Another School Shooting

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Current Affairs

I read those words and felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

A girl at Santa Fe High School in Texas said she wasn’t surprised. “It’s been happening everywhere,” she said. “I felt — I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too.”

After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and after all the student–led protests, it felt like we might be building some momentum. Just this week I got an email from David Hogg, one of the student organizers for the Never Again movement, asking if I would help with high school voter registration at one of our district’s high schools.

I was feeling optimistic. Not for the immediate future. But at least for a few years down the road, when these kids start to vote. (And run for office.)

But for now, the thousands of high school students who just want to go to school safely get outvoted by the handful of unhappy students with guns.

The news stories impact the kids at my school.

Just a week ago an announcement come over the intercom, “All students on the playground must come into the building.” Moments later we heard, “We are going into lockdown.”

After school I heard stories from other teachers of high anxiety with their students. One teacher dealt with the rising panic by having the kids barricade the door to the room they were in. One fifth grade teacher had a student who threw up. There were tears in multiple classrooms.

Even our little kids watch the news. They know what’s out there. They are afraid.

When the announcement came on, my kids went into high alert. So I talked to them as I moved around the room. “I’m checking to see if there is anyone in the hall. Nobody. You all know I keep my door locked so all I have to do is close it. I undo the roll of paper to cover the window so no one can see inside.

“Oh, by the way, check this out.” I pushed the wooden wedge under the door and kicked it tight. “That’s an extra lock.”

They laughed. “It’s old school, but it works!”

“What about the other door?” a student asked as I moved across the room.

“It’s always locked,” I answered as I rolled down the paper strip over its window too.

As I was taking care of the doors, one of my boys—on his own initiative—closed the shades on all the windows in the room.

Then I went back to the front of the class and said we could go back to the lesson we had been working on.

Kids said, “Wait! Aren’t we supposed to get under our desks or hide or something?”

I reassured them that the announcement hadn’t said anything about a dangerous individual. And it started with getting kids off the playground.

One student said, “Yeah, at one of my schools we had a lockdown because a bear got on the playground!”

I nodded. “And I worked at a school where we had a lockdown because the neighbor’s bull got loose and it got onto the playground.”

We got back to work. Even my high-anxiety students did fine.

A few minutes later, the lockdown ended.

Shortly after the Florida shooting In February, we had a lockdown drill at our school. I wrote a brief note to parents after the drill:

We had a lockdown drill yesterday. I explained how we keep the doors locked and the windows covered. I said in a real emergency the most important thing for kids to do is to listen and follow directions.

It’s my job to take care of them.

Then I reminded them all that I have been thinking about students’ safety and planning and preparing for how to keep them all safe since before they were born.

(And you should know the district is continuing to plan and implement additional security measures.)

They’re not just your babies.

Jan

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Teacher Appreciation Week: Don’t Read the Comments

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Current Affairs, Education

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Make sure to enjoy this week, so don’t read the comments under any article, post, tweet, or Facebook share that in any way references teachers, teaching, or public education.

There is growing evidence that engagement in social media, including even the comment sections under mainstream media articles, can have a significantly negative impact on mental health. For people like me, whose twenty-year ebb-and-flow battle with clinical depression has made me unnecessarily sensitive to the venom and hate online, settling into some mindless social media perusal after a rough day at work ends up nudging us into the kind of downward spiral that for far too many culminates in bona fide burnout.

It is important during this teacher appreciation week that we also appreciate each other…both online and in person.

Often we take the time to (rightfully) single out those teachers who made a difference in our lives. For me, names from the 80s and 90s like Mary Jo Jones (science and math teacher), Jennifer Stenkamp (English teacher), Dale Crawford (FFA Advisor) and Elizabeth Shelley (English teacher) will always come first to mind. There’s also Wendi Kuntz and Jan Franke, whose support during my student teaching made me the educator I am today. There’s Fran Oishi, my amazing first-year-teacher mentor from my days in Federal Way. Appreciating the teachers of our past is important.

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Old School Buildings and Infrastructure Investment

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Education, Education Policy

All teachers get good, over time, at being resourceful. We learn to scavenge for what we need to do our jobs. We get comfortable with discomfort, with working with less-than-optimal environments (in some particularly bad cases, “less-than-optimal” would be a laughable understatement). This is not limited to any particular state – from what I’ve read lately, and what I’ve experienced teaching in different states (NY and WA), this is a nationwide public school reality.

A spotlight has been directed on our lack of investment in school buildings, equipment, and furniture. As teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona were striking in the beginning of this year, a wave was building: educators around the country have been sharing about ways that school buildings are failing kids and failing teachers. We saw Baltimore students huddled in coats and mittens in their freezing classrooms, a story that originated with a tweet by NFL player-turned teacher Aaron Maybin. This attention led to a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $84K for space heaters and outwear for Baltimore students – obviously not a long-term fix, but evidence of public support for better classroom conditions.

Personally, I’ve taught in classrooms with broken furniture, no whiteboard, no projector (in a visual arts class!), broken floor and ceiling tiles, leaking ceilings, and above-80-degree or below-60-degree temperatures. One school had a staff of 40+ that shared a single, one-toilet bathroom, while 300 students shared 2 bathrooms of 3 toilets/each (and plumbing problems were frequent).

I have dragged a stained, fraying area rug from a school trash pile and dyed it with I fabric dyes that I found in an old cupboard – it was my “circle time” rug for 2 years. I have pushed students in wheelchairs over tangles of extension cords and directed electric fans at students looking particularly overheated. I’m active in my local Buy Nothing facebook group, where neighbors share items they’re giving away – I’ve gotten art materials and classroom furniture that way. My assistant principal found a pair of computer speakers at Goodwill for me.

But I am so commonplace in this – every educator does this, often more, to try and meet students’ needs. I have seen special ed teachers and paraeducators, in particular, go to unimaginable lengths to make classrooms and environments safe and accessible for students with disabilities.

Rachel Cohen of the Washington Post points out that this is a long-standing problem of Federal vs. State, as far as infrastructure investment. “U.S. school buildings are 45 years old on average. But these problems disproportionately affect poor communities. In older cities, particularly industrial ones, schools average closer to 60 to 70 years old.”

Cohen brings up an idea put forward by Mary Filardo, the director of the 21st Century School Fund, “suggest(ing) school districts should…be able to leverage up to 10 percent of their Title I funds for capital expenses — currently, the federal money distributed to high-poverty districts can go only toward operating costs.”

While I don’t like that this would mean less funding – vital, in my experience – for operating costs, I do agree that the cost of infrastructure improvements in schools should be shared between Federal and State governments.

Locally, Seattle is putting levy funds – special election-based tax funds – towards improving Seattle Public Schools facilities. In 2016, the Buildings, Technology, and Academics IV Capitol Levy (BTA IV) passed by 72% of the vote, allocating $475.3 million toward school building construction, to be received and used between 2017-2022. Three existing buildings will be re-opened after improvements/updates to address growth in SPS enrollment. In a district as large as SPS, it can be hard to reconcile the good news of this kind, with the reality of so many day-to-day inadequacies in our classrooms and school buildings.

In an environment of scarcity, it’s also hard not to resent the newer buildings in the district, even while I know that the funds can’t go everywhere all at once. The most we can do is to be patient, and to advocate for more funding (locally, as well as state and federal), particularly for schools serving students living in poverty and students with diverse access and safety needs from their learning environments. Last year (in my old school), a group of Microsoft workers toured our building. They remarked on things that we had long since stopped seeing: water damage on the walls, cones around playground drains that don’t drain, exposed holes in acoustic-tile ceilings. It reminded me that sometimes my acquired skills in “making do” go too far – we can get used to unacceptable environments when we lose hope that change will happen.

While I try to raise my expectations of my classroom and school building, I’ll continue to scavenge and be resourceful. In my hunt for district and regional policy information regarding school facilities, I also came across this: guidelines for safety in art classrooms! It’s a good learning resource and a reminder that an optimal academic environment requires a safe and accessible space for everyone, and I can start with my own room.

 

Project, Products, and Publishing (or All’s Well That Ends Well)

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Assessment, Education, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Parent Involvment

Assessment. That’s a loaded word these days, particularly in the last months of the school year. But, what is it, really? Is it the state test? Is it an essay? Is it multiple choice?

Of course, the answer is yes to all of that, but there is so much more. We could get into the semantics of what is summative or formative assessment, and what type/mode/format of assessment is more valid or reliable or necessary. However, today I am interested in discussing one particular sort of assessment: publishing.

What I mean by “publishing” is this particular definition: to make publicly or generally known.

The Washington State English Language Arts Standards reference it:

W.9-10.6 Production and Distribution of Writing

Use technology, including the internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

Ooh…and “to display information flexibly and dynamically!” That really gets to the heart of the matter, there. How do we assess this? How do we teach our students to publish? to create products? to display information flexibly and dynamically? And then, once we do teach these skills, how do we assess them?

