Mitt's Classroom

I have no idea what to write. I am a little bit testy today as I had to sit and listen to NPR in my truck and deal with my political ally, Mitt Romney, pick on other candidates for the GOP nomination. "Mitt, what are you doing?" I asked him. "We should never sling mud at those of our own party, man."
There is absolutely nothing wrong with slinging mud at those who wrestle in filth like those of the Democratic party. But that battle has far from begun. We still need to deal with certain people like Rudy. Nevermind McCain or Thompson. These two are political dopes. One is as old as dirt, the other a flop from Tennessee who does not have a chance in Rome of beating a semi-black or a woman. Not with the power they have.
Yeah, this is education we are talking about here. But I think that Romney knows what is best for schools, a very misunderstood idea with conservatives. Mitt understands that the power of the school lies with the principals and that we need savvy principals who can build within schools a reform of a small scale to bring teachers and district offices together.
This is not to mention the breaking down of the monopoly that teachers unions have on the teacher labor market. I have yet to see what unions do beside give teachers excuses for why their students are unsuccessful. "Oh, my kids are so low!" But nevermind that.
Mitt understands that charter schools are the way to go. Allow schools to exist that are union free and teachers have the responsibility to teach as opposed to get away with the bear minimum that a contractual obligation supports. This kind of nonsense does not create successful schools. Hard work creates successful schools and we need to challenge teachers to work to that level. To compete with schools that might do better with best practice.

Roofies

No, not the upper although I did get high. On the roof. The monday after Thanksgiving was the perfect time to climb on a roof and fix a hole that leaks about a gallon per day. Especially fitting was that the wind was fierce enough to nearly blow me down like a pirate. The rain was cutting holes in me and there was a giant trying to get me for stealing his harp and golden-egg laying goose. Okay so the rain was not cutting me.

In all honesty, I am not a handy man. But I do seem to be becoming one by the day. I am not perfect by any means and I would much rather concern myself with improving my school and teacher accountability than stand in the rain with a hammer in my hand wondering where the nails are. Stupid nails.

My school is seeming bass ackwards. For some reason we are worried about the comfort levels of our teachers and helping everybody work at their own grade level when dealing with scoring writing assessments. Some just want to work with thier friends. Others are worried that having three people in the same room might make their ears hurt and lose concentration. We are talking 900 square feet. There is not going to be an overabundance of noice in that space or even six people in 1800 square feet.

At any rate, do we need to be in grade level? THis is about the future of our school. I know where my kids are and I trust others to score their papers. I want to know where others are and to have rich conversations with others in my school, at other grade levels. THis is just the first of many writing assessments but I really see this as being wrong. If we set the stage for making poor choices now and lack those rich conversations about writing, when will we make the change? I wonder.

I do not know everything. Nor do I want to. But we need to move forward with this. Not get bogged down with details. Suck it up and score some papers. Get to work and stop worrying about if you can hear.

I find difficulty in being the only heterosexual male teacher in my school at times and really find it difficult to relate to women who are needy and have problems with everything.

Mobilizing the Insanity

Have you ever stopped to think about what it all would would like without mobilization. This is a quick check to see if you are really thinking. Of course you have not. Even if you believe in evolution you know that things, no matter what they are, have always moved. Always.
But I am not here to talk about the way things used to be. We are in the here and now, probably not talking about anything any of you care about. I am here to ramble. Kind of like Led Zepplin but without all of the pills and alcohol and certainly without the outer reaches of Tolkien novels. How many of their songs have to do with Hobbits and Elves?
Enough about people who work at Wal-Mart. We are only here to support the big ones baby. Those special little people who sit in the back of the classroom and answer all of the questions. Those malicious white people. Sure, I am one of them but nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody wants to talk about how white some white people are. Just that they exist, all people exist. We are all just as happy as can be because we do not see color, we see the inner beauty of every person here on earth.
Hogwash. You, just about every one of you who reads this knows about Jena. And you are thinking about how everything is just fine and dandy down there because the law will take care of it. If only the whole issue of race were that easy. We are talking 400 years of built up angst between races. No, this goes back 5,000 years or more. But we will just stick with the former number simply because that works well with America. Yeah we had Martin and Malcolm and Rosa say some stuff and ride busses and go on some marches. But that does not take care of 400 years of slavery. That kind of thing does not just go away. There are still plenty of people alive that remember having to drink from a filthy water fountain because there was a water only bad enough for blacks. That stays in a person's blood and carries on to another generation and this goes on and on until people forget. But you see, people only forget experiences if they are mediocre. If the experience was horrible or fantastic they do not forget. When was the last time a black person had a fantastic time with whites? Sure, I bet they occured but if you are not black you tell me when you had a fantastic time with a black.
Do you have that kind of relationship with a member of a different color group? If not I think you may want to look at how you view race. Your own Race.

School for the wierd

Yes, I am a bit of a Hunter Thompson fan and have been for a while. My mind wrapps very nicely around the boxed up humor that he delivers as only a true Gonzo writer can. Do I try to be like him. I really do not. However I do feel that such writing has had a tremendous impact on my way of writing. This fits very nicely in to my sarcastic if not Socratic view of education. I am a teacher, remember. Yet I find there are flaws in the system that I often need to get out but have no way. I often promise myself regular seminars of get it all out now writing but often fall short of my good intentions. Unintentionally.
On Friday my at my school we began the InAction professional development, otherwise known as the green notebook or green binder. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this, we look at the learning process as opposed to what is being taught. It goes beyond just student centered pedagogy. No, this is essentially the Holy Grail of teaching and really helps the teacher prepare the kids for what is being taught, how they are going to show they learned the target, what they can do to get to the next level and what resources the kids can use to be successful.
There is much simplicity involved. Yes this is good for the kids. A little more work for the teachers but well worth the work.
Where I became a little hung up is in the area of what is going on in the minds of other teachers. During a two-minute discussion one teacher told me that she does not believe that all kids can be successful, that there are many kids who just do not have the will or capacity. I told her that there are school with 90 percent..." and she interupted me. "No, no let me finish, there are schools that have 90% minority, 90% free/reduced lunch and 90% of kids meeting the state standard. Regardless of which state one is in, such a statistic is tremendous and blows the socks off of many highly white schools. Many of the results occurred with only time adaptions.
How do we change such like-minded people? My guess is that I do not think we can until the results occur in our own classes. Those of us who believe in the kids within the walls of our own classes need to build upon our belief and find best practices out there in schools and universities. Then we need to study them and put them to work in our own classrooms. Going to see "The Two Sisters" or other big names in the world of education professional development are not going to get our business any place. We need to use best practice. We need to have our kids writing about what they read not setting them up on a computer taking AR tests. We need to understand the educational and personal needs of our students and teach to those needs. Basil and anthology reading sets are not a curriculum, these are one piece to a series of tools that can be used to teach children. Certainly not the only way. Not even close.
Monkeys are learning sigh language of their own. To they know how it will be useful to them. Quite possibly. After all, they learning quite quickly that they are getting food for fast learning or learning in general. Perhaps they do not have the metacognition to understand that but they continually learn for more bananas.
Kids do not learn for food unless they see that doing math and learning to read efficiently are going to help them later in the future to, perhaps, avoid prison, go to college and keep from being failures. However ever a teacher wants to think, we need to help kids see their reason for learning. Then help them see what success feels and looks like. The momentum grows and keeps doing so until the kids begin to understand that they really are successful people.