Teacher Truth

Welcome back to all of the teachers who started back to school today!  I hope you had a wonderful, restful break.  We all know it will only take one day of being with our students to undo most of the good this break provided for our well-beings, but at least we had that brief moment in time to start to feel “human” again.

I enjoyed my break very much, and one of the guilty little pleasures I allowed myself was to watch as many of the Christmas specials as my busy schedule would allow.  Syrupy Hallmark romances, stilted Claymation favorites from my childhood, and good ol’ black-and-white classics, like Christmas in Connecticut and the granddaddy of them all, It’s a Wonderful Life, filled my waking hours while I addressed Christmas cards and cooked and cleaned and decorated.

As I was watching my beloved It’s a Wonderful Life, it suddenly hit my heart like a ton of bricks that the scene at the end of the movie where Zuzu Bailey turns to her father and utters the iconic line, “Look, Daddy!  Teacher says, ‘Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings’” could never happen anymore, at least, not in a public school anyway.  I could no more talk about angels in my classroom than I could strip naked.  Any discussion of my Christianity, the birth of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (the whole reason for the holiday), or anything remotely associated is strictly forbidden.

I have heard of schools that have outlawed the mention or depiction of any of the holidays.  While on the surface that seems more fair, I still think that’s going too far in the wrong direction and making a huge mistake.

However, in my experience, it has only been the Christian faith that has been squelched.  In the name of “Equity” I am allowed, in fact, sometimes even encouraged, to include discussions of other faiths’ practices, such as Ramadan, Diwali, Hanukkah and Winter Solstice, and of course, non-faith-based Kwanzaa is allowed.  But not Christianity.

I’d just like to point out to a school district, who spent a great deal of money and went to a lot of trouble to send me to diversity training when I was hired and who continues to further my professional development with equity training, this practice is neither inclusive, equitable, or fair.

How are holidays handled in your school?

It has been a very silent summer. After my school lost enrollment and Title I funding from a decrease in the amount of free and reduced lunch applications, I was told that I would not be returning to the new school I loved so much. I understood. I was the last one in the door, so I should be the first one out, but no one did anything to try to help place me at another school. I still can’t help but think it’s because of my age and experience. I would cost too much. It would be so much easier (and probably a relief to them) if they could let me go. I have to confess, I felt a little bit like a hooker thrown to the curb. They’d gotten out of me what they wanted and had paid as little as possible to get it.

I dusted myself off and applied for every available teaching job and many jobs outside of my current profession but for which I am qualified. There was no response, nothing but crickets chirping in the grass and cicadas rasping in the trees. I wondered why. I worried. I grew hopeless and desperate enough to hold a garage sale and sell off a lot of my teacher resources that have been taking up space in my garage and basement.

Finally, at the beginning of August, with the start of school less than two weeks away, I have been hired to teach first grade in a town about 30 miles away. I’m very grateful to the principal who hired me, the only one to grant me an interview, give me a chance. I truly thought the end of my career had arrived up until that point. I hoped/dreamed of a better life, one in which I could make personal phone calls and go to the bathroom whenever I needed, but that’s okay. Last Friday, I had my first paycheck since June.

It’s not summer anymore, and my environment is definitely no longer silent!

I have always said that teachers are the most generous people on the face of the earth. They share everything. The teachers I work with now are so wonderful. They constantly have my back and are very graciously helping me through my first year at my new school.

I may, however, have found the exception to the rule. A couple of days ago, I was basking in the luxury of sleeping in because I had a rare snow day. I awoke to the sound of my phone dinging with a text on my nightstand. It was 7:30 a.m. I sat up to get it thinking it might be my husband, who wasn’t in bed, or it might be my son away at college needing something.

To my great surprise, it was the teacher who used to be my grade level leader at my previous school. Really? She texts now at 7:30 a.m. when I haven’t heard from any of them since I left? Particularly this teacher. She has a habit of using people. She calls it “delegating.” If you are of use to her, she pretends to be nice, but God help you if you say “no” to her for any reason, and I’d had good reasons on one occasion and had paid the price many times over.

