Testing Follies

A lot of people want to know what the problem with testing students is. After all, if teachers have done their jobs, the thinking goes, the students should be able to pass the test. While I do not necessarily see the correlation there, let’s proceed for a moment as if it were true. Then in order to pass the tests, the students would need a chance to learn the materials and the teachers a chance to teach them. Testing actually decreases the amount of time students have to learn and teachers have to teach.

We are undergoing the trials and tribulations of Alabama High School Graduation Exam (AHSGE) testing this week. The first thing we need in order to give the test is a place for the students to do so. An entire wing of our school, around nine classrooms, and the school library are being used for testing. This means that the teachers and classes that would usually meet in those classrooms cannot do so. It also means that for the week the library is closed most of the day. No research can get done there, no books checked out, no references referred to.

All of these classes are meeting in the cafeteria. ALL OF THE CLASSES. I can see why the open classroom plans of the 60’s and 70’s didn’t work out too well. I wasn’t informed my classroom would be needed until last Thursday afternoon, when I was informed via a call on my PA, which interrupted my teaching, that I would need to cover up all my posters or take them down as my room would be used for testing on Monday. That was news to me. In the memo we were emailed several days earlier, my room was not listed as one that would be used. Although I had expected it to be. Apparently my feelings of relief were premature.

I was never officially informed where I was to meet with the class that would be out of the room during testing. As I have first block planning, I was only dispossessed for one class period. Most of the other teachers in that wing are out for two periods. And I found out via an emailed memo that I would be covering another teacher’s class during my planning block on Monday. So much for having time to prepare a lesson or two to teach to my learners.

As added fun, the schedule Monday was further intruded upon as the testing in the classrooms ran late. As third block is the lunch period, holding classes in the cafeteria is not an option. So, all the teachers in that wing, and our students) sat outside the doors to the wing as the teachers in there got there students to the extended testing site. See, there is no time limit on the AHSGE. If the students want or need to work on it for six hours that is allowed.

So, how much time was lost from teaching this week? How many students didn’t learn as much as they could have if they were in a classroom? How many student hours were lost this week because testing is a state mandate and we do not have a choice about it?

When we have testing for the whole of the tenth grade, and all the eleventh and twelfth graders who need to retake it, in the spring, over half the school does not even arrive until third block. So many rooms are required, and so many teachers to administer and proctor the tests, that we can’t have school for the first two blocks each day for a week. How much time is lost from teaching and learning there?

Then there are the remediation classes. These are often test prep classes that students who fail part of the exam are required to take in place of other classes. So they go over and over the same material again and again until they can pass the test. But they lose out on other educational opportunities.

From what I am told by my wife, who teaches high school “across the river” in Georgia, it is much the same there. The details of what exactly is required and what tests and courses must be passed differ, but the overall picture is much the same--massive amounts of teaching/learning time wasted in the name of testing.

Has anyone else reading this noticed the same trend? Or am I seeing something that isn't there?

Update

[For this post to make sense, you should read the previous post first. Sorry if that is a "duh."]

I got a strange idea and so went to one of the too few student computers in my class. I turned it on and, as I had hoped, the lack of updating the computers does not affect their ability to sign on to the Internet! So I can let my kiddies use the computers in the class. Somehow. If I can figure out how to get 30 kids onto 20 computers...

I have it!

They will have to take turns! And if they whine too much about that, they can just go ahead and write on paper!

Somehow I am feeling a little better about my upcoming teaching.

“And Then, Depression Set In...”

The title, of course, is tongue-in-cheek, taken from that classic movie Stripes. But it is near to being true for me at this point. Okay, okay… so I am not so much depressed as a bit on the stressed-out side.

For the past month or so, I have been following various threads on a listserv I belong to (engteach-talk, you can join it at interversity.org). From about the last week of July to the present various members of the list have been checking on with their beginning of the year stories. I am in a strange position, as I have been for the past few years. My school system’s calendar starts 2 August for teachers and 9 August for students. However, I am not going to start with my students until this Friday, 7 September. Until such time as I am actively in my classroom I get to fill in as a sub whenever and wherever needed and this year I got to spend a delightful couple of weeks correcting and updating student information in STI (the software my school uses for student management).

When I changed to this school system it was to specifically teach a writing course to help prepare students for the state writing assessment. Every semester I split my students with a drivers’ education teacher. For the first four weeks the students are in class with that teacher, learning all they can about driving and safety. Then they get me for the remainder of the semester teaching them writing. Well, most of them.

Approximately three at a time they are pulled out of my class for six days to go out and do the driving portion of their coursework. That means at any one time about 10% of my students are not in class. That, of course, does not count the ones who miss for other reasons (absent, inschool suspension, out of school suspension, field trips, skipping...). To add even more to the fun, my first year at the school I floated. I was in a total of six different classrooms during the year (three the first semester and three different ones the second semester).

Also, that first year, the students were less than friendly for various reasons. Mainly the drivers’ ed class had previously been paired with a study hall and so they felt cheated that someone expected them to do real work. And then there is walking into the classroom after all the relations in the class have already formed. The group dynamics have mainly been sorted out, and there has been a connection with the teacher who is now out driving with them. Then I walk in and everything changes.

Last year I was given a classroom. Still have it this year. In the classroom are twenty computers. Took me a while to figure out how I wanted to use them, but in the second semester the classes really started to cook. I was in a good place mentally.

But... the assistant principal who worked most closely with me on this class is not here this year. He has been deployed to Iraq. The other assistant principal I worked with left to become a principal at another school. The new assistant principals are good people, but they do not have the interest in this class the previous two did.

So my classes, which should be capped at about 25 (as they are technically "test prep" even though we do more than that) all have 27-32 students. This is interesting as I have 25 desks and 20 computer stations. I usually only have tenth graders and returning ninth graders (who may get the required credits to be tenth graders in time to take the writing exam). This year I have eight juniors and one senior. They are not going to take the test. But they will be in the classes where I am trying to prepare others for the test. Luckily, in my experience juniors and seniors (especially seniors) do well in my class.

The computers I made such good use of second semester last year are all basically useless at the moment. The district upgraded the network to the point where Windows98 computers are no longer compatible with it. All mine are Windows98 and no one has come to upgrade them yet, even though there was a work order placed before school started. And, as I mentioned, I have a lot fewer computers than students this time around. There are some computers that are not being used, but for some unexplained reason they cannot be moved from the empty room where they are not being used to my room where that can be used (as soon as they get upgraded as well).

To be honest, I am not sure whether to post this or not. It seems like one giant complaint. But I think I can get to a deeper point.

I am willing to be held accountable for my teaching. But how accountable can I be when I am blocked from using the method I have come to see as the best one for my students and me? And it is not even blocked maliciously. No one set out to work me over. But I seem to be getting worked over from several different directions at once. Sort of the perfect storm of bureaucratic screwups that centered on me and my classes.

Movie Review

Over the summer I took a class on technology and writing at Auburn University. One of the assignments was to create a wiki with several of the other students in the class. My group decided on a movie review wiki. Here is one of my reviews

Review of the movie Freedom Writers (IMDB).


Hillary Swank plays Erin Gruwell, a teacher who chose to work at Woodrow Wilson High School, a minority school. Set in 1994, just two years after the LA riots, Gruwell takes a class of mainly minority students and inspires them to excel beyond anyone’s expectations. Along the way Gruwell has to fight those higher up than she in the school and school district. She pours so much of herself and her time into her teaching that she loses her husband (Patrick Dempsey). She works two extra jobs to have the money to provide her students with the books and extras she believes they need.

I watched this movie fully prepared to hate it. As a genre I dislike films about teachers. Being one myself I see all the inconsistencies. As in all teacher movies, the teacher apparently has one class. I know that isn’t the case, most people in the audience know it isn’t the case, but for narrative purposes the film must focus on the relationship between the teacher and one class. Unfortunately this has the effect of setting up unconscious expectations in the audience. If she just has that one class, what exactly is her problem? These movies need to let the audiences see the overload teachers often work under.

Also, as in many (if not most) films about teachers, there is the subtext of white teacher goes to minority school and inspires the kids to work miracles. Apparently, after she had the students do one particular exercise where they had to go to a line in the middle of the room and she passed out the journals there were no more discipline problems in her classes. That is unrealistic. I can see the problems would be reduced, but not entirely eliminated.

Also there is the subtext of teacher as martyr. Gruwell works extra jobs, sacrifices her marriage, and becomes extremely unpopular with the other teachers. Again, this is a common theme in movies about teachers. While I believe that what Gruwell did was heroic, I do not believe that is what it takes to be a good teacher. Why are teachers expected to spend their own money and sacrifice their personal lives if they want to make a difference? Why not just have the school system provide the necessary materials so that level of sacrifice isn’t warranted.

