Grumpy Old Teacher

It was a tough day for public education in Florida yesterday. Indeed, I don’t know that we are going to survive it. It wasn’t only the continued grip of the Republican party on the executive and legislative branches in Florida. There is much more involved.

But first, the song. I know you want it:

But I don’t feel fine. If you want public education to continue in Florida, you don’t feel fine.

Ron DeSantis will be the next governor with the Republican majorities in the legislature to pass the legislation they all want. Expect to see an expansion of voucher opportunities. Expect to see an Arizona law moving through the chambers to give every parent a voucher. No more qualifications needed, every parent gets a voucher to use at whatever school they choose.

The incoming House Speaker, Jose Oliva, already warned us that if we didn’t like the legislation the outgoing Speaker rammed through (Richard Corcoran), we would really hate what he has in mind. I wish I could locate a citation for that, but I can’t. But if you are passionate about public education as I am, that kind of quote sticks in your mind.

But it’s worse, much worse. Despite all the talk about raising teacher salaries to a minimum of $50,000 a year, despite all the talk about providing public education the resources it needs, despite all the palaver about who loves education more and the role of school competition for students and dollars (oops, excuse me, that should read school choice), the reality is that Amendment 5 passed. It will now take a two-thirds majority vote of the legislature to raise taxes, which means like South Dakota, Arizona, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada and Washington, a tax increase no matter what the need and how important it is, and how much the public may support it, is impossible.

Throw in the current legislative interpretation that a rise in tax revenue due solely to property assessment increases in valuation as markets rise is really a tax increase and that millage rates must be cut so that the state cannot take in more revenue, and we have a mess that will have to be sorted out by the courts.

Courts, by the way, who will be dominated by judges appointed by the Republicans, including the Florida Supreme Court, which has three justices forced out by the mandatory retirement age.

(But Amendment 6 raised the minimum age to 75. Can the three judges now not retire? The courts will have to sort it out. Somebody challenge it quick before January. In the greatest of conflicts of interest ever, maybe these judges can rule on their mandatory retirement. Brian Kemp (Georgia Secretary of State overseeing his own election as governor,) let Florida show you how it’s done!)

It is possible that Florida courts will interpret Amendment 5 as prohibiting any increase in school funding via taxes, even by local initiatives like those passed by Palm Beach and Dade Counties.

Revenues cannot increase even as the years take their toll through slow inflation of prices and wages. There will be no money for increased teacher salaries. Eventually, no one will be able to afford being a professional, certified teacher as salaries remain fixed at current levels while the CPI doubles and triples.

Without teachers, there will be no schools.

Death by the cuts already made. Death by the choices of voters now cemented into the state constitution.

Florida, in the next five to ten years, you won’t recognize your school system.

It’s always interesting to read reactions when I blog a piece and share around the internet and social media. You won’t find direct comments on this blog, but the gist is that the ‘teacher’s lounge’ shared some conversation in various groups about how restorative practices failed at their school.

Here’s the first piece: Restorative Practices.

Let’s hear from Howard Zehr (The Little Book of Restorative Justice) about what restorative practices (RP) are not:

• RP is not seeking forgiveness or reconciliation. Hopefully, that will take place, but it is not the primary focus or else victims and offenders will feel coerced into a process that they do not agree with and will not follow through on whatever is decided.
• RP is not a return to the past environment. That is not possible. What has happened cannot be undone. We cannot pretend that an offense did not happen. What we can do is move forward into a transformation that will bring about a better world.
• RP is not mediation. It is not about bringing the offender and victim together to work out their problem. Sometimes that is not welcome to one or the other; in severe cases, it can be detrimental.
• RP is not about reducing the chances that the offender will do it again. RP often does reduce the rate of new offenses taking place, but that is not a goal. RP is about acknowledging the harm done and putting that harm right.
• RP is not a prescribed set of programs. Good guggamugga, aren’t we tired of the next, best panacea in education? We are told to do the program because some high muckety-muck got an all-expenses-paid vacation to a nice resort and they have to justify the expense. RP is a set of principles that guide each setting to fashion practices that are culturally relevant.
• RP is not restricted to low-level offenses. That is not to say that a careful construction of RP and expert supervision is not needed in the worst cases, but RP should not be seen as something for only minor offenses.
• RP are found in cultures around the world. They are not a Western or U.S. innovation.
• RP does not subvert traditional discipline systems. It will not solve everything and there will be a need for traditional discipline, most likely in cases where the offender will not acknowledge the harm caused, will not take responsibility, and will refuse to be accountable.
• RP is not a cure-all.

