I am a public school teacher, artist, mother and I write from perspectives as all three to things that seem compelling....with a hope it creates community and cross-communication in a busy world and life. I value human connectivity greatly.
See my Mrs. Puglisi's National Standards at:
http://sarahpuglisi.blogspot.com/2010/03/mrs-puglisis-100-national-standards.html
This blog in no way is affiliated with or reflects ANY school district.
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I asked a question last night.
This came about in response.
The Common Core Standards, 21st Century Learning,
and Subsidiarity
After nearly thirty years working in public education in
California in various roles, the year 2013 seems to me to mark a convergence.
It may be true that this is nothing more than a personal marking of time and an
acknowledgement of “getting old,” or it could be a broader phenomenon that
marks a shift or social change in the institutions we call schools.
Standards, or as I call them, the stuff we want kids to do,
are changing once again. This happens every eight to ten years along with their
**** twin, testing, in what researchers have described as the jigsaw effect. Generally
speaking, we ratchet up the content we expect kids to know, we make the tests
more complex and tricky and the end result is that those students who they
tests are earmarked for do pretty much as well as they ever do on any tests
with a slight dip in their score distribution in the higher score ranges. This
group, however, quickly adjusts, and soon makes its move to higher and higher
scores and a distribution with greater and greater amounts of students in the
higher ranges.
The group of students, the tests were not aimed at in terms
of their current demonstrated performance, they fall back in relation to the
target students, the achievement gap grows a bit, the angst about them grows in
a correlated fashion, the rhetoric about America’s future dominance in the
world economy grows louder and more abundant, and the old goats become the new
goats in a new frame that is likely to last another ten years. During the ten
years, most schools get better at helping kids in all brackets do better on the
tests and their associated lessons and units etc..and the tail wags the dog
again under the new banner of a new set of stuff and new tools to assess
whether the kids know the stuff or not.
This time, in the year 2013, the convergence of school
reform and political rhetoric and technological change certainly shares many
similar trappings with the years of the nation at risk, No Child Left Behind,
and perhaps even older eras….but for me, the convergence has qualities and a
feeling of a moment that reflects a wide potential shift in our country and
perhaps even in the human species. The 21st century learning movement
suggests that our schools and our learning in general should promote and
develop the 4C’s; Creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.
Man, I am all for this. I don’t see how we could go wrong as schools, as a
nation, and as a planet if we truly worked on these concepts. For me, these are
among the truly core ideas of what it means to be a functioning and productive
human being. I would add a few other items in there such as empathy, compassion
and a good jumpshot but the 4Cs sound pretty good to me in terms of “stuff” we
want kids to be able to do.
Still, I am concerned about the origin of both the common
core standards and the 21st century learning ideas. As I understand
them, they emerged from the corporate world as infused by and guided by the federal
government. My concern about these origins, does not spring from a general
opposition to corporate business or federal government, rather it emanates from
my orientation to community and to democracy itself. Our new/old governor Jerry
Brown has been advocating for subsidiarity as a preferred concept in
government. Once again, I am all in for this. I am a believer. That is, if what
I understand Governor Brown to be saying is that decisions about how to do
government work like school are best made closer to the source, closer to the
schools, closer to the families, and closer to the students. I think this holds
true for all forms of government. If this rings true with the idea of “all
politics is local politics,” than hurrah for the concept and that reality. In my
systems mind, each community or school system is an object acting within a
larger system and it has the potential to be the most effective when it can
determine its own destiny all the while contributing to the larger system by
managing its own effectiveness. The state, or nation state certainly have key
roles to fostering innovation and regulating local systems that seem
problematic, but the idea of subsidiarity
resonates with the parallel processes of raising a family and being a member of
a community. At the local level, we are in it together.
The convergence I see and feel, or perhaps am egocentrically
constructing, is one where it is more obvious than ever, that schools and the
ways we have been teaching and learning in them for the last hundred years is
really out of line with the ways technology has availed the average person
opportunities to learn any stuff they want as well as even more out of whack
with the things businesses and the world of work wants or needs people to be
and know in the rapidly changing employment environment.
This latter disjointedness seems to be what is driving the
common core standards and the 21st century learning movement and
perhaps rightly so. Still, my concerns connect these origins with the idea of
subsidiarity and with the idea of Aims. In my mind, what we want kids to do and
to learn and to become in the ways of workers, or citizens, or family members;
this should be determined by families and local communities as informed by
state and federal government and the business world but not as blindly
dictated, not as consumed by the local community. In my thirty years of working
in public schools in California, there has been far too little discussion and
work on Aims. That is, working together as a community to what we want our
schools to do, and far too much acquiescence to governmental and corporate
influence about what our schools should be or do. Subsidiarity has been hard to
find and harder to conjure.
The end results organizationally, have been to turn the
educational profession and the job of teaching into a consumptive activity
rather than a creative or productive one and we have developed a generation of
educators who have been encouraged to be technicians following a manual
blindly. Now, at the advent of the common core standards, because the country
is once again going to hell in a hand basket due to their poor teaching and our
poor schooling and a mismatch between our kids and what they need to be good
workers in a new and creative age, our teachers face a requirement to involve
themselves in a paradigm shift. To teach new stuff, in new ways and to figure
that out on their own, or perhaps until the new common core textbooks emerge to
be consumed.
Still when I look at the new common core standards, even
with my aversion to standardization, corporatism and federalism in the world of
education, I like what I see in many places in terms of the stuff we want kids
to do and even how we propose to assess what they know or can do. I like the
movement I see towards verbs rather than nouns, that is that the content per
se, is less important, and that practices and ways of approaching problems and
information seem to be more at the forefront. Especially, in the new math
standards, this seems to be paralleling the world of learning outside the
school world. I think it’s a great idea to have learning in schools be more
like learning in every context. Still, where oh where is the subsidiarity?
