In which I enjoy italics immensely.

Teach a primary school for a few years, and people begin to make certain conclusions about you:

• you own puff-painted clothing;
• all your shoes are sensible;
• you never, ever raise your voice;
• you are not too bright.

Seriously.  I once had a research fellowship, and the principal investigator - who had a kid in Kindergarten - told me he had assumed I "just a teacher" until he heard what high-faluting fancy University I attended.  And when he heard the esoteric field in which I earned a B.A. and M.A. together in four years?  Well, then he "realized [I] must be pretty intelligent".

Which your average teacher is, for the record - along with fast on their feet, able to sing, paint, sculpt, and jump rope credibly, and so on.

I wonder if this explains the miserable quality of research spouted at teachers all the time.  I'm not just talking the fact-free spin stories about charter schools (again, no more successful and sometimes far worse than real public schools) - I'm talking actual learned research.

Well, half-learned.  Ruby Payne's credentials are iffy at best, and her understanding of simple terms like peer review is limited.  That said, she sure makes a lot of money off school districts - although I was never more proud to be a teacher in my old district than when an audience of its teachers chased Payne's second off the stage.

But you also get bad research from actual university professors, which is presented to teachers with no critique to be swallowed whole.  I think now of Drs. Hart and Risely, who discovered in the 1990s that poor children have a "vocabulary gap" and that that gap lowers their IQ.

Hart and Risely never trained as linguists; I did, so upon simply hearing their conclusion about a million-word vocabulary gap I began beating my head against convenient hard objects.  When I later heard them explaining how their conclusions were not racial because they ignored all data about race, I waved my copy of the Lingustic Society of America's resolution about Ebonics in the air before resuming to bashing in my own skull.

I'm fairly well-spoken and I know the research around vocabulary gaps and deficit models in language study quite well.  I can tell you why Louisa Cook Moats doesn't actually understand language, and note that the research that might have cleared up this issue for her was completed in the 1950s.  So I generally make it my business to politely critique any professional development guru who starts yammering about Hart and Risely (I also thank the ones who sniff at the idea of the vocabulary gap).

Their shock is always magnificent.  "This is data from UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PROFESSORS," they huff.  "YOU are a KINDERGARTEN TEACHER.  I know that reading probably challenges you, but trust me: THEY DID RESEARCH."

So I really think it's best to provide my fellow educators with some links that will assist them in such situations.  "Well," they can say diffidently.  "It's true I'm just a lowly Kindergarten teacher, charged with teaching our future.  But I've read these papers by learned university professors who also challenge the deficit thinking Hart and Risely assume.  Have you?"

This little review essay sums up both the broader problem with deficit assumptions while taking on Ruby Payne and Hart and Risely.  It's a nice start; anyone looking for more of the same is welcome to comment - I've got citations from the 50s to the present day ready for my fellow educators of high-needs students who are tired of hearing about how the fabulous and brilliant children in their classrooms have been destroyed by their rotten upbringings.

Before the Pink Ides of March

Superintendent Garcia has been busy letting the media know that layoffs are imminent.  I suppose we don't have any of those truth vigilante journalists around here, because I have yet to see a reporter ask in return, "Hey wait - isn't that the case every year?  Why is this news, Superintendent?"

Sure, the budget situation is bad: that's annual, too.  But SFUSD has very limited ideas on how to balance their budget in lean times, and all of those ideas come down to lay off school site personnel.  It's true, as noted in the article, that employees are the biggest cash outlay in a district's budget.  But it's also true that SFUSD has done nothing to streamline those human resource costs so that school site personnel are prioritized.  Nor has there been any interest among management types for sharing the pain, even if symbolically.

So here's my list of good faith optics and actual cash savings SFUSD could consider this year.

