Category: Reform in Education

Email Colloquy on the Teacher You Want To Be



Below is an email exchange
between an alum and me on the topic of “becoming the teacher you want/have to
be…”

The alum writes:

i’m dying here!!! i’m dying here!!!

my 10th period is the class from hell!!!
so far there isn’t much learning going on. mostly it’s
trying to keep some control. they’re
savages!!! LOLOLOLOLOL

ok…here’s what’s really bothering me, and i know you
two will understand. i have to teach them how to write
a paragraph. they (the higher up people;) seem to
believe that if you can teach them how to write a
paragraph (in isolation) they will know how to write a
paper. they (the students) keep asking me, “how many
sentences does it have to be?” and i am under orders
to tell them it’s 8-10 sentences.

i’m not only getting it from school, it’s happening at
home too. my daughter, gwen, asked me,”how many
paragraphs in a narrative?” what? i said, a narrative
is a story…you need enough to tell the story. her
friend adrianna said, “no, it’s 3 paragraphs. i
remember because i got an A on my narrative and it was
3 paragraphs long.”

all my freshmen were required to write an expository
“paragraph” on the issues that cause teens stress.
well, most wrote a “paper” on teens and stress. I
don’t think they understand it’s just a part of a
bigger picture. they set these kids up…they confuse
the hell out of them. right now i have to “learn” how
to write a paragraph “the right way” so i can teach
it.

i feel like i’m lying to these kids…i’m turning into
the kind of teacher i don’t want to be…i’m not a
“change agent,” angelo. i want to keep my job…but i
know that if they would let me teach writing, real
writing, the kids would be better writers. but i also
know that i have to teach them to write for the
test. (the school will have it’s own writing test, and
they will continue to test writing on ACT tests.)
i’m becoming what i detest…i’m ready to just start
passing out dittos in my 10th period…they aren’t
learning anything anyway!!!

guys, send me some words of advice/encouragement…
i wish they’d let me be me. at least i’m better at
that than being what i’m fearful of becoming.

your friend,
****

who didn’t tell her story in 8-10 sentence
paragraphs…or did she?…LOL

[My Response:]

Writing on the run…as always
(Angelo still has…shhh!…one more syllabus to write for tomorrow)….



My only suggestion vis à
vis the tension here between the teacher you want to be and the teacher
they are forcing you to be is…hmmm….can you do both? Can you teach
the kids the real way and the phony way? Can you teach the artificial
forms that the Powers are enforcing, and then just explain to the kids
that those forms are just VERSIONS of narrative or paragraphs…? There
are others as well? Can you illustrate some of the other versions? You
could tell a few spontaneous stories and then break their “form” apart
for the class. You can talk about the process you went through to
create the story. What led you to your choices–rather than getting to
the number 8 (sentences) or 3 (paragraphs) or whatever. You could also
bring into class a stack of writing–narratives of all kinds and
lengths–and you could do a quick scan of some of the features. Make
sure a few of them are short enough so that you could share them in
their entirety with the class. As a group you could infer a list of
criteria for narratives. You could round off the whole exercise with
Garrison Keillor’s anatomy of a narrative. Good stories, Keillor says,
all have FIVE ELEMENTS: mystery, wealth, family relations, sex, and
religion. And he gloats that he has one in 12 words: “‘God,’ said the
banker’s daughter, ‘I’m pregnant; I wonder who it was?'”



Of course you can’t do all this in
one class period, so why don’t you tell the class that from here on out
THAT is your “agenda” as a group (to use Meg’s wonderful word)–to
figure out some of the many versions of narrative, of paragraphs, of
forms. You could do worse as an English teacher.



The bottom line is that
ANYONE who can do “real” narrative can do the phony, school-type in
their sleep. Thus, if you do a good job with the real, you’re home free
with keeping your job. So yes, teach them the phony school type, but do
it with a wink. It’s actually not a bad exercise. But as a bigger
agenda, set a yearlong, class-community-wide agenda for figuring out
what makes a good narrative, what makes a good paragraph… It’s a
grand mission! And the cheap forms of a bureaucratic pedagogy can’t
touch it or harm it…. If anything, a good teacher can use this very
problem to help kids get “meta” about writing and language–getting
students to think about choices and purposes and effects, in ways good
writers always have, if even only intuitively…



I know you’re worried about time.
But the good thing is this: You have ALL YEAR to do the real thing, and
as for the phony stuff–that can be done really quickly. A lot of the
stuff you do in life with a wink can be done really quickly, I find,
but that’s another story. But seriously, if you and your kids are
living the life, as Burke so strikingly puts it, of “linguistic
quizzicality”–full of wonder, amazement, surprise–and sometimes
skepticism, distrust, and disgust–at the powers of language–well, the
kids will learn narratives and paragraphs….(in 8, 9, and sometimes
even 10 sentences…)



