Wherein I Weave Together Some Disparate Ideas, Part I

As usual, life (by which I really mean “school”) has gotten in the way of blogging. But I’ve finally reached a less stressful point in the semester. I have a few days where I can actually breathe, and I’ve got some things to say. They’re not as timely as they could have been had I gotten around to posting them a few weeks (or months) ago, but better late than never, I suppose.

I also apologize in advance if this post gets a bit long-winded. For a while now, I’ve had a fairly focused post in mind, but the longer I went without writing anything, the more I’ve added to it in my head. Now I have what should probably be at least three or four separate posts, but I’ve decided to combine them into two, because they are—to my mind—very much related.

The first point is a feeling of anger about some of the invective that’s been spewed by those who oppose teachers’ unions. I’m not personally a member of a union, and I often think for all the good they do for their members, they generate some serious negative externalities that deserve to be examined in the light of day. I could probably rant for days about how the MLB Player’s Association has ruined baseball, but I’ll spare you. So, suffice it to say, even though I certainly lean left, I’m not in lockstep with unions, whether teachers’ or otherwise.

Regardless of your political views, though, everyone should be able to recognize that teachers have an incredibly difficult but incredibly important job, and in most cases, they do it for very little pay and only average benefits. “Summers off” seems to get thrown around as a benefit, but I don’t think that counts if you also use that to justify the low pay. Let’s not forget that many teachers have to work summer jobs to make ends meet.

For the sake of simple math, let’s say that a teacher works 40 weeks a year. That gives her eight weeks “off” in the summer, two weeks around Christmas, a week for Spring Break, and a week’s worth of assorted other holidays that other workers might not receive. And let’s say that this teacher’s salary is $40,000, or $1,000 per working week. (For the record, that’s a sum many teachers—especially those early-career teachers most susceptible to burnout and career change—would love to have.) And let’s say that this teacher, when she’s “working,” puts in 50 hours/week—probably a conservative. So before taxes, this teacher makes $20/hour, about as much as a journeyman plumber.

And this brings me to my next point. No one teaches for the money. That should be obvious, but maybe it’s not. Most of the teachers I know chose teaching because they are selfless people. They teach because they feel a desire to give something back to society. Because they want to make a difference. And they are willing to make sacrifices—financial and otherwise—to feel as if they are doing some good. As such, their identities as teachers and their identities as people are often one and the same.

Tell a teacher enough times that he or she is doing a terrible job, and the truly good ones—the ones who really care—will start to look for another career. If you can’t be a good person, if you can’t give back to society as well as you had hoped, why not at least make a little money? By bashing teachers, I fear that we drive away not the “bad” ones, but the good ones.

I can only speak for myself on this one, but I know that too much of my self-worth as a person is wrapped up in the kind of teacher that I am. When I feel that I have failed a student, I feel that I am a failure. Unlike some in the corporate world, I don’t say, “Well, it’s other people’s money. I’ll still get paid at the end of the week.” Because it’s not other people’s money—it’s other people.

It’s not uncommon for me to work from 7:30 am until 4:30 pm, come home, take care of some chores around the house, eat dinner, and then put in a couple more hours of grading before bed. During baseball season, I go strong from 7:30 am to 6:30 pm, skip the chores (leaving them to my overburdened by amazingly understanding wife), and then do an hour or two of work before I crash. And I work (planning, grading, etc.) almost every Sunday, usually somewhere from 4-8 hours, catching up from the previous week and getting ready for the week ahead.

I’ve purposely avoided calculating the exact number of hours I work in a week, because I’m pretty good at basic math. I’m afraid the hourly wage would be intolerable, especially in those weeks where I feel like I wasn’t able to do “enough” for my students. Of course, I chose this line of work, so I’m not asking for pity. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we teachers be spared the nonsense that we don’t work hard for what little we make. Are there some freeloaders and hangers-on? Of course, just as there are in all professions. But the overwhelming majority of teachers and dedicated, hardworking, selfless people.

I suppose many Wall Street executives are dedicated and hardworking people as well (selfless, I’m not so sure), but I know that I, for one, could endure a whole lot more negativity toward the profession if I had more money. We’ve seen a whole lot of negativity directed at the fat cats on Wall Street over the past year or two, but many of those same people received multi-million dollar bonuses even as their companies tanked. If I got a multi-million dollar bonus, perhaps I could buy a pair of those really nice noise-cancelling headphones from Bose. Then you could gripe all day long about how easy teachers have it and it might not bother me a bit.

Actually, it would probably still get me fired up, because as I said before, my identity as a person is wrapped up in my identity as a teacher. At my core, I am a teacher, and I am not the only one who feels this way. So, don’t attack us and then act surprised when we get indignant and start storming the statehouse. And more to the point, don’t attack teachers and then expect the problems we face in education to clear themselves up. If teachers are the number one factor in student achievement, as many politicians and “reformers” claim, they need to be rewarded and encouraged, not browbeaten.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but ultimately, to devalue the profession in any way is counterproductive. It’s already hard enough to find qualified teachers, is it not? So whose bright idea was it to challenge their economic security and make disparaging remarks about them at the same time? I’m sure that will bring aspiring teachers out of the woodwork.