I say its right here in our own backyards. The convergence,
this moment in time, is the opportunity for educators, parents, and students to
come together to determine what they want to learn, how they want to learn it,
how they want to demonstrate what they know or can do and to take this
subsidiarity concept in full force. If
we can move in this direction, if our educational leadership can lead. If we
can consume less, create more, whine less, and make things happen locally while
connecting at state and national levels, if we can demonstrate the 4Cs we want
our kids to learn to do….then maybe our kids will become creative,
collaborative, communicating, critical thinkers that can create the new
generation of what it means to do business, to do government, to do school, to
do community. If we do not enact the 4Cs ourselves in the context of
subsidiarity, it is likely that we will continue down the path of this final
phase of our educational system, and there will be no rebirth and no new phase,
there will be a likely decent and decline into obscurity and school will be replaced
by Iphone or droid or perhaps, this, as previously mentioned, is just a
manifestation of one person after almost thirty years in public schools. I say,
bring in the 4Cs, make them happen in a grand diversity of forms and I am sure
that the world of government and business will adjust to what we have created.
I say, lets drive the boat. I say let’s determine what we
want our schools to do and be and then lets pay more than lip service to these
Aims, lets crank it out with the same amazing human energy and drive that
perhaps is uniquely American and uniquely amazing. Onward to the convergence….onward
to a real kindergarten..
Some people ask the right questions.
The following article asks ........ have people lost their ever loving minds?
But you need to read the article.
And the answer is, yes, they have.
Let's further an agenda to end equity and opportunity by thinking ONLY about who is going to get the GATE cluster in our schools. it's spelled T*R*A*C*K*I*N*G
Mix in a bit of Principal influence, a dash of competition, butter the pan and pour us into the current recipe for tanking our nation.
Haves-have nots. Permanent division.
Boy did James Herndon get it right.
School really ARE ONLY a reflection of the society.
And 99% of us aren't going into the cluster and, apparently neither are our kids.
Even at 7.
Guess which groups people/teachers fight/manipulate/wheedle/fixate to get?
I started to put a thousand quotes from this article here then I thought-oh...flip...read the article.
I couldn't say it better and I'm thrilled this is here.
Simultaneously- along with my deep desire to make it to summer vacation- I started thinking about what ever started this notion that caring for our students was at odds with preparing our students.
It began as a tiny prodding inner annoyance, not unlike a toothache, over the course of the last week's thinking, grabbing me out of my slumber to announce itself again in the form of a younger teacher on-line telling me that she sees herself as a teacher, not there to love them, to babysit, to entertain them or understand. She's there for the critical work of bringing them to a state standard.
I read wondering.
It's interesting because of the many ways one could respond, to that.
I chose to respond with silence.
Maslow, I thought.
Noddings.
Teacher education, your own life, the necesity of seeing the systems and structures in a bigger picture.
I was forwarded two articles by a concerned spouse after I failed utterly to adequately express the nerve in me this was hitting, but he could see the pain in me.
Both articles I have now read and they were helpful in talking to what is great teaching. Not exactly my perception of what has happened to the dialog about teaching, but heartening in speaking to what we are there doing daily.
And then I spoke to Anthony Cody today. He's writing about what teachers are being trained to do. Writing about this teaching field, the changes, and what has been flipped. Always encouraging and supportive -I tried in a few words to convey what I took with my strained hearing to be a young teacher challenging an older one. With my 100 Standards standing rather stark and exposed, I realized that it may well be she saw my entire life's work as so much frippery, I think. Invalidation looms for teachers now. It is there because it has been encouraged as the frame.
Challenging me isn't the problem, it's healthy in some very important ways.
What has stuck in my craw, perhaps, is the definitions of what teachers are now somersaulting to do. And then Anthony reminded me of a video that is making the rounds from a teacher quitting. I'm not even sure if the one I'm putting here is the one he was referencing. This one however is a lot like all the things I've heard from those quitting I know, retiring early, some hounded out, some silently going. They can't play the game under these terms. No matter what you think of the video, we lost tremendous ability, talent, skill and intelligence in the last fifteen years of reform.
The terms of good or bad. Them or us. Data driven or else.
Or as I heard a Government regional guy so eloquently put it-kick these teachers in the ass if you have to.
Why?What happened to our work?
Anthony Cody reminded me of a video, and I'm hoping this is the one, because this one says a lot:
He suggested I take on 100 more standards for teachers, but those we hold for ourselves, that descibe the complexities in the work. Because there is a lot going on within our work-and, sadly, so much has become a bad/good. Just do it. The art of gaining the practice is not appreciated as an arc of learning in itself. In fact in this field experience is openly derided. Experience hurts.
He spoke of the Dimensions that are involved in what we do.
And he suggested this link as a starting place for us to think.
While I want to try to think up some printmaking activities-for my school children to try- and for a training I'm doing next week, I feel I need to try to articulate an answer for a young teacher. Try to channel something.
Mrs. Puglisi's 100 Dimensions That Do Exist In the Work Called Teaching
1. All teachers, everyday, focus on effort.
Above all else, no matter what room, teachers are mandated by their calling to start where we are and focus on the effort made to move towards meaning making, the growth-to change. It is no small thing that this was taught to me by my child- as she presented a guest lesson within my room.
Praising effort within the children she flipped in front of my eyes some of the dynamics that had settled like a dust over us in the months of my isolation there with praise for effort. And like a good polishing it affirmed for me once more what a treasure was my class-all from the keen mind of her perception, yes, a teacher affirms effort.
2. All teachers, everyday, first open a door.
It might be to a classroom, or an idea, it may be to tomorrow, a future job, identification of a talent or strength, affirmation of a skill set, it might be to introduce a child to a new place-situation, context. But at the start of the day, at the end of a year, through the passage of time-teachers open doors in metaphorical places, real places, in hallways of learning, and to Room 9 at Hathaway school.
3. All teachers, everyday, model.
Those of us fortunate enough to raise children know that all that we are is reflected back to us in the children we were gifted with helping along in their lives. This is no less true in teaching. Our feelings, our compassion, our effort, studiousness, organization, wastefulness, criticism-mistakes-blindness- it is all there. One of the greatest ways when you work with young children, to learn about your teaching, is to watch them play school. There you are.