My answer to all these questions is project-based learning. This last week, while my seventh-graders were busy toiling over their answers on the Smarter Balanced Assessment, my ninth-graders were wowing the public with their “Shakesfair” projects. Both of these assessments are valid. Both give me information that informs my practice. Both can really stress a kid out if they don’t have the skills or support. And, both can bring a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Animatic Project for Shakesfair 2018

The difference is that one can also be an entertaining and educational way to connect with families and the community. It can inspire creativity, and it can celebrate individuality. It can encompass so many aspects of a child’s intelligence, skills, and talents. I can tell you without a doubt that the projects my students create prove their understanding of the material we cover in class. They also extend the learning, showing the reading, writing, communication, and research skills I am teaching them. These are valid assessments, and they also “display information flexibly and dynamically.”

On the down side, projects can be a royal pain. They are messy, hard to manage, and time-consuming. They require a teacher to set firm guidelines and offer support in ways he or she never imagined, like problem-solving last-minute tech issues for an Animatic animation, or finding creative ways to serve non-alcoholic English trifle to hundreds of guests. While projects bring out the most creative and imaginative attributes of most students, they bewilder and frustrate others, often those with special needs. To avoid these pitfalls, projects take tons of preparation, patience, and dedication.

I am committed to assessing my students with projects several times a year. Sometimes these are project-based learning activities, and sometimes they are just projects. To understand the difference, check out the handy table here. Some of my project-based assessments are small, such as one day tasks chosen from a menu to show understanding of a text through multiple pathways. These are simple and not too terribly messy or complicated to score. Each grade level gets a couple big projects, too. Some are group projects, some are individual, and some are flexible. They choose. Student choice is paramount for successful projects. For all projects, I have carefully crafted rubrics and timelines and rules established over time. Of course, that was all accomplished through trial and error, pursuing a good idea and learning how terribly complicated it really was!

That said, project-based learning is not for every teacher. It takes a willingness to face the issues head on. It takes a lot of patience to guide students through the discomfort they often experience when they actually have choices. It takes a lot of nerve.

Now the nerve is what you need when you get to the publishing part. That part requires the PUBLIC. The public is your audience. They see the whole big, beautiful mess, with all of its warts and all of its wackiness. You have to be willing to let your students shine or fizzle in a public format. And that is very, very hard.

Historical Recipe Project

At our 14th Annual Shakesfair, my students were shining. Well, mostly. We had Renaissance Era a slightly messy smorgasbord of food – trifle, roast chicken, meat pies – served by enthusiastic students. We had music researched and played heroically by young musicians, and there was a variety of artwork created by students who surprised their classmates with their hidden talents. Others shared creative writing based on Shakespeare- short stories, poetry, and songs. Several this year chose analytical writing, critiquing plays and films and examining themes. A select few gave slide show presentations, and there were the always popular models of the globe theater. Students from previous years came in and begged to show the films they produced when they were freshmen, and we all enjoyed seeing their first attempts at film-making once again.

I have thirty freshmen this year and well over a hundred visitors joined them. Parents, grandparents, staff, upperclassmen, and members of the community came and viewed their work, displayed “flexibly and dynamically.”

It was an exhausting time. The project overlaps with a full month of our Shakespeare unit, but the last week is a flurry of activity. And, to top it off, I was proctoring the 7th grade assessment for three hours on the day of the event, with no prep time. Luckily, my students in my afternoon classes chipped in to help set up, and clean up was well-managed and fast. I have a system.

To those brave and crazy enough to take on project-based learning, I am here to tell you that it is worth it. You will never forget the creativity and enthusiasm of your students, and the praise of their families. And, neither will they.

Ubiquitous Globe Theater Project

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Do you assess with projects? Tell me how your students publish their work and create products to share.

Going Upstream

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Education, Education Policy, Uncategorized

“Two things that are going well and one problem you would like to see changed. You must write a solution to the problem – otherwise you are simply complaining. Complaining in life will get you nowhere. Finding solutions to your problems will get you everywhere. Never forget the farmer! Go!”

Almost verbatim, this is how I begin our weekly class meeting. My students quickly jot down joyful things and happy thoughts; focusing on the good in their lives, their school, their class and their friends. But they do not forget the farmer – the one who stops pulling his drowning sheep from the river and runs upstream to puzzle out the reason they are in the river to begin with and then solves the problem.

