Category Archives: Current Affairs

Real Student Conversation

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Current Affairs, Education, Equity, Life in the Classroom, Middle School, Social Issues, Uncategorized
Cartoon of student images

I started last Wednesday’s zoom office hours assuming that my students would most likely ask questions around their statistics math work.  I spent the earlier part of the week predicting which questions they may have complications with, creating problems with step-by-step explanation, and jotting down my calendar availability in case students needed extra support sessions.  

I start all zoom meetings asking my attendees how their weekend was. Delightful conversation usually occurs around how we are all keeping busy while staying at home.  Once all the students have had an opportunity to share, we switch topics and discuss math.  This last Wednesday was NOT business as usual.

My first student asked, “Mrs. Eaton, did you hear there is going to be a protest down at Winco?”  

I said, “Yes, I heard about that.”  

The discussion quickly unfolded into a slew of questions.  Math wasn’t spoken of at all during the day’s sessions.  

Some of my students are very confused and scared about what is happening in our country.  There were varying opinions on what students have been seeing on TikTok. It was interesting to discover that students receive much of their news from TikTok, the social media platform where people are sharing funny dance moves, challenges, and jokes. 

Students discussed different TikToks they had seen and how they were affected.  I asked students to think about the accuracy/validity of what they were viewing. Students defended TikTok and expressed they felt it was “unfiltered real news”.  When I asked them what they meant by that, they unanimously replied that you can’t trust news from the television.  

The conversation then switched to racism.  Some of my students vocalized they wanted to demonstrate their support while under quarantine (still in phase 1 where we live.)  Others were scared because undocumented older siblings were going to attend the protest. They feared the police would catch them and send them to a detention facility.

Many of my citizen students never considered that some of their classmates were not documented.  An eerie silence filled the zoom room when a student asked another if they were born here.  I interjected and asked my students to think about whether it is okay to discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or national origin?

I can’t help but wonder what this would have looked like in a regular classroom.  Would students have been shy to speak up?  Does the stop video function act as a courage button in allowing students to be more vocal?  Does the chat function facilitate hearing the voices of students who, in a regular classroom setting, would have been overshadowed by outspoken students?

During distance learning our priority, as educators, has been intensely focused on providing equitable instruction.  I have been researching best practices, planning, and preparing what the start of 2020-2021 will look like. It is easy to forget, at times, that our classrooms were safe spaces where students were able to ask non-academic questions.  

The best thing I could do was listen and allow an open forum for their discussion.  The honest truth is that in today’s society, teachers are assumed to be viewed as neutral or as a moderator when discussing such topics with students.  Students look up to their teachers and are influenced by our views, regardless of how we stand on any issue. 

I understand that there are many ways to dismantle institutional racism and other controversial issues affecting our country.  However, let’s not forget that space must be provided for students to question and discuss these issues in a non-threatening environment.  It is through moments like this that understanding occurs, unconscious biases are discovered, bias starts to be extinguished, and our society begins to change for the better.  

Roll Up, Roll Up!

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Current Affairs, Elementary, Life in the Classroom

For years I taught a 5/6 split. The students I had as fifth graders “graduated” into being sixth graders in my next year’s class. Half my class each year was made up of returning students; I called them my “vets.” Half my class was made up of incoming students; they were my “newbies.”

Now I teach a straight fifth grade.

Boy, I miss having a consistent roll up.

There are so many advantages to having a roll up or “looping” classroom.

ONE

When I taught in a roll up, I had every student for two years, increasing student-teacher connections. I saw more improvements. Kids who might be quiet the first year came out of their shell more the second year. They blossomed! They went from not wanting to answer a question in class to clamoring for us to take our class poetry readings on the road.

I remember one third grader announcing to me on the last day of school, “I hate doing work!” I watched him run to the bus and thought, We’ll see how long that lasts. It actually lasted all of fourth grade, but by fifth grade he turned the corner. He became a diligent student, happy to put in the effort because he loved seeing all the great things he could accomplish.

I can make a big difference in a single year. In two years I can do magic.

TWO

Students hit the ground running.

