In the last few weeks, and over the years as well, I've sat on numerous interview panels for the hiring of new teachers. Considering the RIFing taking place all around us, and considering that my district is one of the few who is actually hiring this year (due to retirements, growth, and the fact that my building was operating on a very frugal FTE budget the last couple of years) we were lucky, if that's the right word, to have an influx of candidates.

Like many districts, ours has a very strict protocol for interviews in order to help level the playing field for all candidates. We receive a packet with scripted questions, we rate answers, we share our ratings with our fellow interviewers, and so on. I read the same questions over and over, and listened to a good number of lame, vacuous, sound-byte superficial answers (peppered with some good quality concrete responses, thankfully).

There were questions about the candidates' procedures for planning and implementing lessons, calls for examples of problem-solving with parents and colleagues, requests for the candidate to articulate their rationale for organizing scope and sequence one way versus another, and the obligatory questions about standards, high stakes tests, and current EdTrends. 

I found myself thinking over and over again: how would I answer these questions?

Before long, I also found myself thinking: how would my colleagues answer these questions--now, not when putting our best feet forward to earn a chance at a paycheck?

In the interviews, the candidates I was drawn to were the ones about whom I found myself saying "I like him/her because I can tell that the gears are turning, I can tell there is thinking and reflection going on there." I kept coming back to this: I want teachers who think about what they do.

And no, not all teachers do.

The biggest signal to all of us that the end is near--at least those of us who teach high school--is the playing of pomp and circumstance.

Last year about this time, I posted my message to the class of 2010, and while I tend to be exceedingly cynical about graduation and some of the other (in my opinion) overwrought aspects of The High School Experience (prom, pep assemblies, spirit week...), I do recognize how significant the earning of a diploma can be for kids.

As I sat through my high school's three hour long ceremony the other night, I was saddened that the ceremony itself couldn't be more about all the kids who were graduating. Instead, we had the typical parade of Valedictorians and Salutatorians. The class and ASB officers got their chance to speak. The athletic teams were honored (again and again, and then a few more times in case anyone missed it) and permutations of the clause "We did it!" were repeated a dozen times by and for kids for whom there was never really any question whether they'd be able to "do it."

Sure, everyone deserves their moment, but as the lists of scholarships for much-deserving students were read, as awards were doled out for high grades and other hard-earned accolades, it saddened me that some of the best stories weren't being told:

By Kristin

It's been a tough year, and also a good year. 

I always give my students a final letter.  For a few years it didn't change much.  This year it did, perhaps because I'm leaving high school after eight years and returning to middle school, where I'll teach 7th grade LA/SS.  I realize that I have not yet mastered every piece of advice in the letter, so I suppose I need to listen to my own self and get better at some things.  Many things, if I'm going to be fully honest.

It's long - and isn't really a blog post because there's no hyperlink - but here it is, because for all I'm supportive of testing and use of data and I have high expectations that teachers use class time academically, at the end of the day I think I teach this stuff more than I teach reading and writing.  And where's the test that can measure whether or not I did it effectively?

By Tom

I spent about an hour this morning slogging through an article by Dan Hanushek about the imperative of having good teachers. It's an intriguing read, in which he makes the case that having an excellent teacher will increase the expected lifetime earning by up to $400,000 per student. A lousy teacher, on the other hand, would have the opposite impact. While he allows that "The majority of teachers are hardworking and effective," he argues for renewed efforts to eliminate the least effective 5 to 10 percent. That, and merit pay.

Like I said, I spent about an hour with this thing. Then I taught a full day in a real classroom, where I tried to be excellent. I'm not sure the extent to which I increased the future earnings of my students, but I'd like to think I did some good.

After school got out I went to a meeting. There were seven of us in attendance. In addition to the other third grade teacher and myself, we had the principal, the psychologist, the math specialist, the reading specialist and the ELL specialist. We talked about our students. Our students. Not my students, not the other teacher's students, but our students. We looked at lots of data and talked about the faces behind the numbers. We talked about which of those kids will need more support next year and what that support will look like. 

It seems extremely ambitious for Hanushek to place a dollar figure on something like a teacher's impact on a student's future earnings. I have a lot of respect for data and I appreciate the fact that advanced metrics have allowed us to isolate the role teachers play in student achievement. But I don't see how it's possible to tease out the impact one teacher has on any given student. 

What Mr. Hanushek and others don't seem to grasp is that teachers in this day and age don't "own" their students and the data they generate. We work collaboratively. Remember, there were seven of us in that room, talking about two classes of students. And everyone there played a role in their education and holds a stake in their success.

Furthermore, the students with the highest needs, the ones that need the most support, are the students on whom the most people collaborate. And they're the same students that tend to "drag down" classroom data as it's assigned to a given teacher.

