Eduholic

I know I said I could stop talking about teaching whenever I wanted to, but I never thought anybody would call me on it. Guess what? Someone did. Namely, my ever faithful editor Anthony, who has been the wind beneath my blog since I started here with “Certifiable?” in February 2006. In short, Teacher and I are breaking up.

Yes, my loyal if ever-dwindling readership, it’s sad but true. After nearly three and a half years and 137 pithy posts (67 Certifiables and 74 Eduholics, in case you've lost count-- and yes, I am obsessively poring over my own archives, which is another Sign that it's time to move on), my wide-ranging conversation on teaching and learning in my classroom and beyond is coming to a close with this, my final post for Teacher.

Before the rumor mill starts churning, let me put this out there: no one's a dumpee here. This parting of the ways is mutual. We’ve both gone through some funky changes (I went from being a teacher to an administrator; Teacher stopped publishing in hard copy), and, well, we’ve grown apart. Man, it still hurts like hell.

How did it happen, you ask? I sent Anthony a friendly email ( What’s up? How’s it going? Where’s my money?). And then he wrote back. The reply started off just like any other:

Hey Emmet. Sorry for the delay. I’m just getting back from a short vacation. Congrats on the piece in the Post. That was very nicely done.

At this point, I’m feeling good. Anthony and I have been through a lot: him hiring me when I didn't even know what a blog was, me climbing the National Board mountain for a year, him coming to speak at a class I gave on publishing… good times. Day to day, I do my thing and he does his, but he’s always been there as a reasonable sounding board. That’s why the next part kind of surprised me:

About the contract: To be honest, I’m starting to have some second thoughts about the blog. Not because of the quality of your writing but because—as I look over your posts again—I think your new career direction (including the restrictions your school places on you) has maybe taken you away from the really core teaching-and-learning issues that we try to specialize in. I think the blog has lost a teaching-related narrative or focus (as we most noticeably had, for example, with the Certifiable blog).

You know what hurt the most? He’s right.

I’ve felt for a while that Eduholic has become a donut around the hole of what I really do now, which is totally different than what I did when I was exclusively a classroom teacher. What I mean is, when something really juicy and bloggable happens in my life right now, like (and this is totally hypothetical) a kid pees in a gym locker and I get to investigate it, complete with the nurse doing a CSI impersonation with rubber gloves and a q-tip in a plastic bag… I can’t say a word. The job I do now has its own ethical imperatives, and among them is that I can’t spread sensitive dirt. I understand that completely.

Unfortunately, it eviscerates my blog. I still have my late-night Eduholic moments—plenty of 'em. But they’re all about things that I can’t talk about here. Anthony, a genuinely nice guy and always the straight shooter, put it this way:

Please don’t take this criticism personally. I think the issues I’m talking about are really a byproduct of the evolution of your career—and of the fact that you’ve been working on the blog for a long time, through a lot of changes. And to be honest again, part of reason why I’ve been thinking about these things is that I have to make some tough budgetary decisions this year.

Aha. It always comes down to that, doesn’t it. This to a guy who famously (in my own mind) said to a Post journalist, when being interviewed for a story about Natty Boards, “It’s all about the money.” And now I’ve got no bully pulpit from which to shake my fist at reporters who quote me out of context ("Stung," January 2007) not to mention any of the other educational ills I’ve railed at over the years, like Very Hard Tests ("W.W.A.T.?" March 2006), ranking High Schools ( "We Interrupt This Blog," July 2006) wonks in cubicles making policy ("Call to Fingers," June 2007), and of course, 275 ("NUKED," November, 2007).

That said, I will miss the cash, a cheap dinner out per blog post on average. Heck, I’ll miss being able to go to a legit website and see a little picture of myself on the front cover (although I had noticed, lately, Anthony, that I wasn’t on the homepage as much as I used to be. I should have seen it coming.)

Even more, I’ll miss the gun to my head. You know, the external deadline that makes me sit down every week or so and crank out a post, whether I'm feeling it that day or not. Maybe that will be this blog’s great gift, to me at least: Knowing that I can. If I sit and peck and think and follow thoughts where they lead, I can build it. Board by board, bird by bird, whatever. Thanks for that, Anthony, as much as all the rest. Fuel for all those days ahead of anonymous toil in the man zone (I think I can write a book, I think I can, I think I can…).

So what I was wondering is if, instead of keeping up the blog, you might be interested in doing some periodic freelance articles for us—directly focused on key educator career or instructional issues. We probably wouldn’t be able to pay you as much—even over time—for these pieces as we did for the blog, but it would be a way for us to maintain your ties to Teacher (which I am interested in) and might give a fresher outlet for your pieces.

God, if only all my other break ups could have been this good. Of course I’ll dance with Teacher again—it’s the one that brung me, Anthony, even before I met you. My first paid piece back in the year 2000 involved a life or death conundrum with an alligator and a kid not using an apostrophe correctly, somehow presenting an argument against the teaching of prescriptive grammar despite my own personal fond remembrances of diagramming sentences as a boy (true).

Just let me know what you think. I haven’t made any definite decisions so I am open to your ideas—e.g., if you have other ideas for recharging the blog, etc. I’ll be around all day to day if you want to talk by phone. Just give me a time and I can call you.

Hm. So if, let’s just say, I think up a really cool way to “recharge,” or, less likely, the comment box is absolutely FLOODED with emails begging me not to go, than I guess I could rethink this whole leaving thing.

Problem is, I got nothing.

I thought about writing a book without a net, live and serialized, but my almost secret agent Andrea said that would overexpose the material (like my Natty Board quest isn’t already overexposed?). Only other idea I’ve got is to end this blog with a great question, like Anthony Cody does with his well-conceived and much more interactive blog next door: What do you think? Do you have a good idea for how to energize Eduholic?

If this is, in fact, the end my friends, then so be it. No Bret Favre, I, repeatedly unretiring (come to think of it, I have retired once or twice in my career already. But this time, I really mean it.) Yep, I think it’s best to end this thing once, so that it might someday be said of my all too short a time on the Teacher stage: “Nothing in his blog became him like the leaving it.”

And just in case the last word is the one that stays with you, long after I’ve been relegated to the desolate archipelago found at all blogs> Teacher blogs> archived blogs, let me end this by saying: Thank you, Anthony. Thank you, Teacher. And thank you a million times, dear readers.

More than the chance to rant now and then, the constant opportunity to reflect on my practice, and even the self-indulgent navel-gazing, my greatest pleasure here has been the conversation we've shared. I hope I made you laugh or think, or maybe gave you an idea to use in class. I know that you were always there for me when I when I stayed up late, when I crashed and burned, and when I did good. That knowledge was what kept me coming back to this keyboard, week after week after week.

Eduholics everywhere, I'll miss you. Teach well, my friends.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 11:14 AM | Permalink | 19 Comments | Recommend

Last May I mentioned that I was about to put the finishing touches on another article for the Washington Post Magazine (“Shezzed Clean,” May 7, 2009). Well, it finally dropped. “Family Finances” came out in the Financial Issue on July 19, 2007. “As brothers, they shared a birthday and Ivy League educations,” titillates the subtitle. “Then their bank accounts parted ways.”

I am pleased to report that my brother and I are still on good terms, which seems to be everybody’s first question. He happened to be in town this weekend and there was perhaps a wee bit more tension than normal (but that may have been because I took a couple sets off him in doubles). By and large, he handled playing the foil well, and I think I fulfilled my promise to him to make sure he didn’t come off like a rich jerk.

One of my goals with this piece was to write something that wasn’t based in the classroom, although of course this was still predicated on being (paid as) an educator. I wanted to write out of my teacher box just to progress as a writer, and as a plank for my nope-not-yet book proposal.

I was gratified by the response from the reading public in the form of over forty emails which showed that I had indeed connected with noneducators on this one just as much as colleagues. Following is a sample of the responses which I am, as ever, absurdly grateful to receive, assigned to categories and lightly excerpted.

