Assessments & Grades – Why?

September 20, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

The State of Oklahoma, like many others, is determined to assign numbers and letters to the schools and teachers within its purview. Like the standardized testing of students on which many of these numbers and letters are based, the conviction seems to be that if you just keep pretending to measure things in ridiculously oversimplified ways designed to guarantee widespread failure, you’re “reforming” the system and calling forth a brighter future for all. This is analogous to – actually, never mind the analogy. It’s just stupid.

For those of you who are not teacher-types, there are two basic types of assessment. Formative Assessment is primarily intended to ascertain student understanding or accomplishment. Do they understand the material? Can they demonstrate the skills you’ve deemed important? Are they making an effort to plow through whatever you’ve assigned in your efforts to help them ‘get it’?

We’re all familiar with tests and quizzes, but Formative Assessment can be made through discussions, artsy-fartsy projects, tickets-out-the-door, etc. In some cases the grade is the grade, and in others students are expected to redo, relearn, retry, etc. Either way, the goal is to figure out what’s going well and what’s not, and to adjust, or to identify what students do or don’t get, and decide what you – and they – can maybe do about that. The “grades” handed out by the State of Oklahoma make little claim of such goals, and our legislature clearly has no intention of adjusting or contributing in any way. So… THAT’s not the purpose of these statewide ‘report cards’.

Why do students fail? Some kids are doing the best they can, and just don’t get it. They are mostly present and involved, but just aren’t there yet. Our job is to figure out how to help them. Far more fail simply from not doing what they could or should be doing – in other words, by choice or something that looks a great deal like choice. We don’t write them off, or use this as an excuse not to try different approaches, but solutions begin with identifying sources of problems – not with the scores assigned after the fact.

The State of Oklahoma and the OKSDE have shown a determined lack of interest in the underlying sources of low achievement. It would actually be a huge step forward if they merely covered their ears and ran about yelling ‘NANANANA ICANTHEARYOU NANANANA ICANTHEARYOU!’ Even in the classroom, the oversimplification of A B C D F hinders recognition that no two kids excel, survive, or fail in the same way, or for the same reasons. Whatever the root of shortcomings, our question is the same – what can we as teachers, as teams, as districts, do differently so more kids DO succeed? Even when many factors are undeniably out of our control – home life, background, socio-economics, DNA, etc. – any ethical educator asks themselves what they COULD try… what they COULD do.

Which, as I may have mentioned, the state has shown absolutely no interest in considering.

Summative Assessment is the other category. It’s the ‘BIG TEST’ at the end of a unit or a semester. These attempt to document what students “walk away with” in knowledge and skills. The data can identify strengths and weaknesses of individual teachers so we can help each other improve, or help compare classes from year to year. For students it’s generally the finish line, for better or worse – here’s how you did, now off with thee.

What type of assessment you choose depends on your purpose. That sounds rather obvious, but it’s easy to fall into doing stuff mostly because that’s just… how it’s done. But grades should have a purpose. Otherwise, why bother?

Each semester, 18 weeks of a student’s experience in a given class – their effort, their understanding, their organization, their attitude, their ability – is summarized by a single number between 0 – 100, which in turn translates to one of 5 letters. This is, of course, inane. But it’s been how we’ve been doing things for so long it’s rather entrenched. That number and letter could mean so many different things they’re essentially useless as formative assessment. They’re only real functions are as carrots, sticks, or labels.

Most teachers still give these numbers and letters – they’re pretty much required – but we tweak them based on a variety of formal and informal assessments of our own. We tell students their grades, but we spend far more time talking them through more specific, potentially useful feedback about what they seem to be doing well and what they might try instead if they’re not. In other words, while we still retain the trappings of an outmoded grading model, we do our best within structure to more fully discern and more effectively assist.

The A-F Report Card given by the State of Oklahoma to its public schools each year does none of the things assessment is supposed to do. It provides no support, and intentionally limits the data it is willing to consider. There are no adjustments on the part of the state based on how well a given school is doing, and no conversation regarding options for improvement. It’s not even measuring most of the things we claim are most valuable to us. It is merely calculated and published, and each year more and more schools are sent to sit in the corner with their ‘dunce’ caps on.

If the goal isn’t to help struggling schools, and there’s no state interest served merely by comparing apple schools to the orange, what exactly is the purpose? Is the OKSDE going to call our parents and ask for a meeting? Are our state legislators going to suggest we be tested for meds or glasses? Best case scenario, what are we hoping happens as a result?

