The Treasure Hunter

Here’s a little humor–or, perhaps, truth–that will have to last you readers through the weekend.   Tomorrow I’ll be spending almost all day at the Oregon Council of Teachers of English annual conference, and on Sunday I’ll probably be too worn out to write.  My only hope is that I find a news article about Arne Duncan’s retirement that  is truthful about his incompetence.  If I do, I will re-post it here on Sunday.

Way back when I was a college student, one of my professors warned the class to avoid using jargon in our papers. By jargon he meant big words of indeterminate meaning. Ever since then I’ve tried to follow his advice in my own writing and to be aware of jargon in the writing of others. But I’ve also come to recognize that there are different kinds of jargon and at least one of them is justifiable. That jargon is a “shorthand” used in the technical literature of specialized fields to refer to complicated entities or processes that readers are already familiar with. By using jargon the writers avoid giving long and unnecessary explanations.

But what about other kinds of jargon? Well, some kinds may not carry much meaning, but they do serve the writers’ purposes. Take, for instance, the stock phrases used in formal or ritualistic communications, such as letters of application or notes of condolence. “Yours truly,” and “May you be comforted” don’t really say anything, but they do convey the message that the writer knows the rules and cares enough to write.

And, of course the whole field of advertising is riddled with jargon intended to impress people about the superiority of various products, while not promising anything so specific that it could trigger a lawsuit. We constantly hear or read such words as, “amazing,” “easy to use,” and “ long-lasting.” This jargon often ensnares the gullible among us and even, sometimes, experienced consumers like me.

In addition, there is the jargon used in discussing politics and public issues. That kind of jargon is not meaningless; it deliberately implies one thing while referring to something very different. In the up-coming presidential race, for example, we may hear one candidate call himself a “job creator” because he headed a business for several years.  But, in fact his business closed some American companies and sent jobs overseas.  From the other side we hear that a candidate wants tax cuts for the “middle class,” but what that term really means is people earning less than $1,000,000 a year, including the working poor. The candidate uses it to appeal to all those people who want to believe they are part of that noble and hard-working layer of society.

Apart from politics, the most contentious public issue today is education. It is a polarized field, where all kinds of governmental bodies, organizations, think tanks, and citizen groups hold strong views about how schools should change or be managed. At the same time, most ordinary people have little knowledge about the realities of education, basing their opinions on personal experience, their worldviews, and what their leaders tell them. Thus, the flow of jargon is plentiful and forceful, seeking to turn the tide of public opinion in one direction or the other.

As a career-long educator I can’t keep away from reading and listening to the various arguments about education and noticing the jargon.   When I find some bit that seems especially misleading, I want to point it out to others and explain what it really means. But there is a problem here: I am a partisan, on the side of public schools,  teachers, kids, and progressive education. Although I know that they all have flaws, I still believe they are better intentioned and more often right than the groups that oppose them. So, perhaps it is not surprising that I find very little jargon in their arguments. That means that almost all the examples of misleading jargon I can point to come from the other side. Nevertheless, I will take the leap into “Jargonland” below and hope that readers will see merit in my choices and truth in my definitions.

School Reform Plans: Untested notions for improving public education, many of which have been tried before with negligible results.

School Reformers: People with impressive titles who have had little or no practical experience in schools.

Rigorous: Difficult, boring, and probably inappropriate for the students’ grade level

Research-based program: A commercial product that bears some resemblance to an educational practice found effective by researchers; in some cases by only one researcher who may also be the author or publisher of the program

Whole child education: Let the kids have music, art, and recess regularly and be allowed to talk and move around in the classroom once in a while.

Student achievement: Test scores only; may have nothing to do with real learning

Team of experts: Group of college professors, think tank members, and/or private sector consultants who have never taught children or spent time observing in classrooms; no practicing teachers are included.

Failing school: School where one or more student sub-groups didn’t make AYP on standardized tests, for which the principal and teachers are to be blamed.

Charter Schools: Semi-private schools supported by public funds and chosen by parents who think they are more elegant and exclusive than public schools. They also make their operators rich.

No Excuses Schools: Places where teachers and students do what they’re told or get kicked out.

Merit Pay: Extra money given to teachers for raising test scores. No better teaching required.

Carrots and Sticks: Rewards and punishments—mostly punishments–intended to motivate schools to produce higher student test scores.

Accountability: A government invented system that asks a great deal from public schools and gives little in return. It does not apply to charter schools.

