Teaching and Learning 2015…

Posted by on
Uncategorized

This morning I begin the cross-country trek to the other Washington for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards’ 2015 Teaching and Learning Conference. I’m lucky to be attending both as a panelist for two sessions (one on blogging, one on cultivating teacher leaders through NBCT initiatives and district support systems) as well as a participant.

It was at last year’s T&L that Secretary Duncan shared the vision for Teach to Lead. While my natural skepticism initially pinged (was this just hollow teacher patronization in a climate of rampant teacher vilification?), after seeing the work of teacher leaders who are moving this initiative forward…and after attending the Teach to Lead Summit in Denver…I believe that this work is genuine. It helps, also, that this year’s T&L schedule is filled with sessions centering on cultivating and sustaining teacher leadership at various levels.

I know that whenever NBCTs get together in our Washington, I always learn and return home with new ideas and energy, and I’m confident that T&L will do the same. Many other Washington teachers will be attending T&L as well, including my fellow storiesfromschool.org writer Tom… who through great fortune is stuck with me as a roomie yet again. Tom and I will no doubt be writing here to share our reflections about T&L in the coming days!

Balancing Teacher Leadership

Posted by on
Uncategorized

 

pic

This guest post is contributed by Shari Conditt, 2015 ESD 112 Teacher of the year. An NBCT, she is her union’s co-president and facilitates a NBPTS cohort for her district.

Sometimes I feel like I’m balancing on a tightrope, fifty feet in the air holding a yellow notepad in one hand and a hot mocha in the other.  Teacher leadership is a lot like that.
I work in a small, rural school district as a full time teacher.  I see over 120 students a day and teach two different AP courses. I developed my district’s national board cohort, a program I created in my district to facilitate teachers as they seek certification.   I am also the teacher’s union co-president, a position I’ve held for the past eight years. I’ve bargained four contracts, implemented TPEP, and worked extensively to mentor teachers and am now in the midst of trying to help teachers as we have a massive shift in our district due to the construction of a new high school.  Despite all of this work, I’ve remained incredibly positive and determined to provide our teachers with as many supports as possible.
Continue reading →

PLC, Vulnerability and Student Work

Posted by on
Assessment, Education, Life in the Classroom

Over the last few years, I’ve been lucky to participate in Professional Learning Communities with creative, student-centered, and dedicated teachers; the kind of teachers whose classrooms I would be happy for my own offspring to someday join (and let’s be honest, we all have those in our buildings for whom that sentiment isn’t true).

We shared lesson and unit ideas, we problem-solved the struggles our students presented, and the combined experience and innovation in the room each Friday meant that after nearly every weekly PLC I walked out with new ideas, strategies, or perspectives. Our PLC structure is supposed to follow the DuFour model, and with the focus of our building (and state) shifting toward monitoring meaningful student growth, that PLC model aligns well in theory.

My current PLC includes five of us, and three of us are teaching the course for the first time ever or for the first time after a several-year hiatus. While our classroom student growth goals aren’t worded precisely the same (we’re English teachers after all… and even the text of a student growth goal should convey voice), we’ve all focused on the broad concept of substantiation of claims, whether in analysis of literary or informational texts. This fits nicely with that giant elephant in the room known as the Senior Research Paper, which is a graduation requirement for our twelfth graders and requires proficiency at exactly that skill.

A while back, we took that big step across the threshold that every PLC must eventually broach: examining student work. In our case, a couple of us were sharing student work samples from the Senior Paper.

We tentatively distributed copies accompanied by disclaimers and pre-emptive apologies that built in a crescendo to the eventual appeal of please don’t judge my teaching by my students’ comma splices and inconsistent verb tense.

Continue reading →

Highly Capable and the Legislative Budget

Posted by on
Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Professional Development

Recently a teacher came to my room asking for advice. She had a little girl reading well above grade level, and she wanted to know how she could address her needs. We talked about options, and I shared some of the materials I use. She left feeling like she could better meet the needs of her exceptional student.

I teach fifth graders in a self-contained class for highly-capable students. My kids are bused to me from all over my district. Teachers in my school come to me for advice, but teachers in other elementary schools in the district do not have a HC teacher in their building as a resource. It’s not as easy for them to get help.

When I first arrived in this state in 1989, having a program for gifted students was optional for districts. The state had a pot of money set aside for gifted education. Districts that opted to offer a program could design a program that suited their needs—focusing on grades three through eight, for example—and then access state money.

These state funds, by the way, did not cover the cost of the program my district offered. My district ponied up the rest of the money.

Then a couple of years ago the state made Highly Capable part of Basic Education. Now every district is required to have a program for HC students. The program must run K-12. And according to McCleary, local levy money can’t be used for Basic Education.

Oh, yeah. The pot of money the state kicks in hasn’t really changed much over the years.

Wait a minute!

  • The participating districts have gone from voluntary (around half) to all required to have programs. Many are building programs from scratch.
  • The participating grade levels at each district have gone from some selected grade levels to all grade levels, K-12. I believe that’s an increase for every district in the state!
  • And after McCleary, districts can’t use local levy money to shore up any missing dollars.

Obviously, the districts need more money for quality programs to meet the needs of their Highly Capable students.

I’m on the executive board of WAETAG (Washington Association of Educators of Talented and Gifted). We saw this change in the law coming and realized teachers would need training. We worked with Whitworth College to train a cadre of WAETAG teachers as professional development staff to work with ESDs and districts to offer classes in Nature and Needs of Gifted, Differentiation, Critical Thinking, and Creative Thinking.

Attending those classes is, of course, voluntary.

Teachers who have HC students in their classroom need to be trained in HC students’ special needs and in how to meet those needs. It’s not fair to place HC students in a teacher’s classroom and tell the teacher to meet their needs without that training. (Most teacher training programs do very little preparation in terms of HC education. My original certification program in the 1970s? I think it had about a paragraph!)

I’m glad HC students are recognized as Basic Education students. I think they need targeted funding that meets their special needs. I think the legislature needs to fully fund both HC students as well as the professional development of their teachers.

Owning the Wheel

Posted by on
Current Affairs, Education Policy

“Let’s not reinvent the wheel.”

I used to hear this a lot when I worked in the business world. Yes, absolutely we would all think… that’s been done already. Let’s not duplicate the work that someone has already done.

I often wondered why we didn’t say this more in education. Every state had their own standards and their own tests: there was an incredible amount of duplicated energy. Even district assessments varied from neighboring town to town.

Then we got the Common Core and I thought “Finally!” we’re going to do the work once, and it will be done well, and we will share it. I really didn’t think it would matter if the standards were more rigidly fixed than the previous state standards, because the energy we would all save seemed worth it.

Then we got (or will get) the tests. These have been created without district or state oversight. No parents, no teachers, no principals, or district superintendents will be able to easily modify these tests. No superintendent of public instruction for a given state will be able to easily modify much of anything about the tests – and that’s an optimistic appraisal.

So now I’m starting to wonder about that wheel.

Maybe we do need to recreate the wheel. In the end, at least then we have our own wheel. Ownership matters. All of the sudden we realize we’re riding in the backseat of the car. I wasn’t expecting this when Common Core arrived.

What if we all started with Common Core – what if we adopted Common Core – but then we raised it as our own baby? Each state could make changes, and though they would be weighty decisions they would be possible. Or maybe we could share custody with all of the other states. Perhaps state superintendents could meet every couple of years to propose and then decide on changes.

The assessment piece is even more problematic. Though we might all strive for the same goals, judgment of success is subjective and complex. Coming from the American roots of local control over local schools it just seems like a great distance to have traveled. I think we’re going to need a set of wheels to get that back.

Evaluations and RIFs: Moving Too Quickly…

Posted by on
Current Affairs, Education Policy

Substitute Senate Bill 5744 establishes a procedure for the layoff of teachers in the event of reductions in funding or decrease in enrollment. The gist: when faced with reductions in the certificated teacher force (RIF), a district must consider a weighted average of the two most recent annual evaluations of a teacher (weighted 60% on the current year, 40% on the previous year) and only use seniority to break a “tie.” The bill digest helps break it down and reviews the pro and con positions; the bill passed out of the Senate Committee on Early Learning and K-12 Education with support from Senators Litzow, Dammeier, Fain, Hill and Rivers and a dissenting vote from McAulliffe.

When I read this, I thought I must have missed something…as I was sure there had already been some kind of legislative action tying teacher evaluations to reductions in force. I was right: It is here, way down in section 8a of the “TPEP Law” 28a.405.100 (parts of which I by now have committed to memory, for better or worse).

The current law does state that “beginning with the 2015-16 school year, evaluation results for certificated classroom teachers and principals must be used as one of multiple factors in making human resource and personnel decisions” and also states that nothing in the law as written “limits the ability to collectively bargain how the multiple factors shall be used in making human resource or personnel decisions, with the exception that evaluation results must be a factor” (RCW 28a.405.100 8a). This section also defines “human resource and personnel decisions” as including reduction in force.

All of which leaves me to wonder why we need SSB 5744.

I believe that when implemented as intended our new teacher evaluation system with eight criteria, four tiers, and a strong foundation in scale-referenced and evidence-supported assessment of teachers, will help teachers grow and refine their practice. Prematurely attaching state-level RIF language to a new system still in nascent stages of implementation adds a veiled threat to something that is in most places still in the “we’re kind of starting to get the hang of it…maybe” phase.

I’m not inherently opposed to what the bill suggests. I think it’s kind of clunky and bit micro-managey…I’d of course rather see local control of personnel decisions. However, the overall premise is one I’m okay with. What I’m not a fan of is the haste in adding a new twist to a system not yet fully formed. Instead, why don’t we leave the new evaluation system alone for five, eight, ten years (!!) so we can get it working as intended. Then, once the bugs are ironed out and the challenges are addressed, we can consider how to (or whether we even want to) clarify the already existing mandate that teacher evaluations be a factor in human resource decisions.

My worry is that this is just the kind of twist that might serve to derail (or at minimum, distract from) the good work that so many districts are already doing to make teacher evaluation a tool to improve student learning.

Three Things I Know about the Common Core

Posted by on
Assessment, Elementary

MonNatForestBy Tom

One of my fourth graders began school in a part of the country known for its spectacular natural beauty. Unfortunately, it’s also know for subpar housing, poor health care, and high illiteracy. Sadly, this student started the year well behind his peers and is still struggling to catch up. When I talked to his mom, she explained that he was an average student in his old school and she noticed a huge jump in terms of what he was expected to do in our school.

In other words, standards.

People across the country, both conservative and progressive, are balking at the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, either because they fear too much federal government involvement in what has traditionally been a state issue, or because they fear the Common Core is leading to over-testing of students and profiteering by the companies that produce those tests. While these concerns probably have some merit, there are three important facts concerning the common core that need to be considered:

First of all, we’ve always had, and always will have, standards. And it’s not just us. Doctors have standards. Plumbers have standards. So do engineers, pharmacists and the guys that build train tracks. We had standards before the Common Core and we’ll have other standards if we abandon the Common Core.

Second, standards imply assessment. Think of those guys and their train tracks. From time to time, one of them has to stop what he’s doing and check to see that their tracks are just the right distance apart. Otherwise they’ll have to start over. Likewise, from time to time we have to stop what we’re doing every once in a while to see if our students are learning the stuff we’re trying to teach. It’s inconvenient for everyone, but it’s also important.

And finally, it makes no sense for different places in the country to be teaching to different standards. Particularly math, ELA and science standards. People move around a lot, and kids all over the country will eventually compete for the same jobs and college seats. It’s ridiculous for their respective states to focus on different standards. Because by “different” we’re talking harder or easier; and in this case, harder is better.

The Common Core is not perfect and testing is no fun. I get that. But there’s a kid struggling in my classroom right now, mostly because the beautiful state where he was born and the beautiful state where he lives now each decided on a different set of standards.

That doesn’t make any sense.

Standards and Fallacies

Posted by on
Assessment, Education Policy

Two key standards I strive to teach my students:

  • Regarding informational text: Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.
  • Regarding speaking and listening: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.

False statements, fallacious reasoning, exaggerated or distorted evidence: I can think of nothing more important for literate 21st-century students to be able to decipher, as these are rampant and pervasive in our culture and media today, from reality TV to TV news and from advertising to politics.

In our complex, fast-moving world of constant stimuli from vibrating little screens, one of the easiest categories of fallacy to fall victim to are the fallacies of distraction.

Simply put, this fallacy arises in an argument when the listener distracts the arguer from the issue by raising a point that is tangential or only tenuously related, and thus hijacks the argument so that in the end the original issue never gets resolved.

This is exactly what is happening in debates and discussions about public education today. Why is one of the greatest and most vehement arguments in modern public education about the Common Core State Standards, for example?

As I see it, this argument is a fallacy of distraction.

Continue reading →

Connecting to the Conversation

Posted by on
Education Policy, Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

purpose

Recently I got better connected to conversations on public education in the United States. I got my Twitter account up and started following people talking about our K-12 schools. You might know how that story goes. I knew a few people I wanted to follow, and then this person connected to that person and before I knew it I found it was hard to keep up.

My entire Twitter experience is all about professional engagement. My head is spinning with all of the information, but I have very little chance to be grounded in those conversations here in my school where we can craft solutions, visions, and help shape the course of a student’s day, month, year, life. Follow Diane Ravitch’s blog alone and your head will probably spin too.

One of the people I follow who makes a great deal of sense to me is Pasi Sahlberg. I had the opportunity to be a part of a one-day “Finnish Lessons” seminar with him at UW a couple of years ago, and I saw him again last year at the Teaching and Learning Conference in Washington, DC. He makes a number of compelling arguments about how schools in the United States could revolutionize their approach to teaching and learning. There are many societal issues that are out of reach for schools to take on, so I’d like to focus on one that seems accessible and almost desperately necessary for teacher survival:

Meaningful
Time
for Collaboration.

Continue reading →

Washington State Democrats Oppose the Common Core

Posted by on
Current Affairs, Education Policy

By Tom

Over the weekend, the Washington State Democratic Party passed a resolution opposing the Common Core State Standards. This is a pretty big deal, given that the primary opposition to the Common Core has been from Republicans. But while Republican opposition focuses mostly on federal intrusion into state matters, Democratic opposition is mostly a reaction to over-testing and big businesses who profit on that over-testing. Were Washington to drop the Common Core, it would be significant; it’s not only a solid blue state, it’s also the home state of the Gates Foundation, which has backed the new standards since the beginning.

This is a surprising development.

First of all, no matter what you think of the Common Core, you have to hand it to the people behind this resolution. They are an intrepid group. According to their Website, they’ve been working on this project for a year, lining up their ducks and putting the pieces into place. It’s a group of concerned parents, activist teachers and progressive Democrats and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere soon. We can probably expect anti-Common Core bills in both the House and the Senate in the very near future.

There’s still a long way to go, of course, before any change in policy. Anything can happen in the legislature. But there’s absolutely no way for anyone who supports the Common Core to see this as anything but bad news. It doesn’t bode well, especially since the Republicans have already come out in opposition to the Common Core and especially since Patty Murray, one of our US Senators, is trying to get the ball rolling on rewriting NCLB. She’s made it clear that she still supports yearly testing, and the only tests we have these days are the ones that are pegged to the Common Core.

As a teacher, I find this whole mess extremely frustrating. Like most districts, mine rolled out new curriculum in both math and ELA just before the Common Core was written. So, like everyone else, I’ve spent the last five years trying to figure out how to teach to the Common Core with materials that don’t quite fit. It’s been a struggle, but I’m getting there. I’ve also worked hard to get my students prepared for the SBAC, the Common Core-aligned test used in Washington State.

And quite frankly, I like these standards. They make sense. They might not be perfect, but they’re better than the ones we used to have and they’re sure better than what hasn’t been proposed by the people who want to get rid of the Common Core.

We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Teachers – and students – have enough to work on without having to abandon everything we’ve done over the last five years and refocus on another set of standards. And while I admire the idealism and determination of the folks who got this resolution passed, I resent their ultimate goal.

We’ve adopted the Common Core. Let’s focus on implementing it.