Author Archives: CSTP Staff

Secrets Student Share Help Me to Help Them

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Assessment, Education, Life in the Classroom, Uncategorized

Irene

This guest post comes courtesy of Irene Smith, an EA ELA NBCT in Yakima, Washington, who teaches English Language Arts, Social Studies and more to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at the Discovery Lab School.  She and her students produce a full length Shakespeare play every year, and she is currently writing a companion text for The Tempest.

You may find this strange.

I collect students’ notes that they pass to each other. Sometimes I catch them passing their little missives and keep them. Sometimes I find them left on a desk or floor, tucked into a drawer or left on a filing cabinet. My students are aware of my fixation with their notes. Sometimes they even purposefully pass one in class in hopes that I’ll collect it in order to find the “Hi Mrs. Smith!” folded up inside. Some students purposefully intercept or find notes to bring to me.

I never read the notes aloud. I just save them until I’m alone to see what the message is. Mostly they are of relative unimportance- I m bored L. But not infrequently, they are full of mystery and angst.

Middle school students are careless, but I suspect they may sometimes leave these notes in order to let me in on their secret communications, to become more closely acquainted with their private worlds, and to help me understand them better.

Dear people at my school, I’m so sorry I’m weird. I’m sorry I don’t fit in. I’m sorry I don’t look pretty like all of you.

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Welcome to the dark side. . .

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We are thrilled to have guest bloggers from time to time at Stories from School, and this offering is from Michelle Carpenter who is a MC-Gen National Certified Board teacher in Walla Walla, Washington. She teaches fifth grade and blogs about teaching, running and motherhood.

When one of our own is going into administration, we’ve all said it. “You’re going to the dark side?” “You are switching teams?” “You’re going to become THEM?” I’m just as guilty as the next.

For years, I have been told, “You would make a great administrator.” Not only did I not know what that meant, I didn’t know to ask, “What do you mean by that?” Normally, I just smiled and carried on, assuming that my organization and Type A personality was what they were referring to. I was always the one willing to take on any given task.

The fact is, when I started to continue my education, I felt a shift inside. I know that we need to view teachers as the experts; even when they might not see themselves as such. We need teachers to step up to leadership roles and be the voice for our students. We need to reach beyond our comfort zones and start having conversations with school board members, legislators and community members. They must be in our schools to understand the demands facing education today at the grass roots level. I knew I could do this and was feeling more and more confident in my ability to do so.
When I earned my Masters Degree and Professional Certification, I did a lot of reading, research and paper writing. I gained useful knowledge from that experience. It was when I earned my National Board Certification, that I felt the true change in me and how I positively impacted the teaching profession.

I was being asked to look deeply at my teaching. To question how I was affecting student’s learning and to think about how I could improve. I couldn’t do it alone. I needed colleagues, mentors and supervisors to help me understand the right questions to ask. I suddenly realized that there wasn’t one right answer, but there were a TON of right questions available to ask! During this time, I found myself in the position to do the same for my fellow colleagues pursuing their National Board Certification. I knew that I didn’t have the answer to their queries, but I could certainly offer some questions to help them seek an answer. I felt more “professional.” I knew that I had skills to share. And I felt more confident taking on district leadership roles.

One of my high school teachers, who I had remained friends with, kept planting the seed in my ear. “You are a great leader. You should take it to the next level.” I thought that meant chairing committees, mentoring teachers and continuing to earn those clock hours. I did all of those things. I enjoyed all of those things. But still, I just didn’t want to become one of “them.”

I’ve been doing this long enough (20+ years) that I have seen a lot of demonstrations of what administration means. I take the good and leave the rest. In fact, I’ll be honest. For the first 10 years of my career, I thought I knew what was best. And I did — for my lil’ class of 25 students. But I certainly wasn’t considering the larger picture or the players involved. That’s what time on your feet and in front of those eyes does for you. I have had administrators who were heavy handed, who were more bosses than leaders and controlling. I’ve had administrators who stayed in their office, didn’t have a voice and avoided the hard conversations. I knew education was changing and that none of the above were making a positive change in education.

