What Ronaldo's Foot and Varela's Head Can Teach Us About The A-ha Moment

94:45. In a game with 90 minutes, it's a curious point at which to have your heart broken.

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Max asked me what half they were in at about the 57 minute mark. I told him the 2nd half.  He asked how many halves there were in the game. I asked him how many halves were in a whole. He said four. Let's go through this again. It's a conversation that had started in the fall during the NFL season. Quarters and halves; total minutes; teams switch sides; 60 minutes equals 3 hours. It's not easy for a youngster still trying to understand clocks to work out how the timing of a football game works.

Soccer was supposed to be different in this regard. "If you cut something in half, how many pieces are you going have?"

"Two."

"How many halves are there in a game?"

"Two." Nice. He gets it.

In the 64th minute, Jermaine Jones absolutely destroyed a shot that the Portuguese goalie couldn't see, much less stop. Max looks at me between jumps on the couch, smiling from ear to ear, and yells, "That was a great strike!" He's adorable.

As we gathered ourselves and play resumed, he noticed I was on the edge of my seat. "What's wrong, dad?"

"There's a lot of time left. Portugal is picking up the pace."

"Wait, there's a lot of time left."

"Yeah, buddy. 25 more minutes!"

"Wait, so there ARE three halves." Whoa whoa whoa. I thought we had covered this.

I look at him.  He's bigger than I remember. He walks. He runs. He talks, he writes, he builds his own Lego sets, and he rides his bike. Each of these things happened in one amazing moment that I'm sure we have pictures of, and we've documented in the right way so as to never forget.

But at the same time, none of them happened in one moment. There was training, and there was frustration, and there were changes made to the plan so that the reason we made the plan would come to fruition.

Knowing this - understanding this - made it that much easier to stomach when - at 94:45 in a game that would be blown dead at 95:35 - Cristiano Ronaldo played a beautiful cross that was struck perfectly by a diving Varela into the back of the net, snatching a draw from the jaws of what surely looked to be a loss.  It was not lucky, and it was not all in that moment, for that moment had been practiced for hours on end. The legs, still fresh enough in the stifling heat and humidity, had trained past exhaustion on occasions too numerous to count.

That's how it is with Max's learning. He gets the credit and accolades for those moments in those moments, but it's all the building that led to it that's really responsible for the growth. All the times we fail - those are the times most responsible for the time we succeed.

Walkthroughs: The Imperial March or Walking on Sunshine?

How open are you to people coming into your classroom?

According to the December 2007 Educational Leadership on the ASCD website:
          The idea behind walk-throughs is that firsthand classroom observations can paint a picture to inform

          improvement efforts. These observations typically involve looking at how well teachers are 

          implementing a particular program or set of practices that the district or school has adopted.

The Goal

Ours is a district always looking to improve. We have 3 schools identified by the state as focus schools, so they are subjected to multiple state walkthroughs until they clear that label. To ensure uniformity within our schools, we conduct walkthroughs at all of our schools around the same time as the state walkthroughs are happening. This allows us to remain cognizant of progress through specific lenses in all of our buildings to keep them moving forward.  We focus on effective instruction practices, student engagement, and the appropriateness of grade-level instruction.  There are talented, professional people in the business of improving instruction for students looking at specific content and grade levels to ensure the most informed feedback we can offer.

The Reality

I sat down to have a bite to eat with some of my staff yesterday afternoon, and there were two responses to the coming walkthrough.

          "Excellent! We have planning during that time, so you can't come into our rooms!"

          "It's so scary when they come in. Even when they're not coming to your room, it's still scary."

More succinctly, the walkthroughs are now this:

Image credit: http://kharminspage.com/archive.htm

The teachers see us coming and hope that we decide to keep moving past their room. The anxiety is palpable, but I get it. As a former classroom teacher in the district, I get it. I didn't like the district team walking into my classroom. I saw an array of people with various levels of experience, and nearly all of their collective experiences were not teaching ELA to the high school students I had before me. What could they possibly tell from a 5 minute visit to my class?

As a member of the walkthrough team, I get it. I have conversations every day that amount to the age old, "Teachers aren't teaching." During a recent walkthrough, a team of district administrators referred to allowing teachers to conduct the walkthroughs as a chance to "see what's wrong in the building."

