I figure if we set the alarm off because no one thought to disarm it since no one was thinking that we'd still be there when it went off, we must have had a pretty successful Back to School Night.  I think we had better than 50% attendance, which is pretty good when you take in second shift jobs, transportation difficulties, general disenchantment with the establishment, etc.

The classroom was finally down from its tropical rainforest heat this evening, undoubtedly helped along by Crafternoon: all academic work before lunch, followed by an afternoon of crafts, motor development and games that require turn-taking over in the unused dark portable with its industrial-strength fan.  Removing twenty three bodies from the classroom helps a lot in cooling.

I had a kid disappear off my roster this week but continue coming to school; her mom came to Back to School Night and they declined their waitpool school because her child is so happy.  That's always nice to hear.  I also wore a kicking dress (ombre silk McQueen S/S 2008, salvage as usual), so really I think I have to call that a success.

In general, I'm not a big fan of press reports, books or films decrying the Dread Teachers' Unions.  I note with interest that all the venture capitalists so hot to fund KIPP are not so hot to send their own children to KIPP.  And I am always bemused by prostisuits and educrats explaining why 37:1 is actually optimal for classrooms while their own children attend fancy private schools with 2 teachers for every student.

So when I heard Donors Choose was hooking up with the makers of Teachers Hate Children So Much or whatever the latest pro-privatization propos* is called, I gave my computer monitor a good hairy eyeball teacher look.  Sadly, it did not cower as expected; nor did it alert Donors Choose to hook up with an education ally, not some destroyers.

This did not, however, cause me to stop writing Donors Choose proposals.  I got four funded over the summer.  I had two projects still up this morning, when a donor funded all 2,200 projects in California.  My school had the most projects posted of all SFUSD - fifteen.  All fifteen got funded.  We're getting a curriculum kit, a mess of leveled libraries, cozy furniture for classroom libraries and Peace Places, basic supplies, storage carts and shelves, sensory integration and fine motor equipment, play therapy equipment, a DVD player, math games...

None of these are provided by SFUSD or the state.  Heck, they can't even get classroom mats or cots so the Kindergarten students can rest comfortably.  If we want our students to have what some kids get, we need to buy it ourselves or find someone who will.

I suppose this is a case of trampling on principle for daily reality, a pose I generally do not favor.  Still, standing on principle in front of twenty one students who already aren't getting a fair shake doesn't sound so hot, either.

*Guess who just read Mockingjay?

This blog=facebook without endless teacher stuff.

It is my general practice to begin obsessively checking online weather reports on any late summer afternoon during which I do not observe fog rolling in.  So I was well-prepared for the hot days this school week:

• sprayer bottles filled and set to mist
• case of water bottles, each labelled with a student's name
• procedures for bottle refills and accidents planned
• consideration of responses to unconventional bottle use
• checked batteries in sensory fan
• purchased two small box fans
• rescheduled all heavy academic content/serious procedure teaching to the morning
• enforced resting (usually I have a quiet activity running - not this week)
• planned outfits so that I am not grabbing knee-high boots because they are the only shoes I can find on my way out the door
• mandated jacket removal upon entrance
• scheduled afternoon indoor PE with second grade classrooms for the two hottest days
• purchased popsicles

My classroom has a full wall of windows and old school encapsulated asbestos insulation, so it gets very hot.  All the Kindergarten bodies add to the heat.  The kids are cranky and tired, which heats them up further.  So my overall goal is to keep the classroom mellow, emotionally smooth and friendly.  Years of experience have taught me that it's better to spend afternoons rolling through the tunnel and painting than pushing through curriculum.  Not only is the former academic anyway (this.  is.  Kindergarten.), but the latter doesn't build goodwill.  I will need that later for heavy-duty academics, especially on days I am cranky and tired.

The transition to Kindergarten continues.  There was an upswing in roughhousing this week; I did some individual/small group stuff around limits and personal space.  Roughhousing is of course not allowed; sadly, that does not cause it to disappear.  On Monday we will be reading So Much as part of my anti-roughhousing/situational appropriateness campaign.  I talked to the lunch yard monitors and after school leaders.  Last year's anti-roughhousing campaign went pretty well, so I am hopeful this year's will too.

I have three students who are really struggling with behavior expectations.  Well, perhaps I should say that I am really struggling with their behavior and my expectations.  However, the behavior is out of line, so it's just finding the appropriate techniques for teaching/enforcing acceptable behavior.  One of the three has been doing better in the morning and apparently is a night owl by nature, so I think the issue is worsened by tiredness - after lunch, the kid's done for the day.  There is also a language issue, and since morning recess marks the downward trend in behavior, I suspect a need for structure (I find morning recess very difficult myself, what with the kids and the water and the bathroom and the play structure and the hoops and the balls and the blacktop and and and, myself).

I had a breakthrough with one of the others; I think the issue was limits-testing.  I will bargain with students about the amount of work that needs to be done/how it needs to be done/when it needs to be done (I like Collaborative Problem Solving a lot and try to use its philosophy in little situations like these), but there are non-negotiables.  Anyway, after losing out on doing a craft project until the work got done as agreed, this child has been doing a lot better across the board.  (She did get to do the craft project, by the way; it was just seeing that she would not get to do it while everyone else did that I think did the trick.  Yep, I'm a MEAN LADY.)

The third child is experiencing a disconnect between behavior systems at home and those at school.  Specifically, I will not be providing chocolate ice cream to end a tantrum.  Nor am I able to ignore the child until approached with an apology (the kid has stamina, I'm telling you).  I reserve incentives for kindness, personal best work, etc.  This child has been having serious difficulties in all environments (there is no adult on staff who has contact with K who has not had a Bad News Bulletin for me), and after some reflection and discussion with our emotional/behavioral support people, I think we are in for a couple of unhappy days before just how mean and non-budging I am comes through.  There was a large tantrum on Thursday; it was not rewarded.  Friday I did some one on one with this child, so I am pretty sure that certain cause-effect relationships are clear (throw food in cafeteria?  Clean food in cafeteria.  Rip up work?  Get new work).  For next week, I am planning to set some very specific targets with this child with short time spans and clear incentives.

I left work on time yesterday so that I could do real life stuff, like shoes and gym, before seeing a fellow K teacher play with her band.  While I was enjoying the show, my car failed to enjoy a hit and run.  At least DPT was good enough not to give me a street cleaning ticket, since I did not feel up to getting it off the street until today.  The fact that it had been pushed onto the curb and into another car may have influenced that decision, although the other car was gone this morning.  Anyway, it is time to walk over to school and get ready for the next couple of weeks (and Back to School Night!).  The sleep deprivation associated with concerts, early-morning police reports and poking vengefully at the many pieces of not-my-car car left behind will make this a little harder to do; I had better write a list before I spend another hour on non-classroom tasks.

Amazing Fun Fact Day!

ADHD and Giftedness look a lot alike, at least in the school setting.  In fact they look so much alike that it comes up in teacher credentialing classes.  They may also be co-morbid.  (Successful ADHD people are also often gifted, which I bet is the extent of the co-morbidity - the giftedness helps get around the disorder, and the successful ones write the articles.)

Given my high-faluting education, fabulous wardrobe and bougie lifestyle, I figure I can claim success myself.  So there.


Honestly I don't get the fascination with GATE programming.  Maybe I would had I received it myself, but I went on my merry, distracted, gifted way without it.*  I'm not sure what it's meant to provide.  As far as I can tell, GATE stuff tends to be more hands-on, more inquiry-based, more open-ended.  It may be somewhat accelerated, I suppose - but giftedness is not the same as skill, so if we are saying GATE programming starts at a higher level of skill we are excluding gifted persons who have limited familiarity with the material, right?

All of my Kindergarten students are gifted.  They have all learned a lot already - like, how to speak a language, how to walk, how to get attention, how cool their world is - before they come to school.  And they can all learn the school stuff.  Some of them have talents I don't.  This is not Hallmark stuff or even Howard Gardner, here: they are all gifted.

I have yet to meet the learner who does not learn more when the work is engaging and involves doing and asking.  So why isn't GATE good for everyone?  I have to wonder if GATE classrooms are fulfilling some other need we perceive children to have.

