The Real Charter School Debate

This article was published in the November 2012 issue of the Be the Change Charter School's newsletter.  I am one of the members on the Design Team for the school.  

The debate over charter schools in Chicago and across the nation has increasingly become bitter and polarized.  One side consists of the pro-charter advocates, who believe charters are the solution to the public education crisis - the silver bullet.   As depicted in the movie Waiting for Superman, the narrative is that traditional public schools are consistently failing students in low-income neighborhoods (hence the name “drop-out factories”).  Thus, charter schools provide options to families that are more successful at raising student achievement by being given greater flexibility to experiment with innovative methods of education.

The other side is decidedly anti-charter and sees the increase in charter schools as a move by reform-minded politicians to privatize education.  They argue that charters take away resources from neighborhood schools; instead of investing in the schools that exist, charter schools are opened by private corporations and marketed to families as an alternative, though research shows charters do no better or worse than traditional schools in raising student achievement.  And, among other criticisms, charters are accused of skimming the top students from other schools, not accepting or not being able to provide the services for students with disabilities, and counseling out kids who have behavior problems or cannot conform to the culture of the school.

Navigating through these highly charged arguments and finding common ground is difficult.  It may, however, be helpful to look back to the history of the charter school movement to understand the changing definition of charter schools.  We may realize that the pro or anti-charter debate actually hides a deeper concern not about the existence of charters itself but about the types of charter schools that are being opened today.  

Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers from 1964 to 1985, first proposed the idea of “charter schools,” which would be publicly funded and centers of innovation.  For Shanker, charters would be created by small groups of teachers or parents who submitted research-based proposals for their school plans to a panel of members from the school district and the teachers union.   

In Illinois, Governer Jim Edgar signed a charter school law in 1996 that would allow the opening of 45 quality public charter schools across the state, with 15 in Chicago.  Since then, the cap on the number of charter schools has been lifted once in 2003 and again in 2009.  In 2004, Mayor Richard Daley and CPS CEO Arne Duncan announced the Renaissance 2010 plan, which would open 100 new charter and contract schools in Chicago.  Thus far, the Renaissance School Fund (RSF) has raised over $50 million in order to open 70 new schools and create 13 charter networks.  (A new fund called New Schools for Chicago was launched in 2011.)  

This policy is perhaps the catalyst behind the emergence of different types of charter schools and, more recently, explains why one type has become more and more common.  The three general types of charter school are (1) “independent” charter schools founded by groups of teachers, such as Polaris, Namaste, and Academy of Global Citizenship; (2) charter school “networks,” which have more than one school campus that share the same board of directors; for example, United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) schools, LEARN Charter network, and Noble Network of Charter Schools (which began as a single campus started by teachers). Some networks are managed by national Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) or Education Management Organizations (EMOs), such as Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) and Chicago Math and Science Academy, which is managed by Concept Schools.  And (3) a third group of charter schools consists of a diverse mix of those started by community organizations (Erie Elementary Charter School, partnered with Erie Neighborhood House), universities (University of Chicago Charter Schools), and local business or civic leaders.  

Over the past couple of years, the trend in charter approval has been to replicate charters within networks because they can demonstrate a “proven educational model.”  As Diane Ravitch points out, this is vastly different from the original intent of the charter school movement.  Not only did Shanker propose that charter school should collaborate and not compete against neighborhood schools, he was also adamantly opposed to charters operated by for-profit organizations and corporations.  

Ravitch writes, “In 1993, when Shanker saw that the charter idea was going to be used to privatize public education, he turned against charter schools...He became a vocal opponent of charter schools when he realized that his idea was embraced by “the education industry.” She argues for fixing the charter school movement by re-aligning with Shanker’s original concept.  

In a blog post titled “What is Lost” from January 2012, Dr. Marvin Hoffman writes, “What we are losing by excluding [independent charters] from the mix of new schools is a spirit of entrepreneurship that lay at the heart of the charter school concept from the beginning. Charters were not intended to grow into miniature replicas of the larger system and to eventually replace it. They were intended to establish beachheads of innovation that could eventually reach into existing public schools to help them broaden their view of what education could look like...”
As a design team of teachers, we advocate for quality, independent charter schools, who are truly innovative and thus intend to stay small instead of replicate.  After all, the value of charter schools goes beyond test scores but in the possibility of closing the chasm that exists between charter and public schools in a particular community to provide opportunities for all its students.

Counterpoint

An Inconvenient Superman, by Rick Ayers

What Superman Got Wrong: Point by Point, by Rick Ayers

How to fix our schools, by Richard Rothstein

Sign the Statement on Education: Heavy Reliance on Test Scores for Teacher Evaluation is Misguided

Court: No Teacher Speech Rights on Curriculum

NEA's Activist's Toolkit

Leaving the public school system

I have decided to leave the public school where I have taught for 4 years to work at a charter school in the same city. When Huberman announced the 2,700 teacher cuts, my administration claimed to have their hands tied, and teachers performed their jobs with the lowest morale due to the uncertainty and lack of communication. My school became a toxic environment in terms of how teachers treated each other, while at the same time my students continued to impress me with their work. It took quite a bit of effort to protect them from the crap going on outside of the classroom, to focus my attention on their learning.

When school let out in June, I spent the next month agonizing over my next move. I wasn't sure if I would have a position, being one of the newer hires and one of the youngest teachers. Should I stay in the school where I had developed confidence in my instruction and had formed a connection with students and families? Should I stay in a school where I felt unappreciated, unsupported, and silenced?

Then, all my insecurities as a teacher came bubbling up to the surface. If I looked for a job, would anyone hire me? Am I good enough elsewhere or did I get too comfortable at a dysfunctional school?