I’m (underemployed, underpaid, an educator) and I can relate:
As a 27 year educator it was a pleasure to read your article (which I didn't actually get to until Monday). My husband is in ministry and I coordinate a special education program in an elementary school. I have been in the same school for 26 of those years and find myself now working with the children of my my former students. I used to say, in our fields, we will never be "rich". Like you and your wife we juggle bills each month and I sometimes wonder if I should take my Ph.D and go somewhere else. But, each year about this time the excitement comes again, looking forward to a new school year. My mind is spinning with new ideas, ways to make things just a little better for the children and for the teachers that I work with. Yes, I am grateful for the break in the summer especially with my own child at home, But, as long as that excitement is still there, I will stay where I am and thank God for the opportunity hoping that I really am making a difference in a child's life, And, in reality, we really are "rich" in more ways than one. Your article inspires me - Thank you.

It’s a twin thing:
I wanted to let you know that I recently read your article "Family Finances" and found it refreshingly honest and effective, as well as relatable to me. I have a twin sister with whom I have shared most of my life experiences with. When it was time for college, we choose similar small liberal arts schools. We went to private high school in Kensington, Maryland - Academy of the Holy Cross - and had two other sets of girl twins in our class who both ending up going to school together. My sister and I however knew we would never go to school together - we were more then ready to start on our own lives! Anyway, we both graduated this past May. She is starting an Event Planning job in a few weeks, whereas I am headed off to graduate school in the fall for journalism. It is quite a strange feeling, as it's the first time in our lives that we are going on different paths.
I especially enjoyed your article because it speaks to the unique - parallel, competitive - relationship that twins often have (especially ones of the same gender). I realized it's the first writing I've read by a fellow twin, and I could relate with some much of what you said. Countless friends have told me that they wished they had a twin, which prompted me to write a non-fiction piece for a creative writing class that basically tried to explain to non-twins the difficultly of life as a twin. I was amazed as to how much interested the story was met with. People truly seem to be very interested in how twins live!

I liked your writing because:
Your writing is textured with thought and insight like how the best narratives in the NYTimes work. It lingers and hits home, makes the reader ask their own questions. I hear my daughters and their husbands on the cusp of these choices and, in that way, the essay is instructional.
The photos are vibrant. There are many moments--the planting of the maple tree--the runs along the river in Brooklyn (I was just in that exact area between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge). You captured it. Understatement is something you do well--the imagery and symbolism is subtle. The piece is honest and does not become the least bit polemic--instead treads the middle, peering out into both directions. It honors both paths taken.
When you write like this, bring us these considerations, you enrich our community. At a time when most of the Post is now a whiz-through paper, your writing slowed things down.

I used to teach you (your brother/your sister) in Sunday (high/grade) school:
i read your essay in the 'washington post' magazine today. i knew you became a teacher and your twin brother became a laywer. i taked very briefly to your mom about 6 months ago at a séance regarding bernie madoff at beth el and was told all four of you were doing well and I was happy to hear that. I taught you and jimmy, you may recall, after bar mitzvah and before confirmation, and taught you on the weekend so you could wrestle in high school. I know some grads of your congressional school and my god daughter is in summer camp there (perhaps you have somnething to do with that). If you would like to chew over some of the old nails from beth el, I would most enjoy doing that with you. can you break away for lunch?

Way to stick it to the man:
The score isn't tied. You win. Hands down.
My father had career like your brother's--always working, never home, and when he was home, not really there. Now in his twilight years, he once told me his only regret was that he'd missed his chance to watch us girls grow up.
You will never have to say that to your sons. And that is worth more than all the six figure salaries in the world.

Sir, you are the man:
I love the tone of the article and how evenly you present both sides of the financial equation for you and your brother.
My husband likes to describe the conundrum you're talking about as quality of life versus standard of living, but what I like about your article is that it's very clear that the issues aren't that simple.

Contributing to the demise of organized religion:
Just want you to know that I'll be late for church because I couldn't stop reading your latest. I love it!

I knew someone in your family tree:
My husband and I were most interested in your article appearing in this week's Post-- especially since he grew up in Pittsfield, MA. When I asked him if your name meant anything to him, he said your father's store was right across the street from Besse-Clark's where his Dad worked. In fact, he told me that your Dad had tried to hire his Dad, George Videll Sr., away from Besse-Clark's. I hope you occasionally spend time in Pittsfield. We thoroughly enjoy visiting cousins there, usually in the summer or during the Fall when the leafers are in town. Not much traffic and gorgeous scenery. The changes in the city over the years since GE left are rather sad. North St. not what it was.
I also enjoyed reading about your brother's place in Brooklyn, since I am originally from Jersey and am familiar with NYC. Pittsfield is not the only place that is changing.

You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine:
I have never written to a newspaper article's author before today. I just wanted you to know I enjoyed reading every word you wrote about you and your brother's lives. The fact that you were so open about your finances was wonderful. Many writers just couldn't go there.
I am a 62-yr. old housewife in idyllic Warrenton, Va. who has a sister that lives only one mile from me. She was born a preemie, expelled from school, has dyslexia and ADD and has never married.
I have taken care of her all my life. She has followed me from Michigan to Virginia, Colorado, California and back to Virginia. She treats my three children and three grandchildren as if they were her own.
Of course, I have had a more successful financial life that she has. But, she is still my sister and we have a lifetime in common. She is caring, has empathy for animals and people. All the money in the world can't purchase that!

You tell me yours and I’ll tell you my kids’ (and grandkids’):
thanks for that wonderful piece! my wife and i enjoyed it very much. i worked for VVKR Inc. (an A/E firm) in alexandria from 1972 thru 1990 and in DC from 1990 till i retired in 1996. my wife did her residency at GWU and worked in glen burnie until she retired in 1997. .. in 1973 we transferred our daughter to congressional when alexandria was going to send her from where we lived in the hamlet apts to the inner city. great school you are running there! we moved to springfield in '74 and sent our 2 daughters to FC public schools. the older one attended mt. holyoke and the younger one boston U, after high school at lake braddock.

we arrived in america as immigrants in 1965 and lived and worked in new haven and bridgeport until our move to alexandria in 1972. my wife worked as an anesthesiologist and i worked as an architect. i was the project manager of the alexandria public safety center and city jail and helped design the twin aluminum towers in rosslyn (formerly occupied by USA today). i guess we didn't do too badly. what can i say...america is a great country for immigrants...can't complain.

we have 5-year-old twin grandsons, jake and bobby, from our older daughter. the younger one lives (and is presently jobless) in boston. she refuses to work in DC because of the commute. she worked at georgetown's lombardi center for 5 years and worked at the boston medical center until last december when the BMU grants dried up and she was let go. she is pulling unemployment which should run out soon. but she'll manage. she did a stint in moldova with the peace corps. she's a big girl now. we're not worried.

your story made me wonder if jake and bobby's story will be the same as yours and jim in another 30 years. their dad, chris, was west point '88 and duke MBA. he usually regularly the boys bath time like jim and works his blueberry at home too. he is sales VP of a memphis biotech company. renee is a stay-at-home mom who plays tennis regularly with other wives in their neighborhood.

thanks again for sharing the human condition in 21st century america. who is rich and who is poor? who is happy and who is not? i have no idea. but i think i believe this:

"There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself." - Henry David Thoreau

Poor bro, my butt:
Nice read, but do u truly "know broke"?
Doubt it.
You live in a tony, mostly white enclave. You have only 2 kids, who likely attend good schools.
You r comparing urself to your bro. Wrong yardstick, Id argue. Ur still better off than most. Be grateful.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 4:14 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

So, here’s something I never did as a teacher. Today the school’s technology specialist and I joined an audio conference about how to update our school’s acceptable use policy regarding cell phones, Facebook and iPods. In other words, she and I sat around a speakerphone and listened to a 45-minute talk about technology ethics, following along on downloaded powerpoint slides.

