Teaching Peace, Reaping Rewards

Posted on March 19, 2011 by sutterlearn

When we were children, my siblings and I would tease when we couldn’t locate our mother.  Before the tethered leash of cellular phones, if mom wasn’t around we would all assume she was, “off at some peacemaking conference”.  Mom may have been to one or two actual peacemaking conferences in her life, but often talked about improving the world through making peace, so it stuck in jest.  I had no idea how her subtle statements about a more just world would find their way into my own teaching and hopes for children.  Peace begins with simply understanding others.

My ears perk when I hear about someone else who toils to weave timeless virtue into the relentless academic requirements of public education these days.  Recently, a teacher in my district was named for her efforts towards peacemaking.  Sue Seyfarth, someone I know just barely, but who sought me out as a kindred soul, will be receiving the Glen L. Taggart Award for Community Contributions to International Understanding, next week.  This award is given “to a citizen of the State of Michigan who has made a distinct, sustained contribution to international understanding in their respective communities or in the state at large” according to the MSU International Studies Program.  With all of the hype of celebrity benevolence, organizations that honor subtle, valuable virtues at the classroom and community level should receive more recognition.  Here’s to Sue, and my mom, and all the other folks who move our world toward a more peaceful tomorrow through and for our children.

Check out these local (to Michigan) organizations who value this too:

www.latticeworld.org – LATTICE is a learning community and international network that cultivates and supports a global perspective in K-12 classrooms through personal and professional development opportunities.

www.iearn.org – iEARN has pioneered on-line school linkages to enable students to engage in meaningful educational projects with peers in their countries and around the world.

www.gluna.org – The Greater Lansing United Nations Association fosters cooperative relationships with Michigan State University, Lansing Community College, local schools, school districts and the community at large as it seeks to advocate for and support the mission and programs of the United Nations.

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Ram Pride

Posted on March 17, 2011 by sutterlearn

Today during the daily 10-minute snack break in the morning at our own Holt High School, as the students were gathered in the Commons, music played and the staff came from all over and joined in a dance routine for St. Patty’s Day. Students were apparently cheering and applauding at the end.  The music stopped, staff drifted off back where they came from, and students returned to class. This makes me proud to be part of a fun, learning community!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiBbiVMxN6g

Posted in Students, Teachers | 1 Comment

The Cuts Are Unavoidable, The Targets Are

Posted on March 14, 2011 by sutterlearn

This one will be short.  I understand where our new Governor, Rick Snyder, is coming from with his recent budget proposal for Michigan.  Some decisions have to be for the long-term.  I do not understand cutting a dime for early childhood education.

Kathleen McCartney, Dean of Harvard Graduate School of Education, agrees with me in this informative editorial.

Click here to read it.  Then come back to comment!

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

Recess Privilege

Posted on March 14, 2011 by sutterlearn

Leave it to my neighbor and friend, Mike.  He always shows an interest in education and challenges my thinking in a good way.  Tonight we chatted ever so briefly about the improving weather as I unloaded the car from work.  I mentioned it was nice for recess duty today.

“Duty?” he responded, “You get to go outside and play with kids and they call it duty?  I’d call that a privilege.”

Mike is right and I told him so.  I thought about the fun my partner teacher and I had sledding with kids a few weeks ago, the walks through the nature trail that brighten fall afternoons, the Beyblade competitions I’ve watched, the tire swings I’ve spun, the dance and cheer routines I’ve applauded, the magic wood chips I routinely find with kids’ names written on them…Mike is right.  Recess is not a duty, we should call it “recess privilege”.  I think I will. Who wants to join me?

Posted in Students, Teachers | 3 Comments

Super-Boogeyman: Still Scary, But Nothing New

Posted on March 13, 2011 by sutterlearn

A few months ago, I wrote a piece for a different blog about the documentary “Waiting for Superman” in which I forecasted how educators should see this movie upon its release to be part of the conversation that I felt was sure to emerge about school conditions.  It didn’t.

I finally was able to watch the film myself, having to wait until it hit Netflix, as it didn’t receive cinema privilege around here, and I must say I was underwhelmed.  Davis Guggenheim did a good job of piecing together social, financial, emotional, and political facts that should not shock any educator.  It was like watching my own frustrating professional awakening in teaching.  I suppose that is good because the previews alluded to a film that demonized teachers on whole, further demoralizing an occupation that really won’t benefit children from more of that.

