NaNoWriMo*

* National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated

by folkbum

A rough estimate: In November, I wrote about 40,000 words, but not one of them toward a novel.

The vast bulk of those words I wrote to students, as feedback on their writing, directions for assignments, rubrics, mentor texts to use as models--much of that while perched at the counter of my favorite local coffee shop on weeknights and weekends because I teach all day, not grade or plan.

A lot of words showed up in emails to my students; emails to parents, counselors, other teachers, administrators, or social workers about my students; administrative referrals or other documentation on the behavior of my students; one looooong form for the state Wisconsin about a student; and four letters of recommendation for students.

There were a lot of words in lesson plans, on anchor charts, for my word walls. Words written for collaborative planning with my department. Words written trying to figure out how to resurrect my school's student newspaper.

Words written on this blog in defense of teachers, in praise of unions, in criticism of my district or legislators or other commentators who get it wrong. Words written for the Bay View Compass about my school district and its technology, plus the interview notes and emails and rough drafts and false starts. Words written on Twitter and Facebook and in comments to other people's blogs about teaching, learning, union-ing, and trying to make a difference in Scott Walker's Wisconsin. Words written about a possible new online collaboration.

(I am not counting the Words with Friends.)

Four words--my name, twice--on two recall petitions.

But not a word toward a novel.

I know some people who did that, who started or tried to start a novel or some other creative writing task. I just didn't get to it.

Well, there's always next November--unless I'm still teaching, in which case I will probably have more important words to write.

The eternal war against dungarees

by folkbum

Today is apparently dress-code day at the daily, with two arguments for the notion that I should be fired because I gave up on wearing a tie, and one against.

Here's what I learned all those years ago when I gave up on wearing a tie to teach: The rapport I develop with students is about a billionty times more critical to the learning environment than how I dress. If a kid is going to call me an m-fer (and that seldom happens), he won't think better of it because I'm wearing a tie. I never did quantitative double-blind research, but experientially I couldn't tell the difference between tie days and not. So I dress in a way that makes me comfortable in my classroom and lets me worry about what, how, and whether students are learning.

I once had a younger teacher tell me why wore his suit and tie to work every day. "This is my uniform, my armor," he said. I didn't say back, but thought it, "And just who the hell do you think you're coming to school to fight?" He doesn't teach anymore.

UPDATED TO ADD: Surprisingly, this is proving quite contentious among the Journal-Sentinel commenterati. There is a strong contingent that believes we teachers should shut up and take our medicine because we all only care about money, as evidenced by our designer clothes and expensive personal grooming. On the other side, there is a contingent that believes we should shut up and take our medicine because we're all a bunch of hippie slobs. I hope it doesn't come to blows!

IANALBSIPOOTI*

by folkbum

I will comment, because I suppose I am expected to. Three things:

1. It continues to baffle me that the 21st century Republican Party insists that the 20th century never happened: outlawing unions, relaxing child labor laws, bringing back bail-bonding, trying to kill the internet, leaving the poor and elderly to die early and brutally without the help of modern medicine. What's next, corsets? slavery?

2. This one's a question: Do all the contracts signed in the last 90 days become presumptively void, or do we have to wait for some asshat to file suit in each case? It seems to me that any old asshat will do, as every taxpayer in the state would seem to have standing.

3. There was a time, genuinely, when I was younger and perhaps more naive, that I thought teaching was not just a good thing to do, but something that, generally, everyone else wanted to help me to do. Not in the sense that I had people lining up at the door to volunteer their services, but in the sense that it didn't feel like there was an organized effort to actively make the job shittier. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been for some time. It's not just the recent unpleasantness, of course; there's also No Child Left Behind and the Gates-Broad-Democrats for Education Reform nexus and the like. I still get a lot of pleasure from working with kids, from seeing their growth and achievement. But at this point it's pretty clear that what I do--teach students to write well--is no longer a valued skill and, in fact, something people simply don't want me to be able to do well or easily anymore.

* I am not a lawyer, but sometimes I play one on the internet.

Shorter Aaron Rodriguez

by folkbum

Teachers* are not "people of means," so they deserve a voucher to send their kids to private school, even though they don't deserve a union and should have to pay a lot more for their pension and benefits.

* He doesn't say teachers, but a starting teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools with two children can qualify for food stamps. If a starting teacher in MPS heads a family of four, she can qualify for food stamps through her fifth year of teaching.

Star Wars Day links

by folkbum

Too busy to write, but May the 4th be with these:

• Arne Duncan says he appreciates teachers. Teachers disagree in comments there. Another great response is here.
• The best obit of Ben Masel I've seen so far.
• A parent's guide for making sense of the MPS massacre.
• Kudos to Steve Doyle.
• I'll be missing the Milwaukee Democracy Addicts "tweetup" tonight, but you don't have to.

Why teachers like me support unions

by folkbum

Note: This post is part of a national effort by teacher bloggers to express our support for the unions who keep us safe, secure, and sane in school. Keep up with EduSolidarity events via the twitter and at the EduSolidarity homepage.

