January 27, 2012
Dear students but mostly parents,
After one semester past a life-nudging year in Hungary, I feel a need to reflect on my performance as your teacher and to articulate the victories and limits and therefore the needs and unanswered questions that result.
I have worked hard this semester, harder than is healthy, and still, far too many of my students have arrived at the end of term with a failing mark. There are several possible reasons for this. One is that I have not made the most efficient use of my working time. Another is that many students are stubbornly resistant to my expectations and overtures of support. A third is that my expectations are off-course or too high. A fourth is that the job is simply too large and the structures supporting it too few. Based on a national conversation on schooling and teachers— within which the dominant theme is that teachers lack accountability on one side and on the other that teachers are overworked and unfairly targeted—you might expect me, as a teacher, to lean towards the last possibility, that the job itself contains prohibitive barriers to success.
In large part, I do. And it’s probably the most important truth I’d want to convey to a voting public. I’m a well-qualified English Language Arts teacher—an English degree from Oberlin College with Phi Beta Kappa, Masters in teaching and curriculum from Harvard University, 16 years of experience and countless hours of professional development, and National Board certification—yet my roles as a teacher have often of late left me overwhelmed. Meanwhile, the learning outcomes I assess are based on common standards, and, in my ninth grade and Philosophy classes, grading is heavily weighted towards achievement therein: in ninth grade, students need only to pass two standards-based, thoroughly scaffolded and supported assignments to pass the class, and in Philosophy, students encounter only a very few important skills in the same writing assignment over and over. Despite a narrow focus, many don’t make it. Finally, my students are smart, respectful, well-intentioned kids who help each other and who almost always want to learn, and yet, as we stand here on the last day of the semester, 18 out of 147 them (12%) are failing. If the problem isn’t one of training, course assessments, or students, then there is a problem in the supports or expectations for the job itself. Indeed, I am confident that with fewer students and more institutional supports, such as tutoring or course readers or school week time set aside for conferencing or even one fewer teaching period a day for writing teachers and fewer initiatives and demands coming from Stanford Center, I could reach more kids and maintain high standards.
Still I suspect I could be prioritizing and making use of my work time better. But I know that I can’t plow more minutes of the day than I do now, because, as I’ve said in a blog post, my work week so often seems longer than my week week. So how do I maximize time to meet the weekly demands with the tools provided? That’s the difference, perhaps, between a teacher like me and a master teacher.
It comes to this: I am doing a pretty good job teaching your kids, though not a spectacular one. I feel my standards and expectations are demanding, worthwhile, and fair. I also believe I’m providing clear instruction, useful scaffolding of skills and challenging projects that engage high order reading, writing and thinking skills. I turn around work quickly, usually publishing scores the day I receive work. And I fully stock my Source page with information and tools, including detailed daily agendas and all scaffolding and rubrics for major assignments. But here’s what’s lost in my teaching this semester: I’m not tracking often enough who’s succeeding and who’s failing, and this means I’m also not conferencing with students and contacting homes the way I should. I’m not reflecting much during the week, and I’m not having many spontaneous moments of intellectual connection with your kids. I’m not providing the level of oral or written feedback I think students need, instead providing what guidance I can through maybe an essay a month and criteria-based scores for the rest, hoping that specifically channeled reflection and revision work can make up for the loss in feedback. I know how to be a better teacher to your children. It’s been maddening to fall short.
The job is not so different than the one I left for Hungary. There are slightly more students, slightly more directives from downtown, a new course to create in Advanced Placement Composition, and slightly more pressure to improve outcomes in slightly more ways. It adds up.
So how can I improve what I’m doing for your kids while restoring some balance to my life? And what can Roosevelt, or Seattle Public Schools, do to make its best goals manageable? I have many thoughts about the latter, and many feelings about the former.
I’ll leave these large questions for right now and get to one more immediately relevant to you: What does it mean for your child? Mostly, it means I’d like you to take advantage of how much information I put on the Source. If your child is missing an assignment, go to your kid and make a plan for how to fill the hole. Chances are the assignment is either attached or described on daily agendas on my Source page. If you have questions about an assignment that your kid can’t answer, your child (not you, please) should communicate with me. In other words, while I’m having trouble finding time to chase down students, I need your help monitoring and nagging.
And then, maybe, you can join me in addressing the largest questions of schooling.
David Grosskopf
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