Just Because I Bought You Donuts Doesn't Mean I'm a Serial Killer

Unhappy teachers are not effective. And it's the little things that can pull you down. Sometimes they happen sporadically, but sometimes they come at you in a rush.

The other day, I listened to one student tell another that if you graduate from our school, you are not eligible for the Marine Corps, because "we don't go to a real school." When I asked him what in the world he was talking about, he repeated that you had to go to a "real" school to join the Marines.

Last I heard, charter schools like ours are not pretend.

Yesterday, I was cleaning some graffiti off of a wall - mostly random pencil marks. A student of mine watched me for a minute and then asked why I was bothering. I told him that if you let the vandals know that their tags would be cleaned up immediately, they'd eventually stop putting them up. He laughed, turned to another student, and said, "how's he think he's gonna stop the tags? We go to a gang school."

A gang school. Is that what they call it?

Today, I stopped at the student bathroom to wash my hands. When I entered, I saw two kids with money in their hands. There wasn't much I could do, they weren't doing anything wrong that I could see, but I was suspicious. I asked them what they were up to and one of them said he was getting change for the soda machine. I eyed them as I dried my hands, and even decided that I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Just then, a colleague entered the bathroom, saw the pair with the money in their hands, and said, "Come on guys, can't you find a better place to do that."

The pair protested: "Why ya'll always think we're dealin' drugs or something, I just want some change."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he replied.

I stood stunned. A staff member just implied - directly to a student - that it was okay to deal drugs in school, just not where you might get caught. How do you improve the attitudes of the children when the adults have given up?

Later, I decided to walk across the street, get a dozen donuts, and hand them out to my co-workers. According to "Dexter," that's what normal people do to cheer each other up. I'm no sociopath, but sometimes, like Dexter, I feel like I live in a world full of people I can't quite comprehend.

At-Risk Kids: What Are We Really Saying?

I constantly battle an attitude that is displayed by many of my colleagues. I call it the Our Kids syndrome. The symptoms are: a tendency to say "our kids" or "at-risk" when what you mean is poor and minority, an ability to blame educational failures on the fact that "our population" is different, and a well honed ability to generalize and stereotype students by their race and economic situation.

As a part of the annual Minnesota Online Learning Alliance (MNOLA) conference today, I attended a 'break-out" with the super-catchy title, " At-Risk High School Students and Online Learning: Characteristics, Needs, and Instructional Strategies." It was the low light of an exceptional day of learning.

We were treated to a long explanation of a Delphi study that was undertaken by the presenter as a part of a book she is writing. Her purpose was to come up with a definitive list of instructional strategies for at-risk students. The study started out by asking a group of high school educators, parents, and college professors for a list of characteristics of at-risk youth, and to narrow that list down to the characteristics that 80% of them could agree to. Here are some examples:

• Have a limited or poor ability to read
• Lack study skills
• Mistrust the educational system
• Have self-doubt about their educational abilities

The study went on to name some things that the group thought at-risk kids needed, things like:

• Frequent contact with instructors and counselors
• Flexible school work times
• Curriculum modification
• Critical thinking skills

At this point, besides being bored out of my skull from the description of the particulars of the study, I was beginning to get annoyed.

Does it occur to anyone that it is unreasonable to assume that because a kid is a so-called at-risk student, that she has a problem reading! What kind of assumption is that? Is it fair to assume that it will be difficult to teach certain students using online methods because they don't have access to a computer or the Internet. Can we assume that? Is it fair to take a group of students who are doing poorly - because of poverty, or teen pregnancy, or abuse, or drug addiction, homelessness, mental illness, or undiagnosed disabilities - and attach "needs" that apply to all of them?

Absolutely not.

Furthermore, as I reread the handout and the terms assigned to at-risk students, I realized that the same set of characteristics and needs could be applied to plenty of non-risk students. So who are the at-risk students? Are there any non-risk students? What the hell do we mean when we say "at-risk?"

As educators, we know that no one strategy works for all of our students. We are talking about individual human beings whose educational and instructional needs are varied and unique. This thinking should never be thrown out the window just because the kid doesn't look and act like the kids on the Disney Channel.

Let's do all of our students a favor and stop referring to them as "our population" and start calling them by their true names: like James, and Latonya, and Raven, and Hank. They are individuals after all, not just members of a group.

Vimeo Goes Mobile

Good news for Vimeo users with iphones - Vimeo is now supporting mobile versions of your videos that can be played on your phone - as well the ipod Touch, Android phones, and the Palm Pre. This is a big deal for educators who use Video to display student work, especially considering the number of young people who do the majority of their web browsing on mobile devices.

For those who don't know, Vimeo is a video hosting site, much like YouTube, but different in a couple of ways - ways that are especially important to educators and serious filmmakers. First of all, Vimeo's quality (both HD and DV) leaves YouTube in the dust. Like any video sharing site, users only get the quality that they put in, and that video you shot with your grandpa's phone isn't going to turn out very crisp, but if you start with quality footage and follow Vimeo's compression guidelines, your videos will look like they're hosted on Hulu. Just the fact that they provide easy-to-find guidelines for prepping your video is a big bonus.

The Smother, "The Snuggie Without the Holes" from MTS Digital Media Academy (if you are on a iphone or other mobile device as you read this - click here for the mobile version of the video).

The other thing that sets Vimeo apart is the content on the site - important to the people who decide what does and doesn't get through school filters - there is no juvenile videos of kids knocking over bike riders or pirated music videos. This is a site that is geared toward serious audiences and they keep the garbage out, including inappropriate content.

I have several channels on Vimeo to showcase work from different classes and school years and I'm pleased that my students and their friends will now be able to check out their work on their phones and ipods.

For more information on how to convert your Vimeo files to mobile files, check out their blog.

Thoughts on Unions and Charters

Just came across a series of responses to a Joanne Jacobs blog on charter school misconceptions and unions in school districts. You can check out the whole thing here...

...but here's the best of what I had to say in response to a posting that cited a terribly inaccurate blog from the Seattle School district.

Trey Wodele
October 8, 2009 at 11:39 am
I can’t talk about every charter school in the nation, nor would I want to. By their very nature, charter schools are unique institutions and to lump them all together is not a realistic or fair way to judge them.

I can only talk about my employer: one of Minnesota’s largest, oldest, and (in many ways) most successful charter schools. I can only state what I know from experience, but for a very easy-to-read and informative document outlining Minnesota’s laws surrounding charter schools, you can look at the Minnesota House of Representatives research department’s information brief on charter school law: http://tinyurl.com/yc4eft5

I can also counter some of the general claims made by the Seattle Education blog you cite. Remember though, while I am writing about Minnesota charter schools, the Seattle Education blog refers to the nation’s many charter schools and in very general terms. In reality, each state is different in the way they regulate charter schools and some of what I am reporting will not be true in other states.

1. In Minnesota, charter schools are sponsored by a private organization, a public school, or even a post-secondary institution. They are managed by an elected board of directors. There is absolutely not, “complete control of the school by a private enterprise.” Decisions are made by the board of directors which (by law) includes educators, administrators, community members, and parents.

2. While the blog’s claim that most charter schools do not hire union teachers is true, the phrase, “they can demand the teacher work longer hours including weekends at the school site and pay less than union wages,” is troubling. Again, I can’t speak for every charter school, but I am on a contract which states very clearly when I am and am not expected to work. I was aware of the requirements (which include a three week stint teaching summer school) when I took the job and I’m fairly compensated. I’ve never been forced or coerced to go beyond my contractual obligations.

3. My charter school does not, would not, and cannot expel a student, “(who) it doesn’t believe fits within its standards or meets its level of expectation in terms of test scores.” In fact, many (but certainly not all) of our students are kids with academic, social, and economic troubles. We are the last hope for many inner-city parents who have tried everything and who cannot afford the cost of living in the successful suburban districts or the tuition costs of private schools as an alternative to public schools.

By Minnesota law, charter schools have, “an obligation to enroll an eligible pupil who submits a timely application unless the number of applications exceeds the capacity of the program, class, grade level, or building.”

In addition:

-My school offers high quality and innovative programs like: a Digital Media Academy featuring Video Production and Editing, Screenwriting, Music and Sound Recording, and Graphic Design; a Medical Careers Academy; a Carpentry Careers Academy; and a Sports Careers Academy. These are the kind of programs that just don’t exist for many students at inner-city public schools.

-We embrace new ways of teaching using technology and the Internet, Google Apps for Education, and Moodle – among others.

-Our high school classrooms average around a dozen students per teacher.

-Our teachers are paid a competitive wage, our medical and family medical benefits greatly exceed those offered by the local public district, and we have the opportunity to earn performance pay through Minnesota’s Q Comp program.

Are charter schools the only answer? Absolutely not. Do they fail sometimes? For sure. But ask yourself the same questions about traditional public schools and your answer may be the same.

