State Testing: The Ultimate Solution

July 10, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 5 Comments

Oklahoma is rewriting standards for the 143rd time in the past decade – each time ‘raising the bar’ even higher than the time before, we are assured. National struggles continue over Common Core in all its manifestations and retitled remnants. Should we move to the ACT to save money? Is it better to grade writing exams with crappy software or crappy temps rounded up on Craigslist? Should we punish 3rd graders for not developing at a pace of our liking? Stop high schoolers from graduating for their test scores? Devalue teachers who take on tough classes and work in the most challenging districts? The rhetoric alone gives me a headache.

We’re can’t even agree on WHAT we should be measuring – which subjects, which skills, and at what level. Should we one day solve that (we won’t), we’ll still have to reach some sort of consensus HOW we can evaluate whatever it is with any sort of accuracy or consistency (we can’t) – and all at lowest-bidder prices.

Fear not, my Eleven Faithful Followers – for I am about to reveal to you the final truth regarding this matter. I am confident my solution is both eloquent and attainable, for that is how I roll. You might want to sit down for this.

To hell with the tests.

Seriously, $&%# ‘em. I refuse to care about them one way or the other anymore. I’m tired of watching good teachers with missionary zeal end up stressed out and derailed due to the pressure of some stupid state test and its randomly shuffled cut scores. I hereby revolt against the entire process.

Parents are already opting out in some places, and a few brave teachers in Tulsa Public have refused to administer anything they believe is bad for their kids. I applaud each and every one of them.

But what I’m instituting is more basic. Starting today, we universally refuse to worry about tests or testing. When they happen, they happen. Our kids will do well, or they won’t. Our schools will shine, or they won’t.

We must no longer give even tiny little damns.

You didn’t go to teacher school to improve test scores – none of us did. You, like the vast majority of your peers, signed up to save the world – or part of it, anyway. You became a teacher because you love kids, and history, or music, or art, or math, or literature, or some other life-altering something. You signed up because you care.

Silly idealist.

You may teach a high stakes, heavily tested subject, or something marginalized as ‘extra-curricular’. Maybe you coach, or sponsor, or organize, or publish. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just show up and teach your tired old butt off every day and that will just have to be enough.

But you signed up to make a difference. You signed up to teach kids.

So let’s teach. Let’s love our kids where they are and who they are, without concern for where they stand in relation to someone else’s legislative pablum. We’ll challenge them, and push them, and demand great things of them no matter WHAT their circumstances or gifts – but I’m no longer willing to frame anything important in terms of state standards or national goals. I’ll work for my clueless lil’ darlings, and I’ll do it because I like it. I don’t care about the rest.

So to hell with the tests.

Most of the time, if we just teach the way we know we should, the kids will do fine on the tests anyway. But even if they won’t, as soon as we begin to focus on things BECAUSE they’ll be on the test, or rush through content BECAUSE the test is coming, our priorities drift away from our calling. Testing puts us in an adversarial role towards our weaker students, and rewards ZIP codes over zeal.

Testing is anti-learning, and anti-education. It doesn’t even $#%&ing work the way they keep pretending it does.

I can’t prevent lawmakers from labeling my kids as losers, or failures, or stupid, but I don’t have to be the instrument of such blasphemy. Bill Gates may excoriate my darlings for their lack of college and career readiness while Sir Michael Barber shakes his mass-mandated little fingers at them for their reading scores or their lack of interest in Algebra II – but I don’t have to help.

I don’t have to abuse my kids to please lawmakers or publishing companies. I refuse.

My students are awesome. Some of them are lazy, but that’s fixable. Others lack certain skills or critical content knowledge, but I’ll ride their behinds until they progress. They’re amazing, even while they make me crazy. They’re perfect, even when I have to kill them dead in front of God and everyone in order to get their attention. Give me those tired, poor, muddled classes, yearning for a ‘B’.

I love them.

What will happen to my kids if they don’t pass their state tests? They might have to take them again, which kinda sucks. If not, there are a dozen alternate ways to graduate. Generally, as long as the children are suffering, hate anything involving learning or school, and replace natural belief in their own possibilities with a deep loathing towards their truest selves, the state is satisfied.

I don’t want students to go out of their way to fail the damn things, but neither will we divert meaningful time or energy into passing them – the trade-off is simply too great.

