Category Archives: Education

The Problem

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom

AbaacusBy Mark

I've been having a bit of a problem lately in my classes. 

My students were tasked to create a visual metaphor of the allegory represented in George Orwell's Animal Farm, do research about the "factual" side of their allegorical connection, and assemble this all into an end product that showed their skills at a whole slew of the Common Core State Standards in ELA-Reading-Lit and ELA-Reading-Informational Texts, with each standard accompanied by a proficiency level scale that clearly defined what achievement of the standard would look like.

My problem is that too many of them are earning A's. Even the kids who aren't supposed to. 

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Student (and teacher) Engagement: Increase the drama!

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Education, Life in the Classroom, Professional Development, Science
Photo May 11, 2013, 4:04 PM

by Maren Johnson

The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in — and stay tuned in — to watch drama.

~David Mamet, playwright and screenwriter

I don't usually get my teaching tips from television screenwriters, but I thought the above quote was worth some thought. If drama has a wide definition–let's say drama is a story resulting from human interactions–then adding drama to our teaching is definitely a way increase student engagement–the "tuning in" that David Mamet talks about above.

Our students often aren't here for the information, they're here for the drama. The students frequently find that drama in the actions of their peers. One of our jobs as teachers? Try to create that drama in our subject matter and class activities. Is drama necessary for learning? No, but it sure can help. Some ways to create that drama? Building teacher-student relationships, and including stories about content matter and school.

Last week at my school, a teacher sent out a link to an inspiring (and dramatic) Rita Pierson video on teacher-student relationships. Some teachers discussed it at lunch, a few other teachers commented by email. Teachers engaging other teachers, all right.  Another example: also last week at my school, a teacher announced "Staff Spirit Day" with the theme of "Hey, I went to college!" We were to wear our college sweatshirts and tell students positive stories about our college experiences.

No college sweatshirt being handy, I donned my high school FFA jacket–yeah, that's right, vocational agriculture all the way. I was part of an amazing high school FFA team–we competed in nursery landscape contests across the state and even made our way to nationals in Kansas City.

The FFA jacket I wore last Friday prominently featured the name of my high school, a neighboring school district to the one in which I now teach. As I was sharing stories of high school and college, one of my current students reminded me, "Ms. Johnson, my grandpa was your high school biology teacher!" Sure enough, which meant that my teacher-student-teacher relationship with this family now spanned two school districts and several generations! Good, we've got some human drama.

This high school biology teacher, as I described to my class, was a colorful character, a former Marine who was able to do push-ups with one arm while suspending himself between two student desks. He brewed coffee in his science prep room and gave us worms to dissect. He retired with the graduating class: the students proclaimed him the "Senior senior."

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Inappropriate Jokes and Student Teacher Evaluation

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Education, Professional Development
by Maren Johnson

I had an outstanding student teacher this year. It was a positive experience for both of us: some lucky school in our area will be very fortunate to have her as their new science teacher. Hard working, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable, she makes the future of the teaching profession look bright!

We don't often get student teachers in our school because of our relatively rural location somewhat distant from college or university teacher education programs. When we do get student teachers, they frequently are completing online certification programs. For prospective teachers in rural areas, or for those who move during their education or need to continue working to support themselves, online learning is often the only option. My student teacher completed an accredited online program with a strong presence in our state.

My student teacher excelled in the classroom. Her clinical supervisor, a retired teacher from our area, provided helpful and supportive feedback, and was definitely an asset to the student teacher's development. The online program's student teacher evaluation system, however? More than a little funky.

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Trust, Power, Change and Risk

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Current Affairs, Education, Life in the Classroom, Teacher Leadership

File5172abe3badc9By Mark

Change is hard, and for change to happen, trust is critical.

I've been thinking often about trust lately–sitting in meetings with administrators as they strategize how to build trust within a staff. In meetings at the ESD and with OSPI, I hear about how cultivating a climate of trust is vital for evaluation to produce growth.