I know people who call teachers like me a traitor or a sell-out for leaving the urban public school system. It is like giving up instead of continuing the struggle. Others at my school will say that I thought I was "too good" or wonder why I just couldn't be content with what I had. These sentiments are understandable, but broken is broken. I couldn't be happy because my work ultimately wasn't changing things at my school. A colleague said to me, "You need to be in a place where you can be and feel effective as a teacher."

A teacher has several different spaces in which to take action - the classroom, the school, the community, the field of education, and the state or national policy scene. I see these spaces as circles that grow ever larger from the center. My goal as a teacher has always been to be a true actor in the sense that what I do creates change within these circles, and I believe that the space in which I can act should expand over time.

The first couple of years, you act solely within the classroom. You ask yourself how you could have taught that lesson better, what that child needs, how you will assess student understanding...Then, you open your eyes a little wider and notice how the school is running. You think - Hey, this isn't working. I can change this, or how can we do that? You observe the city's education policies, and you form opinions and you make decisions on whether and how to act.

If you encounter resistance when you try to be active beyond your classroom, then the message is that your role is limited to what you can accomplish within those walls and that you are not welcome into any of the wider conversations about education. I'm not saying that teaching is not enough in itself or admirable as a career, but I think many of us have come to learn that advocacy for our students extends much, much further beyond what we teach. We need to change the definition or perception of teacher to encompass advocacy. To be an advocate, it is necessary to take action within the school, be challenged to continuously improve our instruction, and have a voice in policy matters.

It took me a while to get to this point of deciding to leave and start again elsewhere, but there isn't a doubt in my mind that this is the right move for me. There are feelings of guilt and of abandoning something that I've started, and then letting go of the students and the community to which I've grown so attached is difficult. But for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling hope.

It is not about what charters are doing right and what public schools are doing wrong. More and more, the distinction between types of schools and their effect on student achievement have become moot. It is about teachers being pushed to develop their craft and become part of a team of professionals that move the school and move education research and policy. I think I have found a new space to learn and act, and that is exciting.

Angry

It's hard not to be angry right now. The administration at my school and Chicago Public Schools have been intentionally vague about the 2,700 teacher layoffs they are planning. On the last day of school, one of my assistant principals got on the intercom to tell the staff to check our emails over the summer to find out if we are going to have a position next year. And we are supposed to check our mail for a pink slip from the Board. So now I am waiting, and I am angry.

I find that anger fuels a lot of what I do. I went into teaching because I was angry at the unequal and oppressive nature of the urban school system. I thought I could be part of a change in making quality education a matter of civil and human rights.

When I started teaching, I saw how the idea of education as essential to a functioning democracy had been destroyed by a corporate agenda and an obsession with test scores. I used my anger to motivate myself to become an effective teacher, to hold myself (and my students) to higher expectations, to show "them" that success in the classroom went beyond numbers.

Anger also drives what I teach, and sometimes I feel downright subversive. This year, my students discussed capitalism, the history behind immigration issues between Mexico and the U.S., the beginnings of racial stereotypes, and violent versus nonviolent resistance. My students engaged in political and cultural forms of resistance against the anti-immigrant laws in Arizona. My curriculum is non-traditional, not because I want to break the rules, but because I think it's a matter of necessity. What do students need to know in order to be aware and active citizens? The answer seems very far removed from what's in our textbooks and test prep materials.

I am angry now because of the way teachers are being treated. We are simply numbers to be moved around or eliminated at will, just as individual students are defined by a test score. The Board will cut positions because of the "crisis," with no mention of the basis of their decision, no investigation into who the teacher is and how they teach. The Obama administration insists on evaluating teachers based on their students' test scores. What does this say about the value they place on the work of teachers and our students? Are Obama and Duncan truly listening to the many voices speaking out against their policies?

So I am angry, but I'm not sure my feelings of frustration are productive forces anymore. I usually take action, I push myself to keep working, keep fighting. But I can't help feeling a little bit helpless and tired of it all.

I'm sure that this weariness will pass. I will pick myself up and, if need be, find another position and be reminded by the brilliance of my students why what I do is important. I find some hope in the election of the CORE party for union leadership. We as teachers need to be adamant about the value of our jobs beyond the numbers, and right now we need an indication of trust from the government, our administration, and the community that we know what we are talking about.

Renewal of Purpose

A few weekends ago, I attended the first day of the North Dakota Study Group conference held in Mundelein, IL. I had the privilege of listening to Detroit activist and community organizer Grace Lee Boggs and UIC professor David Stovall present their views on the state of the education system today, explain their vision for what it could be, and issue a call for action for all educators. I even had a conversation with Deborah Meier herself (in which I tried to sound intelligent instead of starstruck.)

What I heard at the conference was exactly what I needed after several weeks of feeling powerless at my school. The pressure of ISATs, conflicts with co-workers, and concerns about the emotional health of my students had unearthed old questions and frustrations about what it means to be a teacher. The speeches and discussions with other passionate education activists has renewed my sense of purpose and reminded me once again of the larger perspective in our fight for quality public education. I would like to share a summary and my takeaways from the first day of the NDSG conference.

One of the themes from both speeches was that the future direction of our country is intimately tied to the state of public education. According to Boggs, we are living in a special time, the end of an era dominated by the belief in the old American dream. She says that it is time to use our imaginations to create a new American dream, one based not on capitalism and a relentless pursuit of cognition, but on more democratic principles and on a kind of knowing based on care and connection to humanity.