When I announced that I was leaving, the first question out of this woman’s mouth was whether I was going to leave the hours and hours worth of reading lesson plans I had written on the Google drive. (The lesson plans that the rest of the team was supposed to help write throughout the year but never did. The lesson plans upon which they were completely dependent and without which they would have been lost and in trouble. The lesson plans that none of the rest of them wanted the burden of having to write themselves.) The other team members protested that that was not a nice thing to ask me, but she justified her question by saying other teachers wouldn’t. Yeah, like her. She would be that petty. She declared she had seen it happen, and that she just wanted to know. No, I reassured her, I had no intentions of deleting my plans from the drive. I would leave them for their use.

Now, she wanted to know where I had gotten the vocabulary tests I had given to the team the previous couple of years to use with their classes. I told her I had created them myself. She then wanted to know if I could send them copies. I wasn’t really sure if I had saved them on the hard drive on my desktop computer at home or on a jump drive that was buried among the cardboard moving boxes still unpacked in my garage, and I told her so, but I promised to look. Besides, I was pretty sure I had at least left paper copies, if not even digital copies, of those tests with the team before I relocated last year. I got out of bed and started to do some digging around on my computer, and within minutes, I had located one of the tests. I immediately sent it to the entire team with greetings and questions about how their year was going.

Do you know, it’s been over a week now and not one of the six team members wrote back anything? No “got it,” no “thank you,” no “Hi, how are you doing,” no “It’s good to hear from you,” no nothing. I will not be sending anything else except a grateful prayer to heaven that I do not work with them anymore.

I remember back in high school sitting in Consumer Education class, being taught all the evil tricks of the advertising profession to get you to part with your money by buying something you neither needed nor truly wanted but were convinced you must have. One of the less ethical practices of which we were warned was a technique called “bait and switch,” where a store advertises a really great price on a valued item but then offers only an inferior substitute for sale once you have arrived at the store. I believe I have been the victim of a new twist to this very old, somewhat illegal, and at the very least, unethical practice.

I haven’t been able to blog recently because I have been extremely busy teaching a third grade classroom in my new home city. Before you congratulate me, though, you need to hear the rest of the story. It sounds like a great thing, right? I move to a new city and land only the second job for which I interviewed. I have to confess, too, I am loving every minute of it. Third grade is soooo much more enjoyable than kindergarten was. My principal is a decent human being for a change, my fellow teachers have been warm and welcoming, and my third grade team members are flat-out awesome. Unlike other similar positions I’ve held where I arrive after the school year has started and the other grade-level teachers are allowed to choose which students they will send to me, my current team members did not screw me over by sending me every trouble-maker, ADHD, non-potty trained, habitual cryer, undiagnosed behavior-problem with a helicopter, pot-stirring parent. My classroom reflects the character and homogenous nature of the rest of the grade level. My team members constantly have my back and are helping me through the year a step at a time. I love both of them dearly.

So I should be having the best year of my career…except that I’m not. For all intents and purposes, this year doesn’t even exist. Despite the fact that I only missed the first four or five weeks of instruction, this year will count for nothing. It won’t count toward advancing me on the pay scale. It won’t count toward my retirement. It doesn’t help in any way, shape, or form except that it provides a small paycheck, but even THAT isn’t what it should be. You see, apparently I’m not a “real teacher.” I am a “building substitute,” except that, too, is odd, because the substitute teachers in this district are all procured through Kelly Employment Services, but I am not. Neither is another teacher in my building, who by the way, is not new to the district. She’d worked in our building for 9 years and been with the district for 12 years until she thought she was moving away last spring and resigned her position. When she discovered she wasn’t relocating after all, she reapplied for her position and has had the same experience I have.

Both of our positions were advertised like any other, normal, full-time teaching position in our district and in the surrounding districts. There was nothing to distinguish that these two positions would be any different than any other full-fledged teacher’s. Then, when we came in for an interview, there was no mention that this was a “substitute” position. I was asked the same questions I’ve been asked for any other full-time teaching position for which I have interviewed in several other cities and states. When we were offered the position, there were no indications given in the phone calls and e-mails that these were anything other than normal, run-of-the-mill elementary teaching positions. Neither of us is “subbing” for anyone. No one had my class before me. It was created. My students had another teacher for about 20 days prior to my start date, but this class that I have did not exist prior to my employment. I AM their teacher. I’m not a substitute for anyone.