**On my very first day of my very first student teaching experience, the very first meeting in the high school cafeteria, the principal stood up, and among his first words, he said, "Teachers, I got your back. You're my teachers, I trust you, and I will go to the wall for you. I don't care if it's a student, a parent, central office. I stand behind you."

This was fifteen years ago, but I remember it, clearly, because in the years since I have never, ever heard it again.

Let me repeat that: In all of my years of professional teaching, I have never, ever, had a principal explicitly say that they supported me, believed in me, would fight for me. Ever.

This is one reason why I support unions. If I knew I could always count on my principal to stand behind me, I wouldn't necessarily need a union. In the years since, in fact, I have found that teachers and principals usually function as adversaries. (This is my experience; your mileage may vary.) I have had counter-contractual job actions taken against me, for being a union rep standing up for the contract. I have had principals threaten me and programs I directed for standing up for my colleagues. I have seen fellow teachers harassed, threatened, intimidated, often to the point of leaving the profession. Not because they were bad teachers, but because the principals were bullies.

**Let me tell you about my friend M. We taught together at a school that both of us have since left. When we were building-mates, she was one of my heroes. The kids loved her, respected her, jumped through hoops for her. No one ever had a bad word to say about M, her dedication to the craft, her ability to manage and teach a classroom full of students who otherwise would be running the halls creating havoc. One of the best teachers I have ever met.

I ran into her a year after we'd both left that school, after we'd both landed at different schools in the district. She looked terrible. I asked how her new school was. "It's awful, Jay," she said. "The kids cuss at me. They don't do their homework. The fight outside my classroom. They fight inside my classroom. They have no respect."

This floored me, as I could not imagine any situation in which M did not have complete control of the learning environment, did not command the respect and adoration of even the unruliest of children.

I can only imagine what this must have looked like to a dispassionate observer. A teacher who deserved every exemplary rating she ever earned suddenly underwater in an out-of-control classroom. If teachers could be summarily fired, what might have happened to this hero of mine?

Thankfully, she wasn't fired. Based on her and her colleagues' complaints, the union stepped in, forced district administrators to address her school as being out of control. The principal was removed and, with the support of the teachers, a new regime installed. Behavior, attendance, and grades have improved. The next summer when I saw M, she was back to her old self.

**I could also tell you about C, a science teacher, who had no knack for being in the classroom. Nice enough guy, but not getting the hang of the job. (Not just anybody can teach, contrary to popular rumor.) I was his building rep, and I worked with the principal to get him into something called TEAM--Teacher Evaluation and Mentoring. This is a program my union designed and developed, which was eagerly agreed to by administration. Teachers who aren't up to snuff must work with the principal and a union-provided mentor to identify areas of weakness and either improve, quit, or be fired.

C's mentor went to hell and back with him. So did I. And even the principal! But C never got back on track and, after a semester of mentoring, with the union's blessing (and encouragement), he left the classroom for good. Amount of time, money, effort spent to fire him? None. No bitter battle, no "rubber room," no protracted litigation or arbitration. Instead, a cooperative effort to send C off to a more suitable career than teaching, thanks to the union.

**One of the most frequent arguments I hear about Why Unions Suck: Why should you, a talented teacher, they say (none spend time in my classroom, so how they know this I am uncertain). Why should you, a talented, highly-qualified teacher, be brought down to the same level as some schlub who sits around reading the paper all day while his students get high and have sex on the floor? Aren't you embarrassed or angry that you are treated the same as that schlub?

First, I say, I don't know that schlub. No doubt such teachers exist somewhere (don't tell them, but my sources say that fully half of all teachers are below average!), but I've never met one and certainly never heard credible tales of one whose actions were defended by anybody, let alone the union.

But second, I say, why do you, who thinks I'm a talented, highly qualified teacher, turn around and advocate for charter schools (where a "charter license" allows anyone to teach any subject) and private voucher schools (where no certification is required at all)? Why do you think a talented, highly-qualified teacher such as myself isn't embarrassed or angry that you think just anyone can waltz in and do what I do?

My union started not as a union, striking and bargaining for pay and all that. It started, actually, as a professional organization, an association of teachers dedicated to improving the craft and helping each other do what they do better. And it still does this: Its charitable arm offers grants to schools--including several million to my district in the recent past--to try new and innovative programs. It offers professional development at the local, state, and national level to promote better teaching. Its chief focus today is the classroom environment, which is not just where I work but where your children learn, advocating for smaller class sizes, greater teacher flexibility to address individual student needs, maintaining high standards for who should enter the profession--attracting and keeping talented, highly qualified teachers like me in the profession.

Why do you, I say, why do you want to strip that away from me? Why do you want to throw out a half-century of expertise in building a better teacher and finding (and funding) what works in education?

**So I am union thug. My thug life involves a lot of late nights at school or grading papers, early mornings copying and planning. Whole weekends lost to school work or taking classes to keep up my license. Giving up my lunch hour for kids who need help with their work or a safer place to hang out than the cafeteria. Being everyone's dad, social worker, nurse, career counselor, coach, mentor. Spending thousands of my own dollars over the years on my classroom and my students. Putting up with constant attacks from the media and the political right that I'm a failure, my students are failures, and my district is a failure--break it up, they say, and you can all fend for yourselves.