If this is a calling, then let’s do it as a calling. That’s why we put up with the crappy conditions in some places and the degrading pay in most. It’s why we’re so tired, and why it’s sometimes hard not to become jaded, or bitter, or simply give up and go through the motions.

If this is a calling, then let’s do it as a calling. Make a difference, help kids, pour yourself out in a desperate effort to light a few more fires. Look your broken ones in the eyes and tell them that the world is a liar, and that they’re amazing, and beautiful, and powerful, and smart. If you can’t – if you’re afraid because someone’s pressuring you over test scores, and that’s the priority – then why are you even here?

Seriously – go get a real job. There are better gigs. Some even pay.

Let them fire you. Fire ALL of us. Well, the good ones, at least – the ones unwilling to play that game, even a little. The ones who’ve decided to follow their calling until they’re shown the door.

Let those principals and superintendents reach out to that long line of people desperate to teach public school in Oklahoma, or Texas, or wherever you are. Around here, that line consists of something like… zero people.

OK, that’s not entirely true – there’s that pompous unshaven guy with all the degrees who spills his coffee everywhere, and that weird chick with no concept of personal space or social cues. I guess they could hire both of them. But after that, their options are pretty much exhausted.

The rest of us aren’t going to worry about the tests, no matter how many times they’re revised or how high a ‘bar’ some legislator thinks they’ve set. Our bar is higher anyway – and so much better.

If they don’t like what we’re doing, they can find someone who will cooperate. We’ll sell shoes or fix computers or work in our brother-in-law’s insurance office. More money, less stress.

To hell with your tests. I don’t care about them, and I won’t play along any more. I’ll no longer compromise my calling or my kids to cater to the rhetoric of liars and fools.

And neither should you.

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“Why Teach?” (Response to #OklaEd Blogger Challenge)

June 28, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

#OklaEd blogger extraordinaire Mindy Dennison recently issued a challenge to fellow edu-bloggers to address the question, “Why Teach?” She’s already received a dozen quality responses taking a variety of approaches – including my personal favorite so far from the Marauding Mentor. MM details many common reasons for going into teaching and finds them delusional at best before concluding – “…but we need you…”

I appreciate the many posts about how rewarding and fulfilling teaching can be. I’m thankful for so many out there who connect with, nurture, and challenge their students throughout each year. I’d have to agree that’s the primary energy on which we feed – those little moments of success, of insight, of realization. It’s not particularly selfless; it’s simply swell when you manage to say or do just the right thing to help some young person’s day suck less than it otherwise might.

It’s less swell when you fail, but still…

The biggest reason I teach is that it needs to be done, and no one else will do it. Don’t misunderstand – there are many, many people across the state and the nation teaching. Many are amazing and will never be recognized as such. Others are largely dead weight but between systemic problems and teacher shortages, we have little choice but to keep them. Most are somewhere in between, depending on circumstances, and can be good when the spirt moves or the situation promotes such. They rise and fall with the pressures of their reality.

But there aren’t enough. It’s a running joke with my superiors when I’ve yet again managed to stir someone’s pot or complicate an otherwise simple situation (I simply do NOT understand how this occurs so regularly!) that I freely submit to their wrath and invite them to start interviewing that long line of highly qualified professionals who desperately want my job.

Because no one wants it, you see. So I keep stirring. For the children.

(Actually, several probably do want my job – I have a sweet gig, teaching-wise. But they’d all be coming from other teaching positions, keeping the net shortage the same and merely shuffling the particulars.)

The fields are ripe. Teenagers are a huge pain in the ass, but they’re not all as stupid as they’d like for you to think. Many of them are quite entertaining if you let yourself see and hear them, and far more than you’d think are hungry for an adult with a reasonable sense of professional boundaries to show even token interest and affection for them.

Many have the potential to be rather smart, if driven to be so. They won’t wander there on their own, thus ruining decades of anticipation regarding the miracle of technology changing education forever as students hungrily devour knowledge according to their individual interests, but most will meander along the trail with some success if you stay focused and on your horse and have a good pedagogical cattle dog.

I kinda lost that metaphor along the way. Hopefully you get the idea.

So we teach.

