Sub Vision: Mathematics Again

After many months of staying home, enjoying a flexible time and trying to fill this period with different activities, I find myself drawn toward math again. My first project, creating a program for learning and teaching algebra, is done, waiting for me to decide if I want to advertise or publish it, and now I am debating what will be my next project. Remarkably, mathematics still appeals to me...                      

I am looking at my college ‘intermediate algebra’ book, the equivalent of high school algebra II, and thinking I should keep on developing algebra, continue to trigonometry and maybe even get to calculus. Crazy… I know…

Maybe it is just that I am a frustrated math teacher, who was never able to use her full potential as a teacher. I am not as good with math as I am good in explaining math; maybe because I understand what other people don’t understand.

My, relatively, short teaching career is a sequence of unsuccessful experiences with unmotivated, unwilling and undisciplined students. The whole literature of how to become a good teacher, acquired during my teaching credentials program, proved to be completely useless, and rather aggravating. The philosophy that throws all responsibility on teachers, and the system that allows students not to do their work, or pay attention or even just be quiet, system that does not require students to be responsible for their materials, or even bear the consequences of having no skills by 12^th grade, make it impossible for teachers to do their job.

My only satisfying school job was teaching a Pre-Calculus class. It was my hardest assignment, as I was not familiar with the material, challenged to the top of my knowledge, but it was also my finest. Students did want to learn. They knew they needed to put an effort to get where they wanted to be; they did their work, came up with good questions, and kept asking until they understood. And when they did, there was a sparkle in their eyes, and they did appreciate it.

Looking back, perhaps I should have invested more effort in becoming an advanced level math teacher, working with motivated students, bringing the light to their eyes. As it is now, I can expand my knowledge and understanding, taking advantage of the time I have, and hope to be able to use it sometime in the future...

                                          

Sub Vision: Dear Teacher...

I know, I am just a substitute and what do I know about your unique style, your great students, and your special relationship with them. You do want a good substitute to guard your precious learners and protect that distinct dynamic. I do understand that, and would love to follow your heart, however it is not that simple... I know the endless hours you invest in your profession; I used to do that too. I see both sides. However, I learned from experience that the special balance you have with your students exists only when you are there. As soon as a replacement is present, students become the rebellious kids, who want to play, not to learn…

No matter how much you trust those perfect students of yours, please leave them with some distinct work, to be completed by the end of the period; not tomorrow, not next week. It cannot be an ongoing project they are working on this week, or a paragraph to read, or studying for a test. They won’t do it! If the work you assign is not on a paper, collectible by me, the preferred way of accountability, if it is electronic, make sure that the deadline is by the end of the period. Make sure they know it, they know you are going to check, and please do so. If they don’t have to show a completed work by the end of the period, trust me, they would NOT do it.

Please leave with me a seating chart. There is nothing as magical for behavior control as seating charts. As long as they know I can find out their names, and they will be answerable for their behavior, they will behave. Don’t just leave me a note to report to you the misbehaving people. They know I don’t know their names and they trust their friends not to tell me.

Please leave me some space on your white, or black, board, where I can find room to put on the date and my name. I would also like, if possible, to write your instructions on the board, just in case someone will claim I never told them…

Whatever instructions you gave the students before I came, please give them to me too. I would like to be informed of what I am supervising, and what your expectations are. I want to be able to tell students to do their work, and to know they really do have work, otherwise I will have to trust their word that they have nothing to do…

And… when they tell you I was mean, it is OK to sympathize with them, if you need their affection, but please be assured in your heart that I was doing my job…

Sub Vision: Long Term Assignment – Part II

Following my ‘success’ at the science and physics classes, and due to another, not unforeseen, situation at school, I was asked to fill an English vacancy. It is quite funny, Not only because English is not my first language and every other substitute would better serve the school, but also because as far as I know, there is no lack of English teachers (unlike physics). Never the less I agreed to try the new adventure.