4. All teachers, everyday, have the inexplicably difficult job of deciding how to rank other beings.
It's inherent in systems of grading, in the culture, in tests, in data. And that is driven from school culture, local, county, state, national norms. It is also one of the most deeply personal and important things ever taken on by the educator. The skills that allow us to develop more or less subjective and objective methods continue to confound us. But there is no confusion for the child.
Do you accept me unconditionally?
5. All teachers, everyday, create some behavioral structure.
Some do this with more ease than others. Some predominately teach a behavioral structure-it consumes their every action. Others have such a light touch, and yet in various forms this system is there to give opportunity for others to learn, to make classroom culture tolerable, to look for ways to further a child's growth in interacting with peers. Since we know that we are a social being the implications of this work are enormous. After reading a book on introversion-"Quiet" I see that this too can be flipped from a structure imposing a Skinnerian behaviorism like CHAMPS- to one that can look deeply at whether or not chanting and imposed structures for class behavioral responses are needed by all of us.
And to question that should not lead to a letter placed in your file btw.
From the Summerhill of New York, AS Neil, to the BF's in the box, to the stickerless Punishment by Rewards of Alfie Kohn, to the Madeline Hunter in red and green cards, Anita Archer chanting her blues to Randy Sprick speaking in Voice level one....we are all together, trying to find ways to organize what we can and cannot do here. And how we can do it better-with a red card or a hand up or simply through a nod, behavioral management is the ground floor. But it isn't the all of it. It is the basement.
6. All teachers, everyday, work in time.
Time demands schedules. It imposes limits. Teachers have to have students receive allotted minutes in subject areas. They are organizers of how to do many things all at once. At the start of every year, and the end of every year time moves in one direction. But during the year it has a complexity a classroom builds. It runs in a thousand consecutive strands. How to run centers, have reading groups, send children to other spaces, chart progress, master facts, differentiate learning, get a group to the library, monitor the growth of the science project, allow for the skill drill, complete the missions, focus on a piece of the data. All of this and more balance within a small section of time, within classroom walls- while recess, lunch, a boo-boo and a tummy ache, or sudden realization of a home situation, rear. Time is the fluid medium which holds us together in place.
7. All teachers, everyday, experience emotions, deal with emotions, and affect emotional states.
Nothing prepares you for this.
Nothing is free of this.
Humor, calm, acceptance, compassion, acknowledgement, less certainty, all assist. But for me it doesn't hurt to meditate on where I am emotionally and to consider why. If you think for a second that this is a not fundamental dimension of the work- consider what you experience when asking anyone over 25 to tell you about school and their memories. Experience the emotion that you will be submerged in for this memory to be recalled.
It's so fundamental, yet we seem to think we can will it away. Meet the morning with the child that just witnessed a parental meltdown. Try to proceed as planned.
8. All teachers, everyday, motivate.
Whether your style is to say, do, demonstrate, open with something sensational-students are beings that work through motivation. They come to us inquisitive, we develop this into a drive to know.
Maslow's last book, for me, is a study in how motivation through the art of teaching works.
9. All teachers, everyday, ask for quiet.
It's inevitable. What is done with it can change the world-and often does. Use with caution.
10. All teachers, everyday, deal with proscribed curriculum.
My father in his wisdom talked to me once forcefully about Academic Freedom.
He was trained at Madison, Wisconsin- in the university where a plaque rests to celebrate the notion. He said, "You are a public school teacher-you don't have ANY academic freedom period. They tell you through script and standard everything they want done."
And that was his gift to me in 1985 when I landed a job in LA. Teachers arrange circumstances for texts that are state adopted, standards at District, state and national level derived. They use materials to further learning that has grade level input, administrator directive, collaborative school process, district expectation, and oversight. Teachers have Focus Walls if they are in- or differentiate curriculum if it is asked. They use reading groups, direct instruction, AR reading reports, SME or whatever they are tasked to use. And one would hope with their intelligences, balance, and insight they also incorporate something of their own capacity. That which they bring, it appears, makes all the difference.
11. All teachers, everyday, need materials.
Though that seems to be less and less supported, and more and more disassociated from leadership action. When they say they need tag, chart paper, a laptop, markers, they do.
12. All teachers, everyday, communicate.
Rules, agendas, ideas, routines, praise, insights, questions, permission, action, jobs, tasks, skills, instructions, chants, poems, stories, likes, dreams, structures, who goes next, even those that simply put down their glasses to signal it is time for lunch-it's communicative. We are the facilitators of the spread of information.
13. All teachers, everyday, adapt.
What did they grasp, what does the data reveal, how can they relearn this concept, is there an assembly at 8:45 on Tuesday? In every moment of the day a teacher is adapting for the needs of this particular student or group, this particular school or system, this happening. No matter how much the goal is to be exactly as the next room, within the flow of time the situation, we require adaptive strengths and our reaction and response is demanded.
14. All teachers, everyday, connect a student to something new- from a place where they have been-to a place we can go.
We are bridge builders scaffolding to the future.
15. All teachers, everyday, offer beginnings.
This opportunity to initiate a unit of study, a lesson, to start a process, or project, is a skill set unto itself. Will you join me?
16. Teachers, everyday, are creating feedback loops.
From what you understood , to how it went, how did your partner do, give me your take on this idea - we are organizers of healthy, turn taking, fair ways to give views and share understandings. And notice that it will be the teacher that considers how to temper the dynamic to structure fair and honest feedback loops. For it is from feedback change can occur. Learning is change.
17. Teachers, everyday, define compassion.
One way or the other a teacher is involved with this critical component of human interaction.
There is no way, I once learned, to not be political-because the "lack" thereof is in itself a political act. So, too, it is with compassion. (And love.) Omnipresent it steals into every single action or lack thereof we do.
18. Teachers, everyday, develop language.
Students in first language, second, third, fourth, within mathematical language, the words of the arts, in academic language, or using the slang of the home-teachers are supporting the growth of knowledge within language development. What a gift we humans have to unfold.