And you know what? Both are right, and both are wrong.

Right and Wrong

So how can they both be right and both be wrong? They're looking at the walkthroughs through the wrong lens. Yes, there are things that are wrong in our buildings, and we as educators need to recognize this and root out the causes of those situations, but we need to understand what's good in order to aspire to get there.

We all need to see the walkthrough as the best way to collaborate our way to better educational experiences for our students. It is critical to create a culture in which a teacher expects to have visitors as well as expects to be a visitor. The UCLA Walkthrough model encourages teachers to be in the classrooms of their colleagues to find things that are positive, and then the walkthrough team debriefs all the wonderful things they saw in front of the rest of the staff. When teachers move around the building in search of good things happening, they find them. They get new ideas to implement. When they have discussions about those good things in front of their colleagues, their colleagues get excited that the good they're doing is being noticed.

When teachers and admin get excited about the good that other people in their building are doing, the culture shifts from one of viewing visitors as dictatorial tyrants seeking any opportunity to force choke someone to one of celebration of teaching and learning.

You may even start to invite visitors in to share the good you're doing.

Or What If Instead of That, Teachers Had Guns,Too?

December 14, 2012 - "B" Day at Orange High School in Orange, NJ. I know it was because my last class left at 12:40, and I had the next two hours to myself. I spent that time in an empty classroom, reading and watching the news unfold. Twitter told me the wrong person had done the things I was reading about. I exchanged text messages with parents of young children as we all tried to come to grips with the event.

I was sure that the modern American would stand up and demand change. Surely, we would step up and say, "That'll do, guns. That'll do."

Since that day, there have been at least 74 school shootings in the United States. Broken out in total school days, that means that approximately every 6 days, we can expect to hear that there has been a shooting on a school campus.

If you're scoring at home, that's more frequently than you can find a Sunday edition of your local newspaper.

Nothing changed following the event in Newtown. Actually Georgia passed some pro-gun legislation since Newtown, and the state has the most school shootings of any state since Newtown (10). The gun lobby and our politicians have worked to ensure that there is no change to our perceived Constitutional right to bear arms.

But this is our world. We live in it, and we need to adjust to it or fight to see it changed.

• We need to arm our teachers to protect our students, or we can take the guns out of the hands of the general population which would reduce the access people have to guns.

• We need to post armed guards at the doors to every school building, or we can drastically reduce public access to guns.

• We need to stop declaring our schools "Gun Free School Zones" so that criminals won't see them as easy targets, or we can severely limit the possibility of a person from obtaining a gun.

• We need to dress our students and ourselves in kevlar vests, or we can take away access to guns so that we and our students don't have to worry about being shot at.

• We need to have an open dialogue with our community about what needs to happen to protect our schools from future shootings, or we can take steps previously untaken to be sure that people who don't need to have guns don't have guns.

There's a lot that we, as a society, can do to protect ourselves when this happens again. But remember that guns are designed to kill something, and every time a gun kills something, it means that the gun worked. What if - stay with me - what if we actually got rid of the guns? There wouldn't be a rifle or a shotgun lying around the house looking like the perfect solution to whatever might be ailing someone at the moment. There wouldn't be aisles of guns in Wal-Mart next to the lawn darts and toilet paper. 

What would that society look like? Would there still be bad people? I'm sure. There are bad people now in countries where the population doesn't have guns.  Would people still have mental illness? Would people still commit crimes? Probably. But I bet we wouldn't be reading about a shooting in a school every sixth day. Then we could get to the business of healing with those people with mental illness and addressing the conditions in which people still feel the need to commit crimes.

To live in fear that a king is going to come be a tyrant over us and to use that fear as justification for an amendment open to interpretation is to ignore that King George isn't posing a threat anymore. It's ignorant. And now that we're on this topic of ignorance, anyone who feels like your rifles and your state militias are going to be able to stand against the single largest armed forces in the world is delusional. If the United States military decided to turn against the people, there isn't a state in the Union that could stand against it. 

I want this to be an America that moves forward into this century. I work diligently to ensure that my staff provides classroom experiences for our students that will lead them to be the best 21st century citizens that they can be. This country should offer no less. 