Which is a sad thing to think about. In this country, no one should be forced to fend for themselves. From the 1770s when a small, scrappy band of rebels joined together to throw off tyranny, to the day Dr. King was assassinated while supporting public workers' right to join a union, to the crowded auditorium last night full of parents and teachers and students united in support of public education, the story of America is the story of union. The story of unions. And I support unions.

Cost of ATT/ T-Mobile deal, in teachers

425,000 teachers.

It's all about priorities.

For the record

by folkbum

THURSDAY UPDATE: The MTEA position here is, apparently, "hold firm, no concessions." It sounds like this is in part because getting the contract re-opened and closed again by next Friday's deadline is asking too much, and in part because of long history of inflexibility, especially in the current leadership. I think it's the wrong decision. Read on for Wednesday's post:

I have been working on this post for like three weeks now, but this is not an easy one. Not because I have some kind of compunction against doing this sort of thing, but because the answers are not easy to come up with. MPS has a $74 million hole for next year's budget. That's a lot of cheddar.

(And, note, MPS estimates that the "tools" Walker provided to give MPS "maximum flexibility" would save MPS less than $50 million. He pretty clearly lied when he said school districts would make up in savings what he proposed in cuts.)

We have a limited amount of time to do something, anything. Starting next Friday, the ability for the union and the district sit down and hammer out a deal like this becomes illegal. As in, against the law. And the contract, absent any change before next Friday, will be locked in, as is, $74 million behind next year and $90 million behind the year after. With no ability to bargain a way out of the contract--and no legal way to break it, either--that could do some real damage to teachers, schools, and, worst of all, students.

So I keep making lists, running numbers, and puzzling over the possibilities.

But, for the record, this is what I passed on to several MTEA folks who attended a must-go meeting earlier tonight about, well, What To Do.

1. Furloughs. I've said it before, and I'll say it again--furlough teachers on teachers' convention days. Savings? About $4 million. If we made it three furlough days--give teachers the option of skipping the August organization day or the June record day (though I bet most of us would just work it free)--that gets us closer to $6 million.

2. The supplemental pension, aka "the sweetener." This is a 30-year-old anachronism, begun in the heady days of the Reagan administration, for reasons that no longer remain relevant. And I have made this argument repeatedly before, too. Dump it. At most, let teachers opt-out (no change to their salary) or stay in (with the cost of the pension plan deducted from their salary). In recent years, the annual MPS investment in the sweetener has ranged from $4 million to $19 million. Savings? Assume around $15 million.

For those of you playing along at home, that's about $20 million. Which is not chump change, I grant you (and all out of teachers' pockets), but it is not $74 million.

However, it is a pretty bold statement. And cuts beyond these, which will be hard for some to swallow, get really tricky. More on health care? The contract already calls for stepped-up contributions starting in June this year. Another year of wage freezes? We just did two years in a row frozen. I have heard rumors of a four-day school week (like they're doing in Hawaii this year), but we still have to put in a minimum number of hours with students.

I don't know--haven't heard yet--what was decided at that meeting earlier. I am hopeful that it was something like or as big as the cuts I offer here. And I hope it's something that can be sealed quickly, before all our hands are tied.

If it's going to be so bad.. quit.

by folkbum

That line showed up in a comment. I have so many responses, I am not sure how to work it. So I think I will just do this "Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould" Style.

If it's going to be so bad.. quit.

A lot of people have. In counties, cities, and school districts across the state, retirements are way up. Which is funny: One reason you hate us is because you think we get to retire early. Apparently, tons of us haven't been, but now will be rather than keep taking your crap.

If it's going to be so bad.. quit. I know you won't because you cannot get a job with pay and benefits like you have in the private sector.

That's not true. Well, it may be more true in this down economy than it would be true otherwise, though I am really not sure why you want another unemployed person out there. But the fact is that I, personally, have plenty of marketable skills and could have been making much more money (with one caveat, in a second) in the private sector for the last 15 years than I do now. And in general, teachers have plenty of marketable skills, which is one reason why half of us leave the profession after fewer than five years. We can have an easier, better-paid jobs in the private sector. Even with 15 years in on the pay scale, I earn less than average for someone with my level of education, according to the BLS.

The caveat, of course, is that I chose a career that defers much of my salary into a pension for retirement. Which reminds me:

If it's going to be so bad.. quit.

I remember when I was in college in the mid-90s, and I read story after story in the news about how my generation (X, we are) and the subsequent ones (Y, Millennials, whathaveyou) would change careers ten, twenty times in our lives. This was being touted as a feature, rather than a bug, and I couldn't understand it. It is too long ago now to remember the exact wording of these stories, but they all had some baloney about how we were too ADD and refused to be put in boxes or something ridiculous like that, and therefore would never want to settle in to a single job forever.

