By Tamara

WELPA, MSP, MAP…. What I used to think of as second semester (or even spring) has now become in my mind “Alphabet Soup Season”. It is also when my instructional year is put on hold for seven weeks. For the next four weeks my “teaching” day will consist of nothing but proctoring the annual language proficiency test. It takes four weeks because I have sixty-eight students in seven grade levels to test in four sub-sets: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking (which is one-on-one with each student). Then in late April (as we all know) instruction crashes to a halt again for MSP. I don’t think losing seven weeks of instruction (more, really, when you factor in MAP) was what the feds had in mind when they crafted the assessment requirements for NCLB.

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By Tom

Well, now that National School Choice Week is behind us, maybe we can use this week to discuss a related topic; one that hasn’t come up yet on this blog: teacher choice. It’s one thing to choose a school, but once there, most parents have relatively little say in regards to who actually teaches their child.

It’s as if you and your honey spent an hour deciding on a Valentine’s Day restaurant. Then, when you get there, it’s “Welcome to Beth’s Café. You’ll have the patty melt. We hope you’ll enjoy it.”

Let me just say from the get-go that I’m ambiguous on this topic. I’m ambiguous because I'm both a parent and a teacher.

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By Mark

If you were not aware already, the way we teachers are going to be evaluated in the state of Washington is undergoing change. (I've mentioned it here at SfS twice before: first here, and then a follow up here.)

After a recent staff meeting, the WEA teaching staff in my building was asked to cast a vote between one of two options for "frameworks" upon which our future evaluations would be based in our district. Because people have heard I've been involved with a TPEP workgroup, every few steps I took after the meeting, someone said to me "just tell me, which one should I vote for?"

With all due respect to my colleauges, who I love and I know were horribly over-worked having just finished the frantic rush of sleepless nights that is semester finals, this very question is a symptom of a critical problem I think many teachers face.

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By Mark

Caretaker, keeper, steward, guardian. One who protects, maintains, facilitates. Teachers are custodians of our children and thus our future. I strive to be a good custodian.

Someone else who strives to be a good custodian–a true caretaker, guardian, and steward–is the woman who I pass most days after school as she pushes her cart down my hallway. Of course, she is my building's janitor–a custodian by all the definitions. 

So I came into school Tuesday morning to a note on my desk from my custodian.

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By Tamara

With levy renewal votes on the horizon for many of
Washington’s districts I’ve been thinking a lot about what an education worth
paying for should look like. I think we
can all agree a solid grasp of fundamental skills in reading and math should be
a non-negotiable outcome. Followed by the ability to form, support, and articulate
an argument whether spoken or written. Art, music, physical education, and
technological literacy each play critical roles in the development of those
skills. As a bookend, adequate time
within the working day for teachers to plan and collaborate on lessons should
also be non-negotiable. That is the core of an education I want for my own
children and one I would support monetarily beyond taxes.

Yet I find myself in an uncomfortable position as a teacher
with a “backstage view” of how resources are allocated. When I witness my district
making new curriculum adoption with all its attending professional development
year after year (especially this year with the full knowledge Common Core is
coming) as a taxpayer, I feel short-changed. When I know first- hand that
developing proficiency with new curriculum and assessments takes time, as a
parent I worry my children are not getting the quality instruction their teachers
are capable of if not having to adjust to yet another adoption. Those are the biggies. But I also find myself
thinking , “Really, we are paying for children to spend twenty minutes reading
with a “Reading Rover” dog because a dog
is so much better at imparting literacy skills?” and “Really, we need five certificated
staff to proctor MAP to twenty-six
students for two hours out of the instructional day?” We have an entire room
full of class sets of books that we actually hired a “volunteer” to organize
but that no one has used in classroom instruction for at least three years. Sure
some of these expenditures are site-based decisions. But whether site-based or
district-wide, this is not how I expect my tax dollars for education to be spent.

