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.

Cow Pies in the Classroom

It has not been a very exciting time since my last posting. However, things do happen that keep life in the classroom interesting.

Two weeks ago we had student-led, parent conferences. I caught a chest cold and have been fighting it ever since. The six years I was out of teaching I think I had a total of two colds. Now I have one every fall and again every spring. I suspect the ninth graders are the source. They seem to have no concept of germs (bacteria) as they pass around water bottles and soda pop containers. Sometimes up to four different kids will drink out of one bottle.

I inherited the district’s greenhouse when I volunteered to teach Natural resources. This past week they hooked up two LPG tanks to supply heat. The horticulture teacher used to have the kids doing hanging baskets and vegetable plants. I will be using a different approach and teaching the kids how to do grafting of conifers and how to root conifer cuttings. We will do flower seedlings in the late winter. I want to have some things to sell for community day.

Community day is unique to Eatonville. The whole school closes at noon on or near May 1. Clubs and other school groups set up stands on the school property and sell various things to the public. The elementary schools provide students to do a Maypole dance. A fun time is had by all. We just have to watch for Middle School students coming onto the school grounds and causing problems with their immature behaviors.

Every once in a while something will happen in the classroom that can only take place in a rural school system. Two days ago I was doing a lesson in equation writing with my first period chemistry students when there was a slight commotion. One of the boys asked if I had a hose he could take outside. He was disappointed when I said no and that the outside faucets could only be turned on with a key. The students around him were waving at him and holding their noses. When I gave them a puzzled look, they told me that there was a very bad smell coming from the boy. He was upset over the commotion he was causing. It seems that he gets up every morning at 5:00 AM and does chores on the farm. This morning he was repairing some fencing around the cow pasture and walked through a number of cow pies (cow flops or poop). The excrement was all over his boots and part way up his pants. He had tracked it into my room (luckily I don’t have carpet) and was quite aromatic (for once my cold was helpful). I sent him outside to clean his boots, without much success. He finally went to the lavatory where he managed to get everything off and then wiped up the floor when he returned to class.

One of the other boys started to criticize him but shut up fast when I pointed out that getting dirty doing honest work is nothing to be ashamed of and getting up to do an hour or two of dirty work before school is something to be admired. I have a number of older students who are very hard workers outside of school. Sometimes they don’t see a need for the same amount of effort on their intellectual type of work.

We got the word this week that we have to plan ahead for sophomore and freshmen students who don’t pass the end-of-year science test for graduation. It will be given to biology students and administered through the state. The WASL was such a fiasco that the state has moved in this direction. Students who normally take just two years of science (the graduation requirement) must now pass this test. Since many of them will not pass it, we will have to figure some way to offer two or three more sections of a biological based science. They have to retake the test until they pass or they will not graduate, even if they pass the class. I hope the impact on our higher level classes is not severe but I am afraid there will be some negative impacts.

Two weeks until Christmas break. The last day of school is our Christmas assembly. It seems that a bunch of kids got together and for their Christmas wish want me and another teacher to sing a song at the assembly. I'll let you know how it goes.