It's all about the students

This blog post is directed at my students, but it's part of a broader conversation that all of us should spend a lot of time on. It's a continuation of some conversations we've had about school rules, why we have specific school rules, and how, when, and why to work to change them. Students, this post turned out a lot longer than I meant. If you want to skip the essay and just leave your thoughts about our school's rules, policies, and expectations, just go straight to the comments. Please remember to be respectful; I don't want to have to delete comments for inappropriate language. (Imagine you're, maybe not in school, but at least in the parking lot outside with our principal standing nearby.)

Our school board sets the school rules; these are the things that are included in your planners that we go over at the beginning of each school year, and that the school-based adults should be reinforcing all year long. This includes the school cell-phone policy (you don't have one on school; if a teacher needs you to have one for a project, give it to that teacher before school starts and pick it up after school ends), the dress code (nothing distracting; no sleeveless shirts for men, no shoulder straps thinner than 3 inches for women, no shorts or skirts that come up higher than the fingers), the tardy policy, the graduation requirements, etc. The school board consists of people who have a stake in the performance of the school. In our case, it's mostly your parents, but it can also include local business officials, education professionals (usually ones who don't work for the school), and others. Their motivation in setting the rules is to keep you safe in school, and to provide you with the best education possible. They usually work with the schools' administration to make the rules.

We also have a set of school behavior expectations--Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible. (If you poke around in the archives, you'll find out more about how these came to be than you ever wanted to.) The Bobcat Code is another way of repeating the same basic ideals. Every community has rules about appropriate behavior, and these expectations are intended to tell us all what those are for our community. It's not just to tell students how to behave. It's also to tell teachers and staff how to behave, what to celebrate, who our good citizens are, things like that.

Each teacher has their own set of guidelines, too: rules, behavior expectations, and classroom procedures. The purpose of these guidelines is to codify how teachers and students interact. You can tell a lot about a teacher by their classroom guidelines.

All of these different levels of "rules" and "expectations" have one objective: to make school the best learning environment for you possible. In order for that to be true, the following things have to happen:

1. The rules have to be directed towards improving your learning experience. (That's why we don't have a "Buy American" clause in the policies--it's got nothing to do with your learning.)
2. You, the student, as well as we, the teachers, have to know what the rules are, what they're for, and what the consequences of following and not following them will be.
3. The staff has to apply those rules consistently, re-teach them regularly, and be prepared to explain (in an appropriate time and place) what the educational value of a rule is.

Changing rules isn't easy, especially at the "school-board" level. I think the best way to do that is to work through the student senate, or failing that, through the administration. The school-wide behavior expectations are a little more flexible. Talk to me or send me an e-mail for more information about changing those. At the classroom level, the teacher has a fair amount of discretion with her own expectations. She still has to enforce school rules and support school-wide behavior expectations, but "good citizenship" is a little bit different in each class, for each teacher. If you think a teacher has expectations that are detrimental to your learning, talk to her. There are ways of getting REALLY harmful classroom policies rescinded, but we all want you to be in the best learning environment possible. Try talking to us first.

In any case, with any rules change, be prepared to justify how the change will help your education. Once, I asked students what they thought about school policies. One student responded, "There should be a boxing ring where students who aren't getting along can beat each other up." We asked how it would help their education to get into fights. The response: "It wouldn't. But it would be fun." Whether it would be fun or not, it would be at the expense of the safety of the students, it would take away from learning, and it wouldn't work as well as more productive, non-violent means of problem-solving. So that's an example of a bad policy change.

SO....after all that, what do you think about our school policy? What works, what doesn't? What could work better?

Never work harder than your students, Cha. 1

Start where your students are

This chapter takes a look at some of the disconnect between a teacher's values and students' values. Let's face it--sometimes it feels like you're speaking an entire different language from your teacher. (Well, in my case, I am. But that's not the point.) Jackson uses the metaphor of "currency" to describe this difference. "Suppose," she says, "youadvertise that your house is for sale and I come take a look. [...] I dig into my pocket, pull out a few shiny beads, some seachells, and a couple of wood carvings, place them on the table, and ask for the keys" (31-2). She suggests that this is like the frustrated teacher and the unmotivated student. The teacher doesn't know why the student doesn't value the "currency" of the classroom. The student feels like she's trying her best, but the teacher just doesn't appreciate her effort. Jackon's metaphor for this is that the two parties aren't trading in the same currency.

She recommends that teachers understand what they value (what currencies they're accepting), what their students value (what currencies they're spending), and the disconnect between the two. Find ways to show students how to use their values in school (use their currencies to acquire school currency) and to code switch based on situation (acquire and spend multiple currencies). As a final point, she suggests creating community as a valuable way to help students see the value in school.

It seems like a good metaphor for the eternal disconnect between teachers and students. I value learning inerently; it's a huge part of why I became a teacher. I think that people should know as much as possible, and that they should be able to think as well as possible. So it always comes as something of a shock to me when students say, "Why should I know this?" My response is usually, "Why wouldn't you want to?" Of course, that argument doesn't work with students. It's not enough, nor should it be. In Jackson's language, we're not spending the same currency. I've spent a great deal of time in the last year striving to create community in the school, at the expense of creating it in my classroom. My frustration level has grown in the last couple of weeks, as I can only assume the frustration of my students has. Now might be an excellent time to re-examine my currencies and those of my students, and to work on creating meaningful community in my classroom to help ease these frustrations.

In a meta-analysis of the book, I like the way Jackson has her chapters structured. She outlines the scenario and describes what less-expert teachers might do. She then presents her principle, breaks it down into do-able steps and how to implement them. She occasionally adds in a "Yes, but..." box, to address probable concerns from experienced-but-not-yet-expert teachers. It's a good way of getting a huge amount of information out in an organized fashion. Also, she illustrates this with a lot of personal stories from her extensive experience. So, good on her! I'm enjoying it so far; wish I had more time to study it than once a week.

Merit pay

Merit pay has been receiving a lot of attention recently, and a lot of it has drifted my way. The idea is to incentivize teacher improvement by paying teachers extra for bigger increases in student achievement. I've always been skeptical of it, as a good soldier of the MEA, and because it's always been suggested by people whose interests I believe run counter to those of public education in general, and public education teachers specifically. But there's so much talk about it, I figured a cool, collected, reasoned consideration of it was just about due.

First, we start with the Union's position (to be accurate, these links are from the MEA PAC, but they're representative of ont only the Union's position, but that of other unions):

The MEA on the 2008 election
The MEA on merit pay

It's not surprising that the MEA would be against it. First, if their objective is to be the rising tide that lifts all ships , or the guardian of all teachers and not just the best and the brightest, then any way of singling some teachers out for added benefits while subjecting other teachers to (probably) disciplinary measures would run counter to their goals. Second, the power of collective bargaining is inevitably undercut when compensation is given on an individual basis. The author of the first article points out a third problem: where it's been tried in the past, merit pay solutions are underfunded. That's not surprising, since failing to increase teacher salaries is one tried-and-true method of decreasing expenditures. As politically difficult as it may be to convince the union to go along with salary cuts, it's logistically easier than, say, replacing all the windows in school with more energy-efficient versions. (Less up-front costs, too.) In addition, if the merit pay is thought of as "extra" or "bonus" (and I have no reason to think that administrations feel this way, except that the payments are often called "extra" or "bonus" pay), then it would be very easy for a cash-strapped superintendent to say, "No MEAP bonuses this year, chaps, very sorry, have a half-holiday instead, except I can't give you that, either." (For the record, my superintendent isn't a London headmaster.)

However, given the vehement opposition that unions normally give merit pay, expressing disbelief that administrations can or would consistently come through with the cash is a surprisingly mild protest. Put another way, on a prioritized list of problems with merit pay, how to pay for the bonuses would be problem #57. I'm a little surprised to see that someone in a union has gotten past the first 56 problems to seriously contemplate that one.

And now, for something completely different:

The Mackinac Center's take on merit pay

"Although it is true that teachers do more than merely teach students how to read, write and do arithmetic, students should be able to demonstrate the academic progress they make during the 180-day school year on standardized tests." This sentence deserves to be surgically dissected, have each of the bits examined closely under a microscope, and thoroughly analyzed. And then whatever's left should be poked with a stick and quietly incinerated. It sums up every issue I have with the Mackinac Center's education policy.

First: "Although it is true that teachers do more than merely teach students how to read, write and do arithmetic..." Thanks for the recognition! I can't tell if it's just in my head, but that's awfully condescending. I guess it beats a poke in the eye, though. But it feels like a poke in the eye. Even granted the general tone of recognition that this phrase tries to adopt, it seems to stick in the writer's craw to have to confess that teachers are anything but computer-programming computers. "...students should be able to demonstrate..." for a given value of "demonstrate," I assume. "...the academic progress they make in the 180-day school year..." Someday, I'll talk about the 180-day school year. In brief: I would like teacher base salaries to increase 25% and have a 225-day (or longer) school year; that would just about cover the testing requirements. I assume that the Mackinac center would like the school year to be longer, and would like teachers to do it for free. "...on standardized tests." If I trusted standardized tests, I might feel this statement held more weight. I do agree that some sort of relationship between instruction and a solidly-designed standardized test should be evident. But I don't think that standardized tests should be the objective, the way the writer suggests.