I would also like to say a few words about the other teachers in the movie. Department Head Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton) was given the role of villain. As was English teacher Brian Gelford (John Benjamin Hickey). I have a harder time demonizing these teachers. True they were not open, true they were obstructions, but they had both been there a long time. They had seen the school they started in change virtually overnight when the voluntary integration started. I am willing to bet they had precious little to say about that or training in how to deal with the new students they received. Although they were wrong in many particulars, I can’t see them as the bad guys, but only as other people who had been ripped up by the system and were just trying to survive.

Overall, even with the flaws, it was a heart-tugger. And knowing it is based on a true story makes it even more interesting. Gruwell left the school when her classes did. She moved on to teach college. I don’t say this as an insult or slam, but to point out there is a reason that teachers cannot pour so much of themselves into their work. It leads to burn out. Maybe some type of happy medium between martyr and uncaring teacher (the only two types portrayed in the movie) might be the best road to travel.



Erin Gruwell comments on the movie. From YouTube.

I'm Back

It has been way too long since I posted here. I could think of numerous excuses, but I won’t. I got a little lazy and then a little perfectionistic. I have found that if I put off writing something until I am certain it is going to be outstanding, I often do not have to write anything at all. I mean, why bother if it isn’t going to be great?

Oddly enough this is an excuse I have heard not just from myself, but from countless students over the last twenty years. I have rarely let them get away with this excuse. After all, writing is supposed be an exploration of the mind and an alternate definition for essay is to try. So I will essay to write something in here today, and I will not worry over it’s certain lack of perfection.

School started for me on 2 August. For the students at my school it started on 9 August. Five days of preplanning and, at least on paper, almost all of it taken up with meetings and workshops. While I do see a great deal of value in attending a good workshop, and we had several, I also see a positive value in free time being given for teachers to work on getting their classrooms ready and being able to sit down and do some preplanning for their teaching. Doesn’t seem like working that into the official schedule should be too tough, but it often is.

At my wife’s school (she is also a teacher), their preplanning week was similarly organized. The new, new principal did let all the teachers know that the school would be open until 9:00 every night and open certain hours on the weekend. Basically he expected that the teachers would volunteer their own time with their families to come and do the necessary work that his own schedule for preplanning did not permit them. Is it me, or does that seem wrong?

I have often confronted that attitude, though. The attitude that teachers should be willing--no, eager--to give up their own free time in order to spend more time at their job. And God forbid we ever complain about it. Then we are met with the “accusation” that we are only teaching for the money. Yeah, that’s right, I got into teaching in order to make my fortune. Somehow I feel I was misinformed.

Whenever I hear this, that teachers only work for the money, I always want to ask the person saying that why they go to work. After all, in our increasingly materialistic society, how much one is paid is a sign as to how important our society views that particular job. I find it distressing that such necessary jobs as police, firefighters, and teachers are not paid commensurate to the importance of our jobs. Somehow we are all expected to be grateful to have the opportunity to do this work and not complain about how more money would be nice.

I love teaching. I love being a teacher. I do not love that there always seems to be quite a bit of month left at the end of my money.

On the other hand, I knew going into this profession I would be on the low end of the professional pay scale. I have two degrees, several awards, and twenty years of experience. I make less that what corporate lawyers make their first year out of school. And yet I am expected to work as hard and give of my extra time as much as they do, if not more.

So why do I continue to do it? It is not entirely for the students. It is not entirely for the money. It is not entirely for the feeling of social usefulness I get doing this job. It is not entirely because I get to exercise my creativity on an almost daily basis. It is a combination of all these factors. The proportions differ from day to day, sometimes from class to class, but these are all component reasons to why I still do this.

And as long as I feel I can make a positive difference, make enough to live somewhat comfortably, feel useful, and creative--in whatever proportions come my way--I will continue to do this job. Even if I don’t always enter the door each morning with a bounce and a smile. I’m here and I am going to do my best. That’s about as good as it is going to get for me. And I just have to hope that that is good enough.

Sun Belt Summer 2007

Since 1989 I have been a member of the Sun Belt Writing Project which is based at Auburn University in Alabama. I still remember my first summer institute. It was the summer after my second year of teaching and I was desperately looking for some way to become a better teacher. My first two years didn’t go well.

That summer I was introduced to the (then) new ideas of Nancie Atwell in her book In the Middle. I devoured Clearing the Way by Tom Romano, a book that showed me many practical applications of Atwell’s ideas. A book that is still relevant today. I was entranced by the simple advice of Natalie Goldberg to just write in Writing Down the Bones. This is another book that is a must read even still today.

I went back to my classroom and was determined to go with the workshop approach 100%. It was my tenure year, but I really didn’t care. That wasn’t bravery or zeal, I was young and figured if I lost that job I could always find another one. In fact, it might have been a motivator for me to move and go somewhere else.

We had new textbooks that year, replacing the books I had been furnished the first two (those books had been titled Modern English In Action—or was it--more aptly--Inaction?). I assigned the new books to my students. Had them write their names in them, in ink, as I was instructed to do. I then collected the books, put them in my closet and left them there the rest of the year. I had a 100% turn-in rate for books that year, not a single one was lost.

I was very lucky to work under a principal who trusted what I was doing and was strong enough in my district that I got tenure. He let me try the new method. All he wanted was for me to explain it to him so that he could explain it to the parents who called him with questions. Ah, the good old days.

I went back in 1991 as a senior fellow at my site. Basically, I wanted to hang around and they let me. I did it again in 1993 and 1995. I think I worked with the site again in 1997 or 1998, but I am a little hazy there. In 1999 I helped to keep the site alive when it hit a really low ebb. I have been there ever since. Somewhere along the way I started getting paid to do so. Now I am the Technical Liaison for my project. It means I like the techie stuff. Like blogs.

Some people, like my lovely wife, wonder why I do this every summer. Why do I make the drive to Auburn every day for four weeks (it was five until this year)? It is 40-45 minutes each way. And there is a time change involved, also. So I never really get to be on an even keel for the whole time I’m there.

I do it because it is a way for me to keep up with what is going on in the current research on writing and reading instruction. I do it because it is an opportunity to write. I do it because I have good friends there, the kind of friends that are more like family to me. And every summer I get to meet 10-15 incredible teachers. And this summer was no exception.

The amount of talent in the room was unbelievable. The conversations were zany at times and always interesting and informative. The teaching demonstrations were outstanding. The level of caring and commitment was off the charts. These people were the cream of the crop. And I am proud that I got to work with them and learn from them this summer.

But now it is over and the post-Sun Belt blues are kicking in. Tomorrow I will go and finish cleaning out the room. Then there is the report for the year. And then nothing.

As I live in a different city than almost all the participants of Sun Belt, I am now pretty much going to be cut off from all these wonderful people.

At least I am now in a school where I don’t have to be the lone stranger in the English department. In my old school no one ever wanted to go spend a summer at Sun Belt. Well, one person, but she went to a different school after her Sun Belt summer. Where I teach now there are several Sun Belt TC’s (Teacher Consultants). It makes the day a little less lonely.

But the TC’s from this summer are pretty much all Auburn folks. Except for one lady from Prattville and another from Guntersville. For those of you not familiar with Alabama geography, those places are a long way off from here. And I am back in Phenix City.

To any of the TC’s who may read this. Thanks for the great summer. I appreciate all the hard work you put in. And I really appreciate all the new ideas I get to take back to my classroom this year. Mostly I appreciate the warmth and good humor you all shared with me this summer. I hope that you all have your best year ever this year and every year after that, as well.

Book Review: The Garden at Night

The Garden at Night: Burnout & Breakdown in the Teaching Life by Mary Rose O’Reilley

This book takes a look at the spiritual side of burnout and breakdown. As her experience is as a college teacher, this is where O’Reilley focuses her essays, but there are applicable lessons for teachers of all levels.

One of the strongest lessons is that everyone undergoes a “dark night of the soul.” It is not unusual, nor should it be unanticipated. Not that these facts make it any easier to endure, as she herself acknowledges. She does advise that we look for the lesson in these situations, to see what we can learn from them. And that, sometimes, that lesson is that it is time to find a different profession.

O’Reilley also emphasizes the need for teachers to take time to meditate or pray daily. She discusses the spiritual traditions of Christianity and Zen Buddhism. These are not mutually exclusive. Both ask that practitioners take that time out of their lives to focus on something besides the problems constantly besieging them. The importance of taking time for one’s self is an important part, perhaps the most important part, of avoiding a burnout—or at least putting it off.

This is an extremely interesting book that takes a look at burnout from a different perspective than others I have read. The practical applications are from a different direction. The philosophical stance is accessible and attainable. This is one I will need to reread to gain the full impact of, but it has already broadened my thinking on the topic of burnout.