Author Archives: Jan Kragen

About Jan Kragen

I'm a National Board Certified Teacher. I am also on the Executive Board of the Washington Association of Educators of Talented and Gifted (WAETAG). I've been a teacher since 1977, in public and private schools, in third through eighth grades, in California, Colorado, New York, and Washington. In 1983 I started specializing in gifted education. I now work in North Kitsap, teaching a self-contained Highly-Capable 5th grade class. I also teach teachers. I've written science and social studies curriculum units for our district, resource books for teachers, and educational articles. I've presented at national and state science, social studies, and gifted conferences. And I've done in-service training, both within my district and as a consultant through other districts and my ESD. Many of the things I have written and many of the materials I have developed for my own classroom use are available for free off my website, kragen.net.

Student Perspective on the SBA

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Assessment

I am finally done testing, hooray, hooray. After we got all done, I asked my fifth grade High Cap students to critique the tests for me. I’ve noticed a lot of discussion on Stories from School about what adults think about the SBA. I thought that by this point people might be interested in the kid perspective.

First, a number of kids commented that several questions on the SBA were “super unclear.” On the other hand, they said the MSP was much easier to understand.

Solution? I bet the test questions seemed clear to the test writers. But the questions need to be equally clear to the intended audience—the test takers. The SBA group needs to scrub the tests again for clarity. It wouldn’t hurt to get some children in to do proofreading. (I know kids who would be happy to volunteer! My students gleefully pointed out every spelling and grammatical error they found on the practice tests!)

Second, my students were pretty unanimous that the math tools on the SBA were horrible. For example, they complained it was terribly difficult to put the correct answer onto the number line because the space allotted for the answer was so small. They felt it was far too easy to make a mistake due to the tools rather than due to an error in the math. In addition, they said the math tools for drawing lines were clunky. And trying to fix mistakes was a complex multistep process.

In the same way they were very frustrated with the tools in the ELA test, especially the spellcheck. None of the ELA tools worked nearly as well as normal Word tools worked. The kids could not understand why the test would make them use tools that were less efficient and less functional.

Solution? Supposedly the SBA is designed to test content, process, and critical thinking skill knowledge, right? But the test also introduces the added stress of, “Now also try to figure out how to use unfamiliar, less intuitive, less user-friendly, awkward, badly-designed tools.” Most computers in most schools in the state use Microsoft Office, don’t they? Why don’t we get Microsoft tools on the SBA? By next year!

Third, the students didn’t actually say anything to me about how long the testing took. They just looked more and more dragged out and exhausted as the testing sessions went on. Someone posted on one of the blogs that the testing is “just ten hours.” Not for my class! I had students who spent 20 hours on the SBA with another two or more hours on the MSP. When they finally finished the SBA and the MSP and then had to do STAR reading and math, they moaned. They never complain about STAR testing. But they were whipped after this year’s testing experience.

I’ve never had a class go through a testing marathon anything like this. My National Board testing didn’t take that long. The bar exam doesn’t take that long. But here we are subjecting 10-year-olds to that level of testing.

Honestly, I wouldn’t want to subject my child to anything like this. I wouldn’t want to subject myself to testing sessions of this length!

Solution? We had five days of SBA testing. No single day of SBA testing should take more than half a day, max. Really, if you can’t tell what you want from two and a half days of a student’s work, you need to redesign the test.

Finally, I had one other thing about the SBA bother me this year that had never bothered me in previous years, on previous tests. We’ve had writing tasks on tests before. But the ELA performance task was different. It gave kids the extra time to craft a well-developed story.

At the end of the third day of the ELA performance task, after nine hours of testing, I stopped by one child’s computer to ask how she was doing and to see if she was almost done. I happened to see two words on her screen. “CHAPTER FIVE.”

She wasn’t. She went back for a fourth day of ELA PT testing to finish her story. Finally she came back to class, after twelve hours of work, all excited about her story. “It’s really good! It had seven chapters by the end! It ended with—”

I told her she couldn’t tell me what her story was about. That made her sad. And she was deeply unhappy to learn she was never going to see her story again. “But that’s the best thing I’ve written all year!”