19. Teachers, everyday, meet tactile learners, those that touch and feel their way to meanings, students that require visual information, those that stand over those that sit, teachers must have the dimensions to interpret for the aurally inclined, for the poet, they must grasp the modalities they might not themselves possess. This, alone, accounts for one of the most critical aspects often missed in their work. We are not one size, and we cannot forget it.
20. Teachers everyday, extend our meanings.
Sharon said to me, do you think all flowers have six identical petals? And something dropped from my eyes. I draw flowers to this day. A teacher may do that challenging in a Socratic way, but they will suggest you look again and extend your vision to a whole new realm of meaning.
21. Teachers, everyday, will think more of you than to have you waste your time.
22. Teachers, everyday, use a bag of tricks.
I apologize, we are in so many kinds of strategies and systems, directed, small group, differentiated, practice, independent practice, explaining, relating, demonstrating, repeating, practicing and finding new and creative-inventive ways to structure, scaffold and spiral our lessons. We are trained to have tricks.
Here we are new and again. We are a strange loop, absolutely.
23. Teachers, everyday, need affirmation of the importance and contribution of our work to individual and greater good.
No greater harm could ever be done to teacher , nation, community or child that to cast a teacher as "the problem" to label then as "bad" and to speak of the profession through the dogma that drives present instructional reform. You "bad", me "good". It is nothing to be employed with children, with others, spouses, in families, in commuities. Nor is it acceptable for anyone to enter and remain hidden within the field that does not wish with their entire being to both do no harm, but also to do greater good.
24. Teachers, everyday, hula hoop, somersault, flip, fandango, high jump and springboard over the low expectations, labels, past practices, limits, budgets, lousy facilities, uncomfortable realities of a failing infrastructure to pirouette onto the stage of life as the facilitator of the brillant life ballet that is going to be carried in the performance of our young.
25. Teachers, everday, help ALL students to...
And the key here is ALL.
26. Teachers everyday utilize technology with their students.
Or better yet we sit down and analyze what those kids can do that we cannot with technology. But the point is well met that technology will be the future for the students, for better or worse, they must find a way to navigate the information highway.
27. Teachers, everyday, can speak to bias.
Advertising, propaganda, opinion, belief, prejudice, tautology, prophesy, dogma, misconception, ego, worldview, politics, frames of reference, all and more become the open discussion and ground for the instructor to unravel. Be strong, my friend.
28. Teachers, everyday, assess students.
From there we plan next steps, what to reteach, what to focus on as group and what are individual needs. Where we've been, where we are, where we are going.
29. Teachers, everyday, support learners with practice.
One day a week for 12 years and I learned to play a violin. Practice. Does it make us perfect?
It might have helped me.
It makes us stronger, better, but it has to have meaning, growth, it must have purpose and direction. A teacher can change the smallest of things and open the most amazing doors within the practice of our lives.
30. Teachers, everyday, consider the safety of their students.
What they eat, how they walk within the room, what materials are used and how they use them-yes lockdowns, evacuations, healthy rituals, physical education, fresh air, reasonable room temperatures, these are all on our mind-how we can affect the best outcomes? When is it time to play a little Beethoven?
31. Teachers, everyday, stop and think about it.
32. All teachers promote student thinking skills that may one day be critical.
33. All teachers, everyday, reveal to students ways to develop creativity, innovation, and invention.
Many do this today in an environment that has restricted its acceptance and value. Many have been so mandated they lack the skills. But there, at the heart of American identity we see it. Teachers must embrace this dimension of their work as crucial to our survival.
Systems might try to lighten up.
Art is every bit as crucial as a third of the year in assessment.
It is a discipline.
34. Teachers, everyday, learn something new about their students and their interests and lives, community and cultural contexts, while promoting an openness to allow students to do the same.
35. All teachers, everyday, assist in the resolutions of conflicts.
It might be about power, or a new pencil, it could be over an opinion, or an object, but life involves conflict. Teachers structure to bring about understandings in the form of resolution. One child cannot call out every answer, another cannot dominate every conversation, yet another can't lead a group to bully. Teachers cannot bully one another and find it comfortable. Teachers are responsible for the personal, group, and community dimension. How can we care well for one another?
36. All teachers, everyday, should understand that if a child cannot feel they are loved, respected, cared for, they will not have access to learning as another will. There is no easy way to break the news to any teacher schooled otherwise. In Gates tough world out there- something else also exists.
Get over it he says.
A basic sense of fair play, playing fields, and things that cross lines exists within our understandings and mental health needs. It just is too supported in our research, some hot off the research presses in our young children-you can be too poor, too hurt, too deprived. Having basic security, is core to learning.
A classroom must reflect that understanding.
In fact a national system of education must.
37. All teachers, everyday, should address work.
It's a good thing to contribute to a classroom environment both through the tasks asked to gain knowledge, skill acquisition, but also in the daily routines. Students need responsibility, work, jobs, and teachers that set up classroom to build responsibility through work are doing something fundamentally important.
38. All teachers, everyday, help to interpret social interactions.
All people are created equal in the most amazingly unequal ways. A teacher can hold both ends of that burning rope and introduce students to one another in empathetic and understanding ways.
39. All teachers, everyday, tire of being told what to do.
And most will find this list tedious I am afraid.
But in the dimensions of their work many have things they need to say.
We might, offer permission for them to talk to us all about their work.
we might find not just The Ed Show valuing teachers.
40. All teachers, everyday, pull desks around in seating charts.
L patterns, T's, circles, rows, desks often designed for industrial durability over comfort or educational purpose-these are the things we break our backs to haul. Teachers must and do consider who wears glasses, who needs proximity to the teacher, who has hearing needs, what two students are distracting each other, how to create a team, how to challenge someone with a new acquaintance. It looks so simple.
41. All teachers, everyday, design their walls.
Focus, focus, and more. A look at Pinterest aquaints me with the newest term, "Anchor Charts".
