Today's post title sounds like a metaphysical question of deep import, or a sarcastic rhetorical rant. I don't mean it to be either. It's a straight question. Why do we teach? Why do we teach where we do? Is it because there were no jobs any where else? Is it because there was nothing else to do with our lives or is it because we were called to it? Were you called to your profession? To your school district? To your grade?
I've been getting that message quite a bit lately indirectly. I am reminded that when I was a teen, my dad used to tell me: "Boy, if you never want to work a day in your life, do something you love. You won't believe people are paying you to do it." Yesterday I was listening to TD Jakes who said that if you are doing what you have been called to do, you will not be chasing money to do it, money will be chasing you. That resonated with me.
Not only do I do what I love, but opportunities to do more and get paid for it chase after me to the point where I now have to think about whether I have the time or the inclination to make more money as a coach, professor, tutor, or teacher. Naively (yeah, at 45, one can still be naive) I expect everyone to approach their job as their life's work. I think the responsibility to lay a strong academic foundation for a student's success to be an enormous responsibility. So when our adminstration encouraged us to embrace the idea of rigor in our classrooms, I smiled inside. Finally. I had not heard this message that clearly from administrators since I left NJ in 2004.
Dr. Downs put it this way: "Joel, the taxpayers of this district pay you a hefty salary to teach their students well. Make sure you give them their money's worth." At the time, while understanding the intent of the message, there was a part of me internally refuting the money part since I had a friend who was a high school dropout with a GED who was working as head mechanic of a medium sized Ford dealership for 25K more salary than I earned with an ivy league master's degree. But when he pointed out to me that teachers that create a rigorous learning environment for their students will often receive friction from parents who do not want their kids to struggle, he warned me: "Don't you dare give in." I got the message. High expectations, partnered with proper scaffolding is my job. That is how we help students grow from one grade to another.
It has taken me many years to find the balance between strong expectations, proper scaffolding, and manageable work load. I have found it through raising the bar for the product but lowering the workload to obtain the bar through more time on task in class with teacher guidance and less homework. Homework is not the great Satan that some parents have made it to be, but the instructional value is reflective. Homework should be practice of what you taught in class, not a place to attempt to learn new information independently. The instruction and exercises are not the final product, but the enduring understanding that the student gains from the endeavor is.
I had to shake the chains of time limits, grade grubbing, and close-ended lessons to get to the point where what is learned is more important than how long it took to complete the assignment. I first heard about curriculum that is a mile long and an inch deep at the beginning of the new millenia. That concept made sense, but I did not see the connection between that and trying to make a lesson always fit with closure when the bell rings or with writing projects being completed with in a fixed amount of time. Even the state writing tests are no longer timed because they got the message: quality takes time.
I was approached to become an adjunct professor after only 8 years of teaching because an elder teacher noticed that I already embraced rigor. I didn't really understand what the fuss was about how I operated. My directions were clear, and my expectations were that if a child earned an "A," it was because they had produced quality work. I took pains to spell out what quality looked like for each assignment by creating rubrics, distributing them in advance, and explaining them well in advance of deadlines. I didn't think that marked much notice, it was just what I learned to be best practices in pedagogy classes as a student teacher.
Unfortunately many did give into parent demands that a student receive the highest grade without earning it. That was as much of a revelation to me as learning that completing a project assigned by my upline at DuPont, a day ahead of schedule, was worthy of earning a plaque, a food processor, a reception in my honor, and a parking space just steps from the entry door. Is this the culture we live in as Americans in 2012?
I remember the re-runs of Star Trek I watched in the 1970s as a kid where Scottie, the engineer, would always overstate how long it would take to fix the starship so that he would come out a hero when he beat his own manufactured deadline. When did the bar of expectations get lowered so low that simply doing what was asked was outstanding work?
My attitude about state minimum proficiency exams was that I should expect more than what was necessary to pass from my students and that my student's goal should be excellence. On the PSSA's, that means advanced proficient. Passing should be a given, if I have taught my students well, because they should understand where the bar is for excellence. Legibility and quantity do not equal quality but the quality of that quantity can be measured.
When I write a rubric I look at my assignment and chunk my expectations into content, GUMS (Grammar, Usage, Mechanics, and Spelling) and whatever parameters were spelled out in the directions. For an essay, that could mean I was looking for a quality thesis, quality organization, quality supporting evidence, a quality introduction and a quality conclusion. I would ask myself what does an "A" look like and what does an "F" look like. Fleshing out the "B," the "C," and the "D" were always the tough part. Fs and As are easy to recognize.
I used to think everybody did this, but I find that there are still teachers who simply slap a grade on a paper with empty praise or commendation like "good job" or "please see me..." I thought the days of counting misspelled words died with the Gerri curl, parachute pants, and Wham UK. Some say rubrics are time-consuming. They can be, but after a while they become second nature-- like brushing your teeth before you go to bed. The practice keeps the dentist away and the rubric practice makes grade inquiries with parents easier to deal with. Ususally when an irate parent is face to face with the grading requirements that were distributed to their child at the beginning of an assignment, and shown where the student failed to measure up, the conversation changes its color.
There are generations of educators and adults who were students before rubrics. Grading was either arbitrary or a mystery. I remember having to guess with my classmates what the difference between a B+ and an A- was. Often it was the difference between whether your teacher liked you and took pity on you. I didn't want to be that teacher.
My bottom line is that I want to bring my students further, push them to achieving excellence, and empower them to achieve more than they believed was possible.
