The Bag of Good Intentions

I don't know about y'all, but I brought home a ton of work to do over the summer.  The bag of good intentions.  Although this summer, it's more like BAGS!  Ugh.  There it sits - I can see it all from here - piled up in the corner of the office.  Haunting me.

At the beginning of the summer I thought, "I am going to get everything done right away so I don't have it hanging over my head."  Ha!  I haven't touched it.

I wrote a while back about NOT bringing anything home, and the guilt I felt.  But this is worse - knowing you have all of this work to do and not wanting to touch it.  But if you don't, you will regret it.  It will slap you in the face come late August.  'Cuz one way or another it all needs to get done.

But I so value the time over the summer.  It is essential - teaching is such a high-stress job.  You must have the time to decompress or you will explode.  Implode?  I dunno.  Some type of explosion will occur.  As always, it's a question of balance.  Finding the right balance so you can manage your life and have time for everything.  Impossible.  At least it usually seems that way.

So, do you have a bag of good intentions sitting untouched in your house this summer?  And if you have touched it, I don't want to hear about it.  I feel bad enough as it is.  ;->

Testing..... Week Two......

Week two was pretty uneventful, other than the fact that my classroom was a disgusting cesspool of germs.  The seven dwarfs were alive and well in my classroom: Sneezy, Hacky, Coughy, Phlegmy, Snotty, Drippy, and Wheezy.  Good times.  I had a sore throat the whole damned weekend.  Those parents did their duty - send those kiddos to school come hell or high water!

Once again, I was discouraged by the tests - both the types of questions and the number of questions.  So many trick questions.  So much developmentally inappropriate content.  Such a colossal waste of time.  Do these tests tell me what my kids have learned?  HELL NO.  Poor kids.  Six days of this crap.  They were SO DONE.

Scores will come out in the summer, and when we return in the fall we will have the dreaded meeting where we go over how we did.  I have gotten used to the annual humiliation.  And I deal with it much better.  Last year I started keeping track of a variety of assessment results - both standardized and assessments that are actually meaningful.  My kids show growth on all of them, except for one.  District benchmarks and CSTs.  Well, they show improvement from Benchmark 1 to Benchmark 2.  This is supposed to be an indicator of how the kids will do on the CSTs.  It never is.  *sigh*  But I take heart in knowing that my kids have made growth.  I take heart in my kids who started the year at the pre-primer level and are now reading at the beginning second grade level.  What an accomplishment!  But those kids will still score Below Basic on the CSTs.  Yeah.  Those tests don't mean jack......

Testing..... Week One

This week marks the first week of state testing.  Ugh.  I hate it.  It represents everything that is wrong with education today.  High stakes, teaching to a test, meaningless results, narrowing of the curriculum, etc.....  But test I must, so every year for six days I torture eight-year-olds.  This is why I got into teaching.

Day 1 - Part 1 of the English Language Arts Test:  As I circulate the room, making sure students are on task, I hear a whisper from one of my kiddos, "Eenie meenie miney mo," as his pencil point goes back and forth between two answers.  Hey, at least he had narrowed it down to two!  I couldn't bear to look and see if one of the two was the right answer.  Sigh.

Day 2 -  Part 1 of the Math Test:  Dead silence as we begin the test.  One of my students announces, "I am sick!  I am feeling queasy, which means I just might PUKE!"  Fabulous.  As I shush him while the whole class looks on, he tells me he is fine - he can go on.  I tell him if he feels bad to let me know.  Then the heavy breathing starts.  Like an obscene phone caller, this kid starts breathing so heavy all of the kids around him are totally distracted and staring at him.  Are you kidding me???????  So I move him to another table with less kids and ask him to curb his breathing.  He then realizes he needs the bathroom immediately.  Upon his return, he announces. "Nope!  Nothing came out!"  Great. Thanks for sharing.  After a few more minutes, the child cannot go on anymore.  He tells me the only reason he came to school was to take the stupid test!  So I send him to the office with my student teacher.  On the way up to the office, he explains how he feels in more detail, "I feel like I am gonna burp, and then I have to poop!"  He wasn't at school today.

