Culture In The Schools

Re-reading Atul Gawande's New Yorker essay, I had an idea how to use checklists at school to make our work better and perhaps shift more attention to caring for students. This is a small school for at-risk students who need additional care because they receive too little elsewhere. Almost anything is worth trying, but I'm not going to suggest my idea. 

I must be some kind of terrible employee, eh? 

School culture matters and is dictated from the top. In the classroom, I'm the leader responsible for crafting culture. I start by considering each student to be worthy of kindness and inclusion. I temper that with continual judgment based on observation. Most of my work is helping students be more kind. I do that work through writing, reading, and discussion, but it's kindness, compassion, and understanding I teach as much as literacy. A culture of kindness is the starting point from which we can learn. 

To create that culture, I'm kind to students. I'm not all lovey-dovey, but I work to be thoughtful. I hold a firm line for our behavior. I accept who we are but not everything that each of us does. When they transgress, I talk with them about it, I try to help them see the problem and move them to new ways of doing things. Sometimes I resort to straight-on discipline (referrals and requests for suspension), but mostly, I work to get them to buy into the culture we need. 

(By the way, when I transgress, I come back with an apology and explanation. I suggest they keep an eye on me. Notice if I make the mistake again or how I change because of it. What's good for them has to be as good for me. That too is part of the culture.)

I rarely yell at students or call them out before others. My talks are short and usually quiet rather than lectures or tirades. I never say "because I said so" or "because I'm the teacher." I try to listen to their explanations and thoughts about what they are doing and have done. I answer questions as honestly and completely as I can. All of this to establish a culture in which people are honest, thoughtful, and don't try to solve things through fighting. 

I've tried setting up all sorts of rules. No phones. No hats. No swearing. But my rule-making created bad culture. Instead, I model my classroom on the culture my wife and I create in our home for our children. 

Many people who hear I have two teenage daughters tell me how tough it must be. Nope, I say. Well then, just wait, I'm told. I nod and shrug as I move away from those people. They don't understand the culture of our home.

Last night, after dinner, I asked the girls to scoop the litter box, dry dishes I was washing, and start the dishwasher. They obliged without complaint. Today they will vacuum the den and sweep the bathroom. When I asked, they said, no problem. 

Why was this so easy? It wasn't because I'd be angry if they argued. It wasn't because we pay them for these jobs. It wasn't because they're perfect children, though they are quite wonderful. It was because of the culture. 

When my older daughter is done with swim, she texts us. I often reply that I'm already in the parking lot reading my book. She knows I'll be there for her. My younger daughter often asks if we will give her friends rides home from school. We always say yes. It makes her happy and provides additional time with friends. Why not say yes? That's our culture. 

Our kids say yes to tasks around the house knowing this is how we do things. We all ask for what we need and give what we can. It's not sainthood but it is a culture of understanding and kindness established before they were born. My wife and I have always worked this way. 

In the classroom, I replicate most of this. A kid comes in too tired to keep her head up and I find her a quiet place to sleep. I tell her she'll get a lousy grade for class participation that day, but it's no big deal. She will feel better the next day. Sometimes I have her put her head down on the desk. The crazy thing: the rest of the class quiets to let her sleep. That's culture. 

If I have ideas from Atul Gawande about how to improve the school culture, why keep them to myself.

Of course it's the culture.  

Culture is dictated from the top and yesterday I received clear instruction from the administration about our culture. 

If I try to impose my will in the classroom by yelling or ordering, we have more conflict and do less learning. Yelling at students leads them to mistrust me. It makes us adversaries or even enemies. It creates a culture of fear and loathing. 

If I yell and demand at home, those warnings about teenagers come true. My kids will sneak out, tell me to go to hell, and worse. Even if the cat litter still gets scooped and the dishes are still dried, it will all feel wrong. Thee culture would be one in which I don't want to live. 

The school culture is clear to me. From 7:30 in the morning until 2:45 in the afternoon, 186 days a year, I live in that culture and am to accept it quietly. Within that larger culture I create a classroom culture that best serves students and my skills. And we keep the door closed.

Grading In The Schools

Our hall monitor and I are talking about school. Kids are done with classes, so we are here on our own, grading, putting things in order, the usual. I've confided that this is my time to look busy. I'm not busy at all, but I need to look busy because most everyone else is terribly busy and will ask me to do some of their work. I'm not into that. 

Maybe this makes me seem like a bad colleague. 

Teaching is a good job, but grading sucks. I don't know anyone who enjoys grading or all the time it involves. One guy said he enjoyed reading student writing, and maybe he did, but I only enjoy reading as they're writing and working through the process. Once the piece is done, grading is mostly a bother. I write comments but they don't teach. They are to justify the grade which is usually lower than the kid wanted. 

Grading is something I work to avoid. I've found ways around most grading and, no surprise, seen no ill effects on learning. When I do have to grade stuff such as the final exam, I suck it up and grade the damn thing. 

But that doesn't mean it has to take much time. 

A teacher here is lamenting the time it will take him to grade the finals. "I'll be at it all week." I nodded and shrugged hoping he wouldn't ask what he then asked. "They take forever, don't they?" I nodded and shrugged some more. I hate to lie, but if I tell him I've finished grading, he won't believe me but word might get out that I'm done, and I can't have that. 

I am ordered to give a final and grade it. I don't want to run afoul of my admins (I prefer they forget I exist). I want to do my job well. I'm not looking for shortcuts around the directive. I actually like giving final exams. It's four days during which kids have incentive to work hard and be quiet. This year, to make things more peaceful and like real testing, I barred phones and headphones during the test. It went great. 