I’m smart and capable enough, but not as naturally gifted as so many others who don’t even consider this as a serious career. They don’t want it, or don’t ‘get it’. So I do what I can do, and over time I’ve become reasonably good at it. I must. We must.

Because the need is great. One of my favorite posts on this topic was, of course, written by me. The Spartans at Thermopylae were outnumbered and outsupported by the Persian hordes storming their shores. But they stood in the gap for as long as they could – not from any delusion of winning, and not because they could guarantee it would change anything substantially. They did it because it was the thing to do. They couldn’t control the outcome, but they could damn sure go down swinging.

Come home with your lesson plans or on them.

I’m not comparing a little high school history teaching to the kind of dramatic sacrifice made by the 300 (of course I am), but I do believe we’re too easily distracted and derailed by talk of reform and assessment, of structure and standards. We lament funding and formats and charters and TFA and technology and teacher school and sometimes I just don’t even care about ANY of it.

What difference does it make what names, hair color, or preferred weaponry each Persian brings with them? Do we honestly believe there’s some strategic scenario in which we win? Some combination of lobbying efforts and public enlightenment that turns this one around for those in the gap? Occasionally we can sweep aside an Ephialtes or celebrate a Dienekes, but that’s not why we stay.

We teach because we believe.

Kierkegaard spoke of an essential “leap to faith,” but such terminology is a bit presumptuous, even for me. Being in Oklahoma, we could just as easily go to Scripture, where “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11.1, NIV).

Both of these capture the idea that our convictions don’t stem from having a pretty good plan. They’re not the result of measured goals or cost/benefit analysis. They’re certainly not based on having the slightest idea where we’re going or how this will turn out.That’s what makes it ‘faith’ – it’s terrifying and futile and probably wrong, but we commit as if we know know know know KNOW what we’re doing makes sense.

I teach because I choose to believe. I choose to believe in my kids and their possibilities, even as I recognize we’re going to lose some of them. Probably most of them.

But not all of them.

We must save enough to hold the gap. We teach because someone has to stand here next.

Given that we’re talking education, I should probably quote a book:

“We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it’s here. And the hour is late. And the war’s begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colours…
For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good…
Right now we have a horrible job… It’s not pleasant, but then we’re not in control, we’re the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war’s over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world.”
“Do you really think they’ll listen then?”
“If not, we’ll just have to wait… A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last.”
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

I pride myself, however, on spreading my wisdom and insights with all peoples equally – profound, and yet so very accessible. So, rather than look to Existentialism, Literature, or the Word of God, I’ll conclude with R.E.M.:

All the people gather, fly to carry each his burden – we are young, despite the years.
We are concern; we are hope despite the times.
All of a sudden, these days, happy throngs – take this joy wherever, wherever you go.

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My #OklaEd and Others Content Challenge

April 9, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Most of you are or have been classroom teachers – whether that classroom is actually in Oklahoma, in a traditional public school, or whatever. We talk policy a great deal – and rightly so. From time to time we’re inundated with pedagogy – which can be either helpful or a tad pompous depending on who’s doing the inundating. But it’s not all that common to use the wonders of the interwebs and edu-blogosphere to get all giddy sharing something content-related that gets us all tingly in our hoo-ha.

So, as I’ve been locked in eternal (well, two days) combat with the unacceptable word count of my most recent elucidation of favorite Civil War shenanigans, I thought it would be diverting as a group to share similar loves from our classrooms, our book research, or whatever. It would certainly entertain ME to hear from YOU, and it might even promote bonding and academic conversation and maybe even stir up things about this gig that DON’T make us want to take up cordless bungee-jumping.

So, here’s my challenge to each of you, whether specifically named in my Twitterpalooza when I send this out or not, AND whether you’re part of the #OklaEd world or not:

1200 words or less describing, explaining, or otherwise sharing a favorite bit of content from whatever you teach, taught, write, or otherwise shine upon the future. You may reference the pedagogy involved, but I’m not asking for teacher techniques – I’m looking for an education about a favorite book or event or equation or chemical reaction.

Talk content to me, baby. Talk content to me HARD.

Please prod me when you post so I can compile a link-list below. Bonus points for appropriate visuals, and triple dog bonus points for submissions before May 1st.