Thus, we have more meetings, use surveys to find the root of the distrust. Still, I have bosses I trust more than others. I have colleagues I trust more than others. 

And when I sit and listen to my fellow teachers, they likewise lament situations where they do not trust their administrator or evaluators. As a building union representative, I sit in meetings where we talk about erosion of trust, and that the climate of distrust needs to be fixed. We talk about it, point at it, discuss it, and then leave the table waiting for that trust to somehow repair itself.

If I don't trust my administrator to make good choices, there is an assumption about how that lack of trust is to be remedied: If I don't trust you, the only way for trust to be repaired is for you to change.

Bam. There it is.

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The New 3 R’s

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Education, Life in the Classroom

Stories from School would like to welcome Brian Sites as a guest-contributor to our blog. Brian Sites is an alternative educator and National Board Certified teacher, who has earned recognition at the state and national level for his work helping students achieve their full potential at River's Edge High School in Richland, WA. 

This post is an excerpt of his self-publisehd book "Who's Teaching Who? Stories of hope and lessons learned from my first 10 years of teaching" available in pdf format, and free of charge  at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/284848

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The New 3 Rs:    Relationships
+ Resiliency=
 Results

The original 3 R’s (Rigor, Relevance, Relationships) always made sense
to me, but I felt as though it missed the mark. To me, I saw an underlying
assumption that teachers did not offer enough rigor to their students, and that
teachers were clueless about how to teach in ways that make content relevant to
the lives of their students. As for relationships…being the third “R” somehow
seemed to diminish its importance, as if by somehow doing the other two very
well, the Relationships will come naturally.

To me, this is entirely backwards! I see Relationships as the cornerstone of good teaching. Building
students’ resiliency is what teachers are supposed to do, but why is it never
discussed? My experience tells me that because it is not easily quantifiable,
and it is not related to specific content areas, resiliency has been banished
from our pedagogical vocabulary.

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Failing at Education Funding

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

The McCleary ruling, which established that the Washington legislature was not adequately funding public education, is popping up in the news again. When the ruling was first issued at the Washington State Supreme Court ordered the legislature to remedy the ed funding debacle, I worried that it was just lip service with no teeth. 

Recent news makes me optimistic that people are paying attention, though my worries still persist. The 2018 deadline is now a year closer than it was when first established, and it is hard to really point at "progress." The court has now said that it wants "yearly reports that 'demonstrate steady progress.'" (Sound familiar?) See the latter part of this article for a "clarification" about what this expectation from the courts might mean, and here's the link to the actual Supreme Court Order dated 20 December 2012. I particularly like this paragraph from page three of the court order:

In education, student progress is measured by yearly benchmarks according to essential academic goals and requirements. The State should expect no less of itself than of its students. Requiring the legislature to meet periodic benchmarks does not interfere with its prerogative to enact the reforms it believes best serve Washington's education system. To the contrary, legislative benchmarks help guide judicial review. We cannot wait until "graduation" in 2018 to determine if the State has met minimum constitutional standards. 

I've learned to not read the comments under any online news report about teachers, education or policy–there's no dialogue there, and too often the perpetuation of incorrect information. I used to whack-a-mole the trolls, but it was futile. Perhaps StoriesfromSchool can be a place for reasoned and thoughtful discourse about this issue.

Should I sharpen up my Teaching Points?

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Education, Life in the Classroom, Science



by Maren Johnson
Sharp pencil

In my district, we adopted a new framework for teacher
evaluation, UW CEL, and I learned a new phrase: Teaching point.  What's that,
you ask?  Learning target, learning goal,
performance expectation, lesson objective, power standard: while they each have
an important nuance of meaning, they all refer to what students should
understand or be able to do by the end of a certain period of time.

Posting those learning targets every day so they are visible
to all?  Yeah, I've never done that, for
a variety of reasons.  However, I have
repeatedly heard that all three frameworks in our state are based on research, and
hey, I want my students to learn, so when I read in our district’s framework
rubric about daily posting as one possible way of communicating learning targets,
I figured–I'm game, I'll give it a try—and I have been posting these in class
for the last two weeks.