Day 3:  Part 2 of the English Language Arts Test.  I just about died when I saw today's part of the test.  An obscene amount of stories* with comprehension questions.  Several of these stories were very long, all with a small font.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME???????  Don't you think we can figure out if they can do this crap with maybe just two stories?  Why so many?????  Heavy sigh.  I have to say, the little chickens did great the first two days of testing.  I mean, I have no clue how they did, but they worked their butts off.  Today was different.  The amount of stories broke their collective can-do spirit.  I watched as many of them counted how many pages they had to do, with looks of anguish on their faces.  I had a few fast finishers.... not because they were finished, but because they were DONE.  And about one third of the class managed to skip the exact same story and corresponding questions.  Of course the proctor and I made sure they went back and completed every little morsel of torture.  Hey!  One question can mean the difference between Far Below Basic and Below Basic dammit!

And so week one is done.  The chickadees will have a few days of rest, then it's back to it next week.  Can't wait.

* You may be wondering, how many stories were there?  I wrote the exact number in my first draft.  Then I got paranoid thinking I might get in trouble for divulging the contents of the test and the testing Nazis might come and rip my fingernails out.

iPods - Amazing Power in a Small Package

So, a while back I wrote about the grant I received - about 30K devoted to professional development.  35% of the funds could be used for materials.  Our team used the 35% to purchase an iPod Touch cart with 20 iPods.  We have managed to wrangle up nine more through workshops that come with iPods.  So, we almost have a class set.  (I am working on another grant to hopefully to fix that problem.)

Our teacher team of three has been working to figure out the best ways to utilize these devices in meaningful, relevant, and innovative ways.  It's slow-going when you have a bazillion other things you have to do in teaching.  One of my personal faves combines Google docs and QR codes.  In my Google account, I create a quiz for the students using Google forms.  (And it only took me four months to realize that there is more than one page of templates for these quizzes..... but I digress.)  Once your quiz is done, you click on the link at the bottom of the page and you are taken to the actual site of the quiz.  Cut and paste that link into a QR code generator (I like QR Code Stuff: http://www.qrstuff.com/).  You can download the QR code image once it is generated; I print mine out and put it on the board.  Students use a QR code reader on their iPod Touch (many free apps for these) to read the code.  They are taken to the quiz site.  Once they take the quiz, they click 'Submit' and all of their answers go into your Google form.  You now have a database of all of the answers.  Soooooo much easier to grade, and the kids love it.

Now, I could have died happy right here.  But then I discovered Flubaroo.  Flubaroo is a script in Google docs.  Flubaroo grades the quizzes.  Did you hear me?  It grades the quizzes.  I am telling you, the heavens opened up and the angels were singing when I used this for the first time.  Amazing.

Moving on to another fave.......  A huge student need in our classrooms is reading fluency.  I have students who read with 100% accuracy, but are only reading 60wpm.  It is painful to listen to them read!  The iPods have been wonderful for this.  iTalk allows students to record themselves reading, then they can go back and listen to themselves.  This has been quite the eye-opener for students.  After doing this the first time, one of my kiddos said, "Wow.  I really sound terrible when I read!"  Ha!  He doesn't anymore.  :-)  Students can save these recordings and the recordings can then be saved onto a computer if you'd like.  Next year I think I will do this - give each student a piece of text, record it, save the recordings, then repeat this process with the same piece of text every trimester.  This can be a time-saver as well; if you do not have time to pull students one at a time and listen to the them, have them do it on the iPod!

There are so many amazing apps for the iPod Touch, it is hard to know where to start.  What is really nice is - so many are free!  So if you don't like it, you can dump it.  We have found many apps that are great for math fluency, and the students love them.  Next up for our team is digging into some of the digital storytelling apps.  While the three of us have learned how to use them - being proficient enough to teach the students is another matter.  But we are ready to give it a go!