Notwithstanding the semi-low-tech delivery on a high-tech topic, and also the possibility that we who write it may be the only ones who actually read our acceptable use policy top to bottom, this was a meaty presentation. Presenter Anthony Luscre, Director of Technology at Mogadore Local Schools, is well-versed in both practice and theory as far as using technology safely and well in public schools. (He also cites another expert, Doug Johnson.)

Some of the content was less relevant to me in an independent school (part of the reason I’m here), including the implications of federal regulations like CIPA and how to create a lawsuit-proof “chain of custody” for a confiscated cellphone using Ziploc baggies and timestamps. Much, however, was applicable to situations that I deal with on a daily basis. He summed it up under three big categories: privacy, property, and appropriate use. He also listed several areas of internet safety that are on every school’s radar these days, including “objectionable materials” and cyber-bullying.

Without dishing his intellectual property, I think I can safely share a few thoughts that stuck. One has to do with the great divide. You know, that yawning chasm between “digital natives” (our kids) and “non-natives” (us old farts). Anthony offered a way of looking at it that cut through a lot of the clutter: if something is wrong in the pre-digital world, it’s wrong in the digital world, too. Copying somebody else’s homework, saying mean things, using bad words… you can do any of these the old-fashioned way, or you can do ‘em in cyberspace. He gave us permission to apply timeless thinking to a rapidly changing world.

Another big idea was convergence. In a world where kids have iPod buds organically melded to their heads, some schools still have the word “walk man” in their handbooks (on a personal note, please ignore the vinyl collection in milk crates in my basement). These days more and more functionality is going into ever smaller boxes. A phone is also a music player and an internet surfer and a grilled cheese maker. So from now on when updating our handbooks or considering digital ethics, let’s agree to use Anthony’s all purpose term, “ECD,” or electronic communication device. And let’s also understand that our approach to technology has to be informed by solid ethical principles but at the same time fluid and adaptable to the newest trends and gizmos.

An area Anthony didn’t get to in this conference but was covered in the supporting materials is plagiarism. In the electronic age, it’s become easier than ever to cut and paste. Again, Anthony offered common sense responses that jibed with my own experience. Plagiarism, he suggests, is often the result of poor teaching. To “plagiarism-proof” assignments, teachers need to challenge students and themselves not just to collect and regurgitate facts, but instead to be creative, hands-on, and “answer real questions.” Student writing should tend to narrative more than exposition, be written for a real audience, and generated via a process that allows them to reflect on and revise products based on ongoing feedback. (My writing project sense is tingling.)

One caller asked during the q and a at the end if restricting technology was an appropriate consequence for abuse, also begging a larger question: Is access to technology in school a privilege or a right? We who mete out justice often claim that it’s a privilege, hence revocable when abused. But as online work is increasingly woven into the fabric of classroom instruction, at what point is technology no longer a privilege but a fundamental necessity, like pencil and paper? In pre-digital terms, would we yank a kid’s text book if he doodled in the margins?

Other questions were more situation-specific, raising just a few of the gajillion new problems schools face today: If a teacher gets filmed by a kid with a phone and ends up on Youtube, what can be done? If there’s a fight in school that was the result of cyberbullying, can the investigation include Facebook? I was left with the feeling that there are so many possibilities it is impossible to anticipate them all. In fashioning our AUP’s, we really do need to boldly go where no schools have gone before.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 9:09 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Never thought I’d be starting a blog post with that title on Monday, June 29. But here it is, 12:28 in the AM, and once again I’ve woken up in the middle of the night with back to school jitters. Only this time, it’s summer school—sort of—and instead of teaching it, I’m running it.

Tomorrow marks the first day ever of academic summer classes at Congressional, a brand new program I’ve conceived and implemented (with a little help from my friends, as usual) which features challenging, ungraded enrichment courses taught by certified teachers.

The classes this session are: Math Lab, for kids from 1st to 9th grade featuring tutoring by TJ students; Story World, language arts enrichment for 2nd and 3rd graders; Rockets and Robots, where 4th graders including my own son get to play some hands on science; and Literature for Muggles, a class for middle schoolers who love Harry Potter. Courses in future sessions include writer’s workshop, Spanish immersion, and reading readiness for munchkins.