You know my next question:
May I use your wonderful story in my blog and share it with my classes?
:)



Keep us posted! And good
luck with the savages of 10th period…(now THAT sounds like a
story…). :) Your friend and sympathizer from the calm of the Ivory
Tower, Angelo


[The Alum’s Response:]

i understand…i do. what you say is wonderful and true. (that rhymes;) but it’s not that simple…or maybe it is and i’m just losing focus about what’s really important. i find myself doing things that i’ve been against from the start of my educational career, without realizing i’m doing it. for example: i’m doing book shares with the students instead of having
them do book reports. now i know…i know…my goal
is to get them to enjoy reading. today in class, i
told a student that tomorrow he better bring in a novel,
instead of bringing the TRL magazine he was
reading that day, thinking about the “book share” assignment. he just looked at me and said, “why can’t we read what we want?” my heart just stopped. i grabbed
his face and said, “you’re absolutely right. i don’t
know what i was thinking. you read whatever you like.”
this horrible transition seems to be taking over
without my being fully aware of it. ANGELO, OF COURSE
THEY CAN READ WHATEVER THEY WANT!!!!

i keep losing focus…

there’s just so much that needs to be
done!! save me from myself!!!

****

[My Response:]

I can see the care in your eyes as you
told your student, yes, he could read what he wants…  But dear friend, I fear
you’re reacting with a tinge of that guilt that all teachers, parents, and responsible
adults feel now and then–particularly when we’re looking out for the child’s
welfare.  I think you have to hold the line on the TRL magazine! 
It’s just me, and you know that this one voice of mine will ultimately be contradicted
by another voice lurking beneath (in TW this week we’re reading that schizo
Covino…), but…BALANCE is the key (said he, in a shout so loud so as to lose
his footing and fall back…).  Reading is so much like a eating–so lifegiving
and pleasurable it is–and there is such a need for a balanced diet for both….



If your daughter kept eating Cheetos day
and night (like someone else’s daughter I know…), and you approached her and
asked her to eat her vegetables….  Would you respond similarly to her
indignant response of “why can’t you just let me eat what I want?”  :)  
All said with a smile…but, the point is, sometimes the teachers DOES
have to be directive…and structure things…  The structures just have
to be the right ones (and I know YOU know what the right ones are…your administration,
I’d say, DOES NOT (or maybe is not yet confident in you (and not just you personally; 
I’m sensing that common condition out there of  “teacher-proofing” instruction…more
later…)).

Volunteer Technology Committee Work

The principal audience
of this blog entry is my English Education students–to give them a kind of
"behind the scenes" look at one type of professional involvement
and volunteer work. The entry also presents some leads on an educational administrative
technology system–the Centre system–which
students might find very useful, as a sample of the type of record-keeping
system they will need to employ in their student teaching and teaching. The
text below (in green and maroon)
is a letter I wrote in July 2004 to Principal Bill Donegan of St. Odilo School
and Paul Rau, the school’s Music Director and technology guru.

I think this entry also
shows some of the "sprawl" of professional/personal/community relations
that is inevitable if one wishes to be an effective, dedicated teacher. I
am or have been the parent of five St. Odilo schoolchildren; I’ve served on
the St. Odilo School Board as member and president; I’ve taught teacher in-services
at the school; I’ve conducted several clinical programs with the Language
Arts and Computers teachers–and I’ve served on the school’s technology committee
(Techcom), in which capacity the current letter was written. There’s been
a connectedness and trajectory to each of these roles, even if there wasn’t
a clear sense always of the purpose and direction and feasibility and worth
of each endeavor.

I think it’s important
for beginning teachers to know how "messy" it can be to get a foothold
in a school and build a professional role there. I confess that from the beginning
I always had ulterior motives for my contributions to St. Odilo School.
Those motives involved not only helping the school be the best it can be for
my children, but also finding a "partner" site where I could conduct
some of my clinical programs–which required a high level of technological
capacity and dependability. As I engaged in technological work at SXU, I knew
immediately that work could pay off in other contexts–everything could fall
into place neatly–but only after a lot of indirect setup and involvement.
Anyway, this blog is just an illustration of that…

Dear Bill
and Paul–The Centre School Information System (administrative school package)
is installed, upgraded, and ready for use. The current system is four upgrades
beyond the first system that was installed about a month ago. So the product
has had an intense development this summer by its creators. The current version,
1.02, seems to have most of the bugs worked out, and I think you can depend
on it in terms of data safety and security. (But there may be kinks lefts,
FOR EXAMPLE: On my Mac at home, I find that Internet Explorer doesn’t always
work for every feature (namely, for editing data); I haven’t been able to
test on a Windows machine yet, so if you experience a problem, and you’re
using Explorer, try switching to Mozilla or Netscape or some other browser
to see if the problem persists).