RESPONSE POST: The Grandaddy of Trig Identities! (Teaching From Here) – Scott Haselwood is a confirmed longtime #11FF and one of those rare people who make math seem possible to me – maybe even fascinating. I think it’s because he genuinely seems to love it, both as an academic exercise and as something that happens in the real world. After you check out this content post, you should follow him on the Twitter and subscribe to his blog. He writes purdy for a math fella.

RESPONSE POST: BlueCerealEducation Content Challenge (JennWillTeach) – Jenn is a charter #11FF (the kind that means she’s an original member; not the kind that makes all the public members mad by drawing away money and glory) and this response might give you some hint as to why. Rather than pick a single lesson on which to elaborate, she’s laid out several weeks of ideas by grade level, 8th – 12th. This is a woman who chose the RIGHT online moniker. Her blog is brand spankin’ new, so go give her some edu-blogger love. She’s also rather amusing and insightful and stuff on Twitter, so check her out.

RESPONSE POST: BlueCerealEducation Content Challenge – I Teach The Blues (JethroBlank) – Jed Lovejoy is a relatively new #11FF who, I’m discovering, is full of surprises. You may not think, for example, that a breakdown of the musical curriculum for a small children’s home in Tipton, OK, would be particularly fascinating reading (and some listening) – but you, like me, would be so very wrong. We should keep an eye on this guy – he might end up changing the world while we’re not paying attention.

RESPONSE POST: “Beat It” (This Teacher Sings) – Mindy Dennison gets serious about Beat vs. Meter. I’m starting to see a theme in how many of these lessons are about taking the unfamilar and connecting it to the familiar before moving into the new. Hmmm….

RESPONSE POST: Blogger Challenge & The Heartbreakers (OkEducationTruths) – Rick Cobb of the legendary OkEducationTruths starts with Tom Petty and takes kids to Wordsworth before they realize they’ve been taught. (If he’d been in charge of getting that guy to eat green eggs & ham, that whole book would have been about 3 pages long.) Turns out even the bloggers get lucky sometimes.

RESPONSE POST: Flying, Fickle Apostrophes (Debbie Matney) – Debbie is a legend in all things ELA, but she doesn’t cotton much to that ‘Twitter’ stuff or them edu-blogs. She was kind enough, however, to send one of her favorite 6th Grade ELA lessons and some student work samples. Kinda makes me want to be eleven again, just so I could have her class…

RESPONSE POST: Talkin’ Content Challenge – History Edition (Marauding Mentor) – I somehow missed this one in the original sweep, but I love the approach. And they say History Teachers just show movies…

The peer pressure is building for the rest of you. Whatcha got? Huh? HUH?!?

Talk content to me.

**If you’ve posted something in response to this and don’t see it here, please nudge me on Twitter (@BlueCerealEduc) or email ([email protected]) – My intentions are good, but my brain is old.

Defining Success (An #OklaEd Challenge)

April 1, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 3 Comments

It’s so teacher of us – a variety of challenges complete with topics and word limits have been issued to various #oklaed bloggers lately, some with DUE DATES! In other words, we’re giving each other actual assignments.

And responding, more often than not. Go figure.

All across Oklahoma, computer screens are being damaged by red pens as we forget ourselves and begin trying to mark them up before assigning grades. I’m not entirely sure if they meet whatever our state standards are this week, but I’m pretty sure OkEducationTruths in particular has remained 100% Common Core compliant throughout – so… kudos, Rick!

Rather than becoming a limitation, it’s actually quite freeing to be ‘assigned’ a topic and such. No second-guessing whether you’ve chosen the right subject matter, written too much or too little, etc. As an otherwise mess of a student told me my very first year teaching when I clearly had no idea what I was expecting on a project I’d assigned, “Sometimes fences set us free.”

Scott Haselwood of Teaching From Here recently prompted Erin Barnes of Educating Me to blog her definition of success. She did – and I was personally blown away.

That Haselwood is a slippery ol’ boy, though (he’s, um… he’s one of those ‘math’ types). When he noticed my praise of Erin’s post, this happened:

I wasn’t just being gracious about not being able to top it. It’s pretty good. Rather than try to match it on my own, I’ll do what I do in class and borrow the wisdom of others – my role being mere commentary. Because this is a blog post and I want lots of hits, I’ll also cram it into a ‘list’ format. Talk about ‘success’ – I’ll be selling ad space in no time!

