A hostile workplace -- in science

This has been the year of some well-known men in science having their careers implode before their eyes in a spectacular fashion -- all due to the speed with which social and digital media share news items.

• Rosetta Project scientist Matt Taylor caused a firestorm with his choice of fashion during the European Space Agency's live stream of  the November 13, 2014, Philae landing. Taylor initially sported a shirt featuring women in lingerie (some were mostly naked). The hastag #shirtstorm was born.
• On June 9, 2015, Nobel-prize winning scientist Tim Hunt attended a luncheon in honor of science journalists -- many of whom were women. When speaking to the group, he said, “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Tim Hunt, an English biochemist who won the Nobel in 2001, said to the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea. “Three things happen when they are in a lab... You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry.”He added that he was in favour of “single-sex labs.” But he “doesn’t want to stand in the way of women.” Many women in science responded with the hastag #distractinglysexy of photos of them at work.
• On October 10, 2015, one of the most important men in astronomy in the search for exoplanets was found at fault for sexually harassing women, primarily undergraduates, over a decade. 

  After a six-month investigation, Geoff Marcy ... was found to have violated campus sexual harassment policies between 2001 and 2010. Four women alleged that Marcy repeatedly engaged in inappropriate physical behavior with students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping.

  As a result of the findings, the women were informed, Marcy has been given “clear expectations concerning his future interactions with students,” which he must follow or risk “sanctions that could include suspension or dismissal.”

I'd like to start a conversation about experiences with harassment, bias, and/or discrimination that people in science, BOTH men and women, have experienced. Nothing will improve until those who are the victims AND observers speak up, speak out, and demand change.

Here's my question: Have you ever experienced bias or discrimination based on your gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or culture? Tell me about a time you either experienced it or knew of someone else who experienced it.

• What happened?
• What, if anything, was done to resolve the issue?
• What would you do differently if faced with the same situation again?

Steve Jobs: The End of an Era

The passing of Steve Jobs yesterday made me realize that the information age has truly reached its first important milestone in the 21st century. I remember reading and teaching about 'digital natives' and 'digital immigrants' -- the way people used and felt comfortable with personal computers in their professional lives. Little did we know, we who were first introduced to Apple computers in the mid-1980s, how much computers would transform education, the workplace, and the home. I did my student teaching in classrooms where Apple IIe computers sat on a counter, collecting dust and holding down papers, while the experienced science teacher at the front of the room lectured using mimeographed notes and wrote on clear plastic sheets from an overhead projector.

My children have never known a time when computers were not ubiquitous. No one talks about 'digital natives' anymore - in our culture, the technology is seamlessly meshed with nearly every aspect of our lives. And yet many of our older citizens are still puzzled by it all. My father-in-law was a man of all trades: he could build a house from the ground up, handling every aspect; fix all his own cars; repair any household appliance; and do all of this without ever having to look up information about what to do. Now he can't even fix his own car if it starts having problems, because it is all run by a computer, and he hasn't the ability to run diagnostics.

Our students don't want to focus on memorizing facts to keep in long-term mental storage with instant retrieval. Why learn something for life when you can just look it up on Google? I've had teachers report that students routinely simply search for answers for nearly all homework questions. Many of their replies come copied and pasted straight from Wikipedia. They ask, rightfully so, "What's the point of just learning facts for a test when you can look it up on your phone?"

But are our students actually learning any information at all? Have we been focusing on trying to teach critical thinking skills when they believe that any information of any worth is only a finger swipe or a click away?

I read a very thoughtful, detailed analysis of the recent draft of the National Research Council's Framework for K-12 Science Education. Included in this framework is an increased emphasis on engineering concepts embedded in, and added to, science content. The analysis, by Paul Gross for the Thomas Fordham Institute, discusses our intense focus for the past several years on teaching 'inquiry-based' science in K-12 classrooms:

But that’s not the end of the matter. In this Framework, “inquiry learning” and the learning of “scientific reasoning” morph into more specific processes, primarily cognitive skills. They are treated here, as in predecessors, as elements of science content, i.e., as subject matter.

If we keep teaching students to 'discover' scientific facts for themselves through 'inquiry' (in its broadest sense of total constructivism), then why should students spend time investigating natural laws, simplistic concepts, or easily discovered 'facts' when they can simply look them up on their phone, right there in the classroom? Why make them go through the motions of 'discovering' basic information?