Recently I was in a teachers’ meeting and the special education teacher was running through some data on our students. She mentioned my own five-year-old who she has worked with on phonograms throughout the year. “My word, she really is such a curious child! Always full of questions! Such strong gains!”

I smiled – a little proud, but mostly just relieved and thankful. This wild little chatterbox had come to us at the age of three with a diagnosis of being developmentally delayed in language as well as both fine and gross motor skills. She was so small and so very silent.

The summer she and her sister came was a summer of intense wildfires in our area. It was a summer of great worries and hopes. She was both. Our school started late that year due to an evacuation of the town. I had barely begun to adjust to her playing quietly underfoot before she was enrolled at the preschool in our school’s building and I was back in the classroom. I was not sure I was making the right choice.

The first day she came home with clay in her hair, blue paint on her new pink dress, her hair flung out of her ponytails and a new, shy smile I had never seen. Her preschool experience changed the very foundation upon which she stands today. The quiet one was left behind on the nap mat that year. She is now reading words, writing, playing with others, and is so full of questions. Why? Why? Why? (Sometimes I think we live with a baby seagull.)

The majority of the data in that meeting reflected strong gains throughout the building. A moment of celebration and “YES!” should have followed. But, our principal was unusually somber. She broke the news…

Our community’s preschool, a preschool funded by the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP), was going to be terminated at the end of the month. ECEAP is designed to serve the educational needs of preschool-age children of poverty, those with developmental delays, and those deemed to be “at-risk.” We certainly have students who match these requirements; we simply don’t have enough of them to warrant the expense of a preschool in our rural community any longer. “If there is another ECEAP provider within 40 miles, and you have fewer than X number of students, funding will no longer be provided.” ECEAP’s hands are tied. It is what it is. And yet, miles is time and money; 40 miles on a bus…that’s an eternity in a preschooler’s mind, and the difference between “barely surviving” and “possibly thriving” on a tight budget.

Preschool matters, and it may matter most for those children at-risk. According to GreatSchools, the brain is undergoing major anatomical and physiological changes that can affect student learning throughout the rest of the child’s school years. Beyond building the capacities required for reading, writing and mathematical reasoning, it is a time for children to grow in their abilities to interact with others, self-regulate emotions, practice focusing attention, and learn the skills of interacting with peers. It was disheartening to be told our community’s children would no longer be able to readily benefit from the experience of preschool.

Two things that are going well? My daughter can write, identify and provide sounds for all of the letters of the alphabet as she strings them into short words. My daughter is not sullen nor silent, but full of the joy of curiosity.

One problem? There are others who will no longer have the opportunity she has had in our rural community. Where will they experience the noise and joys of learning?

The solution? Go upstream! We need to leverage our collective influence to impress upon decision-makers how significant and important early education is. Our students are on a continuum of growth, starting long before the “first day of school.” Early childhood education affects us all and its impact may be greatest on our most at-risk children; all of them – not just those lucky enough to live in close proximity to ECEAP services. Many of your future students, the ones coming down the stream to you already, are counting on it.

Thoughts on Testing Season from the Heart of Testing Season

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

 

It is hard to sleep.

Often preparation, at this point, feels futile.

Changing schedules can feel as stressful as examinations.

Young students who love school often don’t want to go to school.

Teachers learn to hope and to let go.

This is hard on teachers too.

And administrators.

Administrative calendars fill with colors.  From March 5th to June 8th thousands of Washington students (as students all over the country) will take ELA, Math, Science exams, re-take exams, take make up exams, all during school days, in libraries, spare rooms, classrooms, headphones and computers must be found and provided, pencils provided, tools provided, time provided, proctors trained, proctors reminded, schedules changed, altered, and developed to both provide the lowest impact to a school and honor the time and intensity of the test takers.

A bumper sticker reads: a child is more than a test score. When Graduation is on the line it is hard to remember that a child is more than a test score.

As a Washington state student you want to be in the 2500 range for math and for English.

For Washington state:

In grades 3-8, students take tests in ELA, math, and science for federal accountability.
In high school, students take tests in ELA, math, and science for federal accountability.

For some students the exam is not stressful. The calendar change is not stressful. They will cruise through this, like a subway commuter. We are all happy for them.

From May 7th to May 18th hundreds of Washington students will take AP exams—a different exam offered each day, all offering the possibility for college credit.

It will be hard to sleep.

Last night I listened to Naomi Shihab Nye talk about books and the importance of voice for everyone across the world, but especially for children. Among the many inspiring and thoughtful things she said, was a story about one of her own essays that was used for a state standardized exam and how a reporter smuggled that section of the exam (essay and questions) out and showed them to her. She said she could only be certain of the answer for 3 of 10 questions about her own essay.

