I am not a natural storyteller. Often, when I tell my husband about something that has happened at school, he will nod expectantly and say, slightly impatiently, “And...?” to hurry me to the point because he knows it might take a while. I’m tangential.

And that is one reason I believe that writing is a good thing in my life. It allows me to rant, cry, pout, veer off into vectors, and spiral back to what is essential. Revision (i.e. chopping down ideas and putting them in an order that makes sense to someone) is a good thing. In my (wonderful) graduate program, I took a class called “Rewriting a Life” by the wise and lovely Tilly Warnock. The premise of the class was that the act of writing out our lives reshapes them, and makes meaning from our memories. One of our texts was You Must Revise Your Life by poet William Stafford, from which I stole the title of this entry. It helps my stories make more sense to my husband if I go through a bit of a selective process before I tell them.

I remember in my teacher ed classes way back in the early ‘90’s, we were advised to keep a reflective journal. It was a great suggestion. But it is quite a commitment to say you will write each day about your teaching. Hats off to those who manage it. I mean, really. Hats off. It is a courageous act, much like videotaping oneself, to keep a teaching diary. I think if I did that I would never re-read it. It’s too terrible to see who we were yesterday. But, for me, it is incredibly helpful to take stock of who I am today.

I have greatly enjoyed keeping both a personal blog (which often veers toward professional issues) and also contributing here. I think it is good policy for teachers to be writers, and here’s why:

A. Personal and professional development. Much like practicing any art form, writing will shape you and your identity.

B. Learning real writing processes. Writing helps us relate to the writing processes our students go through and become better teachers of writing (which most of us, ultimately, are at some point). (For more thoughts on this, see a speech I delivered about the National Board writing process.)

C. Entering the conversation. If you blog your reflections, and read other ed blogs, you will soon find other voices who enrich your professional life. Also, having readers is nice.

D. Creating a diverse chorus of teacher voices which will at some point take out the Death Star (however you define the Death Star). Many policy makers still have a dim idea of what life in the classroom is like. Ideologies drive much of the public conversation. Ideas can be argued, but it is hard to argue with your experiences. The stories of teachers and students are the reality of education today.

Take some time this summer to jot your thoughts. Join the conversation. Have a great summer!

 

 

 

I recently had the opportunity to attend NBC's Education Nation Summit in downtown Phoenix with a group of teachers from my school. You might have seen me on TV; I was the guy one day removed from the stomach flu whose skin tone matched his grey suit. But I, and those sitting near me, came away unscathed. The anchor's comments, however, did get me thinking.

We sure talk a lot about talking.

At the end of the town hall, NBC host Rehema Ellis thanked us for our attendance on a busy Saturday, but cited that it was exciting to see us, "beginning to have the difficult conversations in education." This, I've concluded is code for, "Nobody in this room is really going to do anything, but let's pretend we will."

Remember that famous scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the guards at the gate of the castle see a knight charging on foot at full gallop, yet not actually getting any closer?

Yeah, it's kind of like that.

In America, talking heads will tell you that it's important to begin to have the difficult conversations about mental health. That we need to begin to have the difficult conversations about entitlement reform. That it's time to begin to have the difficult conversations about modifying the tax code. Well, you get the picture. None of these issues are even close to the reform they so desparetely need and beginning to have the difficult conversations is what people suggest when they aren't interested in actually trying to do anything. Or, they sense that the challenge is unsurmountable due to partisanship, differing idealogy, or political fallout. I'm pretty sure that education is trapped in the webs of all three.  

I'm also confident that Rosa Parks didn't begin to have the difficult conversations about bus seating.

At some point, could we actually do something? Anything? We encourage teachers to take risks in the classroom, yet, as a profession, very few want to take that precarious first step.

Perhaps there is hope. Monty Python fans might remember how the aforementioned scene ends. After seemingly going nowhere, the knight that had been simply running to stand still, somehow covers the entire field in a blink, slays the guards, and successfully storms the castle.  

I'm certainly not advocating impalement. But it would sure be nice to stop applauding ourselves for considering the potential for involving ourselves in considering thinking about the difficult conversations. 

Maybe it's time to propose, try, advocate, or challenge. Maybe it's actually time to do.  

"We did not put our ideas together. We put our purposes together."  Adam Kahane, Solving Tough Problems

John Prosser is there. A teacher leader involved in policy-making. He began as a middle school teacher in the Seattle Tacoma area, then went to law school, then back to the classroom. During a strike in 2011, he and his twin brother became leaders in their union by supporting the lines and eventually serving on the team that resolved the action. He is now a facilitator implementing the policy the strike resolved: how to fairly find the best match between displaced teachers and receiving schools. 

In Part One I asked how teacher leaders will walk the talk when we finally get a seat at the policy making table. John revealed in recent phone calls that policy-making requires an intense level of responsibility, a spirit of conciliation, an unyielding obligation to get the facts right, and an inner knowledge of what it will take to change your mind. 

When his committee began to negotiate teacher placement, those who had been adversaries in the strike had the eye-opening revelation that although the strike had served as a catalyst to get them together, they needed a new approach. They placed everything on the table and collaborated on setting a goal and finding a path. They were acutely aware that their decisions would impact every teacher and, by extension, every student in the district.

Solving Tough Problems, a memoir in which Adam Kahane writes about resolving problems from Apartheid to conflict in Guatemala, inspired the negotiations. John relates, "We said, 'After all, if they can solve Apartheid, we can solve teacher-placement.'" Listening to and understanding the needs of the other party opened their eyes; discussing the craziest ideas from each party opened their minds. Fidelity to the facts secured a resilient policy.

A self-described "intellectual mercenary," John is beholden to no point of view beyond that which the facts support. And sometimes that applies to his own views. A recent proposal that principals could use teacher evaluations in determining placement for displaced teachers seemed in direct conflict with the policy his team had crafted.  A divisive fight seemed inevitable and healing wounds could be reopened.

Yet, driving home one day, John realized that the negotiated agreement already included language that principals must consider teacher evaluations - if a teacher had a poor evaluation or probationary status, the principal couldn't displace them - thus avoiding a kabuki dance of the lemons. He wrote a memo that made it through the decision-making machinery and ameliorated the conflict before it began.

I do have a voice

It's easy to say "I don't have a voice," but John says there are ways to be heard - through social media, blogs, and the old-school means of calling and writing your congressional representatives. He also suggests looking for opportunities to sit down and talk with representatives or their staff - maybe at a rally or public event. In his experience policy-makers want to know what teachers think and keep track of our opinions.   

Yet John cautions that teachers need to do their own research and have a well-crafted message. Although politicians may listen, it's an informed, research-based, well-articulated position that they hear. 

Consider his experience after teachers at Garfield High in Washington state refused to administer a standardized test. Opinion leader and former Washington D. C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee wrote an essay in the Seattle Times criticizing the boycott. John, acting in no official capacity, wrote a response on his personal blog that systematically deconstructed Ms. Rhee's arguments.

Imagine John's surprise when he received an email from none other than Diane Ravitch asking if he were real. She not only tweeted his post, but praised his essay in her own blog.  (John's a modest guy, but if you press him, he'll admit that she really did call his essay "brilliant.")

In summary, John says to inform yourself and act - make that phone call, write that blog - work on what most irks you, but work from knowledge and with an open-mind. Be prepared for frustration and hiccups in the process.  But be prepared, too, to find your power. 

What's next?

In the conclusion to How Will We Walk the Talk? you'll meet Holly Franks Boffy, a teacher leader who upon deciding that a personal life challenge would not become her identity, committed to train for and run in a 5K race. She ended up running all the way to a seat on the Louisiana State Board of Education.

 

 

 

“A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.”  Chinese Proverb

In 2004, Barack Obama introduced us to the phrase “The Audacity of Hope.” Audacity can be defined as the willingness to take bold risks. His implication is that in this society where it is so easy to feel lost in the machine, those who hope make a courageous decision.

The audacity of hope is what makes a great teacher, especially a new teacher. She tackles the problems of the world on the playing field of the classroom.

I propose another category of hope, a way of thinking about hope which might resonate with more experienced teachers exhausted at the end of each successive school year. Or maybe it’s just my kind of hope. 

Please bear with me as I offer to you one of the most overplayed poems in all of American literature. Bear with me, because I am betting there is more to this poem than you may have taken the time to think about before:

254 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops – at all -- 

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard --
And sore must be the storm --
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -- 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land --
And on the strangest Sea --
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

                                                    by Emily Dickinson

Most students (and many teachers) interpret this poem in a syrupy-sweet kind of way: Hope as a birdie with a beautiful, eternal song. Which is why 9 out of 10 students with black nail polish hate this poem.

Hope is the thing with feathers.  I don’t know about you, but here in Southern Arizona, “THE THING” is a roadside attraction along I-10, so potentially terrifying that the billboard lettering evokes the title sequence of a dozen B horror flicks and looks as though it reeks with the stench of swamp-monster effluvia.

