Today was my last day of teaching at my school, at least for the foreseeable future. Here's a summary of my five years there a la Harper's Index. (I stole this idea from a blog I used to read.)
Number of times I've been late to school: 2 (both because my car broke down)
Number of field trips I've organized: More than 30
Number of students who started my class not knowing their letters and sounds in English or in Spanish: 2
Latest I've ever stayed at school: 11:30 pm, I think
Earliest I've ever gotten to school: 5:45 am, I think
Number of my students whose family members have been shot and killed: 2
Number of former students who have been expelled for dealing pot in middle school: 1
Number of former students (that I know of) who have ended up in juvenile hall: 1
Number of weekly progress reports I've filled out: 1050
Number of spelling tests I've graded: 1050
Number of babies who have been born to teachers working in the 10 classrooms in my building: 7
Number of student teachers I've supervised: 3
Number of students I've taught: About 160
This sort of seems like a sad list, a list dominated by problems. Maybe that's because it's hard to quantify the joys of my job, my successes. They are there, though, and I'll remember them.
Two teachers at my school retired today after 34 and 38(!) years of teaching in our school district, respectively. One of them had to sign an oath swearing she wasn't a Communist when she started. They weren't allowed to wear pants at the beginning. I'd like to see their Harper's Index of their careers.
I feel sad today. I realized that the reason I don't want to move out of my classroom yet is because I'm not quite ready to give it up. I still have a few blog post ideas in my head, too, so I won't give this up quite yet either.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Day -2: Promotion
The two big events of the day were as follows:
1) My friend/teacher-across-the-hall and I went to go see our first class of students graduate from eighth grade. Wait, did I say graduate? I mean, of course, be promoted. As you have probably have noticed, sometime since we were all in eighth grade, using the word "graduation" to refer to what 14-year olds are doing when they don caps and gowns has become taboo. As the middle school principal pronounced today, "I present to you the promoted class of 2007." I never thought that vocabulary switch would take hold. But one of my former students came by the other day and said, "I just wanted to invite you to promotion on Thursday." The word at least crossed the kid-usage barrier.
We were sitting in bleachers on a football field behind an outlet mall, melting and squinting in the bright, bright sun. The students were far away from us on the field, but we cheered for all of them and we liked noticing how they still walked the same way we remembered them walking in elementary school.
I like knowing that four years from now, I can show up at high school graduation and lots and lots of those students (I hope!) will be there, and I can cheer for them again.
2) The new fourth grade bilingual teacher who will replace me spent the morning in my classroom. She just finished getting her teaching credential, and her enthusiasm is palpable. Talking to her makes me realize how much I've learned in five years. She is excited for her promotion, too.
1) My friend/teacher-across-the-hall and I went to go see our first class of students graduate from eighth grade. Wait, did I say graduate? I mean, of course, be promoted. As you have probably have noticed, sometime since we were all in eighth grade, using the word "graduation" to refer to what 14-year olds are doing when they don caps and gowns has become taboo. As the middle school principal pronounced today, "I present to you the promoted class of 2007." I never thought that vocabulary switch would take hold. But one of my former students came by the other day and said, "I just wanted to invite you to promotion on Thursday." The word at least crossed the kid-usage barrier.
We were sitting in bleachers on a football field behind an outlet mall, melting and squinting in the bright, bright sun. The students were far away from us on the field, but we cheered for all of them and we liked noticing how they still walked the same way we remembered them walking in elementary school.
I like knowing that four years from now, I can show up at high school graduation and lots and lots of those students (I hope!) will be there, and I can cheer for them again.
2) The new fourth grade bilingual teacher who will replace me spent the morning in my classroom. She just finished getting her teaching credential, and her enthusiasm is palpable. Talking to her makes me realize how much I've learned in five years. She is excited for her promotion, too.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Day -3: When Overwhelmed ... Sort Fraction Circles!
This leaving thing is so surreal. I can't get my head around the fact that three days from now I won't really be a teacher anymore. Perhaps I will still be a teacher in an abstract sense, and I will still be a teacher in the minds of my former students, but I won't be a current teacher at my school, thinking about the next school year.
I have been so overwhelmed by the idea of leaving that I have accomplished next to nothing in moving out or saying goodbye. Even the usual end-of-the-year projects I normally do - burning CDs for my students of songs we learned, writing awards for each student, filing papers in students' cumes (their folders that follow them from one grade to the next) - I have been unable to complete. Mostly, I've just been hanging out with people after school, spending time chatting with a student, the teacher across the hall, the custodian. I guess I can cast that as part of my leave-taking project; I'm appreciating the people around me and enjoying the time I have with them. It feels a little like that while I'm doing it, and it feels a lot like procrastination.
My friend (the teacher across the hall) was laughing at me yesterday because I accidentally flung my pen across the room, and I spent like 20 minutes crawling around on the floor looking for it, as opposed to doing all the millions of other things I should have been doing. But I needed that pen! It was the last ballpoint pen in my classroom! That task was immediately in front of me, so I could handle it. But I never found the pen.