Ms Shiab Nye also mentioned that, though hailing from Texas, Washington State’s motto is her favorite. The motto is Al-ki, Chinook Jargon (a native pidgin trading language of the PNW) meaning “by and by.”

This is my new mantra for testing season, by and by. Presently, be present, as things will happen, things will pass, students will succeed, students will fail, and by and by we will proceed with school, with all sorts of tests, and with our lives.

Indigenous Languages are World Languages

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Uncategorized

I am passionate about my students and providing them with every opportunity to advance toward a happy and fulfilling future. For most this means graduating from high school and going on to some sort of post-secondary education. One requirement which can be a hurdle for them is world language. Most universities require students to take 2 years of a foreign language. For my students, English is their foreign language, so studying a language on top of English can be daunting. Over the past two years, though, Washington state has introduced the option to show language proficiency through a competency based credit (CBC) exam. This exam can result in the equivalent of two years of language study and can also qualify students for the Seal of Biliteracy. The exam is currently given for hundreds of languages, so many of my students are able to take this exam for their first language and receive credit. This gives students pride in their first languages and a leg up as they move forward in life. This is not, however, the case for our Native American students. 

During my recent visit to White Swan High School, a public school on the Yakama Reservation, Jenny Tenney, 2018 Education Service District 105 Regional Teacher of the Year, gave me a tour of her school. As she took me through the halls of the high school, Jenny shared the demographics of the student body, 60% Native, 38% Hispanic, and 2% a smattering of white and other ethnic groups. She also shared the community’s efforts in teaching the tribe’s indigenous language, Sahaptin. The district has the start of a program at the elementary school, through which they teach Sahaptin to the 3rd and 4th graders. There is discussion of moving classes to the high school, but because classes in Sahaptin are not counted for world language credit, students would only receive elective credit. This might limit enrollment. 

After this discussion, I wondered if this was the case across the state. As an English language teacher, I understand the value of having literacy in one’s first language, and its impact on learning English. Plus, fluency in one’s native language also increases pride in one’s culture. 

Washington state has a large number of Native American tribes, with a wide array of indigenous languages spoken throughout our state. The idea that students would not receive world language credit for learning their native tongue didn’t make sense to me, so I did some digging. What I found was inconsistency.

Right here in Spokane, WA. both Rogers High School and North Central High School offer Salish language classes. Students who take these courses receive world language credit. The teacher, Robert Wynecoop, is highly qualified and fluent in Salish. He explained to me that he teaches “a curriculum similar in nature to what is taught at Salish School of Spokane (…written by the same people). It is similar to what is included in [other] world language curriculums and has the same basic scope and sequence.” Rogers HS currently offers Salish 1 and Salish 2, with a total enrollment of between 35 to 50 students. 

Another program is offered at Port Angeles High School in Port Angeles, WA. This program is taught and was created by Jamie Valadez. Valadez teaches Klallam language, a language that was nearly extinguished due to federal policies concerning the schooling of Native children, during the 19th and 20th centuries. Since implementing the Klallam language program, the school has seen dramatic shifts in their Native students. Their grades have improved and they have a sense of pride in their culture. Over 600 students have completed the course since 1999. 

At the university level Native American students also struggle to receive world language credit for their indigenous languages. Yale University offers students an opportunity to study indigenous languages, such as Cherokee and Navajo, through their Native American Language Project, but not for credit. While at the University of Washington students are beginning to see progress, as a student recently became one of the first to receive world language credit for showing proficiency in her native language, Quinault. 

Based on my research, it would appear that one major hurdle for Native American students to study and receive credit for their indigenous languages is a lack of qualified and fluent educators to teach the courses and/or to score the exams. Robert Wynecoop and Jamie Valadez are in the minority as highly qualified educators who are also fluent in their respective indigenous languages. However, this is no fault of the individual tribes. For centuries Native Americans have faced the systematic dismantling of their cultures. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries Native American children were sent to boarding schools in an attempt to force them to assimilate to white culture, in an effort to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” Due to these abusive federal policies, many indigenous languages were nearly extinguished. Over the past several decades, however, various tribes are revitalizing their indigenous languages and their cultures. 