Then I went home and thought, “Wait a minute. This story is her intellectual property. It is being taken from her without compensation. Now it’s just going to disappear into the black hole of assessment. She may be only ten or eleven, but she should have the rights to her story!” Even if it’s never published, she should be able to share it with her family and friends.

Solution? As a published author (and not just for this blog), I feel very strongly about this issue. I think she and her parents should demand the return of her story.

How SBA Testing Affects Elementary Students

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Assessment, Elementary

Our school has been doing SBA testing for over a week now. Here are just some of the things I’ve learned about how elementary students are affected by the SBA.

ONE: SBA affects how much work I can assign in my classroom.

As soon as my students returned from spring break, I asked them to pull out their assignment calendar. I asked them to record the due dates for the rest of the school year. There were the standard reading assignments for the trimester. But there were no major projects. No CBA, no science fair, no research project, no big writing project.

The kids didn’t complain, but they were curious. Why?

Because testing is the big project from now to the end of the year.

These tests exhaust the kids. I can’t load on some other major project and expect them to do well—either on the testing or on the project.

It wasn’t always this way. Not many years ago I did big projects right until the last week of school. (I drove the district tech director crazy insisting he keep the online grading system open right up until the last day of school!)

Not any more.

TWO: SBA affects my team.

Four of us teach math at the same time, but we don’t test on the same days. We have to cancel math on all the days that one of us have an SBA scheduled. We are losing about three weeks of math.

THREE: SBA affects the whole school.

For the entire testing period, all the computer labs in the school are reserved for testing use only. No classroom use of labs. For weeks.

FOUR: Elementary students are not proficient typists.

One third grade girl worked diligently all day on her first test. She finally stopped—paused—at the end of the first day. She had finished questions 1-8. There were 43 questions on the test.

FIVE: Elementary students have limited attention spans.

One fourth grade boy, after an hour and a half of hard work, simply gave up. He tipped back in his chair, looked straight up at the ceiling, and started randomly pressing keys. From what his teacher said, it’s not a matter of him not caring about school or grades or doing well. He just wanted the endless nightmare experience to be over.

SIX: Elementary students are impulsive.

You can give them directions at the beginning of the test. You can say, “This is a two-day test so DON’T hit end when you stop your work at the end of the day today. Hit pause.” You can emphasize and explain the directions. But at the end of the day, there will still be kids who hit end. They aren’t going to stop to think. They aren’t going to stop to ask. In their little kid minds, that’s what makes sense.

Of course, as far as the SBA goes, they are now locked out of any review of what they did the first day. They can’t even go back and look at the article they were reading in order to get information they need to help answer questions or to do the required writing on day two.

They cannot get unlocked.

And there is nothing anyone can do. Their teacher can’t unlock it. The administrator can’t unlock it.

One quick, thoughtless motion by a child hobbles their second day of testing. Because, oh yes, they still have to take the second day of the test.

SEVEN: Has anyone noticed that elementary students don’t process the written word as well on the computer screen as they do on paper?

And haven’t you found that to be true in your own life? I have. I can proofread a paper on the computer multiple times and think I’ve found every mistake. Then I hit print. The moment the paper comes out of the machine, I see errors I missed on the monitor.

This weekend my husband and I hosted a young couple in our home from China. Yuhao has an MA in computer engineering, and Victor is at UW doing research for a PhD in business administration.

We asked them what testing was like in China. Victor said they were tested on paper. Less important tests were given on cheap paper. Important tests were administered on very fine paper. He said he always did better work on the better paper.

I know I used to buy very high quality writing paper for my class for final draft written work (back before we did almost all final drafts on computers). My students put much more effort into making their work the best quality they could produce when the paper itself was beautiful.

SOLUTIONS:

Make the elementary SBA tests shorter. No day’s test should run more than one hour for an elementary student.