Therefore, when we were each summoned into the Human Resources director’s office, neither my colleague nor I were prepared for the temporary “work agreement” that was slid across the table at us to be signed. We were expecting a contract. What is this? “It’s what we do with first-year teachers in the school district.” Really? This isn’t my colleague’s first year with the district. How do you explain that? “And, by the way, you don’t get any time off…. If you aren’t working, you don’t get paid…. Oh, and we also calculated your pay based on the lowest level of the pay scale divided by the number of hours you will be working during the year, so you’ll be paid hourly, and no, we will not be taking your education or experience into consideration.” (Because if they did give me credit for all of it, and I’m sure they wouldn’t, they’d find some excuse to discredit at least some of it, but if they did…they’d have to pay me $20,000/year more!)

“Oh, but as far as the other teachers and your parents and students are concerned, you’re a regular teacher just like anyone else. They don’t need to know.” You mean, you don’t want them to know. How can you stand there and hand me this garbage with a smile on your face? How can you spin this as if this is all for my benefit? “Well, this way you can make sure we’re a good fit for you without having to commit to us.” I want to commit to you! I’m all in! How stupid do you think I am? How can you in good conscience treat people like this? How can you look yourself in the mirror every morning? Do the laws that apply to truth in advertising apply to truth in advertising a job?

I was just asked something recently that I have never been asked before.  Come to think of it, I don’t know of ANYONE who has ever been asked this.  I was required by my prospective employer to produce the last two years’ performance evaluations in order for me to be considered for a teaching position in their district.  (Having my principal’s and assistant principal’s recommendations weren’t enough?  They were, after all, the authors of some of those performance evaluations.  You don’t trust them either?)

Now, if you’re one of those teachers who has a reasonable, appreciative, supportive principal, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal?”  You might also stop to thank your lucky stars, swipe your hand across your brow, and whisper to yourself, “Whew!”

If you’re not, welcome to the club!  Except, this is not really a club to which you want to belong.  For two years, I had one of the nastiest principals on record.  She mistook the performance evaluation as an instrument of torture and delighted in wielding it.  I could do nothing to please this woman.  If I had somersaulted backwards the length of the school hallway, it wouldn’t have been enough or properly executed.  Everything I did was evaluated as “Developing.”  It wasn’t the bottom-of-the-rung “Not Observed,” but it sure wasn’t “Proficient,” either.  God forbid I should ever aspire to be “Accomplished” or “Distinguished.”

Lest you begin to think poorly of my teaching skills, I probably need to add at this point that most other teachers in the building were treated in a similar manner.  I can also show you performance evaluations from other principals who gave me all top marks in every category, which I’m sure, if I were honest, I don’t deserve, either.

Post observation conferences with this principal were agony.  The duration of one was actually 2 1/2 hours!  I was tired of rolling over and taking the unfounded, destructive criticisms, so I came armed with an entire file case of student data and documentation, irrefutable evidence to the contrary.  It took us that long to go through every point where she had marked me “Developing.”  By the time we were through, I was exhausted, but she had relented on 21 different grades, changing them all to “Proficient.”  I told my husband I was never so happy to be found barely adequate in all my life.  Nobody ever told me I was going to need a law degree to prepare my defense of my teaching.

By the time the principal was forced to “retire,” the whole staff was suffering from a kind of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).  It was all they could talk about for the next year.  If the teachers had treated our students the way this principal treated us, we would have been fired in an instant.  Even after we had a new principal, we would all cringe and stiffen whenever she walked into our classroom; even though we knew we were in better hands, we still habitually cowered like dogs who have been beaten and abused by their former owner.

So now, this principal’s legacy to me is not only affecting my past, it’s affecting my future.  If I refuse to hand over the performance evaluations, I don’t get the job.  However, if I do hand over the evaluations, I might not get the job either with less-than-stellar reviews.

Whose idea was this, anyway?  I don’t know of any other profession that has required past performance evaluations before hiring someone.  I’ve been wracking my brain; maybe you can think of one.  Athletes are often hired on their records, but their records are public to begin with.  These performance evaluations of mine are marked “Confidential” all over them, and my former school district wouldn’t release them to the prospective one for fear of being sued.  We all thought they WERE confidential, just between us and our employers.  I even had one colleague who used to say, “I don’t care what score the principal gives me as long as it’s good enough not to get fired.”  You might want to rethink that strategy, friend. Evaluations are necessary and can be a valuable tool for growth when used properly, but they are not always used properly.

