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From the desk of Hobo Teacher comes this tale of well-intentioned leadership programs gone wrong. Apparently, Hobo Teacher's school participates in the Baron Advisory Program, a series of occasional lessons that are supposed to impart students with non-academic interpersonal skills. So the teachers got together to do a dry run of the week's BAP activity ... which turned out to involve taping paper plates to one another's backs and using markers to write compliments on said plates. But since the teachers involved didn't know each other, consider some of the resulting "compliments":

"One time you held a door open for me. I think."

"You're using a yellow marker. It's pretty."

"Cindy, I thought your name was Mindy."

So what did Hobo Teacher get out of this exercise? The perspective to know that he'd better come up with a pretty good answer for when his students inevitably ask "Why are we doing this?"

Posted by at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Teaching in the 408's TMAO thinks that teacher training has suffered under NCLB:

... the timelines for meeting so-called "highly qualified" status are such that more and more universities transformed into certification factories, churning out highly qualified teachers the way a South East Asian factory produces plastic toys. I should know: I got my credential from one such place.

To fix the problem, TMAO says, ed schools must move away from a linear teacher-preparation system and instead use a two-tiered system. His ideal plan would involve one year of teaching, then a year out of the classroom doing content-specific degree requirements, followed by another year of in-classroom teaching. But, in TMAO's opinion, the most important goal of teacher prep should involve attitude:

In the end though, the most valuable knowledge ed schools and certification programs could instill is the fact that as a teacher it is your responsibility to promote student achievement, and any failure to do so is your failure. It's not the fault of parents, young people, society, Grand Theft Auto: San Andres, neo-conservative economic policies, peer pressure, the events that occurred last week at the corner liquor store, or myspace. As a teacher you are more powerful than any of those things, and it's high time to start acting like it.

Posted by at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Elementaryhistoryteacher writes poignantly of her memories of September 11, and her most "rambunctious" student, T., tardy that morning, who burst into class with the news that a plane had crashed and that New York City was "on fire."

She continues:

I walked over to the television, hit the on button and switched the channel to CNN ... the only 24-hour new channel our school could get at the time. The image hit me like a ton of bricks. ...“Oh my gosh, T. You’re right.” I said as I backed up from the screen. The room got very still and we listened to the announcer. It was still early enough that both towers were still standing.

But, when she stepped out of the room for a minute to talk with her teacher partner, the first tower fell.

I walked over to the set at the same time my vice principal came into my room. She smiled and motioned to the television and said, “Turn it off.” ... We both knew this wasn’t the same thing as our first walk on the Moon or MLK’s funeral. Our students didn’t need to see anymore unfolding events. Luckily they didn’t see any bodies falling from the sky and they had not yet begun to show footage of the plane flying into the tower and the resulting explosion.

And then, Elementaryhistoryteacher reacted like anyone would:

I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. I wanted to get my purse and go get my [own} kids. I wanted my husband. I wanted my mother and father. I couldn’t. I was the teacher. I was the adult in charge. I couldn’t let them see me upset. I had to turn off the television and get on with our day.

It's a vivid reminder of the emotional burden placed on teachers. We expect almost superhuman reactions in times of crisis.

Someone oughta write a book.

Posted by Jeanne McCann at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

In a reflection on the first two weeks of school, Fred the Fish of Are We Doing Anything Today? notes that she made some beginning-of-the-year phone calls to the parents of students who had neglected an early assignment. Her husband, she shares, then formulated a helpful taxonomy of parent types:

After describing the calls to my husband he commented that, to him, there appear to be two classes of parents. Those who side with the teacher to support the kid, and those who side with the kid against the teacher. One could argue there is a third group of parents who try to side with the parent [teacher?] against the kid. I had one of each of those calls with the girls ... one parent saying thank you and we'll work on it this weekend, and the other saying she worked really hard and must have fallen asleep.

Not to be discouraged, however, Fred concludes with some constructive tips on the art of the parent phone call:

Parents and the politics of the parent call can be tricky but being prepared and positive (and talking to the parents early in the year, before the kids are having problems!) goes a long way to having a good, constructive relationship with them.

Posted by at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite her enthusiasm for her new school, Sam of Clean Up On Aisle Life says that, a couple of days ago, she had what we imagine is a fairly typical teacher-anxiety dream for this time of year:

[I] woke up from a nightmare about the first day of school in which I got into a huge argument with another teacher in front of my students AND lost my hyper-organized First Day Folder.

Later she wonders: “Will I always have this anxiety the night before the first day back?”

To judge from the experiences of Mrs. Ris of Mentor Matters, a veteran special education teacher, the answer is, guess not. Mrs. Ris notes that she did some first-day planning last night, but that mostly she's been taking it pretty easy:

I made the choice to forget all about school throughout the weekend. And that's exactly what I did. No thoughts of morning arrival routines, early assessment activities, playground rules, and singing new songs. Instead, college football, dinners out, visits with my daughter, … and pony-sized Coronas took center stage.

Hmm, college football and Coronas: Now that's our kind of preparation.

Posted by at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)