Groundhog Day...Again

Remember your first year of teaching?  Wasn't ignorance bliss?

Yours, I mean-- not the students'. You taught something once, and they learned the skill. Ahhhhhh.

Wasn't it frustrating to have to teach skills they should have learned in 5th, 6th and 7th grade?   I mean, what's going on?  Are those teachers just kicked back reading romance novels while the kiddos run amok?

Once you put it all together you gasped in horror.  Those teachers were teaching, so were you. Your students were going to advance to the next grade with no ability to demonstrate some of the lessons that you taught them.

Ouch.  Yeah.  I can still feel the burn.

I feel it every time an 8th grader asks me what similes, metaphors, hyperbole and personification are...again.

And again.

If you're like me, that last one always gets you.  Personification has all of the quietude of Vegas.  PERSONification.  It's like a neon sign with dancing girls wearing fancy costumes and big, foam "We're #1" fingers pointing to P-E-R-S-O-N.  It's the official "If it were a snake" literary device.

I feel it for every apostrophe a child rains down on his paper to make something plural. I feel it every time there's an "a" slammed next to a "lot."   Contractions?  To, Two, Too/  Were, We're, Where/  There, Their, They're...   I could go on.

I'm not talking about the Queen's English.  I'm talking about what it takes to read and write on grade level.  Lawd.

This morning I stopped by the workroom after dawn cracked to flip the switch on the copier, so it would be ready for the first user.  Someone had left a worksheet behind.  Golden.  It was full of commonly misused and confused words.

Are you going to suffocate under (to, two, too) many papers to grade?  (Your, You're) students are over (there, they're, their) crawling out of the library's window towards freedom.

Okay.  It didn't say that exactly, but that was the format.  Eighth graders can always use more practice with these skills.  AND I just happened to read about a cool dry-erase marker technique on a Facebook page.  Teachers were advising a French instructor to allow students the chance to write their vocabulary words on their desks for practice. They are (They're) easily erased.  Cool.

So, instead of handing out the worksheet, I read each sentence aloud and indicated the word that I wanted them to spell.  They wrote it.  I walked around the room to check their work.  If they were correct, I told them to erase the word to get ready for the next.  If they were incorrect, they tried again.  And, yes, I retaught contractions.

Again.

And I bet the fat lady hasn't sung on that one yet either.

(Luckily, I stocked up on dry-erase markers at Walgreens during the Back-To-School sales like a true hoarder who had no idea how 50 markers would come in handy during this school year.)

What will your verse be?

Excuse me.    I know that you are busy stomping on bubble wrap to relieve stress after assessing assessment assessments and the assessors themselves.

May I interest you in a little inspiration?

It's free.

The last time that I remember watching Dead Poets Society was years ago...on the big screen.   I was an awkward teenager who was excited at the thought that there was all of this marrow to suck out of life and that boys would write me sheaves of poetry.   It's not likely that I was seriously pondering a career in education at the time.   I was thinking about boys and rosebud gathering, not inspirational teachers.   Yawn.

I'm kind of excited about watching the film as a teacher.   Mr. Keating had some great ideas about connecting literature to life and making the beauty of language unfold before them.   Remember the earthy coziness of the poets' lair and how much fun it was for the boys to carry on with their education outside of the classroom?   Awesome.   When kids take the reins, it's a great day.

I think that it's because of this film that I skipped so many of  my college English classes that were held in a windowless bank building.   Literature and life without a single ray of sunlight or glass portal to the natural world.   It was making me dumberer.   And grouchy.   But this is all beside the point.

Here's the rub.

   

What will your verse be?   It's up to you.   

But...I beg you.

Please don't be the person who put the "ass" in assessment.

Yes, I said "ass," but so did Shakespeare, so that means it's okay, right?

Let's not let anything make "fools of us all."

Signed,

Little and Fierce

"Sounds loco to me, but okay."

I'm borrowing a quotation from one of my favorite books of all time, Cowboy & Octopus.   Jon Scieszka's created a wonderful friendship between an unlikely pair.   In addition to the earth and water divide, Octopus finds himself having to be the brains of this operation again and again.   But even Cowboy knows when somethin' ain't right.

Do you ever get that feeling?   That feeling that someone has put lipstick on a pig and is trying to get one over on you like you can't smell pork from a mile away?   Makes you a little loco, doesn't it?   When someone's trying to get one over on you, it's really your students who pay the price...and that makes little wisps of steam escape from your nostrils, doesn't it?

Well, take a step back from it and pause.   Why do you think it's a bad idea?   Do you have evidence that it is from research or personal experience?   Who are the stakeholders who came up with the stinker?   Who are the stakeholders who must implement it?   Could it be a good idea after all?   Is it worth a try?   Have other schools/ teachers tried this plan to great success?   If so, does your school have the resources and staff to make similar gains?   Will children be harmed because of this idea?   Do you have a better proposal?   Is part of the idea worth piloting, instead of the whole enchilada?   Can you find someone in your field that you respect to talk this over with?   Is this a battle that you need to choose for the sake of your students, or will your time be better spent on something else?  