Dickinson could have chosen to call hope a songbird.  But she doesn’t call it a “Bird” until the middle of the poem. Not only does she put “Hope” in quotation marks (as though apologizing for writing about such a sappy topic) but she calls it a THING (with feathers). 

When I imagine a bird as a thing, I think about the creepiness of seeing a bird close up: the scaly skin around its small eyes, the unforgiving bone of its beak, its dry tongue and dinosaur feet. With talons.

We used to have a parrot. Rudy was friendly until I tried to put him away in his cage, and then he would clamp my shoulder with his sharp feet, rip out my ponytail holder and start nipping my ear. Not nice. He was determined to stay out of that cage. Obstinate fellow.

 

"Hope" artwork I made on a trip to the University of Arizona Poetry Center with students

 

My hope this time of year is the same. The exhaustion, the disillusionment of the batteries of standardized tests, the pressure to document every effort I’ve made to intervene with every struggling child, the referrals I have to write because students couldn’t keep it together for just two more weeks, the deadlines for paperwork, signing off on evaluations that do not fully represent me, documentation to potentially fail seniors, the grading. We’ve all got a similar to do list that we might finish by the end of the summer if we actually accomplished all of it.

The celebrations at the end of the year are necessary. The people being celebrated deserve it.  Great accomplishments have been achieved, and many people will be missed. But (am I allowed to admit it?) there are times when even these rituals feel like props to keep us going until the end.  Really, there is no time to properly honor everyone. There is no time for anything but intensively trying to get students the last of their feedback for the year in time to clean up my room and making sure I’ve given everyone enough opportunity for success.

Dickinson’s “Hope” reminds me of Annie Dillard’s weasel.  In an essay in which she asks us to live like weasels, she illustrates the weasel’s wild determination by citing the image of one latching its jaws onto an eagle and not letting go, and the image of the eagle soaring through its days with the skeleton of the weasel still attached. I believe Dickinson’s view of hope is similar.  And I as a veteran teacher am left wondering what to do with this dogged companion who will not let go of my neck.

However, unlike weasels or the freakshow in Dragoon, through the storm this feathered thing sings. The speaker in Dickinson’s poem does nothing to encourage this thing.  It perches in the soul and hops out along our arm. It asks for nothing and sings sweetest in the Gale. It keeps us warm, this thing, and never asks for even one little crumb. We need not feed it or nurture it. It exists because we are alive. It is a thankless job for a feathered thing, and the speaker of Dickinson’s poem can only acknowledge its unfailing song.

Even the least syrupy sweet among those of us who work with teenagers must acknowledge it. Somewhere in there, amongst the muscles and bones, the stray bolts and metal pins, around the worn edges of our battered teacher souls, even this time of year, is a thing. It’s a thing that keeps us going.  I look forward to next year, and even to tomorrow, when I can laugh with my students about how we are all ready for summer. Laughter which comes because even though we are ready for a break, we know the struggle to become ourselves continues. We and our things will return to teach and learn another day. And we will hope for more.

After 17 years, I am not pollyannish about education; however, I am not cynical either. I can’t see my thing with feathers ever going anywhere.  It perches in my soul, and sings the tune without the words (See? It doesn’t even know what it is trying to say!) and never stops at all. I didn’t ask for it. But if it ever, in Extremity, abandons me I will know it is time to leave the classroom.  I can’t claim that my kind of hope is audacious, or even eternal.  But I am grateful that it is obstinate.

Staring at this blank screen, I am overwhelmed with emotion as I nostalgically search for a topic to focus on during my last blog article of the 2012-2013 school year.  It was not a school year I especially want to remember, filled with insurmountable teaching obstacles and personal heartbreak.  It was a school year which kept me alive personally and almost killed me professionally at the same time.  But it’s all about the children, and I don’t want to forget those special little people who were placed in my life for a reason.

As I was reading to my first graders in our class meeting the other day, I stared out at those little faces and thought back when I first started teaching fifteen years ago.  Those students are graduating from college this year!  How time truly does fly by.  Yet, this challenging school year will be forgotten as soon as I sharpen pencils in August for my new students.  One question I always ask myself, do the students remember me and our experiences?  What memory is already embedded in their ever-expanding minds? 