*Admittedly I spent a lot of valuable learning time staring out the window, getting in trouble, tapping my foot and ripping paper into microscopic pieces (unless I had scissors,  in which case I cut it into said pieces).  But I got a scholarship to fancy college and everything, so I must have learned something.

Respite ho!

I don't know what it's like district-wide, but the first week at my school is endless flux at Kindergarten.  Kids not on the roll appear; kids on the roll disappear or never show up in the first place.  The kid who sobs on Monday runs on to the playground screaming for joy Tuesday, while the happiest Monday kid lurks at the gate crying.

Presently all of our Kindergartens are full or nearly full - I was overloaded for most of the week, actually - so at least we don't have class collapse fear.  Overall for the week things were fine: no accidents even.  Alas, on Thursday one child was absent.  She returned Friday only to throw up, in which she was joined by several of her peers.

I was hanging up the rainbows the kids made Friday and I realized that they were probably the best set a class had produced yet.  Almost everyone used all six color strips and got them in rainbow order (I number them to help them out a little bit...if they know their numbers).  Yet at the time they were making the rainbows I was feeling totally overwhelmed by child insanity, adult insanity, noise and trivial misbehaviors all adding up to SYSTEM FAILURE.

I think this is a little bit feedback from the start of last year, when our classes were small and we were stressed.  And I started last year with a student who was entirely out of control: body memory, I guess.  Anyway, it's a good reminder to chill out and care less about the small stuff, or the times when sixteen kids need my total attention at the same time and two other kids are throwing bits of paper at each other.  Even when they don't all get the attention and the paper bits collect like snow, the rainbows still get made and I don't need to be all tense and grumpy and join the paper fight myself.

In other news, I wore this the first day of school:

Got it at a thrift store, new with tags.

I still haven't worn the runner-up (this also thrift store Givenchy that supposedly/theoretically/according to people who possibly would know dates to the McQueen era), but I did pull out the Lacroix (salvage), the Balenciaga (salvage), the jacket with the heart-shaped buttons, the dress I bought on the Jeremy's Teacher Shopping Trip and the nifty Puma/designer collab dress.  In short, my clothes are awesome.

For readalouds, I stuck with the excellent-yet-brief/audience-participatory favorites: Tickle the Duck, Knuffle Bunny, Z Goes Home - stuff like that.  We also made Texas Snowflakes (but haven't turned them  into hats yet), had a garden lesson, two parachute PE blocks and one visit to the Imagination Stations (the play kitchen is popular, but still nothing compared to the Dress Up Bureau).  I made new alphabet first-run sheets this year and broke out the Handwriting Without Tears letter building blocks and magnetic boards (which as soon as I have a slot on Donors Choose available I am begging for more of.  Hmmm, awesome syntax there.).

Skillwise my class is all over the place.  I have only three students who need to learn how to use scissors and several kids who can write their names.  Two kids are reading a little and one can do a little phonetic spelling.  Several will benefit from the letter/number sorting game we will play on Monday.  The behavior patterin is interesting; I have very little hitting/pushing/shoving overall but a lot of issues with kindness/sharing/negative self-talk.  We started Caring School Communities on time and I think it will make a difference.

Procedurally, we have made a good start at composting/trash/recycling, walking in a line and respecting personal space.  Friday we started on work completion expectations.  Scissor safety is going well; glue use not so well.  I did a poor job of glue stick demonstration.  Also, my hypothesis around mechanical pencils (that massive lead wasting would not occur if we had them on day one) has failed.  

My general teaching philosophy is that it is useless to teach all policies on the first day, because the children cannot learn them all and the teacher cannot reinforce them all.  So I introduce a few at a time.  This seems to work.

Resident-wise, my resident is confident and can give directions, lead a table group and read Tickle the Duck (which allows for two daily reads, since I refuse to read it more than once a day).  With her first week schedule I don't really think we had any feedback time, so I am trying (not too well) to use the method I saw Adria Klein use: you're there and you pop in as needed.  The kids like her a lot.

One of my students had a bedwetting incident last week, which is possibly a school stress because my teacher is mean thing, or a sleeping so heavily because of the rigors of all day Kindergarten thing, or part of the coming of the virulent fever and flu with which this child was afflicted shortly thereafter.  This makes me sad.  On the positive side, I have not yet had many children disappearing into waitlist schools with no goodbye.   I can say that that behavior makes many many many teachers feel rejected and mean. (I know because it comes up at lots of trainings when Kindergarten teachers sit together.)  So far, only one student has left for another school, and I was keeping that child an hour after school because she was on the after school program wait list and her mom had no way to pick her up before then - clearly a case where a wait list opening was a blessing.

In the best news of the week, I am not going to school this weekend.  YAY!

First week: DONE.

I'm tired (virulent stomach flu hit the Kindergartens starting Thursday, leading to lots of stinky, feverish excitement), so I'll keep this short and sweet:

For the love of a #2 pencil, will someone slap CW Nevius already?

My informal teacher poll is running 90% in favor of the resolution that teachers are always nervous on the first day of school.

I have a slightly overfilled class, which bodes well for healthy enrollment after the wait lists start clearing, but I've only met three of the kids and only have a couple of siblings this year so that's plenty of new children to scare me.

I also have a Resident this year, so I can be anxious about whether my classroom will provide my Resident with a powerful preservice teaching experience.

The best bet at this point is a few hours at school this morning and then successful displacement of first-day jitters onto the all-important question of first-day outfit.

Who is Paid for Performance?

I am tired of hearing that teachers should leap to embrace pay-for-(student)-performance schemes.  The fact that there is no reliable method for linking teacher pay to student performance - no testing instrument, no data collection scheme, etc. - should end the conversation, but it doesn't.  The amount of additional testing this would require also gets forgotten; I think we test enough as it is, and no matter how much it might add to my pay, I will destroy every #2 pencil in the world before my Kindergarten students take a standardized test.

Not to mention: pay for performance doesn't work.  Study after study after study demonstrates that it doesn't lead to increased performance in any domain, and ancedata suggest increased cheating under pay for performance schemes.

The argument that really gets me is the claim that CEOs and other corporate types are paid by performance, so teachers should be, too.  This is so entirely false that it leads me to question a claimant's intentions.

Blue and pink collar workers are generally employed by performance.  Doctors and lawyers are not.  Service industry employees are paid by performance; investment bankers are not.  Hedge fund managers make out just fine even when their investors don't.  Elected officials are not paid by performance.

CEOs are most emphatically not paid by performance.  CEOs make out just fine even when they are forced out; Mark Hurd is leaving Hewlett Packard with a cool twenty eight million dollars.  Let's see that in numbers:

$28,000,000.
Wow.

Maybe teachers should agree to bizarre compensation plans if and only if our pensions are as generous as Mr. Hurd's package, here.  The average state pensioner gets a whopping $24,000 annually - not too impressive, given that teachers pay into their pensions and get no earned Social Security benefits.

Equity is Not Equality.

I have a very simple, very straightforward and (alas) fairly costly way to quickly and effectively improve the conditions at high-needs schools:

LOWER CLASS SIZES - and if you can't do it everywhere, do it at the poorest schools!

No, it really is that simple:

1. Class size matters, but the positive impact is largest and most lasting when the class sizes are around 12:1 to 17:1 (see Perry Preschool, the Tennessee study, etc.  This isn't controversial.  Contrary studies produced by right-wing organizations have used CSR at 22:1 or so or failed to account for schools that already had smaller classes - bad science).
2. Class size matters, and especially for high-needs children and children of color.  The most positive impacts are seen for African American students (again, there is massive research supporting this).
3. Smaller class size enables families to have a closer relations with teachers.  Relationships are key, particularly in communities that have been ill-served by schools for generations.
4. Smaller class sizes enable teachers to offer better differentiation in content and management.
5. Smaller class sizes are popular with teachers.  Want veterans at high-needs schools?  Lower class sizes would be a popular perk!  I'd take a guaranteed 16:1 class over my hard to staff money for sure.
6. Private schools and privately-funded public schools use the money to lower class sizes.  If our wealthiest students deserve it, why don't our neediest ones?
7. This would end the horrible practice of combination classes - when kids leave 3rd grade and class sizes increase, school funding often dictates 3/4 or 4/5 splits.  Combination classes (note: not multi-age/grade span classrooms, which are something different) are brutal.

