Class of 2019

Every year around this time, I get conflicted feeling: tired, anticipating next year, and of course, knowing that my seniors will be gone. I am of course always proud as I could be when my kiddos graduate; like a parent, I am happy to see them fly out of the nest. At the same time, kids that I've had for multiple classes, who are in NHS with me, I know I'll miss them so much. That happens every year, and nothing makes me happier than my former kiddos shooting me some messages a couple of years later saying how well college is doing, and then even later when they get their first jobs, etc.

For myself, this has been a rough year, probably because of buying and selling a house, moving twice and to be honest, being a little worn thin teaching the same subject for 18 years. But I think another big part of it is just not seeing those kiddos on a regular basis. I miss them a little already this year, which is probably good because it will help me to let them fly out of the nest.

This year is really a special case for me. Of our graduating class of around 140-150 or so, there are 26 students that have taken at least 2 classes from me, 24 who have taken at least 3, and 9 who have taken 4 courses with me. That's a pretty significant part of their high school career, and I'm honored to have taught each and every one of them.

I teach at a public magnet STEM Academy, one that has a lottery for admission, no testing is necessary for admission, nor really is there any requirement to be actually interested in STEM, so we get kids for a variety of reasons, including that interest sometimes. What is amazing about this group of seniors is that even though a lot of them are not going into STEM fields, they fully bought into the vision of our school. They are collaborators, innovators, professionals, designers, and perhaps what I'm most proud of, they are inquirers and critical thinkers. They don't shrink from challenges, they rise up and meet them. Even though most of them are gone half the day doing dual enrollment work, they still lead this school by example each and every day.  They have held up the L&N banner high, and our coming classes should really look at what they did, who they were, and try to emulate that even as they find their own way to do it.

So my wonderful senior Gryphons, fly, spread those wings and become what you are meant to be, change the world, find solutions to problems, love others, lift others up, fly high and lead others in the ways that they should go. Don't let tales of Icarus hold you back, that kid had fake wings of wax...you all are Gryphons, with wings made of thought and curiosity, determination and teamwork.

As a long time teacher (next year is 20 for me), I am often hesitant to call out a lot of students or a class for any kind of praise that might make other classes upset or make them feel left out. That probably means that I don't give out as much positive feedback as I ought to sometimes. But, another thing that I've learned over these past two decades is that what students want, what any person wants, is to be known, to have some say their name with kindness and love.

So... Connor and Devon, Rosey, Ansley, Nick, Chloe, Bryce and Bryce, Daniel and Daniel (and Daniel), Macy, Ivy, Kennis, Walker, Cade (or Jakob!), Isabelle, Samantha, Circe, Kailey, Travis, Savannah, Janaya, Julia, Brooke, and Delaney (to any of you who had me multiple times that I missed, it isn't because you aren't as vital, it's because I'm an old man and forget things),  I'll miss you all a lot, but I can't wait to see what you become, I'm already proud of what the four years at the L&N has wrought in each and every one of you.

Bad Blood

I mentioned on Twitter a few days ago that I’d finished reading John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, which I was interested in, but had forgotten about until hearing an interview with the author on the education podcast Have You Heard. As with pretty much every episode of the podcast, it’s a bit slanted for my taste, but on the other hand, I know what the bias is, and I learn a lot from every episode.

                Anyway, about the book, it was amazing and enraging, the latter on many levels. First of all, the book reads well, and while it certainly is not a detached telling either, for reasons that become apparent at the end of the book, I never once doubted the essential veracity of the tale. For those of you that might be unaware, it is about the start-up Theranos that was the darling of Silicon Valley and the biotech industry for nearly a decade, both for what it promised, easy, less invasive blood testing done quickly and for its charismatic founder, Elizabeth Holmes. In particular, it was such a good story because in the male dominated world of Silicon Valley, it was the story of a woman that was every bit as good as if not better than the boys, after all, she wasn’t promoted to an executive spot, the whole thing was her idea. Who wouldn’t want to root for that story?

                Following tech news over the past few years will let you know the outcome ahead of time, and I had a pretty solid interest from the very first time I heard about it. I spent some pretty formative years, five or so during and after college, working in the blood testing arena for 3 different pathology labs. For a while I wanted to be a medical technologist but chose another path. That is part of the first reason this book was so enraging. The whole time the actual work, the testing of blood samples wasn’t the top priority, heck, it wasn’t even the third or fourth. It was all fakery and illusion the whole time, and throughout the whole process there was really no medical oversight in any way. As Carreyrou rightly points out, this isn’t just some app that sells ads or does microtransactions that rip people off. People’s lives are at risk with medical testing, and yet no one that had power in the situation gave a rip about that. That’s not really shocking considering the acidic effects of unbridled lust for riches and notoriety, but it certainly is maddening.

                That leads me to the other thing that enraged me. As much as the book is the story of a company and a person, Holmes, gone very bad, it was also very illuminating about what really matters in a world where profit is king. Connections…with the right connections, you don’t have to have a good idea, you don’t have prove anything, you can put anyone at risk as long as you can sell it and posit a solid ROI. Again, not shocking, but the blind spots shown by the people who already had wealth and power in the attempts to get more wealth and power were truly heart wrenching. It brought back to me the feeling I’ve had ever since reading C.S. Lewis’ The Inner Ring, that of powerlessness, of knowing that no matter how hard one works, no matter what you know, it is really about who you know. And those networked connections matter even more than familial ones, see the case of George Schultz and his grandson. The grandson blows the whistle on the problems at Theranos, but his grandfather doesn’t believe him. Probably because believe him would mean admitting that the connections that led him there were wrong.

                The final piece of the anger I had while reading the book was just this, that there are few consequences for those in the inner ring. The oligarchs never seem to pay the price, Rupert Murdoch just wrote off his $100 million loss and called it a day. And yes, Holmes may end up with some jail time, but the rest of the folks who backed the company, well, no worries, their investment just didn’t pay off. But this wasn’t just an investment, this was coercion, stalking, dirty underhanded legal tactics (I feel I could write a whole other paragraph on that), and as stated before, risking people’s lives.

                The truly painful thing is that it didn’t really have to be this way. Holmes had a laudable idea, if of course zero knowledge or seeming desire to attain the knowledge, or to listen to those who had the knowledge. Had she hired some real doctors, listened to them, had some humility, really wanted to help people instead of trying to be someone else (Steve Jobs in her case). If the investors and companies that bought into Theranos looked for more than a nice sales pitch and claims of disruption and revolution, something really good could have been accomplished.

                To go full circle back, I totally agree with Ms. Berkshire’s assessment in the Have You Heard podcast that a lot of ed-tech promises sound the same way. The world is promised, disruption is the byword and school systems jump on the hot new thing with little study, little idea of how to implement things and just believe that tech = magic and some wand waving will make it all right. And as a teacher, that is what ultimately worried me the most as I read the book.

                Wrapping up, the book was great, I highly recommend it. It reads almost like a fiction book in many ways, intriguing throughout. The added benefit is the timeliness of the whole story.

On the Platitudes

There is a fair amount of drama on Edutwitter right now about teachers being upset about a response to a tweet from a a prominent "thought leader" and then another thought leader responding to the responses from the teachers:

I'm a small fry in the grand scheme of things here, but I have a few thoughts that are probably better thought out here than by trying to cram things in on twitter. The first thing I'll note is that I have a predisposition to dislike platitudes. I think I may have blown a job chance a few years ago by responding to the questions of a panel interviewing me with the phrase "I'd be glad to answer with specifics, but I'm not very good at meaningless platitudes." I prefer to be authentic, I hate prepackaged lessons, I'm not much for vision statements, and while I love a good quote, I'm really not a fan of things that reek of shiny happy people syndrome.

The problem with the inspirational quotes crowd is two fold in my mind; first of all, that the quotes seem to be pretty much their only contribution in most cases. There is rarely dialogue or any engagement with teachers, at least to my knowledge, and I have no problem being proven wrong. Second, it just does not reflect the nature of education and teaching.... Schools and the problems in them are messy, complicated and as the past 40 or so years or reform have showed, silver bullets don't work. 

Don't get me wrong, I want my admins and the teachers around me to be optimistic, but at the same time, I want folks around me in the struggle to recognize that things are hard, that there will be struggle and that no amount of smiles can overcome the difficulties that our kids face.

To be clear, the happy quoters aren't saying that, I want to believe that they want to encourage teachers, knowing that the work is hard and that at various points during the year, teachers are worn down. I think that the quoters also care about kids, one of the prominent ones around our area is a former student of mine and a great human being in all ways, and I've heard nothing but amazing things of his time as a teacher.

