‘D’ Is For ‘Dilemma’
‘D’ Is For ‘Dilemma’I remember sitting down to my very first teacher certification test a quarter-century ago. I’d reported to some obscure little “testing center” hidden in an office complex I’d passed a hundred times without noticing and brought along all the right paperwork. I was armed with a reasonable knowledge of history and plenty of pedagogical theory, with a side of buzzwords and popular edu-trends of the time.
The first section of the exam was multiple choice. I read the first question and marked ‘D’. The second question I felt confident of as well; it also happened to be ‘D’. So was question three. And four. And five.
I stopped after the tenth question and scrolled back through my answers so far. They were all ‘D’.
I was fresh out of teacher school and had completed “Tests and Measurements” only the summer before. I knew darn well that no legitimate exam creation process would play those sorts of games with the answers – ten ‘D’s in a row. It was also considered poor form to do anything to undermine the test-taker’s confidence right out of the gate. Ideally, for example, exams should begin with relatively straightforward questions and only gradually increase in difficulty. “Trick questions” were discouraged in any context, but certainly shouldn’t be thrown in right at the beginning.
I must have been missing something.
I went back through all ten again but still felt fairly certain of my responses. There were one or two that MIGHT have been one of the other options, but ‘D’ still made more sense in each case. So… I kept them and moved on.
The rest of my responses were more or less varied in the usual way – plenty of ‘A’s, ‘B’s, and ‘C’s, along with a few more ‘D’s. I must have done OK; my overall score on that section was well above the necessary cut-off and seemed impressive enough at the time.
Apparently, the first ten answers were all ‘D’, no matter what good pedagogy or standard educational practices said.
Next Slide, Please
It’s almost a cliche by now to note how often professional educators are required to endure some well-intentioned drone (usually from “downtown”) reading – word for word – a PowerPoint presentation of 60 – 70 slides. If you’re lucky, they even include a few single-panel comics… which they read and explain as well. Often they’ll hand out the entire presentation on paper so you can read along – as if THAT somehow makes it better.
On at least two occasions, I sat through ninety minutes of this specifically on the topic of making our classrooms more interactive and engaging. We were scolded in classic Ferris Bueller style (minus even the token efforts at interaction – “Anyone? Anyone?”) about how bad it was to rely on direct instruction. Kids apparently don’t have the attention span for such things – it’s boring and bad pedagogy. The person droning on about this even offered to come help us develop more engaging lessons if we wished.
There was absolutely NO sense of irony indicated.
Some of you may remember when “Prezi” first became a thing. The folks from “downtown” were so excited! I remember vividly the first Prezi presentation I watched and all the many features it included. They started with a page of text… then zoomed way, WAY in on different text, then it swooped over in a circle to some new text before zooming back out to a different part of the original text – all while reading each word to us slowly and methodically. They even described what was happening: “we can now zoom in on this ‘T’ and it says…”
Let’s Go To The Rubric
One of the most bewildering moments in the world of teacher enlightenment came when we were assigned to create rubrics for several different types of assignment. (For any of you unfamiliar with the term in this context, a rubric is an effort to bring clarity and standardization to grading subjective work – art, writing, projects, etc. It allows teachers to bring clarity to their expectations – or at least reduce everything to the same sorts of numbers we use when grading multiple choice quizzes.) The administrator in question wanted more “unified” expectations across the curriculum, starting with a rubric we could all theoretically use to grade student writing.
The problem, of course, is that there are many different types of writing, and what English is looking for in a creative narrative may not be the same as what AP U.S. History demands from a historical argument. Such distinctions were lost on the powers-that-be, however, who insisted that surely there must be some shared priorities – like spelling and grammar, for example. He was correct that we were in agreement on this issue. While we all cared about clarity in student writing, none of us prioritized spelling or grammar over content or overall organization.
I’m pretty sure he was convinced at that point that we were being difficult on purpose.
Eventually we moved on to a different sort of assignment – say, a multiple choice exam. What sort of rubric could we create to promote more unified grading of multiple choice quizzes and tests?
We weren’t sure how to even respond to that one. The very idea demonstrated such a gross lack of understanding of rubrics and what they do that we were genuinely speechless. What’s the professionally appropriate way to tell a superior that you’re not sure how to do what they’re requesting because it’s inane?
Cross My Heart
Such issues become even more maddening when they involve classroom management or discipline. Ask any teacher and you’ll no doubt find a wide and troubling range of examples for the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to administrative responses when students are referred to them for various violations. There are districts for whom “restorative justice” simply means sitting around sharing feelings anytime a student commits a serious violation, then sending them back to class presumably fully redeemed. Other times, administration confuses “zero tolerance” for “consistent expectations,” refusing to let reality or context interfere with their approach towards students OR faculty.
Anyone who’s been in education for more than a few years has encountered their share of bizarre district mandates untethered by reality. I’m currently tasked with raising students who rarely if ever attend school by multiple reading levels by the years’ end – as if sheer determination and some creative lesson plans could transform a fifth grade reading level to that of the average ninth grader in even the best of circumstances. I don’t worry about it, however, because it’s inane. It’s so undoable as to be meaningless. Like my students, I may not always buy into even the legit stuff – but I’ll definitely ignore the impossible.
What’s Your Point?
I generally avoid expressing frustration with school boards or administration. (Not that I haven’t periodically vented a bit when I thought there were larger points to be made.)
We have too many common oppressors from outside the system to turn on one another, at least publicly. And besides, many of the folks working in those positions are sensible, well-intentioned professionals. Just like teachers in general, it’s unfair to demonize them based on the idiocy of a handful of their peers.