Today, here's how I decided to spend my time after school: sitting on the floor with two students, resorting fraction circles into little plastic bags. You can imagine fraction circles, I'm sure. They are plastic discs, divided into fractional pieces. Each set has a whole, 2 halves, 3 thirds, 4 fourths, etc. These fraction circles are very useful for teaching students about equivalent fractions. But they'd gotten all mixed up over the years, so one set might have 8 fourths but no fifths. I decided to have two students empty out all 16 bags of fractions circles and resort the hundreds of pieces into complete sets. This was important, really it was! What would next year's teacher do if I left her with mixed-up fraction circle sets?
I sat there with my students, meticulously counting out eighths and tenths and twelfths while we talked about their families and their summer plans and their soccer team. They loved their monotonous task. "It's like a puzzle," Eddie said.
That hanging-out/procrastination time has been the best part of my days lately, just being in my classroom while that steady stream of people - current students, former students, other teachers - come through to visit me, the teacher-me. What will it be like when that teacher-me identity is gone, when no one can come visit it in my classroom?
I have been so overwhelmed by the idea of leaving that I have accomplished next to nothing in moving out or saying goodbye. Even the usual end-of-the-year projects I normally do - burning CDs for my students of songs we learned, writing awards for each student, filing papers in students' cumes (their folders that follow them from one grade to the next) - I have been unable to complete. Mostly, I've just been hanging out with people after school, spending time chatting with a student, the teacher across the hall, the custodian. I guess I can cast that as part of my leave-taking project; I'm appreciating the people around me and enjoying the time I have with them. It feels a little like that while I'm doing it, and it feels a lot like procrastination.
My friend (the teacher across the hall) was laughing at me yesterday because I accidentally flung my pen across the room, and I spent like 20 minutes crawling around on the floor looking for it, as opposed to doing all the millions of other things I should have been doing. But I needed that pen! It was the last ballpoint pen in my classroom! That task was immediately in front of me, so I could handle it. But I never found the pen.
Today, here's how I decided to spend my time after school: sitting on the floor with two students, resorting fraction circles into little plastic bags. You can imagine fraction circles, I'm sure. They are plastic discs, divided into fractional pieces. Each set has a whole, 2 halves, 3 thirds, 4 fourths, etc. These fraction circles are very useful for teaching students about equivalent fractions. But they'd gotten all mixed up over the years, so one set might have 8 fourths but no fifths. I decided to have two students empty out all 16 bags of fractions circles and resort the hundreds of pieces into complete sets. This was important, really it was! What would next year's teacher do if I left her with mixed-up fraction circle sets?
I sat there with my students, meticulously counting out eighths and tenths and twelfths while we talked about their families and their summer plans and their soccer team. They loved their monotonous task. "It's like a puzzle," Eddie said.
That hanging-out/procrastination time has been the best part of my days lately, just being in my classroom while that steady stream of people - current students, former students, other teachers - come through to visit me, the teacher-me. What will it be like when that teacher-me identity is gone, when no one can come visit it in my classroom?
Monday, June 11, 2007
Day -4: Retired Teachers' Wisdom
Today we went on our last field trip of the year. It might seem like I take my class on field trips all the time, but I really don't. In fact, this year I've taken my students on fewer field trips than ever before. My school narrowly missed making Adequate Yearly Progress as defined by No Child Left Behind. We met 15 out of 17 targets for improvements in our standardized test scores, but because a handful of Latino students and English Learners missed the target in Language Arts, our school is subject to a variety of sanctions. The way my school and district are interpreting these sanctions, we have to implement something obliquely called the "Academic Program Survey." We have to solemnly swear that we are teaching using the state-adopted textbooks for language arts and math and that we are teaching language arts and math for the state-mandated number of minutes each day (150 minutes a day for language arts and 60 minutes a day for math). Moreover, we must solemnly swear that we are implementing this state-adopted curriculum with "full fidelity."
This fidelity does not require a marriage vows, but it does require a disavowal of some field trips and other forms of fun. "Full fidelity" apparently means that we must teach the required number of minutes with the required textbooks 90% of the time. My school interpreted this very literally. There are 180 days in the school year, so we were granted 18 days this year when we could deviate from the state-mandated schedule/materials - 3 days at the beginning of school, 4 days at the end, and then 11 "Flex Days" of our choice. If we are deviating from the state-mandated schedule/materials on a give day, we must write "Flex Day" clearly across the top of our posted daily agenda.
Some teachers who used to take field trips eliminated them altogether this year because they were worried about using up their Flex Days. I still took 7 field trips this year, but I also used up more than my 11 Flex Days, I'm sure. Fortunately, I was not required to submit a list of which days were my Flex Days.
If this sounds bizarre, umm, it is.
But our field trip today was great - the complete opposite of our field trip to a mission a few weeks back. We went to our little town's local history museum. They don't have a great collection of artifacts or any amazing architectural treasure. But what they do have is a retired teacher/principal who designs and leads their student tours. What a gift she is giving to the town's students!