Quite frankly, this country actually continues to offer less. We spend more on our military than the next 8 countries combined and more than triple the country in the 2nd spot (China).  We are leaders of the developed world in two categories when discussing children. Child poverty and school shootings.  We refuse to protect the most vulnerable of us, and if we don't take great strides in directions not previously explored in our still youthful history, our legacy will not be one of improving America. We will be remembered as the generation who tried to protect our students from guns being brought into schools by bringing guns into schools.

Finishing Strong

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The finish line. The pay off. The grand finale. Wrap parties. Graduations. Roll credits. Tying up loose ends. Closure.

There is cause for celebration in the end of all things. No matter the reason for it, there is something to be said for seeing something through to the end. It allows us to know that our work was for purpose. We can move on to the next knowing that the former has ended well.

Schools are constantly in process of moving toward the end of the year. Prom season and memorial day often signal the downward slide toward a summer of opportunity. It is during this brief period of time, at least in the great state of New Jersey, that teachers make the decision of either banging one's head against the wall as they fight nature's magnetic pull of the metallic adolescent attention toward longer days and shorter lists of responsibilities or joining their charges in the march toward a Pied Piper promising bare feet and rolling houses of sweet, frozen temptation.

It is during this time that those of us in education must storm onto those beaches in the minds of students. We must not allow them to look at the end of the school year as the end of learning. It is merely the end of their tenure in that grade. They must see learning as a process that is happening even we're not looking. That comes from their teachers.

So my challenge to teachers is this: Push their thinking. Sure it's the end of the year, and you still have curriculum to get through. It's up to you to get them excited about being there. If you have a great lesson you've been thinking about giving them, do it now! They want to be excited about where they are, not about where they're going because they dread where they are. And that's really the problem. Any student who is telling you the year is over and they're looking forward to summer is really telling you that they're looking forward to not being where they are.

Remember, you can't be engaging until you're engaged. Get excited about what time you have left in this school year. You can excite them. Make yours the class they talk about when it's over.

Why I Stay

Earlier this month, the Huffington Post published another letter from an educator who was just too tired of it all to stay in the classroom another moment. Educators know what "it all" is. The reform of public education coming from the corporate centers and the government entities under their indirect or in some cases, direct lobbying control. It's Smarter Balance. It's PARCC. It's the efforts of Common Core to create an educational marketplace for publishers. It's Michelle Rhee and Bill Gates. It's Super PACs donating to local school board races. It's taxpayers announcing that they are the bosses of teachers. It's attacks on collective bargaining and the right to due process. Educators know that this is out there. We know that it's out there and it's banging on the door every day trying to get in and beat down our spirit. And in some cases, it's successful.

For instance, at the time of this writing, in the state of New Jersey, teachers have just finished scrambling to make sure that their student growth objective (SGO) data have been compiled and analyzed. These data are being used to help determine just how effective a teacher is. For many teachers, this SGO will be combined with an SGP (student growth percentile) and the observations made by administration and a total proficiency number will generated. The number generated by this effectiveness rating will ultimately be used to determine whether or not a teacher keeps his or her certification. Not just their current job is in jeopardy. Their teaching license is up for grabs.

***

I recently fell in with a collection of educators from across the country. We have conversations in #slowchated that span a full week about issues that confront all aspects of schools. An offshoot of that conversation developed something weird. Or something weird came out of this. Or there was something weird in it. (#weirded is one of those.) A smaller group of educators began to have conversations about improving the experiences of students in the classrooms for which we are responsible. These conversations center on fighting. Not fighting the power. Not fighting the symptoms of any struggles faced by students. We don't talk about what we fight against. We talk about what we fight for. We talk about fighting for students. We talk about ensuring that the 11, 20, 35, 135, or 1200 students that you are responsible for get the best of you. We talk about what makes teaching worthwhile - the students and their futures.

The futures of students are incredibly exciting things. They are the future. That's not hyperbole or symbol or dramatic. Their futures are literally in the future. I think back to when I was in the fourth grade. On picture day, I had lasers in the background. (That's a fact. Call my mom. It's still up in her living room.) I now have a laser in my bag at all times. It's on my presentation clicker remote. That's right. I have my own laser. No big deal. You can have one too. And my fifth grade phone calls to my girlfriend? Made on a rotary phone with it's very own stretchy curly cord. My current calls to my wife? Hold on, my pants pocket is ringing. I'm never away from my phone. (Except for that time you tried to call, Grandma. My phone was charging. Far away.) So what will today's fourth and fifth graders see when they are my age?  I have no idea! And they have no idea! It really might not even exist yet! What an amazing opportunity!

