PS: updates on the job stuff

If you're into transferring, this might be your gig on the 25th:

Summary: To follow up on the transfer fair for WTU employees held last week, we will be holding an event for all non-WTU employees interested in transferring schools for the SY11-12 school year at Walker-Jones Educational Campus from 4-7 PM on May 25. Please check the Human Resources page for a list of available vacancies.

• Applicable Educators: All educators
• Date: May 25, 2011
• Time: 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM
• Location: Walker-Jones EC, 1125 New Jersey Ave. NW
• Contact: DCPSStaffing@dc.gov

ALSO:

May 23rd, at Luke Moore Academy (1001 Monroe St, NE), there's a meeting to hash it out about IMPACT as it pertains to teacher support. If you're like me, you'll be there with bells on. The event starts at 4:30 and ends at 6:00 pm.

value added

What gets me really miffed about the idea of value added is that I just don't understand the math. That, and the fact that it's all test-score and benchmark related, and therefore only promotes a certain type of teaching within the classroom.

If a classroom is only an assessment-related classroom, the focus becomes only the measurement of skill. That's the only thing that is measurable, because it can be identified clearly within students abilities. For instance, as a reading teacher, I can figure out how well my students do in the following skills: main idea, compare and contrast, drawing conclusions, etc, etc. These are identifiable and measurable through a test. And, in fact, it's good to measure them: we're able to see how well a student can comprehend and, indeed, chew, savor and swallow a text that way. All these things are gateway drugs: we gather ourselves into reading through comprehending, which makes us enjoy things like beauty and language. But when we only measure those skills, then we falter where things really count: the synthesis of skills, namely writing, and projects, which usually takes the content we learn and wonder about and synthesizes it with a skill such as drawing conclusions based on information gathered, making inferences about character motivations, etc.

I also wonder how intensely the replacement of DCPS standards with Common Core Standards are going to affect how we measure skills, and how we teach. I like the holistic (err...whole-istic?) approach, but is DCPS doomed to be a testing culture because of value added? In the next five years, it looks like. Ugh.

return of the CAS!

So, as most of us in public ed. & charter schools know in DC, the CAS is upon us. Today was quite the shit show, as usual: 4 1/2 hour period for non-testers, a substitute (in my classroom) who sat there reading the newspaper and didn't even hand out the work I had clearly on the table label "Sub Folder." Oy. Sometimes (and I hope I'm not offending any substitutes here), subs are just so uninterested in doing anything--they just want to make their money and go. Are they so jaded, or just ridiculous? Pardon, pardon to those subs who are really great and deserving of real teaching jobs: there are a couple of subs at my school who're regulars, and who are wonderful teachers. Sucks that a few bad apples ruins the whole bunch.

Anyways, while I was returning the CAS items today, my friends and I were like, well, the return of the CAS...which reminded me of an amazing song, and which will now be the anthem of this next week of ridiculous testing. Please enjoy, "Return of the Mack," and substitute Mack with CAS...all the time.

DENIED!

Fucking denied, man. I took an entire day off of school to go to OSSE to drop off my licensure packet that I slaved over for an entire year, and I just got a letter saying I was denied!!! All for one stupid thing: I didn't score high enough on my Praxis II Pedogogy test. Ugh!

Now, I have to take the test again, fork over another 50 bucks for a processing fee, wait another five weeks for the scores again, get another transcript from my college and graduate school, get another letter of clearance from my graduate school and another freaking background check letter, and submit it again!!!!!!

This is the most annoying thing ever. I'm so disappointed, OSSE. What the fuck, man. Jeez.

a quick word about obama

I don't know if anyone caught Univision today (everyone was talking about it at school), but Obama said something to the tune of how we over-test our students.

"Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools," were his exact words.

He said it's boring to have schools teach to tests, and it won't make the student learn in the least. I'm all for that. But what are we going to do about it? That's the next question.

one small step for man, one giant leap for RTD

So, Reading the District is finally getting himself organized. Better late than never, I suppose! I've bought my MS students binders, and am going to instruct them on how to organize them. The reason that this is so late coming is several-fold:

a) I'm not a very organized person

b) I was placed in this class midyear, without much of an organizational system intact already

c) I'm not a very organized person

Binders haven't been my thing, mostly because I think I just never thought of them. We're supposed to keep some form of a portfolio, so I thought that I was covered. Falsity. Binders are the shit, and will help you and your students immensely IF you keep them organized and make sure they are counted every week.

Here's my management system for this, so far. Let me know if I need to work some kinks out:

1. Divide into sections: reading logs, homework, projects

2. Have a checklist or table of contents (?) for all projects and homeworks

3. Check this every week for completion

What say you? Organized finally?

In other news, I'm looking for jobs at public, charter and private schools. Let's see what happens!

trying to respond to students

I don't know how successful this will be, or if this is a good idea at all, but I have a couple of students who might be a bit despondent these days about their reading levels, and probably quite frustrated by the fact that they're still in Read 180.

I also have two of my favorite students completely down in the dumps lately: unresponsive, very cold, not trying (one of 'em, at least). Basically, not their usual selves. This kills me, because they were the lights of my career as a second-year teacher. They made my class lively, entertaining and wonderful.

So, since most of my students fill out once in a while (when I want to get a "pulse of the classroom" as they say in the fucking jargon) this fill in the blanks free-write, and since a lot of them say the same stuff, I feel like it's time to respond to them. I'm going to use the same format, but just make it a response, allay fears, hopefully build confidence, hopefully show them that I know they're growing and doing better each time.

Is this an ok thing to do? I think so. I'll just trust my judgement, and see where it goes.