You know how you spend a long time in the fall teaching your class the routines and protocols of your classroom?

With a roll up I could do that so much faster.

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Distance Success

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Current Affairs, Education, Life in the Classroom | ,

For the vast majority of my students, distance learning has not been working.

Not just my classes, but the concept in general. Many report that their lives outside of school are often unstructured, unfettered, tumultuous, so the routine and predictability (and accountability) of school was what kept their footing. They miss being greeted by the principal and our awesome secretaries every single morning. They miss our one-hallway community where literally everyone knows your name. They even miss my bad dad-jokes. (I added that last one, because I’m just assuming…)

They share with me that it isn’t the content, or the tasks, or the obscure grading expectations, or the fact that they might spend hours staring at a chromebook. It is the loss of the structure of school, both literal and figurative.

While some are adrift, a handful are experiencing an academic transformation. The numbers are small, but there is something about this distance learning thing that is working for them. Let’s take one student, who I’ll call B*. Prior to March 13th, attendance was spotty. When present, B was physically present only. Despite constant attempts to connect, few of us on staff were able to claim we actually had a sustained conversation with them. In the weeks prior to the shutdown, I received two assignments from B. They weren’t defiant, and to be honest their skills (in my classes, at least) did not appear to be deficient in any significant way. B was, and is, an enigma we are continuing to work to unravel.

Transition to distance learning and this same student had nearly the highest rate of engagement of all my students. This is a student listed as homeless, with a history of bouncing from school to school, and with a outside-of-school life that instantly led to worry every time they missed school. When I asked B why distance learning seemed to work, I parsed out three trends in their (short) reply:

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Then and Now

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Current Affairs, Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment

THEN

Almost everything I need to teach math or ELA or science or social studies or health is in my classroom. Student books. Math tests. ELA papers.

NOW

I sent some of the books home with the kids on that ill-fated Friday the 13th: math, science, and Roald Dahl’s autobiography Boy. Per instructions, I sent home papers for six weeks’ worth of work.

The work I sent home immediately became “optional” once we learned that we could not require or grade any work sent home. Then, a couple of weeks later, we learned we could start instruction again.

The additional books and papers I want to use with my students for the rest of the year are in my classroom. There is no way to get them to my students now.

I have to check for coronavirus-era copyright access for materials for my students. For some of the materials, I have to scan (once I get permission) stacks of pages and email them to families. (At least I have the stuff at home!) I have to search the web for open-source materials.

THEN

I think of teaching as a performance art. I make eye contact with my kids as I teach. I respond to their body language, their facial expressions.

I walk around the room, monitoring multiple small groups. I manage behaviors quietly, usually with humor.

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This Is Heavy: The WATAC Conference and Finding Meaning

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Middle School, Professional Development, Uncategorized

Last weekend I attended the 4th Annual Washington Teacher Advisory Council’s Spring Conference.  The planners re-organized their conference into an online format. Amazingly, they were able to accommodate the largest number of attendees in their history thus far. That is one positive when it comes to the distance learning format. We can fit more folks into the “room.”

Don’t get me wrong; I would have much preferred seeing all my friends and colleagues from around the state in person. I look forward to it every year. However, seeing them all virtually and hearing how they are dealing with our unprecedented issues these last months of the school year was invaluable.

If you are unfamiliar with WATAC, it is an organization formed initially to organize award-winning teachers in our state to make our expertise available to stakeholders with influence on education policy. Since its inception, it has expanded to include leaders from all aspects of education – administration, certificated, and classified. Anyone with an interest in teacher leadership is welcome at the conference. And, for me, the conference has been a great way to get a shot of teacher energy as the final stretch of the school year hits, and I really, really need that boost.

This year…I really needed a boost.

Don’t we all? The truth is I am actually grieving. I wobble back and forth between shock, depression, and a sort of manic activity level of problem solving. I’m a mess! In fact, the concept of the five stages of grief won’t get out of my head. Although, losing a loved one is unspeakably worse, losing my classroom feels like a huge loss.  After all, I love my job. I love the most annoying of my seventh graders and the snarkiest of my seniors. I am deeply attached to my classroom, my kids, and my teacher lifestyle. So, yes, I am grieving the loss.