***

So? Fair reader, what does this all mean? What is the point? Educators work in a profession that's pretty easy to define. Because everyone goes to school, everyone feels they have a pretty good grasp of what goes on there. You're a teacher? You work 6-7 hours a day, you have summers off, and you couldn't really hack it in the private sector. After all, "Those who can do..." Educators don't even have to deal with adults. They deal with kids. Kids! How hard can it be to get a group of kids to color in the lines? The economy is down? It really must have to do with those educators with their swanky guaranteed jobs and high end benefits packages.

Teaching is hard. Educating young minds is hard. Students walk into a school building from as many different story lines as one can imagine. They come to us with empty bellies, full bellies, glasses, a need for glasses but none to be found, 2 parents, single parents, same sex marriage parents, dead parents, grandparents, physical limitations, special needs because they're so far behind, and special needs because they're so far ahead. The one thing that they all have in common is that they come to us with hope. The hope that the people they meet in those buildings will lead them to become the best possible person they can be. We owe it to them to live up to that hope.

And that's why I stay. Because the hardships that I face are not more important than the hopes of the young faces that will one day stand where I am. They will need to lead, and they will need to remember that despite the challenges, they cannot waver in the commitment to be there for those who need them most. And maybe, just maybe, when they stand in our places, they will remember how we fought for them in the face of the challenges, and they will have the strength to do the same.

The Darth Vader of Education

@MrLeBrun Empire Strikes Back is on Spike now. Who/what is your Darth Vader of Ed? (Totally geekier over your themed post btw)
— Kate Baker (@KtBkr4) January 5, 2014

"Who/what is your Darth Vader of Ed?"

It was a simple enough question. A couple of geeks just chatting about an analogy that, in the long run, means very little. But it was enough to get me thinking about perceptions, responsibilities, villains, and victims. A one word answer could not suffice. I found that 140 characters couldn't begin to contain my thoughts on this one (a common trend for my loquacious self).

Vader, for those of you who don't know, was the face of evil for 95% of the three Star Wars movies. (Sure sure. I heard they made more, but let's be real - Jar Jar Binks belonged in a Star Wars movie just the way grilled cheese sandwiches should be used as the bun for a cheeseburger. You can, but you shouldn't.) But I digress. Lord Vader was a Jedi gone bad. He was as awesome as you could be, and then went directly in the opposite direction, so it seemed, as far as he could go. Spoiler alert, he ended up being conflicted when faced with putting down a member of the family, so maybe he wasn't all-the-way all the way evil. Then he died as a result of protecting one of his own.

Put that all together and we're left with some compelling ideas of just who, in the American Education system, is the equivalent of Vader. He or she would have to be:

1. A former amazing educator of Jedi-like amazingness who has moved into corporate/reform-y world (that world is the empire trying to exercise its control over the local rebel alliance. After all, the emperor doesn't talk about a peaceful, harmonious universe, comfortable in all its diversity; he insists that once Luke has crossed to dark side, they will "control" the universe.):
          One of the complaints in my PLN about the people who are labeled "big names in the future of education" is that these lists are generally comprised of people who are not really in education. This is difficult to pinpoint amazing educators who went in this direction because amazing educators understand the value of teaching is the rapport you develop with the students in front of you and how that changes from class to class and year to year. I have come across very few amazing educators who went reformy.

2. Nightmarish for those who were trying to be awesome:
          Any non educator making education decisions. (This includes all educators with minimal meaningful classroom experiences who move into Ed Management.)

3. Loyal to someone or something left behind:
          Teachers fit this bill. Generally it's old-guard teachers who are nervous about being replaced by technology, so they cling to the old ways that they know. But young teachers are guilty of this as well. Young teachers often look back at their own education and try to replicate it rather than being confident enough in the power of what they've developed to innovate, take risks, and push students beyond their own memories of what learning was like.

4. Willing to turn back around even at the risk of being destroyed by the side they are now betraying:
          This sounds a lot like Diane Ravitch. She is the nonstop target of ed reformers as a person protecting the status quo and poor teachers who put our students at risk. All this despite her involvement in the development and implementation of NCLB.