Restorative practices are often condemned along the lines of “we tried that and it didn’t work.” Yet I know of no case where RP failed of its own merits. The cases cited are those where it was not sufficiently supported by school administration/the school district or it was not implemented appropriately. The comments I have read fall along those lines.

It takes time, it takes patience, and it takes fortitude to get it right. Not only for the adults to shift their mindset, but for students as well.

First and foremost, restorative practices depend upon building community: that we all belong to one another and harm to one is harm to all.

Less than one week past the latest incident of domestic terrorism, a mass shooting (the definition of which does not depend upon the body count but the intention of the shooter to kill as many people as possible), the politicians trotted out their answer: armed guards for houses of worship.

The same dreary answer as the response to Parkland; to stop mass shootings, we need more people with guns.

The irony, nay the stupidity, of this response boggles the mind.

In Florida, we now have armed personnel, whose guns are discretely covered by vests, patrolling elementary schools.

Yet Parkland had an armed school police officer, one who was too cowardly to go into the building and stop the shooter.

Do our politicians want us to believe the problem was too few guns on campus? in the house of worship?

More guns, more guns, more guns. Yet the shootings continue.

In many discussions across the course of the last nine months with many persons of many political stances and diverse opinions, I have found that all agree upon two things:

1. No one wants to end gun ownership rights under the second amendment.
2. Everyone wants sensible gun laws regarding background checks, past history of mental illness, and a limitation on the firepower of weapons that civilians should have.

Amidst the unending education wars, a quiet revolution is taking place in many school systems regarding their approach to discipline and student misconduct. Schools are moving away from suspension and other punitive approaches to the implementation of restorative practices, a focus on the harm that was done and how to put it right.

For schools, it is an adaptation of practices better known as restorative justice that grew out of traditional cultural approaches to deal with offenders of societal mores. In Western culture, the approach is associated with alternatives to our criminal justice system. Restorative Justice is the usual term, but for schools to truly reduce misconduct, they need to move away from a conception of justice to a vision of practice because misconduct ranges along a wide spectrum of minor disputes and classroom disruption to more serious conflicts of bullying and fighting, which do not cross the line of criminal conduct, to actual criminal conduct such as drug-selling, theft, and inflicting serious bodily harm.

At my school, I lead the committee that is working on designing and implementing restorative practices to address our issues. Thus I am reading widely and deeply about restorative practices.

At the heart of it all is a recognition that we form a community in which all members have connections with one another. Our students form a part of that community. They are us and we are them.

If it seems silly that I am saying that, you don’t realize the adversarial stance into which adults fall. The efforts some teachers go to catch students in some misconduct and then going all out to make sure punishment takes place. I’m not calling them out, but that is the traditional Western concept of justice: punish the offense severely enough that the student will conclude it is better to comply.

Western justice is rooted in behaviorism. If the pain is great enough, the offender will change the behavior.

That is why you will hear a lot of muttering in the teacher lounge about their referrals that have been dismissed or that the administrator chose a student conference as the consequence (the administrator met with the student and they talked about why the behavior was wrong.)

Restorative practices do not focus on punishment. The focus is on the harm that was done and most especially, the direct harm experienced by the victim. As we seek to translate that into the school, we must keep in mind the interconnectedness of the community because many instances of student misconduct do not have a direct victim, but do harm the community. In some cases, the offender and the victim are one and the same, for example, cheating.

As the journey at my school gets underway, I want to share the basic principles as espoused by Howard Zehr in his book, The Little Book of Restorative Justice.

One: The focus is not on the violation of a code of conduct, but on the harm that was done. The first and primary focus is on the harm experienced by the victim, but there is also the harm to the community and possibly also harm that has been experienced by the offender that led to the offense.

Two: The needs of the victim are addressed in the process. Primary among these are the needs for the offender to admit responsibility and accountability. However, this principle also acknowledges that the community and offender may also have needs that need to be addressed.

Three: The outcome must focus on putting things right. This may include an apology, an acknowledgment to the victim of the harm done, restitution, and consequences depending on the severity of the offense. The emphasis is getting all persons involved to agree on what it will take: victim, offender, community.

Sometimes putting things right means that past wrongs or trauma must also be addressed by the community and supports put into place that will support offenders into changing their behavior.

Or whatever dark corner the Koch brothers skulk in. There’s no shortage of villains on this Halloween night.

On Janus Street, where Middleville Elementary occupies a prominent place where the street intersects with Florida Avenue, teachers are gathered as the longtime dominance of the Reds continues in the legislature. Not satisfied with the erosion of union rights after the Janus decision, the Reds pressed on.

“No longer will honorable citizens and productive workers have to be under the abusive union contracts that teacher unions negotiate,” said House Speaker Oliver Jay. “It’s not about agency fees, it’s about freeing teachers to make their own deals with the schools that employ them. We have passed legislation, which Governor Sanctimonious has signed, that allows any teacher who wishes to opt out of union negotiations and the resulting contract. They are free to make their own deal and negotiate their salary.”

Jeremy P. crowed at this announcement. He immediately signed a paper that said he renounced the union contract under which he had been employed. “No more,” he muttered to the air. “No more. I am free.”

Jeremy made his deal. Although he wanted a three-year contract, his school only offered him one. Yet he signed. He actually signed for less pay (because he had not the power of numbers), but his contract included many incentives that he was sure would boost his pay by tens of thousands of dollars once the annual test results rolled in.

“Showed you,” he told his fellow teachers. “I’m worth more than three of you put together.”

But he could not anticipate what came next.

First, he was given lunch duty. He protested, “Teachers get 30 minutes a day to eat lunch apart from students.”

“That’s under the union contract,” his principal replied. “But you, you made your own deal and nothing in your contract says you get 30 minutes of duty-free lunch. But hey! You like the kids, right?”

Jeremy didn’t like the look on his principal’s face. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll eat on my planning period. With 90 minutes a day, I can get my work done and eat, too.”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’ve reduced your planning time to 15 minutes a day. That should be sufficient for parent conferences and other contacts you need to make. We’ve scheduled you for other work during that time.”

“When am I supposed to plan lessons? When am I going to grade student work? I need my planning time. Other teachers get the time.”

“Oh, but they have a contract with negotiated work conditions that I must comply with as much as I hate doing so.”

Jeremy cursed. His principal frowned.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Good thing you apologized because you no longer have the protection of a progressive disciplinary policy. I could have fired you on the spot.”

“I need some time to wrap my head around this. See you tomorrow,” Jeremy said. “It’s 5:00 PM and I’m ready to get out of here.”

His principal laughed. “While your fellow teachers, your Union teachers, have negotiated work hours, you do not. Remember, you don’t need the union. You wanted to make your own deal. From now on, you will arrive 90 minutes before the school day begins because I need you to supervise the students who are on campus. Yes, the parents aren’t supposed to drop them off that early, but they do. Now I have someone to watch the little buggers.

“Parents work all day. They need to meet with teachers at night. From now on, you will stay until 8 PM every Tuesday and Thursday to meet with parents who want to see you.”

Jeremy spluttered. “No one can work those hours. It’s exhausting.”

