First Let's Fire All the Teachers

Under the Orwellianly named NCLB law, all public schools across the country will be required to have all their students, 100%, at grade level by 2014. By 2014, unless something changes, we will have a nation full of “failing” schools.

While striving to teach 100% of the students to grade level or beyond is a cherished ideal, it is ludicrous to penalize and deem failing schools that do not reach that goal. But in my school, my wife’s school, at the schools of every teacher I know across the country, we are trying to meet it. We are working our butts off to get the impossible done.

I’ve been teaching since 1987. In that time I have heard teachers lauded over and over again in the press and by politicians as being members of a “noble profession.” That is, when the press and politicians weren’t busy using teachers as scapegoats for all of the educational problems on the country. But it does rest pretty squarely on our shoulders to be the ones to help make the goal. Without teachers, the goal is so far past impossible, the light from impossible would take thousands of years to reach it. And so, of course, all of us teachers are rewarded with respect and the acknowledgement of just how important it is for us to keep working hard.

But, if that is true, if teachers are so important to quality education, why are so many teachers being fired?

In California 23,000 teachers and other educational personnel got pink slips. That is on top of 16,000 teachers and 10,000 other education employees fired there last year. Let’s see, 16 + 23 = 39. So in two years almost 40, 000 teachers are fired in that one state. But the goal to improve the standardized test scores each year took no notice of that. The teachers left are expected to do better somehow.

It is not just California. In Illinois they are looking at a possible 17,000 teachers lost. In New York City (not state, city) they are looking at laying off 8,500 teachers. Almost 50,000 teachers gone this year from just those three places. And, again, NCLB does not take that into account.

And the hits just keep on coming. Googling teachers fired, teacher layoffs, teacher firings, yield far too many hits. We are decimating the teaching profession in this country. And we are expecting teachers left to reach Olympian heights.

Am I the only one here who sees the disconnect? How in the name of all that is sane and rational are we going to have the slightest chance of reaching that goal without the teachers to do the teaching? How can there be no provisions in the law to take this gigantic collapse of public funding into account? How many more teachers will be fired?

I tried to get mad about this. I tried to get all indignant and righteous. Instead the most I could manage was weariness and despondency. I guess all I can do is enjoy the descent in this glorified handbasket that American education has become.

Metaphor Collage Follow-up

I recently put in a post about the metaphor collages I got my students to do. As a follow up, I had them write metaphor poems. They were to take the ideas and images in their collage and create a poem making a metaphor or metaphors based on the word they chose. Here's the one I came up with for my example:

Freedom Is...

A fast car on an empty highway
traveling wherever it wants to go
A butterfly
flitting where it will
A loose balloon
floating untethered into the sky
An angel
blessing me

©2010-Art Belliveau


I have collected up their publication drafts. As soon as I can get them posted, I will link to them. I think this idea worked out pretty well.

Ah, Memories...

Back in 2003, a few months after my daughter was born, I went to San Francisco for NCTE and NWP national conferences. It was the one time at a convention I got to talk to really famous people. I talked a little with Naomi Shihab Nye--and she IS wonderful as a person as well as a poet. I got a book autographed by Gary Paulsen. The highlight for me, though, was to get to meet and talk to Paula Danziger.



When I was in high school I read many of her books. I started with The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, and went on to read most of her other young adult novels. I think my favorite may have been Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? As my own parents had divorced when I was in seventh grade, I felt a connection to this.

Her young adult books deal with real issues. Her characters are realistic. And she almost always managed to inject some quirky humor into her writing.

She autographed one of her Amber Brown books to my daughter, Molly. And Molly is just now getting old enough to read the book on her own. I am very excited about this. I ran across the photo above in one of my thumb-nail drives, and it brought this rush of memories.

Thanks, Paula! You really helped me a lot when I was an adolescent.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief -- Book Review

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

If you are looking for a book to add to your classroom library, this is one to consider. It incorporates classical Greek mythology in ways that do not totally destroy and distort the myths themselves.

In this universe, Greek myths were not just stories to explain natural phenomena. Greek myths were real. Are real. And, as in the past, Greek gods still occasionally have affairs with mortals, resulting often in demigods.

Percy Jackson is a sixth grader with a troubled past. He has yet to attend the same school two years in a row due to the trouble he always finds--or that finds him. With dyslexia and ADHD, Percy is certain he is stupid and will never amount to anything.

Soon he is launched into an adventure that takes him from one side of America to the other. Percy must face challenges beyond anything he had ever imagined. With his best friends, Grover and Annabeth, he battle gods and monsters as he attempts to find the master bolt, prototype for all lightning and the most destructive weapon ever created, and return it to Zeus before the gods of Olympus go to war.

It is fast-paced and weaves the fantastic elements in well with the more believable aspects of the modern day. Percy and his friends are easy to identify with and their adventures are epic. Literally.

There are enough major differences between the book and the movie just released that it will be obvious whether your students have really read the book, or tried the inevitable shortcut. This book seems aimed at a middle school audience. It would be especially appropriate for those young men who grow bored easily with the books they read. With one action scene after another, there is little letup in the adventure.

I enjoyed the book a good deal and am looking forward to reading the sequels.