It is clear that providing Native American students with an opportunity to learn, study, and use their indigenous languages leads to positive academic outcomes. Studying their indigenous languages also increases pride in their Native culture and preserves their heritage. As a state we make a concerted effort to meet the language needs of our immigrant and refugee populations. We should be doing the same for our Native American students. Indigenous languages are world languages and deserve to be credited as such. 

 

Bargaining Salaries

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Education Policy, Teacher Leadership, Uncategorized

 

 

When the state legislature decided to abandon the state salary allocation model (SAM), my work as a local association president became significantly harder.  Now, my local teachers association is responsible for negotiating salaries with our school district.  I’m sure that this happens in places all around the country, but to be fair, I’ve never experienced this as a teacher in Washington.

And now it’s happened.

And I’m feeling additional stress and responsibility.

Especially as a leader who is also a full time teacher/coach and who has no expertise in crafting a salary scale.  

Oh, and that pressure-it’s real. The 151 certificated staff who work for our district are depending on the team–but I’m the leader of the team, so inherently the pressure’s on me.  My colleagues- they’re worth fighting for. Kim spends time at lunch, after school, and on weekends preparing students for their SkillsUSA competition (by the way- a few students earned a trip to Nationals, which means that Kim will spend more time facilitating preparation and a week out of her summer with students). Ryan spends nearly every Spring Break chaperoning students on an overseas field trip. This is time away from his family but it provides his students with an opportunity to leave the confines of our small town and see the world. Kim and Ryan deserve fair compensation for their work. So does Kyla, who is married with two children, and who wants to purchase her first house and Katie, who just purchased hers. Both teachers are finishing up their 4th year of teaching, and both deserve a raise for the valiant and quality work they’ve put in crafting English curriculum for the first time this year (both were Social Studies teachers who agreed to teach some ELA courses this year).  Their students are engaged and demonstrating strong analytical, reading, and writing skills. 

I want to keep them working for our students and in our community. I have a real vested interest in retaining and attracting quality educators to our district. I want my children and your children to have supported, dynamic, and fairly compensated educators in their classrooms. I want to work in an environment where teachers feel recognized for their work. But how do we even go about creating a salary model that reflects what the teachers value and what the district values?  Maybe the better question is- what are our values in this system and are those the same values that district administration hold when crafting a schedule? As I make my rounds to each of the buildings in our district, I’ll be probing at values in order to nail down what must be reflected in a salary schedule.

I’m not completely flying blind.  Our local association executive team is ready and willing to work and to maneuver this new “opportunity.”  Our state association (the WEA) has assigned a representative to us to help as needed. But I’ve always been that concrete-sequential gal who has to set up the header/footer and put her name on the paper before I even start writing the essay, so the task feels especially daunting.  Starting seems to be the biggest challenge.

To add to that tension, no district wants to start first.  Because if your district’s the first to nail down a salary schedule then you’re either the exemplar or the model of “what not do”. So there seems to be hesitancy on which of our local districts is going to make the first move. Yet, making the first move is also important. Teachers want to know next year’s salary as soon as possible. This knowledge empowers them to make decisions about their finances and labor. If a neighboring district is offering a significantly higher salary under their locally negotiated schedule and that district is close in proximity to home then it’s a real possibility that the teacher will want to seek employment in the closer district that pays more. While I’m a firm believer that a school culture drives retention, I also recognize that for some teachers, the trade off of an additional $15,000 might be the impetus to move to another district. I don’t want to feel competitive with the neighboring districts, but I can’t help but feel that this system is creating this exact scenario.

So the rubber hits the road this spring as our local, like so many others across the state, works with our district to create a salary schedule that mirrors our values and fairly compensates our educators.  This is a tenuous balance: we want to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars while cognizant that schools have been granted via the State Supreme Court and funding in legislative action, an increase in wages.  This is delicate work not to be taken lightly. Trust that local association presidents, particularly in small districts like mine, are shouldering this work and feeling the heaviness of this responsibility.  This is the weight of 151 salaries, 151 families, and 151 colleagues on your back.

And this is real.

And has serious consequences.

What Teaching Internationally Has Taught Me About Life, Limits and Differences

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Education, Life in the Classroom, National Board Certification, Teacher Leadership, Travel | , , , ,

By Guest Blogger, NBCT Sarah Applegate

Things that aren’t different:

  • Teachers complaining about staff meetings
  • New instructional initiatives that both inspire and tire teachers
  • Kids who turn in assignments late
  • Parent meetings that are stressful

Things that are different:

  • Where the staff meetings are held
  • The types of instructional initiatives that occur
  • Where kids turn in their late assignments
  • How long parent meetings last

Phuket, Thailand

Nearly two years ago, my husband and I finally finished our Search Associates application and did what we had been threatening/planning/talking about doing for years – we started actually searching for overseas teaching positions. What surprised us the most (we were naive) was how competitive overseas teaching is.  We had a very narrow search at first…Europe, some Latin American countries since Rob is a Spanish teacher. But we soon discovered that despite our (stellar) resumes, jobs were tough for us to land. After a year of frustration, we expanded our search, and, based on experiences our friends had been having at a school in China, we applied and were hired at the Dalian American International School in Dalian, China.