I thought then that it was spin, that it was crap. My grandfather worked the lines at P&G for 40 years and retired. My dad worked at the same job in a hospital pharmacy for more than 30 years until neurosarcoidosis knocked him out of the game. I planned to teach until I was dead--though, to be fair, when I was young I was pretty sure the heart disease would have gotten me by now.

What I mean is this: the fiction that Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers want to be kicked around from job to job without ever building seniority or vacation time or a 401k is crap. It's crap fed to us and to you by the same folks whose pockets are more thickly lined now with what used to be our pensions and 20-year commemorative pen sets and health insurance and retirement gold watches. A fungible labor force benefits management, not labor.

If it's going to be so bad.. quit. I know you won't because you cannot get a job with pay and benefits like you have in the private sector.

This may surprise you, but I'm not in it for the money. Which is not to say the money isn't helpful: When my wife got laid off in 2009 and we had a surprise round of "guess whose check isn't coming to dinner anymore," we got through it without having our house foreclosed or robbing a bank or moving back in with my parents (themselves almost foreclosed that year from Dad's medical bills--America, what a country!). I have felt quite blessed during this recession and, since my wife found re-employment, have been tipping more, buying more, getting those renovations done to the house that we put off for years, giving more to charity, trying in my own way to stimulate the economy. (Unlike America's biggest corporations, I am not just sitting around on my cash reserves.)

But I would not characterize myself as overly wealthy. I don't have, won't ever have, a summer home anywhere. It took me 12 years to pay off my student loans. Search the archives of this blog long enough and you'll find category tags for both "Prius Envy" and a plain-old "My Car," so you can see the difference between what I wanted and what I could afford. I know I'm way past the median and average salaries in the state, so, no, I'm not hurting. But I am getting what I expected, and I am not asking for more.

And though we don't have kids, I would like to think that a teacher's salary could support a family. That my colleagues who have been teaching five or ten years fewer than I have can afford to have, raise, feed, and clothe two or three children. That my colleagues who have been teaching five or ten years longer than I have can afford to send their children to college. It galls me to think that there are those who believe the people who teach our children shouldn't earn enough to raise their own well.

If it's going to be so bad.. quit.

That's kind of like telling Brett Favre he should have retired in 1999. Which is not to say that I am the Brett Favre of English teaching--for one thing, I have never been addicted to pain pills and people complain that I get my summers off.

But rather, teaching is what I do because a teacher is what I am. I'm not working just to be working; since I was 12 years old I wanted to do this, almost exactly this, when I grew up. I am, as odd as it sounds, living my dream. I'm trying every day to exact small miracles from the fabric of the universe so that these kids, Milwaukee's kids, my kids have a shot at living better in a better world than what there is now. And I think I'm pretty good at it. I've won awards. I've been evaluated at the highest levels. Visitors to my school get brought to my room to observe.

Walking away, at least walking away without putting up one hell of a fight, is not about economics.

If it's going to be so bad.. quit. I know you won't because you cannot get a job with pay and benefits like you have in the private sector and I don't understand HOW supposedly educated people can be used as pawns by big labor.

Here's the remarkable thing about some conservatives: They can hold conflicting ideas in their heads without exploding. I can't do it myself, but the union talk is a remarkable example. On the one hand, unions do nothing for their members; we're just pawns. On the other hand, killing the unions "saves" a ton of money, hundreds of millions of dollars that would otherwise be going to--wait for it--union members.

Walker's bill, if my district ditches the contract we negotiated last fall, will charge me ~$500 a month in money that used to go things like paying my mortgage or supporting local arts and businesses. In return, from the forces of now-dead "big labor," I would get back ~$100 a month in money I used to pay in dues. Those were the dues that got me legal protection when administration, parents, students targeted me. Those dues negotiated a deal that says when a student threatens to kill me, I don't have to take him back in class the next day, or ever. Those dues ensure that if I want to transfer schools, my experience and advanced degree don't price me out of a position, and that I can't be replaced with a long-term sub when the budget gets tight. Those dues run workshops for new teachers and fund mentors for veterans who need help. Those dues ensure that I get adequate time during the day to prep, call parents, grade papers, eat lunch, pee. Those dues protect my right to be critical of my district on this blog, on TV, or in print without fear of reprisal. Those are worth a lot more than $100, even $500 a month to me.

If it's going to be so bad.. quit.

And that last part--what the union does beyond getting me paid--is what is truly galling about the whole debacle we have just witnessed. As I said, I am not in this for the money; you want me to take an effective $5000 cut in pay? I'll do it. I'll take $10,000 if you want, if it would make you feel a bit like more of a man.

(Of course, to a first-year teacher, a $5000 cut in pay is a much uglier monkey; they might not be so willing to make that deal.)

But what Walker has done is strip away my right to band together with my fellow employees to negotiate over anything but salary (and that's capped at CPI). The hardest-fought fights in collective bargaining haven't always been over pay and benefits, but about working conditions. What will drive me out of the profession, eventually, is not the pay. It will be the class sizes in the 50s and no time to plan. It will be watching my colleagues get railroaded for not playing ball on the reform of the month. It will be driving a friend to the district headquarters to file charges when a principal refuses to call the police on a student assault.

These are things I didn't used to have to worry about. Because I had a union.

It is a sadly un-American thing to believe that it is okay for the state to forbid employees from working together to address working conditions. That, I'm afraid, is what will make me quit.

The $26,000 woman*; or, building a better teacher

by folkbum

I've been following with interest, for several reasons, the Journal Sentinel series on "building a better teacher." (The series seems not to have its own page, but here's part one, at which you can find links to all the parts published so far.)

The series is not done, and its last part--the part on the role of teachers unions in teacher evaluation and quality--promises to be perhaps its most contentious. We'll dive into that pool once it's full.

But I have a couple of reactions to share so far, with the series mostly done. One is from the part two Sundays ago by Alan Borsuk, about how difficult it is to get the best teachers to volunteer for the worst assignments. What you need to do, though, when reading that is read Borsuk's regular Sunday column from that same edition of the paper, where he writes about Florida's system of grading schools using A, B, C, D and F. Here's a bit from the latter:

There is a benefit to a school if it gets an A or gets a grade that is at least one letter higher than the previous year, namely that each school gets $85 per student from the state for the school to use as it chooses. Most of the money goes to bonuses for staff members.

And there are consequences for getting a low grade: The school doesn't lose any money, but the state takes extra steps to intervene in the school's academic program. And if the school gets Fs in two years out of four, students are allowed to transfer to high-performing public schools in that district. (Originally, they were allowed to transfer to private schools at public expense, but the Florida Supreme Court found that in violation of the state constitution in 2005.) [. . .]

[F]or teachers in schools that earn the high-grade bonuses, the grades can mean $500 to $1,000 extra a year.

I can't tell if Borsuk is endorsing the grading or not--the column's title ("State could learn a thing or two from Florida's school grading system") may not have been his and was ambiguous at best, and there's no clear "We oughtta do this here" line in the piece. But the column does make clear that something like this could be coming to Wisconsin under Scott Walker and his enablers in the legislature.

Which is why the piece a few pages over on pushing teachers to high-needs schools is a frustrating companion. Borsuk gives star status in the column to MPS principal James Sonnenberg:

West Side Academy's Sonnenberg has been outspoken in recent years about how difficult it has been to fill teaching jobs in his school, which serves poor minorities, a large number of whom are transient students from troubled homes in a high-crime area.

"If you've got openings that nobody wants, you're going to get a struggling teacher," Sonnenberg said. He praised the teaching staff overall, but said the joke in his building is, if you show up for a job interview, you get the job--unlike some suburban situations, where there can be hundreds of applicants for each opening.

While we currently do not grade schools (A, B, C, and so on), there's little question what schools would get what grades if we did; it's not a big secret. And if we adopted Florida's model, which offers $1000 bonuses to A-scoring schools, the incentive gets that much stronger for the best teachers to avoid schools like West Side Academy that will get an F.

Even if Wisconsin offered bonuses to schools that improve, there is no incentive to leave an easy-A school for an F school, because how can any great teacher be certain that the rest of the teachers would be just as good and just as focused on improvement?

A second reaction to these stories is that the comment sections are, well, insane. By that I mean the high proportion of people commenting who seem to have learned everything they know about schools from talk radio. Yesterday's story on teacher training programs, for example, attracted this comment:

You want good, dedicated, and very capable teachers?

FIRST: You eliminate the Federal Department of Education! Since Carter created this bureaucratic behemoth, the UNIONS have controlled the schools!

SECOND: You eliminate ALL University Schools of Educations, which are very little about teaching; and, all about leftist ideology and indoctrination!!

THIRD: You legislate strict limits on Teacher Union influence on curriculum and teacher continuing education!

This poor fellow's keyboard apparently doesn't have a working period, at the same time he doesn't have the faintest bit of working knowledge about schools or schools of education. The US Department of Eduction (not a Carter construct, by the way) is the smallest department by employment and a wee 3% of the federal budget; hardly a behemoth. (It is bureaucratic, and if I met Arne Duncan in a dark alley, I'd take him for coffee and explain the error of his ways.) The unions do not control the schools, and have little to no influence on things like curriculum, the structure of training programs, requirements for license maintenance and continuing education, or even teachers' placement in schools and districts once they're hired. While unions have influence over compensation and, to a lesser extent, working conditions, none of those other things are the subjects of collective bargaining agreements.

But you can find comments like that throughout the threads on all these stories: Blah blah UNION BAD blah blah. It's disheartening and not a little concerning that this is what passes for rational discourse about the complicated and nuanced subject of teacher preparation, evaluation, and retention these days. I cannot imagine what the comments will look like on next Sunday's story specifically about the unions.

Finally, I want to link to my most recent Bay View Compass column, which is about teacher evaluation in MPS, but it's not online yet. When it is, it will be at the top of the page here. Here's a bit of it, to whet your appetite::

Two things bother me about the current set-up, one personal and one systemic. Personally, I haven’t had a full-on formal classroom observation by a principal in nearly a decade. As a professional who takes my job seriously, I actually like feedback, and I miss it.

Systemically, there is no consistency to teacher evaluation--here, we’re a system of principals, not a school system. And, when far less than one percent of all evaluated teachers rate “unsatisfactory,” I have no confidence in how seriously the process is run.

So first, let’s take principals out of the evaluator role. I haven’t had a formal observation in forever not because my principals have been bad at their jobs; rather, principals have a thousand other jobs to do. Instead, keep principals--and give them district-level support--focused on helping teachers improve classroom practice without the pressure of putting a label on the teachers they’re helping. Teachers will be more receptive to principal interventions, even those based on sensitive data like test scores, when they know they’re non-evaluative.

There's more, including my suggestion for where the evaluator role should be if not in the hands of principals. If you can get a paper copy, it's there; it should be online any time now.

Update: Also.

* Title: The average starting salary in Wisconsin, and the fact that this profession is still attracts more women than men--cause and effect?

Teacher of the Year

by folkbum

The woman who kept things calm and together and safe in that Marinette classroom yesterday--she has my vote. Scary stuff.

I could have written this

by folkbum

If you cut and paste from things I've written here and elsewhere in the last decade, I probably have written most of these sentiments. But Louanne Johnson puts them all in one place:

Most American teachers are good at their jobs -- when they are allowed to do their jobs. And that is the primary problem with our public schools. Teachers are not allowed to teach.

Or rather, they are told how to teach in such great detail and required to document what they are teaching in such great detail and expected to spend so much time teaching students to pass the tests that will prove the teachers have paid such great attention to detail that the teachers don’t have time to teach the information and skills their students need.

I doubt that

by folkbum

The lede of a Washington Post story on teacher merit pay:

Offering teachers incentives of up to $15,000 to improve student test scores produced no discernible difference in academic performance, according to a study released Tuesday, a result likely to reshape the debate about merit pay programs sprouting in D.C. schools and many others nationwide.

I don't doubt the first part, that such incentives, especially when tied to things teachers see as unimportant, like test scores, are ineffective. That resonates as a billion percent true with me.

It's the second part, that this study will have an effect on the debate, that rings false. Of course it won't have an effect on the debate: Those pushing merit pay almost exclusively do so for ideological reasons (gotta make schools like "the market"!), and reality simply never enters into their consciousness. So good luck changing that debate one bit.

What's outrageous?

by folkbum

Since I started teaching for the Milwaukee Public Schools full-time in the fall of 1999, about half of my first days of school were done under an expired contract. It is looking more and more like this year's first day will be another, making two in a row. (Three in a row is the record--2003, 2004, 2005.)

Why is this? Is it because MTEA, my union, is a bunch of hardened bastards who refuse to negotiate, who won't make concessions, whose only concerns are gimme, gimme, gimme? No.

In fact, every one of those expired-contract first days has been because the district's negotiators have delayed, stalled, demanded arbitration, withheld critical information from the union, and bargained in the media rather than at the table.

Indeed, in the current round of negotiations, the union has been ready for two years to get a settlement, and the district has gone months at a time, literally, before returning to the table with new or adjusted offers. Late last winter, for example, when the media campaign ramped up about teachers' health care plans (this following months of ignoring union requests to bargain), MTEA requested utilization data in order to help craft a revised proposal. Those data were delivered just a few weeks ago, long after the superintendent released his draft budget proposing to lay off hundreds of employees, long after the layoff notices were sent. In the intervening months a solution could have been achieved, except the district delayed because it is their strategy to fight these things in the media and make the union look like the bad guys.

All of this is outrageous, right? A public entity negotiating in bad faith with its employees and spreading lies in the media, this should cause all good people to stand and demand better accountability. But no. What is it, really, that spurs outrage?

Viagra.

(I am anxious to see what google ads appear in the sidebar after this.)

For some reason--I cannot say for sure, but I am guessing the AP was tipped off by district officials--a long-running legal battle over whether the district's prescription formulary can offer female sexual dysfunction treatments but deny coverage for male sexual dysfunction treatments made the news this week. After all, it had been a few weeks since any news had broken about the status of contract (non-)talks and whether there were any breakthroughs that might have saved some teachers' jobs. So someone felt the pot needed stoking, and then the AP offered its story. Viagra is, literally, a much sexier story than the way the district conducts its negotiations.

And, of course, outrage. Jason Fields, reliably anti-MPS Milwaukee legislator: "You've got to be kidding me. [. . .] What are our priorities?"

I expect more soon, and perhaps even renewed calls for state intervention. One state legislator wrote to me, "[This] is exactly what nauseates me and 99% of Milwaukee when it comes to teacher compensation. MTEA has not done anything creative since they were created."