This is what a robust "Weighted Student Formula" or STAR program would do: fund schools to maintain class sizes at 16:1 K-5 (at least).  But this is expensive, prohibitively so system-wide, and only offering it to some set of high-needs schools would, I bet, set off some real howls.

Here's the problem with those howls, though:

1. Life isn't fair;
2. Equity is not equality.  Giving BVHP schools exactly what you give to schools in the Sunset is equality.  But those BVHP schools have greater needs, and if you truly want all students to have equal opportunity, those greater needs must be ameliorated.

This is a lot easier than school desegregation, which is so enormously unpopular among a certain subset of San Francisco that it seems like wasted energy to me.  Besides, the smaller classes and improved test scores might drive parents to consider these schools.  Given a big population shift, it's likely that some schools would start exiting the class size reduction program, at which point school communities would have to ask whether the reduction was so powerful that heavy advocacy to maintain it across the system (thereby eventually extending it to a larger group of schools).  After all, ratios like 16:1 just make California more like other states.

And so it begins!

I went to school yesterday.  I dragged in a big wet vacuum to steam the rugs, but I forgot to ask how to use it (oops) so I wasn't too upset that the floors in my room were just getting waxed.  I had surgery on my hand and it's still not 100%, so I am hoping to use a patented combination of whining, eyelash-batting and bribery by baked goods to organize a work gang.

Today I am also going to school, but it's only to meet up with some of the fabulous ladies with whom I work so that we may refresh our collections of salvaged couture and DIY remakes.  Which brings me to the next stereotype in my teacher fashion parade:

The Teacher Who Wears the Same Uniform the Kids Should.

This teacher invariably has one or both of the following motivations:

1. S/he is not an early bird and teaches at an early-start school.  Uniforms do not require one to be awake and generally do not require ironing.
2. S/he has some kind of ethical/political/socioeconomic position that is best visited upon fellow teachers through wearing the uniform...accompanied by regular lectures.

Monitoring the students' uniforms is not something I'm willing to waste a lot of energy on.  Like many of my fellow attention-challenged, I have to get up very early so that I can be fully functioning by the time school starts, so I have lots of time to decide if I'm feeling Midge Wood or Grace Jones.  While I have great sympathy for the ethical/political/socioeconomic arguments, I prefer to make them while well-dressed.  (Also, buying salvage means fair trade labor and reuse.  WIN!)

Whatever the case, the course of action is clear: avoid this person at least through first bell.

Argle bargle.

(Sorting through, disjointed, etc.)

I strongly believe that diverse schools are best.  Moreover, I think diversity in and of itself is an important value; all children deserve diverse schools because all children benefit from it.  Well, providing that the school affirms that diversity for all, I suppose.  So I would love to teach at and learn in a diverse school.  I feel fortunate that our school staff is quite diverse, and that our student population is also mixed.  Still, our school staff is not diverse in ages and the children at my school are all of color and mostly (80%) poor.

Yet some wealthier and whiter parents are not interested in diverse schools - or at least schools that match SFUSD demographics.  I don't think anyone would benefit from their (perceived) forced presence; their perceptions of the school community would complicate assuming best intentions on either side.  I still think these parents and their children would benefit, but the amount of work it would take to just get everyone talking seems way too strenuous.

So right now I'd settle for more equity with the students we have right now.  Our schools are not equitably funded, and it's a problem.  Moreover, there is a persistent attitude among some stakeholders in SFUSD that poorer schools are riding high on Title I funds.  That is simply false.  Not only are those funds miniscule, this position ignores the reality that Title I students need more.  They need more services through school health.  They need more school readiness activities.  They need more counseling, more food, more after school programming, more outlets, more more more.  The Weighted Student Formula isn't keeping up, and neither is federal Title I.

Then there's locally collected money.  At a school level, some schools are raking in PTA dollars.  We're not.  Without getting into any of the issues around this, it's not possible to argue that it's fair - and I don't think much of "Life isn't fair" being visited upon children in this way.  (Besides which: my Kindergartners have figured that out already.)  More broadly, the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of property tax funding disparities, so districts with high property values (Palo Alto) or big industrial concerns (Santa Clara) have more money on hand than SFUSD does.  And of course, California's statewide school funding is abysmal.

All that said, I am growing more and more concerned with the idea that one has to do one's best for one's child no matter what the cost is.  The fact that so many San Francisco parents opt out of public schools means that the system as a whole becomes less diverse, and it loses its most powerful advocate voices: the voices that have the power and the privilege to demand systemic changes to school funding.  (Small philanthropy is great, and I love Donors Choose, but I think the state should be funding my classroom.)  So the aggregate of doing one's best for one's child is that many other children get less.  Long term, I suspect the costs for that same child will be great (PreK to prison pipeline, etc.) but the cold hard cash arguments are not my favorite.

I think what is bothering me right now is that I feel like there is very little understanding that like it or not, we really are all in this together.  Opting out is not actually an option; you can opt different, if you will, but you are not an island.  I want to live in a society that cherishes its members and works collectively for all within it.  Lately, I feel like "American individualism" has become a contrary (and false, BECAUSE YOU STILL AREN'T AN ISLAND) and forceful thing that does great harm.

Two weeks.

I once had a principal who absolutely refused to allow teachers to be at school after 5:00 PM on the last Saturday before school started.  Sunday trips were verboten.  This is good policy; I don't think people realize how nervous teachers are starting a new school year.  The tension grows through interminable "professional development" sessions a few days before school starts.  This is the worst time to have any kind of professional development; teachers are too preoccupied.  There is a great deal of list-making and classroom mapping in these workshops; teachers with laptops compose "Welcome to My Classroom!" letters on the sly.  I find it difficult both to sit still and to remember orally-given information without some kind of hands-on element, so I generally try to bring a bunch of laminated things to cut - it's mindless, yet focusing.

Teachers are stressed out and eat too much boxed lunch at the break, so to keep them awake presenters invariably break out the candy in the afternoon.  It's downhill from there.

I've heard of all kinds of centering, stress-lowering activities for teacher work days.  Personally, my stress is not lowered by anything other than getting my classroom in order so I skip the yoga and whatnot.  On the other hand, one year I was so nervous on the first day of summer school (new grade, unfamiliar school building, forty two kids on my roster) that I washed but did not rinse my hair.

Anyway, I do like to focus on BIG GOALS for the year.  These are not the BIG GOALS in the management textbook sense, nor in the Teach for America sense.  I have been teaching for a long time now.  We do not have new standards this year nor any new curricula.  I do want to develop my practice, and I do that by making some plans every year - things I want to try, subjects I want to teach differently, management techniques I would like to use more effectively, etc.  It is not as important to me that I see each of these ideas through; some things end up not working out simply because I cannot maintain them successfully.  I just want to make sure I reflect on what happened and see what I learned from it.

Last year, my big push was teaching thematically and I think I pulled this off reasonably well.  It led to a lot of long projects taking many days.  These can be hard for me; they require organization and planning.  So it was an important development area for me personally, and I think the learning payoff was big.  Students seemed to have more patience and more willing to keep working on things; for instance, by the end of the year students were willing to spend 90 minutes weaving a basket (with music, conversation and short breaks, of course) and "sewing bees" were popular at art time.  And I think the content integration was useful, too.  In the past, I've worked to integrate more sensory stuff and to actively teach cooperation.

For this year, I have some very specific learning goals for motor development.  I failed penmanship (left-handed, ADHD) in school and am not a stickler for it now.  I think it's destructive; my students struggling with illegibility put so much energy into neatness that they have nothing left for content.  I do want to provide experiences that will build hand-eye coordination and fine motor control and to be very explicit why these are important.  I also want to experiment with teaching letter formation; I am the happy inheritor of a bunch of Handwriting Without Tears stuff that looks promising.

Tenure: I Have It.

Or: While I Admit the Persistently Problematic Issues Underlying Cat Macro Grammar, I Find Cat Macros Funny Enough to Borrow Their Structure; Alas, I Remain Unable to Utilize Their Non-Standard Grammar.

For all the alarmist rhetoric around tenure, one thing that's really really really really awesome about tenure (which I totally have...as you can see, I have not one whit of a problem with Valley Speak) is that it means I don't feel any particular need to keep my smart mouth shut.

Realistically, the number of Kindergarten teachers in SFUSD is not enormously large; the number of Kindergarten teachers in SFUSD at high-needs schools is even smaller.  It would not be that difficult to find out who I am, and it's not like I'm hiding my identity or the school at which I teach.  And why do I feel free to do that?  I have tenure!  La la la la la.

Teacher free speech rights are constrained within the classroom and without it as well.  Moreover, I have actually witnessed vindictive administrators moving against high-quality teachers because those teachers had the very bad idea to explain that Open Court had some issues.  (This did not happen in SFUSD.)

If you teach Open Court (California Edition) to the manual in Kindergarten, the kids get their last letter sound at the end of May.  This is utter insanity.  By the end of May, students will have finished off many of their End of Year assessments, and unless they picked up the last letter sounds on their own, they will have a lot of Open Court-caused misses on their assessments.

Additionally, Open Court's literature selections are...well.  Let's just say that an Open Court trainer told me once that the purpose of reading these selections was not that students would enjoy them; no, it was to practice reading strategies.  After all, we all have to do things we don't enjoy, right?

Dorothy Parker wrote a review of an A.A. Milne play wherein she claims to have shot herself in the head during a particularly twee scene.  This is where I wanted to do likewise.  I mean, this idea is wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to unpack it without instruments of self-harm near at hand.

And I'm not even getting into the Massive Flaw of Open Court: that it was written by Louisa Cook Moats, a woman who believes in the Language Deficit Hypothesis.  You know, a hypothesis absolutely destroyed by William Labov in the 1950s.  (Fun Fact: Vocabulary Deficits Don't Exist, Either...Unless You Don't Know the Difference Between 'Difference' and 'Deficit'.)

Okay anyway, so this teacher I knew questioned Open Court in front of an administrator.  Her comments were pretty mild and had teachers nodding all over the place.  When the administrator moved to shut her up, I also said some anti-Open Court things, and another teacher commented that the Louisa Cook Moats article we had just read had an underlying racist ideology of language.  (Teachers are smart.)

The administrator blew a gasket.  The kind where everybody in the  room gets a letter in the file and the principals of the offending teachers get a phone call.  (This administrator ended up working for SCOE and warned a trainer I had later about me and wanted to check my homework for that trainer.  This backfired astoundingly, but I digress yet again.)

So we have three naughty teachers.  Two of the naughty teachers have tenure and full credentials.  One of the naughty teachers does not.  That naughty teacher is laid off at the end of the year.  When it ends up that her position still exists and she is the most senior person laid off, she is not offered her job back because she was so naughty they fired her for cause (mouthing off to administrators).  Since we shared a room doing AM/PM Kindergarten, this means I teach two classes a day until they come up with someone to fill the position: a first year, uncredentialed newbie who is so low-functioning that she cannot bother coming to school before 10:30am.

Anyway, without tenure I sure wouldn't have a not-very-secret blog and I sure wouldn't be mouthing off to the BoE.  But I have it.  I suppose I should worry about anti-tenure forces and caches and all that, but honestly?  The Jeremy's new arrivals email looked promising and that's far more interesting than playing hide-the-opinion on the internet.

Strapping on helmet.

Living three blocks from school and possessing a full set of keys, I don't really have a whole lot of excuses not to work over the summer (except burnout avoidance).  Throughout June and into July, I was caring for our late-blooming silkworms so I went in every couple of days.

I haven't been to school for three weeks.  The administrative staff is back in today, and so am I.  Something nifty is happening, so there will be a lot of people there, but it is still a little jarring.

On Starting Out

Earlier this month, I spoke on a panel with some other teachers for an audience of education reformers.  The topic was SFUSD, with a focus on the current strategic plan ("Beyond the Talk: Two Years In and We're Still Just Talking").  Needless to say, I had quite a lot of opinions on the issue and I aired these at some length to an audience that seemed receptive.  At least they gasped at all the right parts, like where I ran down the school demographics and statistics, noted our #1 (in layoffs) status and then stated that these factors left me leery of the will behind the strategic plan.

Anyway, one of the other things I said was that I thought SFUSD would be a very difficult district in which to start one's teaching career.  I didn't, for the record.  When I got to SFUSD, I had a credential, done teacher training, had student teachers, done education research, all that noise.  I knew what I was doing.  So while I had to deal with the eccentricities of a new district, the vagaries of a mammoth district and the specific drama that is SFUSD I could go into my classroom and do my job.

Even better, I could do my job with none of the unpleasant nonsense of Reading First mandates, scripted math curricula (they even give you lines for the wrong answers they predict students will give!) and whatnot.  If my students had mastered rhyming, I didn't have to teach it for seventy four more days.  If the unit on wood went so well that we needed to stop and do a little carpentry art for a week, we could.  We could even TAKE FIELD TRIPS (providing they were within city limits and free, but all the same!  FIELD TRIPS).

On the other hand, there are some flaws in this model even for the veteran.  Finding teachers with whom to collaborate could be a bit difficult - it took me a year to get a good buddy system going.  Since I no longer used the purchased language arts program and there is no district language arts assessment, I had to come up with my own (or not assess at all, I suppose, but life is easier when you know what the kids know and don't know.  They're not bored or lost, so their engagement is higher and the management is smooth).

But imagine this system as a first year teacher: worse, as a first year, uncredentialed teacher.  A credential may give you very little in practical technique, but you will have at least a student teaching experience upon which you can draw.  I can't imagine what this would be like.  Of course, some schools probably have more cohesive programs (but not many) and at my school the grade levels are tight team projects so that even the greenest newbie can get some assistance (this I know is far less true at most SFUSD schools and generally not that true at Kindergarten, although I have no idea why).

The lack of support system is brutal for the newbie - and these teachers invariably start at high-needs schools, where there are fewer supports and higher concentrations of early-career teachers.  And high-needs teaching is never easy: I have ten years in doing it, and I'm really good, but my job is not easy.  Fun, yes.  Exciting, yes.  An intellectual challenge, oh yes.  But it is not easy.

So you have the neediest teachers at the hardest schools having exceptionally hard times - the kind of experience that means burn out even if you do survive a layoff cycle.  There just isn't a safety net in SFUSD.

Based on what the reformers told me later, SFUSD seems to know that there is a lot of site-based freedom.  However, they seem less interested in building a safety net than building a boot camp - or maybe they just can't see a middle ground.  I do suspect this will be the big tension of the whole "re-design" this year.

For the record.

The purpose of this blog is largely to keep my endless teacher blathering off my facebook page.

That said, dang.  Open Court is watching you.

Guide to School Personnel: Team Kindergarten

I know there are bright young Kindergarten teachers out there, just starting their careers...but I don't know any.  Kindergarten teachers always seem to be in their late twenties or older.  I think this is because Kindergarten really is different.  It's not like teaching any other elementary grade, and you either like it or loathe it.  The people who like it will never leave, and those who don't will flee as soon as possible.

I think Kindergarten used to get more than its fair share of burnt-out teachers, too.  Old-school Kindergarten is just alphabet, singing and playtime, right?  And those things aren't HARD, are they?  (Note world-weary, dripping sarcasm.)  So if you have a veteran who really needs a career change or a couple years in the book room, put that person at Kindergarten if you're too lazy to deal with the paperwork of evaluations and documentations and all that stuff.

These days, that doesn't really work anymore.  Kindergarten has some serious academic standards, and in SFUSD it's full day.  You are going to spend a lot of time crawling on the floor.  You will teach reading and also nose-blowing technique.  Shoes will be tied until you develop carpal tunnel.  It is not a job for the weak.

However, Kindergarten teacher fashion still branches down just two paths: Pooh Bear and Anti Pooh Bear.

Pooh Bear Kindergarten fashion is the home of your fabric painted sweatshirts, your wooden jewelry, your Disneyland memorabilia.  Denim is popular, and relaxed-fit is assumed no matter what the body type of the wearer.  These Kindergarten teachers have special clothing for at least seventy three holidays, some of which are extremely esoteric and known only to other Kindergarten teachers.  These teachers tend to make extremely cute parent presents.

Anti Pooh Bear teachers buy each other sweatshirts with cats on them as gag gifts.  This can lead to acrimony.  They know when the next Target and/or H&M designer collaboration is coming out and they have an opinion on it.  They tend to be really excellent shoppers and scroungers, which leads to very interesting and well-equipped classrooms and projects.   They have a favorite designer and are eagerly awaiting Sarah Burton's first collection as creative director at Alexander McQueen.

Needless to say, I am absolutely of the latter group.

Let's be bold. REALLY BOLD.

I have been an avid reader of SFUSD BoE agendas for years.  I consider this part of being an informed educator.  If I want to advocate for my students, it's good to have the facts.  Board resolutions also help identify key buzzwords; if you want someone to take what you're saying seriously, it helps to align it to their priorities and their language.

Not to mention, it knocks Deputy Superintendent Leigh off his "This money stuff is too complicated for your little teacher brain to understand" game when you can ask some esoteric question about funding streams.

This year I also became an avid public commenter and organizer of public comments at Board meetings.  My role was to make sure we'd get an early speaking slot (we were often first because I called ahead) and to organize our key themes so that we got as many across in a pooled-time comment as possible.  I helped write public comments and add key facts and figures that supported our arguments and made sure we would have large banners and big turnouts.

GOOD TIMES.

Despite the fact that we were not ever that successful in our comments and the remarkable rudeness of our Board and Superintendent (many of whom really need to stop texting when teachers are talking, and talking audibly and laughing when a teacher is crying at the podium is poor form), we did win some big points.

For instance, it was fun having principals and other District staff call the school or email on the down low to let us know that they loved us and encouraged us to keep up the pressure.  I was not the only person who noticed Superintendent Garcia saying "That's not true!" when one of our teachers quoted from his own strategic plan.  I heard that Gentle Blythe was not too enthusiastic about the "SFUSD saves teachers' jobs" story in the Chronicle being illustrated by...a big picture of protesting teachers from my school.  And we all got rehired in the end - with some comments being made to various individuals that we'd been so noisy that big layoffs at our school were politically unwise (also legally unwise, but I digress).

Another outcome was that I got to mouth off to Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller.  But he had it coming.

What I learned from Tony Miller was that the administration apparently feels it needs to "be bold" in transforming failing schools.  Apparently, "boldness" is defined as the transformation-closure-charter-turnaround models proposed for persistently low-achieving schools.

So boldness, in essence, is reconstitution.  Boldness is getting rid of the teachers and administration.  Boldness is charter schooling.

Boldness is bunk.

Those aren't bold solutions!  Those are same old, same old.  Reconstitution doesn't work.  Charters aren't more successful than non-charters.  And administrator shifting, teacher transfer - it's been done.  It doesn't work.

Real boldness would mean real change.  It would mean dealing with infrastructure and equity issues that lead some schools down the road to failure.  Over a quarter of California's schools have endemic vermin infestation, for instance.  About the same number have failing physical plants.  My school has mice and ants.  We can't hang things on many walls in my classroom because of encapsulated asbestos.  Two of the windows have been broken for years, and paint is peeling everywhere.  There are holes in some walls.  I had no heat in my classroom for over a week this winter.  I run the sink and fountain in my room every day for two minutes to clear the lead pipes.  And my school is in good condition compared to those on the SIG list.

You know what would be bold?  A school rebuilding campaign.

Eighty percent of my students live in poverty.  Many have persistent food insecurity.  There is no grocery store in my community.  Many of my students have health problems associated with poor nutrition: anemia, vision problems, insulin resistance.

You know what would be bold?  A major increase to the Federal School Lunch Program and a community garden initiative.

California state funding per pupil has dropped nearly two thousand dollars over the past two years.  At my school, we ran out of yellow construction paper in February and sentence strips in December.  By March, we were on the last bits of copy paper and the laminator was out of commission.  Field trips were out of the question.  I spent several thousand dollars of my own money on my classroom and wrote twenty grants on my own time.

You know what would be bold?  A radically equitable funding system that provided additional money to high-needs schools.

My Summer Vacation is UPDATED.

is not over yet, but the back to school sales have sure picked up.  Anyway, I have:

1. Had threeFOUR fairly large grants funded on Donors' Choose.  I have a nice new set of art supplies, fourteen language arts games and kits, a workbench and tools, and a puppet theatre and all kinds of extras being delivered next year.
2. Met with someone who's running for school board.
3. Spoke on a panel for some education reformers.  Deformed reform.
4. Met with some Teach for America people about My Issues with Their Programming.
5. Discussed My Issues on the phone with some national office Teach for America people.
6. Made several hundred math counters out of Sculpey.
7. Made dollhouse food out of Sculpey.
8. Made beads out of Sculpey.
9. Watched a lot of footy.
10. Received not one but two Bafana Bafana jerseys as gifts.
11. Used lack of television to justify watching footy at the houses of friends and relatives.
12. Trolled their closets for classroom donations.
13. Friends and relatives felt unable to stop me because I thoughtfully carried a vuvuzela.
14. And I know how to use it.
15. Came up with a dollhouse.
16. Used all saved-up World Cup vacation money purchasing salvage couture clothing.
17. Justified same as supporting fair trade labor, DIY ethic, etc.
18. Purchased a large wooden kitchen for classroom.
19. Justified same by not purchasing fabulous sale silk cape.
20. Managed not to justify further clothing purchases by noting that I did not purchase said cape.
21. Had all the doctors appointments I neglected over the year.
22. Made a brand-new set of alphabet discrimination materials for students who need extra support in visual processing.
23. Scheduled HAD necessary surgery (also neglected).
24. Volunteered at two local organizations.

Shoes for the First Day of School.

I really should write a post on teacher fashion.  I am eminently qualified to do this.

Oh please, none of these.

SFUSD laid off eleven of fifteen teachers at my site this year, all of whom were eventually offered their jobs back. Of course, if you wait until the beginning of July to offer everyone's job back, some people leave: they actually need to be employed. So they find new jobs.

I think we can take it as a given that SFUSD will place elementary education TFAers in classrooms. I floated my TFA proposal (that they should be assigned to high-performing west side schools while veterans take the southeast side) by a prospective Board member last week and she seemed to dig it, but no dice for this year.

I have a huge issue with this, because in essence what TFA is doing is saving SFUSD's ass from a Williams complaint. If TFA refused SFUSD elementary education candidates, more credentialed teachers would get their jobs back sooner or not be laid off at all. TFA is Plan B for when teachers leave.

Given the latest studies on TFA (academic results: bad, retention: worse - and worse than other new teachers' retention rates) it's not really a point of pride to have them. Moreover, it's unfair to our students. They get to be someone's training class, and TFAers don't stay and build relationships with families - the kind that take more than a year and make a big difference. Nor is it fair to me: when you have uncredentialed newbies, site professional development must prioritize their needs. That makes sense, but those of us who have been teaching for years also need to grow, and our PD needs are different. They don't get met, so we either a. stagnate b. redesign the wheel testing "new" stuff or c. spend a healthy proportion of our salary that would be much better spent purchasing fantastic clothing on professional development.

Anyway, this is from the New York Times' latest Best-and-Brightest Piece.

Lilianna Nguyen, a recent Stanford graduate, dressed formally in high heels, was trying to teach a sixth-grade math class about negative numbers. She’d prepared definitions to be copied down, but the projector was broken.

This is not a productive method of teaching. Copying definitions does not teach anything. Also, does this classroom lack blackboards? Could she not photocopy her notes, group the students and have them jigsaw definitions - or rephrase them in their own words to teach the class? Newbies don't have pockets filled with Plan Bs. This makes it difficult for them, and they're out of their element. Things tend to go badly and end with management issues because the flow is poor.

...Copying definitions, though? Management will ALWAYS be bad with that kind of nonsense.

She’d also created a fun math game, giving every student an index card with a number. They were supposed to silently line themselves up from lowest negative to highest positive,

Dude.

Don't lie.

That is not a fun game. It is a boring game...unless someone manages to start a fight. That'd be cool.

It is also a discipline nightmare: that many students? In one line? Interacting? I predict pushing, with a side of shoving. Also probably some running.

You can get away with this kind of thing, mind you, but your ground expectations need to be tight. They need to include things like "When I say integer, stand up and tuck in your chair...don't forget your personal space bubble. If you pop someone's bubble, you are out and must sit down until I give you a signal..."

