Why We Don't Need Teacher Appreciation Week

While the PTO breakfast, the Facebook posts, and the e-mails lauding teachers are sincere and heartfelt this week, they all ring a little hollow as I look at my stressed-out students and our overworked school psychologist who bounces between three buildings trying to meet the mental health needs of over 1400 students -- needs that must be met if kids are to thrive in the classroom.

For fifty-one weeks a year, I hear a lot about how teachers are the problem, the school I spent tens of thousands of dollars to go to is garbage (for the record, I felt well-prepared by my program), and tests designed by people who have never worked in the classroom are the best way to monitor student progress and teacher quality. 

We don't need Teacher Appreciation Day. We don't need Teacher Appreciation Week. If we valued the teaching profession the way our kids and country need us to, people would be aware and appreciative of the teachers working to build knowledge and our economy throughout the year.

Here's my teacher appreciation wish list:

• some type of entrance exam into education school designed by practicing classroom teachers
• a rigorous two-year course of study that includes one thousand hours in the classroom and also courses in classroom organization to help teachers develop the systems necessary for a smoothly-running classroom
• a wage commiserate with the value we add to the economy 
• a national teacher licensing exam, also designed by practicing teachers, that includes plenty of emphasis on using understandings of cognitive development in the classroom
• smaller caseloads so teachers can make meaningful impacts in kids' lives by building relationships
• a decreased emphasis on statistically noisy, poorly-designed standardized tests and an increased emphasis on project-based learning designed and evaluated by master teachers
• room to grow professionally without permanently leaving the classroom. 

I have a lot of other wishes for making meaningful changes to public education. In fact, I keep a running list. But during this teacher appreciation week, I think the list above wouldn't be a bad start. 

Get a Student Teacher

Sorry for the radio silence, loyal readers! C and I recently moved and are Internet-less as we carefully weigh our provider options in rural Central Virginia. In the flurry of the move and the last few weeks before spring break, I've managed to find some time to update you all on how things are going in our  classroom. 

In the spirit of showing my work, here's how I generally spend my weekdays:

Hit the gym for some running or yoga, attend a morning meeting with teachers who teach the same grade levels or a guidance meeting with a student, (a) parent(s), and other teachers to discuss issues make a collaborative game plan about how to helps the student be more successful at school, teach for forty-eight minutes, collect work for students working in the in-school suspension program, teach two more forty-eight minute classes, meditate for five minutes, eat lunch while responding to e-mails, start grading, work on our SOL tutoring program or attend another student success meeting, teach two more forty-eight minute classes, tutor or attend a faculty meeting, go to my Spanish for Educators class or second job depending on the day, spend a little time eating some food with a friend or my sweetie, finish grading, take on more swipe at my inboxes, and get ready for bed. 

I need two of me.

My students really two of me.

This semester, I haven't mastered the art of adult human cloning. However, I did volunteer to have a student teacher. This decision has turned out to be one of the best I've made in my teaching career so far.

Ms. R. has been another consistent, caring adult with whom my students can connect. She takes on my duty two days a week and organizes student work after I've graded it. She's also gotten involved in our tutoring planning. 

Is there a way to give every teacher in the US this sort of support? Or perhaps the teachers in schools that have high-needs populations? The research on teacher residency programs such as the ones in Boston, Seattle, and Chicago so far has used testing outcomes to measure the programs. Researchers at Harvard found that the Boston program only "modestly" improved student achievement once residents moved into their own classrooms. 

Veteran readers of this blog might suspect that there are a few things I value more than standardized test scores. The Harvard research also found that teachers who came through the residency program were more likely to stay with the district, providing stability in a division that has nearly 50 percent turnover.

Residency programs or student teacher support may be difficult to scale in that we don't need a 1:1 replacement rate in our schools. What we do need, however, is a way for teachers to grow in the profession without permanently leaving the classroom. Residency programs could provide this missing professional growth piece.

Residents could work in classroom support for three years, gradually taking over more of the day-to-day management of teaching, lesson planning, and the like. After they transition to being the the full-time teacher, the mentor teacher could then spend time working as a master teacher who provides vertical alignment, common assessment planning, classroom teacher evaluation, and the many other administrative tasks that could be completed by someone without an administrative license. The master teacher could then transition back into the classroom with new ideas and a refreshed attitude to mentor a new teacher resident and work with a new group of students.

Fellow teachers, until this virtuous cycle becomes a reality, let me offer you some advice: get a student teacher. 

The American Teachers Association

I want to first make it clear that I don't think the 3.1 million men and women who wake up early and state late to make sure our kids get educated enough to participate in our democracy are committing any sort of act of treason. I question the narrative that our schools are failing or are even doing worse than they've done in the past (and please read Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error for some in-depth unpacking of how we've cut the race-based achievement gap in reading nearly in half since 1978, or enjoy these charts).

But as an overworked and underpaid teacher, I recognize that some things in my profession need to change. We need to attract and retain talented young people to the classroom -- not just for two or three years but for long enough to hone their craft and pass on lessons to the next crop of novice teachers. Students most at-risk of dropping out often have the most chaotic home lives and would benefit the most from stable school communities we could create if teaching were something a person did for many years in the same place. Instead, we have a profession where the annual turnover rate is 4 percent higher than it is in most other professions.

There's a lot local school boards and state superintendents could do to change this situation, but it seems like perhaps teachers need to take matters into our own hands. Last year, ATF President Randi
Weingarten (you may remember her as the villain from Waiting for Superman) backed a proposal to create a national certification exam for teachers. She joined Education Secretary Arne Duncan among others in this idea that just didn't seem to catch on. I think we need to go one further: teachers' associations should be in charge of licensing teachers.

One often hears a desire to elevate the teaching profession to one on par with doctoring and lawyering -- a job that kids from upper-middle class families seek out in order to remain firmly in the upper-middle class while making some sort of meaningful contribution to the world around them. Both doctors and lawyers design, administer, and certify the tests that result in the licenses of their practitioners. These professions also take away the licenses when their practitioners have been found delinquent in meeting their professional duties. Why shouldn't teachers, instead of the people who bring you the poor predictor of college success, the SAT, have that same sort of professional autonomy? 

I'm not sure that this sort of autonomy would attract and retain talented teachers, but what do I know? I'm just someone who gets to stand in front of a classroom five days a week because I took the courses set out by my state legislature and passed a standardized test.

Poverty in the Classroom

Have you ever taken part in a poverty simulation? I had as part of my Americorps training in 2008, but I was surprised about how much I'd forgotten of that feeling that, no matter what you do, you cannot get enough money to meet your basic needs and those of your family.

As part of the new teacher orientation for my new school division, we took part in such a simulation. Put into teams of varying sizes, participants work to have enough money to pay rent, buy food, while making sure that all dependents are cared for. Each "week" lasts fifteen minutes, and there's just no time. If you have a full-time job, you have to spend five minutes "working" in order to get your check. Then, you have to go to the bank (where you probably don't have enough money to open an account and thus must pay fees). Oftentimes, your movement is interrupted by the need to go buy more bus tickets. This leaves no time left to sign up for social services, check in with a kid's teacher, or attend any sort of classes to help you advance to the middle class (I'm getting stressed just typing this as I remember the frenetic pace at which my family ran trying to get jobs, secure services, and navigate a world of volunteer "business owners" willing to take advantage of our situation).

Sometimes people make bad decisions and take their kids along with them. Sometimes people have medical disabilities. Sometimes one family member bails, and you have to figure out a whole new way to run your household. A friend summed it up best after a class about education policy: Think about what you would do in a situation where your family didn't have enough money. Do you really think the people living that reality are so different from you?

My new school division serves a lot of different kinds of kids, and every kid has something going on in his or her life that comes before school. Educators have to find ways to reach students and make school meaningful in light of a student's problems. It continues to be unbelievable to me, however, that some think we can overcome educational inequality without overcoming inequalities in standards of living.

As one of the participants said, "When I was at school, even playing a nine-year-old, I couldn't help but think of my family and all they had going on. I couldn't concentrate on school." Maybe those interested in bettering education should concentrate on some of those problems that distract our students, too.