After An Educator's Journey

Out of the classroom & into the universe

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Once upon a time, I taught 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. Now I’m retired and working on new ventures.
I taught second, third and fourth graders. Teaching was my passion and joy for 30 years. And it didn’t hurt that they called me “mom” sometimes.

  • Well, they are gone…. and summer vacation is started. How I feel like hoarding these precious days off. Honestly, I don’t know how people who teach during summer school manage it. By the last day of school, I am so dead tired, it takes about 2 weeks to become human again.

    And usually, the start of summer vacation signals that I will come down with a major cold. This year was no exception. Now that this too has passed it’s on to more interesting, non-teaching activities. And the thorough housecleaning that gets pushed aside as the demands of the school year become more and more intense.

    So far I’ve already completed a couple of landscaping projects:

    I needed a new spot for our charcoal grill, so I built this mini crushed stone area. Also finished weeding the pool area, the side patio, and repainted a bistro table.  It takes me a while to get used to just sitting 🙂

  • Bumping Up

    It’s a rite of passage, I guess. Yesterday my third graders bumped up to meet their fourth grade teachers.  My students were pretty evenly distributed across the four  fourth grade classrooms so while they will see some familiar faces next Fall, they will have an opportunity to meet new friends.

    While my current kids were down the hallway, my “new” class came to the room to be introduced. There are 24 students currently on my list and, while I’m sure that number will change – hopefully not too much higher – the proof that the students change and grow throughout third grade was very apparent.  These kids looked (and acted) so much younger! Several children were so much shorter than my current students that the desks seemed gigantic; several chins just made it to the desktop.

    The incoming students have lots of questions – learning to multiply is definitely something they are anticipating with excitement. And writing in cursive, too. When they return to me on August 31, we will spend much of our first few weeks together learning signals and routines that make the management of a class more, well, manageable.  We will learn to become the community of learners that my current third graders have become.

    So while I was energized to meet some fresh faces – and perhaps a few new challenges – I was glad to spend another few hours with my grown up third graders. And to savor the changes that 180 days bring.

  • Some thing to smile about

    Our elementary school, like many others, has a moment at the beginning of the day for school-wide announcements. In our school, the Morning Announcement also includes the Pledge of Allegiance and our school’s Learning Pledge.  Each morning, coming together as a school community, we recite both pledges together.

    As you can imagine, sometimes a student will be in the hallway just as the announcement is starting.  Given the location of my classroom (at the intersection of two hallways), I often get a bird’s eye view of how students handle being “caught” in the hallway during the Pledge of Allegiance.

    To my knowledge, without any adult prompting, students – singularly or in groups – stop at my doorway, face the flag visible from the doorway, put hand over heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No big deal as far as the students are concerned; they are doing what is expected to get our day started. Upon finishing the Pledge, the students continue on their mission without missing a beat.

    Coming together as a community of 500 or so learners is an important way we get started on our day.  In a time when we are hearing about all the ways schools and students allegedly do not measure up, here is something for which we can be proud. And to think that the kids thought this up themselves. As teachers and parents, we must be doing something right.

  • The end of a year

    We have five days to go. I find it incredible that this journey of an academic year is quickly coming to the finish line – or more accurately, getting ready to crash and burn.

    It’s a time of year when every culminating activity that was ever invented gets scheduled: field trips, tests, report cards, field days, art fairs… you name it and you can find it in the last 2 weeks of school. It’s always been that way. The reliable routines that we used all year are constantly being adapted to accommodate one or another special event. After all, it is the end of the year and everyone is looking forward to summer vacation, right?

    Wrong. Not all my students are looking forward to spending about 10 weeks at home. This is a phenomenon with which I became familiar the first year I moved from a white, middle class school to one where the poverty level was 92% – you read that number correctly. Children of poverty don’t always have fun in mind when they anticipate spending a large chunk of time at home where they may be hungry, beaten, spend large amounts of time in front of the electronic babysitter, or verbally abused. These kids aren’t looking forward to a summer of fun and relaxation.

    One might think that, looking at 10 weeks of a less than idyllic summer vacation might cause a student to savor each and every remaining moment of school – a place of safety. Not true. Starting sometime after Memorial Day when the realization hits, these are the very students who act out in school. They hit, they swear, they bolt, they otherwise break every rule that they have learned to live with in our school community. Why? Because they are pissed off, frustrated, and most definitely not looking forward to those lazy days of summer vacation.

    And those end-of-year activities serve as yet another reminder that we are approaching the danger zone – summer vacation. It is a time when juggling schedules and cajoling good behaviors out of really angry kids is nearly constant. For me, it is a time of exhaustion.

  • Sound the alarm

    I have an emotional relationship with alarm clocks. Not the hate relationship that most people have because it interrupts sleep. My relationship is far more basic than that.

    When Adrien and I were first married, we saved extra pennies in a jar until we could afford a radio alarm clock. We finally achieved our goal, which may have been $25, and purchased an Emerson clock radio with alarm from Lechmere – the big store that used to exist right near the Museum of Science in Boston.  To my thinking, it was the best alarm clock ever made. We used that bad boy for years and years and years. Until I wanted something more modern, something with two alarm buttons and a snooze setting. Oh, and by then CD players on alarm clocks were the gold standard.

    So I convinced Adrien that we needed a new alarm clock. And I bought an RCA with a lovely CD player-radio-two alarm-snooze button-environmental sound option. The first night I plugged it in and the hideous blue light kept me awake. Changed the light color to something more subtle and still, I couldn’t sleep. What was wrong with the old red numbers anyway? THEY didn’t keep me awake. But I digress.

    I did manage to play one CD in the CD player before the thing crapped out. The light display was so bothersome that I ended up turning the clock face toward the wall so it didn’t glare at me. Here I was with a spiffy new alarm clock that after a week kept me up with its hideous light display, didn’t play CDs after one try and I couldn’t glance at the clock to see what time it was because the clock face had to face the wall.

    And then there was the cacophony that passed for an alarm.  I’ve heard sweeter sounds in a junior high marching band. It that alarm didn’t wake you up, you must be dead. Okay, poor consumer research. I’d do better next time; I’d buy something simpler, something with a gentle awakening sound. Something that didn’t blare a hideous blue light in my eyes all night.

    Just about this time, LL Bean offered a Sunbeam alarm clock. No clock radio, just an alarm clock.  An updated version – I remember my grandparents had a similar model which was encased in real wood – this one came in a variety of soft pastel colors. I chose yellow because we had recently painted our bedroom yellow.

    This clock had a spiffy analog clock face. Very basic.  What I didn’t realize was that for about 3 minutes prior to the alarm actually sounding, this bad boy would pulsate all along the clock case. Its furious blinking quickened as the time for the alarm approached.  In theory, the marketing literature claimed this would gradually wake the sleeping owner so that, refreshed and relaxed, said owner would reach over, turn off the sounding alarm — which once again turned out to be a most horrible low sounding buzzing  – just as it began to go off.  In actuality, the pulsating light show just ticked me off because I lost an extra 5 minutes of sleep each morning watching the show and waiting for the nagging alarm to buzz.  We relegated this purchase to a spare bedroom where even unplugged it continued to nag us from afar.  You see, this clock featured a battery back-up.

    For several months the stupid thing would glow, pulse and warm us that it was approaching the time to wake up. Then one day, my son, the engineer in the family, took the foolish thing apart and removed light bulb from the clock case. Peace at last.

    About a year ago, convinced I could be a good consumer and purchase an alarm clock that would not only wake me, it would charge my iPod. Fixed on the convenience of no longer connecting my iPod to the computer when it needed a charge, I was confident that here at last was an alarm clock that would take me into the next millenium.

    Wrong. This clock – again – features a hideous bright blue clock face; something of the wattage one might expect from a sign on the Vegas strip.  A bit of genius on my part, I faithfully cover the clock face with a piece of cardboard each night so that the ever present glow does not keep me awake. I bet  you thought I hadn’t learned anything from my previous purchases. See, I did learn something, really I did.

    And wait, there’s more. It beeps. Not a nice chirping. A nagging beep, beep, Beep, BEEp, BEEP until you figure out which of the many cryptically marked buttons will release you from the hellish reminder that it is indeed time to get out of bed. This alarm is only made more special by the fact that about 10 percent of the time, it doesn’t go off at all. Bonus.

    Given my purchase history over the last 20+ years, I now have to admit that I just am clueless about alarm clocks. Maybe someone out there has a suggestion. Or maybe I can just get a rooster. It surely would be less obnoxious sounding and definitely would not glow in the dark.

  • The Road Not Taken

    A lifetime ago, I was involved in music. Growing up, as I did, in the midwest – home of Friday night football and marching bands – I can’t even remember when music performance wasn’t on the radar. As an elementary school student we were prepared to be in the high school music program fairly early, fourth or fifth grade.  If the band director mentioned there was a need for saxophones in a couple of years, well everyone scrambled to rent a sax and take lessons the minute we were deemed old enough to take instrumental music lessons. By junior high, we were competing to be first chair in each section; as for me I belonged in the flute section.

    I also was a semi-serious pianist. I could sight read music fairly easily. When I went to undergraduate school, I was a music education major. In between methods classes and exposure to all genres of music – you haven’t really lived until you’ve attempted a final music history exam complete with “drop the needle” listening tests (needle, as in phonograph records), I worked at becoming a better performer, not as a soloist, but as an accompanist. Probably not very hard though – I hate, hate, hate practicing and drilling. And without practice, without the drills and exercises, excellence in sight reading could only take me so far. Short fingers and less-than-optimal technique sealed my fate as a music has-been.

    Do I miss being able to play? I may have left my music life behind, but I do miss playing for myself. Now when I sit at my piano – one that we bought when we were first married – I look at the music on the page, I can imagine how it is played and how it should sound, but my fingers don’t cooperate. The muscle memory that used to allow me to automatically reach from one key to another with precision has atrophied. When I reach for an octave, I sometimes get a seventh.

    While I know that the career path I ultimately chose was the right one, there is something left unsatisfied. The demands on me leave  no time to seriously revitalize piano techniques that have long lapsed. Maybe maturity would allow the discipline to practice to kick in, but my dislike of practice would probably come roaring right back.

    Yet, there is that feeling of something left unfinished. How different would life be had I stayed with music? It is the question that will remain unanswered.

  • Defining the term “furlough”

    The public hearings on the 2010-2011 school budgets begin tonight in Lowell. No one thinks that there is any way the schools will be able to get through the next fiscal year without massive cuts of programs, services and teachers. The last several years the budgets have been decreased and belt-tightening measures have been put in place. Optional services and programs have already been cut or consolidated so that, for this next massive round of cutting – or more accurately, unfunding – the cuts are to the bone. Teachers and paraprofessional staff  have been hearing about the possibility of job loss for the last month and now those murmurs are reality.

    One idea being floated is the idea of teachers taking “furlough” days – unpaid leave. As you can imagine, the unthinking masses who hate spending a dime on educating “those people” are frothing at the thought of those “lazy teachers” who work only part of a full day (see my previous posting) earning less money.

    Hold on here folks. If you assign a particular day to me as a “furlough” does that mean you expect me to still show up for work because that seems to be the popular belief?

    When a public works employee takes a furlough day, he or she stays home and the work just does not get done. If I stay home from work, the plans for the day and the preparation to implement those plans, still get done – on my own time – and the City hires a sub at the tune of $75-$90 per day. The school day just doesn’t disappear because I’m present or not.  How is that a budget saver?

    Here’s what I would be willing to do: I would be willing to work partial days at strategic times throughout the school year. For example, the first 3 days of school and/or the Friday before a vacation week. In return, the students would be dismissed at lunch time similar to what happens on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving break. The day would count as a school day so that would not impact the state’s requirement for 180 school days, the afternoon would be left to my discretion, and the City would not have to pay anyone for the balance of the day.

    And in return? If I’m willing to reduce my pay and potentially impact my retirement, I’d like to see some of those 90 teaching positions restored. Our students get little enough without massively cutting technology teachers, music teachers, tutors, or paraprofessionals who are essential in helping teachers reach every student.

    And if you have a better idea? Attend the budget meetings. Call your School Committee. Call the City Council. Our children’s futures depend on you.

  • What would be fair?

    This week I was asked at a Team Meeting what I thought about particular student’s participation in MCAS (this student has serious health issues which limit school participation). Was there an alternate way to assess this student that would enable us to know what had been achieved?

    And that got me thinking about what I really feel about MCAS, this 4-day brain drain.

    I get that standardized testing and MCAS is a part of teaching now. I get that teachers need to be help accountable for teaching the state (and now federal) standards. Honestly, watching my student navigate the Mathematics tests this past week made me realize that there are some weaknesses in the curriculum that was delivered. My teaching will be informed by my students’ performance on the test — a test which, by the way, I thought was reasonable.

    What I don’t understand is how one high-stakes test can serve as the ultimate measure of my students’ achievement, particularly when more than half of my students are English Language Learners. Six and a quarter hours of correctly spoken and written English each day can only go so far – the vocabulary that English speakers take for granted is daunting for many of my students.

    And before anyone’s shorts are tied in a knot about second languages, let me say that I wish those who disparage people whose first language is not English tried to take that test in another language that they were in the process of learning. My experience in learning a second language, a Romance and therefore related language, was and is one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever encountered. I think if you attempted an important reading/writing task in a second language, you too might be hanging onto new vocabulary by the tips of your fingernails. I’m not advocating for abandoning the goal of performing in English — that is the language of business in this country and therefore, the way to economic success — I’m just saying cut these English speaking/writing “toddlers” a little slack on the high stakes tests.