I bring up these few examples of nonsense I’ve encountered over the years to make a point many have made before and which I hope others will continue repeating as often as possible going forward: it doesn’t matter what you demand until you can demonstrate that you have some idea what you’re talking about.
This is just as true with teachers as it is with students. My expertise in a subject area may not always secure enthusiastic cooperation from teenagers, but my ignorance pretty much guarantees problems. I may have an entire arsenal of policies and expectations intended to coerce them into doing what I say, but unless I manage to build some degree of rapport, I’ll have to rely on the authority of others to handle my problems (of which there will be many).
The number one thing districts or administrators can do to secure more support and cooperation from their teachers is the same as what we’re told to do with students – build some credibility. Spend some time listening more than talking. Don’t pretend to know more than you do. Assume we can tell the difference between genuine interest in our perceptions and expertise and yet another survey about building climate or district priorities. Stop basing so many of your decisions on petty disputes with individuals or what looks best on your resume. Most of all, be genuine. You don’t have to sacrifice professional boundaries to not be full of $#!+.
Just like in the classroom, you don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to be sincere. Until you’ve built up a positive track record with all involved, job title alone is insufficient for securing buy in.
You may get token compliance, but genuine cooperation? Not so much.
Teachers aren’t always easy people to deal with, but then again, neither are students. That’s the gig. If you can’t be genuine about it, or you lack the necessary skills and knowledge to do more than fake it, maybe it’s not for you. There are many professions where you can rely on misdirection and obfuscation without doing any real damage, but this isn’t one of them. In short, whether you’re a superintendent, a department manager, a curriculum director, or a building principal, please take a moment and ask yourself what you’re really doing, and why.
Then ask the folks working “under” you how you could be doing it better. And mean it this time.
I teach in a district that’s had some struggles in recent years. We’re majority-minority and 100% of my kids are “free and reduced lunch” (mostly “free”). Add in eighteen months of not having real school and the fact that most of the schools feeding into mine are already under state “control” (an ironic term by any measure), and it’s easy to grow discouraged. There aren’t always those “breakthrough” moments you count on to stay motivated – personally or academically. 
We’ll soon hit a full year of trying to figure out how public education works (or doesn’t) during a pandemic. Some of the experience gained may be specific to 2020 – the social and political dynamics of which have not been even remotely encouraging (see what I did there?). I’d respectfully suggest, however, that many of the “lessons” learned along the way apply to most forms of remote, virtual, or online “education,” whatever the surrounding climate.
The centerpiece of this delusion is the conviction that THE TESTING MUST GO ON. Standardized state assessments, sketchy endeavors in the best of times, have long claimed their primary function is to “assess student learning and growth.” Supposedly the resulting numbers help direct instruction; as a bonus they can be twisted like balloon animals into some sort of marker of teacher ineffectiveness as well. (Why did you not learn them harder?!)
#2 The “Problems” With Public Education Are Huge Advantages
In districts with lots of technology and support, the twists and turns have generally gone better than in districts without. In districts where kids already had reliable internet at home and parents with basic online communication skills (the bulk of the email goes in the BODY, not the SUBJECT LINE), etc., things have been a little easier than in districts where half the kids don’t have heat – let alone reliable wi-fi.
My students are not typical of those I’ve had in the past. I’ve had plenty of diversity in my 22+ years of public education, but it’s always been just that – diversity. My current school is not particularly diverse. Sure, there’s a mix of haggard white kids and not-particularly-prosperous Hispanic students walking the halls, but by far the greatest majority of my darlings are poor, Black, and from backgrounds the rest of us might cautiously clump together as “complicated.”
For those of you new to education, there are several things you can bring up in any gathering of teachers to virtually GUARANTEE a complete and total breakdown of whatever was SUPPOSED to be happening. “So… what’s our primary goal as educators, exactly?” is a classic – both unanswerable and constantly answered poorly. “How should our honors/advanced/GT/AP classes be different than our regular/on-level/academic classes?” is another sure-fire disrupter. Oh, and I particularly enjoy overtly ethical and unavoidably emotional conundrums: “Do we really want students missing class because they’re not properly aligned with our outdated and possibly misogynistic ideas about clothing?” or “Should attendance really matter if they can demonstrate they can do the work and have mastered the skills?”
The primary criticism of the Five Paragraph Essay is that it’s stifling. Students learn to plug-n-play to fit a format without any real conviction and little actual learning. It’s barely an evolutionary step up from fill-in-the-blank worksheets. Secondary teachers and college professors alike lament their students’ inability to break free once their minds have been trapped and corrupted by this five-part infection.
I’ve previously compared writing with structure to 
I don’t belong to a particularly organized English department. There’s no time built into the weekly (or yearly) schedule for collaboration or team-building or whatever, and as of March I don’t actually know the names of everyone who teaches the same subject I do. Meetings are infrequent and informal (although there were snacks last time), and most of the teachers I actually talk to regularly are a door or two in either direction in my hallway.
Twenty years ago, I would have been intimidated by the terminology (the “scaffold,” not the “$#*&%”). I was getting by on enthusiasm and self-delusion and if I’d slowed down to think about anything too clearly, I’d have been Wile E. Coyote just after running off the cliff – he didn’t plummet until he looked down.
I don’t like to lie to my students. I try not to, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s literally required by the folks signing my paycheck, creating what we in the teaching business call “a dilemma.”
Lie #1: You can be anything you want to be if you really set your mind to it.
Lie #2: Appearance doesn’t matter – it’s only what’s inside that counts.
Lie #3: This {insert stupid required school thing, probably state-mandated, always done in the most annoying, time-consuming way possible} is very important for all these reasons we’re about to give.