Even though I am not really qualified to teach English, and absolutely not the 12th grades I was assigned, I know few things about teaching, and about putting some order into unruly, and unmotivated, students. The problem was that those exact skills turned the whole 12th grades community against me…

Starting with my basic tool of creating seating charts for better control and learning names, I had to fight students to sit at a seat and stay there, not to switch and not to wonder around. This first battle cost me a wide spread hostility, even from students who knew me from before and originally favored me.

The next rule of thumb, keeping them busy, was met with no less hostility. I was their 5th or 6th sub for the past two month, and they didn’t think, not unjustifiably, that they should take me / my assignments any more seriously than those of all the prior subs. I had to send several students to the dean before getting any students’ cooperation, which helped, but did further harm to my popularity with them…

It was a Friday when I started, and the prospect was to stay there for at least three weeks, so I thought I did what I needed to do to set the ground to an easier job. Over the weekend I created an orderly seating charts, typed all the 200 names of my new students to my computer, getting ready to record work assignment and any other project that will be useful in evaluating students in case I need to grade them (quite unsettling, considering the fact that the end of the semester was approaching)…

Monday seemed to be somewhat better. I had some handle on the read material, and students who reported back from the dean knew I was serious. At the end of the day I had two visitors, the heads of the English department. They didn’t seem to be too interested in what I was doing, and even less interested in how the students were doing (more than 160 seniors). I told them what my plan was, to have students write, and then exchange papers and critic each other, which they approved, but mostly to assure me that these were THEIR students, and are excellent and capable of doing that.

By Tuesday I already recorded most of the work students handed to me, starting to collect information as a base for a grade, even just to pass it to the next teacher. I worked diligently to put an order in the papers, in the messy classroom, installing procedures, trying to prove how serious I am. Never the less I had a feeling that my efforts are futile, and students, although taking their assignments more seriously, are hostile and not cooperating. I was pretty exhausted and discouraged when I stopped at the office at the end of day. There I discovered that my assignment is over and another teacher is replacing me the next day. I was asked, however, to stay there for another day, to direct him and help him settle down.

Two conflicting feelings overcame me all of at once, a huge relief that I don’t need to do it anymore, and a rage of anger and frustration. Why was I put through this nightmare just for three days, and why did I take it so seriously. Back at home I collapsed into my chair and ate everything in a reasonable radius…

The following day was just as frustrating. The expected teacher had arrived, a substitute (not a pool teacher as I was told), with English credentials (according to his account). I was not a bit impressed, but students were. He told them cute stories about himself (to which I listened five times) and they adored him! At the end of the day the two esteemed department chairs reappeared, threw a contemptuous hand wave at me as I approached, pointing to the new teacher, the one they wanted to talk to. Later I learned they knew each other from past years, but he has not been there for five years (I wonder why).

During that next day I kept up with recording papers and finalizing seating charts, and at the end of the day I showed him my procedures and recording. But then I learned that the department chairs had told him to disregard everything that was done earlier and start over. If that was not infuriating enough, I saw how friendly the coaches were to him and much students liked him. It did hurt…

so much for taking my assignment seriously and orderly… so much for putting students and school’s interest ahead of my own, and so much for doing the right thing and paying the price of students’ hostility, instead of the adoration we are all so yearning to earn…

Sub Vision: Get a Job… or better yet – a Career!

When a sales person calls and manages to bypass my answering machine to get to me, I get furious about a system that allows anybody to intrude my privacy at my special time. If a stranger breaks into someone’s home, he is a violator, and faces fierce consequences, so why invading someone’s space is not a violation?

The point that I want to make, however, is not about my frustration; it is about the people who are behind these calls. I want to tell them ‘young people, is this the best you can do with your life? Is calling people at home, trying to sell them something they don’t need, something you probably won’t buy - Is this the best way you can do to make a living? Aren’t you wasting your life?’

As I grow older, my attitude toward all young people is a mixture of parental and educational approach. I want to tell them not to waste time and energy on unimportant matters, to approach money as a mean, not as a goal, and a job as a career of the type that (as I heard once) they would do even if not paid to do it.