But most importantly, we must look honestly at charter schools, voucher programs, public schools, alternative schools – and any other education solution. It is difficult for those of us in the field of education to discuss policy without looking at it through the window of our own self interest. But these are our children we are talking about, and those of neighbors and our fellow citizens.

Let’s stop misstating facts, tearing down solutions, and complaining about what does not work – and start offering suggestions, solutions, and advice to the people who are trying to make a difference.

Final Student Teaching Reflection

It's over. I've now spent five wonderful, relaxing, carefree days with my family and I guess it is time to put down some final thoughts about my experience as a student teacher.

I spent my first half of student teaching in my own classroom and I have to say, that was the easier half of my tour. Everything was in place, I had written all the curriculum already, and it was at the end of the year and my student relationships were in place, so there were few difficult interactions. 

The useful thing was that I had the opportunity to have both the building director at my school (who is a licensed L.Arts teacher) and AK (my student teaching supervisor) in my classroom watching what I do on a regular basis. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, teaching can be such an isolating job. Sometimes the only collaboration or advice we get from others in our building or our profession comes when we share an experience with our colleagues. This is absolutely a good practice, but the problem is that our experience is filtered through our own eyes and as truthful as you try to be, a bit of editing is inevitable.  To have someone right there to observe and advise is a valuable experience, one that should not end as a teacher's career progresses.

At Crosswinds, it was a whole different story.  There was a lot of work, a lot of learning, and lot of correcting papers.  I am a big advocate of web based curriculum.  As much as possible, my classes are posted on Moodle and students log on to complete tasks.  So if I assign a "traditional" assessment like a quiz or a worksheet, students complete it on Moodle and the program corrects it for me!  All I do is look it over to see what it was that a student is having trouble with and to insure that the program did not misinterpret an answer. In a more traditional classroom like Crosswinds, there is just so much paperwork!  I definitely like my way better!

As I also mentioned before, interactions with parents are much different at Crosswinds than in my district.  In my school, it is difficult to get parents to answer phones or return emails, they seldom come for conferences and few have much to do with their children's academics.  Many of the parents in my school district are poor and spend a lot of time working.  Some are single parents, some had their children very young and are barely adults themselves.  For whatever reason, contact is difficult to obtain in a lot of cases.  At Crosswinds, the majority of parents are all over their kids and their kids' teachers.  

But in addition to that, I found an interesting cultural difference between the parents I interacted with at ComArts and Crosswinds.  (Of course are were exceptions in both cases.) The parents who are involved in my district are from the old school.  They listen to what the teachers have to say and take it right to their kids.  They snap at their child if he/she contradicts an adult or shows disrespect to a teachers or administratort.  When I call them to relay an event, they recognize me as the adult and take my word over their child's, recognizing teenagers tendency to "rearrange events."

At Crosswinds, there were many times that I witnessed TL and other teachers in our house defending themselves to parents.  Parents came in or called, insisting that a teacher account for his/her actions, quoting their children, or even their children's friends.  It seems the balance of proof was heavy on the teacher's side in these cases.  I wonder about this difference.  Of course my experiences are merely anecdotal and by no means prove anything about poor verses middle class or suburb vs. inner city, but they are interesting to think about.

I think the most important lesson that I will take away from Crosswinds, aside from the great classroom management techniques I learned from TL, is the importance of relationships. Joining a class at the end of the year and having only seven weeks to interact with them is difficult.  When I compare the interactions that I was able to have with the class with those that TL did, his deep relationships with students were so very apparent.  They are what enabled him to effectively teach, discipline, manage, and interact in an effective and caring manner.  I like to think that I obtain the same in my own classroom and that they prove to be  just as effective. I will continue to concentrate on this aspect of my teaching as I grow in my career.

Since I know that both TL and AK read this blog, I'll add another thank both of youfor my experience at Crosswinds and my student teaching experience as a whole.  It was a long summer, but it was worth it and I'm excited to jump back into my own career, armed with all the additional understanding that I've been granted with your help.

I hope to continue this blog, detailing some of the triumphs and challenges I face in my career at ComArts and beyond, so keep reading and keep in touch. TW

The Suburbs, Part 1

It was a hard week out in Woodbury. I've often heard that the only thing worse than parents who are not involved in their kids' schooling is parents who are involved. I've visited, in one way or another, with four sets of parents in the last three weeks, all but one on their own initiative.

TL sent a note to F's father, telling him that he was observing F in class while I taught, and that she was having difficulty staying on task. I was unaware that the email was even sent, but the next day, there was a note in my email box forwarded from TL, it was from F's dad.