Also, this game is not very...well, learning. Everyone only gets one try. It's easy to help someone else out. A more interesting variant might require that some kids can't show their numbers but can only say "greater" or "less than" or something. Real world data might be interesting here, too: temperatures of planets in our solar system, I dunno.

(True story: I taught the scientific method to 6th graders by standing in front of the room claiming with a straight face that ketchup was made from blood, up to and including an exchange where a kid offered to go to the cafeteria to get some ketchup to prove it wasn't blood and I said to also bring a knife to prove that it was. Oh, don't worry: I didn't actually give him a hall pass. Anyway, best lesson ever? No, of course not. Did they get the difference between a hypothesis and some crazy shit you just thought up? Yes. Also, I can get away with this kind of stuff because I am harmless and sixth graders are generally not sure if I am schizo or just ADHD.)

but one boy kept disrupting the class, blurting out, twirling his pen, complaining he wanted to play a fun game, not a math game.

I am so with this kid.
Check how bad the management is, though: he's doing this IN FRONT OF A REPORTER. Either the kid is incredibly fearless or things in this classroom have degenerated to open warfare.

“Why is there talking?” Ms. Nguyen said. “There should be no talking.”

Yeah, that'll stop the talking. Oh, and raise your hand if you can hear the voice she used in your head. I totally could. Moreover, if the kid is clowning around IN FRONT OF A REPORTER, he needs a different plan than whatever you've got going on, and probably that needs to be a personal conference.

Oh, and no talking EVER? Did you tell them they had to do the game with no talking, or did you forget that and assume that they would give it to you for free?

“Do I have to play?” asked the boy.

That suggests she could still get somewhere with this kid. This isn't total rebellion: he's not refusing to play. He's just whining.

“Do you want to pass summer school?” Ms. Nguyen answered.

This could be a light and funny rhetorical question between a teacher and a pupil with a good relationship, or it could be an outright threat. A simple "Yes." would have been much better. After all, some kids will freely answer such a question with "No." And honestly, nothing in this exchange suggests a good relationship between Ms. Nguyen and Bad Boy X.

The boy asked if it was O.K. to push people to get them in the right order.

I will assume this was said in a smarmy way, but honestly: fair question! It also suggests that he knows (or thinks he knows) how to order integers by size. Kids who are above whatever you are teaching have far too much time to think up ways to bug you, like calling your boring game boring.

“This is your third warning,” Ms. Nguyen said. “Do not speak out in my class.”

So is the rule no talking? Because she answered him when he asked if he had to play. Or is it "No speaking out"? Also, what happens after three warnings?

Okay, I'm being very nit-picky, but honestly? America's best and brightest need to stop avoiding the job market in America's neediest classrooms. I have my own class, and I don't have enough time to teach them how to teach every day.

California Educator Arrives!

Last issue, I learned about QEIA schools. I like the QEIA program - more money and smaller classes are always good - but the school they picked to highlight as a QEIA success was Miraloma Elementary.

Miraloma sure is successful, but I think its overwhelming demographic shift - about 20% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is way below district averages - may be the determing factor there. The school used to draw heavily from Hunters' Point; it now is hugely oversubscribed so doesn't really pull from its B Zone (that program is over now anyway under the new assignment system).

Worst of all, the article did get into the lower performance at the upper grades...without mentioning that they have the majority of poor children of color (next year, Miraloma will largely be a white school as the last heavily B Zone class has gone on to middle school).

I find that intellectually dishonest.

This month, I was not surprised to find that the CTA doesn't support Steinberg's tenure tweak. That's fine; seniority is an important union tenet. I think it's perhaps not the brightest thing politically: Barr's proposal is poison and I suspect the RTTT districts will not play nice with regards to test performance and pay/tenure. Still, I hold all kinds of unlikely positions and generally shake my fist at political expedience. I find it irksome. And the critical problem is indeed school funding. You can't starve a system into layoffs. We need to layoff no teachers. It really is that simple.

That said, teacher layoffs are an equity issue. We went a big 11 for 15 this year: eleven out of fifteen teachers laid off. Needless to say, when your cuts inequitably hit the hard to staff schools - you know, the ones where the teachers get extra money because you can't find teachers who are willing to work there - you are making your own problem worse. I got into it with my Mighty Union Semi-Progressive Caucus at a Board Meeting because I stated mildly that I strongly feel the union has no coherent racial and class analysis guiding how we work. (The response of our unions VP: "I'm not going to let you race bait me! And the VP for Paras isn't white!" ...yeah, really. That's what she said. Do you think she has black friends? Because I totally do.)

What is killing me on this one, though, is that the CTA is now claiming that the Ed Code allows for tenure skipping for equal protection/equity reasons. This is the current thinking in the UCLA case, but it's generally been the stated non-opinion of the union and the School District (in fact, due to the ongoing advocacy by our staff, SFUSD Legal ended up having to come up with an opinion on that. They found there was no equal opportunity skip allowed, or if there was the class was too big for them to bother, or something. If anyone wanted more information, they'd have to get some consultants off the General Fund as usual. This led to a member of the School Board walking awfully close to calling me a liar, but that's cool. I won in the end, didn't I?).

Also, they're arguing this is a teacher blame thing, and honestly? It's not. We have a system that guarantees constant turnover at high-needs schools. They get fewer resources and less-senior teachers, and the churn is unending. TFA exacerbates this locally, too.

It's not the CTA's position but its framing that's bothering me. After all, I have not yet forgiven the CTA for:

1. Uni-Serv Director to Site Rep Council/Exec Board, ARUSD: "We've decided that while our official position on the recall is NO, it's just not a popular stance so we won't be doing any door-to-door or get out the vote on it."
2. Agreeing to the Groper's "I steal your money with your consent and I promise to pay it back on...oh, let me see here...on the 12th of Never. But I'll totally give you interest when I do!"

However, framing this as an issue of simple tenure is, again, intellectually dishonest. It also has the effect of positioning the union against high-need schools' stability. That does not support union/community relations - and those are important. We're spending far too much energy in Sacramento or capitulating to our own Districts (hi, terrible new contract!) that we could spend working with parents: the working class and the employing class have nothing in common, after all, and to me that means I need to have more allegiance to my school community than to supporting the current system in any way.

Positioning Problems

If SFUSD's teachers justified themselves with the righteous indignation that our Superintendent and Board do, our students would fail.

Carlos Garcia cannot leave a forum without reminding us that he is not to blame for the budget cuts. I am not to blame for the fact that all of my students live in poverty, or that five have significant mental health issues.

Regardless, I am responsible for their school success - and therefore I must be reflective, crafty, and dedicated to student mastery of material. If I take my blamelessness as an out, my students fail.

Alas, our Superintendent may not be responsible for budget cuts, but he ought to be reflective, crafty, and dedicated to going "Beyond the Talk". Unfortunately, he shows no interest in any solution other than those that are traditionally comfortable and deeply inequitable.

Our Board would like you to know that they are very dedicated to equity. That's why they have made some admirable decisions: increasing ethnic studies offerings, increasing access to AP courses, providing resources for LGBTQ students.

However, their commitment to equity is only for the easy initiatives. Desegregating schools? No. Demanding equity in cuts and layoffs? No.

If teachers took this view, we would be happy to explain our colorblindness to you. We might offer some of that "soft bigotry of low expectations", too. And our students would fail. Instead, we make our philosophy drive our decisions.

I am tired of being the District's moral courage.

No, Actually: I Blame You.

One board meeting earlier than necessary, the BoE voted affirmatively on the poorly-planned, mendacious layoffs proposed by SFUSD. To evince said claims:

POORLY-PLANNED: The District is unable to state what percentage of teachers would be cut in a worst-case scenario (everyone who gets a 15 March letter is laid off). The District also failed to negotiate a hard-to-staff point for hard-to-staff schools: math and science credentials get an extra point on the seniority list, but the hard-to-staff schools don't. Therefore, schools that are hard to staff and have transient teaching corps, whose teachers are getting an extra thousand bucks on their paychecks this cycle and by the nature of hard-to-staff staffing, have very low seniority...are getting laid off.

SFUSD: Wasting Prop A Money on People It's Laying Off.

MENDACIOUS: The District's layoff list names all of the Associate Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents, a mess of Executive Directors, many Directors and a bunch of Program Managers. To some extent, these positions could be reduced and their holders bumped into the teaching pool, and if you think that's going to happen you must actually be Pollyanna.

Also, the District has implied that no permanent teachers will get a 15 March layoff unless they are "consolidated" (their position disappears, so they have to find a new one), but given their numbers this cannot be true. I have been told by District employees as high as Associate Superintendent that permanent teachers cannot be laid off, but that is wrong: in a catastrophic budget situation, there is a mechanism enabling such layoffs. The mechanism's conditions are met. It is disturbing to me that high-level District functionaries do not understand these issues as well as a run-of-the-mill teacher does.

The Superintendent and the Board would like you to know that they are totally blameless and committed to equity, which is why the layoff vote didn't happen until after 11pm. Before that, SFUSD committed to increasing ethnic studies and AP classes and renaming SOTA after Ruth Asawa. For what it's worth, I approve of all of these. I think the self-congratulatory pro-equity bent is compromised by layoffs that are by nature inequitable, though.

The Superintendent keeps repeating that he is absolutely blameless, and this is totally not his fault, and he doesn't want to cut one teacher, which is why his staff cannot come up with a coherent plan to present to the union, keeps increasing class sizes for next year and trying not to get anyone to notice that, and significantly increased District office staffing over the last year.

Also, the Superintendent and BoE are absolutely committed to closing the opportunity gap, which is why they are laying off teachers at high-needs schools, failing to make funding adjustments that will protect schools in poor neighborhoods, and have been threatening to sue the state for three years but...not actually suing the state.

Therefore, they are 100% in favor of 4 March demonstrations, which is why the Superintendent attempted to end same by sending out a threat letter to any school planning any kind of demonstration or organizing even off-hours participation.

Needless to say, SFUSD would prefer that no one discuss equity in budget cuts and have no plan to talk about it themselves (SFUSD: "What? How dare you ask! Don't you know: We're Beyond the Talk! Look at our five-year plan!"). Alas, it ends up that the District unfortunately hired some real radicals, who really believe in equity, and those people keep talking to the press and commenting in public forums. So far, we've managed to place quotes in the Chronicle and the New York Times, and our well-planned, easy to explain take on equity is shaping stories in the Chronicle and SFSU's paper. Seriously: so evident, clear and verifiable are our claims that we are able to change stories from "funding cuts are bad" to "funding cuts are inequitable, and SFUSD's particular cuts go against everything in its five-year plan".

Which isn't too shabby given that we are looking, site-wise, at layoff letters to at least 10 teachers and consolidation or layoff letters to at least two.

Interesting Developments in School Funding

1. The Governor's proposed budget - and it is very important to remember that this budget is his proposal, and the state Legislature is not required to adopt it - requires the federal Secretary of Education handing California a waiver.

California took stimulus funding for education, and doing so required that it agree to maintain school funding at the same levels as four years prior. In the case of massive shortfalls, the state can get a waiver if the same proportional funding is maintained. Through prefunding (budgeting money for next year into the 09-10 budget, so that schools get it now but can't use it until 10-11) and changing gasoline taxes into "fees" (a change in name only that keeps these TAXES from entering the General Fund, thereby making them unavailable to Prop. 98's funding guarantees) the Governor's budget claims to do this.

This is, obviously, a scam - or at best, it uses the letter of the law to beat the hell out of the spirit. If Duncan refuses the waiver, the Governor needs to cut the cuts - $850 million need to come back into the budget.

The state Legislature is trying to come up with a way that will enable the tax/fee reversal to go through but maintain school funding through upping tax revenue; all current proposals have been threatened by veto (even the one that passed). It is a win-win for the Governor and state Dems to get an agreement here: the state Dems look tough and the Governor gets to claim he totally saved education. I do not support these: taxes are taxes are taxes, and this particular renaming also underfunds transportation infrastructure projects.

2. The ACLU is suing LAUSD. They want an injunction against layoffs at three schools in Watts based on the inequitable education created by the 2009 layoffs. Note: they're suing LAUSD, not UTLA. It is the district, not the union, that is required to create ed equity. It is the district, not the union, that decides what impact funding cuts will have. It is the district, not the union, that agrees to contracts that do not protect high-needs schools.

In short: We should be printing mass copies of the complaint, folding same into paper airplanes, and firing them at St. Carlos, the Most Blameless Superintendent Who Ever Gifted SFUSD with His Presence.

Possible? I suppose. Credible? Not at all.

For the upcoming BoE meeting, SFUSD has quite a layoff/reduction list that lends itself well to claiming that 15 March letters will hit administrative offices and school staff with equally horrible outcomes.

But the idea that SFUSD will really and truly lay off four Associate Superintendents and a veritable gaggle of Directors, EDs, and Supervisors strains belief. It's hard to see this as much more than a PR move - one that I hope fails. I mean, how does the District intend to handle enrollment if the EPC has no Director - especially when planning to roll out a new assignment system?

Cross-checking proposed reductions in staff with incoming Kindergarten projections - numbers prepared by two different arms of the District for two different purposes - suggests that all District administrators are planning on 25:1 or higher next year. This is something of a surprise to me, because there has been a lot of agitation at all levels to create a proposal of furlough days that would enable holding to 20:1. (This is financially possible.)

However, it does appear that SFUSD has a layoff/cuts plan that will enable them to survive inability to come to a contract negotiation agreement with the union (or the membership voting such an agreement down). Not a plan so much maybe as a starting point.

The problem with private funding and public schools

I am a repeat offender at Donors Choose - over the years, friends, strangers and foundations have chipped in (conservatively) $12,000 toward my classroom. I like Donors Choose because I pick what I want: sensory integration equipment, novel math manipulatives, art supplies, stuff for my students to take home over the summer, and so on. It's all stuff my school cannot purchase itself and mostly stuff I couldn't supply either. (Well, I could in theory blow the two thousand bucks or so I spend every year on, say, twenty backpacks, a rug and some PeaPods, but I'd rather buy ingredients for cooking and sequins and stuff like that.)

Still, the idea that teachers should rely on the good will and pocketbooks of strangers through personal initiative (mine to write a grant, funders to support it) is problematic on all kinds of levels. Aren't we supposed to be a public system, funded through the pocketbooks of strangers in the form of taxes? Is the system equitable? Are the most critical projects being funded? Do teachers have equal access to the process? Of course, these are all concerns that are ameliorated by the promise of cold, hard cash for the stuff I need. And the vast majority of donors - foundations and individuals - are doing what I consider good in the world.

I imagine that the Koret Foundation believes it is doing good by supporting the Hoover Institution's education wing and its recommendations: charter schools, vouchers, Teach for America, boot camp for Black children (quite literally: they support the OMI and figuratively in the form of KIPP), and so on. I believe that they are funding the destruction of public education and supporting racist ideology, but certainly they'd say the same of me (...do teachers count as "poverty pimps"?).

The California Teachers Empowerment Network, though...well, I'm sure that they believe they are doing great good by supporting opting out of unions. Or at least they are "empowering" teachers. Their biggest stated reason for this need to empower teachers is that the CTA put bucks behind the No on 8 Campaign. Evidently teachers were disempowered by this action. Also, they note darkly, state Superintendent Jack O'Connell helped make No on 8 commercials. So clearly, opting out of a union will tell Superintendent O'Connell and the CTA...what, exactly? That they need to get out of the business of educating voters about ballot initiatives? That de facto discrimination isn't empowering enough and we need some de jure too?

So when these guys get into putting up cash on Donors Choose, it certainly shines a rather nasty spotlight. I am still choosing the things I want for my students, but the people paying for them will use their support to shine up their credentials, then use those credentials to destroy public education.

I wish they'd stick to funding their little charter initiatives and whatnot.

School Equity

I have been teaching now for...well, a whole lot of years. Eight in the classroom teaching Kindergarten, a year out of the classroom as a teacher coach/trainer, and two teaching college students. What with all of this experience, I have had an opportunity to view many, but many children, including:

a. a child who entered my classroom in March on his second try in Kindergarten. He did not know the whole alphabet and was under screening for a major speech and language disorder.

b. a child who was born exactly two minutes before the cutoff (1 December at 11:58 pm).

c. several children with major trauma backgrounds including head injuries, all of whom were homeless.

d. children in emergency foster care.

e. children in long-term foster care.

f. children who were the victim of assault or witnessed violence/murder against family members.

g. a child whose caseworker told me, "Essentially, he was raised by the television" - which explained why he had all kinds of old movie quotes in his conversational repetoire.

All of these kids learned something in my Kindergarten. Almost all of them were promoted to first grade (I retained the youngling). I referred several to counseling and exactly one for "testing" - the first child, who had not received a primary language screen but who had an extensive workup on his second language.

I have a stated anti-SST policy. I do not believe it is in the best interest of children to have a paper trail. An IEP does bring legal protection, but I have been teaching long enough to know that those protections are valid and strong only when there is institutional power backing the child. I have been seriously injured by a child in crisis. I kept that child in my classroom and promoted him to first grade. I have explored sensory integration strategies with major improvement on my own initiative to better serve high-needs children rather than IEPing them, and have created extensive case histories for their future teachers so that the same in-room modifications can be used. I have been praised by high-level administrators for "treating emotional disturbance as part of a natural spectrum".


I could go on, but here is my point: after many, many successful years in the classroom, you'd think that when I flag a kid for testing they'd take me seriously, right?

Of course, they don't. But after violence, intervention through district and private specialists (UCSF, Edgewood) and two union grievances, it ended up the child in question had major processing disorders, sensory issues requiring OT and a SIPT screen (for sensory integration disorder), and full-day special education...with or without an ED component.

Let me very clear: I cannot educate this child in a 20:1 environment. The child's sensory needs alone (low light, tactile feedback, low noise) make this impossible - let alone his well-developed strategies for negative attention if I cannot provide immediate positive attention. And despite the many, many strategies I have (even the OT person wrote that in her report), I have not found a strategy leading to the retention of more than 25% of introduced content.

Not to mention: the child is a harm to himself (poor impulse control), others (proprioceptive gaps that lead to collisions and worse) and the emotional states of other children (his presence triggers another kid in my class - one who, at five, is already engaging in self-harm and suicidal ideation - into tantrums).

Therefore, I supported moving this child to a Special Day Class, where he could receive a lowered adult-child ratio (this classroom is apparently about 3:1), pullout OT and in-class modifications (light filters, etc.). The child is bright, confident and interesting. With some modifications, he should be able to learn what he needs to learn. With some therapy, he should be able to integrate sensory information and self-regulate more easily. At his IEP meeting, we predicted he would be mainstreamable within two years.

His new teacher is an uncredentialed, first-year Teach for American. The class is at a high-needs school with strict discipline and lots of yelling - not to mention major physical plant problems (like exposed wires...always a plus for the low impulse control types, no?).

The problem is obvious, but here's my issue: How on earth does Teach for America believe that this teacher, this placement create equity? They can't possibly - or if they do, their Pollyanna ate mine for breakfast (and I'm a notorious Polly). There is no well-meaning best and brightest white kid who can handle such a placement.

This, my friends, is how our system replicates itself whilst claiming reform and change.

Not really funny.

As part of the Prop A funding, SFUSD and UESF got together and named a list of "hard to staff" schools: schools with high turnover and "challenging" demographics (high poverty, high percentage of English Language Learners, etc.). Teachers at these schools fill out a little form and get an extra $2000 annually. It's a pittance, but it's money.

Anyway, "hard to staff" schools have by nature had heavy recent staff turnover, which means they have a lot of new (overall or to the District) teachers. So their teachers are low seniority.

So their teachers will be laid off this year. So in essence, teachers at hard to staff schools are getting paid to stay and fired all at once. This is counterproductive.

One could argue that this is a short-term, single year counterproductivity. In theory, the fired teachers will be replaced with higher-seniority bumpees, who can collect the Prop A money and won't be subject to layoffs for many years to come.

In actuality, there is no reason to believe that bumped teachers will accept an assignment at a hard to staff school in the first place, nor stay any longer than necessary before transferring. Given these circumstances, SFUSD may resort to TFA teachers. Of course, most of these teachers leave after two years, so the "hard to staff" problem is ongoing.

So the district is throwing several hundred thousand dollars in salary away. We know that staff stability strongly correlates to positive student outcomes, and that trained, experienced teachers get better student achievement results by any measure. The purpose of the "hard to staff" funding stream was to increase teacher retention. So much for that.

In other SFUSD news, the BoE agenda is up and Garcia's merry band of budget cutters remains unwilling to let much sun shine on their financial proposals. They are asking for the union to agree to the District having total freedom over class sizes, which brings the 25:1 ratio into doubt. It also is decent evidence that SFUSD has no intention of ever reducing class size if we give that away (there's nothing in the proposal that puts in writing Garcia's claim that class sizes will be reduced as soon as possible).

Whatever the case, SFUSD is dragging its feet on specifying how and what they plan to cut other than union concessions. Given how quickly they want a union vote and a budget vote by the Board, their pace suggests (to me, at least) that speed is necessary to obscure inequity in cuts: agree to SFUSD's lifeboat now or we all drown.

There appears to be decent support within UESF for an option of 20:1 retention through furlough (it's possible; Garcia said it would be either seven or nine days over two years depending on whether or not he was counting the two days' furlough already in the pipeline. The funding actually works out for it to be no more than six days, but I haven't looked into this so I can't accuse Garcia of trying to throw a potential pro-CSR vote. Yet.) I don't think SFUSD plans to offer this option, though; it doesn't show up on the agenda. What they do want is so sketchily outlined it's hard to tell.

Still, there is a good argument for voting down any contract revision that does not protect students. SFUSD is threatening apocalypse if this happens: no budget, no reserve, state takeover, consultants from Sacramento bearing pitchforks and Open Court, etc.

That's apocalypse for Garcia et al, though, not for the teaching staff. The state is not required to take over districts that fall within the possibility of takeover, and I don't think Sacramento really wants to deal with what they have wrought on school budgets. And even if they did? Garcia's out of a job, but I'm not. Consultants would get the big bucks for stupid programs, but that happens already. Privatization and Eli Broad would come in bearing big bucks for big cuts and corporate philosophy, but again: already happening. San Francisco isn't such a good market for boot camp schooling, anyway: why add another market when it's possible to get more done in Los Angeles and Oakland?

I think the state takeover gambit is a threat of very little interest. Barring a good proposal, UESF should vote it down.

Teacher Pack Rat Disease

Packratitis is an understandable side effect of the constant spectre of budget cuts, newbie colleagues who need stuff, purchased curricula that call for unpurchased manipulatives, students who like to chew on things, and the MacGuyverism of any urban school teacher ("The microwave in the staff room blew out all the power in the school and maintenance gave us "top priority" status, so we've got at least 72 hours without heat? NO PROBLEM - with this gum wrapper, dust bunny and...").

When I started teaching and had nothing I used to go bug-eyed at the supplies others had stockpiled - several thousand dinosaur counters stored in an overflowing 40 gallon container, shelves full of used pencils, paint last used in French caves, etc. Teaching in a portable classroom kept me from indulging too much for a couple of years. Now I look back upon the shelving options in the portables with fondness, since my current classroom is huge but lacks storage.

And I have so much stuff, because I might throw this copy out and not be able to find the original (the last major reorginization job I have is this one, but it's been in the pipeline for three years and barring a cure for ADHD I don't think it's happening). And then there have been a couple of dream world Donors Choose projects that actually got funded. Plus, once I got rid of all the garbage that was left behind by the person who taught in this room before me I had some extra cabinets. I couldn't have known that when my dear friend's mom retired, she'd give me so much awesome stuff (half of which I still have to pick up, since the first half overwhelmed my car). The last three years have all been budget cut years, too, and nothing makes one pack rat it up more than that. Also, my superpower is finding. I hope one day to discover something truly excellent, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, tucked inside an old discounted teaching manual published by the Department of Health. I will use it to fund the classroom of my dreams. Until then, I am the queen of the mysterious drawer at SCRAP or RAFT, the miner of the Children's Book Project, and the superstar of sales.

This is why I am the proud owner of six raccoon-in-garbage-can handpuppets. Hey, they were a buck apiece (marked down from $25). I'm sure they'll come in handy.