Advances in sharing of information through electronic media have made textbooks, standard lectures, and cookie-cutter labs obsolete. But the argument of "I can just look that up" falls into the same category of "Why should I learn to add and subtract when the calculator can do it for me?" Why indeed? Teachers should be prepared to explain to 21st century, technologically-raised students, just why a person should have a vast pool of basic information stored in long term memory instead of relying on an evolving technology to never fail, always be accurate, and needing a power source. Remind them that a human brain still operates faster at basic retrieval than the fastest typist using a search box. And until we enter the Matrix, and can plug our brains directly into the global web of information, people will always need to know some basic information in order to do the heavy mental work of critical thinking, creative problem solving, and inventing solutions to problems that don't yet exist.

Everyone who ever worked with Steve Jobs called him a 'visionary.' He wanted to transform the world -- and he did. He invented technologies that no one knew they needed until they were available. Where would we be without people who didn't have to stop and 'look it up' to move on to the next step in a process of discovery? There's still a place in K-12 education for basic instruction in foundational knowledge -- 'facts', if you will. And teachers need to both know them and be able to teach them to their students in a usable fashion.

Cheating and NCLB

We knew it was happening. It was impossible, statistically impossible, for many of the success stories to be true.

July 5, 2011, Atlanta, GA

Dozens of Atlanta public school educators falsified standardized tests or failed to address such misconduct in their schools, Gov. Nathan Deal said Tuesday in unveiling the results of a state investigation that confirmed widespread cheating in the city schools dating as far back as 2001.

Some of the cheating could result in criminal charges, Deal said.

"I think the overall conclusion was that testing and results and targets being reached became more important than actual learning for children," Deal said. "And when reaching targets became the goal, it was a goal that was pursued with no excuses."

Falsifying test results made the schools appear to be performing better than they really were. But in the process, students were deprived of critical remedial education and taxpayers were cheated, as well, Deal said.

Investigators said 178 teachers and principals working at 44 schools were involved. The educators, including 38 principals, were either directly involved in erasing wrong answers on a key standardized test or they knew -- or should have known -- what was going on, according to Deal's office.

June 10, 2011 Texas, Massachusetts, Virginia, Georgia

Recent scandals illustrate the many ways, some subtle, that educators improperly boost scores:

At a charter school in Springfield, Mass., the principal told teachers to look over students’ shoulders and point out wrong answers as they took the 2009 state tests, according to a state investigation. The state revoked the charter for the school, Robert M. Hughes Academy, in May.

In Norfolk, Va., an independent panel detailed in March how a principal — whose job evaluations had faulted the poor test results of special education students — pressured teachers to use an overhead projector to show those students answers for state reading assessments, according to The Virginian-Pilot, citing a leaked copy of the report.

In Georgia, the state school board ordered investigations of 191 schools in February after an analysis of 2009 reading and math tests suggested that educators had erased students’ answers and penciled in correct responses. Computer scanners detected the erasures, and classrooms in which wrong-to-right erasures were far outside the statistical norm were flagged as suspicious.

May 18, 2011 Washington, DC

The District has voided the 2010 standardized test scores of three classrooms after an investigation found evidence or a strong suspicion of cheating, officials announced Wednesday.

The disclosure comes amid ongoing reviews of security questions related to the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System, the high-stakes test used to measure student achievement, teacher effectiveness and annual progress as required by the federal No Child Left Behind act. It also comes as multiple school system and teachers’ union sources have said that at least two instructors were fired for inappropriate actions while administering tests.

March 17, 2011 When Test Scores Seem too Good to Believe

Scott Mueller seemed to have an uncanny sense about what his students should study to prepare for upcoming state skills tests. Charles Seipelt Elementary School's gains and losses are typical of a pattern uncovered by a USA TODAY investigation of the standardized tests of millions of students in six states and the District of Columbia.

By 2010, the teacher had spent his 16-year career entirely at Charles Seipelt Elementary School. Like other Seipelt teachers, Mueller regularly wrote study guides for his classes ahead of state tests. On test day last April, several fifth-graders immediately recognized some of the questions on their math tests. The questions were the same as those on the study guide Mueller had given out the day before. Some numbers on the actual tests were identical to those in the study guide and the questions were in the same order, the kids told other Seipelt teachers.

