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.

By Tom

Last session!

Today began early – for me at least – with breakfast and a morning session. I led a discussion on blogging with about 20 attendees. After a second round of “networking” we all convened in the large room for the closing session.

It began with Jeanne Harmon giving the context and background for NBCT support in our state. She was there from the get-go and has played a huge role in the growth of Washington’s Accomplished Teacher community.

After Jeanne’s talk, we got up and shared our strengths – a certain skill we bring to the leadership table.

After that, Nasue Nishida, Executive Director of CSTP,  explained the process whereby attendees could apply for leadership grants; a chance to have their leadership ideas funded and put into play.

Next we had the traditional “Pinning Ceremony.” From the first time we had this conference, all new NBCTs receive a National Board pin from another NBCT. It’s a fun way to welcome them into the Accomplished Teacher community.

Then it was lunch, followed by closing comments by Gunnar Guttormsen. Gunnar is an NBCT from the Kelso area. He spoke of his own journey: becoming a teacher, an NBCT and now an administrator.

I’ve gone to this conference every single year and I always leave energized and motivated. There’s a certain energy that comes from a room full of amazing teachers, all of whom are focused on the same thing: making Washington’s education system the best it can possibly be for our students.

By Tom

First breakout session: Navigating the Systems of STEM, by Al Gonzalez, who teaches middle school in Chimacum, Washington. He’s what you might call a “Techie.”

He began the session by pointing out the fact that most adults now travel to events like this conference with more than one internet-compatible device.

Al acknowledged that teachers are overwhelmed right now, but asserts that a lot of what we do overlaps with other stuff. (Think TPEP and Common Core) He also encouraged us to use technology to ask for help, in particular; places like Yahoo Groups. He uses practically every conceivable form of social media to connect with his students, their parents and other teachers. Technology, of course, can be fickle. To wit: most of the activities Al had planned were based on-lined; yet the room had limited connectivity. Fortunately, Al had plenty of “Plan Bs.”

Al talked about “branding.” Teachers need to establish and maintain their digital identity. We need to think about how we look when someone googles our name. Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest are a part of our “brand.”

Another aspect of technology is “curating.” Curating refers to the collecting and rendering of the vast amount of information that’s out there. His favorite collecting tool is something called “Feedly.” which he uses to collect information from a vast amount of teacher bogs and other sources.

Al spent some time talking about advocacy. Starting at the classroom level, he invites legislators into his room to co-teach or just visit. And then he blogs about it. At the district level, he makes sure that school board members, as well as the superintendent, know what’s going on in his classroom. He videotapes a lot and posts on YouTube, showing what his students are doing in his room. We had a nice discussion of various platforms for displaying student learning on-line.

The last thing Al discussed was grant writing. His best advice is to contact district administrators and have them forward grant proposals his way. He reasons that grants proposed to teachers are going to be exponentially more competitive, since there are so many teachers. Administrators, on the other hand, are less numerous; the grants they have access to are therefore less competitive. He’s raised nearly $300,000 by writing grants, most of which went directly into his own classroom.

This was a fun session. All is obviously way farther down the road than most of us in terms of implementing technology into his classroom.

By Tom

For the next 24 hours I will be “live blogging” from the 2014 Teacher Leadership Conference at the beautiful Skamania Lodge along the Columbia River about 40 miles east of Vancouver, WA.

CSTP has held this conference every year for the past decade or so. The goal is to welcome new (or old, actually) NBCTs into the Accomplished Teacher community of Washington State and develop their interest in, and capacity for, teacher leadership. Like with most conferences, there’s a combination of whole-group sessions and breakout sessions. And lots of food.

I’ve been lucky to be involved in every one of these conferences since it started, mostly as a presenter, but also as a participant.

This year I’ll also be blogging live from the conference. I’ll try to attend as many sessions as possible and post what I see and hear. Look for frequent updates over the weekend!

By Tom White

Regular readers of this blog might get the impression that we’re a bunch of unhappy teachers. After all, much of what we write about deals with our concerns for the teaching professional and our complaints about some of the policies that shape the world in which we work. And it’s true! We do have concerns and we do have complaints. However, I think I speak for the whole writing team when I say that despite my concerns and complaints, I overwhelmingly love this job!

