Thoughts on the End of the Year June 25, 2008
Posted by timschlosser in Uncategorized.2 comments
June brought my second year of teaching to an end. I faced a complicated conundrum: how to process my experience of 180 school days with over 180 students and lend it meaning. Depending on my mood, it seems that I can take a number of different perspectives on the year:
1) The Relativist: It was much better than my first year. Nowhere near the number of discipline problems, more of my kids were positive about my classes, and the school year didn’t leave me feeling like I’d just been run down by an 18-wheeler (maybe just a Prius).
2) The Reasonable Pessimist: The year did not meet my high expectations for it. A few students failed my class throughout the entire year, never putting forth even the minimal effort necessary to rise above the sixty-percent mark. I should have been able to motivate those students to at least try.
3) The Über-Pessimist: I think about the many students who have drifted in and out of my classes without learning a thing, and the nasty notes that a few anonymous middle school boys have left in my “comments” box (“you suck!”), and I wonder why I ever had any interest in such an emotionally exhausting, under-paid, and ultimately futile profession.
4) The Reasonable Optimist: In their end of the year surveys, the overwhelming majority of students said my class was one of their favorites and that they hoped to have me next year. On average, testing data shows solid growth across the board for all students. I have taken my kids on a wide variety of field trips, and I put a lot of after-hours work into planning learning experiences for them. Though it has been challenging, I usually enjoy my job.
5) The Über-Optimist: Looking over the comments from students in my yearbook (“You’re the best English teacher I’ve had,” “You rock!” “You should never stop teaching English!”), I’m pretty sure I must be a teaching phenomenon. If I keep on improving at this rate, I’m sure they will appoint me to some kind of Super Teacher Commission that has conferences at luxurious hotels and enjoys warm cookies served on white cloth napkins during lunch breaks.
Each of these perspectives is rooted in facts about my second year of teaching—that is, each is a conclusion that I could choose to draw on the basis of my experiences. We all struggle to process and characterize our experiences, yet the ways in which we choose to look back on the past do nothing to change it. Nonetheless, I have tried to focus on the “reasonable optimist” perspective because I think that in choosing a perspective from which to view the past, I’m choosing who I want to become. I am aware of this as a conscious decision, a choice to focus on some facts to the neglect of others. After thorough reflection, though, optimism also seems to be the most rational approach, the one that strikes nearest to the truth. I felt good about my classes and so did most of my students, so why linger on the negative? Some failure comes with the territory. Striving to improve at teaching is no different from striving to improve at playing baseball or at maintaining a relationship: it is important to look at your failures closely if you want to learn from them. For me, the most difficult part has been remembering to look, not linger.
On the Picket Line June 8, 2008
Posted by timschlosser in Uncategorized.2 comments
I consider myself a socially conscious, politically active young teacher, so it may steem strange that I wasn’t looking forward to protesting the governor’s budget cuts last Friday. I drove to school that morning in my red United Teachers of Los Angeles T-shirt, ready to do my union duty but feeling like a hypocrite.
I think UTLA has a necessary role to play in our schools. However, I also think that it is at least partly responsible for the poor quality of education endured by LAUSD’s 694,000-plus students. It’s a problem for schools nationwide: because of the union’s strength, it is almost impossible to fire teachers for incompetence. LAUSD teachers are paid primarily according to the number of years they have been with the district, and tenured teachers at some schools are free to belittle and ignore their students without repercussions. Many tenured teachers are wonderful, of course, but the union sometimes acts as an enabler for the exceptions.
Driving to the school that morning, I thought about the union’s claim that the demonstrations were “for the kids of L.A.”—though we all knew that they were planned as a “shot across the bow” (in the words of our union rep.) to protect jobs. I wondered if our union’s leadership (which is not comprised of teachers) thinks about the kids of L.A. as much as it thinks about the union dues it will lose when the district starts cutting positions.
Such were my cynical musings—before I actually arrived at school. Then I saw the whistles, bull horns, and signs (Arnold: Don’t Terminate our Students’ Futures!). I saw our school’s teachers laughing, cheering, and acting like big family at Fourth of July picnic. I saw the outpouring of support from parents and students as they arrived at school: blaring horns, high-fives, and thumbs-up. One mother stopped traffic to ask for a sign to stick to her car. For that hour, petty squabbles among our teachers and staff seemed to evaporate, and our voices sounded in unison: “No Budget Cuts! No Budget Cuts!”
Maybe our schools do need strong leadership more than money. And maybe UTLA does bear some responsibility for LAUSD’s persistent problems. But the fact remains that these cuts will hurt kids. Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting the state’s education budget by 4.8 billion dollars. According to a nonpartisan watchdog group, Edsource, this means $750 less per K-12 student. The district may have to increase class sizes and cut funding for field trips, electives, and professional development. Our students should not be punished for our legislature’s inability to balance a budget, or for our governor’s dogmatic unwillingness to raise taxes. They deserve better, and regardless of its motives, the teacher’s union stood up and said so. In this case, I’m glad I stood with them.
