Accountability: An Imagined Conversation

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SCENE: Camera pans into The Principal’s Office. Teacher has been invited in for their end of year reflection conference. Principal has raised concerns about the high number of students on track to earn an F in Teacher’s 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th period classes. [Editor’s note: The characters represented below are not intended to serve as proxy for all principals or all teachers…]

PRINCIPAL [P]: Thanks for coming in, and I see you have your data with you [gestures to the stack of unnecessary spreadsheets the teacher is carrying].

TEACHER [T]: Of course. It really looks like the kids blew it this year. I’ve never had so many Fs in my whole career.

P: That must be frustrating. This has been an unprecedented year, according to everyone everywhere. Tell me about these Fs. It looks like from what I can see in Skyward, almost half of all of your students across all four classes have below a 50%. It looks like, though, when those kids don’t have zeros on their work, they are getting mainly As and Bs on assignments. What do you feel like is going on there?

T: Yeah, they just aren’t doing the work.

P: Hmm. What sorts of work have you been assigning them to do?

T: Typical stuff. The same stuff we’ve always done. I’ve never had so many kids just not do the work as this year. Worksheets, homework, reading assignments, there’s no trend, really, it’s just that they’re not doing the work or they’re just not turning it in. I remind them, I tell them to, but their engagement just sucks.

P: [Slowly nods and takes a deep breath] I see. What do you think is getting in the way of them doing the work or not turning it in? Maybe something to do with what’s going on in the world right now?

T: No, they’re coming to school on in-person days, and they’re even coming to zooms. They’re just not doing the work.

P: Tell me about your response to this situation. How are you providing feedback to them about their performance? What sorts of support or differentiation have you tried?

T: Well, they get zeros in the grade book. [Tosses grade book printouts onto the table between P and T.] They know they’re supposed to be doing the work. They’ve gotta learn that they can’t just not do what they’re told to do. That’s a life skill. What’s gonna happen when they’re in a job someday and they just don’t do what their boss says? No more job. No paycheck. In school, that’s a zero.

P: So it sounds to me like you are attempting to prepare them for real world responsibility.

T: Exactly. Gotta hold them accountable. No work, no score.

P: You’re intending to teach responsibility and then hold them “accountable.”

T: Exactly.

P: So tell me again, what is it that you are doing to teach responsibility?

T: They get zeros in the gradebook when they are too lazy to do the work and turn it in.

[Principal cringes, takes a deep breath, mentally runs through HR deadlines and CBA just-cause procedures.]

P: That sounds more like you are testing their responsibility.

T: I don’t get it.

P: It sounds like giving them zeros in the grade book isn’t teaching them responsibility, it is testing their responsibility.

T: I still don’t follow.

P: Let’s think of a math example. If you were going to teach the students the quadratic formula or the parts of a cell or how to decode a poem, what would that look like?

T: Lessons, examples, practice, a few quizzes, probably a final test.

P: So what do lessons, examples, practice, a few quizzes, and a final test look like when you are teaching responsibility? What might I see if I were observing this in a classroom setting?

T: [Visibly frustrated] I don’t get what this has to do with anything. They aren’t doing the work. I’m giving them zeros to teach them a lesson, I guess.

P: Okay. But you said that in “teaching,” the lesson’s just the first stage. You said [checks notes] “lessons, examples, practice, a few quizzes, and a final test.”

T: It’s a lesson they gotta learn! If I don’t give them zeroes how else are they going to learn responsibility?

P: Are they learning responsibility when you give them the zero?

T: I don’t understand.

P: If the “lesson” to teach responsibility is to give the kid a zero, what evidence might you have that this lesson is achieving its desired effect?

T: They get zeros for not turning things in. That teaches them the lesson.

P: I feel like we have a disconnect here. This is what I am asking you to consider: First, you’ve been giving students zeros all semester.

T: Yes, when they don’t do the work.

P: Have you found that getting a zero on missing work teaches the student responsibility, teaches them to avoid missing work in the future?

T: No. It’s all the same kids [taps on printouts], they just don’t do the work.

P: So it is clear that giving them zeros is not actually teaching them responsibility…

T: [interrupts] …nope, they just keep not doing the work.

P: …so have you considered that maybe your lesson on responsibility isn’t actually working?