1. At least follow legal procedure in notifying district office personnel of possible layoffs.  SFUSD likes to tell the media about all the central office staff they're possibly laying off.  Yet last year, SFUSD did not even bother to notify these personnel of looming layoffs, thereby making it illegal for SFUSD to lay them off in the end.  There was no actual intent to even pretend to cut central office staff.  SFUSD owes the teachers it's laying off better than that.
2. Cut Central Office staff.  SFUSD has a wide range of claims about the lean meanness of its central staffing, but it's not really that impressive.  Sure, the district probably has fewer central office staff than the average district proportionately.  But SFUSD is a huge district - it should have far fewer staff than a smaller one, simply because all districts need certain personnel regardless of size (it doesn't matter if you have two schools or two hundred: you need a Superintendent, a Human Resources Director, etc.).
3. Trim at the Top.  The Superintendent makes about seven times my salary and takes as many furlough days as I do.  He should take more.  It's not fair that the average teacher - notoriously low paid - is losing a bigger percentage of salary than our leadership is.
4. Top Brass Should Share the Pain.  All SFUSD upper management should take a pay cut.  If the Superintendent and the Associate Superintendent took a 10% cut each, they've just saved one teacher job.  These folks are well-compensated; they've also avoided the real financial pain that their cuts have inflicted on school sites.  It's time to show solidarity with their employees.
5. Little Cuts Don't Save Much Cash, but Build Good Will.  It's time to cut travel expenses at the district office.  The Board shouldn't be getting reimbursed for babysitting or fed at their meetings (I believe the former's already been cut, but not the latter).  Wait a year before upgrading or replacing the technology provided to out-of-classroom personnel.  Make do with fewer post-its in the Legal Office.  It's not a lot of money, but these are things school sites gave up years ago.  There is no reason for our leadership not to do the same.

Unsent Letters

Dear Mikey One Percent,

Frankly?  I doubt you attended Kindergarten with forty three of your peers.  And I know - I know, with absolute certainty - that when it comes to academic performance, that Kindergarten class didn't get the results that my students meet by the end of August.  (Things have changed since you went to Kindergarten, dude, and it's not just the terrible union teachers and their tiny little classes.  The standards are years higher, too.)

But as always, I have to tell you that if you intend to double my students and my pay, I want to see you do it first.  Mikey, it might sound like a generous offer, but compare it to your income, and think hard about this offer.  (It's worth remembering that while, say, $125,000 may sound like an awesome amount of money for a teacher, the people proposing it make more than ten times as much.  And their pensions, insurance and so on are better than teachers', too.)

Given my typical class load, the forty four students you'll have will present some serious classroom issues, Mike.  At least six will have IEPs upon Kindergarten entry.  Eighteen to twenty will be on the young side - late October and November birthdays.  Thirty will not speak English, so start planning those ELD lessons now.

Four children will be in foster care; at least six more will be in kinship placements.  Two will be homeless; almost all of the rest will live in decrepit, violent and under-resourced public housing.  Eighteen will have witnessed or been personally involved in serious violence.  Twelve will have chronic asthma or other major health problems.

Forty three of them will qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and half will face food insecurity at home.  Twenty five will live in homes where no adult is able to find work.  Start stocking up on the snacks and school supplies, Mike: you'll need to use that excellent salary to supplement what your school and your families can't afford.

Based on your breezy comments, despite the challenges, you'll have no trouble ensuring all forty four read fluently by the end of the year.  They'll whip through their fifty sight words spelling test in five minutes before finishing twenty addition and subtraction problems.  Then they'll write a five sentence story before making a map of their neighborhood and creating a Venn diagram to compare insects and isopods.

And then you'll have the credibility you need to lecture me about school success, ineffective teachers and the good old days of fifty kids to a room.

Until then: shut up.

Not So Cordially,

E. Rat

Unit Blocks for All!

Sadly, this article highlights their use at private and charter schools.  It suggests that blocks are the province of the public school, but that may only be true in New York and similarly funded states: here in California, if you don't have unit blocks in your classroom, there sure isn't room in your budget to buy them.

I have about a third of what the article says would outfit a classroom ($1,000 of blocks).  The kids do get an incredible amount of collaborative concept development out of the blocks, including thinking about properties of physics, engineering and social studies (what buildings does a community need?, etc.).  Sadly, what I don't really have are the arches and curves that the photo shows.  I tried to get them off Donors Choose this year, but that project expired.  Maybe I'll try again when I have an open slot.

Coloring and High School Math

I saw this story about Michele Bachmann's public school fears and rolled my eyes until I got to the "legitimate" worries Rep. Bachmann experienced when her high school-age foster children had coloring homework in mathematics.

Then I got a little suspicious.  Whether or not the concern is "legitimate", has anyone ever fact-checked this claim?  It's so easy for reporters to believe whatever they're told about the Lazy Union Parasites at our public schools.

As it ends up, a slightly-filled out version shows up in New Yorker profile.  Now the coloring was "involved" in a math assignment, which is slightly less derogatory: the implication is that it was a portion of the work rather than the sum total of the assignment ("Color this picture of Euclid").

And honestly?  An interesting math project might just involve a little coloring.  Here is a project on color for 6th to 9th grade mathematics.  It covers frequency and wavelength.  Or you can explore the perception of color.  And according to this project, written by a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, "Color is a profound mathematical topic with multi-million-dollar industrial applications."

Anyway, I'm not sure I believe Bachmann at all: I mean, she also believes that I am training tomorrow's Communists for a totalitarian government work system.  But even if I accept her claim that there was some coloring involved in high school math, she hasn't said anything profound about the Shocking Low Standards of America's Public Schools.  And it's a shame that the dread spectre of Crayola, coupled with knee-jerk education reformist impulses in reporters, gets a free pass.

KIPP: Not For Everyone

And specifically, not for African American boys.

Doomsday May Revise

...and a whole week of fun times before it!

Having taught in financial climates adequate (2001 with a lot of II/USP money), bad (2002-3), worse (2004-5) and gruesome, yet predictably more gruesome each year (2005 - on), I am surprised that this year's May Revise may actually present a budget so bad that some school districts will get over the whole "find a way through" nonsense.

Actually, I am kind of hopeful that they will: that some districts will have the courage to say no, to refuse to present the state with a budget, to call for system-wide strikes and basically demand that California fund its responsibilities.  Let's face it: the state is used to grumbling and lawsuits followed by massive cuts and somehow limping through.

We need to draw the line.  It is not okay that some districts are back to 31:1 AM/PM Kindergarten with one teacher, no aides and no supplies.  It is not okay that basic aid districts will still manage to keep their "essentials" - art and music and labs and computers - while I eagerly await the day that the solution to the plumbing problem in the boys' room near my classroom is not "keep the door open all the time".

It is not okay that I can look forward to an ever-increasing class of kids who have not had adequate nutrition, medical care or preschool.  It is not okay that that half of those kids will have experienced major trauma, five will be homeless and four will have diagnosed learning differences.  It is not okay that I will be expected to ameliorate all of the above while buying all materials beyond pencils and integrating technology using two computers that are 15 years old and cannot load the local newspaper, let alone Google Maps.

I do not anticipate that SFUSD will be one of these districts, given that Beyond the Talk is a lot of talk about systems and MAPs and Redesigns and Overcoming the Historic Power of Demographics.  The District can't even get itself behind the symbolic action of, say, having its top brass take some solidarity pay cuts.  So I don't think we can expect any actual challenging of institutional racism.  I'm sure there will be some good rhetoric around how California won't fund SFUSD, leaving it with no choice but to sacrifice its neediest.

Unfortunately, the buck doesn't stop with California.  We need to have the moral courage to take responsibility for the actions we take - or that we fail to take.  What SFUSD chooses to do is not constrained by the choices it claims to have.  If this is a state of emergency, then the conditions demand extraordinary action.

Hard-working teachers putting that extraordinary effort in every day can look forward to a meaningless Day of the Teacher resolution and a rather more concrete pink slip.

That says a lot about how Beyond the Talk we're really willing to go.

Great Moments in Not Sharing the Pain.

SFUSD's only sent out non-renewal notices to 17 of those 100+ administrators that they are absolutely totally and completely willing to sacrifice along with teachers.

SEVEN classroom teachers at my school are still facing layoffs.  Unlike the district office, our school qualifies as "Hard to Staff".  Moreover, I'm sure SFUSD will take a good look at the late layoff window come the May revise...maybe they can bump that up to thirteen classroom teachers or so!

Ponies, Pegasi and Ice Cream for All!

Confidential to the California state GOP:

If you're going to go around telling the media that all you wanted were a few little pension and regulatory reforms to allow a special election, maybe you shouldn't release your seven pages of demands to the LA Times.