Anti-Test Poems

I tend to rant and rave quite a bit during test week. This year, though, so far my rants have been taking the form of poetry. I thought, as the halfway point of the week is here, it would be a good time to share what I have come up with so far.


soul crushing boredom
mixed with stark anxiety
AHSGE*

©2010-Art Belliveau


*Alabama High School Graduation Exam

Blind Spots

I am more
than just a score
more than
a number
this is what you
never see

You do not see
the hours I work
to bring home money
to pay for food
to pay for rent
because my father ignores
his child support

You do not see
my infant son
up crying all night
no one to comfort him
but me

You do not see
the empty stomach
which I could not fill
at home
and was too late to fill
at school

You do not see
me at home
speaking my native language
at home with my parents
who know no other
you see only my struggles and flaws
with this new one
I am learning

You do not see
their expectations
weighing me down
tying my stomach in knots
flooding my brain with panic
desperately afraid
I won't measure up

You do not see
because I hide them
in shame
bruises on my body
from last night's beating

You do not see
my hopelessness
my anger
my boredom
my fear
or maybe you do
and just don’t care

You keep your numbers
Don’t label me
with them
for there is more to me
than all your tests
will ever be able
to see

©2010-Art Belliveau


Sick

When I woke up for school today,
I just knew that I was sick.
My throat was full of coughing,
And my tummy full of ick.

I told mommy I had a fever,
She reached down and felt my head.
Then she looked real close at me,
and said, “Get out of bed.”

I think I know what’s caused this,
But you don’t need a day of rest.
You need to go to school today,
You have to take that test.”

And so I went to school today.
I took the test.
(I got an A!)

©2010-Art Belliveau


as if

it is as if
they believe--
truly BELIEVE--
that the answers
on this multiple choice test
will be the same as
the answers to life’s questions
about me and my future

if only it were so

©2010-Art Belliveau

Metaphor Collages

I am trying to help my students understand the concept of metaphors. As they are tenth graders, I am relatively sure I could ask them to define the word and have more of them able to do it than not. I am also relatively sure that parroting back the age-old definition does almost nothing to help deepen their understanding—or even to see if there is any understanding of it there to begin with. So when I read about an idea called metaphor collages in Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, I decided that might be something to help my students. At the very least, it could be—dum-dum-DUM—fun.

They would work to create collages of visual metaphors for a word of their own choosing. It took a while to remind them of the idea that metaphors are comparisons between two completely different things. To help remind them I showed them Eve Merriam’s “Metaphor” and Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry.” I also showed them Merriam’s “Simile: Willow and Ginkgo” as a refresher on similes.

We talked about what the metaphors meant. With “Introduction to Poetry” we even got to the point where we decided getting complete understanding of every metaphor in the poem was not necessary to understand the poem as a whole. The initial images of fun and unexpected images contrasted with the torture image at the end were obvious enough to make an impression with even a partial understanding.

Then I took us into the idea by Pink. I had each of my students pick a word and then cut out images from magazines that were metaphors for the word they chose. I found out for myself that using an abstract word worked better than using a concrete word. When I tried to make one for coffee, I got stuck after about three images. When I switched to freedom it went much better.



I did mine on a PowerPoint so I could project it on the screen at the front of the room. I pointed out how each picture was a metaphor for freedom. Then I set them loose.

Note to self: never set them loose without written instructions for how to proceed.

Additional note to self: Especially when it is the first time you are trying a lesson to see how well it works.

The students were into cutting pictures out of the magazines. Well, most of them. Some were busily looking in the magazines for words to cut out. Why were they trying to cut out words? I dunno. They must have somehow thought that was the assignment. Some of them were looking through the magazines to find a word to make metaphors from. Why? I dunno. I guess they thought that was the assignment. Some were just into chatting with their neighbors, doing nothing, and reducing their number of daily participation points. I corrected the misperceptions as I went around and checked on their progress.

Walking around the classroom is always an interesting experience. The way the bubble of hushed tones seems to follow me is always a little amusing. Then there are the young ladies who just have no volume control whatsoever. They aren’t trying to be loud; it just sort of happens. Ah, the joys of teaching.

The one large problem I noticed were the number of students who were not looking for metaphors, but rather for examples: the person who chose happy searching out nothing but smiling faces; the person who chose sadness and just cut out pictures of sad-looking people. I had to repeat over and over in each of my three blocks—almost to each individual—that they were not looking for examples, but for comparisons—for things their word could BE.

I kept going back to my own example on the board. I kept trying to point out how the pictures were not examples of freedom, but were instead metaphors for freedom. Sigh.

Last night I when I went home I decided I had to write up an instruction sheet that they could refer back to. I did it on Google Docs, so I could access it anywhere I might need it. You can check it out if you want: Metaphor Collage.

So today I give them a little something of a refresher page on similes and metaphors for a bell ringer. Then I went through my cards and gave out extra credit for answering the questions. Have I explained my card system yet? If not, ask about it and I will.

After that back to the collages. For the students who were here. I had students absent, in ISS, at the ALC, on field trips, playing in the state Final Four basketball tournament, excused from school to go to said tournament, were out driving with their driver’s ed instructor, and just plain skipping. That’s normal though. Except that the proportions were higher today. My third block class had literally half the students out. Fourteen out of twenty-eight. Geesh!

Next week we will be delving into the wonderful world of standardized testing. It is again time for the Graduation Exams. I will post a rant on that next week.

And then this afternoon I ran a Google search for metaphor collages and found this one, that is a much better way to do it than mine. Next time maybe I’ll check first and not reinvent the wheel.

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction

As I was looking through my friends' posts on Face Book today, I found a link to this: Ten Rules for Writing Fiction.

Anyone want to share a rule you have for writing? It does not necessarily need to be about fiction.

With all due respect to Newton, here's mine:

A pencil at rest tends to stay at rest; a pencil in motion tends to stay in motion.