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My principal receives an e-mail called "Before the Bell," which is a news summary from the NAESP. He forwards me these when they contain something he thinks I'll be interested in, or if they have something pertinent to a conversation we've had recently. The following are all articles brought to my attention through that source:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/102508dnmetlisdcuts.4aa4cb9.html

As someone who works for a school that hasn't been able to afford annual raises (as opposed to seniority step raises) in years, a 2.5% raise down from 5% seems like a fair deal. But in real life, annual raises of 4 - 5% doesn't seem like it should be out of bounds. Even so, I don't like the concept that educators' salaries can and should be cut for the good of the students. Inflation affects all; it's not necessarily true that what's good for teachers is good for students, but I think it's fair to say that what's bad for teachers is bad for students.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/article867862.ece

This link highlights some of the concerns that teachers feel, and that all right-thinking folk should have in mind. I don't know that we have the information-gathering systems at the micro-classroom level to accurately determine who's effective and who's not. And truly, I don't know if we ever will. Classrooms simply seem like too small a sample size.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-10-21-teacher-bonuses_N.htm

This article suggests some of the benefits to teachers. It's pre-election, so it has a campaign touch at the end. A pretty positive take on the thing.

My conclusion is this: If we do this right (and we won't), if the money is there (and even if it is there now, it won't be soon), we still wouldn't know enough, COULDN'T know enough to apply this fairly. What bonus, for instance, would a Latin teacher receive when her students scored above the schoolwide average on the English section of the ACT? Even if we kick it up a step and work it to a school level--something that might encourage educators to work together, and take away the "competitive" argument--there's still no way to pay out in a way that recognizes the many elements of improving test scores. I think I'm broadly in favor, on the basis that teachers should be paid more, and if increased accountability is the price, then that can probably be a good thing, too. But the wide value of accountablility by its very nature makes determining who would get paid an almost-arbitrary matter. So long as a school district is willing to take that responsibility, then it might want to try it.

In support of Positive Behavior Support

Today I introduced Positive Behavior Support to my peers. Here isn't really the place to analyze the presentation itself, but I thought that a lot of notable things happened at the in-service day that bear discussion.

The single most important thing that came out of the meeting of the minds today was the idea that consistency is key. We would like to have a consistent vocabulary for coming to attention and other common tasks throughout the school days (do you, dear reader, have any suggestions for things we need to communicate all the time, and should call by the same name?). Consistent instruction and re-instruction methods for behavior expectations would be nice, too. But what I think we found today was that consistent expectations are the first step. We all want the same things from students, even if we think about what we want in different terms. And in order to teach students how to behave, knowing what we expect from them is requisite to figuring out how to teach them.

A lot of today's conversation rotated around finnicky bits of policy, usually in places where we have to draw a line in the sand, but the location of the line is clearly arbitrary. A lot of people discovered things about the way our school was run, and found that maybe was not all to their liking. I think this is great; nothing encourages participation in an increasingly team-directed model like a little controversy. I often had to answer questions with the response, "That's a conversation that's ongoing." I'm sure it started sounding like, "I don't know, go bother somebody else," but the truth is that all these conversations are ongoing. The fact that they're conversations is the important part. And everybody had their take--the elementary teachers, the secondary teachers, the teaching support staff--and they all made sure their perspective was heard. And when I told them, "This is a conversation we'll have to continue later," they believed that it was a conversation, and that it would continue later.

A lot of complications in regards to the first days' introduction of behavior expectations came to light, as well. I had a lot of help solving the ones that could be solved right there, and a lot of offers of help to solve the rest. That's the makings of a Leadership Team right there. There remains a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in, and that doesn't even count how much stuff I haven't done for my Spanish classes yet. But we made HUGE strides today in changing the way our teachers interact with our students, and how our students interact with school. Let's keep it up, guys!

The community of schools

To my colleagues: If you're looking for the post on Positive Behavior Support, please scroll down to the next entry. Or click here.

Texas school district to let teachers carry guns

I've never really understood the idea that carrying guns makes people safer. I TRULY don't understand the idea that teachers carrying guns makes students safer.

It's just possible that a rural district in Texas with fewer than 150 students will be able to have such a policy without disastrous unintended consequences (I'm thinking accidental shootings or unlicensed operators getting their hands on the guns). But I doubt it will help the district improve student safety in any meaningful way, either.

I also imagine a devastating effect on school culture. This is the first school in the United States to permit this, and nobody knows how it will play out. But I imagine that the presence of firearms will change the timbre of the basic social calculus of schools dramatically.

I don't know a lot about firearm safety, other than the many safety concerns raised by firearms. I'm prepared to eat crow if a teacher saves a classroom full of students with the help of her trusty 9, or even if such a move gives the school a long-term boost in public confidence and students' sense of safety. These outcomes are ridiculously unlikely, though, and compared with the potential hazards, I would call this a case of good intentions spawning bad policy.

Edited to include more effective ways of getting to other blog posts.