More than anything, I think my main objection to this additional step in the hiring process is that performance evaluations are so very subjective.  I have often thought they reflect the evaluator every bit as much, if not more, than the one being evaluated.  You can’t help how good your boss was at his/her job, and you shouldn’t be judged based on your boss’ performance.  But that’s what can happen if you make the decision to hire someone based on their past performance evaluations.

I’m sorry for the long silence, but I have been in the process of moving.  For those of you who have never had that experience, it’s like your life is one big jigsaw puzzle to which you have finally managed to get all the pieces in place and see the bigger picture, only to have someone else come along and scatter the puzzle pieces all over the floor.  You don’t know where anything is, and you don’t know quite how all the pieces will fit back into the puzzle again.  To make matters more interesting, sometimes the pieces don’t fit where they used to or in the way you’re accustomed to them fitting.

But enough about me, yesterday was the first day of school at my previous place of employment.  When I arrived there several years ago, it was the first time I had ever worked for a school that used a staggered entry system where only about a fourth of the kindergarten students came on the first day, another fourth on the second day, and so on, until Friday when every student attended for the first time.  I had always worked for schools where everyone came on the first day and every day thereafter.

I was a bit dubious at first, but my colleagues swore they wouldn’t want to start the school year any other way.  The overlying issue is that of assessing all of the new kindergarten students at the beginning of the year.  Many different skills are checked.  For example, can they count?  Do they know their shapes and colors?  Do they recognize the alphabet, and do they know the sound(s) related to each letter?

The procedure went something like this…parents drop off their children in the media center with varying degrees of success.  There is a LOT of crying and confusion while two of the kindergarten teachers check each child in, giving the child a name tag with instructions for dismissal and gathering any critical health information or special instructions from the parent.  Once the child has the name tag, the parents take their child over to one of four assigned tables where each of the other four kindergarten teachers are waiting and supervising.  Children say goodbye to their parents at their own pace and then play with toys and puzzles that have been left on the tables for their amusement.

At the appropriate moment, the children are gathered to a central location in the media center on the rug with songs and body movements, and the parents are given their cue that this is the moment to say their final goodbye if they haven’t already.  The children are then divided and lined up with the teacher they have been assigned only for that day.  Once in line, the teachers take them on a grand tour of the school so that they can see the building and all of the places they will be visiting throughout the year.

After the tour, the line breaks up into each of the classrooms.  There is a welcome time, a brief tour of the classroom, and an activity to start to get to know each other, but keep in mind, this is not the children’s permanently assigned classroom.  A particular student may or may not have this same teacher or classroom or classmates for the rest of the year.

Then, as quickly as possible, the teacher tries to engage the students in drawing or working with math manipulatives or puzzles so that she can begin pulling students back one-at-a-time to assess all of the many skills encompassed by the entry assessment.  Simultaneously the teacher is supposed to be maintaining control of a group of 5-year-olds that have never been together before, some of which have never even been in a school setting before and don’t know how to behave all the while assessing every single child in that room before the end of the day.

To their credit, our new administration last year assigned the grade level reading facilitators to come pull individual children out of the classroom to test them, which helped ease the burden tremendously, but I still couldn’t help long for the good ol’ days where the first day of school was everybody’s first day of school, and the assessments were either performed before school began or were conducted by the teacher with the help of a substitute or assistant teacher taking over the classroom.

For three years I campaigned to have the assessment performed, as much as possible, during the summer before the school year begins.  There will always be those students who are enrolled at the last minute, but by and large, the bulk of the testing would be done, and the administration and teachers alike have a much better sense of the students who are walking through their doors on the first day.

I was thrilled when I heard that our new principal felt the same way and would be conducting entry assessments in August prior to the first day of school this year.  What baffled me, though, was everybody’s expectation of still having staggered entry.  WHY?  For goodness’ sake, why?