But one of the issues with the quoters is just that...most of them aren't teachers. They are admins and consultants, rarely classroom teachers. And yet their influence is widespread. The thing that really upset me about Dr. Tarte's comment is that he accuses teachers who dissented with the original tweet a "mob" spreading "poison". 

This is the real problem...not the positive quotes...most of the time, I can laugh them off, and since I'm a lot less confrontational than some people might think, I rarely say much about them. Heck, once in a great while, they do what they are intended and boost me up. Not often, but occasionally, and that is I'm sure what is intended. They aren't going to get me all of the time, or even most of the time because of my pragmatic leaning to smirky view of things. But the irony here is that one quote tweeter (71.5K followers) is defending another (37.3k followers) against a bunch of teachers with a far smaller influence (16.8k followers). And most of the teachers that I connect with have a far, far smaller influence, maybe a few hundred followers, and in many cases, those are probably half students. Who leads the mob in that case? 

For the record, I follow all of these gentlemen, I follow a lot of different folks, because I don't want to be in a bubble or an echo chamber, I want to hear folks that disagree with me, who occasionally make me angry and push me into thinking in different ways. And that, as a final thing is what bothers me the most about this who dust up. Everything is a dichotomy, one way or the other. I've written before how much the "good teacher" thing drives me bonkers. Part of this is just twitter, it's not easy to get across meaningful thoughts in 280 characters. Which of course leads to platitudes...I get that limitation, I really do, and I suspect the influencers do as well...it's hard to state both cases.

But with great power (or influence) comes some responsibility to really think out what you tweet. Heck, I will confess that I miss the days when almost no one in my district or school followed me on Twitter, I was a bit more free with what I said...and then, as more students started to follow me, I became even more circumspect. And if you are pushed back against, maybe engage a little, at least if influencing teachers is your real goal, which again, I truly believe that it is for Steele and Tarte. And do so in a way that isn't defensive, but shows that you really want to discuss things. They don't have any obligation to do this, I want to be clear that isn't what I mean. 

For the record, in the thread by Dr. Tarte, I saw a lot of responses on both sides, most pretty mild at best, and might note that a lot of the support was from folks who were not teachers, but from other speakers and publishers. I hope they note that...

In closing, I'd like to say that I really appreciate that Mr. Steele did respond to folks in Dr. Tarte's thread. The whole thing is definitely overblown, but I appreciate his engagement and willingness to clarify, again, he doesn't have to, but I think it shows the real heart.

Snow Days and Rest

As I write this, it appears that we will have a one day week actually at school, which is almost silly considering how little snow we actually got. (Not a complaint, I understand that we have to be extra careful on the back roads, especially with buses and student drivers).

I can very safely say that it has been a true blessing for me. This semester started with some family illness that required me to be in the hospital a lot, after not really being able to get any work done on the time off, or for a month or so before. So while I had a great first week back, I was tired...so tired, as I saw one of my twitter friends tweet out...teacher tired.

A scheduled long weekend was going a long way to allowing me to regain the sleep, despite more trips to sit with a sick relative, but I wasn't getting caught up per se. Honestly I'm still not, but getting several straight days of 8 hours of sleep is so beneficial. I took some time to read, to spend some time with friends and family, to cook and eat (slowly, which I can't overstate doesn't always happen), to decompress and really think about a lot of things.

Could go on about new ideas and plans, and I may do that in a future post, but after reading about twitter friends either leaving the classroom or having near breakdowns, and feeling myself really getting burnt out, I am just really thankful for the break.

For those of you, like my friends, who mostly work in IT, who have snarky comments like "hope you are enjoying your 6 day weekend", no worries, I still put in a solid 10 hours of work yesterday and am in the midst of doing so again today. But again, working a lot doesn't make you a better teacher if you are burned out...teachers, as much or more than a lot of professions, need space and time to reflect, to reconsider what they are doing, to plan, to learn and to remember why they do what they do. Glad to have had that chance and am using it to the fullest.

A new term, a solid start!

I teach at a school that is on year long schedule, so even though today was my first day of classes for this year, I didn't have new students today, but just a good reunion with the ones I've had all year (and a few I've had for 3 years).

To be honest, I had a pretty rough break, with the exception of Christmas itself. It was one of those breaks that I'm sure my teacher friends can relate to, 4 dentist appointments for myself and the kids, doctor visits, a 6 hour doctor trip for my mom, and then when we came back from a trip to the in-laws, several days in the hospital with my very ill grandmother.

Coming back made me a little nervous frankly because I had great plans for planning and making videos and such over the break, but instead, barely got my grading done, and that only with the help of some icy roads on Monday. But as it often turns out, sometimes it is just a joy to be in the room with young folks:

1st Block (Chemistry I)- We reviewed a few things from last semester in small groups, then I gave my usual anti-recruitment speech for AP Chem. Don't get me wrong, I want kids to take AP Chemistry, I enjoy that class a lot, but I want to make sure the kids know what they are getting into (pain, tears, and good problem solving skills). And it is not that I am trying to only get the best kids in AP Chem, I want the ones that want to be there, who aren't going to go to guidance and try to bail after the first test.

It went really well, I had a ton of questions from a lot of kids, some of whom I didn't think would be interested in crying that much, and I suspect I'll get quite a few from that group in the next couple of years, which is really encouraging after a down year this year (which I knew about).

Then we covered oxidation numbers, which can be dry, and which I lectured through briefly due to the aforementioned lack of new video production. Again, went really well, near full class participation and interest throughout, felt as though they really got it.

2nd Block (Organic/Biochemistry)- This class is my baby as I designed it myself years ago to hopefully keep a few kids from being cut down by the scythe of college Organic Chemistry. But it has never gone as I've hoped in the previous 3 iterations I've taught it. I usually have 12 students, 4 or whom might be interested, 4 who took it to take another class with me and 4 who got shuffled in there against their will. That makes it hard to really go deep as the material is not a cake walk and really requires some real thinking about how chemistry works, maybe even more than AP.

This year though I have 24 students, and while I have the same general groupings of students, the ratio is far in favor of the interested category and even better, every single kid in there is a solid science student. That being the case, I threw out almost everything from the previous years and have built it from scratch focusing on electron movements and really understanding the underlying dynamics rather than memorization of forms that played a bigger role in my classes in previous years.

Going in today, I wasn't sure if it was succeeding as I've had to do some really weird things to get them the lab experiences that I think they have to experience in Organic since I only have one fume hood (think 6 different groups of students rotating daily). Additionally, I haven't been able to really devote a ton of new time in the past month, so I had to fall back on some of my old material, much to my shame.

But then as I was asking questions today about the underlying systems and why a certain mechanism might be favored in different scenarios, they really got it...Not in the "memorized a chart of substitution and elimination reactions" sort of way, but in the, we get why a weak nucleophile would lead to this being favored, or why a polar solvent would matter. I'm not saying it was every student, I'm sure it wasn't, but so many of them really displayed a higher level knowledge of what was going on in a really complex topic that I was very heartened.

3rd Block- AP Chemistry- As I said, this is a down year in student numbers (10 compared to 43 last year), but it is a really fun and interesting bunch of kids. Handed back their Kinetics tests from before the break and then we dove into the beginning of the big gorilla for the year, Equilibrium. And they really got it, no problem with the (albeit simple) math, the concepts seemed to sink in, and for one of the few times this year, they seemed confident and unafraid. I love that, especially since they are often (most of them) very quiet.

So even though my feet feel like some hammered the bottom of them, even though I'm dead tired and drained knowing that I have another hospital shift tomorrow evening, I am encouraged. I went into the day a little defeated, doubting myself, and chastising myself for not getting 10 videos done over the break and revamping everything. Instead, I had a stand up, lecture/conversational day with the students and It...Was...Great!

My Inspiration- Teacher Appreciation Week

I've written briefly about this in the past, but in light of getting some nice notes, emails, gifts and shout-outs on Twitter from several students and parents, I thought I'd share a little something about a teacher I appreciated, who quite literally altered the course of my life for the better, and probably as much as anyone in my life, made me into the person and teacher that I am today.

Some backstory first...I grew up pretty poor...not homeless poor, but moved every 6 months poor... Went to 5 different elementary schools poor. My mom loved me and thought I was the smartest thing ever, but that's about all I had going for me, I was fairly smart and I was tough, willing to take or give a punch as needed.

By the time I got to high school, I wasn't really sure what I intended to do with my life. I worked pretty hard during summers, and starting the second I turned 16, I worked 30-40 hours a week at Publix (which I loved and still love). I had done some building plans for my uncle, who was a contractor, so I thought, maybe I could be an architect. And of course, the one constant my whole life has been books...I read even more than that I do now, thousands of pages a week generally.

As high school started to wrap up, I had good grades, I had good test scores, but guidance depts then aren't what they are now, and as a kid from the wrong side of the tracks with no real advocates, college was sort of a pipe dream. I delayed enlisted in the Navy, but had a medical condition that stopped that from happening. So there I was, 18 years old, 2nd in my class of 283 and no real plans in April of my senior year.

Being that rank in my class, there was an automatic scholarship at the local community college. Because really, most kids 2nd in their class aren't going to community college, they are rocking it out at a university at the least, at some nice private school perhaps. At least, the middle and upper class kids around me were. That wasn't really in the cards for me, for both financial and family reasons. So off to Lake Sumter Community College, or as we called it, Lake-Dumpster or Harvard by the Highway. My declared majors were Architecture and Creative Writing.

In my first semester there (I think), I took Introduction to General Chemistry, also known as Baby Chem. It was in that course that I was taking with a few high school acquaintances of mine, that I first met Edmund Cameron.

Ed Cameron was almost out of place there...he wore a white dress shirt and a tie every day. He sort of looked like Bernie Sanders does now. And he was brutal, I still repeat his line from the first day of class "You are responsible for everything I discuss in class, anything in the book, and anything else I can think of". He was ruthlessly sarcastic in the way only a college prof can really get away with. Somewhere in the 2nd week or so of class I had my (at the time) trademark Anthrax hat on. He said to me "Anthrax...do you know what the heck anthrax is?" My response was "they rock" with devil horns thrown up.  He never called me anything but Anthrax from that point forward...he referred to me to his co-workers as Anthrax. The only reason that I know he knew my name is that my grades got posted.

And by grades, I mean a lot of grades...I took 6 total classes with him, because he wasn't just a chemistry teacher, he also taught Western Civ classes. I took 4 Chem classes with him, both Western Civs, and then I worked as his lab assistant for a year while I took the Physics and such necessary to switch my major to Chemistry before I transferred to university. Ed Cameron was an old school, hardline teacher that believe in you knowing the content backwards, forwards and on the z-axis as well. I made Bs in General Chem I and II and he still let me believe I was the best.  He was never buddy-buddy with me, though we were both "adults" (yeah right), but he gave rip, which was more than I could say for most of the males in my life up to that point. When he posted a headline from the newspaper that said "Anthrax spotted in North Dakota", I got the message, I mattered to him, and that mattered more than I can say. Heck, I'm tearing up a bit right now as I type this...

Folks that know me understand that Chemistry isn't my only passion, if I could say it was really a passion at all. I love History too, but I can't say it is my passion. Outside of God and Family, my passion is teaching, my passion is being someone important in a young person's life, of being that person that they can just sit in the room and talk about nothing, but knowing that they ARE WANTED THERE, that they aren't a burden, but they are the whole reason for me teaching.

Ed Cameron, I'm sorry my life took me away and you never knew I became a teacher...a teacher of Chemistry, maybe one day of History as well. I don't want to be you, but I could sure do worse than that...I want to reflect well on you, and to be half of what you were to me to a few kids.  Thanks...

To my AP Chemistry students

So we are almost 4 weeks into the year, a year in which I have a larger AP Chemistry class than I've ever had by a factor of over 2. Over half of every day for me is spent in my those two sections.

Judging by the first tests and quizzes, it will be a great year. Definitely had higher scores on the first test than I'm used to, and that makes me very happy. When I graded the tests though, there was a sharp disparity between some groups in my class, one of those being by gender. There are a lot of reasons that I might posit for that, but I analyzed the data over and over, by class, by grade level, by gender, by who had me before for Chem I and who didn't.

So let me say this to all of my students, but particularly for those who I know are feeling overwhelmed, unsure if they should be in the class, unsure if they can take the pressure or the day to day grind. Some of you aren't sure if you can do this along with the rest of your course load, or if it is worth the time. You are not here by accident!

Unlike most AP teachers, I don't recruit...I anti-recruit...I tell kids at the end of Chemistry I how awful AP Chem can be. I have former students come in and tell them how rough it is (along with how it can be worth it). I don't want someone in the class that doesn't want to be. That being the case, some of you might feel like you "just got in", or that I just wanted numbers.

Nothing could be further from the truth...you were chosen, you were fought for, and I believe in you. I saw the list of names back in May and made sure that those who didn't have a chance would be talked to (by me). I knew who you were months ago in most cases. Hopefully this doesn't offend any of you, but I started praying for you then, and will continue to do so.

Back in March/April, when we saw the numbers for this class, the initial, and understandable reaction of the administration was that we needed to cut the numbers. That would have been the easy path...I could have cut all the sophomores, or cut those of you that didn't make high As in Chem I, or just those of you that I thought maybe lacked some work ethic. It would have been the easy path for me as well. I essentially dropped a self-created class for you...I'm eating a class I've never taught before for you, I (and many of you) am doing a zero block class, putting me over the allowed number of sections for a teacher for you.  I made a complete and total nuisance of myself for months to ensure that you all could get in, administration still probably hesitates to open an email from me, thinking it is me pleading, cajoling, whatever I had to do/say to keep all of you.

I don't do any of it because I expect anything in return. In fact, my end of year AP scores may suffer, I have to grade a ridiculous amount of FRQs and Lab Reports this year. I gave up many other things to make this happen. None of this is to lay down guilt, but rather to establish worth...you are worthy, you are wanted.

When you are crying, as I occasionally do about school as well, remember that...you aren't doing it just for the grade, the GPA, the AP score, the college credit, the preparation for college. Do it because you are worth it, your education, your thinking processes, the struggle itself has intrinsic value no matter what. It has value whether you ever take a chemistry course again.

I
Believe
in 
You

Regardless of my rather prickly, sometimes exasperated demeanor at time, you all are a big part of the reason I get up every morning and come to school. You can do this...you are worth it...

It Begins Again

I sort of made myself a promise this year that I'd try to be a bit more reflective on a regular basis. For a lot of teachers that means blogging everyday, which would be amazing, some year I will aspire to that, but it won't be this year.

My goal is to do so at least once a week though and since the first week of school just finished, I better get to work or I'm already behind.

To start off the year, I knew it was going to be rough at the outset.  I'm teaching 7 instead of the normal 6 classes, and additionally adding on a different AP (Environmental Science) class that I have only a minimal amount of content for from 4 years ago. Things could have potentially gotten a little easier when we decided to cut Organic this year because of lack of students signed up.  

Actually, the real reason turned out to be more the schedule. We are a small high school (>650) that actually has a lot of electives, so inevitably there will be conflicts and Organic fell to AP Biology, which is fine, might be better for those kids to take APBio in any case in the long run and it gives me a full year to make some serious changes to the course.

The real kicker came when it became apparent that I was double booked during one block. That couldn't be resolved in any good way, but the way it was resolved was a big hit to me. I'm picking up an Honor Physical World Concepts class this year (think Conceptual Physics for Freshmen). It has been 12 years since I last taught any sort of physics class, and I honestly didn't enjoy it a ton when I did.  Then, as now, I did it out of necessity.

As an actual professional, I will do my best by these kids. They had nothing to due with the unfortunate way it turned out and deserve the best. It does mean though that I'm down to only one section of Chemistry I, which means that our plans to have heterogeneous classes (Honors and CP together) are only a small part of my year, though I was the initiator and the biggest proponent of that plan. I feel awful, because now my two other Chemistry I teachers, who are either moderately new to teaching or brand new to Chemistry, now have to bear disproportionate amounts of what some might deem a crazy plan to begin with.

To be clear, the 7 courses thing was entirely my idea, but that was when I thought I'd have no brand new preps (though still 5 preps in a way, CP, Honors, AP and Organic Chem, APES), now I've gone to 5 preps with one that I am completely at a loss for and I am spending a silly amount of time trying to get my feet under me in that class.

In other words, even for my school, the year is off to an interesting start. I was mad as all get out for about 5-6 days after I got that bomb dropped on me. I've reached an internal accommodation with it, but still wish things could have worked out differently.

But on the plus side, classes have started, and as I suspected, as soon as I had actual real live students in front of me, a lot of those cares eased.  The work load will still be murderous, I've still spent way too many weekend hours preparing, but in the end, the kids in front of me make it all worthwhile.

Summer Reflections part 4- Scheduling

When I was feeling bad initially about my AP Chemistry scores this year, my assistant principal in charge of our really weird wonky schedule said to me "don't jump right to the schedule".  I didn't, in fact, I didn't think about it for first few hours of my thinking about it.  I'll say at the outset too, that I don't think the schedule is the sole or main reason for my failings this year.

Let me outline the schedule.  We are an alternate day block schedule Tuesday through Friday that means that:

• On T/R we have "L" day classes
• On W/F we have N day classes

That means 8 classes in that time frame of those 4 days of the week, meeting twice in that time for about 82 minutes each class session.

What about Mondays?

On Mondays, which we call Mastery Mondays, students might have one of those eight classes at some point, there are a few classes in our school where that is the case, my APES class next year is one of those, which means it will meet 3 days a week instead of 2.  Most of their schedule though is in "Lab" classes which can best be described as supervised study halls.  They might be in a "Science Lab" which means in a classroom with a science teacher, working on their own on whatever projects, HW, studying, etc that they need to do.  For a teacher like me that prefers they don't have a ton of HW, that would be great, since they could get a lot of it done each week on Mondays.

Most students have 2-3 of these "labs" (yes, quotes, because that isn't what labs should be in my science brain!) on a typical Monday, which means they should have 3-4 hours of studying/working time at school, with access to their teachers.

I'll say right now that even though it seems I'd like this, I have disliked it since it was initially discussed and am still not a big fan.  I will again put out the disclaimer that I don't think this is the big gest problem for me this year. It didn't hurt the other teachers at our school, they all rocked out the AP tests, and according to administration, most everyone outside of my department really likes the Monday schedule.  I can respect that and don't expect things to fit my expectations and wishes.  But here are the rough stats/facts for me:

• I have 20% less class time with my AP students than I had the year before, each and every week. That was my choice as department chair, because that was what I traded to get our CP (non-honors) Chemistry and Biology I classes 3 days a week.  To make that happen we agreed to do Honors 2 days a week and AP Chem and Bio 4 instead of 5 days.  There have to be tradeoffs... (I don't know the impact on honors yet, we don't have the data back).
• The class average on AP Chemistry from 2015 to 2016 dropped 12.4% . Again, strict passing was the same, but 4s and 5s were basically wiped out.  (I'll also note that perhaps my strongest student did not take the exam this year, but that student didn't take any of the AP exams)

Again, this is not the sole reason if it is one at all, and I know that even under this 20% drop in time, I still have more time than a lot of teachers across the country.  But I feel it might be a part of the issue, or at least needs to be mentioned as a possibility.

Summer Relfections part 3- The issues

So rather than being my normal rambling wordy self, I'm going to essentially put down bullets of my own self-critique for this year (and in general I suppose).  I talk about implications in part 5, which I may not get to today...

I left the actual paper I'd brainstormed on at school, but here are the high (low) points that I can recall:

1. I fear I may have been guilty of unconsciously projecting low expectations for some of my students.  (I don't want to explain too much in a bullet list, but basically I mean that since I allow in any kids who meet the prereq classes, I fear that some of them may sense that I know they are struggling and internally I suspect they may not get 3s or above) This is the most damning one to me, so I'll lead with it.  I'm trying to get my my around it with a lot of thought, prayer, and planning.
2. As mentioned in part 1, I fear my leniency with deadlines led to complacency among my students, turning in labs late, waiting until the last minute to do HW.
3. Homework, yeah, for the last couple of years, my philosophy has been that none of my university college teachers checked HW, they assigned it, and then let the chips fall where they may.  I did the same, had them check their own work in solutions guide, then gave a cursory glance that they did it, gave them points on the test for it. (more complex, but again, bullet list).  That led to a lot of students waiting til the last minute, on test day, therefore not asking questions when we were on the topics.  
4. Daily quizzes (actually usually every other day) were short, graded in class, based solely on HW and nightly reading.  They were also almost always universally awful. I didn't use this information quickly to change practices as one should with formative assessments, and I don't think my students took it very seriously, just took an F on it and went on as their point value was low.
5. Coddling- If you would have told me at any point in my teaching career that I was coddling students, I would have raged. I believe strongly in having high expectations of knowledge and problem solving, but have usually been willing to bend on timelines, etc.  I think I did waaaaaay too much of that this year and think that led to students taking advantage of that, rationally so, and therefore, not doing their best.
6. Overly Encouraging- I know, that sounds ludicrous...teachers should be encouraging, I believe strongly in building students up.  Actually, what I really believe is what one of the previous year's students said to my prospects for next year, "taking them apart and putting them back together". In other words, making them realize that being smart or working hard like they've always done isn't good enough.  This year, I think I was too encouraging, leading them to believe that it was always ok....sometimes it ain't ok, sometimes a little panic and worry is a good thing.
7. Labs--I think we did too many/and or spent too much time on them this year.  We did 17, which is one more than the minimum required, but as many have noted, the labs are sort of incidental, students can do well on the test without those labs.  I love the labs, but I think we've definitely been doing them wrong and spent too much time on them.

Those are what I call systemic or philosophical issues.  It's hard for me to fathom, but I think my student-centered approach has backfired and needs revamped substantially.  I have some ideas on that that I may cover in part 5 of this reflection if I get there.  Part 4 is coming with another big possibility that I didn't mention in this list...

Summer Reflections pt 2- Results and philosophy

While I'm not personally ashamed (maybe a little) of this years scores, I don't want to post my overall results for fear that students will figure out what their peers made who might not want to share them.

I'll say this though...they were disappointing in many ways.  While I had the exact same percentage of students "pass" as I did last year, the numbers of 4s and 5s were almost non-existent.  To be clear, I teach at a STEM school, one might think that these were students really into AP Chemistry (another discussion!), and my expectation going forth is that every student should get a 3 or above as a minimum, and I'd like to shoot for at least 50% of them getting 4s and 5s.

Before the rockstars of AP chemistry teaching jump in and say how low these expectations are, let's stipulate that I probably don't approach the class philosophically the same way you do, nor am I looking for the same outcomes you are.  I don't tell students they can't take my class and I don't hard recruit any either.  I'd say out of this years graduating class of around 120 or so (I don't have the actual numbers), that only 6 or so took AP Chemistry, Out of the top 12 students, only 2 took AP Chemistry, even though many are going into science related fields.

There could be many reasons for this, first and foremost might be that I'm a little abrasive and sarcastic.  I don't really think that is it as I connect with most students really well despite (or because of) this, but I recognize that I might be part of that.

The biggest thing in my mind is that students hear their peers say how hard it is and how bad their test scores are on exams and those students who have been raised (and are still hearing everyday) that GPA matters more than anything avoid the class.  The irony is that most of my students make As and Bs despite the crazy rep, but there are always students that are going to major in Chemical Engineering or Biosystems or something that don't take AP Chemistry because it might hurt their GPA.

So be it, I never try to talk a kid into taking it, because it is hard, stressful, a lot of work,etc. and I want them to make that decision on their own (or well, with their parents).  In fact, I anti-recruit every year, just to make sure that students take it because they need it or really want it, not because they'd like to take a class with me or because a friend is taking it, it won't be worth it then, I'm not that amusing...

Back to my evolving philosophy, I've always held that I wasn't going to worry much about the exam results.  I've always considered my job teaching AP Chemistry not to replace their college class, though I try to teach it at that level, but rather to make sure that when they get to college, they rock out that A and don't get weeded out by college Chemistry I and II, which plenty of students do.  The scores were always sort of incidental to me.

But here's the thing that hit me hard this year...just because that is my philosophy doesn't mean that is what all of my students expect.  Many of them want to opt out of college chem, they are taking AP classes for three reasons- it looks good on transcript, can boost GPA, and it might save them money in college.

And I'm letting those kids down, with my philosophy and style of teaching...

Summer Reflections pt1-Background

As I indicated on Twitter this week, I was disappointed in my class AP scores this year.  We haven't gotten our state test scores back yet, but I fear there may be a somewhat similar let down there as well.

For any teacher worth their salt, when there is a drop off in performance of students, they sit down and try to analyze things, which I have done a lot since Tuesday, a lot of thinking time and a couple of hours of sitting down and actually writing down thoughts.  But since this will be a darn long, rambling (knowing me) serious of thoughts, I figured I ought to give some background since I haven't blogged in 10 months.

This coming school year will be my 17th, my 16th teaching Chemistry.  I've taught in schools of 4600, and in schools of 70, public and private, urban and suburban.  Now I teach at an amazing magnet high school of 600 or so students 9-12. While I have numerous things I'd like changed about my school (who doesn't?!?), it is a truly outstanding place, one that I hope I can spend the next 20 years at to be honest.

Prior to coming here 4 years ago, I taught at an urban high school that I also loved for very different reasons because it was a very different school.  After teaching there my first year, I realized that I really needed to adapt my teaching style from the sort of stand up, lecture, work problems, do labs, rinse and repeat style.  A big part of that is that my students there had a really hard time doing much real work outside of school, largely because of their home situations and other distractions.

This made me dive full bore into more "progressive" styles of teaching, and in the 6 or 7 years since then I've read dozens of books and hundreds of articles on new ways to do things in the classroom.  I've been presenting PD in my district for several years on flipped and student centered classrooms. For my Chemistry I classes for the past 5 years, I've been all in, full-flip, standards based grade, inquiry labs, retakes, everyday grouping, etc.  Last year our school had the highest achievement scores in the district, so that must indicate that something worked right about it.

Even though I'm at a really innovative school, I've always felt a bit like an outlier because of this.  The bulk of the teachers at my school are hard deadlines, lots of out of class work, no retakes, zeroes for missing work.  What this functionally meant for me is that students (who I think like me a lot, I'm the favorite for a few) often leave my work til last because they know I'll be flexible where others won't.  I still hold really high standards for knowledge and problem solving, but I care a lot about stress loads on my kids, I've almost always been willing to move a test date for their projects in other classes, or other tests, etc.

For a year or so I've been having the feeling that my methods might not be right for this school and the students that I serve here, and so the rather poor performance on the AP Chemistry exam this year was just more fuel for that fire.  I'll speak more on that in the next post, but I want to be very clear that I'm not blaming students for the poor scores...these are kids that rocked out other AP classes, I'm taking the bulk of the blame on me.

part 2 to come shortly!

Glenn 2.0 and a slight reversion to 1.0

I haven't blogged or really even tweeted a whole heck of a lot about education stuff in the past year (since last November).  To be honest, last year was a catastrophic year for me, my health was hit, my ego and self confidence were hit, my sense of value to my school, students and the whole education profession tanked pretty hard.

So I made a very conscious decision to try to do something very different from the norm for me of late.  That was to not rant, and to some degree, to not be an advocate that I had tried hard to be for a few years.  It wasn't healthy for me, mostly because I approached it in a lot of the wrong ways, overestimating my voice and importance (common in egotists like me).  So I have at least attempted to be as I frame it, Glenn 2.0 (really I think I'm on at least version 10 at this point, but I digress).

It's been somewhat hit or miss, some things still get me upset, I just shut up or try to vent very calmly to those I trust.  Sometimes I swing and miss terribly, but I don't think I've really done a full Glenn 1.0 meltdown for a couple of months at least.  I've had a few people even ask me if I was on some medication, though I hope they were kidding.  For the record, I'm not, I'm just, at the risk of being more political/religious than I dare most of the time, trying to be more like a book I read this summer called Unoffendable (by Brant Hansen, I recommend it). I am certainly not unoffendable yet, but while I believe intent informs actions, sometimes actions can help affect intent, and so I'm working on that.

It is so hard though...every time I read my twitter feed, which is mostly Edu stuff of course, I get aggravated, mostly at progressive educators who think they aren't dogmatic, but it reality are just dogmatic about different things.  As always, the rebels don't really want liberty, they want people to do things their way.  Such is our nature I suppose.

On the plus side though, not worrying about all of the extra stuff has given me a more coherent focus on my classroom.  I still have other duties, many more than I would wish, but just freeing up mindspace for my kiddos. (Yes, I know people hate the fact that I call students that, but I'm going to do it anyway.)  I am trying to get back to the creative yet focused and competent teacher that I really feel like I haven't been the past few years.  That is a work in progress.

What inspired me to write today was some of the attitudes of some of my favorite and most capable students at my school.  I teach at a STEM Academy, and whatever you think of that term and its buzzword status, that meant something to me when I came here.  It means a little something different now as I try to dismount from my high horse, but it does mean though that we have a fair number of students for whom science, math, etc are priorities for.  We have a lot who don't care about that stuff and a lot that they or their parents just wanted something new.  On the whole though, we have a great student body to match some pretty amazing teachers.

I teach Chemistry I, AP Chemistry and Intro to Organic/Biochemistry to students that range from 9th to 12th graders, some really great students.  Of late I've noticed that a lot of them want to be Biomedical Engineers, Chemical Engineers, Materials Scientists, etc...a lot more than I think was the case in years past, to go along with those that want to be Doctors, Vets, Pharmacists, etc...  One would think that would be an amazing boon for the classes I teach.

The hurtful truth though is that remarkably few of even those students want to take those upper level classes in Chemistry, less than 5% of our students.  Glenn 1.0 (who was cynical and snarky unlike sweetness and light new Glenn) would say that maybe that is because of who teaches IOB and AP Chem (me!), but if I'm not being a sad panda, I don't think that is really the case.  Generally speaking, I have a couple of kids taking it because of me, not in spite of me, so I don't think that is wholly the case.

One might also think that it is because those classes are really hard.  That's true to some degree, but that doesn't stop them from taking a host of other AP classes at our school, ones that ostensibly might have less to do with their future success in science related majors.  I don't think the percentage of kids making As and Bs in my classes are any different than those classes, even if the work is hard. I don't think it about success on the AP test itself either, because last year was our most successful in that regard, and I only see that going up.

It hit me hard today though in conversing with a couple of my best students.  They said they probably wouldn't take IOB (my Organic class) because it didn't have an Honors or AP designation and would thus be a drag on their GPA.  I've heard the GPA complaint for years for AP, because, yes, it is more likely that you might get a B in there than another class, but never really worried that much about it.  I mean, if a kid is that foolishly worried about GPA, let it be.

But the IOB thing really drives me nuts, because that was a class that I made specifically to help students at our school.  I was tired of students going off to college thinking about Medicine or Chemistry as a major and getting buzzsawed by Organic Chemistry I and II there.  That is a real thing, that really happens.  No offense to some of my friends in other disciplines, but as someone with a degree in another subject aside from Chemistry, the introductory or 2nd year classes in that non science major was not going to keep anyone from majoring in that.  Organic might...heck, to be serious, Chemistry I and II do for many students.

How did we let things get so messed up that a student would give a rip about that minuscule a difference in GPA (which would still be 4.0 unweighted, I hate the weighting system almost as much as I hate GPAs)?  Do students really think their high school GPA matters anywhere outside of that 6 months between fall and spring of their senior year when they are applying for colleges and scholarships.  I say this as someone who graduated 2nd in my class in HS...you know who cares about that and how much difference in made in college for me?  You guessed it....exactly not a darn person...

I know that kids want to get accepted and they want the scholarships (or need, I get that, really I do), but seriously kiddos, what matters isn't getting INTO college.  What matters more is being able to get THROUGH college.  And for those of you with dreams of being doctors, engineers, or scientists, even if you have to take Chem I in college because they don't accept AP results, why, why, why would you not want to be ready for that?  Or maybe even more important, wouldn't you rather figure out in Organic Chemistry in high school that maybe you don't like science enough to go through with that degree?  That is better than figuring out 2 years in that you can't hack it, and the main reason for that being that you didn't prepare yourself.

I'm not saying that a student has to have their whole life planned out and decided in HS, that's ludicrous.  But I genuinely don't understand a student like the one from a couple of years ago that wanted to go to MIT, but said they weren't going to take AP Chem because MIT didn't accept that credit.  I was pleading with the student, trying to explain that by not taking it, they probably wouldn't be ready for Chem I at MIT, but they just blew it off.

This all of course just sounds like the rant of a teacher who wants more students in their class. That's really not the case, I generally like my class sizes, and if we don't get 20 in Organic next year, I'll be ok with canceling it so I can teach something else.  I just want my students to be successful, I want them to learn, to love to learn, to challenge them and have them challenge themselves.  To not take something just because it makes a transcript look good, but because it is beneficial and needful.

Sorry for the rant for the folks that came here...a slight reversion to the 1.0 version of me, but I'm not mad about it, just sad and disappointed.

Conflicted

What I am about to say is semi-heretic in some of the circles I float around in online and on twitter, and to some small degree, even at my amazing school.

I like to lecture...

I'll compound my blasphemy with the comment that

I'm pretty good at it...

This came up to me because while I run full flipped Chemistry I class and for the most part flipped intro to Organic class, I do a lot less in my AP class and sometimes I lecture for a bit in my organic class.

I had a terrible teaching day a few days ago and just went home defeated.  I've been sick for a couple of weeks and all sorts of craziness is going on at school and at home and it has been a rough slog of a year in many ways, but still, this day was one of those that just makes you want to reconsider your profession.  Not from any bad behaviors or anything, just a bad day that it felt like no kids learned anything and I wasted their time and mine.

So in partial personal response to that, when I had those same classes two days later, I shifted away from my usual very student centered model to that more traditional teacher in charge day.  I lectured for 20-30 minutes in my first class, and you know what?

It felt great...

I understand and know all of the arguments on the other side of that, I've made them myself, often vehemently:

• Just because you "covered" the material doesn't mean your students learned it
• Students tune out after X number of minutes of lecture and you went way over that
• Students need to be in charge of their own learning

Again, I've drink that kool-aid on a daily basis, even whipping up batches for other teachers pretty often.

But I think sometimes we forget what can occasionally be the simple effectiveness of direct instruction, live, in front of a class of students.  I'm not saying that every second of class should be eaten up that way, I'm not saying that pre-recorded content is useless (I've wasted a lot of my time if it is!), or that every student learns best that way.

Some students do though...some students want the chance to ask questions immediately and get an immediate response.  No manner of discussion threads or managed messaging or emails or comments on videos or voicethread will do that, and as a flipped classroom teacher, even though I spend most of my class every day answering questions in small groups or for individuals, which I believe is more effective than for a whole group, there is real power in answering a question for the whole group, all at once, in the moment that it was asked and they were most confused.  There is power in capturing that moment at the moment that it happens.

No that doesn't have to happen during a lecture and probably shouldn't most of the time.  But it can, and it is great when it does...

My title of conflicted is a bit overblown because I'm not really conflicted per se.  I know that there is no real pedagogical silver bullet and that being a "pure" flipped classroom teacher or constructivist or 21st century educator or student-centered classroom facilitator or whatever the hot new thing of the day is doesn't really matter.

What matters is having a variety of approaches and methods in your toolbox and using the right tools at the right time judiciously and with discernment for the betterment of the students.

And sometimes, that might be a good old-fashioned, sage on the stage teacher delivering content lecture!

New Year Resolutions

Summer is essentially over already, my mind, like the eye of Sauron, has shifted focus back to school. Actually it never really left as I spent most of June working on school stuff.  It was a good summer though, couple of short but good trips with the family, a raft of books read for pleasure, learning, and work.

To be honest though, aside from going back to 5 hours of sleep instead of the 8 I get during the summer, I am ecstatic about the new school year. Our MakerSpace is getting started up and I really think that considering the amazing kids at our school, this is going to blow the lid off and take us from a quirky, high
performing school to a truly exemplar school for innovation.

Last year was an amazing year and I fully expect this year to be even better, but as hits me every few years, I overdid it a lot. And with the new stuff I'm doing this year, there is a real chance to overwork myself into uselessness pretty quickly.  To that end, here are my new (school) year resolutions, and hopefully I can stick to them better than the plan to lose 40lbs.

1. Concentrate on my classroom and school (mostly)- The last couple of years were the first where I really branched out a lot and got involved in a lot of things and issues philosophically with regards to education.  I actually love thinking about the philosophies of old school vs new, SBG versus traditional, and really diving into the issues of education nationwide.  I love it and will probably continue to read up and and think about it.  But last year in particular I think it had me lose a lot of focus on the things going on in my classroom.  I love teaching because of the kids and don't really want to leave the classroom, and won't unless money makes me have to.  But I need to put a tighter focus on my practice and the needs of each of my kids above all.  Ultimately, these education debates will still be fought 20 years from now and my kids need me this year.
2. Stop being dogmatic- Over the past few years I've spent a lot of time transforming my teaching, making it more student centered, switching to SBG, focusing on the whole student aspect of things.  In short becoming a new agey sort of teacher which is pretty funny to those that know me personally.  but this past year, as I noted in some earlier blog posts, my strict adherence to the ideas of SBG, flipped, TLAP or whatever thing I was pursuing at that time really made me feel like I was in a teaching strait-jacket.  I'm going to let the philosophical ideas guide me but to restrict me.  No one is checking up on my pedagogical purity and it doesn't serve any real purpose.
3. Ignore Twitter sometimes- This one is weird, because I can safely say that I would be a vastly different teacher without my interactions on twitter the past few years.  I've learned more about changing my teaching practice there than at anything else.  No PD has mattered as much, no rah-rah conference has motivated me as much.  But the fact of the matter is that sometimes on twitter I just get mad for a variety of reasons, ranging from people straw manning and overreacting to things, the witch hunts against people that don't believe the things, and especially, oh most especially, the pithy, airy, motivational quotes that mean absolutely nothing real.  I know I could eliminate a lot of these things from my feed, but at the same time, I want to be challenged in my assumptions, I don't just want an echo chamber of like minded people.  I already know not to feed the trolls, but I have to learn to avoid the things that detract from my emotional reserves a bit too much.
4. Set aside time for my family- I am actually a great one for setting aside personal time for myself.  Having burned out before, I know that my own sanity revolves around remembering to pleasure read, to play a couple of video games most days, to hang out with my friends.  But since carpool with my
   whole family for hours every day, sometimes I go read a book to get away from the fighting that is inevitable when you have 3 boys separated by 4 years total.  But one thing the summer really solidified for me is that it isn't just about quality time, it's about quantity as well.  I've always been a big believer that I have to watch how much I work at home because it takes away from my boys, but I haven't held as true to that belief these past couple of years. Not this year!
5. Don't change too much- I have a tendency to discover something new over the summer and want to upset the whole apple cart of what I do.  Instead, I've decided that this year, I'm going to focus on a major change in just one of my preps and some minor "tweaks" (I hate that word...why did I use it...) to my other classes. Not that I can't think of a hundred ways to make those classes better as well, but I'm going to triage and try to master one thing instead of dabbling in 20. 

Of all of those things, I suspect that the last one will be the hardest, but I am really going to try, I've laser focused on that one class the past few weeks, knowing that the others were fairly successful last year and there is only so much of me and my time.

All of that said, I cannot wait to get the kids back in my room(s)...every year here at STEM has been amazing so far and I have even higher expectations this year!

Cycles and Renewal

In my last post I talked a lot about what a rough but worth it year it has been.  That is definitely true, but so very worth it to see that first graduating class, to see our AP and upper level science classes literally explode when I was worried for a bit if the S in STEM stood for something other than science.  Getting end of the year notes (and tweets) from students, those that I'll have next year and those that I'm just going to hope have amazing lives as they move on out of my orbit.  Helping those last few students get over the line to an A, or even to passing, even if I have to hunt them down and drag them across the finish line.  It is all worth it.

And of course as we wrap up one year that seemed long at the time, but now seems like it just flew past, attention starts to turn to next year.  I think this is one of the most amazing things about teaching, not the summers off per se, but the fact that it is one of the things I've done that was in these discrete packages (quanta, one might say).  When I worked in the medical field or in industry, each day might be slightly different, but on the whole, it was the same process, over and over and there was no real time when you were "done" other than packing up for the night, or handing it over to the next shift.

Teaching though affords us this unique chance to step back and say, this is officially over for this time. I think that allows for so much reflection (which is coming in post form soon), but it also allows so much for a looking forward to the next school year.  Since I'll have all of the mundane paperwork stuff done this morning, inventories and such boredom, I can spend half of my day maybe standing at a whiteboard plotting out the next school year.  I spent 45 minutes or so with a new tweep in Michigan, Dan Meyers (@meyerschemistry) discussing how he teaches organic chemistry and what we would do differently in our Chem I classes.  As a science dept, we are going to get together and do some vertical planning as a department and discuss our new unofficial motto of "pedal down" to illustrate that we really want to challenge our amazing students next year.

It makes me think that seasons for teachers (and maybe for students) are sort of inverted.  Spring for us is harvest time, as we tally up the year's growth, as students go off to market....err...university.  During the summer we till the soil of our minds, thinking of new strategies, new lessons.  We restore nutrients to that soil by reading, by traveling to new places, by sleeping finally!  And then in the fall, things are reborn, it is planting time.  We start to sow seeds for the year's growth, we cultivate to coax maximum growth.

I love this time of year, for the knowledge of the fruitfulness of the year and for the planning of the harvests yet to come next year!

Worth It

Anyone who has followed my Twitter or the very occasional post here on the blog knows that it has been a rough year for me.  There are a myriad of reasons for that, I had to pick up the department chair spot at my school, there are 4 new to the building folks in my dept, I spent all of last summer and some of the fall being a common core coach.

And...due to a teacher leaving about a week before school started, I took on a 7th class of 34 kids.  That I think was the real difficulty for me, even though I am still glad I did it, I didn't want those kids to have a month or two of subs before a teacher got there.  I've drowned this year in grading, even with only grading SBG style.  My self paced efforts fell short, I have barely made any new content, we probably did about half of the fun activities as last year. In short, it was that year that just about every veteran teacher has every 5 or so, the doom year.

The thing is, I teach at the most amazing school, filled with amazing people, from my fellow teachers, to administrators and the students, most especially the students.  We are an insanely quirky school.  We are in our third year, and we put a lot more focus on our Robotics team than any of the few sports we have.  I guarantee that we have more kids that play Minecraft 2 or more hours a day than have any clue about the upcoming NFL draft.  Nerd is not a slur, but a badge most of our kids (and staff for that matter) wear with pride.