Both were insistent on the insidious nature of the current system. The path we are on now leads to destruction. The type of education the government is encouraging will create a country of passive subjects, content to believe and do whatever they are told by the media and politicians or those with power. Narrowing down teaching and learning to tests and quantifiable data not only dumbs down our students, but makes them completely incapable of thinking and acting on their own. True democracy, however, requires involved citizens who are able to think critically, discuss and dissent, be creative, have moral responsibility, and be active in changing the world around them...qualities that can't exactly be measured by a standardized test. Boggs used a quote by Albert Einstein to make the point that we need a total shift in consciousness that has yet to occur in our history: "The splitting of an atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe."

Stovall brought the concept to the ground by showing how mayoral control, business interests, and the gentrification of neighborhoods have essentially disintegrated many public schools in Chicago. The city has strategically dis-invested in its lowest-performing schools and communities, leaving them vulnerable for years. Then, citing accountability measures and the miracle of charter schools, the city has moved to close the schools and "turn them around" in a supposed last attempt to save them. He made clear how the city's actions are based on assumptions about urban youth, poverty, and race as pathological. None of these tactics have solid research to prove increased student achievement, and actually there is increasing evidence against them. Yet Chicago is used as a model of successful reform that is now being replicated across the nation.

For Stovall, and many others, this is a crucial time. It is the end of public education as we know it. There was a palpable sense of pessimism and cynicism throughout the conference about the direction of the nation and whether we would see our vision as a reality in our lifetimes. What gave everyone hope, however, was the simple fact that our kids, our students have the capacity to change the human condition.

Stovall asked of the educators gathered together, "What are we doing knowing what we know?" For me, this was the crucial question. As a teacher, what does it mean to resist, to empower, to trust, to work with students to imagine and create a new, different world? I want to join in on the discussion of what a complete redefinition of effective teaching would look like based on these values. One of the first things that we teachers can do, which Stovall adamantly suggests, is to be clear about what we do and why we do it. We need to have a voice, we need to find the "cracks" within which we can act upon what we believe, and we need to seek each other.

Failing and Thriving

Thought I'd share with you an excellent article I came across in Teacher Magazine the other day. It is actually a review of a new book by Thomas Newkirk called Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones. I have yet to read the book, but the piece by Mary Tedrow, a teacher in Virginia, really struck a chord. I thought she articulated very well what I attempted to in my post about daily failures as a teacher. Her thoughts reflect what I have been thinking and feeling lately at this point of the year, too.

Here is an excerpt from Tedrow's article entitled "How Teachers Fail - and Thrive."

After nearly a decade of high stakes accountability, the meetings, data collection, pre-tests, post-tests, required lesson plans, reports, and more reports have diluted my view of what kids really need to be “well educated.” Newkirk has written a good reminder.

His book, subtitled Six Literacy Principles Worth Fighting For, is something of a manifesto on behalf of quality instruction—recalling for us the basics that good teachers know but may have lost sight of: Keep the curriculum simple, use what kids already know, let kids write a lot.

The review of essential teaching practices is welcome. But in these most difficult times of my teaching career, I think I needed Newkirk’s cheerleading even more.

In Chapter 8, “Finding a Language for Difficulty: Silences in Our Teaching Stories,” Newkirk reinforced for me that I am—all the way to the bones and beyond—a teacher. Obvious, you say? Perhaps. But there are those days when I leave the building feeling like much less than that.

Newkirk acknowledges that all teachers live with a deep insecurity that we either learn to accept or ultimately ignore for self-preservation. He argues that the profession needs to embrace an awareness that all teachers struggle with regular failures: students they can't reach, lessons that fall flat, explanations that are met by blank stares. He eloquently describes the inevitable class where—because of the time of day, or the season, or the odd mix of personalities—no one appears to have the energy for learning, and the teacher feels mired in lethargy as well. He reminds us that no one is a super-teacher 24/7. Some failure is a natural consequence of the tremendous challenges we take on.

I needed to hear that. I’ve been feeling the failure most keenly of late. Hitting the new round of government goals means that every discussion centers on students who are the hardest to engage. We are asked: Who might fail? What are you doing to ensure this does not happen? What remediation is occurring—with or without system support? Teach harder, we are admonished. Teach harder. This is the message from all corners. It’s a demoralizing one, according to Newkirk. I concur. I’m dancing just as fast as I can.

Newkirk argues that “harder” isn’t the answer. What teachers need is each other. We need to be sharing and discussing student work, bolstering and supporting each other through the inevitable failures, collaborating in manageable small communities, inviting each other into our classrooms. We need to witness daily the great teaching that is already going on inside our buildings.

Newkirk eschews the teacher-hero we all know from the movies. The idealistic views portrayed in these self-sacrificing wonder-workers only undermine the confidence of real teachers who regularly must face failure in their practice. Too often, Newkirk says, teachers deal with the fact of failure in isolation. The true hope of reform lies in a teaching culture where we are expected to share with colleagues, where we are routinely given the time and support we need to find ways through and around failure together. We need to slow down, not speed up the teaching act.

Remember the old chestnut: Put two teachers together, and all they do is talk shop? And why is that? Because we are never permitted time to do it on the job. Because no one else knows what it's like. Because grown-ups need grown-ups. We can't subsist on a diet of all children all the time.

At some point we need to articulate the long view. We need the perspective of many eyes and many ears so that we can survive to teach another day. And even prosper. However, these practices are supported by policies that make us the objects of reform rather than the co-creators.

This idea of co-creation is the hoped-for change that will sustain me through the years beyond 2010: that teachers may one day wrest control of their work from others. If it happens, it will happen by bits and pieces, but it is the most important “good idea” I cling to in this time of very bad ones.

I hasten to say that there are many other excellent reasons to read Newkirk's book. I have several new ideas for informal writing with my students, for instance, and a list of notes on the flyleaf that will no doubt lead me to other good practices. But if you have hit that low place in the school year (or perhaps in the decade of “No Child Left Behind”), you will especially appreciate Newkirk’s offer to help us find “a language for difficulty.”