42. All teachers, everyday, provide equitable opportunities.
43. All teachers, everyday, have the opportunity to find a capacity, ability, interest, within a child that is unique. An opportunity to find a way to present that child anew to others and to themselves.
44. All teachers, everyday, deal with the critical work of taking learning seriously.
You cannot replace Charlotte's Web with a worksheet, nor can a child read expository text and find the mandated whitewash to relate meaning of an EB White. While reading expository text, or non fiction is important, the soaring power of our experience as humans is not a written art form there. It is important work this world of literature. Mathematics is a language.
Art is the most expressive form we have. Students need to see learning as having value.
I'm not sure the word is rigor.
Perhaps it is academic fun or play.
I'll think about it. As I stand accused. But I do hold that happiness lies in seeing learning as an active, motivating, fun pursuit-over an amazingly long exercise in memorization. For a state test.
45. All teachers, everyday, know children need to learn and teach one another.
46. All teachers, everyday, create opportunities for choices.
Students will grow up to make choices, face consequences. How we approach resources, use gifts, share, fix problems, set up centers, handle the class pets, what we do and how we do it are times children make choices. Teachers give opportunities to advance independence and good health, mental and physical.
47. All teachers, everyday, raise their expectations upward.
(I temper this by saying because we are in a time that this becomes a sword to fall upon do this with some use of judiciousness) Expect a great deal-in conjunction with reason, with thoughts to healthy emotional development, with consideration of what is age appropriate, with compassion.
My own mistakes as the mother of a child that spoke at three months, and my subsequent fascination and reliving my own mere adequacy through her gifts, would lead me to say one of the most devastating mistakes made with another is to project yourself into them, is to live our lives in our children, or to see our never self realized desires be achieve in them.
High expectations (and then the tiger Moms) can create a world of important things to consider, not least of which might be a mountain of resentments. Teach with self control and careful use of
"but can you."
If you read Josh Waitzkin's on "Flow"-see Searching For Bobby Fisher- you'll be glad you did.
48. All teachers, everyday, pace.
In the presentation of the standards based material, using the adopted texts, teacher's pace material to arrive at a reasonable place by the time we assess- with an eye on state tests. It requires looking hard at the rates student's learn, calls on differentiation, managing and using assessing, reteaching, grade level and district planning. Then there are the other things-the inexplicables in pacing that can't go in a teaching cookbook, where did they actually start from, what do they recall from previous instruction, the timing of when a child is ready to go there with you and something firmly eschewed in our present state of dialog-both the developmental ability to acquire that next step along with the cognitive dissonance for it to be of interest. All this and more challenge teacher work in a dimension of daily considerations. A step at a time a day at a time.
49. All teachers, everyday, choose.
When the reading lessons that are required have a 150 minute block but a 350 minute suggested program- something has to give. One thing most folks do not know is that we are not working with material that CAN be presented within our time frames. Teachers choose. Artful teachers do not look upon this as a chore, but rather an invention and opportunity.
50. All teachers, everyday, ask themselves how do I do this, and why do I do this.
It is no small thing that I read a book arriving in CA 25 years ago called The Way It Spoze To Be, and later read James Herndon in a book at the end of his career in teaching. The book I read first was in a teacher lounge in a position under a potted plant- years yellowed and it came to my rescue. In the later book Mr. Herndon spoke of two simultaneous feelings a teacher holds-master of the universe and someone with the greatest inadequacy. Indeed. When we walk in another teacher's room every teacher I've ever met displayed this range instantaneously.
A sudden awareness of how another might do the work better, combined with a deep worry for having missed a better way. And then a feeling of having "my own way" too.
This is the critical dimension of the open teacher mind.
51. All teachers, everyday, face a student or students that challenge their perceptions, authority.
No greater example is a video currently running of a blond student, in his teens, that has had enough of the classroom worksheets and trning it in finished.
One of my mentors said this was the moment he waited for, altering my perception on such challenges to me as an authority-as he shuffled off two kids I wasn't able to quite figure out for the afternoon. He modeled in his work the adaptation to take on directly his student needs. As for this video-if this child can take in her realities- then I'm pretty sure she should take in his.
Teachers face now a world of instantaneous opinion.
When in reality we are working towards the ability to suspend this and dig deeper.
What would I have done that day?
Possibly thought a long time about what Bliss is, and how to arrive at it.
52. All teachers, everyday, communicate with families, parents, caregivers.
From Pre-K to 12th grade family support, involvement, encouragement and participation informs teacher work. Corine Reeber likened this in one parent conference for me as Mom (on a Back To School Night with a son in her K) to the building of the snowman. As he glides down the hill of our teacher work- just a little more snow is packed onto his being- shaping these lovely little snow people into beings to be admired. Through newsletters, parent letters, meetings, conferences, calls, visits, in hand-outs, spoken conversation, a smile at the door, a willingness to encourage volunteerism, to find ways to accept donation and presence, to affirm community, child and parent and a teacher become the active lexicon in the process of education. Teachers everyday step out of judging into judicious use of acceptance. How well they manage this piece will mean the world to the success of their student population. Community involvement is both required, but also essential tools to be grasped.
53. All teachers, everyday transition.
From now to then, from here to there, transition time is everywhere.
54. All teachers, everyday, address special needs.
Some students may need a structure and routine daily that is fairly set, others just need more time. Some students thrive with frequent involvement, others more practice. But whomever the student all need acceptance of gifts, of strengths- and assistance with areas of difficulty. All need support to achieve their personal bests, most need systems to see growth-portfolios, records, data, products, tests, files. Some students need something more. A healthy classroom supports a group in seeing all its citizens into success.
55. All teachers everyday come to terms with the fact students need some voice, input and role in what they learn.
See Bliss number 51.
