Don’t Waste my Time: Seeking out Meaningful Professional Development

 I’ve been teaching for about five years and I can count the number of meaningful district-run professional development opportunities I’ve had in that time on one hand. It’s not for lack of trying on my part. I regularly scour the “PD Planner” on SchoolNet.  I’ve gone to schools all over the city to attend workshops and classes on a ton of topics, but by and large, they’ve been busts.  Fed up with District offerings, I broadened my search.  Using my newly formed PLN (I joined twitter last June and have found it to be an invaluable professional resource… check me out @MrTeachPhilly), I started seeking out different opportunities.  Below are some of the resources that I found: 

#engchat  -  This hashtag was the reason that I joined Twitter in the first place.  I read an article about a teacher in Philly who started a weekly Twitter chat for English teachers and how quickly it had grown. I thought I’d give it a try.  The first time I tuned in, I just “lurked”.  I tried to join the conversation, but it seemed to move too quickly and I didn’t yet understand Twitter.  After a few weeks of slowly breaking in, I now look forward to #engchat every Monday night.  There’s always an engaging topic and a great group of educators from all over the country who contribute. I’ve gotten some wonderful resources and inspiration from these folks. Not an English teacher? No problem.  There are tons of #chats for different subjects and levels. 

Educon 2.5   -  Educon is another opportunity that I learned about through Twitter (and felt foolish for not knowing about before).  It’s a conference that takes place every year in Philadelphia at Science Leadership Academy (SLA).  SLA is one of the District’s “special-admit” schools and exists in partnership with the Franklin Institute.  The conference is put together by the school’s dynamic staff and students led by Principal Chris Lehmann.  The theme changes each year, but the focus is always on building connections, transforming learning & instruction, utilizing technology, and cultivating inquiry.  Workshops are led by educators, entrepreneurs, techno-folks, and various others involved with education across the country.  More than anything, Educon is about conversation and learning from one another.  

 

In addition to great speakers, including the always powerful Salome Thomas-El whose words had me ready to walk out of there and start my own school, I attended 6 workshops on a wide range of topics including Fostering student voice, What does a 21^st century classroom look like?, Spoken word poetry, Cultivating the “ethic of care”, Students’ lives outside of school, and Pushing back against high stakes testing. 

Though I really encourage folks to come check out Educon 2.6 next year, there are experiences like this in cities across the country. Sure I had to sacrifice a weekend and a few dollars to attend Educon, but many of the workshops, panels, and conversations were the breath of fresh air that I needed half-way through the school year. 

PhilaSoup  -  Professional development absolutely does not have to be based in instruction and it certainly doesn’t have to place in school.  PhilaSoup is part of a growing “-soup” movement where people concerned about a particular issue get together to discuss innovative ideas and share a meal (in this case, soup).  PhilaSoup takes place once a month at different locations around the city.  Educators and education-supporters pay $10 at the door then eat delicious homemade soup and talk informally before listening to four short presentations, each by a teacher who has an innovative idea for their classroom.  After hearing the ideas, everyone votes for the project they like best and at the end of the night, the winner gets a grant (the money from the door).  The dinners have been a great way for my fiancé (also a teacher) and me to get to know other teachers from all over the city and to support great teachers directly. 

TAGPhilly & ItAGs   -  The Philadelphia Teacher Action Group has a ton of great opportunities for teachers and other folks who support education. Recently they started this year’s ItAGs(Inquiry to Action Group) and I’m really excited to be participating in one on Project Based Learning.  These groups meet for six weeks around a common topic or idea.  They are not classes led by an “expert” (though the facilitators are exceptionally qualified). The idea is to participate in genuine inquiry about a specific topic, collaborate with like-minded peers, and bring the topic back to your classroom.  The groups are free and completely voluntary.  

This is the epitome of professional development.  A group of teachers united by a common interest or objective collaborating, raising questions and concerns, and working better understand a pedagogical practice.  It is a sustained effort that can be tailored for each individual educator.  There is no reason that school districts couldn’t co-opt this ItAG model for professional development.  In fact, they’d save a ton of money on “so-called experts” who come in to do their stock workshops and peddle their books…

Teachers Lead Philly  -   Another great network of teacher-leaders in the Philadelphia area.  This year, I’ve been to two TLP meetings (both of which included a meal… a nice bonus at the end of a long school day) and I left each one feeling a new level of motivation and energy.  The first meeting was about teacher cross-visitation and observation and the other was about teacher evaluations.  Both meetings were very well facilitated, with short information/ overview sessions and ample opportunity for collaboration and discussion.  This type of PD is a great step toward empowering teachers as professionals and encouraging individual and collective development. 

Reflective Teacher Network   -   Like the ItAGs, the Reflective Teacher Network is a group of teachers that get together to engage in genuine inquiry.  In this case, the meetings are once a month and they’re focused on reflective practices, something that is absent in too many teachers’ lives.  In small groups of three of four, teachers work together to discuss and address challenges in their individual classrooms.  The focus is on shared experience as well as action through inquiry.  I’ve had a great experience with RTN as it brings a great new perspective to specific issues that I struggle with everyday.  Other teachers helped me work through struggles with truancy, differentiation, and a number of specific student concerns. 

                                                                                                                                         

I have gained more from these professional development opportunities in the last 6 months than I did from four years of district-presented PDs that probably cost more and were facilitated by “experts”. There are many aspects of these resources that make them fundamentally different from what I have experienced as PD in the past and maybe things like PhilaSoup and #engchat don’t fit into the traditional PD category, but I think that’s the point.  Why so many schools cling to the “sit and get” model of professional development is beyond me. 

My wonderful and talented fiancé (who teaches 4th grade) and I were talking about the nature of professional development the other night.  She was preparing to lead a PD workshop for her peers the following afternoon and was lamenting the fact that she was required to make a PowerPoint and have a Do Now for her colleagues. “Why can’t we just have a discussion? We’re colleagues and peers, we should just be able to come together and discuss pedagogy,” she bemoaned. 

I couldn’t agree more.  Too much professional development is pitched as “Here’s how you              “ when it should be “Let’s discuss or collaborate on                  “.  This shift isn’t easy, I’ll be the first to admit it.  Workshops where we work together to address a deeper issue or collaborate about pedagogy are much involved and tiring.  There are certainly times when I’ve welcomed the opportunity to sit in a room, turn off my brain and listen to someone else talk for an hour, but just as we know our kids don’t learn much that way, neither do we. 

As professionals, we need to call for and seek out meaningful opportunities to develop and collaborate with one another.  We all know teaching can be isolating and it’s easy to get wrapped up in our own classrooms.  But to do better for our students and keep our own creativity (and sanity) we need to reach out. 

Jon Stewart Exposes the Hypocrisy of Rhee & Students First

“Radical” Michelle Rhee has been on a real PR push leading up to and immediately following the release of her new book Radical: Fighting to Put Students First.  She’s speaking at the Free Library of Philadelphia tonight to a sold-out crowd who will no doubt eat up each vague generalization that she makes about teachers and students and every misguided assertion about how to reform education that she spews.

And who can blame this audience for their acceptance of and even reverence for her words? She’s an intelligent, well-spoken woman with a compelling narrative, who presents herself as an expert on the shortfalls of urban schools.  However, what makes her so compelling to so many people is that unlike many educational historians and scholars, she doesn’t get caught up in all the messy talk about poverty, funding, and lack of resources and instead proposes a “solution”.  She is also quick to point out the people get in the way of her “solution”. Her appeal stems from her ability to lay out educational reform as a binary - either you are a Reformer who puts students first or you are Anti-reform and don't care what's best for children.  

I have written before about Michelle Rhee and how there was a time when I too thought, “hey, at least she’s doing something”.  It wasn’t until I started working and living in an urban district and researching urban education that I realized the systemic and intractable forces at work in large city schools.  Putting aside the DC cheating scandal and Students First’s political ties & support, I see Ms. Rhee’s reform agenda as being terribly short-sighted and ignorant of the inequities and realities that will continue to plague urban districts if they aren’t addressed at a systemic level. 

This came to the forefront in her interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show on Monday night.  Say what you will about the biases and leanings of Jon Stewart or the fact that his show is preceded by some of the dumbest programming on television (though for some reason I find Workaholics to be hilarious), he did what interviewers almost never do when sitting across from Michelle Rhee: challenge her. 

At first, after watching the five minutes or so that aired on TV, I was concerned that this was going to be just another venue for her to push the message that she’s the only one out there who really cares, she’s putting students’ interests first, blah, blah, blah.  She made her typical statements like, “If bringing common sense to a dysfunctional system makes me radical, then I guess I am and maybe more people should be radical” and “I come from teachers, that’s why I have an incredible regard for what they can do”.  Too many so-called reformers get away with making empty statements like these.  It’s like saying, “I spend time around doctors and I know they work hard, so I can tell them how to best perform surgery” or “I’ve been going to the dentist all my life, so I’m an expert of orthodontia”. 

 

But Jon Stewart came through for me in a big way.  Towards the end of the broadcasted portion of the interview and certainly in the extended version posted online, he did a powerful job pushing her to be specific and addressed much of what her "brand" of reform ignores. 

In one exchange Rhee referred to teachers as the greatest tool to improving student achievement.  Stewart replied, “That’s true, but teachers are the only tool that gets yelled at.  Teachers are the only tool we look at and say ‘fix it or you’re fired’”.  Stewart’s response demonstrates the inherent hypocrisy and disconnect in the corporate reform model.  You can’t argue that on one hand teachers are the greatest tools to improving achievement and have the greatest impact and need to be supported, but then on the other hand portray them as lazy and needing to be threatened into doing their jobs.  Corporate reform seems to have a paradoxical view of teachers as incredibly powerful and important, but ultimately inept. 

Stewart also pushed her to address some of the social and environmental realities facing urban schools. 

She replied: “Does poverty matter? Absolutely. I mean that makes it much more challenging… To escape poverty, we know the best way to do that is through education”.   

Stewart offered a simple but powerful reply, “Education can only take root if the soil is fertile”

This short exchange gets to the heart of what’s absent in her reform agenda: the structural forces that have a profound effect on academic and educational success. Yes, in a perfect world all the social programs would work together and every student would get the support they need so schools can focus all their efforts on academic success (actually, I’m not so sure that’s my idea of a perfect school… but anyway). Those in schools everyday know that’s not the reality , especially not in urban schools.  Students are hungry, they’re homeless, they’ve experienced major trauma, they’re sick, they have emotional or behavioral disorders, or they have undocumented learning disabilities. To ignore these realities is hardly putting students first. In fact, to expect a child who is hungry or in extreme emotional distress to sit through a two-hour math lesson or to take a standardized test seems cruel and unrealistic.  

Near the end of the interview the two have another great exchange that I’d like to highlight:

     Stewart: Have we abandoned the model of public schooling?  Especially in urban environments

     Rhee: No family should feel like they’re trapped in a failing school

     Stewart: Doesn’t public school become a repository for worst, most troublesome students?...

     Stewart: Your solution is if a school is failing, why not give students an alternative that works. But if you know how to create an alternative that works, why not offer that to the entire system and address the larger problems?

What Jon Stewart is pointing out is one of the major holes in the corporate reform movement: it focuses so much on individual schools and eliminating bureaucracy (which I will admit is exhausting), that it ignores the need for systemic change and even ignores the need for a system at all.   

Further, this whole reform ideology relies on “FAILING schools” to demonstrate the need for charters & vouchers so they can  swoop in and save the day.  It’s like waiting for a person to drown before you throw them a life preserver.  If reformers like Rhee have the solution, why aren’t they sharing it or putting it out there? Why are they sitting back and waiting for more and more students and schools to drown?  

This question harkens back to Diane Ravich’s “challenge” to KIPP to take over an entire district.  Her argument was, if you are having so much more success than the public schools and your model is so groundbreaking, let’s see it in practice.  Take over a district and show them how it’s done.  Of course, KIPP’s reply was essentially ‘that’s not what we do’.  

Rhee tried to wrap up by casting herself as a savior who’s not only putting students first, but also trying to support teachers (though she’s been pretty clear that if you recognize teachers’ needs, you aren’t putting “students first”). Fortunately, Jon Stewart refuses to let her use his show as a soapbox. 

     Rhee: We need to free teachers to be innovative & respond to students’ needs. This dysfunctional bureaucracy that’s driven by these antiquated policies.  Let’s change the laws and policies so they don’t stymie the educators into having to do things in a certain way. Let’s free them up to be able to do what they know is right for kids.

     Stewart: But isn’t that the antithesis of the testing regime?

     Rhee: No. We must have measures by which we understand whether or not kids are learning appropriately. 

     Stewart: The entire system of that metric is somewhat broken.

     Rhee: We should be always working towards finding better assessments.

                                                                                                                                              

So there you have it.  Apparently fixing our education system is that easy:

 - Ignore students’ realities

 - Label & close schools

 - Open new schools that can remove “problem students”

 - Test the hell out of kids

 - Vilify, intimidate, and terrify teachers

 - Make them compete for what slim resources remain

 - Tell anyone who doesn’t agree with you that they are selfish and don’t put “students first”

 - Write solipsistic memoir

 - Collect a big fat paycheck & look for a fancy private school for your own children

Urban Teaching and Juvenile Justice OR Why I have 8 probation officers’ numbers in my phone

 When I started teaching, I had no interest or background in the juvenile justice system. The fact that it might one day be incredibly relevant to my work in education was not even on my radar, but here I sit nearly 5 years later with no fewer than 8 probation officers in my cell phone. 

The reality of teaching in an urban environment (especially at an alternative school) is that nearly 75% of my students are in some way involved with the juvenile or adult justice system.  With the move toward a more “policed” school environment across the country, it’s a safe bet that this percentage will grow.  I think it’s crucial for educators to understand how this system functions and what we can do to support (and modify) it to better serve our students. 

I am the first to admit that I was blissfully naïve about juvenile justice when I first entered the classroom.  I didn’t know what “placement” was.  I thought probation and parole were synonyms. And when one of my students was out for a few days and a girl in the class said, “Oh he’s up State Road”.  I thought she meant that he’d moved [State Road is the location of one of the prisons that serves Philadelphia County]. 

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been working to better educate myself about the juvenile justice system both in Philadelphia and nation-wide.  I think it is as important to understand it from a structural standpoint, as it is to recognize the profound effects it has on my students socially, academically, and emotionally. 

 While there is no substitute for observing and talking to those intimately involved in the court system, two books have given me great insight into the structural side of the justice system. Steve Borgia’s Courtroom 302 explores the “justice machine” from a variety of view points within one of the busiest felony court houses in America.  His observations set a great framework for deeper exploration of the effects of these experiences.  Edward Humes’ No Matter How Loud I Shout delves even deeper, focusing specifically on the juvenile justice system.  From Humes, we hear about the daunting task that is juvenile justice - both some of the successes and the utter failures.  His text truly opened my eyes to the paradoxical struggle that is juvenile justice. 

Though my initial goal was just to have a context for the experiences facing many of my students, I came to realize that there is a whole social and emotional side to experiencing the justice system.  Mark Salzman explores much of this in True Notebooks: A writer’s year in juvenile hall.  Through student writing, Salzman finds that at the heart of all offenders, no matter how brutal their offense, is a story and a voice.  Further, he drives home the point that these are still kids, despite their very adult crimes and experiences. 

The final text that really shaped my views on juvenile justice is John Aarons, Lisa Smith, and Linda Wagner’s Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a failing system.  Beginning with testimonials and interviews from offenders, advocates, police officers, lawyers, and parole officers, Aarons and friends address the question of whether we should be “soft on crime, using treatment-oriented responses” or “hard on crime using corrections responses”. In the second half of the text they offer their solution, “The answer is neither. It is more effective to be smart on crime” (163).  They suggest that successful treatment programs must “provide the right services to the right kids at the right time” (147). [certainly no easy task]. 