There is redemption in confession. And here is the affirmation that teachers need to make for and about each other: Our work is hard. And messy. And fraught with the pitfalls of failure. We see it daily and without blinders; we know what is working, what is not. No one grasps the consequences of failing to make forward progress with a student better than a classroom teacher. It is a despair we live with, inseparable from the joys of teaching. We should be able to work on it together.

And another book goes on my "must-read" list!

Voices from the Classroom

A Found Poem of Room 204’s Voices

“Race”

Race is labeling someone of their skin color without even getting to know them.
Race is when someone is judging you.
Race is when you see someone and you say I know what you are going to be when you grow up.
Race is how you classify someone by their skin color or by how they look.
Race is separation of people. Race is something that is a big problem.
Race affects and hurts people’s feelings or attitudes.

Race is only the color of your skin.
Race is a word to say that people are different.
Race is that people have different backgrounds.
Race is a made up group of people that are separated.
Race is a theory that scientists haven’t proven. It is not real because we are all equal and people think different races to be better at other things even though they are not.

Race is not what creates who you are.

We can be an upstander…
by not being racist yourself,
standing up for others if they’re made fun of by someone because of their skin color,
defending yourself like, for example, if someone tells you you’re a certain race, you can say, “Yes, we are and we are happy for it!”

We can be an upstander…
by standing out and working together,
getting to know someone before judging them and try to persuade others to do that as well,
treating everyone equally to make our union a better place to be in,

We can be an upstander by explaining that people who look different are not different because they have feelings, hopes, and joys.

In the Classroom

It's been almost four months of school. I've been mostly abstract and philosophical about teaching so far in my blog. Earlier in the year, I set the goal to talk about the idea of teaching and trust in public schools, but I've been unable to write very much in the moment...I can't separate myself from the messiness and uncertainty of teaching.

It's hard for teachers to write or speak publicly about what goes on everyday in the classroom. The accounts we usually hear are either those melt-your-heart, sweet memories of what a child did today or horror stories about that other kid, about the miserable conditions in the school or community. Teachers rarely talk about the million split-second decisions they make and the results of those decisions, whether positive or negative, in their classrooms.

My confidence wavers at times. I think back at the countless moments in a day and wonder if I could have explained it better, acted sooner, said something to a student before he left for home. It can be crippling to think like this, to doubt every next step and ask if what you are doing is right, if it is any good, if it is effective.

This week, my students and I were analyzing how a writer develops the protagonist in a short story. I realized half-way through the week that I had chosen a very difficult text to read as a class. Several students were lost. I should have given more time to students who needed to finish typing their writing. Several students reminded me this week that I had failed to conference with them while they had worked on their writing project. We spent two weeks studying run-ons and fragments, but those types of sentences abounded in their published work. I yelled at a student in front of the whole class for consistently being disrespectful and moved him to a desk facing the wall. I got tired.

But teaching allows for new beginnings. Teachers and students are currently on break, and I have a lot to think about in terms of figuring out where my students are and how I need to improve my instruction. I don't know if I ever forgive myself completely of the mistakes and missteps I make, but I do try to amend them the next day, the next week, the next quarter, the next year.

I will reconsider how to support students individually with conferences and finally begin pulling small groups consistently. I will rethink how to teach run-ons and fragments. I will sit down and talk with that student about how he can meet expectations in writing class and spell out the consequences for bad behavior. I will need a new approach to get students started writing their own fiction short stories, and I will need to find better mentor texts in English and Spanish.

Reflection is both powerful and painful and often a very private process at my school, if it happens at all. But teachers' decision-making should be made more public. We are afraid of being judged on one moment or on one mistake, but accountability to administration, families, and community is necessary to make sure we are doing our jobs. This is where trust on all sides is essential.

Teachers may not fully trust the public to understand the myriad of decisions they make or what they do everyday and often play the role of victim. But our job is too important to be relegated to secrecy, which breeds incompetency and ignorance. We need to make what constitutes effective teaching more public, despite the messiness of what occurs everyday in our classrooms, and take responsibility for our work. In this way, we can not only turn a critical eye on ourselves, but we can receive focused observation and feedback from those that have a stake in each student's education.

As a teacher, I trust you to know that teaching can be imperfect and experimental. Evaluate me on my performance and also on how I reflect, what I learn, and how I put my reflection back into action. I am open to listening to your voices because I take the trust you put in me to educate your children very seriously. With that - here's to a new year, new starts in my classroom, and new prospects in my professional life as I look for a new position in a more functional school.

Urban Youth Violence

Back in September in Chicago, a high school student was beaten to death by other teenagers near Fenger High School. Reports say that it was a gang fight gone out of control, and Derrion, a sophomore on the honor roll, was a bystander at the scene when he was fatally struck in the head. A cell phone video aired on local TV and now seen across the country has renewed public concern in urban youth violence. Since then, the media has covered other shootings and violent incidents among students in Chicago as well as across the country, including the disturbing gang rape case in Richmond, California.

Violence among urban youth is nothing new, though the details are shocking every time. The debate over the causes and the increasing brutality of the crimes of the young have been hashed and rehashed. Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman has declared he is willing to throw large sums of money at the problem for more programs that target students who live in impoverished, gang-ridden neighborhoods. He has also stated that he wants to see a "culture of calm" in public schools.

Again, nothing new. So I have to ask what the role of the school and the role of the teacher is in addressing urban youth violence. Why is it not the school's problem? Instead, we point to the lack of after-school programs or lack of safety in the neighborhood, both of which are important of course, but as a teacher I wonder if violence was discussed in the classroom beyond the surface level of "keep your hands and feet to yourself," whether such incidents would happen with such frequency.