Bill Thomas once taught me, a young teacher candidate in art education, that if we ever glimpse the art in the home, the resourcefulness, the family instruction, the things made there- we had stepped over into a place to understand the role of art in community and thus beget art in our rooms. Students are shaped in homes, in opinions, ideas, dreams , situations and from that they develop their voice. How we can affect this growth, this development of moral compass is a study unto itself. But clearly students need to be respected and invited into the process of their learning at whatever level a teacher can manage. And some can manage this only at a very low level.
56. All teachers, everyday, are affected by what they have experienced.
We are what we know. So quality programs to challenge, develop, expand these perceptions matter.
Great universities matter in teacher training.
academic freedom in those programs matter.
Reading and research matters. The acquisition of a quiet mind matters. Openness matters. One dimension of teacher work is improvement in our practice-seeking training, staff development, furthering study through classes, skill set improvement, feedback, mentorships, writing, teaching, and an on-going process driven internally will further teacher effectiveness.
Sometimes the past limits us, "if it was good enough for grandma its good enough for my kids" and sometimes it is a platform to sail off into the future. Teachers are creatures of experience.
Interesting, but true.
57. All teachers, everyday, collaborate.
With administrators, curriculum specialists, technology support, students, families, children, classroom assistants, other teachers, with the librarian and the maintenance-the local community. Teachers are seeking best practice ideas, and looking to share out their successes and minimize their losses.
We work together.
58. Teachers, everyday, "balance instructional, preparation, administrative, and managerial time."
Lifted directly from here. We also try not to re-invent the wheel. We steal great ideas. We drop down into a three ring circus and consider what we can do a step at a time, a day at a time.
We don't sweat the small stuff, and we try to stay away from thinking trite ditties will truly represent our work. But, in the main, a teacher cannot learn to time manage through the presentation of a time management book at the year's start.
The work requires a symphony. Played all year.
59. All teachers, everyday, exist within knowlege.
Academic content has to inspire teaching, it must drive a teacher personally. No one ever looked to a critic or a blank page for insight in what to do next. Teachers daily enter into the practice as first, a learner. Their love of science, math, Russian, literature, insects, formulas, evolution, volcanoes, hybrids, green-living, growth, geometry, Impressionists, farming, pine cones, Golden Means, Dark Ages, Jazz, song, chemistry, crystals, all and more support them in their own academic pursuit. So does their involvement with practice, their self driven curiosity, thirst to know, willingness to adapt and change. Teachers pursue interests and learn.
60. All teachers, everyday, see patterns.
Across content areas, through time and space, around us, through us we are able to divine the repetition, the structural elements. Our job in the work will enable us to use pattern to assist us in noticing difference as well.
61. All teachers, everyday compare and contrast.
62. All teachers, everyday, see the themes that are life.
Seasons, trips around the planet, the divisions -categorization, the areas of content knowledge present us with themes. The water cycle, spring, man's inhumanity to man, home building, community celebration, ecosystems, the planets, exploration, mammals, migration, forces, energy, matter, magnetism, reproduction, renewal, cyclical patterns, perhaps sightwords and phonics, themes are present that teachers return to in planning both new instruction but in framing and expanding on previous work.
63. All teachers, every moment, operate from frameworks and standards.
64. All teachers, everyday, seek knowledge.
Oh, I said that.
65. All teachers, everyday, realize we live in a global community.
This dimension of our work first was brought home to me arriving in California from West Virginia. Meeting students working in 2nd Language. I met Dr. Krashen that year too, in a setting working with explication of dual immersion. I had 30 years of work, at the least, ahead of me to consider my practice as a teacher of students that immigrate to our shores. He had a wealth of information to share that my inexperience precluded my rapid assimilation of that into teacher action. We work within countries, nations, states, communities, languages, assisting one another into better lives. A teacher is a member of a global world, and their students as citizens of that community will need, first, language. It is power.
A teacher is a key in that door.
66. All teachers, everyday, get advice.
67. All teachers, everyday, bore someone.
It has to be said.
One dimension of the teaching life is helping us to understand the nature of that, the reasons and responses, to recognize the state and seek to find instead a place where "time stands still."
A day that went in a blink-ah-to that we are required to strive.
Mandated scripted curriculum can be such a pitfall, and yet we meet teachers that strive to bring to that state some fresh air.
68. All teachers, everyday set goals.
Personal goals for the day, lesson, unit, year, month. Student goals for achievement and planning. Teachers are goal diggers. They are seekers of next steps, improvement, miners for that next small step for mankind.
69. All teachers, everyday, consider IEP,'s learning plans, 504's.
When I came to California, when the first year ended, after I'd taught at 93rd Street School 5 months, having been placed from a "pool," the CUM's came to my room the day before the year let out. I had no idea where they came from, or were stored, and little understanding of what I needed to do with them. A mentor, Mrs. Keyes, provided the first lesson I had in this vital aspect of school life. There I read IEP'd , learned of many things and stayed up all night reflecting on my students through the lens of comments left at the end of the year by a host of previous teachers on each child.
Never again was I to be taken by surprise by these records we keep. Teachers are involved in this to better serve student achievement.
70. All teachers, everyday, assess.
They test, they grade, they record data, they look at achievement of goals, teachers give benchmark tests, writing assessments, daily, weekly, monthly, trimester, yearly assessments. Their keen use of this process precedes what they plan to do and why. Teachers target areas to further instruction. Then they check to see if this worked, then we look to see if it is working over time. Teachers do, in fact, spend a remarkable amount of teaching life within the assessment frame. Surprise!
71. All teachers, everyday, use informal assessment.
It's the most interesting thing, teaching is observing.
72. All teachers, everyday, talk about their work.
My daughter's have made the observation that I never enter a store and speak -without informing the person I've cornered that I am a teacher. This sometimes leads to discounts or donation. Sometimes it supports some idea I'm stewing on. It can be counter-productive if the talk runs cold in negativity. But teachers take their work with them, everywhere they go.
73. All teachers, everyday, participate in school and community events.
Spelling bees, math nights, Back to school, the rapidly disappearing assemblies, fund-raisers, kite festivals, author fairs, Oktoberfests, carnivals, read-a-thons, jog-a-thons. More. We are there.
