Miss Bennett in the Bay

I start my training for my new charter school on Monday. We have an entire month before school starts to plan, build a staff culture, and get our classrooms ready.

I could not be more excited. I’ve spent my summer reading books about teaching (including The Cornerstone for Teachers, The High Trust Classroom, and What Great Teachers Do Differently.) I’ve re-vamped my classroom management strategy, thought about ways to lay out my classroom, and considered organization strategies for 80 students (because I’m only teaching math, I’ll have 4 times the students than I’m used to.) I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get started!

The thing I’m most looking forward to is seeing the difference that this month of planning will make. Last summer, Jess and I spent the month of August planning as well, but I feel there is a substantial difference in those two things. Last year, our goal during August was to make the beginning of school not suck like it had in our first year. While this may be an admirable goal for a new teacher, it’s certainly not the pinnacle of good teaching. I’m excited to collaborate with the other teachers at my school in an authentic way. And I really can’t wait to put into practice all of those things I’ve learned from my books.

So, it’s the last real weekend of summer for me. Scott and I are off for a hike today, and tomorrow we’re going to check out The Lake Merritt Lakefest with Jess. After this, it’s work, work, work!

How do you know if your child is being educated by an excellent teacher? A mediocre one? A poor one?

According to a new study by The New Teacher Project, the only reliable way to tell is by word of mouth from other parents.

But wait, you say. Teachers are evaluated by their administrators, right? Well, yes, but those ratings are pretty much useless, according to this study. In districts where teachers can be rated either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory”, a whopping 99% of teachers are rated satisfactory. In districts where teachers can receive a broader range of ratings, 94% of teachers are rated in the top two categories with only 1% being rated unsatisfactory.

These results highlight the uselessness of teacher rating systems, and bemoan the fact that not only are we unable to determine who the great teachers are, we are also unable to determine who the poor teachers are.

That part is the scariest of all to me, and I think it underscores a greater problem in education. There are a wide range of teachers in every school. Teachers know which of their colleagues are effective and which ones are not. I’d like to think that some administrators would admit who their weakest teachers are. And yet, these teachers continue to receive tenure and satisfactory ratings. This is doing our nation’s children a great disservice.

The authors of the article put forth several ideas to counteract this problem. They advocate for an overhaul of the teacher evaluation system by putting in place a comprehensive set of standards for teachers, and then evaluating teachers on these standards. Then, based on evaluations, administrators should determine the professional development needs of their teachers and provide them with support. (Wow, what a concept!) Exceptional teachers should be rewarded while exceptionally poor teachers should be given an opportunity to improve. If they do not, they should be removed from the classroom.

I think all of these sound like great ideas. My experience with teacher evaluations gave me the distinct impression that they are a big joke. After one 30-minute observation in November, my entire worth as a teacher for that year was summed up in 2 sentences. What if I had a particularly great lesson that day, or a particularly poor one? How does 30 minutes even give you a sliver of an idea of what I’m like as a professional? Apparently, this type of evaluation practice is commonplace all over the country.

This is actually one of the reasons I decided to move to a charter school. At my new school, I will be evaluated on a weekly basis. The point of this is not to highlight my failures but instead to help me develop as a professional. This is what I want. I’m tired of people telling me how great I’m doing when the reality is that I’m still a young teacher and there is always room for improvement. I applaud The New Teacher Project for this study. Maybe at least some districts (the ones in the study perhaps?) will take their suggestions to heart and work for real change. One can always hope.

Every summer (or, more accurately, each summer I’ve been associated with TFA) I find myself stepping back from the day-to-day grind of a classroom teacher and start thinking about the education problem on a much broader scale. I think about what it would take to finally close the achievement gap permanently. I think about the major players in this problem, and all of the things stacked against true reform. I think about the long history of discrimination in this country, and how the more things change, the more they stay the same. I think about my own role in this mission.

This line of thinking is dangerous. Whenever I have one of these thought sessions, I always come out of it more cynical and depressed than before. “Changing things?” I think. “We’re not changing anything. This problem will never be solved.”

Of course, one cannot believe that and have this job. Think what you may about the naivete and idealism of TFA corps members, there is something about drinking the TFA kool-aid that keeps you going in the face of this reality. It’s pretty easy to start believing that we actually are doing something when you hear success story after success story at a TFA conference. I’m able to jump on board with TFA’s mission when I see 200+ 2009 Bay Area corps members walk into a hotel ballroom ready to close the gap, equipped with little more than their own convictions about this injustice. And I am reminded that I actually did help close that gap myself when those same new corps members hear my own stories and look at me with awe in their eyes. It gives me goosebumps to think about it.

So, while I recognize that we’ve still got a very long way to go to fully realize true independence in this country, particularly for those who are the most marginalized, I can also see that there are plenty of people out there who are making a difference. My friends and colleagues around the Bay who fight the status quo, leaders who around the nation create change.

Independence Day always makes me a little sappy. When I hear “Born in the USA” or “God Bless the USA” I get a little teary-eyed, not gonna lie. I am proud to be an American. Being proud doesn’t mean that I blindly follow whatever somebody says. Being proud means that I strive for the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and I fight for those freedoms for my students. After all, they deserve the same freedoms that I have had, and if these Truths are really self-evident, then change can’t be too far behind. What an amazing thing to celebrate this Independence Day.

In an effort to Continuously Increase my Effectiveness, I have spent quite a bit of time this summer reading various books and articles about teaching. I recognize that I am by no means an expert teacher; part of the reason I wanted to move to a charter school was that I knew that they would help me develop in my profession in a meaningful way. I can’t help close the achievement gap if I just stay as effective as I am now. As a teacher, there’s always more you can do, and so here I am, spending my summer working. (And I love it, by the way!)

I was sent A Mathematician’s Lament through a TFA-Bay Area listserv that I am a member of. Since I’m only going to be teaching math to second graders next year, I figured it was highly relevant to me. What I read humbled me.

The author, Paul Lockhart, starts with a hypothetical situation about a musician trapped in a world without music. Children are being taught to write music in sheet form, but they are never allowed to hear music or taught to play it. The beauty and art has been sucked out of music. This, Lockhart claims, is exactly what has happened to math in our public schools.

Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In
fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.

Well, I certainly agree that most math classes are boring. In fact, I’m pretty sure I slept through much of my high school math education. I remember often feeling like my teachers were kidding me when they tried to convince me that “I would need to know this later.” Yeah, right. I’m pretty sure that I use the quadratic equation every single day- thank goodness I spent all that time learning it!

To be fair, though, I can’t remember much of my lower elementary math education. I remember doing multiplication tables in third grade and hating every second of it. Is it possible I enjoyed first and second grade math?

Lockhart continues by explaining to us that the reason nobody sees math as an art is because nobody understands what mathematicians do. He claims, “[M]athematicians sit around making patterns of ideas. […] If there is anything like a unifying aesthetic principle in mathematics, it is this: simple is beautiful. Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary.”

O…k. So, I’m supposed to teach my students about imaginary things? Right. It’s hard enough to get some of them to stop daydreaming about fairies and princesses as it is. But, maybe I’m missing some key piece of information about math. It’s not, after all, my favorite subject. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now and accept that math is about imaginary things.

Lockhart takes us through a discussion of how to derive the formula for discovering the area of a triangle: A=1/2BH. (Yep, I remember that from my geometry days.) He has chopped a triangle inscribed in a rectangle in half, thereby discovering that the triangle fills exactly half of the rectangle. He says, ” But it’s not the factthat triangles take up half their box that matters. What matters is the beautiful idea of chopping it with the line, and how that might inspire other beautiful ideas and lead to creative breakthroughs in other problems— something a mere statement of fact can never give you.”

Ok, fair enough, I see his point. He’s arguing for more of a self-discovery process of math- of appreciating its beauty and using your own natural curiosity to learn about the mathematical world. It’s similar to making a painting- children should be given artistic freedom to create something beautiful on their own. I can appreciate this point of view.

But, here’s my problem with it. When I place myself back in my younger self’s shoes, sitting in a desk in a classroom in front of a math teacher, I remember that I never once cared what the answer to a math problem was. I would do the work and find the answer, but I never thought that it was fun or beautiful. Maybe this is a result of the fact that I was simply handed all the formulas I ever needed and told to use them. There was no self-discovery process for me. Is it possible that if I had had a teacher who showed me a triangle inscribed in a rectangle and asked me, “How much of the box does the triangle take up?” that I would have found that interesting? I’d have to say probably not. I (and I’d be willing to bet, most of my classmates) would have responded, “Who cares?” I simply fail to see the beauty in this problem.

Lockhart uses the rest of his article to give a scathing report on how horrible everyone involved with mathematics education is, from the top of the government right down to the classroom teacher. Nobody gets math, he claims, so of course we are failing to teach it to our kids. The very establishment designed to impart math knowledge has, in essence, killed it. “There is surely no more reliable way to kill enthusiasm and interest in a subject than to make it a mandatory part of the school curriculum. Include it as a major component of standardized testing and you virtually guarantee that the education establishment will suck the life out of it.”