I think we often shy away from this question because there exists a tension between what should supposedly be taught at home and what should be taught at school. Parents and teachers argue over their respective "domains" in the life of a child. Teachers might complain, for example, that it's not in their job description to teach a child manners or even conflict resolution. In adolescent years and even earlier, there is increasing separation between education of character, which is traditionally the parents' role, versus academics, which is the role of the school. Schools who have it right have found a way to bridge the divide and acknowledge that teachers and parents need to work together on the social, emotional, and academic development of each student.

But urban schools are victims of a system of accountability that creates distrust between home and school. Parents are asked to evaluate a school almost solely based on its test scores. At the same time, discipline issues in the classroom are often blamed on bad parenting with the excuse that there is simply no time within the school day. As a urban teacher, one feels the pressure of NCLB and high-stakes testing, which places value on reading and math over anything else. We are asking if students can comprehend a reading passage but not asking them if they feel safe or if they are able to gauge and control their emotions or what it would look like to make good choices.

We forget that social and emotional intelligence also needs to be taught in school, which directly affects students' decision-making in the situations they face outside of school.

At the beginning of the year, I debate internally about whether or not to take the three weeks I need to build a classroom community because my school puts pressure on teachers to do "actual" teaching and ISAT prep instead of the "fluff." Building a classroom community is more than the students getting to know each other. It consists of creating a contract of what we need as learners and what we can do to help everyone achieve their goals in class. We discuss and act out how to make decisions and weigh consequences in tough situations students might face in school and out, as well as how to resolve conflicts with each other by using language and understanding perspectives. Much of the community building ties in with other content areas such as social studies throughout the year, so it is an on-going process. But to be honest, I often doubt I do enough of it.

We have come to a point in education policy debate where the fact that teaching students about how to simply be with each other is completely neglected in favor of math and science. I want my students to care about others, to be strong enough in character and have the confidence to make good choices for themselves and their future. This is possibly the most important thing the students can walk away with from school and home.

And, yes, it is part of my job, and gladly so...in addition to teaching students how to write five-paragraph essays. And, yes, it is the parents' job as well. There is much that both teachers and parents can agree upon in considering the type of adult and citizen we want our students to become. I wonder if the problem of youth violence and the bystander effect could be alleviated if character education or social and emotional intelligence or whatever you'd like to call it could be given the necessary "rigor" in all public schools as are the academic areas.

Mike Rose's Advice to Teachers

Here is a brief excerpt from a Teacher Magazine interview with Mike Rose, professor at the UCLA School of Education, who just published a book called Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us.

What’s your advice for teachers in the current education environment, besides simply, “Hang in there”?

Oooh boy. There’s something to that, actually! When veteran teachers see yet one more new thing coming, they just put their heads down, and work in their classrooms, because they know that in a couple years, there’ll be something else. “Hang in there” is one piece of advice that veteran teachers give to younger teachers. But it’s hard to do.

Right now, I’m teaching in a school of education, so it would be really presumptuous of me to give people who are [teaching] in K-12 classrooms advice. What I can tell you is what I’ve heard other teachers say and do.

Be sure to find colleagues who matter to you – those colleagues you admire, those colleagues who are skilled and competent and are just good to be around. I think it’s hugely important to belong to, to join, to participate in whatever institutional or organizational thing you can find that helps sustain you, whether it’s trying to participate in the National Writing Project or the National Science Foundation, or workshops that reinvigorate you, or your union.

Remember, too, that the work you do has a powerful public and political dimension. And therefore, you are de facto, an actor on the political stage. So don’t be hesitant to write that letter to the editor. Don’t be hesitant to try and get that guest column in your local newspaper.

And then, finally, it’s just reminding yourself of what it is that really brought you into this profession. And those are the moments we all crave. The kid who lights up, the student in trouble who confides in you and you find a way to help her out of a jam, or the pleasure of thinking about how you teach something to somebody. Or just remembering that this is one of the grand cultural activities, one of the historically great things that human beings do with other human beings: We teach each other! It’s so easy to lose sight of it in the day-to-day grind, but it’s really magisterial work. Without teaching, culture collapses.

This helped me get through the week! I also bought Rose's book today and look forward to reading it.

Reflection on Writing

My students have just finished publishing their first writing project while learning the writing process. For many students, this is the first year that they are learning writing as a separate subject. I asked the students to reflect on their work and what they learned about writing and about themselves as writers. Here are some of the responses I got:

I learned that I am a good writer and I like to write now.

I learned that having ideas before writing is so much easier.

I learned that it takes a lot of effort.

I learned that writing isn't just like writing stories but also the way you feel and want to express things your way. I learned that it is possible to write something if I just put my head into it.

I can express my feelings, I can talk about my life that is in the present or in the past, and I can tell other people how I feel by writing.

I learned that I should work harder to come up with way more ideas.

I learned that wriiting is awesome and that it felt good doing a poem. I felt that it's good you get to explain yourself and let it out.

I learned that writing isn't easy, and you need to have a great imagination.

I learned that I might be a writer when I grow up because I love to write and I can't go one day without writing.

What's in a job

I've written a bit about the common and annoying misconceptions about why we become teachers - mainly, that it is a nice thing to do, we get summers off, etc. We've also all heard the saying, "those who can't do, teach," which exacerbates the view that teaching is something that one falls into because nothing else worked out, a career out of necessity but not by choice.

But teaching has to be by choice. Teaching cannot be just another job because it is unlike any other job. Lately, as the school year has started and almost 120 sixth grade students walk through my classroom doors everyday, the question in my mind has been what are the right reasons for teaching. I choose the word "right" deliberately because I do think there are wrong ones. The question to ask is not only Why teach? but Why do I want to teach?