If the movie identified a boogeyman, as I first expected, it was much more subtle and less predictable.  The boogeyman is the irony of the mismatched beliefs our society claims and the actions we actually take regarding public education.  It seems our nature to create problems for children that are centered on solutions for adults.  For the past three years, I have been researching and learning about the demands of society for better public schools and the knowledge that exists in academia, and among teachers themselves, for creating effective solutions for kids.  Somewhere in the mix our political system, with its contradictory requirements and inequitable funding issues, provides opportunities for us to grandly forgo the ends and means we want and could have been using en mass for a decade at least.

I sit in a peculiar position, involved in this system as teacher, researcher, and citizen-customer all at once.   I feel like I can appreciate the various viewpoints, but I surely do not have all of the answers. My wish for a compromise is that we all consider those many viewpoints for the good each brings to kids (all kids), not for the way they offend our individual values.  If our values are really about all kids, as we publicly espouse, our actions would become more consistent, less about adults.  We wouldn’t need a superhero and the boogeyman wouldn’t be us.

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Report Card Frenzy, Conference Expectations

Posted on March 9, 2011 by sutterlearn

I love and hate report card time.  It is forced, in-depth reflection on data that I collect and see at-a-glance on my students every day.  It is an experience of aggregation, disaggregation, strengths, weaknesses, academics, social-emotional growth (mine and my students), developmental acuity, rationale, justification, and goal-setting.  Then multiply those activities by twenty-some kids.  I don’t approach this game lightly, which makes it frustrating and rewarding.  One minute I will be celebrating how far we’ve come, the next I may be irritated at myself that I do not have more than gut-level data for some superfluous category on a report card I may have overlooked or under-prioritized.

I have come so far in my data collection and analysis that I have the important information at my fingertips on a daily basis.  This makes the report card frenzy less frenetic.  I love this.  Then, there are those tacit qualities that children present or the questions a parent provides for things I haven’t considered.  I hate this, but it helps me grow.  My primary strategy has been ongoing communication with parents so that there are no surprises at conference/report card time.  I consider that setting expectations and managing the relationship.

I’ve been a parent of a school-aged child for as long as I’ve been a teacher, so I never really had the chance to underestimate what goes into gathering report card information or preparing for parent conferences.  Still, I admit that my expectations for a conference, as a parent, are woefully absent.  I have always walked in blank, to hear what the teacher has summarized about my children, but having set no agendas or goals of my own, for or with them.  As a parent, I could do more.  As a teacher, I’m busy summarizing and setting goals for other people’s children.

I’m curious what parents expect of me or themselves and how that might inform future conferences and report card frenzies.  Do tell.

Posted in Parenting, Teachers | 3 Comments

Inputs to Outputs = Process

Posted on March 6, 2011 by sutterlearn

It is probably frivolous to create any extra ink about teachers’ rights or the plight this profession faces politically right now.  You would think there can’t be a rock large enough that someone living beneath still believes teachers make too much and work too little, but there are plenty of rocks and apparently dwellers beneath.  I am pro-kid, not pro-teacher or pro-government, in this debacle…er, debate. (I’m writing this after working in my classroom on report cards until 9:30 p.m. on a Friday, for six hours the following Saturday, then spending five more hours planning my week of lessons. I work a little, so many of us do.)

However, I’m thinking recently about the differences in how we approach things in this country.  In almost every industry or environment I’ve worked, a premium is placed on the inputs.  The reasoning goes, that the higher-quality inputs to a system, the better the outputs should be.  This made sense when I made pizzas in high school, when I hung wallpaper, when I rescued the sick and injured, or when I developed marketing programs.  In each there was a vast selection of ever-improving inputs of ingredients, wallpaper, equipment, technology and innovation.  The difference was, I could and did have a choice in the quality of my inputs.

The newest healthcare plan for our country places a value on preventive care.  Companies the nation over are putting in place “wellness” plans to help their employees reduce the healthcare they need, by improving themselves.  They want to improve the inputs to the medical process, so that the outputs cost less and are better quality; understandable.  I’m quite sure no one would consider valuing physicians as a whole, by the healthy capacity or state of their patients, our country.  If we did, and as we’ve seen, doctors can choose which patients they treat, again an ability to control the inputs.

In education, the inputs I’m given are far less under my control.  Inputs like children across the spectrum of learning abilities from families across the spectrum of educational and financial backgrounds; inputs like curriculum that is substantial and coherent, supplies abundant enough to support it, time to collaborate and understand our goals and trajectories;  these are inputs to my current environment, none of which I have much direct choice or control over.  Still, teachers paid with public money are expected to produce superior outputs, not only within our nation, but against other countries.  I think I do alright, and I try to get better all the time with the things I can control.

