The Winds of Change

This will be my last year of blogging so I decided to take a different approach. I tend to “get on my soapbox” and express my feelings about some of the things that are going on in education today. For the rest of this school year, I will be throwing the soapbox away and share tips and techniques I have used in my classroom to be an effective teacher (and survive).

That being said, I have just this one last rant from my soapbox. I will relate my feelings about teacher evaluations and seniority in this blog. There is a lot being said about poor teachers. There is no question at all that there are bad teachers. Every school has their share of them. They are not always the experienced teachers, since being new is no guarantee of competence and greater enthusiasm for the job. I am entering my fortieth year in the classroom and still look forward to interacting with my students. Likewise I have seen first year teachers who bored their students to death or had no classroom control and were driven right out of teaching.

The biggest recent complaint about teacher evaluations has arisen due to all of the RIFing (teacher layoffs) that are taking place across the country. The news is full of comments about finding ways to layoff the “deadwood” and keep the young, energetic teachers in the classroom.

Historically seniority has always been the predominant method of laying off people in any industry or profession. I don’t hear government workers being laid off according to any criteria other than seniority. How about having open heart surgery performed by a surgeon fresh out of medical school instead of a surgeon who has done hundreds of those operations. Which would you prefer?

On the other hand, seniority does not guarantee competence in any profession and RIFing in any job or profession should be based upon performance, not duration. However, the fair evaluation of people in any job or career depends upon so many different factors that it is a very difficult process. Not the simple process advocated by a number of simpletons (simpleton in their understanding of the educational process).

Let’s look at each of these factors as they apply to teachers:

1. Students

            a. Student opinions about teachers are nonfactors since most students like the friendliest teachers and dislike the teachers who work them the hardest. Of course parents hear all kinds of stories about what goes on in the classrooms and are infuenced by the stories that come home. Especially since their child would never lie about or embellish anything that goes on in school.

            b. Student test results are a poor gauge of teacher competence since all students have different learning abilities. Teachers who teach students with involved parents will see good test results no matter how incompetent the teacher may be. Meanwhile, students who see no value in school (for many different reasons) will generally show moderate to no test improvements. Of course the administrator will say that is the fault of the teacher who has not been able to interest all students in his subject.

            c. No matter what is done regarding seniority, there will always be a pecking order among faculty and the newer teachers will be predominantly given the more difficult classes, especially if student testing is part of the teaching evaluation criteria. I would prefer the advanced students if testing is part of my evaluation.

2. Principal

            a. Not all principals are competent. Not all superintendents are able to make the best choices when selecting principals. The principals and superintendents hire teachers and are able to evaluate teachers for two or three years with no tenure considerations. If a poor teacher is hired, whose fault is that?

            b. When evaluation criteria are changed and the principal’s evaluation determines who gets RIFed, almost all controversy regarding curriculum development and the teaching environment will go away. Who wants to aggravate a principal who is no longer held to a detailed due process to remove tenured faculty?

            c. Many, if not most, principals warn teachers in advance before doing a formal evaluation. It gives the teacher plenty of time to prepare a “dog and pony” show for the day of the classroom observation. Drop-in evaluations are looked upon with a “He’s out to get me” attitude on the part of the teacher. The exception would be if the principal makes drop-ins a regular occurance and focuses on the positives as well as the negatives taking place in the classroom.

3. Peers

            a. There is no way teachers will evaluate each other. Not only would personalities enter into the process, teachers don’t have the required training nor time to visit each other’s classrooms.

4. School board members

            a. Since most of them never visit classrooms at all, let alone on any sort of a regular basis, they base their knowledge about their schools upon what they are told by their administrators and any of their own children who are enrolled in classes. That makes them a nonfactor in evaluating teachers, not a very popular thing to say on my part.

5. The most ignorant groups who don’t know what is really happening in the public schools would be the politicians and big money executives who want to fix all of the problems in the educational system by tearing it down. They base their opinions upon what they hear from special interest groups such as conservative “think tanks” who use skewed data collected and evaluated by someone who would be “eaten alive” in a typical classroom. They know how to evaluate teachers and want to remove job protections to “kick out” the bums doing a bad job. If only it was so simple.

There are fair ways to evaluate people and those methods need to be developed to remove incompetent teachers, worthless government employees outside of education, and politicians who refuse to live within a budget. Why just focus on the easiest target?

Sacrificial Lambs

Another school year is behind me. I was invited to several graduation parties and was able to visit all but one. It is always nice to mingle with students’ parents, especially when they appreciate the work you have done with their “graduated senior”. At one party I was talking to a parent of a former student who graduated last year. I had her daughter in my ninth grade advanced earth science class (which I no longer teach, having assumed responsibility for two chemistry classes). She told me how much my class helped her be successful as a college freshman. I had discovered that my ninth grade students were woefully lacking in study skills. They could not outline a chapter, had no note taking skills, did not know how to studey for a test, and did not know how to take a test.

When I discovered this lack of preparation among the best ninth grade students, I did something about it. I would spend the first four weeks of my science class focused on study skills and I would use the science subject matter as the tool. She remembered a lot of what we had done and applied it to her college work. It made things a lot easier for her. I felt good hearing that for a couple of reasons. First, it showed that my efforts were successful with some students (for every one I hear about there are probably several others that I heaven’t heard about). Second, it helped her get over one of life’s hurdles.

I had good relationships with a lot of my students who have now graduated. I will be making new ones with students in my classes during the next school year. Hopefully I will have some successes and only a few failures. This past year I taught two sections of non-college bound ninth grade students. Three of the students failed every class they were taking. I would have liked to have gotten through to them that they were making a serious mistake. This year I will have two more classes of the same type of student. I plan on varying my methods a bit and being a “loving hardass”.

Since school is out I thought I do a couple of posts on the state of education from my point of view as an experienced educator who gets more good results than bad results. I’ll focus more on my classroom happenings when school resumes in September for what will probably be my last year as an educator in a public school (I will decide in January).

In education there are some groups of kids that go through the educational system who are what I call “sacrificial lambs”. They are sacrificed on the altar of “educational improvement”. For example, throwing high stakes standadrdized tests at kids that establish their “stupidity” cannot be a good thing. Those kids have an esteem disruption that the middle school with its excessive focus on esteem cannot overcome in a realistic way, especially when the testing continues. Then the waffeling of the politicians over how to use the test results only adds to the confusion. Eventually the tests are watered down and simplified so most students pass or the consequences of failure are put off for a number of years from the original schedule.

Then someone has the bright idea to use these tests to evaluate teachers since the student failures must be due to bad teaching. When that happens, then teachers “pull rank” to get the best classes where students will be successful regardless of the teaching methods. The schools in the tougher parts of town see more of an exodus of their most experienced teachers to schools in the higher income parts of the district or even to other districts. Then the youngest, least experienced teachers have the students that tend to show the least improvement on standardized tests.

“Sacrificial lambs” are taught self esteem in middle schools (replaced junior high schools) and have a disatrous year as high school freshmen. “Sacrificial lambs” are taught newly designed curriculum that ignores past successful teaching methods as being antiquated and out of date (modern math). “Sacrificial lambs” are not able to take shop and home economics in middle school (eliminated) and cannot take basic trade classes in high school since many have been eliminated for computer based trades classes and besides, they need to take remediation classes to pass standardized tests. “Sacrificial lambs” can’t take music or art because something had to be eliminated due to budget constraints and high stakes testing programs. “Sacrificial lambs” are created when our politicians adjust our educational system to try and catch up with Asian and European school systems that produce students who test higher than our students. That is such a farce as to be almost unbelievable.

I’ll go into that more in a future post. I also plan to blog about teacher evaluation methods and layoffs. Other topics will appear in my blog this summer based upon whatever public education bashing I read in the paper.

Another One “Bites the Dust” (Year, not person)

I have one week of school remaining before summer vacation. I have been away from my blog for a while since I not only had to finish the school year but also our plant nursery work was requiring extra attention and I had to finish working on a book about dwarf conifers.

A number of things have been going on at school- some good and some questionable. Students completed the science test (HISPE- might not be quite the correct acronym, but who cares?) They were told by a vascillating legislature that they had to pass it to graduate. We worked on revising the biology curriculum and my Natural resources class for next year to accommodate the students who don’t pass it. They would have to take it again, although then it would be an end-of-year (EOC- another g-damn acronym) exam that they must pass to graduate. I even coined my own acronym- PMS – for Primary Middle School.

Guess what? The legislature waited until a week after the test was given to postpone the passing requirement until the class of 2018. So the EOC will have no teeth to it, will not be used to improve the educational process, and will serve the role of an evaluative tool to demonstrate how bad our public schools are. Meanwhile, our curriculum changes involving Natural Resources are out the window since upper classmen will not have to take the class. Oh well, another day in the politically controlled public school system where we try to teach everyone to feel good about themselves and to go to college.

Graduation was last night. I have several graduated seniors who are returning to class tomorrow to take the final exam. I gave them that option as an opportunity to improve their grades. They are chemistry and physics students. That doesn’t happen very often. It’ll be interesting to see how many actually show.

Two weeks ago I had one of my ninth grade wastrels come to me during class (not on his own time) to tell me that I had to give him the twenty assignments he hadn’t done so he could make them up. His father had been in to the office about his grades and they told him that his “little boy” could make up any and all missing work. So I took two minutes to show him on his grade printout what he was missing. Surprisingly, the work still hasn’t been turned in.

One of the goals I have always strove for was to hold students accountable to deadlines. That disappeared this past year. It is now school policy that we accept late work as far back as 18 weeks, even if the student wasted class time and just screwed around instead of completing it. We are allowed to only give half credit. Students are now able to copy other students’ returned work and turn it in and we have no way to check to see if it was copied. That takes care of another life skill I tried to teach.

The latest buzzword at school is the Power Standard. (Actually two words but then I went to public school and have trouble with my numbers. Everyone knows the United States produces terrible math students). Someone wrote a book taking old concepts, relabeling them, and repackaging them as something new. Now he goes around the country presenting expensive seminars and sells books and videos about this wonderful new concept that I was doing back in the 1970’s. Meanwhile the district is spending all kinds of money on training and rewriting curriculum (copying old curriculum and relabeling it would serve the same purpose). We are not the only district doing this. The really sad part is that the book publishers and state standards committees have already spent millions of dollars doing the same thing.

The math EOC was given and the results will be back sometime in August. That will be just in time to rewrite schedules for thousands of students across the state who will have to go into math remediation classes. Unfortunately the problem is not that they cannot do the math. They can’t read, interpret, and apply their math skills because they are not trained to work with math in that way. I see that in science all the time. Whenever we have physics problems that only involve algebra, my students, many of which are on geometry and calculus have no idea what to do. They have poor written problem solving skills and they haven’t done basic math for one or more years.

I have to break this off and go to a couple of graduation parties. Both of these boys had issues when they started high school. One would not do any school work while the other vandalized school property and was always in trouble. The former turned it around in his junior year and did alright in my physics class as a senior. He just needed to decide on a goal and to go for it. The second student changed during his sophomore year, and as a junior became my regular TA in Physics (he told everyone he was in physics). He was still my TA as a senior and even became senior class treasurer. Two success stories: one is going to a private college and the other is going into a family business to work with his brothers.

If I get on my soap box once in a while, it is because I hate to see what happens to students because of political tinkering with the educational system. Too many well intentioned (and lots of self interested people as well) people who have no idea as to the realities of the classroom have their own opinions as to how to fix it all. Meanwhile it is the students who suffer.

I have been a classroom for forty years and have pretty much seen it all. I will retire in the next year or two and I am sure I will be replaced by some new teacher who will know all of the answers and will treat any suggestions or curriculum I leave behind as the ramblings of some old fart who was burned out and has nothing appropriate to the modern world (I’ve seen that happen more than once. Of course sometimes it was true!).

Next blog I might just ramble on about teacher evaluations and RIFing and I have a good story about a budget email I sent out to all staff.

Fare Thee Well

I was reading the obituaries from my home town newspaper tonight when I came across the name of a man named Joe who died at the age of fifty. He was living a successful life with a lot of community involvement and a good career. I was quite upset to read his obituary. I hadn't seen Joe since 1979, his year of graduation from Tamaqua High School. Joe was a former student of mine.

I love teaching but I am always saddened whenever a former student dies. I should not outlive my students anymore than a father should outlive his son or daughter. My former high school had an inordinate number of deaths among our students. One year we lost six students. Most were not mine but their loss impacted our school community and Curt, the high school principal, had a very difficult time since he attended every funeral.

I remember an eleventh grade girl who was often careless about keeping her asthma inhaler close by and ready. She died before she could graduate.

I remember Ernie, a brilliant kid with a great personality who belonged to ski club and usually skied in bib overalls. He graduated and was studying to be a doctor when he died. I used to have a lot of fun teasing him.

Greg was my chess opponent in over 300 games through high school. It made us both better players. I won almost 60 games against him before he finally beat me with some new maneuver. I always figured it out and started another streak which he would derail after about ten games with another new maneuver. We got so involved that nobody could watch and follow what we were doing. Greg had a bulldog-like tenacity when it came to our chess games and he never got frustrated, just even. I read almost twenty years ago that he died as a young man from a heart condition.

I had one boy in class, Joseph, who was always in trouble. For some reason we got along quite well, even though he never passed my class. He had a girlfriend, Maureen. She was academically challenged but always had a smile and was great fun in class. Joseph quit school and was living in a car for some time. Maureen tried to stay in school and get a diploma but she didn't make it. A short time after giving up on school, she was murdered by Joseph.

Lori was a ninth grade student of mine and was in my wife's tenth grade homeroom. She died in a house fire when she was in the tenth grade.

Mike was a real character and loved life and loved being a bit of a cutup in class. He even had a crush on my wife. A short time after graduation he was killed in a car accident.

Jim was a junior when he was killed in a car accident. Then there was John, who could be a real pain in the class. His yearbook picture shows him on a motorcycle. Unfortunately the yearbook was dedicated to him because he died before he graduated.

These are the students I think of with fondness and sadness. They will always have a special place in my memories when I think of "what might have been".

At the same time, I have taught over 6000 different students in my career, which spans almost 40 years. I have seen more good things happen than I could ever begin to list. I still teach and I have not "burnt out". I enjoy teaching and my students keep me feeling young. After all, I have to stay one step ahead of them. It is funny to see my students acting out in ways that they think are unique. During my career I have seen every action done by every student multiple times. I have to chuckle to myself when I watch their actions.

The only time I don't chuckle is when I am reminded of a former student who has left this world ahead of me.

I Am Back

I have had an interesting as well as very busy time since my last posting.

My chemistry classes are moving right along. Students are comprehending the material we are covering, even though they have some problems with the tests. I believe they have problems with the tests because they simply don’t know how to prepare for a test. Hopefully they will master that skill by the time they enter college. Meanwhile my physics students are still having problems with the mathematics part of the course. Since it is what should be simple math for them, I believe it is due to a lack of skill in reading a problem and deciding which math to use to solve it. There are two possible reasons for this problem: students don’t have the mental maturity to have the insights needed to relate the appropriate mathematics to the problem and secondly, the way students are taught mathematics emphasizes the mechanics of problem solving over the interpretive skills required for mathematics applications needed for science.

A few weeks ago we decided to modify my ninth grade natural resources class to serve students who have failed the tenth grade biology end of course exam. We were told that students graduating in 2013 or later had to pass this test. Now the state may move it to the class of 2017 and later. These are mixed signals similar to what happened in math. We have also been prewarned that students will have to take three years of science to graduate from high school.

Budget cuts mean that schools will be laying off (furloughing) teachers and class sizes will be going up, so I guess this is a perfect time to increase graduation requirements and push more students into the sciences. I don’t know where the additional science teachers will originate and I wonder what will happen to the teachers who teach electives. Students are able to take fewer and fewer electives as more requirements are dumped onto them.

The state is experimenting with a new system of evaluating teachers. Students’ test results will be part of a teacher’s evaluation. I am not sure how this system will work. One of the big falicies of public education is that all students can be successful. There are always students who will make no effort to be successful and use the school for socialization time. Most administrators will criticise the teacher for not engaging such a student. Now the test scores of such a student will have a negative effect on the student’s teachers. I am also interested in how much of the new system will be objective and how much will be subjective. One big fear teachers have is that the principal will use administrative powers to create a feifdom in the district. Teachers would not be so adamant about merit pay and job seniority if a fair method of evaluations could be devised. Unfortunately no such method has appeared.

I am wondering if I should move to Wisconsin. I understand from the Tea Party crowd that the average state worker makes over $100,000 a year. I think I’ll go there and drive a school bus so that I can afford to own two houses and drive a Lexus. They have decertified their public employees unions and basically took away many of their job protections, using money as the reason (bogus). There are plenty of public service employees who are next to worthless but going after everyone is hardly the best solution.

Next week I’ll write about my natural resources class.

Tie One On

This past week had a few interesting events. First of all, I was able to throw out a few puns that caused a few chuckles and a lot of groans among my upperclassmen. We worked on phase transitions and latent heat energy in chemistry. When the students started having trouble with a problem about latent heat, I explained how the girls would do better on those problems than the boys because the units were in joules and the girls like joules better than boys do.
My TA has been installing some aluminum clad bubble wrap insulation in the greenhouse. I want to reduce the energy cost. I plan to run it at 40 degrees fahrenheit through the winter and produce some grafted conifers. This coming week I’ll show all of my freshmen how to graft and then offer training after school to interested students. They are the ones who will take over the plant production.

Today I did some demos for my chemistry students and successfully completed two out of the three. I warmed and then cooled chainsaw bar oil to discuss viscosity. That worked just fine. Then I did 10W-30W oil to show that it reverses the process and thickens upon heating and gets thinner upon cooling. It didn’t work. It behaved just like the chainsaw oil. I pointed out that things don’t always work out and that I got ripped off with that brand of oil.

Yesterday my chemistry students did a latent heat lab. They all had their prelabs done and I have been letting them just reference the procedure in the lab instruction packet when they do their writeups. Unfortunately there was a lot of bumbling around during the lab. It seems that they are doing the prelab without reading the procedure. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they would take the easy way out. So I had to warn them, they are very close to having to include procedural summaries in their lab reports.

Yesterday was interesting. I wore black jeans and a black shirt with a bright pink/paisley tie. I had at least twenty different compliments from students throughout the day. I even had one of my ninth grade girls interrupt the class discussion to say that my tie was having some sort of an effect on her. After school one of the junior girls in chemistry came in for extra help with a classmate. Before she left, she told me that she couldn’t take her eyes off of my tie while I was lecturing and that everytime I looked at her, she quickly looked away.

Kids think they are so worldly and yet can say the most innocent things that could be taken inappropriately. It is one of the joys of teaching.

Awards and Money

As Christmas vacation comes to an end (last day today), I am just getting over a bad cold that my students gave me for the holidays. I just read an email from the assistant principal about a new program. We seem to be in a “something of the month” condition right now. Back in November we were told that each department had to select two students of the month each month. Now we are to nominate a teacher each month and a support person each month. I guess we are really going to be “feeling good” about each other for the rest of the year.

As a rule, most teachers dislike the “teacher of the month” or “teacher of the year” designation. It is a bit like painting a target on your back. It also has a problem in that it either gets passed around so everyone gets a turn or it becomes a regular “award” among a select group of the staff. I always believe that recognition for good teaching comes in the feeling of self satisfaction as well as results observed among the students.

I know I do a good job because I can observe the growth of my students as they master the material I present and in their attitudes toward me as they gain confidence and become more mature in their approach toward achieving a good education.

Our state is entering a period of severe budget cuts. Education was hit hard, which was expected, since it takes a large percentage of the state’s budget. One area cut was the $5000 annual bonus for teachers who achieved National Board Certification. I have already seen “letters to the editor” bewailing the loss. The additional $5000 for teaching in a district with a high number of free and reduced lunches (a warning flag that the kids will be more difficult to teach) and having that certification also disappeared.

It is nice to have the extra money and to get repaid plus make a profit for getting the certification, but that should not be the reason for getting it. It is interesting that no one from the teachers’ union came out against the original proposal to pay these bonuses and yet there is a great outcry when any proposal comes along to pay bonuses or higher salaries to teachers in critical areas such as math and science where private industry filters off many of the best for much higher salaries.

It is expensive to obtain National Board Certification. I don’t agree that it is all it claims to be. It is a continuation of “teacher training” that puts more of the work upon the teacher. This work is evaluated by board representatives and a test is given. Pass everything and you are labeled as a superior teacher and receive benefits of cash and licensing from the states that recognize it as a worthwhile program.

Meanwhile, get a Master’s Degree and a Doctorate in Education and actually receive less in the way of “perks”. The standards listed are the same as any good teacher training program will provide. Good teachers will continue to grow with or without a national standards board.

On the last day of school before vacation I actually had to sing a Christmas carol duet with another teacher at the Christmas Wishes assembly. We had fun with it and even involved all of the male faculty in our building singing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”. The student who made the wish said it was the best thing to happen ever since he started school.

My TA in Physics is a success story. Nothing but trouble as a ninth grade student, he turned things around in tenth grade, became my Physics TA in eleventh grade (and told eveyone he was in my physics class), and is repeating as my TA this year plus was elected senior class treasurer.

Next time I’ll probably talk about what is going on in a neighboring district as they realign, sending ninth graders into the high school and sixth graders to “learn” with the seventh and eighth graders.

“We study history so we do not repeat the mistakes of the past.” Too bad we don’t follow this in educational pedagogy.