I shared what I was doing with a fellow teacher—and we had a
very animated discussion (raised voices in the copy room!) about the pros and
cons of posting learning targets and how this might or might not fit into
teacher evaluation.  I will say I put
some thought into how and when during my lessons I was going to post these targets
and discuss them with the students.  I knew that for many lessons, about the
last thing that would be helpful would be to have a posted learning target at
the beginning of a lesson. 

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The Time to Do the Right Work

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, National Board Certification, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

Ship in a bottleAs a writing teacher, one of my greatest struggles involves getting kids to understand the writing process. Writing can be frustrating, arduous work. Understandably, then, when a kid puts the last period on the last sentence in the last paragraph, the impulse then is to put down the pen or click "print" and pass that piece on to the teacher.

As adults, we know that the last period is not the finish line, and that often the toughest work begins when the writing is "finished." The act of meaningful revision–the analysis of effectiveness, the cutting and splicing of sentences, the refining of vivid vocabulary–that formidable work often makes the first stages of writing seem simple. We know, though, that the difference between mediocre and exceptional comes with the time invested in revising, polishing, and refining. It is hard work. It is the right work to do, and it takes time. If that work is skimped upon or shirked, the end product will not have achieved its full potential.

When I had the opportunity to present to the Gates Foundation last week, the other presenters and I never met ahead of time to coordinate our message–yet the same point resonated loud and clear: the new evaluation system is the right work to do to improve teaching, schools, and student learning. 

And the corollary to that point: doing this work will take time.

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The Right Work

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, National Board Certification, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

As some of you might have seen on Facebook, this past Thursday, December 6th, I had the privilege and opportunity to offer a short presentation and serve on a discussion panel for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Education Pathways meeting.

IMG_1558In the audience were names attached to some of most important and influential groups in public education in the state of Washington–and beyond, since also present were Ron Thorpe, President and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and Washington's own Andy Coons, who serves as the Chief Operating Officer of NBTPS. Walking into a room with leadership from OSPI, the Gates Foundation, the Association of Washington School Principals, CSTP, and numerous other organizations, I was quick to feel intimidated. After all, my main thought during my drive to Seattle was about whether my ninth graders were behaving for the sub–nothing quite so heady as the future of statewide policy.

My comfort zone is much more intimate with much clearer roles: When I walk into my own classroom, I am the expert, I am the authority. It's not that I wield power like a tyrant over my domain, but to those fourteen- and fifteen-year olds, I am the voice they are to listen to, heed, seek for advice, and learn from. I am the teacher: what I have to say matters.

In my eleven years of teaching, as I've ventured little by little into the world of education policy, there are many times when I find myself in a room filled with nicely pressed suits (and me wearing my one pair of decent slacks) feeling just the opposite way as I do in front of my classroom. I think to myself: I am just a teacher. Will what I say matter?

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Hey, Ms. Johnson, Do you need a letter too?

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Education, Education Policy

Smart cards

By Maren Johnson

When I miss school for a professional reason, I like to briefly explain to my students why I will be gone—I want my students to know I do not take being absent from their class lightly.  Before attending a recent training on our new teacher evaluation system, I told my chemistry students a bit about what I was going to be doing.  I even showed them our colorful UW CEL instructional framework “Smart Card”—hey, it’s a little like the Periodic Table of Teaching! 

Just before this, one of my senior students had asked me for a letter of recommendation.  I have had this student in class for several years and would be happy to write one. Before I was going to be absent, I explained to the class the new teacher evaluation system as involving observations as well as teachers gathering and submitting evidence.  Clearly, the student who had just asked me for a letter of recommendation was listening.  He leaned back, raised his hand, and said with a big grin, “Ms. Johnson, do you need a recommendation letter for your evaluation too?  Let’s talk about this—maybe we can work something out!”

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