"Lady, Step Away from the Metaphor..."

I’ve always considered myself lucky that I don’t lose my composure easily; staying calm and saying reassuring things during stress frequently helps me out as a classroom teacher. (Well, most of the time...) During stressful moments, I can seem measured as long as I don’t have to create any similes or metaphors. The figurative language I create under duress always gives my anxiety away.

If I didn’t teach literature, I may have never discovered this idiosyncrasy about myself. It first came to light when I had to videotape myself student teaching back in 1993. (The tape would provide perfect fodder for a “no teacher should do that” drinking game, by the way.) The tape showcases me at twenty, standing before an eleventh grade class of twelve self-contained, I.E.P. classified boys. With my zero years experience, I made the insightful decision to teach them feminist poetry. Anne Sexton’s Transformations to be exact. (It probably doesn’t require a viewing of the tape to laugh at me.) Shockingly, the class participation part didn’t go well. I wanted my students to write a simile, and they unanimously claimed they couldn’t think of anything. “Come on! Of course you can!” I urged. “Just pick something and compare it to something else…” The tape unflinchingly records the awkward pause as I struggle to think of a simile to show how easy it can be: My eyes search the room. My mouth hangs slightly open. My hands wave vaguely in the air. “Umm. Okay, Like…like…like…Look I’m doing it right now! For example, I could say, ‘The bell went off like a bomb in my head.’ Or I could say, ‘The flag waves like a body from the gallows.’” Oy. It goes on from there, but suffice it to say that my emotional desire to run screaming from the room as I surveyed the debris of my lesson revealed itself through my similes.

I’ve tried to avoid such pitfalls with better preparation. If I want to provide examples, I write a list of innocuous comparisons ahead of time. Once I’ve taught something before, I can usually remember the examples I’ve provided in the past. And since sixteen years have passed, teaching is less stressful now that I’m more experienced. Mostly, I do okay now, but this week, I revealed too much about my state of mind again through figurative language.

My school decided to put a departmental exam on computer, and the powers that be selected my class to help pilot it. We met in a special lab, but despite lots of troubleshooting, the pilot didn’t work, and I had to move my students back to our classroom to recoup the remainder of class time. My students bubbled with the euphoria that comes from having enjoyed thirty minutes with nothing to do. We walked back into our regular classroom, and I noticed someone new in the room, a colleague stopping by for an observation. I knew these observations would happen, but I didn’t expect one on such a raucous day; cue the stress. With a deep breath, I settled down my students and started to lead a productive lesson. Things rolled along well. However, one student got out a phone and started texting. Gently, I asked the student to put it away. “Oh, absolutely,” the student said, and put the phone under the edge of the desk, proceeding to text from the lap. Since I don’t tend to blush or yell when I get stressed, I should have reached for a rote teacher phrase, like “Please put it away in your bag.” However, I foolishly reached for a metaphor: “When my husband and I agreed not to cheat on each other, we didn’t mean ‘Don’t cheat on me where I can see you.’ We meant, ‘Don’t cheat on me at all!’” Oy, again. My class blinked and then burst out laughing. “Ms. K, you’re crazy!” The student zipped the phone into a book bag pocket, and my class observer looked at me wide-eyed. My mind reeled. Had I really just compared a texting student to a cheating spouse? Sheesh. Did my unconscious mind really feel so betrayed?

Ah, well. Maybe one day I will truly feel calm in stressful situations so that even my creative mind plays along. Until then, I think I need to just step away from the figurative language when I feel my blood pressure rise.

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher

Yes, They're Watching Our Numbers--Thank Goodness!

Who are they? Our department chairs. Our deans. Our principals. Our students. Our students’ parents. According to The New York Times, New York City plans to pilot a program isolating how much teachers impact students’ standardized test scores. As in, how much does Teacher A influence scores as compared to Teacher B? As in, did I properly prepare and teach my students this year? I don’t know, Kate, let’s look at your scores. Why, look! The scores are published on the Internet! I’m impressed with the factors NYC plans to take into consideration: kids on free lunch, kids classified with special education, class size, student attendance, previous year’s scores. Of course these numbers can be skewed, but if kept in the proper narrative as NYC plans, they should be a pretty interesting number to consider. The school district swears these numbers will be one of several factors used to assess teachers, not the only factor. I say, it’s about time.

In my experience, good teachers have been using their students’ standardized test scores as a way to evaluate their own performance for years and years and years and years. If my students score below the department, district, state, or whatever average, (after considering my population’s factors like the ones listed above) I look at what I’m doing. I try new things. I consult peers and read more resources. The teachers I know who love teaching all do the same. We use these numbers as a tool to look at our teaching. My administration already knows these numbers and uses them to form opinions about me and my teaching. Informally, these numbers have already shaped my teaching career.

Formally, however, I’ve been evaluated by more mercurial measures, like how many kids wear a hat into my room. (I can get the hats off once they are in my room, but somehow, I always end up with a high percentage of students who don them in the hallway.) I always make sure to strap my share of extra-curricular service to my back, which curries favor on any yearly evaluation, but as my family responsibilities increase, I worry that not being able to sponsor clubs will impact how I’m assessed as a teacher. My experiences being observed have varied; I’ve never had a problem being observed by my subject department chair, but not all of my administrative observations have gone as I would have liked. One vice-principal would come for three or maybe even seven minutes. Sadly, I had a vice-principal tell me to write my own observation and leave it for him to sign. More egregious was the administrative observation that I had to sign my name to without fixing his sentence fragments or spelling errors.

Have I had positive observation experiences with administrators? Yes. I had a principal come watch for the entire period, script the lesson, and then spend half an hour discussing pedagogy and philosophy with me. In fact, I wept in his office over the fact that every time I managed to get mainstreamed kids up to grade level, he gave me more kids on an IEP. I felt like he heaped so many variables on me that I would never see my overall class average improve. He handed me a tissue and nodded kindly. He then told me, “Kate, you are right. However, I can’t afford to worry about your numbers if I know that your class is the optimal place I have to offer a student in my school.” I wept some more, but this time with pride, and I left his office with a better sense of the big picture with which he had to deal. So, yes, I’ve had an incredible administrative observation and evaluation, from one of the great administrators of my experience. Sometimes, though, these evaluations vary too much depending upon who does the observation. My point is that our students’ standardized test scores may be a much less subjective measure of us teachers than some of the measures used currently.

I think it will protect teachers who work well with kids but don’t stand in the fickle sunshine of administrative favor. Quite frankly, if this additional factor can get rid of the people in my school who only teach for half a class period, don’t return or evaluate written work, and gossip about students’ sexual exploits, I’m all for it. Why do we fear this so much? Aren’t we often evaluated now by popularity and cooperation more than effective teaching? If our students continually perform poorly, aren’t we obligated to look at that?

co-posted on Between Classes: Living a Balanced Life as a Quality Teacher