Our best and our brightest

For a couple of years I taught next to the best educator I have ever met.  There is nobody I know that motivates students better and pushes people to excel.  I often wondered what a school would be like if we had 100 people like him teaching.  Then I asked how do you we get great people to enter this profession?  Here is where me and him differ in opinion which always scares me.  He is rarely wrong.

I think it is time for education to become serious about the investment that they make in teachers.  When I look at our best and brightest very few want to enter this field where they are doomed to be lower middle class.  My friend's argument is that we can not have people entering this field just for the money.  I totally agree with him but I believe we need to pay teachers a large enough salary so that money is not an issue.  My thoughts were about 100,000 a year in Maryland for the average teacher.

If that was the salary I think we could start attracting our smartest and brightest students.  These are students   who have a passion for making a difference but are just realistic in the sense that they want to send their kids to college without worrying about how they are going to pay the bills.  I have asked my seniors the last couple of years how many are thinking about teaching?  Usually, one or two hands go up in an AP Economics class.  When I raise the wage to 100,000 we get half the class.  These are the type of kids that we need to change education.

Today I asked students to picture there best teacher.  Would they want more teachers like them or computers?  More teachers like them or elmos?  More teachers like them or wifi?  The answer is more great teachers.  We are so willing to invest in technology but not in our teachers.  Elmos do not care about kids people do ( I use all of the equipment above).

My final thought however, is there is an internal part about teaching that is priceless.  A couple of years ago a struggling student came for help.  We worked hard to overcome some obstacles and she went into the AP test more confident than any other test she had taken.  At the end of the semester she sent me a note which read.  'You taught me how to believe in people.  You believe in people that nobody else does, and one of them was me"  You can not put a price on that comment.  So maybe my buddy was right all along.  Your thoughts?

educational cliff-

For all the yammering about the fiscal cliff, another cliff might present a more perilous danger — what the folks at Gallup call the “school cliff.”

Never heard of that one?

Take a look at chart below — and you’ll grok it immediately.

As this Gallup blog post explains: “[Our] research strongly suggests that the longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become.” Primary school kids begin their educations deeply engaged — but by the time they get to high school, more than half are checked out. And the problem is even worse for our most entrepreneurial students.

Brandon Busteed, Executive Director of Gallup Education, points to several factors for the decline. An “overzealous focus on standardized testing.” Not enough project-based or experiential learning. Too few pathways for students who won’t, or don’t want to, attend college.

But whatever the reasons, he says, “The drop in student engagement for each year students are in school is our monumental, collective national failure.”

This excerpt was posted in Dan Pink's blog the other day.  For years I have talked about the excitement that students have in kindergarten.  When the teacher asks a question hands go up with such zeal as each student wants the teacher to call on them.  By the time they come to high school however, they seem all worn out.  Seniors are barely keeping their eyes open and you can tell that most rather be anywhere except your classroom.

What happens during the course of time.  Many of my students claim that school gets harder but they probably have forgotten how hard it is to learn how to read.  They also state that they no longer like to learn but I know this is not true, just give them a computer game and watch them attack it.  I am not even buying the standardized testing reason for this was happening in high schools way before high risk testing.

If we engage our students test scores will take care of themselves.  So how do we stop from falling off the edge of this cliff

Cheating

I am not a seventeen year old facing enormous pressure to get grades so that I can get into college.  Nor do I face the pressure of facing my angry parents because I received a "B", nor am I trying to stay eligible so that I can play sports.  All of these pressures are placed on my students each and everyday they attend school.

Now I have hoped that I provided an environment where cheating would not exist.  Trying to treat all of my students like adults and trying in return to have some conversations about this topic.  However, where I will take blame is that sometimes in my haste to cover content, I forget the more important part of my job which is to teach character.  Here I have failed but I have also learned a lesson.  Never again will i tell myself that I do not have time to talk about a character issue, the truth is that is the most important issue we face.

Now with all that is said above, there is no excuse for students to cheat.  As I continue to read research from Angela Duckworth, Martin Seligman and Paul Tough the word character keeps coming up in what makes children successful.  As educators we need to continue to help build this characters by encouraging GRIT, self control and self discipline in our students.  The truth is that the cheating is not what is important it is how the student will react once they have been caught.  Will they grow from it, learn from the mistake, develop better discipline in the future?  That is what it is about.

As educators we can not buy into how students rationalize cheating.  It is only homework?  I just asked about some of the topics that were on the test?  They did not give me any answers.  We need to take a strong stance to demonstrate to all the students that cheating is not acceptable.  The truth is that we are usually extremely soft on cheating with little to no punishments.  On a personal level I hope to see the day when students stop each other from cheating.  When they just tell another students we do not cheat in this school.  When they have that much pride in both the school and the class that they are in.

The argument is often made to me from students that why should I care if others cheat?  They are hurting themselves not me?  That is why we need to build a team of students and educators trying to produce the best product we can. We really need to build a community in our classrooms that cares about each other.

There will be a cry from people to take some of the pressure off these teens.  I would argue against that line of reasoning.  We need them to deal with the pressure, to learn how to handle stress, to deal with setbacks and to demonstrate GRIT in the face of adversity.  It is better for students to have these setbacks in school where they still have strong support systems.

Most of my students do have great character.  While I was initially disappointed in that a student was caught cheating I am now inspired by the fact.  It motivates me to work harder to inspire other students, faculty members and educators to make sure that we do not lose our morale compass.  I will invite my students to read this blog and hopefully comment on it.  I hope that we can have a good conversation about this very important topic.

Buck

I have spent a lot of time reading about what allowed the Orioles to turn around this year.  One of the things that i found interesting is that the players started to regulate themselves.  If a player did not hustle down to first base, Adam Jones, would explain that is not how we play baseball in Baltimore.  They created an environment in which they did not want to let each other down.

My question is, can we do this in education?  Can we self regulate.  As a teacher can I tell other teachers that we do not show movies that are not in the curriculum the day before Christmas?  Should I tell teachers that we teach bell to bell and that is what makes us great here at Dulaney?  Should the teachers all be doing this with each other creating an environment where we do not want to let each other down?  Sharing best practices and helping each other provide students with the best product possible.

I never heard a teacher complain that they are getting too much positive reinforcement.  Should teachers be in charge of the morale in the building.  Making sure that every teacher feels that they bring something to the party and that they are an important part of making that school successful.  Is self-regulation the formula that will make schools change from good to great.

Now can we even take this to the next level.  Can students self regulate?  Can a student tell another student stop cheating because we do not cheat in Mr. Bressler's class.  Can students motivate and push each other to be the best that they can be in the classroom?  What do we have to do to make this happen in our schools?

Education by an Angry Old man

I wanted to start a blog about my thoughts on education.  I realize that I am an angry old man but still I think there is something in this blogging thing that might work out.  As a teacher I am often struck by how powerful good teaching can be.  I see on a day to day basis how my colleague's influence students and in some cases turn their lives around.  It is also a very tough business to be in.  Your clients (students) rarely want to be there and the reason for their boredom is you.  How do we turn kids who are excited about learning (go to any kindergarten class) into students who hate school.  This is what I hope to explore in this blog.  Hopefully I will be hitting topics as they come to me during the course of the day.