Great Motherly Advice

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those who are perishing. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice."

-Proverbs 31: 8-9--

(From King Lemuel's mother)

What Makes an Effective Teacher?

All of the sudden, talk of education reform is everywhere. From the "Waiting for Superman" film to articles in the September 20 issue of Time Magazine to NBC's Education Nation summit in NYC this week, suddenly the media is buzzing about education. I've been following the conversations in mainstream media and watched all of the programming on MSNBC this weekend, from "Meet the Press" on Sunday to the Teacher Town Hall Sunday afternoon to the "Waiting for Superman" panel last night to President Obama's speech on education this morning on the Today show. Frustratingly, it seems many of these panels and discussion forums keep inviting the same people (Geoffery Canada, Michelle Rhee, Randi Weingarten, Davis Guggenheim) to talk about education and I'm starting to see the media focusing in and perhaps steering the national conversation to focus on two or three themes, the main one which is that much of the problem with the education system lies with ineffective teachers, the tenure system, and unions blocking district's attempts to reform their systems for evaluating teachers and removing them if necessary.

First of all, I have been in education for five years and I had never heard of teacher tenure. I had to do a little research to find out that in the state of Texas, we don't really have tenure and union contracts as teachers in other states do. From my understanding, the Texas Education Code allows for districts to offer three kinds of contracts: continuing (the closest thing to tenure that Texas has), term, and probationary. Only a few districts offer the continuing contract; most offer only term and probationary contracts, with term contracts usually being 1 or 2 years. However, I still commonly see teachers that I would consider to be poor teachers have their contracts renewed term after term and I'm not sure if membership in a union plays a role in that or not. I personally am not in a union so I am limited in my knowledge on what kind of protection union membership provides, but I just haven't observed the unions playing as big of a role here in Dallas or Texas in general as the film and the national conversation seems to imply. BUT with that said, I am wondering then what is holding adminstrators here in Dallas back from being more forward in evaluating and removing ineffective teachers from classrooms...because they do exist and I see them all the time.

The union's side in all of this is that they feel that instead of demonizing and scapegoating teachers there needs to be more support and more tools for teachers. According to them, there needs to be more support in developing and growing good teachers through professional development and training. While I agree that there needs to be better preparation BEFORE entering the classroom, I personally think that there is a ton of wonderful resources and professional development opportunities available for teachers already in the classroom. In Texas, education service centers such as Region 10 in our area provide all kinds of free trainings, workshops, and seminars that are really, really good! Most large districts provide all kinds of professional development, technology training, instructional coaches, etc. etc. etc. Then there is an endless array of online learning opportunities and resources, lots of which is free to educators. Technology has opened the door to just an amazing selection of free resources to really enhance instruction in the classroom. What I see is not enough teachers taking these opportunities seriously and not enough teachers being open-minded enough to embrace new ideas and approaches to instruction. Yes, I have been to plenty of pointless trainings, but I have also been to really some great ones. And usually, good or bad, there is always something to take away. It's all in the attitude of the teacher. Teachers who constantly self-reflect, constantly want to improve, constantly want to adapt and innovate to achieve even greater results, are eager to take part in any kind of learning opportunity. Mediocre teachers who are comfortable with mediocrity see professional development as a waste of time and just something else to do and these are the ones you see on their cell phones throughout the entire workshop. I'm not really going to say that we need to pour more resources into better teacher professional development until we start taking full advantage of what is already out there. I truly believe that teachers in this district have the learning resources and development opportunities available to improve their instructional practices if they really wanted to. So I'm not fully buying what Randi Weingarten is arguing on that point.

However, I do agree that there needs to be better feedback and better evaluation tools for teachers. When I was in the classroom, it was RARE that an administrator came in to observe (maybe only once or twice out of 180 school days) and one of those times was for the annual evaluation report. The feedback I received as a first and second year teacher was almost non-existent. Even as a librarian, I receive almost no feedback from anyone on what kind of job I'm doing. I think teachers would better know which professional development opportunities to pursue if they had more feedback on what they needed to work on....constructive feedback on a regular basis. That is why I'm glad that part of this debate is focusing on teacher evaluation tools....but I'm still not sure how I feel about teacher evaluation being linked directly to student standardized test scores. Perhaps that should be a small part, but certainly not the weightiest part of a teacher's effectiveness rating. I feel that would place even more undue focus on the test and even lead to more unethical practices on the part of teachers who are feeling pressured to achieve a certain test score percentage in order to receive a paycheck or even keep a job. Therefore, while I'm a strong proponent of re-vamping how teachers are evaluated, I'm not necessarily a proponent of the merit-based pay system. I just think there is too much focus on these stupid tests anyway and that student achievement needs to be measured in other ways beyond a test score, just like teacher effectiveness needs to be meausured beyone test scores. High-stakes testing coupled with bad teachers are two of the most fatal ingredients in our failing system, in my opinion.

So how do you know if a teacher is effective beyond test scores? That's what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to find out through a huge research study being conducted right now called Measures of Effective Teaching Project (MET). Our district is actually participating in this project and I am the school project coordinator for this campus. Last year I was pretty frustrated with all the extra work that came with participating in this study. There are ten teachers in this school that I had to video four times, plus administrer extra surveys, tests, etc etc etc. There is more to it that I won't go into. I wasn't particularly happy about my new assignment. But now as I've begun to listen more closely to what is being discussed on the national scene, I'm actually glad to be a part of this research, which is taking place in five major school districts across the country and collecting over 70,000 hours of classroom teaching on video. The goal of the study is to identify effective teaching practices that can be used to develop evaluation tools and even to help re-shape teacher preparation programs. I hope they can come up with standards and tools that measure all aspects of a good teacher beyond just once-a-year test scores.

The tricky thing is that so much of what makes a good teacher cannot be measured. Like I said in my previous post, so much of it is passion. So much of it is what your attitude and philosophy towards the kids is. So much of it is the relationships and rapport that you develop with the kids. So much of it is a person's creativity in overcoming the obstacles and challenges that their kids bring to to the table. So much of it is just pure content knowledge and academic expertise. So much of it is the teacher's desire to just personally and professionally grow and improve. So much of it is a gift of being able to talk to and relate to kids in relevant ways. So much of it is selflessness. How do you measure those things? How do you put a value on those characteristics?

The most important thing that is coming out of this discussion is a focus on "other people's children." When evaluating a teacher or a school, we all need to ask, "Is this what I would want for my child?" We have got to start wanting for all children the things that we would want for our own children. It may still be fuzzy how to define an effective teacher, but we all know one when we see one before we ever see his or her test scores. We all know when we see a teacher that we would trust our own child with. We've got to work toward making sure our own children would be okay going to any school in Dallas or in Texas or in America. We've got to work towards figuring out how to get those kinds of people, not just those kinds of test scores, in every single classroom.

More to come....just taking a break for now!!

The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

A few weeks ago I heard of an upcoming documentary that is being released today called "Waiting for Superman" that examines the crisis of public education in America today. In fact, Central Dallas Ministries is going to host a screening of this movie on Oct.7 and I am eagerly waiting to see it. However, before it's even been released, this documentary is already stirring up a lot of conversation and heated debate, especially after it was discussed on the Oprah show on Monday. Many educators are outraged because they feel that both the documentary and the Oprah show make teachers and teacher unions the scapegoats for a broken educational system. The documentary also apparently highlights the success of several charter schools as it tells the story of five desperate families trying to get their kids into these select schools through the random draw of a lottery. Some have taken offense to the idea that charter schools are the answer as opposed to failing public schools. Apparently this episode really fired a lot of teachers up and I have become fascinated this week in reading and examining all sides of this very complex issue. I find myself reacting very strongly as well. This has long been a critical issue in my mind. I heard someone say that inequitable education in America is the civil rights issue of our time and I completely support that statement. Therefore, this conversation is one that I will be following closely in the days and weeks to come.

However, while most teachers are outraged at the questions being raised by this documentary...questions that seem to focus on whether teachers are doing their job or not...I personally couldn't agree more. I have long said that I truly believe one of the most critical issues with our struggling educational system are the quality of teachers and administrators leading the schools. In fact, I've blogged about this very topic before. I am not offended when the implication is made that maybe the problem lies largely with ineffective teachers. Yes, there are lots of wonderful public school teachers out there and no one is trying to take away from the important and sacrificial contributions they make every day. But I think it is important to acknowledge that there are thousands of teachers who are in the wrong profession. There are thousands of teachers who are academically incompetent, who don't believe all kids can learn, who set low expectations for kids, who are unprofessional in their ethical decisions, and who are unwilling to commit the time it takes to reach kids who are coming from extremely difficult circumstances. I can't tell you how many times a day I hear teachers complaining about the lack of parental support and involvement, about administrative decisions, about lack of resources, lack of time, about how bad the kids are, etc. etc. etc. But I never hear teachers acknowledge that there may be some deficiencies in their own abilities, approaches, and attitudes as teachers.

Yes, it is a problem that often our kids don't come to us with the level of parental support and involvement that we would like to see. As a teacher, I was as frustrated as the next teacher when I couldn't get the parental support I so desperately needed. Yes, it is a serious problem that the kids come to us and haven't been raised to show the kind of respect for adults that we were raised with. Yes, it is a serious problem that kids come to us from homes and parents that have very little value for education at times. All of that is extremely discouraging and frustrating as we try to do our jobs every day. But to me, the bottom line is that we have a job to do. No one ever said this job would be even remotely easy. But the kids in front of us every day had no control over where they came from, who their parents are, and how involved their parents choose to be. But they deserve an education just as much as Joe in the suburbs whose parents enrolled him in private school at age 3 and read to him every night an hour before bed. They deserve that education whether they realize they need or want it or not. They deserve to be able to choose their fate when they reach adulthood. Our apathetic and failing schools are choosing the fate of too many for them.

Teachers say it's not fair that they can't just teach anymore. They say it's not fair that they're expected to play parent, teacher, social worker, counselor, law enforcement all at once. Teachers say it's not fair that so much is asked of them that they have to work 11-12 hour work days and still pay for supplies out of their own pockets. Teachers say it's not fair that they are blamed when a student fails. And they're right...it's not fair. But it's reality. This is the nature of the business we are in right now. We cannot change how parents are raising their children or the influences that kids come to us with. There is nothing we can change but what we do in our classrooms for those 8 hours a day that the students are with us. But too many teachers refuse to see past all the other frustrations to see what they can do to work around those tough obstacles. They throw up their hands and look the other way when they see difficult students slip through the cracks....I know, because I've done it. And no one....NO ONE...ever held me accountable for it. Not a parent, not an administrator...no one.

Teaching is too easy of a career to get into to be such an important work. People can decide on a whim they want to teach and two months later be in a classroom. Teaching is not a valued and respected enough profession. Therefore, we get way too many people in classrooms who really don't know much about the subject they're teaching, have no background in any kind of pedagogical theory and practice, and are really just counting the days until their summer break....the reason they decided to go into teaching in the first place. I am just appalled at what I see from my colleagues daily. I am appalled at the lack of expectations not just for the students, but for ourselves. I am sorry. America deserves to be outraged at teachers, because in all harsh honesty, there ARE a lot of sorry ones.

Teachers defend themselves, citing the long hours they work and all that is asked of them. And granted, it is A LOT. Teachers are asked to be almost superhuman at times. But again, you know this going in. You have to have an innate belief in the importance of quality education for all, you have to have an innate love for and belief in the capacity of all children to learn, and you have to have a passion for what you teach. If you don't have those things, you can work 23 hours a day and not be effective. If you have those innate values driving you, you will have the stamina and the selflessness that is MANDATORY for this profession! Teaching is not for the selfish, bottom line.

We can stand around and point fingers at parents and school boards and superintendents and rappers and everyone else all day, or we can point that finger back at ourselves and say....I have a job to do. This child needs to learn and what am I going to do to make sure that happens? True, there are some kids that even the best teachers can't reach. But another good teacher down the hall might connect in a different way and be able to motivate them. If a school is filled with quality teachers, more than likely almost all the kids at some point are going to be reached by someone. More importantly, all too often there are kids with gold mines of potential, that do have the support of parents at home, that are overlooked while teachers are so busy complaining about all the "bad kids" they have to deal with. There are LOTS of parents out there who do care tremendously about their kids and their kids' education...but just don't quite know what to do. Don't get so caught up in frustration at some parents' lack of support that you overlook the ones who do care.

I wasn't a great teacher. I wasn't the type of teacher I speak of above. But what bothers me is that no one ever called me out for not being better. No one expected me to be better. I was good enough...at least I was allowed to believe that. But really, I wasn't. And although I can admit that, there are too many teachers who can't.

The reason I feel that this is the civil rights issue of our time is because schools are more segregated than they were before 1954, according to lots of national statistics. Schools are starkly segregated along lines of race and socioeconomic status and the achievement gap is astounding. Lack of teacher quality is most noticeable in the schools in the poorest areas. Lack of technology and resources is most prevalent in the areas that need them the most. Things are tolerated in urban schools in low-income areas that would never be accepted in wealthier, more well-supported schools. And who suffers are the children who had no control over where they were born and what school is down the street from their house. Being born poor equals a poor education and that should not be true in a country with the ideals that America touts around the world. If parents don't advocate for their children, children still deserve to be advocated for. If parents don't choose to make education a priority, children still deserve to get one. And for the low-income parents who do want to make education a priority, they deserve to have a good school available to them.

There is so much more to say, and believe me, I will have more to say. This is such an amazingly intricate and complex problem. The answers are so difficult to find. The blame does not lie all in one place. But somehow, we have got to start peeling these layers away and finding solutions. I hope that "Waiting for Superman" can stir up the conversations that will make those solutions possible. I look forward to the reactions and commentary to come.

PaPa

My twin brother Brandon and I have a very unusual background. When we were born, we had all four sets of our great-grandparents and all four of our grandparents still living. Most of them lived within 25 miles of us, so we had the opportunity to get to know all of them and remember all of them (except our Great-Grandma Embry who died when we were 2 so we don't remember her). We even had two great-great grandma's alive when we were born! We had the opportunity to make a lot of wonderful memories with all of these great-grandparents and grandparents. I know I still remember going to see Grandpa Embry in Muleshoe and getting lemon drop candy at his house and going to Grandma and Grandpa Ike's house and drinking Dr. Peppers and playing with all their souvenirs in the back room. I remember spending the night at Memaw and G-Daddy's house and Memaw teaching me to play the keyboard and the organ. I remember going to DeLeon to visit Grandmother and Granddaddy McKillip and getting hugs from her that squeezed the air out of you. One by one, our great-grandparents passed on and most of them were gone by the time I turned 20...which is still a really long time to have had your great-grands! I still miss each of them.

But even more special to my heart are the memories we have of the many, many, many days and nights we spent at our grandparents' homes...MaMa and PaPa and Nana and Papaw. The older I get the more I appreciate the blessing of having such wonderful, loving, and supportive grandparents play such a big part in my life. The countless hours spent with them make up a large part of the fabric of my childhood. Of course, having them so close and playing such an enormous role in my life has made it even harder to lose one of them.

Last weekend, our PaPa passed away at 88 years old. Although we've known for many years that this day was inevitable, it did not make me any more prepared or any more ready for it to come. Everyone who knows PaPa knows that he has suffered for the majority of his life from a rare disease that made him crippled and he has been in more pain and discomfort than we ever really knew or understood. We all knew that it was harder and harder for him to function and that the quality of his life was rapidly deteriorating. We knew that it was getting harder and harder for Eldon and MaMa to take care of him and we knew that the nursing home would totally destroy his spirit. So while our heads and our hearts know that it is wonderful for him to have finally passed into peace and pain-free rest after so many years of struggle, it is still hard been hard to accept that life as I know it will never be quite the same again.

I was so glad that most of the family was able to be together Labor Day weekend, only 5 days before PaPa passed away. All week I have been thinking of the last conversation I had with him as he sat in his chair and of seeing him at church last Sunday night. Then when I traveled back to Farwell only a few days later and walked into the house and saw his empty chair, a million memories of the past 30 years began to flood my mind. They've been running through my mind ever since. I think about playing tea party when I was about four with him in their living room or sitting his lap while he read book after book to us. I think about shelling peas or snapping beans every summer in the garage. I think about him sitting in the pickup while I hoed Eldon's cotton and keeping me company on my breaks. I think about washing dishes with him after every meal while he told me stories about washing dishes in the Army. I think about him coming into the bedroom when we were spending the night and telling us stories about Sambo and reciting some of his many funny rhymes and sayings. I think about eating cake and homemade ice cream with him on every birthday or about rubbing his "gourd" (as he called it) with his hair that was "fine as frog's hair." I think about helping MaMa put his socks on and him joking about his ugly toes. I think about seeing him at church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night and about helping him get his crutches in the car or playing on his crutches while he was sitting down somewhere. I remember going to lots of parades with him and MaMa and how he never met a stranger. I remember him telling the same stories over and over but still laughing because he got so tickled every time like it was the first time he told it. I think about him shuffling around the yard moving the water hose or scratching up weeds. I remember sitting around the kitchen table drinking soda pop with him in the afternoon. I think about him dozing off in his chair with his mouth wide open and snoring loudly with his Bible in his lap. (One time we even dropped some little pieces of paper towel in his mouth just to see what he would do...that was mean of us, huh!) I think about watching Jeopardy with him in the early evenings or the weather before bed. Once I left home, I remember getting lots of letters written in his beautiful pensmanship telling me all about the crops and dr's appointments and other news...always signed "See you in the funny papers" or "crippled Annie." PaPa was always making jokes and laughing about old stories. He would say things like "See you down the road if it ain't uphill" or "My name's Embry, I guess you know yours" or "I'm fair to middlin'" or "its hotter than a two dollar pistol on Saturday night." He always told all his granddaughters, "You're just the bestest ole grandgirl a PaPa could ever have!" or "I like Rachie better than Rachie likes PaPa!".

People always think of PaPa as friendly, upbeat, and full of good humor. Lots of people in the church and community were so impressed because they never heard him complain or say a negative word despite the things he went through. I also think of PaPa as being very gentle and patient and kind-hearted. I don't think I ever heard him raise his voice or get upset or even slightly angry about anything. He was always so glad to see people and especially his grandkids. He just made us feel like we really hung the moon.

I know that its selfish to want these kinds of memories to go on forever, but the human side of me does. For my entire life, every time I went home to Farwell or went to MaMa and PaPa's house, everything was EXACTLY the same. There was so much comfort in that familiarity to me. I always dreaded the day when I would go back and it wasn't the same any more. And now it's not. It will never be the same. Already I just miss PaPa so much. I miss that I will never see him asleep in his chair again or hear him laugh and joke or tell another war story ever again. I miss that I will never get another letter or hear him tell me how "purdy" I am today. There is just so much I am going to miss and it has been harder than I ever thought it would be.

But more than anything I am just so thankful we had him all these years and I am so thankful for all these memories and more. I am thankful for everything I learned from him and for everything he meant to our family. I'm just thankful that PaPa was PaPa and that I got to be his granddaughter. I'm the luckiest grandgirl in the world and I KNOW that I like PaPa better'n he likes me!!

Progress!!!

So...last week was the first week kids came into the library to check out books. And for the first time ever during "opening week" of the library, I did not check out ONE SINGLE Junie B. Jones book!!!! And only a handful of "Goosebumps" books!!! Yessss!!!!! Slowly but surely the kids are starting to realize there are other books out there in the world!! I feel like this is marked progress during my tenure as librarian here!!

A little background on why this is such a great feat here...when I first became the librarian, the majority of the kids would always make a beeline to the shelf containing Junie B. Jones or R.L. Stine books. Now these books are really more of a 2nd or 3rd grade level, really not advanced enough for middle school. Apparently, the kids had been introduced to these in elementary school and their loyalty ran deep. I used to get so frustrated that I could not convince an 8th grade girl that there might be something she could relate to and enjoy a little more than Junie B. for her book report. But as I have slowly brought more relevant books into the collection and forced them into the kids hands, I see the interest in other genres increasing, much to my relief!

Here's to another Junie B free week at Pearl C.!! Let's leave her in 2nd grade where she belongs!