T: So you’re saying I’m not allowed to give zeros? Fine, everyone gets an A!

P: That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’d just like you to reflect on what the lesson is that you’re trying to teach and whether the lesson is actually resulting in the student learning what it is you want them to learn.

T: How are they supposed to learn responsibility if I don’t give them zeros?

P: The same way they learn anything else: You teach the skill intentionally before you expect them to perform it. You give them examples, guidance, and feedback. You give them a safe place to fail now so they won’t fail later. You give them opportunities to demonstrate the skill, reflect on their mistakes, revise their thinking and their practices. I’m not saying don’t give zeros, necessarily. I’m saying that when you put a zero in the gradebook, you are testing them on a skill you haven’t explicitly taught them. High school is where students are supposed to learn the skills that keep them from the kinds of consequences you described: losing jobs, losing paychecks. When you give the zero, you’re taking away the paycheck, you implied that yourself. My question to you: What are you doing to teach responsibility, not just test responsibility?

END SCENE: Camera pans away, Teacher’s scrunched brow indicates they are clearly wrestling with this new concept of responsibility.

State Testing in the Time of Corona

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Schools function best when they follow processes. Students, families, and staff know what to expect. Everything stays in compliance with state and federal laws. We follow the process year after year. Fine tuning and increasing efficiency until a pandemic hits. Then, we scramble.

At the start of every year new students who may qualify for English Language (EL) support services in Washington state take the ELPA21 screener. I wrote a previous blog post that went into greater detail about the test, but here’s a quick overview: students new to the school qualify to take the test based on answers given on school registration forms. The test is mostly taken by incoming Kindergarten students and a few older students, who are either new to the country or state.

As a result of the pandemic no students at my school took the ELPA21 screener.

Therefore, every child, whose families indicated their first language as other than English or that they speak a language other than English at home, became a provisional EL student. They received EL services.

About a month and a half ago my school transitioned from a fully online learning model to a hybrid model with the option for families to stay fully online. Almost immediately the state wanted every student attending school in person to take the ELPA21 summative assessment within a very narrow time period. Provisional EL students needed to begin taking the test within a week.

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Leap Year

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Distance Learning, Education, Education Policy, Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Online Teaching |

It was the spring of my first year teaching, and I was walking hurriedly through the hallway on the way to pick up my class. I saw our music teacher in the hallway, and she asked me how I was and how things were going. Her concern was genuine, and I told her how tired and overwhelmed I was.

She smiled at me and said, “Let me give you my best piece of advice. They say in your first year you sleep; in your second year, you creep; and in your third year, you leap”.

Admittedly, her words have been rattling around in my brain for the last three years. The statement felt too simple to be good advice, but now that my third year is coming to a close, I’ve found she was absolutely right. 

In the fall of my second year, I wrote about how the rating of “Basic” on my evaluation affected my perception of myself as an educator.  

Looking back, I realized I was unable to see the ways in which I had grown because I was far too fixated on the rating my evaluator was giving me. In the months following that observation, I worked tirelessly to improve my teaching. With the help of an instructional coach, I built solid structures for managing my classroom and facilitating my instruction. I was proud of my hard work and asked my evaluator to visit my classroom to see firsthand all that I had worked to improve. 

Then, the pandemic hit, and the classroom visit never happened. 

As my third year of teaching comes to a close, I can’t help but feel robbed of experiences and opportunities for growth. I was assigned to a fully remote position this school year, which means I have been out of my classroom for essentially as long as I was ever in it. My foundation of classroom skills lies with a version of myself I’m having a hard time recognizing.  

However, despite all of this, I did leap.

I learned what I am truly capable of as an educator and grew in ways I didn’t think I would. Things I could never quite get a firm grasp on in the physical classroom became second nature in my virtual space. In a year with so much uncertainty, I adapted to everything thrown at me. 

In the end, I was finally marked proficient on this year’s evaluation. Truthfully, it didn’t feel as satisfying as I thought it would. It was always just a label and never a true reflection of how I perceived myself or my teaching abilities. 