Go back to paper and pencil tests for elementary students.

Make Fun A Top Priority

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Elementary, Life in the Classroom

The morning of the state science fair, I asked all the students gathered in my room what they had learned from their projects. They told me lots of specific details about their individual projects, from the behavior of worms to how difficult it is to make cheese. I asked what they learned about the scientific process. They talked about problems they had controlling variables and how they learned to write better conclusions.

Then I asked how many thought science was fun? Hands shot up all over the room. I threw my fist in the air and announced, “I won!”

After we got back from the fair, we debriefed. I passed out the class’s ribbons and awards. We had lots of second place ribbons, some third place, six first place trophies for “Best in Category,” and two Special Awards. As a team, for our first time at the fair, we felt we’d done a pretty good job.

I reminded my students, “Look how well you did. Not bad when you consider my number one priority for your science fair project was that you have fun.”

One boy quickly added, “But you also set really high standards.”

I said, “Ok, that was my number two priority. But my number one priority was that you have fun.”

A week or two earlier a parent had come in and commented on how her child hadn’t chosen a very important topic. I said I didn’t really care. As long as the student found it interesting and was doing a good job of following the scientific process, it was fine with me.

As I told that mother, elementary school is about getting them engaged. It’s about building positive attitudes. It’s not just about making them learn—it’s about making them want to learn.

If I can make them enjoy science—and math and reading and social studies and writing and everything else I teach them—they will go on to middle school and high school and want learn those subjects more deeply.

If I don’t build the positive attitudes now, then when they continue in those subjects in middle and high school, their secondary teachers will be fighting such an uphill battle.

The truth is, I have a really good researcher backing up my claim that building positive attitudes in elementary school can—believe it or not—be even MORE important than being the most highly skilled teacher in the field.

Benjamin S. Bloom, the educational guru who developed Bloom’s Taxonomy, led a team of researchers who worked with immensely talented young people in six fields of endeavor. They published their findings in a hefty book called Developing Talent in Young People.

Here, briefly paraphrased, is how the researchers described the initial teachers of these extraordinarily successful individuals.

At this stage the best teachers are described as being good with children and someone the children are comfortable with. They are supportive, warm, loving, caring, nurturing. They give positive support and rewards like stars and stickers and smiling faces on papers. They are a “second mother.”

They are not necessarily leaders in the field. They don’t necessarily have the highest skills themselves. Their gift is they make the field of study enjoyable for the children. They can make beginning lessons seem like fun.

If you want to read the full summary/review of the book, go to my Teacher Resources page and look under the Education section.

Somehow, in the race toward rigor, the idea that we need to make learning enjoyable seems to be slipping off center stage. I object. At the elementary level, I believe the two goals are equally important.

So I know it’s testing season, but go ahead—this spring concentrate on making learning fun!

You Can Lead a Child to Testing, But You Can’t MAKE Him Try

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education Policy, Elementary

There’s a lot of chatter in the lunchroom lately about test scores and pay, and how teachers will want to change positions if their pay is tied to test scores. “No one will want to teach third, fourth, or fifth.” “I’ll want to switch to second grade.”

Then I hear, “At least you won’t have to worry, Jan. You teach gifted kids. All your kids pass all the tests every year.”

It’s true, most of my highly capable students have the ability to pass most of the tests that are thrown at them. Having the ability to do well doesn’t necessarily mean that they will perform at that level.

Last week I asked my students, “How many of you want to go into computer programming when you grow up?” Hands shot up around the room. I said, “You need to be good at writing.” One boy jerked his hand back down as fast as he had originally thrust it up.

Honestly, what conceivable motivation can I offer that boy? He’s dreamed of working in the computer industry; I’m sure he’s pictured himself spending his adult life designing video games and having a job that’s more play than work. But he is willing to give up his dream—in a heartbeat—in order to avoid the dread task of writing.

Over the years I’ve had several students who are stubbornly resistant to writing. They may start out strong on a writing piece with a great initial idea but then peter out fast and dribble down to nothing.