The other teacher imagines I have a huge stack of finals to grade, but I don't. 

Kids finished the final in dribs and drabs. As they finished the final, I graded it. The multiple choice is cake. Takes a minute. The essay has a strict rubric (from the state exams), and I've graded enough of them that I can do one in three minutes. Then there's a piece of free-writing graded largely on how much they wrote and how well they thought. That takes two minutes but only because I like reading them. Each final takes no more than six minutes to grade and I finished them as they came in. 

Don't tell, but all my finals are graded and recorded. 

Years ago I watched a teacher calculating grades from a paper gradebook with calculator. She was frustrated. It was taking forever. I asked, why not use a spreadsheet? She said she didn't want to take the time to learn how. I nodded and shrugged, bowing out of the room. She looked flustered and rushed. She had a lot of work to do. I went back to my room and probably read a book after closing my door. 

This year, my spreadsheet has calculated the grades. I haven't entered them into the school's system yet. Better to do that closer to the due date. Until then, I've got my computer out to do this writing. Around the computer I have paper printouts of grades, a thick folder full of final exams, and a binder full of plans for next year. In a tab I have my spreadsheet and I click into it whenever anyone comes in to talk with me. I look busy as hell, so they don't stay long. And I am busy. I'm writing this. So don't bother me.

Final Exams In The Schools

I'm giving the final exam at school this week. It will likely bleed into some of next week too. That's why we start early. Our school requires a final as 20% of kids' overall grades, so it's a big deal. I use pieces of old New York State Regents examinations and have two guys here right now trying to do the reading comprehension part. Of course, neither is reading the passage on which the multiple choice questions will be based. 

Before the exam, I gave them advice about how to score well: Read the questions, then read the passage, and finally, cross out answers they know are wrong in order to circle the right one. Most of them skip reading the passage. I don't blame them, but try to talk them out of it. They say, I never read no passages and get like hundreds on these things. I nod. Wow, I say, that's great, but students in my classes haven't done that well with that method and so you might-- Nah, they say, I got this. They then answer three out of ten correctly and say the test is rigged.

Teaching is a series of largely rejected suggestions. I would be more upset if this wasn't also my model for learning. I want to figure things out on my own anyway even if that means failing the first seven times. For better and for worse, I'm suspicious of advice and other people's experience. I can't be surprised then when my students think I'm full of shit, nor can I say they're wrong. 

One guy here just started trying to read the passage. The other just asked me what sheems means. Puzzled, I went to his desk, looked where he pointed, and said, oh, schemes. He repeated my pronunciation. Oh, he said, then asked, what does that mean? It's in one of the questions, so I couldn't say but I said he might be able to figure it out from reading that part of the passage. He said, screw it, that's too much work, and circled answer three at random. 

The last two weeks of classes are like this. The end of the school year is like this. I want to think we have made huge advances, that kids have been transformed. As Hemingway wrote, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" They aren't transformed. Maybe they've learned a few things, but these are the same kids with whom I've worked most of the year. Kids don't change into what I want them to be. School doesn't work that way. 

They have changed though and mostly for the better. That one kid is still trying to read the passage. The other, well, he's honest with me and hasn't thrown anything in anger. We've only had one school year together and so it's wrong to expect transformation. I've been working on slow change for them and there's some evidence that they have changed. 

Thankfully, I've changed too. I'm not battling them much. I try to understand them a little more. Change is slow with me too and I don't feel that I have been transformed. Like change, learning is often just at the edge of what we can register. Teaching is mysterious. We don't really understand one or the other. What we do know is that final exams are largely exercises in wasted time. I go on through the mysteries of teaching and learning because what else is there to do? We carry on with finals because someone, somewhere clings to the idea that they have meaning, and that someone signs my paycheck. Good enough reason for me. 

Growth (or something like it) In The Schools

As in other schools, my worth as a teacher is determined almost arbitrarily. My school has students take the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) in September, January, and May to measure how effectively I've gotten them to learn reading and 'riting if not 'rithmetic. 

This week, my administrators and the person who facilitates testing stopped to see me. They were both interested in having a couple more kids take and do well on the test. I was confused because I don't much care about unreliable tests that measure very little. But rather than chalk up their interest to rah-rah, go-team nonsense, I came to understand they were looking out for me. 

I need to show growth acceptable to the algorithm in order to be rated effective and avoid being put on an improvement plan. Need might be too strong a word. I've been on improvement plans before and they are largely just additional paperwork for my admin. I don't want to be the reason for more work, but I didn't develop this ridiculous system and won't buy into it. 

I spend a lot of class-time developing reading skills. I don't teach much of this. I structure time for students to read and take everything out of the way. No book reports or testing. We write a brief note (post-it size) after each day of reading. I talk with kids about their books, but mostly try to listen and get them back to reading. The problems kids have with reading are that there's no backlit screen, they aren't used to staying with something, and teachers usually spoil the hell out of even a good book. 

The SRI may measure reading growth or not. I don't give a shit. I know that many of my students haven't read a book in years if ever and when they finish a book they are surprised at what they've done for themselves. I have a few students who have read half a dozen books this year. One has finished more than a dozen after claiming to have never read a whole book. 

Today is the last day for SRI testing and the facilitator is back hoping to get a couple more kids tested to prop up my scores. I'm grateful I have people trying to help me, but I hope they won't mind that I choose not to get excited about any of it. I've got more important things to do, like reading my book.