By Mark

My goal is neither to roast this teacher nor defend his practice. The video above clearly doesn't give the whole story. However, it raises an question with which I myself have battled: when a teacher disagrees with a colleague's classroom practice, how should this be handled?

We've all been there. A kid comes in and complains about another teacher. We take the high road, try to give the kid strategies for conflict resolution, and hopefully, we don't take sides. If you're like me,  you occasionally hear about a colleague's questionable discipline or off-target comments–we must of course take what students say with a grain of salt. But what if a kid hands you a paper from another class with feedback like what was given above? And worse, what if it isn't an isolated event, but something you've seen as a pattern in this teacher's behavior? Can, or should, a teacher try to influence the questionable classroom practices of a colleague?

What would you do? What should the administration do?

 By Mark

The last few weeks I've been really busting my tail. A month or so ago, I noticed some major problems in my 10th graders' analytical writing. They were writing often, but only maybe once a week could I find time to give much feedback–and too often by the time I'd get the feedback returned to them, it would be just enough a delay as to be irrelevant to them. Even in the span of one week, some kids had forgotten they'd even done that writing I was handing back to them. I saw almost no skill growth from my feedback in their next writing sample. It's the same struggle I have every year and the same issue most teachers of writing encounter. Despite my feedback, the students would persist with the same errors in conventions, arrangement, and idea development. 

However, these like so many problems I see in my learners' abilities to learn, are all problems I know how to fix. 

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 By Mark

What exactly does this word mean?

I read often that the reason schools are failing is that teachers are not being held accountable. Teacher accountability is the solution to all the problems in public education. Tie teacher pay to performance, make them accountable! If students don't perform, shutter the school, fire the teachers, hold them accountable!

I work to make sure that I hold my students accountable. But, that doesn't mean standing at the front of the room and making threats and demands until they perform. If I am going to hold my students accountable, I know that I have a responsibility to them. I must offer them the time, the training, and the support to do the tasks for which I am holding them accountable. I must give them strategies and resources, not just mandate that they do while I watch and wait, leaving them to figure it out and readying to punish them if they don't.

So, I'm a relative young'un…not even a decade in the business.  Can someone please explain to me how "holding teachers accountable" will solve all the problems in education today? Why are we focused on accountability (which to me, for some reason, carries a punitive connotation) rather than preparation and providing adequate resources?

 By Mark

When I have that student who keeps coming to me for advice, asking questions I know he knows the answers to, I always tell him "trust yourself."

When I stand in front of my classroom and tell them the book they are about to read may just be the best experience they've ever had in school, I implore them to keep an open mind, play along, and "trust me."

In my classroom, one of the words that comes up constantly is trust. I want them to trust the guidance I offer and trust that I always have their best interest as students in mind. I want them to trust themselves as thinkers and readers and writers so that they can grow and soar constantly. I tell them I know that asking them to trust is a tall order. It involves deep personal risk and the turning over of not just confidence, but in some cases, a relinquishing of power. 

In education, I think that almost any mess we find ourselves in can be traced back to a fundamental failure of trust.

When students don't trust their teachers, the kid won't go seek help or advocate for his own understanding. The kid flounders, is perhaps left behind.

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 By Mark

I've been lucky to teach in a community which over the years has supported bonds and levies to support their schools and infrastructure. In the last ten years or longer, our population has exploded and demanded the building of what seems like countless new schools just to house all the students. However, over the last few elections, the margin of support has gradually eroded with the sliding economy.

We're running a replacement levy this month. Unfortunate timing. Passage of the levy will have zero impact on our patron's taxes–it is a replacement levy, merely continuing the level of funding already being provided so the proportion per $1000 of assessed property value will be the same as last year.

Failure of the levy will mean the instantaneous loss of approximately twenty percent of our district's total budget. I'm new to the budget cut game, but that number is huge and scary.

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