This brings me to my final point. I finally had the opportunity to watch Waiting for Superman over the weekend. I’m still processing it, but I do think it’s very much related to what I’ve written above: debates over how to improve education get to the very core of what we value as a society, and what we value as a society is very much in a state of flux. Ultimately, though, Waiting for Superman proposes incremental changes at best. Even if we could snap our fingers and make the changes that the filmmakers seem to support, our education system would still be fundamentally flawed. In that sense, the film is little more than a red herring, diverting our attention from a more fundamental (and, likely, more controversial and intractable) problem. I’ll address this in my next post.

A Blog About School

A couple of months ago, I came across A Blog About School, written by parent and law professor, Chris Liebig. It has quickly become one of my favorite education blogs. For me, personally, Chris serves as a powerful antidote to the some of the irrational parents I have had to deal with this year–a refreshing reminder that the great majority of parents not only care about their kids, they also care about what is right and good for kids in general. At the end of the day, it’s not just  about grades and test scores–and, as Chris points out, our current emphasis on “accountability” and “performance” has serious implications for participatory democracy. In short, he gets it.

Although he sometimes blogs about local issues, he also writes about the sheer madness that sometimes passes for “school reform.” Occasionally, the two intersect. One of his recent posts along these lines caught my attention. In it, he wrote that “Iowa City has a reputation as an artsy, intellectual, socially liberal college town; the Advocate even named it America’s third most gay-friendly city. So why do so many features of our public schools seem like they could have been designed by the most authoritarian, anti-intellectual, corporate-captive elements of America’s political spectrum?”

The policies that have drawn his ire of late are severely shortened recesses and the requirement that children eat lunch while bundled up for Iowa’s winter weather–to maximize playtime during the too-short recess, of course. And all of this to free up more time for drill-and-kill test prep.

In the same post, Chris pointed out that he was not “sure exactly what ‘progressive’ means, especially in the context of education,” to which I responded that progressivism has always contained a strand of technocracy–a abiding faith in the ability of science to improve our world. More to the point, though, given the recent thrust of his posts, I also asked him what he thought about Sudbury schools, which have really captured my interest of late.

I honestly don’t know as much about them as I should, but I appreciate Chris’ thoughtful response. His understanding and mine seem to match, and like most of his posts, it’s worth reading. It’s a careful and nuanced view of a school environment that would seem the antithesis of the “authoritarian” policies he so despises, but one that comes with its own set of challenges. I look forward to his forthcoming second post of Sudbury schools.

New Year’s Resolutions

I know, it’s pretty strange to be posting about New Year’s Resolutions in February, but if you haven’t noticed, I’ve been mostly MIA over the past month. It’s all I can do to keep up with what others are writing and saying, and I never seem to have time to get my own thoughts down on the… screen?

Still, this is a topic that’s been brewing in my head for a couple of months now. Toward the end of last semester, I gave my students a teacher evaluation form. My school also gave one, but I frankly find that one pretty useless. For the most part, the answers are all multiple choice, “never-through-always” or “1-through-5” kinds of things. I’m not sure what to make of it when students give me an average of 3.92 for “The teacher is prepared for class.” Seems to me that I’m either prepared for class or I’m not.

In any event, the form I gave students was much more open-ended. I asked them to reflect on what they would and wouldn’t change about the course, as well as what they thought I did well and didn’t do well as a teacher. I got a lot of good feedback, and much of it has informed my New Year’s Resolutions. Despite the fact that I’m just getting around to posting them, I’m happy to say that I’ve been trying to uphold them for the past month, and so far, I think it’s going well.

Although they said plenty of good things as well, many of my students conveyed in their evaluations that my “expectations are too high.” Typically, this was in response to the question of what they would change or what I don’t do well. I actually take that as a compliment. I’m glad to hear that they think my expectations are high, because they are high. At least we’re on the same page there. On the other hand, several of them used words like “harsh” or “uncompromising” or “severe” to describe my grading. This stuck with me.

The longer I teach, the more I despair about grading. I’ve written about this before. One part of the problem (but certainly not the whole problem) is that my school is fairly lax about student enrollment in advanced courses, and every year, I end up with a number of students who probably shouldn’t be in my class. As a colleague of mine put it recently, there’s a clear tension between the need to teach the kids you’ve got and the need to teach the course you’ve got. The more I think about this, the more I realize that the kids are the ones that matter. That seems obvious, of course, but when you’re in the thick of things, that sometimes gets lost. I can honestly say that I sometimes lose sight of the forest because I’m so busy cursing the trees (whether those are tall administrative cedars or underachieving young saplings)–which brings me to my first resolution.

In the new year, I plan to be a more compassionate teacher. I don’t mean to say that I plan to relax my grading standards (OK, maybe the kids wore me down a little bit, but I still like my average to be in the B-/C+ range). Rather, I hope to be more thoughtful about the way that I present constructive criticism, to make sure that it truly comes across in the spirit in which it is intended. Especially for those kids who are underprepared for my course, I’ve increasingly come to realize something. They’re there because someone or something–be it their parents, their peers, or their perception of the college admissions process–is pushing them to be there. Those same forces teach them that Cs are unacceptable, that the only grade worth getting is an A.

In short, these kids are being told that they have to take the most advanced courses that they can possibly take, and that they have to get the highest grades they can possibly get. For many kids, these expectations are totally unrealistic. And so, even though she’s still struggling to comprehend the difference between a primary source and a secondary source, this sixteen year-old girl enrolls in an advanced history course. And when her teacher asks her to write an essay analyzing how race and religion contribute to change over time, supported both primary and secondary sources, she does her best. The grade at the top of the page is a C+. Although there’s clearly room for improvement, she should be pleased with herself. Instead, what she hears (or reads) is “You’re stupid.”

Those words will be found nowhere on the page, of course, but no matter. Our culture tells kids that a C+ is tantamount to failure. Now, I firmly believe that kids need to learn to fail. To be more accurate, they should be pushed to the edge of failure, because it is on the threshold of failure that true learning happens. But a C+ is not failure. Still, I think I could do a better job of putting grades in context for my students. A student who begins the year earning Cs and Ds needs to have at least some hope that by the end of the year, he can be earning Bs. And the student who earns a C on her first essay should be praised mightily for a B- on her next–as long as she’s working honestly toward her potential all along. And that brings me to my other resolution, which has little do with my students.

In the new year, I plan to be a more self-forgiving person. In much the same way that I set high expectations for my students, I put a lot of pressure on myself. When things in any aspect of life don’t go as I hoped, I fret about it. When students don’t learn as much as I thought they should, I take it personally and blame myself. But I have to realize that I can only do so much. It sounds corny, I know, but in 2011, I will try to take each day as an opportunity. If, at the end of the day, I can say that I gave it my all, I will try to be happy with that.

In that sense, I will try to live a more healthy and happy life–one in which neither the successes nor the failures of my career will define me. So maybe it has everything to do with my students.

Learned Helplessness in the Classroom, or: “The Parent Trap”

As I noted in a previous post, I have it easy in a lot ways. Unlike a lot of teachers, I don’t lack for classroom resources, and the majority of my students are motivated—if not intrinsically, then extrinsically by parents who are concerned about the return on their sizable education investment. As you might imagine, though, with all of the advantages of teaching in independent schools come certain disadvantages.

One of the most frustrating things I deal with is the student who expects to have everything handed to him or her, not only in life, but in the classroom as well. Although I hate to sound alarmist, I fear that this behavior has serious implications for our democratic society. If all students are drilled on how to prepare for a multiple choice test but never learn to think for themselves, to problem-solve, and even occasionally to fail (and to learn from their failure), what kind of leaders can we expect in the future? What kind of citizens can we expect in the future?

Over the course of this year, I have become increasingly frustrated with the amount of “learned helplessness” I see in my classroom. Now, I am not a psychologist—only a college graduate who took Psychology 101 and has read a few books that touch on the subject, but if you’re not familiar with it, allow me to offer some background.

The first research on learned helplessness occurred back in the 1960s. In the first part of the experiment, psychologists placed dogs into three groups. The dogs in the first group received an electrical shock, but they could stop the shock by pressing a lever. The dogs in the second group were actually wired to the first group. These dogs received shocks as well, but they had no control over the duration. The shocks for these dogs ended only when the dogs in the first group pressed the lever. The dogs in the third group were the control group; they were placed in harnesses but received no shock.

In the second part of the experiment, all of the dogs were placed in the same environment. They each received a shock, but they could easily “escape” the shock by jumping over a low barrier. What these psychologists found was that the dogs in the second group (those who had no control over the duration of the previous shocks) simply succumbed to the pain. Rather than jumping over the barrier, the dogs simply whimpered. From this, the psychologists concluded that these dogs exhibited “learned helplessness,” an acquired inability to take control of an adverse situation and better themselves.

Over the last four decades, the term has been used outside the realm of laboratory psychology. In politics, social welfare programs are often cited as a contributor to “learned helplessness.” (The term “nanny state” seems to be an especially popular refrain among certain segments of the electorate these days.) In education, the phrase has been applied to those students with ADD/ADHD or learning disabilities. The theory in any case, I suppose, is that once someone learns to get by with “help” from someone or something else (in the form of food stamps, Ritalin, or testing accommodations), they can no longer manage without them.

In my classroom, I use it to mean those students who have come to expect their education to be spoon-fed to them in easily digestible, study guide-sized morsels. Many of my students—even some of the brightest ones—are fundamentally uncomfortable with uncertainty in the classroom. Upon being told that there is not a “right answer,” they’re unsure of how to proceed. When confronted with an unfamiliar assignment or an unforeseen problem, they seize up. When asked to think, they say (literally, sometimes), “I don’t know how to do that.” Some of this is certainly developmental, but I think a lot of it has more to do with nurture than with nature.

In my case, it would be easy to ascribe this problem to socio-cultural factors. Many of my students come from wealthy families, and frankly, they often do get whatever they ask for. I can look out my classroom window and see several student cars whose monthly payments are probably as much as my mortgage. Most of them are good kids, but by any traditional definition, they are what you might call “spoiled.” So wouldn’t it follow logically that these students would be spoiled in the classroom as well? Perhaps, but I think this is too simplistic. I suspect that many teachers—regardless of their school culture—see this sort of behavior.

Another possible explanation involves looking in the mirror. Perhaps we—as educators—are partially to blame. Over the last ten years especially, the push toward standardized education and high-stakes testing, not to mention the more recent call for “merit pay” for higher test scores, has created a monster wherein teachers are forced (or at least greatly rewarded) for “teaching to the test.” Growing up in that sort of environment, students come to expect their teachers to “teach them what they need to know.” Although the pressures of state-mandated exams are greatly reduced in independent schools, they’re replaced in some ways by the pressures of AP performance. But of course, life is not multiple-choice, and students need to learn this.

