Because I am partially working in a 7th grade math classroom this year I supported the proctoring of the state exam yesterday. While I have done this type of thing for high school ELA regents exams and the PSAT/SAT before I wondered what would feel different about doing it for younger students. I was placed in a room with students who could have the test read aloud so it was a smaller group.

As expected, it was somewhat as boring as proctoring other tests. Mostly, the students were just working away after I read some introductory instructions. What was fascinating to me was the amount of instructions dedicated to restricting electronic devices (my guess is around 35% of what I read had to do with that). We collected student devices (as we always do) and returned them at the end of the test. I had one student who read slower than the others (I learned later he probably was reading at a 1st grade level) so I read most of the passages to him and he answered the questions as best he could. 

These tests usually take six days of second semester but this year are taking only four. Even with that, it seems relatively unnecessary to me. If the purpose is to help teachers be aware of their student's needs, we already knew going in what the students were going to have trouble with. On the parental side, I think it would be more useful to have teachers spend time working with students instead of administering a test that is biased and won't necessarily give information the parents don't already know. On the student side it just seems like a task to complete when they may rather be in their classrooms. 

There is an argument to be made that students need to 'practice the skill of standardized testing' because it exists in our world. I think that could be accomplished in the classroom instead of disrupting the entire schedule. During these days, only some students take the test and the rest are in their regular classes. But, they cannot learn new material because that would unfairly affect the kids in the testing rooms. They also cannot run 'clubs' or some such because that would be unfair to the students who are testing as well.

In summary, proctoring this exam confirmed what I thought already: it would be more useful to teach the students than take these exams, especially this year.

​Today I had a half day with students and a half day for professional development. This is a fairly normal thing for a teacher to experience but I haven’t written about them in a while so I thought I’d debrief some thoughts. 

Half day with students

These days have the possibility of being useful and often are not. This year I’ve been working in a 7th grade math classroom 1st period (8:45-9:30), whose attendance is stellar. I would say 80-85% of the students are there on time and we have 95% within the first 10 minutes. This makes it possible to use the entire class period for content teaching and the absent students could be caught up later or we try to find our way they are not on time and deal with it accordingly. In contrast, today I had what is normally my 4th period geometry class (10:21-11:10) at the beginning of the day. I had three students on time and by the end of the period I had less than half. This class is a mixture of grades 10/11 mostly with some 9/12. I tried my best to teach about the sine and cosine functions and have my students play a game that uses them but I had to reteach twice because of latecomers. So I’m going to have to do something very similar on Monday to catch everyone up. 

Even the next two periods were sporadically attended. Luckily I teach computer science during these periods and so my students are working on a project where they know what to do already. But I hear from others that students don’t bring their bags or notebooks on these days, making it really difficult to have substantive teaching taking place. To top it all off, we ended the day 10 minutes before we normally would to have students leave at 11am because that is what we have done in the past. I disagree with that policy and wish we could have had the extra time to teach our students.

Half day with staff

We have had three half days in March to learn together. Today's focus was on deficit thinking and how to get out of it. The idea being if we only think of students as being ‘low income’ or ‘having a single parent’ that might negatively influence how we view them and act towards them, leading them to internalize these interactions.
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I was impressed with my principal for sharing a story of her upbringing; she doesn’t often get that personal. It was quite motivating for me to hear how she interpreted her life’s arc and how it relates to what we do as educators. Essentially, her teachers didn’t pigeon hole her into certain boxes just because of how she looked or her family background and that allowed her to have a positive self-image and do well in the future.

We spent a significant amount of time in pairs talking about when we have experienced or seen certain types of deficit thinking. Then we looked at some examples of things staff members might say and tweaked them to think about our role in supporting them. I liked the re-framing of ‘those kids fail because they are always in the hallway’ to ‘what is the reason those students see the hallway as a better option than the classroom?’

The only snag to me is resources. Maybe those students in the hallway only get to socialize during that class period. Maybe a student comes late to ​​school because they have to help their grandma in the morning. Those are important things. I want to know how I, as a classroom teacher, can provide the support those students need within the confines of school so that it doesn’t overwhelm my life. Certainly, I could host a club before or after school for kids to socialize but when would I get my work done or socialize myself? I could try to connect a student to resources so their grandma gets help in the morning but when do I make those calls? Sometimes it feels like the system is broken at a level so deep that we don’t have the time to fix the things we recognize need fixing. 

Anyway, it was an interesting day to ponder. 

I haven't written much on this blog in the past few years. Of course, part of that is the pandemic, sucking a lot of the energy out of me after I spent most of it trying to educate young adults. But another part is maybe a lack of desire or seeing a benefit of what I write, for me or for the world around me. I would like to change that mindset and get back into reading and writing about education policy. 

I am not sure how much longer I will stay in the classroom. Certainly, the past two years of pandemic teaching have not been the best for me (nor many other teachers out there). But I still try to do my best every day. I think I am realizing the gap between what I am able to do and what needs to be done is widening. Even with the extra money coming in from the state and federal government to try to assuage the issues of 'learning loss' or whatever you want to call it, it is not enough. Or, maybe it is not being used in the correct way.

In any case, I am getting less joy and meaning out of working in the classroom than I used to. And before I become that jaded old white teacher who is only in the room for the paycheck, I want to reinvigorate myself.

When I began teaching 13 years ago I said that I did it because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of young adults. I still feel that to be true but maybe the time has come for me to shift where I do so. A lot of the gripes I have about what happens in my classroom come from higher than I can influence in my current position. It is people making education policy, negotiating budgets, and generally making decisions without teachers present to offer our critique. It might be time for me to enter into those ranks and influence things in a positive way. 

One of the first things I want to do is begin writing on this blog again. I want to read about education policy, the history of math teaching, current trends in computer science pedagogy, and more. My plan is to get back into the swing of writing about what I am passionate about and maybe that will get my engine revving again. We shall see.