(1) Success is not making things worse. This probably sounds rather negative. Perhaps it is. The thing is, we’re all so broken and careless and it’s so hard to see clearly – we wound one another constantly, in such colorful variations – commission, ommission, misunderstanding, hurt, anger, fear… success is when we don’t. Or at least when we manage to do it less.

I’m not being entirely fair – not all of you are such a mess. Some of you manage to come out on the positive side more days than not, and I’m deeply thankful for the truly complete souls in my world who pour in more than they drain out. More power to you, and thanks for not being dillweeds about it most of the time.

For the rest of us, before we can encourage, inspire, challenge, or otherwise build up those in our reach, first we must take our cue from Hippocrates and ‘do no harm.’

…They walked carefully through the china country. The little animals and all the people scampered out of their way, fearing the strangers would break them, and after an hour or so the travelers reached the other side of the country and came to another china wall… by standing upon the Lion’s back they all managed to scramble to the top. Then the Lion gathered his legs under him and jumped on the wall; but just as he jumped, he upset a china church with his tail and smashed it all to pieces.
“That was too bad,” said Dorothy, “but really I think we were lucky in not doing these little people more harm than breaking a cow’s leg and a church. They are all so brittle!”
“They are, indeed,” said the Scarecrow, “and I am thankful I am made of straw and cannot be easily damaged. There are worse things in the world than being a Scarecrow.”
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter 20)

We remember they killed the witches, but forget they took the Wizard away from a perfectly contented Emerald City before proceeding to stomp through the little china people. To their credit, they tried – but Dorothy arrived in a tornado and never really outgrew that quirk until back home and properly restrained.

(2) Success is paying attention.

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years, and the slow parade of fears without crying – now I want to understand.
I have done all that I could to see the evil and the good without hiding; you must help me if you can.
Doctor, my eyes… tell me what is wrong. Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?
(Jackson Browne, 1972)

I think the hardest thing about teaching, about marriage, about parenting, about citizenship, about socializing, cooking, fixing, feeling, running, thinking, being – is paying attention.

Always.

What’s being said, and by whom? How do they feel? What do they mean? What’s the big picture, and what really matters in this situation? What are my options – my real options?

We are creatures of habit and selective attention – a necessary development to function in a complicated and highly stimulating world. But to listen, and see, and think, and feel – that’s challenging. Somehow, though, everything important comes from there.

(3) Success is to just keep going.

You’ve probably picked up on what a downer this list seems to be. That’s not really my intent – I’m a idealist at heart. Sort of. Some days. Well… that one time.

I’ve taught some great lessons in my time, and watched some young people have some pretty impressive lightbulb moments. Not every day, though – not most days, or most kids, or most lessons. Sometimes I really step in it, saying or doing something reckless and unnecessary – which, I mean, is the same reason the good stuff works. But sometimes it doesn’t, and I hurt someone, one of my kids, or peers, or worse – I alienate them. Lose them for the light.

Other times it’s less serious – blog posts that suck, or which leave me feeling exposed in the icy silence of cyberspace (you want to crush an online voice, don’t argue or attack – just ignore. I assure you, it’s devastating.) Side projects that don’t take, or conference proposals that go nowhere, or worse – bring in two people for the day to awkwardly stumble along with me.

Sometimes it’s a marriage, or that kid you tried to raise better, or that job you lost, or that purchase you should/shoudn’t have made. That accident, that embarrassment, that stupid stupid thing you said. That emptiness you caused, or felt, or filled with all the wrong things. That sickness. That inadequacy.

We grossly underestimate the value and power of simply getting up again the next day and trying to press through one more time. You juggle, you adjust, you ponder, or sometimes you just put your head down and charge. Maybe you get closer, maybe you don’t – but, see… that’s OK. Because you’re still going.

And when you just keep going, sometimes you say the right thing at the right time in the right way. When you just keep going, sometimes you’re the one who helps someone back up, or sits with them while they can’t. When you just keep going, you sometimes get it right. You sometimes figure stuff out. You occasionally get better in one or two areas.

If you haven’t yet, then you start now. As long as you’re still going, it’s not failure. You haven’t quit.

And that makes it success.

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#OklaEd ‘King for a Day’ Submission

March 24, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 4 Comments

I must confess I like the responses so far, most of them more than whatever I’m about to say. Scott Haselwood’s is one I could particularly get behind – I was tempted to simply cut’n’paste it here and claim it was ‘group work’.

But in the interest of adding to the conversation rather than simply standing on the shoulders of giants, here are the approximately two things I’d sweepingly reform were I sovereign #oklaed ‘King for a Day’, in, um… six hunmumblemurmer or so words (hey, Common Core math). I eagerly await the letter from Congressional Republicans reminding the rest of #edreform that my efforts will probably be reversed as soon as the next ‘King for a Day’ takes office.

#1 – Eliminate the Cult of College Readiness.

Not everyone needs to go to college. Not everyone needs 4 math credits, 3 science credits, 3 history credits, etc. Sure, in an ideal universe I’d endorse every United States citizen having a comfortable familiarity with every core subject. In that ideal universe, every child can learn everything about everything in their own unique way while held to universally high standards.

But you’ve all had those conversations, sometimes in conspiratorial whispers – “look, we’re just trying to get this kid through – we’re not doing him any favors by trying to go by the book…” We constantly circumvent the system even while demanding it be reinforced, because of all of the ‘exceptions’.

Which are MOST of our kids, if we’re honest.

We juggle our convictions regarding what SHOULD happen in theory with our concerns about what’s actually GOOD for the real kids in front of us. Let’s stop.

Our terror of tracking is valid, but it’s led us to overstandardize curriculum and students in a way which is not only harmful, but doesn’t actually work. We’re hurting the top kids in various academic and ‘extra-curricular’ realms in order to pretend that if we just grunt harder, the kids who can’t or won’t engage will rise towards excellence and discover how truly fulfilling it is to argue themes in a self-selected novel.

#2 – Get rid of semesters and required cores.

Four week units, one week off between each, teacher and student-selected. Students are offered a wide range of teacher and subject options created by teachers according to their own interests and abilities, and we do our best to work in some reading, writing, and other essentials through these.

But oh! The gaps in knowledge! The missing essentials!

Have you seriously talked to a single high school student or adult ever? They’re not all emerging as Renaissance Peeps, dear – there’s little danger of things getting worse and much potential that given the choice to teach something you care about or learn something you’ve chosen from actual options… well, real education might happen.

How do we maintain ‘high standards’ while we do this? I have no idea. But if you reject it on that basis, you’ll need to first demonstrate there’s something currently successful that we’ll be losing in the effort.

#3 – Allow kids to fail.

Yeah, I don’t like it either, but the problem with eliminating failure is that success becomes impossible as well. As I type this, March Madness is killing productivity in offices across the country. For every game played, the failure rate is 50%. Given those numbers, how are all of the teams involved SO good? Excellence matters, and that requires falling short be a real possibility.

School isn’t a competitive sport, but the mechanisms necessary for dragging everyone across the finish line willingly or not prevent anyone else actually running, or falling, or getting up, or getting faster or better at anything. You cannot be both a baby and an adult effectively.

We’re stuck in our efforts to maintain the illusion we’re promoting struggle and growth while focusing most of our energy and other resources towards dragging along the least engaged portion of our populations. Not only is it disingenuous, it doesn’t work – the bottom isn’t becoming the top and the top isn’t fooled as they sink towards mediocrity, frustrated by trying to beat a game whose rules most of them recognize as well-intentioned lies.

Other Responses from #OklaEd Bloggers (Please let me know who I’ve missed):

Fourth Generation Teacher / Claudia Swisher – #oklaed Queen for a Day

OkEducationTruths / Rick Cobb – Blogging from a Prompt: If I Were King

Teaching From Here / Scott Haselwood – If I Am The #Oklaed King for a Day!

Tegan Teaches 5th – Queen for a Day!

Nicole Shobert, Thoughts and Ramblings – If I Were Queen of Education for the Day

Choosing the Road Not Taken / Shanna Mellott – Another Brick in the Wall

A View From the Edge / Rob Miller – If I Were King of #Oklaed

The Principal’s Cluttered Desk – King for a Day of #OklaEd

Thoughts on Oklahoma Education / Jason James – King for the Day