This year, I’ve encountered a couple of students with extreme cases of learned helplessness, and they have challenged me tremendously. Perhaps the most frustrating has been a very intelligent student who couldn’t seem to complete her work on time, yet never asked for help. She received a failing grade for the first grading period, primarily as a result of late penalties. In the end, her parents intervened on her behalf, concerned that her grades in my class would prevent her from getting into the college of her choice.

They scheduled meetings with my school’s academic dean, as well as with my department chair. In both cases, they stated that they did not want their daughter present, and in both cases they took issue with my grading standards. When, in the second meeting, I asked why their daughter hadn’t turned in her work on time, they said that she had seemed unsure of herself when confronted with my open-ended writing assignments. In the course of working on the assignment, she grew increasingly frustrated, “hit a wall,” and simply stopped working. Finally, nearly two weeks after the deadline, she submitted an introductory paragraph and some sketchy notes. The parents believed that my grading was too harsh, but it didn’t occur to the parents that this submission was exactly why their daughter needed to be in the meeting. Why hadn’t she asked me for help?

In reflecting on this situation, I see two possibilities. The first is predictable: the student has “learned” to take the easy road. Why should she take responsibility for her education when Mom and Dad will do it for her? I think there is an element of this at work, but as above, I think it’s too easy to just blame the parents and be done with it. In fact, I do believe the parents are to blame, but I’m afraid there’s much more to the story here. I say “afraid,” because the more likely explanation is much more tragic than a “lazy teenager” who skates by while Mom and Dad pressure her teachers for better grades.

Again, this is an extreme example of the type of behavior I see on an almost-daily basis, but my fear is that this student has come to believe that she has little control over her own education. I don’t mean to suggest that these are bad parents. On the contrary, they obviously care for their daughter and want what is best for her, but in advocating so forcefully on her behalf, they explicitly prevented her from advocating for herself. And so nearly a month passed before the student came in to meet with me about her writing. The student simply whimpered until someone else tried to press the lever.

Although I’ve often wondered, I have no idea when or where this started for my student—but that’s really not important for my purposes. What is important is: where do we go from here? The entire situation was incredibly taxing in terms of time, energy, and even emotion. It strained the parent-student-teacher relationship, and although the student has finally started meeting with me to get some help with her writing, I can still sense that she resents my earlier grading. Her parents’ strong involvement reinforced (if implicitly) her perception that I was wrong to grade so harshly.

In reflecting on this situation, I’m reminded of a talk that I was fortunate to attend earlier this year. The speaker was Robert Evans, an organizational psychologist/consultant and the author of several books, including Family Matters: How Schools Can Cope with the Crisis in Childrearing. I haven’t read the book yet, but from what I can gather, the talk followed the general outline.

According to Evans, from the time they’re born until the time they graduate from high school, students spend only about 10% of their time in schools. As a teacher, it would be easy to interpret this statistic as “Aha! So it’s the parents’ problem.” And in large part, it is. According to Evans, though, teachers have a role to play here.

In Evans’ view, teachers are burdened by perpetual guilt and inadequacy—“Why don’t all of my students learn as much as I want them to? And why couldn’t I reach that one kid?” (I don’t know if you have these feelings, but I certainly do from time to time.) Therefore, Evans says, it’s incredibly distressing for teachers when parents become a “problem,” and particularly when they ask us “Why aren’t you doing more for my child?”

The premise of Evans’ talk, however, was that although they are sincere, parents are equally distressed, because it’s becoming harder and harder to be a confident parent in the 21^st century. Even among “good parents,” he says, there is a “rising tide of anxiety,” and there are two reasons for this. First, the rate of change (social, economic, technological, etc.) in our society is incredible and constantly increasing. Parents, like teachers, can’t always keep up. Second, the choices for kids (of cultures, of ideas, of educations, of futures) are many.

Gone are the days of finish your homework, eat your vegetables, do your chores, and head to bed. The “kids these days” are plugged in to people and ideas from around the world, and although that’s exciting, it also makes it difficult for parents to assure a child of his or her future. It sounds a little nihilistic, maybe, but I buy it. Parents are worried that they’re not getting the job done as well as they should be, and so they expect teachers to take on some of that responsibility. Unfortunately, we don’t really know what the future holds either.

In any event, what I took away from the talk was that most “problem parents” are sincere but anxious (if wrong), and Evans says that teachers sometimes have to “parent the parents.” This does not mean to act in a condescending manner toward them, but to make sure the expectations are clear and then engage them in a conversation about where they are and how to get to where they want to be. In the case I described above, this was clearly necessary.

The parents needed to understand that there were clear expectations. The student needed to hear (again) that clear expectations had been set, and that she had failed to meet them. And both parents and student needed to hear that past failures would not define the future. I made it clear to everyone involved that I was more than willing to work with the student on her weaknesses, but that she had to take the first step toward success.

I can force-feed a student names, dates, and facts, I suppose, but this is antithetical to a classroom model of democracy. I can’t encourage critical thinking, problem-solving, and personal responsibility on one hand and force a child to do his or her work on the other. (And, by the way, if no one can predict accurately what the future holds, is it more important that we teach students a bevy of historical “facts” or the skills to wrestle with uncertainty?)

Although it’s not what I signed up for, I have no problem with this idea of “parenting the parents”—as long as the student is also part of that conversation. Education is a partnership, to be sure, and everyone needs a place at the table. But I get a little bit confused on how we intend to prepare a child for an unknowable future by solving all of his or her problems behind closed doors. That just won’t work. Like those dogs in the 1960s, students need to know that even though education sometimes delivers a “shock,” the levers are always there. At the end of the day, though, only the students can push them, and sometimes you have to push pretty hard. That’s a lesson from the lab experiment of “life,” and one needs to be taught in the 21^st century.

Teacher Tenure (in Independent Schools?)

All of the recent talk about the need to eliminate teacher tenure has gotten me thinking. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t fully understand the ins and outs of teacher tenure in public education. Working in independent schools, it isn’t something I’ve ever dealt with on a personal level. Perhaps I shouldn’t wade too far into this debate, seeing as how I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but that has never stopped me before, so here goes.

First, my instincts tell me that no teacher should be totally insulated from dismissal, so perhaps eliminating teacher tenure makes sense. If we’re being honest, there are a lot of unengaged teachers in the public schools. I had a few of them myself–but I also found a way to be successful without their help (and I don’t think this point can be emphasized enough: at the end of the day, responsibility for success must rest first and foremost with the students themselves).

Firing every single one of those bad teachers tomorrow–as some seem to demand–is not a practical solution, and more importantly, it would not solve the problems that our educational system faces, even if it were possible. On top of this, the little bit that I’ve read suggests that teachers can be terminated for such reasons as “incompetence” or “inadequate performance,” so would we really need to eliminate teacher tenure to get rid of the bad apples? Perhaps so. It’s certainly easier for politicians to sell (and voters to buy) “firing bad teachers” than defining incompetence or inadequate performance in the classroom. If NCLB has shown us anything, it’s that the very attempt of defining competence or adequacy in the classroom is fraught with challenges.

That said, a shake-up of the system couldn’t hurt. This is by no means a simple fix–I don’t think people can be scared into doing their jobs well–but it may be a starting point. Combine a more challenging path to tenure with better support for early career teachers, substantial professional development, and the promise of an eventual increase in pay, and maybe we start to get somewhere. Make tenure more difficult to achieve, and I suspect that people would begin to strive for it. Make it the next brass ring in the never ending quest for brass rings. (There are many reasons, after all, why so many Ivy League seniors apply to Teach for America; it’s not simply idealism or altruism.)

I guess what I’m getting at is that maybe teacher tenure should be granted only to those teachers who can demonstrate competence. Notice that I did not say that we should fire all teachers who are not granted tenure. Simple math dictates that we need at least some of those mediocre teachers to stick around for at least a little while longer. Nor do I advocate determining competence based on standardized test scores. This doesn’t work. What we need is a more sophisticated model.

Although tenure in higher education faces significant challenges as well, perhaps we can take a page from the university’s book. Not only must a junior professor demonstrate patience, serving in his or her junior role for five or so years, he or she must also demonstrate competence. In history, at least, this means a proven track record of peer-reviewed publications, respectable colleague and student evaluations, and service to the department and the institution, among other things. Scholars spend a significant amount of their preparing this file for the committee.

Obviously, the actual rubric would look quite different for K-12 teachers–most notable would be the absence of publications–but I see value in requiring teachers to compile a portfolio to “sell themselves” to a tenure review committee made up of multiple constituencies–fellow teachers, administrators, board members, and perhaps even parents.

This is naive, I know. But what I see is a lot of entrenched interests arguing past each other, and I think we need some “outside the box” solutions.

Shifting gears a bit, I can say that as an independent school teacher, I long for some sort of tenure system not unlike the one I describe above. (On this note, is anyone out there aware of an independent school that does grant tenure? I’d love to hear about it.) I suppose I’m looking at a series of one-year contracts from now until I retire, and this isn’t exactly reassuring. Given all that teachers are asked to do, and given the price at which they’re asked to do it, the promise of job security goes along way toward a teacher’s peace of mind. (Summers “off” are nice, sure–but they’re not enough in and of themselves, especially if you’re worried about having the next year “off” entirely.)

The fluctuating independent school enrollments of the current economy make any such promise difficult at the moment, but if lifetime tenure is too much to ask (and realistically speaking, it probably is), I would also be very much in favor of a system of contracts that gradually increase in length. It might look something like this:

• One-year contract
• One-year contract (Year 2)
• One-year contract (Year 3)
• Two-year contract (Years 4-5)
• Two-year contract (Years 6-7)
• Three-year contract (Years 8-10)

From there, teachers could either be granted longer contracts (five years? ten years?) at the discretion of the administration, or they could continue on the “three-year plan.” This would still allow schools some leeway in their staffing, but also provide faculty with a measure of job security. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think this would inspire loyalty among faculty as well as ensure the institutional memory and program stability that independent schools seem to covet.

New Approaches to Grading Writing

As I noted in my previous post, grading has become the bane of my existence. At times, it’s bad enough that I worry about becoming an educational statistic—the new teacher who leaves the field within the first five years. Again, as I stated previously, there are many things I love about my job, but if there’s one thing that could push me over the edge, it would be grading.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to re-vamp my approach to grading—specifically, to grading writing assignments. These, I find, take the majority of my time, and the subjective nature of such a task creates undue stress, both on my students and myself. I find that many students are excessively grade-driven (in other words, they’re less concerned with how to become a better writer than with “why they didn’t receive an A”—even though those two things are often one and the same). With that in mind, my goals for any such change were as follows:

1. The new approach would teach students that good writing is a process—a process of writing, revision, and lastly, engagement (and, quite possibly, criticism) in the “marketplace of ideas.”
2. The new approach would reduce the stress—if not the workload—associated with grading written work, particularly the trouble of subjectively distinguishing between various letter grades as well as +/- grades.
3. The new approach would place responsibility for any grade earned squarely on the shoulders of the student, minimizing or eliminating complaints about grades.

