I just started this network for ESL and bilingual teachers because I have noticed how some of the teachers I know feel really isolated. Some are the only ESL teacher in their school, or are the only self-contained class in their grade, or for whatever other reason they feel totally alone, or feel unsure about how to handle the new and particular obstacles they’re facing this year. Bilingual teachers, too, feel like they’re a dying breed, or feel frustrated because they both feel strongly about kids learning in their first language, but torn about teaching transitional bilingual classes.  Also, I was inspired by this article in education week.

So, please join my Ning and add your thoughts, questions, ideas; share resources and connect with and inspire new teachers, or reignite veterans, or yourself!

I just started it, and would really love for it to take off as a great resource for ESL/bilingual teachers hoping to do the best for their students, grow as teachers, (including ranting and venting as needed), and to help others to do the same.

Personally, this is my third year as an ESL teacher and every year I have done something totally different! My first year, I was a push-in with grades 1, 2 and 4. Last year I had my own self-contained, multi-level third grade class and this year I have my own self-contained fifth grade full of newcomers! It’s constantly a challenge and one of the things that keeps me sane and gives me perspective is being able to commiserate and share with others in the same boat.

I am suffering from “new teacher hot flashes”. You thought they were only for menopausal women? Think again.

Last year, when I was a push-in, I relished my vacation. It was a surprise to have all this time off and not be the sole person away from the busy office.

While I’m still not used to having these breaks, instead of relaxing, now all I am doing is suddenly realizing all the things I could have brought home to do but didn’t. My day goes by, and my mind makes a mad dash to “where did I put those math tests?!” or “I should have brought home their published writing pieces!”

Sometimes the thoughts rush in just as I’m waking or falling asleep. I’m unconsciously making lists of things I need to do as soon as I get back Monday morning. It’s torture.

I didn’t plan this break very well. I kind of rushed out of the classroom to meet a friend instead of going through everything more carefully. I just imagined myself doing lesson plans and charts over the break.

I can’t even say I’m re-energizing my battery since I’ve spent the last four days recovering from a sinus infection. *sigh* At least Xmas was great!

It’s funny, the folks at Edwize recently asked what some of our new year resolutions were — I should have added “to better prepare for these holiday breaks!” Either by working harder before so I have less “new teacher hot flashes” or by actually bringing home everything I need!

Trying to generate a conversation:

Why do elementary school teachers have tenure?
Why do they deserve a level of job security most other jobs lack?
Please post your comments below.

Here are links to articles that have been feeding my own thinking on the subject (although they largely deal with higher education, which is why I feel a discussion from an elementary teacher perspective would be interesting):

Stanley Fish Underestimates Academic Freedom (from Sept. 2008)

An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom (from Nov. 2008)

Academic Freedom Is About The Task At Hand (from Dec. 2008)

The Klein Who Stole Tenure (hilarious)

In the hallway, she muttered about teachers who spend too much time cutting out elaborate bulletin-board decorations or chitchatting at “morning meetings” with their third-graders before the real work begins.

This is the problem with so many articles on education for the general public. Most everyday-readers do not know what morning meetings are, and here their purpose is compared to bulletin boards and chitchatting. Yes, it’s a throw-away quote in a sense, used to introduce the person being written about, but it invites the unknowing reader to think, “Oh, yeah, she must be a no-nonsense woman who has some good, controversial ideas I might like – that call for ‘real work’.”

The “she” in that quote is Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of Education, and the quote is from a brief piece Time magazine published on her last month, making me aware of her name and existence for the first time. And I must say, the article left me uneasy. Not simply because of Rhee’s beliefs and approaches but more so because of the article itself. Rhee is portrayed as a rebel, and her ideas are constantly pitted against teachers in an oversimplified “heroic” way.

There’s always this morality play that unfolds in articles like this – the veteran teachers who just want to love the kids and let them do arts and crafts because she instinctively knows what’s better, and the ambitious, research-focused and data-driven authority who is trying to save students from a “touchy-feely” education.

In my first read of the article, I drew the conclusion that it is the kind of philosophy she espouses that has landed so many of our public schools in this factory-producing-the-best-products approach to education that is deadening and sickening. A philosophy that demands teachers differentiate but then re-mold the students through undifferentiated standards and standardized tests that insist on and reinforce inequality and setting students up for failure. And then giving raises or pink slips to teachers based on those same test scores.

Back to the quote above. I agree that there are teachers who spend too much time on maintaining appearances and not enough time on creating challenging lessons (which requires a lot of time and effort, in my opinion), and Rhee probably agrees the problem does not rest solely on the teachers but on principals who put things like bulletin boards as a major priority on already over-taxed teachers.

However, then I began to think about students like ELLs or Non-ELL Special Ed students who have language delay issues and need exposure to oral language use. Who need the morning meeting time as a way to settle into the class that day and readjust to the classroom community they’re trying to create. Who decides how much time those kids deserve? The teacher who knows them or some outside force like Rhee that knows those kids more as numbers than individuals?

Are there unengaging teachers who are always watering things down and consciously simplifying complex material for students she/he thinks won’t “get it”? YES. But Rhee’s approach* to solving this problem is inadequate and only hurting the children – largely because the principle problem has been misidentified.

