I have always taught both math and science, but this year I had to choose one or the other because it was decided that our test scores might improve if teachers specialized. I chose science. Why? Well, mostly because I love science, and it’s fun to teach – plus there are so many cool props to bring in and mess around with. Bones from a Merganser I found at the pond; a giant shelf fungus I found growing on the side of a tree; the swamp aquarium we keep running in the classroom, complete with leeches and, once, a small snapping turtle. We raise plants and butterflies and worms and do experiments on everything we can find.

But I love math too! I love puzzles and problems and teaching kids to become more logical thinkers. I love the elegance and simplicity of an algebraic expression. I especially love it when the light bulb goes off in a kid’s head, as s/he finally understands the concept of exponential growth or surface area.

But really, I chose science because I didn’t want to be in the pressure cooker that our math department has become. Every curriculum meeting is devoted, not to sharing lessons or group planning, but to poring over test results and planning “interventions” based on three multiple choice questions. Plus, we give the state math assessment to every grade in our school, which means that every math teacher has to drop everything to “get ready for the test,” and every math teacher knows that test scores will soon be used for performance evaluation.

The state science test is only given to 8th graders. This means that, while I have to take the science test into consideration, I don’t ever find myself in the position of stopping what we are doing so we can get ready for the test. Additionally, while I would love it if my students remember that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, or that respiration is the opposite of photosynthesis, it is not my responsibility (yet) to make sure they still show it on the 8th grade science test. I pity the 8th grade students (and their teachers) – they have to remember back to 6th grade when they studied earth science and astronomy, 7th grade when they studied the cell, ecology and the human body, plus what they learn in their current year: chemistry and physics.

For the time being, I am happy to be hunkered down in 7th grade science. Call it cowardice if you wish. I call it teaching.

Because we are deemed a level four school – our standardized test scores just won’t go up, no matter how much we practice taking multiple choice tests – we have started yet another initiative. This one has a particularly ominous feel to it, in my mind, although we are assured over and over that it is not the teachers who are being judged, it is simply looking for… well, today it was “student engagement.”

Here’s how it works. A select group of teachers, along with administrators, and possibly a few minions from the Continue reading →

I personally hate going on field trips, because of the stress and the organization required, plus I’m always afraid some child is going to throw up on the bus (for some reason, my worst fear!). However, whenever we get the chance, I grab it, because these little forays are undoubtedly a great thing for the kids.

I will illustrate with this example. We have a very nice student whom I’ll call Randy (not his real name!). Randy is twelve, and has never, to my knowledge, Continue reading →

Each fall I am given $100 to spend on school supplies for my 100 students. With that fat budget, and my deep pockets, I supply EVERY SINGLE consumable  (except copy paper) used in the classroom, along with tape dispensers, whiteboards, scissors and so forth. I want potting soil to grow plants? I foot the bill. M&Ms to demonstrate populations? I get ‘em. Pencil sharpener breaks (and they are such cheap crap these days, they do very quickly) – I buy one.

My school email inbox is full of what amounts to electronic ambulance chasers. They know my job now depends on how my kids do on the blessed tests, so maybe I’ll talk my boss into buying one of these for me, or, if that fails, I’ll cough up some blood for one of the following:

All these companies that care so much about students’ success… not one has ever offered to buy me some pencils.

Since we are so busy testing and getting ready for tests, our “let’s build cool stuff” time is basically nil. Which is of course too bad, because it is THAT kind of activity that will send kids off to be engineers and inventors, as opposed to “let’s learn how to answer this multiple choice question.”

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	B.
	C.
	D.

There’s a state standard to identify bridge types?!?

The kids don’t know how to fold paper carefully. They don’t know how to cut with scissors. They can’t saw a board or hammer a nail. They are uncomfortable with physical materials. The fine motor skills that come along with hands-on activities are severely lacking. As they get older, kids who are not confident and competent working with materials start to shy away from those kinds of activities.

 I can tell which kids have had a lot of “project-time” at home, just the way I can tell which kids have been read to. In our school, they are in the minority. To be fair, our Tech Ed teachers do the best they can, but they can’t do it alone. We might know what a beam bridge is (I suspect it’s ‘C’), but we sure won’t be able to design or build one.

I once had a very enjoyable career as a graphic designer. This was back in the antedeluvian days when things were actually printed on paper by a printer. There was an old saying that we used to have about printers (and it applies equally well to other services): Fast. Cheap. High Quality. Pick any two.

• We want our schools to be egalitarian (well, lip service, anyway). Every child has the right to an education. No child can be left behind.
• We want our schools to produce innovative, creative thinkers who are not afraid to “think outside the box,” and who will keep (restore?) the US in the position of innovation glory.
• We want our students to perform well on standardized tests, so that we have a number to attach to each student, each school district, each teacher.