I love the people I work with. I’m not talking about the other teachers, although they’re great people; I’m talking about the kids with whom I spend most of my time. Fourth graders have such an infectious sense of joy and innocence that for seven hours every weekday you would never know that there were any problems in West Africa, Eastern Europe or North St. Louis. Fourth graders are open and honest; they laugh when they’re happy, cry when they’re hurt and skip when they’re supposed to walk. I wish we could all be like fourth graders, but we can’t, so I’ll take the next best thing.

I love the fact that society trusts me to do something so important. There are 27 families that send their kids to my classroom every day, confident that I’ll consistently keep them safe and get them ready for a successful future. Thirty years ago, when I was first starting, that overwhelming responsibility kept me up at night. Now it just keeps me busy during the day. Really busy. I get up every morning, eager to get to work and come home every night exhausted but happy with what I’ve done.

I love the extra stuff. Starting about fifteen years ago, I realized that there were opportunities for teachers to extend their skills and knowledge beyond the classroom. So I began doing extra stuff. The hardest part – for me, anyway – was letting go of my classroom every once in a while. But I finally realized that with clear lesson plans in the hands of a decent substitute, things will be just fine without me. And any problems that occur are more than offset by insuring that teachers have a voice in the profession. Extra stuff can be fun. Although I’ve never done anything outside the classroom that was as fun or as important as teaching, I’ve met some wonderful people and traveled all over the country working on interesting and important projects.

So don’t get the wrong idea from our blog. Yes, we have concerns and yes, we’ll have complaints. But we still love what we do.

By Tom White

Last week my school district sent out letters to every family in our school, informing them that our school is failing. This week we learned that fourteen of our students will be going to a different school. One that isn’t failing.

I can’t tell you how upsetting this is. I have worked at Lynnwood Elementary for the past 25 years and it’s become part of my soul. I have worked with an entire generation of that neighborhood and now I’m beginning to work with the children of former students. In fact, one of my former students is now a teacher at my school. We have nearly 600 wonderful, diverse students from all over the world, taught by a faculty of bright, caring professionals, dedicated to their work. Although we have plenty of room for improvement, ours is not a failing school by any stretch of the imagination.

To be told by someone in Washington DC who has never set foot in my school that we’re failing is about the most ridiculous characterization I can think of. We’re not alone, of course; over 90% of the schools in our state are “failing.”

Here’s why:

In 2002 George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into law. This was a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which previously gave states and districts block grants with which they could fund special education and other programs designed for at-risk students. NCLB was supposed to make schools more accountable for student learning; they had to make steady progress over the course of the next twelve years, culminating in 2014 – last year – at which point every kid in every school in America was supposed to be performing at grade level or risk sanctions.

That goal, of course, was preposterous. When President Obama took office there was some talk about rewriting the law so that it made sense. That talk didn’t go anywhere. Consequently, the Obama administration decided to use the threat of NCLB and its sanctions as leverage for certain education reforms by granting “waivers” from the law to those states that complied. One of those reforms was the use of student test scores as part of teacher evaluations.

The Washington State Legislature decided not to go along with that particular “reform.” So the feds revoked our waiver, which means that we’re still bound by NCLB. And since it’s now 2014 and since some of our kids failed to meet standard on the last standardized test, our school is classified as “failing.”

What makes this particularly stupid in the case of our school is that the scores used are actually two years old; we piloted the new SBAC last year (tied to the Common Core) and therefore our scores weren’t even recorded.

So here we are. The letters went out, parents read them and some decided to pull their kids out of our school and have them bused – at the school district’s expense – to the nearest “not failing” school.

What happens next? I can think of five possibilities, presented in the order of least likelihood:

1. Congress rewrites NCLB/ESEA so that it makes sense and actually serves at-risk students by providing financial support to their schools. This is obviously the best solution. It’s also the least likely to happen.

2. Every student suddenly performs at grade level. This is, of course, also highly unlikely. The only reason I didn’t put it first is because our students, their parents and their teachers are at least trying to make it happen, whereas the people charged with rewriting NCLB/ESEA aren’t.

3. The Federal Department of Education decides they’ve made their point and reinstates Washington State’s waiver. There’s actually been movement in this direction, but I get the sense that they’ve chosen to make an example of our state, especially because of the role that our teacher’s union played in swaying the legislature. But it could happen.

4. Our legislature decides to change our teacher evaluation system to include student test scores. Although the WEA will put up a strong fight, this could also actually happen. Our evaluation system won’t be as accurate or as meaningful as it is now, but at least we’ll be waived of NCLB’s sanctions. 

5. Nothing. This is probably what will happen. Congress won’t act. Our students will improve, but they won’t all pass their state tests. The feds won’t back down. Our legislature won’t change the evaluation system.

And my school will still be “failing.” 

Eight Washington teacher-leaders, including Stories from School writers Kristin, Mark and Tom, participated in a project to explore what it looks like when student growth policy translates into real-world classrooms.

Click here to take a look!

By Mark

In my near-decade as a building union representative, I have worked with several staff members in need of support. They were struggling in one way or another, and their supervisor was recognizing that this was impacting student learning. Some of these teachers were "tenured" (though that's the wrong term, the real term is "on a continuing contract") and some were not. None were fired. All chose to leave on their own accord.

Should my school have been faulted for not firing them outright at the first inkling of trouble? Was it wrong that we gave them between a few months to a whole school year to try to improve their performance?

As I read what is going on California (where a judge has declared their "teacher tenure" policies unconstitutional and a dire threat to the well-being of students) I am truly torn. On one hand, I could name a couple of teachers I've met in my career who would have been dropped like a hot potato had their administrator not wanted to engage in the contractually agreed upon due process for termination. On the other hand, I've also known a few less-competent supervisors who would use the power to fire at will to advance an agenda that may not be best for kids. Like every other issue in education, it is more complex than the sound-bytes from each side. It is not as simple as the union protecting bad teachers or lawyers advocating for students. 

David B. Cohen at InterACT, a group blog for accomplished California teachers offers an initial reaction that I think is worth the read. One point I can agree with him on above all: we're focusing on the wrong thing. If that judge wants to remedy something that is a dire threat to the well-being of students, start with adequate funding and infrastructure, not scapegoating teachers.

The parallels to Washington, to me, are obvious: TPEP, McCleary… And our constant need to remind the public that teachers are not un-firable once they leave provisional status after three years–while under provisional status, no due process is required and no reason must be given unless part of local CBAs. Once in continuing status, all teachers are guaranteed is due process. Tenure, the guarantee of permanent employment, does not exist in the way people think it does.

This piece from NBCT Kareen Borders was originally posted on the Ready Washington Coalition’s blog, and available here. It is reposted with the Coalition and the author’s permission.

Why did the states create the Common Core State Standards?  

We are preparing our students to compete in a world that is different than ours, and education needs to be responsive to this.  The bottom line is that my middle school science students need to be ready for college, career and life.  Right now, 80% of entering college freshmen are not prepared academically for first-year courses, according to ACT, and the United States spends an estimated $3 billion a year on college remediation, according to Complete College America. 

Does this mean that as a teacher, I wasn’t doing a good job or didn’t have high goals before? 

Unequivocally, the answer is no.  Teachers have been doing and continue to do a great job.  I see Common Core as an exciting shift that will finally put standards into place that aren’t full of education-ese; standards that will allow me to be innovative in helping my students to reach these goals. Clear goals, rather than long and vague goals about what students need to know and be able to do are long overdue.  And what I especially like: CCSS get teachers out of the test-prep business in their classrooms and frees up teachers to provide opportunities for richer learning and mastery of increasingly difficult problems and texts. So, I can concentrate on the work of preparing my students for college, career, and life.  Will it be hard work?  Yes. Teachers are ready to take on this hard work.  Major shifts in instruction are already happening in thousands of classrooms.

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