“Also, you will work two Saturdays a week from 8 AM to Noon. We can really make progress on our state tests with you tutoring the students for the extra hours.”

“At least I’ll get paid for it. How much?”

“Ha, ha, ha. You get no overtime. You get no pay. I can assign all the hours and days I want. You didn’t want a union contract, you wanted out, and you made your own deal. As one little person, a very tiny cog in a very large machine, how much leverage do you think you have?

“Gone! All the benefits that labor fought for and won over the past century: 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay, and health/pension benefits. Gone! All the protections teachers’ unions have secured for their members: defined work hours, duty-free lunch, guaranteed planning time, limits on after-hours meetings, and more. Gone! I can fire you for any reason and I don’t need a reason. Plan your lessons on your own time, but be sure to fill out the 25-page template I designed for my Ph.D. dissertation. As for grading, you will not leave the campus until every day’s work is graded and entered into the online grade book. You have no say, you have no power. But be sure to be done by 10 PM. I don’t want the custodians staying late because of you. They still have a union and the overtime rate is a killer!”

Jeremy woke in a cold sweat. Dark vapors of the night clouded him. He was terrified, but he wasn’t going to wait for the sun to rise.

He arose, put a robe over his PJs, and went into his study. He found the union card he had been given when he opted out. He signed it, put a stamp on it, and went into the night to put it into the nearest mailbox.

One of the benefits my union offers is professional development via courses developed through AFT, the American Federation of Teachers.

Who would have thunk it? Maybe not the general public after hearing the constant demonizing of teachers, hearing that teachers are lazy, indifferent to improving their practice, and hanging onto a guaranteed paycheck for life, …

The reality is different. Teachers care and pour their time and money into being better. In this case, we devote part of our union dues to a program of professional development, based on the best research, to provide our members (and we welcome non-members, but as they don’t pay dues, they do need to ante up for the training) with the knowledge and support they need to be the best teachers.

This year, I’m working through ten sessions under an overarching theme, Strategies for Student Success. Saturday’s session was about questioning and how to develop good questions.

Veteran teachers, hell even novices, know how we have been pushed to use ‘higher order’ questions. That is, using the hierarchy developed by Benjamin Bloom, we should avoid asking low-level questions involving a recall of facts or an understanding of basic ideas. We should be demanding students analyze, apply, evaluate, and generalize learning and our questions should push them to do the same.

Yet as every teacher has screamed while she pounded the steering wheel on her drive home, how can a student do those things if they can’t recall the facts? That has to come first.

Oh, but that doesn’t work on an observation. Ask those high-level questions. In fact, many administrators want to see the questions scripted in the lesson plan. Rather than allowing a teacher to riff on the lesson as it unfolds in the classroom, some administrators want to hear those scripted questions, regardless of whether they are appropriate in the ongoing conversation between students and teachers.

We form questions and we categorize them into the taxonomy.

What I learned Saturday is that that is wrong, wrong, wrong. The taxonomy is not for categorizing questions and even less for prioritizing questions. The taxonomy shows us the different levels of thinking students engage in as they answer our questions.

We all got Benjamin Bloom wrong.

Good questions have structure: there is the surface structure in the framing of the question and there is the deep structure in the many levels of thinking students have to go through in order to posit a response.

Good questions dive deep. Good questions force students into all the levels of Bloom: recalling, understanding, analyzing, evaluating, generalizing. Bloom was never meant to be an either/or framework. It was meant to help us understand how students have to think in order to have meaningful inquiry and thus learning.

The best questions have that deep structure. The best questions engage all levels of thinking. Because (does it have to be said?) a student cannot analyze, generalize, evaluate, or apply if they don’t have the content knowledge to start with.

P.S. If you weren’t there, you missed a terrific method to get students to pose their own questions to guide their learning. Duval Teachers United, the next session is December 1. Be there.

Data is one of the many controversies that dog education. We argue over the collection of data, what is appropriate to capture versus what is not, and who should collect the data and what use they should be permitted to do with it.