Pick any two.

Actually, scratch that. The last choice pretty much precludes the first two.

Plastic is cleaner than wood, right? I remember several years back when restaurants and butchers were forced to get rid of their beautiful old wooden cutting boards and chopping blocks because someone decided they must be unsanitary. After everyone was chopping away on plastic, someone else decided to actually do an experiment to compare the two surfaces.  That person smeared raw chicken on both wooden and plastic cutting boards and left them overnight to stew. In the morning, the wooden surface was virtually free of bacteria, while the plastic was swarming with it.

Education is full of assumptions about what is effective, what children need and so forth. Some of these assumptions have become sacred cows, and a teacher risks life and limb if he or she questions these cows. Now, I don’t propose that education can be tested in quite the same way, nor do I propose smearing anyone with raw chicken! But there are some cherished assumptions that just don’t make sense to me.

Cow #1: Co-teaching is better than teaching solo

I like teaching by myself, and if I have a second adult in the room, I’d rather send him off with a small group of students who need help in a particular area. The times I have observed co-teaching, it always seemed to me that one person was doing most of the work and the other was standing by as needed. That seems like a waste of resources, especially when class sizes have gotten so big.

I like bumperstickers so I made one for my car to protest the scourge of high-stakes testing. I was happy with how it came out, so I printed some extras. They are 8″ x 4″ and will look great on your bumper or on the door of the school. Want one? I’ll send you one. If you would like to make a donation to help defray costs (it will cost me $1.25 to print and mail), I would gladly accept – please hit the “donate” button below. If you can’t make a donation, that’s ok – just send me an email with your mailing address. I’ll keep sending these out as long as I can afford to.

As the state comes down harder and harder on schools, inspecting for “objectives posted on the wall” and “evidence of learning,” and my administrators, nervous and agitated, talk more and more about “achievement gap” and “data-driven decisionmaking,”  I think about my favorite teachers from when I was in school a thousand years ago.

Mr. Scherer was my 5th grade teacher. We made weathervanes and ran around outside like windstorms. From him I learned that adults could be enthusiastic, that knowing stuff was cooler than not knowing it, that I had a point of view, that the world was a pretty interesting place and I had a right to explore it. Mr. Bibeau taught me chemistry in High School. He had decided that students would be better off if they could go at their own pace; he wrote and printed up a self-directed chemistry text (supposedly Addison Wesley later published it – I couldn’t find any trace of it). I still remember his mnemonic for Boyles Law.

I doubt that either one of them had objectives posted on the board. They were too busy teaching.

There are so many ways to be a great teacher. I suppose that if you are NOT a good teacher, the state’s and the school’s requirements might be useful. But actually, I think more and more about teaching as playing music. Some people are tone deaf and should just get out of the classroom. Most people get better with practice, and some should be left alone to be their brilliant selves. Plus there’s lots of kinds of music, and lots of ways to play it. Classical music requires very careful study and exacting performance. And some teachers do best if they plan out everything beforehand. I’m more of a jazz musician – I know my scales and chords really well, and I work by improvisation. When I go into school in the morning, I don’t really know what I’m going to do – it kind of depends on how the kids are acting, what materials I find that I need, and what my mood is. Does this sound like lazy, poor quality teaching? It’s not – it’s jazz. Actually I am regarded as a dynamite teacher, running on adrenaline and the love of my subject and my students. And they dig it. To quote Lee Konitz, fabulous alto sax man, “The best preparation is no preparation at all. And that takes a lot of preparation.”

I’m not advocating for everyone to use my method of teaching (it’s exhausting!). I am advocating for something beyond the new “one size fits all” approach to what makes an effective teacher. The more time I have to justify myself to the DESE, by filling out forms no one reads, filling folders with “evidence” no one will look at, and filling time with stupid meetings that accomplish nothing, the less time I have to teach, and the less enthusiasm I have to do so.

I love music. Just don’t make us all play the polka in C major.

It has often struck me: why not expect our elected officials to know as much a high school student? Or even to know just as much as we expect from an eighth grader? I would love to see our self-satisfied bureaucrats who blather on about excellence and innovation take the same test my seventh graders take. Way back when the Massachusetts standardized tests first reared their ugly head, The Boston Globe’s Mike Barnicle tried out the 8th grade MCAS, and was duly chastened.

After all, if teenagers have to be able to solve math problems and remember what they learned a few years back when they studied astronomy or U.S. History, shouldn’t we expect the same of our politicians? Are you telling me that politicians don’t need to know as much as a high school student?

MoveOn has an easy way to start a petition – my only reluctance is that in fact we DON’T need another layer of bureaucracy and testing. What we need is for this testing madness to stop. Stop trying to sum up a lifetime of learning into a number.