Everybody into the Pool

My family has an Oscar Night tradition. Every year, we gather at my brother's house to watch the whole thing, Barbara Walters and all. We have a nice dinner, usually tapas, so that we can eat without missing a single reaction shot. It's always a lot of fun talking about the movies we've seen and gossiping about the celebrities, and we even take the next day off, if possible, so that we can enjoy the broadcast until the bitter end, usually sometime around midnight here on the east coast. This year my mom flew in from Minnesota to join the party. Woo hoo!

Of course, there's a friendly wager: ten bucks each, winner take all. Wish me luck!

Crime and Punishment

My students recently wrapped up a memoir-writing unit, and as I try to do as often as I can, I wrote along with them. My piece this year was called The Creek, and it was about a time when I was 7 or 8, and my younger brother and I walked home along a tiny stream that ran from the school to the end of our street, something that we were forbidden from doing.

On the way we found a little plastic bucket and filled it up with tadpoles and then cooked up a ridiculous lie about finding the pail full of tiny amphibians on the sidewalk. Not wanting to leave them to die (and not allowed to return them to the creek), we just had to bring them home-- that was our story anyway. It's hardly surprising that my mother didn't believe us, although she was tipped off by the neighborhood tattle-tale. (Michelle Hall, if you're out there, I haven't forgotten your treachery.) We got in a lot of trouble, but the tadpoles got it worse: my mother dumped them out into the garden.

It is this final, fatal detail that seemed most memorable to the kids in my class, and when I happened to mention that my mother would be in town this weekend, they suggested I bring her in on Monday. "Really?" I asked. "You want to meet my mother?"

"No," one student answered, "we want to put on her on trial for killing those tadpoles."

Pride and Prejudice

I heard an interview with Diane Ravitch on NPR the other morning. A former Assistant Secretary of Education in the second Bush administration, she has come 180 degrees on the No Child Left Behind act since 2005 and has published a new book outlining her concerns.

It was her remarks at the end of the piece that have stuck with me most. Speaking against the inherent competition that is present in both NCLB and the Obama administration's Race to the Top, she said, Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what's been successful for them. 

As it happens, I've been thinking about collaboration and competition all week. Back in December, I collaborated with a colleague in my building to prepare our students for a national writing competition. On Tuesday, we got some preliminary results. Ten students from our school were among the top 67 out of nearly 1,200 participants in our state.

In my colleague's opinion, we should stop the presses. She's a competitive person who sees no reason not to be recognized for such an accomplishment, and it doesn't hurt that six of the ten were her students as compared to my four. I can't tell you how many people at school, including the principal, congratulated me on this achievement before I had seen the e-mail myself. In addition to that, letters are going home to parents, and our district newsletter is receiving an item to publish.

I have to say that I think a little perspective is in order. I'm proud of my students, but this is a nice, but minor, recognition for those kids. They may or may not move on to be state finalists, and if they do, they have the national judges to face. Not only that, but the pieces that were chosen were not the ones that I would have predicted. To me that just illustrates the subjectivity involved in judging any writing, much less any writing competition. Don't get me wrong, I encouraged my students to enter, and those who did were excited about it. We worked hard together to make sure every piece was the best it could be, but on some level, I want that to be enough.

Undercover Boss

Reality TV is one of my guilty pleasures. Oh, I don't watch just anything; I'm actually pretty discriminating in my own way. One newish show that I kind of like is Undercover Boss. The premise is that the CEO or some other high-ranking executive of a big corporation goes undercover as an entry-level new hire in some of the stores in order to get a more complete perspective on the company. How do they explain the cameras, you wonder? They tell everyone that they are filming a documentary on the newly employed and let that tape roll. Oh my.

I saw the Hooters and White Castle episodes. Who knew that both were family-owned businesses? And, consequently, since neither of the principals wanted to let their forefathers down, there were tears. I guess it shouldn't come as any shock that wealthy, white collar guys aren't very good at manual labor, but what does that say about our economy and what we value?

Fundamentally, though, I think I like the show because it reinforces one of my fondest beliefs, which is that all educators should teach. I just don't believe that there is a completely separate skill set that qualifies a person to be school administrator. Frankly, I have a hard time following the advice and guidance of anyone who hasn't done it themselves and who isn't still doing it today. In my experience, even the most rational and grounded of teachers lose perspective once they are out of the classroom. Facing a roomful of kids every single day keeps you humble and on your toes.

Hm. Those sound like the qualities of a good leader.

Sense and Sensibility

This morning I entered the building with some students who were headed either to breakfast or to get some work done in the library before school started. The entrance I used has one flight of stairs going up and another leading down. As we climbed the steps, a student was asking me about our current writing contest when we were interrupted by a gasp and the clatter of a book bag hitting the stairs below us. We both stepped to the banister and peered over. Another student sat awkwardly on the edge of a step, tottering back with her legs outstretched in front of her and a panicked look on her face. She had obviously slipped, but how far she had fallen and whether or not she was hurt, I couldn't tell.

"Are you all right?" I called. Her eyes met mine, but she didn't answer. "Are you hurt?" I tried again and started down to her, but I was moving against traffic, so I didn't get too far.

"Esta bien?" a voice to my left inquired. The girl nodded, then climbed to her feet, and continued on her way to breakfast. I turned to the student I had been talking to on the way in. Although she speaks English like a native, her first language is Amharic. She had diagnosed our communication gap immediately and used the Spanish she is learning now to help. I was both impressed and proud of her reaction; as minor an incident as it was, it illustrates what we hope for in our students.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

So, I'm running this Professional Learning Committee for the English Language Arts department in our district. I've posted about it here before. The idea is sound: it's supposed to be a continuation for teachers who have participated in our local Writing Project, and so the focus is on using our own writing to support our teaching of writing.

Up until now, my main complaint has been that we weren't allotted enough time to meet and share our writing and teaching experiences. That situation was aggravated last month when we were canceled because of snow, but what can you do?  Back in December I arranged to have a guest speaker for our March meeting. It's tomorrow. Yesterday and today, four out of the ten people in the group have e-mailed to say that they won't make it. Given that there are typically a couple of people who are absent without notice, I'm probably going to cancel the speaker. It seems like a waste of someone's time to ask them to speak to a group of four or five, especially a group over half of whose members couldn't be bothered to show up.

I feel angry and discouraged.  Facilitating this PLC is a voluntary position, and right now it seems like it's been a pretty big waste of time.

Walking the Dog

We took a walk with the dog around the tidal basin yesterday. It was a blustery afternoon; the wind pushed the clouds across the sky like so many ducks in a carnival game. The sun was in and out, and when it was out it seemed a tiny bit warmer and more golden than one has the right to expect on a day in late February. Even so, geese and gulls huddled against a stiff northerly breeze, bobbing on the choppy gray water. As we made our way around, we encountered piles and piles of cherry branches trimmed and stacked neatly below the trees they had come from. Broken during all that winter weather we had a few weeks ago, they were ready to be hauled away. Passing by, I saw that the tips were loaded with buds. They were still as hard as pebbles and many weeks from blooming, but I mourned the thousands and thousands of cherry blossoms that would never be. We rounded the other side of the basin, the wind quieting at our backs, and it occurred to me to snap some twigs off to bring home. In a vase they should bloom in a few days. Tonight as I left school the air was mild, and I knew that spring is not far away.