After An Educator's Journey

Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance

June 25, 2018

For 30 years, I was a teacher in both private and public elementary schools. I certainly was not a perfect teacher, and I made more than my share of missteps, especially in interactions with students.

Experience can be an exacting teacher, however. One of the most important and useful lessons I learned was that for empathetic practitioners, there is no such thing as “zero tolerance”. Despite one’s insistence that a rule be followed without exceptions, the reality is simply the opposite. In a world of right-or-wrong, black-or-white, there is always a gray space.

Take a school’s zero tolerance for wearing caps in school as an example. On the surface, such a policy seems simple enough particularly for those of us who were brought up in the generation of “men do not wear caps inside.” I share with you an anecdote from my time as an elementary teacher.

One morning, a student of mine walked into my third grade classroom just on the cusp of the tardy bell. His head was down, he hadn’t gone to his locker, he made zero eye contact with anyone and… he had his baseball cap firmly on his head. This student was a leader, well-liked and respected by his peers and, even at his most challenging, liked by his teachers. When I asked him to take off his cap, as was the rule, he simply looked down and shook his head defiantly.

As I was about to escalate this conversation, I was saved from being a jerk by the school’s social worker who had cajoled the whole cap story from this child. For some reason, this student’s father had taken to giving the child an at-home hair cut, leaving tufts of his hair randomly interspersed between patches of skin. My student was mortified that his friends would see his new haircut and, as kids often do, taunt him mercilessly. So in a nod to the gray area, the zero-tolerance of caps in school was abandoned and the cap stayed on.

I tell this story because there is an important take-away for every “zero tolerance” situation, including the one currently unfolding in our government. The consequence of this government’s action however is far less benign than becoming an over-zealous enforcer of school rules.

Zero tolerance should never become an absolute; there are far too many extenuating circumstances that can and should guide it. It is a lesson our government could and should apply as well.
25-year old calculations do not make equitable access to schools

June 8, 2018

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, this one, courtesy of Colin Jones of Mass Budget is one of the most compelling reasons why we need to implement the Foundation Budget update (S.2525) which is currently languishing in Committee.

Communities with greater wealth have the luxury of adding to the grossly under-calculated “what it costs to educate a student” (Chapter 70) calculation. Here’s an example: in neighboring Burlington, MA, the per pupil cost calculated $9,940. In Lowell, that base number is set at $11,734. Based on the economics of each community, the Commonwealth determined that Burlington’s state aid be set at $1,724 leaving the remainder, $8,341, for the Town of Burlington to provide. Recognizing that Lowell’s community economics are different from Burlington, the numbers look quite different: state aid is $8,875 and the City’s required contribution is $2,859. In an effort the keep this “simple”, which it is not, I’m ignoring the whole cash vs. “in kind services” debate.

Burlington’s per pupil costs are enhanced by the Town’s ability to add $8,409 to what Massachusetts has determined is the cost of educating a student in that town. Lowell, with many more demands on its municipal budget, adds $518. So, in the end, Lowell is able to spend $12,252 on every school student (public and charter) while more affluent Burlington can allocate $18,474.

This is not just a simple numbers game; it gets worse. Those per pupil determinations that the Commonwealth starts with are based on 1993 (yes, that is correct) formula calculations. So in 2018, the data determining how much each community is expected to expend and raise for each student is already 25 years out of date.

The Foundation Budget Review Commission tackled this issue 2 years ago, but the recommendations were not implemented. It was not forgotten by everyone, however, and a refreshed bill, S.2525 unanimously passed the Massachusetts Senate last month. Now it’s the Massachusetts House’s turn. And this week, with some strong advocacy by Rep. Vega, House members are appealing to Speaker DeLeo to move this legislation out of the House Rules Committee and on to a floor for a vote.

Locally, because state funding in education has been whittled away Lowell’s kids are on the losing end of budget roulette: our K-8 students will no longer have school libraries, for example.As of this morning, only Rady Mom from the Lowell Legislative Delegation has signed on to Rep. Vega’s letter asking that Speaker DeLeo move the FBRC bill (S.2525) out of committee for a vote.

I cannot understand why our other two representatives are hesitating to embrace a reform that would – over time – provide Lowell’s children with equal access to educational services. Maybe one of them can explain that to me.

If your Representative is either Mr. Golden or Mr. Nangle, please call, fax, or email them today. We need to fix the funding formulae in Massachusetts so that every child, no matter the ZIP code in which they reside, has equal access to education in the Number One Schools in the Nation.
It’s Not That Simple….

May 23, 2018

Senator Charles Shumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi have published their collective ideas supporting public education. Their 5-point proposal can be found in this USA Today article. I read their ideas with great interest, particularly as recent Democratic administration proposals have not been very supportive of Public Schools and the 90% of students who attend them. Take a look at the often high stakes test-reliant and misguided education policies like Every Child Succeeds or Race To The Top.

I often find it illuminating to read comments attached to news articles, even when my own views are in disagreement with the commentary. I like to try to understand what people who don’t live and breathe edu-issues think.

I try to stay above the fray and not get pulled into debates with anonymous readers. However, today, I couldn’t help myself. One comment at the end of the Shumer/Pelosi op-ed was predictably that teachers should be judged on the basis of student test scores.

As a former educator, and one who proctored high-stakes testing many, many times, I can’t disagree more. There are far too many outside factors that can – and do – influence a student’s performance on a standardized test, and quite a number of these influences are out of the classroom teacher’s control to mediate. Education is not the simple act of pouring knowledge into children.

So I broke my own rule this morning and responded to the comment. And this is what I wrote:

…., but I disagree with this. I was an elementary educator and unafraid to take on some of the most difficult to educate throughout my career. In the city in which I worked, that meant students who were learning English as they learned grade level skills and concepts, behaviorally and emotionally challenging students and those children who came from traumatic home situations. Tying my performance as an educator simply to test scores would not tell the whole story of whether or not I was an effective teacher. It would only tell whether or not my non-native English language speakers, special education, and economically diverse students could master a standardized test. Teacher effectiveness and evaluations need to include some holistic assessments and consideration of how academic growth can be influenced by outside factors.

A single measurement is not any way to assess whether or not a teacher is effective. Nor is it a way to measure whether a teacher deserves a merit pay bonus (spoiler alert: I think those merit bonuses kill the collaboration needed to fully support and educate a child).

Tying a student’s performance on a high-stakes assessment does not tell the story of whether or not a teacher is effective.
Here we go… again

May 3, 2018

It’s budget time once again in Lowell and if you thought last year’s budget was a squeaker, wait until you see this year’s edition.

I do not envy the Superintendents across Massachusetts. This is a pretty ugly time to try to keep programming viable when Foundation Budget calculations are 25 years out of date and when cities and towns have little appetite for raising tax revenues.

If Lowell’s budget proposal is any indication, most of the options for cutting without affecting direct services to students have been exercised. Now it is going to hurt. And one of those areas of pain seems to be library services.

Like last year, the proposal is that the entirety of school libraries – with the exception of the High School – will be dismantled. I believe the only reason that the certified Library Media Specialist at the High School is retained only because, without this position, the High School could lose certification. Not a good thing.

Historically, all of our schools had library-media specialists (click the link to see those requirements) AND library aides. Why? Because it was unthinkable that a school would not have a library where students learn literacy and research skills that they not only use later in life, but where students could go to be exposed to all manner of materials – video, audio, web-based, and of course print – that enhanced their love of literacy and literacy learning.

When all but a few library media specialists were cut from a very lean budget, the library aides were there to pick up maintaining a welcoming school library. The aides became the last line of defense for school libraries, and a threatened one at that.

Last year, there was a proposal to eliminate library aides, and the school libraries. The positions and the library programs were retained however because of some strong advocacy to increase the City’s contribution to the school budget. And here we stand, a year later, with the same threat to eliminate all library aides across the District and push the school library collections into classrooms. As Yogi Berra once said, it’s like deja vu all over again.

I recently heard an educator equate a classroom library to a school library. That was a shock to me as a classroom library and a school library are two very different entities.

Here is why I think such a statement is impossibly misinformed. My own classroom library (documented on this very blog) was curated by me, the books in the collection were not only purchased by me – all 2,000 of them. That’s an important point. I am good at a lot of things, but I am not an expert at building a library collection. My book collections had biases – for example, I’m not a fan of science fiction, so I didn’t buy a lot of that genre. If one of my students loved science fiction, those books could be checked out of the school library, a more eclectic and thoroughly curated collection of books.

Last year, this is what I wrote about the value of our school libraries and the wonderful library aides that staff them:

… As a former educator, now retired, I am concerned with the short-sightedness of this action [eliminating library aides]. Library Aides not only check out materials for staff and for students, they maintain the school libraries as a welcoming environment in which to pursue literacy. Books that are in need of repair, are fixed and reshelved. New and replacement materials are added to school libraries. Weekly book exchanges are a time when students can explore new reading genres. The Library Aides also assist students using electronic card catalogues, a research skill that will be necessary as a student moves from grade to grade. Without the assistance provided by Library Aides will these valuable literacy and library skills still exist in the coming years? I do not think they will and I wonder if in a few years, the School Committee will be decrying the loss of library skills.

As Paul Begala once said, “a budget is a profoundly moral document” in that we fund what we value.

If we value literacy, if we value fostering our students’ love of literacy, we must also ensure that our school libraries remain and that our Library Aides continue in each and every school. We need to insist that our City funds our schools so that our students are not short-changed.

And if you also think it is incomprehensible that an entire school district would shutter all but the High School’s libraries, please let your elected officials, city council and school committee, know your thinking. Otherwise, what we value might be lost. Forever.
Recess: How can we not?

April 6, 2018

LEJA, a local grassroots collaborative of teachers, parents, students and community allies is hard at work here in Lowell to advocate for consistency in recess allocation across all elementary and middle schools in Lowell. One would think, logically, that fair and equitable recess would be a given, but it is not.

Recess time is a building based decision. Anecdotal evidence shows that in this test-crazed, performance based era of education, it is much too easy for a building administrative team to shave recess minutes away in favor of test preparation. Having recently retired from nearly 10 years as a 3rd and 4th grade teacher, I have personally experienced the pressure put on students and educators at test grades, and the response has generally been to increase test preparation time. That increase comes at a cost; the cost has historically been to reallocate recess minutes to academics and test preparation. When I tell you that more targeted test preparation does not yield higher test scores, you don’t have to believe me, but you should.

I empathize when schools try to carve out more test prep through less recess time. However, that doesn’t make less recess the right thing to do. Research notwithstanding, there should be an expectation that children will a) have recess AND b) have a minimum of 30 minutes to re-set. There is much research that supports the need for recess (LEJA Recess Policy Guideline Proposal) including the impact on a child’s brain and the manner in which children learn and the impact on executive function and social-emotional growth of children.

Here’s a personal story that I hope illustrates that cramming more information in without sufficient break time is a recipe for ineffective teaching:

Some years ago, I attempted to learn Italian. I felt doing so would serve several purposes, not the least of which would be an experience similar to what the children I taught as ESL learners might experience. The class was 3 hours long without a break and conducted completely in Italian. By Hour 2, I was no longer able to retain any of the important language learning that the class was engaging in; the instructor’s pace did not slow and mainly what I was hearing was nonsensical droning. By the end of Hour 3 I had a terrific headache and couldn’t tell you what I had been learning. What I can vividly recall is the rush of fresh air as I stepped outside of the building. My brain needed a break not only to refresh and be ready to learn, but also so that synapses could form that would allow the connections to what I already know grow to include new information.

Now apply this experience to a student in an elementary school where from 8:30 to 11:30 (3 hours) you are learning in YOUR second language English. In college we used to call this type of “learning” cramming; it was useful to varying degrees of success for retaining facts just long enough for a major exam. In an elementary or middle school it is just plain cruel.