I am aware of a ready criticism toward someone who grew up, and raised kids, in a normal family situation, with values, education, and financial stability. And of course, any honest job is better than no job. We all had temporary situations when any honest job was OK; cleaning houses, babysitting or telemarketing. For a student with young family, or a person who supports an elderly parent, every job is respectable! But once situation is stabilizing, one must try to move to a better position, or at least try to find aspects of the job that he/she likes and expend on them…

Another reproof I may face might arise from the type of the job I do; it is not exactly a high profile career, one may claim. Unlike full time teachers, I am not that much of an educator… I don’t have their grueling responsibility of seeing 200 students under their care learning and maturing. Mine is more of a job than a career as it does not develop into a whole process with a start and with end results. I don’t take students on a long path that brings them from ignorance to enlightenment …

Yet, I am a teacher, and as such, I am true to my career indicator - I will do it even if I am not paid to do it…

True, as a substitute teacher I don’t have the satisfaction of seeing the whole progression, but never the less I am still a teacher and an educator. I don’t envision my job as just a warm body in a classroom. I am an instructor whenever I have the opportunity to discuss an academic subject - literature, historical event, or a math problem, and I am a mentor when the occasion arises to discussing social issues, relationships, values or current events, thus making them teachable moments…

There is nothing more gratifying for a teacher than seeing the result of a teachable moment… Not very often, but occasionally, students that I had before, at the same school or even another, would remind me that they learned something from me that affected them. Those are what Mr. Sima, my teaching credentials professor, would call ‘psychological dollars’, worth, infinitely, much more than green dollars…

Sub Vision: Special Education Made Right

At the beginning of my education career, I was lucky to land a job at a good school, close to my home. I started there as an observer, part of my teaching credentials program, stayed as a bi-lingual volunteer aide, then (minimally) paid aide. A year later, after passing the proficiency test, I was offered a math teaching position at the special education department. This was my first year teaching and I had a lot to learn about teaching math, special education and school organization in general. My aide was a great help with teaching, and fellow teachers with IEPs.

As my goal was to teach math in the general education, I left at the end of the year. The next ten years took me to charter and private institutes, adult education, and a variety of public schools. These experiences led me to the conclusion that a full time teaching job was just impossible, and thus I became a substitute teacher. I did hold several semester-long assignments, but was always careful not to commit to a contract employment. At times, regretting leaving special ed, I considered going back to school to add a credential, but when I learned of what it entails I gave it up.

During those ten years I learned that my special education students were not different from most other students, academically or behavior wise. With time, and repeated disappointments, I lowered my expectations and rigor of teaching, and became complicit to the lack of students’ progress. Long-term assignments kept me for a while at certain locations. Usually, however, I wandered between different schools, and being lower on the seniority ladder, was called to the lower-end ones.

Despite the realization that students in the special ed are very similar to those in the general ed, I was stunned to discover that most schools do not take the special education seriously. Unlike the earnestness with which we took our job at my first school, most special ed programs lacked integrity and real goal. When assigned to a special ed class, I was given no specific directions, students had no definite guidelines or work, and when asked about their daily routines, typical reply would be ‘none’. I would not believe it had there been anything to point to the contrary...

Ten years later, I returned to my first school as a substitute. I was delighted to see people I have not seen in years, most still there, teaching same subjects, and in the same classrooms. With renewed acquaintances and relationships, I received invitations to substitute, especially from my special education teachers, friends.

I then re-discover something amazing… special education teachers that do actually teach! During two weeks I spent at one classroom we read a book, discussed it and had a project. At another one-week assignment the teacher left specific instructions and orderly class work, with one high-quality movie to watch, following a guide-line and a worksheet. At my friend Maria’s class I enjoyed a very well-organized plan for both English and math, and I realized that her class’s math level is higher than many general ed’s. Similarly impressed I was with another math class where advanced work was completed and submitted. Even the last day of school was not idle; The Health teacher left several tasks, and – a qualified, difficult, final exam…

There is also a lot to say about the wonderful and dedicated assistants, many of whom had been there for years. They work closely with the teachers and are an integral part of the learning process. They don’t sit in the corner and exchange text messages. They are active, knowledgeable, authoritarian yet accommodating.

I wish I had known back then, what I know now, and not wasted ten years looking for the ideal job. This place is as close to ideal as I could find, with dedicated, great teachers, colleagues, friends, and with students whose life I could have affected...

Ch 7 of 20: Books

Remember those light weighted books that our parents would buy us at the beginning of the school year? Well, maybe what I remember from a different country, in a different era, does not apply to my generation’s experience in the US, but I am sure someone remembers, even here, a time when a textbook was just that – a text book. Not an artistic creation with colorful pictures and short sophisticated clips, but just a book with text. Don’t get me wrong – I am all for enrichment of the mind and the senses, and teaching with open horizons is more than just a good idea… but…

How many students do you know that are looking at those additions just because they find them interesting? We do; the teachers, the parents, the adults who are holding the textbooks, but most of the children do not. “So what?” you would say – “if only one in a hundred students looks at the enriching part then it is well worth it…” And you may be right. However, this enrichment comes with a price… each text book weighs more than an average person can hold for several minutes… if I need to move two or three books at a time I really have a problem – and I am a fit adult who is able to handle more stress than many teachers I know. “Well, students are younger and stronger” you may claim, and you may be right again, but what happened when they have to carry five or six books that are just as heavy? My daughter suffers from backaches for years now, since she was in middle school. Being the ‘A’ student that she is, she carried all her books back and forth, as she was told to do, in a backpack that was as heavy as her skinny early teens figure… I used to watch her with pain as she carried those torturous heavy books, and I would frantically call the middle school office begging them to delay the school bus departure for several minutes so that students would have enough time to get to their lockers and get rid of the weighty burden at the end of the day, but of course my appeal was never listened to.  Yet, as a parent, I was quite impressed by the quality and richness of the textbooks, and considered their weight as a trade-off. I changed my mind when I became a teacher…

I realized that no one of my students had ever read or paid any attention to the extra information. Few of them might have found some of the information mildly interesting if I read it to them, and even that slight interest happened only in the higher-level classes. I found the over-loaded information too confusing for the average student, the pages too busy, and the important information too hard to find. My favorite Algebra and Geometry textbooks were two simple books that were assigned to me when I was teaching special education class on my first year; basic, colorless small books, with the learned material simple, clear and easy to find. I used those books whenever I could do so without risking my career…

One of the hardest and least effective battle that I had to fight with my students was making them bring textbooks to class. It was just a losing game. Once you sent the books home with students, at the beginning of the school year, as you were supposed to do, most probably you would never see them until the end of the year (usually still brand new and untouched...) If you allowed students to leave their books in your classroom, most probably they will soon disappear, and not only that would not be used, but you, the teacher, will be blamed for their loss. Officially, teachers are not allowed to store students’ books in their classroom.

So… many schools came up with a solution – they offer a class set. Sounds like a great idea? (especially for the books’ publisher…)  Not so fast! These books are not assigned to a specific student since they are being used by all learners that take the same class, and thus they are subjected to neglect and abuse… I saw classroom books flying in the air toward unsuspecting student, being torn, left on the floor and stepped on, being transported to random locations at the school grounds, and most of all – being an open space for graffiti, innocent in the better case, but quite often inappropriate and vulgar.      

Different teachers have different solutions for the books dilemma. One of my colleagues, whose classroom was next to mine, a tough guy who was also a respected coach, did not give in to the books situation. He did not agree to have a class set and demanded that students bring their own textbooks. Students that came empty-handed had to stay standing up for the entire period… It took me a while to figure out why some of his students would come to my classroom and ask to borrow an algebra book, with a solemn promise to bring it back (and they did). But, when more and more students showed up with the same request … I, at last, asked him what was going on and found out what the reason was…

Other teachers’ answer to this impossible situation is not using textbooks at all – they use only worksheets… Imagine the expense that results. Not only that the school spends hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars on textbooks (and they are mandated by the district!) it wastes many additional thousands of dollars on duplications. Most of those papers are just for a one time use and being tossed (or become flying objects) very soon afterwards. And the worst part of using worksheets is not even the waste, but its poor value as learning materials. Students get into a bad habit of just plugging in an answer in the “fill in the blank” area (makes the job of copying real easy...). I was shocked to discover, when teaching Algebra II to eleventh graders, that doing homework means for them just writing the answers on a piece of paper, without even copying the problems (and in most cases just copying the solution from the back of the book…)

So how did we get ourselves in such an impossible book situation? The answer is, unfortunately, quite common in the education business – money! Someone is making money, a lot of money, out of those textbooks. Think about a large school district that enforces a certain textbook on all students in its domain. Each of these hard covered, heavy with hundreds of pages, books, cost the district many tens, if not hundreds, of dollars. How can the publisher charge so much for its product? By padding it with very many un-necessary colorful pages so it can justify the price. This is not a new trick by any means. Restaurants, for example, give us enormous and unreasonable amount of food just so that they can charge us a lot more…

Of course, this is not the only way to get the district pay unbelievable amount of money for textbooks… Every so often, the school district is committed to buy a new edition of the same books… well, hard covered books don’t get destroyed very easily so there must be another way to move and re-vitalize the book business -  new edition... They do that also to the colleges and universities textbooks, although probably not with as much revenue as in the K-12 industry.

So, here we are again… Teachers (and students) pay the price for a system that is completely ignoring their needs. Books that are impractical for use by teachers and don’t fit the needs of students. A situation where teachers are scrambling to find a way around the system to supply their students with what they really need. And in doing so, not only they, quite often, use their own money to supplement a budget of millions of dollars used inefficiently, but they are also prevented from doing what they really want to do – teach efficiently…

Ch 6 of 20: Discipline

From: Cubs Pre-School

Picture going to a lecture on your favorite subject, on a topic that you are anxious to learn about. What are the chances that you will comprehend and learn from it if the people who are sitting around you are constantly talking? What if right in the middle of the most interesting part of the lecture your friend at the other end of the hall calls for your attention to something she wears or a good piece of gossip. What part of the interesting lecture would you understand, or even hear?

And, what if this lecture is not that interesting to you? You need to take it in order to qualify for something, but it is not really your favorite subject? What are the chances that you learn anything from it at all?

This is the situation that teachers face every single day in their classroom, when trying to compete for students’ attention… Imagine a history teacher trying to teach about the French Revolution, not a bad subject at all, and can be interesting even to a non-history enthusiasts… But can the history teacher win the attention of a fourteen, or even eighteen years old student who listens to a real juicy piece of news about a classmate, a friend or a teacher? No way!

Now… think about a teacher trying to teach not history – French Revolution, but math… geometry, for example, a mandatory subject for all students…

You would say, it is the responsibility of the teachers to keep the class quiet and make sure the students’ attention is focused on the lesson, and teachers who are unable to do so are “ineffective teachers”. Really!

Well, how exactly does the teacher supposed to do just that – keep the class quiet and focused? In an upper middle class, sub urban areas, there is some leverage for a teacher. He/she may ask students to stay after class or after school and talk to them, appealing to their reasoning. If it does not help he/she may call students’ parents, and if not enough invite them for a meeting. Teachers may assign students extra work, and of course can always use the mighty threat of report card grade. If none of the above helps – the last resort may be used - referrals to an administrator or dean of discipline. Teachers do not like to use that as it reflects right back at them, perceived as not being in control, but it is an option...

But…What are the tools for a teacher who teaches in less favorable areas – in a lower socioeconomic or inner city areas, where many students don’t respond to the usual measures, and a bad grade is not a threat.

I can’t even count the number of times when I asked students to stay after class or come after school and they just did not show up.

So, I would try the next step, contacting the parents. Often I would not be able to reach them because contact phone had been disconnected, or, family had been relocated…  If reached, parents would usually be supportive; however, chances are that they are struggling with basic life’s necessities, working several different jobs, trying to feed kids and elders. They do want to help but many times are unable, and sadly, sometimes, they have little or no influence on their kids…

Teacher’s choices, then, are very limited, and they have to use their last resort - appealing to the help of the school administrators or deans, and thus pay the dreaded price of being labeled by them as “ineffective teacher”, because the other option is even worse – being labeled by the… students as “ineffective teacher”…

When I happily graduated from the teaching credentials program, I knew it is not going to be easy, but no one prepared us, the future teachers, for the ruthlessness of some students, or told us how exposed and helpless teacher really are. It is not that students are necessarily bad or mean; it is just that they know exactly how far they can go without being panelized. They completely understand that the system is a hundred percent behind them while their teachers are practically defenseless.

I used to be very resentful toward the deans of discipline, feeling that they don’t help enough, until I heard, unofficially, a dean speaking his mind and telling how helpless he is when it comes to strict measures of discipline. He was describing situations where students caused so many problems and yet he was just unable to expel them. Every time he did, they would, somehow, be back at school… This was when I realized that the system’s incompetence is far deeper than I thought…

You see, discipline is not only an obedience problem, it is an academic problem! If a teacher tells a student to bring a notebook and a pencil, to open a book or to copy from the board, and he refuses to do so just because he is not interested, this is not a disciplinary problem anymore, but an academic issue that its implication goes far beyond one individual. It influences every person in that learning environment.

Yes, some students, maybe ten percent of the classroom population, will always be able to learn. Some students, maybe another ten percent, will never learn (at least not for now), but what about the other eighty percent?

I am not exaggerating when I say that we lose eighty percent of our students’ population every single day, every semester and every school year, to the disturbance of ten, maybe less, percent of the students. The major part of a classroom population is missing its chance to learn because they are taken hostages by a small number of students whose sole purpose is to divert others’ concentration from the learning, and become the center of attention…

I saw an example of a creative solution in one school, at a satellite campus, where teachers and administrators, enjoying some independence, dealt with the problem in an innovative way. On the second semester of the school year they decided to get rid of the disturbance and removed the failing students (those who failed algebra on the first semester) from their regular program and created a new class for them. Their goal was to give the algebra teachers a chance to progress without the constant interruption, and thus give their full attention to the motivated students. I was assigned to teach the failing students. Not surprisingly, it worked great for the regular teachers. They were able to teach, at last, and kept thanking me for talking the problem students. The real surprise, though, was that it worked well for me, and my students, too. I was not pressured to move in a certain pace and thus was able to go back to basics and concentrate on subjects with which students were struggling. As tough crowd as they were, it actually worked quite fine, and at the end of the semesters students came to me and said that now they are able to understand concepts that they had never understood before. Unfortunately, the program was cancelled once the satellite campus returned to the main campus, and creativity gave way to rules and regulations…

We must realize that discipline is the main obstacle in the way to a better education structure, and that teacher’s “shortcoming” is a direct result of the system’s shortcoming …

I challenge all politicians and “education specialists” to step into one of those schools in an unprivileged areas, where administrators and teachers are losing sleep over students achievements, and to spend only one month there as classroom teachers… Of course, a whole semester would be much better. Few days or even a week, are not enough time to be part of the effort…I want them to experience what teachers are facing every day. To see how a small number of teenagers are holding hostage the learning experience, and how highly educated adults turn blind eye toward the real problem. I want them to feel the frustration of teachers, the essence of education, as the system turns its back to them…

From: Cubs Pre-school

Ch 5 of 20: Standardized Tests

Imagine a manager who works very hard, during the day and after hours, on weekends and vacations, and being paid only forty thousand dollars a year, sometimes even less. Imagine a manager who has to buy not only his/her own papers, pens and other office supplies, but has to buy them for his entire staff, from his own pocket, with a very slim chance to ever get paid back. And, how about hundreds of photocopies, paid cash at Kinko's, just because the company’s copy machine is either out of commission or tens of people are waiting to use it?

Picture a manager who is being pressured by the board of directors to increase productivity. He knows his paycheck is not going to be altered as a result, but his performance evaluation depends on it. Of course, he wants to do his best and provide top service to the company, so he asks the board for some guideline on incentives he could offer his employees for doing well and deterrents for an unsatisfying job. The response is – none, neither incentives nor deterrents. “Your employees will be just proud of the company”, he is told. “But if they don’t raise productivity - are they going to be fired?” asks the idealist manager. “No! Not at all! It is not going to affect them; they should do it for the sake of the company…”

Now, think about a teacher who is asked to raise his students’ standardized tests score, and whose performance evaluation is based on the performance of his/her students on that test. There is an enormous pressure on schools that, in turn, becomes an enormous pressure on teachers, to perform well on the standardized tests. I have seen teachers trying to do everything, including the impossible, to get students to perform well on those tests; volunteering endless hours, even weekends, with no additional pay, buying food for every single person in the class, meeting students during the summer to correct their report card grade if they increased their test score (even by ONE point. Even if that teacher’s job is not secured for the following year…)  I have seen schools forcing teachers to spend so much time on the standardized testing preparation that they don’t even have time to teach half of what they supposed to teach…

Why doesn’t it work? The answer is very simple. It takes a common sense of a child to point out to what thousands of sophisticated adults refuse to admit about the emperor’s clothing… that he wears nothing…

Our students know the truth. They know that the entire force of teachers, administrators and district leaders, are armed with NOTHING that can make them do well! If performance is not going to affect their report card grade they are not going to put effort in it… they know that nothing can be done to them!

You see, our students are just as smart as those employees who are asked to raise productivity. They ask – “What is there for me?”

If the employees know that raising their productivity does not come with a raise in their paycheck, and on the other hand, there is no danger of being fired, they are not going to perform – why should they bother? How much do they care about the image of the company?

If student know that the results of the standardized tests have no consequence on their report card grades, and they are neither going to benefit nor penalized for their performance - why should they bother to do their best on a long, tiring, and irrelevant test? What is there for them…? And they raise this very question every single time before a standardized test.

I have many stories about the pathetic hysteria that occurs at a school during the tensed time of the testing. I can tell you about countless hours put by paid and unpaid school employees who are assigned to the job as full time or part time coordinator (…and it is always more than a full time job…)

On my first year supervising a test I caught a student cheating (using a calculator when no calculators allowed). I dutifully dragged that student to the headquarters of the testing and reported him to the supervisor in charge. Soon enough I found myself being interrogated about the nature of the cheating, if I really saw it or just imagined seeing it, was it really a calculator or only seemed to be a calculator, and so on… At last I realized that I’d better cooperate with the nature of the investigation and leave room for a doubt that maybe it didn’t happen… it took me years to realize what scrutiny schools face if they don’t reach minimum percentage of participating students, and what exercises schools practice to reach this percentage…

Another story is about a different standardized test, mandated few times a year by the district. During my first year, teaching full time, it was a periodic nightmare. Without any warning, the department head would come to me and instruct to administer this test immediately, make sure to check the open response answers myself, and submit it on the following day… Then, for a while, I didn’t see that test and almost forgot about it until several years later, when, due to an injury of the permanent teacher, I took over teaching algebra to classes consisting of repeated algebra students. These classes were very tough and challenging; I knew some of the students from previous years and was walking on eggshells dealing with them… All went quite well for several weeks until, all of a sudden, a command came from above – Administer the horrid test! Now, these are very low motivated students, who are so smart and calculated about where and if to put their effort. Certainly, they are not going to do anything that doesn’t pay to their immediate interest. Thus, I had to face an ethical dilemma - do I just let them take it easy, compromising about noise level in the classroom, and letting them pick at their neighbors’ test (stupidly – the test is only one version), or do I act on my conscious (and on the fear that administrator will sure come and check on them, and on me…) So, I started a losing battle, in a desperate attempt to get them to work quietly, as hard as they can, and on their own…  I lost not only that battle but I lost it for the rest of the year… from that time on I could not make them do anything any longer, and each day of the remaining two weeks of school I was praying that the day will be over without any major incident…

A curious finding about that specific test: When I received the tests results, I was surprised to find out that students’ performances were almost in an opposite correlation to their ability, according to my assessment. It took me a long time to figure out why. What I realized, at last, was that students who didn’t care, just marked all the answers without checking them, but did finish the test. Obviously some of their answers were correct. The good and conscious students took a long time to answer and check, but never got to the end of the test, and thus their overall score was lower than of those who marked randomly, but answered all questions… 

That much for standardized tests, their value for assessing students, and even worse, their value in assessing teachers…

Yet, time and again, teachers are being blamed for the failure of their students in the standardized tests. Blamed in the best case; evaluated, penalized and in some cases – being fired, in the less fortunate case. Blamed for something of which they have no control, nor do they have the tools to control it…

Ch 4 of 20: What is wrong with our education system?

EVERYTHING! Everything EXCEPT FOR … believe it or not… THE TEACHERS…

to teachers with love...

For the past ten years of being in education, I have NEVER met a bad teacher. I met teachers whose teaching methods might have not been ideal, in my opinion. I met teachers with whose opinion I did not agree. I met teachers that were not as organized as I thought they should have been, teachers whose response to a situation was different from mine, but not even one of them was a bad teacher!

All the teachers that I know love their job and try to do their best. They are very intelligent people with knowledge that goes far beyond what they teach, in their subjects and in general. They show up to school when they are well or sick, fresh or tiered, making almost impossible arrangements for their families to take care of their sick children, aging parents, or incapacitated spouses. They come to school early, some of them very early, and often stay late after school hours, long after their learners had gone. They remain at their rooms during lunch to accommodate struggling students, and they come in the evenings to endless required, or even only recommended, meetings.

Teaches spend a weekend after weekend preparing lessons, projects and tests, checking endless amount of papers, and planning new policies and methods in hope that maybe this time their effort will bring better results. They answer emails and phone calls from administrators, parents and students. They are available for anyone at any time, almost twenty-four hours a day, almost every day of the year.

Yes, there might be some CEO’s out there who are responding to communication coming their way at all times, maybe even on vacations and off time, but shall we compare compensations?

A teacher is paid for six hours of teaching a day. Yes, it does include, sometimes, one “free” hour, conference, for preparation time. I don’t remember too many conference hours that I actually used for ‘future’ preparations, let alone “free” time. There is, always, so much to do that teachers use conference hours to catch up on school errands, and they barely make it.

On average, and this is quite an accurate assessment, for each classroom instruction hour there is at least one, out of class, additional hour of work. It means that at the end of every school day a teacher had already worked two school days. It means that by the end of the school year the teacher had already worked for every single day of the summer vacation, winter vacation, and every other vacation. In most cases teachers had “covered” most of their weekends, as well, and probably more than that…

So – what IS, really, wrong with the education system?

NOT the teachers! Yet they are the ones who are being blamed for all the ailing of our education system, and why not? They are the easiest target…

It always reminds me of a joke about a man who is looking for his lost key near the street light. When a neighbor asks him where he lost the key, he points to the other side of the street. “So why are you looking for the key here?” asks the confused neighbor. “Well, it is too dark over there…” answers the man, “it is much easier to look for it here…”

We are looking at the easy place, in the light, instead of looking where is right… The real problems and solutions are not under the comfort of the streetlights, but at the dark corners, far away from the easy and bright…

Yes, we all heard about cases of bad teachers, and yes, there are bad apples everywhere, but if there is one field where it is very rare, it is in education.

Why should a person want to become a teacher? For the money? For the respect? For the support?

No, a person who wants to become a teacher is an idealist (or a fool…), an optimist who just does not know how hard it will be to make his dream a reality; who does not realize that the system will consistently be against him and will continuously stand between him and the dream…

What do I mean? …Where shall I start…?