Data: Plentiful numbers that give very little useful information to schools, teachers, or parents.

NCLB waivers: The DOE gives a state relief from the unreasonable requirements of NCLB in return for a promise to meet its own impossible goals.

I could go on pointing out more examples of misleading jargon in education, but I think there are enough here to reinforce the idea of “Reader Beware!” I also suspect I’ve supplied enough fodder for readers who agree with me to present new examples and those who disagree to tell me why I’m wrong.

I can’t count all the times I’ve read articles condemning teacher unions for protecting incompetent teachers or forcing ones who don’t want to belong to pay dues anyway.  Isn’t there anything different that union haters can complain about?

Although I’m not ready to defend all the teachers unions in the U.S.– because I don’t know them- I will exhort the excellence of  Madison Teachers Incorporated (MTI) in Wisconsin.  I belonged to it as a teacher and worked with it as a principal.

Before I came to live and work in Madison, I taught in three different school districts in New Jersey and was never aware of any local unions.  I remember having the opportunity to represent teachers in my own school once or twice, asking the School Board for a salary increase or better working conditions.  But those were just “requests” with no power behind them.  Sometimes the Board acquiesced; more often, it didn’t.

What I remember even better, however, were unreasonable conditions at a couple of schools.  For example, in my first school male teachers were automatically paid more than female teachers because “they were heads of households.”  Never mind that there were also many single women teachers who were supporting not only  themselves but also other family members.  Also, at that school  teachers had no breaks on most school days.  We supervised our kids at recess, ate lunch with them, and were required to teach them PE twice a week.  In addition, there was a strict dress code, and we were warned that we’d better not be seen in any local pubs. I stayed at that school for only one year.

Things were never that bad at any other school where I taught in New Jersey.  But at times there were excessive demands, unfair decisions, also some racial and religious discrimination that we just had to put up with.

In Madison, school conditions were better right from the start.  Salaries were higher, class loads were reasonable, and there were planning periods during every school day.  Soon after arriving I joined the union, and later I became our school representative.  During my eleven years as a teacher in Madison, I filed one grievance against the school district, in conjunction with several other teachers.  The union took up our cause and secured a decision in our favor.

Still, I was not aware of all that our union did for teachers until I became a principal. Working with the union I was able to help a few of our school staff members caught in difficult situations.  First, we managed to  get a leave of absence for our school librarian who wanted to take care of her dying mother. Then we fought for our school nurse, who was emotionally incapacitated for some months by a family tragedy.  She was being was pressured to resign by her superiors, but the union got her a leave of absence instead.  She returned after a few months and performed her job just fine. Finally, one of our teachers who had been transferred out at the end of the school year because of low student number projections, was denied the right to return when the  number of students arriving in the fall  turned out to be much larger. The district replaced her with a new hire.  But the union took up her cause, and the district relented.   About two weeks into the school year, our teacher  was returned to us. In all those instances, the union prevailed and our staff members received fair treatment.

I also remember union assistance on the few occasions when we had problems with poorly functioning teachers. They  worked with me and those teachers  to resolve matters swiftly in a just and dignified manner. The union was particularly helpful to an older teacher who had been effective in the past, but now was no longer able to do everything that needed to be done.  They  also helped  one younger teacher who had developed a chronic illnesses that caused frequent absences. Both teachers resigned, but with unanticipated  benefits from the school district.

Over the thirteen years I was principal of that school, the MTI was our partner in preserving and furthering our teachers’ dedication to their work and our school’s excellence.  I can’t believe that other unions are not doing similar good work around the country.  How come no one is talking or writing about it?

I suspect that most of you have heard the good news from Seattle where the recent teacher strike was settled by giving teachers most of what they had fought for.  Below I have posted a full account as it appeared in Valerie Strauss’ blog last week. Tomorrow  I will give you an account of my own experiences as a teacher with and without a union to support me.

Seattle teachers went on strike for a week this month with a list of goals for a new contract. By the time the strike officially ended this week, teachers had won some of the usual stuff of contract negotiations — for example, the first cost-of-living raises in six years — but also less standard objectives.

For one thing, teachers demanded, and won, guaranteed daily recess for all elementary school students — 30 minutes each day. In an era when recess for many students has become limited or non-existent despite the known benefits of physical activity, this is a big deal, and something parents had sought.

What’s more, the union and school officials agreed to create committees at 30 schools to look at equity issues, including disciplinary measures that disproportionately affect minorities.