Children who reach their frustration level often show us that frustration without verbalizing it. Could the impact of a longer recess allowance reduce the number of out-of-compliance incidences in schools and classroom? Eliminating and reducing behavioral interruptions certainly would make time-on-task academics more productive for all the learners in the classroom, would it not?

I challenge our school committee and local policy makers to make increased recess and priority for our children. We need to treat our children like children. When you hear someone say we cannot schedule 30 minutes of recess in our school schedules, ask them HOW can we not?

Interested parents, students, educators, and community members are encouraged to attend a Policy Subcommittee meeting scheduled for April 23, 2018 starting at 6:00 pm in the Public Schools Central Office Fifth Floor Television Studio (notice attached).
Take the lead, kids

March 26, 2018

I was in Boston this past weekend to be an ally for the student organizers of March for Our Lives, Boston.

I feel as if my generation of Boomers has dropped the ball. Or maybe we never picked up the ball because when we were students in school, worry about an “active” shooter, one with an assault weapon, was not anything to be concerned with. The duck-under-desks drills were more about tornadoes or the Cold War threats from Russian Bombs.

Since Newtown and Sandy Hook, it hasn’t mattered how young the students, we practice

responses to active shooters several times a year. The protocols and program acronyms, such as the ALICE or Options-Based responses, change a bit from year to year, but the routines are basically the same.

As a teacher, I resented having to configure my classroom in order to have heavy furniture nearest the classroom doors. I resented the mind shift from what was the best environment for learning, to figuring out what might be a good escape route during an active shooting.

My goal in creating classroom space was to design a place that supported learning cooperatively, encouraged students to be independent, and was welcoming. Instead, I would start the school year thinking about which furniture should be near the hallway door and how 9-year olds might be able to move it in front of the door. Depending on the students’ physical limitations, it was necessary to carve out space for hiding. Teachers made plans for another adult to watch over students in a safe meeting spot in case the worst possible situation presented itself. Teacher might not be with the students and might need to stay back in the classroom hiding with a child for whom running was made impossible by physical disability.

I am abundantly aware of the ridiculous response to keeping students safe from an intruder carrying an assault weapon into a school building. The response in such situations might mean a lock down. It might mean running. It might mean creating a barricade by piling furniture at the egresses. If the shooter enters the classroom, we teach students to run around, scream, or throw items such as staplers and books in an attempt to distract the intruder.

The students know that safety from an intruder armed with an assault weapon is not just an issue for schools. It can happen in nightclubs. It can happen in outdoor concerts. It can happen in churches. An assault rifle can penetrate your skin and shatter your internal organs without consideration of race or ethnicity.

I have yet to hear a cogent argument for allowing the general population to purchase an assault weapon. Assault weapons have no purpose in the hands of the general public. They kill and maim quickly whether one is sitting on a front step or in a park or at a desk in class.

Listen to the kids.
In a (more) perfect world

March 21, 2018

In case you weren’t paying attention, it is budget season here in Lowell, Massachusetts. The Superintendent’s proposed budget is based on funds coming from Chapter 70 (state aide) and funds allocated by the City of Lowell. There are lots of moving parts to this process, including budget hearings which are generally open to the public and to public participation. The result is a financial roadmap for the coming fiscal year. This document links to the dates currently proposed for school budget presentations. Keep your eyes and ears open though, our New England weather may play a large role in adjustments to this meeting schedule.

What is clear to me even as a retired educator, is that our school budgets are quite lean. I know this from personal experience: throughout my career, I spent in EXCESS of $1,000 – and often closer to $2,000 – of my family’s funds to supply my classroom with a classroom library, paper, pencils, folders and much more. I know that I was not alone and I know this “tradition” continues today.

Each time I’ve led a literacy class here in Lowell, I’ve asked the participants what would appear on their classroom wishlist if there was no limitation to funding their classrooms. I encourage them to not self-limit: if one’s opinion is that more staff would make things better for students, write that down.

