Category Archives: Life in the Classroom

Banned Books Week

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Books, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Parent Involvment

Source: American Library Association (click for source site) By Mark

It is one of my favorite times of year… Banned Books Week is September 25th through October 2nd. The American Library Association (click on the photo to go to their site) promotes the freedom of choice by encouraging libraries across the nation to celebrate every American's right to choose not to read controversial books.

Notice that I didn't emphasize "every American's right to choose what they read." When I consider the titles which have been challenged or banned over the years, what I see is not just the loss of a choice to read a book but the loss of the choice to not read. There is a reason I haven't read Mein Kampf and haven't watched Natural Born Killers. These are not the same reasons I choose not to read Twilight or watch, well, Twilight, but the fact is that I have the right to choose not to consume these texts. That decision was not made for me. Sure, I agree that every student's parents have the right to say that a text is not appropriate for their kid and ask for an alternative if a text is assigned in a class. 

But, there are only two parents who have the right to say what text is not appropriate for my kid.

Appropriately, this year's theme for Banned Books Week is "Think for yourself and let others do the same."

It's particularly fun this year that Banned Books Week corresponds with my teaching of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Down on the farm, literacy is wielded like a weapon. Those who are literate easily overpower those who are illiterate, essentially enslaving them by controlling information (hello FoxNews). A great Orwellian theme, and one to which we ought always pay close attention.


As a side note: There's a very intriguing interactive map at the ALA press-kit site which uses Googlemaps to tag exemplars of challenged or banned books. Some of the titles and reasons are rather surprising.

Classroom Management: Fear vs. Understanding

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Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment

Gman By Mark

I have a three-year-old son at home who is that child whose behavior is my karmic payback for the times I mouthed off to my parents. He's a boundary-tester and an eye-lash-batting innocent cherub for whom consequences like time out and taking away of toys have no influence on behavior. Though I regret it, there have been times when the worst of me has come out, and this 32-year-old ends up shouting at that 3-year-old.

And then he cries and cries and I feel horribly guilty.

But usually it changes his behavior, at least for a while. The same results cannot be said for a stint in time-out.

I was venting my frustrations to my dad this last fourth of July when he mentioned that behavior changes only result from one of two things: fear or understanding. I don't know if he discovered this on his own or if he learned this from some workshop, but it rings very true. My dad is a well-respected educator who taught for over three decades, served in the military, and has even volunteered in prisons to teach math to inmates. He made me realize that if I want to influence my toddler's behavior, I should aim for understanding. My son needs to understand why it's not okay to punch his brother or jump off the dining room table. Sometimes a lesson is learned the hard way (he hasn't leapt off the back of the couch even once since that trip to the ER with bashed-in teeth) but there are many other lessons I'm having a hard time teaching him simply because there are a lot of things a three-year-old just isn't capable of understanding yet.

There are obvious analogies to teaching. 

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Kicking the Tires

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom | , , ,

Untitled By Kristin

Buy this car.  I'm serious.  Come on.  This car has been around a long time.  It has proven its worth.  It deserves to be on the road and anyway, the rules are that you can't buy another car until this one is purchased.

I wouldn't buy the car in the photo.  I don't have the time and money to make it queen of the road, and I don't need test results to know that.  Unfortunately, because we can't seem to design a better system of teacher evaluations than seniority, this "you have to take it" policy is what many buildings face when they have a position to fill. 

The system is faulty, and districts and their communities are trying to fix it by placing more weight on student test scores.  We don't need test scores to identify ineffective teachers, we just need to make it easy for administrators to evaluate their staff.  I think it can be easy, and measurable, because you can kick a teacher's tires, so to speak.

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One Thing

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Education, Life in the Classroom

D4ekuF I'm gearing up. I know some of you are already back in the classroom, but I'm still two weeks from first period English 9. This will be year nine for me, and past summers about this time I'd be shopping for school supplies and focusing on what kinds of posters to put up and how to organize my classrooms. However, all that external preparation is no where near as important as the internal preparation.

Now is the time for reflection: examination of what has worked in the past, what to reframe, and what to roundfile. 

In much of the reading I've done about effective teaching and impacting student learning, again and again I see reference to one of the trait of an effective educator: the thoughtful and purposeful examination of one's own practice in order to develop oneself as a practitioner. Again and again, I hear about this internally driven introspection as "the most valuable professional development." I'll keep that in mind as I sit in staff meetings and trainings all next week.

For me, my one thing to do is the writing goal activity I did last year with my kids' short writing samples. Instead of becoming a teacher-turned-proofreading-service, with my feedback on each short writing sample I gave the kids two or three specific individualized writing goals. Then, in the next sample, they had to explain how they addressed those specific goals and improved their own writing. It made for quick turnaround, very meaningful feedback and very rapid progress in their writing.

As for what I vow to never do again: I tried this twist on creative writing and writing workshop. I don't want to say it went down in flames, but let's just say that there's not enough wreckage to piece it back together and if I do creative writing workshop again I'll be starting with factory-fresh parts and expert advice.

Think back to last year. What one thing did you do last year that you feel is most important to do again in order to teach effectively? Or, conversely, what one thing did you do last year that you vow to never do again?

My “Paid Vacation”

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Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment

DSCN2569 copy copy

I’m going to lay all the cards on the table: summer was about 95% of the reason I decided to pursue a job in teaching. The other 5% was that I was earning a BA degree in English literature and that’s not a particularly high-demand field in 2001. I can go on and on about how I care about kids and love seeing them learn and grow. Yes, that’s true, and while that’s the reason I stay in the job it has less to do with my choice to become a teacher than most other young teachers will admit.