Here are some of their answers as I conducted an informal survey:

·         fun adventures with the classroom turtle

·         going to the zoo on a field trip

·         having a hen visit the classroom for the day

·         playing with Legos and blocks

·         reading fun picture and chapter books together

·         skyping with a real park ranger

·         Pirate Day……. arrr!!!

Funny, there was no mention of studying for our district-wide benchmark assessments (which took several weeks throughout the school year).  This reminded me of how we should prepare our students for success. 

Let me teach you the song of my people- our children, our future, victims of the Great American War in Education.  Let it guide your vision for the next school year:

Live each day to the fullest with hands-on experiences and materials.

Laugh with creative attempts to solve real-world problems.

Love each other for our differences, enduring heartache with empathy.

Peace out, 2012-2013.

As a school administrator, I get dozens of emails a week from companies selling programs designed to facilitate any number of "school reform" efforts. I put "school reform" in quotes the way someone might put air quotes around "day off" when they are going to spend the day with their toddler.

As a long-time student and fan of Deborah Meier and Ted Sizer, I get a little sensitive around the phrase "school reform". In my mind, real school reform is about democratizing schools, caring about students, and designing rigorous curricula that is meant to ignite passion and inspire action.

I typically gloss over at the various emails that show up in my inbox: "more effective drug testing", "increase student test scores", "foster creativity under the common core", "using technology to reach all students", etc. I have spent the past almost 20 years working as a member and facilitator of professional learning communities, and I am convinced that a structured conversation, facilitated by a skilled coach, around a topic that is important to all members of the school community, is what will lead to real school reform. Not the kind with quotes around it.

So I was taken aback at a recent email from a well-known educational association that was titled  "Build a Data Culture to Promote Academic Growth."

A "data culture". Ummm....no thanks. The culture I am working to build is about asking questions and listening. It's about knowing the whole student and making appropriate decisions that are in that student's best interest as a human being. The culture I am building is about trust and risk-taking. It's about asking teachers to share their most troubling work with eachother in an effort to gain more perspective and deeper insights.

I regularly use data as a framework for many of these collegial conversations. But what I want to build would not be considered a "data culture".

The term "culture" originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind. Cicero believed that this cultivation was the highest possible ideal for human development. We have much building to do in our schools with regards to culture. A culture of respect, caring, decency, fairness, honesty, inquiry, reflection, to name a few, is still lacking for so many of our students. I have a hard time believing that a "data culture" is going to lead to any real school reform, at least not the kind without quotation marks around it.

"Mr. Spencer, we don't have enough breakfasts for the whole class," a kid complains. I double-check the numbers. Zero absent on Cocoa Puffs day, which means that unlike yogurt day, they're all having breakfast. 

A boy pulls me aside and points to a classmate."She took two." 

"But she doesn't even have one," I say. 

Reluctantly, I ask her about it. She tells me that she doesn't have one, because she hates Cocoa Puffs. I ask her to open the backpack. Sure enough, she has two breakfast bags. I take her outside and ask her to tell the whole story. 

She cries. "They're for my younger brothers. I really thought we had extra, I swear." 

It is in moments like this that I am tempted to say, "School doesn't matter when you're hungry" or "suddenly linear equations feel irrelevant." In moments like this, I have a tendency to let discipline slip or require a little less work on assignments.

However, I deliberately avoid this temptation. See, hunger is horrible, but that doesn't take away the value of an education. Instead of becoming more permissive or making excuses as a teacher, I will continue to treat her as a person who possesses an amazing mind. I will show empathy. I will talk to the administration and try to get her the help she needs. But I will also teach her linear equations and persuasive techniques and reading strategies. 

When she talks out of turn, I still correct her. When her work isn't up to her potential, I encourage her to revise it. I have a nagging sense that I should go easy. I second-guess myself. 

At the end of the day, she pulls me aside. "Thanks for treating me normal." 

I'm not suggesting teachers ignore hunger or the policies that influence it. Neither am I suggesting that teachers pretend that hunger doesn't affect behavior and learning. Instead, I'm suggesting that hungry students often want a chance to be normal and that's one of the best things a teacher can offer. 

The last time I looked at my calendar it was February. Where has the year gone? We are now fast approaching the end of the year. It didn't hit me until this weekend, less than 15 days of school left. When I think about it, it takes my breath away. So much to do in just a few days.