As Lowell goes through the process of funding schools and school programs, this too is interesting information that should inform decision-makers. These are some of the items educators, those who work closest with students, would like to see in the budget.

Here is what the Fall participants put on their lists:

Middle/High School

Grades 3 & 4

Grade 2

K/1 page 1 of 3

K/1 Page 2 of 3

K/1 Page 3 of 3

And here are the wishlists from the Summer participants
Here’s the thing

March 19, 2018

Did you happen upon KQED’s interview with San Francisco educator, Michael Essien, principal of MLK Middle School? If not, here’s the report which includes an audio of the story.

So many of us in education feel the pressure to keep teaching the prescribed curriculum even when our students, our kids, are telegraphing their emotional response to the curricular pressures they are experiencing. Could it be possible that the children are telling us “this is not working for me?”

I believe this to be the case when so many kids have escalating behaviors that disrupt the flow of the classroom. Just as an infant wails when it is hungry, tired or bored, our students are also wailing in the form of noncompliant behaviors.

As a classroom teacher, I was fortunate to have some really supportive push-in help when a child’s behavior was, let’s use the education-ese term, “off the wall”. I can picture Liz Higgins, a now-retired social worker who was assigned to my last school, talking in the calmest of voices to one of my students who was under my desk after having up-ended her own. The child eventually returned to the class activity, and the day continued.

I was fortunate to experience the power of push-in reconnections with traumatized and frustrated students many times over the course of 30 years. I hope over time I learned from these education mentors. Fred and Sandy and Sharon, Mary Ann and Maria, I don’t believe I properly thanked you for that. You taught me that when a child acts out, it is important to reconnect and re-establish our relationship. What has always impressed me about these six educators is that none of them ever seem to have lost touch with their roots in education. They may have been (or may now be) administrators, but they never forgot about their own experiences in classrooms or with students.

On some plane of understanding, I eventually realized that when one of my students was acting disruptively, that was a signal that, for that student at least, the demands of the classroom were too much. The times that I was able to keep that student with us in the classroom were, for the most part, successful outcomes. They did not happen all the time and they certainly did not happen as often as they should have.

Principal Essien’s experience as a teacher and in special education informed his decisions. He demonstrated to his staff that he could be trusted as an administrator because he still remembered what it is like to be in a classroom. Mr. Essien recognized that adding one more thing to a classroom teacher’s responsibilities was unworkable, that there needed to be a collaboration between administration and classrooms in order to best serve the students.

His push-in model is working because the collective focus is on what the students need in today’s education pressure-cooker.

Shouldn’t this be the goal for every child?
When More (Time On Task) is Less (Effective)

March 5, 2018

Some years ago, I enrolled in an Italian language class at Boston Language Institute. The class met for 3 hours – no break – several times each week. The instructor only spoke my “new” language, Italian, for the entirety of the three hours. We had some written materials, some listening resources, but mainly we were expected to immerse ourselves in Italian. If this sounds like what happens in a classroom, I would agree.

The first thing I learned from this experience was how utterly frustrating it is for a learner to function outside of his or her native language. But one of the larger experiences for me was the chance to experience what it must feel like for a student to attempt to sustain concentration and focus for extended stretches of time without a break.

By Hour 2 of my 3-hour class, I felt hopeless and defeated. I could no longer take another idea into my brain. I left the class with a dull and aching head and lots of questions as to what the goal of that instruction was. If this was my experience with sustained time-on-task learning as an adult, it wasn’t hard to imagine the same sense of frustration and defeat applying to the young learners in my classroom.

Regardless of whether or not the student is learning in a non-native language, as many of my former students were, extended periods of concentration does not necessarily yield higher academic achievement. Whether adult or child, the brain needs what the brain needs. And in learning new things, the brain needs some time off to make connections and absorb learning.

Since the inception of education reform, standardized curriculum, and high-stakes testing, educators have been pressured to prove that students are learning. The proof has, to date, been in the form of high stakes testing. Students, teachers, and schools who do not achieve arbitrary scores indicating that the prescribed curriculum has been mastered are called out. The trickle down response to test scores that are less than stellar has been toward reducing or eliminating children’s recess time.

