By Tom

Hi there! Come on in! You must be Paul’s mom.

Yes I am. Hello.

You didn’t bring Paul?

No, he wanted to stay
home. I hope that’s OK.

No problem. It’s good to see you again. We met at curriculum
night, but didn’t really get a chance to talk.

Yes, there was a lot
of people that day.

There was. So Paul tells me your family is from Romania?

I am from Romania. But
Paul was born in America.

So you must either be a vampire or a gymnast.

(laughing) I am not a
vampire! They are all from Transylvania! My family is from Bucharest, south
from Transylvania. But I was a gymnast; most of my life until college! In my
country all of the girls they do gymnastics.

Does Paul do gymnastics?

No, he likes soccer.

Not baseball?

Not baseball, only
soccer.

Well, let’s talk about his academics.

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By Kristin

In an earlier post, I promised to write about how I transformed my classroom management so that it was student-centered. 

It all started with my third period – a reading intervention class where every child was behind in his or her skills because of one reason or another - often unscholarly behavior.  In my third period I had five boys who were all good friends, and they were in the habit of socializing instead of working.  I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't ever kick them out – an intervention class is the end of the line, and they were behind because of time spent in the office instead of class. National efforts to end discrimination in school discipline, something my district is under investigation for, echo what we already know - African American and Latino students get in trouble more often than their white and Asian peers.  I made a personal commitment to create a classroom that served the most challenging kids, but it wasn't easy.

There were days that when 3rd period began, the boys continued their conversation about Mohammad's shoes not matching his shirt, or what happened in last night's game. I would get Mohammad to sit down and Michael would pop up, arguing with Stephen.  I'd get Michael and Stephen to sit down and Trey and Mohammad and Donald would get going.  I'd get them to all sit down and work, I'd finally have some time to go work with the other students, then Donald would fart and it all fell apart again.  Luckily, there was Sensei.

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By Tom

I teach fourth grade, which means that my students will turn
ten at some point in the next eleven months. There’s something special about
being ten. In a lot of ways, people are more confident and self-assured at age
ten than they’ll be in a long time, if not forever. When you’re ten, you’ve pretty
much mastered childhood. In another year or so, you’ll be in the throes of The
Awkward Years, and then its adolescence, from where there’s no return. Ten year
olds know a lot, but it’s what they don’t know that makes them so fun to be
around.

CSTP is also turning ten. Like my students, CSTP came along
at a time when those of us in education were getting blindsided by the
stupidity that was NCLB, a misguided law that blamed schools for everything
wrong with education. It was the beginning as the great data bath that has consumed
education for a decade. Then came the current administration, which refined the
blame game by targeting individual teachers, touting overbearing evaluation systems
as the silverest bullet.

As this mess has played out in Washington State, CSTP has
played the role of the adult child in the room, reminding the children
adults that you don’t get anywhere by pointing fingers. You get somewhere by
empowering teachers; by helping them help each other become better. You get somewhere
by encouraging teachers to collaborate and by helping them find a voice and
tell their story.

Like my students, CSTP is young; young enough not to have a
vested interest in the battles that consume so many school reform and
anti-school reform stakeholders. And like my students, CSTP has a long,
promising life ahead of it.

Because I honestly believe we’re at the cusp of something
huge. And I truly think that organizations like CSTP are uniquely poised to
take us there. I think that soon we’ll see a great coming-together of all the disparate
fragments in education. Advances in neuroscience and learning theory will
converge with increased private and public funding and the realization that
every cog in the system is important; every parent, every teacher, every
principal, every lawmaker, every venture capitalist, and – most importantly –
every student. We’ll stop blaming schools and teachers for our shortcomings and
instead of blaming someone new, we’ll realize we can actually solve our
problems by working together. And organizations like CSTP, which have always
had that attitude, will become the drivers of this new spirit of cooperation.

Or maybe I’m just being overly optimistic. Which is what you
get from being around ten-year-olds all day.

  By Kristin

Eleanor Barkhorn, a Senior Associate Editor at The Atlantic who oversees the Education Channel wrote this piece about how she almost quit after her first year as a Teach For America corps member, but didn't.

Ms. Barkhorn's experience teaching Black children in the Mississippi Delta had the same effect on her that it has had on so many other unfortunately vocal TFA alums – it changed her life, made her a better journalist, opened her eyes to the reality of racism, forced her to summit the peak that was Eleanor's Inner Being and introduced her to her own true self – and this is exactly why so many teachers resist the idea of TFA.

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By Tom

I went to O’Dea high school, which is a small, all-boys
school in downtown Seattle. Our Spanish teacher, Brother Patatucci, had a unique
way of getting us to do our homework. At the start of class he would tell us to
open our workbooks to the assigned page while he walked up and down the aisles
with a large, thick, leather strap. If your workbook page was finished, he
would move along. If it wasn’t, you had to hold out a hand and have it
strapped. It hurt like crazy, and the only relief was to grab the cool, metal
bars of our desks until the pain subsided.

It was a different era, obviously, and I doubt they still
use corporal punishment, even at Catholic high schools. Of course, you can’t
argue with the results; not only can I order a beer and a plate of tacos in any
Azteca, but I could stand on the corner in any town in Mexico and ask passersby
for the location of the local library. Learning!

I was thinking of Brother Patatucci this summer while
leading a training on classroom management. Most of the participants were
elementary teachers and I felt reasonably comfortable addressing most of their
questions. But one lady was a high school English teacher. And she came there
looking for a solution to a very specific problem: how could she get her
students to do their homework. Her class, she explained, was pretty much
predicated on students either reading or writing something at home so they
could discuss it in class. When students didn’t do their homework – and most of
them didn’t – there wasn’t much for them to do in class. Hence the problem.

Frankly, I was at a loss. I teach fourth grade, and our
solution to homework refusal is pretty straightforward: no homework; no recess.
For reasons I’ve never understood, high schools don’t have recess, so kids who
don’t do their homework simply don’t do their homework. And apparently it’s a
huge problem.

The rest of the participants and I tried to offer solutions.
We suggested making the reading material and writing assignments more compelling.
She’d already tried that and was continuing to try it; she’d gone so far as to
asign comic books, and her students still wouldn’t read them. We
suggested making homework a bigger part of their grade. She tried that, but her
students didn’t care. Even when they failed her course, they didn’t care. We
suggested contacting the parents. She’d already been down that path; apparently
the parents weren’t much help. I suggested she just have them do the reading
and writing in-class and forego homework altogether. She’d already thought of
that; in fact that was pretty much the strategy she’d settled upon. The problem
was that by basically doing all the work in class with no homework, she wasn’t
able to move through the required course content and was on-notice by her
district.

Like I said, I was at a loss. I have two high school kids of
my own. Frankly, keeping them on top of their homework is practically my
part-time job. Like most districts, we have an on-line tool that tells parents
about missing assignments. Of course these things only work when people look at
them and care about them. And apparently not everyone does.

Which is why I’m posting this question: how do high school
teachers get their students to do homework?

Please tell me we’ve moved beyond Brother Patatucci.

By Mark

Teachers change the world. Teachers shape the future. Teachers make a difference.

Like so many well-intentioned platitudes, over time these can start to ring hollow. When I drove to Leavenworth in 2007 for the NBCT Leadership Conference (then known just as "Sleeping Lady"), I expected a little rah-rah, a little break in that long April-to-June stretch of constant classroom push. And maybe a decent meal in a part of Washington this transplanted Oregonian had never visited.

Instead of teachers change the world, teachers shape the future, teachers make a difference, I got something better. I was shown: Here is how teachers can change the world, here is how teachers can shape the future, and here is how teachers can make a difference.

As corny as it sounds, I left that conference feeling empowered. 

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By Kristin

I've been teaching a long time, but I think I'm only now figuring out what matters most – creating a classroom my students own, are proud of, and where they flourish.

Last year, my first year teaching a reading intervention class, I threw away almost everything I knew about classroom management and tried to create a room that worked for the most challenging students. Things got a little crazy, and they got a lot uncomfortable for someone who doesn't like loud noises or a lot of jumping around, but I worked hard to adapt.  

What I got in return were moments like this one, and that made it all worth it.

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