On my 18th birthday, I practically sprinted to
the school library to register to vote. I don’t think I was really as excited
about the democratic process as I was about the right of passage it marked. It
happened to be just a few months before a presidential election, and all of a
sudden I started to notice the ads and the news stories and quickly became
aware of how complex voting could be.
Unsolicited Advice for the National Board
By Tom White
It’s often said that receiving unsolicited advice always
sounds like criticism. That’s unfortunate, since giving unsolicited advice isn’t
usually intended as criticism; it’s usually just one person looking at another
person and articulating where there’s room for improvement. Which, now that I
think about it, is a pretty good definition of criticism.
So it’s in that spirit that I’m about to give advice to the
National Board. Advice that is entirely unsolicited. Keep in mind that I love
the National Board. I love what it stands for and I love what it’s done for the
teaching profession. In fact, other than marriage and fatherhood, National
Board Certification is perhaps the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But
just like marriage and fatherhood, National Board Certification is not quite
perfect.
And they apparently know this. In fact, under their new
leadership, they’ve signaled that big
changes are in the works; changes that will hopefully make the National Board
more relevant to the current educational landscape, while making the
certification process more accessible to today’s teachers, and without
compromising the high standards that are at their core. So here goes:
Unfortunately, it’s not invisible: The Equipment
This month on Stories from School, we are trying to expose some of the "invisible" work that teachers do–the things in teaching that may go unseen by others. Unfortunately, what I have to write about is not at all invisible–rather, it is all too often in our way! Science teachers, Career and Tech Ed teachers, and other teachers of project and lab based classes spend much of our time functioning as equipment managers–not the most glamorous duty, but a duty, indeed, it is. You can see a few of us in the photo off to the left, and yes, we are hamming it up for a Homecoming spirit day dressed as Industrial Hazards, but you get the idea–our equipment is large and can be hard to handle.
What are some of the “invisibles” that come with all this equipment?
Habitat
By Kristin
Here's an old fashioned Polar Bear exhibit. Some effort has been made, but even if you haven't spent much of your life glued to Frozen Planet on the Discovery Channel you instinctively know that this isn't the kind of home a polar bear would choose. The tire swings and poolette are intended to give the bear some mental and physical stimulation, but I doubt this cage provides a quality of life worthy of such a magnificent creature. Zoos are getting better, but they still face the challenge of being ambassadors of wild creatures even as they keep the creatures in exhibits that, at best, mimic small parts of an animal's habitat – kind of like trying to design a school that serves the needs of all its students.
The Field Trips
By Tom White
It was a beautiful spring day in the great Pacific
Northwest; my third graders had just spent the morning meeting their pen pals
for the first time. After corresponding with them for eight months, we were at
Edmonds Beach during a really low tide, looking at all sorts of marine
creatures and getting pleasantly muddy. Now we were on the ferry, having lunch
on the sun deck with our new friends as the boat sailed across Puget Sound. We
got to the other side, disembarked and milled around on the dock, planning to
catch the same boat back so we could enjoy some more time at the beach before
returning to school.
That’s where the ferry worker found me. “Are you in charge
of this field trip?” He looked concerned.
“Theoretically,” I said. “Why, is there a problem?”
“Yes. It seems the Edmonds dock has been damaged. They need
a new part to fix it. It’ll take about five hours before we can send another
boat back across. I just thought you should know.”
No conversation about the invisible realities that affect
teachers’ lives would be complete without bringing up field trips. There’s
nothing I hate – and love – more than taking my students out into the world for
some hands-on learning.
They take an incredible amount of time.
The Mindsets
When I was an undergraduate, I loved having the opportunity to choose whichever courses interested me. Outside of my major, I took everything from calculus to photography to sociology. I also took advantage of another benefit offered: the option to take courses "pass/fail." I engaged this option whenever there was the chance that I would earn less than an "A."
At the time, I justified it from a financial standpoint. I had tuition and housing scholarships which required a certain GPA: a "C" would harm my GPA, but a "P" had no effect on it and I'd still earn the credit. However, in hindsight, I see that this behavior was a sign of something I'm only now starting to understand: my transcript was my identity.
Recently at an after-school meeting, one of our building associate principals shared an article summarizing the work done by Carol Dweck of the Stanford University School of Psychology. The gist: while it is not absolute, there are generally two "mindsets" into which people can be classified–the "fixed" mindset and the "growth" mindset.
A person whose disposition is in the "growth" mindset will relish challenge, recover from failure having learned and applied critical lessons, and "end up" in a different and usually better place from where they "start out."
In college, I was clearly of the "fixed" mindset.
The Paper
Paper. A school is dependent on paper. This thin, white, innocuous object has value beyond what is initially seen. Paper marks the flow of ideas and learning throughout the school. It is hard to imagine a school without paper. Yet, each year imagining a school without paper becomes easier to imagine.
Paper is an indicator species for resources in the school. Paper represents the health and strength of the school. Paper is symbolic of other resources within the school such as writing utensils, novels, additional support in the library, or clubs to create school culture.
Paper, and that for which it represents, is another item I will include on my list of Invisibles.
Invisible – Letters of Recommendation
By Kristin
One night at 11:30 the phone rang, waking me up. It was one of my all-time favorite students and she was sobbing. At midnight her online application for a desperately needed scholarship was due and the librarian, who had promised to write a letter of recommendation, hadn't done so. If she sent me the link and password, would I write one? She wouldn't ask except the librarian wasn't answering her phone.
The Budget
Another invisible: the budget. I spend a lot of time on amazon.com as part of my job. As chair of the English department, I have keep up the inventory of our resources–a key resource, of course, is our store of books. Every student at my school is required to take an English class, and my department budget works out to be about $1.80 per student per year. Granted, once you buy a book you can use it multiple times–but books also wear out, and our department budget also has to cover, among other things, basic supplies like paper, staples, dry erase markers, and the other necessities that my 18 full- or part-time English teachers usually end up buying out of their own pocket when the department supply runs out around mid-November.
When I get an email that we are a class-set short of copies of an anchor novel in the curriculum, I have to find a way to cover that gap. In a dream world, I'd buy library-bound hardcover copies of each novel, which start at about $20 per copy. Scratch that: in a dream world, I'd supply all of my students with e-readers wherein they can interact with, annotate, and easily carry their texts.
The Lesson Plans
To plan a
complete and well-designed lesson takes time. Most of us have 30-40 minutes of
prep time per day, yet teach 6-10 lessons per day (at the primary level). Since
that in-school prep time is also the only chance we have to go to the bathroom,
organize manipulatives, or gather materials, not much lesson planning happens
during the school day. Which means that either we do most of our planning on our
own time, or we don't do it and end up winging it.
We need
community members, administrators, and policy makers to carefully consider
where they want us to focus our efforts. How much time do you want me to spend
preparing lessons for your child?