The five stages are trademarked, actually. You can go to David Kessler’s website, if you are interested in what he says about grief and grieving. After wondering if I was actually experiencing grief, I looked over the process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Yep. I’m doing all of that.

The conference theme was “Back to the Future, and keynote speaker Amy Campbell, our current Washington State Teacher of the Year, quoted the famous meme that comes from the movie Back to the Future, the one where Marty McFly says, “This is heavy.”

This IS heavy, Marty. You thought it was tough that your mom had a crush on you. But this, THIS is heavy.

Education is changing. This is not merely a moment of pause. We can’t go back to normal. In this crisis we have pulled back a curtain and revealed serious problems with equity in education. Yes, we knew they were there, but it is easy to just go about our business making little shifts that don’t rock the boat too much.

It won’t work that way this time. Serious change is needed, and now is exactly the time to work on it.

As Amy told us- speaking directly to my teacher soul – we are experiencing loss. We are in a crisis that impacts our safety, our economy, and our mental health. “Hindsight really is 2020,” and we need to find our “place on the continuum and start moving forward.”

Most importantly, she said, “Old normal should not be the final destination.” And I feel that. I really do.

As a member of the teacher panel later in the conference, I was asked what was working, what was hard, and what I want to take into the future of education. I don’t remember what I said exactly, and I hope it made some sense at the time. But, I can summarize right now.

What’s working? YouTube, Padlet, Zoom, and all the technology no one thought we could use on such a large scale.

What’s hard? Missing the kids and noticing that some fell off the radar when the crisis hit. Many of my kids live in crisis all the time. Not knowing where they are right now is indescribably tough..

What to take forward? Poor kids, rural kids, isolated kids—they deserve whatever the other kids get. I don’t want to see how the one-to-one schools gracefully flipped their systems to accommodate distance learning. I want to see how internet access becomes a universal right for all families. I want legitimate supports for English language learners and students with IEPs and 504 plans. I want to see every teacher receiving the training to support distance learning. I want my tiny district to have more than the grit, goodwill, and volunteer spirit that is filling the gaps in the system. I want equity for all- educators, families, students, all of us.

That’s what I would take to the future.

So, thank you Amy and all the other wonderful WATAC planners and facilitators. You acknowledged what we are going through and you set us on an impassioned path to the future. You did not pretend it was easy, but you did assure us that we are not alone on this journey. There are a lot of amazing educators who are fighting the fight alongside us. So thank you.

In closing, my grief research led me to David Kessler’s final stage of grief from his latest book. He calls it “finding meaning.” It is the way that we can begin to move forward. We find meaning in the loss. I am starting to feel like I am on that path. With the “loss” of my familiar job as an educator, I am focusing on how to reinvent it to make it equitable, relevant, engaging, and, well, comforting, for the students of my future classroom, online or elsewhere. I am beginning to plan going back to the future.

WATAC Facebook Page

Amy’s Keynote on OSPI’s YouTube Channel

My Hopes for a “New Normal”

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education Policy | , ,

One silver lining: Sometimes it takes the unimaginable to jar loose our imaginations.

When we finally get back to face-to-face education with kids, I have a few changes I hope I’ll see. Some of these are based on my own personal experiences with distance learning, some are broader. I hope to see…

  • Continued curricular flexibility and resources to individualize for kids based on their needs, interests, and situations.
  • The devaluing [elimination…?] of grades and task completion as a means of measurement in favor of teaching and learning rooted in skills and standards.
  • The dismissal of “the way we’ve always done it” as a argument with any merit whatsoever.
  • The recognition that different environments (in-person, virtual, etc.) have strengths and limitations, that these vary from student to student, and that each student can have access to their own “just right” mix.
  • Realization, without question, that quality teaching demands quality preparation, which demands time… and that we revise the teacher work-day to include actual, meaningful, and significant time for preparation, collaboration, and design.

How about you? In what ways do you hope school looks different upon our eventual return?

