The following entry is a guest-post from Jeff Charbonneau, 2013 National Teacher of the Year, 2013 Washington State Teacher, NBCT, and Chemistry, Physics and Engineering Teacher from Zillah HS. 

***********************************************************************************************************

What will this year
hold?

For me and so many other teachers, the start of the school
year is a magical time filled with energy, new plans, ideas, and instructional
strategies.

A great many of us have spent the summer reading up on a
vast array of educational trends. 
Ranging from flipped classrooms to keeping cursive in the schools, we
have been knee deep in professional communities, conferences and followed
#edchat tweets until late into the nights.

With all these new tools hanging from our belts, I have to
ask, what will be different this year?

My hope is that this year will be the year that (among many,
many other things):

1.  We maintain an emphasis that education goals
are more important than the tools.

Don’t get me wrong, as a STEM
teacher who uses a smart phone, tablet, laptop, and a traditional pc daily (if
not all in the same hour), I strongly advocate for tech tools to help improve
instruction.  However, there are
times when paper and pencil are simply the best tools for the job. The past few
years there has been a trend to value tech integration for the sake of
technology integration.  However,
the tools are not the goal!

We, as a community of educators,
need to ensure that the tools we employ are used to improve learning.
Certainly technology can do that. 
However, I have seen far too many purchase technology and then try to
make it work; rather than determining the learning goals first, followed by
selecting the right tool (tech or non) for the job. 

I am an early adopter of technology
in both my personal and professional life, but sometimes there is nothing
better than paper and pencil.

Pick the goal before the tool!

2. We celebrate and communicate the success of
our students and staff.

 As a profession, we do an excellent job at
pointing out issues and problems within our system.  I do not deny these issues; they are
real and it is vital that we improve in several areas if we are going to meet
the needs of all of our students.

However, if we are to move forward, we must be willing to acknowledge the
successes that are all around us!

When one of my physics students incorrectly
answers a problem, I do not label them as failures, publicly ridicule, or place
blame. Instead I look for what that student did correctly, then help them to
understand the key places for improvement and work side by side in order to
help them succeed. 

As teachers, we know how to motivate our
students, let’s do the same with our profession.

Let’s make a conscious decision to showcase
the abilities and the progress that our students are making.

I fully admit that we have our problems, and
we need to continue to identify and communicate them with our parents and
community at large.  All I am
asking is that we put the same effort into identifying and sharing our success
too!

Now it’s your turn, as a teacher, what will you do to make
this year personally and professionally exceptional? 

By Tom

I’m heading back to the classroom tomorrow for the thirtieth
time. Although I’m not big on looking back, it’s hard not to notice the numbers
that end in zeros. When I started we were still using ditto machines. The
school secretary (not office manager) and the principal were the only people
with telephones. Computers? Our whole staff shared one IBM Selectric.
We also had real chalkboards, real chalk and reel-to-reel film projectors.

Although my own teaching has evolved, I’m pretty sure the
1984 Tom would recognize the older guy. I’m still strict, I’m still structured
and I still write out every lesson plan. I’m also still learning how to do this
amazingly complex job.

And speaking of learning, if I had to pick three experiences
that had the biggest impact on my career and life as a teacher, I would start
with 1993, when my wife and I went on a teaching exchange to Australia. Besides
the weather, the beaches and the kangaroos, what I remember most was the fact
that I went down there with absolutely no materials. I found out what grade I
would be teaching the day before school started. And I did fine. I learned that
teaching isn’t about what you use and what you have in your room; it’s about
the connections you make with the people in that room. It’s not about telling a
kid which page to open to, but it’s about showing that kid what happens when
she opens her mind. A teacher is the person who brings the learning, not the
guy who runs off the papers and assigns the work. I came back home and threw
most of my materials away.

The next big moment came in 1996, when my first son was
born. It was then that I realized exactly what this job is all about. It’s not
that I didn’t already understand how precious and amazing each child is, but it
wasn’t until then that I actually felt it.
Holding that little kid for the first time made me realize what an awesome
responsibility each of us have. And how important it is for a teacher to
connect with the whole family, not just the students.

The third moment came in 2000 when I went through the
process of National Board Certification. Not only was the process itself the
best professional development I’ve ever experienced, but certifying was immensely
validating: I was being told by people who knew what they were talking about
that I actually knew what I was doing. Besides all that, National Board
certification marked the point in my career when I began to reach out and lead
other teachers; a mixed blessing as it turned out, since ever since then I’ve
had to work very hard to prevent leadership activities from impinging on my
true love: teaching.

