Questions that Teachers as Parents Ask Ourselves

Six years ago, I was accused of being an "alarmist outsider" who wouldn't last (even though I had already taught for over a decade), a teacher who "over-communicated with parents," telling them "our secrets," letting them know things they "didn't need to know."  As the schools I'd worked at previously were all trying to increase parent involvement, communication was key, and was considered best practice.  My students benefitted from my partnership with their families.  With administrative approval, I decided to carry on being a bridge-builder.

Fast-forward to this evening: I'm finishing up my eighteenth year of teaching kindergarten.  I've taught in three states and four different school districts.  Having taught grades 1-6 in summer school, kindergarten August-May, and in both Title I and non-Title I schools, I consider myself "highly qualified."  I enjoy friendships with families of former students, and my students themselves.  Once you're Mrs. Sommerville's Super Star, you stay Mrs. Sommerville's Super Star.

Significant changes in education have happened over the course of my career.  In spite of big mandates, tons of press, and proponents and critics having their say, one thing remains true: diversity is the rule, not the exception.  An Alaskan student's educational needs don't match what a New York youngster likely needs to know.  Knowing this, shouldn't the multitude of ways that children across the nation learn about pulley systems be encouraged and allowed, with assessments addressing only the essential common knowledge that every child will likely apply about pulleys in their lives?  How many children from Alabama will ever help haul whales from the ocean onto the beach?  Because most, if not all of them won't, does that mean students in Barrow, Alaska shouldn't be taught how to use a block and tackle on the beach by their teacher, or have the system explained to them as part of their necessary, real life experience?  Should my Kansas students be denied the experience of planting flower bulbs at the beginning of the school year, observing a spring eruption of daffodils, because students in New Mexico don't or won't?  As more and more of our daily lessons become scripted by curricular requirements, less and less time is available for essential activities, activities that are now being labeled "fluff."

I've borne witness as several components of public education, curriculum, consumables and technology, have become hot commodities, and the producers, be they big name publishing houses or independent school teachers on TPT, sell, sell, sell.  Education is not only a profession now, it's a business.  Big business.  The government supports this, and makes sure that districts purchase from a controlled group of assessment and curriculum manufacturers in order to continue to receive funding for students.  Teacher-created materials initially supplemented or filled the holes that the Biggies didn't address or provide for, but if you've ever visited sites that sell items from teachers, you've likely had to sift through products that frankly, don't meet the standard that they should.

Not surprisingly, standardized assessments reflect not only the bias of the test creators themselves, but the performance of the test-takers that is likely affected by a myriad of factors outside of the evaluation environment.  No matter how many granola bars, water bottles, rolls of Smarties, and daily cheers that are given to each child, they all bear the weight of how they handle the pressure: either blow off the test, or develop an ulcer over it.  How the data obtained in this scenario could ever be considered valid is beyond me.

While parents are incessantly barraged with education reform rah-rahs, critics of the negative effects of NCLB, Race to the Top, and other elements of educational reform are evaluated out of the system (or chased out after having their spirits crushed), newbies are hired, and tenure is made near impossible for any teacher to achieve as states move to widen the chasm that now exists between not only administrators and teachers, but teachers and parents, those former partners in education.  This technique is referred to as "divide and conquer."

I'm not just a teacher.  I'm also a mother, and I'm allowed to have an opinion about public school, considering two of my children have moved up through its system and are now attending college, while my youngest is still in elementary school.  I want his teachers to be informed, educated, curious, articulate and impassioned.  I want them to inspire him, guide him, and encourage him to question, discover, create, imagine and share.  As many skills are built upon earlier foundation levels, I understand they must assess his progress, and I have no problem with them communicating how important it is that he do his best, think through his activities, and participate, accepting help from and offering it to teachers, support staff and classmates.  I'd like them to guide him with patience, not urgency.  

Will any teacher be able to do so, if they themselves are limited to parroting out a scripted set of daily lessons and are forced to use a limited set of intervention and enrichment resources?  If teachers know that one-size-doesn't-fit-all, and they differentiate instruction to meet each student's needs, why are so many districts adopting intervention strategies previously used for a handful of students who truly need it as instructional "best practices" for entire classes?  When two of my students can't hold a pencil correctly, I don't make every child use a modified gripper tool.

What can I as a parent do to help my son's teachers, when as an education professional myself, I know all too well what mandates they're bound and limited by, and the threats they face if they question or challenge them?  What can my students' families do to help advocate for their children as I continue to do everything in my power to strengthen the partnership between us?

When in Rome...

...one has to *learn* what the Romans do!

After this first week at school, I've figured out a few things about myself. Surprising, because I didn't spend the past year actively asking myself questions about teaching, debating how I'd like to spend my free time, or building face-to-face collegial ties. I also didn't anticipate how my unique traveling circumstances (I'm now working with my fifth principal in my fourth school district in my third state since 2003) would affect my mood, my tone, and my attitude when I was once again hired to teach with a school staff that for the most part (other than the new hires that joined me this year) has remained the same for a while now.

My first ten years of teaching were spent in the same school, at the same grade, with roughly the same colleagues. The nurse, lead custodian and music teacher's positions changed (along with a new principal) but the rest of us were a long term team, quirks, beliefs about education and all. Teaching in a small community, any teachers who transferred in were already known to everyone, and those who left visited often. A comfort zone was created by this long term teaching commitment that I have not felt again since leaving Alaska. Comfort zones are more common for those who stay in one place longer than a year.

Easy to understand since I spent one year teaching in New Mexico, one year in Kansas, and took last year off while we were stationed in Texas. I haven't been anywhere long enough to settle into a school's routine, a staff's easy banter in the lounge, a community's familiar scenery. On this latest educational stage, many roles are the same (librarian, kindergarten team, cafeteria staff, administration, special education teachers, custodians etc.) along with some new characters (21st Century Classroom teacher, Educational Dome Theater instructor, Compass Lab facilitator), and the goals we all work toward achieving are student focused and are seemingly educationally sound. Contemplating my new environment, I'm reflecting on my own perceptions, not knowing anyone well enough yet to be able to guess with any certainty what, if anything, is running through their minds as they interact with me.

For someone with over a decade's worth of teaching experience, a person who has taught in very ethnically, religiously, geographically and socio-economically diverse locations, I've been asking what must seem like silly questions this past week, to include "What do the alarms sound like at this school?" My principal was kind enough to let us listen to short bursts of the tornado alarms, but several colleagues have looked at me like I've lost my mind when I've asked for a description of the sounds since, as hearing those alarms and dealing with them is second nature for teachers who have been here longer than a year. Alaskan schools have fire alarms. No tornado alarms. No earthquake alarms, nada. Just fire bells. In the newer schools, there are probably some computerized alarms with flashing strobes, but that's it. In the New Mexico school I worked at, there were no tornado alarms. No door alarms. No intruder-on-campus drills (I'm sure that has changed since). In my previous Kansas school, the fire bell and tornado alarm did not sound the same as they do here. Some of you have sirens, some of you have bells, some of you have "tornado watch" beeps that are different from the "tornado imminent" howls- and at least in this school, you have a new teacher who has not heard them before. Thank you for your patience, new colleagues. Hopefully you feel you have a new partner that wants to be as prepared as possible, so she's asking.

One school had designated door holders during alarms, another stressed that no kindergarten student should hold the doors because they might get trampled, or get scared and be left inside, and another school insisted that all students file through the doors pushing the bar and not looking back, trusting that the next student in line would also be facing forward, arms at the ready to push the door open as s/he walked through in a quick but orderly fashion. Cafeteria routine? In Alaska, my students ate in the classroom. In New Mexico, they ate in the cafeteria which was in an annex building right next to ours. In Kansas School Number One, the gym and cafeteria were the same place. In Alaska, children had two choices, "home lunch" or "school lunch." Same in New Mexico and Kansas School Number One. Here, my students have the following choices: entree one, entree two, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, bagel and yogurt, OR home lunch. Wow. And if you've taught kindergarten before, you know exactly how that routine goes during the first week of school: "I changed my mind, I want something else," or "I thought I had lunch but this whole lunch sack is really filled with SNACK," or "I don't have to do the lunch chart because I'm not hungry." Throw in a few "I brought home lunch but I want pizza now," or "but I drank the three juices Mom gave me and now I want milk" and you can imagine that every so often, too much of a good thing is NOT a good thing.

Routines for duties, who walks whom back, who escorts students to buses, who picks up kids from the day care, who walks, who takes attendance and lunch count (I have an aide this year), who does copies, what hours can we be in the building over the weekend, and is it the class list on yellow, the red or green paddle flags or the class list on a clipboard we use for emergencies at this school? Does the principal want composite data sheets on students' beginning-of-the-year screening assessments, copies of e-mail communication that *might* get tricky depending on how parents interpret them, and lesson plans on a weekly spread page or in daily list format? Do the staff members at this school view kindergarten teachers as teachers or glorified babysitters? Do we sit wherever we want to during staff meetings or do we sit at tables by grade level? How clique-ish are the teachers? I can't tell you how I *wish* I could do a selective brain dump on the routines and need-to-know info I've had to memorize and learn from my previous teaching locations so I can keep this new set straight! Who uses the hallway potties and when since my classroom shares a single seat girls' toilet and a single seat boys' toilet with another entire classroom (talk about bad planning that someone should have caught when looking over the blueprints!), and though handrails are available down ramps we use to get to other parts of the school, why are most teachers encouraging their students NOT to use them while walking? I know, I know. I'll "get it" this year. Time will give me the info.

Unless Uncle Sam decides to move us AGAIN.