Here are my objections.  One, it is terribly confusing for the first-time kindergarten students.  They don’t understand that the teacher they have for the first day may not be their “real” teacher.  The first excited glimpse they have of a real kindergarten classroom, the place where they have their first school experience, may not be their “real” classroom.  They are given a false sense of what their class will be like, because only about a fourth of their schoolmates are present that day.  They’re also disappointed if they make a new friend the first day and that friend doesn’t end up in the same class with them.  Most of all, they don’t understand why, if they got to go to school on Monday, they can’t go to school again until Friday.  Or if they don’t get to go to school until Thursday, why couldn’t they go Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday like all the other children they see.

Two, all of this uncertainty only heaps anxiety onto both the children and the parents during a moment in their lives that is already incredibly stressful.  It’s tough enough having to separate from your child/parent, perhaps for the first time, without knowing exactly to whom the child will be handed and whether or not it will be the same person the next time.  The parent can’t even allay their child’s fears or set the child up for success, because they are unable to tell their child, “Mrs. So-and-So is going to be your teacher, and she’s very nice, and this is where your classroom will be, and this is what you will be doing,” etc., etc.  The whole process seems almost cruel to the parents and children from where I sit.  At the very least, it isn’t child-centered.

As chaotic as it is on that first day, I still believe it’s better to have those little kindergartners in their own classroom being greeted by their own special teacher, settling in from the very first moment of the school year.  Believe me, just because staggered entry delays the first full day with all students present until the actual fifth day of school doesn’t make it any less stressful or chaotic.  If anything, I think it doubles the opportunity for tears for those children who are prone to cry, once on the first day they’re allowed to attend staggered entry and a second time on the Friday when all the children return together to their permanently assigned classroom.  I’d just rather get it all over with the first day of school, and by Friday, have a classroom that’s already beginning to learn the routines and expected behaviors of school.

I’d love to hear what your thoughts are or how kindergarten entry is handled in your school.  Please share a comment!

I have a student that has every material advantage in the world. He lacks for nothing. He lives in a house in the country club neighborhood. His parents give him everything he wants. However, they’ve given him something else, too…their haughtiness and disdain for the rest of the world.

I have never met a more sullen little boy, jaded at the ripe old age of 5. If you listen to him talk to his peers, you will discover that his favorite word is “boring.” Everything is BOOORRRING.

He has a classmate who, frankly, is a mess most of the time. He’s often neglected by his parents, not to the point of abuse, but almost. His parents also live in the same country club neighborhood, and usually they just can’t be bothered with the hard work of parenting their son. Their parenting “job” is a little harder than some because their child is autistic, a fact with which they can’t quite reconcile themselves.

Anyhow, because they live in the same neighborhood and attend the same social functions there, they are an unlikely pair of friends.  I say “unlikely” because in many ways they are the opposite of each other.  While one is bored by the world, the other takes an almost exaggerated delight in the simplest of things.  This other child also has a big, big heart and a generous temperament, and because of that, I gave him the Character Award for our class this month. When the sullen student found out, he protested, “Why did HE get the award?”

“Because he is kind and caring and has a smile on his face every day, and he always says ‘Good morning!’ cheerfully when he arrives at our class,” I replied to the child who never returns my greetings at the classroom door each morning and who always looks as though he’s just sucked on a lemon.

One day, this miserable little fellow’s grandmother volunteered to be our “Mystery Reader.” I spotted her from the playground where we were having recess as she made her way from the parking lot up to the front door of the school. I knew who she was instantly, because her daughter, my student’s mother, looks a lot like her. She arrived with a book in her hand, not just to read to our class but also to donate to our class library.

I brought the class in from recess, and as I introduced myself to her, I chatted with her briefly and discovered she had come for a visit all the way from the opposite coast. After the children had settled down on the rug, I introduced her to the rest of the class, mentioning that she was their classmate’s grandmother.

As I did so, their sullen little classmate sneered, “She’s not my REAL grandmother. My REAL grandmother is my Grandma Russell,” his father’s mother. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I glanced up quickly at the woman’s face, but she showed no signs of a reaction. If she was hurt by her grandson’s words, she took great care not to show it. If I were his grandmother, I would have been hurt beyond measure. To recover from his gaff, I think I stumbled through an explanation that what I’m sure he meant to say was that he didn’t get to see this grandmother as much as he did his Grandma Russell because this grandmother lived so very far away, but that we were all lucky to have at least two grandmothers, one who was our mother’s mom and one who was our father’s and that no matter how often we did or didn’t get to see them, they were both still our grandmothers and very much loved.