When you’re a new teacher, the evaluation process can feel daunting. It carries with it the weight of something that is the end all, be all to your teaching career. I’m here to tell you that it is definitely not, and share my big takeaways from my first three years:

Your teaching is not binary

Nothing in life is black and white, and neither is your teaching. Yes, there is such a thing as “good” teaching and “bad” teaching, but nothing is 100% all of the time. Some days are good, and some lessons are bad, or maybe it’s the opposite. Or it’s both at once. Either way it doesn’t matter because teaching will always be fluid and messy. Give yourself a little room to breathe, good things take time. 

You are more than your teaching abilities

Being an educator is just one facet of our identity; it is not everything. Your value as a human being does not hinge on your teaching abilities. Truthfully, I often still struggle with this one. 

Openness to feedback and other perspectives is key

To hear feedback, you must allow yourself to be vulnerable. Someone pointing out the things we are not excelling at never feels great, but it’s necessary for growth. However, another person can only offer what they see on the outside and how others see you is rarely the same as how we see ourselves. Others cannot view you through the lens of your past experiences, traumas, and projections. For better or for worse, feedback is just a mirror. It only reflects the surface. It can show you what’s happening on the outside, so that you can begin the work on the inside.   

Observations are never as bad as they feel

After every observation, I’ve thought it went horribly (and honestly, sometimes it did go horribly) but most of the time, it was just the nature of teaching. I know those moments where you feel like the train is two seconds away from leaping off the tracks, but if that’s how it feels, it’s because you care. It means despite everything you perceive to be going wrong, you are doing your very best, and it’s enough.

Speak Up At School: Inviting Everyone into Equity Work

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Equity Advisory Committee 

I recently helped design and lead a district wide PD on equity. A mandatory staff training of this breadth hasn’t been done in close to a decade, let alone a training focused on equity, so our work was cut out for us.

The impetus for the training came from our district’s Equity Advisory Committee (EAC), a group of teachers, parents, and leaders who’ve volunteered to assess our district’s equity policy and practices. 

Our teaching staff is 93.9 % white so  talking about issues of equity and race is difficult, to say the least. But, this group has been collaborative space to surface issues of discrimination, bias, and inequity.

Parents have been vocal and vulnerable. One in particular shared how her son was called the n-word by another student repeatedly, and chose to transfer schools because he didn’t feel safe, let alone really seen. 

Educators have articulated their frustration with equity work that seems to move at a glacial pace. 

Speak Up At School 

Our superintendent’s initial plan for this mandatory equity training focused on Harassment, Intimidation, and Bullying (HIB). While that work is critical, our equity leaders worried that centering on HIB would be an easy excuse for white people to once again avoid talking about race and simply focus on colorblind kindness

Knowing this, we reflected on what we’ve done in our building to design a training using the  Speak Up At School framework from Learning for Justice. 

We started the session with an overview of the resources and we then moved into breakout rooms where people discussed scenarios that have happened in our buildings using the Interrupt, Question,  Educate, and Echo pocket guide.

Although we’d hear some complaints later, as we always do with anything labeled “equity,” it seemed to be going well. The conversations in the breakout rooms I visited were productive and people came back to share thoughtful insights with the larger group. 

It was going well until the last two minutes, that is.when an older white man, let’s call him George, asked why we can’t just go back to the times of Martin Luther King when we celebrated everyone, regardless of their skin color. He said he doubted that MLK would even have supported Black Lives Matter. 

And, just like that, a relatively successful training crumbled. My principal offered redirection and a few tried to point out the flaws in his thinking. But, others echoed George and quickly the chat spiraled into a political debate that luckily could be severed by an “end meeting” button.  

The next week, when I saw colleagues in the hall, they were just as likely to thank me as they were to cringe about what George said. 

Later, we found out that one of the few staff members of color ended up leaving the meeting, rightfully discouraged by how colleagues debated the validity of her lived experience. 

Equity 101 

I can’t and don’t blame her because I too was incredibly frustrated, and I have the privilege of being white.The fact that a training we had worked on for weeks could be so easily derailed easily was disheartening, but not exactly surprising. 

Having so many different staff members together was a glaring reminder that we don’t all need the same training. Teachers differentiate for a reason. Some students need sentence stems to start an essay, while others dive into symbolism with college level prose. We meet students where they are and we need to do the same for adults. 

The EAC was clear: equity work (education and training for tangible change) has to be mandatory. As soon as “equity” is optional, educators will choose to check out. It’s up to leadership to find the best ways to invite everyone to this work, otherwise, nothing will change. 

Our staff of color might need affinity groups, so they don’t have to hear the George’s of the world catch up to 2021. And, maybe George needs a safe space, perhaps with other white males, where he can ask questions and get some more accurate answers without committing an abuse against the marginalized.

What would it look like to have an equity 101 course in our August staff development, along with a 201, 301, and even graduate level? What would it look like to have these ongoing conversations all year? Not just in “equity” allocated PD days, but in all of what we do? 

This training we started has to be the floor, not the ceiling. 

Yes, Even (Especially) White People

A few weeks later, I saw George at a sporting event and he thanked me for “that equity thing.” He said it was good stuff but “it’s hard because, you know, we don’t have a lot of…*insert awkward hand motions to wave around the fact that we are 93.9% white.*” 

I tried to call out what he was dancing around and said something like, “Yes, it is challenging to have these discussions with a majority white staff, but the work is still important.”

Hindsight, I wish I had added something like, “As white folks, we have to confront our own biases and reflect on how our norms can be harmful. We need to act to interrupt systems of white supremacy and inequity.” 

But, in reality, if I said that, he probably would have shut down. George is a good reminder to me of the need for “Equity 101” and staff differentiation. He means well and it seems he wants to learn, so the only thing worse than his training comments would be for him to stop listening and engaging altogether. 

We might be in different places on our equity journeys, but it’s important that we keep our foot on the gas. 

Good-Bye ELPA21

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Standardized testing.

This phrase stirs up a lot of emotions in the world of teaching. If you work in a public school, you probably experienced some sort of instinctual reaction yourself. Did you remember the long, monotonous stretches of time spent monitoring students? Or the pressure from administration for students to perform?

I am not sure how you personally responded, but I am willing to guess the thought of standardized tests failed to put a smile on your face.

When most elementary school teachers think of standardized tests in our state, they think of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). However, I am an English Language (EL) Specialist, so standardized testing makes me think of ELPA21.

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An Immigrant Story

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I moved to the United States in the late 90’s during a wave of Slavic immigration to Washington State. The Soviet Union fell apart and the Eastern European countries under communist control were (and still are) filled with corruption as a result of the socialist dictatorship, offering few opportunities for economic advancement. In Ukraine people today buy test scores and degrees, bribe doctors to receive care despite having nationalized healthcare, and pay off the mafia to operate businesses. Last year my cousin was killed over two dollars. No wonder my parents decided to abandon everything they knew to seek new opportunities in the United States. Like thousands of other Slavs, my family moved to Washington State with nothing to their name.

You’re probably wondering how my personal story relates to school and school policy. For the past few years my district promoted trainings in diversity and equity, challenging staff members to examine their thinking and biases. The trainings coupled with personal experiences and anecdotes from other Slavic teachers and students made me realize that these trainings are often approached from a solely Americanized perspective often not accounting for the immigrant experience.

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Trauma-Informed Classrooms for All

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There is no denying it. Education is changing due to Covid-19. And, to be honest, it needs to. We have been stuck in a rut for a long time, and much needed change is long overdue. This last year I feel like the veil was lifted, and the dark and ugly side of education was laid bare for all to see. We found out what we strived to achieve was all an illusion.

Equity? We did not have it. Some families had the support, the technology, and the safe and secure space to conduct school at home. Many, maybe most, did not. Do any of us believe that it made no difference before the pandemic?

Engagement? How many of us had the illusion that our content was truly engaging blown away when our Zoom meetings were lightly attended and our remote learners opted out of all of our innovative and personalized resources? If they opt out as soon as they are out of our reach, did we really have their attention?

Achievement? Did our grades and test scores measure the important metrics? What good have they been to us this year? Who still cares about standardized tests? Have we all figured out what we are actually teaching yet? (I’ll give you a hint: It’s not standards.)

As we move back to so-called normal, we need to remember that the old normal no longer exists. More than that, we have changed. We have come through a time of collective trauma, and we can only succeed if we create safe and supportive learning environments for students and teachers.

I am a trauma-informed educator. I grew up with trauma of my own, and I have made a study of trauma-informed teaching practices to better serve my students. I believe this has helped me reinvent my teaching practice this year in ways that supported students and created a safe and secure learning environment. I plan to do more.

I remember when I first learned GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design) strategies to better serve my English language learners in class. The selling point was that all students would benefit from them. The same must be said of trauma-informed teaching practices. They will make all students feel more supported, more safe, more able to learn and grow with us.

And, let’s face it; aren’t we all a little traumatized this year?

Students who have experienced trauma feel unsafe in most places, including school. They may have little control of their fear response due to trauma, and when they are under this stress they are less able to learn, to focus, or to regulate their emotions. They may be hyper alert or withdrawn. They may have disruptive behaviors. They may struggle socially, academically, emotionally, and even physically.

Here are some gems I collected from my recent research on trauma-informed classrooms:

  • A 2014 study tells us that 45% of students have experienced some form of trauma. What do you think the numbers are now?
  • All students learn best when they feel safe and supported.
  • A safe, caring, and consistent adult is the best intervention for a child affected by trauma.
  • Both students and teachers must feel psychologically safe in the classroom- no bullying, no judgment, no demeaning behaviors.
  • The key to relationship-building is authentic interactions that respect student voice and perspectives.
  • Trauma-informed discipline requires us to acknowledge the role of trauma in behavior and use appropriate consequences that promote healthier reactions in the future (think restorative justice practices).
  • Self-regulation and mindfulness skills are as important as any curriculum.
  • We can offset stressors with messages of empathy and optimism to support healing and resilience in our students.

I’d add to this list that we should do the following as we reinvent education:

  • Create systems for evaluating student work that are more holistic and less demeaning and/or stress-inducing.
  • Demand discipline systems that respect every child and offer support and encouragement over punishment.
  • Encourage creativity, student choice, physical activity, and all other joyful pursuits.

There is an excellent article from the School-Justice Partnership: Trauma-Informed Classrooms. It is very long, but comprehensive.

If your time is limited, here is a short tip sheet from WestEd for Creating Trauma-Informed Learning Environments.

I would love to see more resources in the comments. I hope that educators all over the state will band together to support our students with new and improved practices- trauma-informed classrooms for all.

Facing 2021

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I’ve hosted dinner parties in the last couple of weeks with fully vaccinated friends. It’s been delightful to see people again, face to face!

So many of those adults shared stories of how hard this year has been, how much they’ve struggled, how exhausted they are. We’ve talked about the need to rest. To recuperate. To do art and music and get exercise. To stop pushing to get everything done. 

Then I think about the kids returning to—possibly—full time school next year. And two SBA tests. (Lord have mercy! Why couldn’t we just acknowledge that this was a horrifically bad year and drop one test entirely?)

I heard an interview with a psychologist on the news the other day who said we won’t be able to “return to normal.” We will have to transition. It will be a process. It will take time.

Personally, I think we will have to focus on social and emotional learning (SEL) at least as much next fall as we have during remote and hybrid learning. For several reasons, “many students will need increased mental health support as they transition back into a full-time academic environment, and as they struggle to manage grief, anxiety, or other emotional responses to recent events.” We are going to need to monitor students, not just in the first weeks of school, but for months. Our schools will need a response plan in place for the year. We need resources and more resources.

One year I had a student die. I led my students through their grief. We wrote cards to the parents. We attended the memorial service together. We had an assembly. We planted three trees and set a plaque in the garden in memory of their friend.

memorial trees

It was A Big Deal when we changed desks a few weeks later. As everyone cleaned their desks, I cleaned out Kyle’s. When we moved desks, I made sure his was in the mix. No one knew who ended up with his desk.

“Wait, where’s Kyle’s desk?”

“It’s gone,” the kids said.

“Like Kyle’s gone,” someone added.

“Kyle will never be gone,” was the fierce reply.

We read some short stories at the end of the year that elicited yet another highly emotional response and discussion. Kyle had died months earlier.

We are going to have classroom full of students who have lost a family member or a family friend—someone they know. Imagine the compounded grief and the emotional echoes that will reverberate all next year.

I know how long trauma can linger in a classroom. I’ve seen it.

This year I’ve had parents call me, in a twist, worried that their child will be academically behind next year. I’ve said, “No, they won’t. The entire country went through the same pandemic. Everybody’s kids struggled with remote learning and Zoom lessons and connectivity issues. Your child won’t be ‘behind’ because everyone will be set back the same amount.” The parents breathe a sigh of relief.

On the other hand, I’ve had parents tell me that they aren’t pushing their kids to achieve this year. If the kids get their work turned in—eventually—the parents really couldn’t care less about the quality. I tell those parents that I understand. There is a limit to what we (teachers/schools/districts) can expect out of families when everyone is overwhelmed.

I think the very worst thing we could do next fall is walk in the door with the attitude that all our students are months and months behind and we have to get them all caught up in the space of the next nine months. “If we don’t get them caught up next year, we will have failed.” Even worse: “If they don’t get caught up, they will have failed.” “Failure is not an option!” Buckle up, kids, it’s pedal to the metal from the first day of school! 

Adding that level of stress to kids—and their parents—will be a disaster. We don’t need to be in launch mode. We need to be in recovery mode.

Instead of looking at the students who come into my fifth-grade classroom next year as “fifth” graders, I need to look at where they are. I may actually have a class of “fourth” graders, in terms of achievement. I need to start there and work forward at a reasonable pace.

Meanwhile, next year I should do art (therapy), music (therapy), and poetry (therapy). I want kids to journal, sharing their experiences, their stories, and their feelings.

I want them to heal.

According to my husband, who chairs a coworking community group, business people are doing that kind of social-emotional work right now. Adults recognize how important that work is—for adults. Kids are going to need extra SEL support next year too. 

Media Literacy: 21st Century Critical Thinking

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Divided We Fall?

I’m sure there have been many times in history where it seemed like our country was irreconcilably divided. The Civil War is of course the ultimate example, with the Civil Rights movement closely following. But, all year, I have felt the strains of teaching in a cultural climate that seems both at odds with reality and finally aware of grim truths about our collective history.

I have students whose Google ID photos proudly ask to Make America Great Again , and others who display the light pink and blue flag that signifies their transgender identity. While there are always a wide range of opinions in the classroom, these differences between students feel more like cavernous divides.

 There have been several points in the year, particularly around the presidential election,  where I was a little glad I didn’t have students in class. Glad, at least, that I was the only one who had to read the vitriolic message from a student asking why we have to read about the sanctity of Black lives. Glad I could shield my students of color from his anger and unkind words that were rooted in fear, rather than empathy.  

As a teacher, the line between what is political and what’s appropriate in the classroom is blurry at best. And, when we are all bombarded with media from every angle and avenue, it seems impossible to combat disinformation. 

I’ve always found that teaching media literacy and critical consumption of media is important, but this year, among vaccine skepticism, conspiracy theories about stolen elections, and claims of learning loss, these skills felt even more pressing. My job is not to teach my students what to think, but how. 

So, this year, when I dove into media literacy and argument writing, I strove to bring the real world into the classroom. If I could prime students to at least pause and critically think about what they consumed, I’d call that a win. 

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words 

One particularly poignant lesson my student teacher created was around the power of images and captions across different media. 

We went over connotation and denotation, and she then presented examples of images with different captions. She asked students to see how the image and their understanding of it changed based on those differences. 

For example, when students saw these two, several swore that she lightened the second photo because they noticed the brightness of the sun and trees, even though nothing but the caption changed. 

While she created the above image for the purposes of our assignment, I saw and remembered myriad examples in the real world. 

This summer, when protests for racial justice broke out across the country, I paid particular attention to Portland and Seattle where headlines diverged wildly. They were called everything from “Antifa mob” and “riot” to “peaceful demonstrations.”  Without being there, it was hard to parse the truth. Some images depicted Portland burning, while others showed a wall of mourners, holding candles. Two wildly different reports of the same story, with two very different connotations, interpretations, and impacts. 

Then, as we were wrapping up our unit, Biden announced his two trillion dollar spending package, and two different news organizations posted very different accompanying photos. One of Biden, the president, and one of Alexandria Occasio Cortez, even though she wasn’t involved in the legislation and openly said that it was “not nearly enough.” Why, then, was she included in the headline? 

These and subsequent lessons on analyzing images helped students realize the persuasive power that lay in small choices that are far from arbitrary. Captions are short, so every word matters. And yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and our increasingly shrinking collective attention spans, they might be the most important thing a viewer sees.

Read Between the Lines 

While a caption on a forested trail might not be high stakes, the protests over racial injustice and government spending most certainly are. Students, like most media consumers, are so used to the near constant stream of information that they don’t often take a moment to pause and analyze what they’re seeing. 

Honestly, it was only because I was teaching this unit that those different posts about the infrastructure bill caught my eye. We’re so used to being bombarded with content constantly that it’s hard to remember to stop and think. 

After completing this unit, and her research on defining the police, one student told me she realized the issue was much more nuanced than what she had seen on social media. She went into her research against the movement, but ended up doing her project in favor of defunding. 

As with many well meaning, surface level media consumers, she understood the issue to be a false dilemma between police state or mass chaos, and she was actually fairly shocked when she learned more details. 

I don’t want my students to become cynical, but I do want them to recognize when they are being sold a bill of goods. I want them to understand how words and images intentionally play together to convince a specific audience. I hope these lessons at least helped them think twice. 

And, amidst rampant misinformation, fears, and theories around COVID vaccinations, I’d like to run an adult refresher course too, while I’m at it. 

 

Wednesdays

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Wednesdays are saving my life right now.

Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, I deliver in-person instruction for 335 minutes each day (down from 350 minutes per day pre-Covid, mainly because we had to make room for rotating lunch periods, which increased passing time).

During that 335 minutes of face-to-face time, I also work in a varying amount of time to simultaneously zoom with my students who remained fully remote.

During those 335 minutes, I say I “deliver in-person instruction,” but I’m a big believer that the person doing the work is the person doing the learning, which means that I work hard to shift the cognitive load to my students… getting them doing, talking, reading, writing.

To shift that load requires deliberate planning and preparation.

And shifting that load means students produce work which deserves feedback and guidance.

When people criticize teachers’ complaints about our workload, I wonder if the public envisions the old school university prof standing in front of the class lecturing. Let me tell you, lecturing is easy. I’m at the stage of my career where I could lecture your ear off for a ninety minute block no problem, no prep on my part required…just give me a topic and a time limit. Plus, the students are just sitting and “listening” so they aren’t generating work that needs feedback or assessment. Is this what people picture when they imagine the work of a teacher?

Anyone with any knowledge of teaching and learning knows what research confirms: that sort of marathon direct instruction, the endless lecture and notes method, is wildly unsuccessful for the massive majority of learners… especially teenage learners compelled by law to attend as opposed to university students paying top dollar to get their college’s name on a resume.

Good teaching requires preparation, intentional design, and feedback (which is sadly, the easiest to let fall to the wayside when time is tight). When I’m at my best, the ratio is easily 2:1, two minutes of preparation, assessment, and feedback for every one minute of student contact.

Add to the whole mix collaboration with colleagues, communication with families, and email…so many emails…and the finite resource of time quickly is exhausted.

Which is why Wednesdays are saving me right now, and why our current Wednesday routine is one I’m hoping we can continue into our post-COVID transition.

Right now, Wednesdays are full-remote days for our student body. Students are off-campus (except for small group intervention or scheduled appointments with staff), and teachers have created independent learning experiences that students continue to engage with. The pressure here is to ensure that the “homework” we design is effective and advances learning… and considers the varied non-school environments that our students may be learning from.

But Wednesday, sans structured student instruction, enables us to make home contacts, collaborate with peers on instructional design, provide feedback on student work, and build more responsive lessons.

Yes, these are things we’d be doing anyway. But now, there is time to do that work within my work day.

I’m still up at 4 or 5 am to read student work or fine tune the day’s lessons.

I’m still at school most days well after my “work day” is over, and grabbing moments to lesson plan or respond to emails while I cook dinner or help my own offspring with homework.

But Wednesdays are saving me because, for the first time in my career, I at least feel like the system actually considers what my real work is… and is giving me time to do that work at work.

Would I rather my work be doable within my work day, not overflowing into the early mornings and late evenings? Of course.

Wednesdays are a start. We have all this talk about shaking up our system post-COVID. The quality of those moments we spend in front of kids is the direct result of the quality of those moments we spend planning to be in front of kids.

We know our system needs to change, and the systemic and predicable inequities of our students’ experience prove that. System change isn’t just about policies or trainings or different curriculum. How we structure teacher time, in my opinion, is the highest leverage change we can make to our system. Without that change to the fundamental structure of our schools, all the other efforts will be for naught.