Actually, never mind.  Go ahead: the New York Times will acknowledge that perhaps there were other issues, but largely back up your story.  Dan Walters will claim that the voters support your positions...while signaling in favor of an all-cuts budget with (presumed) political reprisals from the voters (that's cute.  I guess Dan doesn't have any school children).

None of these sources will mention that you demanded a special election for not five years but eighteen months of tax continuances.  (I saw ONE mention of this, in the San Jose Mercury News.)  They will also fail to mention that you are demanding redevelopment funds be continued, for tort reform, end QEIA funding (even though it works!), and muck around with teachers' contracts.

Oh!  And all those teachers and state workers who've given up whatever they've put into Social Security should also accept our brutal changes to their pension plan - current AND future workers.

That's a lot of free giveaways in exchange for one and a half years of piddling tax continuances.

This is not a story with two sides that are equally partisan and radical.  This is a story of a deeply radical right wing and a center-right Democratic party.  Nor is there a winner and a loser: everybody loses.

So, Those Administrators Got Their Contracts Yet?

Teacher layoff notices went out.  At least 40% of our staff is getting noticed.

I'll go ahead and predict that will put us toward the top of the list of most heavily affected schools.

I'll go one step further and predict that all of those top schools will be located on the southeast side.

It's not even a step to predict that those top southeast side schools would all qualify as "high needs".

Of course, this has no implication for equity and equal opportunity AT ALL.

And by making this an annual course of action, SFUSD does not in any way question its real commitment to radical, "Beyond the Talk" change.

...oh wait.  No, it actually IS inequitable and worsens the systemic problem of high teacher turnover at high needs schools.  And again, we receive annual proof that when it comes to the real tough decisions - the kind that take more than a press release and are unlikely to provide awards to Superintendents - are so far Beyond the Talk that we can't even talk about them (SFUSD Legal said so!  And they've never been wrong, nor has any other lawyer or court ever disagreed...which is why we don't actually need a judicial system.).

I haven't personally received a letter (or communication from the union, which is typically what I get first - I haven't actually picked up or signed for a layoff letter in the last couple of years.  I leave them at the post office to rot sullenly in a miasma of wasted certificated mail fees).  Looking at the numbers, I have to figure I finally have enough seniority to not get laid off until the 60 day window (hee hee).  Of course, if I'm not getting one, then I need devote less time to personal worry and more time to raising Cain for those committed to equity administrators leading our District in these sad times.

In other news, I have created a monster.  I have a student whose name has the same letter twice in order.  One day that kid spelled it with three of the letter and I commented on that, which the child found hilarious.  The student now always spells the name with five of the letter.  We occasionally pronounce it accordingly.   Now that kid's best friend's name, which has its own doubled letter, is growing exponentially too.

We are big into fish printing right now.  The girls who are in after school are mad at me presently.  They snuck away from the program and came in the room to find me testing out a craft project.  Sneaking away from after school to explore The School By Late Afternoon is not allowed, so I sent them out, thereby selfishly hoarding all the good toys and games for myself.  As they see it.

I have an official request to make west African-inspired masks to go with the maracas and tambourines that will accompany our promotion performance.  I need to think on this one for a little bit.

Your White Privilege is Showing.

Ahem:

Prioritizing the desires of the most powerful stakeholders will never make for a progressive argument.

Repeat: never.

I am tired of hearing about FAMILIES FLEEING THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS and how we need to get them back.  Even if those WEALTHY WHITE FAMILIES FLEEING THE DIRTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS came back to those schools, they have no history of advocating for any group other than themselves.

Aaaaaaaaaand they do that enough already.

The progressive argument is for building strong and well-funded schools serving the families already there. The progressive argument does not fantasize about how meeting poor children will be good for rich ones.  The poor are not there for your edification.  The progressive argument agrees that diversity is an important social value for all, but doesn't put the onus on achieving it on the oppressed.

Oh, and the progressive argument definitely doesn't fail to notice the block-by-block segregation that characterizes our city.  The neighborhood school proposal ensures that those WEALTHY WHITE FAMILIES will attend school with their fellow pale moneyed.