Collaboration is a great thing, and it's here to stay. It's high time the research community accepted it.

By Tom

I have pink hair. Not normally, but currently. Long story short, I lost a bet that involved a fund raiser for a great organization called Clothes for Kids. The students at my school raised close to $1000 to help clothe other kids. And to see me with pink hair. It's been pink for two days now, and I've had a chance to do some reflecting:

 - Kids love seeing their teachers humiliated. I'm not sure why. Maybe it involves turning the tables on authority or something. Or maybe not. Who knows, but you've never seen a happier class of third graders than those kids when they found out I was going pink. 

- It's difficult to scold someone when you look ridiculous. 

- Shampoo doesn't get "Manic Panic Hot Hot Pink Hair Dye" out of your hair. Neither does Dawn dishwashing soap, salad oil, orange hand-cleaning stuff or Selsun Blue medicated dandruff shampoo. If you know what works, please comment. 

-There's a vast difference between having students look at you and having students give you their attention. Trust me on this. 

- Earlier this year I was in Pakistan, where I saw incredible poverty on a large scale. It's shameful that in this country, with its vast wealth, we have children holding fund raisers to clothe each other. Shameful, yet wonderful.

- Coloring your hair is complicated and it takes a long time. It took me most of the evening. I'm 49 and my real hair is turning gray. I'm not going to color it. 

- We do very important work as teachers and we need to to take our jobs seriously. If we don't, we're in trouble. But when we take ourselves too seriously, we'll be in even more trouble.

I came across an article about the Federal Way Public Schools (where I had my first job, and I must add, also had a very positive professional experience) which described the current practice of automatically enrolling into AP or IB courses all students who have met minimum state standards.

Thinking back to my childhood, I remember hearing Garrison Keiller's recounting of Lake Wobegon from Prairie Home Companion. At that young age, I didn't follow the satire. Now, that simple line about how all "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average," keeps echoing in my mind as I look at what is happening in some districts as they recoil against cultural perceptions that schools are failing, and in their response, create a situation where they can claim all their students are above average. Federal Way Public Schools are not alone in this movement. I see the seeds of it in my own district as well.

The reasoning behind this movement often seems to be that (1) kids ought to be challenged, (2) AP and IB courses are challenging, ergo (3) all kids should take AP or IB courses. Unfortunately, whenever any opposition is offered, that logical fallacy is then too quickly followed by others: "Don't you think all kids deserve a good education? Don't you think all kids can learn?"

In talking to some of my friends and colleagues who teach AP courses in my home district and in other districts, there is tremendous reticence about the enrollment en masse policies which stack AP kids to the rafters regardless of readiness. Several teachers lamented how they were forced to move more slowly, cover less material, and deal with greater and greater numbers of students entering without the necessary skills preparation, dispositions, or work ethic demanded in an effective Advanced Placement course, all of which resulted in less effective preparation of the students who actually were advanced.

Somehow, it feels to me that the mantra of "all students can learn" is taken to obscene proportions with movements like the one described...with all this stemming perhaps from what is referred to as the "Lake Wobegon Affect" or "illusory superiority" where we tend to overestimate our own or our group's capacity or talent by comparison to others ("We're all above average! We're all advanced!"). I am familiar with a few high schools who require all students to enroll in at least one AP class--and I seriously doubt that is the best educational decision for each and every student. The article about compulsory AP or IB enrollment detailed how around a quarter of the students forced to enroll ended up dropping the courses--likely after damage to their GPAs (and thus their post-high school prospects) and perhaps their morale as a scholar. While there parents can choose to opt their child out of the compulsory program, some parents indicated that it had not even been communicated to them that their child would be enrolled in the advanced programming--let alone that there was a way to opt out.

In our fears of falling behind, and perhaps because we fear being ostracized for seeming to imply anything other than "all students can learn," it seems we're now deluding ourselves into believing that not only can everyone learn, but everyone can be the best learner (or at least that all students can be above average).

I'm all for high standards--but the missing modifier in this "everyone is an advanced student" approach is reasonable; I'm in favor of high reasonable standards. In Federal Way, all students who have met state standards are enrolled into advanced courses; when I look at my students who have met standard and passed the HSPE in reading and writing, I see the kids who have met the minimum standard, not necessarily kids ready to take on the rigorous challenge of Advanced Placement Language or Literature--courses wherein I see even my very best students struggling to earn high marks.

If the program in Federal Way works--that is fantastic. But in analyzing whether it works, it is important that people consider statistics beyond simply the number of AP enrollments and tests taken, which coincidentally (or not) is a primary component of certain prominent "best schools in the nation" lists.