Fast forward a year, and here we are, living and working at DAIS. Literally since we live on campus. We live in a rural area about an hour outside of Dalian, a small city of 8 million people(!). We live a mile from a beach, our apartment looks out on a blueberry farm/wedding picture locale and we live with most of the people we work with in a six-story building. One plus- our commute is about 2 minutes.

I teach Senior and Junior Seminar (which focuses on college application and completing a research project) along with teaching technology at the elementary school. Rob teaches English and Social Studies to 7th graders. Our school is unique in that there is an international group and a Chinese national boarding program. Rob and I work with only Chinese students at the secondary school and the students I work with at the elementary school are all international (meaning, they hold a passport from a country other than China).

We had months to think about what work would be like here. And, many of our assumptions came true.

The students we teach are incredibly privileged and part of the rising middle and upper class in China. It isn’t surprising (anymore) to see a Porsche, a Range Rover and a Maserati at elementary pickup.

Students have a wide and varied range of educational experiences, both in the international and the Chinese national programs. In the international program, some students have lived all over the world, speak 2 and 3 languages, and see themselves as part of the broader global community- they have a deep understanding and acceptance that DAIS is just a stop on their journey as part of their parent’s work assignments.

Kids arrive and leave the elementary school frequently, and some are more ready to be in an English only program than others. In the Chinese national program, there isn’t a ton of turnover, but the language proficiency varies widely. Some of my seniors love to practice their language skills and have a solid understanding that next year they will be attending college in an English-speaking country so practicing now is valuable! Others are reticent and take shelter in the fact that 2/3 of the entire secondary school speaks Mandarin as their first language. They only speak in English when they are required to by the course or the teacher, and otherwise their day is in Mandarin. As someone who doesn’t have a second language and is a self-admitted lazy language learner, I can empathize- heck, I live and work in a gated community with other English speakers. However, my senior students are going to be in an entirely English university program in just 6 months! Gaah!

View from Hike

But, many of our assumptions didn’t come true:

Just because parents are shelling out a lot of money to attend a “western style” school, this doesn’t mean the students are motivated, take initiative and want to learn everything they can. They are still kids and teenagers, with moods, interests and skills that vary widely, and a broad range of understanding the privilege and opportunity they are being offered. We still have to bring our ‘A’ game every day. At least we have less of them to inspire. To be frank, class sizes are very reasonable.

Even working at a private school, even with the tuition, resources, etc., behind the scenes, we are still living in China, a developing nation. Thus working with technology can be incredibly frustrating. The government has a pretty tight monitor on information (apparently their website that filters all information that comes in and out of the China is the busiest in the world, which makes sense) but trying to be a technology teacher, providing 21st century experiences to worldly kids can be incredibly frustrating. We do a lot of sitting…and waiting for websites to load. As teachers, we all try to laugh it off, giving one another sympathetic “I know” looks whenever it is brought up at staff meetings (see above). However, as a technology teacher, I think I have a special and uniquely frustrating relationship with this reality.

China is different. So much different than the US, and the other two countries we have lived in (Mexico and Finland). There is so much I don’t understand- the language, obviously is a huge one, but layer that with characters that are pretty much unintelligible, traditions that don’t look like anything I have known before, and a public school educational system that is amazing (in the fact of how fast they have been able to increase literacy) but is entirely based on rote and routine memorization for an exit exam that requires a complete and exact regurgitation of the textbook information using the ancient and complex characters? Well, it is just a lot to take in every day. The first few weeks and months are a blur and people try and help- the question- “How are you adjusting?” is asked to every newbie frequently during the first few weeks. I vacillated between trying to stay strong (“We are great”) to honest (“I don’t know that I can stay here past October without having a nervous breakdown”).

In mid-November I had a quiet and brief epiphany: I can do it. I can figure out how to get groceries, coffee and exercise. I can appreciate the differences, I can laugh and relax just a little, and I can work on doing a better job of parenting, teaching and taking care of myself. I have a year and a half to go in my contract. I know I am going to be surprised at who I become and how I talk about these experiences in June 2019, when we plan to come home and “return to regular programming.”

PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games Ski Jump

Sarah Applegate has been teaching for 23 years and is excited to be new at something again! Sarah spent her entire teaching career in the same high school, first as an English teacher and then as the Teacher Librarian. In 2016-2017, she had the opportunity to work for CSTP working on teacher leadership initiatives and learned a lot about how to create the environment for teacher leadership to grow. Sarah has worked with National Board Initiatives in Washington State since 2002 and believes teacher leadership can improve student learning and transform schools. Sarah cannot believe how many miles she has been putting on her frequent flyer account over the past 10 months.

It’s Bad. And It Keeps Coming Back.

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Current Affairs, Education Policy, Social Issues

Eugenics.

It’s the idea that we can create better human beings by encouraging the breeding of the higher class people and discouraging the breeding of the lower class people.

There are all kinds of pseudosciences. Eugenics is the one that makes my blood run cold.

In the early 1900s eugenicists in the United States focused on weeding out “undesirables”—poor, immigrant, minority families.

Sound familiar?

Fast-forward to 1994. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray wrote a book called The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Now, more than a decade later, the book has gotten a new and highly critical write-up in The Vox because of the influence Murray is having on current US policy. There’s a lot not to like in The Bell Curve, but I’m going to focus on one aspect that has an impact on teachers in the classroom.

Here is one quote from the book:

The technically precise description of America’s fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended.

Basically, stop any program that gives assistance to low-income families. Because that just encourages them to breed. And we don’t want any additional poor, unintelligent people being added to our population.

That’s eugenics rearing up its ugly head again.

It’s not just a theory in a book from the 90s. The bad political philosophy of eugenics (it’s not a science) is being applied to governmental policy right now.

That’s why you have leaders in the federal and state levels of government attempting to roll back Medicaid expansion, tighten eligibility requirements for and reduce enrollment in the Department of Health and Human Services, and make it harder for individuals to access Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

Here’s the truth. Eugenics doesn’t work.

What does work? Giving moms good pre-natal care. Making sure moms and their children get good nutrition. Making sure they have a healthy environment, free of lead, pesticides, mercury. Making sure children are in a safe environment, free from sexual and physical abuse. Providing children with a warm and nurturing home.

Parents who have plenty of money have the means to provide all of the above. That doesn’t guarantee they necessarily have the will or the character to provide them, although The Bell Curve assumes they will.

What the authors ignore is that moms in general want all those things for their children, whether they can afford them or not.

I’ve seen some of those “poor” moms. The dads are gone, leaving the moms on their own with the kids. The moms are working full time. They’ve gone back to school to try to get a better job. They’ve maybe had to declare bankruptcy. I’ve seen them standing in the grocery store trying to figure out the most nutritious food that they can afford to feed their children. They are doing everything they can on their own. And they still need help.

Let me tell you a personal story. My husband graduated and interviewed for a job back at the beginning of the 80s. He was hired on a Thursday afternoon. He called the next day to get the details about starting. They said, “So sorry. We just got a call from corporate. There’s a hiring freeze. We can’t give you that job after all.”

I had already quit my job. I was pregnant. We spent eight months without work. We applied for work in multiple states. There was no work to be found.

In the end, my husband got a job with a friend of his father’s, and we moved back with his family.

That’s not the main point of the story. The real point? I was visiting with a woman a month or two later, sitting in her kitchen. She made a comment about a man she had seen by the side of the road with a sign “Will work for food.”

“Oh,” she said. “Those people just annoy me. Everyone knows you can get a job if you really want one.”

I had to take a really deep breath before I could answer her. And, bless her, she was willing to listen to me.

I wonder if the authors of The Bell Curve ever heard from people like my husband and me? Both of us with MA degrees. Both of us out of work for eight months straight. Both of us wanting work, and neither of us able to find work.

I wonder if some of the current policy-makers have any understanding of “poor” beyond the stereotypes they’ve been fed.

All right, now consider all the things we are learning about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Multiple major stressors in childhood rewire the brain to an almost continuous “flight or fight” response, which makes it difficult for the child to function in a school setting.

The more we, as a culture, invest in prenatal and neonatal care for the poor among us and the more we support mothers with young children, the fewer students with ACEs we will have in our classrooms. Then in the long run, the more likely it is that those children will grow up to be well-adjusted, civic-minded, and contributing members of society.