Now there is a statement I can get on board with! I may not have ever seen the fun or beauty in math, but I have always loved reading. I think this statement applies to all subject areas- we have become so focused on the results of some meaningless test that we just force our students to test prep all day long. In the end, what have we taught them? How to fill in bubbles? Awesome. I’m sure that will help them in life.

Anyway, Lockhart does go on to suggest improvements to math instruction.

So how do we teach our students to do mathematics? By choosing engaging and natural
problems suitable to their tastes, personalities, and level of experience. By giving them time to make discoveries and formulate conjectures. By helping them to refine their arguments and creating an atmosphere of healthy and vibrant mathematical criticism. By being flexible and open to sudden changes in direction to which their curiosity may lead. In short, by having an honest intellectual relationship with our students and our subject.

Certainly, that’s a great ideal to strive towards. But I think it sort of makes the assumption that, as the math teacher, you see math as beautiful and artistic. Since the education establishment is so horrible, how many teachers out there really see it this way? Everyone in my life who actually does see math this way absolutely did not go into teaching. They went into engineering. Who is left to do the teaching? People who were brought up by and buy into the very system that Lockhart condemns.

So, Mr. Lockhart, I will do my best to see math as an art from now on, to push my students to reach their own mathematical conclusions, and to discover the beauty of it on their own. But I don’t think that any of us should be surprised if I’m not successful in every single unit. Tell me, where is the beauty in subtraction with borrowing? I can see the beauty in 3-D shapes or in multiplication. But subtraction? It’s pretty ugly, if you ask me.

It would be awesome if I could get my students to see math in this way. How much fun would they have, and how much more would they actually learn? I am sure the possibilities are limitless. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned during the past two years, it’s that you have to believe what you are teaching. If I lacked the artistic mathematical instruction from my education, how am I going to bring that to my students?

Frankly, articles like these make me feel hopeless. If seeing math as art is truly the way to go (though I’m not convinced it is) then how are we supposed to get there? The problem is so systemic that unless all those mathematicians who do see math that way come out of their high-paying jobs to teach, the problem will persist.

There must be another way.

Hmm. If I could at all fathom teaching middle school, I would apply to Atlas Prep in a heartbeat.

Seriously, the only thing that would hold me back (aside from the fact that I’ve got a contract at another great school in California and I’m really excited about it) would be teaching middle school kids. Pre-teen hormones drive me crazy. We had sixth-graders on our elementary school campus this year and I couldn’t stand their attitude. Give me little, cute kids any day.

But really. If you’re into middle school and you want to go live in the best state in the union, go for Atlas Prep. It looks awesome.

Well, I did it. I survived two years as a Teach for America corps member. I still have not quite gotten used to the fact that I am now a TFA alumna.

I probably don’t have closure yet because I’m not finished moving out of my classroom. Yesterday we drove Jess’s stuff up to Oakland, today we are moving Rebecca’s stuff to downtown San Jose, and tomorrow it will be my turn to move stuff to downtown San Jose. (At least the drives to downtown are significantly less painful than the drive to the East Bay.)

Did I mention that I hate moving?

I mean, seriously. We’ve all seen Star Trek. Shouldn’t we have this “beam me up” technology by now? It feels like the moving process is never over. Each individual piece of it is absolutely exhausting, and yet you have to simply power through it or risk not getting it done. First, the agonizing days of organizing and packing. I spent so much time getting my classroom organized this year and I don’t want to have to do that again in my new room. So, I spent way longer than I needed to packing and trying to organize things into boxes by their subject area. Halfway through this venture, I second-guessed myself and wondered if I should have organized them by where I kept them in my room, namely, in cabinets or on shelves. As I contemplated this, my iPod died. This shook me out of my reverie and made me say “forget this” to the whole thing. At that point, I just put things in boxes. Half of it is organized, half of it isn’t. Oh, well.

After that agony, then there’s the agony of fitting boxes into cars. No, I am not renting a U-Haul to move my classroom across the city. I can’t justify that kind of expenditure when a) I’ve only been teaching for two years and I don’t have that much stuff and b) I have two wonderful friends who are willing to donate their cars to the cause. But still, in case you didn’t know, boxes don’t pack well into cars. And I’m not one of those visuo-spatial type people who can just see where things will fit. I have to shove things until it works.

Then, just when you think you can’t stand it any longer, you then have to drive your car, which is so stuffed to the gills you practically can’t see out of it, across the city (or the region, in Jess’s case) and do the whole thing over again in reverse. I’m honestly glad I can’t unpack anything until August. Just thinking about all of this exhausts me. At least after tomorrow it will be completely over and then I will definitely feel like I am finished with TFA. Then, I can sit down and synthesize all I’ve learned in my brain. For now, I’m heading to school yet again to finish this project.

We are in the final stretch. For all intents and purposes, school is already over; I just have to keep my students occupied for the next 5 days.

Coming into the final stretch, my students were this close to meeting the Big Goal. We only had a few standards that they hadn’t quite mastered yet, so I created this intense re-teach and re-take schedule to get them where they needed to be. Every time the class average moved above 80% for a standard, I would change the yellow or red sticker on our class tracking chart to a green. Every time, we would applaud our hard work and our ability to grow our brains.

And every time, the applause got a little bit rowdier. As the students could see their progress, their excitement at reaching the Big Goal grew. (Some of them were motivated by the fact they had learned a lot; others were motivated by the pizza party I promised them. Either way works for me.)

Finally, on Friday, we only had one more yellow sticker to change to green. My students were exhausted; we had been pushing ourselves harder than we ever had all year. An incredible thing happened: whenever a student even looked like they were going to give up, another student would jump in to motivate them. “We’re so close to our Big Goal! You can do it!” The struggling student would take a deep breath and dive in again.

Before the last quiz re-take (over multiple meaning words, in case anyone is interested), I gave my students one last motivational speech.

This is it, guys. Our last goal quiz in second grade. I know we’re tired. I know we want school to be over. But don’t give up now. We are so close to our Big Goal! You all have grown so much this year and made such incredible progress. I will not let you go to third grade without meeting this Goal! So, who’s going to pass this quiz?

They worked so hard. And they passed the quiz, of course. So, final data: overall math average: 87%! Overall language arts average: 89%! Class average reading growth: 1.5 years! (Some students grew 2.5 years in reading! Wow!)

As I got the class’s attention to change the last yellow sticker to green, I had such a swell of pride that I was almost overcome. My students got so excited that they started cheering and dancing. Then, spontaneously, they all ran to me and gave me a huge group hug. We were all giddy with excitement. It took us several minutes to calm down, but that’s ok. Meeting a Big Goal like ours warrants such a celebration. I will never forget that moment.

Does anybody else out there ever randomly get hit with a terrible case of homesickness? It’s funny how it can sneak up on you sometimes.

Like one time, last year, I was driving home on the 101 North and feeling fine after a decent Friday workday. I was kind of on autopilot, like normal since I have a reverse commute and there isn’t much traffic. All of a sudden, I realized there were palm trees next to the highway. It totally freaked me out and for the entire weekend I was left with this awful feeling that I was in the totally wrong place and I needed to get back to my wonderful Colorado foothills home.

Normally, I appreciate those palm trees. But that day, I wanted a Colorado Blue Spruce instead.

My most recent bout of nostalgia for my ancestral homeland came yesterday morning during my normal get-ready-for-work routine. I always eat my bowl of cereal in front of the computer at 6:30 in the morning. I check my emails, troll my usual blogs, and read Google News. This is my little way of jump-starting my mind in peace. (I’m not really a morning person- my first alarm goes off at 5:15 and I don’t usually leave my apartment until around 7 because it takes me that long to get up and get ready.)

Anyway, in my inbox, I had an alumni e-newsletter from my alma matter. I usually just skim through these things- I enjoy seeing what’s going on with my old university, but I don’t really have time to read carefully. For some reason, yesterday I decided to actually read the full thing. This edition was about the recent class of 2009 graduation, complete with pictures and outstanding student bios. Well, naturally I started thinking about my own graduation two years ago (it feels more like a lifetime) and all of a sudden, I realized I had tears rolling down my cheeks. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be able to hike the Boulder Flatirons again, breathe the clean mountain air, and give my mom and dad a hug. I really didn’t want to drive over to east San Jose and see the gross, ugly, dead hills they call “mountains” here. I was tired of the smell of the bay, tired of the morning fog, tired of having the same kind of weather all year round.

Man, was it ever hard to pull myself out of that funk. The only thing that uplifted my spirits yesterday was a spontaneous act of kindness from my students. Yesterday afternoon we did a project where we made our own imprint fossils with clay. Naturally, the clay got all over their desks, but I had accepted that fact and was prepared to clean them off myself after school. As I’m wrangling the students into finishing the projects and getting ready to go home, D comes up to me.