Teachers need data to check our classroom observations against. Traditionally, we gathered data from review of student work (I thought Gladys understood, but her work shows me she is confused about what to do) and reflection upon our assessments.

We use that data to make instructional decisions, which is appropriate since it is teacher-generated and understood.

A problem comes with data that cannot be understood, for example, state tests. Teachers don’t see the questions or student answers. Shoot, we don’t even get a breakdown by standard. All we see is an overall score and a breakdown into broad categories. That tells us nothing about what the student knows.

Because state tests are not designed to measure teacher or school performance, they do not yield useful, understandable, or accurate results for those things. In short, data from state tests is worthless.

Then there are the privacy concerns. Using online educational platforms is beneficial if wielded by the expertise of teachers who assign and modify what students do based upon student work and professional judgment. But teachers are usually denied that opportunity. Instead, they are relegated to stalking the room to suppress student misbehavior as students fail to be enthralled by sitting at a machine for hours with next-to-none interaction with other live human beings.

Despite FERPA protections, online providers of educational platforms reserve the right to use (SELL) student data as they wish. Don’t get me wrong, for a platform to work, it has to gather data. How else will an educational professional be able to know what a student accomplished?

But it doesn’t stop there. Data is big bucks and the platforms are eager to sell.

To recap, data is problematical for reasons well and often discussed: it is misinterpreted, it doesn’t provide the insight it pretends to provide, student privacy rights are disregarded because the data is too valuable to protect.

BUT! One thing I never see discussed is what happens if the data is wrong.

Commercial packages and state tests are worth huge profits to the providers. They have a vested interest in making sure that the results are scored accurately.

But there are other data sources. Districts fret over what those state tests will reveal and do their own testing: mimic tests during the year to see how the students might do, unit tests to provide a periodic report of how well progress is being made.

It is those tests I have in mind. My district does a mid-year scrimmage and exhorts us to inflict district-staff created unit tests upon students. Whenever I review these tests, I find errors. Forget that some questions will be confusing, not up to par, never field-tested, seldom revised, the district answer key is many times flat out wrong.

The tests are scored incorrectly.

What happens when the data is wrong?

What happens when teachers are called in because the results are not what administration and the district want, but the data is wrong because the answer key was flawed?

What then?

What happens when a superintendent interprets results that are nothing more than garbage in, garbage out (GIGO)?

What happens when a Board of Education gets the report?

At best, nothing. At worst, personnel changes and good people get canned.

What happens when the data is wrong?

The importance of sleep to the adolescent learner cannot be underestimated.

I was reminded today of this in a parent conference where Mom said her child was staying up until 2 or 3 AM almost every night trying to finish work not completed during the school day, stressing about falling behind, getting bad grades, and overall feeling like I’m not up to this.

My response was that the lack of sleep was a major concern to me and I am willing, as always, to extend deadlines to meet the child’s needs.

We don’t understand the importance of sleep for learning despite the efforts of neuroscientists and developmental experts to clue us in.

Our time of sleep is when our brains have the opportunity to go through the overwhelming sensory input and cognitive registry that the day has brought. Our brains sift through everything, discarding the unnecessary, unimportant, and trivial, connecting new learning and observations to existing memories, and reconstructing mental frameworks of understanding.

We don’t do this consciously. It is what our brains do while we sleep.

Deprived of sleep, none of us can remember well and that goes a hundred-fold for children.

Sleep is essential for learning.

Good night, sweet dreams, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Thanks to all who commented in the various places around the web where I share my thoughts.

My latest post, Metal Detectors, brought responses from around the country about other districts and schools who have installed these devices to screen high school students as they daily arrive for learning. Apparently, it’s not difficult to run thousands of students through detectors in a matter of minutes.

BECAUSE THE OBJECTIVE DOESN’T MATTER.

Let us be clear about that.

If we really want to stop students bringing weapons on campus, we need to restrict access to one entry point, examine all bags, and investigate every beep of the stand or wand.