Our day started with students getting into three different groups to perform readers' theater plays. One was an Ohlone creation myth, another was a series of testimonials by people living at Mission San Jose, and the third was a play about the baptism of a new baby at the Mission and the surrounding conflict between the Ohlone and the Spanish. Students got to wear great costumes, which they loved! Then we had a snack break and our class split into two groups, one of whom got a tour of the museum and a brief overview of the town's history, focusing on the Rancho period after the missions closed. The other group went on a tour of an early home built by descendants of the original rancho land-grant holders. We ate lunch in the home's beautiful courtyard and then got ready for the afternoon activities. Parents led four different centers about different aspects of rancho life. At one, students got to design their own cattle brands and practice roping a (fake) cow. At the next, students made salsa and hot chocolate. For the third, students designed a map of their own imaginary rancho. In the fourth, students made beautiful punched tin milagros (which I'll try to take some pictures of tomorrow).
So many things about the day's events were great. The pace of the day was perfect, with students sitting and reading and listening to plays in the morning when they were the most calm and then doing hands-on activities in the afternoon when they were more antsy. The vocabulary the tour guide leader used was also perfect. She explained difficult words, showed objects to illustrate her points, and repeated key concepts many times, usually eliciting student feedback. To me, the best part of the day's plan, though, was that parents got to lead the centers in the afternoon. It was so great for my students to see their parents as experts in a school context! All of the centers revolved around activities that most of the parents grew up doing on their families actual ranchos in Mexico, and to have those experiences valued is so important. Our field trip helped students and parents to realize that the history of California is, in large part (at least pre-Gold Rush), the history of Mexico, that the people who lived in our little California town two hundred years ago were people a lot like them who spoke Spanish and ate tortillas.
So you retired teachers reading this blog (I know there are a few of you!), we current teachers need your wisdom! Plan cool activities for our students to do on field trips!
This fidelity does not require a marriage vows, but it does require a disavowal of some field trips and other forms of fun. "Full fidelity" apparently means that we must teach the required number of minutes with the required textbooks 90% of the time. My school interpreted this very literally. There are 180 days in the school year, so we were granted 18 days this year when we could deviate from the state-mandated schedule/materials - 3 days at the beginning of school, 4 days at the end, and then 11 "Flex Days" of our choice. If we are deviating from the state-mandated schedule/materials on a give day, we must write "Flex Day" clearly across the top of our posted daily agenda.
Some teachers who used to take field trips eliminated them altogether this year because they were worried about using up their Flex Days. I still took 7 field trips this year, but I also used up more than my 11 Flex Days, I'm sure. Fortunately, I was not required to submit a list of which days were my Flex Days.
If this sounds bizarre, umm, it is.
But our field trip today was great - the complete opposite of our field trip to a mission a few weeks back. We went to our little town's local history museum. They don't have a great collection of artifacts or any amazing architectural treasure. But what they do have is a retired teacher/principal who designs and leads their student tours. What a gift she is giving to the town's students!
Our day started with students getting into three different groups to perform readers' theater plays. One was an Ohlone creation myth, another was a series of testimonials by people living at Mission San Jose, and the third was a play about the baptism of a new baby at the Mission and the surrounding conflict between the Ohlone and the Spanish. Students got to wear great costumes, which they loved! Then we had a snack break and our class split into two groups, one of whom got a tour of the museum and a brief overview of the town's history, focusing on the Rancho period after the missions closed. The other group went on a tour of an early home built by descendants of the original rancho land-grant holders. We ate lunch in the home's beautiful courtyard and then got ready for the afternoon activities. Parents led four different centers about different aspects of rancho life. At one, students got to design their own cattle brands and practice roping a (fake) cow. At the next, students made salsa and hot chocolate. For the third, students designed a map of their own imaginary rancho. In the fourth, students made beautiful punched tin milagros (which I'll try to take some pictures of tomorrow).
So many things about the day's events were great. The pace of the day was perfect, with students sitting and reading and listening to plays in the morning when they were the most calm and then doing hands-on activities in the afternoon when they were more antsy. The vocabulary the tour guide leader used was also perfect. She explained difficult words, showed objects to illustrate her points, and repeated key concepts many times, usually eliciting student feedback. To me, the best part of the day's plan, though, was that parents got to lead the centers in the afternoon. It was so great for my students to see their parents as experts in a school context! All of the centers revolved around activities that most of the parents grew up doing on their families actual ranchos in Mexico, and to have those experiences valued is so important. Our field trip helped students and parents to realize that the history of California is, in large part (at least pre-Gold Rush), the history of Mexico, that the people who lived in our little California town two hundred years ago were people a lot like them who spoke Spanish and ate tortillas.
So you retired teachers reading this blog (I know there are a few of you!), we current teachers need your wisdom! Plan cool activities for our students to do on field trips!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Day -5: Report Cards
I can't believe it, but I actually finished my students' report cards today. Each student's report card has 81 boxes, plus a space for written comments. I have 31 students. So that means that in the last 48 hours I have filled in 2511 boxes!
Back when I was in elementary school, I think we just got one grade for math, one grade for writing, etc. But in the brave new world of standards-based report cards, such simplicity is long gone. I have to give my students 19 different grades in math alone, one for each of the 19 math standards my district has deemed to be most important. There are actually 44 math standards that fourth graders in California are supposed to master, but we only give report card grades for 19 of them. Here is a sampling:
* Uses algorithms to add/subtract multi-digit numbers
* Knows the definition and value of prime numbers
* Decides and explains when a rounded solution is called for
* Uses and evaluates parentheses in equations
* Finds the length of horizontal line segments on a coordinate graph by subtracting the x-values
* Finds the length of vertical line segments on a coordinate graph by subtracting the y-values
For each of these standards, I have to assign a grade from 1 to 4 - 1 meaning that the student is working below grade level, 2 meaning close to grade level, 3 meaning on grade level, and 4 meaning above grade level.
This method of grading leads to many conundrums. For example, there are no standards about fractions on our report card. None. Yet fractions are an important topic in the fourth grade math curriculum. When I calculate my students' overall math grade, should I factor in their grades on work related to fractions?
Our district has standardized trimester assessments we give shortly before we fill out report cards, and data from these assessments are supposed to help us assign grades for each standard. Yet this trimester's math assessment has only 31 questions. Let's say there are three questions about using and evaluating parentheses in equations. If a student gets 2 out of 3 of those questions right, that's only 66%, which puts them below grade level for that standard (at least according to our old grading scale). Let's say the student got 80% on an algebra test I gave about using and evaluating parentheses in equations. How do I weight these two measures?
Also, our district assessments are not cumulative. Each trimester, different standards are assessed. But just because a student didn't show mastery of the algorithm for long division in March, though, doesn't mean he hasn't mastered it by June. Our district assessment we give in June does not have any questions about long division, however, so we have to figure out our own ways to reassess standards from earlier trimesters.
One of my favorite standards to assess is, "Uses a variety of strategies for reading comprehension." What does that even mean? Of course my students use different strategies for reading comprehension. We practice predicting, summarizing, questioning, and lots more with everything we read. But how can I reduce their use of reading strategies to a single number? What does "on grade level" mean when you are talking about how well someone makes predictions about texts? Or there's the standard, "Understands words with multiple meanings." Well, of course my students understand words with multiple meanings. They know that "bat" can mean a flying animal or something with which you hit a baseball. But how well my students do on assessments of their ability to understand words with multiple meanings just depends on whether they happen to be familiar with the words on the assessment. I can't possibly teach them every word in the English language with multiple meanings.
The district's answer to questions about the ambiguity of the standards when applied to reading is that students should be assessed on their mastery of these standards using "grade level text." But take the standard, "Recognizes events of the story and the motivation of characters." Some students can recognize a character's motivation in one story in our fourth grade anthology but not in another. Maybe they have a personal connection to a character in one story and that makes the character in one story easier to understand. How can I accurately state the student's ability to determine characters' motivation in all 4th-grade-level stories?
I have to think through these issues for 81 different boxes! And remember, this is elementary school. No one's life is going to be determined by what grade she got for "Uses and evaluates parentheses in equations" in fourth grade.
For better or worse, I've never had a parent question me about a grade I assigned. I kind of wish a parent would ask me to justify how I arrived at a grade. But the parents of students in my class are so deferential to teachers. "La maestra" is a title with real authority and respect in Mexico, and they really think that I know best when it comes to their children's education. Plus, the report card is so overwhelming, that many parents don't really know how to interpret it, never mind what questions to ask.
But, despite these issues, the important thing at the moment is that I'm done with report cards! I've never finished them 4 days before they were due before.
Back when I was in elementary school, I think we just got one grade for math, one grade for writing, etc. But in the brave new world of standards-based report cards, such simplicity is long gone. I have to give my students 19 different grades in math alone, one for each of the 19 math standards my district has deemed to be most important. There are actually 44 math standards that fourth graders in California are supposed to master, but we only give report card grades for 19 of them. Here is a sampling:
* Uses algorithms to add/subtract multi-digit numbers
* Knows the definition and value of prime numbers
* Decides and explains when a rounded solution is called for
* Uses and evaluates parentheses in equations
* Finds the length of horizontal line segments on a coordinate graph by subtracting the x-values
* Finds the length of vertical line segments on a coordinate graph by subtracting the y-values
For each of these standards, I have to assign a grade from 1 to 4 - 1 meaning that the student is working below grade level, 2 meaning close to grade level, 3 meaning on grade level, and 4 meaning above grade level.
This method of grading leads to many conundrums. For example, there are no standards about fractions on our report card. None. Yet fractions are an important topic in the fourth grade math curriculum. When I calculate my students' overall math grade, should I factor in their grades on work related to fractions?
Our district has standardized trimester assessments we give shortly before we fill out report cards, and data from these assessments are supposed to help us assign grades for each standard. Yet this trimester's math assessment has only 31 questions. Let's say there are three questions about using and evaluating parentheses in equations. If a student gets 2 out of 3 of those questions right, that's only 66%, which puts them below grade level for that standard (at least according to our old grading scale). Let's say the student got 80% on an algebra test I gave about using and evaluating parentheses in equations. How do I weight these two measures?
