By Kristin    

This article is just fabulous.  Written by an ex-police officer and Marine who now teaches physics, it outlines why teachers deserve more credit than they're getting.

The reason it fits in this post is that Matthew Swope mentions things teachers do that blur the professional boundary between student and teacher.  It's risky to cross that line, but teachers do it every day in order to let a kid know someone cares about him enough to stand by his side even if there's no learning target involved.  Even if it could be seen as inappropriate.

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On my 18^th birthday, I practically sprinted to
the school library to register to vote. I don’t think I was really as excited
about the democratic process as I was about the right of passage it marked. It
happened to be just a few months before a presidential election, and all of a
sudden I started to notice the ads and the news stories and quickly became
aware of how complex voting could be.

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By Tom White

It’s often said that receiving unsolicited advice always
sounds like criticism. That’s unfortunate, since giving unsolicited advice isn’t
usually intended as criticism; it’s usually just one person looking at another
person and articulating where there’s room for improvement. Which, now that I
think about it, is a pretty good definition of criticism.

So it’s in that spirit that I’m about to give advice to the
National Board. Advice that is entirely unsolicited. Keep in mind that I love
the National Board. I love what it stands for and I love what it’s done for the
teaching profession. In fact, other than marriage and fatherhood, National
Board Certification is perhaps the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But
just like marriage and fatherhood, National Board Certification is not quite
perfect.

And they apparently know this. In fact, under their new
leadership, they’ve signaled that big
changes are in the works; changes that will hopefully make the National Board
more relevant to the current educational landscape, while making the
certification process more accessible to today’s teachers, and without
compromising the high standards that are at their core. So here goes:

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By Kristin

Here's an old fashioned Polar Bear exhibit.  Some effort has been made, but even if you haven't spent much of your life glued to Frozen Planet on the Discovery Channel you instinctively know that this isn't the kind of home a polar bear would choose.  The tire swings and poolette are intended to give the bear some mental and physical stimulation, but I doubt this cage provides a quality of life worthy of such a magnificent creature.  Zoos are getting better, but they still face the challenge of being ambassadors of wild creatures even as they keep the creatures in exhibits that, at best, mimic small parts of an animal's habitat – kind of like trying to design a school that serves the needs of all its students.

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By Tom White

It was a beautiful spring day in the great Pacific
Northwest; my third graders had just spent the morning meeting their pen pals
for the first time. After corresponding with them for eight months, we were at
Edmonds Beach during a really low tide, looking at all sorts of marine
creatures and getting pleasantly muddy. Now we were on the ferry, having lunch
on the sun deck with our new friends as the boat sailed across Puget Sound. We
got to the other side, disembarked and milled around on the dock, planning to
catch the same boat back so we could enjoy some more time at the beach before
returning to school.

That’s where the ferry worker found me. “Are you in charge
of this field trip?” He looked concerned.

“Theoretically,” I said. “Why, is there a problem?”

“Yes. It seems the Edmonds dock has been damaged. They need
a new part to fix it. It’ll take about five hours before we can send another
boat back across. I just thought you should know.”

No conversation about the invisible realities that affect
teachers’ lives would be complete without bringing up field trips. There’s
nothing I hate – and love – more than taking my students out into the world for
some hands-on learning.

They take an incredible amount of time.

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By Kristin

One night at 11:30 the phone rang, waking me up.  It was one of my all-time favorite students and she was sobbing.  At midnight her online application for a desperately needed scholarship was due and the librarian, who had promised to write a letter of recommendation, hadn't done so.  If she sent me the link and password, would I write one?  She wouldn't ask except the librarian wasn't answering her phone.

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To plan a
complete and well-designed lesson takes time. Most of us have 30-40 minutes of
prep time per day, yet teach 6-10 lessons per day (at the primary level). Since
that in-school prep time is also the only chance we have to go to the bathroom,
organize manipulatives, or gather materials, not much lesson planning happens
during the school day. Which means that either we do most of our planning on our
own time, or we don't do it and end up winging it.

We need
community members, administrators, and policy makers to carefully consider
where they want us to focus our efforts. How much time do you want me to spend
preparing lessons for your child?

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By Tom White

Last Monday night, many of us watched the Seattle Seahawks
beat the Green Bay Packers with a controversial touchdown pass. Then we watched
it again, and again and again. It was an interesting play; two “referees” saw
the same thing from pretty much the same angle, but while the guy on the left
saw an interception, the guy on the right saw a touchdown. (See Figure A) The guy on the left then deferred to his colleague and they ruled it a touchdown. It was immediately challenged by the Packers. So the refs went off the field to watch it again and talk about it. Three commercials
and 17 replays later, they came back onto the field and ruled it a touchdown.
Seahawks win, 14 to 12.

Four days later, on Friday morning, the faculty at my school
sat down to watch some very different film. We watched Teachscape videos. Our district is
complying with the new teacher evaluation system by using the Charlotte
Danielson evaluation model, and we’re using Teachscape to support it.
Consequently, we get to spend the majority of our professional development time
watching teaching videos and talking about whether the teaching is
unsatisfactory, basic, proficient or distinguished.

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At curriculum night last week, I parent asked me to share
what a typical day was like for first grade. I felt like the guy in the truck commercial. My mind
flashed to all the things that had happened that day:

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Tamara Mosar

In the state of Washington if you are an English Language
Learner in-country for less than three years you cannot be considered for
special education services. Unless there is written documentation (key word
there being written)of special education services having been received in the
country of origin or if qualifying tests can be administered in the student’s native
language. There is very good reason for this: English Language Learners often seem
slow to make progress in comparison to their grade level peers. They often
display behaviors inappropriate to the classroom: refusing to answer questions
or make eye contact, hiding under desks, violating other student’s personal
space. All of which should be expected from students not yet able to
communicate in English, who come from cultures where eye contact with adults is
not acceptable, have a different definition of personal space, and often have
post traumatic stress syndrome. So the policy is there to attempt to recognize
this reality for ELLs. To give them time to acquire language and acclimate to
our culture, rather than write them off as SPED.

However the policy can backfire. For example I have a student from Bhutan who in infancy was relinquished by her mother to another family in order to keep her from starving to death like two older siblings. Severely malnourished, this child was taken by the new family to a Nepali refugee camp where after care from camp doctors,the adoptive family notes significant developmental delays. Eventually, according to the family, the camp school places this child in special education courses. When the family arrives in the U.S. the child is placed into an age appropriate grade per policy. Parents alert school personnel to the child's history, request grade level retention, and special education services.  ELD and Special Ed staff attempt to start the identification process but hit a dead end because there are no written records from the refugee camp school-just the parent’s word- that
the student received special education services, and there is no Nepali version of the qualifying tests. Policy regarding qualifying ELLs for special ed apparently cannot take ancdotal evidence from parents in place of written documentation or test in the primary language. Thus, the child was left with only ELD services much to the consternation of the family. 

I now have this student in middle school. A notoriously difficult time to qualify even an English speaking student for SPED services. Especially as this child is studious and compliant-you know, the kid who quietly fails. We may be able to squeak in through a Health Impairment qualification because we still can't get around the primary language testing issue. But it will take time. Time we are running out of. And this is how well meaning policy quietly fails.