I suppose they could be onto some cutting edge pedagogy I’ve overlooked. Perhaps if I just keep posting my kids grades in the main hallway outside the front office, I’ll be the highest standards most teachingest educator ever! I won’t even lesson plan or teach anymore, and when kids ask for help, I’ll explain I have so many obligations and just can’t spare the time or resources unless it’s to give them more tests to post.

A teacher who just kept failing more and more kids while providing less and less assistance or supplies would be condemned as completely useless and unethical. A state that just keeps failing more and more schools while providing less and less is the same – but moreso.

Related Post: #OKSDE & The A-F School Report Card

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In Defense of Due Dates & Deadlines

September 14, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 6 Comments

There is a good case to be made that part of our job as educators is to prepare students for the ‘real world’ – whatever that is. We could thus argue that deadlines and responsibility are valid goals of public education. In the ‘real world’, you’re expected to do stuff when it needs to get done. Rolling in at 3 p.m. with “hey, here are those burgers you asked for during the lunch rush” isn’t going to cut it, nor will you get paid half if you simply don’t make them at all.

Unfortunately, we can just as vigorously argue that in many cases, not getting something done on time at work doesn’t mean you don’t still have to do it – you’re just in hot water while you do.

Either way, I’m not personally organized enough to make that case. Anyone who’s ever had to get paperwork from me knows what a challenge that can be – despite my best intentions.

The thing is, there are many less noble, smaller scale reasons for due dates and deadlines and policies regarding late work. Not surprisingly, many of them come down to the realities of teaching public school rather than the sorts of grander ideals we usually proffer when challenged.

Most of you are familiar with ‘economies of scale’. We teach kids in large batches mostly because we can’t afford to do it in small, or individually.

I do my best to come up with lessons that have a reasonable chance of reaching a majority of my 151 students while allowing some wiggle room in terms of quality and individual strengths and such. I’m not complaining – I love my job – but this is enough to keep me pretty busy most days and for several hours on the weekend.

And no matter how modern or flipped or inquiry-based I may try to be, there are still things that require grading. I hate grading, but there’s a limit to how much I can job out to students and still be able to sleep at night. There are things they can learn from peer evaluation, but half-a-class spent announcing that #1 is A, #2 is C, etc., is an embarrassing waste of limited time. Besides, most of what I’m grading isn’t multiple choice.

So when I hear repeatedly from otherwise respected voices that it really shouldn’t matter WHEN students do the assigned reading, master the required skill, absorb the expected content, as long as they GET it some day in their own special time and way – my shoulders tighten and my stomach hurts. I appreciate the theory, but education reformers and ideologists aren’t known for being bound by the same reality as the rest of us.

If reforms were horses, then students would ride… and teachers would walk behind them in the parade.

It’s time and energy-intensive to grade 150 of anything – paraphrases, thesis sentences, artsy fartsy projects, whatever. It’s FAR more time and energy-intensive when the stack you’re grading is a mix of everything you’ve done so far that semester – some clearly marked and easy to evaluate, some requiring you revisit the rubric you used or the instructions you gave. Some things you’re not actually sure what they are – so you read over them a few times trying to connect them with something you assigned in the past six months.

Yes, I know the answers to the quiz – but I don’t memorize the letters. Of course I can just read each question and its possible responses – but it takes much, much longer. And the writing… sometimes the priority is content, sometimes the priority is the formulation, sometimes something else. I’m so glad you finally turned this in, but I don’t have instant recall of every discussion in every class at every step as we worked through the process, or what priorities I may have suggested you personally focus on three weeks ago when you first asked to redo this particular prompt.

Yeah, yeah – poor overworked teacher. But this isn’t about me missing my tee time after school. What it means instead is that when I am working, at my desk or at home, I’m spending far more time and energy trying to figure out why little Johnny has handed in a page of Level Questions over some – well, over SOMETHING, I’m not sure WHAT – and whether or not they correspond to anything he’s missing in the gradebook – than I’m spending coming up with better ways to teach Johnny’s 150 peers the next unit. Flexible deadlines and nurturing late work policies mean I spend more time grading than preparing, or teaching, or collaborating, or whatever.

And there are other ways to assess – I’m not trying to run us all to the other extreme. Just trying to tie a little string to the kite of late work reform.

Expecting students to more or less keep up is not just about my personal space-time continuum. Remember how bookwork and lectures are the devil and all learning should be in groups, because collaboration is the new god? It’s difficult to really ‘collaborate’ if not everyone has done the required preparation – read the same chapters or worked through the same prompts or tried the same individual activities to get them to the point they have anything useful to say to or gain from one another.

It’s not about all having the same abilities or all achieving at the same level – it’s actually even better if they bring DIFFERENT things to the group. But do we seriously want all group work to be the two prepared kids once again dragging everyone else through the basics just because 2/3 of the group didn’t feel inspired to learn at their own pace and in their own special way that week?

How many angry lil’ Republicans are created this way – barely into high school and already learning that the harder they work, the more they are expected to drag along those who can’t or won’t, often at the expense of their own progress? At least under the old framework the best and brightest were merely ignored and marginalized under the assumption they’d still pass state tests and stay out of discipline trouble – under this new approach we can actively punish them for being responsible!

Which, I suppose, IS part preparing them for ‘the real world’, now that I think of it.

I don’t know how to make good use of class time without the expectation students will arrive prepared. I don’t know how to have a class discussion, build a logical curriculum sequence, structure activities, select reading, or even insert movies if I’m supposed to be OK with half the class working at whatever lil’ pace their specialness allows. I’m hardly inflexible – no two years play out in quite the same way or at the same pace – but I am bewildered by the suggestion that I should deliberately hold off on judging little Barclay until the last week of May when suddenly I simply must give him a grade indicating what he’s done or learned that year.

I appreciate the suggestion we could stand to be more accommodating of students’ various needs. I realize the assumption behind much reform is that I’m an inflexible fascist who enjoys crushing the young no matter how intensely they strive for success. That is, after all, the primary reason to teach – along with my desire to maintain low standards and have no personal accountability, of course.

I respectfully suggest, however, that we’re not doing them any great favors by teaching them that the most important question they can pose along their learning journey is “when are the retakes?”

Related Post: He Tests… He Scores!

Obedience School

August 27, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

My daughter wanted a new backpack last year about this time, and after several unfulfilling stops, we ended up at Target. The selection was a bit slim, but she found something that seemed like a good combination of practical and not-entirely-embarrassing, and we took it to the nearest register.

It didn’t have a tag, which was inconvenient, so the girl at the register called a guy from the back. He found similar backpacks of the same brand, but not an exact match – it being a few weeks after school had started and all. A third person was called, a manager of some sort, who finally explained to me that she couldn’t sell me the backpack because it lacked a tag and thus could not be scanned by the computer.

By now we’re 20 minutes into our effort to purchase this backpack, and my daughter likes this one – not the ones we saw at Academy, or the ones we examined at Wal-Mart, and not the selection at Dick’s.

Yes, there’s a major chain of sporting goods stores which chose to call itself “Dick’s.”

I offered to pay the highest of the various prices listed along that aisle. Worst case for the store, I pay the correct price. Chances are I’m paying more than it’s worth, but I’m happy, and they’d be rid of the one without the tag.

No.

The manager couldn’t, or wouldn’t, because there was no tag. I could not have it at any price because they couldn’t scan it.

Let’s step back for a moment and ponder the nature of Target. Its sole function is to sell people things they want, and in so doing make a reasonable profit after paying their employees and other overhead. To the best of my knowledge they don’t claim to do or be anything more or less. They guess what we might buy, procure it, tell us it’s pretty, and we flock.

But not this time.

The summer prior I’d had a similar problem with AT&T, who wouldn’t send me a phone I’d ordered. The website said they had it, the guy in the warehouse confirmed they had it, and even the manager I finally reached after 90 minutes of minion phone-tag hell acknowledged that it was on the shelf in front of her – but the computer wouldn’t let them send it to me because it showed they were out.

I remember losing my composure and at some point nearly yelling that “THE COMPUTERS. ARE. NOT. IN. CHARGE!!!” before blacking out. Whatever happened seems to have worked – a few days later, my phone showed up.

The problem is NOT that a few individuals at Target or AT&T are idiots – I doubt that’s the case. It’s systemic. In our ongoing efforts to legislate, codify, and policy away bad decisions and stupid behavior, we tie the hands of the people actually DOING a job until they can do little BEYOND blindly following those policies.

I doubt anyone particularly wanted to deny me the joy of giving them money for their products. It’s far more likely they’d been trained to follow the rules at all cost, or face who-knows-what consequences. They did the defensible thing – even when diametrically opposed to their fundamental purpose – rather than the risky thing. They followed the rules by missing the point.

Why do those policies exist in the first place? Presumably, most began because someone did something stupid or dangerous without them.

You’ve probably noticed the tag on your hairdryer warning you not to use it in the shower, or the instructions in eleven languages not to let your kids play with large plastic bags. A recent commercial involved a post-apocalyptic warrior picking up a rhino by the horns and throwing it into the sky to knock down a helicopter. This scene is accompanied by small print warning us not to try this at home.

There’s a legal division somewhere covering someone’s corporate behind by advising me not to throw a rhino at a helicopter. We need a rule for that? Is there a label on the rhino?

A friend visiting his wife’s family in China a few years ago was surprised to notice while parking on the top level of a garage that there were no fences or other barriers to prevent someone falling. He asked about this, and was told with some bewilderment that anyone capable of driving a vehicle and parking it on the 15th story should be capable of not walking off the edge of a building.

We don’t assume that in America in 2014, and because we don’t, we can’t. We devote great energy and expense in our legislation, our business practices, and – yes – our public education, to make sure we raise an entire generation completely unable to make basic decisions or take risks or otherwise step out in ANY WAY. We begin, logically enough, by doing the same thing to their teachers.

We reward those who most closely mimic one another and culture at large, individually or in groups. We schedule conferences and base assessment not on great ideas but on ways to best ensure uniformity.

We don’t judge teachers or their students on what they do well, but on what items they miss. Inspire your kids all you like, but if you don’t happen to be demonstrating requirements 4a, 4b, 7, and 11 and have your learning objectives on the board when your administrator drops in for five minutes, you suck. Write with passion, but if the MLA heading is on the top left instead of the top right, I can’t and won’t read it. It’s all about the policies.

We dictate the curriculum EVERYONE should know, mandate the tests EVERYONE must pass, and – perhaps out of necessity – regulate their dress, their behavior, and anything else we can standardize. We legislate away their choices in lunch, daily schedule, personal giftings, or genuine interests. We process them in the hundreds and in the thousands and quite honestly we can’t tailor too much or it all falls apart.

If only we had more laws, more rules, more guidelines… utopia!

We demand that those in charge be held accountable for the worst behaviors, the worst choices, the worst outcomes. The majority of our energy is consequently devoted to limiting the damage done by the bottom 5%, whatever the cost to the other 95%.

It’s not working, by the way – somehow no matter what we do, there’s always that bottom 5%.

In the process we’re crushing the initiative, the energy, and the ability to make sensible decisions based on the realities of the moment, out of our best teachers and students. And the average teachers and students. And the slightly below.

We’re making policy based on the worst of the worst at the expense not only of the best of the best, but of virtually everyone else.

Of course we’re left with a ‘real world’ whose populace seems so clueless, so helpless, so lacking in initiative or even concern. Of course I can’t buy the backpack without the right tag. It’s what we’ve been fervently working towards for years.

I’d like to try something different, but it’s against – well, you get the idea.

Hole in the Wall Education

August 24, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m a bad person.

I’m an idealist with little use for idealists. It’s not personal. I like those I actually know. But their articles, and books, and speeches make me want to break things and yell school-inappropriate things.

I resent speakers and writers who build their reputations on explaining how amazing children are and could be if these damn teachers would just get out of the way. I’m sure they’re nice people, smarter and probably better traveled than myself. It’s just that what starts as a neat isolated experience becomes a TED Talk, then a doctrine, then a Pink Floyd cover band.

“Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!”

Don’t get me wrong – it’s just peachy keen swell that throwing a few computers in the middle of an impoverished village and making sure no teachers interfere practically guarantees a bunch of eight-year olds will master calculus, cure cancer, and reverse climate change. Here’s to the success of every one of those dusty darlings and even newer, bigger opportunities for them to challenge themselves AND the dominant paradigm. Seriously.

Variations of this theme abound on Twitter, the blogosphere, and administrators’ bookshelves. Hand any teenager an iPad and stop crushing his little spirit with your outdated ways and he’ll learn like the wind. Enough, you fiend – let them love learning!

But I don’t buy it. Not even a little.

I can’t point to research or books with provocative edu-titles. If you really want me to, I’ll try it – I’ll lock my students in my classroom with the two relatively outdated computers available there and come back in May to release them.

Maybe it would be better to do the entire building… eleven hundred freshmen set free to learn with a bank of Dells and no silly adults with their stifling expectations. Imagine the money saved on staff – and computers never take personal days or violate professional dress code!

Forgive me if I don’t anticipate an education revolution as a result.

My bet is something more akin to Lord of the Flies, although I could be WAY off – it could be more Hunger Games or Clockwork Orange-y. I’m not prescient, I’ve just met teenagers.

It probably doesn’t help that my students have so much else they could do instead of take a self-directed learning journey of personal discovery. The kids in the inspirational anecdotes don’t tend to have an Xboxes, smart phones, cable TV, malls, or meals which include protein.

Remember how entertained you now think you were as a kid with just a cardboard box and some Cheez Whiz for a whole afternoon? That was great, mostly because you had ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING ELSE TO DO. Teeter totters are awesome compared to staring at dirt; they lose some magic compared to Halo: The Arousing. It’s just all so relative. In the land of rotary dialers, he with the Atari is king.

But only there.

I’m not unsympathetic. I get what these writers and speakers are going for. Most are trying to make the very valid point that when we try to cram kids’ heads full of 87-pages of curriculum standards compiled by committees and approved by states to be tested by bubbles, we are unlikely to either fill their buckets OR light their fires.

Our American spawn resist being cajoled into dronehood – which is largely what public ed does and is designed to do. We do try these days to at least beat them into more CURRENT drone models… it’s just that things in the real world keep changing so fast…

But… technology! ALL LEARNING CAN BE GRAND MATH AUTO!

I’m not against online coursework. I know for a fact that it serves a useful function for certain kinds of students in specific situations. But let’s keep a little perspective.

We’re swept up in the promise of ‘individualized pacing’, intense engagement, and infinite branches of exploration – like the Holodeck or those Divergent serums. One would think educational software must be on the verge of surpassing the major video gaming companies in terms of graphics, storylines, and immersion. (Watch out Elder Scrolls VII – here comes Bioshock Civics: How the Powers of the Executive Branch Have Evolved Commensurate to Expansions in Mass Media!)

It’s not. Remember that Oregon Trail game we were all so excited about a few decades ago? That’s still about as cutting edge as educational games have managed, and that’s not even what most virtual learning is attempting.

The vast majority of online coursework consists of reading short passages, watching videos, following a few links, then answering multiple choice questions. There may be a little writing. You work alone, and guess at the multiple choice questions as often as necessary to hit 75% or whatever before you move on.

This pedagogy is everything we’ve been fighting against since Horace Mann. Nothing wrong with utilizing textbooks or lectures or video, but a teacher whose class is driven by such things is unlikely to win a Bammy.

To be fair, the more cutting-edge programs let you email your teacher or make a few lame required posts to a ‘discussion group’ from time to time. Truly this is leaps and bounds beyond my foldables or a good Socratic circle, but Fallout: Populism it is not.

Most learning happens because teachers in rooms keep trying to figure out how to inspire, motivate, cajole, or trick their darlings into learning things the teacher thinks are important even though the 11-year old may not realize it just yet.

There are glaring problems with this system, some within the school’s control and many more without. The biggest problem with the current model is also the most substantial barrier to all this self-directed learning we keep hearing will save us all – state legislatures dictate most of what’s supposed to be “important” and decide how these things will be assessed.

But the absurdity of rigid state mandates doesn’t mean the logical solution is to eliminate all adult guidance regarding essential knowledge or skills. Crazy as it may sound, many good teachers are perfectly capable of finding balances based on the abilities and interests of their kids – some non-negotiables, because hopefully the certified professional knows a few things the pre-teen does not, and some choice for the child regarding what they pursue and how they pursue it.

And if that doesn’t work, we can go back to your plan. But I’m not cleaning up after the pig head on a stick.

Related Post: Teach A Kid to Fish

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Revival

August 17, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m from Tulsa. That means many things, but among them is an essential familiarity with Evangelical Protestantism in all its flaws and glory. I’m not a practicing evangelical, but neither do I find them so strange – they are my people, in warts as well as wisdom.

If you’ve never been to a proper revival meeting, you’ve missed a grand cultural experience. Some border on the bizarre, others can lean a bit quaint, but most are not so far removed from the weekly experiences of the faithy folks in attendance. It’s pretty rare in your typical revival service or tent meeting for the message to be something radically new.

You don’t generally introduce a host of new songs, or swap theologies with the church down the street, or even change the format of the service much without careful framing, smiling explanations, and a special insert in the bulletin. You certainly don’t introduce new doctrines or complicated thoughtways at such times. That would be completely missing the point.

Because the goal of most revivals isn’t to hear something new. The goal is to be reminded. Refreshed. Revived. Hence, you know, the name.