Why? Because when test scores look bad, the first response is that the students need “more time” to learn the material. That time has to come from somewhere, so shaving minutes away from recess is the first response. To me, this sounds a lot like what I did as an unprepared college student studying for a final in Western Civilization: cramming.

Reducing or eliminating students’ active time does not mean better test results. The brain needs some time to process and absorb new learning. Kids who fidget less, focus more.

So what our kids need is similar to what my experience as a student proved for me: more recess. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a statement from a recent Time Magazine article from October 23, 2017:

… a 2010 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found positive associations between recess and academic performance. “There is substantial evidence that physical activity can help improve academic achievement, including grades and standardized test scores,” the report said.

More time-on-task does not equate to more learning.
The Elephant in the Classroom

February 26, 2018

Another mass shooting, another set of knee-jerk responses.

Once again, there is a call to arm educators and school staff in an effort to thwart an active shooter in a school building. It is yet another measure that has been proposed to protect students while in school, but certainly not the first.

At first we practiced soft- and hard-lockdown procedures. Which morphed into active shooter drills employing ALICE (Alert-Lockdown-Inform-Counter-Evacuate) and other options-based practices. Read more about ALICE here.

While I was glad that a protocol had been worked out by people far more expert in such situations than I would ever be, these protocols can make adults and children very anxious. ALICE and options-based responses are not a 100% guarantee of success.

Schools sometimes have resource officers stationed within them. At Stoneman-Douglas in Parkland, FL, there has been wide-spread criticism of the resource officers who did not enter the building as the gunman was shooting. The officers, I believe, were armed with pistols which would have been no match for the AR-15 assault weapon the shooter was carrying. Would a resource office shooting a pistol have saved lives and prevented injuries in the Parkland incident? Were those officers slow in assessing the situation and their response to it, or were they incompetent? Either way, the officers must now live with their decisions and the consequences for the rest of their lives.

Now Mr. Trump and others are raising the idea of arming educators, or to be more precise, arming some educators. That elite group of people would be reward by a bonus for their skill and willingness to take on an active shooter within a school building using a concealed weapon. And while teachers carrying weapons is allowed in some state and schools already, this horrifying proposal – horrifying to anyone who has ever worked in an elementary, middle, or even high school classroom with impulsive children – is being touted as the magical solution to make our schools safer.

I don’t know why anyone would think school safety would be enhanced by an educator carrying a weapon. Here’s a statistic from a 2007 NYTimes article. In New York City, police officers, trained in weaponry and in responding to tense shooter situations:

In 2005, officers fired 472 times in the same circumstances, hitting their mark 82 times, for a 17.4 percent hit rate. They shot and killed nine people that year.

Maureen Downey reaffirms this statistic and more in this Atlanta Journal Constitution article, “Cops face hard time hitting targets in gunfire“. Law enforcement officers who train extensively know that hitting the “target” in a tense situation happens less than 20% of the time. How does that translate to educators? What will the collateral damage be in such a situation?

To me, it seems the path of least resistance is to come up with more protocols and reactions to armed shooters. The hard route? That would be having the courage to eliminate the types of weapons used most frequently in mass shootings: assault weapons. Is a weapon that obliterates everything in its path, that causes such massive and total damage to human life (see “What I learned from treating the victims from Parkland“) necessary for civilians to protect themselves?

The elephant in the classroom is that, despite all the protocols and proposals for protecting schools and churches and other venues, mass shooters, some with some very severe mental issues, continue to get access to some very powerful weapons. And unless we are willing to say that this style of weapon has no place in civilian society, until our lawmakers are willing to walk away from lobbyists who protect the manufacturers of these weapons, until access to such high-powered guns is taken away, no amount of hiding in a classroom or arming staff members will save anyone.

Carrying any kind of gun would never be for me: I had no intention of using it whether in a classroom or anyplace else. But I understand that is not everyone’s feeling. I think Emma Gonzalez expresses it best: