Name changed to...

"I Hella Heart Oakland".

Because I do.  It's silly, but I realized this when I saw a Nor-Cal sticker and really wanted one. I think this means my heart is now approaching an even split between Austin and Oakland... never saw that one coming. I mean, I do hella heart Austin, Texas!

Now I just need some swag. 

Memo: Classroom/School Policies and Procedures, Professional Conduct

Last week, I had an upsetting interaction with one of my assistant principals over the discipline of a student. Basics:

1. I suspended a student from class, some one lost the paperwork, so my classroom authority was undermined by the AP 4 times in one class period.

2. The AP called me into a meeting and berated me while I sat there and took it.

3. The AP sent a follow-up memo (CCed to the 3 other principals) which informs me that I need to have an effective classroom management system and must behave professionally. Nevermind the fact that she yelled at me or that my classroom is better managed and my students are more engaged than most other rooms at my school...

My head principal requested that I document everything that occurred for their records. I'm copying it all here, minus full names.

*************************************************************************************

Re: Interactions with Ms. S, February 5 – 11, 2009

Date: February 19, 2009

Background/Suspension Situation:

[Student 1] had been repeatedly disrupting my 5^th period class for many days in a row. She had been tracking the behavior and call-outs herself for 3 days and had a complete understanding of why she was being suspended.  I met with her after class every day during the week of February 1, and by Thursday decided to suspend her from class for 1 day (Friday 2/6/2009), as is my contractual right. She was given her work on Thursday, parent was called, but phone number was disconnected.  As a side note, [student 1] has behaved incredibly well since her 1-day class suspension. I take referrals and class suspensions very seriously, and my record will show that I do not frequently remove students from class, unless the situation is very severe or the behavior has not changed after multiple student conferences, and parent phone calls (or attempts).

On Thursday afternoon, I filled out the teacher suspension forms in the front office and placed them into one of the AP boxes. I am not sure which, but in hindsight, it was probably Mr. G’s. [Front office secretary] told me to just put it in either one, since no one knows who will take care of the student the next day. On the few occasions I have done this in the past, the administrators have been very casual about the process – usually just telling me to stick the form in their box without being too concerned about it.  

I then proceeded to the AP office area, in order to give one of them the courtesy of knowing that I had placed that form in their box. Ms. S’s door was open, but she looked busy, so I just mentioned to her in passing that I had put the form in one of their boxes. I was not asking for a reply or a conference, it was simply a quick casual comment so she would know what was going on.  Instead of just saying “OK” and returning to work, Ms. S reprimanded me. The entire interaction was about 8-10 seconds.  In her memo, she indicated that I was “yelling” at her, which was absolutely not the case.

On Friday, [student 1] knew that she should go to the office and did. About 5 minutes into SSR, she returns to class with a security guard, who says that [student 1] is returning to class. I did not understand what happened in the office or why she was in my class, so I sent her back. She was returned a few minutes later, and I wrote a short referral that simply said “[student 1] is suspended from class,” and sent her back. Next, I receive a phone call from Ms. S about the form. At this point, I am unhappy that my class has been disrupted 3 times, and each time, the students are seeing my authority undermined. Many of them are giggling and SSR [sustained silent reading] is beginning to break down (whereas it is usually completely quiet with 95% of students actually reading every day).  SSR is nearly over, and I now have to write the details for her suspension again – approximately one paragraph. I also wrote a note to Ms. S about the situation, re-stating that I filled it out and put in one of the boxes. Since class was starting, I had to write both very quickly – I do not have them to reference at the time of this memo.

Follow-up Conference:

On Wednesday, February 11, I was summoned into Ms. S’s office about the situation. I sat down without saying anything and waited for Ms. S to begin. She had my note in her hand, and started to aggressively lecture me about the situation, without asking me about my reasons for the note or suspension, or being willing to engage in a problem-solving approach to the situation.  The first point she spoke about was the first line in my note, where I mention placing [student 1]’s “suspension form” into an AP box. She started going on about how she doesn’t know which type of suspension form I was talking about in the note – since I don’t have the power to suspend students from school. At that point, I interjected to clarify, because I didn’t understand why it was unclear to her that I was referring to a teacher-initiated suspension.  I have no authority to suspend students from school, no access to the forms, and have never even seen one.  I tried to clarify that my note could only have meant the teacher-initiated suspension form, and logically not any other, but was cut off.

After about 1-2 minutes of her lecturing me, I calmly asked “Ms. S, do you mind if I interrupt you?” She said OK. I don’t remember my exact words, but I requested that we conduct the meeting in a way that gave her and I a chance to talk about our feelings around the situation and to come to a consensus or new way to handling something like this in the future. She refused my request and continued to lecture me in a condescending manner.

While she lectured me, her tone was unfriendly at best. The entire time, I sat quietly and responded neutrally with the words “I understand”. After about 5 minutes, I was feeling very belittled and like the conversation was going nowhere constructive.  I quietly said that I was beginning to feel anxious and angry because of how I was being spoken to and that I needed to discontinue the conversation before it became unprofessional on my part. At this point, I had said nothing else in the entire meeting other than what I have documented here.

I stood up to leave, and Ms. S followed me out, all the while continuing to berate me and saying that I “can’t tell her how to run the meeting”. I responded that I was not telling her how to do anything, only that I had once requested that we do it in a way that would be productive for both of us. At this point, my voice has remained very calm and professional.  I am beginning to have tears in my eyes because of the way I was being treated. Ms. S’s voice has gotten progressively more discourteous during the entire exchange.

She then marches me over to Ms. C’s office and closed the door behind her, leaving me standing in the outer office area. After a few minutes, Ms. C called me in to meet with her alone. During this meeting, she asked me to explain my side of the story, then professionally told me another way that we could handle the class suspension in the future. I was very pleased with how Ms. C handled the conversation.

Post-Conference Reactions:

I understand that the office may have been busy that Friday. However, I am sure that I completed the forms and followed all proper disciplinary procedures before suspending the child from my class. As a matter of professional courtesy, I will acknowledge that there is a very small chance that I was the one who lost the form. However, it is equally likely that someone else did, and I would have appreciated that acknowledgement during the ordeal. We all receive a lot of paper, and it could have been anyone.  

I found the exchange to be very upsetting. Two of my students and [front office secretary] saw me in the office, clearly in a state of calm distress. Ms. S’s handling of the original situation and her tone with me made me feel like an undervalued colleague.  The extent to which she spoke harshly made me very anxious, and felt unfair and unprofessional. That is why I thought it best to leave the situation before I caused it to escalate. 

Reactions to Ms. S’s Memo – 2/19/2009

“You are responsible for developing and implementing an effective classroom management plan.”

Most visitors to my classroom this year agree that the management and student engagement in my class is at or above par, at least in comparison to my peers at [our school].  I take referrals of my own students very seriously and do absolutely everything I can to ensure that they do not miss class unless there is no other alternative.  I conference with students after class on a daily basis; in the case of [student 1] and [student 2], I have conferenced with each of them at least a dozen times this semester.  Their parents are very difficult to get on the phone. I am not up-to-date with my parent and student conference log, due to the fact that I am still only a second-year teacher and have a large number of things to balance in order to be an effective instructor for all of my students. Unfortunately, paperwork tends to fall to the wayside in lieu of more pressing objectives.

“C. Counselor Referral”

I am not aware of any procedure that is regularly followed by teachers involving a counselor referral. I am happy to do so if given more information, as I truly believe that counseling is much more effective than discipline in rectifying student behavior.

I do not know how many referrals I have written this year, only that I am sure it is significantly less than last year.  [student 1] and [student 2] have been much better behaved since their respective referrals. Both girls have not only behaved well, but have also been completing more work and actively participating in class. This is also critical to the success of my 5^th period class – when those two girls are on task, the rest of the class is as well. The class also sees me effectively following through on behavior issues with them, which keeps all of the students on track.

P. 2, second paragraph: “whenever I have spoken to you, I have given you the courtesy of respect…you interrupted me repeatedly, were insistent on how I conduct the meeting…”

All three statements are untrue, as evidenced by the information above.

“Board Policy states that we are to refrain from “discourteous, offensive, or abusive conduct or language…”

All of my comments are detailed above, so I am stating for the record that there was nothing discourteous, offensive or abusive about my language or comportment. However, the entire manner in which Ms. S addressed me during the meeting falls into the realm of “discourteous, offensive, or abusive.” As stated above, she spoke almost constantly and brought me to the point of tears.

Related Outcomes:

As a result of this situation, I am formally requesting that Ms. S be removed as my evaluator. I understand that this may not be possible, but if it is, I would greatly appreciate the change, as I am unsure that she can provide an objective evaluation. 

Texas Top 10% Law

Current UT President Bill Powers sends periodic updates about issues important to the UT community. Today's update was partly about the Texas Top 10% Law. For those not familiar, it means that any student who graduates in Texas in the top 10% of their high school class, is guaranteed admission to the University of Texas at Austin or any other public state school. 

UT apparently did a report about the situation that illustrates the dire circumstances we are in. Essentially, if the legislature doesn't act now to change the law, no one other than Texas Top 10% graduates need apply.  It even goes on to say that within a few years, if trends continue, UT will no longer have room for even all the Top 10% grads.

When I started school in 2003, I was a non-top 10% grad, and was actually forced to attend summer school in order to secure my place in the freshman class. In 2003, 71% of my class were top 10% grads. In 2008, that number has jumped to 81%, likely due in part to the economic situation facing many families these days. In 1997, when the law went into effect, only 37% of the class was selected this way. Therein lies the problem.

Don't get me wrong - Top 10% students are most definitley not bad people :) In fact, most of my best friends were all members of that cohort. However, pretty much everyone agrees (I think) that it's getting out of control. 

President Powers says that UT is not in favor of repealing the law altogether, which sounds a little too political to me.  I'm much more in favor of repeal, but here are some other options:

1. Offer all Top 10% grads admission to the UT System automatically... but not necessarily UT-Austin. We have 8 other undergraduate campuses, many of which have specialities and could really use an infusion of high-quality students to round out the system. If our system is ever going to have a chance at competing with the UC system, every single one of our campuses needs to be developed, not just the flagship. And that development starts with recruiting and attracting top students.

2. Cap the admissions at 50 or 60%, in order to leave room for enough holistic applicants. I don't like this idea as much, but at least it does something.

If you have any thoughts or personal stories around this topic, please share!

Google!

Today was field trip to Google day! It was pretty f-ing sweet. And we all got free shirts :)

So, I tend to come up with lots of bright ideas that are very hard to execute. Today was one of those days.

I've already been tossing around and ironing out ideas for how to begin the process of digitizing education records. By that, I mean EVERYTHING: contact information, behavior records, test scores, grades, attendance, etc... all the stuff that is already collected on billions of little pieces of paper all over the place, hard to access, and often missing.

So at Google today, I was thinking. Why not get Google to hire me in 3 years (post-MBA, probably) to make this happen? I figure they probably have the best built-in infrastructre to actually start this kind of thing, maybe by piloting with a Bay Area school district. I can come up with a pretty good project proposal by then...

THEN I was thinking, what if someone is already doing this somewhere? So here's my question to the world:

Do you know anyone that is working on a large-scale project to digitize education records? If so, email me! Or just leave a comment! Thanks!

Ding Ding!

US News and World report wrote a recent article that succintly sums up TFA's current impact and the responding vitriol from many of those in the education world. 

And I'm working on that mini-thesis... sadly, free time is not my friend these days :(

2009-2010

This is on my other blog, Occasionally Careless, as well.

Eighteen months ago, I would have been the very last person to say that I would teach a 3rd year. Hell, even 6 months ago. However, my mind has been changed.

First of all, I didn't get into Stanford. I'm not broken up over it because there's always next year. In order to strengthen my application, I will do the following:

1. Complete calculus and accounting, hopefully with As (started last week).

2. Engage in a summer job that will give me supervisory and/or more management experience - maybe TFA institute, but maybe something else.

3. Retake the GMAT. My score was competitive this year, but can always get better.

4. Create and perform more professional development sessions for new teachers in the areas of management, student achievement/tracking, and instructional practice. 

5. Get my recommenders to actually submit their forms on time, instead of 2 months late...

I'm actually pretty excited about the third year for a few reasons:

1. I've done so much work to create quality lessons, assessments, and tracking tools, that next year will be a lot less work, leaving me more time to focus on higher-level teaching strategy. 

2. I get to teach a math enrichment class for advanced students, which will be an absolute joy. I will be working with them to solve complex puzzle and to master key 7th grade math concepts, so they can start algebra in 7th grade. This was an idea I had last year, that might actually be made into reality before I go!

3. Another 6th grade math/science teacher and I are currently working on making our core classes single-sex next year. Sixth grade is a great age for homogenous sex groupings because they are just starting to grow up. My class already has single-sex groups, and it's working far better than when I combined them last year.  Science is also great for separation, because girls will be far more inclined to engage with the material without boys around. Mr. S is also a very strong figure around the boys and will have a great impact on them. 

So that's the deal. Come visit Oakland!

PS: I'm sick, and it sucks. I keep trying to sneeze and it just won't come out!

Coming Soon...

...I will be writing my (hopefully comprehensive) thoughts on how to systematically change our education system. I'm thinking that it will be a 6-part piece on what I would do if given unlimited resources and power to change anything and everything. Some of these thoughts have been drawn from editorials or other sources, which I will cite on the individual post. These are the main points, which will be fleshed out in upcoming posts:

1. Schools of education must focus their teachers on student achievement above all else. The schools of education should be judged on the achievement of the students in their graduate's classrooms. Teachers must be taught how to break down standards into daily objectives that can be assessed and tracked constantly, to inform instructional choices. Teachers must be given the tools to teach students coming from low-income communities.
2. College students of all majors should be encouraged to puruse teacher certification concurrently with their regular major. Teaching should be promoted (not exclusively) as a entry-level career option, pursued by many for 3-5+ years. Comprehensive loan forgiveness programs should be in place for teachers and other public service jobs.
3.  Veteran teachers must be compensated well and given additional (optional) responsibilities, including mentoring, in exchange for lighter class loads. Hybrid teacher-administrator jobs should be created to allow for upward career movement.
4. The current school system is a congolmerate of 15,000 school districts. The overhead and administrative cost for 15,000 districts is enormous. Cut the administration by nationalizing and creating 70 or so sub-regions - one per state (2 for large states), plus one for the 20 largest metropolitan areas. 
5. National Standards for all grade levels in the core areas of reading, writing, math, and science. National standards must be implemented along with national exams that comprehensively and rigorously test the standards - ideally, including free-response questions like AP exams. 
6. All student records should be nationalized and tracked electronically. Student test scores and growth should be tracked by standard, with teachers held accountable for the academic value added to their students. Students should be assigned an ID number (in no way linked to immigration status) that would follow them throughout the American education system, no matter where they move. Cumulative file information will be electronic rather than paper. 
   

I do reserve the right to add points...