This isn’t the first summer program I’ve imagineered. I started a camp up at another private school two teaching gigs back (before TJ I spent a couple years at Alexandria Country Day School), and before that ran a walk-paddle-bike trip called “Potowmack Discovery” along a local stretch of the river (the extra letters are historical). But this is the first that is exclusively academic in nature. And there are a couple significant features I just have to brag about.

One, no grades. Gasp. That’s right, not a single percent, signifying letter or other abstract summary of a kid’s ability/performance/cut of jib/etc to be found in these classes. As a teacher I have always had mixed feelings at best about the efficacy of the extrinsic reward system that is as much a part of school as summer vacation (also needs to go, but I’ll rant about that some other time). Since they finally asked me, I chucked ‘em.

Here’s a prediction: even without grades, kids will learn. And teachers will be able to “control” their classes. And parents will be happy. Of course, we do plan to send home narratives at the end of each two-week session, with detailed description of course content including skills and essential concepts, featuring anecdotes and observations about each child. Imagine that: assessment that treats each student as an individual learner. Regasp.

Another cool aspect of this program is that it is designed within the context of our already existing mega-camp. Congo Camp is a wonder to behold: hundreds of children descend on our forty acre campus to ride horses, swim in the pool, zip in the trees, arch… you know, all the stuff that makes camp cool, and you don’t even have to sleep over. Dozens upon dozens of unfailingly cheerful blue-shirted staffers take care of all these bodies, communicating on radios and governed by elaborate color-coded schedules that look like they were created by Mondrian on speed. Nesting half day classes within the moving parts of camp was both a challenge and a necessity.

The trick for me now will be keeping track of my forty-four students amongst the 400 or more that will be running around camp this session. The campers will all be clad in lime green or orange t-shirts festooned with turtles; my kids will be the ones in civvies clutching pencils (except the ones that are only with me for a half a day, and then go to or come from camp, who will be wearing t-shirts and clutching pencils). After months of planning and preparation, it all comes down to counting noses.

“Camp Brain” will help with that. This old dog learned a new database, though I claim only basic facility with this software (the registrar works it like he’s driving a Ferrari in LA traffic). Another secret weapon is my girl Friday, in this case a UVA second-year named Casey, who has worked camp before and can walkie-talkie her way around both camp and campus blindfolded (she’s a grad of both CSOV and TJ, to boot).

The heart of it all, of course, will be what happens in the classroom. And while I have faith that my hand-picked staff will offer great classes, and have worked with them along the way to make sure that they do, there’s still going to be a twinge at 9 AM when their doors shut and I’m on the outside, clutching my clip board, looking in.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 1:45 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Here’s some stuff I’ll remember from my Father’s Day weekend:

Getting almost five-year old Will an early birthday present of a new fishing rod and, on the very first cast into not so picturesque but close enough 4-Mile Run, catching a bass.

End of little league season trip to National’s Park on a rainy Saturday morning where a few dozen kids sit in the dugout, throw pitches in the bullpen, take swings in the batting cages and get free hats, hotdogs, and tickets.

At the swimming pool where I grew up a few decades ago, now watching my own kids splash in the water, enjoying a Belgian beer at a table in the corner where there’s a pleasant breeze.

A card by Jack with his best cursive on kid’s handwriting paper with the dotted blue line in the middle to show the height of lower case letters, using “you’re” correctly as in, “I think you’re the best.”

Putting together five decent shots in a row to make par on one of nine holes on a windswept hilltop course that reminded my brother-in-law’s dad of Cape Cod.

Stopping by my parents’ house for a father’s day lunch of Balducci sandwiches and frozen custard from the best place in the neighborhood (even the President goes to the Dairy Godmother).

While he shuffles out to the back yard patio, Dad’s legs kicking crazily from the Parkinson’s, as if some twisted puppeteer has taken them over and is amusing himself by fastforwarding the controls.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend