Teaching FTW

Time's Up, Let's Do This

2010-07-31T12:05:00.002-04:00

Where We At

2010-07-27T20:18:00.003-04:00

Three days from now I move to California. Right now those are still just words. Fly, fly, little starling. Fly, fly!

We've got one more day of classes tomorrow, giving out final on Thursday, and graduating (with distinction!?!?!?! pantpantpant!) on Friday. Three hours after we walk... I'M OUT.

Things I now have experience in: telling Mom her son isn't doing my homework; memorizing 16 secret handshakes; accidentally swearing in front of a kid ("Do your reading, Aaron. Don't bullshit me." OOPS.); enjoying the daily grind; panicking at having 20 copies of the wrong handout 2 minutes before the bell; getting a text message at 11:05 PM from an overeager student ("HEY TRUDEAAUUXXZZZ I'M UP LATE! LOLXZ!"); getting the best feedback ("I don't like reading but I like reading this."); logging grades; a beer after 5 days of teaching.

And it occurs to me that just because it's almost graduation, I'm definitely not ready to say I'm going to teach for the win. Teaching FTW is a marathon, a grind, and a labor of ~~caffeine and hair loss~~ love. Maybe I'll try to solicit a statement from MG or Orin about my prospects. They've got to be on board, right? If not... well, I'd find their lack of faith... disturbing. Maybe "with distinction" will be as good a marker of my trajectory as any. Either way, alea jacta est.

And I'll let Marv Alberts do the rest. FOR THE...

...to be continued.

Overstimulation

2010-07-23T18:15:00.002-04:00

It never ceases to amaze me how fired up 14 year olds can get about arts n' crafts. But they live for my Junior assimilation tracker. Live for that shit.

Attached are some images of a few of the visual aids I have around my classroom. Some of them are content/essential question related. Others are procedural. Others are Big Goal trackers.

Not pictured: my "how to debate" sentence starters. It straight up KILLS me whenever my kids say "with all due respect..."

When I make it to the big leagues in September I'm going to outsource this work to ~~my amazing, thoughtful, wonderful dad~~ professionals who will give me a good rate.

Narrate Compliance... Mister Anderson

2010-07-22T20:16:00.005-04:00

Lee Canter is one of the leading classroom management and teacher training gurus of the last 3 decades. His brand of assertive discipline revolves around a teacher completely owning their domain through urgent tone, strong voice, eye contact, etc. He's a big fan of Doug Lemov's taxonomy, and coaches teachers in those methods, too. He's basically the Michael Jordan of teacher coaching.

And this past week MG hired him to come train MTT coaches. So they can be like Mike.

Lee is perhaps best known 'round these parts for developing a method for coaching teachers in real time. But not, like, calling timeouts and telling kids to

freeze. No no. He gives his teachers ear buds and sits in the back of the classroom with a walkie-talkie barking one or two word directions.

"Narrate compliance. Narrate. Narrate. Louder. Louder. Scan Jose. Jose. Jose. Narrate."

Three MTT's actually got to be coached by Lee. Who is an intense dude, I might add. His main critique of our operation was that our coaches need to convey a higher degree of urgency in debrief meetings. "Hey, that classroom is chaos. You know the only thing between those kids and the street? YOU. You gotta dig deep and find that stronger voice or it's the STREET."

Yikes.

Anyway, having gotten the Pimp yo' Program makeover advice from Mssr. Canter, MTT Admin Orin let me test drive the new protocol. Slapped the ear bud in my ear, came up with 2-3 focus areas (narrate compliance, "why" stretch it moments), and set up shop in the back of room 205.

"Question, Nathalie?"

"I think this relates to our Essential Question."

KKRRZZT Why? KKRRZZT

"...Why?"

"Well..."

Boom. Instant coaching. Same great taste, none of the calories. The experience was kind of jarring at first, and it did draw my attention away from other stuff (I practically forgot to do an opening altogether); but the benefits were tangible and immediate. After a few minutes, Orin all but stopped reminding me to ask "why" or narrate compliance. It was "sticky" over that hour, as MG would say.

"Trudeau, what's that in your ear."

"I'm a secret service teacher."

"Are not."

"Oh yeah? KKRRZZT Take Felico down KKRRZZT."

"HEY!"

Making Moves

2010-07-18T21:36:00.004-04:00

Summer Academy. Cutting our teeth on the MTT-prescribed teacher moves. The Killer Paper Crossover. The Head-up Fake. The Drop-your-pencil Step. We ballin' now, son.

I isolated a few "moves" and salient moments from Friday's class, courtesy of Coach Max and the incredibly useful FlipCam device. (All teachers should own one of these. Seriously. Amazon.com. Make it happen.)

1. Bathroom pass? Take two minutes to think it over.

2. Giving demerits? That's my job.

3. Buzzer goes off - you know what to do. They're SO well-trained.

4. I see, I see, I see. Narrating compliance 'til the cows come home.

5. 100% compliance. Shine on, Vann. Vaaaanntastic:

I Won't Be Boycotting the Crossword, But...

2010-07-15T17:28:00.004-04:00

MG goes to bat for TFA in an NYT online discussion on the heels of a piece regarding TFA's selectivity and retention.

Michael Winerip (best name ever for an armchair critic) re-opened an old debate around TFA's ability to keep their good teachers teaching beyond their 2-year commitment. His opening is loaded, to say the least. "Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a resume, whether or not the person stays in teaching." What's up with the NYT recently?

MG points out that TFA 'dropouts' aren't turning in their eduwarrior badges at all. They run school districts. They start CMO's. OMG, they even run boutique teacher training programs. In my four years in the education sector here in Boston (where they just started placing last year), TFA alums seem to be everywhere.

So let's try to move past this whole chestnut. Again. Never mind that the "dropouts" are better than their average replacement--by a mile--during their two years. TFA gets fantastically motivated people into classrooms for two years. A good chunk of them stay in education and/or become educational philanthropists and/or vote for ed reform politicians, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if their post-Corps numbers looked very similar to MATCH Corps alumni.

Could our stay-in-classroom rates me higher? Sure. Are our former teachers "failing" the cause? Hardly.

Protocol and Response

2010-07-14T11:46:00.006-04:00

Do all teachers' hands look like this? Or is it just uber-newb alert?

Coach Max had me transcribe the following exchange from class yesterday so I could email it to the rest of the fiction team. It's a Trudeau original example of how to hold the line on an important expectation while destigmatizing consequences and setting kids up to meet your standards in the future.

Aaaand, action.

Jordanis raises his hand.

"Yes, Jordanis?"

"I left by book in my locker."

"Ah! Excellent! Jordanis has given us a golden opportunity to observe how I want you guys to receive an unprepared demerit. Every day I need your binder, your notebook, your book in class. Jordanis, I'm going to walk over here and start a conversation with Vann. I want you to raise your hand again and tell me you forgot your book when I call on you. Then comes your moment to shine by being the first person to receive an unprepared demerit the right way."

Jordanis raises his hand.

"Is it a real demerit?"

"Yes it is. Ready?"

Trudeau walks over to Vann.

"Hey Vann. What's up?"

"Uhhh..."

Jordanis raises his hand.

"Yes, Jordanis?"

"I left my book in my locker."

"Jordanis, that's a demerit, I need you to bring you book every single day."

Pause. Look around the room.

"FANTASTIC. Jordanis got his demerit professionally. And every single one of you did what you were supposed to do: nothing. Okay, Jordanis, take the pass and get your book."

Vann says something inaudible.

"Vann, that's a demerit. I need you to raise your hand if you want to offer an opinion."

Pause.

"Another well-received demerit. Remember, guys. Demerits are reminders. Do I think Vann is a bad person for calling out? No. In fact, I love his enthusiasm. But we have to remember that calling out or not bringing your book is in a small way detracting from being able to move forward with our learning."

Orin finishes with:

(Pssst: Ross doesn't know it, but every time we get him to do a detailed blog entry or email, he's actually writing next year's curriculum for me under the guise of "sharing best practices" with his teaching team. Heheheh....excellent work, Coach Smithers. Excellent work.)

I feel dirty.

Teaching FT... halftime lead?

2010-07-13T17:12:00.006-04:00

MTT's graduate from our program with a Massachusetts Initial Certification, and a certificate from MATCH Teacher Training. The certificate has two levels: original recipe and "with distinction."

What does "with distinction" mean for... job opportunities? Pay grade? Resume building? Nothing. Zippo. Do I crave "with distinction" with every fiber of my being?

You bet your goddamn overhead marker I do.

The rubric for the "cum laude" equivalent of our program has to do with instructional ratings from our coaches, 3x weekly instructional ratings from pop-in observers (school leaders, distinguished guests), 1x weekly full lesson observations from someone scary (seriously, they build these grand inquisitors up to be frickin' Lord Voldemort or something), ratings from our managing director on our professionalism, ratings from parents on our communications, ratings from kids on our accessibility, etc. etc.

So. Today I got my first "grades." My 3x weekly pop-in observer rated my first period opening an 8/10 on aim achievement and an 8/10 on behavioral climate.

My 1x weekly grand inquistor rated my third period class an 8/10 on aim achievement and a 9/10 on behavioral climate. These are both within the "with distinction" range.

Can I get a witness? Don't make me cold call for a witness...

Scale. 1-3: "Rocky lesson; typical of a struggling 1st year teacher." 4-5 = "average first year teacher lesson; still needs a lot of tightening." 6-7 = "Solid lesson; looks like a 2nd year teacher." 8-9 = "Really impressive; top-notch 2nd year teacher." 10 = "Blown away; wow."

Game On!

2010-07-11T15:47:00.004-04:00

Summer Academy teaching has begun. Thursday I was ~~totally wigging out and biting my nails to nubs~~ cool as doped-up cucumber. Two highlights thus far both involve the adorable and obliging young Kim G.

1. Text message exchange with Li'l Kim after Day 1:

Kimberli: Heyyy mr. trudeau!!! itz kim :)
Trudeau: Kim my dude! Thanks for the text. Get that HW done and keep it up in class. I like your style.
Kimberli: Lolxz tanxzz. u got a funnie style 2 lolxz nd im doin ur hw rite now lolxz

eRelationship building. But how does this sort of thing pay off? Well...

2. Kim's first demerit, earned Friday for calling out without raising her hand.

Kimberli: Oh it's like alcohol abuse!
Trudeau: Kim... [pause for effect] That's a demerit. I need you to raise your hand if you want to answer a question. [extended pause looking at Kim] AMAZING! Kim got the very first demerit in our fiction class and she handled it GREAT! Everyone shine on Kim! [class extends jazz hands at Kim]
Kimberli: AAAHH!! [buries head in hands]
Trudeau: No, no. EVERYONE has to shine on Kim. Until she's bright red!
Kimberli: I'm already red!

Boom. Could I have exposed Li'l Kim to such a mercilessly embarassing demerit-then-praise moment if I hadn't taken the time to signal that I care about her and I'm down with some corny humor? Maybe. But maybe not.

At the end of class she stopped in the high-five line (class opens with a handshake, ends with a fist bump or high five) and told me she had come up with her own handshake for the end of class. Pardon me while I go practice that bad boy.

MTT: Deep Fryer

2010-07-07T18:40:00.003-04:00

This is a fun little story about Roland Fryer, MTT Summer Academy, and moi. Back in April I blogged the following about unsubstantiated assumptions I hold about teaching:

I don't have any objective rationale for believing that calling home to report bad behavior/praise good behavior has any effect on student motivation or engagement. Someone please link me to the study. I'd love to be validated. This is sort of a cornerstone of the school I work at and the certification program I'm enrolled in.

To which user "MG" (hmm..) replied in the comments:

Hombre, while of course I'm with you on the need to study this stuff empirically, I would add that there's a difference b/w "any objective rationale" and an randomized study (or many).

Evidence is a continuum.

Doesn't it look like this "MG" is scoffing at my notion? Keep that in mind.

SO. Two weeks ago MTT admin Orin springs on us that Roland Fryer's Ed Labs is running with an idea for a study from MTT founder Mike G. (That's right. ROLAND FRYER is going to use our fair school as a test tube for a randomized study. NBD.)

But what, oh, WHAT are they going to test?! Settle down, italicized inner monologue, I'm about to tell you.

They going to test the effect that heavy doses of both positive and negative parent phone calls on student motivation and engagement. I won't get into the scientific details of this study just yet, because a) I don't totally understand them and b) they'll distract from my innuendo.

I rule.

Don't Call It a Comeback

2010-07-07T10:45:00.006-04:00

Ross,

I understand your media black-out. (Though somehow you seem to have real time updates about various Knicks free agency scenarios...not complaining, just saying.) And I understand your fear that the blog is a totally self-indulgent exercise.

I disagree.

1. Addiction 101: addicts don't really quit something cold-turkey. They learn to live with their addiction. What's the first thing someone says at an AA meeting? "I'm ____, and I'm an alcoholic." Zero media during working hours = totally unreasonable bar. Remember, we're constantly harping on you to craft attainable aims for your students. Same thing applies for self-imposed aims. Or, as Maia might say, make it bite-sized. So maybe you just do one Yankees stats round-up each day at 4pm. Start small.

2. It's game time now in MTT. Your first "real" class. Your curriculum. Your kids. Your phone calls. If this isn't grist for the blog mill, I don't know what is. This is the stuff that readers -- particularly other new teachers, both current and future -- want to know. Plus we have a lot of actual money invested in how much you LEARN this summer and actually APPLY next fall. Stickiness. I think regular blog writing about what you're learning this summer increases the likelihood that it sticks. And if you need a way to move past thinking your learning is self-indulgent, think about the impact of these lessons on your future students. Hell, think about me having to take a second job mowing lawns so I can send my 2 kids to college if you guys don't turn out to be jaw-droppingly good teachers.

Yours,

OMG

Well, crap. Lila and Gabe's erudition rests squarely on my shoulders. I can't say 'no' to Orin Mark Gutlerner. And not because his initials are OMG. Or his last name means "good teacher" in German (yeah, that's real). I can't refuse him because... it's an offer I can't refuse.

Gulp.

To clarify for the Gut Teacher, my media blackout begins tomorrow with Day 1 of Summer Academy teaching. The specs:

1. Duration: 7:15-1 (teaching, prep), 2-4 (prep, Orin time) and 7-8 (phone calls).

1. My phone remains in my drawer until 4 PM.

2. My laptop remains powered down until 1 PM.

3. I have 1 hour between 1 and 2 to read/answer time-sensitive work emails.

4. 7-8 is dedicated phone outreach time.

5. NO laptop post 10 PM. Get your ass to bed, Trudeau.

6. 10:30 PM bedtime.

This is a trial period. If blogging seems healthy and makes things stick by next Friday, I'll continue for the duration. There's a TON to say about summer academy so far, so stay tuned...

This Is the End

2010-06-28T07:41:00.005-04:00

Beautiful friend, the end.

To my knowledge, The Doors have only licensed "The End" to be used for two purposes: the famous opening to Apocalypse Now, and an animated spoof of that opening involving Duke, a Doonesbury character who ran for president back in 2000. So, it's only appropriate that you listen to it while reading this.

In an effort to remain true to my media darkness during work hours, I've decided to limit my solipsistic interweb inclinations by shutting down the ol' blog. Save for a couple of days in mid-July when I'll visit the 'rents in NYC, I'll be hunkered down here in Boston each and every day up until the Big Move to San Fran on July 31st.

So, many thanks to all those who contributed to my efforts to Teach FTW. My compliments, and gratitude. I leave you all with one more poem d'Trudeau -- feel free to critique that ish for my 'how to give feedback' lesson plan.

Love,

Ross

A Heartbreaking Love Poem

She appears

leaning 'gainst my doorframe

tossing up and down

a polished Winesap,

the Apple of Discord.

I pause:

Who chose the apple

as the fruit of the fall?

Atalanta's were threefold:

golden delicious.

Arthur's misfortunes buried him

on the Isle of Apples.

Paris doomed Troy

bestowing on Aphrodite

the fated fruit.

A rose-red peel twists

'round my finger.

A core, so much more,

remains.

Peer Review

2010-06-24T09:25:00.006-04:00

Since blogs ~~are incredibly self-serving and implicitly beg for feedback and engagement~~ have no fourth wall... you, dear reader, have a job.

Week 1 of Creative Writing at King this September will involve teaching my students how to give and receive productive feedback in peer reviews of their creative output. Prerequisite lessons will include:

1.Technical language. "Stanza," "couplet," "diction," "cadence," etc. I look forward to being a stickler for this. Brings me back. "No, Kayonna, 'Mister' or 'Mister Thing' or 'Thingy' are not accurate ways to refer to me."

2. Feedback scripts/sentences starters. "I wanted to ask you about your decision to...", or, "You may want to consider...", or, "It stood out to me where you chose to..." Kids have to be able to phrase their feedback in ways that their peers can access it without being defensive or feeling offended.

So, to these ends, I was hoping to solicit reader-generated (read: organic and honest) feedback on a poem that I dug up from an intro to poetry course I took as an undergrad. Analyze the crap out of this bad boy: form, structure, word choice, poetic devices, setting, connections, everything. When we're done, I can create a mock marked-up poem and include various pieces of appropriate feedback language.

Readysetgo.

Epitaph

Passing under the abandoned bridge, I would take care with my strokes,

and conceal my eyes under the brim of my hat, for you.

I would take care that they might be delicate and deliberate

and the ripples would be in harmony with the burdened willows at the bank.

The hooked cod trailing alongside the old dugout seem to swim,

cheating death by my humble approach and diligent strokes.

For you, I would approach, for you, I would lift my gaze at a distance,

just peeking out from under my straw hat, like a child at church.

There would be the Old Post bridge, eclipsing the already half-orb sun,

where I would squint to discern the shimmering silhouettes.

The village behind the willows but before the sinking hills

has not changed, ten-thousand lures and flies later, and I know

that the old men hang over the iron rails of the bridge in the same way

as when I, just a boy, would lean courageously over the rail, with you.

Tech Addiction: Heritable?

2010-06-21T16:26:00.004-04:00

As instructive as it is hilarious. Thanks to Tom T., brother FTW, for reinforcing my point about devices and productivity. Same principle for teachers and ESPN producers.

From: Tom Trudeau

Subject: Day 1 of no laptop

Date: June 21, 2010 4:20:16 PM EDT

To: ross.trudeau@gmail.com

9:15 am - Crap. Just realized I forgot my laptop at home.

11:45 am - Made it to West Hartford. Just remembered I forgot my laptop at home.

12:45 pm - Food consumed. Movie over. Bored. I will nap.

2:47 pm - Dreaming of flash and system backups.

3:30 pm - Nightmare about spinning wheel of death wakes me... back to sleep.

4:00 pm - Awoke from nap. Feel vaguely liberated... mostly mad though.

4:11 pm - There's some sort of firey orb outside... seems to project heat.

4:15 pm - Damn it's hard typing on smart phones. Going to check if dad's fed ex w/ laptop has arrived yet.

4:16 pm - No luck. Check for most appealing means of suicide in house.

Last Hurrah

2010-06-19T14:09:00.004-04:00

They stayed at school until 5:00 PM every day, a lot of them until 6 or 7. They rode the T before sunrise and after dark an hour or more, one way. They had six day school weeks as sophomores. They passed with a 70. They took BU classes, AP classes. They came from beautiful homes and broken homes and no homes. And they're all going to college. All of them. They're not the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone's really hoping makes it happen... they made it happen. They're so money and they don't even know it.

My freshmen are officially MATCH graduates. All five of my MATCH Corps year tutees made it, by hook or by crook (nah, they're straight shooters), all the way to college. Spelman, UMass, Northeastern, MCLA. Check out my dude Chance sporting the ill honors threads. My dude.

And, inevitably, the 2010 graduation video I spent the last few weeks throwing together. It's the last ~~silly youtube fodder~~ celebratory movie I'll make for MATCH. Sniff. I think it's my magnum opus. Jump to 2:30 to see the lively part.

Rossaroni, the SF Treat

2010-06-17T11:42:00.005-04:00

Back at the Blue Danube. Five hours before I get on a plane to head back to Boston, the end is in the beginning.

Sum up, sum up!

Had a couple of productive conversations at King in the last couple of days. Ms. Kirkpatrick helped me get my head around elective culture in advance of any serious planning for Creative Writing. Thanks, Katie. Having been reading fiction and doing some writing for the first time in three years, I'm rediscovering just how jazzed reading/writing made me. Sounds simple. But even simpler is getting away from it in favor of work and iPhone and yadda.

Spoke to Ms. Belden (current 11th grade English teacher) about possibilities for next year with her kids as 12's. She's pretty focused in on getting them writing a lot more, recommending a Writer's Notebook (word) and diagnosing specific issues that they'll be dealing with when I get 'em. They're solid at the Toulmin essay structure, but struggle with variance of modes, audience, sentence structure, diction, etc. To that end, she gave me some rubrics she's been using, and gave me 5 samples of work that they've done recently. We also chatted about the curriculum that MTT admin Orin requisitioned from a former colleague of his who taught 12th grade English. Kate dug it. Word.

Chatted with Mr. Singer, principal extraordinaire. Most impressive about this conversation was the way he dropped the hammer on a weighty burrito of not-insignificant girth. Multitasking is part and parcel for principals. Cheers, Jason. Herr Singer was a fan of the structure of the curric I presented him with, and asked me to do some thinking about the pacing of essays; how many reps per quarter? How many pages per rep? Also asked me to think about the rigor/"velocity" of the course, which was originally written as AP curriculum--most of my kids will not be AP kids, so I'll have to dial it back a bit.

And, I love San Francisco. Sprawled out on the grass and squinting into near-horizontal light in Alamo Park in front of the "Painted Ladies," the Full House block, I felt both ridiculously content and ecstatically uneasy about the future. I love the food, I love the weather, I love the freaks. Last night I watched my once-and-future colleague Laura E. sing in her 40-woman, seemingly 20? 40? percent transgender community choir as part of a show featuring burlesque comedy, soft rock, and spoken word. Michelle Tanner put it best: "I am coming, I am coming, I am coming, I am HERE!"

Looking West at sunset means everything you see is going to be a silhouette; I can't wait to fill in the details.

MATCH FTW

2010-06-14T12:00:00.006-04:00

While the formulas for these things are always pretty dubious, MATCH is the 49th best public high school in the country, according to Newsweek. They look at AP/college course enrollment (MATCH rules) and scores (MATCH is so-so).

Bonus question: which actually matters more for kids? Okay, that's a reductive way to put it, but you see what I'm getting at. Do you need high standards? Duh. Do high standards alone mean much? Nah. I'm going to write about this AP expectations/outcomes relationship when I'm not high on avocados and World Cup fever.

McSweeney's Lists > education ranking lists, but I guess good press is good press.

Teaching Creative Writing, addendum

2010-06-14T11:39:00.001-04:00

Update: the proprietor just asked to take pictures of the 10 or so customers watching the game for his World Cup collage, and emailed us our "portraits." Mine at right. God I love this city.

Teaching Creative Writing

2010-06-14T11:08:00.005-04:00

A name. I need a name. First order of business. What’s in a name? In a course catalogue, EVERYTHING.

Okay, so. Where’s my name? I pause to look around.

I’m in the Blue Danube coffee shop in San Francisco, which I overheard has been here forever. The World Cup is on a television in the corner above the door, on mute. Cameroon and Japan. I’m drinking coffee with cream and sugar (good) and I’m eating a chocolate croissant (realfriggingood). There’s a man on the other side of the window holding a hot chocolate that’s wearing an absurd whipped cream hat. He’s smoking something.

This place is a goldmine. The name’s not coming. But it will.

While we wait: writing well involves three things. First, words. Lots of them. You have to have them. You have to be on the lookout for them, and collect them, like close friends. Could Monet have become an absolute renaissance boss with only 3 shades of blue? Could Zeppellin have become Rock Gods with just 2 chords? Maybe. But not likely.

Second, Socrates advises us to “know thyself.” Best. Advice. Ever. I’m serious. That’s my honest opinion. Literally the most useful thing any one individual has said to another, writer or otherwise. (Aside from the occasional timely “duck!”) If you’re not being constantly reflective and introspective, you’re not going to produce writing that’s useful to you.

(Japan’s up, 1-0. Asian guy sitting on a couch against the wall just spilled thirty percent of his coffee.)

Third, purpose. Why are you putting pen to paper? Sure you have a plot, but what is this piece about? And by the way, even if you can’t perfectly articulate a message, your purpose can be to write with the goal of getting to know thyself. (Timeout. Is that my course title? Creative Writing: Get to Know Thyself? Holy crap. This is what writing teachers mean when they wax frustratingly mystical about a story or a character “going where you didn’t expect.” Meta-gasm!)

This course will have to be grounded in very specific elements of writer’s craft for kids not to get annoyed. And it can be annoying to recognize that it’s somewhat circular to say that you should be introspective and attentive to detail in order to write well, but that you need to write in order to get to know thyself. It’s sort of meditative, in that sense. I used to hate the idea that you can “learn things” about yourself and the world by shutting down sensory data inputs. Will they?

I’ll have to spend a ton more time on this. But at least we have a name.

AND. I just had a Keanu Reeves revelatory moment… I think this blog post in some form could constitute a syllabus of sorts. Whoa…

A Good Day for YOUR MOM

2010-06-10T14:38:00.007-04:00

One of Pop Trudeau's best friends is essayist, author, playwright, and PBS contributor Roger Rosenblatt. I know he's been teaching creative writing for many years, so I called him up about curric. 10 minutes later he emailed me the manuscript to his new book... about teaching a year of creative writing. Dear diary... jackpot.

In a creative writing class, like the one I'll be teaching soon, lists are one way to pull oneself out of the creative morass commonly know as writer's block. Get the pen moving. [Get to] Know Thyself.

I plan to assign them, at some point, to submit a list to Dave Eggers' literature and humor site McSweeney's. An old Onion article titled "McSweeney's Rejects Mike Mussina's Seventh Consecutive Submission" hit a little too close to home. One of my students will succeed where I've failed. I once even got a reply that said, "This made me laugh out loud... very close. Keep trying." Blah. Great. I'm more encouraged by the "please try again" underneath my soda cap.

The HILARIOUS submission that was oh-so-close (and when you've finished, go back and take a closer look at the embedded photo... photoshop FTW via collaborator Marjory C.):

A Comprehensive Reading List for the Self Important Prick in the Front Row of My M/W/F Lit Seminar

Classic

A Portrait of YOUR MOM as a Young Man

The Old Man and YOUR MOM

Around YOUR MOM in 80 Days

Unbearable Lightness of YOUR MOM

Of Mice and YOUR MOM

A Streetcar Named YOUR MOM

YOUR MOM of La Mancha

YOUR MOM's Inferno

The Legend of YOUR MOM's Hollow

Journey to the Center of YOUR MOM

Contemporary

A Hitchhiker's Guide to YOUR MOM

YOUR MOM Falling on Cedars

The Things YOUR MOM Carried

A Wrinkle in YOUR MOM

Three Cups of YOUR MOM

Non-Fiction

What to Expect When YOUR MOM is Expecting

The Audacity of YOUR MOM

Guns, Germs, and YOUR MOM

FreakYOURMOMics

YOUR MOM for Dummies

Children's

YOUR MOM Goes Boink

How YOUR MOM Stole Christmas

YOUR MOM and the Giant Peach,

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, YOUR MOM

YOUR MOM Poops

Cold Turkey

2010-06-09T09:33:00.007-04:00

Hi, I'm TeachingFTW, and I have a problem.

Since I started writing this post 12 seconds ago, I've already felt my cursor finger twitch 14 times trying to click back to my email. Extrapolate that out over the 4 hours I spent curricu-planning last night and you get... 23940823094 superfluous refreshes of my gmail or glances at my iPhone. (I just did it again. Seriously.)

NYTimes recently published an article entitled Your Brain on Computers. It's an ~~incredibly depressing and accurate~~ interesting read.

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — adopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

There's only one thing to be done. Technology darkness. During prep periods, during assigned work blocks of at-home time.

Seriously. This is legit. I am 100% addicted to email, and am perpetually tethered to it via mobile internet.I know enough about myself that given addiction to X, no amount of promises to "limit" myself to Y indulgences in X over Z hours/days are going to cut it. I have to choose vast swaths of the day during which to go cold turkey. And I have to turn off WiFi and leave my phone in the other room when I'm working at home. Only 100% rigid compliance to these rules will yield returns. (Just did it again. OMG. Attention span for the LOSS.)

But I am committed to doing everything I can to set myself up to be the most legit grinder I can be this summer/fall/life. I didn't participate in a single fantasy draft this year. I deleted Scrabble and the NYTimes crossword from my iPhone months ago. Tangible steps towards responsible teacherhood.

So during July (trial period) don't email or text me between 8:00 and 3:00 (teaching, prep). Or between 5:00 and 7:00 (phone calls, prep). Because you'll get the Cold eShoulder.

Phase 3, Cont'd

2010-06-08T10:20:00.006-04:00

The milieu of MATCH High School summer school is a bizarre and dynamic amalgamation of stakeholders and agendas.

MATCH Administrators (Principal, etc.) want:

-Kids to "get" the gravitas of the school

-Kids to buy in to high standards

-Incoming ninth graders to get set-up to succeed as freshmen

MTT Administrators (MG, Orin, coaches, etc.) want:

-MTT teachers to stay reflective and hungry to improve

-Incoming ninth graders to get set-up to succeed as freshmen

Incoming 9th graders want:

-Well, 14 year olds don't really know what they want, outside of

-To make out with each other

-To not have to go to school in July ("you forced it, Mister.")

MTT Teachers want:

-Order. Calm. Serenity.

-Kids to learn

-Kids to LIKE me! That's how you win, right? Way up top. Best high five ever.

For the MATCH admins and teachers, it's the first battle in the war to win kids' hearts and minds. Set high standards from day 1 and you're normalizing the project. Hold kids accountable and be transparent and you're creating fairness. Crack corny jokes from the outset and... well, returns are debatable. But I swear by them.

For MTT teachers, Summer School is the final climactic stage. It occurred to me that our training is scaffolded a lot like classic video games, getting harder and higher stakes as you go. It's Bowser at the end of a 2D lava castle... thing*. It's a robotic, dual gatling gun-toting Hitler at the end of Wolfenstein 3D. It's fighting Iron Mike himself at the end of Punch Out.

THIS IS IT. And don't eff it up, Trudeau. Or you have to go back to the last save point. Where kids don't follow your rules and refuse to learn.

*WTF? That place is completely unlivable. One long straight hallway? With no windows? It's like Sauron and Marilyn Manson had a kid who grew up to be a Dark Architect with daddy issues. "If you want to get to my room you have to jump over SENTIENT LAVA PITS and avoid NARCOLEPTIC GHOSTS ON ACID. I HATE YOU."

Phase 3

2010-06-07T08:34:00.003-04:00

MATCH Teacher Training phase two is over. Phase three begins with the first day of summer school on July 6th. I think you'll find the deflector shields will be quite... operational.

I've been placed as a Fiction teacher in the MATCH High School. There will be four of us teaching a unit on Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Fantastic book about a misfit Spokane Indian who abandons his reservation school for the white school 22 miles off the reservation. (First time I've ever used the phrase "off the reservation" in its literal sense. Word.) The essential questions that come to mind around how community defines identity are tailor-made for kids coming from a Dorchester project to the MATCH School in lilly-white Boston University East/Brookline. And it's got swear words. And fisticuffs. We're pumped.

On Saturday I met with Coach Max to do a Phase 2 debrief of my progress as an instructor. We identified big strengths/weaknesses and target areas for Phrase 3. Specifically for me: being a hard ass. Setting and maintaining high standards of engagement and output. Pulling the demerit and/or teacher face trigger early and often. In a recent planning email, MTT founder Mike G. articulated how losing the desire to really put the screws to your Big Shortcomings during phase three could play out in the fall:

Example: I could imagine a low-key Ross (hey buddy) over-emphasizing the "They're Seniors And It's California And They're Soon To College So I Will Be On Mellow Side," letting go of the vision of himself as the Teacher Who Demands Excellence And Makes Them Work Very Hard Each Class, dispensing with things like Ticket To Leave, and being a 5.5 out of 10 -- instead of a 9 out of 10 and the top teacher out of the whole evaluation group of 60-some teachers and "winning" the darned thing.

Dammit. Right again. If I'm honest, while working with rising 9th graders who have never been in a high-standards, high stakes charter school environment before is not optimized for someone in my position, it will definitely push me to keep this issue in the forefront of my brain.

Serious business. Game face. Now soliciting recommendations for pump-music that I can blast on the ol' iPhone in the supply closet before the first day of class. Kids will learn. Eye of the tiger.

C.R.E.A.M.

2010-06-03T08:10:00.005-04:00

Wu Tang had it right. So did Rod Tidwell. I mean, you were expecting Michelle Rhee *not* to get exactly what she wants? She's probably the scariest woman in the world. Well, this side of The Shining twins. Reading about the recently-ratified D.C. teachers contract, all I could hear was Marv Alberts saying, "OH! Michelle RHEE! With auTHORity!"

Salient points:

It also includes an extraordinary pay-for-performance component that could earn participating teachers up to $150,000 a year in salary, making them some of the highest-paid urban teachers in the country.

The contract practically ensures that the chancellor can fire teachers based on performance, not seniority. It's an issue that unions have long battled. But as states scramble for the $4.3 billion federal Race to the Top funds, more and more unions are compromising with school districts on the performance aspect.

On the heels of my post about Chicago's TAP program, the potential for a 150k payday makes Chitown's effort seem pretty watered down. Watered down with TAP water. Hoo ha. And, of course, even more significantly, DC schools can now fire people who suck at their jobs. Bizarre paradigm, I know. But lets just see how that works, ok?

And lastly, is anyone not still shaking their head over Race to the Top? $4.3 billion is a drop in the well of the federal education budget, but somehow that very modest carrot has become a total game-changer in many, many states. Crap... now what? Someone has to administer these initiatives. Middle Management for America? Lacks panache. Maybe we should create an opt-in federal fund to solicit applications to name this org...

Performance Bonuses

2010-06-01T22:12:00.005-04:00

In baseball, it's not uncommon for older players or players coming off of injury to sign short-term, incentive-laden deals that become lucrative if a pitcher, say, makes a X number of starts, records Y strikeouts, yadda. Sometimes they're very specifically tied to particular benchmarks. $1mm for 20 home runs. $1.5 mm for 25. And so on.

My aunt emailed me last week with the results of a study on Chicago's Teacher Advancement Program. (Most importantly, it had a June 1st media gag date. That's right. A "source" gave me a "tip" that I wasn't allowed to disseminate or publicly comment upon as a member of the "media." Never before so happily gagged. Journalism FTW.) Sad story short: the program, long on "professional development," relatively short on performance-based compensation, yielded no positive results in a sample of 16 schools in which it's being implemented over it's first two years. Arne Duncan was still in the Chi when this thing got off the ground. Friends everywhere. But the headline is, of course, that merit pay fell on its face. No statistically significant difference in either test scores or teacher retention rates.

The National Institute for Excellence in Teacher, which created TAP, had this to say:

Comprehensive school reform takes time, particularly in the nation's highest-need schools. Althought Chicago TAP has yet to attain the implementation success and outstanding growth we have seen in other places, we believe that additional time and focus on implementation will position them for improved results in the future.

The other thing about comprehensive reform is that it needs to be, you know, comprehensive. On his blog, MTT founder Mike G. recently wrote about the extended school day, another of the hallmarks ingredients in everyone's favorite new cocktail: the Comprehensive Ed Reform Spritzer. It's tasty-sounding, but usually pretty weak... the bartender's a union guy and waters it wayyy down. Bottom line is that merit pay, extended school days, etc. are A) necessary but ultimately insufficient ingredients to ~~getting you drunk~~ seeing real progress in student outcomes, and B) subject to good/bad implementation plans, just like anything else.

Moreover, this TAP program appears to have been the weakest of the spritzers.

One possibility for the lack of results concerns the local flexibility in how the program was implemented. Chicago officials did not adhere to all aspects of the TAP model. For one, the district spread the bonus funding to teachers, principals and staff, rather than simply to teachers...

The report also notes that Chicago's incentive payouts... averaged $1,100 for those schools in their first year of implementation.

Well, shoot. Listen, Nomar, your knee isn't what it used to be. We'd like to pay you a low base salary with $0.99 bonuses for each game you play in over 100. And we're going to spread it out to the other infielders, too. It's a team sport, after all. Fail.

Black eye for a program that the feds were quietly probably pretty keen on in Arne's old district. That stings. But with such lame implementation, and a strong commitment to "professional development" (whatever that means to them), not a huge surprise.

Cause and Effect

2010-05-27T08:57:00.003-04:00

LIKE ZOMG YES PLS!!11

2010-05-23T21:39:00.004-04:00

My teaching assignment appears to have been set. My principal wants me to teach 4 sections of a 12th grade English class that incorporates college writing and research, and 1 section of a creative writing elective class.

My reply to the email my principal sent me asking me if I was cool with this arrangement:

"God, yes. You just made my week. I wouldn't be more excited if I were Holden Caulfield, finally graduated with a Comp Sci degree, and then discovered Mystery Science Theatre 2000 on hulu.

THE WORLD SHALL READ AGAIN!"

I haven't gotten a response, 48 hours later. Which could mean he's not a MST2K fan. Or he doesn't know what hulu is. Or he's having major nerd alert buyer's remorse. Or he's still laughing. Probably the latter.

Either way, I'm incredibly excited. Two preps, five sections, all content that will be a joy for me to work with on a daily basis. Jason, if you're reading this: BOO. FRIGGIN. YAH.

The Hess Truck

2010-05-21T15:21:00.002-04:00

Rick Hess weighs in on the Central Falls aftermath.

Big news yesterday out of Rhode Island's Central Falls--the city where Superintendent Fran Gallo dusted off the dreaded "turnaround" bomb earlier this year--as the Central Falls Teachers' Union folded and acceded to Gallo's demands. In return, Gallo backed off the mass firing she'd launched. Some observers might regard Gallo's move as a disappointing reversion to powder puff school management, especially after reading the weak-kneed press release stuffed with promises that all the union ever wanted is "what is best for our students." But such concerns are misplaced. Gallo's play shows how stiff-spined management is supposed to work--by forcing unions and other claimants to come to their senses.
In February, Gallo had fired every teacher at Central Falls High School after teachers at the school refused to get on board with her efforts to transform the poorly performing school. This was after they had embraced the transformation model because it would protect their jobs, so long as there weren't any transformational measures that would, you know, actually transform the school.

Word.

Eat the cherry, EAT THE CHERRY!

2010-05-21T15:01:00.005-04:00

If you go to google.com today, you'll find a the logo is now a playable (with your arrow keys) Pac-Man mini-game. They're celebrating the 30th anniversary of the iconic littler om nom nom-er.

In homage, please enjoy a 4-year old video project with Mr. Brian Whittaker (he got an A+ on an algebra test). Feel free to count the terrible pedagogical decisions Mr. Trudeau makes, and keep an eye out for cameos by Phil Chang (MATCH Corps III), Tom Trudeau (family corps I), a rail-thin Mr. Trudeau, and the introduction of that phrase that will live in infamy...

"...don't forget to square your Pac-Man." (2:25).

I mean... I GUESS.

2010-05-20T22:03:00.005-04:00

Central Falls is back in the news. The 9o previously-fired teachers and admins have all been rehired, having acquiesced to provisions that are more stringent than those originally proposed by the superintendent before negotiations broke down. Teachers got flexed.

The agreement lengthens the school day by 30 minutes and requires all teachers to spend one hour tutoring each week. Teachers would be required to eat lunch with students once a week, face a more rigorous evaluation system and undergo up to 10 days of professional development every summer and 90 minutes of weekly planning time after school.

I especially like the eating lunch with kids idea. Looking forward to the follow-up Onion piece: "Why are all the teachers sitting together in the cafeteria?"

What do you think? Kids win? Reform bellwether? NBD?

A Model... Idiot

2010-05-17T21:50:00.004-04:00

Doug Lemov was on NPR a couple of days ago talking about his book. Beyond having some interesting ideas around teacher training, the guy sounds like a model human being. The second caller during the interview sounded like a model idiot.

SCOTT (Caller): Oh, hi. I was just calling from I'm actually on a break from delivering tests in San Mateo. Just a quick critique, if I may. The premise is that the scores are what make the teacher great. The entire premise seems to be that the scores are the judge of a good teacher.

And I've got tell you from personal experience, I've taught at Hillsboro School District, now I'm teaching at San Mateo, and Hillsboro is always one of the top economically performing or I mean SAT-performing schools in the country, and I would challenge anyone to say, okay, take that entire staff and put them over to Hunters Point in San Francisco and have them teach over there - which is one of the consistently low-performing schools - and see if they can bring up the scores. Because I've got to tell you, it's socioeconomics that make the student, not the scores.

Lemov responds:

Mr. LEMOV: Sure, two things. The data set that we looked at to determine the teachers who we thought were game-changers controlled for socioeconomic factors. So we basically, we geeked out on a big regression set where we put -we plotted every school based on the percentage of kids in that school living in poverty on the X-axis, percentage of kids proficient on the state tests on the Y-axis, and we looked for schools that were in the upper right-hand corner, schools that had 90 percent of their kids in poverty and were still finding a way to work the magic.

And, in fact, one of those schools is in Hunters Point. It's Kipp Bayview Academy. It's an incredible school. It was founded by Molly Wood, who is someone I've had the luck to learn a ton from.

Read: Yeah, jackass. We thought of that, too. And we controlled for that biggest and most obvious variable. It's sort of the whole reason we set out to do this. But, being the central premise of the whole book, you probably already knew that. In fact, let me rebut your point further by referencing a data point from the exact location you're talking about.

Now, this happens in both the classroom and the blogosphere. (Whoa... autocorrect is fine with the word 'blogosphere' (WHOA. Autocorrect NOT fine with the word 'autocorrect'! METAAAAA!).) Oftentimes talk radio callers/students read the first paragraph of a book and develop an opinion. It's like the kid who read the Cliff's Notes being the biggest participator. Meh.

There's a reason I haven't responded to Diane Ravitch's book where she 180's on charter schools and standardized testing. I haven't had time to read the damned thing. One day...

Ro$$

2010-05-14T17:59:00.006-04:00

A quick quantitative update. On March 20th, MTT outside observer Ben Wells gave me ratings of 6 and 4.5 on "Achievement of Lesson Aim" and "Overall Behavioral Climate" respectively. This past week, after two months of at-bats and Coach Max feedback, he handed down ratings of 7.5 and 7.5.

We haven't started full-time teaching. Still taking baby steps. But, allow me a moment.

Don't talk, pass the chalk/ Mister turn the rigor up/ all class, no hall pass/ 'til you get the aim right / Tik tok, Trudeau rocks / But the learning don't stop, no... / Oh, oh oh oh...

Mother's Day

2010-05-12T08:25:00.006-04:00

Later today I'm hopping on the Acela to get down to D.C. to attend the launch of Bellwether Education Partners, an education reform non-profit co-founded by Eduwonk's Andy Rotherham. It should be very interesting stuff. Recap to come.

Mama Trudeau and Andy are both on the board of The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based education entrepreneurship fund (Mom's originally from Indy). Incidentally, Mary Wells of MTT office fame (does awesome development work with Mike G.) is also involved in Bellwether. So, Andy asked Mom to moderate the event tomorrow.

Now, I know this is a tired trope that everyone can relate to. You get into education reform to avoid the looming shadow of the journalistic accomplishments of your forebearers. You feel pretty good about carving out a niche in a relatively unglamorous industry. Then just as you're getting your feet wet, BAM, Mom elbows her way into the picture. Oops! Sorry, Ross. Didn't see you there in edu reform world, my EMMY AWARDS were in the way.

One. BILLION. Dollars.

2010-05-10T12:05:00.006-04:00

Last week Mama and Papa Trudeau had dinner with Newsweek's Jon Alter, after which Mom emailed me saying that she thinks I'm an "idealist without illusions." Had apparently picked up the phrase from someone during that evening. I dug it, so I started reading Mr. Alter, including a recently penned piece about how Goldman Sachs can score some PR points: boost TFA $1,000,000,000.

The biggest bang for Goldman's buck would be to give a cool billion to a single nonprofit—Teach for America (TFA), which places talented young college graduates in challenging schools. In case you haven't noticed, huge numbers of young people, including 12 percent of Ivy League seniors, apply to TFA. The program has supplanted Goldman itself as the coolest spot to land after getting your diploma. But for budgetary reasons, fewer than one in 10 applicants are accepted. With a billion dollars, TFA could double in size and account for 20 to 25 percent of new hires in the 60 greatest-need urban and rural areas of the country. That would dent the biggest domestic crisis we face: the fact that at-risk kids have about as much chance of graduating from college as, well, college students have of getting into TFA.

Now, anyone who spent any time with me during college ~~when I'd had more than 2 drinks~~ knows that I used to be pretty bearish on TFA. The inherent drawbacks of hiring a zillion rookie teachers, however, have softened for me as I've become more and more aware of a) the human capital influx they're responsible for and b) the job they've done as the single biggest rebranding of the teaching profession - teaching through TFA is downright sexy.

Emily L. is Recruiting Director for TFA in the Bay Area, a recent acquaintance who I emailed around the human capital influx issue. Her response did touch upon some of the recruiting and vetting questions I focused on, but like any former teacher, she waxes kid-centric. Reading through her answers, it dawned on me that she represents what the next generation of ed-reform needs most desperately: smart, high-functioning teachers who actually believe what you need to believe to be part of a No Excuses school, or a turn-around project, or a TFA island-in-a-crappy-school classroom.

That's all to say that my students, they're brilliant. They're like any kid growing up in any community on this planet - with all the raw material, and potential, and brains of (and likely a lot more guts than) their more affluent peers. And at the same time, they were seventh and eighth graders with the writing ability and geographic knowledge of the typical fourth grader - by no fault of their own. These weren't kids who'd just arrived in this country, either. The vast majority of them had been attending school, in the US, for the last seven years. For all they knew, they'd held up their end of the bargain.

Now, there's a reason that schools around here like MATCH, CCSC, and KIPP Lynn get about a bajillion applicants for every teaching opening but still lament how hard it is to find good teachers. Some massive percentage of those people don't have the core (Corps?) beliefs about kids and teaching that Emily and her successful peers do. Some massive percentage of teaching applications are ostensibly dead on arrival. "No Excuses" means not just a commitment to holding kids to a high standard, but just as importantly acknowledging that despite the sociological laundry list of challenges facing poor kids, classroom instruction is by far the most important variable in determining whether kids will learn.

In fact, our role as a recruitment team starts much earlier than that. We have, basically, two main priorities. The first is to ensure that our applicants, or potential applicants, or students on college campuses broadly, understand what we do... This means understanding the stark reality of educational opportunity in this country, today - not 53 years ago at a high school in Little Rock. It also means educating potential applicants on why the set of skills they already possess, as high-achieving, involved student-leaders on college campuses and in their communities, is a set of skills that can easily translate to a classroom in a low-income community. This sums up the two core beliefs that we know an applicant needs to be invested in and committed to, wholeheartedly, in order to not only be successful in the application process, but as a corps member. If you are going to work, tirelessly, relentlessly, doggedly to move your students forward and give them the rigor and opportunity they deserve, you need to be committed to the fact that this is a great civil rights issue of our generation, and that we, as a generation, can change it.

It's easy to forget, living in the MATCH/KIPP/TFA bubble, that people who hold such beliefs are the exception to the rule. And beyond that, some significant proportion of people who say they believe things like "all kids will learn" don't fully believe it. It is to the credit of orgs like TFA and MATCH that they don't budge on insisting their people hold those values, and instead are a) honest about the hugely difficult task of vetting for these (genuinely held) beliefs and b) devote the necessary resources to finding the people to make good teaching and broader policy reform happen. And, as a not-insignificant corollary, props to nauseatingly charming recruitment directors everywhere for the glad-handing grunt work. Aw, thanks, me! No prob, me.

So, amen, Mr. Alter. Let's ride the Goldman Goodwill Express all the way to bank. Cha-CHING!

Cutting the Chord

2010-05-09T11:59:00.003-04:00

On Thursday of this week I took the hardest step in leaving MATCH. It wasn't telling Mom/sister that they'd have to go through 2 security checks and checked baggage fees to see me. It wasn't taking stock of the worldly possessions I'll be leaving behind or bequeathing to an overeager younger brother. It wasn't even leaving behind top-tier major league baseball franchises.

No. Rather, I had to tell Kathy I was leaving her.

This little Dominican girl is brave, kind, hardworking. It was over short stacks at IHOP, via paragraphs-long text message conversations, during lunch every Monday in my office that I and several other of the adults that love her at MATCH convinced her to repeat her 10th grade year. Convinced her that the hours, the extra tutoring, seeing her friends move ahead were all worth it. Getting to know her over the last 3 years made me want a daughter.

"You can't, Trudeau! I stayed because of you!" Argh. Ouch. That's right, she went there.

In the end it's still the relationships that sustain me. Even if my motivations for getting into education are much less "about the kids" than the average aspiring educator (and more about leveraging my own talents towards some high-impact social good), Kathy et al are why I stayed. Check out the MATCH promo video below and you'll catch my drift.

Here's to you, kid. You gave my compass a heading: due West.

Next Gear

2010-05-07T10:53:00.007-04:00

Just a quick update on where I stand in the MTT training trajectory.

We have 3 more weekends of both SAT and MCAS classes, wrapping up with SAT class the day before the test on June 5th. I plan to do some good old-fashion pump-up jammin'. WHOSE HOUSE!?

Starting Monday, July 5th, MTT's will be teaching summer school to incoming MATCH 6th and 9th graders, depending on where we get/got jobs to teach in the fall. Solo teaching. Full-size classes. 100% lesson plan ownership. Calling home. The works. Very close approximation of our experiences starting in September. Unless you're teaching rigorous 12th grade English at a school with little major behavioral work to be done. Heh.

Last day of Summer Teaching is July 30th. That leaves me 2 days to move my life to San Francisco to start at King on August 2nd. Hoooo boy. Good thing I eat chopped-up logistics for breakfast with my Frosted Mini Wheats.

More to come on the specific curriculum planning I'm planning on doing a lot of in May/June to get as big a jump as I can on that stuff before I arrive on the Left Coast.

Well, Crap.

2010-05-05T17:25:00.004-04:00

Damnit, MG. On the heels of my anecdote about Papi's 8th-inning choke in the office this morning, Mike G. blogged earlier today about HIS take on David Ortiz's "tenure" as DH. An entirely different angle on the tragic Papi narrative, but embarrassing nonetheless.

Sub sole nihil nove est. Humbug.

The Papi Effect

2010-05-05T16:34:00.005-04:00

Last night Orin and I talked shop for a couple hours about planning my curricula for this coming fall... from the second row behind third base at Fenway. Real educators measure productivity in hot dogs.

In the bottom of the 8th inning of a 1-1 tie, Big Papi stepped to the plate with the bases juiced and no outs. To that point he had struck out swinging, grounded into a double play, and struck out swinging. Orin and I watched slack-jawed as he chopped the ball to second, starting a 4-2-3 double play. As he crossed first, the dude didn't even look angry. No barking at himself, no thrown batting helmet. He just bit his lip and looked skyward before ambling back to the dugout.

Now, had this been even Derek friggin' Jeter for a week or so in 2004 (I'll never forgive you people, whoever you were), you would have heard a vigorous Bronx cheer. The Fenway faithful, somewhat to their credit, just sort of shook their heads or looked down at their beers and muttered. It was as somber a moment as I've seen at a sporting event. David Ortiz's career should be over, but they keep running him out there to get 90-mph fastballs blown by him.

So it goes with failing charter schools. I'm sure most of you reading this have gotten to the NYTimes piece from a couple of days ago; if you haven't, do, it's a pretty fair assessment of the legit merits of the current charter efficacy debate. In particular, the Papi Effect:

Perhaps the sharpest knock on charters — one that even some proponents acknowledge — is that mediocrity is widely tolerated. Authorities are reluctant to close poor schools. Some advocates concede that the intellectual premise behind school choice — that in a free market for education, parents will remove students from bad schools in favor of good ones — has not proved true.

For all the talk of accountability and standards, at the end of the day it's just talk if crappy charters aren't getting the axe. The main study referenced in the article bears out the dirty little secret of the A-list philanthropists that throw in with the charter crowd: there are a ton of crappy charter schools. That need to be benched. Or cut. Because they can't hit the heater. (See what I did there? Get at me.) A blind commitment to high-minded notions of "high standards" or "choice" or "accountability" (themselves means, not ends) will get you just as far as Sox fans clinging sullenly to a fallen hero. This, I think, is a vestigial organ from the pre-2004 Sox Nation; a masochistic commitment to underachieving, underdog status.

The author sort of whiffs on an important point, though.

Rather than starting their own schools, these philanthropists largely went looking for successful charters and provided money for expansion. Thus they can boast of mainly backing academic winners.

Well, friggin' duh. If you acknowledge that only some charters are improving outcomes for kids, it's a pretty cynical way of spinning their financial support to say that they want to spend dollars to score some easy political points. YES they want to replicate the good schools. That's a GOOD thing. Why reinvent the wheel when you already told us what can happen to schools that don't sweat the small stuff?

And from the human capital angle, which the piece acknowledges as a potentially very significant source of drag akin to having a non-entity in the five hole of your batting order (on FIRE today). Answer? Good recruiting! ... Ahem. Speaking of, I recently made the acquaintance of an obliging Bay Area TFA Recruitment Director (Brown U., Yankees fan... credibility: check.) from whom I'm hoping to get some more insight along these lines. For now I'd like to issue a blanket "thank you" to all TFA folk I have and will continue to pester in the name of fresh content.

Ch-ch-changes!

2010-05-02T11:44:00.003-04:00

In the end, the avocados won out.

Mr. Trudeau, come this August, will be a 12th grade English teacher at KIPP King Collegiate in San Lorenzo, CA. 2 sections of English. 3 sections of a Research Methods/College Writing course. Both brand-new classes, as next year will be King's inaugural class of 12th graders.

On its face, this is a challenge and a half. In the context of moving across the country, I will have to build 2 whole curricula and teach 5 sections. That's a lot on my plate. Fortunately the fresh, salted avocado is also on my plate. OM NOM NOM.

I'm excited for the undertaking for a number of reasons:

1. 12th graders are probably my ideal grade level. Just a personality thing. And these kids, whom I taught during my sample lesson, are amazing: engaged, friendly, curious, righteous.

2. 12th grade lit and writing are right in my wheelhouse. The content puts wind in my sails.

3. There's something unique about King. I'm sure I'll spend a lot of time trying to divine what it is. Kids are... happy. Teachers are driven, not ground down.

SO. Next steps. Spend as much time as possible around as many 12th grade English teachers as possible. Start grabbing curriculum pieces. Find SF roomies/apartment. Sign up for Bay Area FasTrak. Ready... break.

Summing Up

2010-04-29T14:25:00.001-04:00

Jump to Conclusions Mat

2010-04-29T13:45:00.004-04:00

See, it's got different CONCLUSIONS that you can JUMP to.

Or, failing that can't-miss decision-making hueristic, maybe you're familiar with EmPOWER's Brain Frame technology. Better, faster, stronger. Please find attached two Brain Frame's that I sketched on the cell store's white board to aid my ~~decision making process~~ frenzied indecision. They're pretty self-explanatory.

Lemovian TFA...

2010-04-27T09:07:00.003-04:00

...two great tastes that taste great together.

Via old friend and first-year TFA Corps member Jesse M., teaching FTW in D.C. public schools:

TFA's PD is 10-3 on Saturdays...11-1 is typically content and then after lunch we have workshop sessions until 3. This week, Doug Lemov was the main workshop (not the only one, but the main one...i'd say about 300 of us attended it?) and it was taught like an interactive lecture. We were in an auditorium, Doug talked along with a powerpoint (limited) and video clips from the taxonomy (more of that). He also had corps members come up and demonstrate different aspects of the taxonomy (register, strong voice, framing the positive). He had guided notes for us, which everyone used. I dont think I've ever seen so many corps members actually use the guided notes the workshop leader hands out.

Essentially Doug was framed as successful inner city teacher/administrator/achievement gap buster who's techniques/taxonomy would be beneficial in our classroom to not only increase achievement, but also increase motivation and decrease behavior concerns. Everyone wins. Doug's a pretty powerful/well spoken presenter and he kept the workshop casual, interactive, and funny/fun. we all had a good time...and learned. Again, everyone wins. Doug framed the workshop as the "monday morning workshop" in that we WOULD walk away with several techniques that we could actually do on monday morning...and not just catchphrases like "teach kids, not content"/"set high standards"/etc.

I HAS A JEALOUS. I've gotten mixed reviews on some of the buttons TFA's PD chooses to push, but this one seemed can't-miss. Had I not been away getting bowled over by a righteous school in the East Bay, I might have taken the shuttle down to DC and impersonated a TFA CM to soak up some of the awesomesauce by osmosis.

I'm currently harassing an obliging TFA Boston executive (don't be too impressed, he's an old buddy with an even older-looking jump shot) to get me in touch with some of his CM's. I'm very, very interested in how their people hone their craft over the course of the year in the absence of the unifying, top-down prescriptiveness that MATCH Teacher Training is afforded by being, you know, housed entirely in the same two schools with very consistent culture. I'm very encouraged that Doug's taxonomy is useful/actionable for Jesse in her public school classroom. TFA CM's never cease to amaze me with respect to a) their balls of steel and b) their ability to (largely) independently reflect, tack, reflect, adjust over the course of the year.

Hopefully they're not too busy to indulge the inquiring minds... stay tuned.

Checkmate, Unemployment!

2010-04-25T21:42:00.004-04:00

Well, it's all coming to a head. I've got a couple of offers from amazing schools in hand. One more on-site at an amazing school coming up this week. An embarrassment of riches in front of me, and... I couldn't be more schizophrenic at moment. Counsel to be sought. Reflecting to be done. Impulse buys to be purchased.

In all likelihood, by the end of the week I'll be watching the ink dry on a contract. On a dotted line.

Some weeks ago I wondered aloud which variables in the teacher job search mattered most. Or, what most strongly correlates to first year teaching happiness. Well, now those variables are, for the most part, set. The past few days in San Francisco have been something of a revelation, and what's important to me has shifted dramatically (don't worry, Mom, I'm about to call you. Put the phone down). Obviously I have to get the frack out of Dodge (t-minus 4 hours) in order to objectively process all that's come down the pipeline in the past few days, but just while I'm still in thick of things: San Francisco is unreal. I mean that 90% in a good way. We're talking whole other planet here, people. Seriously, Mom. Phone. Down. I need to be alone with my fresh avocado for a moment. Om nom nom nom.

Clarity via tasty produce.

Yankees FTW? WTF!?

2010-04-22T13:02:00.004-04:00

Upon arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area for a job interview (on Friday), the first thing I did was take BART (MTA > BART > MBTA) to the Oakland Coliseum to see my Bronx Bombers take on the Oakland Athletics. MTT admin Orin immediately questions my transcontinental motivations. By the end of the night, the following things were true:

1. The Yankees were in town the same week I was (covered).

2. The object of my most OCD minor league baseball fandom, young Phil Hughes, was the starter.

3. Philthy Phil Phranchise carried a no-hitter into the 8th inning. Finished with 10 strikeouts. Nasty.

4. The Yankees won.

Crusty metaphysical cynic that I am, it is disconcerting that so many apparent "signs" accompany my first day on the Left Coast. Notes on my observations of the impressive KIPP King Collegiate and the nauseatingly accommodating Laura E. to follow.

Stay hyphy, y'all.

Riding the Crest

2010-04-19T10:41:00.008-04:00

Via the NYTimes, the New York Board of regents will vote this week on whether to expand the role of alternative teacher certification orgs by letting them grant masters degrees. What's that you say? Someone should start a boutique school of education that obsessively trains teachers how to manage classrooms and plan lessons? One step ahead of the curve... I tried to embed the link in Mike Goldstein's head (at left), but... fail. Anyway, if you haven't subscribed to his blog, well, you're off-task. Demerit.

This could end up being a massive end-around on the ed schools, who currently are the key masters for an NY teaching credential. MTT's that went there last year had to enroll in TeacherU, a better-than-most Saturday and online masters program through Hunter College.

David Steiner, commish of the NY DOE, warmed the cockles of my heart by issuing a call to infuse "new actors" into the teacher training business... with a sports metaphor!

"He now urges the use of video, a tool he pioneered at Hunter, to help student teachers see what works and what doesn’t in the classroom ('Like taking apart a serve in tennis,' he says)."

Skadoosh! Now you're talking my language, Dave. And, once again, waaaay ahead of you, buddy. What else is NY looking for?

The Regents are looking for academic programs that would be grounded in practical teaching skills and would require teachers to commit to working in a high-needs school for four years.

Chiggidy check. Where's my carrot?

Dr. Steiner said that the alternative groups would have to shape their own certification programs subject to Regents approval. While those programs would involve some theoretical classroom learning, he said, they would be “given some relief from the traditional constraints of course credits and hours.”

Mmm... what year is this Kool-Aid? It's delicious...

Back in the Saddle

2010-04-19T08:35:00.002-04:00

Self-referential is where blogs go to die. Meta narrative... steel yourself...

The recent hiatus has been a practical response to heavy job search work volume. I don't know where this bandwidth came from, but somehow I'm staying on top of it. Oh, right, I used to do laundry. Employedness is next to Godliness.

Short version: no use blogging about offers from schools that I may or may not have gotten but can't talk about. Leverage, folks. And no, I have not signed anywhere on any dotted lines that might not exist at all. (Though when I do, I will issue a contractual demand that there actually be a dotted line... I've been let down by Brown University and MATCH and their solid lines for too. damn. long.)

And finally, on the stuff that actually matters front: a few days ago I was tuned in to NPR, and they kicked it down to a Florida affiliate for a story on that state's recent push to end tenure and institute merit pay. Pretty sweeping stuff. Governor Crist will (hold the presses) listen to constituents and experts for a week before announcing if he will veto. And this is after Florida was dealt a Race to the Top black eye by the feds. Edu-mentum!

Office Morale

2010-04-14T11:16:00.003-04:00

The MTT office at the MATCH High School has a unique culture. Productivity and morale and usually pretty high. Tracking my own morale over the course of the year.

Low point: MTT admins Laura and Erica introduce "FUFN" (pronounced "fuffin") to office's romance/relationship lexicon. Brownie points to whomsoever guesses the acronym. Hint: they're both effing crazy.

Bizarre point: MG's out-takes (below) for the MTT Informational Video (embedded at bottom of page).

High point: Brian Sub-Zoubek (below) arrives. Ross enjoys first eminently convenient, refrigerated lunch.

It occurs to me that this entry isn't at all education or teaching related. Well, shoot. It's my ~~body~~ blog, I do what I want.

Preaching FTW

2010-04-13T22:31:00.005-04:00

I recently attended a debate on the subject of the existence of gods between Rabbi David Wolpe, world-renowned sweetheart, and Christopher Hitchens, world-renowned intellect and epic douchebag. You can find the full thing on YouTube here. By my lights, Hitchens owned Wolpe, but only with significant help from ~~his tag team partner~~ "objective" moderator and NPR personality Tom Ashbrook. Gah. Don't get me started.

At any rate, as a self-avowed atheist, the only real "rules" I try to live my life by are the golden rule and, simply: don't do believe things you don't have any evidence for believing. In short, I don't have any sort of faith because no one has presented me with a good enough reason to believe.

Problem is, this way of thinking has presented me with a whole slew of inconsistencies within my teaching/education worldview. For instance, I don't have any objective rationale for believing that calling home to report bad behavior/praise good behavior has any effect on student motivation or engagement. Someone please link me to the study. I'd love to be validated. This is sort of a cornerstone of the school I work at and the certification program I'm enrolled in.

Sadly, I can't help but admit the horse is squarely in front of the cart.

Any educators out there married to "best practices," procedures, habits that they swear by, but can only swear by? Be honest... Zeus may be listening...

Allow Myself to Introduce... Myself

2010-04-11T13:11:00.006-04:00

In response to a few reader comments and emails about parsing down video of me teaching, I've... parsed down video of me teaching. You can check out some of the "moves" we've been trained in, such as "100% compliance," "Break It Down" and "Steering Hints," as well as behavior and effort specific "group praise."

There is some required reading for anyone who accepts the premise that while personality, aptitude, and other attributes can help a teacher succeed, the dozens of different response/protocol/questioning decisions a teacher makes over the course of a lesson can be isolated, coached, and trained. A bunch of what we're trained to do at MTT can be found within the pages of Teach Like a Champion. We also draw from other Uncommon sources, TFA, etc. Best practices FTW!

For context, 100% compliance means demanding that every student participate (in this case) in the call-and-response group pronunciation of a difficult word. It creates a culture of accountability where students know you're not going to let them zone out.

"Break it Down" and "Steering Hint" took place in the context of a line of question where I was pretty sure the student could come to the answer with a little bit of help. Here's how the exchange went down:

"Tyhree was that a beefy notice and think?"
"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it's, well, that's kind of what I put in a different way. But, it's good because she used something from the text that... and put it in her own words."

"What's the second half of a Notice and Think, what makes it beefy?"

"The think part."

"The think part. And what does the think part have to be to make it a beefy notice and think?"

"Um..."

"Not a fact but..."

"An opinion."

Tyhree initially was off-track with where the beef was. The "break it down" moment came when I realized I needed to steer him back to what the criterion for "beefy" is. The "steering hint" was when I offered him a finish-my-sentence moment. This all falls under the "right is right" umbrella. A few weeks ago I might have said "Yes, think part makes it beefy, if it's an opinion," rather than making Tyhree do that last 30% of the cognitive legwork.

Link Dump

2010-04-09T18:13:00.004-04:00

New video of me teaching SAT Reading from this afternoon. NOT the lesson that was observed by Phoenix folk. But I think I still look damn good in florescent institutional lighting.

This is the mini-fridge I'm considering for the office. Input welcome. Mike nixed the fridge/microwave combo devices the cool kids had in college.

This is the school in the S.F. Bay Area that asked me to do a sample lesson. Yes, I'm strongly considering the notion of teaching (FTW?) in the East Bay.

Shoot the J! Or don't.

2010-04-09T16:32:00.004-04:00

Was recently at a Celtics-Knicks basketball game with Orin, a MATCH trustee, and this guy. We started poking just the smallest bit of fun at the notion of running a progressive-ed varsity basketball team.

"So, fellas, what do you want to do for practice today? Sprints? Bounce passing? Oh, scrimmaging again. Ok! Hey, listen, I'm not going to impose some freaky boundaries on you. You go ahead and travel. You have to learn what happens when you travel. What? No, don't stop doing your 'gimme the rock' dance! If that's how you want to call for the ball, power to you, man!"

The MATCH High School boys varsity team, reigning league champs, are definitely a compliance-based team. Learning to hoop with clear directions and accountability. Radical stuff from coach Orin (Yeah. He coaches FTW on the side. What it do?)

Yesterday I did a sample lesson at a compliance-based No Excuses Middle School. Silent transitions. Demerits. The works. The principal has seen me do pretty cardboard, compliance-based lessons in the past, and wanted to "see my personality." So I let it shine. I relaxed the MTT rigor a bit, cranked the joy factor, and... it felt really damn good. Coupled with the fact that I wanted to swing to the opposite pole, as far away from rote teacher move, demerit-wielding Trudeau, was the fact that the kids I was teaching were kids who weren't allowed to go on a field trip that day.

Eep.

End result: not a tight class. Not nearly as tight as my SAT and Saturday classes are. But it reminded me why I love kids. And it was gratifying to know that I'm capable of oscillating back towards that extreme. Now, the task is calibrating to an optimal middle. A sample lesson with behavioral-issue kids might not have been the best time to take those kinds of risks, but I was given love for doing so.

And, just for good measure, I followed it up with an SAT class this afternoon where an observer from Phoenix Charter Academy in Chelsea gave me a friggin' 10 on "overall behavioral climate" (at left). Remember all those 3's and 4's from a couple weeks ago? Yeah, I do, too. Today? 8's and 9's from both observers. And my highest ratings yet (8, 9, 9) from coach Max. Here's to two steps forward.

Get at ya boy.

All over the map, but definitely the right hemisphere...

Feast or Famine

2010-04-07T08:03:00.004-04:00

On Monday I was turned down by an area charter school that was high on my classroom abilities and my presence within a school and as a grade leader, but which was (rightfully) hesitant about my ability to build curriculum. I fully intend to bust my ass when I do land my job--I'm legit VERY excited to actually use my liberal arts degree and backwards plan the crap out of some nerdtastic grunt work--but this particular school is looking to find a teacher that can bring years of that experience to address years-old departmental issues. Kids win.

Silver lining from the week?

MINI FRIDGE!

Here's the morbid part. For you late arrivals, I'm pretty staunchly pro-charter. Though accountability, high standards, and autonomy aren't in themselves the answers to ed reform, they are in fact the means by which I see Big Change being most efficiently brought about. In the microcosm of my life, a part of me feels proud to have been the unfortunate byproduct of a charter school exercising it's ability to hire a better option instead of the "longer tenured" teacher. Just because I've been a part of the charter world in Boston doesn't mean there isn't something out there that is better for kids.

And you gotta understand Trick love tha kids.

SWBAT: Spell "Krzyzewski"

2010-04-05T20:17:00.005-04:00

MATCH founder and die-hard Blue Devil Mike G. agreed recently to acquiesce to my year-old desire to obtain a mini-fridge for the office... if Duke prevails in the NCAA Tournament.

MG offers: Final Fridge!

Orin offers: Frozen Four! Wait... that's taken.

Let's go Duke!

Shane Battier: Master Teacher?

2010-04-04T14:30:00.003-04:00

On Saturday MTT admin Orin presented us with a lesson called "If You're Not Winning, You're Losing." It was an hour of discussion about how best to utilize praise moments to deal with your most challenging students. In a nutshell: the temptation is to "get by" with the tough kids, which can often lead to lowering your expectations with them and/or becoming complacent when you do happen to have a good day (week?) with him/her/them.

We were encouraged to look for moments to engage them, praise them, have an extracurricular interaction with them. When Orin used the word "game plan" he looked over at me and saw the sports metaphor twinkle in my eye. Oh yeah. It's on like Diddy Kong.

Basically, the tough kid is Kobe Bryant, and we're Shane Battier. Battier is the all guts, no glory defensive stopper charged with covering elite scorers like Bryant. His cerebral approach to this task is the stuff of stat geek legend: if Michael Lewis, of Moneyball fame, chooses to put Battier under the microscope, you know there's some freak[onomics]y shit going on.

When it comes to the tough kid, you're playing the percentages. You need to do your homework, prep in advance, remain proactive and intentional every single period; and it still might not work. Battier runs the numbers on how to put Kobe in the least likely position to hurt him. Lewis writes:

"People often say that Kobe Bryant has no weaknesses to his game, but that’s not really true. Before the game, Battier was given his special package of information. “He’s the only player we give it to,” Morey says. “We can give him this fire hose of data and let him sift. Most players are like golfers. You don’t want them swinging while they’re thinking.” The data essentially broke down the floor into many discrete zones and calculated the odds of Bryant making shots from different places on the court, under different degrees of defensive pressure, in different relationships to other players — how well he scored off screens, off pick-and-rolls, off catch-and-shoots and so on. Battier learns a lot from studying the data on the superstars he is usually assigned to guard."

This is incredibly instructive for me. And reinforces what all educators learn at some point: kids aren't always going to succeed, they're not always going to meet you half-way. Your job is to do all you can do to put them in the position to make the right choices, and to influence them as much as possible, but at the end of the day you have to be a pragmatist if you want to stay sane.

So when Battier forced Kobe to take the game-winning shot attempt from a spot on the floor and in a certain way that he was least likely to actually make it, in a way it didn't matter that the odds prevailed for Kobe and he swished the 26-foot J. Battier had done his job. If you game plan for the tough kid (seating assignment, outside of class relationship building, home visits, in-class job assignment, praise and prompt, etc. etc.), he still might hit a wall. But you can't write him off, and you can't shoot for containment. If you're not winning, you're losing.

Thanks, Orin, for the fodder. This blog is going to ~~become a sports opinion website so gradually y'all aren't even gonna notice~~ continue to look for creative metaphors to distill important teacher lessons. After all, we're teaching "for the win," ain't we?

Help You Help Me

2010-04-02T19:24:00.004-04:00

Recent phone interaction with Mom:

"Hi, Mom."

"Hi, Rossy, it's your Mom! You already knew that!"

"...What's up?"

"I'm concerned about your blog, where did you go?"
"Oh, I've just been busy."

"What do you mean? Why have you been so busy?"
"I have a full time job and a 20 hour per week teacher training program."
"But you always have that."

(repeat last 5 lines three times. click.)

Sorry, Mom. I love you. This is hard and stressful, but I'm fine. REALLY. Don't come to Boston. Put the keys down. I'm peachy.

I preface this post with the above conversation with mother dearest (who by the way, is once again broadcasting FTW) because it relates in part to a key ingredient in my job search. For someone who is now, thanks to MTT, a feedback and observation crack fiend, I'm starting to think about what it is that schools can provide teachers in the way of professional development that is truly high impact. Principal observes once a week, gives feedback. How helpful is that? What's the range? Grade level and cluster meetings once a week. Cool? Waste of time? What does "supporting" teachers actually mean?

Lots of MTT's are motivated. We're receptive to feedback. We're ready to keep working 70+ hours/week to be good first-year teachers. But what should I be looking for from a school? Mike G. says a prepackaged curriculum* of ANY description would free up tons of hours so I'm not reinventing the wheel every week. What from the school is going to make this realfrigginbusy teacher a balanced and happier teacher?

*When the the phrase "curric in a box" blows up on the national stage, I'm officially taking credit for that right... meow.

****UPDATE: MG and I can't actually remember who contracted "Curriculum in a Box" to "Curric in a Box," so I'm going to back off taking credit for that. He's way smarter and funnier than me, anyway. But I'm more scrumptulescent.*****

Epic Loss

2010-03-30T22:10:00.001-04:00

RIP Jaime Escalante. Vaya ganas, no?

Mind Games

2010-03-30T09:51:00.003-04:00

It may come as a surprise that I was not always the incredible educator I am today, seemingly influencing desire, motivation and hard work with a jingle of my carabiner keychain. No, it was not always so. In fact, my instructional futility of yesteryear was once caught on tape. Happily, so was the day on which I learned the secret to masterful teaching. It's a secret with more mystery wrapped up in it than the day the guy who knows the Coca Cola formula faked a moon landing on a grassy knoll with a pocket full of Everlasting Gobstoppers. It's a secret called...

The Clap Off.

Gut Check

2010-03-29T07:48:00.002-04:00

Saturday's lessons went OK. Coach Max gave me solid ratings. I didn't barf all over principals. Chalk that up as a victory.

Downside? Everyone who observed me rated me as either a first year teacher or a crappy first year teacher. OW. My... pride. From chatting with other MTT's who were observed, that was more or less the (unsurprising) general feeling.

Despite these ~~inconvenient~~ incredibly humbling truths, only one of the principals who observed me checked the "No, I won't be following up with this person" box (I was about to dump you first!) . Another two gave me the "If I have job openings I may follow up with this person," and one gave me the "Yes, I will follow up with this person."

One out of four still makes me a .250 hitter in danger of getting sent down to the minor leagues (what are the minor leagues of teaching? Manning the Chuck E. Cheese costume at toddler birthday parties?), so hopefully some things will fall into place with the two schools that don't yet have a job for me to interview for.

That being said, I do have two more sample lessons lined up at other No Excuses schools in Boston. And with my first one under my belt, I'm really eager to get back at it.

Incidentally, that same night after Judgment Day, MTT Cohort One (now first year teachers) had a reunion at the bar down the street from MATCH. I communed with a few of them who recalled the nerves and emotional black eyes from the "thanks, but no thanks" reviews. In particular, MTT alum Teacher Emily gave me some pretty heavy psychic shit to chew on when she described her first few months. Got kicked around kinda hard first semester, the very occasional "good day" sandwiched by a few weeks of "bad days." Second semester, however, she is experiencing strings of good days that add up to (gasp!) good weeks. Here's to progress, E3.

Main takeaway from that conversation (context: she's incredibly sweet and patient, so maybe she was just instinctively nurturing my bruised ego) was that for all the stressing and sweating we do at MTT around the "Rockstar teacher" that "kicks ass" and "takes no prisoners", at the end of the day you have to be able to internalize that when you are taking the occasional prisoner... you're still a first-year teacher. It's what you do. And you can get better, but you can't always focus on owning your crappiness.

Here's to finding the balance. Keep that improvement fire burning, Ross, and don't accept failure, but know that it's OK when you fail*.

*Unless failure means no follow-up interview. JK!!!! No but seriously.

Stand and Deliver

2010-03-26T10:23:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow MTT is bringing in school leaders and principals from 5 or 6 area charter schools to observe Teacher Trainees en masse at Saturday Academy. This gives us a golden opportunity to strut our stuff for multiple potential employers at once.

OR it gives us the opportunity to pull our best Syracuse impression and freeze up in the clutch. (Sidenote: ESPN ran the headline "Orange Squeezed from Dance" this morning. That's a home run. Fallback employment idea: write puns for sports editors.)

How lucky are MTT's to have their admins bring potential employers to their classrooms? Did your Ed school/cert. program/yadda do that kind of job placement? I'm trying to gauge just how victimized I can pretend to be if I implode under the pressure. (Too hard on the Pats fans this month? Or... not hard enough?)

How We Do

2010-03-23T16:52:00.003-04:00

This is your brain on hugs.

PEBO: Patrolling effort and behavior oblongata. Noticing and dealing with misbehavior appropriately.

Performance Cortex: Rigor and ratio. How much heavy lifting are the kids doing? How many of the kids are working?

Teacher Navigation Lobe: What comes next in my lesson plan? Am I going to finish all the constituent parts of my lesson on time?

HumorBellum: Mister got jokes, yo. Ask me anyone who has ever spent more than 5 minutes with me my 'gwapes' joke. But not if you're on blood pressure medication, are more than 6 months pregnant, or if you hate puppies and rainbows.

And, the text of the MTT Coaching Eval form. I get two of these per week (or, at least one for every time that I teach).

Return on Investment

2010-03-20T14:24:00.005-04:00

As to the sample lesson I taught on Tuesday. It went well. There were seven (7!) people observing the lesson, including 2 principals and 1 department head. Hopefully not all of them noticed that I didn't breath until the 30th minute.

The feedback I got was very helpful, and went along the lines of: you're going to be solid on classroom management, you're going to be good at leveraging personal relationships. The main criticism was around the rigor of mental work the students were doing, specifically as it related to my questioning techniques. In other words, MTT Coach Max has been right on the money by asking me to focus on RIGOR and RATIO.

Clearly, we have a focus area. Yesterday in SAT class and today in the Middle School I took a lot of time scripting ratio and rigor moves. One that I've found particularly useful.

"Trent, what does it mean if a word is bolded?"
"I don't know."

"We don't say 'I don't know' in this class."

"Can I ask for help?"

"Reina, help Trent out."

"If a word is bolded it means it's a keyword."

"Trent, what does it mean if a word is bolded?"

"It's a keyword."

"Everyone, what does it mean if a word is bolded?"

"IT'S A KEYWORD!"

Yes. Boom. Thank you. Feels like you just pulled off a triple combo in Mortal Kombat for the first time. While playing JESUS.

I keed, I keed.

Today I had my Coach Max and an outside observer, a teacher from the tight n' legit Roxbury Prep Charter, watch one class each. Their notes are embedded below. RoxPrep teach rated my Instructional Clarity as the strongest aspect of my lesson. SWISH. Max gave me an 8 in my Performance Cortex category. Trudeau spins, fades away, fires... SWISH!

As Jamie G. noted in the comments a few days ago, MTT is all about 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Today I took steps towards the win. Many steps remain. Many things still sucked today. The RoxPrep teacher rated me in the MTT metric as currently an average first year teacher, which is, needless to say, way short of where I want to be. But I'm making better decisions all the time. The more you knooooow!

Game Footage

2010-03-17T10:50:00.004-04:00

I'm a huge fan of watching footage of myself teaching. Good or bad, the adrenaline definitely gets to me and it's hard for me to ~~critically assess~~ remember in the slightest specific moments that need to be addressed. Will Ferrell knows what I'm talking about.

MTT posts a lot of video that our coaches film on a private YouTube site. Very helpful. The vids are limited in length, though, and we're not always filmed. SO, I've begun taking my own video, (including from my sample lesson yesterday, more on that later) and have created a TeachingFTW YouTube account for myself (and y'all).

Remains to be seen if 13 year-old YouTube trolls crush my will to live. "ROFL U R THE WHACKEST TEACHER EVER OMG KILL URSELF NOW LOLCATS!!11!1"

Punks.

Brass Tacks

2010-03-15T13:02:00.003-04:00

MTT alum and NYC Charter teacher Jamie came back to MTT this weekend to be interviewed and talk about his experiences in the program and in his first year of teaching in a No Excuses middle school. By all accounts Jamie is killing it. So we were all ears.

Biggest takeaway for me was how systematic Jamie was about improving as a teacher. I was gratified to learn that he kept very specific records of his quantitative and qualitative feedback from week to week, and was incredibly deliberate about how to improve. He would pick one very narrow aim each week and make sure he hit that move/protocol/tone/yadda and hit it hard. Then he would solicit feedback on that one narrow aim, and if satisfied, move on.

Ladies and gents, consider that page in the Jamie book stapled to the front of my feedback binder. Attached are photos of my crappiest teaching day feedback form and my most recent feedback form from Saturday Academy at the Middle School, courtesy of MTT coach Max.

Trend: upward. Progress: slow. And the beat goes on da da dum da dum da da da da.

(Speaking of one shot, sample lesson is tomorrow. Gulp.)

Substitute Teaching FTW

2010-03-11T15:13:00.010-05:00

Earlier this year I substituted for MATCH Teacher B who (seemingly) controls her class with Jedi mind tricks. These are not the parts of speech you're looking for. Subbing for a class where demerits, posture, etc. are NOT the norm was, to say the least, realfrigginchallenging.

Happily, that was over in an hour. Lizzie Pace, immortalized by Jay Matthews for being the busiest person on the planet, recently took over for a teacher at MATCH who went on paternity leave (BT-dubs, dude named his kid John Connor Collins. Epic child-rearing win. Kid has one hell of a destiny to fulfill).

That's right. She's subbing for a month. On top of that absurd schedule Matthews reproduces. Eye of the tiger, PaceFace. She wrote me about the first day. In her "infinite newness," she allowed a student to switch her normal seat, prompting multiple kids to end up in the wrong place.

The bell rang and a switch flipped in my head. Do Now. Do Now. I don’t care if students are working on the floor or the ceiling or each other’s backs, DO NOW. I told them to stay where they were, be silent and start the Do Now. The timer beeped. They began working.
...
Had I sacrificed the Do Now for rearranging the classroom, I am not sure I would ever have regained the urgency for the material.

On NPR a couple of days ago, Doug Lemov was interviewed about his teacher training philosophy, and started by talking about a bad-ass teacher named Bob Zimmerli subbing for the day.

You know, he's really got 30 seconds to win this battle, or as any teacher knows, it can go south really fast and it's going to be a painful hour. So Bob starts giving directions to his students and he gives them very clear, very absorbable directions about what to do.

It appears Ms. Pace made the right move. She gave the clear, simple directive of a silent do-now. As a substitute teacher, she was dealing with a disproportionately critical part of class: the 30 friggin' seconds she has to solidify in her kids' minds that they're there to do work.

Why do I concern myself with this at the moment? Because I have my first sample lesson coming up in the job search. And sample lesson-ing is in some part like subbing. Strange kids. Stand-alone lesson. One hour to show my mettle. To not be found wanting. With like 5 different people observing me.

Time to bolster my confidence in the comments section. AHHHFREAKOUT.

Bang for your Buck

2010-03-09T12:29:00.004-05:00

Recently overheard in the office that mentor teachers for Harvard GSE's teachers-to-be receive $1,000 per semester. And that's above average.

I legit LOL'd imagining how that conversation went in my head:

"Yo, BPS teach, I'll give you a 1.75% pay raise to have a 22 year old teach in your classroom, get daily critical feedback on his pedagogy, develop lesson plans, talk curriculum design, and maybe even get some job placement advice from you."

"Uh... No."

"Okay fine, just pat him on the back and tell him he's doing a good job every week."

"No."

"Okay, just acknowledge he exists and let him into your classroom."

"Sold!"

I mean, honestly. What are you paying for when you spend $1,000? What do you expect to get for your dollar? How can that product possibly be a real incentive to add value to the trial-by-fire experience? And what's the accountability mechanism? Do you get a receipt?

Can current and former undergrad or graduate degree teachers-in-training describe what you get/got from your mentor teacher?

Plateauing

2010-03-08T12:05:00.002-05:00

My coaching ratings have begun to plateau a bit. MTT Admin Orin quips, "Charismatic and relatively with-it young teacher... ratio is the next frontier."

Ah, ratio. My old nemesis. We meet again. En garde!

"Ratio" in the teaching world refers to how much teacher work (lecturing, modeling) is being done relative to how much student work (answering questions, independent practice) is being done. High ratio means the teacher is literally saying fewer words while eliciting more student thinking and participation.

MTT Coach Max on both Friday in SAT class and Saturday with my 6th graders noted my main deficiency was putting more work on the kids. Actionably, it means: implementing more "stretch it" questions - pushing a student further; having students assess their peers' answers; why-and-how follow-ups ("Rayauna, why did Tabitha choose to underline that sentence?"); etc.

Action plan: I'm going to script the bejeesus out of my lesson plans this week. And I'll share that script towards the end of the week for critical review. I'm learning more and more that breaking down what you ask your students to do to foresee actual moments where you can plug in ratio moves will pay enormous dividends. That's because the problem isn't an unwillingness or inability to ask for, for example, a 'call and response' moment to get more kids involved... it's because I literally don't think to do it in the moment. (Think Brittany Murphy in Clueless implementing a new vocab word. "I hope we don't meet sporadically!" Yep. Solid pedagogy right there. RIP, Tai.)

Hm... great parenthetical aside, or greatest parenthetical aside? Boo-yah.

A Tale of Two Teachers

2010-03-04T14:59:00.003-05:00

MATCH Teacher A get a ton of learning out of kids. Hands out demerits. Scans for small potatoes stuff. Asks for posture. Serious, sardonic.

MATCH Teacher B gets a ton of learning out of kids. Hands out zero demerits. Lets a kid work if she has poor posture while on task. Permits some calling out. Warm. Empathetic.

MATCH Teacher Training philosophy doesn't align perfectly with any one teacher in our school. Teacher B is, for obvious reasons, skeptical of the methodology; they would never teach us to attempt what she can do as an experienced teacher. Teacher A looks more like logical extension of MTT, and probably executes a lot more of our "moves".

Our administrators stress to us that we're getting a basic tool belt for our first year. Rather than not knowing at all what to do when a kid gets up and attempts a fade-away jump shot at the trash can 20 feet away, we have something for responding to that, even if it's suboptimal.

The question for me is, how much of the mold will I break as I grow as a teacher? I'm curious to hear from experienced classroom teachers about how much their voice, their procedures, their mannerisms, their humor has changed over the years. Are you 5% different? Are you unrecognizable?

Required Reading

2010-03-03T15:24:00.002-05:00

Very interesting read on teacher prep, Doug Lemov in the NY Times today. Some relevant snippets.

“I think that there is an innate drive or innate ability for teaching,” said Sylvia Gist, the dean of the college of education at Chicago State University.

"But what makes a good teacher? There have been many quests for the one essential trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try."

"It was the tiniest decision, but what was teaching if not a series of bite-size moves just like that?"

This is a double bacon cheeseburger article. Echoes some common sense notions you hear at MTT: you can teach teaching, good teachers aren't Jedi Masters born with force mastery, Ed schools continue to lag behind.

Still... how is it there hasn't been more made of the notion that good teachers have "moves" that you can point to and replicate? See Doug teach. Teach, Doug, teach!

How Do We Reach These Kids?!

2010-03-02T13:32:00.014-05:00

Obama weighs in on the potential bellwether in Rhode Island that I commented on below. Randi Weingartner immediately has a public conniption, because Obama throws the White House behind the radical mass teacher firings that went down in Central Falls two weeks ago. Gasoline, meet fire.

"If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability," [Obama] said. "And that's what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school, when just 7 percent of 11th-graders passed state math tests -- 7 percent."

Standard justification. Randi?

"We know it is tempting for people in Washington to score political points by scapegoating teachers, but it does nothing to give our students and teachers the tools they need to succeed," she said in a joint statement with other union officials.

Well, that's the first time I've ever seen her go more than 3 clauses without saying something about "what's best for kids." And it's also pretty standard rebuttal.

Personally, I agree with both of them. You're right, el Presidente, this is some barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat of accounta-friggin-bility. And you're right, Ms. Dubs, baseball bats are pretty blunt instruments. But when you're working with 7% pass rates, and you already said no to longer days and a couple other kid-centric provisions, are you really that surprised when the ~~hand of God descends~~ superintendent goes to DEFCON 1 on you?

Don't answer that.

And second of all, the underlying assumption seems to be that teachers aren't the only factor at work here (and, implicitly, the more significant factor is p-p-poverty). Be that as it may, does anyone want to make the case that the single most important variable in determining whether kids learn is teacher quality? And that when kids are straight up not learning ANYTHING that's the variable over which we can most easily exert the most direct control?

I guess the alternative is wringing our hands and screaming "HOW DO WE REACH THESE KEEEDS!?" (Seriously, if you can, take the time to watch Cartman's Jaime Escalante South Park episode. Friggin' hilarious. Unless you're a Patriots fan.)

Almost TOO Quiet...

2010-03-01T22:23:00.004-05:00

Here in Boston, as far as I can tell, we have one of the most functional city-wide charter school systems in the country. Perhaps THE most functional. The cap on charter enrollment was recently raised to 18% of the district. We have half a dozen established charters ready and willing to grow. We've actually closed bad charters. A couple weeks ago when I crowned Indianapolis the official place to be? Well, that was a couple weeks ago. Back then I also ate nutella straight out of the jar. Harder better faster stronger.

Massachusetts is also heavily unionized. I recently heard a Massachusetts charter leader talk about how a superintendent had sent a letter to the district schools forbidding them to let him speak to their kids or teachers. Charters here (in particular) have some very, very determined opponents.

Is anyone else waiting for the other shoe to drop? Why haven't we gotten both barrels in response to the obvious gains being made? Boston is locked and loaded to become the bright, shining example for inner-city charter systems, and since the cap has been lifted there's been nary a peep about "creaming" or back-filling or SPED capacity.

So here are my questions: where do Boston charters get hit when the powers-that-be finally bring their might to bear? How do we take advantage of the momentarily calm seas? If the numbers flipped Menino, who do we take our data to next?

Also, Eduwonk linked to me today. Goodness. I guess I'm going to have to start spell-checking.

Jay Matthews FTW

2010-02-26T12:12:00.005-05:00

Jay Matthews weighs in on Mike Goldstein's boutique teacher training operation in the WaPo. That's right, we're ON THE MAP, BABY!

Matthews goes with the 'train teachers like ice skaters' metaphor that MG oh-so-topically has employed during the Olympics:

"A kid who practices 10 hours playing sloppy pick up basketball with his friends might develop less than a kid who has a focused two hours of practice with measurable, highly specific, small chunk feedback," Goldstein told me in a long email. "Similarly, a rookie teacher who simply student teaches or acts as an assistant teacher might simply be repeating the WRONG moves."

That's an MG quote from the article. Why we got the ice-skater intro and then read about basketball sort of gets at the heart of who MG is as person: basketball fan first, edu-reformer second.

Most notably for me, this is the first public acknowledgment that this methodology does appear to be adding significant value. On the first cohort of MATCH Teacher Trainees currently teaching in their first year:

He is sending graduates of this experiment out to teaching jobs in charter schools of the No Excuses variety, places that pride themselves on gains in student achievement. Amy D'Angelo, principal of anAchievement First school in Brooklyn, called one MATCH trained teacher, Ellie Brown, "the best first year teacher I've ever seen." Jason Singer, who runs a high school that is part of the KIPP charter network in California, said another MATCH product, Laura Einhorn, was "light years beyond a traditional first year teacher," according to Goldstein.

The TFA model is sort of at work here. Get really smart and hard-working people on the front end, and they'll survive their first year with very little training by virtue of being really smart and hard-working. MATCH Corps is even more selective than TFA, so the type-A awesomesauce is certainly there, and they also get, you know, taught how to teach. Incidentally, who recruited and vetted the jaw-droppingly effective Ellie Brown and Laura Einhorn? Just sayin'.

So there it is. The proof is in the pudding. Mmm... pudding... They don't call me "Snack Pack" around the office for nothin'.

Found Pedagogy

2010-02-22T13:43:00.003-05:00

Commonwealth Sports Club helped me write my Do Now for Friday SAT class: "Read and understand this SAT Critical Reading passage, then get all of the questions right."

I'm pretty sure they're unaware that I still pay the corporate rate MATCH Corps got 4 years ago, and they've undergone two renovations and many service upgrades in the interim. I'm probably paying 50% of what the next poor sap is. Epic grandfathering win.

Update: They also have a sign outside the locker room claiming they cannot "assure the security of personal possessions."

Update 2: All threats to reveal my absurdly low monthly rate to management will result in immediate banishment from this blog. This isn't 'Nam. There are rules.

I Work in a Strange School

2010-02-20T14:27:00.004-05:00

Growing up in New York City, attending college at a bastion of liberal politics (and apparently epic douchebaggery), I always took for granted the righteousness of educational progressivism. I was socially liberal. Economically egalitarian. Of course I was going to throw in with a ed reform philosophy that tagged itself 'progressive'. That's what so useful about dogma labels for undergrads... reductivism is just such a time saver.

Interrupting an, ahem, incredibly productive afternoon in our office at school, a few of my office mates and I decided to do a greatest hits list of the hallmarks of progressive edubabble. Because we'd been working so hard. And needed a chuckle. Cough.

1. Project-based learning; "learn by doing!"

2. Portfolios; assessing based on creative output and production.

3. Group work; build social skills! Collaboration and cooperation.

As an undergrad reading Freire and kicking around lofty notions of urban ed reform, all this stuff was gravy. It made all the sense in the world. We needed to educate the poor to be critical thinkers who didn't mindlessly conform to intergenerational acquiescence to 'the system'. Duh. Viva la revolucion!

Or something.

Part of me is sort of nostalgic for the good ol' days... but here we are. The end result for me is a sort of pride that the Dickensian K-12 machine (that an old friend riled against below) can so seamlessly be integrated with being obsessive about building personal relationships with kids.

And yes, we make them do SSR - sustained silent reading. I heard a rumor about a charter in Newark that internally calls this period 'STFUAR'. Door prize to whomsoever divines the meaning of this acronym in the comments.

And yes, we assess with cold, sterile standardized tests. Not beautiful, bedazzled portfolios.

And yes, we sometimes just have them sit there and take notes and do work individually. For whole periods at a time. For weeks at a time. You might not see any 'stations' or kinesthetic activities.

But we run on love. Yep, love. How often do you hear the L-word thrown around in public education? It can sometimes even lead to us being silly as s***.

Rhode Island: Wears the Pants

2010-02-16T16:41:00.006-05:00

Andy at Eduwonk linked to this story about an extremely low-performing high school in Rhode Island where the entire 100-person staff is being fired.

Central Falls Superintendent laid out a half-dozen turnaround changes: 25 minutes added to the school day, rotating before/after school tutoring, eating lunch with kids once a week (the horror, horror!), yadda. You know, some really above-and-beyond stuff. Teachers didn't budge. Not much more pay for more duties. No deal.

So they got axed.

This is pretty badass from the reform perspective. Actually doing politically unpopular stuff because radical reform doesn't often come at the negotiating table. And what's more unpopular than firing teachers? Phillip C. noted in the comments of Fuzzy Math that teachers, soldiers, and firemen are bonafide heroes who will often be defended vigorously by the very people they fail to serve.

From the Central Falls article:

A couple of parents said they were stunned by the announcement and said they blamed students, not teachers, for the high school's consistently poor performance.

"It's not fair," said Angela Perez, who has a daughter at the high school. "They shouldn't be punished because the students are lazy."

Jinkies. "Because the students are lazy." If the very parents of a God-awful school won't hold the people that run the school at all accountable for student outcomes, where does the fuel for broader scale teacher quality efforts come from? The ivory tower interweb eduwonks? Yeah, that's right... we're gonna BLOG THE CRAP OUT OF YOU, BAD TEACHERS. WHAT NOW? I'll link you to some scary s***, son. Yeah, yeah you walk away. Punk ass.

UberFail

2010-02-14T15:27:00.002-05:00

Friday SAT class this past week was ~~inconsistent~~ totally schizophrenic. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Can't-Uphold-Standards. I can intellectually encompass the idea of having disparate results with different groups of kids while content stays constant, but the yawning chasm that separated my first and third period classes' relative tightness is driving me bat-shit crazy. Gaaahhhfusdf8048234.

First period marked my first encounter with mutinous students. 7 of the 10 students arrived 20 minutes into a 45 minute period. Apparently a coordinated effort. With three (three!) kids in class I was totally off my game; it felt even more stilted than usual to give on-task calling out demerits. After all, this looked like a tutorial! So I missed multiple demerits I should have given.

When the others filed in--and this is the epically actionable part--I took the opportunity to ~~LAY THE HAMMER DOWN~~ say something sort of lame about how important the SAT's are.

Fail.

Coach Max debriefed me directly after the class. We agreed that significant problems could be found in not sticking to my guns on demerits, falling short of 100% on directives, and overall lack of ratio; several kids didn't participate. But here we are, in an ecstatic moment of failure from which to learn and grow, to take my medicine and bounce back stronger... what is it Max, what is it???

I wasn't Chuck Norris. That wasn't MY classroom back there. I was not the ultimate authority and I didn't believe that the kids would let me make every single rule and demand 100% compliance. And that 'SAT is important' move? That should have been our most righteous moment together: uncomfortable silence and eye contact. Low voice. "I. Am. SO. Dissapointed. I've known you all for three years. This isn't your time, this is OUR time, and you disrespected me to my face."

My project for the week, from Max: script out word-for-word the paraphrased quotation above and "perform" it when we get back from February break. And I plan to video tape that. Ready for the dark horse Oscar performance of the season?

Take 1. Action.

EVERYBODY PANIC

2010-02-11T11:44:00.004-05:00

STOP THE PRESSES. Houston Independent School District to fire 400 teachers whose students made very little or zero gains on standardized tests (or in some cases actually lost ground).

Teachers argue that the value added metrics don't paint a full/accurate picture.

Proponents say teachers in some cases will be trained and mentored or reassigned, rather than being fired for one year of bad tests scores.

Lost in the mix: there are 13,000 teachers in the HISD. Alternative headline:

97% of Houston teachers performing at 'satisfactory' or better, keep jobs.

In what other industry does replacing/placing on probation the crappiest 3% of one's workforce generate this kind of controversy? Brain hurts. Pls help me 4 understands thees? K thx bye.

Fuzzy Math

2010-02-09T16:18:00.004-05:00

Prioritizing the variables involved in a depressed economy job search for a would-be teacher is no picnic. Though here is my own first attempt, in order of Gotta-Have-It to Meh-It's-Whatevs:

Location (Boston), school culture ('No Excuses'), subject matter (English/reading), grade level (high school), number of preps (??), salary/benefits (one. MILLION. dollars.), peripheral duties (Dungeons n' Dragons club wOOt!).

(Incidentally, I'm super cereal on the Wendy's thing. Frosty-covered french fries are an extremely effective Insane-Kid-Stress prophylactic. I also REALLY like parenthetical asides. It's like a cozy little kitten-infested den of tangential bliss. I can't be touched in here. I can talk about, like, fabric softener, or link you to incredibly pointless crap. And you've gotta sit there and take it like a chump. Hoo ha.)

Anyway. Obviously it's incredibly unlikely that a No Excuses school leader is going to call me up tomorrow and say she wants to pay me $45k to teach 3 sections of 11th grade American Literature at her brand spankin' new take-no-prisoners charter school start-up in Back Bay. But a boy can dream, can't he?

So the question becomes... do I work for the below-mentioned 'Some Excuses' charter school if they hire me to teach high school English? Would an offer from a No Excuses middle school with a reading opening trump that? Would a history position at a KIPP high school in NYC with a higher base salary be more attractive?

Honestly, I'm looking for counsel at this point. Enter: MTT life coaches. Later this month we'll be invited to sit down and have it out with the admins about these tough decisions. If any established teachers out there have any anecdotes about how a particular job affected the relative weight of these EPICALLY. IMPORTANT. variables for them, I'd love to hear about it.

Get at ya boy.

In Defense of Sterility?

2010-02-06T19:50:00.007-05:00

Got an interesting email from a former high school classmate who read about MTT and watched the video below (2/2) of my classroom management exam. With her permission, an excerpt:

I have to say, Ross, I'm frankly appalled at what I understand your program's ideal classroom to be. Sit up rigidly, don't speak unless spoken to, eat the same edu-gruel day in and day out. And all to get good scores on tests. Children aren't robots. I shudder to think what a kid who would go through 12 grades of that type of education would look like... a Dickensian robot with no creativity and no love of learning.

First of all, man oh man do I wish kids were robots. You'd never have to say, "Omar, why is your shoe tied to the overhead projector?" Irrationality gone! Does not compute! Huzzah!

*blink*

Meanwhile, an MTT alum I know teaching (FTW) in her first year at a charter school (with a pretty good reputation) has been at a philosophical impasse with an administration that doesn't agree with all the freaky rules she's trying to impose on her kids. You know, like being seated and working when the bell rings, or not sleeping in class. Some of these kids have a lot to deal with at home, you might hear. They shouldn't necessarily be punished if they need more time to transition into a class period.

Swing and a miss.

When a school's cultural foundation is "student choice" (read: you can choose when to get to work), I can't help but think of the total loss of learning time. Assuming all kids are learning 5 minutes into the choice-based classroom, the Gradgrind "No Excuses" educator has 5 x Instructional Days worth of learning minutes more than the "Some Excuses," they'll-sit-down-eventually educator.

Obviously the calculus here isn't that black and white. Happy students are engaged students. Engaged students are productive students. Even a No-Excuses classroom needs to concern itself with the joy factor; where "da rules" optimally intersect with the joy-factor is certainly an open question, but the premise remains... How much more engaging/joyful does the choice-based, sorta tight classroom learning environment have to be to make up for the raw learning time advantage that the No Excuses teacher enjoys?

I need you to raise your hand if you'd like to answer. Hoo-ha.

Breaking it Down

2010-02-04T07:23:00.005-05:00

I've gotten a bunch of requests to go into more detail about the structure and content of the MATCH Teacher Training program. You can read the full blow-by-blow here, and there's also an embedded video about it at the bottom of this page. But here's ~~a reprint of promotional materials~~ my own run-down:

Five key skill areas:

1. Automatic response to student provocations/misbehaviors

2. "Sposato Method" for building 1-on-1 parent and student relationships

3. Planning and executing crisp lessons

4. Agressive time management of 60-hour teacher work week

5. Specialized knowledge in math or English instruction

Phase one, October through mid-January: learn, practice, commit to muscle memory automatic responses. You start with flashcards (left) to memorize the appropriate response to something. You practice in the mirror, literally getting the words out. You practice in groups of 6 trainees, who actually act out the misbehaviors. You are coached the whole time. Eventually you take an *exam* on how good you are at catching and appropriately responding to this stuff.

Phase two, January through May: student teach classes of ~10 MATCH 11th graders (Fri) and 6th graders (Sat), using lesson plans written by the administration. Hone management skills. Observed/coached every day you teach to develop week-to-week improvement plans.

Phase three, July: MATCH Corps-component over. Teach full-size classes of incoming MATCH 6th and 9th grade Summer Academy students using your own lesson plans. Internalize the teacher work week. Learn how much time to devote to lesson planning, parent phone calls, etc. Coached and observed every day you teach.

So, to use some teacher jargon: that s*** be scaffolded. Number of kids goes up over time. Number of balls in the juggling act goes up over time. Observation and feedback remain constant. Presto change-o... bad-ass, Chuck Norris, take-no-prisoners, holdin' it down for the homies on death row TEACHERS. Chuck Norrae? Whatever. You get it.

The part that really blows my hair back is how much the coaching resembles, shoot, wrestling practice back in the day. "No, no, no! That looked bad. DO IT AGAIN." Where else do teachers-to-be get this kind of instruction? It's like learning to be a surgeon. You actually practice procedures under the auspices of experts (okay, on cadavers--sleepy/catatonic kids don't count) before you take a scalpel to an inflamed large intestine (psych! sucker.)

Program founder MG once likened traditional teacher prep to putting a pilot in a cockpit after teaching him about aerodynamics and meteorology... but not telling him what any of the buttons do. What? You crashed the plane into the mountain? It's cool! You get a whole new plane next September, and you probably learned SO much from that first plane crash! Go get 'em, tiger!

I chopped up a short video of this kind of direct instruction in a practice round. The voice you'll hear is coach Josh B., who halts me mid-lesson to give feedback. At the end you'll hear a couple of other MTT's giving peer feedback.

Instant Replay

2010-02-02T17:24:00.002-05:00

When I was a MATCH Corps tutor one of the most frustrating things was getting feedback about my tone in tutorial that I completely disagreed with. "You just sound really sarcastic a lot of the time." Na-uh. NA-FREAKIN-UH. "I'm serious, you can't hear it when you're doing it?" NO, dude. Made me want to drive a nail into the speech cortex of my teacher brain. Now I can't speak English. Do I get an exemption? That's right. Back off.

And then someone showed me video of my tutorial. I made the sarcastic clapping family look earnest. Wow. Let's use more video in teacher prep. Give it to me. I eat this stuff up.

So, here it is. Poof out your Bob Costas coif and channel your inner sports analyst. What do you notice about tone, presence, reactions to misbehavior, my fashion-forward MATCH fleece, how terribly I've aged in 3.5 years of inner-city education, etc. Let's get some feedback going in the comments section... could this rookie educator be ready by September to teach FTW?

A Disturbing Trend

2010-02-01T10:51:00.003-05:00

Having finished a brief exchange with one of my 6th graders about the salient differences between the Poke- and Digi- incarnations of the -Mon universe, I decided to drop him a themed note encouraging him to flex the golden pipes during Group Practice next week. (Aside: great Pikachu sketch, or GREATEST Pikachu sketch? Eat your heart out, legitimate artists.)

As I drove to work this morning with my ever-ebullient Pikachu windshield ornament facing dutifully forward, it occured to me that I should address the frequency with which the tawny little bastard shows up in my personal and profession lives.

I bring this up for two reasons:

1. Pikachu is the most adorable and one of the most powerful of the Pokemon. And he's a good guy. Triple threat, ladies.

2. Another way in which MATCH Teacher Training appears to be a ~~weird as hell~~ pedagogically non-standard is their prescriptive approach to relationship building. It's called the Sposato Method, after our late, great founding Principal.

Sounds somewhat oxymoronic. We're told how much time we should spend calling home, texting, dropping notes for our kids. There's a whole book in our curriculum about relationship building. What teacher training program TEACHES relationship building? It's sort of at the root of everything MATCH does in general. How do you get kids to buy into staying until 5:0o PM, or passing with a C (not a D), or coming to school 6 days a week? By leveraging personal relationships and tough love.

Ditto for classroom teaching. How was it that one student was able to swallow the entirely unexpected experience of getting a demerit for an on-task shout out in SAT class? In his words: "What!? Dang. Aight. I got you, Trudeau. But it's only 'cause you ball up with us."

And, heaven help me, I'm absurdly jealous of this woman.

A Rebuttal to A.I.

2010-01-30T18:40:00.000-05:00

To bring everyone up to speed: MATCH Teacher Trainees teach 2 SAT classes to MATCH 11th graders on Fridays, and 2 MCAS classes to MATCH 6th graders on Saturdays.

So. What did I bring into this weekend?

1) Heavily-practiced teacher "moves" that I was deemed proficient at by the administration. 2) Lesson plan, Do Now's, Tickets to Leave, all written by MTT 3) Coach Josh B.: experienced high-poverty teacher, PhD student, pretty sweet jump shooter.

What did I take away from this weekend?

1) 4 teaching 'at-bats'. 2) An hours worth of observation/evaluation from Josh B. (including an actual grade!) 3) 30 minutes worth of evaluation from my peer observer. 4) 30 minutes worth of video of myself teaching.

My job ≠ create materials. (Yet.) My job = run a tight classroom and teach a legit aim. I was trained in the tools. I was put in front of kids. I was observed at executing those moves. I was given actionable feedback on what to change next week. In this case, my coach focused on: implementing a better Closing, specifically tying the Independent Practice back to our Aim, and reconnecting the days work to our Big Goals; failing to scan the rest of the classroom during 10-second check-ins during the Independent Practice; not maintaining sufficient eye contact after issuing a noise-making demerit to a whisperer. AND I have "game film" of the whole thing to review at my leisure.

This type of training just makes so much sense to me. A game plan, a gym, coaches, and PRACTICE. Not a game! Not a game. Practice. It's how you get to Carnegie Hall, isn't it?

Holy Disproportionate Response, Batman!

2010-01-29T10:22:00.000-05:00

The National Charter School Research Project recently released a way-interesting and relatively encouraging (to my untrained eye) report on the charter school landscape in the last 5 years, focusing specifically on 2009. Totally worth reading.

Big takeaways to come, but immediate reaction is to the 2.9% of public school students nationwide who are enrolled in charter schools.

THREE OUT OF ONE HUNDRED.

That's about the number of people who have Geographic Tongue. And how many people do you know with Geographic Tongue? Touche, me.

Anyway. Do you know how many resources are being devoted nationwide to kill a microscopic subset of the public education system? Good grief. It is kind of gratifying to be part of a movement that inspires such vigorous opposition. My juvenile self-conception is sort of a cross between being a stealth ninja subverting the system with pedagogical ninja stars and being a disaffected teenager who thinks that any reaction is a win. First artist to render that image wins my undying love and affection.

Off to lesson plan for the first day of SAT Critical Reading class here at the MATCH High School this afternoon. Gulp.

Incentivizing

2010-01-28T07:19:00.000-05:00

Before I retire my favorite office decoration...

It could be argued that Angie Cotto received the most improved student award this fall due to her own perseverance (and that of her teachers and tireless MATCH Corps tutor, Ms. Thorstenn).

I would argue that it was mostly a function of the existence of her Sweet HW Planner Calendar. Homegirl finished almost a whole month writing down all of her homework assignments as she got them. Preparedness win. Why?

Behold, the power of Pikachu.

Pika...CHUUUUU!!!

The Latest, Greatest Ed Reform Hotbed Is...

2010-01-27T13:09:00.000-05:00

...Indianapolis.

The brightest ed minds at Harvard are flocking to the fly-over zone? Hold the phone.

Last summer Mom and I visited her hometown to poke around a baby education entrepreneurship outfit called The Mind Trust. Led by former Indianpolis Mayor Bart Peterson and his then-Charter School Director David Harris, TMT hands out sizable start-up grants to individuals with innovative alternative education initiatives... who are down to move to the Middle West.

The reasons I'm choosing to write about this today are A) because Mom is currently attending her first Board of Directors meeting out there, B) I'm getting to the point where I'm going to have to decide where (in the country) I'm going to attempt to teach FTW in September, and C) because I'm realfriggininterested in the unique charter climate over in Naptown.

As to A, ready for some six-degrees fun? Ross is the firstborn son of Mama Trudeau, recently the newest member of the Mind Trust Board of Directors, on which also sits Andy Rotherham, for whose blog Eduwonk (see the sidebar) an occasional contributer is Mike Goldstein, founder of a little charter school in Boston which runs an uber-selective education fellowship year called the MATCH Corps, for which Ross Trudeau serves as Director of Recruiting. Eat your heart out, Kevin Bacon.

As to B, I just finished a phone interview with KIPP Bay Area schools, and am sojourning Westward in February to go check out their outfit (and will wave to Indy as I pass overhead). While visiting The Mind Trust, I wondered aloud how you get coastal grads from the premiere Ed schools to invest in the Midwest. Ethan Gray (TMT VP, Harvard GSE) and Suzanne Anthony (TMT Fellowship Manager, Kennedy School, and yes that's her real name) told me more or less what I figured: that generally awesome people go where interesting and generally awesome plays are being made. Right now, one such place is Indy. Boom.

As to C --and this is my favorite part-- it turns out the mayor is the sole granter of charter approval for Indianapolis. The MAYOR! That kind of made my head spin. Someone please let me know if this is happening anywhere else in the country. To my mind, one big pro and one big con stand out:

Con: Mayors come and go. Pro-charter mayor: Yatzee! Anti-charter mayor: Wah-waaaah.

Pro: Mayors are accountable and scrutinized. If the mayor approves a charter, you best believe he/she 1. has a vested interest in accountability for those charters and 2. is willing to devote reputation/time/resources to helping those school succeeds. Allies are good. Motivated allies with their necks out are great.

So, yeah. Who wants to move to the the 14th largest city in America? They're throwing it down out there...

Masters Piece, Yo

2010-01-25T19:25:00.000-05:00

I was recently at a barbeque attended by a couple of friends-of-friends who happened to be in their second semester at a Masters in English Education at NYU. The following is a pretty faithful representation of their joint explanation of their oh-my-GOD-so-SUPER-interesting week of seminar discussions:

"Like, oh my GOD it was like, like, Becky was it like?"

"It was like SO super interesting."

"Like TOTALLY so super interesting. We were talking about ebonics..."

"And whether you use it in like the classroom and junk..."

"And like are we supposed to use it and support it..."

"And this one girl was like ebonics is like totally versatile..."

"And we were all like shut up, what?"

"And she was like yeah totally it's like totally grammatically useful!"

"And we were like shut UP!"

"But then the Professor was like, you know, Lauren what was she like?"

"Well SHE was all like, 'yeah, okay let's talk about this... what do YOU guys think?'"

"And we talked about it for like three HOURS!"

"On Tuesday and AGAIN on Thursday!"

"Like, it was TOTALLY super interesting."

Okay, so admittedly, I took some liberties. But the message was the same. Six hours of like, way-interesting discussion about where ebonics fits in an English classroom. And, admittedly, discourse on this topic can actually be way-interesting.

My problem is this: some dozen or fifteen of the English teachers NYU is going to pump out this summer just spent six hours (someone do the math on how many tuition dollars that is, I don't want to barf on my keyboard) talking about linguistics. What it is, yo? What it is is a massive, colossal, bass-ackwards waste of time.

What SHOULD have gone down:

"Hey, Professor, I read this like TOTALLY interesting article about ebonics in the classroom..."

"That's nice. Ebonics is a culturally valuable and valid dialect. In our classrooms we teach standard English, and we correct for standard English. They need it to succeed in college and beyond. Next question?"

10 second exchange. Boom. Out. Done. That's teacher training. Save the intellectual pornography for a PhD. Teachers-to-be don't need (and can't afford) that crap. Just for giggles, I went to website for NYU's MA English Education program.

The distinguishing characteristics of this program are the faculty's commitment to a transactional social constructionist view of learning that is embodied in the following principles:
learning is most significant when one attends to one's own and others' needs, concerns, and enjoyments;
individuals learn not by memorizing but by constructing their own version of that knowledge in relation to what they already know, believe, and have experienced;
language learning and use proceed most naturally from whole to part, from known to unknown, and from experience to reflection;
language learning has no ceiling; and
learning is acquired through using language in its various modes.

So... I uh, um... What? I'm about to attend to one's own need to impart an ass kicking through various modes. I went to college. I can rock the academia jargon jam with the best of them. But holy hot goddamnit if that doesn't take the cake.

Seriously, though. Someone give me a dollar figure for how much the ebonics discourse ran those two women... while I light my Cohiba with a c-note.

VORT: Value Above Replacement Teacher

2010-01-25T09:49:00.000-05:00

Brian Bannister is an average major league pitcher. He doesn't strike too many guys out; he doesn't walk too many, either. His name sounds like the mind-mannered alter ego of a super hero. But Mr. Bannister works really hard to be an average major league pitcher. And I'm not talking extra time the in weight room or more wind sprints or an insane winter exercise schedule. He does his homework.

Bannister utilizes advanced statistical analysis to inform his own pitching. What type of pitch in what part of the strike zone to this particular batter with this many outs and with these runners on base will be most likely to yield an out. There's some evidence that it works for him.

The setup seems to make sense. Use data to inform decision-making. Works in consulting, works in urban planning, should work in baseball. Right? Well...

The problem facing Bannister (and GM's trying to use data to find undervalued players) are twofold. First, how good is the data? Is it asking the right questions? Is it actionable? And second, how do you translate the data into on-field decision-making? He's in large part blazing his own trail here; there's no precedent for this sort of thing.

The temptation for baseball fan teachers is to spend time thinking about the Sabermetric approach to teaching. What in-class practices are undervalued as correlated to student outcomes? What character traits are linked to achievement, and can they be influenced/coached? I'm a smart cookie, we think. Let me see the numbers behind the classroom and I'll figure out what lazy pundits overvalue and ignore.

Problem. Brian Bannister has BaseballProspectus and FanGraphs. Where do I go for the data? Anyone? Bueller?

This fall, Arne Duncan referenced JFK in a speech at Teachers College. Ahead-of-the-curve-Johnny said:

"Research in education has been astonishingly meager and frequently ignored . . . It is appalling that so little is known about the level of performance, comparative value of alternative investments and specialized problems of our educational system."

Now, I wouldn't call "teaching" a "specialized problem," but unfortunately that's how it appears to be treated in general. Teaching is often regarded less as learned skill than divinely-gifted trait.

Brian Bannister pitches for the Kansas City Royals because his TFA interviewer didn't give him a good enough answer about data-driven teacher education. Talk about brain drain. Major League Baseball is sucking the education pipeline dry.

I have dreams about establishing iEPR (Isolated Exam Proficiency Rate) and VORT (Value Above Replacement Teacher) and PIT (Poverty-Independent Teaching). After I get my own iEPR well above league district average, I'm totally getting hooked up with some forward-thinking education data outfit. Ed reform is still looking for it's Bill James.

Any takers for Fantasy Teaching 2020? With the first pick, in the first round, the WhiteBoardsCan'tJump select... RAFE ESQUITH!

Sigh. A boy can dream.

Primer: Starting Sentences with the Word "And"

2010-01-23T18:50:00.001-05:00

This morning was the first day of student teaching. Check the date. It's a Saturday. Before we get into what's on my mind... MAD. RESPECT. for MATCH 6th graders. You know who P'WNS the MCAS? 4'10" scholars who go to school on Saturdays. Take it to the bank.

In my pedagogy textbook, Step #1 to successful teaching is cutting coffee out of your pre-Do Now diet. If you've got to hit the john 10 minutes into your guided practice, well, who's going to fly the room? So, my first cup o' joe came after third period with lunch.

Ross 1, caffeine dependancy 0.

My coach (Max, Uncommon Schools teacher video analyst, more on him later) watched the first 30 minutes of my first period this morning; I teach two Reading classes. In a couple of weeks I'll be joined by Liz Fort, a former co-worker at MATCH who is the only other non-MATCH Corps person in MATCH Teacher Training. Huuugely disproportionate amount of stress went into prepping for day numero uno. It was like spending 3 hours getting ready for a first date with a fancy lady, then feeling like a jackass 2 minutes into the appetizer because she immediately puts you at ease and makes you wish you were cool enough not to stress out about that sort of thing.

But I stressed. Hardcore. And then my teacher box didn't have the pencils it was supposed to have in it. And then the lightbulb blew out on my overhead projector. And then we were short one snack. And funnily enough, we all just, you know, dealt with shit. And we gave kids demerits without them/us exploding/melting. And kids learned stuff. Even hair-slicked, headgear-sporting, Michael Jackson impersonating kiddo. Boo-friggin-yah.

My big takeaway from the day is simple. I learned that if you're competent, in most cases, most kids will be mostly well-behaved and will devote most of their attention to what you want them to do. Mostly. I'm a rookie teacher. My strikeouts are too high and my slugging percentage is weaksauce. Despite this, the day still *went*. But if you want to teach FTW, it's going to be a constant process of reflection and sweating the details. How could I tighten up that transition? What's going to make my Aims that much more legit? How do I leverage some phone calls to get 5% more effort tomorrow from the lollygagger in the front row?

Fortunately I'm working with a gaggle of Type-A Ballers who are themselves made of win (I should know, I interviewed nearly all of them, they really are absurdly legit raw material). And fortunately some of the most observant, experienced teachers around are going to be watching me every. single. time. that I teach.

It's (mostly) official. I'm not going to sink. So let's Michael Phelps this bad boy.

Yo mister, I'ma let you finish, but...

2010-01-21T15:37:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog. I'm skipping the self-serving frame job and letting the content speak (incoherently? compellingly?) for itself. And let's be real, blogs are already 98% self-serving unto themselves.

Ready? Go.

It's really hard to give kudos where kudos are due to teachers at my (read: any) school. As I've witnessed it, it takes the form of qualitative assessments of how much time and how much effort teachers appear to be putting into their work. Teacher X arrives early, stays late, calls kids, goes to basketball games, provides baked goods at regular intervals for appreciative coworkers; Teacher X gets some back-patting and a nice email from the department head. End o' story.

Sound less than ideal to anyone else?

Don't get me wrong. I love chocolate chip banana bread. I love a nice 'Way to go, slugger!' every now and again. But when it comes down to it, I want to know just how good I am at a particular task. Is there a connection between banana bread and teacher efficacy? Is there a strong correlation between spending 10% more time lesson planning and student outcomes? How the hell would you even measure that? Let's get scientific! (You go, TFA.)

Last week the second cohort of the MATCH Teacher Training program was graded (literally, like x/10) on how effective we were at noticing and responding appropriately to low-level student misbehavior in a classroom while delivering the Intro to New Material portion of an English lesson plan.

Sound totally bizarre[ly awesome] to anyone else?

It's exactly what it sounds like. 10 kids. Misbehavior assignments at non-regular intervals. Teacher 'moves' that I've been taught to preempt and react to these misbehaviors. Two observers sitting in the back of the room. A debrief at the end where they tell me what I did well and what I sucked at. Yes. Please. Giveittomestraight.

This feels like the best way to learn how to teach. TELL me the moves. WATCH me practice them. CRITIQUE me on how good my presence is, or what my face looks like disciplining students, if my line of questioning is appropriate, yadda. It's like the total opposite of learning adolescent psychology and debating at length the place that ebonics has in a classroom. It's a common-friggin'-sense way to go about learning how to teach.

So, I think I'm in the right training program. I remain open to the possibility that this type of prescriptive learning could suffer diminishing returns, though at this early juncture (1 week before student teaching begins) it appears to be made of win.

Next step: someone find me a school that pays me based on my kids' standardized test scores and that has an administration that will be extremely prescriptive about helping me figure out action steps for the slow gradual ascent towards teaching FOR THE WIN.