    What would be fair? Well for one thing, look at my students’ growth over the year. We have data for that – Fountas Pinnell Benchmarks, SRI Reading tests, Writing Portfolios, and district-wide Math assessments. Consider these as well as the MCAS when commenting on my students’ achievement. Look at the Massachusetts Growth data — are we making progress? Is it just at a slower rate than the students in more affluent, parent-involved suburbs?

    We need to look at a more complete picture of our students before pointing fingers of blame at educators. Nothing in education is black and white – we aren’t producing widgets on an assembly line. To know what students know and don’t know, we need to dig deeply. Standardized state testing should be just one item to consider.

  • Amazing Teachers Need Not Apply

    If you have been reading the postings of the Massachusetts DESE, you may have noticed their new campaign for “Amazing Teachers”.  This appears to be a recruitment program to entice teachers to work in the Tier 4 Schools — those who are being carefully scrutinized because test scores haven’t moved out of the sub-basement.

    So, let me understand this, DESE. You are going to stick with the notion that these 37 schools are under-performing because of the teachers on staff? Parent involvement – or parent uninvolvement – has no bearing in these students’ success? Presto,change-o with the change of the knowledgeable and dedicated teaching staffs, all will be well.

    I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Have the politicians and educational leaders in our state become such political kiss-ups that they are afraid to do anything more than make teaching faculties scapegoats? Or do they truly believe that experienced teachers working their asses off  in urban, multi-lingual, traumatized, high poverty classrooms can be quickly replaced by successful teachers from exurbia? Seriously?

    I get that there are teachers who should not be in a classroom — the Bell Curve makes that a no-brainer. But there are many, many, many others who are those “amazing teachers” the DESE is looking for:

    Amazing teachers…

    • Are relentlessly committed to high achievement for all students. They demonstrate tenacity and persistence in pursuit of the goal of ensuring that every child develops the knowledge and skill necessary for college and career success.
    • Have demonstrated success in enabling students to make significant academic progress. They have a track record of results with students and are skilled at using data to analyze and improve student performance.
    • Build and value strong relationships with students, families and the community. They create a sense of community in the classroom that celebrates success, empower students with choice and responsibility and make content relevant and accessible to all.
    • Thrive in diverse, multicultural settings. They respect and support families and students of all backgrounds – regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language or ability – and actively engage them in achieving rigorous academic goals.
    • Work collaboratively with school leadership and their colleagues to help foster a culture of teamwork. They welcome and seek out opportunities to lead, plan, learn and collectively solve problems in pursuit of student achievement.
    • Have deep content and pedagogical knowledge and skills and constantly strive to improve their practice. They have a strong understanding of content and learning standards, maintain strong classroom management skills, and differentiate instructional strategies so that all students comprehend key information.  They reflect on their teaching performance and seek feedback and new learning to improve.

    Most of the people I teach with have these very qualifications; they are amazing teachers. We cajole, inspire, and open our students’ eyes to the possibilities that effort and a great education can bring.

    We celebrate our students milestones and achievements no matter how great or how small — our students are progressing. We would give our right arms for a partnership with parents. Sometimes that’s possible, sometimes it is not – but we still try no matter how many times our outreach is rejected because maybe the next time, we will not be turned away.

    We are challenged by a multicultural society, and despite those challenges, we love teaching in a diverse classroom because more often than not, we learn as much from the children as they learn from us.

    We work collaboratively; we know our content; and we keep growing.

    So DESE, look no further. Those amazing teachers you are looking for? We are right here, right under your nose. What we need is a little respect, a lot of support, and less of the blame game.

  • History Around Us

    I’m not sure I really appreciated Lowell’s place in history. We live immersed in the history of the Industrial Revolution here in Lowell, and oftentimes we don’t see or appreciate it.

    Carved out of Chelmsford, Lowell traces its beginnings to the 1820s. Lowell was a planned manufacturing center for textiles.

    This week, my third graders visited the Tsongas Industrial History Center and the Boott Mills as part of our third grade study of the community. The program we participated in, Change in the Making, chronicles Lowell’s development from its beginnings as East Chelmsford to the development of the textile mills.

    We started in the Boott Mills Weave Room – where although only 6 looms were operating the noise of the looms was nearly unbearable. Climbing five flights of stairs to the class rooms was a chore for my third graders – but something Mill workers did numerous times each day, and in record time.  

    As tempting as it might be to romanticize the past, there was much that made life as a Lowell Mill girl (or boy) hard. Long regimented hours, dangerous machinery, unreasonable mill overseers, and an often unhealthy environment caused by the cotton fibers in the airless weave rooms. I’m not sure many of my students thought they would enjoy being part of the good old days.

    I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t have.