According to F's father, F and other [unnamed] students found me to be condescending and rude. TL defended me admirably, noting that he had rarely left me alone in the classroom, "I have not seen him be rude or condescending to students, or inappropriate in any other way," he wrote. He talked about issues that students often have with student teachers, about trust and and about how short of a time I had had to earn that trust. He invited Mr. F to talk with me if he wanted, but gently pushed the matter toward closure.

It felt good to be supported in that way. Teachers are so isolated in the classroom. When a student accuses a teacher of something, it is really difficult to dispute it. You can only stand on your reputation and your word. In addition, I sometimes find myself wondering if I did, in fact, make a mistake, even when it is out of character or the exact opposite of my own recollection of events. Many times, my perceptions can be flawed and I need to bounce things off of another person to get a fair read of a situation. In the classroom, unless there is an EA present, or it is a rare evaluation by a administrator, teachers do not have that luxury. I was glad that TL was observing and that he did not see me as condescending or rude.

The next day, I received another forward from TL: an email to me, from Mr. F. It was very long and full of suggestions. For someone who is not a teacher and who had never met me or seen me in the classroom, he seemed to have a lot of answers for my "problems."

There were a lot of things that I wanted to respond with. I wanted to invite him to observe my classroom. I wanted to present him with my resume and my qualifications. I wanted to debate classroom management and behavior management with him until he realized that I know a little bit about this stuff.

Those were all terrible ideas. I didn't need to bounce that perception off of anybody.

I answered him with just a few polite lines:

" Mr. F, Thanks for your input. I had a chat with F this morning and we agreed that we would chalk this matter up to a 'bad day' and start with a clean slate. We had an engaging, exciting class today with lots of participation from the students. F was one of the most consistent participants. I'm confident that F and I can move on in a positive direction from here."

I did speak with F that day, just to make sure that things were okay between the two of us. She seemed confused and assured me that we could start over with no hard feelings. At the end of our conversation, she asked me, "one thing, what does condescending mean?"

I'm not sure what to think.

27 kids!

Suddenly, everything was not going so smoothly. It was 4th hour on "B" day and I had twenty-five kids sitting in rows, copies of a pre-writing worksheet strewn around the desks, pencils flying, students poking, a kid begging a pass to the nurse, and two boys in back who refused to pick their heads up off of their desks.

I was strolling up and down the aisles, trying to lead a discussion on writing a product review and reaching about four kids. Each time I paused to put one outburst out, another burst up behind my back. It was like waiting tables in a giant restaurant with no busboys and too many tables.

And every time I glanced up to the back of the room, TL was smiling and writing notes with his little green marker.

When the bell had rung and I was finished picking up pieces of inky, broken pens; twisted, torn worksheets; and the shavings from at least three pencils that someone had just sharpened and sharpened and sharpened, I sat down with my supervising teacher.

"Well," he said, "how did you think that went?" I had kind-of hoped he hadn't noticed.

He went on to explain that I had been bum-rushed by a very tricky class and handed me a piece of paper, full of those green-marker jottings, that detailed where I might have gone wrong.

He gave me some simple tips:

• Use a timer, say, "Now we're going to put away our worksheets and switch gears to the reading for today, I'm setting the timer for one minute, have your novels out when the bell rings."
• Tell the class exactly how you want the conversation to run. Tell them that sometimes you will say, "raise your hands," and you will expect them to wait to be called on, and sometimes you will ask a question and tell them to answer out loud, so everybody can talk. Sometimes you may even ask them to turn to their neighbors and talk about the question (for one minute, using the timer)
• Use the "take a break" strategy that has been systematically drummed into their brains since spring. And remember , it should be a time to collect thoughts or to take a breather, not a punishment.
• Randomize who you call on. Ask a silly question like, "raise your hands if you are wearing colored socks." Then ask those people with colored socks to share an answer from a group activity or from written work.

Well, today was "B" day again. I used all of TL's suggestions on the eager and calm students of first hour. The class sailed. They were digging the discussion, participating, and even understanding some of what I was saying. But these kids were not at all the same class that I would face in a few hours. 4B is a totally different beast.

And they responded too. More so. I had them in the palm of my hand... mostly. The discussion went just as I described it to them. they were (mostly) quiet when I was talking or when one of them had the floor. They participated in the discussion pairings and they reported back to me when i asked everyone who was wearing a necklace to tell me what they had said. They even took the conversation in a new, unplanned, but totally appropriate direction - all on their own.

It's amazing what a few simple tips from an experienced teacher can do.