Sleight of Hand

Years ago, our school system took the progressive step of having teachers design their own professional development plans as the major component of our evaluation. The object was to encourage and empower teachers as researchers and collaborators who, in consultation with an administrator, used their observation, data, and reflection to improve their practice. In my opinion, the concept was never fully realized, mostly due to time constraints on teachers and administrators alike, but the PDP, like so many things in education, was something that the more you put into it, the more you got out of it.

Flash forward to these times of connecting teacher evaluation (and in many places, teacher pay) to "performance." Much has been written about the difficulty of finding an objective, much less fair, measure of teacher performance. Everyone agrees that student achievement should be the primary consideration, however the variables impacting a given student's achievement as well as the absence of an effective tool to measure it, can make any discussion of such rather contentious.

In addition to a rather cherished reputation for progressive best practices, our school system also has a less celebrated habit of going through the back door to implement key policies and procedures. Call me cynical, but I have sat through a lot of meetings of several committees where, by the end of the process, it seems as if the conclusion was foregone from the beginning and the group merely convened to put that stamp of collaboration on a top-down decision.

Re-enter the PDP. This year we are all being strongly encouraged, if not required, by our administrators to tie the results of our classroom-based research to "student achievement" in the form of high stakes, standardized test scores.

Yes. Our system is so progressive, they are forcing us to use the flawed measures available to evaluate ourselves.

Scaring Up Donations

I remember when I was a kid being a little bit jealous of those children who came around, even before dark, to collect for UNICEF-- it seemed like they got double trick-or-treating time, and where did they get those cool paper banks that jingled so solidly with all that change? I still can't answer that question, and even today I myself have never stood on any threshold chanting trickortreatforunicef!

The same cannot be said for my homeroom students. Each year our school sponsors the ToTfU campaign, and so they can be the lucky ones who go to door to door for this good cause, if they choose. Of course, given my own history with the program, I'm always a little surprised by the lack of enthusiasm, and the first time I heard one kid telling another that they could just keep the money, I was genuinely appalled.

I have a sweet bunch of kids this year, (don't get me wrong-- they're not so nice that they skipped the petty larceny angle altogether, but they had the decency to blush a little when I reprimanded them for considering such fraud) and they were all pretty excited about the whole UNICEF gig as I handed out the bright orange boxes. Even so, a few were a little unsure of how to approach their public.

"What do we say?" someone asked.

"What do you say?" I repeated incredulously. "Why, just those five magic words... trickortreatforunicef!"

"But what if people say no?" somebody else asked. "What if they just say, Not today, honey?"

"I guess you should tell them thanks anyway," I suggested.

"And Happy Halloween!" said someone else. "Don't forget that."

They seemed satisfied with that advice.

Seven Billion

Does anyone else think it's getting a little crowded here?

Evening Constitutional

The snow had stopped but there was still a little sleet spattering against the windows tonight when I set aside my book, banked the fire, and tied my boots on to take the dog out for a walk in the bluster. At six o'clock it was dark and the weather had almost everyone inside, and so we walked alone through the aroma of woodsmoke and apple muffins carried on the cold, our way lit by the reflection of jack o'lanterns and street lights in the shallow puddles on the sidewalks.

NaNoWriMo Cometh

Yesterday, we held the inaugural meeting of the new writing club at our school. My sister-in-law, the art teacher, sponsors an afterschool art club for kids who either can't take art or who wish they could have more, so I figured why not apply the same principle to writing? Kids frequently complain that they don't have a chance to do their own kind of writing in school, so we aim to give them the opportunity and the audience. Even so, when I explained the idea to a couple of my former students, they dismissed it as just another version of study hall or homework club.

Still, we persevered, and four kids actually showed up for the first meeting. Since National Novel Writing Month starts Tuesday, we hooked them up with the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program, and boom, boom, boom, boom, four novels were born. The young authors were particularly taken with the "Dare Machine," a random generator of crazy curve balls you might try to work into your novel. Example: We dare you to add a waterfall, fireworks, a unicycle, a wrestling match, and a poetry slam to the next chapter.

Heck! You can create a couple of characters and write a novel based on the challenges alone.

By the end of the day today, we had a couple of more novelists signed on, simply by word of mouth. It looks like it's going to be a fun month.

Curveball

Today's common text was Litany by Billy Collins, a hilarious poem that lives up to its name in metaphors. After we read it, I asked the students to choose their favorite to share with the class. Then? They had to fit that particular metaphor into the next draft of one of their own free verse poems.

Sure, some of their attempts were the waft of the bat and the tiny cloud of dust from the catcher's mitt,

(and the rules of the game were that they could cut it from their next draft if it wasn't working for them),

but some were the towering fly that the outfielder lost in the sun,

and others were definitely the cork in the bat.

Baby, You're a Firework

We're working on figurative language in my class these days, and the notion that something can mean two (or more!) things at once is right on that imaginary line that divides the abstract from the concrete thinkers. I know it's tough, and so I am patient, providing as many different ways for them to explore this concept as I can. Ultimately, the objective is that they will be able to identify, explain, an use these writing tools. Maybe even use them as effectively as, say, Katy Perry does in her song, Firework, which we read, listened to, and annotated today.

Perhaps it was their familiarity with the text, or their enthusiasm for listening to pop music in school, or both, but almost every student was able to see how a plastic bag drifting in the wind might feel empty and useless, not to mention how a house of cards could feel weak and vulnerable.

A+ for you, Miss Perry.