In pondering these goals extensively, I’ve come to realize that a “perfect” system probably doesn’t exist. I’m not sure there’s a way to achieve all four of those things, unless, of course, you are Superman. (And if that is the case, please show yourself, because everyone’s waiting for you.) I’m no Superman, but I’ve come up with four different ideas that might potentially solve my own problem, and I apologize if the different scenarios are confusing. I’m not sure which I might end up using, but either way, I probably won’t make a change until next school year in any case.In the meantime, I welcome any comments.

Idea 1
With Idea 1, I would grade essays in the traditional manner, but allow students to revise and re-submit a certain number of essays per grading period.

Pros: Simplicity—easy to explain, easy to follow; Would give students an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and might reduce grade complaints; Would spread out the workload for grading of revisions (not all students would revise the same essays)

Cons: Might teach the “process” but students would likely remain focused on the grade, seeing the revision process only as the means to an end—not an end in itself; Would not solve the problem of subjectivity in grading

Idea 2
With Idea 2, I would grade all essays pass/fail, but with a fairly high standard for “pass” (likely in the neighborhood of what would traditionally be a B). Essays earning a “pass” on the first attempt would receive an A. Essays earning a pass on the second attempt receive a B. Essays earning a pass on the third attempt receive a C. Essays not passing after three attempts would receive an F.

Pros: Would certainly teach students that writing is a process and place the responsibility on their shoulders

Cons: Would likely create more work for me as many students would be forced to resubmit essays (as a result, I would likely need to reduce the number of writing assignments per grading period and not offer comments on grammar, etc.)

Idea 3
With Idea 3, I would assign essays a “grade” of check, check-plus, or check-minus. A check-plus would be roughly equivalent to a B (or better), a check would be roughly equivalent to a C, while a check-minus would be a D/F (needs significant improvement/failing). Students would be allowed to revise each essay once. Essays earning a check-plus on the first attempt receive an A, while essays earning a check-plus on the second attempt receive a B.

Pros: Accomplishes the three primary goals by emphasizing the process, placing the responsibility on student shoulders, and eliminating the distinctions between +/- grades

Cons: Still requires a clear delineation between B, C, and F (the third goal is not as thoroughly accomplished); Like the second idea, all the revisions might create a significant increase in grading workload

Idea 4
Inspired by Alfie Kohn’s article “From Degrading to De-Grading,” Idea 4 would eliminate assignment grades entirely. Instead of offering grades, I would provide only comments, but allow students to revise any essay as they see fit. At the end of each grading period, I would conduct individual meetings with students to discuss/decide a course grade based on quality of work.

Pros: Removes most—if not all—stress associated with grading, freeing up my time and energy to focus on constructive feedback; Reduces or eliminates ongoing tension within the teacher-student relationship and makes the grading process more democratic and conversational; Along those lines, would force students to reflect self-critically on their own performance

Cons: Might encounter significant resistance from multiple constituencies (students, parents, colleagues, administrators) because it would be a radical shift for my school culture; Students, in particular, might feel “lost” without the security of steady grade updates and the inability to ask “what is my average?”; Students may abuse the grade determination process to “negotiate” for grades higher than what they deserve

Career Envy

Like many teachers, I think, I occasionally suffer from “career envy.” Around this time last year, I visited the state farmer’s market and the state fair in the same day, and I came away from that experience wanting to become–get this–a dairy/poultry/goat farmer. There is something about becoming intimately reacquainted with the land that really appeals to the romantic in me. And there is something about becoming more self-sufficient that really appeals to the cheapskate in me. (As a side note, I think both of these qualities do serve me well in my actual career.)

I’ve also thought at various times about going to law school or getting involved in politics. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if any of the careers I find myself envying would actually make me happier. It seems that all of the “careers” I find myself drawn to are ones in which you must work long hours and take your work home with you, and this is exactly what I would be trying to escape in leaving the teaching profession. So perhaps what I really want is not a career at all, but rather, a job. And specifically a job that you can leave at the office and not think about between the hours of 5:00 pm and 9:00 am.

Honestly, there are times–usually when my grading “inbox” has gotten backed up–when I would kill for a 9-to-5. I know that this would leave me unfulfilled professionally, but I do wonder if it wouldn’t allow me to feel more fulfilled personally. Would I be happier day-to-day if I could come home and spend time with my wife rather than quarantining myself in another room, grading essay after essay after essay? Would I be happier week-to-week if I could go 48 hours without thinking about work, rather than spending most of Sunday a) grading, b) preparing for class, or c) both?

I’ve been told that, in this economy, I should just be thankful to have a job–and I am. Don’t get me wrong: there are many things I love about my job. I love that I start over with a clean slate every year (at least in theory). And I love the life of the mind–always thinking, questioning, reflecting. I also–most of the time, at least–love the kids, and I especially love the kids when they show an interest in the life of the mind. And, of course, I can’t lie: I love having the summers off. I know I would start to go crazy in a job that involved menial labor or simple repetition. But sometimes I start to go crazy now, usually around 9:00 or 10:00 on Sunday night, after putting in 6-8 hours of work before the week has even begun.

Most of my job-related stress centers on grading. In case you haven’t caught my drift yet, please allow me to be clear: I HATE GRADING. And I’m not talking about multiple choice tests here. If I could, in good conscience, give nothing but multiple choice tests, my life would be much more pleasant. But, as it turns out, I am that teacher who requires his students to write–a lot–and as much as they hate writing essays, I hate grading them.

I especially hate trying to figure out if an essay is a B or B- and worrying that a student may compare his grade with a classmate’s and have a legitimate complaint about fairness. I hate seeing the looks on students’ faces when they get another C, and then I hate myself for feeling guilty, because they’re the ones not putting in the effort to learn from their mistakes. And I especially hate when parents ask me if there’s “anything Susie can do to raise her grade” right before report cards come out (read: “anything you can do to artificially reward her for failing to meet expectations”), even though they know her essay was totally off-topic.

It seems to me that grading (especially meaningful grading of writing assignments that prompt critical thinking) requires a vast investment of time and energy, only to put unnecessary strain on teacher-student and teacher-parent relationships in the end. And, as I mentioned, it’s also caused me to want to become a farmer. For all of these reasons, Alfie Kohn’s 1999 article “From Degrading to De-Grading” really speaks to me. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that “de-grading” (i.e., not giving grades) is an option for me given my school’s culture.

My wife tells me that I simply need to relax my standards. Don’t assign so many essays, she says, and don’t grade them so strictly. After all, there are a few teachers in my school who basically “hand out” A’s and B’s for mediocre work, and they seem to be well-liked by students and parents. To my knowledge, at least, they don’t receive any pushback from the administration either. But I find that this is easier said than done. For better or worse, I think that part of my identity as a teacher (and thus, as a person) is tied up in trying to show students that success requires hard work. It’s not something that’s handed out freely. I suppose I’m trying to teach them life lessons as well as history lessons. Maybe I’m trying too hard.

But given that I have no farming skills to speak of, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to re-vamp my grading process. Now that I’ve laid out the “problem,” if you will, my next post will start to address how I hope to solve it. Honestly, I expect the solution to come to me in fits and starts, but if there’s anyone out there reading this, I certainly welcome your input.

How do you manage the stress associated with honest, meaningful grading that accomplishes your pedagogical goals without sacrificing your personal sanity? I’d love to hear from you.

Bogged Down

Like most teachers, I suppose, I seem to be drowning in work lately. I’ve mostly been grading essays and meeting with students in preparation of research, but I hope to post some thoughts here soon.

The Never-Ending Knowledge Bowl?

As W.B. Yeats famously said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” But what if we substituted a bottomless bowl of pasta for the pail, and what if said fire was actually a wood-fired pizza oven? If you’re lost already, please allow me to explain.

Last week, a tweet from The Chronicle caught my eye. It read, “The Olive Garden Theory of Higher Education,” and really, how could I pass that up? So I clicked on the link, which took me to a blog post that asked a simple question: “Should colleges and universities find ‘innovative ways to skimp on quality’?” As an educator, my gut reaction was to scream “No!,” but I read on.

Turns out, the question was first posed by Matthew Yglesias, and although the metaphor is striking, the idea is really pretty simple. According to Yglesias and the Chronicle, national chains like The Olive Garden have achieved economies of scale that allow them to sell “reliably okay” food at prices that a middle-class family can afford, even in this economy. According to Yglesias, these kinds of restaurants are “successful at exactly what our health care & university systems are terrible at, namely … balancing cost and quality or … finding innovative ways to skimp on quality.” Yglesias argues further that no one would mistake The Olive Garden for “the world’s greatest Italian restaurant,” but that such establishments take high-brow concepts and make them affordable for the mass public. Hmm.

As a side note, many commenters take issue with the characterization of The Olive Garden’s food as “reliably okay,” but let’s not get bogged down there. I’ll admit that although I don’t care for The Olive Garden, I do enjoy Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill, and other typically suburban chains of that ilk. And you do too. So I understand what Yglesias is saying (and you do too). Sure, those restaurants are about as far from the “local food” movement as you can get, but the food is a definite step up from McDonald’s or Burger King. And in this economy (probably in any economy), the folks who can afford “local food” are greatly outnumbered by those who can’t. I also tend to think that American culture has become so homogenized that many middle-class Americans actually would point to the Olive Garden as the “world’s greatest Italian restaurant.” And that is a shame.

But all of that aside, this has gotten me thinking about the costs of education. Substitute college for carbs, and you have the gist of Yglesias’ argument. Although both he and The Chronicle focus on grappling with college and university tuition, I wonder if the same principle can’t be applied to independent schools. (You might say that charter schools attempt to bridge that divide, and I suppose that’s true to some extent, but charter schools are still subject to many of the bureaucratic restrictions of public schools.)

A case in point: the school where I teach charges more than $17000 per year in tuition, and this does not include nearly $3000 in additional fees (books, technology, etc.). If you’re math-averse, this equates to nearly $80000 for four years. Of high school. For someone like me who went to public school K-12, this seems unfathomable. But, of course, there are benefits.