In coming up with the following list, I've tried to stray away from fluffy answers. I'm interested in practical motivations for doing what we do everyday despite the philosophical reasons we might give, such as educating for social justice or to share our love of learning. I want to portray teaching as something we can be passionate about for rational, perhaps even selfish reasons instead of trying to defensively justify what we do in comparison to more respected professions.

1. Teaching is fulfilling work.

Some people don't look for fulfillment in their jobs or have forgotten why they work. What they do from nine to five is just a paycheck, a way to pass the time with friendly coworkers and be, at best, mildly intellectually stimulated. The same holds true with many teachers at my school - those who clock in at 8:30 am and leave by 3, those whose only concern is to get through the day, gossip in the hallways with other teachers, and reuse the same, boring lessons from ten years ago. They have confused teaching with something else, something easy and comfortable and mindless.

Teaching can be, on the other hand, fulfilling - your job can satisfy your intellectual curiosity and demand the best of your talents. Teaching can make you become a better person, can challenge you to think on your feet, can ask that you reconsider and improve your practice year after year. But it's not easy and it's uncomfortable. You put yourself at risk for failures but also huge successes. You are in danger of taking things personally and questioning your motives and investing too much of yourself into your work. That's what makes it worthwhile.

I want to argue that the job as teacher can offer you the satisfaction of achieving professional and personal goals, but also requires constant humility and hard work. No other job requires so much of your better self and the opportunity to directly impact the lives of other individuals. Being a teacher should be considered, to put it in the words of my colleague, a privilege.

2. Effective teaching matters.

We might think that no one cares or sees what we do day in and day out in our classrooms. The publicity we get is mostly negative. Politicians and textbook companies and some teacher preparation programs espouse the view that you can take anyone and make them a good teacher. Give them lesson plans, three months of training, and throw them in the classroom they say.

But there is increasing evidence that who we are matters and how well we can do our job matters. In fact, having effective teachers may be the single most important aspect of school reform. Here is a statistic from a Time magazine article that shows how essential a strong teacher is in the academic life of a student.

“If two average 8-year-olds are assigned to different teachers, one who is strong and one who is weak, the children’s lives can diverge in just a few years, according to research pioneered by Eric Hanushek at Stanford. The child with the effective teacher, the kind who ranks among the top 15% of all teachers, will be scoring well above grade level on standardized tests by the time she is 11. The other child will be a year and a half below grade level – and by then it will take a teacher who works with the child after school and on weekends to undo the compounded damage. In other words, the child will probably never catch up.” (Ripley, Amanda. “Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenge.” Time Magazine. Nov. 26, 2008.)

3. What we teach and how we teach it makes a difference.

I know I'm bordering on cliche, but teaching makes a difference in students' lives and, admittedly a bit intangibly, the world. We should be concerned about the next generation's ability to solve the problems that the nation and the world face, especially since nowadays we are obsessed with test scores and the capacity of our students to bubble in multiple-choice answers.

I recently reread a Harper's magazine opinion piece entitled "Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school" by Mark Slouka. He argues that the current focus on math and science achievement in schools is a reflection of a culture driven by economics. Our world is analyzed in terms of market costs and benefits, and education is a business commodity. The common belief is that schools should produce proficient workers who will grow our economy once again, hence the need for better and more math and science instruction.

The problem as Slouka sees it is that education has to be essentially about the humanities and thus inherently political. He writes:

The humanities, done right, are the crucible within which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their “product” not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their “success” something very much like Frost’s momentary stay against confusion.

They are thus, inescapably, political. Why? Because they complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance. Because out of all this work of self-building might emerge an individual capable of humility in the face of complexity; an individual formed through questioning and therefore unlikely to cede that right; an individual resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery in all their forms. The humanities, in short, are a superb delivery mechanism for what we might call democratic values. There is no better that I am aware of.

I'm not taking his argument as a rant about which subjects are more important to teach. The question is really about being aware of what we are teaching and how we are going about doing it in terms of the kind of democracy we want in the future. As a teacher, you have the power to shape humanity - to nudge children to question, to reflect, to create, to change the circumstances around them - not just to observe or simply understand the world as facts.


This list isn't finished, but it's a start to something I have been thinking about quite a bit lately. It is meant as a reflection on what I think is at the core of an effective teacher and reminds me of why I do my job.

I'm not a brainwasher

I'm angry that in this huge blow-up over President Obama's speech to the nation's students on September 8th, there is little to no mention of the role of teachers. Aren't teachers the people who are going to be making the actual decision to show the speech in their classrooms? The conversation has been degrading to say the least: We can't trust the teachers to discuss the speech in a meaningful way, so we either need to tell our kids to stay home or convince the school administration to make the decision for them.

The controversy has revealed the patronizing, stereotypical view of teachers held by the media and some politicians - that teachers aren't smart enough to make curricular choices in their own classrooms, that teachers are raging liberals, that teachers will take lesson plans from the White House verbatim and plop them down in front of the students for lack of anything better to do.

Even worse, the conservatives' "concern" shows extremely low confidence in our kids' ability to think for themselves or in the value of teaching kids to think for themselves. According to some, it is better for children to be told what to believe by their parents and to shield them from ever having to face challenges or questions to their beliefs. Who is doing the brainwashing here? No matter what we adults, parents or teachers, personally believe - we can make sure that children have the ability to think critically about information they are bombarded with and the positive guidance to make choices about their future plans, much less their political leanings.

As a teacher, I want my students to know what it means to live in a democracy. To become informed and active citizens. To know how to weigh perspectives and form their own opinions. Equating the President's speech to socialist indoctrination is antithetical to democracy and exposes the lack of trust in teachers and schools to educate our children. Actually, it should make us think once again about the purpose of education and how much better our democracy could be with citizens who know how to listen to one another.

Because it's nice

In an op/ed piece by a former teacher in the D.C. area, one of the reasons she gives for leaving the profession is the public's view that teaching is, to put it simply, a nice thing to do. She writes, "Teaching is an admirable and, well, necessary profession, they say, but it's not for the ambitious." The young, go-getter types of our generation are ambitious and crave the "social recognition" for the hard work we do. But the treatment of teachers as bleeding-hearts instead of driven activists, she claims, leads to burn-out and high turnover.

Although I don't think this is a justification for leaving the field of teaching, she does bring up an important misunderstanding about why we teach. There are two connotations of "nice" used to describe teaching. On one hand, people might be making a reference to our character - being a teacher reflects what a kind and caring person we are. There is a range of ideas in play here, from our love of children to how teaching is, according to my aunt, a job particularly fitting for a woman (and all that implies).

While it may be a valuable characteristic of a teacher, niceness is a separate issue from effectiveness in the classroom. Being "nice" has little to do with the necessary experience and training, authority, creativity, reflectiveness or ability to improve one's own teaching. Ironically, both students and their parents say they want a teacher who is nice in this sense. I think we can be personable of course, but we need to shed light on all the other, more intellectual aspects of teaching just as the public needs to demand more of their teachers. I look forward to the day when a child can list more specifically the qualities she wants in a teacher: someone who has high expectations, will challenge her, supports her strengths and areas of improvement, makes learning relevant and exciting, and works hard.

The other connotation which I feel is the more controversial issue here has to do with ethics. When someone says teaching is the nice thing to do, they also mean it's morally upstanding work in less than ideal circumstances, especially in the inner-city. People envision Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers. The problem is that it implies teaching is inherently "gritty," that the ability to overcome the little professional support, crumbling schools, and safety issues and still, heroically succeed is what defines good urban teaching.

Yes, teaching is ethical work, and many of us go into the profession because of the belief in equal, public education and social justice. But we don't like to be seen as martyrs. Give us your trust and support, elevate our profession to one based, like others, on skill, talent, experience, and motivation. I'm tired of being nice.

A Reason for Teaching

A professor of mine once told a story of how he accompanied his wife to a formal dinner party one night. Surrounded by lawyers, doctors, and other young professionals who complained bitterly of the long work hours but obviously loved the challenge of their jobs, my professor stood waiting for the inevitable question - So, what do you do? The group paused their conversation and turned eagerly towards him. I teach third grade, he said. People nodded, patted him on the back in sympathy or in a show of support, and looked down into their drinks awkwardly.

When I'm in similar situations, I get two types of responses. Oh, it must be so difficult! Why do you do it? is one. The second response is one I despise: Well, at least you get your summers off! I have never been able to come up with an articulate comeback for either comment. Maybe because it's impossible to be concise.

So the question is, what do we teachers do exactly? And why? The motivation for going into most other professions seems pretty clear cut. To help people who are sick, we assume, or to ensure justice, or for the money, to put it bluntly. To create a product, to be involved in politics and change, to be someone important in the business...But teaching? The reasons are vague and border on becoming excuses for not doing something more glamorous.

It seems to me that if the nation is going to learn once again to trust its educators, then we can start by being able to explain to the public why we teach. And if we are going to raise the quality of teachers and the preparation they receive, then we should have strict guidelines for who becomes a teacher in the first place. In other words, if you are responsible for a year of learning in the life of the thirty or so children in your classroom, then you better have a damn good reason for going to work everyday.

By the way, to finish my recollection of the story, my professor smiled at the party guests and continued - I teach my students how to read and write and how to think about a problem. I teach them what it means to be a good person, to love learning, and to reach for their dreams. That's why I do it.

And later, he would write, "We have to refocus on teaching as intellectual and ethical work, something beyond the instrumental and the linear. We need to understand that teaching requires thoughtful, caring people to carry it forward successfully, and we need, then, to commit to becoming more caring and more thoughtful as we grow into our work."

Thank You, NCLB

Let me give you an example of a school that is broken thanks to No Child Left Behind.

For the fifth year in a row, my school has not made Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) on the state test or ISAT. In the past, our school's English Language Learners and special education students were the two categories that performed poorly on the test (due to the school's lack of a bilingual program and dismal special education services). But this year, the overall Reading scores fell a few percentage points. In fact, since 2006, the overall percentage of students who met proficient levels on the test has been steadily decreasing, while NCLB requires the number to rise incrementally until 100% of students are proficient by 2014.

My principal, obviously alarmed at the prospects of being "restructured" by the powers above, has decided to take drastic measures to raise test scores. For one, she is mandating one day a week as ISAT day for the entire year ahead. That means all teachers have to indicate on their lesson plans the ISAT strategy they will be teaching, which the students will practice that day. Since there are 40 weeks in a school year, that's 40 days, 240 hours and 14,400 minutes a year dedicated to ISAT. Oh, I'm exaggerating. The principal has stressed that there are only 19 Wednesdays before the ISAT.

This confirms one of the biggest criticisms of high-stakes testing as a means to hold school accountable - Teachers will be forced to teach to the test. Students will bubble in answers for multiple choice questions and write formulaic paragraphs instead of doing any meaningful learning or critical thinking. Unfortunately at my school, test-driven teaching has been the norm, and obviously that's not even working. But the administration insists that we continue drilling ISAT skills to an even greater degree.

Secondly, my principal has combed through the data to connect every teacher to the number of students in their class who were "below" or at the "warning" level on the ISAT last year. She sent out a list of all the teachers in 3rd-8th grade and the breakdown of their class's performance to the whole school. I find her actions disrespectful towards her staff and inappropriate on many levels.