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And How Did I Do?

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

To steal from Tom’s post a few days ago, I too wonder “How I did” this school year. Since my evaluation was likewise “satisfactory,” I thought I’d consider the question how a state government might: through test scores.

Colorado has joined with a few other states (Florida and New York are among those with plans in motion) to tie a teacher’s continued employment directly to test scores. It appears that student test scores must comprise “at least fifty percent” of the evaluative criteria for teacher tenure and retention. If improvement is not sustained, a teacher can lose tenure and risks being fired. That would certainly align with an “unsatisfactory” review…potentially sparked by poor test scores. 

As I read the article, it stated clearly the bill calls for teachers to demonstrate student growth. I’m not familiar with the Colorado assessment system, and a half hour of wading through the web didn’t net me many answers. I’m a skeptic of that word growth, however. Something tells me we’re not talking about a preassessment in September and a postassessment in June, which is the only kind of assessment of growth I’d feel comfortable tying to teacher pay and continued employment. The old argument of comparing apples to apples is key. If we’re comparing apples to oranges, then ready the court for appeals.*

In a once-a-year test situation, how can growth be assessed? Let’s trace it out and play the how I did game by considering my students’ performance on the recent High School Proficiency Exams (HSPE) in reading and writing and previous years’ Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) tests.

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Tech Guru, Tech Skeptic

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Assessment, Education, Games, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Web/Tech, Weblogs

Ibm_pc-jr  By Mark

I've inadvertently, and inexplicably, become a guru of sorts. I sometimes feel like I barely have myself figured out–but nonetheless, my willingness to experiment with technology and use it in my instruction has led other to seek me out for advice. The dirty little secret? Most the time those confident answers I offer are simply my willingness to offer conjecture and speak it with authority–I have no special training to back it up other than the time I spend on my own just playing with these "cool toys." 

The dirtier little secret? When it comes to incorporating technology into the classroom, I may be computer savvy and a digital native, but more than that I'm a technology skeptic.

Too often, when I see technology for the classroom, I only see ways to go the long way about accomplishing a goal which could have reasonably been accomplished "the old-fashioned way." (Full disclosure: I'm a 31-year-old education blogger who came of age with the internet…so I may be entering my curmudgeonly years a little early.)  

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The Inevitable Cuts

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Current Affairs, Education, Games, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues

G4ZHay  By Mark

So let's face reality. Something's got to give. 'Tis the season of budget cuts.

We can rail all we want against the flawed system of funding for public education–we can complain about cutting this and that and those as well–but there comes a point that tough decisions must be made.

I recall last year Washington Governor Christine Gregoire posted a website with the bold challenge "You Balance the Budget," where she openly shared the state's budget and the state's needs and challenged the taxpayers to find a solution. I don't have that audacious a charge, but I do have a question:

Since we have to cut somewhere, let's be solution-oriented: What can schools afford to cut?

Go ahead and say "nothing," and then rejoin us in the real world. Since sacrifices must be made, let's line up the lambs. What do you suggest should be first to go when it is time for schools to cut spending? How do you suggest that schools prioritize what stays, what goes, what is sustained and what is starved?

Basic Addition

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Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Mathematics

Z9sk1r  By Mark

I'm lucky that my 5-year-old son comes to work with me each day. His preschool is housed in the high school where I teach 9th and 10th grade. In fact, his classroom is literally across the hall from my 6th period and just around the corner from the room where I teach the rest of the day.

Not long ago, I went in to visit him and his peers during my plan period. He and his little buddies were sitting around a table doing a math worksheet. Two frogs on lily pads plus five frogs on lily pads makes a total of seven. Three frogs jump off and you're left with four. Good stuff for pre-K. Sure, an occasional finger was employed in these basic mathematical operations, but for the most part this computation was quick, confident, and alarmingly accurate for a bunch of pre-K-ers. 

I listened as the little folks' conversations about math escalated until those little five-year-olds were adding and subtracting frogs accurately up in to double digits, and I kid you not, I heard one boy talk to another about the "pattern" he saw that the numbers repeated, and yes, he used the word "pattern." He pointed out that if he added three to nine it made 12, and if he added three to NINEteen, it made 22, and if he added three to twenty-NINE if made 32. Good stuff…not every 5-year-old will get that, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that every 15-year-old should.

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Dear John

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Life in the Classroom

MotorcycleI know that the banner across the top of our blog reads teacher leaders tell stories about how policy decisions impact learning and teaching in their classrooms. I freely admit that this post strays from our purpose more than a little and I hope my fellow bloggers will get us back on track with their next posts. So I digress:

My second year teaching, I somehow earned the reputation that I could handle the "tougher" kids. Perhaps I was (still am) naive to interpret this as a compliment of my classroom management, strategies, and dedication to respecting every student–nonetheless, I've had a number of my most favorite students enter my classroom "on conditions." Sometimes they've bounced through other teachers with whom they butted heads, sometimes they've failed other classes and it was time to try my teaching style on for fit.

By no means do I claim to work magic–but sometimes things just work well. This was the case with the young man who I am thinking about tonight. His freshman year, he was placed in my class part way through the school year, because the counselors had a feeling that we might get along. And he is one of those kids who I knew, from the time I met him, that I'd always remember.

First of all, the kid never stopped smiling. He'd spot me through the crowded halls or locker bays and wave up high, shouting hello with his huge smile, bright enough to outshine everything else. And you only needed to be around him a minute or two to know how passionate he was about riding dirtbikes. 

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