Shelter
One month ago, I woke up exhausted from the most difficult week of my teaching career. After a weekend of mental rest, I had to go back to my classes at my current school.
What a shelter I find myself in every day. I teach upper level math and science to our brightest and best. I have few, if any, classroom management issues, and I have fun. I get to purchase nanoparticles and play with them in class. I get to push students to do project work that is totally in their control. No one watches me, or calls into scrutiny my teaching practice. Maybe that is because no one comes, or maybe that is because I am good enough at teaching to warrant no scrutiny. It's a dream, no doubt about it.
But teaching in Lawrence was also a dream. Teaching students at the bottom of the educational ladder, simply because our system puts them there, and busting my ass to pull the bar higher. Busting my ass to give those kids one more skill to pass a standardized test that might well define their future. Busting my ass because I feel like I'm being watched and intensely scrutinized under a microscope by administrators who want to see the program succeed, so that it might continue next year.
From which dream would you rather wake?
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For those of you who know baseball statistics, you might be familiar with the concept of WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. It is a basic idea with a complicated computational algorithm, but the idea as follows: WAR projects the number of wins that a player provides over a random replacement-level (i.e. average) player. It also projects the increase (or decrease) in wins for a team if a certain player would join over its current player in that position (assuming the player is average). In other words, does a player improve outcomes or worsen outcomes?
Obviously, the measurement is tough in baseball. So many things must be taken into consideration: batting average, extra-base hits, stolen bases, runs scored, errors in the field, baserunning errors. So much to consider. Is there a similar idea in teaching? Is a teacher better than her or his replacement? What would be considered valuable measurements? Attendance? Engagement? Achievement? Perception? The propagation of kindness and care?
I wonder about this a lot now. My week in Lawrence left me with a tough thought: would any other teacher placed in that scenario do better? I don't know. I've never known. Early in my career, I had a tougher game to play: teaching physics to seniors as a graduation requirement. Teaching ninth graders in preparation for a competency determination test. Teaching some kids who struggled with reading and writing and mathematics, and even English as a second language.
Some kids.
And doing this all without really knowing how to teach kids, let alone reach out to them and do what good classroom teaching really requires.
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I think I need to continue writing here, because I have kept myself in shelter for a long, long time. I want to push myself beyond that shelter, and find out just how I stack up against my replacement, whomever that might be.
I am going to focus this on three essential questions. By the end of this writing experience, whenever it should end, I hope to know the following:
1. As educators, what helps us improve student outcomes?
2. How do we know we've chosen the right indicators to measure this?
3. How do we know we're not just the 'replacement'?
I am hoping to know this about myself and our educational system at large. I'm not sure how I'll set about finding this out, but I am hoping this is one avenue. Stay tuned. We might just learn something.
What a shelter I find myself in every day. I teach upper level math and science to our brightest and best. I have few, if any, classroom management issues, and I have fun. I get to purchase nanoparticles and play with them in class. I get to push students to do project work that is totally in their control. No one watches me, or calls into scrutiny my teaching practice. Maybe that is because no one comes, or maybe that is because I am good enough at teaching to warrant no scrutiny. It's a dream, no doubt about it.
But teaching in Lawrence was also a dream. Teaching students at the bottom of the educational ladder, simply because our system puts them there, and busting my ass to pull the bar higher. Busting my ass to give those kids one more skill to pass a standardized test that might well define their future. Busting my ass because I feel like I'm being watched and intensely scrutinized under a microscope by administrators who want to see the program succeed, so that it might continue next year.
From which dream would you rather wake?
---------------------------------------------
For those of you who know baseball statistics, you might be familiar with the concept of WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. It is a basic idea with a complicated computational algorithm, but the idea as follows: WAR projects the number of wins that a player provides over a random replacement-level (i.e. average) player. It also projects the increase (or decrease) in wins for a team if a certain player would join over its current player in that position (assuming the player is average). In other words, does a player improve outcomes or worsen outcomes?
Obviously, the measurement is tough in baseball. So many things must be taken into consideration: batting average, extra-base hits, stolen bases, runs scored, errors in the field, baserunning errors. So much to consider. Is there a similar idea in teaching? Is a teacher better than her or his replacement? What would be considered valuable measurements? Attendance? Engagement? Achievement? Perception? The propagation of kindness and care?
I wonder about this a lot now. My week in Lawrence left me with a tough thought: would any other teacher placed in that scenario do better? I don't know. I've never known. Early in my career, I had a tougher game to play: teaching physics to seniors as a graduation requirement. Teaching ninth graders in preparation for a competency determination test. Teaching some kids who struggled with reading and writing and mathematics, and even English as a second language.
Some kids.
And doing this all without really knowing how to teach kids, let alone reach out to them and do what good classroom teaching really requires.
----------------------------------------------
I think I need to continue writing here, because I have kept myself in shelter for a long, long time. I want to push myself beyond that shelter, and find out just how I stack up against my replacement, whomever that might be.
I am going to focus this on three essential questions. By the end of this writing experience, whenever it should end, I hope to know the following:
1. As educators, what helps us improve student outcomes?
2. How do we know we've chosen the right indicators to measure this?
3. How do we know we're not just the 'replacement'?
I am hoping to know this about myself and our educational system at large. I'm not sure how I'll set about finding this out, but I am hoping this is one avenue. Stay tuned. We might just learn something.
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