They explain that these programs must:

 - Pay attention to their thoughts and feelings

 - recognize how those thoughts and feelings lead to negative behavior

 - use new thinking to reduce risk

 - practice, practice, and practice those new thinking and behavior skills (180)

Now, to the question: What does this have to do with the classroom/ schools/ education?

Well, I think that it better equips me to recognize and serve the needs of my students.  By no means do I think that reading a couple of books makes me an expert [or even a novice] on crime, policing, law or juvenile justice, but I am certainly better informed to engage my students. I want to be able to have real conversations with my students and I feel better equipped to do so when I have a context for what they’re talking about or going through.  Of course, everyone’s experience is different, but having a handle on the language of the justice system helps me support my students.

Further, knowing a bit about the system helps me seek out allies and serve as a better ally for my students.  I have a better handle on the things that probation and parole officers are looking for and the scope of what they are able to do.  I recognize the power that a portfolio full of work [or not full of work] or a strong recommendation can have on a judge’s decision.

Finally, it helps me better structure my classes and objectives to serve the “whole” student.  Though my school is not a “placement” or disciplinary program, we serve many students who have just come out of placement. They’re often easy to recognize as they address staff as sir or ma’am, walk in hallway protocol, and have bizarre credits on their transcripts (How do you get 0.37 of an English credit? - in placement that's how).  Looking at Aarons’ qualities of successful juvenile offender treatment programs, there are so many opportunities to engage them in the academic classroom. 

After all, don’t we want all adolescents to Pay attention to their thoughts and feelings, Recognize how some feelings & thoughts effect others, Use new thinking to reduce risk, and practice these skills in real settings?  Isn’t that what maturing and growing up is all about?  It’s not a matter of “character education”, but rather developing and working with empathy and there is plenty of room for that in all schools and classrooms - whether urban, suburban, or rural - no matter who they serve. 

And yes, it’s always nice to be able to text a PO when one of their probationers is cutting my class. A little bit of leverage never hurt anyone.

Philly TeacherMan’s 2012 Reading (or waiting to be read) List

  

Not too long ago, I came across a list 50 most popular books for teachers.  As I scanned the list, I was a little dismayed at the lack of substance in the titles.  Lots of books of wit, quotes, jokes, and heartwarming stories, but not much professional analysis or criticism. 

 
(To be fair, there are a few good ones on the list.  I love Parker Palmer and actually reread him a few weeks ago. Perlstein’s Tested is good. So is Mondale’s School. I’ve heard Roxanna Elden speak and  See Me After Class is supposed to be pretty good.  And I was happy to see a text about Teacher-Researchers on the list.  That’s an important field that we need to grow).  

All in all, most of the books seem like little gifts parents might pick up at Hallmark to give to the teachers at the holidays.  

 

The list got me thinking about what I’ve read over the past 12 months and the stack of books that continues to grow in my office (and bedroom and living room).  To further demonstrate my textual obsession, let me share the agreement my wonderful fiancée and I have: If she doesn’t say anything about the constant stream of books that arrive at our door from Amazon, I won’t say anything about the dresses that arrive from Ideeli.  We get along fine.

At any rate, I’m very happy with the amount of reading that I’ve been able to get done this year.  What appears on the list below does not include the stuff that I taught, but it does include a couple of things that I started in my final semester of grad school and finished later in the year.  

I think it’s really important for teachers (and everyone for that matter) to continue to read on their own.  My list happens to be dominated by non-fiction that is related to my classroom or my population, but I suppose that’s just where my mind is now.  I also feel that many of my fiction needs are met in the classroom through short stories and novels that I teach across my five classes. 

Read:

Salzman, Mark - True Notebooks

Tatum, Alfred - Teaching Reading to Black and Adolescent Males

Goodman, Greg - Alternatives in Education: Critical pedagogy for disaffected youth

Stein, Garth - The Art of Racing in the Rain

Palmer, Parker - The Courage to Teach

Humes, Edward - No Matter How Loud I Shout

Moore, Wes - The Other Wes Moore

Delpit, Lisa - Multiplication is for White People

Harbach, Chad - The Art of Fielding

Ravich, Diane - The Death and the Life of the Great American School System

Hollowell, Mary - The Forgotten Room: Inside a Public Alternative School

Hill, Marc Lamont - Beats, Rymes + Classroom Life: Hip Hop pedagogy and the politics of identity

Anyon, Jean - Ghetto Schooling: A political Economy of Urban Ed Reform

Darling-Hammond, Linda - The Flat World and Education

Gallagher, Kelly - Readicide

Brooks, Max - World War Z

Pink, Daniel - Drive

Still in the Queue: 

Aarons, John et al.  - Dispatches From Juvenile Hall: Fixing a failing system

Bogira, Steve - Courtroom 301

Wilson, William Julius - More than Just Race: Begin Black and Poor in the Inner City

Meier, Deborah - The Power of their Ideas

Perry, Steele, Hillard - Young, Gifted & Black

Noguera, Pedro - The Trouble with Black Boys

Kohn, Alfie - Feel Bad Education

Tough, Paul - How Children Succeed

Sandel, Michael J. - What Money Can’t Buy

What have you enjoyed reading this year?? 

Uniting in Dialogue

 Late Friday morning, one of my students barreled into 4^th period and said, “Yo TeacherMan, you hear about that school that got shot up?”.

 “What? In Philly?”, I replied confused.

 “Yea. No wait” he said starring at his phone. 

I now know he was confused by the postal abbreviation CT… Connecticut. Newtown, Connecticut - A town that in the last six days has been thrust into the spotlight. 

I was truly at a loss for words after reading of what unfolded at that elementary school on Friday morning.  After all, what more is there to say about a man murdering 26 people, 20 of them children?  

--

By Monday morning, the news was saturated with images, stories, and conjectures about the shooting.  I sat at my computer torn about what to use as my daily warm up.  

[Every morning, I pull a couple of sentences from an interesting or relevant news story and write them with an error like and SAT question on the far side of my board.  As students search for and correct the error, we discuss the story] 

Though I knew the shooting was likely the biggest and possibly the only news story that my students had seen over the weekend, I felt that discussing it further might only exhaust the matter and draw out the tragedy and sadness.  However, I knew my discomfort was nothing compared to what others closer to Newtown were feeling and I certainly couldn’t ignore this event  

On the left side of the board I wrote:

Friday morning a 20-year old man forced his way into a Connecticut elementary school and began shooting.  He murdered 20 children and 6 adults before killing himself, police still don’t fully understand his motive, but they suspect he was mentally ill.  NO ERROR

I wasn’t sure what type of response to expect from my students.  Would they be tired of hearing about it?  Would it be just another story of violence in their already hyper-violent world?  Would it turn into a shouting match about gun control?

As usual, my students rose to the occasion.  In each class, we had a very different conversation, but all were very insightful, poignant, and respectful.  The discussions lasted between five and ten minutes, though at lunch several students came in to talk in greater depth, but it was clear that talking about what happened was important to everyone (myself included).  

Some of the topics we talked about:

 - Mental health as an explanation, excuse, or warning sign.

 - Safety in urban schools vs safety in suburban schools.

 - Feelings of revenge after a mass shooting.

 - Why there was so much confusion and misinformation in the media

 - People’s need for a “clean” story or narrative after a tragedy

 - Racial differences in mass shootings

 - Whether to ever reopen the school or not

 - Teachers sacrificing themselves for “other people’s kids”

At the end of the day, as my 5^th and final class filed out of the room, I was left with more questions about the tragedy than I had six and a half hours earlier.  However, I didn’t feel the same discomfort.  I realize now that what I was feeling that morning was in large part due to not talking about what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary, by keeping my own thoughts and reactions inside.  Though the short dialogue at the beginning of class, I was able to reflect with my students on a moment of trauma that we had all experienced. 

It is impossible to imagine what the Newtown community is going through and I hope that they are able to find some tiny bit of solace in the fact that communities around the United States and around the world are uniting in their honor and in their memory. 

The only way you can be wrong is if you do nothing…

--> I did my student teaching in a predominately white, very well resourced, rural school district.  Many of the students lived in two-parent homes where there was a legacy of post-secondary education.  The majority of my students, even those from lower socio-economic families, carried a high degree of social capital.  The population that I currently teach (and have taught for the last four years) could not be more different on paper - almost entirely black, low SES, non-traditional or “unstable” family structure, and very minimal history of post-secondary or even secondary academic achievement. 

Though I had some experience working with urban schools in my undergrad (spending a month in the Boston public schools), I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be prepared for the challenges that would await me in Philadelphia.  Though there were many ways that this was true, I continue to be struck by the reality that in the classroom students are students.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that I discount the role that experiences, family life, SES, poverty, social & cultural capital and a host of other factors have on students. (After reading almost anything else I’ve written it should be pretty clear how I feel about the “no excuses” approach to education reform). The point I’m trying to make is that there are some student behaviors that you’re going to encounter if you’re teaching in rural Vermont, in a ritzy Main Line private school, or in North Philadelphia.

One of these behaviors that I’ve been struggling with recently is what I call:

 The Power of the Blank Page. 

The brilliant Margaret Atwood summed it up pretty well when she said: 

The fact is the blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them?  Will it be good enough?  Will I have to throw it out? The trick is to sit at the desk anyway, everyday.

Now, if a blank page can have this debilitating effect on a woman referred to as the voice of an entire age, imagine what it can do to a high school student, especially one who is just coming back to the classroom and hasn’t written anything for a teacher in over a year. 

If you’re a classroom teacher, what I’m describing here is probably something you’re all too familiar with.  However, the Power of the Blank Page is often overlooked, ignored, and belittled by administrators, curriculum writers, and reformers. These are the folks who don’t understand that even literary luminaries like Margaret Atwood are frozen by a blank page.  They are the folks who expect students to produce brilliance on demand (high stakes testing?).  You can recognize them because they will use the phrase “students will be able to” in casual conversations. 

The harsh reality is that whether you’re a professor’s kid in a small college town or in DHS custody in West Philly, the blank page can evoke the same feelings of terror and dread.  Even teachers feel the Power of the Blank Page (maybe that explains the recent blog hiatus or the reason that lesson plans lay blank until the night before they’re due).  

 

As educators, it’s important to bring the Power of the Blank Page to our students’ attention. The title of this very entry is a phrase that I say so often that sometimes I think it’s my name. While it is not the only reason that students disengage and screw around, the Power of the Blank Page often pushes my students to put their heads down, hoods up, and headphones in.  It has even been the cause of several of my most memorable blow-ups (of which there have been many) that usually involve profanity like I’ve never heard before.  The Blank Page is a powerful nemesis indeed. 

I try to encourage my students to take risks with their writing and it’s nearly impossible to take risks if you’re afraid of being wrong. 

The only caveat to my “only way you can be wrong” dictate is that it can become a law for some students.  I would caution all teachers, but especially newer teachers, to be sure to distinguish between times when there ARE ways to be incorrect and times when a blank page is the only way to be “wrong”.  Inevitably, I encounter students who will look at essay that they did poorly on and shout, “Teacher Man a FRAUD! He said if I wrote SOMETHING, I’d get an A”.  

I’m careful to distinguish between analytical, reflective, and creative writing.  I also am very clear with expectations ahead of time. I tell students what I’m going to be reading for when I give credit (and it’s almost never a page length… UHHH do I hate the ‘how long does this have to be?’ questions).

We need to help students take control of the Power of the Blank Page and to do that, they need to know that they’re not alone in their terror.  This comes through low-stakes writing, empowerment of voice, and PRACTICE.

How do you counter the Power of the Blank Page in your classroom? 

The Double-edged Sword of Teacher Autonomy

 It is safe to say that I work in an environment with a very high degree of teacher autonomy.  When I was first hired, the then-principal told me that we followed the School District of Philadelphia curriculum, but as an accelerated alternative school we were charged with pulling the “meat” from the curriculum and focusing on that.  “Awesome” I said with a huge, happy to have a job smile on my face.  I figured that at some point someone would come and explain what that meant in terms of what I ought to be teaching. 

After four years, I’m still waiting for that someone to explain what I’m supposed to be teaching. 

I quickly realized that I am the English department. 

 I developed the curriculum, selected the texts, created the assessments, and carry out the instruction for four different English courses (five if you include summer school).  I have great colleagues and an amazing principal, all of whom are more than willing to collaborate, but all of whom are also creating their own courses and managing their own workloads. As a small alternative school, we are, in many ways, on a super-autonomous island in the sea of highly regimented School District curricula.

And I love it.

In fact, I’ve become so used to this level of autonomy that I often worry how I would adjust to a more regimented or even collaborative environment.  Now don’t get me wrong, I utilize the SDP scope and sequence to an extent and my curriculum aligns to CCSS (perhaps better than the SDP mandated curriculum I might say).  It’s not like I’m off brain-washing my students with whatever brand of rhetoric I choose as many of the neo-liberal reformers would have you believe.  Nor am I kicking back while my students watch movies everyday as the corporate reformers would claim. 

I have worked very hard to develop a curriculum that is responsive to my students’ needs and interests.  With that said, my content is constantly changing.  I have the freedom to try out a wide variety of texts to accomplish my curricular goals.  Today alone my English 1 class was reading Matheson’s “I am Legend” and making stylistic connections between modern and classical horror, while English 3 was exploring bias in autobiography through the film “The Hurricane”.  English 2 was listening to some classic hip-hop to practice supporting themes with text (or lyrics) and English 4 was doing some collaborative close reading of Act 1 of Othello.   

These texts, learning activities, and assessments are not on any mandated curriculum that I was handed; instead they were developed with my students’ interests and needs in mind. And I will happily show any parent, colleague, or district administrator the standards alignment and my rational for making these curricular decisions. 

The crux of the matter is that I feel both empowered and challenged by the level of autonomy that I am fortunate enough to have.  However, this is not the case for everyone. 

At my own school, I’ve seen the darker side of such autonomy.  With such little oversight, it’s easy to become complacent. Over the last four years, we’ve had a few teachers who took this high level of autonomy for granted, relying heavily on worksheets and movies that did little to accomplish any curricular goals.  I’m sure part of this was to do being overwhelmed, but in large part I think it was complacency. 

It is because of those rare situations, however, that teachers are often stripped of autonomy. 

On the other hand, in order to gain a degree of autonomy, some teachers are required to give in to certain “accountability measures”.  Reformers will cede a degree of curricular autonomy, if teachers agree to have their evaluations linked to student performance.  Of course, it’s easy to see right through this ploy.  Since teachers are not able to make the assessments, but are held accountable for the students’ scores, the “autonomy” is merely symbolic. 

As such, autonomy represents a sort of double-edged sword.  It allows teachers to be creative and responsive to their students' needs, but too much can be overwhelming and be a detriment to learning (especially if teachers are new or inexperienced).  Strip teachers of autonomy and you remove professionalism and expertise from curriculum.  Even worse than this is using autonomy as a bargaining chip to manipulate educational reform. 

My solution:

In my utopian “wonder-school”, teachers would exist in autonomous groups. Perhaps based on subject and level, perhaps not.  The curricular goals would be developed by the teachers guided by groups like NCTE or NCTM and even CCSS.  Based on these curricular goals, teachers could then design their units and lessons as they saw fit.  They would be free to choose texts, readings, and other material that were of interest and relevance to students.  Further, this would give teachers the freedom to innovate within their courses and even develop new courses to better serve the needs of students.  

After all, innovation is consistently pegged as a 21^st century skill that students will be expected to have, so why not afford it to those guiding their academic journey.