Month: August 2015

Back to School: August Is the Longest Sunday

Heading back to school after all of this summer...
Some of my summer adventures: Wedding at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine, Measure for Measure in Brooklyn Bridge Park at sunset, the cat helping with my new sheets, Coney Island, a trip to Abbot’s Frozen Custard, the cat helping to unpack the CSA share (or trying to eat the lettuce), Mexican takeout for the 4th, knitting while waiting in line for Cymbeline tickets (Shakespeare in the Park), street art and a fancy pedicure.

There’s this narrative about teachers and the end of summer.

That we’re just as sad to go back to school as the kids are (another narrative we maybe need to think about).

That we’re dragging ourselves out of bed.

That we’re dreading the first day of school.

That our lives are so much better over the summer without our students and our colleagues.

Kind of like this comic that a friend posted to my Facebook wall:

you have to your a teacher
I tried to find where this image came from to attribute it, but all I have is Facebook.

I’m not going to lie, I enjoyed waking up at 8 instead of at 5:45, going for runs in the morning, reading in the park, cooking a leisurely lunch. I liked having time to indulge my non-teacher-related passions (knitting, reading books written for adults, starting to train for a half marathon) and to engage in professional learning. And I, admittedly, was annoyed when I walked into Target in early July and saw back to school displays up. But just because I enjoyed the summer doesn’t mean I’m not excited to go back to school. And I think that’s the problem with our narrative. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, and when we focus on the not wanting summer to end, we’re missing something.

I can enjoy my vacation time, even relish doing a different kind of teaching, having a different schedule and the ability do laundry in the middle of the day on a weekday when no one else is in the laundromat and go to Trader Joe’s when the line is almost guaranteed to be short. I can even be sad to see it go and wish I got one more trip to the beach or one more uncrowded trip to the laundromat. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy my work, and it doesn’t mean I’m dreading going back. In fact, I’m pretty excited to head back to school tomorrow. I’m excited to see my colleagues, to plan for student learning, to jump in with both feet and try out everything I learned this summer. Neither one negates the other.

A friend of mine referred to August as the longest Sunday night. And I have to say I agree. The end of summer comes with everything that the end of the weekend does: excitement about starting something new, anxiety about both starting something new and sleeping through your alarm clock, a little sadness about having less free time, the desire to have a long, leisurely lunch or brunch before you’re back to oatmeal for breakfast at 6:30 and a salad for lunch 11:30, a brain spinning with new ideas and new things to try.

Todd Whitaker says that if we want to work in a positive place we need to celebrate the Mondays. That means we also need to celebrate the first day back for faculty when the summer finishes. Tonight is the end of my long Sunday, and tomorrow morning, I intend to celebrate my Monday. Will you join me?

Adventures in Teacher Education

Teacher education: Student feelings about assessment
My students share their experiences with assessment during one of our initial classes.

I spend most of my time teaching middle schoolers, but I’ve moonlighted in teacher education for nearly 6 years. I started out teaching one course in the program where I got my Master’s degree. Then I was presented with a new opportunity to participate in teacher education. A professor at another local university reached out to me and asked if I was interested in teaching a 5 week summer course in assessment for Special Education over the summer. The course was for students in an alternative certificate program here in NYC. I was thrilled to try something new, but there were challenges that I hadn’t anticipated. Working in a different kind of teacher education this summer really challenged a lot of beliefs and assumptions that I had about education. Particularly the idea that learning is scalable.

Learning is scalable is one of the CGC principles that really resonated with me. What it means is that our beliefs about teaching and learning for children in a classroom should be able to scale up to a whole school level, to professional development (and, by extension, teacher education), and even to how we run our schools. In theory, if I truly believe that learning is scalable, the same beliefs about education should apply whether I’m working in a middle school or in teacher eduction.

I know that with my middle schoolers I believe that work should be able to be revised as many times as possible until a student demonstrates the knowledge, skill, or understanding that I’m expecting. Basically, I believe in mastery grading and not punishing students for taking longer to understand things than their peers. I don’t really believe in penalizing students for late work, but I found myself more frustrated with graduate students who turned work in late without an email or a request for an extension. I found myself feeling that I shouldn’t be offering students the opportunity to rewrite things because they should “know how to do this by now.” I found it really hard to reconcile my belief that graduate students should possess a particular skill set with my belief in everything above. Was it my responsibility to teach them those things? Or, did they need to ask questions, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and figure it out. Did I really believe, as my Ed Psych professor in college said, that in “grade school you have teachers who teach, and in college you have professors who profess–get used to taking in information and figuring things out.” When I really examine my beliefs, I don’t believe that at all. But I also am not sure I have the time to teach them all of that.

A summer course means less time. It means less time to revise work, so that means less time for students to “get” everything before the end of the term. There is also less time for questions and discussions about assignments, and fewer assignments. There’s less time for me to write substantial feedback on the assignments I do get, so there are fewer assignments. There’s also less time for student-professor contact outside of class. I hope I did a good job of building relationships with these adult students, but I’m not sure.

If I teach this course again, I want to make sure I spend more time getting to know my students. I also want to spend more time practicing what I preach: using formative assessments to figure out what skills I need to teach before a major assignment is due. And now that I’ve taught the course once, I’ll be better able to adjust assignments and content to make time.

What are your experiences with teacher education, either as a student or as an instructor?