Tag Archives: rttt

State of the New Teacher

I’ve been terrified to write about anything within a hundred miles of politics since I became a teacher. I don’t want to be known by my students, fellow teachers, parents, or readers as anything but me. I’m not “Mr. Moore, <insert political adjective> Teacher,” I’m just Mr. Moore and I care a whole lot about the kids in my community and everywhere else in this country for that matter.

 That being said, I have a hard time dealing with some of the political rhetoric in President Obama’s recent State of the Union address.

 “To win the future … we also have to win the race to educate our kids.”

My layman’s opinion of Obama is that he’s more hungry for a bi-partisan issue than for a superlative solution; in education, he’s found his golden calf. Oh, and is he ever worshiping it.

I’m sick and tired of politicians and people who’ve never set foot in a K-12 classroom outside their own record as a student mandating what should happen in mine. Race to the Top isn’t quite as bad as No Child Left Behind; I suppose I choose it as the lesser of two evils, but I’m not entirely convinced. At least there’s the promise of a little carrot with
RTTT unlike the threat of a big stick with NCLB. Then again, that’s exactly the issue; my generation of educators will be defined by our ability to respond to the false choice of carrots and sticks.

What motivates me to teach isn’t merit pay, a stable teaching job market, tenure, the promise of retirement, or the hope I’ll cultivate a crop of Ivy-Leaguers who will drop in to pay me laudatory visits. What motivates me is intrinsic and personal. I crave the benefit for my students that I had with two loving parents. I want them to graduate and go to college and graduate again, but I want both of those pieces of paper to mean something more than “I followed the rules, I did the tests.”

I think our inability to learn from the kind of “A” students who brought us mortgage-backed securities will mean a lot more than the mirage of Sputnik flying faintly overhead. C’mon Obama, where’s your hope? Why the switch to fear?

I’m not providing an in-depth analysis of his agenda in education, but the continual focus on words like “race” and “win” pit student against student, school against school, and community against community. Do we value citizens who collaborate or disparate tribes who deviate?

I’m upset with the kind of conversation that Obama’s rhetoric is leaving us with, but I hope there are a few diamonds in the rough. For instance, I was very skeptical at first about The Common Core Standards Initiative, but once I actually read through it in detail, I found it was much more broad than I expected. Rather than a blueprint on how and when to do X, Y, and Z, I found a narrative guideline about broad subjects. It wasn’t the prescriptive, rigid national curriculum I feared.

I’m also encouraged about the changing practices in higher education loans subsidized by federal funds and the push for more access to higher education in America for all. We just need to change how we prepare students to get to higher ed institutions. Right now, we can’t seem to get past the idea that standardized testing is the best and only way to motivate schools, teachers, and students.

 As a new teacher, an urban core teacher, and a formerly burnt-out overachiving suburban student during the NCLB era, I hope we can change the conversations about K-12 education and RTTT to make them about learning and not winning.

Is Your School Like a Glow Stick?

Originally post on the ERT website

While reading a post on The Student Affairs Collaborative, a blog on higher education, I got a very vivid image in my head. The title, Break the System to Remake the System, made me think of a glow stick instantly. I like this image analog for several reasons. First, I relate to the idea that what we need to shine, as schools, is already inside of us. To me, that’s an idea that just about every teacher already embraces. Yes, you need to hire well, but you’ll almost never be in a situation where you get to replace every teacher in a building; training and cultivation is the best answer to improvement.

breaking

How does a glow stick work? Well, if you’ve never been to a fair or theme park (or a rave I suppose) then you need to know about glow sticks. They are clear plastic tubes with two luminescent chemicals trapped inside, but separated by a thin artificial membrane. When you “break” the tube by holding it between your two hands and bending, you cause the chemicals to mix, thus causing a safe exocharmic(exuding excitement and entertainment) reaction which makes the stick glow fluorescent.

Now that I’ve made you relive a time when you were overwhelmed by large crowds of children wielding cheese-filled pretzels, I’ll get back to idea of education I’m trying to get at. The glow stick: you need to break it in order for it to work. Is public education the same? More specifically, what can we define as “breaking” education? Will Race to the Top “break” it? Did NCLB already break it (or will it be revealed as broken in 2014)? Will it break slowly over time or instantaneously? Are you risking breaking your school by providing new ideas? These are all questions worth considering.

How-Glow-Sticks-Work_02

I can’t pass up a good diagram. Haven’t you always wondered about glow sticks?

Second, if we do “break” education and all the evident faults and possible strengths are fluorescently illuminated for us, how do we act in response? Is there something contained within the action that broke it, or is it still external and unknown? Before I veer off into a metacognitive or philosophical cliff, I want to focus this topic into one coherent question:

What does a “broken” education system look like?

When any large change is brought about in a system, it could very easily be seen as broken in the pejorative sense of the word, because it is no longer preforming functions as it did previously. Change can be a scary thing if you fixate on the unknown; you have to  look inward and concentrate on what goodness is hiding inside your school that can’t be let out until you break the tube.
My answer to what a broken system looks like: noisy, shifting, luminescent, radiating light and energy. I want my school to have such energy and I want us to visibly share it with the world. We should hold our glow stick up to illuminate the darkness and understand that even though it will not last forever (a dying glow stick is a traumatic realization for a small child) we know how and why we must break another one if we expect to see.
I’m interested in hearing from you: Is your school like a glow stick? What is waiting to shine through? Is a system broken from outside forces or made from what’s inside?