In closing: if there is a progressive argument for neighborhood schools, BeyondChron didn't make it.  They do provide an excellent example of San Francisco progressive politics at their worst: willfully blind to privilege.

Patient Zero

One of the reasons teachers take more sick days than you might is really obvious: we get sick more often than you do.  I spend my days interacting with 300 children, twenty of those very closely, all school year.  As a Kindergarten teacher, my students are young and building immunity to childhood diseases...by catching them.

There is not enough hand sanitizer, hot water and soap in the world to protect me - and if there were, the dry skin from constant washing would lead to new entry points for germs anyway.

Since becoming a teacher, I've contracted classic common colds and flus, immunizations notwithstanding (remember the year they guessed wrong on the virus?  I sure do).  I've been exposed to conjunctivitis and strep throat more times than I can count - not to mention head lice and fifth disease.  I've also managed to get some more exotic illnesses.  I missed mononucleosis in college so I could catch it in a Kindergarten (two weeks out of work).  I've had whooping cough (the entire winter break with coughing fits to spare for January).

This year, I have missed more days for District-sponsored professional development and events than I have for illness - for whatever reason, this has been a year of Fever and Chills on the Weekend, but Just a Runny Nose by Monday.  (Also, I can now teach fairly easily through the annual bout of cold-with-laryngitis.)

Beyond that, I think people forget that teaching as a profession is not sitting at a desk eating muffins.  I can't even go to the bathroom when I please.  I really need to be in a good, generous mood all the workday long.  I spend my day on stage, performing for my loyal audience.  And so does every other teacher.  This is emotionally wearing work.  It leaves you open to illness.

Those Teachers Are So Lazy with The Contracts Bust 'Em Already has been a popular trope lately, making its appearance in the New York Times and the usual teacher-loathing sources.  It's offensive.

Brief Flu Thoughts

1. If Michelle Rhee doesn't want uppity bloggers casting aspersions on her students' results, maybe she shouldn't have offered so many contrary reports of same.
2. And if she just now noticed those uppity bloggers, she really needs a better Google alert on her name.  I think the Daily Howler commented on the issue four or five years ago.
3. We need to move away from the idea that diagnosis is in itself a negative.  Locally, maybe the move toward inclusion will do this.  But right now, we are ignoring students' needs in the name of not labeling learners.  Given the dark and racist history of SFUSD's special education referrals, it's an admirable impulse.  But some students have real needs.  These needs can often be ameliorated in the classroom, but they won't be if they aren't named and teachers aren't given support in doing so.
4. For instance, I know some things about sensory processing issues.  I can generally offer support to students who need tactile feedback, proprioceptive development, etc.  But there is far more I don't know and therefore can't support.  When we can't assess students who are struggling for special needs, how can I serve those students well?
5. In short: learning differences are differences, and differences are good.  Diversity makes us richer, not poorer.
6. Ms. Rhee's Cult of the Teacher plays into this, too.  If the teacher is the driver of all student achievement or lack thereof, then he or she - if truly motivated - needs no support or guidance to reach all learners.  If he or she would just work harder, everything would be easier.
7. Of course, the thoughts of anyone who duct-taped students' mouths closed on any issue in education should be taken with a veritable Bonneville of salt.

I am not at work today because I have the flu.  I am very thankful we celebrated Valentine's Day Friday because a rainy celebration day on my poor Resident Teacher would be a truly terrible thing.  Today is the first day I have been awake for more than three hours in a row since Friday afternoon.  This is a big achievement.

I'd Rather Be Broke.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

In return for the cash, the district was required to replace the school's principal and come up with a plan to turn test scores around. Former Starr King Elementary School Principal Christopher Rosenberg took the job.'

His plan was simple: Keep a laser-like focus on literacy. That's it.

That means no extra art, no additional science and no feel-good programs that can complicate the core mission.

That is the most short-sighted, depressing view of education that I have read recently.  If this truly describes what Muir is up to, then it's in thrall to the anti-child, anti-research forces.  All studies suggest, and strongly, that the best way to teach reading - particularly to poor students and students of color, like those at Muir - is to teach reading broadly.  Kids need reading across the content areas.  Kids need multiple, relevant access points to reading.  Kids need art and music.

And as a society, we need scientists, mathematicians and artists.  We need kids who enjoy reading and read broadly, with a critical eye.

The core mission is education, not test scores.  As described, this is an approach that will bring higher test scores.  It won't bring success.  I know that I can teach kids to read AND have plenty of time for painting.  There are pedagogical issues associated with this (mostly around management, for time issues, and around lesson planning, for layering one's content objectives), but it's possible and it works.  It just demands that you put your time and energy into teaching and learning, not cutting out the "extras".

...class sizes as small as ten students sounds really good, though.

I Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident.

1. The ultimate purpose of hanging standards with wall displays is to please disaffected, out of the classroom and generally useless administrators who cannot be bothered to observe actual teaching and learning and therefore want to wall-walk to decide how useful you are.
2. Given the lack of knowledge about standards in the arts, standards-posting dumbs down schools by mandating boring, strictly academic wall displays of limited beauty and interest.
3. Given that California is more or less "between standards" right now, having adopted Common Core but teaching from the state content standards-aligned textbook adoptions, standards-posting is particularly useless at present.
4. When one has encapsulated asbestos that precludes anything being hung from the majority of walls in one's classroom, standards-posting is a real waste of space and time.

What with the redesign, all the schools have a new host of administrators to please, all of whom bring their favorite pieces of school reform for our immediate adoption. Given that education reform assumes negative practice needing amelioration/reform (hey, don't take my word for it: even the Rheecolytes over at the Washington Post say so in their style guide), they come looking for their pet answer to the reformer question ("Why do all you classroom teachers hate children so much?").

If I seem a little irked, well that's because I am, having never desired the affected disaffection associated with popular British acts of the 80s.

Not only have I outlasted many school reform programs, I've also lived through many different procedures for administrative walkthroughs, and have hosted visitors both local and federal (with a stop at state-level functionaries, who in my opinion are the worst.  Living in Sacramento does nothing good for one's joie de vivre, and man do they take it out on you).

There was the three-minute-and-a-sticky-note period, which wasn't so bad because at least they left a post-it that informed you what their general takeaway was.  (I also had a really great principal at the time, a natural teacher who left administration to go back into the classroom, and that principal left useful questions or comments.)  I have several copies of Good to Great and other insipid corporate screeds floating around for kindling, I mean for drinking games at parties.  (I do not condone book-burning, and I don't want these things back on the market, so they hide out at my house.  Besides, you never know when a freak blizzard might hit, taking all power and leaving subarctic conditions.)  There was the biweekly long visit period, the you will all be on the same page at the same time at least you will be when the Reading Lions people show up period...

In my old district, our school's Kindergarten team was a go-to place for other district teachers to visit.  Our kids did quite well on district assessments, our Kindergartens were always full and the state team never had anything concrete to pin on us.  That said, it was also very well known that we did not in fact follow our state-mandated program to the letter, as mandated with a mandate, mandately.

That's because we taught Open Court.  Open Court, if taught by the book in Kindergarten, will not finish introducing letter sounds until mid-May.  That's a real problem for Kindergarten writing.  The literature selections are horrible, bad enough that a trainer told a room of teachers that the purpose of readalouds in Kindergarten is not the enjoyment of literature but the teaching of reading strategies (these two being in a dichotomy, apparently).  Kids will only learn thirty-three sight words, too.

If you want academically high-performing Kindergarten students, you're going to need to massage that curriculum.  Sounds will have to be introduced earlier, you'll need more sight words and, unless you want to hate yourself, your life and what your students will become, you'll be selecting your own readalouds.  We did this.  It was so well-known that we did this that there is an ex-district, now state-employee who used to warn my trainer about me at the annual AB466 training.  (One year she even read my homework to see if I was putting any anti-Open Court sentiment in there.  Looking back, it's kind of amusing (E. Rat: SUPERVILLAIN!  Debonair criminal, subverting Open Court trainings with real linguistics and Whole Language principles!  Fetch me my cape and/or stylish trench!  I prefer black!) but then it wasn't, and she did manage to get a colleague of mine fired.  Our kids did well.