First and foremost, teacher-student ratios and class sizes are considerably smaller (the largest class I’ve ever taught was 21 students, and that is considered huge–my classes this year average 15 students). Within those classes, I feel confident in saying that all of my students will attend four-year institutions, and at least a few will go on to very selective colleges and universities. So although I am faced with varying degrees of ability, the range is not as wide as what I experienced in my own (public) high school classrooms. Similarly, there is a general consensus among students and parents alike regarding expectations, and motivation is less of a problem.

Faculty teaching loads are somewhat reduced (I teach four sections, with two preps), which allows for more individualized student attention and greater emphasis on writing-intensive assignments. Faculty are also given a significant degree of classroom autonomy, and the absence of standardized assessments allows teaching to be student-centered with critical thinking–as opposed to factual mastery–as the goal. Lastly, as a teacher in an independent school, I have at my disposal all sorts of resources (technological and otherwise) which allow me to teach the past in ways that a textbook simply cannot.

Of course, this is not to say that public school teachers can’t do great things. Of course they can, and my own education is a testament to that fact. I had more than a few phenomenal teachers in high school. But there are institutional impediments to this sort of teaching and learning in almost every public school in the country, which is one reason that for families of means, independent schools are a very attractive alternative.

In the current economy, though, independent schools across the nation are struggling to maintain their enrollments. Many of those families who once sacrificed and cobbled together funds to give their child a “leg up” now simply can’t afford it. And financial aid dollars that may have once gone to underrepresented student populations are now being spent to retain the students who are already enrolled. At my school, our enrollment has decreased by about 5-10% since 2008.

And all of this makes “Olive Garden schooling” an interesting concept. Are there ways–even in this economy–that independent schools can reduce their costs while still providing a first-rate education? I think there must be.

For one thing, I think many independent schools could cut back on “appearances.” One trivial example comes to mind immediately. From what I can tell, my school spends a considerable amount of money on fresh flowers for ceremonies like the opening of school and graduation, and the school grounds are always impeccably groomed. When the school renovated a building several years ago, beautiful hardwood floors were installed, and the reception area was outfitted with leather sofas and beautiful antique furniture. Of course, this looks very nice, but is it necessary to teaching and learning? I would not suggest we allow independent schools to become barren wastelands, but I wonder if these sorts of expenses don’t do two things at once: first, drive up costs, thus putting such schools out of reach for many families; and second, give such schools an air of elitism, thus making them unattractive for many families.

We also have Nike and Under Armour athletic uniforms. Surely there’s a less expensive option that would either a) reduce the school’s costs or b) allow re-allocation of funds toward classroom purposes. (Let me state clearly that I am not one of those teachers who resents the athletic department. I am an avid sports fan and a coach on top of that, so I believe very strongly in the benefits of high school athletics. But I don’t think that a brand-name jersey makes any difference in what students take away from athletics in the long run, and I’m not convinced it’s the most effective use of the school budget.)

For another, I think that my school has become increasingly “business-oriented.” Although fundraising is obviously crucial in this day and age, our development department is larger than any academic department on campus. Perhaps I’m alone in this, but I worry about the message this sends, and I fret that schools have become too focused on the bottom line. If discretionary costs weren’t so high, might we be able to scale back the fundraising efforts, or has fundraising become a new measure of assessment for independent schools? In other words, are we now fundraising because we think we must? Are we fundraising for fundraising’s sake?

I don’t know if there’s anyone out there who reads this blog yet, but if there is, I welcome your feedback. How do you feel about the concept of “Olive Garden” schools? Are there ways that independent schools can put themselves within reach of a broader cross-section of society without compromising their essential goals?

Welcome to Indie Teacher

I teach history and coach in an independent secondary school in the South, and although I have blogged before, this is my first foray into the education blogosphere. (As I side note, I hereby resolve to steadfastly avoid the word “blogosphere” henceforth.)

I envision this blog primarily as a place where I can a) reflect on history, on teaching, and on independent school education; and b) connect with other educators, thus informally advancing my own professional development.

I first considered starting this blog over the summer, while reading Parker J. Palmer’s The Courage to Teach. Palmer’s book had been assigned as “Faculty Summer Reading” by my school’s administration, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that although I didn’t necessarily agree with everything I read, it was full of ideas worth engaging. During our faculty orientation discussions, I realized just how much I’d missed the unfettered exchange of ideas that I enjoyed during college and graduate school. Too often, I think, this sort of communication is limited by institutional power dynamics, by the compartmentalized nature of secondary education, and (perhaps most often) by the sheer exhaustion that we teachers struggle with on a daily basis.

For me, this orientation discussion was refreshing. This sort of thing happens occasionally in passing conversations with colleagues, but there is rarely–at my school at least–any sustained dialogue about what it means to teach, why we do it, or how we can get better at it, especially while maintaining our collective sanity. (This is to say nothing of serious intellectual conversations about our respective disciplines.) Although I hope that I can help to change the “local culture” where I work, I also hope that this blog can become a place where teachers can swap their own ideas about such topics.

So, now that you know a bit about me and why I started this blog, you may be asking: why is it called Indie Teacher? Well, I can assure you it’s not because I’m always up-to-date on the indie rock scene. In fact, I tend to dismiss guys with asymmetrical hair and skinny jeans, regardless of what their music may sound like. (Yes, in fact, I do realize what I’m missing. I just don’t care that much.) Rather, I chose the name because I teach in independent schools and I tend to have a bit of an independent streak. I cherish the autonomy I’m given in the classroom, although sometimes I wonder if I’m a little too independent even for an independent school. More on this later.