Also, our district assessments are not cumulative. Each trimester, different standards are assessed. But just because a student didn't show mastery of the algorithm for long division in March, though, doesn't mean he hasn't mastered it by June. Our district assessment we give in June does not have any questions about long division, however, so we have to figure out our own ways to reassess standards from earlier trimesters.
One of my favorite standards to assess is, "Uses a variety of strategies for reading comprehension." What does that even mean? Of course my students use different strategies for reading comprehension. We practice predicting, summarizing, questioning, and lots more with everything we read. But how can I reduce their use of reading strategies to a single number? What does "on grade level" mean when you are talking about how well someone makes predictions about texts? Or there's the standard, "Understands words with multiple meanings." Well, of course my students understand words with multiple meanings. They know that "bat" can mean a flying animal or something with which you hit a baseball. But how well my students do on assessments of their ability to understand words with multiple meanings just depends on whether they happen to be familiar with the words on the assessment. I can't possibly teach them every word in the English language with multiple meanings.
The district's answer to questions about the ambiguity of the standards when applied to reading is that students should be assessed on their mastery of these standards using "grade level text." But take the standard, "Recognizes events of the story and the motivation of characters." Some students can recognize a character's motivation in one story in our fourth grade anthology but not in another. Maybe they have a personal connection to a character in one story and that makes the character in one story easier to understand. How can I accurately state the student's ability to determine characters' motivation in all 4th-grade-level stories?
I have to think through these issues for 81 different boxes! And remember, this is elementary school. No one's life is going to be determined by what grade she got for "Uses and evaluates parentheses in equations" in fourth grade.
For better or worse, I've never had a parent question me about a grade I assigned. I kind of wish a parent would ask me to justify how I arrived at a grade. But the parents of students in my class are so deferential to teachers. "La maestra" is a title with real authority and respect in Mexico, and they really think that I know best when it comes to their children's education. Plus, the report card is so overwhelming, that many parents don't really know how to interpret it, never mind what questions to ask.
But, despite these issues, the important thing at the moment is that I'm done with report cards! I've never finished them 4 days before they were due before.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Day -6: A Haiku
My students are finishing up their poetry books (finally!), and one boy wrote this haiku:
The moon is shiny.
It looks like the letter "C."
It may taste like cheese.
***
I found out that Wilfredo didn't go on our field trip to the park yesterday because he didn't have food to bring for lunch! I talked with him and explained he should never, ever not go on a field trip because he can't bring lunch and that I can order a free lunch from the cafeteria for him. But still ... I feel sad for him. He found out that there was a party and that there would have been plenty of food for him, so he started off the the day a little bummed out. He's so resilient, though. By 9:00 he said, "We're a great team!" when he and his partner found lots of prepositional phrases in our little Prepositional Phrase Hunt. Our school district continues to provide free breakfast and lunch to families during the summer, which really helps out people like Wilfredo. I wonder what he did eat for lunch yesterday.
The moon is shiny.
It looks like the letter "C."
It may taste like cheese.
***
I found out that Wilfredo didn't go on our field trip to the park yesterday because he didn't have food to bring for lunch! I talked with him and explained he should never, ever not go on a field trip because he can't bring lunch and that I can order a free lunch from the cafeteria for him. But still ... I feel sad for him. He found out that there was a party and that there would have been plenty of food for him, so he started off the the day a little bummed out. He's so resilient, though. By 9:00 he said, "We're a great team!" when he and his partner found lots of prepositional phrases in our little Prepositional Phrase Hunt. Our school district continues to provide free breakfast and lunch to families during the summer, which really helps out people like Wilfredo. I wonder what he did eat for lunch yesterday.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Day -7: "Que te portes bien en la otra escuela"
Today my fourth graders went to the park with their first grade reading buddies for an end-of-the-year celebration. It was very, very cute. The moms of both the classes surprised me with a potluck they organized themselves, complete with vegetarian pupusas and vegetarian taquitos (since I don't eat meat) and many kinds of salsa and flan. I made a summer date with the pupusa-maker to come over to my house and teach me how to make them!
Another thing that made me smile a lot today were the letters that our first grade reading buddies wrote to me. They thanked me for bringing my students to read with them, for being kind to them, etc. And then they offered me advice for my future life as a doctoral student:
"No se olvide de terminar la tarea." (Don't forget to finish the homework.)
"Pórtate bien." (Behave yourself.)
"No olvides a prestar atención a tu maestra." (Don't forget to pay attention to your teacher."
And my favorite - in English - from a student who has a really, really hard time at school, who's been retained, and who other kids get frustrated with sometimes: "Good luck at your new school. I hope you have a lot of friends there."
I was thinking about what to write back to them. I was thinking of promising that I would do all my homework and always pay attention to my teacher. But then I realized that might not be true! Maybe a big difference between first grade and 19th grade (which my students and I figured out is the grade I will be in) is that by the time you're in 19th grade you know when you can get away with not doing your homework and not paying attention - while still learning what you need to learn.