Waiting for Distribution

We all remember the buzz around Waiting for Superman.  It got everyone talking about the "problems" in education.  Trouble is, the movie is badly flawed with oodles of inaccurate data.  (I am not going to go into this - it is widely documented.)  But how did this movie get out there?  Well, with names like Gates, Broad, and Guggenheim behind it, along with their money of course, the message was heard.  Public education is the devil and charter schools are our salvation.  Yeah.  Right.

But there are four other films out there that are worth our time and address REAL issues and REAL solutions.  The problem?  They do not have big names and big money behind them.  They are relying on local screenings to get their films seen.  Each film tackles similar issues in a different way, emphasizing different facets of the complex world that is education.  Combined, they tell a more global picture.

I have been doing my part to get the word out to my colleagues through e-mails and Facebook, but that's not enough.  The general public needs to see these films.  The general public needs to be made aware of the data and issues.

Below are the titles and web sites for each film.  Please share this info with folks you know.  Society needs to be educated before it can be a part of the dialogue about real reform.


Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America's Achievement Culture


http://www.racetonowhere.com/


The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman


http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/


American Teacher


http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/index.php


Mitchell 20


http://www.mitchell20.com/

kjwbvlqouwrybdhnipwjen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's how I feel right now.  Way too much going on and I have no clue how to put it into words.  The highlights:

1.  Mounds of data collection really can save your butt.  Or at least prove that yes, you are indeed doing your job despite the results of one test.
2.  American Teacher and The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman are the new must-see films about education.
3.  I will never be able to stop drinking Diet Coke.  Never, never, never.
4.  Kids + iPods = Engagement.  Time to make it meaningful.
5.  There are always people who do nothing and complain.  And there are always people that bust butt and pick up the slack.
6.  I still hate two things more than anything else: Lying and stealing.  And lying.  Did I mention lying?
7.  Change is inevitable.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.
8.  I need to buy another Cootie game for my daughter.  She cannot bring herself to take the four apart from the game she has in order to play again.
9.  When in the hell did kindergarteners start having so much damned homework?
10.  The round file is my friend.

Focus, Daniel-San, Focus!

So, CST scores are out.  Ugh.  While my math scores are the best they have ever been, my language arts scores are the worst ever.  This is so frustrating given all the time spent on preparing students for these tests.  I expected the "third grade dip" that our state experiences, but I was at least hoping for some growth.

Luckily, I have been reading Focus by Mike Schmoker.  This book plainly states, with all of the research to back it up, what I have known all along.  The "inch-deep mile-wide" approach works to hurt our students, creating an artificial need for what Schmoker calls "expensive, time-gobbling remediation mechanisms."  I certainly have seen this in action.  As students' scores "decline" due to the unachievable goals of NCLB, more and more remediation is thrown at them.  Sickening.  As Schmoker puts it, "Educators continue to be diverted toward new methods and programs, even as the most important aspects of curriculum, teaching, and literacy are ignored almost entirely."  So what is the result?  Students continue to fall behind.

I have definitely felt this effect in my own classroom over the past few years.  As my schedule is encroached upon by interventions and remediation, I have less and less time for authentic literacy experiences.  Maybe THIS is why language arts scores are not going up?  Maybe.

So far I have learned a few other key points from Focus:

1.  New initiatives and programs cannot succeed in the absence of decent curriculum, lessons, and authentic literacy activities.
2.  Less is more.  Content standards should be reduced by about 50%, and even more in language arts.  (Singapore, Japan, and China teach to about a third as many math and science standards - about 15 per grade level compared to our 50.)
3. Guided practice and constant checking for understanding are essential and often overlooked.  (Research tidbit: Effective formative assessment and checking for understanding add six to nine months of additional learning growth per year.)
4. NOT MORE THAN 20% OF COMMON ASSESSMENTS SHOULD BE MULTIPLE CHOICE!!!  HELLO?  IS THIS THING ON?????  20%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5.  No more than five minutes of 'teacher talk' before giving opportunities to process information.  This is in contrast to the ten minutes I learned.

I am halfway through this book and have not only learned a great deal, but feel so validated.  I am looking forward to reading the rest!