Month: February 2015

Cities have Restaurant Weeks, Beer Weeks and even Museum Weeks, so WHY not Education Weeks?

It would be epic: Have the city host ALL state conferences for a week. Schools could host community events to showcase all the awesomeness that is going on. Businesses could observe the educational process and open their wallets to offer assistance in areas of need. It would be a festival of all things education! Teachers would pitch their ideas to crowds of people who would readily help make the ideas turn into reality.

SO WHY isn’t this happening?

Education always is a main pillar of all political platforms. Businesses desire to locate themselves in areas with educated populations. The idea behind the “theme” weeks is to drum up business for the city. Typically these weeks are placed on the calendar during “down” times to help promote business and allow capitol to flow. An Education week would cost that valuable capitol. Sadly, most in the community feel their tax dollars are enough to support it.

Education needs to be celebrated in the same way as restaurants, beer, museums or anything else in our society. DO we have Education City USA? No but we have a beer city USA! What does this show about our societies values?

There is a dire need for society to CELEBRATE and VALUE education, instead of it being the running joke on the late night talk shows. (We have all seen the guy on the street asking questions to adults that 5th graders can answer but adults can’t.) The time has come to show our values and hold them up, not complain.

Teachers are doing their jobs! Society is not holding up their end. Education shouldn’t be a complaint. Companies that see weaknesses in our current system should be offering up funds to fill the gaps and create equity. Instead they complain and say: “We have jobs but nobody educated to fill them!” That is a sad statement: Most of these jobs they have weren’t around 5 to 10 years ago so HOW could our education system create employees for them? What have companies done to fix this? (Besides lobbying for laws that ruin ed?)

Our educational leaders need to step up, GO OUT and show the great stuff we are doing in schools. Offer businesses avenues to assist in creating equity in our schools. THE TIME IS NOW, IF NOT YOU, WHO?

First step: WE need a Ed Week in major cities to start the ball rolling!

My mind has been going a mile a minute this past week. So many ideas passing in and out of my conscience. I am going to through a few down here to allow myself to sleep, hopefully some will grow into their own blog posts at a later time.

1. Critics of education are hard for me to comprehend. Maybe it is because I am a teacher and send so much time in education. “Fire more teachers” they say, “Recruit better teachers and make the standards higher”.  It seems these comments happen every week. “America is slipping!” “School are failing the students!”

Well um, NO!! NO to all of it. First: To be a teacher you don’t have to be better at school! In fact most of the GREAT teachers I know struggled at some point in school! Struggling and over coming the struggle to reach success is a quality we should desire in all of our teachers. Great teachers love KIDS and working in the classroom! The system that is in place NOW devalues teachers, makes us feel like a cog in a wheel that can be thrown away when worn out and replaced. WELL great teachers are hard to replace. Teachers don’t have to be fired because those that can’t cut the mustard QUIT!! Look at the stats roughly half of those that go into teaching quit in the first 5 years, what other career has a stat like that? America is not slipping we have been staying the same for a very long time, the rest of the world is catching up! Look at the data, and if while you are looking, POVERTY is the issue in America, when you take it out of the equation USA rocks in Education!!

IF teaching is SO important, which I feel it is,recruiting would be easy if TEACHER were paid as CEOs or Athletes or even Wall Street Executes! Let them live on their salaries and take all their combined bonuses to help fund education!!

2. Education Charities and Grants. I read about them all the time. I have received solicitations to apply for grants and fund charities. Even been a recipient of grants to help fund projects in my classroom. Are they promoting equity? I struggle with this question. Teachers that need the funding MOST don’t have the time to fill out paper work and jump through the hoops to gain the funding. Charities seem to pick the highest profile locations to help or are active in their “backyard” to get the must publicity. (Are charities for the publicity or for helping others?) Can states set up a one stop shop to help with equity? Collect donations, grants etc and then distribute based on NEED not on the media attention the grant can create.

3. Education Conferences: I love conferences, always wanting to attend. I get the most out of the personal connections I make at conferences, taking the big ideas and classroom practices that were shared then having SMALL conversations about them. These conversations frame the ideas in ways that I can use them back in my classroom. BUT I struggle when away from the classroom. How are my students doing? I leave quality lesson plans but are they followed? It leaves me wondering how many times can I miss school to attend a conference? IF these are important educational conferences why aren’t they during breaks? (YES some are but not all!) Can we as educators create a system where our valued educational learning does not interfere with our teaching?

Please help me in my thinking and respond to any and all ideas in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Teachers continually have been trained that feedback is vital for the learning process. Educators know that feedback is more than just a grade. Training programs stress that feedback needs to be timely and specific to be effective. Giving feedback has a daily occurrence in classrooms. Since feedback is valuable for growth, TEACHERS (and Administrators) need to be receiving it too.

Teachers need to gather feedback from many sources to make sure they are staying sharp at their craft. Teachers need to be observed by administrators who are trained in giving feedback. This should not only come as an observation for evaluation but as a regular check up to stay true to their teaching craft. In a transparent, trusting environment teachers should have regular conference sessions with administrators to discuss how they are growing in their craft. If time doesn’t permit for administrators to give this feedback, then peers should observe each other providing feedback for growth.

Too often this is not what happens. Trust doesn’t exist in buildings. Staff do not want to show their weaknesses to each other. Administrators have very little time to spend doing growth observations with all mandatory evaluation observations. With the raised anxiety of an evaluation, teachers put on “dog and pony” shows to highlight strengths avoiding any areas that need improvement. Any feedback gained from these observations is not very valuable. How can this be changed? How can a system be created where teachers desire more feedback?

Teachers also need to seek feedback from students. Before, during and after lessons teachers should be asking students about their learning experience. Before lessons teachers should focus on feedback about how to deliver the lesson. Does the lesson need hands on activities? How can we move about our learning space? What type of writing products can we produce to show learning? During the lesson teachers have to look to feedback about the activities. Is the material too easy? too hard? DO directions need to be explained more? After the lesson teachers need to ask about the experience. What worked? What did not work? What could be added to make it better? How might it have been changed? Many times teachers forget to digest this feedback and use it to adapt their lessons. Why? Often due to time or plans. It is easier to stay on course than respond to the feedback even if the course takes the ship off target.

Teachers need to examine their practice. Value feedback. Grow in their craft!

Administrators need to focus on growing their staff more less on evaluating!

Students share your voice, give feedback that the teachers can hear and use to grow.

I am presenting a conversation about Standards Based Grading at the Nova Now Conference in Grand Rapids: