The Empty Classroom

The Empty Classroom

It waits in darkness
Empty
Purposeless
Silent

Soon enough it will again be
A lively, raucous place
Filled with life
Filled with sound
Filled with direction

Once the break is over
And school begins again

©2009-Art Belliveau

National Poetry Month and My Students Are Publishing

In honor of National Poetry Month I am featuring quotes by poets on my Almost Daily Quote blog. I am also going to do my best to write a poem a day for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). I will keep these on my poetry blog. Any feedback is always welcome.

I am not the only one publishing this month. My students are at that point as well. Last week I got them to start typing up some of their assignments on Google Documents. Even with my prior rant on Google Docs, I still find the service to be very valuable. After my students write up their assignments I require them to add me as a collaborator so I can help them edit their work.

Then, this week, I had them join wikispaces.com. My class website is located there. After they join wikispaces, I have them join my class wiki so they can add their own content to it. Each student is provided with their own webpage. On that page, so far, I have had them write a brief intro (this was freestyle--no explicit instruction past no last names used). Then they were to type in "Table of Contents," "Portrait Poem," and "Memory Paper."

Then we went back to Google Docs. I showed them how to publish their documents as webpages and had them copy the URL. Then back to wikispaces, where I showed them how to link from their webpages to their documents.

Most of them have at least made a start on doing this and are at various stages of completion. But, if anyone is interested in taking a look and leaving a comment, please feel free. Please try to keep comments constructive, these are beginning writers.

Happy National Poetry Month!

03/18/09

Inspired teachers... cannot be ordered by the gross from the factory.  They must be discovered one by one, and brought home from the woods and swamps like orchids.  They must be placed in a conservatory, not in a carpenter shop; and they must be honored and trusted. -John Jay Chapman

Google Sometime Sucks

Maybe they have gotten just too $!&$*# big for their own $%^$#^ good.

I am trying, really trying hard, to sign my students up to Google so we can use Google Docs in my classes. Google, in a measure of corporate responsibility, has set up a program that if too many addresses are being set up from the same IP address too quickly, then no more can be added for about 24 hours. Ten seems to be the limit. I can live with that. I can use several different computers with several different IP addresses.

However, as a way to just annoy the @$#%$^& out of me, there is also something that makes me reenter info for a student anywhere from 3-20 times before accepting it. This is maddening. I recopy the passwords and type in the capcha word. Then I do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over... ad nauseum.

There is no number to call. There is no address to email. Google remains totally aloof from the problems its users encounter. It is not even slightly amusing. It is frustrating and aggravating. I doubt that anyone at Google will give a flying flip about the problems I am having, but wouldn't the universe be better place if they did.

Annual Standardized Test Rant

I hate standardized testing. Truly. Deeply. Passionately. And this week that hatred is reinforced.

Testing in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. (Although I do like Tom Bodett’s take on the different emphasis on testing that school and life give.) I give tests in class now and again, but I prefer other means of assessment. I almost never give multiple choice tests that require a scantron sheet to be bubbled in. These kinds of tests just don’t seem to measure what I am interested in knowing: whether or not the students can apply the knowledge they learned in my class.

Standardized testing, however, is another kettle of fish altogether. Especially when it is school wide testing like the Alabama High School Graduation Exam (AHSGE). Especially because during the week of testing virtually all education in the school comes to a screaming halt. I am relatively sure that is not the intention, but as with all things in life the Law of Unanticipated Consequences takes a strong hold of it.

There are five tests in the series: math, reading, language, social studies, and biology. Virtually all of the tenth graders in the school take all the tests, as do any juniors or seniors who have not passed them. Seniors who have not previously passed the old science portion of the test have to take that, also. All of the tests are multiple choice, fill-in-the-bubble.

In Alabama the tests are untimed. The students have as long as they need to complete them. So we start in the morning and let those who are not finished by a certain time move to either the library or the auditorium in order to finish the test. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

We were originally given a schedule that called for the first part of testing to be over by about 9:45. Technically that is a little over two hours after we get started. But that did not count in the time for the teachers to collect and tag all cell phones in the classroom, to go and collect up the exact number of tests and answer sheets that are being used, to recount them for accuracy, and to sign for them. As the tests have become higher and higher stakes, the security precautions for them have correspondingly tightened.

The first day also neglected to take into account the time necessary for the students to bubble in all their demographic information and write the test booklet number on a piece of paper issued for this purpose. During the test, these are collected and all the test booklet numbers are kept on a daily tally sheet issued for that purpose.

Once all of the housekeeping tasks are accomplished (did I mention passing out the answer sheets, pencils, scratch paper, and test booklets? oh, and for Monday, the calculators for the math test--also numbered and recorded twice), the students get to start the test. Then the true agony of boredom sets in for those teachers who are test administrators and proctors (a second teacher in the room). Again, since the tests have become so high stakes, the teachers can no longer read, write, grade papers, etc. The teachers get to circle and watch the students test. Eating, drinking, and sitting are also forbidden activities for the teachers at this time.

Oh, one more wrinkle to this testiness--we started it the Monday after Daylight Saving Time started. So, basically, we were all starting the testing at 6:30 according to our bodies' internal clocks. The window to the outside showed a pitch black view. Could have been the middle of the night. It sure enough felt like it to me.

The first day I had eleven students who needed to go to "extended testing." The time when the students who haven't finished yet get to go to the school library or auditorium to complete the test. All those answer sheets and test books need to be collected. All the students' names, book numbers, and calculator numbers recorded on yet another sheet of paper so that the teachers in the extended testing center can sign them, like a receipt. The testing materials for the students who are already done get returned, recounted and resigned for. This pushed the first day past the scheduled time. By that afternoon we had amended schedules we sent out with the students.

The students who are not testing do not have to come to school until ten or so. When they get here, they are made to sit in the gym and wait for testing to end. There are a few teachers in there to try to manage the group. But it is basically a great big party for the nontesters.

After testing ends, we go to first block. That lasts two hours because we serve lunch during this time. The classes might or might not be up to half empty due to extended testing. The other three blocks meet after lunch for 20-30 minutes depending on how much we went over the test time when setting up extended testing.

The students are totally brainfried. There is no testing of any other kind this week, even for students who are not taking the AHSGE. There is absolutely no homework of any kind given during this week. All learning basically comes to a stop. While there is one class meeting the usual amount of time, it is often half or more empty. The other three classes lack the time to get anything accomplished.

Here is where I see the Law of Unintended Consequences taking hold. I will be optimistic and suppose for the sake of argument that the people who came up with these ideas for testing, legislators in Washington, D.C. and (in my case) Montgomery, AL, never intended for a week of learning to stop cold. I bet they would be upset about it and use the idea to condemn the "lazy teachers." Hey, if all learning stops, it must be our fault, right?

Next week we start a return to normality. The last quarter of school is going on. Prom is in a couple of weeks. Spring Break in the last half of April (totally different rant about that). The students and teachers are all much more relaxed. The build up in tension and aggravation building to the climax of AHSGE testing is done for another year. Now we just have to get through the denouement.

Bowling Writing Thinking

While working on a writing project in class yesterday, my students and I were discussing different prewriting techniques to help them prepare to write the first draft. In class previously we had worked with listing, clustering, and freewriting. To be honest, I was sort of hoping that these techniques would be the ones they told me as I asked them how to prepare in this stage. While I eventually did get those answers across (either by getting them to tell me or, as a last resort, reminding them of we have been learning), in each class at least one student answered they would prepare for the writing by "thinking about it."

While I am all in favor of thinking, I see this answer as a cop out. What my students have predominantly meant by this over the years was that they would sit in their seat and do nothing physically while they pondered the topic. I am trying to get them to a point where they prepare for a writing task by picking up a pen or pencil. "Just thinking" about something is not the most effective way to prepare--unless it is coupled with the physical activity of writing the thoughts down.

I tried to come up with a way to get across to my students that thinking about something is not the same as doing something. I went bowling last week (this will connect, I promise). It occurred to me that I might be able to link up the way I bowl with "just thinking" about writing something.

When I bowl and it is my turn to fling the ball down the lane, I always try to take a moment or two. I stand there on the lane and think through my approach. Where is the best place to stand? What should I aim for? Where should I put the ball down to make it go where I want? I think through the proper form and the way to take the three steps and let loose.

After I told them this (to much rolling of eyes and irreverent bowling comments) I asked them if doing all that was bowling. The majority of my students yelled out no. They told me that just standing there thinking about bowling was not, in fact, the same thing as bowling.

I agreed with them and then pointed out that just as standing there thinking about throwing the ball was not bowling (and how much less when I am seated, waiting my turn, and thinking about how to improve my swing), sitting there thinking about what they wanted to write was not writing. Even if they were holding the pen in their hands.

The only way to bowl is to fling that ball at the pins. The only way to write is to put words on paper. Once either is done, then the work of improving it can truly begin.

10,000 Hours

In his newest book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell takes a long, hard, in-depth look at success. In the book he takes apart many of the American myths about success and looks at what it really takes.

One of the claims he makes in his book is that it takes a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice in order to become expert in doing something. If you want to be an expert in swimming, you need to spend 10,000 hours swimming. If you wish to be an expert teacher, you need to spend 10,000 hours teaching. If you want to be an expert writer, you need to spend 10,000 hours writing.

He even helpfully breaks this down a little more. 10,000 hours works out to be three hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for ten years. I was talking about this with a friend and we figured that meant about five years to become an expert teacher. Then I rethought. Even if we double the number of teaching hours from three to six, most teaching contracts run a maximum of 180-185 days. So that again, in my revised thinking, works out to about ten years.

Then I look back at my teaching career. I still apologize to students I taught my first year when I run across them. I assure them that I have improved since then. By my fifth year, I was just becoming relatively confident. I had the basics down and was working on improving. It took me a little over a decade to really feel like I had mastered the job. And even that feeling fades on occasion.

When I add to that the thought that, according to statistics compilrd by the NEA, 50% of all new teachers quit within their first five years, I have a real problem. Why are so many of these new professionals leaving before they have the chance to acquire expertise? So I have known have run away hard after just one year.

I think the answer might be in the way teachers are prepared for the classroom. Most teachers have minimum exposure to students prior to getting their first job. They have probably interned, but that is such a short time. Also, there is always that safety net of the supervising teacher. Sometimes, more than a safety net.

For instance, my supervising teacher never left her classroom. She sat in the back of the room quietly doing paperwork. However, when the class would get too loud to suit her, she would raise her head up from that paperwork and look meaningfully around the room. Sure enough they would get quiet. And I would (the next fall) go into my teaching career with no real experience in managing classroom behavior. I survived, but it was a rough year.

Tossing new teachers into the deep end with nothing to cling to but an anchor might not be the most effective way to retain teachers and help them get to their 10,000 hours. Doctors do it with paid, years long internships. Lawyers do it with years of case file work. I think it would be exceedingly rare for a first year doctor to provide surgery unassisted, or a first year lawyer to argue a case in open court with no supervision. Yet teachers are required to this all the time.

Maybe some sort of paid, years long internship for teachers is needed. But the cost, some will cry out. It is too expensive. How expensive is it now to have rotating teachers? How expensive is it to future generations that the teachers they had were so very far from being an expert in their field? There will be up from costs, no doubt––but the pay off on the back end might well be incalculable.