Blonde Leading the Blind

Memories

2007-02-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

What are your elementary school memories? What moments from your early school career really stand out in your mind? For me, I remember doing a "How To" speech in the fifth grade on how to make deviled eggs. I remember playing Star Trek at recess. (I didn't really know anything about the show, but the boys needed a female character and I was the only girl who wasn't otherwise occupied at recess.) I remember in the sixth grade, I was responsible for cleaning out the gerbil cage on Wednesday afternoons. I remember student council meetings and Friday afternoon craft projects. I have fond memories of my wonderful art teacher, and not-so-fond memories of a less-than-welcoming music teacher.

In this age of NCLB, what will our students remember? With more and more time focused on reading and math, and less and less time spent on "non-academics," what will be their memories? With more requirements and tighter budgets, "extras" like recess, art, and music are losing the battle to subjects that are on the test. But what price are our kids paying for this shift in priorities? Would I be a better reader if I hadn't spent time playing outside? Would math have been less of a struggle if I had spent less time in the warm, welcoming environment of the art room or less time suffering in the music room?

I certainly believe that we need to look closely at our school schedules to ensure that we are using our time efficiently and in a way that is most conducive to learning. But sometimes I think, rather than looking critically at what we're doing and when we're doing it, we simply cut those things that do not have an obvious educational purpose- like music, recess, and art- and forget that these things can contribute to a student's overall learning and his ability to lead a balanced, productive life.

I really hope that we're still giving our children a school experience to remember.

No Teacher Left Behind

2006-07-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

As newspapers carry stories daily of schools failing to meet the NCLB standards, threatening to intervene, shut them down, reorganize, etc., I'm constantly amazed at the number of "solutions" posed for improving schools. But I have yet to hear anyone threaten to change the actual job of teaching to make it more doable, more conducive to greatness, and more compatible with life in general.

Research indicates that nearly half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years. I'm not sure whether or not I'm included in this number, because while I left the classroom within five years I continued to be employed as a "teacher" (meaning I got paid a teacher salary) for years after that. But I certainly feel like I speak from experience nonetheless. I have also been involved in professional development for years, helping people to be better teachers. My experience is that really good teachers (and I'm including those who have the potential to be really good but are young, inexperienced, etc.) leave the classroom because it just isn't possible for a human being to be a really good teacher every minute, every day, and with every student with the way schools and schedules are currently organized. Now I certainly have seen exceptions to this, of course, but the attrition numbers indicate that it isn't the majority.

Yet, as schools continue to struggle with the requirements of NCLB, I have yet to hear someone suggest that we should make a fundamental change to how schools are set up- how many minutes per day a teacher teaches students, how many days per week teachers work with students, etc. I've seen the research on reducing class size, and I certainly think this is a step in the right direction. I've seen schools with creative scheduling that gives teachers 1/2 day of planning per week, also a step in the right direction I think. This second plan doesn't really increase the planning time, however, it just arranges it differently. While I'm encouraged by these plans, I just don't think it's enough.

My husband (also a former classroom teacher) had a discussion with a friend of his who worked in the business world. He was attempting to help his friend understand the pressures of being a teacher. He asked his friend how long he would spend preparing for an hour-long presentation for work. About 6 hours was the response. My husband then explained that as a teacher, he had the opposite ratio- about an hour of planning for 6 hours of presentation. His friend understood.

The bottom line here is that we've created a job that almost 50% of the people who try it don't feel successful at. Yet we keep chastising teachers for not doing a good enough job, for leaving children behind, and for not reaching all students in their classes. Then we give teachers the same time to plan, the same amount of hours per day with students, the same number of students, the same support, the same money, and the same resources and expect something different to happen. When are we going to take a hard look at the job itself and ask what we can do to make it different? What fundamental change do we need to make in how it is set up in order to make it possible for the average person who tries it to be successful? If almost 50% of our students were failing at something, wouldn't we change it?

I'll conclude with one of my favorite analogies:
Think of the fly who is trying to get out of a room through the window. He can see the goal- it is so close! He flies at the window, but, of course, crashes into it. So he tries HARDER, and he crashes harder! As we all know, he can try as hard as he wants, but until he tries DIFFERENTLY, he will never succeed.

Great Teachers Sometimes Play Hangman

2006-04-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

When I was student teaching, my student teaching professor visited my classroom one time the entire semester. He came on a Friday afternoon in late April. I would love to say that I was doing some amazing hands-on science activity, but that would be a lie. We were playing hangman. Although my professor reassured me that it was okay to be having a little downtime, I was still concerned that, just a few weeks short of graduation, I would be failed for playing hangman!

As a first year teacher, I did activities with my students that I was a little embarrassed about later on. Not that they were horrible activities, just not as engaging or thought provoking as the activities that I used later on in my teaching. I remember a first year teacher that I worked with who had planned on showing a video one afternoon. She had parent volunteers who were supposed to stay for one hour, who informed her when they got there that they wanted to stay the entire afternoon. She spent the afternoon digging out every worksheet she could find rather than show the video with the parents present! She was a great teacher, and great teachers sometimes play hangman!

As teachers, we need to give ourselves permission to not be as great a teacher today as we're going to be in the future. Had I given myself this permission, I might still be in the classroom. As it was, I basked in my great moments, berated myself for every worksheet and hangman game, and eventually left the classroom because I couldn't be a great teacher every single moment of every day.

Welcome!

2006-04-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Blonde Leading the Blind. This is where I will post the ideas and thoughts that are important to me about education, technology, and the combination of the two. The name of the blog comes from my friend Susan. At the time I was a technology coordinator in a very small, rural school district that had fallen behind technologically. As I worked hard to bring them up-to-date, Susan expressed that our technological situation was like the blonde leading the blind.

I hope you find the blog to be useful and entertaining. Let me know your thoughts and ideas that you have as well.