And then we got a new principal in our building, and I felt, well … INSPIRED. Inspired to push my limits, to look deeply at my teaching with colleagues and to dream big. I spent the summer listening to and talking with a wide network of people — people who work at the community college, people who work at universities and people within our own district. The picture was becoming more and more clear. Education needs leaders who empower others; who weren’t afraid of tough conversations and who have a vision of change they are willing to sustain. National Board Certified teachers have been trained to do this.

I took advantage of leadership seminars, started reading books and looked into administrative programs. I earned scholarships to pay for my continuing education and I am currently enrolled at Gonzaga University moving full steam ahead. I know that the certificate at the end is going to be awesome. But this journey–right now–is pretty amazing in and of itself. I am meeting new people, seeing things from a new perspective and am taking this experience straight back into my classroom each and every day. I am using my skills from the National Board certification process with purpose. I reflect on conversations I’ve had, think about how it impacts student learning and am finding my voice in this changing role. Teachers need advocates. Teachers need to feel empowered. I can do this.

I may be going to the “dark side,” but it’s my plan to light that side up with clarity, inspiration and hope. What started out as a flashlight, has gained power and is becoming a flood light. At whatever level I work at, I know I can be the change and continue to provide the best education possible for students. Because at the end of the day, we are only at our best when we are on the same team with clear goals, reflective practices in place and effective communication.

I know I am going to make mistakes along this journey. How I learn from those and improve from those experiences are what count. It’s going to be hard. I’m sure there will be disappointments, frustrations and pure exhaustion. However, I feel the responsibility to my four sons; my current 24 students; and the thousands of students I’ve had and that are coming in the future. Ensuring the best education possible and having staff members that share the same vision because they are believed in, makes this calling even more important to me.

So as I heard this fall, “You’re going to the dark side?” I said, “There is no dark side. I will always be a teacher, no matter what the title. I’m following my heart. We are all in this together. The only way to change is to have people who are willing to light up this team. When administrators and teachers are leaders, students will always prevail. I’m in. Are you?”

For English Language Learners, Intentional Collaboration is Key

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Education, Education Policy, Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

Tamar Krames

Guest blogger Tamar Krames is a NBCT in English as a New Language, a certified GLAD trainer, and an ELL instructional coach currently working with OSPI. Prior to her work at OSPI, Tamar worked as a district GLAD trainer and coach, taught ELL classes and co-taught sheltered ELL content classes. 

I recently sat at a table in a windowless conference room with a 3rd grade team of teachers. As you might expect, the table was covered with grade-level ELA curriculum materials, open laptops, and copies of Common Core Standards. Far less common were the open and highlighted English Language Proficiency Standards (ELP), Tier 2 vocabulary lists, and the laminated pictures piled on the table. Two teachers were pulling up engaging image files related to an upcoming unit on their personal tablets and one was searching her phone for affixes and Latin roots to support their vocabulary mini-lesson. While the driving force of the co-planning session was ELA content and standards, addressing the profound language needs of their dynamic students was inspired. This is it, I thought, this is what best practice for ELLs looks like. These teachers were clearly committed to their craft and to their multilingual students. But what made that collaborative moment so powerful was the shared focus of the whole building to best meet the needs of their particular student body. The teachers had common understanding of second language acquisition and ELP standards because a team of teachers had requested ELL training for the whole staff. The planning session had the full support of the building’s leadership. Collaboration was not happening on the fly. It was intentional and deliberately supported.

As a traveling ELL instructional coach, I visit diverse school communities across WA State. The geographic context and demographic mix varies greatly. One school community is comprised of Spanish-speaking migrant families living in a small town surrounded by orchards and mountains. Another school has no clear ethnic majority, the students speaking 15 different languages in one urban classroom. Regardless of setting, I walk into my first building visits with one central question; What might best practice for ELLs look like in this unique school community? I ask this question to school leadership right off the bat.

More often than not, the answer to this question disappoints me. Consistently the first answer points to a single focal point. “ We are so lucky to have a wonderful ELL teacher named A” or “ We just purchased this amazing online language program called B”, or “ our ELL Para has attended a training called C!”. Clearly this singular view of best practice begs the question – What happens when A, B, or C leaves the building?