Again, outrage. And for false reasons, too: MTEA has been incredibly creative in trying to find solutions. In 2005 for example, when the contract went to arbitration (an arbitration that was settled after, technically, it had expired), the union offered to have every teacher pay 1% of salary, on top of out-of-pocket costs, to health care costs. This plan would have saved taxpayers money compared to the district plan the arbitrator settled on--in fact, it would have been much more expensive for me at the time, I wrote. Yet it was only long after the arbitration that the media, who were allies with the district in its public negotiating, finally admitted that maybe the teachers had a point. This should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

More recently, the Board proposed a way to offset health care costs: a two-day furlough for all teachers ... equivalent to about 1% of salary! That the district took so long to come around to the idea should also be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

MTEA had to drag the district kicking and screaming into adopting a wellness plan that has saved the district tens of millions in costs and has meant that MPS's health cost inflation has been lower than the regional and national average. The union got in changes to retiree health care that had those costs decreasing for several years. That the union is still blamed for out of control health spending despite its creativity and success should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

MTEA has also designed one of the most innovative programs to identify, mentor, and if needed fire underperforming teachers, but you wouldn't know that from the way people talk about the union protecting bad teachers. The way the media attacked MTEA for letting young teachers be laid off rather than some undefined, non-specific, theoretical group of "bad" teachers certainly seemed to me like it should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

Beyond that, the fact still remains that MPS teachers are just about the lowest paid in SE Wisconsin, and even counting our benefits we are average in total compensation compared to peer districts. You don't know this because it's not, apparently, important for stories about MPS to include context. It's not, apparently, a priority to make sure that the people who choose to work with the most difficult students in the region get rewarded for their service. This, too, should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

So go ahead. Have your viagra outrage orgy. (Now I'm just asking for trouble with the google ads.) Get it all out of your system, make your comments about how this will make it easier for teachers to molest students or whatever else it is you feel you need to say. Believe me, I've seen that and worse in many places the last couple of days, sick as it is. Because in a few days I head back in to school to do what none of the rest of you seem to care about: Actually helping the children of Milwaukee have a better life than what they see around them every day. Your outrage does squat to change that.

Quote of the Day

by folkbum

I had my upperclass students making movies at xtranormal.com for their final project. Here's a bit of dialogue:

Girl 1: Don't say anything, but I heard that he beat her so bad she died.
Girl 2: Are you serious?
Girl 1: Yes. That's why she hasn't been to school in a while.

Alternatively from a different movie:

Perp: If I run, will you do me like Rodney King?
Cop. Perhaps. (pause) Is it too late to ask for an autograph?

Sometime I can't tell if they do this on purpose.

Where Have I Been?

by folkbum

This is my blog. I really ought to be writing on it, no?

Well, let me just say this: I never, ever blog about "work." There are privacy issues and the intense need not to get fired, among other things going on around that decision.

But this week has been tough for me, both in not crossing that line and in keeping the job. This week is the first week in many years of teaching when I have really, seriously thought about not doing it any more. I have always maintained that as long as the rewards outpaced the challenge, it would be worth it. But this week has put that to the test.

I wish I could say more--and, maybe one day, I will--but that is all.

[BUMPED with the ANSWER] A Poll! (Class Size)

by folkbum

So, dear readers, what would you say is a good maximum size for a class of high school seniors? An English class, in particular, but if you think it can vary, go ahead and explain it.

After a while, I'll tell you what my class sizes actually are.

UPDATE, Thursday 9/6: Today I had 39 crammed into my 90° classroom, out of the 42 registered for my second-block class. Fourth block was lighter, with 36 of 39 in attendance. I will admit that we were warned that upperclass courses might be a little overstuffed this year because they were trying to keep the 9th-grade classes smaller.

By smaller, they apparently meant 35, because that's how many are in my 9th-grade class.

Just another day in the big city.

(And props to FreeFall for guessing MPS would go for 40.)

Teachers: opening day rituals

by folkbum

For my teacher readers (I know I have a few), what are you opening day rituals? Email me at folkbum@hotmail.com if you have a good one you'd like to share. I will share mine next Tuesday--opening day.

Blogging and Teaching

by folkbum

Any minute now, I will probably be marking my second appearance in USA Today (the first is here). I did a long interview last week with education reporter Greg Toppo, who contacted me for a story about teachers who blog.

I haven't really given the subject a lot of thought, except as it relates to me and my own situation. But, especially during and after the conversation with Toppo, I've been considering what I do, and how that's different from what many other teachers do.

The NEA Today did a story about teacher bloggers last September that began to touch a little bit on the issue:

Many teacher blogs look like personal diaries and serve as virtual lounges, a place to kvetch and share inspiration with colleagues [. . .].

The stories your colleagues could tell… and do! More than ever, under the anonymous cover of the Internet, teachers are downloading their daily frustrations, aggravations, and occasional satisfactions. "It's the first thing I do when I get home," says La Maestra, author of A Contar, the daily tale of a bilingual educator in Texas. [. . .]

For La Maestra or Ms. Frizzle or Posthipchick, the blog isn't just a teaching tool, aimed at motivating students. It's a way to remember the details of their jam-packed day, turn on their inner comedian, and activate their politics. After a day spent basically alone--well, except for those 34 kids--the blog serves as a welcome way to decompress, says the pseudonymous Ms. Frizzle.