The problem is not simply bad educators. The problem is that we have seen a large shift in who makes up the student body, and their needs are very different from student bodies of the past. We are not solely teaching content anymore – we are all teaching academic language to students who are either new to the country, or who lack exposure to academic language at home.

As Rhee points out, the concept of a data-driven education is new, but how it’s being implemented is pitting teachers against research – again because teachers in and of themselves are being identified as the problem. I get the sense that, from the point of view of some veteran teachers, there always seems to be new data changing what was insisted upon before (which was based on other data or accepted ideologies), and there are teachers who are resistant to what, to them, feels like arbitrary changes. I am a new teacher and right now there are new philosophies coming into my school, changing the way our ELLs are taught. Personally, I revel in this – in learning something new and expanding my tool set because I do believe what is taught in classrooms should not be decided by one person. But I can imagine being a veteran teacher who has witnessed so many ideological shifts that it becomes to feel like a joke.

I blame this largely on the dogmatic way the research is given to teacher – it’s an approach that says, “Here – I have the new solution based on new data. Don’t think about it. Just implement it.” In some schools, like mine, this is translated into cookie-cutter lessons with cookie-cutter Teaching Points that are so far removed from what most of our students need it is comical (and bloggable ha!). Not only is the data seen as for administrators to analyze (or even people above them), and no one else (unless, of course, you have been part of an Inquiry Team – I imagine that is different), but it’s as if there is only ONE kind of data based on ONE kind of research. There is plenty of research that challenges the whole notion of standardized tests as culturally-biased, for example – which doesn’t mean, “Awww, it’s too hard for those ELLs, so we should make it easier” — NO, culturally-biased means it’s an inaccurate measure of students from other cultures (including right within our own borders). So much more can be said on this.

This is partly why, in my opinion, teaching gets reduced to a pretend-science. The practitioners are themselves not enough doing the research. Or being asked to think about the new data and techniques as researchers would. Of course, I know plenty of teachers who would say, “Don’t give me the data. Don’t lecture me. Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.” In my opinion, that reinforces the dogmatism but *shrug*. It reminds me of the kinds of activist organizations I used to volunteer with.

Here are some other choice quotes from the article:

“The thing that kills me about education is that it’s so touchy-feely,” she tells me one afternoon in her office. [...] “People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning,’” she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. “I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’ Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job.” [emphasis mine]

(This really pissed me off because it insinuates the opposition to test scores is solely based on an artsy, unchallenging approach to education and NOT based on OTHER actual research and data, which it can be.)

“Rhee is convinced that the answer to the U.S.’s education catastrophe is talent, in the form of outstanding teachers and principals.”

The ability to improve test scores is clearly not the only sign of a good teacher. But it is a relatively objective measure in an industry with precious few.

I’d like to know the reporter’s analysis of these tests’ “objectivity”.

The article then goes on to other controversial subjects like tenure, (which I will blog about later) etc. It’s really worth reading and then mentally-exploding over, as I have in this post.

*I know this may be blasphemous to many, but I am not totally against the idea of “getting rid of weak teachers”. However the definition of “weak” is often too subjective – including when “objective” data is used for witch hunts. As long as education is driven by sweeping ideological shifts, teachers deserve some kind of security in their decision-making. But they also deserve better training.

*****

In the interest of upholding research and such, here are articles that have influenced my thinking in this post:

“Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners“
-by David Freeman and Yvonne Freeman

“English Learners Reading English: What We Know, What We Need to Know“
-by Suzanne F. Peregoy and Owen F. Peregoy (Theory Into Practice, Autumn 2000)

“Necessary and Irreconcilable Differences: Paradigms within the Field of Reading“
-by Sharon Ruth Gill (Language Arts, Vol. 82, No. 3, January 2005)

“Focus On Research: Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk: Researching Oral Language in the Classroom“
- by Karen Gallas, et al (Lanuage Arts, Vol. 73, December 1996)

“Teacher-Researchers Study the Process of Synthesizing in Six Primary Classrooms“
-by Stephanie Harvey, et al (Lanuage Arts, Vol. 73, December 1996)

“Barriers to Meaningful Instruction for English Learners”
-by Lois M Meyer (Theory Into Practice, Vol. 39, Number 4, Autumn 2000)

“Who Is Given Tests in What Language by Whom, When, and Where? The Need for Probabilistic Views of Language in the Testing of English Language Learners”
-by Guillermo Solano-Flores (Educational Researcher, Vol. 37, No.4, pp. 189-199)

“Preparing Mainstream Teachers for English-Language Learners: Is Being a Good Teacher Good Enough?”
-by Ester J. de Jong and Candace A. Harper ( Teacher Education Quarterly, Mar. 2005)

And too many articles by Lilly Wong Fillmore to list

Just about the time you’ve gained a good grasp of your subject matter and your assignment’s vast scope, and your little webbed feet are kicking up a storm underwater where nobody else can see them, you’re also hit by the disturbing awareness that your job has not gotten any easier.

Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook: Embracing Your Practice