As far as I can tell, there is no right answer to this question of best practice for ELLs. The learning needs of multilingual students are complex and always changing. A linguistics professor once said to my class, “ if you remember one thing about second language acquisition, remember this – language acquisition is without fail developmental”. For teachers this means that the ELLs support structures (scaffolding) must change and flex as their students’ English proficiency and content mastery develops. On top of that, the rate at which ELLs develop proficiency and mastery varies drastically in relation to a seemingly endless set of factors (literacy in first language, status of first language in the dominant culture, educational background, poverty, learning disabilities, access to quality instruction…)

If you need further proof of the complex and ever-changing learning needs of ELLs, try navigating though the English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards (An amazingly thorough matrix that outlines language development by grade level in relation to common core standards). Best practice for ELLs is truly a moving target as students trudge through the stages of second language development and academic literacy at their own unique pace.

More than a “right” answer to this question of best practice for ELLs, what I hope to hear is a plural answer that points to shared ownership instead of pointing towards one program or person. Whatever the site-based vision for ELL support entails, it must involve intentional and ongoing collaborative structures. Collaborative structure is different from collaboration as it is proactive and systematic – it implies a deeper commitment than amazing content teacher, X, that collaborates with one-of-a-kind ELL specialist, Y. Intentional collaborative structures answer questions such as, How and when do counselors, administrators, content teachers and ELL specialists work together to best schedule ELLs according to their developing proficiency level? How and when do content teachers investigate and integrate ELP standards into their grade-level planning? If the ELL specialist is ‘pushing in’ to core instruction – how and when do teachers learn about, experiment with, and reflect on co-teaching models?

Ultimately, the goal of any ELL program model is to expedite the academic English language/ literacy development of multilingual students so that they can meet grade-level standards and breeze through any gatekeepers they encounter on their path towards earning a diploma. Supporting ELLs through the K-12 system is not about finding the right teacher, program, or PD session. It is about shared ownership and commitment to refining best-practice, uniquely designed for each community, together.

TamarArt

The above drawing is an original piece done by Tamar Krames.

On Test Scores in Evals and Changing My Mind

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy

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The following post is by Nate Bowling is a 2014 Miliken National Teaching Award recipient and a founding member of Teacher’s United. He teaches AP Government & Politics and AP Human Geography in Tacoma.

The following excerpt is posted below with Nate’s permission, and was originally published on his website, “A Teacher’s Evolving Mind”. His writing represents his own thinking and not a policy statement of any organization/entity with which he is affiliated.

I have always been obsessed with how and when people are willing to change their minds. In my mid 20s I was fascinated by the book Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party. Well, that’s not really true. I was obsessed by what Cleaver did after the book. After seven years in exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France, Cleaver went on to become a Republican. I was fascinated: how did a founding member of the Black Panther Party become a Reagan Republican? That is a Tarzan swing across the political spectrum in the US. How does one change their mind so much on so much?

All that said, in regards to education policy when confronted with compelling evidence, if we are being true to our calling as teachers we have an obligation to evolve. Or put differently, people who are too stubborn to change their minds when confronted with overwhelming evidence aren’t worth listening to and I want you to listen to me in the future.

To read the full post, go to Nate’s new website “A Teacher’s Evolving Mind”

 

Why I’m Not Opting Out

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Parent Involvment

Katie Taylor is a recently renewed NBCT (AYA/ELA) and serves as the Deputy Director for the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession. The views represented in the blog post are her own and not representative of the organization for which she works.

 

Why I’m Not Opting Out

My third grade daughter came home from school on Tuesday, “too pooped to practice.” This is unusual for her, because rain or shine she cannot wait for Tuesdays and Thursdays because those are “soccer practice days.” She wasn’t ill, the weather was perfect for practice, so what gives?

Tuesday was SBAC testing, the third one so far in the last two weeks. When I sought the source of her exhaustion, I calculated that excluding stretch and snack breaks, recess and lunch, 4.5 hours of her 6.5-hour school day was spent testing.