It's cheap therapy--and it's particularly valuable for new teachers. You might not want to tell Mrs. Delaney in the next room that you dearly wish you'd looked twice at an accounting degree--but you can freely tell your tales of woe to strangers, who often offer a bit of nonjudgmental advice.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that those bloggers don't sound like me at all. I have said before that for me, I have a big, bright, red line that I do not cross. I don't talk about "school." Sure, I talk about education. I even talk about what's happening in the district. But I don't use this blog as a way to decompress or connect with colleagues (though I know many of my fellow MPS teachers do read me) or ever--ever--reveal anything personal about colleagues, students, or parents.

Greg Toppo was very interested in that in his interview. In fact, one of his first questions was, "You aren't anonymous--tell me about that." Apparently, he'd mostly been talking to teachers who don't use their names, and told me I was a rarity. He asked if I were worried about repercussions, and I told him that no, I had a strong union that I trusted to support me. Besides, I said, the superintendent knows who I am and what I think of the way he's running the district. He would have fired me years ago if he'd wanted.

Toppo mentioned one anonymous teacher in particular, First Year Teacher (who is now well beyond her first year). He read to me, incredulously, from this post, which is FYT's unsent letter of resignation after a particularly horrible year. Here's a piece of it:

First, there is a dangerous man in room 134. I have referred to him as Jackass, mostly, but you know who he is. I know that you are aware that he is tracking his female students menstrual cycles on a sheet of paper at his podium because I have told you this. I am certain that you know he also keeps a picture of a female student on his whiteboard and has been observed kissing it by students because, again, I have told you this. At Field Day recently he also laughed along side some male students as they stood behind a female teacher making comments like "This is the best view around!" and "Booty, booty, booty, booty, rockin' everywhere!" He has spit in the face of some male students, pushed a boy into the door, made fun of the accents of Hispanic students, and held votes as to whether students would be punished or made fun of. Again, I made you aware of each of these activities, though you've done nothing about it. I'm not sure how you sleep at night knowing you have allowed this man to be here for two years and are now planning to write him a "shining recommendation" though you aren't allowing him back here. It seems obvious that he is just going to go to another school and behave the same. It is people like you that make child abuse an easy crime to commit. You might want to deal with your issues concerning this.

You see my point.

There are any number of reasons why I would never write the above paragraph. The most obvious one is that you, the reader, know who I am and a clever Googler can figure out where I teach, opening the district up to a tremendous lawsuit. Additionally, while I have on occasion written that unsent-letter sort of thing, I know that the whole point behind those is the catharsis of writing, not the letting people see--and, while the principal may never have seen it, putting it on the blog is still a step beyond what this process calls for.

Most importantly, though, in a situation like the one FYT describes, the correct answer is not to post it in a blog, but to call the police, or, at least, social services. Telling the principal is the right first step but, when that principal doesn't follow through and I know that students' health and well-being are in danger, I have to act beyond sitting here and typing.

Greg Toppo, perhaps following the "there must be two sides, and they must disagree" model of journalism, wanted me to condemn FYT for this, and the "diary" style of teacher-blogging in general. And, yes, I believe that there is some exposure under FERPA in situations like those, but I also told Toppo that, you know, that isn't my style and I would never do it, but they made their choice. I would like to think that these teachers--some that I read and many, like FYT, that I don't--are smart enough people to know FERPA and to know, especially after three or more years of doing this kind of blogging, where their own lines are, and how not to cross them.

I figured out, over the course of my conversation with Toppo, why there is a difference between me and many of the other teacher-bloggers out there, and it has to do with why I started blogging in the first place. For me, blogging was never about having a diary or a journal or some other chronicle of my life. Yes, I occasionally bring on the personal, but I didn't start this blog as a way to keep in touch with friends or document the thousand mediocrities that are my daily life.

I started this blog to be political. I was brought to blogging, like a lot of Democrats who started in the first half of 2003, by Howard Dean and his campaign for president. The more other blogs I read, the more I thought, "Hey, I could do that." Even when writing about education elsewhere, such as at the defunct Open Source Politics or a blog a few other Milwaukee Public Schools teachers and I started to provide some alternative, positive views of our profession and union, I was more about the issues in education, the politics of it all. I never wanted, nor have I ever tried to have, the kind of blog where I talk about students--their lives, their foibles, their performance. (The exception is if the students are news, as when a student of mine won a Gates Millennium Scholarship recently). I don't even use this space to talk about lessons, activities, or units to bring into the classroom.

The personal was never political enough for me to blog about. And the early surrender of my anonymity meant, if I ever did get around to doing a different kind of blogging about teaching, there would be tremendous consequences. Hence, my big, bright, red line.

I don't know when the USA Today story is running; rest assured, I will tell you when I see it.

(An aside: Toppo asked me about maybe sending a photographer in case the story were to run with an accompanying picture--you know, photograph the the teacher-blogger in his natural futonian habitat. It confused me at first, as I'm sure others--such as First Year Teacher, linked above--are both more telegenic and more elemental to the story he's writing. Only after I hung up the phone did I realize that he asked me because I'm the only one not trying to stay anonymous!)