A Day in the Life of Distance Teaching

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Current Affairs, Life in the Classroom

Disclaimer: What follows is not a complaint. It is documentation. I know many have it worse: I recognize that I am beyond lucky to still be employed and receiving a paycheck. But this site is about “where practice meets policy.” What follows is where my practice is given current policy.

At 6:00am, my phone buzzes that the scheduled post on my first-period Google Classroom has gone live. When I check, I also see a few emails from students, time-stamped at 2, 3, or 4am. If it’s a good day, I’ve been up since 5:30, maybe had a cup of coffee, and I’m heading out the door for a run or into the garage for a workout when that notification comes in. The “good” days have not been particularly frequent.

Until March of this year, I never allowed work email notifications on my phone. I had to have a line drawn somewhere, and I have spent the last six years of my career building boundaries brick by brick: work and life needed separation. Those boundaries dissolved when I realized that I needed to be “on” and accessible to my students and my colleagues in some way similar to how we could step across the hall for a quick question or walk to the back of the room for a check-in. I turned on email notifications on my phone after logging in one mid-day and seeing a string of messages from students who had questions that had hung in the ether unanswered.

In my mind, I sensed momentum lost and opportunity missed.

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The Virtual Classroom in the Age of Coronavirus

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Current Affairs, Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment, Social Issues

Thursday, March 12, we had a staff meeting after school where we learned that eventually schools might be closed for a period of time.

Friday, March 13, at 12:30, I learned school would close the following Monday. We were told to gather work to send home that would support student learning for the next six weeks.

I flew around, getting math, ELA, and science organized so students could take them home by the end of the day. Before they left, I hugged them all (one last time before social distancing made us stop that!) and said I planned to start teaching them for “at least one hour a day” starting the next Monday.

I spoke too soon.

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The Sexual Health Education Bill: Facts to Calm the Fear

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Elementary, High School, Middle School | , , , , , ,
Shannon Cotton

By Guest Contributor Shannon Cotton, NBCT

Senate Bill 5395, known as the comprehensive sexual health bill, was a hot topic in Olympia this Legislative session.  A few weeks ago I spent 90 minutes watching TVW listening to the state senators make comments about the amendments before a roll call vote which passed the bill 27 to 21. 

Legislators talked about constituents who  felt as if “government isn’t listening to what they want.” For every parent who wants to exercise their rights to control the sexual health education of their child another family desperately wants their children to have access to health-enhancing information. Shouldn’t our public school system make information accessible to all as long as provisions are made to allow a family to opt out if they wish?

As a National Board Certified health teacher with 16 years experience teaching sexual health to middle school students in Washington state, I have been fielding questions and attempting to help others understand what this bill means to student learning and overall student health. I have spent more hours than I care to admit trying to clear up misconceptions and disprove outrageous propaganda created to spark fear into parents on social media with information that are outright lies. 

Here are some facts about ESSB 5395:

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No Right Answer

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom

It is a classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

My own three children are in three different buildings in the same school district (one elementary school, one middle school, one high school; all in a different district from where I work). Technically, their teachers have been directed by district admin not to send homework yet.

My elementary schooler’s teacher has done so anyway, with the clear communication that it is optional. She has sent suggested math pages from the workbook, along with video guides. She has also video recorded herself reading aloud to kids. My son is in a Spanish-immersion program, so he is also charged with continuing his online practice program. I’m okay with all of this.

My middle school son was asked by his science teacher to finish up a project about natural disasters that they started before the shutdown. His math teacher has sent e-packets of worksheets. There hasn’t been a clear statement of “optionality” for these. We haven’t heard from his other teachers. I’m okay with all of this.

My high schooler? Radio silence from teachers. I’m okay this, too.

Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Denise Juneau has stated that the largest school district in Washington will not transition to online learning in the immediate future. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles (LAUSD) school system is investing $100 million in making sure kids without online access are provided tech and internet during the shutdown. From one side, Superintendent Juneau is being praised for her pragmatic view of the access divide among Seattle students. The other side is quick to drag her publicly. (I’m not hiding my bias well, am I?)

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