I was so embarrassed for this grandmother and her grandson. I had heard him be hateful to his classmates before, but I never dreamed he would actually say such an awful thing to a member of his own family. I wonder what his parents’ response would be if they knew. Would they even care? Would they even see anything wrong with it? Do you, dear reader, wonder why I’m making such a big deal of this, or are you as repulsed by this child’s behavior as I am?

In any case, that, young man, since you were wondering, is why you will NEVER earn the Character Award. You have so much, but you have so little of what really matters.

“We should definitely arm our teachers.  We should arm them with good wages and the funding and supplies they need to help our children succeed.”  –Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

Thank you, Representative Schakowsky!

Arm me with some office supplies. How about a pencil sharpener that I don’t have to buy myself?  Remember that closet full of shelves heavily-laden with office supplies in my school that used to sit there waiting for me to need them?  Whatever happened to that?

Arm me with some lined handwriting paper for my students.  Whenever I ask for 2 packs, knowing I’ll never be granted the 4 packs I really need, I only ever receive 1 pack.

Arm me with some water bottles, or better yet, how about a sink that actually works?  I keep asking parents to send water bottles with their children each day, and for whatever reason, a surprising number do not.  I guess they think their child is going to magically hydrate himself.  However, the joke’s on them, because even though I have two sinks in my room, neither works properly and hasn’t for weeks, make that months.  The janitors had to disconnect the one in my classroom when the drain began leaking into the cabinet below the sink, drenching everything that was stored there and cascading onto the floor.  The one in the adjoining bathroom, on the other hand, runs constantly, but only warm water.  The cold has never worked.  So if a child wants a drink of water in my room, they either have to bring it from home or endure the foul-tasting lukewarm swill that runs from the bathroom sink.  I guess I should have become a plumber, not a teacher.

Arm me with a paycheck on which I could survive if, God forbid, something should happen to my husband’s income.  Adequately compensate me for the 10+ hours I work each day and the time I spend on this job over the weekends.  Proportionally reward me for the value I add to the lives of my students, their families, and the society in which I live.

Arm me with a full-time instructional assistant.  It wasn’t that long ago that I had one.  I miss her.  Very much!  Now, I’m granted the benefit of an assistant for 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in the afternoon…if she’s not pulled to cover someone else’s duty somewhere else in the building, which she is about 85% of the time.  I’ve seen her twice during her normally-scheduled time in my class in the last three weeks.

Arm me with enough janitors in my building to actually keep it clean and to be able to come when I need them, like today when one of my students peed her pants for the second time and left a puddle in her chair and on the floor that I had to mop up…twice.  Give me parents that send a change of clothing when I ask them.

Arm me with an aid dedicated full-time to meeting the needs of my Down’s syndrome student.  They used to exist, honest!  I know because I used to take long-term sub assignments for them.  Each child with special needs that was put into a regular classroom was given an aid just for that child.  Heck, I’d even settle for one that was just available for toileting needs, like this morning when my six-year-old little EC friend had pooped her pull-up, and the EC teacher and her assistant were busy literally wrestling with another more pressing issue and couldn’t come to help change her.  Send me someone to watch my class while I have to turn my back on them to change her and clean her up myself.  Arm me with a way to dispose of the nasty-smelling used pull-up so that my room doesn’t smell like excrement all day, every day because I can’t leave a classroom full of kindergartners to take it outside to the dumpster.

Arm me with the patience to deal with my other student who has been diagnosed with Autism but whose parents think he has “outgrown” it.  Grant me the peace of mind to cope with his constant noise-making and motions and distractions.  Help me be able to focus above the din of his inattentiveness and to find a way to reach him.

Arm me with the time to teach, really teach, not attend meetings or give one more required standardized test or progress monitoring assessment or type one more report or learn one more new curriculum or participate in yet another marginally-helpful, mandatory professional development class.  Let me teach.  Let me do my job.

I don’t need a gun.  I need you to make it harder for people to have access to them, people who have no business carrying one.  Arm me with your trust, your respect, and your protection, all of which I have earned.  Treat me as the intelligent, experienced professional that I am, and listen when I try to teach YOU something.