I got a text message on the bus on the way home. My eyes were on my phone because I left my e-reader at home. Consequently, I cradled my elephantine, non-smart phone in my lap,looking at it so as to dodge eye contact. The screen went white and I clicked the round "OK" button in order to read the new message from a colleague. "My doctor was shocked that teachers are allowed to grade Regents exams." I went livid. Of course, I have complained about differences with colleagues over how to interpret the rubric for the ELA Regents. That is the nature of language, however, and it wouldn't be fair if we didn't question each other and dialogue with the grading system foisted upon us. The Board of Regents itself concedes that there is more than one way to obtain the same grade -- there are "4" level essays which are more than thoughtful, but stray somewhat from their objectives, though they ultimately defend their original argument sufficiently. There are those which hit the mark, provide sufficient development -- all "no more, no less," than very good, but not excellent. We are given more than one "Anchor paper" (model papers) to judge our own by. The more you work with language, the more shades you can see to it. People will always have stylistic differences. Not every English teacher is interested in pretty prose -- some are in it for the bold themes or the heroic stories. However, we balance each other in the end as no one person determines a student's final score. Papers are always marked in teams. In the end, we always agree that the tasks themselves aren't rigorous enough, and the rubrics are equally shallow.
I go into this explanation because I was so affronted by my colleague's physician's response. She had related some of my feelings about the debates which ensue over work sometimes. Instead of seeing the complexity of the task, or perhaps, wondering why the State bothers to insist on "standardized" exams when its own rubrics are not stringent enough to satisfy the ideals of good teachers, he just questioned teachers' abilities to judge. Why not just let teachers create better, harder tests? The largest complaint in our grading room was about the fact that papers were going to pass State standards despite the fact that we would've failed those same papers if they were submitted to us in our courses. It would be unfair, however, not to give the student the State exam grade he/she deserves. In this case, the teacher is punished twice. First, we have to give an exam which doesn't live up to our own standards. Then, we have to pass kids on this exam whom we failed regularly during the year. But, all my colleague's physician could think of was the possible inadequacy of the teachers grading the exam, not that the whole exercise is flawed. It's natural for people to argue about language. What's sad is when the language isn't worth our breath. Or, in my case, my thumb movements.
After sending upwards of 15 texts back, many asking questions about whether doctors could be trusted to treat their patients properly given all the incentives from insurance companies to cut corners, I grabbed the handles of the backdoor with both hands and slowly pulled myself down onto the wet pavement. Without even waiting for me to turn around, one of the local car service drivers pulled up and I got in. First, he rebuffs my exhaustion with "well, just one more day." "No. There's Monday and I have Professional Development before summer school." "Well, at least you are working," says the upbeat driver. I let the "at least" comment go. I've never been fond of cherishing the "At least." It brings to mind my forebears in Nazi Germany thinking, "At least, they haven't..." Until they had. I make some passing remark about the heat and the lack of A/C in my classroom. He is seemingly, sincerely up-in-arms. "What about portable air conditioners?" "We would need three per room." I know this because the computer room has three air conditioners to insure that, even if the students fail, the equipment doesn't. Finally, he says to me, "Well, this is all because the communists are coming." I'm livid again. For one thing, education in the Soviet Union was, arguably, better than ours is here. For another, it's American cheapness that is keeping us from providing proper treatment to our students. If we were any cheaper, we'd be anarchists. I say something like, "but we're not spending any money on schools." "You will see. Little by little they will take over." What this has to do with anything I have said, I don't know, but this man is convinced of this. Like my colleague's doctor, he lives in the golden world of rumor which is fueled by anger and ignorance. Of course, this is part of the new/old list of Republican talking points against Obama, recycled from the start of the Cold War. Standardized tests were created out of distrust for teachers when, in fact, they undermine our efforts to be rigorous and rely on our best abilities to interpret their "standards" in order to be clear and fair with our students. I suppose that my driver was picking up on the buzz from our "fair and balanced" media, but does not understand that it is the rumor mongers who are denying my students decent learning conditions and giving weak students the impression they have achieved something by passing easy exams.