4.5 hours in front of a screen, taking a test. Looking at her face, my mother bear instinct kicked in and I thought,  “I’m not having her go through this again” despite the fact that she still has at least two more days of testing to go.

And yet, after thinking it over, I decided not to opt her out of the rest of her tests.

I’ve been an educator for 18 years, a National Board Certified Teacher for 10, and a parent for 11 years. As an educator with children in public school, it is sometimes difficult to find the line between when I am engaging as an educator and when I am engaging as a parent. This year of testing has been particularly hard from both stances.

As a parent I am tempted to excuse her from testing, the educator in me knows the undue burden it would do to the other children, teachers and administrators at her school. Her discomfort was for a day, and no more than 5-7 partial days in one month. The pain inflicted on teachers and schools for low participation and low-test scores lasts entire school years.

I believe the solution lies in removing the punitive nature of what the test scores mean for schools in terms of resources and performance evaluations. I do not believe that my pulling my daughter out of school during the state tests accomplishes that. Being part of public education is being a part of a collective community, and I fully recognize that there are parts of her community that do not have the luxury of opting their children out for a myriad of reasons. For many of these families, the high-stakes tests are even more high-stakes since it’s many of these children’s scores on which resource allocation decisions are made.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like how much my children are tested, but I also don’t have any interest in returning to a time when it was okay to ignore the opportunity gap. Her teacher doesn’t want to spend his time testing, nor does her principal and I won’t affect a change in that outcome by having my daughter miss testing days.

As an educator and as a parent, I can make a change by being active in policy conversations and using my voice to change current and future testing practices.

As a parent, I can do what I did this week – listen to my daughter’s concern, tell her I’m proud of her perseverance and that all I want is for her to do her best, and then take her out for ice cream and tuck her in bed early with a good book.

Balancing Teacher Leadership

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This guest post is contributed by Shari Conditt, 2015 ESD 112 Teacher of the year. An NBCT, she is her union’s co-president and facilitates a NBPTS cohort for her district.

Sometimes I feel like I’m balancing on a tightrope, fifty feet in the air holding a yellow notepad in one hand and a hot mocha in the other.  Teacher leadership is a lot like that.
I work in a small, rural school district as a full time teacher.  I see over 120 students a day and teach two different AP courses. I developed my district’s national board cohort, a program I created in my district to facilitate teachers as they seek certification.   I am also the teacher’s union co-president, a position I’ve held for the past eight years. I’ve bargained four contracts, implemented TPEP, and worked extensively to mentor teachers and am now in the midst of trying to help teachers as we have a massive shift in our district due to the construction of a new high school.  Despite all of this work, I’ve remained incredibly positive and determined to provide our teachers with as many supports as possible.
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The Christmas Tree Light Analogy

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The following holiday offering is a guest-post from Brian Sites, an NBCT since 2009 who teaches and mentors at-risk students in a blended-learning program in Richland. He also currently serves as a Regional NBCT Ambassador Coordinator for the WEA.

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It was time. Storage bins were cleared, the ladder was brought down, and the Christmas lights were dug up from beneath the layers of decorations that had been piled on top of them for the past eleven months. It was a frigid day; but the first snow had yet to fall, and I knew if I waited any longer, it would be a decision I would regret putting off. It was time to hang those darned Christmas lights (bah-humbug)!

As I began to unwind the wound-up balls of icicle lights, it dawned on me. The tangled lights represented a student. We all have those students, the tough ones who challenge our abilities as a teacher on a consistent basis. Within each of these students, there is so much they are dealing with, that it takes time to unravel what is going on beneath the surface.

Just like the unwinding of the Christmas lights, we must be patient with our students. The work can be frustrating at times, and although one approach seems to be working, all of a sudden, things seem to get even more tangled than when you first began. With patience, however, the tangles become less. The lights begin to unravel before our very eyes, and we see the fruits of our labor. Pretty soon, that ball of knots becomes something much greater than it once was.

It was cold, and there were times when I felt like giving up, and just going and getting a new set of lights. But, I persisted, and in the end, received what I set out to accomplish in the first place…creating something beautiful, that brings a smile to my face due to the joy I get knowing I had a part in the end result.

Our students are the same…we work to create something of beauty. We know the potential they have, of becoming that shining light that deserves the attention it has drawn. We are driven to work harder, knowing that we could give up and move on, but we choose not to because there is still work to do. We choose to hang in there, undoing the tricky knots, maneuvering every which way until we find what works.

In the end, we see the amazing beauty that was once hidden becomes visible for all to see, and our work was well worth the time spent.

The Important Practice of Vulnerability

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Education, National Board Certification, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

Lindsey Stevens, NBCT, is a regular blogger for Puget Sound ESD’s CORElaborate blog , where this piece first appeared, and is republished here with the permission of both the Lindsey and Puget Sound ESD.

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I just spent another amazing weekend at the National Board Certified Teacher Leadership Conference. This time it was at Skamania Lodge in Stevenson Washington and it was amazing and beautiful. The surroundings were wonderful but even more that the atmosphere, I always leave appreciating what I have gained from this inspiring gathering of professionals. The biggest takeaway I have form this weekend is that I need to continue to be vulnerable in my practice to really be a leader and to impact student learning.

At the conference we were greeted first by the fabulous Katie Taylor. Katie is the Director of Teacher Leadership and Learning at the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession (CSTP). If you have not checked out or been in contact with this wonderful organization you should find out what they are all about. At any rate Katie was helping us to think about the traits and qualities of teacher leaders in her opening session. During her presentation we were asked to complete the sentence, “Teachers lead when we…” I sat and thought about that for quite a bit before I could fill it in. What do I really do that is true inspiring leadership? It’s not necessarily when I run a training, or when I plan a meeting. I realized that I truly do my best leading when I am vulnerable, when I make my practice, my trials and my tribulations transparent. This is really the only way to ask others to show me what they are doing and to be honest. I really think that vulnerability might just be the most important disposition for any teacher, especially teacher leaders to embrace.

Katie had us examine our leadership in relation to an article from Educational Leadership “Ten Roles for Teacher Leaders” by Cindy Harrison and Joellen Killion. In this article the authors point out the following ten roles for teacher leaders: resource provider, instructional specialist, curriculum specialist, classroom supporter, learning facilitator, mentor, school leader, data coach, catalyst for change and learner. In the activity we were identified how we were and could be any of these roles. Later I began to think about how these roles as teacher leader and my personal insight into vulnerability when hand-in-hand. Each of these roles take a certain level and different kind of vulnerability.

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Common Core Q&A

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This piece from NBCT Kareen Borders was originally posted on the Ready Washington Coalition’s blog, and available here. It is reposted with the Coalition and the author’s permission.

Dr. Kareen Borders, NBCT  is a 7th-8th grade science teacher and NASA Explorer School Team Lead at Key Peninsula Middle School in Lakbay, Wash., near Gig Harbor. She recently finished a one-year term as a Regional Fellow for the U.S. Department of Education. 

Why did the states create the Common Core State Standards?  

We are preparing our students to compete in a world that is different than ours, and education needs to be responsive to this.  The bottom line is that my middle school science students need to be ready for college, career and life.  Right now, 80% of entering college freshmen are not prepared academically for first-year courses, according to ACT, and the United States spends an estimated $3 billion a year on college remediation, according to Complete College America. 

Does this mean that as a teacher, I wasn’t doing a good job or didn’t have high goals before? 

Unequivocally, the answer is no.  Teachers have been doing and continue to do a great job.  I see Common Core as an exciting shift that will finally put standards into place that aren’t full of education-ese; standards that will allow me to be innovative in helping my students to reach these goals. Clear goals, rather than long and vague goals about what students need to know and be able to do are long overdue.  And what I especially like: CCSS get teachers out of the test-prep business in their classrooms and frees up teachers to provide opportunities for richer learning and mastery of increasingly difficult problems and texts. So, I can concentrate on the work of preparing my students for college, career, and life.  Will it be hard work?  Yes. Teachers are ready to take on this hard work.  Major shifts in instruction are already happening in thousands of classrooms.

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