and the old women’s words would come to her, “the first year will be incredibly difficult, but you must remember the second year will be better.” May rolled around before she knew it and, although she had not accomplished all she wanted to, she felt like she’d given it a good first year.

In May, after the state standardized tests had all been locked away, all the fun labs had been performed, and the last of the students had taken their final exam, the little teacher began to pack a box.

“I’ll take all these lesson plans home, and these textbooks, and I can’t forget the files. I’ll have all kinds of time this summer . . . I can write an entirely new curriculum for next year!” She worked for a district that gave teachers the freedom to design their own curriculum, even the new ones, and she wanted to make the perfect curriculum that would make her students love science and make her job easier at the same time.

She took the box out to her car and remembered the fish in her room. “Oh, well, I’ll just be sure to come to the school once a month and put a new feeding stone in. I know I’ll have plenty of time and I can work on my room when I’m here, too!”

Cheerfully, she practically skipped out the door and to her car. She listened to classical music all the way home and looked forward to the great summer she was going to have.

Two months later . . . (not three, because nowdays summer is a lot shorter than she remembered as a kid)

The little teacher frowned as she trudged up to the school. She carried a box. It was a box full of lesson plans, textbooks, and files. The box was still sealed shut with the packing tape she’d used at the beginning of summer. The box had sat in her living room for two months and now was going to sit under her desk.

She was greeted at the door of the school by a smiling principal’s secretary. She handed the little teacher a sheet of paper with everyone’s teaching assignments. The little teacher clenched the paper between her teeth and carried the box up to her classroom. There was a note on the door “Mrs. Plybon, you are in room 308 now”. She turned to see room 308. She could have sworn that room was a storage room last year. She opened the door. Yes, it was a storage room and now it had a desk, a locking cabinet, and that’s about it. No lab tables, no lab equipment. Hmmm.

She sat down at her desk and looked at the teaching assignment. She had started the summer being told she was going to teach Biology and GMO (Geology, Meteorology, and Oceanography). The teaching assignment said she’d be teaching Chemistry. She thought about all the professional development she’d attended over the summer — two weeks of Biology, two weeks of technology-related workshops and institutes (to assist her in a classroom with no computers other than the teacher desktop), and another several days of GT training, Assessment training, Classroom Management training, etc.

She looked at the box. “I guess I’m glad I didn’t get around to planning any lessons for this year.” She tried to remember what she knew about Chemistry, but drew a blank. She decided to head downstairs for the big first-day-back gathering in the auditorium. As she passed her old room, she smelled something.

It smelled like dead fish . . .

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The truth about summer is that you will have grand plans for all the things you are going to do over the summer to make your job easier the next year and you most likely won’t accomplish any of them. You will think you’ll have a lot of time for travel, and you very well may get to do so, but you’ll feel like your summer flew by. You will always pack a box to take home at the beginning of summer and you will always bring the same box, unopened, back to school at the end of summer. I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but I never came back to school at the start of the year teaching the classes I thought I was going to teach at the start of summer. I always took professional development classes for the wrong content area.

My last summer as a teacher, I literally was home a grand total of 14 days, and those were spread out, not all at once.

BUT, I also always became energized after spending that first week back before the students arrived - reconnecting with the other teachers, hearing new ideas and making new plans for the best way to teach my kids. The fact is, there is no other job that allows you to have the freedom to decide how much you are going to work for two months out of the year. Decide what you want your priorities to be during that time, plan wisely, and smile whenever someone says, “oh, that must be such a cool job!”

One of the problems most new teachers face is classroom management. When I started teaching, what I really wanted was to sit in on several different classrooms on the first day. What did those veteran teachers say on that important first day to begin to instill the respect and order needed in the classroom?

Of course, we have our own classes on that first day, and most student-teaching gigs don’t start until after the initial procedures and essential expectations have been established. For this blog’s first big question, I’d like for teachers to post their opening “speech”, summary, or outline. What I’ve experienced is that what is best for one teacher is a blend of the things they’ve learned from several teachers, so every comment added to this site will help new teachers to develop a plan for their first day next year (because it is never too late to have a first day, even during the school year).

Bring on the answers! . . .

When I originally started this blog, my intent was to stay away from this particular teaching truth. My reasoning was this – I was afraid if I made this point, people would consider leaving the profession, rather than being encouraged to stay, as is my intent with this blog.

Yesterday, during lunch with my new supervisor, who incidentally is a former teacher herself, the topic of why she left teaching came up. Some of her thoughts rang true with me and I began to wonder - should I put this on the blog? This morning, I opened my email to find an interesting article, published in EducationWeek, which was originally published in January, 2008, entitled Human Resources a Weak Spot. I’m not sure what made me read it, as the title doesn’t exactly sound interesting to me, but I did. What I found was another long commentary on the things that are broken in teaching as a profession. I decided to add my two-cents worth, so here I am.

The system is flawed.

Only in teaching can you start on day one with the same responsibilities you will have after 30 years on the job. You will be thrown into a room of seemingly hungry students and feel like you must have french fries and cheeseburgers smeared on you.  If you manage to struggle through, develop a plan, and become a good teacher, you will be sitting at a desk after school is out with words like sheltered instruction, differentiation, rigor and relevance, scope and sequence flying all around your head while the teacher in the next room decides what lengthy video to show their kids the next day or what worksheet to have them do - the same thing he or she has done every day for 20 years. You will get less money than that teacher does because of their long years of service. You will have exactly the same benefit package. You will begin to wonder if there is some way you can advance yourself.

There isn’t. That is, unless you think moving into school administration is an advancement. That would be a topic for another post, but I’ll just say that I personally don’t think it’s an advancement.

So why am I telling new teachers this? Being armed with the truth going in can advance your potential for success. Going into the profession with the real truth for an expectation can keep you from becoming disillusioned. The truth is, if you want growth, you’ll have to take comfort in personal growth. Become involved with an organization outside of school that can give you, during volunteer hours, a feeling of advancement. Take some classes or work on your Master’s degree. Some teachers work towards national certification. Whatever you do, be happy that you are striving to be the best you can be.

There is hope - you can also be part of a move towards reform. Think about positive alternatives to the current system. Try to work towards making changes, in baby steps. Become involved with a group of educators who share your concern. Don’t sit in the lounge partaking of the complaint sessions. They will depress you and are surely not motivators for positive change.

Hang in there - you are a teacher for a reason - hold on to that.

I am guessing that this Teaching Truth might set off some debate, but here it is, as I see it.  One of the things I hear from fellow former educators is how different it is to actually get to spend time on the weekends and evenings doing things for themselves, rather than planning lessons, or grading papers, etc. Although I agree that it is great having this time to myself, I don’t believe that it takes leaving the education profession to get it.

About my third year of teaching, I finally figured out that it was actually possible to manage my time so that the amount of time I spent at home working was minimal. I did this by taking one “marathon weekend” and planning out the next two weeks of lessons. During the next few days of school, I spent my entire planning period making all the copies I needed (or I sent them to copy volunteers), and then the remaining planning periods for those two weeks could be utilized for grading papers. I imagined that if I had remained in education a few years longer, I’d have a nice set of plans which could be adapted and enhanced to each unique set of students each year and built upon.

I also began to analyze exactly how many papers I needed to grade. Being a student of the school of thought that grades are really not necessary, I began to reduce the amount of graded assignments I gave my students. Now, I am not saying that I didn’t hold them accountable for everything they did in my classroom. I managed to hold them accountable in the form of a “portfolio” in which they kept their work. They turned in this portfolio at the end of each six weeks and I had a checklist of things that should be in it. Some of the work was things that I had already looked at to give them immediate feedback. Others were things that could be checked off and forgotten.

I began to focus most of my “grading” efforts on watching my students as they did their activities in class. Verbally questioning them to assess mastery. At the end of the six weeks, their grade was not only an accumulation of their ability to complete homework assignments, but more substantially my assessment of how well they had mastered the content. I had rubrics I would follow to keep myself consistent with all the students.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is . . . your job really is what you make it. You can choose to manage your time and make a pact with yourself that you will not take it home with you. Or you can work long hours at school and spend all your “family” time contemplating what you are going to do the next day with your students. You decide.

During my career as a teacher, I had the opportunity to work for both a very small, rural district and a very large, urban district. One thing that was true for both of them, perhaps more so for the larger district (which received more federal funds), was that administration frequently introduced us to new “tools” for us to use in our classrooms.

In my eagerness to be the best teacher I could be, and also to be the best employee I could be, I would attend the workshops, read the books, and work towards implementing whatever new tool had been introduced. I quickly became frustrated and discouraged by the lack of time to do this. During the workshop, I would be excited about the new product and I’d see just how it would fit into my curriculum. Once home, or back in the classroom, I’d realize the number of hours it would take to actually integrate this new piece into my lesson plans.

It became a source of anxiety for me, as I would definitely see the benefits of using the new technology or strategy, but I’d never have the time to use it. I also could see that once I took the time to work it in, my job could even be made simpler — but that still didn’t mean that I actually HAD the time.

Once I went to work for the bigger district, this problem became even more stressful for me. This district had the funds to provide us with all kinds of technology “candy”, and it seemed that they would even purchase subscriptions to products that directly competed and duplicated each other!

It was during yet another workshop, which was introducing us to a really nice piece of technology, that I realized this teaching truth:

You cannot do it all.

What needs to happen in order for you to keep your sanity is for you to sit through those workshops, be excited, see how that new product would make your students more successful — then go home and don’t worry about it. Now, I’m not saying that you should go home and never look at that product again. I’m saying you should go home, don’t stress, and then really evaluate that new product. Evaluate it against other products you already use. Evaluate it against your curriculum. If you still feel like it would be a useful addition to your curriculum, don’t try to integrate it into every unit in which you see a place for it. Work on just one lesson that would integrate that technology. Deliver that lesson in class. Evaluate whether it actually did make a difference — what could you change? did it flop? is there no hope for this product in practical applications? Based on this evaluation, you can either forget about the new product completely, or you can take it one lesson at a time. Don’t think that you are going to get every single lesson for the rest of the year transformed. You may only get 2 or 3 for the entire year done - then focus on another 2 or 3 next year.

The bottom line is, you know what you are doing right now. Adding new technology or strategies into your curriculum is supposed to be an enhancement to what you already do — it shouldn’t make you a less effective teacher because of the stress that integration has caused you.  And, by the way, your administrators know about this teaching truth. They do not expect you to drop everything and convert to this new product 100% before your next lesson!

Take a breath.