It's the "Principal" of the thing!

A few years ago, when a friend told me that he was going to get his school administration credential, I remember saying that was great, we need good people becoming prinicipals.  But I also told him he was out of his mind, that I would never wish the job on any friend.

 

Being a principal is an impossible job.  You get all the responsibilities of running the school, including student achievement, school climate, employee relations and community spokesperson, but very limited power.  Long hours, low budget, and everyone expects you to live up to their very specific expectations.

 

So, what qualities make a good principal?  How can we measure success?  In my head, the answer is we need some combination of circus skills in your basic principal – some combination of juggler, high wire act and ringmaster.  However, it’s best to avoid the people who see themselves as lion-tamers and dart-throwers.  Those are the types that can run a staff ragged.

 

I believe that a principal can do more harm in a school than good.  A bad principal can easily marginalize parent groups, divide a staff or shove students into a box.  Then run.  And leave Pandora’s box open for the next unlucky person to come on in and take the job.  But a good principal’s best gift to a school community is to simply encourage the good things that other people are doing.

 

With all that said, I think it’s the duty of people in a school community to expect and demand good principals.  I actually believe that experienced staff members need to take it on themselves to train principals how do their jobs, which is awkward, because the principal is the “supervisor” in the relationship. 

 

Awkward, but necessary.  The teachers, office workers, counselors, aides and custodial staff are the folks who have been in the school community the longest, and also the people who will last the longest.  Teachers carry school culture and remember school history.  Staff members develop working relationships with each other that last long past the principal’s tenure in a school. 

 

A good principal should inspire the people around her or him to add their talents to a mosaic – which becomes a shared vision for how the school should be serving the community.  That’s the basic job description for a quality principal.  The more you impost, the more the staff, parents and students resist. The principal who recognizes this basic truth about the way a school functions is the one who fits the school the best.

Evaluate Your School Administrator

Just before the end of the school year in a survey monitored by the San Leandro Teachers' Association, ninety percent of the teachers who participated voted "no-confidence" in the Superintendent.  The results didn't come as a surprise to many people, including some of the board members.  Our Superintendent has been in her position for five years, and has never been a staff favorite. But this is the first time we've actually quantified how 'un-favorite' she is.  

I generally think that school administration is an impossible job, with pressure from too many interest groups.  Every good administrator has to piss off someone with almost every decision, whether you're answering to state mandates, parent relationships, board relationships or Union relationships.  But when ninety percent of your staff won't follow your leadership, it's time to look at what you're doing that isn't working.

What's the lesson from this?  I think it's time for school districts to institute staff evaluation of their administrators as a normal part of the cycle of the school year.  Superintendents, principals and program directors could all benefit from a bottom-up evaluation.  In the education community, administrators often play musical chairs, moving from position to position frequently, and often burning their bridges as they go.  The teachers are often far more experienced than the administrators, usually much more firmly established in the school community, and an evaluation can lead to a better vision of where the school community has been and where it ought to be going.

Think about how teachers' insights could improve an administrators' performance in these areas:  the quality of internal staff communication,  staff (stakeholder) involvement in school-wide decisions, leadership development (remember that teachers usually last much longer than principals and superintendents), school climate and discipline, even new teacher orientation and support.

What's the catch?  Administrators might not go for it.  Why would they ever want to give their employees that much power?  Because it makes for better schools.  I wouldn't stop there, either.  I would also ask for leaders of the parent community to conduct an administrator evaluation.  These are the voices (teachers, faculty, parents) we say are important, yet they are excluded from the process of determining who runs our schools, and how our schools are run.

What happens when an administrator refuses to be evaluated?  Conduct the evaluation anyway!  Union leadership at a school should conduct surveys and share the results with the administrator (or the school board if the administration won't listen).  What message would be sent if the administrator didn't want to participate in such an exercise.  Think of the benefit to the school community of organized groups of people regularly meeting to talk about whether a school or a district is being well administered.

Here are the questions I have, which I invite your comments on.  What performance areas should a school administrator be evaluated on?  Which people should be involved in the evaluation?  What should be the process of dealing with the evaluation?

Every administrator gives lip service to involving parents and staff in school and district decisions.  An annual evaluation of administrators by teachers and parents would give a school community another important opportunity to talk.

The Blog is Back!

Shockingly, I have readers!  A few people have actually asked me when I’m putting something fresh on my blog.  Now that our contract is ratified, and the 7^th grade research papers have been read, I have no other excuses.

While I’ve been busily diverted, I’ve been thinking about how I want this blog to function.  I’m actually hoping that it serves as a forum with multiple participants on public education issues.  In other words, I’ll float a topic idea, then give folks a few days to think and comment, sharing experiences and opinions with each other. Also, feel free to propose topics for future blogs.

I’m developing a series of future topics.  Please e-mail me (mistermorse109@yahoo.com) if you have a knee-jerk reaction for any of these ideas.  One of the ideas I’m working on is what should a Teachers’ Union be working on after the contract has been ratified for the year.  For another piece, I’m worried about the impact that the Federal Government’s ICE immigration raids in our schools will have on whether children attend class.  

I’m also thinking about the role that schools should play as the center of a community as keepers of culture, which might become a critique on cultural relativism.  In other words, I’ve heard arguments recently that we ought to just look the other way when black kids use the “n-word” while talking to their friends on campus.  Funny how none of the black teachers agreed with that viewpoint.

 

Meanwhile, I’d like to divert your attention to three links.

Raleigh McLemore sent me a connect to the Educator’s Roundtable comment on “closing the achievement gap:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVmPKvhsNVk

 

Tammy Johnson sent me Chela DelGado’s comments about testing:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90167642

 

Gina sent me a piece from www.racewire.org about the ICE folks using a school’s database to get information which would help them in immigration raids.

Pick up that Picket Sign!

The picket signs have been going up all over our district again.  Well, some of them.  We had a few loud and raucous events, but now that the fight is rolling into Act II, the angry expressions of fury have dissipated a little.  I think we had 12 of our 50 teachers at the last before-school informational picket.

People often think that Unions are old-fashioned and irrelevant.  I get asked almost as many questions about car insurance as I do about the contract.  And damn, they sure take a lot of dues!  When people discover how much they need a Union, it's often too late.  One of the problems with teachers' Unions is that every member is college-educated.  That means that almost every member grew up in a family that had the capacity (i.e. - upper middle class) to send them to college.  And they didn't grow up in a Union household.

I guess that makes me one of the lucky kids.  I grew up in a Union household, in a Union town; and I still managed to go to college.  Even though the Unions were being blamed for all of the economic woes of the entire midwest, I got to hear what my Dad was thinking about.  If you work hard at the factory, then you deserve the basics:  a house, a retirement, a vacation and health care.  And if you save up your money, you should be able to send your kids off to college.

While I'm writing, I better give equal time to my mother, who was not in a Union, but worked hard and also made sure I was going to get all of those things.  Her ethos was a little bit more conservative.  She believed that if a company treats you right, you don't need a Union.  And when Dad was layed off or on strike, it was Mom's paycheck that kept us in chicken noodle soup.

But here's my truth.  Without the U.A.W., I don't go to college.  Well, maybe community college, but no way can my parents pay for the University of Michigan.  Without the Union, I don't get to see the rest of the country with my family (family vacation = camping trip through some little corner of North America.)  And mostly, without the Union, my Dad's cancer bankrupts my Mom.  Its hard enough watching a spouse die.  But getting the bills ...

All these basics were brought to us by a Union.  They're all being slowly eroded because the Union movement is losing its momentum.  We've already lost our grip on health care.  And those of us who have it find out that it doesn't cover half of what we might get.  Now people are losing their ability to keep their homes.  

Look, I know life is expensive.  But in the end, my Dad was right.  You work your whole life for a school community, there are some things you ought to get from the deal.  A house.  a retirement.  A vacation.  See the Doctor when you're sick.  And send your kids to college.

Pick up that picket sign so we don't lose the basics.

I can leap tall textbooks in a single bound!

I’m going to have a difficult time teaching this week.  My superhero cape and tights are at the cleaners.

It's almost staff development season again.  Our school district loves to pay these miracle-worker education consultants thousands of dollars to come and speak to our teachers.  They come armed with videos and graphic organizers, and they model their lessons.  Each consultant advertises a gimmick -- some bottled miracle that they can make happen in your classroom. The last few years, it's all about the achievement gap.

A few years ago, one of these educational consultants showed a documentary about Erin Gruwell, that energetic, "idealistic" young teacher who started the Freedom Writers project in her Long Beach School.

The gist of her story is that if you can find a way to connect to the kids in the classroom, any student can learn no matter the hardship.  In her first year of teaching, her given-up-on students transformed themselves into college-bound kids.  Gruwell wrote a book about her miracle year, then she was featured on Oprah and Rosie O’Donnell.  Now Hilary Swank is playing her in a movie.

I’m all for miracles and connections in the teaching and learning business.  I even believe that they’re possible.  Could be Jaime Escalante, Coach Carter or that Dangerous Minds woman.  I just don't think that they are sustainable.  And I resent when administrators and politicians expect miracles without putting the required resources into our schools.  For some reason, I resent it even more when some carpet-bagging consultant pockets thousands of dollars to tell us how to make the miracles happen.

Here’s the downside to Erin Gruwell’s story.  As a first-year teacher, she had to work a second job just to pay for all of her classroom expenses.  She had to work ridiculous hours, and didn't seem to have a life outside of school.  She made a noble commitment, and I applaud her dedication.  But real humans who want to make a career out of teaching have to recognize that superhero teachers burn out.   Erin Gruwell doesn’t teach anymore.  She quit.  She actually cashed in.  Now she is an education consultant.

Some Erin Gruwell character teaches in every school.  Usually more than one.  The principals love them.  “Join the equity team…  How would you like to coach volleyball? …  We really need your energy in the PTA…   Maybe you could do a staff briefing to show others what you're doing.”  For a couple of years, she is everywhere; but then something changes.  She becomes exhausted, overwhelmed, or simply disillusioned when the hard work doesn’t seem to get her anywhere.

Every teacher wants to make a difference.  Many of us have even bought into the superhero notion.  You can put all the superheroes together and make a committee.  The committee can be the driving force to ensure that the education consultant's plan is put in place.  What's the strategy?  Give teachers collaborative preparation time.  Be available to students one-on-one at lunch and after school for hours, and visit homes of students when it’s required.  These are the strategies that do work miracles.

But nobody can make those kinds of commitments to our classrooms year after year for a career.  If every teacher in the school is expected to work sixty-hour work weeks, then most of them will be out of the classroom within a couple of years.  These strategies have to be planned-for and funded, and scheduled into a regular human's life.  More prep time for teachers, smaller class sizes, or community liaisons.  

Without the funding, we’re simply hoping for superheroes who work for free.

Substitute Blogger: Starla Mason

Testing Craze

What is it about teachers that makes us believe we must follow the rules at any cost, even when we know those rules are not in the best interest of those we are entrusted to teach and protect while they are in our care? Today teachers throughout the state administered a state writing assessment to ALL 7^th grade students. I mindlessly went into this bothersome exercise that was taking away time from my ability to actually teach my students. As the day began, the assessment was like a pesky fly that continues to buzz and land on you; frustrating but tolerable.

My first class to be subjected to this NCLB nonsense happened to be a class of English Language Learners. Fortunately, this group is nearly proficient in English, and was able to take the assessment with confidence. My frustration came as a result of students who took the test with my class. The teacher for our "newcomers" (students who, for the most part, have been in our country/speaking English for less than a year) needed a 7^th grade English teacher to administer the test to her seven 7^th grade students, and since I had the room to accommodate these students, I welcomed them into the fold of our community. I read, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, the scripted instructions for students; noting the blank stares of the newcomers as vocabulary to which they had not been exposed was read aloud. I did my best to explain the directions for completing the assessment in a comprehensible way before having the students begin the independent work of reading the prompt and writing a persuasive letter to the editor about "lengthening the school year." Reading the directions did not include reading the "prompt" which contained challenging and unfamiliar vocabulary, even some of my native English speakers asked the meaning or pronunciation of certain words throughout the day. 

As the testing began, I moved around my classroom to encourage and motivate students. When they asked about a word, I reminded them to break it into smaller parts they could understand or to use the context of words and phrases in the passage to better figure out the meanings of these unfamiliar words and phrases. Most of the seven visiting students worked quietly and independently to complete the writing task to the best of their ability. Early in the testing period, however, I noticed one boy whose personal information had been filled in manually by the teacher rather than preprinted, telling me he had been in our school community for less than an academic quarter.

This boy sat and stared at the blank lines of his test booklet for the entire testing period. I realized that he was the student who had come from China two months earlier; a true "newcomer" in our country. Yet there he sat taking the same assessment as every other 7^th grade student throughout the state. Will the person who looks at his blank booklet realize that this boy did not stubbornly refuse to participate? Will they understand that he did not understand what he was supposed to be doing? Will the damn lawmakers that continue to reauthorize this flawed legislation called "No Child Left Behind" ever see beyond their ivory towers and look into a real classroom and see real students that suffer the consequences of their thoughtless testing rules? And most importantly, will we, the teachers of these young human beings, ever stand up and say, "enough is enough!"

As I watched this boy silently stare at the empty lines of his test booklet, my rage and resolve grew. I contemplated teaching him to write "FUCK YOU." Fortunately I regained my composure and resolved instead to speak out against the craziness of these test mandates. It is time that we teachers, the people on the front lines, stop playing nice and doing what we are expected to do. It is time for us to: stand up, speak the truth, refuse to subject our students to harmful legislation. If we don't speak for the students who can't speak for themselves, who will? It is time to pull our heads out of the sand, to stop feeling powerless and to start acting on behalf of our students. As the testing frenzy of spring approaches, we need to be prepared to do what is best and right for the students we know and work with each day. If they do not speak English, why should they be expected to take a test that is incomprehensible to them? The lawmakers are not going to change their minds, but if we stand united against this inhumane treatment of our students, perhaps we can make a loud enough noise to be heard or at least noticed.  The conversation about test mandates must include the voices of all stakeholders, and we, the teachers of these "newcomers," must help those who can't speak for themselves to be heard.

Teachers on Steroids!

I'm a little jealous of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds.  Cameras follow these guys wherever they go.  Government agencies want to hear from them.  Congress holds hearings.  But teachers can't even get local school boards to listen.

I keep wondering what it's going to take.  This week, 250 teachers (more than half) in my school district showed up at a board meeting - asking for a little attention.  It seems as though they were all fed up about the same things... low pay, low morale, low respect.  The crowd cheered support for speaker after speaker.

Official Board Response... A couple of smirks. 

Clemens has been the recipient of moral outrage and righteous indignation.  Congresspeople were tripping over each other trying to ask the next question.  The media is having a field day.   Don't get me wrong here, but Clemens is just a baseball player.  It's not like the future of our children is depending on anything that might have happened in those hearings.  Why aren't people all up in arms about the state of education?

Desperate times deserve desperate measures.  So, it's time for me to make some startling revelations about what goes on in our schools.

Teachers are using performance-enhancing drugs.  That's right, after numerous interviews from multiple sources, it's time to leak this story -- Teachers are on steroids.

A veteran teacher, who only spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, "The pressure is too high.  We face impossible test score expectations.  They're threatening to shut our school down."

Said another, "Those No-Child-Left-Behind expectations - every student above average - this isn't Lake Wobegon!"  

Yet another teacher who was interviewed for my story talked about the pressure of paying bills.  "I have to work two jobs just to pay the mortgage and health care.  I turned to steroids because I have no time to sleep."

These revelations bring every AYP and API ranking in the entire country under scrutiny.  It's unclear who is supplying our schools with steroids, though one teacher speculated that educational consultants who wander from school district to school district with their power-point staff-training presentations might be the source.  It's unclear the role that superintendents are playing in this, but it seems as though they have been knowingly looking the other way, hoping that those test scores would get the boost.

To do the important research for this story, I had to guarantee my sources that I would never release their names.  Subpoena me if you feel you must, but I will remain true to my word.  

Anyway, Bring on the cameras.  Schedule the hearings.  Call up the talk radio people.

Maybe our school board will pay attention to us now.