Bill–if
you intend to use this system, you’ll probably need some assistance in figuring
it out and finding all its uses. It took me a couple of hours of tinkering
to get the hang of it (once all the installation difficulties were overcome).
Some of the features are pretty obvious; some, however, I found counter-intuitive
or a little odd. Some of the features won’t be needed at all by St. Odilo,
but most seem pretty useful.

Everything
is editable from within an admin account, even though it often doesn’t look
so. If you see something you’d like to edit (e.g., a password), try clicking
on it, and you should get a text box or pop-up menu for editing. (Here’s where
I had the problem with Explorer. Explorer lets you change the data, but after
you click "Save" the change doesn’t stick.)

I’ve created
an Administrator account for each of you. One feature I don’t like is that
an administrator can see the password of every user (not just CHANGE the password,
as is the typical admin power with such systems). So I’m sending this message
with your password at the same time, since either of you could look at each
other’s passwords at any time. In fact, to keep things simple at this point,
I’ve given you each the same password: ******.

It’s important
to know that every administrator will always be able to view every password,
so you’d want to know who your admins are, of course, and you’d want to advise
users not to use a super-sensitive password (for instance, Paul, I don’t think
we should use our master Odilo password in this system).
Here’s the login info you need:

http://www.saintodilo.org/centre

Username:
**********
Password: **********

There
are some test accounts created for us to tinker with. Feel free to create
some new accounts.

Go ahead–log
in. You’ll see eight icons across the top. Click on "Users" ("Users"
are parents, teachers, and administrators; students are administered from
another icon). To see a list of all the current users, clck the "Submit"
button with all the search boxes left blank (this procedure for displaying
all the users is one of the less obvious features I referred to above). Try
to edit any of the users by clicking on their names, and then clicking on
the text you wish to edit.

There
are four types of accounts available in the Centre system: student, teacher,
parent, and administrator. To download a brief manual on each, go to:

http://www.saintodilo.org/centre/Docs

Do either
of you think it would be a bad idea to go to Techcom with some kind of call
for assistance in using/testing the system? I don’t think we should create
any "spare" administrator accounts on our system, but there is a
demo site set up for the general public to learn about and practice with the
system. If you decide to use Centre to handle the school’s record keeping,
you’ll want, eventually to get parents and students on board. First, of course,
are the teachers, but my hope is that it won’t be too difficult to give them
a start in using it. Perhaps Paul and I could prepare some type of in-service
for the start of the year?
But what do you think about sending Techcom something along these lines?

DRAFT
OF POSSIBLE ANNOUNCEMENT TO TECHCOM:

Dear Techcom–This
summer we’ve installed a new system on our server for managing record-keeping
and various administrative/communicative tasks for the school and school community.
The new system is call "Centre," and it is Open Source software
developed by the Miller Group (http://www.miller-group.net/). The Centre system
can be used for scheduling, record-keeping, turning in grades, making reports,
taking attendance, recording grades for assignments, quizzes, and quarters,
making mailings, determining sports eligibility, etc.

Since
an implementation of Centre would involve the whole St. Odilo community (there
are four types of log-in: parent, student, teacher, and administrator), Techcom
should probably lead the way in learning about the system and testing it out.
If we decide to go with a full implementation of Centre, Techcom could probably
best advise on how to announce and promote the system, as well as to educate
users–primarily teachers, but also parents and students.

A demo
site has been created for people who wish to get started in Centre:

http://demo.miller-group.net/index.php

You can
log in with one of four demo accounts (the different account levels carry
different permissions and functions):

•
Username: admin; Password: admin
• Username: teacher; Password: teacher
• Username: parent; Password: parent
• Username: student; Password: student

For user
manuals for each of the four types of login (Administrator, Parent, Teacher,
and Student), go to

http://www.saintodilo.org/centre/Docs

END OF
DRAFT OF POSSIBLE ANNOUNCEMENT TO TECHCOM


Bill–If you like this message, you may send it, or any version of it. Or
I would be happy to send it or something else, if you wish. Or Paul could
send something. Or, we don’t have to send anything. But getting the word out
might generate some interest and assistance….

Okay–that’s
it for now. Take care, Angelo