But for site visits, the District wanted us to sing the party line: flip the alphabet cards back over, hide the extra sight words, find the OCR big books.  They wanted us to lie to our fellow teachers, to say that we did use the curriculum just like they did, and our results were better because of our intrinsic yet learnable awesomeness.  If they'd just try a little harder, their students could also excel, because Open Court works.

Reading this, it sounds like Catch-22 level paranoia (only a lot less humorous and well-written).  Sadly, it's not; the district and the Reading Lions had convinced themselves that the program worked, and when it didn't it was the teaching - and despite knowing we weren't toeing the line, they held us up as an example of what they believed.

The other drag of visits is that invariably nine will be normal or even awesome days, and the tenth will be horrible.  The kids will not be fidgety (I have in the past been both reprimanded and praised for letting students fidget/not sit criss cross applesauce/getting self-regulation items), they'll be lethargic.  Or twenty will be on their game, but number twenty one is having a meltdown of epic proportion, requiring immediate attention and leaving the other twenty to notice the strangers and react appropriately (tension?  check.  strange adults?  check.  teacher stressed out?  check.  unpleasant noise?  check.  peer melting down?  check.  All systems set for pandemonium!)

And speaking of these meltdowns, high-needs schools are going to get more than their fair share.  In this class - like any other at my school - I have students who are currently homeless, whose parents have had custody terminated, whose family members are incarcerated, who have experienced family violence and sexual abuse, who are experiencing food insecurity, who have sensory integration issues that lead to overstimulation, who do not trust strange adults because no good has ever come from one, who...

If wallwalkers want to be welcomed, they need to have a sit down with school staff first and explain why they're there, what they are looking to do and how they plan to help.  They can then do the same for the students whose classrooms they'll be interrupting.  And then they're going to need to visit regularly and get down in it - look at some data, find out about the neighborhood, come every day for a week to see the flow and stay quite a while in each class.  Then their takeaways will be useful: an outsider, but an informed one, whose perspective can be welcomed.

Otherwise they're just looking to feed whatever notion of school success and failure was popular when they got demoted outside the classroom.

In other news, for the first time ever I wore apparel that was worthy of compliment in the eyes of one of the extreme Jeremy's fashionistas (not the nice young college kids who work there rocking 70s revival wear, the other ones).  Perhaps I can continue to win praise so that when choice items from 2010 F/W start appearing I will know about it first. (Funnel neck bird print dresses, you made your first appearance 1.5 years ago and at this point we're approaching full ADHD hyperfocus.  Come to Jeremy's. Sport attractive price tags.  Be the envy of my Kindergarten students.)

And while I'm ranting...

In 2005, California had a whooping cough epidemic.  I caught it; despite the romantic image of 'whooping' I developed as a child reading Ballet Shoes, it is really not a good time.  The problem is that the whooping starts up after you're feeling pretty good, so you end up back at work having an uncontrollable, endless and breathless coughing fit in front of twenty-odd frightened children.

Anyway, here we are having another pertussis outbreak.  Lucky California!  No dark sarcasm in the classroom means lots of it elsewhere, you see.  Needless to say, this has become fodder for anti-immigration fear mongering (apparently whooping cough takes on human form and comes to the United States without papers, hellbent on infecting upstanding white nationalists citizens) and bad mother blamers (the New York Times had an article titled something like "Wealthy Stay at Home Mill Valley Mothers Fail to Vaccinate, Thereby Causing Nuclear War").*

DTaP vaccines become less effective over time.  Whooping cough sucks, but not literally seeing as how you will be unable to suck down any air.  Get yours updated today!

*For the record, I find anti-vaccine philosophy the kind of individualist, Ayn Randesque tripe that makes me gag, even when I don't have whooping cough.  I do not, however, think that the ponderings of a few overly-educated, overly-monied mothers makes a trend, and I wonder why it is always the mothers who are to blame for anti-vaccine sentiments.


Also, I personally cannot get a DTaP booster; I have an actual, doctor-verified, terrible horrible no good very bad extreme adverse reaction to tetanus and no pertussis vaccine is made without it.  So while this is a case where I am personally counting on herd immunity, it is also one where I cannot lord it over others while waving my pricked arm self-righteously.

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.