Of course, if education were a world priority, none of this would be happening. But, never fear. Companies are in no danger of losing their right to create and sell standardized exams, and drivers are in no danger of losing their opportunity to make cash they don't declare on their taxes. The classrooms are still boiling hot, the students are definitely "first" to be given an easy way out, and the teachers can't do anything to stop it. If we do, the media will say we aren't teaching because scores are too low. If scores are too high, they'll complain about why we are allowed to grade the exams. Has anyone bothered to look at the tests, the rubrics for grading, the anchor papers, etc.? Too busy looking for those Communists/Weapons of Mass Destruction/Communists/Evil Teachers.
Showing posts with label ELA Regents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ELA Regents. Show all posts
23 June, 2011
18 May, 2009
Children won't listen.
I told myself I never wanted to be one of those peppy, overweight English/Theater teachers who sings songs like Sondheim's "Children will listen," at assemblies. Obviously, the overweight isn't what bothers me as I've grown accustomed to my girth. It's the cloying sentimentality which I distrust probably because I was raised to and do respond to it. It has just enough of Mr. Rogers' gentle scolding and the rumbly sound of ocean which resonates within the litany of women's literature about failure and suicide. (Ah, the hate emails should be pouring in. FYI: I don't mean Virginia Woolf. I mean Kate Chopin and any story which talks about wallpaper.)
If we wanted to make assemblies in which students would listen, we'd invite students to be part of the process. And I'm sure a lot of teachers and administrators would like to do that. Why don't they? When the temperature reads "standardized tests" the emotional range within the school usually is pushed to within about .005 of a degree. We become apologetically automatic in the name of seeming fair. But what could be less fair:
You pour a group of students into a large echoing chamber with no real sound system and poor sightlines. There's also no breeze, but lots of dust of every kind. Just from lack of use, the auditorium has the feel of an envelope sitting in the back of the desk drawer for fifty years.
Then you ask the teachers to tell the students to be quiet. You don't necessarily tell them why. The best they can create is a kind of homage to the feeling of loss that one might get before throwing the envelope away. And even the cheapest of you would throw it away as it is so coarse and moldy -- dry and moldy --something mushroom-like has definitely left spores.
Okay, so the kids are down to silent talking and shifting and then the adults are up there deciding whose idea the assembly was and why it's being held. This is not a particularity of any one school. It's par for the course everywhere. At Brooklyn Comprehensive, we tried never to have these things at all.
Then somebody speaks and whatever he/she might've said gets translated along distance and volume....
We haven't had an assembly where I work, but the feel of the place is one of having been be-labored with busywork, memoranda, emails and the re-definition of what used to be called a grade book into "DATA." I am a few minutes away from a meeting now in which I will be asked not really for my opinion, but to listen for what I am going to be told to do. Can you imagine anything, besides an assembly being this insane:
You pour a group of teachers into a hot room at the end of the day. They can see the dust spinning in the rays of sunshine. You talk to them about a test which they have been concerned about for much of their teaching lives and which they, by now, know how to handle. But, you take away all their power to handle it. And you want them to be quiet. They wait while the administrators draw straws outside about who is going to tell this year's bad news. We already know that we have no room in our current curriculum for test-prep -- in the English classes, anyway. We already know EXACTLY WHO is failing, what their scores were two test sessions ago, etc. We will be told that this is NOT DATA. Data is not found among actual results. It must be specifically collected, the way we note what pages our students are on in their independent readings. We are actively measuring their reading. If we just looked at, oh, how many books they could read in a marking period, it wouldn't be the same because that would be marking period information. There wasn't a scientific process or anything. I mean, you might've assessed the students on different days of the week. With slightly different forms....
Somebody comes into the room and starts talking and it is translated quietly in looks and very silent body language. One idiot talks too much and that's usually me. But, not today. My colleagues are all excellent teachers. They should be listened to. When they get their say, I'll wait my turn and then say mine.
Nobody starts their career wanting to be pushed into oblivion. Nobody.
