By Tom

A few months ago I was visiting a friend of mine who teaches
high school English. We were in his classroom and he showed me his grade book. I
noticed that in some of his classes, most of the students were missing most of
their assignments. I asked him about this.

“There’s really not much I can do about it. I assign work,
collect it, grade it and post the scores on-line. Some kids just don’t turn in
their work. Other than giving them an F, there’s not much else I can do, since
some kids simply couldn’t care less about their grades.”

I explained how things work in my classroom. I assign work
and then collect it. If a student doesn’t have it, they do it during recess.
Period. No questions, no yelling, no discussion. Their names go up on the
whiteboard and they come back to the room after lunch to get it done. I’m in
the room anyway, taking care of paperwork, and I don’t mind the company.

And if someone misbehaves or wastes time during the day, I
put a tally next to their name on my clipboard. Each tally mark equals one
minute of lost recess during our second recess, which we have toward the end of
the day.

I use first recess to take care of missing assignments and I
use second recess to take care of misbehavior. And it works beautifully. I have
the best-behaved class in the school with literally no missing assignments.

But then I came across this article in USA
Today. Basically, a bunch of pediatricians want us to leave recess sacred;
don’t make kids do schoolwork when they should be out playing and don’t
withhold recess as a form of punishment.

In other words, don’t do what I do.

I can see their point. Recess is an important time for kids
to blow off steam, get some exercise, mingle, and just “be kids.” For most children,
it’s their favorite time of the day. It certainly was for me, when I was young.

But pediatricians aren’t teachers. They deal with one kid at
a time, for ten or fifteen minutes, with their parents in the room. They’re not
trying make 25 to 30 kids work quietly at something most of them would rather
not do for seven hours a day.

At a certain level, teachers need leverage. For those of us
at the elementary level, recess gives us that. 

What do you think? 

By Kristin    

Goodbye, 2012.  I don't have much luck keeping challenging resolutions, particularly if they involve physical activity. Instead, I've settled into the routine of simply attempting to master the art of seeing the positive.

Last March, my fellow bloggers wrote a series of posts in response to a MetLife Survey that found teacher job satisfaction is down 15% since 2009.  The survey hit me at a funny time, because in my new school – the biggest middle school in Washington State, a place where buckets are in the hallway to catch leaks and my overhead projector was held together with duct tape – I was surrounded by teachers who were positive, who made choices that put kids first, and who were willing to quickly adapt their schedule and their approaches to try new things instead of saying, "What's the point?  We've been here before."  

What was their secret?  How were they so resilient?

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By Kristin

We're all trying to come to terms with the fact a young man shot his way through locked doors and used tiny bodies for target practice.  My mind goes so far, and then stops.

And I try, like any person, to think of possible ways to prevent this from happening.  I think of ways we can improve mental health care, ways we can entertain young people without letting them think killing is thrilling, and ways we can keep weapons whose only purpose is killing large numbers of human beings out of the hands of the untrained, the unfeeling, and the disconnected.  I try to think of ways to protect my own 6-year old first grader, whose body, when I look at it, doesn't seem to have enough real estate to sustain eleven bullets from an assault rifle.

But the solution proposed by the NRA, to put armed guards at schools, is the absolute worst solution I've heard of.

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By Tom White

There’s a family at our school from the Ukraine. Each
morning, the mom walks her five kids to our school, drops off the two oldest
children at the flagpole and then walks back home with the three youngest. But
before she leaves, she swings past my classroom to check on Alex. She looks
through the window, catches his eye, and smiles. Then she waves to me and
repeats the same procedure outside her other son’s room. She wants to make
sure they made it safely into their classrooms. Later, when school’s over, she
waits for her two oldest kids at the flagpole, and she smiles at me when she
sees Alex. And I smile back.

The Ukrainian mom does not sign permission slips for her
sons to go on field trips. She’s not comfortable with the idea of letting them
leave the school, so she usually keeps them home on those days.

Last week, while I was collecting permission slips for an
upcoming field trip, Alex asked to spend the day in his older brother’s
classroom so that he wouldn’t have to stay home. I spoke with the other teacher
to make the arrangements and we talked briefly about the family. We agreed that
the Ukrainian mom was “over-protective.”

That’s right. We derisively called this wonderful mom “over-protective.”

This one got to me more than the others. Maybe it was the
proximity to Christmas. Or maybe it was the age of the victims.

Or maybe this time we have to face the fact that we’re
entirely unable to protect our most innocent and our most vulnerable from our
most evil. And their weapons.

Like you, I’m supposed to go back to school tomorrow and
talk to my students. I’m supposed to make them feel safe. I’m sure I’ll think
of something. And we’ll get through the day, and then the week and then the
year.

But I’ll tell you this: I have no idea what to say to the
over-protective Ukrainian mom when I see her at the flagpole.

I’m not even sure I’ll be able to look her in the eye.

By Tom White

The American Federation of Teachers (the other teachers’
union) recently came out with a
proposal to have the National Board develop a pre-service evaluation for
teachers. They believe that by testing prospective teachers before they enter
the classroom, we can elevate the level of our nation’s teachers and thus
improve student learning. For obvious
reasons, the National Board (and by proxy, Pearson, Inc.) would
be more than happy to develop – and sell – another pre-service evaluation. And
they would probably do a pretty good job of it. For their part, the AFT wants
this new test to “raise the bar,” giving induction into education the same
status and complexity as induction into law. I disagree.

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