By Tom

Snow Days are literally, if not figuratively, a gift from above. They usually come with some warning, and frequently don’t come despite warning, which is why they always come as a surprise.

Snow Days, of course, aren’t much of a gift. They’re more like a bad loan. We trade a day with inclement weather and 8 hours of daylight for a day with 16 hours of daylight and 70 degree weather. That’s a horrible deal.

And as much as we might think we need a day off now, that need will be far greater in mid-June. Trust me.

But of course Snow Days are neither a gift nor a loan. They’re a response to nature. Moisture blows in off the ocean over a mass of cold air and precipitation falls in the form of snow. Snow makes it hard for vehicles to get around, so schools close for the day. And everyone sleeps in.

And for me, the beauty of a Snow Day is that act of yielding to nature. They remind us that we are not fully in charge here. We can predict snow, we can hope for it, we can even pray for it, but we can’t order it. It either happens or it doesn’t.

And when it does happen, it makes no sense to wish that it didn’t happen or worry about the plans we made that won’t reach fruition.

Just let it happen.

And enjoy it.

By Kristin

The first time I tried taking a practice Smarter Balanced assessment I almost lost my mind.  I was overwhelmed by the user interface, which required me to scroll up and down through a long skinny column of text.  I was defeated by my inability to mark up the text, see the questions and text at the same time, and the test's awkward expansion tab which allowed me to widen the text's column but then prevented me from seeing the questions.  With a big knot of anxiety in my stomach, a headache, and a sense of failure I shut it down without answering even the first question.

When this video went viral, I cheered the student's every word.  Yes, I thought, this has all gotten out of hand!  But then I remembered how much I really liked both the Common Core and its intent – that every student in the country be held to the same high standards.  I like the standards, and I like how well they're aligned from K-12, so I decided to try the SB assessment again and guess what?  It's a good test.

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By Tom

I was reading the Seattle Times the other day when I came across an editorial by the venerable Lynn K. Varner. In it, she describes an essay written by a guy named Ron Clark who quit his principal job because he was fed up with dealing with over-involved parents.

That’s too bad. It sounds like Ron Clark was a good principal, and it’s unfortunate that he was essentially run out of town by people who actually love him. He’s not alone, of course; the education world is awash with tales of helicopter parents who badger their children’s teachers and principals with complaints, questions and comments. They want to know more about a grade on a test. They want to suggest the next field trip. They want to know why their child is sitting in the back of the room. They wonder why their daughter is always picked fifth in kickball.

What they don’t realize is that in a typical elementary school there are 26 kids per class, and twenty classrooms in the school. A teacher deals with fifty parents each year; a principal deals with about a thousand. If every parent contacts their child’s teacher twice a week, either by voice or email, that teacher has to produce one hundred responses. If each response takes three minutes to compose and send, that’s five hours. That’s a lot. Nothing, though, compared to the principal. If she gets only one message per parent per month, that’s 250 responses per week. Her responses, of course, take much longer, since she probably has to find out exactly what happened in whatever classroom the child is in. If this takes ten minutes per message, then…well, you get the idea.

My point is this: teachers and principals in some schools spend an incredible amount of time dealing with parents. Granted, some of this time is well spent. Dealing with parents is an important part of our job. Parents have every right to advocate for their children and we have the responsibility to address their concerns. And there are legitimate concerns that do need to be addressed.

But this should even out across schools. There’s no reason to think that parents in school A, in the affluent, well-connected suburbs, should have more legitimate concerns than parents in school B, twelve miles away, in the high-risk low-income area. (If anything, they should have less) Yet, it seems that wealthy, connected parents have more concerns – and send more messages – than parents in less affluent areas.

In fact, educators in high-needs schools seem to have the opposite problem. They can’t seem to get parents involved at all with their kid’s education. They have low turnout for events, fund raising efforts are futile and permission slips go unsigned.

Then there’s my school. Right there in the sweet spot. Our parents are generally supportive, yet generally hands-off. Permission slips get signed, but emails go unsent. There are well-packed lunch boxes in every backpack, but no helicopters in the hallway.

And that’s just fine with me. When I tell my district colleagues from the rich side of town that I get about two parent emails per month, they ask if we have any openings. I get the same response from teachers in the other end of town when I tell them that I don’t have to buy any coats or shoes for my students.

Life in the sweet pot. And for that I’m thankful.

How about you? Which side of the sweet spot is your school? And how are you coping with it?