So who is Vader? Just as there isn't one answer to what we can do to improve student achievement across the board, there isn't one Vader. Each of us have the power of the force within us. We can choose to harness the energy and work toward a better world for each of the students we meet. If we do not keep this energy positive and find our confidence, Yoda's sage advice finds its way into our classrooms. 

"Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." 

If teachers are fearful, they will begin to feel anger about their vocation, if they feel that anger, they will begin to resent those around them (teachers with better classes, their students for making them feel this way, their bosses for the demands placed on them, and finally -the worst - themselves for allowing their life to get to such a point.) Once they've reached that level of resentment, everyone involved in their lives begins to suffer.

So use the force, and let your students see it in you. This will create the next wave of great thinkers who realize that knowing students as individual people is the best way for us all to continue moving forward.

Remaining Positive

So here we go. Q5: How do you remain positive in a climate of edu-cynicism, edu-ugliness, edu-enemies? #slowchated #LOADEDquestion

— Jodie Morgenson (@morgetron) February 28, 2014

What a question!

So my state has become one of the examples of the war against public employees and teachers in general. Our governor continues to press onward in his quest to reform the educational system and destroy any motivation for young people to enter the field of education. There is a public relations campaign to create a sense of crisis and turmoil in our schools, and those members of the public who know very little about the system believe that those employed within education are receiving bloated salaries and benefits packages and half-year schedules. Internet comment sections scream, "I pay taxes, so I'm your boss!" Education bosses swoop in to make changes based on the publishing company who can offer the best finding fees or future jobs. Federal mandates dictate from afar the way a student must be taught, and standardized tests are designed for failure to prove that schools are not educating students.

It's pretty hard to stay positive. Depending with whom you speak, it's pretty close to impossible. I have spoken to educators all over the state who have a lot of similar things to say. I'll spare any sensitive ears (eyes?) from the words that are often used. It suffices to say, they're not positive.

Connecting with educators on social media has given me the ability to surround myself with the types of people who see beyond the negative aspects against which me must fight to see that there are still students who want and need to be led down educational roads. We discuss the projects we use to make standards mastery possible and engaging. We discuss tools, tips, and tricks that allow us to engage even the most reluctant learners. We look at the reasons reluctant learners are reluctant in order to put together strategies to bring them along with their peers. We celebrate even the smallest victories for our students, and we shout down the negative to prove that we are above it, and our students will not be denied access to the learning because of public perceptions and media spin.

Despite this persistence and commitment, I look at the educators I have known on my journey. I have watched as longevity statistics are proven again and again. Richard M. Ingersoll's research estimates "that between 40% and 50% of new teachers leave within the first five years of entry into teaching." I read the comment threads that follow education articles. I feel the very real strain of taking pay cuts disguised as added contributions (when there's less money coming in than there was, that's a pay cut - at any level of semantic argument). As a supervisor, I see the regulations that are here and the ones that are coming , and I know the challenge of being a teacher is only going to become greater.  The great irony is that the students are rarely the problem. They give us our direction, inspiration, and joy in our work.

But that's why it's so critical to remember the negative as we fight to stay positive. We cannot effectively instruct our students to be amazing critical thinkers and forget to think critically ourselves. We must recognize the wrong in the world and work diligently to right it. So many of the educators in my PLN cite Gandhi and post "Be the change you want to see in the world." And so many then dictate that you must ignore the negative and push forth the positive.  The danger here is that in our positivity, we must be careful not to have our heads buried so far in the sand that we don't recognize what's happening around and to us.

So how do I answer the question? I wrestle. Day in and day out I wrestle. I wonder if Diane Ravitch and others who fight so tirelessly to advocate for education see the positive amid the numerous tweets and blog posts about all the dangerous negatives. I wonder if the positive energy I seek to instill in my teachers is enough to overcome the pressures put on them from outside sources. I wonder exactly which fights are worth fighting and which are just cases of me banging my head against a wall. I do know that there are a lot of great teachers in our system doing a lot of great work. I know that I love working to support my teachers every day. I know that they keep me vibrant and always striving to be better, and I know that I love coming to work because of them. It might not be much, but it's what I've got.

How do you deal with the negativity?