If we wanted to make assemblies in which students would listen, we'd invite students to be part of the process. And I'm sure a lot of teachers and administrators would like to do that. Why don't they? When the temperature reads "standardized tests" the emotional range within the school usually is pushed to within about .005 of a degree. We become apologetically automatic in the name of seeming fair. But what could be less fair:
You pour a group of students into a large echoing chamber with no real sound system and poor sightlines. There's also no breeze, but lots of dust of every kind. Just from lack of use, the auditorium has the feel of an envelope sitting in the back of the desk drawer for fifty years.
Then you ask the teachers to tell the students to be quiet. You don't necessarily tell them why. The best they can create is a kind of homage to the feeling of loss that one might get before throwing the envelope away. And even the cheapest of you would throw it away as it is so coarse and moldy -- dry and moldy --something mushroom-like has definitely left spores.
Okay, so the kids are down to silent talking and shifting and then the adults are up there deciding whose idea the assembly was and why it's being held. This is not a particularity of any one school. It's par for the course everywhere. At Brooklyn Comprehensive, we tried never to have these things at all.
Then somebody speaks and whatever he/she might've said gets translated along distance and volume....
We haven't had an assembly where I work, but the feel of the place is one of having been be-labored with busywork, memoranda, emails and the re-definition of what used to be called a grade book into "DATA." I am a few minutes away from a meeting now in which I will be asked not really for my opinion, but to listen for what I am going to be told to do. Can you imagine anything, besides an assembly being this insane:
You pour a group of teachers into a hot room at the end of the day. They can see the dust spinning in the rays of sunshine. You talk to them about a test which they have been concerned about for much of their teaching lives and which they, by now, know how to handle. But, you take away all their power to handle it. And you want them to be quiet. They wait while the administrators draw straws outside about who is going to tell this year's bad news. We already know that we have no room in our current curriculum for test-prep -- in the English classes, anyway. We already know EXACTLY WHO is failing, what their scores were two test sessions ago, etc. We will be told that this is NOT DATA. Data is not found among actual results. It must be specifically collected, the way we note what pages our students are on in their independent readings. We are actively measuring their reading. If we just looked at, oh, how many books they could read in a marking period, it wouldn't be the same because that would be marking period information. There wasn't a scientific process or anything. I mean, you might've assessed the students on different days of the week. With slightly different forms....
Somebody comes into the room and starts talking and it is translated quietly in looks and very silent body language. One idiot talks too much and that's usually me. But, not today. My colleagues are all excellent teachers. They should be listened to. When they get their say, I'll wait my turn and then say mine.
Nobody starts their career wanting to be pushed into oblivion. Nobody.
22 March, 2009
Curriculum Guide
Since I've become an ATR, I've become even less politically astute than before. Didn't think it was possible.
We had a meeting regarding the new curriculum we are using this term. Well, technically it's not really knew as it was used on these same kids when they were in 9th grade. But, new curriculum guides were purchased and even new copies of the same banal book the kids read years ago. There ARE some books worth re-reading at different points in your educational life. Usually, books designed specifically to meet the needs of a particular grade level -- in this case, middle school -- are not one of them. The students don't read at HS level, by and large, but assigning them a book geared to JHS kids was not a good idea. The themes are beneath them and don't merit revisiting. What they needed was something geared to HS kids written at a lower reading level. Or, they needed a book worth reading twice, which is not this book.
During our meeting about this curriculum, I found myself talking. That alone was a mistake. I know that I should keep my mouth shut, but for whatever reason, I needed to pretend to be empowered. When you are an ATR, I think, you want to do as much as possible and to try to connect with the center of the school. What you don't realize is how rotten things are at core and what influences whom because you're new to an already tainted environment and you're not given enough stake in it to get into the kinds of political battles which help you to learn what's worth fighting for. The lessons which go with this book are very amorphous and I've held back from completely suggeting a new structure with accompanying handouts. I said enough, however, to get the administration to use me to create items to make themselves look good -- rubrics for grading. As if there was really material here from which to differentiate.... However, my skills in education b.s. exceed theirs because I am good at creating meaning in activities and evaluations in and of themselves. Part of this comes from watching a colleague design rubrics for grading English essays which were harder than the English Regents, but used the same basic formula. Part of this comes from living in a world in which what the students do in the lesson is the meat of the lesson. It's been years since I've ever seen teachers asked to actually SAY what they are working on without an accompanying action. The phrase, "speak it into existence" has never been so wrongly used. It's not the teachers' fault and its probably not the administrators' fault either. We are all forced to make use of a product.
Indeed, at one point, one person referred to the "decisions" of "America's Choice," the for-profit organization who designed our curriculum. I thought, "that's the name of a company. They're not Harvard, for god's sake. What gives them academic credibility? Next you'll be selling me a curriculum by Fisher Price and speaking of them as if they were run by descendants of Moses."
My biggest mistake, however, was offering to create the enabling materials to make this business look less half-baked than it is. I don't want to seem like I am betraying my colleagues in doing this and I won't do it again, I think. The problem is that we are going to have bigger and bigger problems trying to engage students with this material as it only gets more amorphous and unbound to form as it continues. There's no build of skills upon the other -- there's a reference to a collection of habits students are supposed to develop. I've found that good habits need to be taught thoroughly and sometimes in stages. You can't just say you're teaching them even if you model them. Students need to know, "How." I'll give you an example of the kind of absurdist practice my colleagues and I are forced to perform.
One element of this curriculum is the use of "Sticky Notes," to mark important passages in a book. As a fan of the pen, highlighter and bookmark, I've never actually employed a Post-It to this end. When the students were told to do just that next to an image which they could envision, they were baffled.
First, where to put it: above, below, adjacent? Next: Do I really see what the author says or do I just kind of? If the latter, well does it get a note? Third: Should I put the page number on the note in case it falls out? Wouldn't it just be easier to mark it in my notes?
Since most students don't get the same book again to work with, they might never see this Sticky Note again. Even if they do, they were so busy trying to figure out the logistics that they fell behind in the text which was being read aloud by the teacher. So, they became even more frustrated.
I suggested that the students put their notes on a separate sheet of paper with spaces for each note, page number and, is turns out as I draft it, circling whether it's a description of a place, character or feeling. I didn't get into whether the student can fully visualize the image or not. When I read, I don't necessarily see things immediately, but the overall feeling of the language reaches me. Then, in discussion or re-reading, I see it more fully. Let's not forget that a lot of writing lends itself to synasthaesia. Too bad we're not reading Rememberance of Things Past.
So I found myself defining a real skill and method to cover for an unfinished idea. Students should take note of extensive descriptions as usually they are in place for a reason. I'm not sure that they don't do this already, but they don't generally take notes. The problem is, that in order to distinguish between what's worth noting or not, you have to understand its connection to the plot and themes as a whole. Probably, I'll have to put that in the worksheet. Now, I don't want students not to see things outside of the larger themes -- or necessarily think these are the only themes. Ideally, people would underscore what moves them. However, you usually aren't moved by abstraction that is not connected to something you seek. Since the book isn't really the sort that touches upon universal yearnings, it's good to get them to define what ideas it does have....inasmuch as it does.
Now, the final rub is it will take a long time to do this exercise if I create it right --- and we have been criticized for going over the appointed time for the curriculum. This was explained in this meeting as not meant to limit how much time we take, but that we should make sure that "teaching and learning is taking place" if we do go over. There's concrete for you. Not.
Next time, best to bring and eat cookies.
We had a meeting regarding the new curriculum we are using this term. Well, technically it's not really knew as it was used on these same kids when they were in 9th grade. But, new curriculum guides were purchased and even new copies of the same banal book the kids read years ago. There ARE some books worth re-reading at different points in your educational life. Usually, books designed specifically to meet the needs of a particular grade level -- in this case, middle school -- are not one of them. The students don't read at HS level, by and large, but assigning them a book geared to JHS kids was not a good idea. The themes are beneath them and don't merit revisiting. What they needed was something geared to HS kids written at a lower reading level. Or, they needed a book worth reading twice, which is not this book.
During our meeting about this curriculum, I found myself talking. That alone was a mistake. I know that I should keep my mouth shut, but for whatever reason, I needed to pretend to be empowered. When you are an ATR, I think, you want to do as much as possible and to try to connect with the center of the school. What you don't realize is how rotten things are at core and what influences whom because you're new to an already tainted environment and you're not given enough stake in it to get into the kinds of political battles which help you to learn what's worth fighting for. The lessons which go with this book are very amorphous and I've held back from completely suggeting a new structure with accompanying handouts. I said enough, however, to get the administration to use me to create items to make themselves look good -- rubrics for grading. As if there was really material here from which to differentiate.... However, my skills in education b.s. exceed theirs because I am good at creating meaning in activities and evaluations in and of themselves. Part of this comes from watching a colleague design rubrics for grading English essays which were harder than the English Regents, but used the same basic formula. Part of this comes from living in a world in which what the students do in the lesson is the meat of the lesson. It's been years since I've ever seen teachers asked to actually SAY what they are working on without an accompanying action. The phrase, "speak it into existence" has never been so wrongly used. It's not the teachers' fault and its probably not the administrators' fault either. We are all forced to make use of a product.
Indeed, at one point, one person referred to the "decisions" of "America's Choice," the for-profit organization who designed our curriculum. I thought, "that's the name of a company. They're not Harvard, for god's sake. What gives them academic credibility? Next you'll be selling me a curriculum by Fisher Price and speaking of them as if they were run by descendants of Moses."
My biggest mistake, however, was offering to create the enabling materials to make this business look less half-baked than it is. I don't want to seem like I am betraying my colleagues in doing this and I won't do it again, I think. The problem is that we are going to have bigger and bigger problems trying to engage students with this material as it only gets more amorphous and unbound to form as it continues. There's no build of skills upon the other -- there's a reference to a collection of habits students are supposed to develop. I've found that good habits need to be taught thoroughly and sometimes in stages. You can't just say you're teaching them even if you model them. Students need to know, "How." I'll give you an example of the kind of absurdist practice my colleagues and I are forced to perform.
One element of this curriculum is the use of "Sticky Notes," to mark important passages in a book. As a fan of the pen, highlighter and bookmark, I've never actually employed a Post-It to this end. When the students were told to do just that next to an image which they could envision, they were baffled.
First, where to put it: above, below, adjacent? Next: Do I really see what the author says or do I just kind of? If the latter, well does it get a note? Third: Should I put the page number on the note in case it falls out? Wouldn't it just be easier to mark it in my notes?
Since most students don't get the same book again to work with, they might never see this Sticky Note again. Even if they do, they were so busy trying to figure out the logistics that they fell behind in the text which was being read aloud by the teacher. So, they became even more frustrated.
I suggested that the students put their notes on a separate sheet of paper with spaces for each note, page number and, is turns out as I draft it, circling whether it's a description of a place, character or feeling. I didn't get into whether the student can fully visualize the image or not. When I read, I don't necessarily see things immediately, but the overall feeling of the language reaches me. Then, in discussion or re-reading, I see it more fully. Let's not forget that a lot of writing lends itself to synasthaesia. Too bad we're not reading Rememberance of Things Past.
So I found myself defining a real skill and method to cover for an unfinished idea. Students should take note of extensive descriptions as usually they are in place for a reason. I'm not sure that they don't do this already, but they don't generally take notes. The problem is, that in order to distinguish between what's worth noting or not, you have to understand its connection to the plot and themes as a whole. Probably, I'll have to put that in the worksheet. Now, I don't want students not to see things outside of the larger themes -- or necessarily think these are the only themes. Ideally, people would underscore what moves them. However, you usually aren't moved by abstraction that is not connected to something you seek. Since the book isn't really the sort that touches upon universal yearnings, it's good to get them to define what ideas it does have....inasmuch as it does.
Now, the final rub is it will take a long time to do this exercise if I create it right --- and we have been criticized for going over the appointed time for the curriculum. This was explained in this meeting as not meant to limit how much time we take, but that we should make sure that "teaching and learning is taking place" if we do go over. There's concrete for you. Not.
Next time, best to bring and eat cookies.
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