The report of possible cheating quickly reached district officials, who put Mueller on paid leave. He initially denied any wrongdoing. Ultimately, investigators concluded that Mueller had looked at questions for both fifth-grade math and science tests in advance — a violation of testing rules — and then copied them, sometimes word for word, into a school computer to develop his study guides.

The 50-year-old teacher resigned. He signed a consent agreement with the Ohio State Board of Education admitting that, by looking at the 2010 tests in advance to prepare study guides, he had "engaged in conduct unbecoming a licensed educator." His teaching license was suspended for three months.

I believe we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg: the cases that are so blatant that they were simple to discover. Administrators live and die by the standardized test scores. Teachers are told they will be evaluated for effectiveness based on the test scores.

Forget about the child who came to school in August or September from another district and about a year behind her peers. Forget about the boy whose father is deployed yet again who worries that this time he's going to be killed. Forget about the pubescent girl whose friends are harassing her on Facebook. Forget about the children who are diagnosed with a learning disability. All, ALL of them must score "proficient" by 2014, and in 2011 have arbitrarily set cut-off scores that they must reach.

Any teacher can tell you that a student's ability to do well on a single test is hugely variable. This is why students frequently take the SAT or ACT test more than once, and usually score significantly higher the second time around.

I've attended professional development sessions designed to teach teachers how to train their students to do better on these standardized tests. Just like SAT-prep courses, teachers now have the students take myriad 'practice' tests, simply to get them used to what the test looks like and how the questions are stated.

In Pennsylvania, years ago, the extended response questions in mathematics for 8th graders had a little box at the bottom of a large white space. The answer was supposed to go in the box. One point (out of 5) was deducted if the student failed to put the answer in the box. The rest of the white space was for the student to write out his/her explanation of the problem and how to solve it. We hammered our students for seven months with practice problems with a little box at the bottom of the page. I dutifully took off points when the student forgot to write in the box. When test time came around, after a few minutes my students' hands started to go up. "Where's the box?" they all asked. It was gone. They panicked, because it had been my mantra all year: Put your answer IN THE BOX. And now the box was gone. "How will they know what my answer is?" they asked. I had them DRAW a box around their answer and write, "Here's the answer," so no grader would miss it.

How often was I tempted to simply tell a student what a word meant in a reading selection, to remind them that they had done literally hundreds of similar problems from the math test when they froze and couldn't remember.

I heard reports from other teachers who were parents that their younger children literally tore out their hair during testing. They vomited from the stress. They cut at their arms with sharpened pencils. I knew of a case where a special needs student missed lunch three days in a row to stay in the guidance office to finish her test, crying and pleading to be able to stop.

This is not what NCLB was meant to do. This comes about because of intense pressure to demonstrate student achievement. It's time to re-think how we're assessing our students, and craft a policy that more closely matches what the rest of the world is doing. They do not test their children using 50 different assessments. They do not assess their children repeatedly throughout the school year for practice. And they do not make every funding decision based on a single test near the end of the year. We want our children to have a world-class education? Then for God's sake, we should follow where others have led instead of this horrific testament to cheating.

When AP is not really AP

Five years ago, I was presenting a workshop on careers in health science to a group of charter school students in Los Angeles. Over 100 students were present during each of the two workshops, where I had them complete a scavenger hunt through an online database of health careers to learn about median salaries, educational background needed, likelihood of employment, etc. The charter school was attached to a hospital and health center, and most of the students were interested in pursuing a career in health care, medical school, health sciences, and the like.

All of the students were minority students, and the school director had told me how academically successful his students were. He intimated that they were all going to be accepted into college and graduate with at least a bachelor's degree.

I spoke with one enthusiastic young lady and asked her what kinds of classes she was taking. I was extremely interested in hearing what she was studying that would enable her to be one of the first people in her family to not only graduate from high school, but go on to college. She proudly told me, "I'm taking FIVE AP (advanced placement) classes!" I was taken aback. "Five?" I asked. "What are they?"

"English, biology, history, algebra, and chemistry," she replied.

"And what grade are you in?" I asked.

"Eleventh," she said, preening a bit, for taking five AP classes at once is quite an accomplishment.

In fact, it is almost an unheard of accomplishment. I immediately thought that perhaps her "AP" classes were nothing more than regular classes with an AP label. Unsurprisingly, less than two years later the charter school closed. The associated hospital had lost its accreditation, and the test scores of the charter school students weren't as high as the local public school.

A few days ago, the New York Times posted an article about the phenomenon of inflating course titles: High School Classes May Be Advanced in Name Only. It claimed that

the content of these courses is not as high-achieving as their names — the course-title equivalent of grade inflation. Algebra II is sometimes just Algebra I. And College Preparatory Biology can be just Biology.

Students were taking more Advanced Placement classes and exams, but test scores for AP and other tests are not increasing.

I have encountered several other instances where students were supposedly being taught AP classes only to discover that the content of these classes closely matched the regular curriculum. One of the most common AP classes is biology, which is supposed to cover material learned in a college freshman biology class.

What will happen to these students once they get to college, only to find out the "AP" level of their coursework was nothing more than regular high school classes? They're unable to adjust to the level of detail required for understanding, the need for hours of independent study outside of class, and are often amazed when they fail to earn an A on their first exam.

A student in a failing school district, taking five AP classes as an 11th grader, is a warning sign that all is not as it should be. AP instructors should complete the mandatory AP training; AP students have high workloads and rigorous study requirements; and all AP students should sit for the AP exam. Districts should stop looking at AP as a way to introduce students to rigorous coursework when the same effect could be accomplished by changing the expectations of the teachers, the regular high school course requirements, and holding students accountable for learning outside of regular school hours. Otherwise, we might as well keep teaching "Jungle Gym Math" (from the article) and failing to adequately prepare our high school students to read, write, and do math at a 12th grade level.

Cuts to Federal Funding of Education Programs

The newly passed stopgap spending bill designed to keep the US government in business for two more weeks removes funding from almost a dozen education programs for the remainder of the fiscal year (through Sept. 2011), and maybe for good.

However, I do not mourn the loss of funding for the "Exchanges With Historic Whaling and Trading Partners" for $8.6 million.

"Authorized projects include internships, apprenticeship programs, and education programs to increase understanding of cultural diversity and multicultural communication among Alaska Natives, native Hawaiians, and the people of the continental United States, based on historic patterns of trading and commerce. The authorizing law was amended in 2006 to include projects for any federally recognized Indian tribe in Mississippi.

"This program supports culturally based educational activities, internships, apprenticeship programs, and exchanges for Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and children and families of Massachusetts. The program earmarks funds for certain entities in Massachusetts, Alaska, and Hawaii as follows: $2 million each for (1) the New Bedford Whaling Museum in partnership with the New Bedford Oceanarium in Massachusetts and (2) the North Slope Borough in Alaska; not less than $1 million each for the New Trade Winds Project to (1) the Alaska Native Heritage Center, (2) the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, and (3) the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts; and not less than $1 million each for the same three entities for internship and apprenticeship programs."

Makes me wonder just whose vote was bought in 2006 with adding native Americans from Mississippi to a program based on historic whaling partners.

And just how much was this program adding to educational achievement of Native Hawaiians, Alaskan Natives, and Mississippi Indians?

We don't need to throw more money at many of the problems with education in the US. We need to spend what we already fund more wisely.

Teachers under attack

This post from the Daily Kos caught my eye, and then my heart yesterday. Read it and weep, because this is happening all over the country to the highly dedicated teachers.

I don't want to be a teacher any more.

"I’ve always been a teacher. Even before I received my teaching credentials 34 years ago, I was the one who Mr. Wells asked to help Kim Hull learn how to do his story problems. I always knew I’d become a real teacher some day because Kim told me I was the first one who ever explained it to him in a way he could actually understand.

"Now, I wasn’t ever one of “those who can’t, who teach,” and I always knew it. My high-school guidance counselors had advised me not to go into education because I would be “wasting my brain.” They suggested that due to my 98th percentile math scores, I should go into engineering. But I was undaunted, because I knew that in reality I already was a teacher. I just needed to go to school to get a piece of paper to make it official so I could get paid for it. I was very clearly told that I wasn’t making the best financial choice that I could, but that didn’t matter in the least—I was out to change the world—one student at a time.