So now what? I’m thinking twenty more. Seriously. Teaching is
one of the few professions in which you get to take your retirement on the
installment plan. And I’m very good at retiring for about eight weeks at a time. But now it’s time to put the toys away, get the room ready for the kids and get
back to work.

Again.

By Kristin

The last three posts on this blog have responded to the Federal Government's warning that unless Washington uses test data as part of a teacher's evaluations, we no longer meet the waiver requirements for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA or No Child Left Behind).

In no moment of my professional or academic life has one test been used to measure my growth.  The biggest assessments I've sat in my life – the SAT, the GRE, my National Board tests – were used to measure whether or not I was ready for the next step of my career.  

Why are some groups still insisting this is the best way to measure a teacher's impact on student growth?  It is so misguided.

Continue reading →

By Tom

Mark and Maren have both written about the news that
Washington State is in a little trouble for failing to follow the Department of
Education’s guidelines for the use of state tests in teacher evaluations. Here's a small example of how using state tests to evaluate teachers
can have some negative side-effects.

Last spring I was in a meeting with the other fourth grade
teachers in my school, along with our principal and the support staff. We were
planning for this coming year. Our principal made the suggestion that we might
want to place all six students who are on an IEP (Individualized Education
Plan) into the same classroom. The reason was simple: if they were all in the
same room, we could deliver support service more efficiently; the support
teacher could come into the room and help those kids, all of whom would be
working on the same lessons, and she wouldn’t have to coordinate with three
different teachers, who may or may not be focusing on the same learning activities.

It made sense to me, and I volunteered to be the teacher
into whose rooms those six kids would be placed. I was willing to “take one for
the team,” knowing that I would have way more than my share of high-needs
students, each of whom performed poorly on their state tests, but also knowing
that those six kids would have a more relevant support experience and the whole
fourth grade would be better off.

Under Washington State’s current (albeit illegal) teacher
evaluation system, I wouldn’t be penalized for having more than my share of
high-needs students. I’m planning to use a classroom-based reading, math and
writing assessment at three different points throughout the year, and I expect
all of my students to show growth, including those six kids who are on an IEP.
I’m not worried at all about collecting this data and showing it my principal
as part of my evaluation. It makes total sense.

However, should the Department of Education get their way,
forcing Washington State to capitulate to their demands, I would be a fool to
do next year what I did this year. Next year I will be evaluated based in part on
a comparison of the number of my kids who met state standard in third grade
with the number who met standard after a year with me.

And that means that those six kids would compromise my
evaluation. It’s more likely than not that those six kids will lower the
percentage of students in my class that pass the state test. Remember, they
didn’t pass their tests last year, when they were in third grade. This year
they’ll be taking the fourth grade test, which is harder. Even if they make academic
gains, they will be taking a harder test, and more than likely they’ll have some
problems. I don’t say that because I have low expectations of these kids. I say
that because all the data that’s ever been collected shows that kids who struggle
one year tend to struggle the next year.

Under next year’s evaluation system (assuming Washington State
bows down to Washington, DC) it will behoove me and every other teacher to start
the year with the strongest class possible. Think about it: high achievers have
already shown that they learn faster than their peers; that’s how they got to
be high achievers in the first place. On the other hand, low achievers have shown that it takes them more time to learn. Sometimes it takes them more than a year to learn what their classmates learn in a year. And if they start out behind their classmates, they can make a year's worth of progress and still not be at grade level when they take their state tests. 

These are not excuses. This is not the "soft bigotry of low expectations." This is simple cause and effect. When a teacher evaluation system is based on state test scores, those who teach struggling students will suffer unfair consequences.

Which means that this is the last time I take one for the team.

By Tom

I went on-line this week to see how last year’s students did
on last year’s state test and it got me depressed. It’s not that they were low
– my  students did better than the other
fourth graders in my school, my district and the state – but what made me
depressed was who scored low.

I had twenty-eight students last year. Each of them took
three tests: math, reading and writing. Altogether, that’s 84 tests. Of those
84 tests, 23 did not meet standard.

But here’s the part that bothers me: twenty-one of those 23
low scores belong to students who live in what New York Times columnist David
Brooks would call “disorganized households.” These are homes where little or
nothing is done to support what I do at school. Bedtime and meal time is
random, homework is not checked or even acknowledged, school attendance is not
a high priority, reading doesn’t happen, and families don’t regularly attend
evening school activities.

Dysfunctional families are common fodder for TV sit-coms.
Think Arrested Development, Roseanne, etc. But there’s nothing funny about really
growing up in a home in chaos.

Children who grow up in these homes tend to enter
kindergarten behind their peers, and it only gets worse. By the time they get
to high school, many are so far behind and so disillusioned by school that they
simply drop out. When I see them in fourth grade, there’s still hope. So I do
what I can to “light their fires,” to get them excited about school or at least
see the importance of school. And to some extent, I’m successful.

But then I look at the data and see that I can only do so
much.

And that’s the great unspoken truth about American
education. We can talk until we’re blue in the face about teacher quality, and
there’s no denying how important that is. But at some point someone needs to
lay out the cold, hard facts: it is nearly impossible for a child to succeed
academically without the concerted effort of a competent teacher and an
organized, supportive household.

And that’s what depresses me.

By Kristin

I played coed indoor soccer at one point in my pre-mother life and was hastily made keeper so that we could have a (faster, more skilled) guy on the field.

I had to learn to tend goal quickly.  The most important thing, I realized, was to keep my eyes on the ball, not the game.  It's more interesting to watch the game, more terrifying (or reassuring) to watch the clock, and hopeful to watch the score, but the important thing is to know where the ball is.  It doesn't matter where the ball used to be.  What matters is where it is now, and where it's going.  Grading schools is like watching anything but the ball while tending goal.

Continue reading →

By Kristin

There are reasonable concerns with implementing and holding teachers accountable for the Common Core Standards, but I'm still excited about them.  They scaffold backward from where a student needs to be at graduation to what she needs to master in kindergarten, they elminate the crazy inconsistencies we had between the states before, and while they're a little wordy they leave a lot of room for academic creativity in serving the children sitting before each teacher.  Before, our nation's academic standards were like a mall's food court – lots of different options, but few of them really good.

Continue reading →

By Tom

On the last day of school, I gave my fourth graders an extra
recess for the first time all year. At one point, a girl walked up and said, “Mr.
White, what’s your dream?” We talk a lot about dreaming big and working hard to
catch those dreams. It was an interesting question.

I thought of all the dreams I once had: centerfielder, park
ranger, milkman, wide receiver, ophthalmologist, sail maker, ski bum. Those had
all come and gone, some more quickly than others.

Then I thought about some of my colleagues; people with whom
I had come into the teaching profession and many with whom I had gone through
National Board Certification. A lot of those people seem to have “risen up the ranks;” and moved into leadership positions as principals, administrators, instructional
coaches, and things of that ilk.

Then I thought of myself. Here I was, doing the same job I
started doing 29 years ago, and working at the same school for the last
twenty-five years. Was there something wrong with me? Am I not dreaming
anymore?

Actually, no. There’s nothing wrong with me. And I am still
dreaming. I have looked at other options within the education profession. If I
wanted to, I could become a principal, an administrator, a coach, or whatever.
But I don’t want to. I simply prefer to teach than to support those who teach.
Not that there’s anything wrong with those other people. I have nothing but
respect for those who choose to support those of us who teach. They are
important and necessary.

But they aren’t teaching, which is what I want to be doing.

Which is why I looked at that little girl right in the eyes and
answered, “My dream is to teach fourth grade in Lynnwood, Washington.”

“But you’re already doing that.”

Exactly.

By Kristin

Should curriculum be narrowed down until it is comfortable for each student?  Seattle Public Schools recently required Race
and Justice curriculum taught in a senior class at the Center School to be suspended after a student felt “intimidated.” The teacher, Jon
Greenberg, was transferred to Hamilton Middle School after Center School students protested the course restrictions.  While this has been discussed in my district as an issue of academic freedom, I see it as something even more important – as a parent, I see it as other parents deciding what my daughters can and cannot learn about in school, and that deeply concerns me.

Continue reading →

By Tom

The National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) just came
out with a review
of America’s education schools. And it’s caused quite a stir. I spent most of
the first day of my summer vacation sifting through it, and I’ve got several reactions.
But before I get there, a quick word about my own perspective: For the past
eight years, I have served on the Board of Examiners for the National Council
for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). In that capacity I visit two colleges
of education each year, collaborating on a standards-based report, which
eventually leads to the accreditation. (Or, in some cases, doesn’t) NCATE
accreditation isn’t universal; many states require it, although some states –
like Washington – let colleges decide whether or not they want to pursue it. Every
state, however, does have some form of standards-based accreditation for higher ed programs.

Now for the NCTQ review.

Continue reading →