Another thing that made me smile a lot today were the letters that our first grade reading buddies wrote to me. They thanked me for bringing my students to read with them, for being kind to them, etc. And then they offered me advice for my future life as a doctoral student:
"No se olvide de terminar la tarea." (Don't forget to finish the homework.)
"Pórtate bien." (Behave yourself.)
"No olvides a prestar atención a tu maestra." (Don't forget to pay attention to your teacher."
And my favorite - in English - from a student who has a really, really hard time at school, who's been retained, and who other kids get frustrated with sometimes: "Good luck at your new school. I hope you have a lot of friends there."
I was thinking about what to write back to them. I was thinking of promising that I would do all my homework and always pay attention to my teacher. But then I realized that might not be true! Maybe a big difference between first grade and 19th grade (which my students and I figured out is the grade I will be in) is that by the time you're in 19th grade you know when you can get away with not doing your homework and not paying attention - while still learning what you need to learn.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Day -8: 60 Is the New 75
No, I'm not talking about ages. I'm talking about percentages.
Used to be that in order to score Proficient on my district's standardized trimester assessments in language arts and math, students had to get 75% of the questions on the tests right. About a month ago, however, some district administrators decided to change all that. Now, for this last trimester, students only have to get a score of 60% or higher to be considered Proficient.
Here are the old assessment guidelines we used:
0-59% = Far Below Basic/Below Basic
60-74% = Basic
75-89% = Proficient
90-100% = Advanced
Here are the new guidelines:
0-19% = Far Below Basic
20-39% = Below Basic
40-59% = Basic
60-79% = Proficient
80-100% = Advanced
It's a pretty drastic change to make midyear! The change in the guidelines was allegedly made to better align district assessment results to state standardized test results. But students' scores on state tests don't correlate at all with the district tests evaluated using the new guidelines.
Last year, when my current students were in third grade, 12 of them scored Far Below Basic in Language Arts on the state standardized test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, none of my students are considered Far Below Basic. In third grade, only one of my students scored Proficient on the state Language Arts test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, 10 of my students are now considered Proficient.
Of course I expect some students' state standardized test scores to be better than they were last year, but I can almost guarantee my students' state scores will not improve as dramatically as their district scores might suggest.
The state Department of Education shifts what percentage of questions students must get right to score Proficient each year, depending on the difficulty of test questions and other factors. They don't make it easy to figure out what the cutoff for that magic score of Proficient is. I went through all of my students' test results, though, and wrote down the percent of questions they got correct and their performance levels. As best I could figure out, for the 2006 3rd grade Language Arts test, here are the guidelines:
0 - ~36% = Far Below Basic
~37 - ~53% = Below Basic
~54 - ~72% = Basic
I can't tell what the cutoffs were for Proficient and Advanced because I only had one student score at these performance levels. He got 78% correct, which was reported as Proficient.
Even though my data are incomplete, it's clear to me that the district's new guidelines do not align at all with state guidelines. The state has lots and lots of well-trained people thinking about what should count as Proficient and using real statistical models to ensure reliability across grade levels and years - or at least that's what I assume. Our little district cannot hope to reproduce this.
Last year, a question on a district math assessment read as follows: "Four boys shared 38 pennies as equally as possible. How many pennies did each boy get?" The only possible answers listed were 8, 10, 12, and 6. What do you think the correct answer is? At least there aren't any questions as bad as that one on this year's assessments. But still, I hate how standardized test scores gain this mythic status as unbiased, objective, and reliable, when how students do depends totally on how hard the questions are and the scale used for their scores.
Letting a student who scores 60% on a pretty easy test be considered Proficient during this last trimester does not seem a step in any kind of right direction. Especially when that same score of 60% on the same kind of test was reported as Basic on that student's report card earlier this year. What parent wouldn't assume that their child improved markedly when seeing the jump from Basic to Proficient? But really it's just the bar that moved, not the child.
Ever wonder how all students are going to score Proficient in Language Arts and Math by 2014, as mandated under No Child Left Behind? Here's your answer. Just lower the bar.
Time magazine actually has a cover story this week about No Child Left Behind, which talks about this same problem at a national level. State test results often don't correlate with national test results. Students in California score 15 percentage points lower on the national reading test than they do on the state test - which is nothing compared to students in Alabama, who score 48 points lower on than national test than the state test. So just what does Proficient mean? And who gets to decide?
Used to be that in order to score Proficient on my district's standardized trimester assessments in language arts and math, students had to get 75% of the questions on the tests right. About a month ago, however, some district administrators decided to change all that. Now, for this last trimester, students only have to get a score of 60% or higher to be considered Proficient.
Here are the old assessment guidelines we used:
0-59% = Far Below Basic/Below Basic
60-74% = Basic
75-89% = Proficient
90-100% = Advanced
Here are the new guidelines:
0-19% = Far Below Basic
20-39% = Below Basic
40-59% = Basic
60-79% = Proficient
80-100% = Advanced
It's a pretty drastic change to make midyear! The change in the guidelines was allegedly made to better align district assessment results to state standardized test results. But students' scores on state tests don't correlate at all with the district tests evaluated using the new guidelines.