It is in that spirit I’d like to remind some of us of some things we already know. Stuff we’ve learned from both study and practice, in the classroom and out. Feel free to throw out an ‘amen’ or raise your hands, although if you’re more of the snake-handling variety, I’d appreciate a heads up first. Otherwise, please allow me to preach to the choir a bit…

(1) This year’s students are a different group than last year’s students. You are not (in most situations) picking up where you left off in terms of either knowledge or ability, and certainly not in terms of rapport or expectations. You have to start all over, because they’re new… even if you’re not. And that’s totally OK.

(2) The whole “this is a new group” thing also means some of what worked well last year may fall flat with this group. Maybe you’ve lost your touch, or maybe this group is just slow, or maybe it’s just one of those things that don’t make sense – it doesn’t really matter. Whatever the cause, some things will have to evolve.

Yes, it so very sucks when you finally get a lesson perfected over a few long years and then… it suddenly quits working for reasons you never quite understand. But it happens. You’ll find something else that works – you always do.

(3) On that note, it’s totally OK for you to do stuff that works in class, even if it’s not what works for everybody else. It may not be what’s trendy at the moment, or hi-tech, or flipped, or project-based. Some of you give killer lectures that suck kids in, while others work magic with a few markers and an unnatural enthusiasm for asymptotes. I know one lady who makes “foldables” a meaningful genre, which so never works for me.

Live it up, brothers and sisters. The fields are ripe for harvest – teach like the wind.

(4) Still, it won’t kill you to try some new things. I know that guy they brought in for that interminable PD day was boring, or irritating, or both, and that you’re cynical about these ‘fads’. You can (and do) tell innumerable stories of seeing them come and go.

I get it. People are scrambling to figure out what works – some with pure motives, others not so much. In that mess, though, are lots of things that work, and are good for kids. Find a balance between chasing trends and being that arms-crossed curmudgeon with your 48-year-old transparencies and mimeograph pages. You might learn something, and so might your kids.

(5) The smart kids need good teachers too. Before we quibble over my use of ‘smart’, feel free to substitute ‘successful’, ‘best and brightest’, ‘highest performing’, or whatever – you know the ones I mean. Let’s not forget amidst all the hand-wringing and standard-raising we’re doing trying to bring signs of life to the bottom 20% that there’s a top 20% as well, and that despite popular rhetoric THEY WON’T TEACH THEMSELVES.

We owe them challenge. Engagement. Time. Resources. Passion. Just because they’re not in discipline trouble or triggering Improvement Plans from the state doesn’t mean they’ll be excellent on their own. Let’s work our asses off trying to help them be amazing. To whom much has been given, much will be required.

(6) The bottom feeders need good teachers too. Before we quibble over my use of ‘bottom feeders’, I use the term affectionately for the most part – and you know who I mean. (If you really wish to be more politically correct, feel free to substitute ‘mouth breathers’.) The point is that we’ve got to keep trying everything we can come up with to reach and engage and inspire them, no matter how hard they work trying to convince us they are stupid, disinterested, or unreachable. Most of them are not.

Mind the gap between acknowledging factors beyond your control (don’t blame yourself for every miracle you can’t work) and justifying lethargy by blaming the kid and his or her world. It’s not their job to come from better backgrounds – it’s yours to overcome that background.

If you wanted a job that was possible, you should be selling shoes or doing accounting or something. This is education – reality is not an acceptable excuse.

(7) The ‘bubble kids’ need good teachers too. They make the least splash each day and they generally cause the least suffering – all the more danger they’ll pass unnoticed. Find them, notice them, grab them (not literally, unless you’re really really tenured), and find ways to help them be great. Or at least pretty good.

It’s hard more often than not, by the way. Tiring. Sometimes very discouraging. That’s OK. You know going in the range of emotions involved. Be ready for them.

(8) It won’t kill you to send a little good mojo to your teacher peers. Where two or more or gathered, there will be complaining about students – consider at least sandwiching every conversation in positives about our lil’ darlings and about one another. It’s like a giant, ongoing parent contact. (“May I start by saying what a bright, creative child Adolph is…”)

(9) Our kids have potential, even when they hide it rather well.

(10) You have potential, even when it hides from you rather well. You must not quit – the need is too great and the harvest too close. You just don’t see it every day – but you do sometimes. Look again – there it is…

Sight is nice, but mostly we walk by faith – in ourselves, each other, and the possibilities. Unlike the religious kind, it’s rarely enough – but it’s what we have, so we make it enough. Organist…?