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July 8, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

School Librarians and Teachers Must Work Together To Make School Fun

This past school year was the hardest most educators have faced in their careers. The word “pivot” is honestly a word I would be okay never hearing again, is anyone with me there? This year, my main goal is to make this year as easy as possible for my teachers on my campus as their librarians. It surprises me year after year that teachers do not realize how their school librarian can support them with instruction and make their life easier with less stress. Together librarians and teachers, through collaboration, can not only help create an environment where the school is even more fun for our students but also librarians can help relieve some of the stress of lesson planning for the teachers.

So how can librarians help teachers, and how together can they make school fun? Through collaboration! The library is the heart of every school, and anytime instruction can move from the classroom to the library is exciting for students regardless of age. Often librarians have a bit more freedom than teachers when it comes to creating lessons out of the box because of the available resources in the library. Most libraries have more access to technology, maker space, print, and digital resources than the classroom, making it easier for lessons with the technology or project-based. Between fun lessons collaborated with teachers and librarians and a change of environment from the classroom to the library, you are on your way to making school, learning, and class fun.

How librarians can support teachers:

Curatining classroom libraries based on units of instruction
Co-teaching
Lesson planning
Lesson support
Curating resources for instruction
Collaboration

With lesson planning, lesson support, and collaboration, librarians can support teachers by creating video tutorials, book tastings, book talks, small group activities, maker space activities, research skills, and lessons on your district-provided digital learning system curriculum content lessons, breakout edu lessons, etc. Recently, with help from another high school librarian in my district, I have started incorporating Google Websites to help create lessons for teachers and students that can be reused and modified year after year for all teachers of that subject. A majority of librarians are very knowledgeable about incorporating technology into instruction and can teach teachers and students how to use these skills.

Librarians and teachers can collaborate to create lessons that empower students to be ethical creators of their content and projects. Personally, project-based lessons and assignments are some of my favorite lessons to plan and implement. Students are given the freedom to choose and create their content based on instruction, and the library has resources to help and technical skills to help create. Lessons and units are more engaging and fun through collaboration, and with two different educators with different background experiences, you can have a variety of ideas to create with. So many of my amazing teachers and instructional leaders are moving towards projects that students have the freedom to create whatever product they want or have the freedom to do a project over something they are passionate about. With projects like these, I get so incredibly excited! Teachers and librarians can create a rubric, and together, the librarians and teachers can help students have as many resources and points of view as possible.

With librarian collaboration, librarians and teachers can create lessons based on the instruction that shows students to be connected to their community, state, country, and the world safely. As a result, students will be able to identify reliable resources, learn various ways to spot fake news through research and create skills that will last a lifetime. With how the internet has become such an important part of our lives, it is a vital skill for students to have the skills to identify fake news, and together librarians and teachers can work to have lessons that teach these skills.

The library is a collaborative space for other teachers and students to use. Using maker space projects in instruction, students can express their creativity and make connections to instruction. Makerspace stations are great for all subject areas to use to add an extra flair to their lessons. In the past, I have had teachers use the legos in the maker space to have students create various things based on their instruction, and I have had teachers use the button maker to create buttons based on a character they most related to. Check out the maker space area that your librarian has and work with the librarian to see what different ways you can use the maker space in your instruction.

Beyond just providing co-teaching and collaboration with teaching, librarians can also help teachers by providing various resources for teachers to use. Various digital resources can provide for teachers and students like ebooks, audiobooks, databases, research articles, various media resources based on units, and digital magazines. Teachers can discuss with their librarian what their unit of instruction is over and what ideas of resources they would like to use and the librarian can provide! The library has so many different resources available and can find something based on your lessons, and if for some reason they do not have the resources, your librarian can and will find them.

Overall when working together, teachers and librarians can improve student outcomes. Almost every librarian I know loves to have students and teachers in the library, and they love to collaborate. Be sure to reach out to your school librarian today! If your campus does not have a school librarian, reach out to your district administration and let them know how vital a school librarian can be at your campus and district. School librarians are so important to every campus. I hope that by using your school librarian this school year, you can have a successful year and much less stress than this previous school year.

September 18, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

In Defense of Defending the Literary Canon

B.H. James is the author of Parnucklian for Chocolate and co-author of A Sea of Troubles: Pairing Literary and Informational Texts to Address Social Inequality and of Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature. He has taught English at Franklin High School in Stockton, CA since 2006.

Every May, I conduct a survey asking the students in my 12^th-grade International Baccalaureate (IB) English class to not only rank (from favorite to least favorite) the books we had read that year but also to discuss their favorite and least favorite books over four years of high school English.

For a decade or so, this survey was given on paper. This year, like everything else, it was online.

The works the students were ranking, in August 2020 to May 2021 order, were…

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Medea by Euripides
Five short stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Between the World and Me by Ta Nehisi Coates
Five short stories by Gabriel García Márquez
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Most of these are works that I had taught before, but last year was my first year “teaching” (explanation of quotations marks 1,007 words away) Díaz’s Oscar Wao. Personally, I first read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the year that it was published, in 2007, and I was blown away by it. As a budding fiction writer and a lifelong reader of fiction, it completely reconfigured my perception of what fiction was capable of—or of the possibilities available to a fiction writer. And, in each of the next twelve years (2008 to 2019), I taught Díaz’s story, “Fiesta, 1980,” from his 1996 collection, Drown.

But, then, one day it happened: a box of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao showed up in our school’s bookroom.

My assumption, now that I had the chance to “teach” it (quotation mark explanation now 887 words away), was that it would be a hit. Students would go head over heels for it, just like the twenty-something version of myself did. I therefore also assumed that, when I conducted this survey, Oscar Wao would surely be one of the favorites. It was just so good.

And, besides being so good, it was a book written by a Latinx writer with Latinx characters—my seniors, by the way, are nearly-all (95%) nonwhite, and mostly (72%) Latinx—plus the book frequently mixes Spanish (which many of my students speak at home) with English.

But, despite my hopes and assumptions, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was not the book that, collectively, the class chose as their favorite. In fact, exactly one-third of the class (33.3%), chose Oscar Wao as their least favorite (#7) book. However, the same number of students put the book in their top two (most of those in 2^nd).

The two books that tied as the most-often-ranked-number-one were Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In the survey, I also asked the students to explain why #1 was #1. Here are some of their responses, unedited:

“Metamorphosis. I just think it was such a cool idea and it’s full of things to annotate and themes and felt like turning into a bug was somewhat relevant to this senior year because people probably felt like that.”
“I rank Hamlet #1 because of the central theme that I enjoy being explored. I think the idea of action/inaction and to be or not to be is what the world runs on. It is the difference between what we value in the world and what we see vs what never goes seen. I also think that it is an interesting exploration of how thoughts can be paralyzing in most cases.”
“I picked Hamlet because it was very thought provoking and at some points spoke with me deeply.”
“The metamorphosis because although it wasn't long, it was jam packed and the discussions we had after reading the novel were very interesting and provoked more questions.”
“Hamlet, because Shakespeare Duh”
“I don't know why but I really liked the demonstration of capitalism within the novel. I think at the time my family was going through financial issues and I related a lot to the book.”
“I ranked Hamlet as number 1 because I found the play, assignments, and lectures to be entertaining.”
“Hamlet is Shakespeare's best play. Its exploration of death, uncertainty, hierarchical imposition (at least, it was implied) was amazing and very interesting to dissect and analyze. His plays may be shrouded in early modern English, but it is substantive and timeless.”

And, of course, I asked the students to explain why their #7 was #7. Why was Oscar Wao, the book I assumed would be the collective favorite, the collective least favorite? Here are some responses:

“I ranked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz as #7 because I feel like we didn’t have enough time to really study and appreciate it.”
“I chose Oscar Wao because it just did not interest me at all.”
“The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao and not because I hated it but just because I enjoyed the others more.”
“Nothing bad, it just was the least interesting to me.”
“I ranked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz as #7 because it felt too misogynistic and I didn't like the use of the n-word.”
“I ranked "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" as #7 because I have not really caught up to it. I vaguely remembered anything and I wasn't very active at that moment.”
“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was rather annoying to read. Junot Diaz's use of crass language and footnotes is intrusive to the reading of a rather serious subject of cultural imposition of patriarchal and statist social relations, and the role of learning from history over generations. If I wanted to read footnotes, I would rather read a history book. While it is fiction, most of the characters feel kind of cliché.”
“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, I could not empathize with Oscar. It felt like he just accepted his fate. I did like the linguistic composition of the book.”

I should explain something. One of the IB requirements my students had to complete this past year—virtually, of course—was an oral exam. That exam took two weeks of class time to conduct, so I assigned the students, during those two weeks, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, giving them questions to answer chapter-by-chapter. We did not, however, because of the oral exams, spend time in class discussing the novel. In contrast, we spent a good deal of time discussing and analyzing (close reading!) and writing about and presenting on both The Metamorphosis (our first book of the year) and Hamlet (our last book of the year). So, based on the responses, it seems that at least one reason for the unexpected lack of enthusiasm for Oscar Wao can be blamed on the teaching (or lack thereof): they were not engaged by it because we did not engage with it.

To be clear: my suggestion here is that many students failed to appreciate Oscar Wao because I didn’t really “teach” it; in contrast, students did appreciate Hamlet and The Metamorphosis because I did teach them and we did engage with them.

It’s also worth noting that, though I assumed they would all love Oscar Wao because they would see their lives reflected in it, the responses suggest that at least some students saw their lives reflected in the respective stories of a prince in medieval Denmark and a salesman in turn-of-the-century Prague.

It’s also worth noting, given the ongoing high school English debate over choice vs. classics, summed up nicely in Holly Korbey’s 2019 Edutopia article, The Reading Wars: Choice vs. Canon, that neither Hamlet nor The Metamorphosis are books that many (or any) students would have chosen on their own, but, having been chosen for them—and having engaged with those books through classroom discussion/analysis/debate—they were nevertheless appreciated.

As aforementioned, I also asked the students to pick their favorite book from the past four years of high school English and explain that choice.

Here’s a rundown of the books that this particular class was assigned each year:

Ninth grade:

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Things They Carried
Romeo and Juliet
The Great Gatsby
Fences
Death of a Salesman

Tenth Grade:

The House on Mango Street
1984
Oedipus the King
Antigone
Macbeth
The Taming of the Shrew

Eleventh Grade:

The Handmaid’s Tale
Slaughterhouse Five
Beloved
The Merchant of Venice
The Woman Warrior
In Cold Blood

For twelfth grade, see above.

And the winner (drumroll, please): The Great Gatsby, the book that, more than any other of the traditionally-taught-high-school novels, seems to have a target on its back cover and which seems to be often characterized as a book that always gets assigned to high school students though high school students hate it. However, one-fourth of this particular high school class chose it as their favorite book over four years, with Beloved and 1984 tying for second and Slaughterhouse-Five not far behind.

So why Gatsby? Here are some responses:

“I liked doing Gatsby in freshman year because it was so fun to annotate and it’s an interesting story with a bit of historical aspects and also a lot of themes and symbols in there”
“My favorite was The Great Gatsby because it’s pretty confusing at first but then you understand it the farther along you get in the book. Also, I read it my freshman year and was barely learning all the English literary terms which made it more interesting.”
“This is tough, maybe the Great Gatsby because it changed how I saw writing”
“The Great Gatsby because it was the first actual novel that I read. Beforehand I hadn't really read any novels like the Great Gatsby and it was really interesting talking about all the things happening under the surface/in the background and applying literary terms to it.”
“The Great Gatsby because I liked the symbolism and overall plot of the novel.”
“I would say the Great Gatsby, was the most fun reading and learning about.”
“The Great Gatsby was my favorite novel we read because I could relate to it. The dream of making it, the American Dream that fools everyone.”
“The Great Gatsby, I have to go with this book because it's what started us off on the journey to classic literature.”
“The Great Gatsby. Not that all the others weren’t great, but this was the very first book we studied and my baby brain was mind blown.”

I should note that I was not the teacher with whom these students read The Great Gatsby. This group of students, in their freshman year, were taught Gatsby by my colleague—and wife, and co-author—Elizabeth James. If you’re at all curious about how Liz goes about teaching Gatsby, she wrote a chapter about it in our 2016 book, Method to the Madness: Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature.

But I can tell you now that Liz does a great job at…

Teaching “close reading” in a way that is not cute or token or “symbol-hunting” but, rather, as a true deep-dive into the craft of fiction, such that students—their notions of the possibilities in literary arts expanded—often look up and ask, “You can do that?”
Universalizing the particulars of Gatsby’s experience such that the story of a man who is not part of the in-group—not born a winner—reaches desperately toward his ambition, and in so reaching, risks falling.

So, finally, what does this certainly-un-scientific survey of this probably-statistically insignificant group of students tell us? Here are some humble observations:

Maybe it’s true that student choice in reading is a good thing (of course it is), but maybe a teacher choosing a book that is a true work of art but that students may never have picked up on their own and perhaps even groaned about at first but that, eventually—through a collective process of reading and re-reading and annotating and discussing and questioning and arguing—a book that the students come to appreciate in a meaningful, memorable way…is also a good thing.
Maybe “close reading” isn’t a bad thing that sucks the life out of reading. Maybe, for some students, particularly student populations for which expectations are too often too low, it gives reading life.
Students should absolutely see their lives, their cultures, their experiences, and their selves reflected in the literature that they read, and, in order to achieve this for as many students as possible, teachers should choose (when teachers are doing the choosing) as diverse and as representative a reading list as possible,…
…but it may also be true that a truly great work of literary art will engage a student and reflect the universality of human life back to them, regardless of the particulars of place, period, or person.

September 15, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

The Student-Teaching Model Is Outdated: Here's How We Can Do Better

This summer I spoke with three friends on three consecutive days. Each declared burnout in their field - one in business, one in transportation, the other in sales - and they were hearkening back to their college-aged dreams. All parents themselves. All great with kids. All looking to become teachers.

But because of student-teaching, they just can't do it.

And so many others can't, either.

In the United States, 39 of 50 departments of education require at least 10 weeks of student-teaching, and most college institutions require that as a minimum. In Pennsylvania (where I teach), that requirement is 16 weeks.

In that time, essentially what we are asking of student-teachers is to work for negative pay ($0 salary minus the cost of college tuition) to not have a guaranteed job as an outcome.

By definition, student-teaching becomes an uneconomical choice for:
1. Those without the means looking to move up the social ladder
2. Experienced folks in search of a second career who can't afford to take the risk
3. Individuals who would rather choose paid internships
4. Experienced master-teachers who receive little-to-no benefit for turning over their classroom to a novice

The Student-Teaching Model Is Outdated: Here's How We Can Do Better Click To Tweet

And when I met with a group of folks at the Pennsylvania Department of Education in 2019 to talk about changing student-teaching requirements, they talked about increasing that length of unpaid time in the classroom.

What we are doing with student-teaching is preposterous. And what is coming next might be worse.

We can do so much better.

PAYING COOPERATING TEACHERS MORE

Working in reverse order, we need to provide incentives for cooperating teachers to turn over the classroom keys.

First and foremost, the average cooperating teacher makes $250 for hosting a student-teacher, which is pennies on the hour. It makes much more dollars and sense to just take an extra-duty contract or pick up a part-time job. A weekend of waiting tables will often produce more than this task.

Moreover, in an age of data-driven determinations, being a cooperating teacher is a seriously difficult ask for those in tested subject areas. They know that a bad year of test scores can really be an impediment to one's career.

THE IDEA OF A PAID STUDENT-TEACHING

My brother entered as an apprentice in the electrical union. During the day he would be in the field, working on lines and making $15+ per hour. At night he would attend classes and pick up the skills of the trade from an experienced teacher who was invested in him.

One of my friends is in the pipe-fitter union, where they are hired and make $18 an hour and learn the trade and the certifications at their speed with the advisement of a mentor.

It might also help to give the teachers' unions more control over who enters student-teaching, thereby guaranteeing an income. For example, there were 240% too many teachers graduating with an elementary certificate, but there are deficits in content areas (to no surprise) technology education, vocational-technical fields, and special education. There are also intense deficits in high-poverty, high-turnover schools.

As we experience an extreme dearth of support staff and substitute teachers, it would be great to give student-teachers an income by plugging these holes and then receiving feedback from a master-educator.

As in the case of trade unions, this helps to keep the quality of the work high as well as the income for the apprentice - a win-win for both.

BOOSTING THE GUEST-TEACHER PROGRAM

One pipeline that could continue to generate income for second-career educators is to infuse the guest-teacher programs at regional and state levels. While not at the level of a full salary, a commitment from an interested, experienced person with a college degree interested in pursuing the education field could help keep food on the table, classroom coverage, while providing a learning environment for the interested party to pursue a teaching certificate. This would occur without having to take the risk of 10 or more weeks of unpaid time.

This would also open up opportunities for first-generation college students looking to enter the field and leave poverty, countering the financial disincentives to entering the profession.

CONCLUSION

When I entered college as the first in my family, I was presented with this exact situation. I remember writing a check with every penny of my 18-year-old's savings to my college, and working hard until grants (and later scholarships) helped cover most of the burden. When I student-taught, I remember waking up every morning at 5 a.m., working as hard as I could before and after school until I drove to my night job, where I kept full-time hours. It did not make for a good experience at all, and it almost drove me from the profession.

What made me love teaching was substituting, getting paid for it, and not having to burn both ends of my candle. The fact that we still require our student-teachers to do this is wrong, and we can do so much better. We just need the means to push this change towards more win-wins for students and staff alike.

September 14, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

The Missing Link in Culturally Diverse, Anti-Racist Work is Paid Collaboration

We have heard so much about the need for a culturally diverse, anti-racist curriculum, but the question is, are you willing to pay teachers for their time and energy in writing and implementing it? There are many teachers out there who have seen enough seminars and been to enough conferences to have been inspired to begin to take on this challenge of revamping the system from the inside out.

The Missing Link in Culturally Diverse, Anti-Racist Work is Paid Collaboration Click To Tweet

Many teachers are anxious to begin the essential work and even make that “good trouble” with “out of the box”, “out of the cannon” and out of the “traditional” approach to what many argue is a “one-sided” approach to teaching. I, for one, am itching for the time to add so much more to what I consider to be a fairly diverse approach to lesson planning, creating assignments, and having a more student-centered approach to education.

Transparently, I was stuck in what I now call the “typical” four areas of what I thought could be considered a diverse curriculum: White, Black, Asian, and Latinx/Hispanic. I unconsciously limited the diversity of my lessons by what I considered to be “diverse”, as long as it was outside what is considered to be a Eurocentric view. But that was and is far from enough. To explore each continent, each country, each culture, should not be limited to just an Ethnic Studies class students have to wait until college to be exposed to. We need to purposely diversify our curriculum in ALL disciplines. But even with the proper experience, training, and a culturally diverse “mindset”, what teachers need is TIME.

I put forth the following solutions to those at the “top” advocating for teachers to put into practice what many of us have learned about culturally relevant pedagogy.

Pay us for our time. Provide time (and subs if needed) for teachers to develop lessons plans and units that include purposely diverse, culturally relevant, anti-racist, current, relatable material, and student-centered. In the words of Joe Truss, “We fight for equity because it’s so important.” Many already have (or have recently adopted) an “equity” mindset.

Teachers are ready to actually use all of their training. If the powers that be are worried about accountability, make sure that everyone knows that in order to be paid, the lesson plans and units must be turned in before payment is issued. Further accountability could be an additional stipend for teachers to provide a reflection on how the lesson went, or better yet, student feedback on the lesson or unit. Personal and student reflections would also help teachers to adapt, revamp or completely change lessons to provide the most effective outcomes. This entire experience of being provided the time and compensation would potentially encourage teachers to put the things they have learned about culturally relevant, purposely diverse, pedagogy into practice more often.

True collaboration should be encouraged. Collaboration is more than just sitting in monthly faculty meetings, or discussing how to improve data, or emailing about common students. In the words of Bettina L. Love, “Theory does not solve issues—only action and solidarity can do that…” Cross-curricula lesson plans and assignments are ones that many teachers wish they had time to create. A one or two-day session with another teacher is all it would take to develop a culturally diverse AND cross-curricula lesson plan. My mind is racing with ideas as I type, imagining a successful collaboration with so many different teachers, in so many different disciplines, on so many different subjects, guaranteed to be relevant, engaging, and culturally affirming.

Teaching is one of the few professions that require a continual renewal of credentials and ongoing professional development. We are lifelong learners and are ones who oftentimes, continually hone our craft. In her book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, Goldy Muhammad stated the following, “We live in a period where there's no time for ‘urgent-free pedagogy’. Our instructional pursuits must be honest, bold, raw, unapologetic, and responsive to the social times.”

There is no loss for material to work with, especially with America providing us with …(issues/events?) that we can use to create engaging lessons plans on the daily. Of course, there are some who will implement purposeful diversity because it is a part of who we are, but we could do so much more if we had the time. We are here, we are ready, and we are willing.

Maya Angelou stated the obvious quite simply,” If you don’t like something, change it.” In this case, change begins by reaching into that newly stuffed “pandemic purse” of seemingly endless funds and pay teachers to develop what you have been asking for decades to see.

September 13, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

Setting Boundaries for Type A Personality Teachers

Think about the number of things you do each day. Now think about how many of those things you do that are actually things you enjoy doing. I hope that the number of things you enjoy doing outnumbers the things you don’t enjoy, but for many of us, I believe that’s untrue. We live in a fast-paced, always moving world where we do for others before we do for ourselves. And although you may be thinking, “well yeah, it’s really important to serve others and put others before ourselves”, there’s the old adage that you can’t pour from an empty cup. Sometimes you need to be selfish. Sometimes, you need to say “no”.

Choosing to Serve Others

Those of us with careers who serve others have oftentimes chosen to do so because it’s something we are passionate about. If you are a Doctor, Nurse, Teacher, Therapist, Social Worker, or even a Car Salesperson, you more than likely chose your profession because you enjoy working with people and helping others.

Setting Boundaries for Type A Personality Teachers Click To Tweet

For many of us, this was a calling we had when we were young. I’ve known I wanted to be a teacher since I was young enough to set up my Barbies in rows on the floor and create lessons for teacher Barbie to teach her students. My love of playing school turned into an obsession over school supplies and life of different jobs serving others.

From checking out shoppers at my local grocery store to my now current career as a high school Special Education teacher, I’ve learned that helping and providing education and guidance to others (at this point in my life, my students) has brought me such an extreme sense of satisfaction and feeling of self-worth that I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’m sure many teachers can look back to the first few (or 20) years of their careers and remember that feeling of going all in and doing everything they could to enhance their teaching careers. Sometimes we get so swept up in all of the extras, we lose sight of the importance of our main goal in the first place: serving our students.

People Pleasing is a Dangerous Habit

When working in a school district, the number of people making the district function range from the very top of administration to the teacher trainers, maintenance and custodial workers, to teachers and teaching assistants. The buildings don’t run effectively without the secretaries and school nurses. Everyone has a part to play. If one of those jobs is missing or not functioning properly, the equilibrium of the school building can end up in disarray. It’s in these times that people in other roles in the building are asked to step in and step up. And those of us who are people pleasers, always seem to take on the extra tasks.

I am by nature, a people pleaser. I don’t like to burden others to do anything that I can take care of myself. Delegating tasks has never been something I’m good at and it usually takes an outside force like my teaching assistants, a friend, or my husband to tell me to sit down and let them do something. I would imagine that there are many others like me and I am not alone in struggling to relinquish control.

The people pleasers out there (including myself) are the ones who are the go-to's for covering an extra class, taking on the new training initiative, leading the teacher discussions, and continuously presenting at meetings. And we are always asked because we are the ones who always say yes. We have an invisible target on our backs because we help out when others refuse.

As a young people pleaser, I couldn’t believe the number of teachers I worked with who never did anything other than teaching. No committees, no presentations, no creating Google Sheets with organizational strategies for the department, and no extra-curricular.

How could they possibly get everything out of their teaching careers without participating in things?

Then I would get angry. If everyone else would just carry a little bit, maybe the other people pleasers and I wouldn’t have to do it all. I was stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, and failing as a teacher. It was only then that I realized that pleasing others was failing my main purpose and that maybe my colleagues who focused on their students knew what they were doing. I wanted to be a good teacher to my students, and by taking on every other activity that didn’t serve them, I was in actuality failing as a teacher.

Our Time is Worth Something

How many times have you heard “teachers don’t teach for the income. Teachers teach for the outcome. Thank all teachers for their hard work”. Isn’t that sweet? The connotation is that we don’t do our jobs for the paycheck, we do our jobs because we want to change lives and we love children. I used to agree with this. I’d see these words in some meme online and think, “yeah! I’m so selfless that I do this job because I want to teach kids and make a difference in their lives. Whatever money I make as a part of it is just a nice bonus”. That was still back in my people-pleasing days.

It wasn’t until post-pandemic teaching that my mindset started to change. Teachers have always hung out on the balance beam between being praised and being attacked. We’re praised one minute because you can’t imagine doing our job when you’re at home with your child expecting to be the teacher, then we’re vilified as lazy, incompetent people who are paid “too much” for “only working” ten months out of the year. I saw that meme again online but it was edited to read: “teachers are skilled professionals who deserve a competitive income. Professional level pay is how to thank all teachers for their hard work”. Huh, interesting thought.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The original meme pulls at my heartstrings because I truly believe that teachers work hard and love their students and want them to succeed. If you don’t like kids or want to help kids or want to see them succeed, get out of the teaching profession now. Stop reading this and just go write your resignation letter. Those types of people don’t belong in this profession. That second meme though, the one about paying teachers because we are professionals, blew my mind even when it really shouldn’t have.

We are professionals.

Our time is WORTH something.

All of those extra things we take on, we do it because we feel like we should. We take on extra tasks that eat up our planning periods and after-school time. We take time away from our families, our friends, or even time to refill our own cups so we can continue to pour forth all the energy we need to serve others. It’s time to start looking at the things we say yes to and see if they are truly what we want to focus our unpaid time and energy on.

The reality is that in a school building, there are many tasks and activities that need to be attended to that you won’t receive extra pay for. We may not have control over being paid for every additional thing we take on, but we do have the control to set boundaries and choose to do the extra things we want to do that will serve us and help us continue to serve others, rather than the things that don’t serve us.

Setting Boundaries for Type A Personalities

Going back in time a few months to the end of June 2021.

I was exhausted. I’m sure many of my teacher friends can relate.

The end of the longest-feeling school year arrived and even when it was all over, I couldn’t seem to relax. I’m an avid reader and I tried focusing on my books as a way to decompress in the week after school ended. After chatting with a friend of mine, also an avid reader, she told me she just couldn’t focus. She couldn’t relax into what was supposed to be the first week of rest from an incredibly trying school year.

It was then that I decided I needed to start setting boundaries for myself. I am an extreme Type A kind of person. More like Type A++. Throw on top of that my people pleasing attitude, it is so hard for me to say no and set boundaries. I want to help and take on all of the extras and be involved. There might even be a little bit of FOMO on my end that pushes me to take on every little challenge that is dropped in front of me. I’ve always felt like this was very noble of me. I’d take on one more thing so my colleagues didn’t have to. I’d spread myself so thin that I was spinning out of control not being able to figure out what needed to be done.

Although I’ve felt honored being the go-to for administrators and colleagues, going home and not being able to function as a human to do the things I want/need to do hasn’t been pleasant. Taking on so many additional activities was causing me to not focus as much on planning solid lessons for my students. At the end of the day, my title is ‘teacher’ and I was slowly creeping away from being an effective one.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy to stop cold turkey during the school year so I practiced a bit during summer vacation. I decided if it didn’t serve me, got in the way of plans I had already made, or if I just didn’t really feel up to doing it, I said “no”. It felt good to set boundaries with activities in my life outside of school and I am happy to report I ended up having a very relaxing summer!

Setting Boundaries at School

The summer came to an end. It was time to face the music and begin prepping for September. Although I adopted a “if I don’t feel like doing it, I’m not doing it” type attitude in the summer, I know that’s not realistic in the real world of work (I know you read that above and were thinking, “gee, must be nice” with sarcastic undertones and that’s ok).

I made a decision to think about what I really wanted out of my career this year. I can only work with where I am and how I’m feeling right now. Maybe three years from now I’ll decide I want to take on coaching or be in charge of the Junior class, but right now at this moment, I want to be a teacher. I want to be effective for my students. Using my plannings to plan thoughtful lessons to bridge the gaps in their learning rather than for other tasks not directly impacting my students will make a huge difference. I want to write my IEPs and reports at school rather than working during my nights at home with my family or on the weekends.

In order to do this, I know I need to say no and set boundaries. I know I can’t take on more additional tasks than the ones I already do. I need to limit myself to one after school committee that I find important. Closing my door during my planning periods to focus on my tasks rather than socializing and always helping everyone with what they need and tabling what I need will help me stay on track. I will not stay after school with students unless they have made an effort during the day to get the help they need. I will continue to do some of my other extra activities because I love them and they don’t take away from my ability to be a great teacher, but I will take on nothing more.

Following Through

It’s easy to say you won’t take on another thing that you can’t handle. The hard part is actually sticking to the promise you made to yourself. Setting boundaries and saying no is a lot like flexing a muscle. The more you practice, the stronger it’ll get. A few days before school I was asked to take on another (very large) responsibility. I asked the questions I needed to be answered to make a fully informed decision. And the final question I asked was “how much time will this take me away from my students?”. In the end, although me taking on this responsibility would have really helped out my district, it would have added an exorbitant amount of additional stress on me and would have set me up for a very difficult start to my school year. I chose to say “no”.

I hung up the phone and immediately felt guilt and thought for a second about emailing her back and saying that I would do it. Instead, I called my mom and told her that I said no to something. I immediately felt proud of myself and she was elated.

I urge you if you find that you’re starting to lose your way whether you’re a teacher or not, start saying no to things that aren’t serving you. It’s time to take back enjoying more of the things that we do in our lives. And if you’re a Type A++ people pleaser like myself, just practice flexing that muscle and I believe it will get easier.

September 12, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

Check Your Toxic Positivity and Correct Your Word Choices

How many times this past year during pandemic teaching did you hear, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” How many times after hearing that “verse” have you felt like a complete failure?

Well, here’s the deal - that’s not actually a verse, but a variation of this one:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. 1 Cor 10:13

Does that surprise you that it’s not actually from the Bible?

I did a little reading in various scholarly pieces and discovered this little nugget from
Terry Storch - co-founder of YouVersion explaining this verse.

Let’s break it down this way. Temptation vs. Suffering. Temptation, what Paul said, for the most part, is connected with our choices and things and situations that we have decision-making and control of. Being tempted isn’t a sin, acting and deciding on that temptation is the sin. Paul said we wouldn’t be tempted beyond what you can bear...what we have the ability to say no to. Suffering is not connected to decisions we make and actions we are in control of for the most part. These are two very different words, meanings, and ideas that should not be confused with each other.

Totally different than how people use it today. Now after years of thinking I’ve been encouraging people by saying “God doesn’t give you more than you can bear” I feel a deep need to apologize for those misleading, misguided, hurtful words. So - I am sorry for saying those damaging words to friends, family, and co-workers - especially this past year and a half when we’ve all bore more than we can possibly bear.

Teaching during a pandemic has been incredibly difficult for those of us in the classroom.

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Then our districts pile more on our plate-making it almost impossible to do our jobs. Throw in mask mandates from a few of our states forbidding the wearing of masks - well it is like wishing a drowning man well instead of tossing them a life preserver. I’ve come to the conclusion that quoting that particular phrase is hurtful and damaging to say because the true message we convey with this saying is this - when you cannot handle the pressure “God puts on you” then you are a failure. I do not believe it.

I am back in the classroom at a new school this year and am beginning to get a taste of what my new colleagues experienced over the past year and a half. I am learning new software to record lessons online for when students start having to quarantine.

Schools are being required to provide 30 hours of tutoring to fill those gaps in learning here in Texas.

We are under pressure. Too much pressure.

So - we obviously want to encourage those around us.

First of all - quit offering that statement as the source of encouragement. Offer your support. Be a sounding board for co-workers to vent to. Be a voice in your districts when the pressure is too much. Administrators - please stop piling things on your staff. If your teachers are crumbling under the pressure, step in and help. Maybe cover their classes for the rest of the day and let them go home without docking their pay.

Years ago my assistant principal stepped into my room telling me to gather my things and go to the hospital. My daughter had had a medical emergency and was rushed to the ER with my husband driving behind the ambulance. The AP told me not to worry about my classes because he would teach the rest of the day. He made sure I could drive myself and offered to have someone drive if I needed to. That is the level of compassion we need in our schools today- the most important thing we can offer those in tough situations is Grace.

Extending grace can bring healing and restoration. I am also concerned about learning gaps, but I am more concerned about the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health of those in the classroom.

September 11, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

President Biden is Correct, All Teachers Should Be Vaccinated, But With One Exception

"There's no way I'd do it. I'd rather be fired!"

"Sign me up tomorrow; we should be testing all kids and teachers! We're in a pandemic!"

"It's a conspiracy. Why do you think they're so bent on us getting this shot!"

These were the tidbits of conversations that I heard as I clocked in Friday morning at my school after President Biden's address to the nation around COVID vaccinations. It didn't matter where I went in the building; the talk of the day between students and staff was heightened and all were on edge.

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In between grading narrative essays from 9th graders, I listened with heightened dread as President Biden urged both school systems and governors to increase their vaccination to help keep kids in schools. I knew we were at this point in the cycle of this pandemic. But hearing the pundits replay the vaccine mandate made me remember how my neighbors, co-workers and even family have developed COVID fatigue and went back to living their normal lives despite the community spread getting worse day by day.

Not only was COVID not over, it was mutating. Now add that mutation to the 2021-2022 school year and as the cases continue to rise in schools, we're on a dangerous path.

As a certified Hippie, I recoil at the thought of the government mandating any medical procedure. But, in the last 18 months, I've developed PTSD after watching over 15 family members succumb to COVID complications, being quarantined 5 times after being exposed to COVID by students who refuse to wear a mask, and after being verbally assaulted by parents at the school board meetings who are threatening to sue any parent who teaches critical race theory.

As the last 18+ months flashed before my eyes, I came to a startling realization...

President Biden is right. Teachers and staff should be required to have a COVID-19 vaccination to work in a school. We should be required, but with one exception, teachers should be compensated a living wage for the work they've done during this pandemic.

That's right. For this entire pandemic, the teaching force around the world has been on the front lines fighting this disease as it mutates and hurts everyone in its path. Now it's time for us to be compensated for such.

When I say compensated, I'm not looking for a measley one-time payment of $2,500. No, I'm speaking about a standard $15,000-$20,000 stipend on top of our district salary that's permanently given to teachers as a way to retain and attract teachers in the education field. This stipend can be directly added to our salary, or be given in the form of tax credits on insurance or retirement, however, it's done we deserve this investment.

For many of my colleagues around the world, we work extra jobs, take extra duties just to pay rent, buy groceries and live. After helping a whole generation of students continue to learn, we deserve our share of federal money to subsidize our salaries.

With that money, we could afford :

to send our kids to post secondary school without sacrificing our livelihoods.
to work our teaching job and spend the time needed to continue to be an effective teacher.
to spend unadultrated time with our families instead of spending the weekend working our part-time job.
to attend professional learnings that would help us find joy in the profession.
to know we're looked at as the professionals we are and the joy that the public recognizes it.

Of course as soon as people read this there will be my fellow teachers decrying this thought, but the truth is that vaccines are safe. We know that based on the eradication of measles, mumps, yellow fever and a host of other diseases that are almost gone due to vaccines.

So Uncle Joe (as he's affectionately called), mandate the vaccines and our pay raises.

We thank you in advance.

September 11, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

9-11: My Eleventh Day of Teaching

Meran Khon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Spring Arbor University and a Master of Education in Middle-Level Education degree from Walden University. She taught seventh-grade language arts and a third-grade self-contained classroom before reinventing the library and computer lab into a twenty-first-century Learning Lab/Maker Space, where she currently teaches K-5 students.

On Sept. 11, 2001, it was my eleventh day of teaching. As I headed into my seventh-grade language arts classroom at 7:30 a.m., I was already sweating in the lingering summer heat of early September. A few posters on the mostly bare wall hung haphazardly in the humidity, mirroring my own wilted exhaustion. I was a fresh college graduate and newlywed, drowning in papers to grade, behaviors to manage, curriculum to plan, and wading through the hormone hurricane unleashing itself on my classroom daily. By 8:00, my students were straggling in, a few muttering “Good morning” and “Hey, Mrs. Khon.” The first hour was always the quietest, the sleepiness not yet having made an about-face into hyperactivity. We dove into the morning warmup and our current reading piece, and soon the bell rang for the second period.

I made a quick dash to the office to use the restroom. Donna, our secretary, was standing at her desk, which didn’t seem all that unusual at first until I noticed she wasn’t moving. She seemed frozen, a statue carved in front of her computer screen. “What’s up?” I casually asked, coming back around the counter. She didn’t answer immediately, and I then saw another secretary standing behind her.

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“A plane hit the World Trade Center, “ she replied.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a skyscraper in New York City.”

“Like it was an accident, or what?” I asked.

“They don’t know.”

“Oh, man. That’s awful,” I replied. I headed back down the hallway to my room as the warning bell rang, my mind already on next period.

I wandered back into the office 50 minutes later between my third and fourth hour, and this time, our principal, the counselor, both office assistants, and a handful of other teachers were milling around.

Glancing my way, Dona told me, “Another plane hit the tower.”

“Geez, I guess it wasn’t an accident!” I exclaimed. “What happened?”
“They don’t know yet,” she murmured.

I once again scanned my mailbox and found a printed copy of the latest news release regarding the incident. But, unfortunately, it had a blurry black-and-white photo of a tall tower with a gaping, smoking hole in the side.

Mobile devices (and the instant information they provided) didn’t exist yet the way they do know- students and most adults didn’t even own one. Yet by lunchtime, parents were calling; a handful pulled their kids out of school for the day. By my prep hour at sixth period, the news was constantly on, replaying the collapse of the towers, the screams of shocked New Yorkers, and the horrified silence of the news anchors magnifying the devastation. My coworkers and I flitted back and forth across the hallway with “Did you see…” and “Have you heard…?” Driving the 30 minutes to my apartment after school was dismissed, my eyes barely saw the road as my ears absorbed unfathomable details. My husband met me at home, his coaching duties and all other school events canceled in light of any unforeseen threats. For hours, we sat glued to the television, watching bodies fall from windows, pedestrians run from clouds of ash, seeing the desperate pleas of families searching for loved ones. The Pentagon. Flight 93. It was exceptionally disturbing, yet we could not look away as the hours bled into midnight and beyond.

And then I had to go back to school.

I wasn’t trained in what to say or do: I was a newbie with zero formal education or practical experience in social-emotional learning, counseling, PTSD, or trauma. I didn’t even know then what those terms meant. But I did know that my students would have heard and seen the news, and they were scared, confused, curious, and more. They were living through a historical event of unprecedented tragedy and magnitude, and grammar or reading logs weren’t the most important topics to cover anymore. Their emotions were frayed and on edge. They couldn’t really focus on anything else and didn’t know what to do with what they were feeling, and frankly, neither did I.

So I just let them talk for days. I listened to them tell me how awful it was to think about choosing to burn alive or fall to your death. They told me the eerie sound of the firefighters’ chirping Personal Alert Safety Systems haunted them - like the sound of hundreds of ghosts. They asked questions I couldn’t answer: Who would do that? Why did they do that? Are all the people on the planes dead? I told them it was ok to cry, and some did. They told me it was ok to cry when I found out Meredith Whalen, my high school track teammate and church acquaintance, died on the 93rd floor of 1 World Trade Center. She was 23 years old.

And then I let them write. I told them this would be something they would never forget. “Where were you on 9-11?” would be a question they’d always have an answer for. They poured out their emotions: horror, anger, disgust, sadness, morbid fascination - all of it came to roost in the pages of their journals, and for the first time, they realized writing actually WAS recording history. The American Flag became a necessary decorative item and fashion piece. They watched a nation forge a stern resolve to avenge this terrorist act. Eventually, they too saw their country enter a war in foreign lands. We returned to reference this throughout the months to come. As we read The Giver, The Diary of Anne Frank, Zlata’s Diary, and Daniel’s Story, they came to recognize them as more than just books; they were teenage experiences written from the pain of history lived. Those students are approximately 32 years old now, yet I’d wager they remember that day with some clarity, muddled as it may seem by time.

A few years back, I took a trip with some friends to New York City. I visited the Statue of Liberty, took a run in Central Park, ate at Tavern on the Green, took a Taxi to see “Wicked” on Broadway, had pasta in Little Italy, walked Times Square at 2 a.m...but the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to do? Visit Ground Zero and the Freedom Tower. Standing in the shadow of the massive skyscrapers and realizing just how HIGH they were, visiting a high-rise hotel and envisioning a PLANE crashing into the windows, walking in the very streets, many fled down; it all felt even more unbelievably terrifying. I couldn’t bear to see the crushed fire trucks, the charred remains of the towers, and Meredith’s name engraved on a wall. It seems uncourageous of me in retrospect, but I knew the emotional toll it would take to relive those horrible moments.

This fall begins my 21st year of teaching and the 20th anniversary of 9-11. As an elementary school librarian now, I read to my students about what 9-11 was, as they weren’t even born yet, and most of their parents were young adults or teenagers. Our conversation has to be censored for their age and maturity level. Much of it is too scary and violent. We stick to basic facts; they have no frame of reference or developmental experience to process such information. But they can look it up on the internet, read about it in books, and hear their family’s stories. They still always have lots of questions: What happened? Why would someone do that? How many people died? Were you there? The rabbit-trail conversations that inevitably follow usually command most of my time with them for the week. They still seek the same answers and reassurance my students did 20 years ago. I find talking about it deeply saddening and upsetting, rather like ripping a mostly-healed wound open again. I often cry in front of my students, my tears quicker to flow than they did years ago in front of snarky teenagers. The rawness of that day has faded over the decades, yet somehow it becomes fresh again each year. But my students need to know, and we shouldn't shy away from remembering and honoring just because it's painful.

This September, I will, for the twentieth time, walk my students through 9-11.

Then, they will come into the library, have a seat, and I’ll begin: “On September 11, 2001, it was my eleventh day of teaching…

September 10, 2021 Instruction & Curriculum

I Let My Teaching Dream Die and I Don't Regret It

By Lanee Higgins

At 16, it was my dream to become an English teacher. I wanted to inspire students the way my English teachers inspired me. I sacrificed so much to become a teacher--sleep, sanity, and being there for my grandma’s final days of life-- it hurts that much more that at 28 I let this dream die.

Many people will look at me like I’m crazy: You gave up a good job with job security and healthcare during a global pandemic?! Yes, yes I did. The dream that I had sacrificed so much to achieve had become a nightmare that was increasingly draining the life out of me. Being a teacher is hard, and while it is not the sole source of my depression, it is one of the biggest triggers.

Teaching demanded more and more of me-- more than I was willing to give. I am paid for 32.5 hours, but I work 50. Weekends are dedicated to catching up on work instead of spending time with my husband and son. I go to bed at 1:30 AM planning, grading, doing reports, contacting parents, and anything else I missed. I wake up at 6:00 AM trying to catch up on all the things I didn’t do the night before prior to the start of the school day.

Add the lack of support from parents and the school system.

Add the isolation of the pandemic.

Add the fear of returning to unsafe work conditions and the failure of the union to protect us.

Add the meetings that give more reports to do and more phone calls to make and more strategies to include in your instruction.

And it becomes an endless never-ending cycle of losing yourself to meet the demands of a system that you will never satisfy because it will always want more.

No wonder I crumbled.

I am not writing this to bash the teaching profession. I loved teaching. Getting students excited about reading and discussing literature or understanding how an era in American history impacted our lives today was fulfilling. Planning lessons that were both creative and engaging was my specialty: I found the perfect balance between reaching and teaching students. I learned from my students as much as they learned from me, and I valued each and every one of the perspectives that they brought to my language arts class. But if you were never a teacher (or have a teacher significant other), you have NO idea what teachers endure on a daily basis. You don’t know that a school day starts way before the start of the actual school day and ends hours after the bell rings.

You don’t see workplace bullying, gaslighting, and intimidation.

You don’t hear the tones that administrators, parents, and students take with teachers that have caused many of us to cry at our desks, in front of our students, and in our cars on the way home. You haven’t witnessed a teacher get physically hurt by a student or by protecting a student. You don’t know the pain when you lose a student to illness, accident, murder, or suicide.

When teachers do find the strength to voice how much teaching hurts their mental health, the responses from administrations and local educational leaders are lackluster. We’re told, “if we’re feeling this way, imagine how the students are feeling.” We must think of their needs before our own.

They forget that exhausted, unhappy teachers don’t create the best learning environments.

Not because we don’t want to, but because we’re so drained we can’t. We’re told “self-care!” but no amount of “self-care” is going to fix the broken public education that breaks teachers.

More mental health resources need to be obtainable for educators.

More districts need to adopt policies on addressing educator trauma.

More support and fewer demands need to be placed on teachers.

Teachers need more pay for the work that they do on and off the clock. I want all of these changes to happen because our teachers more than deserve it. I taught for seven years, but my mental health couldn’t afford for me to wait around and hope. The decision to resign as an 8th-grade language arts teacher killed my dream, but it saved my life.

I was once the 2014 Hood College Distinguished Teacher Candidate of the Year, but now I’m unemployed.