When I stop to think about it, I like the variety of learner that the current system provides as one input.  I don’t know that I would want to choose those inputs differently, though I would prefer our society support broader “preventive care” such as early childhood literacy.  I don’t even need to change the input of money public education receives, but I sure would like it if the collective “we” (teachers, policy-makers, taxpayers, administrators) rethought how we work with the inputs.  It seems that if we continue to expect particular outputs and we cannot control the inputs, then we must focus more on the process of how we transform them.

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A Balanced Calendar

Posted on March 6, 2011 by sutterlearn

I’ve been ruminating for a while on the questionable value of a balanced Pk-12 academic calendar (in other words, year-round school).  There are good arguments on both sides of that debate, some more perfunctory than others.  FYI – The “outdated, agriculturally-based” argument isn’t good soil, if you know even a bit about farming.  Most of that work can be done in the spring and fall, leaving plenty of summer days for learning…but I digress.  Family farms are sadly disappearing at such a rate that few children get the benefit, or are allowed, to work one.

Our local district is recently considering a revised schedule of some sort, based on recent staff and parent surveys used to gather public perception.  This is a good move, because despite any argument for or against, if the people do not want it, this will not be successful.  Personally, I fancy this concept.  Not because it guarantees me uncomfortably, humid, smelly days in a yet-to-be air conditioned classroom, but because it guarantees me a more authentic schedule to the way that learning should and does happen:  all the time.

To be sure, we’d get summer.  My lazy days in the pool and camping with my family would not be eliminated.  There could still be an abbreviated summer vacation.  If we went to school for nine weeks, then took two or three weeks off, around the year, I might even get to experience Disney world in the off-season when they have prices and climates that are friendly to public teachers.  I think they have pools there too.

A balanced calendar promises me more consistent timing to prepare children for the never-ending learning standards that keep coming at us.  It promises to reduce summer loss for those kids who can not afford to lose any ground.  Year-round school would give me the chance to watch things grow in gardens where we currently plant in the spring, then weed out in the fall…isn’t that ironic.   I can imagine lessons outside, more days in the woods and by the river with my students, learning in real time in the classroom of life and nature.

What do you think?  As always, I invite holes to be shot in my ideas…otherwise I’m not learning (and I do that all the time).

Posted in School Reform, Students, Teachers | 8 Comments

Recruitment Efforts

Posted on February 18, 2011 by sutterlearn

This post has absolutely nothing to do with teaching, other than it goes against everything I spend my teaching life promoting…peace.

I am a passionate teacher, a respectful hunter, a patriotic American, and now an angry taxpayer.  Today I was at the Michigan Deer & Turkey Spectacular, a hunting show in Lansing.  Among all of the outfitters’ booths and hunting gear displays was a video game shooting gallery provided by the United States Army.  I was fine with this.  What torqued me was the logo-wrapped Hummer with a huge flat screen television in the back.  A soldier, in fatigues stood there playing a video game in which he shot other human beings, exploded domestic buildings and vehicles, then graphically showed a bullet-riddled, bleeding torso of a digitized man’s deathly stare.

It took me a minute to process that I was seeing this purposeful rendition of human slaughter in the midst of a show promoting respectful and safe use of firearms, a sport trying to be passed on responsibly to a new generation.  This video-game playing soldier gladly handed out applications to join the U.S. Army and glorified arguably the worst part of his job in an effort to entice young people.  I was torn between feelings of pride and concern for all those who have lost their lives or put themselves into war zones under our flag, and feelings of disgust that killing humans had become the selling point.

It certainly doesn’t represent all of our military, but to think any of our money paid for this inhumane exhibit is sickening.  Am I overreacting to be so dismayed at this tax-funded display?

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Team Teaching

Posted on February 18, 2011 by sutterlearn

I began researching team teaching during my first year in the classroom.  I realized immediately that with the uber-high expectations of the standards movement on teachers, it really isn’t efficient or effective for one person to teach small, active humans to the required depth in five content areas.  To be sure, it can be done and there are plenty of teachers who make it appear effortless in how they integrate content authentically.  Many of my own generation have come up through this format, so anything different is considered foreign.

If we really want our children to learn to depth, and the standards though they become more “Common” are not really getting fewer, it would seem we should support teachers in focusing their efforts on improving both pedagogical and content knowledge in specific disciplines.  Team teaching is but one way to provide schools such support where teachers can either focus on fewer content areas to depth or share the learning of the multiple content areas to deepen their own understanding of content and instruction.  Isolation breeds the now-cliched “working harder, not smarter” that Stephen Covey has longed warned us of.  Some of the benefits of teaming, even with young children, are highlighted in this article from the Baltimore Sun.

Posted in Teachers | 2 Comments