And if you've decided that it's a good idea that will benefit children, be the first to get behind it and help others implement the plan.   There's nothing better than discovering a new, effective way to reach learners.

We're all resistant to change once we've found methodologies that seem to work miracles for our children.   We're also a little prickly when people outside of the classroom claim to have the magic answer for us.   I always fall back on WWLD, as in What Would Laura Robb do?  

I think that it's always good to let our minds entertain a new approach to reaching our children, but every now an then someone comes up with something that can only be described as "loco."   And that's not okay.

I'm gonna assess the stuffin' outta you, bub!

Can I talk with you about something we used to call effective teaching?   Now it's called Response to Intervention, or RtI.

RtI isn't as scary as it seems.   Its basic premise is differentiating instruction for students without pushing them past their (learning) frustration points.   For example, an eleventh grade student reading on a fourth grade level who is handed an American literature textbook and expected to conquer it without any teacher support...just worksheet after worksheet...well, that's bad teaching.

RtI is about getting instruction geared towards different ability levels within the structure of the usual school day.   The first focus is on tier one...meaning...let's get all teachers to instruct in a way that maximizes learning.   Fair enough.   And a little common sense goes a long way with me.

Kids who still need additional help would be considered to be in tiers two or three.   Your lowest readers may even need one on one instruction with the reading specialist, if you are lucky enough to have one in your school.   RtI is an "all hands on deck" approach to instruction, but your options can be limited if you are light on faculty and resources, as many schools are in our current economy.

RtI is a way of thinking.   Your school decides how to implement it.   I'm over-simplifying the program concepts, but if you are teaching with the intent of having your students learn, you are probably all about intervening when a child needs more support and instruction.   And nobody had to force you to do it.

Here's the bumpy part.   RtI can quickly turn into an avalanche of data.   And the true blue RtI folks would be the first to tell you that data for data's sake, data that is not reviewed or used, is useless since it serves no purpose.   Many of the assessment tools were piloted in the elementary school, but they don't quite translate into meaningful information for the adolescent reader.

Let me pause and remind you that these are my opinions.   I encourage you to seek out research-based articles to make your own judgments.

Many of the assessments that seem to draft the barreling 18 wheeler that is RtI raise red flags more than anything else.   This could be more meaningful in lower grades were there's not a long history of prior assessments.   By 8th grade, we know who is at-risk from day one because we inherit 8 years of test scores and other information that indicate a child who lacks fluency in reading and math.   Using red flag predictors with adolescent readers seems to be putting the cart on top of the horse.   Yes, the cart on top of the horse.   Ouch.

That is all I have to say about that at this point, but I will tell you that if your school runs the Maze assessment, there's a free online Maze generator that you can use to  give your kids some practice before the real test date.   You can paste any passage into the space provided and come up with a text that can be used to remind the kids how short three minutes can be when one is reading and circling.

Assessing a child's learning is important.   But what do we do with that data?   Does it inspire us to change our instructional methods?   Does our school district identify areas in which we need additional teacher training?   Does our district invite presenters to train us in a manner that is in line with best-practices that work with children and adults?   Can teachers even interpret the data and apply it to their instructional approaches in a meaningful way?   Do all teachers have access to the data?   Is the data compiled in a user-friendly document or program?   How will you explain children's scores to them and their parents in clear terms that lack educationalese?

If we do not use the data, we are disrespecting the instructional time of our students.   Assessments are crucial to what we do, but how much testing is too much?   Think about the days in a school year and how much time is given over to assessments.   Are you assessing more than you are teaching?   Is each assessment valuable and valid?   Are they biased in any way?   Can they be scored objectively?  If you are able to preview potential tests for purchase, please don't waste any time kicking a flawed assessment to the curb before your district swipes its credit card.

Lastly, does your opinion matter?   Sometimes decisions are made outside of your learning community that are non-negotiable.   If that's the case, you have to do what you have to do to make the experience a positive one for kids.   Explain how the test is administered and what the results mean.   Tell them how you are going to use the results to benefit them.   Give them time to practice with the format of the test.   Make them comfortable with the process.

And if you teach in a way that causes children to learn, stick with it.   Protect your instructional time as best you can.   Perhaps this is the year that some of your struggling readers are ready to make some big strides.   Hopefully, the next time your school conducts a mass screening, they will see the progress that they are making thanks to your diligence.

When Laura Robb, Nancie Atwell and Kelly Gallagher prescribe an RtI plan, I will hop right on board and complete any assessments they see as vital.   Until then, I will need to weigh all of the options before moving forward.   Children first, right?