So I am on the fence about my local levy. To vote no feels
like cutting off my nose to spite my face. But voting yes feels like a stamp of
approval for resource allocation I cannot as a parent, taxpayer, or educator
support.

By Mark

Here's some data for you.

Between my first and second period English classes, I have 60 students total. Certainly, a reasonable number for a large high school.

At the six-week progress report in October, a whopping 15 of those 60 had A's. Five had F's.

During the months of October, November, December and January, I participated in around 20 one-on-one or wraparound meetings (the latter included other teachers, administrators, counselors along with parent and usually student). Of those, at least half were specifically for the five young'uns earning an F at the October progress check.

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By Kristin

Something's been bugging me lately.  While I support testing to gauge whether a child's where she's supposed to be or not, and I support using that information as one of the many possible measures of a teacher's impact on a child's growth, I am not happy with testing in Washington State. I wish my district and OSPI would get themselves organized.

I'm starting to feel like a 41-year old student driver, a driver who's had her license and been driving professionally for sixteen years now, but who still has an instructor next to her telling her what to do.  To make it worse, while my instructor is telling me to how to steer, park and reverse a car, the test I'll ultimately have to take involves flying a plane.

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By Kristin

Here's a Lincoln Continental.  I had the opportunity to have the entire back seat to myself one long summer drive, going from Atlanta to Miami, and I'm here to tell you that the back seat was bigger than some apartments I've lived in.  It certainly had better storage. 

I'm old enough to remember the first appearance of "compact" cars.  They were, in Southern California at least, called "Jap cars," "sardine cans," and "nut twisters." That last one is from my best friend's father, and I just couldn't leave it out.  He drove a big Audi sedan and, we can only assume, drove untwisted.

The transition to small, fuel efficient cars was not an easy one, nor one without its unsavory terminology.  Education is experiencing its own unsavory moment, and we see terms like "ed deform" being tossed about. Is that where we're really going?  As someone with a "deform"ity, I have to assume that this term was invented to wound.  

Luckily for us, with the way humans keep reproducing, some people managed to stomach the unsexiness that was a Honda Civic and chose to drive a car with better gas mileage. 29 MPG for the Honda, compared to the Continental's 7.9.  Where we would be in our quest for fossil fuel if everyone insisted on driving a nut-untwisting Continental is anyone's guess.

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By Tom

I’m pretty sure my house needs a new roof. It’s not leaking right now, but it looks like it might. There’s moss here and there, and the shingles look old and limp, like they’re about ready to give up.

But the trouble with getting a new roof is that there’s nothing “new” or “flashy” to show off. You just have a roof that’s new. No one stands out in their front yard, admiring their new roof, like they would with a new patio. People don’t comment on it.

But if we don’t replace our roof in a timely manner, we stand to compromise our entire house. No matter how much we’d like to put in a new patio out front, we need to stay focused on taking care of the roof. Being a grownup means setting priorities.

Washington State, like every other state, is flat broke. Not only that, the State Supreme Court recently ruled that the Washington Legislature is shamefully underfunding its schools, ordered them to take care of the problem.

That‘s what you might call a “priority.”

The Legislature needs to focus right now on just one thing: fully funding education. Period. Nothing should be allowed to distract their attention or divert their funds.

Two bills were introduced this month that do nothing to fully fund education and do everything to distract lawmakers from doing what the court just ordered them to do.

These bills would introduce charter schools to Washington State. Personally, I’m rather intrigued by charter schools. Where I was once dead-set against them, after visiting several successful charters in New York City, I’ve come to appreciate what they do with the populations they serve, and I think they may be useful in certain areas here.

But not now.

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By Mark

One day my oldest son, at the time a kindergartner, came home distraught.

Eventually, my wife and I were able to coax out the whole story. He said he'd done everything he was supposed to do: day after day he was doing his work in class, helping others, being a good citizen, and everything else his teacher asked. He'd been a great line leader, a great tablemate, and almost always raised his hand before speaking.

Sobbing, he couldn't understand why the teacher just wouldn't ever change his card to orange.

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