Here are the kinds of help I can give my reluctant writers in class:

I can give them the structure and encouragement they need throughout the writing process. “You need to develop those ideas.” “Don’t stop there, I want to hear more.” “Wow, that’s great. What happens next?”

But, oh, how they balk at doing more than a single draft. Writing anything once is painful enough. Making changes and writing it again? Pure torture! “You need to read it aloud now. Does it make sense?” “Can you use stronger verbs, more precise words, or some great figurative language?”

Finally, finally, they are supposed to edit for conventions. They are long past tired of the piece by now. They just want to be done, so every single time we get to the editing stage in class projects, I give a pep talk to the class about how important editing is. “I know it’s hard. Conventions weren’t invented to make it easier for the writer—they were all invented to make life easier for the reader.”

All the help works in the classroom where I can ride herd on all my little mavericks. Even my reluctant writers can produce excellent, quality work when they get the support they need.

Here are the kinds of help I can give those writers during testing:

On the day of the ELA performance task, all my students will go in knowing what they need to do and how to do it. They will walk in knowing they need to be meticulous and thorough. It’s nothing new. We’ve practiced those skills all year.

I can guarantee my reluctant writers will be the first ones done with the test. I can picture the student a couple of years ago who popped up an hour or more before anybody else. “I’m finished!”

I asked him (through gritted teeth), “Are you sure you’re done?”

Big grin. “Yes!”

“Did you answer every question?”

“Yes.”

Short of cheating, I can’t do anything more. I can’t say, “It’s not a race. You need to go back and read your piece and see if you can develop your ideas more thoroughly. Are your ideas organized well? Can you express your ideas better? Now go back, sit down, and do a proper job.”

For most of my students, that speech would be enough to get a significant improvement out of them. And if I could give them a couple of pep talks along the way—without looking at their writing at all—they would produce the kind of writing they are fully capable of creating.

I’m not allowed to do that.

Yet some people want my pay to be based on how well my students test.

My point? A test is a measure not just of academics but of motivation. If it turns out my pay is going to be based on how well my students do on the SBA, then I want to be able to properly motivate my students during the test.

Inspiring the Next Generation of Teachers

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Current Affairs, Education Policy

Tuesday night I was at an award ceremony for teachers. One of the teachers being honored was described as patient and kind. She described the teacher who inspired her to go into teaching also as being patient and kind.

That made me sit up and take notice.

Now I already know the two words students most often use to describe me—strict and fun. My fourth grade teacher Mrs. Hester was the first teacher who inspired me to become a teacher. She was a-MAY-zing. And the first two words I would use to describe her would be strict and fun.

Do we as teachers get imprinted by our first great teachers?

I started thinking about the next teachers who would come into the classrooms.

Right now I see two movements heading toward us on a collision course.

My principal was talking at lunch about the lack of substitute teachers and about how thin the pool of quality applicants there was for teaching positions right now. There is a shortage of teachers across the state of Washington. The problem goes beyond our state, which means we can’t look beyond our borders to find quick solutions. Nationally, enrollment in teacher training programs is down as much as 50%.

Governor Inslee’s new budget proposes lowering class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, which is a step in the right direction. Once those class sizes are lowered, there will be positions open across the state for K-3 teachers. If we actually lowered class sizes K-12, which is what the initiative mandates, that would require even more teachers.

It sounds like there will be a lot more jobs and not enough teachers.

That worries me.

It worries me because I don’t want districts scrambling to find teachers. I don’t just want warm bodies filling positions. Nobody wants that! We all want amazing teachers.

It frustrates me that salary is a negative issue, a reason people flock away from education as a career. I’ve watched college students check out which degrees pay well and choose their college programs accordingly.

You can look at the data yourself. Go to the graph of The College Degrees with the Highest Starting Salaries put out by Forbes. You won’t find an education degree anywhere on the list! Starting teacher salaries typically range from just under $31,000 to just over $34,000.

According to the Bellingham Herald, “Washington allocates about $34,000 for a first-year teacher, even though the state determined that it should pay about $52,000, to be competitive” (emphasis mine).

It concerns me that lack of respect is another negative issue driving people away from careers in education. How many of you have met people who hold teachers, especially public school teachers, in low regard?

The truth is everyone has gone through school, some sort of education. They carry that experience with them. It colors the way they look at education—and educators—the rest of their lives. If you can get them to realize that you are not the teacher they had, that your school is not the school they went to, that the curriculum you are teaching is not the same that they had to learn, that the whole experience is different now than it was 20 or 30 years ago, sometimes that’s where you can actually start a conversation.

So how can we draw students into the world of education in spite of the problems? How can we inspire the next generation of teachers?

I’m actively recruiting.

A boy in my class did his social studies CBA on the Berlin Wall. Well into his presentation, he suddenly asked, “How would you like it if your city was divided in half—like this?” And he took a roll of crepe paper, taped one end to the counter at the front of the room, and unrolling the paper, walked to the back of the room to tape the paper to a bookcase in the back. All eyes snapped to attention and followed his every move. “You,” he pointed, “are East Berlin and you,” he pointed, “are West Berlin.”

He went back to the front of the room and continued his presentation. As he described various escapes and escape attempts, student volunteers that he had prepared ahead of time acted out what he read. Students were enthralled.

At the end I called for our standard “Three Stars and A Wish.” There were more than three stars as the compliments poured in. There was no wish. No one had any suggestion for improvement. Then I said, “I have a wish.”

The class waited. What more could I possibly expect?

I said, “I wish you become a teacher.”

He smiled and nodded, and the class agreed. He would be an a-MAY-zing teacher.

Highly Capable and the Legislative Budget

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Professional Development

Recently a teacher came to my room asking for advice. She had a little girl reading well above grade level, and she wanted to know how she could address her needs. We talked about options, and I shared some of the materials I use. She left feeling like she could better meet the needs of her exceptional student.

I teach fifth graders in a self-contained class for highly-capable students. My kids are bused to me from all over my district. Teachers in my school come to me for advice, but teachers in other elementary schools in the district do not have a HC teacher in their building as a resource. It’s not as easy for them to get help.

When I first arrived in this state in 1989, having a program for gifted students was optional for districts. The state had a pot of money set aside for gifted education. Districts that opted to offer a program could design a program that suited their needs—focusing on grades three through eight, for example—and then access state money.

These state funds, by the way, did not cover the cost of the program my district offered. My district ponied up the rest of the money.

Then a couple of years ago the state made Highly Capable part of Basic Education. Now every district is required to have a program for HC students. The program must run K-12. And according to McCleary, local levy money can’t be used for Basic Education.

Oh, yeah. The pot of money the state kicks in hasn’t really changed much over the years.

Wait a minute!

  • The participating districts have gone from voluntary (around half) to all required to have programs. Many are building programs from scratch.
  • The participating grade levels at each district have gone from some selected grade levels to all grade levels, K-12. I believe that’s an increase for every district in the state!
  • And after McCleary, districts can’t use local levy money to shore up any missing dollars.

Obviously, the districts need more money for quality programs to meet the needs of their Highly Capable students.

I’m on the executive board of WAETAG (Washington Association of Educators of Talented and Gifted). We saw this change in the law coming and realized teachers would need training. We worked with Whitworth College to train a cadre of WAETAG teachers as professional development staff to work with ESDs and districts to offer classes in Nature and Needs of Gifted, Differentiation, Critical Thinking, and Creative Thinking.

Attending those classes is, of course, voluntary.

Teachers who have HC students in their classroom need to be trained in HC students’ special needs and in how to meet those needs. It’s not fair to place HC students in a teacher’s classroom and tell the teacher to meet their needs without that training. (Most teacher training programs do very little preparation in terms of HC education. My original certification program in the 1970s? I think it had about a paragraph!)

I’m glad HC students are recognized as Basic Education students. I think they need targeted funding that meets their special needs. I think the legislature needs to fully fund both HC students as well as the professional development of their teachers.

TPEP Is Killing My Principal

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Education Policy

I have a really great principal.

I’m not just saying that because I have a sense of loyalty to the school and the staff or because I like him and his Star Trek suit. (Which I do.)

I’ve lived in multiple states and taught at multiple schools. I’ve encountered many principals from mediocre to strange to bad to great. He really is one of the good guys.

Our elementary school is on tribal land. About half of our students are on free or reduced lunch. Our principal maintains a strong, positive relationship with the tribe and the community. He builds coalitions with a terrific PTSA, with volunteers and coordinators, with classified and certified staff. If we are all rowing our canoe in the same direction, he is the one calling out the rhythm.

In the past my principal has come by my classroom nearly every day, often twice a day. He comes in, sits down and soaks in a portion of a lesson, interacting with the students, asking questions, interjecting his own comments. When it comes time to write an evaluation of my teaching, he has a wealth of direct observation to draw on—he knows what my classroom looks like and how I interact with my students.

Well, in the past he had that.

This year nearly half the teachers in the school are on comprehensive evaluations—or, as I’ve dubbed them, the “Bataan Death March Version of TPEP.”

My principal has all the same job expectations he’s had in previous years, but this year the time he is spending on evaluations has quadrupled. (At least quadrupled.)

I have watched the energy drain out of him this year.

He still comes to my room, occasionally, once in a while, for a quick pop in and pop out. I know he wants to stay longer, but he doesn’t have the time. He’s off and running to the next room.

I know how driven he is to do a stellar job, but something has to give. If he must do evaluations and they take so much more of his time than they did in the past, how does that affect the rest of his job? What gets short shrift or what gets eliminated because there just aren’t enough hours in the day?

Principal burn-out is a national issue. Take a look at the article Churn: The High Cost of Principal Turnover. Two of the primary causes driving principals to leave their jobs are

  • excessive workload and managerial tasks that prevent more meaningful instructional leadership efforts and
  • personal costs—long hours and the physical and psychological toll.

I know my principal would enjoy more meaningful instructional leadership efforts than ensuring all the TPEP evidence is collected and all the TPEP paperwork is complete for all the teachers on the comprehensive evaluation form this year. Obviously, that’s another thing he would love to do. If he had time.

How could we make evaluations take less time? We have a handful of National Board Certified Teachers on staff at our school. Wouldn’t it make sense to exempt all the NBCTs at our school—all the NBCTs in the state—from the comprehensive level of evaluations for the term of their National Board Certification? After all, NBCTs have to undergo a rigorous certification process. It’s an objective review at a national level, far more extensive and impersonal than any local administrator could hope to manage. TPEP is, in many ways, redundant for the NBCTs.

If NBCTs were exempt from the comprehensive evaluations, my principal could do the focused form with all the NBCTs in the school for the ten years of their certification period. It would take those comprehensive evaluations off his schedule for a decade.

Principals in general might get more supportive of teachers who wanted to pursue National Board Certification since their certification would mean shorter evaluation forms in the future and reduced work load for the principal!

Having NBCTs on the focused form for the length of their certification would be an added incentive for teachers too, giving teachers another reason to do the difficult work of pursuing National Board Certification.

Meanwhile, there is no solution in sight.

The legislature created the more rigorous teacher evaluation system to make sure all the teachers in the state met high standards. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, in their effort to create more perfect teachers, they destroyed their principals?

It’s Not on the SBAC

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Assessment, Life in the Classroom

Our student-teacher conferences are in October. Of course, I had several student-teacher conferences in September, and I’ve had more in November. I do conferences any time a concern comes up. It may take time to meet with parents and their children more than once in the fall, but it saves time and trouble in the long run.

It may be surprising, but most of my conferences are not focused on academic issues.

I teach students in a self-contained Highly Capable class. For the most part, my students test above grade level in both math and reading. They have above average cognitive abilities. Yet they don’t always achieve academic success, at least not automatically. A lot of them need extra help. Why?

A major pitfall for many of my students is two-pronged: organization and time-management. My most recent conference was with a girl who spends hours preparing for major presentations—her oral book report, for example, or a research report for social studies. When bedtime rolls around she looks up wild-eyed and says, “But I didn’t do my math!” Or “I forgot to study my spelling!” Or both. Her math and spelling scores were suffering as a result.

Her mom and I talked to her about life skills and the need to manage assignments. We told her she needs to do the math homework first (since she likes this least). She needs to spend a few minutes each day on the spelling (instead of trying to learn all the words for the week in one night, and maybe missing the night).

And she needs to break the major assignments into more manageable pieces. We looked at the template for the Power Point for the oral book report, counted the required number of slides with her, and showed her that if she did one slide each night she could do it easily. It was waiting and worrying that turned the assignment into a monster.

Our conference happened to be at the end of the trimester grading period, so I told her I had to apply those lessons of organization and time-management to myself to get all my grading and report cards done!

She left the conference feeling like she could tackle the tasks of school more easily. Her mom left the conference feeling relaxed and comfortable, knowing that she and I were working together to meet the most pressing needs of her child.

I left the conference realizing, once again, that some of the most important things I teach are not on the SBAC. Or any other high-stakes test.

The two best predictors of success are not inherent talent and academic success. They are

  • having a good solid work ethic and
  • having the ability to get along with other people.

I spend a lot of time teaching my students how to work hard and work efficiently—to challenge themselves, to dig deep, to excel—and at the same time to work smart and do no more labor than they need to do. How to manage their time. How to get themselves and their work organized so they don’t waste time and effort. I explain to them it’s all designed so they have more time for fun.

I also spend a lot of time teaching my students how to work together in teams. How to treat each other with respect. How to collaborate. How to be a leader. How to be a follower. How to “share the air.” How to resolve conflicts. Again, I explain that the better they work together, the more fun they will have.

Of course, the better work ethic they have and the better interpersonal skills they have, the better they will do in college and careers. Who knows, these skills may help them in their future family relationships! I talk to them about the long-term impact of the skills too.

Does that mean I want the critically important life skills I teach to be on some state test in the future? Good heavens no! We have more than enough testing going on as it is.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with Common Core, SBAC, TPEP, and whatever else is requiring immediate attention. It can feel like an unending avalanche of demands. It’s important to take a breath and get some perspective. Teaching isn’t just about academics and grades and meeting standards and bringing up test scores.

Think of all the things you do as a teacher that aren’t quantifiable.

But some days those things are the most important part of your job.

Putting Our Best Faces Forward

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Uncategorized

I firmly believe that my job is more than teaching my students in my classroom. It’s more than meeting with their parents and connecting with the staff at my school and my district. Part of my job is making the public aware of positive stories from school.

Recently our district community relations person started emailing all staff every month, reminding them to send her notices of any good news she should share. Every month I try to be aware of things going on that I should highlight for her that would make good news stories.  Over the years my class–alone or with other classes–has been in the paper or on local TV for Decade Days or Amigos Centers or Market Day. I know that in our area, the newspapers are eager for positive stories about our schools, which is heartening!

The last few years I’ve wanted to push that idea even further. I’ve started taking more opportunities to nominate people for awards–even awards that seem like a stretch. Ok, the first one wasn’t so hard. A year ago I nominated our head custodian Thad Bayes for the STAR 101.5 school support staff award, which he won. That was cool.

Then I put together a team from my school to nominate our former principal Joe Davalos for one of the WEA Human and Civil Rights Awards. He won the Community Service Award in April! That was amazing!

This fall I saw an ad in the Kitsap Sun for the “20 Under 40” award. I read the requirements: the person had to work on the Kitsap Peninsula, had to be under the age of 40, and had to have demonstrated exceptional leadership skills in the workplace and/or community. The award was sponsored by the Kitsap Sun and the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal. They said they were looking for professionals in business, medicine, and education. 

I nominated one of our teachers, Kristy Dressler.

By the way, I went into the Sun website much later to look through the past winners. I couldn’t find them all–they don’t post the winners back to the first year they gave out the awards. But I found very, very, very few representatives from the world of education. I think there were two principals and two private school teachers–a music school owner/teacher and a Montessori teacher. If I’d looked there first, I might have been scared off.

Nevertheless, Kristy won!

The Sun called to tell me the news and I started to cry. I went to Kristy’s room and told her and we both cried. Then she asked me why I nominated her when there are so many good teachers out there.

I have good reasons. First, she’s under 40. There are a lot of good teachers who aren’t! Second, I have been impressed with her from day one. She doesn’t just teach her class. She gets deeply involved with the school, parents, and the community. She trains staff. She works on district and regional committees. She’s a powerhouse. And she was a National Board candidate last year. (By the way, a couple of weeks later we learned she had passed, on her first try. Just another example of how she’s amazing.) Third, of course there are other teachers I could nominate. But I could only do one this year.

I can always nominate someone else next year.

How many ways can I find to shine the public spotlight on my really exceptional colleagues? I’m having so much fun finding out.

PLCs and Question Four

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Assessment

Our district started the year with a huge professional development day—all morning with the secondary staff and all afternoon with the elementary staff attending an inservice designed to reboot, reenergize, and refine our Professional Learning Communities. Our administrative team from “the hill” flew a guru out from Utah to train us.

I have to admit, I was impressed with her style. Whatever it took to make PLCs work in her school, she made it happen. “You need a place and time to meet all together? I can coordinate that!” “You need pizza and Cokes? I’ll bring it in!” “You need everyone to have laptops? I’ll buy them!”

I was less clear where she found the money to make it all happen. Pizza and soda for every PLC meeting? New laptops for every teacher? Maybe she writes really great grants.

She led us through the process to the inevitable high point—the increase in test scores. The impact on the lowest performing students in math and reading was, again, impressive.

Then we took a break, and I was able to go up with my little sticky note question, “Did the test scores for your top reading and math groups show comparable gains with your low groups?”

When we reconvened she answered my question first. “No,” she admitted. And, she added, in their euphoria over their success, it took a while for them to notice the discrepancy and start to address the needs of their highest students.

It’s a nation-wide issue that, I believe, has been exacerbated by No Child Left Behind. The legislative emphasis is on “meeting the standard.” Politically, that doesn’t give much incentive to pouring a lot of time, energy, effort—and money—into children who already “meet the standard” in September. So what is the result?

In 2008 the Fordham Report showed that the lowest fourth grade reading group posted a 16 point gain over seven years while the highest fourth grade reading group posted a 3 point gain. The lowest eighth grade math group posted a 13 point gain over the same seven years while the highest eighth grade math group posted a 5 point gain.

In our PLC we have four questions. Unfortunately, there is a sense of order to those questions, almost a sense of priority. Often, we never get to grappling with question number 4 until we have thoroughly resolved questions 1, 2 and 3. Those kids on the high end need us to answer the question now, not after they have moved on to college.

The truth is, it is not enough for teachers to ask, “How will we respond if they already know it?” There should be an incentive in the testing system itself, not to bully individual teachers but to acknowledge high-achieving schools and districts.

When the WASL first came out (remember that precursor to the MSP?), districts earned one point for every child who moved from a 2 to a 3 in a test—math, reading, writing, or listening. But districts earned 2 points for every child who moved from a 3 to a 4. That system gave districts an incentive to continue pushing students past simply meeting the standard toward exceeding the standard. I have no idea what the points were used for, and unfortunately the incentive system disappeared almost immediately.

I was sorry to see it go.

I want to see the test scores for the top groups go up as much as any other group. Because right now, those are the children most likely to be “left behind.”