Those that can, Teach.

I laughed really hard at this clip in the movie "School of Rock" the first time I heard it. Now there is a new saying that is pretty similar that made me chuckle a bit.  Not because it wasn't funny, but because it is sadly true.  Those that can, teach. Those that can't, make the rules for teachers.

There has been a lot of uproar over the new Common Core Standards that most of the states have decided to use as their curriculum guide.  I went to a meeting last year where a person from the Utah State Board of Education came to talk to teachers about a new style of test that we will start using for our end of level tests.  They showed us a lot of great features that it has and they tried to sell us on the idea that this way of testing will help us get a better sense of what the student understands more so than a multiple choice standardized test.

After the presentation there were a lot of parents in the crowd that started to ask questions about the Common Core and the role of certain people in the testing application we were implementing.  They were concerned that it was a government conspiracy to pry into their child's lives and keep tabs on them.  I know some kids have to tape the cameras on their computers because they think other people are going to hack into their computer and spy on them.  I left the meeting after the 3rd comment because I realized the direction the conversation was going.  I heard later that i was correct and that I should've stayed because it was quite entertaining.

The truth of the matter is that these people are looking for conspiracies that don't exist (hopefully) and aren't looking at the real problem here.  The people that are creating the standards and the people telling teachers how to teach, what to teach, and when to teach it have very little experience in the education field.  When I say education field, I mean teaching.  This does not include Teach for America nor does it include summer camps or after school clubs.  I've seen how these operate and they are simply a daycare service/day camp for kids who don't have a place to go after school.  I love these programs, but teaching in a regular classroom is completely different than the sort of job I just described.

I've recently learned about a man named David Coleman who was the mastermind behind the Common Core.  He's a very educated man with degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale. Did I mention he is a Rhodes Scholar? Well I've seen a couple of his interviews and I'm not impressed with the man.  He seems like an elitist that comes across as a man who is always right.  I get the impression that he feels teachers are not doing a good job and that if we taught like him then the world would be a utopian society where everyone attended an Ivy League school.

Attached is a blurb about his thoughts on what students commonly write about.  In essence he says that the type of thing I'm doing right now, expressing my opinion, is of little worth.  I would not expect this from someone who speaks to large groups about his personal opinions on education. I disagree with this man on so many levels that I find the pill I'm forced to swallow next year as we implement the Language Arts portion of the Common Core.  Why is it that a man with no teaching experience is telling us what makes good teachers? For your viewing pleasure, two videos of the man himself. Click HERE to view video.

Really...I mean, REALLY?

I really feel for the spelling bee announcer in this video.  I mean really, she isn't that hard to understand.  She speaks perfectly clear a few dozen times.  Seriously, what is the deal kid?  Clean the gunk out of your ears and listen.  At first I thought he was kidding.  Maybe it was an Onion video that made fun of situations like this, but nope, it was real.  You can see the relief in his eyes when he finally realizes what word it was that he was to spell.  He spells it easily and then sits back down.  That feeling and look he has at the end is what teachers commonly refer to as an "ah-ha" moment.  That moment where after a certain amount of time a child finally "gets it."  You hear about this moment when you go through school and you are told that it is the greatest feeling you can have as a teacher.  That feeling you have that after so many hours of planning and working (sometimes with just this student in mind or at hand) you get when everything comes together in the child's mind and then they understand everything.  That is the coveted and prized award that teachers get for working harder than they are paid for.  "That's why we do it" I've heard, "That's when everything you sacrificed becomes worth it."

What happens when they don't get it though?  What if you work harder than you ever had, sacrificing your time to make an impact on students, and then nothing happens?  What is the opposite feeling of relief and success?  Let me tell you, because I've been feeling it for the last month. A few feelings come to mind, but these are the ones that I feel the deepest: depression, sadness, and failure.  They don't tell you about that in school.  Let me tell you why I've been feeling this lately. 

For the last month and a half I've been spending an hour after school tutoring my really low kids in math.  Once a week I have my class take a skills test on math concepts we've already learned this year and then I take the lowest scoring students and then break them into 2 groups that I meet with after school for a half hour each.  I originally thought I was going to cure their math woes because I had more time to help them.  I spent the first week with them and felt that they understood everything.  I gave them the same test and then I compared the scores.  To my surprise, to my utter astonishment, most of them did a point or two better, a couple really aced it, and then a couple did worse.  WORSE! How does this happen?  They were fine when we talked about each skill individually, but put it all onto one test and they act like they've never seen it before.  I mean...REALLY!?

Well, I'm sure the month of March has something to do with these feelings I've been having.  March is the longest month of the school year because we get no breaks and the month right before we really gear up for end of level tests.  Really, it's the last month that we can teach everything that needs to be taught before we start testing and preparing for the tests.  When I try to help my students and I see that anything I try to do so they can get help and get better isn't working, I tend to feel bad.  I feel incompetent as a teacher.  Even more so, I feel bad for the students that continually lag behind in every subject even after teachers have put in extra time with them.  When will they get it? Will they ever get it? How will this effect their life? Well, I'm not going to worry about that right now because SPRING BREAK HAS ARRIVED!  I really need this because as the song says, "You'll lose the blues in CHICAGO."