The Price of Policy

So far it's been a tough year at school: our meeting time (team, grade level, departmental, staff) has increased, as have the documentation requirements for all such meetings. There is a new class to teach, a new sixth grade configuration, a new principal, a new teacher evaluation process, a new test of standards for my curricular area, and a new state accountability process. Our enrollment has increased by over 20% and our classrooms are encumbered if we should want to work beyond our contract day.

The professionals in my building are frustrated, not because our formerly cushy jobs have suddenly entered the "real world," but rather because all of those things breed anxiety and take time, which is time away from planning and grading and from sponsoring after school activities-- there are only so many hours in the day.

My students this year are delightful-- smart, inquisitive, and conscientious, and I would love to devote more time and attention to them, but I can't. Because I have to jump through hoops to verify that I am meeting their minimum needs, I don't have the time to push them as far as they can go.

How Far Have We Come Again?

Today in Tolerance Club, we did an activity that we've had success with every year. Called In and Out, the concept is simple: everyone in the group forms a large circle, and then someone reads a series of statements. If you feel like it it describes you, then you step in, otherwise you stay out. (It's kind of like the Hokey Pokey with an agenda.)

The activity is designed to spotlight our uniqueness by highlighting our commonalities and differences, and the kids love it. As we hear statements like, I speak more than one language fluently, I consider myself a musician, I like to read for fun, I have a friend or relative with a disability, the perimeter undulates like a living cell under a microscope, and people laugh in delight, recognition, or even embarrassment at their admissions and the attendant associations.

It's always a bonding experience and it's always eye-opening, too. Today my personal wake-up call came when we heard, I have been told I couldn't do something because of my gender, and the only ones inside the circle were girls.

A Wonderful Child

Despite all that sabbath day stuff, Sunday is the step-child of the weekend-- delightful to be sure, but always a little less so because you just can't miss that glimpse of Monday in Sunday's smiling face.

Even so, who could fail to love a day where there was sleeping in and hot coffee, reading and writing, working and shopping, harvesting and cooking?

Today I love Sunday sooooo much?

I wish I had a couple more days just like it.

Film Buff's Dilemma

"Question!" a colleague approached me the other day. "Have you seen The Master, yet?"

I told her it was on my list, because of the critical buzz, but I hadn't seen it.

"Darn," she literally stamped her foot. "I need someone to talk to about it, and I was hoping it might be you."

I laughed and shrugged. "I'll definitely let you know."

Did her comments influence me when choosing a movie for today? I'm sure they did, and this afternoon as I sat, baffled, I knew just why she wanted to talk. Critics suggest that seeing it more than once will definitely help clarify the film, but while Joaquin Phoenix's performance is breathtaking (Early prediction? Oscar.), it would be a tough movie for me to sit through twice.

Fortunately, I know just who to talk to.

Stepford Homeroom

Today was student-parent-conference day, and for me it was markedly different than those in the past.

At our school, we conduct student-led conferences where the homeroom teacher is a facilitator. Because those groups are not only heterogeneous but also random, that means that in some cases the conference is being overseen by a teacher who might not have the student in class.

Therefore, in order to support the students, we prepare them and ourselves in advance. Not only do we make classroom teacher assessments, student self-assessments, and current grades available to students and teachers in the days leading up to the conference, but we designate teacher meeting and planning time to review that data and to clarify any questions we might have.

That's what we were doing just a couple of days ago. The teachers on the team were flagging students of concern to be sure that their parents were aware. As the meeting progressed, I realized that not a single one of my homeroom kids had been mentioned. "There must have been a mistake,"  I joked with the guy who had a whole page of notes, "I think you got my students."

The Wisdom of Crowds

I heard a piece on the radio a few weeks ago about the philosophy behind Wikipedia and its public editing policies. It seems that the concept is based on a tenet of crowd psychology discovered over a hundred years ago. When asked to guess the weight of an ox at the county fair, whether or not any single person was correct in his or her estimate, the mean of all the entries was within a pound or two of the animal's actual weight.

In other words, even if individuals are off the mark, collaboration and/or combined effort will yield accurate results.

As interesting as it was, I totally forgot the notion until the other day. At the end of reading a series of memoir excerpts by Ralph Fletcher, I asked the students to create a time line of the key events. They could work individually or in small groups, at their preference. At the end of the assignment, there was quite a variety among the 12 products. We hung them up and did a little "gallery walk" where students  walked around silently and studied the work of their classmates.

Afterwards, when we talked about their observations, we started by listing the events that were on everybody's time line. It turned out that there were nine, and while any given kid or group could explain the extraneous entries on their chronology, the amazing thing was that those nine were definitely the main points of the story.

Why So Serious?

Let me start with a riddle.

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That's NOT funny.

I used to think that joke was hilarious, but last night when I heard Mitt Romney say, "binders full of women," the patronizing attitude just made me mad.

Clearly I need to lighten up, especially because other folks have had a lot of fun with that image today.

My two favorites:

 

And this tweet

If you like it then you should have put three rings on it...