Day 97: Seriously . . .

As an educator, I wonder MANY things: were these kids raised by wolves? does anyone teach manners anymore? do children have attention spans longer than 15 seconds? what was she thinking when she got dressed today? Why are bodily functions so funny? and why don't children even consider respect important anymore?

As we finish off a week of the most insane scheduling nightmare I've ever seen, I'm really wondering if legislators consider how the laws they make affect the children and educators?

Like most states, we have state standardized testing, in Texas it is called TAKS. The state is trying to move away from generalized testing and toward EOC's, End Of Course exams, but this year we're doing more of the EOC's and we still had to do TAKS testing too. I've lost approximately two weeks of educational time with my students testing them to see what they know, but with zero consequences for failure except at the junior level.

We had to schedule testing all freshman, sophomores and juniors at least twice each. What makes this more of a nightmare is because the testing is end of the course, sometimes we have sophomores or juniors taking freshman courses or freshman taking junior or sophomore courses. Basically, we spent the entire week disrupting a little bit of everyone's schedule.

The past two days, most of my students were testing but I was in my classroom with my four or five stragglers who were not testing. Today and tomorrow, none of my students are testing, but I am stuck in the cafeteria with several hundred students. It was an absolute disaster. My students are trying to finish reading a book. They are not very focused readers as it is, in a cafeteria filled with crazy students, it wasn't pretty.

So instead of teaching and learning, we're relocating, testing, corralling, monitoring, pacing. Legislators talk about adding days to our calendar. Why don't they just give us BACK the days we have. We take two weeks for TAKS (next year STAAR) and two weeks for AP testing and now a week for EOC, which next year will be two. That is six weeks of testing. While not all students will test for all six weeks, the testing disrupts learning for many or most students much of the time.

And on top of all the required testing, we take two more weeks for semester exams and another two weeks for district wide benchmark assessments. Now we're are at nearly ten weeks of testing, give a day or two for each grade level. Imagine how much more we could be learning if we were TEACHING all those days.

Don't even get me started on how much better my students would be doing if I were allowed to teach the way I want to, to hold students and parents accountable for results and work, but here in May, two weeks left to go for the school year, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with my students.

It just prompts me to ask SERIOUSLY???? as the state heaps more and more regulations and testing on our shoulders and asks us to do more next year with so much less. Why is it so hard to make decisions that make sense. I want to sponsor a law that requires all legislators who make laws requiring state tests/testing to take all such tests and have to visit a school once a year during the state testing to help with scheduling and administering the tests.

I can't imagine they would continue to test us to death once they realized the kind of torture it is for the students and teachers. I tested in three rooms today. In each room was at least one student who just made patterns in the tests and one other who was sleeping, and one other who seemed to be looking everywhere but actually at the test. Already more than 20% of the students I saw today were just blowing off the test.

Seriously, let's spend more time teaching and learning, save a few million dollars and thousands of trees. I understand a need for accountability, but can anyone produce a single study showing me that students are actually more educated now that we test for it? I doubt it, very seriously. 

Day 167: Professionalism

Yesterday, many teachers got emails from our district about attending a meeting. The meeting to which the email referred was about Reduction in Force layoffs. One of my close friends received such an email. As she was preparing to leave to attend the meeting, she was accosted by a furious parent.

This parent was upset that her daughter was failing and would not be eligible for cheerleading tryouts next week. The parent's frustration had become explosive fury. She screamed and berated the teacher in the hallway. I assumed it was a teacher dealing with an inappropriate student and didn't get involved. It wasn't until today I realized what had been happening.

What makes this situation so frustrating is that this furious, out of control, violently abusive parent is a teacher in this building. My friend Sally (*not her name) has been telling Cathy* that her daughter isn't doing her homework with each assignment she failed to complete or turn in. Sally and Cathy meet daily to work on curriculum, and Cathy has been well aware of the situation all year. Her viewpoint has been to teach her daughter a lesson about taking responsibility for her own choices and to let her fail if she is refusing to give any effort. Somehow that all changed yesterday when her daughter would not be allowed to even tryout for the cheerleading squad next year due to the failing grades.

Not only was Cathy upset, but she was cruel and ridiculous. She accused Sally of purposely failing her daughter, of not giving her the opportunity to make-up work, of not doing her job. Sally said that the work the student does is ok, but she literally only does about 50% of the work. Her grade is subsequently around a 50%.

What saddens me to no small measure is that Sally is an amazing teacher, a solid Christian and a wonderful woman/friend, but was told yesterday that her contract would not be renewed for next year due to budget cuts. The vindictive, cruel, unprofessional, small-minded teacher will be back in the fall. What is wrong with this picture?

Education is tough enough when people on the outside criticize something they don't understand. Education is tough enough with the federal, state and local and building mandates teachers try to balance, serving too many masters poorly instead of one well. Education is tough enough with students who have a variety issues outside of the educational environment that impede learning. When people who understand how tough it is, understand how thankless a job it is, understand failing students have often put themselves there - when that person rains down fury (undeservingly) on another teacher, it is unforgivable. But it is also unprofessional and immature.

She should have maintained her composure, kept her voice calm and words civil if not polite. She verbally abused a member of our faculty. If this had been "just" a parent, the administration would have taken significant action against that parent, removing them from the situation and possibly from campus at minimum for the moment, if not for good. Just breaks my heart and infuriates me that "Sally" was so horribly treated by someone who should have been on her side and probably would have been if the student hadn't been her daughter.

What I want to know is what message and lesson her daughter got out of that? I am glad Sally isn't going to acquiesce to Cathy's demands to "give" her daughter a passing grade, but wish that the lesson Cathy had been trying to teach her daughter all year, had finally been the rooster coming home to roost. She is a smart girl choosing not to do her work, being allowed to reap those consequences in high school might teach her the lesson she needs to understand how life really works most of the time.

In any case, no one should be treated that way no matter what the disagreement is. Especially as teachers, we should endeavor to be examples to our students and parents of professionalism even in the face of overwhelming difficulties.