That’s not going to happen in 15 minutes, probably not even an hour.

Almost every student has a three-ring binder in which to keep their work as they progress through their classes. Every binder has enough metal to set off a metal detector.

All I can conclude is that the show must go on, as they say on Broadway, but what we are doing is only for show.

If all a teenager has to do to smuggle a gun on campus is to put it in his/her bookbag, … do I need to finish this thought?

If we make them carry their bags through the detector, then I stand by my opinion that every single binder will set off the alarm and that student will have to undergo a more thorough search.

We’re going the wrong way, people. Technology will not save us.

Sensible gun laws will if we combine them with relationship building with students.

Or haven’t you been listening to the Parkland students?

They reacted with condemnation when they returned to school and were told only clear plastic backpacks would be allowed.

“And a little child shall lead them.” Anyone remember where we read this?

Let us listen to the students, and then ACT on what they tell us.

In the ongoing response to the February 14, 2018 tragedy at Parkland High School, Florida districts are hardening the infrastructure at their schools.

This week brings news that the Duval County school district plans to install metal detectors at all high schools. This was news that seemed to take even board members by surprise.

Wondering about the interworkings between district leadership and the school board and a change in long-standing policy (informal) against installing metal detectors at schools is above GOT’s paygrade.

Nevertheless, given the limited information we have, GOT can’t help but wonder if the new policy or practice is well thought out.

First, each school will receive two metal detectors for the hundreds of students who arrive daily. At my school, that means every day about 1,500 students will have to pass through the new security. It’s not only the walk-through that will be slow; every student arrives with a book bag, often an additional sports bag, and sometimes a purse. All will have to be hand searched or there is no point to having metal detectors.

Think about the last time you flew on an airplane and the long delays of getting through security. Airports have x-ray machines for the baggage. Usually, a dozen or more persons are working the equipment. Even so, hours-long delays are common. Now think about 1,500 students arriving at school within 20 to 30 minutes by bus and car.

How long will it take to get every student into class?

Second, the machines will be supervised by administrators. At my school, that’s two adults per station. That takes them away from supervising the actual arrival areas. Who’s going to take their place? Or do we hope that the students will not engage in misbehavior before they walk to the entry point?

Third, students arrive early. They are not supposed to arrive until 45 minutes before the start of the school day. However, many are dropped off early as parents have to get to work on time. Do we keep the doors locked? Or will we have to round them up at a certain time and make them pass through the detectors?

What about faculty and staff? What about those of us who arrive one to two hours early to put in the extra time needed to prepare for the day? Will we be told not to show up until our contract time? Will the adults on campus also have to pass through the security screening?

If not, won’t students quickly figure out how to enter the buildings where faculty do and bypass the screening?

Students who show up early often go to a willing teacher’s room to sit and do work. For some, lacking internet service at home, that is the only time they can do their online assignments. They will no longer be able to do so if we keep them out of the buildings until administrators arrive to screen entry.

GOT would hold up the purchase order until these issues are considered and a well-thought-out plan has been drafted, debated by board members, and shared with the community, most especially parents.

Otherwise, we face another issue that our schools are beginning to resemble prisons. A lot of kids think that, anyway, but do we want the atmosphere of our schools to change from a learning environment to one of fear? Effective learning takes place when students are free to explore, examine, and challenge. But a daily reminder that school is not a safe place to be will make that hard to maintain.

Update One: I forgot to add the disclaimer that my blog posts, including this one, represent my opinion and mine alone, and should in no way be interpreted as an official or even an unofficial position of the school district that employs me. So said an email I received last week about blogging and using social media. I don’t think anyone would fail to recognize that I speak for myself, but now–hey–CMA accomplished.

Update Two: In today’s faculty meeting, I learned that the district does not intend to search every bag as students enter school. So this is really more of a PR move with an estimated cost of 2.5 million rather than a serious attempt to improve security. But hey! Maybe the state will approve the grant and pay for it.