Several days after the end of the strike, the Seattle School Board voted for a one-year ban on out-of-school suspensions of elementary students who commit specific nonviolent offenses, and called for a plan that could eliminate all elementary school suspensions.

Other wins for students in Seattle’s nearly 100 traditional public schools include:

Teachers won an end to the use of student standardized test scores to evaluate them — and now, teachers will be included in decisions on the amoun of standardized testing for students. This evaluation practice has been slammed by assessment experts as invalid and unreliable, and has led to the narrowing of curriculum, with emphasis on the two subjects for which there are standardized tests, math and English Language arts.

Special education teachers will have fewer students to work with at a time. In addition, there will be caseload limits for other specialists, including psychologists and occupational therapists.

Seattle teachers had said they were not only fighting for pay raises but to make the system better for students. It sounds like they did.

I’m pleased to be able to start off this week with a post that was drawn to my attention by a faithful reader, Nancy Belkov.  Nancy began her teaching career in the school where I was principal in Madison Wisconsin and now lives in the Boston area and creates a math book series titled, “Use Your Math Power.”  Nancy found this story on the blog “Mathminds” by Kristen Gray.  I think that the teacher innovation described below is worth emulating in other middle or high schools, not only in the cafeteria at lunch time, but also when students enter a classroom before the lesson begins.

It is amazing to me what a well oiled machine our cafeteria is each day! Amidst the near 800 students walking in and out, the volume of students all talking over one another, the perfectly timed staggered schedules, the forgotten utensils, and spilled food and drinks, the students still get in and out of there within 30 minutes each and every day without fail. The wonderful people working those lunches are absolutely amazing!

As I walk around the cafeteria, or even stand outside in the hallway, I hear all of the different types of conversations…some are about their lunches, or about their classes that morning, or possibly even about their classmates. However, at a glance around the cafeteria, there are other students who are not talking at all and some tables are even eating in silence. While I appreciate students who may want to eat in silence, I wonder if there are others who need a topic in which to engage in conversation.

When my colleague Erin suggested putting up some type of slide presentation on the projector screen on the stage during lunch, I thought it was a genius idea! She said it could be like the previews in a movie theater that everyone watches before the feature presentation. Like most ideas with me, we jumped right in. We came up with prompts for students to use as a piece of their conversations and spark interesting conversations around the cafeteria. We put 15 ideas together in a looping ppt, with a 30 second transition between slides.

It was so fun to walk around and see students pointing at the screen and offering what they thought the answer would be and explaining why! What a way of creating a student culture that demonstrates how differently and creatively we can all think about the same thing.

Like any idea, there are always ways to improve and this idea is no different! We have brainstormed ways to include pics of the students, our Peacemaker awards (shout outs for students and/or teachers who are caught doing great things ), pics/fun facts about the teachers, and ways for all of the students to contribute ideas/prompts for the presentation. My colleague Melissa came up with the adorable name of “Chat-n-Chew” which is so much better than “lunch presentation” and offered to have a group of her students design future presentations and of course, they are the “Chat-n-Chew Crew.” Each homeroom teacher will have suggestion forms for their students to send to Melissa’s  class to use in their presentation creation.

One day, I will get Erin on here to blog (I hope she is reading this) because she has so many wonderful ideas to share!

I started this blog a little more than a month ago because I wanted people to know about the good things going on in our public schools and the positive changes possible in the future.  For at least three years, I have been reading–and contributing essays and comments to — Diane Ravitch’s and Valerie Strauss’ blogs . But so many of their posts these days are reporting bad news that I was getting depressed, and I thought that maybe others were. too.  So, I decided that a new blog was needed to report on the other side of the coin, even though it rarely falls that way these days.

Since I started blogging, I have been pleased with the numbers of readers some days and dismayed on other days when those numbers go down to only two or three.  It looks like the day of the week influences readers more than the title of a post, so I understand why the weekend numbers are higher.

Nevertheless, I had hoped for larger numbers by this time.  Maybe the field of bloggers is already too big; maybe the topics I’ve chosen are not that compelling, or maybe not enough people who feel the way I do about education are aware of this blog.

What this whine boils down to is my humble plea for your help.  If you loyal readers have friends or colleagues who might be interested in “The Treasure Hunter,” please tell them about it and suggest they give it a try. And, as I’ve said more than once before, I’d love it if some readers would contribute pieces about the good things going on in the schools they are familiar with.  Your assistance would would cheer me up immensely and, maybe, help me to write better and more often.