D: Ms. Bennett, would you like me to clean off the desks for you so that you won’t have to do it by yourself after school?
Me (in my head): Wha….?
Me (out loud): Yes! Here, use these wipes.

Soon, all of my students who had already finished their projects were pitching in to clean up the mess. The desks were sparkling by the time they were done. It brought a tear to my eye to see them working together so respectfully- maybe I have made an impact on them, after all. That makes all the homesickness in the world worth it.

Man, if every month was like the month of May, I would be a teacher forever.

No, seriously. This month is the best month I’ve had so far as a corps member. I like to think that this is more than just situational- that I personally have something to do with it. First, let’s examine the situational reasons why May rocks:

1. The CST is OVER! No more stressing, test-prepping, and worrying. Now, my teaching is just about my students and what they still need to learn.

2. The students are older, more mature, and more self-sufficient. At the beginning of second grade, it feels like the kids can’t do anything. Now, they work together independently for (gasp!) 30 to 45 minutes at a time!

3. 4 weeks of school left. No explanation needed.

Now, certainly, these situational things are great. Anybody can understand why you would feel better during the last weeks of school.

BUT last year at this time was not such a piece of cake. What has made this year different?

1. During the year, I actually taught my students things in a way they could master them. Now I don’t have to spend the last weeks of school killing myself to meet the Big Goal. (Certainly some re-teach is necessary, but my students have already met the goal this year. Last year we were at about a 71% going into the last month of school, whereas this year we’re at an 82%.)

2. MY CLASSROOM IS ACTUALLY ORGANIZED! I cannot emphasize enough how awesome this is! I have been reading The Cornerstone and it has completely revolutionized my mindset and approach to my classroom. I can actually see my desk! Like, all the time, not after I’ve spent 3 hours cleaning it off on a Friday night. (Side note: if you have papers all over your desk, frequently lose important things, and don’t know where things are, you need to read this book. Just do it.)

3. In that same vein, I have been reading a lot of professional development type books and thinking a lot about myself as a professional. I started with What Great Teachers Do Differently and it, too, has changed my mindset and approach to my job. I go to work feeling positive and excited to be there. It certainly makes the job better.

My only regret about my time in Teach for America is that I was unable to approach every day like I am now. I have grown so much. I doubt that if I were to meet my pre-TFA self I would even know what to say to her. That former person just didn’t have the energy to be the person I am now. Certainly there is no point in beating myself up about this; I could not have done any more than I did.

So, in looking forward, I know I can better impact my students next year based on what I have learned in the two previous years. In addition, I want to continue building Teach for America’s mission. That’s why I’ve applied to be a Collaboration Team Leader with the Bay Area staff next year. This person leads a small group of corps members once a month to help them develop as professionals. This job sounds awesome to me- I hope I can have this opportunity! I won’t know for a few weeks whether this is in the cards for me. Even if it’s not, I am making it a personal goal of mine to learn as much as I can and lead as much as I can in the next few years. I really feel like this is what I’m meant to do- and as we used to say in college, go big or go home!

There are exactly 25 more days of school.

The CST is over. The days are warmer. And the children are going completely crazy.

Case in point: on Tuesday we were out with our Sports 4 Kids coach for an extended play as a reward for finishing the test. Jess and I brought our classes out together (since the break was as much for us as it was for the kids) and we were enjoying having a little relaxation time. Suddenly, a group of about 8 of my girls came up to us surrounding this small child, who appeared to be about two. Jess and I exchange skeptical glances.

My students: Ms. Bennett, we found a pre-schooler!
Me: What?
Jess: Where?
My students: On the playground!

We turn towards the building, where the pre-school teacher is just taking her students in from their afternoon recess. She shakes her head and shrugs; this random little girl does not belong to her.

My students: Let’s play with her!
Jess: Girls, stop surrounding her!
Me: I guess we should take her to the office…
Jess: Where is your mom?
Little girl: My mom is at work.
Jess: Well who are you with?
Little girl: I can’t remember.
Me (in my head): Oh, here we go.
Me (out loud): Well, come to the office with us.

We finally manage to break her from the grasp of my students (who I think were disappointed that they didn’t get to have a real-life baby doll to play with) and walk towards the office. Thankfully, her dad was there and the little girl had just managed to slip from his sight.

I’ll tell you one thing about this job. It’s never boring, that’s for sure.