Last year, when my current students were in third grade, 12 of them scored Far Below Basic in Language Arts on the state standardized test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, none of my students are considered Far Below Basic. In third grade, only one of my students scored Proficient on the state Language Arts test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, 10 of my students are now considered Proficient.
Of course I expect some students' state standardized test scores to be better than they were last year, but I can almost guarantee my students' state scores will not improve as dramatically as their district scores might suggest.
The state Department of Education shifts what percentage of questions students must get right to score Proficient each year, depending on the difficulty of test questions and other factors. They don't make it easy to figure out what the cutoff for that magic score of Proficient is. I went through all of my students' test results, though, and wrote down the percent of questions they got correct and their performance levels. As best I could figure out, for the 2006 3rd grade Language Arts test, here are the guidelines:
0 - ~36% = Far Below Basic
~37 - ~53% = Below Basic
~54 - ~72% = Basic
I can't tell what the cutoffs were for Proficient and Advanced because I only had one student score at these performance levels. He got 78% correct, which was reported as Proficient.
Even though my data are incomplete, it's clear to me that the district's new guidelines do not align at all with state guidelines. The state has lots and lots of well-trained people thinking about what should count as Proficient and using real statistical models to ensure reliability across grade levels and years - or at least that's what I assume. Our little district cannot hope to reproduce this.
Last year, a question on a district math assessment read as follows: "Four boys shared 38 pennies as equally as possible. How many pennies did each boy get?" The only possible answers listed were 8, 10, 12, and 6. What do you think the correct answer is? At least there aren't any questions as bad as that one on this year's assessments. But still, I hate how standardized test scores gain this mythic status as unbiased, objective, and reliable, when how students do depends totally on how hard the questions are and the scale used for their scores.
Letting a student who scores 60% on a pretty easy test be considered Proficient during this last trimester does not seem a step in any kind of right direction. Especially when that same score of 60% on the same kind of test was reported as Basic on that student's report card earlier this year. What parent wouldn't assume that their child improved markedly when seeing the jump from Basic to Proficient? But really it's just the bar that moved, not the child.
Ever wonder how all students are going to score Proficient in Language Arts and Math by 2014, as mandated under No Child Left Behind? Here's your answer. Just lower the bar.
Time magazine actually has a cover story this week about No Child Left Behind, which talks about this same problem at a national level. State test results often don't correlate with national test results. Students in California score 15 percentage points lower on the national reading test than they do on the state test - which is nothing compared to students in Alabama, who score 48 points lower on than national test than the state test. So just what does Proficient mean? And who gets to decide?
Monday, June 4, 2007
Day -9: Mission Museum
Today was my fourth annual Mission Museum. As the culmination of our unit on missions, we invited families to come see students' models of missions, reports on missions, and diaries about mission life.
Making models of missions has been much-maligned in California by history educators, and I understand why. Craft stores sell kits for building each of the 21 missions out of styrofoam, and it is hard to see what educational purpose is served by just assembling styrofoam pieces. But my students and their families really love building models of missions! Many of my students' parents have a limited education in Spanish; having finished only fourth grade in Mexico is normal. Plus, many have only limited English skills. By the time their children are in my class, they often cannot help their kids with homework - in English or in Spanish - because they don't know how to do it themselves. Many students' parents, however, work in construction, carpentry, or related trades, so building is something at which they are experts. Our mission building project becomes, for many families, a total family effort, in which parents' "funds of knowledge" are valued. I encourage students to spend as little as possible on their mission models and tell them that I value their creativity much more than the accuracy with which they reproduce the exact proportions of the missions they are studying.
Another criticism of building models of missions is that it glorifies missions and does not help students think critically about the role of missions in California history. It seems wrong to value building pretty white churches over teaching about the enslavement of Native Americans at these pretty white churches. But I think there's no need to give up the latter while doing the former. Almost all of the my students wrote diaries in the voices of Native Americans who wished they could escape from the mission where they were living, who longed for the village where they used to live, and who, in some cases, were plotting an uprising against their captors.
About 20 parents came to my classroom today to see students' work. Many of them dressed up for the occasion. Students were so proud to show off their missions. We put out papers for our museum visitors to write comments, and every students' comment sheet was full with really thoughtful feedback from their peers and from parents. Students would come back over and over to check how many comments they had gotten and read what they said.
Every time I invite parents to come see students' work, I always vow that I should do it more. It's so easy, and the students and parents love it. Somehow, though, I never manage to pull it off as often as I hope.
Here are pictures from our mission museum. Students and their families really had ingenious ideas for building - lentils for a pathway, folded construction paper for a roof, aluminum foil for a reflecting pool. Look closely!
Making models of missions has been much-maligned in California by history educators, and I understand why. Craft stores sell kits for building each of the 21 missions out of styrofoam, and it is hard to see what educational purpose is served by just assembling styrofoam pieces. But my students and their families really love building models of missions! Many of my students' parents have a limited education in Spanish; having finished only fourth grade in Mexico is normal. Plus, many have only limited English skills. By the time their children are in my class, they often cannot help their kids with homework - in English or in Spanish - because they don't know how to do it themselves. Many students' parents, however, work in construction, carpentry, or related trades, so building is something at which they are experts. Our mission building project becomes, for many families, a total family effort, in which parents' "funds of knowledge" are valued. I encourage students to spend as little as possible on their mission models and tell them that I value their creativity much more than the accuracy with which they reproduce the exact proportions of the missions they are studying.