In short, we go to a school that I wish I had been at as a kid.  That was really proved to me last week when I got one of those phone calls as I pulled into the parking lot and got the text that meant I had to leave to pick up my son asap.  We had been doing an inquiry lab in my AP Chem class and I figured they had most of their data and could do their discussion and complete the lab.  Well, they had the discussion and then I got an email while I was at home trying to prep a last couple of review videos before the AP test.  The email said essentially, hey Mr Arnold, we discussed it, but we really feel like we need to run a couple of more tests, we've narrowed it down to those two things, can we run the tests?

Any good science teacher knows that you can't let even the best class actually do any lab without being there for safety reasons.  So I texted the teacher in the next room, asked him to switch out with my sub for 10 minutes to let them do the tests.  He did and they did, and it was just amazing.

Here's what it comes down to, I've had most of the kids in that class for 2 straight years, and we have a good relationship, which is of course the mantra of a lot of progressive educators.  It really makes a difference, I feel like these kids would run through a wall for me, and I would definitely take a bullet for them.  Some folks might see that and say, well you only have great kids and you're talking about your AP class.  Fair enough, but I teach at a public high school that works through a lottery, we don't select the kids at all, we take em all and love em, educate em.  But we are making a place where it is not only to ok to excel, but preferred and I'd argue, expected.

And I love this school...If someone offered me a job for 10k more tomorrow, I wouldn't take it.  And last night, the hard work was really rewarded.  I've been teaching for 14 years now, and have always thought of myself as a slightly above average teacher with a slight gift for building rapport. I think this is built around the fact that I love being in the classroom, that I am willing to treat students for the young adults that they are, smart, with ideas that matter and yet accept the fact that they are indeed, still teenagers and it is ok for them to mess up. My students probably won't ever get the district highest scores, but I've sent a lot off to be engineers, doctors and english teachers...

So last night I was voted our school's teacher of the year by our students.  And our school being what it is, we don't just have them vote, they have to provide evidence, the have to write in why they think a teacher should be teacher of the year.  And man...I almost cried...in fact, when I had to go up to get the award, I had to get off the stage pretty quick so I didn't cry.  It meant a lot more than I can ever express.  I know that a lot of folks think that what students say about teachers doesn't matter because they just hate the hard teachers or whatever, but I've always thought that HS students are great BS detectors. They know who cares and who doesn't, who cares about their test scores for the evaluation and who wants to actually prepare them for college and or the real world.  The things they said made the whole year worth it....the dozens of kids who came up to me today and congratulated me, said they had voted for me, said I was the best. (also, I got serenaded by our Dean in the lunchroom, delightfully awkward like most social interactions at our school.)

I'm not saying that it is all true.  I don't think that I'm the best teacher at our school by any stretch, we have a ton of amazing teachers, because a great school with amazing administrators attracts good teachers and students.  But I'm so pleased to be here, and so ecstatic to even be in the running. I'm overjoyed that I've made enough of an impact on some of our kids to be "that teacher".  If anything, it just motivates me to want to do more for these students next year.

And it occurs that it is so true that educators don't work for the money (though it would be nice to have more!) but for this feeling, not that "you are the best", but just, hey, you made a big difference in my life, I'm going to tell my friends to take your class too. It is so amazingly true, and I don't know that ever felt that as strongly as I did last night.

PS...I love my school, the students, parents, teachers, and administrators at it. It is the best!

Crisis of Faith

So herein is the post where I admit that my fancy philosophies and attempt to do things as student centered have not been terribly successful.  I suspect that most of my twitter friends who have much the same philosophies as me will just tell me it is a rough year and to "tweak" what I've been doing.  Those who hate one of the many new things I've tried this year, flipped, SBG, self-paced, etc. will probably say it is my own doing that I should have stuck to the tried and true molds.  I'm open to criticism, but would much rather have some positive ideas.

A quick outline of how I've been running the bulk of my classes this year.  I run a full flipped classroom, meaning that I deliver little direct instruction in class, rather I pre-record my "lectures" for the students to watch.  Sometimes that happens at the beginning of the cycle, sometimes in the middle, depending on the inquiry (or Explore) phase.

I use what I think of as a modified Standards-Based Grading model, where I still give 100 point grades (as this is what parents and students most readily understand), but I don't count practice problems, etc for a grade, I just grade something like 50 standards based assessments and the occasional bigger cumulative test.
For most of this year, I've also been allowing self paced in my classroom.  What this means is that students have an outline of things they need to get done, some optional, some not, and target dates.  There are also some other deadlines that are a little stronger, but those are typically weeks past the target dates to accommodate for students who need a bit more time. It also allowed students to work ahead if they chose to, or to take an extra day or two as needed to get the material.

I also have a pretty generous retake policy (I think) as I allow students to take any of the SBG assessments over twice, for a total of three attempts.  It is not the same assessment each time, I have multiple versions of each of these.

My goal behind all of this is manifold, but to shorten this I'll bullet point my reasons for making these big changes (gradually over the past 3 years):

• As a parent of 3 young boys, I believe that as much as possible, home time should be home time.  While the videos are supposed to be watched at home, this 20 or so minutes two, maybe three times a week doesn't seem too excessive to me.
• Chemistry is hard, and if students have to struggle at home, they often don't get past the first problem.
• I am much more concerned that they learn the material at all than they get it right the first time.  If a student bombs a test the first time and there is no chance for redemption why learn that material other than for the final?
• I want students to learn to manage their time and learn at a pace that is comfortable to them.  From the very beginning of my first forays into "flipping" or "21st Century Ed" or whatever buzzword we're calling it this week, I wanted it to be about the students taking charge of their own learning, being as student centered as possible, while still under the umbrella of my state and county standards.

I suspect that all of this sounds like the party line to both those in the party and out.  And I'll be honest, I really believe it.  I want my students to be able to acquire knowledge and to be able to apply it.  I didn't switch over from being a largely lecture based teacher to a constructivist (still not sure I'm that) or 21st century teacher or whatever.  I was a very successful lecture based teacher for years, with a lot of students that tell me I inspired them to go on to careers in engineering, science, and medicine.  I suspect I could have remained that way and still influence a lot of students in a positive way.  A fear has nagged me all along that folks who want to try out "new" (not sure that they are all new) methods of teaching have a tendency to run down teachers who still teach the old way.  That's ludicrous as I had a lot of amazing teachers and there was no SBG, videos, workshop model or any of that.  

Back to my current crisis of faith.  I sort of want to go back to the old way, because the new way is driving me nuts.  A lot of my kids love it and rave about it to visitors to our school, which are frequent.  I talk to prospective parents, community leaders and educators about my methods fairly often.  But I look at my gradebook and see a lot of Fs....to my friends who don't believe in grades, I have a lot of students who don't know the material either, who don't produce amazing projects, who just want to work while I'm standing over them and then go back to watching videos on their ipads (not chem videos!).  I spend hours upon hours grading retakes, mostly for the students wanting to go from a C to a B or a B to an A, rarely from the students failing.

Here's the kicker, it is largely my fault.  I teach at a pretty high flying school.  I love this place with everything that screams teacher in me, I love the kids, the staff, the gosh-darn buildings.  We have some amazing rockstar teachers that really get a lot out of a lot of the kids.  Almost none of them do retakes, I know maybe 2 or 3 that do SBG. One flips in a manner somewhat similar to me.  

So if you are a 14 year old kid, and you have a 10 point assignment due for French class the next day and an assessment for Chemistry that you could take the next day if you weren't ready, which would you do.  Never mind that as an adult you know that the assessment in Chem is worth 100 points and the 10 point assignment might be meaningless busywork.  Never mind that you want to be an engineer when you go to college.  What matters is that the French teacher doesn't take late work and the Chem teacher just wants to check your work personally to see if you did it right.  And if you did, then you can take the assessment, but you don't want to take it anyway, so you put it off.

I'm totally a victim of my own policies taken to their logical extension, do what you have to for now, put off what you can put off.  

Yes, I put in deadlines, but if you've put off 4 assessments and try to cram them in, what happens...you bomb them all, because you don't know squat.  No big deal, because you can do retakes....only you forgot to do the retakes, or never studied to prepare for them, so you do worse the 2nd time.  You'd like to do it the 3rd time, but you have an English project due, so it falls by the wayside.

To forestall some of the obvious, yes, I have good relationships with my kids.  I make every effort to speak to every student every day about their progress, to nudge them, admonish them, to pull them into my sort of office and let them know this can't work.  They assure me they will do better, then don't.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't my first rodeo...this year marks I believe the 13th year I've taught Chemistry I, and the 3rd year I've been in full flip mode.  I know that even the best teacher doesn't reach every kid in every class every day, despite all contrary intentions.  As a friend of mine says, sometimes it is hard to get between a student and their F, even when you love them and work hard for them.

I'm really just so frustrated and I don't want to wait til next year to change things up.  I love the kids I have now, and don't want them to miss out on a single thing because I was beholden to a philosophy, as right as I might think it is.

TVAAS at least being considered

This post in in response to the news today here  about the state BOE in Tennessee at least at the moment, apparently removing the requirement for a teacher to have a 3 on TVAAS for 2 out of 3 years for professional licensure.

I'll say in short that this is good news, for teachers, for teacher morale, and by extension, for students of good teachers throughout the state.

I know that the immediate response would be that we need ways to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom.  I've taught for 14 years now and have definitely seen/worked with a few teachers I wouldn't want my children to be taught by.  Emphasis on a few.  In that, I agree that bad teachers should be removed, but what I would disagree with is that you need a bogus number whose statistical validity for the use that Tennessee applies, i.e. hiring and firing of teachers, to it has been disputed by the very person that came up with the measure.  My solution for the problem of bad teachers is to not hide behind a bureaucratic numerical rationale, but rather to have administrators at the building level make the call with due process involved.

Let me throw a few things out there about why TVAAS is bad, from my own mouth, but also from others I've spoken to or been emailed as a result of being on the Teacher Working Group:

• TVAAS is a black box.  I've heard this from a ton of folks at all levels.  I read through the powerpoint of a presentation given by someone behind TVAAS explaining how it wasn't a black box (in fact, that was a bullet point on a slide).  They gave a formula and explained the variables.  Except one, which had proprietary algorithms, so they couldn't be explained. That folks, is a black box.  Just like chemical companies with their proprietary surfactants, I understand protecting trade secrets, but don't tell that something isn't a black box but then don't let me see how it is calculated.  I'm no statistician, but I think I have enough math to figure it out if shown it all.  I suspect I have more math in my background than a few of the folks deciding if it is right for everyone.
• If someone gets a 4 or 5 on their observations, but gets a 2 on the TVAAS, why do we assume that that it is the evaluator that needs calibrated, rather than the data.  I'd rather trust my principal to make an informed decision about my teaching as opposed to TVAAS data. (as would almost everyone I've talked to about it).
• I don't know this for certain, but from all accounts I've heard, TVAAS counts outliers.  Again, I don't know a lot of statistics, but outliers aren't usually the basis for these types of decisions. I have a teacher that had one student of 67 account for 50% of their TVAAS score by blowing off the test.
• Hand in hand with that is that TVAAS has an unfair effect on teachers, especially as you get to higher levels.  If you teach Biology and the teacher next to you teaches Physics, and you both had the same kid who blew off a test, it hurts you as a Bio teacher because that is a TVAAS course.  On the other hand, it doesn't do much of anything to the Physics teacher as that is not a TVAAS course.  Most courses in High school are not, thus providing a disincentive to teach those classes.
• That same one student blowing off a test could then bomb another teacher the next year in the SAME CLASS as TVAAS doesn't take that into account.
• If you teach HS and have 6 classes, but only one is a TVAAS course, that one class is 35% of your evaluation (more if it happens to be where your observations are, but who knows).

Ironically, despite this tirade, I'm ok with getting TVAAS data, I just wish it was explained more.   Tell us what the expected gains are.  In the case of a firing level score (1 or 2 the way it was) have a committee at the school sit down and see what happened.  Was it one student drawing a pot leaf on their assessment (happened to me one year btw)?  Did say, a school lose two weeks to snow the semester that exam was given?  Was the teacher pulled out for a lot of meetings?  Was their plan time constantly eaten up with meaningless PLC time? 

What is to keep teachers from fleeing schools where they fear a student not taking the test seriously and thereby harming their entire career?  What is to stop the inner circle around any principal from making sure they cherry pick the classes for themselves or make sure they only teach non-TVAAS classes?

Again, I understand the thought behind objective data behind decisions in education.  But I question whether the data in this case (TVAAS) is objective.  Trying to reduce education to numbers when it is both an art and a science is futile, like trying to assign numbers to art.  Train good principals (I have an awesome one), and empower them to shape the culture of their schools, trust them to let you know if their are teachers that don't fit that culture.

So I will applaud the state BOE for at least considering things, for having the wherewithal to change their opinions as warranted.  As for the flummox situation, speak to ordinary teachers in a variety of schools, ask them what they think, pros and cons.  Don't surround yourself with people only like yourself or make educational decisions based mainly on a political predisposition.  And recognize that things change as we learn more, that is what education is all about.

Teacher Revolt pt 1: Choice

My district has undergone what many are deeming a teacher revolt in the past few months, bringing to the surface a lot of what I think are long-standing concerns among teachers.  I'd like to preface my comments here by noting that unless noted, my thoughts are my own, not those of my district, nor of the Teacher Working Group of which I'm happy to be a part.  That group is set up to bring teacher concerns directly to the school board and the superintendent without any middle men and I think is a great first step in acknowledging that there are serious concerns.

I'd also like to say that many of the things I write I believe are true of the county as a whole (and in some cases, education in the US as a whole), but many don't actually apply to me directly.  I love the school I'm at, my principals are truly amazing, encouraging and willing to listen.  Not that they have a lot of choice but to listen with me around...I have a big mouth.

I plan on writing up a few posts on this topic of the unrest that teachers I believe all over are feeling.  I'd like to start though with what I think is the simplest fix of all, choice...

Choice is almost at the point of fitting on edubabble bingo cards at this point (or it may actually be).  Many want parents to have choice of what school to go to, as teachers we are admonished and indeed docked points on evaluations for not offering students choice in their learning.  A lot of that makes total sense as in our society, personal choice reigns supreme, even if the choice is over a meaningless sugary beverage.

The fact of the matter though is that most teachers either don't have choice or feel that they don't.  On the former of those, in many circumstances what teachers do in their class is almost fully dictated by the "programs" that counties purchase.  This may be a reading or math curriculum or an assessment system like Discovery Ed.  Many of these programs are probably great, many are vetted by psychometricians, many have shown statistical gains for schools using them (I'll come back to statistics in another angry post).  Teachers are told that these assessments will be given on certain days regardless of what else may be planned for that day.  The programs range from guidelines to scripted where you are told exactly what to say in what amount of time.  When I was a common core coach this past year, we were encouraged to stick to the script and indeed, to carry around a timer to make sure we were using time effectively.

The real killer is that there are tons of these programs/assessments/etc for teachers, especially in the lower grades.  Their use is mandated by either the school or the district. What that means is that someone outside of the classroom has determined what is right for that teacher's class of 20-30 kids.  That someone is typically many layers of bureaucracy and several years removed from actual teaching.  In addition, they rarely get feedback or input from anyone outside of a core inner circle of like minded educators.  A teacher is not allowed to deviate from the guidelines unless say, their literacy coach comes in and mandates that they spend 30 minutes of reading time with 2 students, 25 with another 4 and whatever is left for the rest of the students. God forbid the kids are at the water fountain for 2 minutes over their time back from recess, the teacher is in hot water then for losing instructional time. (true story btw)

On top of that, all of these mandates are often contradictory. Many departments/schools have very strict pacing guides.  I was told at one point that I better be following it strictly, that someone should be able to walk in my room any day and know from the pacing guide exactly what I'd be teaching.  Was that pacing guide adjusted for ACT testing, Discovery Ed testing, CRA practice or even more mundane things like school pictures, pep rallies, etc?  Of course not...

At most schools teachers have little to no say in what they teach, in grade level at elementary, in subject (other than their certification) in other grades.  Then, once they are in a class, they are told not just what to teach, which in the form of curriculum or standards is acceptable, though there are issues there, but more offensively how to teach.  Ironically, very few of those telling them how to teach were effective classroom teachers at least in my experience.

Here is my proposal...Give every teacher their standards, ask them if they want/need a prepackaged program or assessment modules.  If they say no and their students don't seem to be learning, then ask them to reconsider or at that point explain that something has to change.  In other words, tell me what to teach but not how.  Don't tell me I can't count zeros, don't tell me I have to use videos or PBL or for that matter that I should straight up lecture.  You want me to differentiate for my students? Great, I do...I think that is my best attribute as a teacher.  So do the same for teachers, give us choice, let us be the professionals that we are.

Disclaimer part 2: Again, this is a general statement, not aimed specifically at my own district, though the problems there bring this to mind.