"I finished college in three years, and began teaching third grade in 1976 at the age of 21, and I’ve never looked back. I found what all who become teachers know, that being a teacher is so much more than a job. It’s always been my passion, my mission, even my identity.

"Being a great teacher came naturally to me. Now that doesn’t mean it’s ever been an easy job. I’ve always found it exhausting, challenging, frustrating, and very rewarding—in other words, a perfect job for somebody who needs their brain to be challenged in ways they could never imagine. I went from being able to focus on only one or two things at a time, to being able to easily manage twenty or thirty on-going projects or ideas. Over the years I’ve improved my creativity, flexibility, problem solving skills, and sense of humor.

"I’ve taught grades three through six, and felt very lucky that I never felt I was in a rut. I knew people who got burned out, but it honestly never happened to me. I knew I was very blessed to find the perfect occupation. I’ve changed how I do things in my classroom many times, incorporating new ideas, trying new things, always learning, always changing, and loving every minute of it. I’ve always been told in every way that I’m a great teacher, but I honestly didn’t need to be told, because I could feel it. That is, until recently.

"Things started to change in education in Oregon about ten or fifteen years ago with a number of tax measures that created huge budget cuts. I noticed programs such a band, art, and drug-abuse prevention being cut for lack of funds along with enrichment programs, swimming class, and all kinds of little things that we used to offer that could no longer be afforded. Class sizes began to grow, and my class size averages went from the low to high twenties and then eventually into the thirties.

"All these things were sad and annoying, but they didn’t change how I felt about my job in the least. I just worked harder to make my lessons even more creative, and added in as much enrichment as I possibly could on my own to make up for the cuts. I spent thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to buy materials my school could no longer afford to buy. I wasn’t about to let a little thing like budget cuts stop me from my mission. The first time we cut school days in Oregon, and I had to take a several thousand dollar pay cut in the middle of a school year, it was a definite setback, but I never really thought it would become the norm.

"As my class sizes increased, so did the needs of my students. Normally when I would teach something, I would have a handful of students who didn’t get it. I rarely had kids I couldn’t get to make progress. But as the classes got bigger, that began to change. More students with special needs were being mainstreamed into my classroom. I was getting kids in class who had been in America less than six months who spoke no English, with very little help or support. I crazily began to take all kinds of classes, do research on how to reach kids with autism, ADD, emotional disturbances, limited English proficiency—you name it, I studied the best ways to overcome disadvantages. I’ve always had a never-say-die attitude, so I worked my butt off to reach everyone in this increasingly diverse classroom with fewer and fewer resources.

"I also began to notice that lots of things that never had been my job before were suddenly added to my list of responsibilities. A silly example, but very time consuming, was janitorial work. Due to limited resources and constant budget cuts, I now had to devote my time to things like cleaning my own classroom, doing clerical work that used to be done for me by the front office, planning my curriculum instead of just my lessons, so many things I began to have trouble keeping up. One year I started a list I called “Jobs Other People Gave Me,” but after adding 57 things to my list in less than a single year, I decided that it wasn’t really healthy for me to continue the list.

"Now mind you, that through all of this I still actually loved closing my door and teaching. I continued telling myself that I had wanted a challenge, although at times I privately admitted to myself that maybe I would have liked a little less of a challenge. But I still loved my job, I still got glowing reports from principals, parents, and especially kids. That was what sustained me as things began to change.

"When No Child Left Behind came into effect, it didn’t affect me that much at first. My class averages were always above where they needed to be, and I was still having good results, so I didn’t really worry about it much. Philosophically, I knew I didn’t agree with focusing so much on test scores, but I could still keep my students’ scores where they needed to be by focusing on what my experience as a teacher had taught me was best. I pretty much just worked on reaching each kid, pushing, encouraging, helping, inspiring, prodding, and let the test scores take care of themselves. I believed that great teaching overcame the over-emphasis on test scores, so I concentrated on great teaching instead.

"One thing that did bother me during that time was that it became acceptable to bash teachers, schools, and education in the media. I wasn’t hearing it personally, but I didn’t like the way people were so ready to berate my passion. Maybe because I was hearing good things on a personal level, I didn’t worry too much about it. I just closed my door and taught my kids.

"Then the past few years a few of the buildings in our district didn’t meet their AYP (adequate yearly progress.) The district began to look for ways to help these building to succeed. The focus on test scores escalated to a crazy level. The teachers in one of the elementary buildings in my district were told they could no longer teach anything besides reading, math, and science because those were the subjects that were tested. Our building wasn’t ever told that specifically, but it was understood that we were to focus on practices that would improve our students’ test-taking skills.

"The district decided to implement required core instructional materials that were mandated to everyone. Suddenly, the creativity of the job was being removed. They wanted everybody to teach the same materials, the same way. I’ve never been one to buck the system, so I began to wrack my brain for how to use these new materials and still keep the lessons interesting for my students.

"At the same time, class sizes and special needs were growing. The behavior classroom was closed and its students were mainstreamed into the regular classroom. I tried to become an expert on dealing with anger issues. I tried to learn how to help fifth graders with severe disabilities, limited mobility, and cognitive levels of very young children, all in my regular classroom now filled with 30-35 students. My job became an even greater challenge than it had always been before, but still my attitude was to think “bring it on!” I just couldn’t fathom the idea that my natural teaching ability wasn’t exactly what was needed to solve any and all challenges that came my way.

"Never once in the past 34 years of teaching did I ever want to quit. I even told my husband that if we won the lottery, I’d keep teaching. My students would just have all their own computers, art supplies galore, and any book we wanted to read as a class.

"So now I’m into my 35th year of teaching. Last July my district had offered a $20,000 bonus to any teacher who could retire, in order to save money. It struck me as odd that they’d want to get rid of experienced teachers. I didn’t take it because I felt I’m not ready to retire. It’s been such a big part of me forever, and I’m not ready to give it up yet. Besides I’m only 55, and even though I’ve been teaching so long, I’m just barely old enough to retire.

"But then one Thursday, on the eighth day of my 35th year of teaching, I suddenly thought for the very first time ever, “I don’t want to be a teacher anymore.” It’s so weird how it just came over me like that. I don’t know if it’s like the challenges in Survivor where they keep adding water until the bucket finally tips over and the slow leak of problems finally made my bucket tip over. Or maybe this is how it happens for all older teachers.

"It wasn’t a single thing that gave me this feeling. I’m hoping it doesn’t last. Maybe it was the severely autistic boy who showed up at my door the first day with no notice, but I don’t really think so. Maybe it was the rigid schedule the principal passed out for everybody to be doing the same subject at the same time of day, or the new basal reader we have to use that we aren’t allowed to call a basal reader. Maybe it’s the look in my student’s eyes when we’re reading the newly required dry textbook when I’m used to wild and crazy discussions about amazing novels.

"Maybe it’s that for the first time, our school didn’t meet AYP because two few English Language Developing students in the entire school didn’t pass their reading benchmarks.

"When I heard this, I instantly thought of the two English Language Learners in my class who hadn’t passed their reading tests last year and how unfair I thought it was that they even counted on our test scores when they came to our school in January and were absent at least twice a week from that point on. I was wondering how I could possibly have gotten them to benchmark level in three days a week for three months. I was thinking how if only those two students hadn’t counted on our scores, we would’ve met AYP as a school. When I mentioned it to my principal, she just said there are no excuses. We aren’t allowed to have any excuses. We have to get kids to the level they need to be no matter what the circumstances. I thought of the little boy I had with an IQ of 87 who could barely read. I thought of the little girl in a wheelchair who’d had 23 operations on tumors on her body in her eleven years, and the girl who moved from Mexico straight into my class and learned to speak English before my eyes, but couldn’t pass the state test. Somehow it doesn’t feel like making excuses to acknowledge that they had good reason not to pass their benchmarks.

"Maybe it was the e-mail I got saying that the department of education in Oregon has raised the cut scores again this year by six or seven points per grade level, even though they just raised them a couple of years ago. I found out that if they would have used these new cut scores last year, over half of the students in grades 3-8 who passed their benchmarks wouldn’t have passed. That led to a realization that as a school we have very little chance of meeting our adequate yearly progress this year, but of course I’m not allowed to say that because there are no excuses. It’s hard not to feel discouraged.

"Maybe it was one of the two parents who contacted me in the first few days of school to tell me that their child doesn’t particularly love my program this year. I’m so not used to that. I’ve always had kids achieving highly and loving my class. I’m just not sure how I can use the mandated materials in the required time periods, focusing on the required skills and still get kids to really love it.

"Maybe it’s the fact that I lost a third of my retirement when they reformed our Public Employee Retirement System a few years back and now I keep reading about how they want to slash it even more because of the greedy teacher unions and how this is the main reason for the budget problems in our state.

"Maybe it’s that I haven’t gotten a real raise in a really really long time, or that we had to cut eight days again this year to solve our state’s budget problems. So I’m taking a big hit again, and nobody seems to notice or care.

"Anyway, whatever the reason, for the first time in 34 years it hit me, I don’t want to be a teacher any more. I want to sit on a rocking chair on my porch and drink tea instead. Maybe if they offer $20,000 for me to retire next year, I’ll take it. It’s so weird because never in my wildest imagination did I think I’d feel this way. I wonder if I’ll still feel this way when I close my classroom door tomorrow. I sure hope not because it makes me really sad."

My daughter wanted to be a teacher for most of her life, and excelled in school to become an elementary teacher. Half-way through her first year, she told me that testing and the focus on bringing all students up to 'proficient or advanced' in reading and math had sucked all the fun out of school for her eight-year-old third grade students. They were to be engaged in academic pursuits their entire time in school -- with the exception of one 15 minute recess period a day and a 25 minute lunch. During morning snack time (which was necessary because her students arrived at school before 8 AM and didn't each lunch until 1 PM), they were supposed to be filling out worksheets relating to their reading or math class. While waiting for the bus, she wasn't supposed to be reading to them -- they were supposed to be doing their homework. She had more than five students in a class of 28 who did not speak English -- and they all spoke different languages. She had a boy who had never been to school before, having been homeschooled by his grandmother, who did not even know the alphabet. But when she tried to institute reading aloud to the entire class, she was chastised for not following the scripted curriculum. In despair, she finished out her first year never to return to the classroom.

This post is primarily about a dedicated, highly qualified, highly energetic teacher who cannot do what she loves and what she does best because it doesn't fit the 'one-size-fits-all' program her district has instituted to improve test scores. NO program is best for all students and all teachers. If you've never been in an elementary or middle school classroom for the past ten years, you should visit a school, just to see how standardized testing and its emphasis on meeting unrealistic goals (100% of ALL US students in grades 3 - 8 and 11 will score proficient or advanced by 2014) has changed the face of education. And not always, or mostly, for the better.

Teaching K-12 Science and Snow Days

This winter has been the snowiest on record for many cities in the eastern US. My local district has declared its fifth day with a delayed start in two weeks. This means that students and teachers have missed 8 hours of instructional time that is not required to be made up to meet the required 180 days of school.

What happens to science teaching on a delayed start day? In elementary schools, the curriculum is compressed; maybe science is canceled or postponed. In middle and high schools, it means that a teacher either misses an entire class (or two) or has every class truncated. One delayed start day isn't a big deal.

But several delayed start days begin to have a cumulative negative effect. In block scheduling, you're missing a proportionally greater amount of instructional time. Scheduled laboratory activities that typically take 30 or more minutes cannot be completed during a compressed schedule. If classes are canceled during a delayed start, the classes that meet may have an alternative activity in order for the teacher to keep all classes on the same schedule.

Students barely have time to get settled and started on the day's work before the class is over and the next one begins. Labs that need a full five minutes or more for clean-up are put off until a full day of school. Tests may be delayed to keep all the students on the same schedule or because there isn't enough time.

Any new topics that are introduced the day prior to a delayed start or snow day need to be reviewed again, as many students will simply see a day off as a vacation day and not do any studying or preparation for their return to school. It disrupts the learning process, disrupts the instructional schedule, and disrupts laboratory investigations so much that they may be dropped entirely.

Teachers of many other subjects do not have the same difficulties as science teachers when dealing with days off for weather or delayed start. If chemical solutions have been mixed prior to a lab class, they may need to be discarded before being used if a school is closed for a day or two due to weather. Biological materials may die or become useless if stored past a certain time frame. Setting up a complex lab takes time that might not be available on a compressed schedule.

I've thought for a long time that our school year should be lengthened. When schools can continue to meet legal requirements for the number of days held (180), even after losing several days' worth of instruction due to delayed starts, maybe it's time to look at changing from an agriculturally-based school year to one that reflects the demands of the 21st century instead of the 19th.