74. Teachers, everyday, buy something for their classroom.
Most of us are not even allowed $200 for the needs within our rooms. Not a dime.
But we can all tell you the best place to get crayons in August for the cheapest amount.
I would like to amend this to say we are needing to be critically involved in resource allotment.
75. All teachers, everyday experience the denigration of our union status.
Because of the political aspect of current educational reforms-unions are cast as a wrong.
I remember something in California. I remember class-size of 42.
I remember what that did.
I also remember a drive by the CTA for class-size reduction. That didn't line our pockets.
I remember that affecting every child irregardless of parent political orientation.
I remember the growth in my ability to do this work.
And now I see rooms of 30 returned. And a union blamed for things that are not necessarily even true. It's a strangely polarized time. Has that served nationally student achievemnent especially in areas of need?
76. All teachers, everyday, are involved in evaluation of their work.
77. All teachers, everyday, are decision-makers.
78. All teachers, everyday, stand- as one police officer told me- as those held to a higher standard.
79. All teachers, everyday, create.
Teacher as artist. Maslow looked out at the end of his life and suggested that in a rapidly changing world the stance of the artist might serve us in teaching. He knew the stance of the scientist, the technocrat, the bureaucrat, but it was to the reactive, insightful artist he suggested we might consider learning a lesson. We know our students will alter careers many times due to the acceleration we see in this world, we can only read Dr. Yong Zhao to better see what role innovation and creativity have played in our national educational development. An artist is really not necessarily teaching how to artfully present the Van Gogh you are mimicking. They are addressing interpretation, form, function, design elements, choice, problem solving, observation, adaptation, the true nature of idea.
There is much to be done in the use of the teacher's creation.
80. All teachers, everyday, consider working through lunch.
81. All teachers, everyday, ask and take questions.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the work, or the most artful.
Some of the deepest they ask themselves.
82. Teachers, daily, informally and formally, lead.
It is teacher leadership, it's definition and power that change climates within schools. In the video I placed high in this post the teacher has run aground, clearly, and been involuntarily moved to clear a "negative climate" or so her shoulders are bearing the weight of that being stated to her. Teachers do lead.
And they do question, they do ask why. They have to functionally report back when something wasn't a great idea. They are tasked to suggest you read Yertle the Turtle.
83. Teachers, daily, monitor.
Ferne Vincent, from Texas, long gone told me once her sister Biggs-a fine teacher-was not even allowed a stool in her Texas public school. Teachers for 6 to 8 hours were expected, mandated, and monitored for moving.
Her sister longed for a few minutes to meet with a reading group, or correct a paper.
Someone has to speak up when the application of an idea-active engagement and monitoring-turns into a farce. Teachers do monitors and they must.
They also have to voice how that might best be achieved and trust a system to listen with respect for them.
That said we need to be up and involved with students. But we are not to use cattle prods.
84. Teachers, in one dimension of their work, organize.
Boy, do we. For just about everything- but most especially for student growth.
And we also have to resist the temptation to become OCD.
85. Teachers, everyday, put aside their personal life.
86. Teachers, everyday, hear someone or some outlet, tell us -or suggest- or forward- that "the students come first."
And we do, in fact, operate under that umbrella. Or we must.
I was watching a local LA public TV program, more because it came on than I chose it, the reporter-opinionator doesn't "buy" that for thirty years he's been in the business the LA Unified Teachers have been saying they are underfunded to do what they are tasked to do. He doesn't buy that years of sitting at the bottom of national ADA figures is a "reality." His advise, "get over yourselves and do it" times are tough "all over." Then he went on to interview a billionaire entrepreneur who happens to be virtually taking over schools in LA, and who happily agrees with him. At some point in this May 2013 broadcast they said that teachers ought to try "placing students first."
I don't know what LA schools look like today.
In 1986 I was hard pressed to find a single book to use, locked in a room with locked sealed bullet proof glass well over 85 degrees daily, no PE equipment, no phone, nothing but binder paper and pencils. And over 40 kids.
It seems to me that placing children first professionally does require pointing out tragic underfunding.
87. Teachers, everyday, give homework.
I know of nothing else I do more controversial with families.
It is mandated in my state by law.
It is an opportunity we are told to further student practice.
It is often demanded by a half of my parental population.
It is despised by a portion.
It can be better.
88. Teachers are models of those that we hope to produce.
And as such they can't all be the same.
89. Teachers, everyday, are character builders.
We might work under pillars of character programs, or see our work as places to address human mistakes, we are interpreters of truth, of traits that need to be watered metaphorically in our gardens. Teachers address fairness and equity. We address and develop our humanity that we hope is gained through the educated mind.
If teachers can find ways to help students tolerate, care, accept, hear, share, value they are indeed mighty forces in the future of community and state.
90. All teachers in their work deal with the dimension of care.
One of the things we did as a staff many years ago was write our personal philosophy of education. We had 5 minutes and I could not finish.
Nel Noddings, at Stanford did finish. A curriculum of care may be debated.
It's a deep philosophy.
But has it been tried?
91. All teachers in their work build teams.
Problems, solutions, teams to take them on.
92. Teachers, everyday, seek assistance.
93. Teachers, everyday, take attendance.
94. Teachers, everyday, say the Pledge of Allegiance.
95. Teachers everyday address the dimensions of working within student work.
Sometimes it occurs to me that not a single thing I made or did in the first 12 years of my school is available to be seen now. Not a spelling test, not a report, no certificate (of which we had none I know of) remains. Just me.
Teacher's know this very well.
96. Teachers, everyday, lose someone.
I'm so sorry. It eats at me even as I type it.
97. Teachers everyday demonstrate humor as a way to approach learning.
One of the true joys of my life was a child that came back to say I always made him laugh.
98. Teachers, everyday, remember.
Suggested by my son, he says they know you years later.
They remember the good times and the bad, they encounter you in the present but consider how far you have come.
99. Teachers, everyday, struggle. And sometimes they succeed.
100. Great teachers everyday love their work, students, process-yes, they do.
It is, at the end of the day, the only thing that we have to separate us from our baser natures, it is a gift and a source of joy. When we see in our students ourselves, and we affirm our student's through effective work we contribute to the care and growth of our society.
There are those that look at teacher work and see a market.
There are those that see a place for making workers.
There are those that look and see teacher work as replaceable.
There are those of us that see this work as an act of love.
Perhaps one day you'll join us and the world can live as one.
We have family in Oklahoma. My Aunt Sarah is buried there and her children, my cousins and their kin are living there. Of course we are just so horrified.
Please keep Oklahoma in your prayers and thoughts.
I'm trying to catch a parakeet in my back yard that appeared yesterday morning.
This kept me up last night worrying about it being the Cooper's hawk's dinner. Plus I think I have zero chance of doing this.
I have put a cage in the back yard. I'm hoping he hops in.
I just bought the cage because, well, I'm not good with letting something die.
I'm not sure if this parakeet will willingly go back in a cage but I can't think of another way to try.
A few years ago a beautiful canary was in the yard two days and then was toast. A dinner for something.
By the time I got an idea of what to do it was too late. I figure this bird was accidentally released.
I have a broken computer so I can't post pics.
Wish me luck.
I caught a You Tube tonight. (Below)
Just as I was about to go to bed.
Do you remember Linus?
Back in the day when Charles Schultz had the Peanuts gang teaching us our history?
Well the voice in this seems the same.
I think that's Linus.
I watched this utterly fascinated.
A word of caution-I had a child, my daughter Syl, that memorized like this but I wasn't so cool as to be taking it to the Presidents-yeah not like this- though she can sing them thanks to seeing Animaniacs a few time. Sing the periodic table, totally recite the million videos verbatim we had. The books. By 9 months 200 nursery rhymes. Ok..yes, I bought thousands of books because.....
Was I really sitting around saying...oh I need you to do this to reflect well on me?
Lately that's a demon I'm slaying or facing.
Actually her remarkable abilities just seemed so far from anything I ever expected- it was ...kind of mostly astounding.
So...here is the video.
What a fascinating thing it is...
As a teacher (giving the state test) I feel a kind of end of the year vibe- though I have weeks to go.
5 I think, maybe 4.
That's plenty of time to teach. So I've been thinking about what to hit hard-math mostly.
Math inspired me this year though a lot of what I did better I'll hope NEXT year I really take on.
Because math will be a visual process from here on out in my room.
I've fallen in love with a person who makes YouTube videos on math for all of us really. After school I compulsively watch them thinking how much I'd like them tuned a bit more to the 3rd grade, but how I like them anyway; we showed one today they loved after testing. After those tests left the room, of course.
They are genius videos.
Basically because she's charming, loves math, cares, and draws.
So the person may be known to you, once you go see her pages you'll be off mine for sure.
Her name is Vi Hart. Or I think it is her name. My daughter calls her adorkable.
So I showed this video today. One of my students has discovered patterns on the piano, left and right hand and he was so mesmerized as I said to him, look at what we are seeing. Patterns.
He then drew what he's been playing for me- much as she draws these lines in the music.
She uses art, She uses music, because she understands the deep connectivity and meaning in these languages of understanding.
I asked my 3rd graders to tell me what they learned, remembered, thought of this Youtube.
I got interesting responses:
I saw music like a braid weaving in and out.
How did they show it at the same time?
The colors were very important.
High notes went up.
I could see the patterns in music, I never knew that.
It's harmony we were watching.
They were busily taking down the website information to check out at home- because there were many they desperately wanted to watch. I know they want to see the one on candy dots.
Since we are very visual I think they'll watch.
Yes I do.
I, myself loved her riff on the 12 Days of Christmas.
My head spins actually listening to all the delightful things in this, and is flooded visually, but especially having someone that knows math, to get to see them use art, to teach adults and children about HOW TO TEACH MATH. Score, high five, rock on and I bow.
Wish grade levels could spend time on-line on something worthwhile like this. Common Core will demand it. Even in poverty schools with narrowing as an anthem.
Oh and she's being added to the Kahn Academy. Which I've asked to access for years now.
There is a lot to teaching math, but these enthused me.
Oh, oh, oh
I forget why I got to this.
In my class a student drew a massive page of these roses that I think of as a very naive image I see in art here. Usually starting with 5 petals. Ending up in a tat.
So I was talking about this at home, her images and the math I found in them, and remembered a link to a video I had watched briefly some weeks ago when we were studying and researching symmetry at home so I could go teach a visual arts symmetry connection-for my umbrella project.
That video was really about how plants grow. Very timely because I'm thinking of studying and drawing pine cones and other Fibonacci organic forms all summer. And my students have been trying to internalize why angles should matter to them.
So here was the video I shared with my student-she loves math and loved this-seeing her flowers and her doodles right at the video's start...her jaw dropped:
Skoolcade 2017 & Video Game Design in the ClassroomThis Saturday, I had the honor of serving as a judge at Ventura County’s
first annual Skoolcade competition, hosted by Rio Vista Middle School! My
fellow j...
I'm a public school elementary teacher from W.V. beginning my career in poverty schools in the 1980's. (I have GIST cancer-small intestinal and syringomyelia which isn't what I want to define me but does help define how I view the meaning of my life.) I am a mom of 3 great children-now grown. I teach 3rd grade in an Underperforming school, teaching mostly immigrant 2nd Lang. children.
I majored in art, as well as teaching. Art informs all I do. Teaching is a driving part of my life energy. But I am turning to art soon. I'm married to an artist I coaxed into teaching- now a Superintendent of one of the bigger Districts in the area. Similar population. We both have dedicated inordinate amounts of our life to the field of teaching in areas of poverty hoping to give students opportunities to make better lives. I'm trying to write as I can to the issues of PUBLIC education , trying to gain the sophistication to address the issues in written forms so they can be understood from my teaching contexts.I like to blog from daily experiences.
My work is my own, not reflective of any school district.
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