Another criticism of building models of missions is that it glorifies missions and does not help students think critically about the role of missions in California history. It seems wrong to value building pretty white churches over teaching about the enslavement of Native Americans at these pretty white churches. But I think there's no need to give up the latter while doing the former. Almost all of the my students wrote diaries in the voices of Native Americans who wished they could escape from the mission where they were living, who longed for the village where they used to live, and who, in some cases, were plotting an uprising against their captors.
About 20 parents came to my classroom today to see students' work. Many of them dressed up for the occasion. Students were so proud to show off their missions. We put out papers for our museum visitors to write comments, and every students' comment sheet was full with really thoughtful feedback from their peers and from parents. Students would come back over and over to check how many comments they had gotten and read what they said.
Every time I invite parents to come see students' work, I always vow that I should do it more. It's so easy, and the students and parents love it. Somehow, though, I never manage to pull it off as often as I hope.
Here are pictures from our mission museum. Students and their families really had ingenious ideas for building - lentils for a pathway, folded construction paper for a roof, aluminum foil for a reflecting pool. Look closely!
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Day -10: The Priest's Son
Last year, I tried a new writing project at the end of the year. I had my students assume the role of a person living in one of the periods of California history that we had studied, and I had them write a diary in the voice of that person. It was a fun and revealing exercise, giving students a too-rare chance to really exercise their imaginations. I would turn the lights off, have the students help me with sound effects as our time-travel machine warmed up, and then narrate events we were traveling backwards through. "We're traveling back before cellphones were invented, before computers were invented, before there were cars, before there was electricity. We're traveling back before California was a state," etc. And then I would ask students a series of questions, guiding them as they tried to imagine their lives in the past. "The sun is rising and you are waking up. What do you hear? What do you see around you? Who is with you?" And so on.
This year, the time I have for teaching social studies each week has been cut in half (down to 45 minutes a week from at least 90 minutes a week in past years) due to our school's "Program Improvement" status. (Schools that fail to meet standardized test score targets must implement a variety of changes, and in elementary schools, those changes mean that everything but language arts and math instruction is basically eliminated - or at least drastically reduced). I felt like I didn't have time to do the historical fiction project on the same scale this year, plus my students have learned about fewer time periods than in past years. So I decided to have everyone set their diaries during the mission period this time around. Some students assumed the roles of Native Americans living at missions and some assumed the role of Spanish priests or soldiers.
Alex wrote this diary, and though he has some misconceptions about the sex lives of priests (misconceptions, I guess, which are shared by some priests themselves), he gets the important parts.
P.S. What students really liked about the historical fiction project last year was that I bought parchment paper (the kind you use for baking) and cut out rectangles that they used for the covers of their diaries. They loved crumpling up the parchment paper so it would look old. It is hecka hard, though, to hole-punch parchment paper!
This year, the time I have for teaching social studies each week has been cut in half (down to 45 minutes a week from at least 90 minutes a week in past years) due to our school's "Program Improvement" status. (Schools that fail to meet standardized test score targets must implement a variety of changes, and in elementary schools, those changes mean that everything but language arts and math instruction is basically eliminated - or at least drastically reduced). I felt like I didn't have time to do the historical fiction project on the same scale this year, plus my students have learned about fewer time periods than in past years. So I decided to have everyone set their diaries during the mission period this time around. Some students assumed the roles of Native Americans living at missions and some assumed the role of Spanish priests or soldiers.
Alex wrote this diary, and though he has some misconceptions about the sex lives of priests (misconceptions, I guess, which are shared by some priests themselves), he gets the important parts.
I see a bed, a cruz on a wall, a cemetery. No one is with me. The room looks old world, really old. I hear the bells and the people speaking to me. I hear birds. I see the old pictures. I'm going to the church because I am the padre. I am a priest. I am 20 years old. My family is in Spain. I came here to become a priest like my father. My name is Jesus.
It's in the middle of the day. I fed the animals. I helped the Native Americans with chores. When I first came here it was a disaster. I planned to marry a beautiful Spanish woman and to be the best priest ever. I will learn to pray more to believe in God. Make the Native Americans believe in God. God has the power. There's only one god, not a bunch of gods. You people should believe in God. That's my dream speech. I want a nice house in Spain. Sometimes I want to go back to Spain, meet my family there, make a new life there, become the greatest priest in Spain. People will respect me. The day is fainting away. It's time to sleep and dream sweet dreams. Good night.
P.S. What students really liked about the historical fiction project last year was that I bought parchment paper (the kind you use for baking) and cut out rectangles that they used for the covers of their diaries. They loved crumpling up the parchment paper so it would look old. It is hecka hard, though, to hole-punch parchment paper!
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