Stories from School: Practice meets Policy

Professional Development and Baseball

 

By Tom

My family and I are down in Arizona this week, trying to dry out from a ridiculously wet winter. Coincidentally, our beloved Mariners are in the exact same place! So we went to a Spring Training baseball game today for the first time, and frankly, it was a little weird.

Now we've been to a lot of Mariners games. But this one was different, and at first I couldn't quite get a handle on it. It wasn't so much the weather, which was perfect; like Seattle in July. It certainly wasn't the fact that the Mariners were getting creamed; God knows we've seen that often enough. No, it was something about the way the players went about their business. They were working, but differently. Their attitude wasn't what I'm used to seeing when I watch pro baseball, yet there was something oddly familiar about it.

NBPTS and Washington Teachers, a great match

Clickity-Click, tap….tap….tap, Click, CLICK, tappity-click. That is the sound of Washington teachers finalizing their portfolios for National Board Certification.

The process of National Board Certification involves 4 lengthy portfolio pieces, a combination of analytical and reflective writing; video submissions; documented accomplishments; and instructional materials. Additionally, there are 6 assessments on content knowledge at a testing center.

Randy Dorn, Seal Keeper?

 By Tom

It was pretty obvious to most of us that the relationship between Randy Dorn, Washington's new Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the state legislature didn’t get off to a perfect start. Shortly after taking office, he announced sweeping changes to the state assessment system; changes made without much input from the legislature.

 

They weren’t happy. But we didn’t know the extent of their unhappiness until just last week, when the House and the Senate each passed massive education bills. Which, according to verse three of Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill,” meant that the two houses then got to switch papers so that they could scrutinize and criticize each other’s work.

 

I looked at these bills and quickly became overwhelmed. They’re really long. Remember, I teach third grade all day. Anything longer than a paragraph freaks me out. So I decided to focus on the section about accountability: how the state is going to make sure our students learn. And for the most part, I like what I see.

Inside an NCATE Visit

By Tom

Regular readers to our blog may have noticed that I frequently mention NCATE. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education is responsible for holding colleges of education to high standards. And that’s important. No one wants their child spending six hours a day with someone who didn’t go through a decent teacher education program.

 

So how does it work? How does NCATE go about checking out teacher schools to see if they’re any good?

 

Least Restrictive?

In my tenth-grade core English classes, we’ve been working on writing skills with regard to literary analysis with the triple goal of learning how to find relevant citations, how to use MLA formatting, and how to answer WASL-type analysis questions. One young man in my class has really been struggling with the concepts and doing poorly on the quizzes, even though he understands the literature. I told him after he struggled with one quiz that I would sit down and do the next one with him. He was absolutely horrified at the thought and said, “Then everyone else will know that I’m in special ed! I wish I could just go back to a special ed classroom where it doesn’t matter that I’m stupid.” That broke my heart. He is far from being “stupid,” but that is his academic self image. He didn't care that I had sat down and worked on the quiz with two other struggling students (who happen to NOT have IEPs).

This brought me back to a subject I have contemplated much over the last decade. When I started teaching in this district, our SE kids were mainstreamed. Then the trend changed to separate SE classes. Now the pendulum is swinging back to inclusion models as being the "least restrictive environment" (LRE).