Final teacher evaluation paperwork, pre and post test data comparison, teacher portfolio review, 301 data review, perfect attendance luncheon, volunteer recognition, student assessment sheets, end of the year awards assembly, student placement, annual IEP meetings, transition kindergarten meetings, kindergarten graduation, teacher appreciation, end of year check out procedure, golden character awards, summer training, maintenance checklists, new hire screening, interviews and background checks, summer school staffing, report cards and retentions, summer planning, summer letter, room changes, new programs, 6th grade transition, half day kindergarten transition, budget deadlines, final purchase orders, and parent meetings, submit National Board renewal, oh my.

One certainty, as soon as I post this blog, I will think of more things to add on the list.

What does your end of the year list look like?

When I achieved National Board Certification I declared that I found my voice. For the last six years, I have used my voice with some proficiency to advocate for teaching excellence. Saturday afternoon I found myself representing Arizona educators on NBC's Education Nation. My task of course was to use my voice, speak about education issues in Arizona on television for everyone to critique. Might I know the topic? Sure, any topic in education. Excellent. No pressure. Zero worry. 

The time came and I walked on stage. The first, second, third, fourth questions came as my memory serves like rapid fire. Much to the dismay of my interviewer, I simply wouldn't tell the world that we, Arizona, were not ready for Common Core. Why? Here's why:

First, I believe in Common Core. I am beyond ecstatic that gone are the days of the idea that "I do, We do, You do" will accomplish every instructional challenge and meet the needs of every student. I do not shutter at the mention of PARCC. Instead, I thank a higher power that we are moving beyond choosing A, B, C or D. And, most thrilling is that students will not achieve at the same levels as in previous years. Hooray! They shouldn't achieve at the same levels as before because we are asking students to do more, frankly we are having students think. 

If I had another round on NBC's Education Nation, I would like to pose the questions. The first one would be how has society allowed education to become about choosing C? How has society allowed achievement to equate to learning? How has society allowed teaching to be reduced to reading a script? And last but not least, how has society allowed our students to wait so long for Common Core? 

What questions might you ask?

 

The public perceives that during summer vacation teachers take vacation.  The teacher-leader community perceives that we work - planning for the new year, attending and presenting at conferences, and the like.

I think the public perception is closer to the truth.

From May 24 until July 29, my time off, I have sixty-five days that I own. I'm committed to ten days of compensated work (and I hope to find some more).  I'll likely sprinkle in another ten days or so of uncompensated time planning for next year and maintaining my lab.  So as it stands, I'm looking at forty-five free days this summer - more than six weeks.

When I hear teacher-leaders colleagues declare - usually in conferences or on Facebook - that we work in the summer it bothers me that the tone is universally negative and defensive.  The terms Teacher Martyr and Teach Whiner jump to mind. 

In a conference a presenter may speak in lofty terms, something like, "The public right now thinks we're all out enjoying ourselves on vacation, but here we are showing our dedication to our profession on this June afternoon."  Lots of heads will nod in agreement or shake in despair. 

On Facebook, there will be lots of cartoons. They usually feature a frazzled character telling us something like, "The next time someone tells you it must be nice to have summers off, tell them, "Oh really? If you think planning curriculum and going to in-services is vacation, than it's just great!" Those cartoons always get a lot of likes, and "Too true" comments.

But in between the conference, which lasted six hours in an air-conditioned room and included lunch, and logging into Facebook at night, I'll drive by the bridge they're building near my house.  The workers were on the job two hours before I left and will go on another hour after I get home.  Their air is conditioned by the Tucson sun.  They ate their lunch out of a metal box while sitting on a rock. 

My conference was likely inspiring and transformational.  I'm motivated and energized.  I'm a better teacher.  The construction workers are tired, sweaty, and sunburned.  I'd be embarassed to say I'd been at work. 

So where does the defensiveness of teachers come from? I have just as many people tell me that I deserve a break after nine months teaching.  When someone is more sarcastic, I embrace that challenge, "You have no idea how good it is to have two months all my own.  I'll spend some time planning and learning, and still have tons left for personal projects, reading, and travel. It's a great part of being a teacher."

If someone claims  I demean the profession by stating that summer vacation is a great part of teaching, I'd counter that it's no more demeaning than stating that because I'm professionally active for twenty out of sixty-five days, I'm really not on vacation.

So, having made war, let me try to make peace.  My twenty busy days this summer are less than average for me and less than many colleauges.  And some colleagues do seem to be professionally engaged all summer long. 

Most importantly, the work, oops, our summer professional activity moves the profession forward, and I don't trivialize it at all. 

And I'm happy to engage contrary opinions - preferably at poolside poolside this summer while enjoying an adult beverage after our conference breaks for the day.