You cannot evaluate a teacher based on one year's test scores. There are questions of accuracy (one day, one test) and whether the test itself reflects what a student knows. As is often the case in my school (again because there is no bilingual support), English Language Learners lag far behind grade level in reading. A 6th grade teacher who has moved a student from a 3rd grade reading level to a 5th grade reading level in one year is still considered a failure since the student couldn't pass the test.

You can, on the other hand, look at the progress each student made in that teacher's classroom during the year as one component of the teacher's effectiveness. The administration could make an effort to visit the classrooms regularly and observe the teacher in action. Teachers could evaluate each other as well and offer feedback to improve our practice. The administration could support teacher leaders to pave the way on curricular and instructional changes. We could, together, ensure that a student has a consistent and coherent education throughout his time at our school that prepares him not only to do well on a test but to succeed in life - to show care and tolerance, to be articulate, to reflect and critique, to solve problems, to be creative.

Placing blame on individual teachers for our school's performance on the test is hardly a way to build a team. I don't know if, by sending out the list, my principal anticipated that teachers were going to compare themselves to others, gossip, and just feel completely deflated, unmotivated and angry. But she has succeeded in doing so. I have never seen such low morale of the staff as we start this new school year, and I am feeling the pressure too. I know one thing though. "ISAT Day" won't exist in my classroom.

The Silver Bullet

I like catching up on education news on the Schools Matter blog (http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com). Yesterday, they posted an article about how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is planning to put half a billion dollars into a project to research teacher effectiveness. The project will gather data about what makes a quality teacher and test methods of hiring, evaluating, and firing teachers. Several school districts across the nation submitted proposals of their effective teaching plans for a share of the money. The districts' ideas included teacher training, tenure and monetary incentives, and coaching and mentorship for teachers. The deputy director of education at the Gates Foundation called their new goal for having effective teachers in front of every student the "silver bullet" to educational reform.

I'm going to ignore the "silver bullet" comment for the sake of avoiding a rant. I could go on about how the obsession over silver bullets has undermined any progress on holistic public policy change in the field of education. But I won't.

I don't know the specifics about the project, but I do have several points of concern about this new focus on teacher effectiveness. First, I don't think we can go about asking what makes an effective teacher if we don't come to a conclusion on what it means to be effective. In other words, I'm assuming that effective means "resulting in higher test scores" in this case. We are looking for a reason why so many of our students do poorly on a flawed test, so let's focus on how "effective" teachers teach to the test. I guess it would be relatively easy, then, to come up with a formula for good teaching that completely obliterates teacher individuality and who the students are in front of them.

But if by effective we mean the complex set of skills, knowledge of their students, environmental factors, personality, ability to adapt, leadership, creativity, motivation, and other subjective (gasp) aspects of teaching that are used to reach and push students toward relevant goals; then we are talking about something that cannot be easily measured. Ironically, we already implicitly know what makes an effective teacher in this sense. The thought of putting this into some sort of formula is also scary.

My last concern is that, once again, we teachers are having studies and assessments done to us (and against us.) You don't need billions of dollars to tell you why some of us teach - a hint: it's not always about the money. You don't need a study to tell you what makes us good teachers or need to use test scores to bully us into teaching a certain way. We teachers need to lead the discussion on what changes need to be made and how we want to be treated.

Are we going to have outside "experts" tell us exactly what to do or should we take it upon ourselves to open our classrooms and share or critique our practice with each other? Are we going to be at the mercy of "objective" evaluations, or should we evaluate ourselves and each other on the values and skills we need as we grow as teachers? We know what works and what's wrong in our schools. We know the kids. We know what it means to be an effective teacher. And if some of us take a good, long look at ourselves and realize that we are failing at our job and are unwilling to do anything about it - then maybe we shouldn't be in this profession.

A Reason for Blogging

I have shamelessly stolen the title of my blog from Deborah Meier's book called In Schools We Trust. In her book, she reminds us that there is an alternative vision for education and schooling that is not based on high-stakes testing and top-down reform. She gives a definition of the kind of trust we should have in our schools and in our teachers: "It is a hard-won, democratic trust in each other, tempered by healthy, active skepticism, and a demand that trust be continually earned." As a teacher, I feel that this trust is hard to come by in many urban, public schools. There is little trust among the teachers, no trust between the teachers and the administration, and increasingly less trust of teachers from city and federal government leaders.

I believe that we as teachers are as much to blame for the lack of trust in our profession as are the politicians in DC. Very few of the debates on education reform are driven by the people who know children, who see how they learn and interact with each other, and who struggle with the myriad of challenges in the classroom. I hope to shed some light onto what it means to be a teacher. This blog is more for my benefit because I am constantly asking myself (and reminding myself again) why I teach, especially when it gets tough, but I also hope that people will begin listening to teachers again. Indeed, trusting them in the way that Meier suggests.

I like how Meier's definition of being trustworthy involves being open to skepticism. I plan on being very critical of teachers - who we are and why we do what we do. I know that politicians have sometimes labeled us as incompetent, lazy, and unwilling to change, and I disagree with these labels since they are untrue for the most part and are used to push a political agenda. But in my mind there is no excuse for teachers who have lost sight of why they are in the classroom or never had a good reason in the first place.

Some groups of more vocal teachers have shifted the debate away from educating children to saving face and saving their jobs. I'm talking about how teachers' unions have battled for shorter workdays and better pay but ignored taking part in any real curricular or instructional reform. This brings me to another point. Yes, I wish we were paid more as are other professionals, but I'm not sure teachers who do the bare minimum and show no real commitment to the job are deserving of such pay. Instead of becoming defensive at the negative name-calling, I think it is a good opportunity to ask ourselves what it means to be competent, professional, and open to improving our practice. We need to demand respect for being a teacher. That means no longer being complacent about our job, how schools are run, and what it means to educate a child.