What a difference a few years makes

Reading over old blog entries I can't believe how much has changed.  Michelle Rhee is no more and I am still a teacher at the same school - although under fairly different circumstances.  My opinions couldn't be more different.  In my first two years I had faith in Ms. Rhee.  While I didn't like a lot of her ideas for how to change the schools - the reliance on charter schools and NCLB testing in particular which I have never liked - I thought her heart was in the right place.  I believed in her rhetoric, that she cared about the students and would work tirelessly to help them achieve.  Boy was I a moron.  It is amazing the 180 I have performed.  Rhee was a master media manipulator.  She was able to take a complex situation and distill it into a few simple ideas.  Everyone who stood in her way was against the children and clearly against 'progress'.  She would do what was easy instead of what was right, going through a RIF to get rid of teachers, putting schools under harsh restructuring mechanisms, putting 'professional developers' into our schools who feed us a simplistic teaching rubric that is currently being used to make us all cookie-cutters in a large TFA-like system.  And what has it accomplished?  Each year has been more difficult for me as a teacher - this one being by far the most stressful and our testing scores fluctuate wildly or not at all.  And from everyone I talk to they are saying the same thing - there is something up with administration.  Something is severely broken, and the fish rots at the head so they say, so I say, why not cut off the head? (Thanks Dr. Horrible)

Hopefully when Gray comes in he will see the writing on the walls and bring us back towards a more positive relationship between administrators and teachers - though that seems increasingly unlikely given the negative hoop-jumping climate we are in thanks to Obama and Duncan's draconian 'policies' - why not beat the dead cash cow a little longer...  NCLB didn't work because the stakes weren't high enough!  That must be it...

But enough with the pessimism.  Maybe administrators, policy makers, the community and teachers can actually begin communicating as equals and teachers can once again be treated as professionals.  I know there are teachers who aren't doing their best and who maybe need to move on.  But I also know that they are not the biggest problem facing our schools.  And they are NOT the reason schools like mine's scores are low.

We need to get back to the bigger picture, we need to stop pretending that each school's problems can be solved in the same manner, we need to stop caring about these NCLB tests that we are going to fail because the system is rigged and not worth participating in and get back to EDUCATING our students and preparing them for life outside of these messed up walls.  Our students need to be able to THINK CRITICALLY, use logic, become engaged citizens who know and understand our world - history, economics, science, math, literature, art, ALL OF IT!  If we give them the literacy skills to interact with this planet then they should be able to learn and discover the petty details that our textbook wants them to focus on on their own (thanks Dr. Google).  Instead of having them 'learn' the basics, why not actually get them to learn about how to form and support their own opinions?

I know its easier for me as a social studies teacher, but I am pledging to IGNORE all testing initiatives that dumb down my classroom.  And I am not going to play the 5-step lesson plan game any more.  I am in the process of revamping my entire curriculum to move away from the DCTF/TFA model (man I really wish I had gone to a real teaching college for my masters...) to make it authentic, project-based and formative.

I want my students to have more ownership of their learning, and the only way to do that is to start giving them more power in the classroom and over the content.  The standards are stupid.  They were written by testing companies who wanted to write stupid textbooks and tests and make tons of money.  I'm done with it all.  If that gets me fired then I'll just become a martyr in the name of good teaching.

Happy new year yall.

Woah... a post?

I was just reading over this blog that I haven't used in over a year. Wow things have changed.

So here is an update:

I am still at the same school that I started in and I am now quite happy overall.

The Reduction In Force hit our school very hard, I picked up a lot of new students and had gigantic classes (around 28-35 students)

I taught AP Government for the first time and ONE STUDENT PASSED THE OFFICIAL AP EXAM (which is the first time in our school's recent history - past 10 years at least) and 4 earned 2s which isn't bad considering the obstacles that we had and probably also a record.

I am teaching a full year AP Government next year, I am getting supported by some of my administration and left alone by the rest.

Debate team was a moderate success. While we did not win any competitions (whoops!) we attended 4, which is the first time we have done that.

One of my classes participated in the United Nations conference at the State Department and we had 15 students attend which was fairly large group.

I taught US History for the first time and really enjoyed it.

My 9th graders from my first year starting behaving like mature students as 11th graders (unfortunately that was only for me and they were psychopaths in our poor science teacher's class)

My arch-nemesis was RIF'd which turns out made my life wonderful and the teacher who moved into her room is amazing and the opposite of everything she stood for and helping me learn and grow as a teacher.

So I am officially bucking the DCTF trend and happily entering my 4th year at the same tough-as-nails school that I started in and looking forward to it.

After my hard-earned vacation I will try and get back to posting about specific issues and things I will be doing to proactively deal with them for next year. Hopefully that will make me do it?