While we're talking about watching our language--
Just in the afternoon, I've stumbled across the image of raising the bar on the education world about five different times. Here's what's wrong with "raising the bar."
Raising the bar is a perfect image for the idea of one-size-fits-all education. After all, it only makes sense if there's just one bar and it's set up in the only place where people jump. It's a metaphor that is repeatedly employed, and yet falls apart with very little examination.
Are we raising the bar for a high jumper, or a pole vaulter? Has to be one or the other, because here at the Common Core Track and Field Meet, there can only be one event.
What happens if we raise the bar for the 100 yard sprint? What if we raise the bar, but we set it up behind the jumping line? What if we raise the bar for the shot put? If we raise the bar for the limbo, isn't that rejecting excellence?
What if we raise the bar for swimmers? Should we raise the bar at basketball games, or should we raise the basket? Can we raise a bar at the band concert? Should we raise the bar for the dance group, or the drama club?
"Raise the bar" is the verbal equivalent of the oft-shared cartoon that shows all the different animals in school (the one where the fish fail because they can't fly). "Raise the bar" demands that we reduce the whole complicated business of education to one simple act that must be performed by every single student. "Raise the bar" insists that the whole wide range of human endeavor and achievement does not matter-- just the ability to get up over that bar. Use "raise the bar" with me, and I get the idea that your vision of what education is about is tiny and cramped and fails to reflect the full range of human awesomeness.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Let's Drop "Privatization"
As we continue the struggle with reformy stuff, we should always keep a close eye on our vocabulary. I think we need to stop talking about "privatization."
I understand the word's appeal. It seems to speak to a movement to move schools out of the public sphere, to make education policy and financing captive to the whims of our new corporate overlords. It is also a relatively shiny new word. Google ngram shows trace elements of it from 1920 on, but it doesn't really take off until the early 1980s with a peak in the mid-90s. That would suggest a word without much baggage, but I don't think it's the word we want.
"Privatization" suggests a neat, complete takeover. It makes it sounds as if the Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools just want to buy up all the schools and run them themselves. It certainly conjures up a scary picture-- slick, gleaming, soulless schools where uber-standardized children are stamped into uniform blank-eyed Stepford students.
But that picture, horrifying though it may be, is seductively wrong. It allows us to assume two comforting things-- 1) that privatized schools might be awful, but they will still be functioning which means that 2) there will still be hope of a revolution in which we recapture the front office and return the school to its rightful function. Maybe it will be like a private school, and many of those are quite fine. We imagine that the school is a big machine and privatizers will capture it and turn it to manufacturing ugly hamster cages. All we'll have to do is find a way to get the machine back and reset it to make pretty handbags.
But that's not what the MoRONS have in mind at all. From Philly to New Orleans to Chicago to LA, they've demonstrated that they no more want to privatize school than a junkyard wants to privatize your car.
What we're seeing is nothing new in the business world. One business often buys out another simply to get at inventory, a brand name, a customer base, or manufacturing capacity. They buy the company, take what they want, and discard the rest.
None of these MoRONS want public schools. In some cases, they want the branding (TFA uses the word "teacher" to help brand itself as some great humanitarian enterprise). In some cases, they want free use of real estate (e.g. the now-very-nervous charter schools of NYC). But mostly they want just one thing-- money.
Money. Government grants. Revenue streams from programs. Income from the Right Students. Money. Money moneymoneymoneymoney money MONEY!
Everything else about the public school system is unimportant to the MoRONS. The parts of the system they care about are the parts that keep the money flowing. Everything else is unimportant. It's a business decision. Anything that keeps the money coming in is good. Anything that costs money without providing ROI is bad.
So MoRONS are about dismantling the system, keeping what makes them money, throwing out the rest. Given the chance, they will gut schools like you scoop the seeds out of a cantaloupe. They are not interested in privatizing. They are interested in dismantling the machine, selling the parts, and scrapping the rest.
Teachers too expensive. Find a way to scrap 'em. Some students provide bad expense-to-income ratio? Get rid of them. Some schools too hard to get ROI from? Abandon them. Make sure that curriculum, programming, materials, and evaluation all work in a perfect circle, each buddy handing money off to the guy next to him, around and around and around. We don't need an education system; we just need a revenue transfer system.
All the MoRONS really need is enough of what looks like a school system to convince government to keep giving them money. And since they generally get to help government write the rules about how money is handed out, they can make that process completely streamlined.
And it's not just an urban fight. The big money is in urban schools, so that's where the MoRONS have focused so far. They may never turn their attention to rural schools (though in PA, cyber-charters are sucking small districts dry already), but even if they don't, they will redirect school tax dollars to the profit centers in big cities, leaving rural schools to sip fruitlessly at ever-drying pools of spare change.
"Privatization" is a seductively dangerous word because it suggests we're in a fight over who runs the public school system. I'm thinking we're actually in a fight over whether that system will continue to exist. We're not talking takeover; we're talking destruction. So let's all stop using the word "privatization." However, if you want to keep using the acronym MoRONS, you have my enthusiastic permission to do so.
I understand the word's appeal. It seems to speak to a movement to move schools out of the public sphere, to make education policy and financing captive to the whims of our new corporate overlords. It is also a relatively shiny new word. Google ngram shows trace elements of it from 1920 on, but it doesn't really take off until the early 1980s with a peak in the mid-90s. That would suggest a word without much baggage, but I don't think it's the word we want.
"Privatization" suggests a neat, complete takeover. It makes it sounds as if the Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools just want to buy up all the schools and run them themselves. It certainly conjures up a scary picture-- slick, gleaming, soulless schools where uber-standardized children are stamped into uniform blank-eyed Stepford students.
But that picture, horrifying though it may be, is seductively wrong. It allows us to assume two comforting things-- 1) that privatized schools might be awful, but they will still be functioning which means that 2) there will still be hope of a revolution in which we recapture the front office and return the school to its rightful function. Maybe it will be like a private school, and many of those are quite fine. We imagine that the school is a big machine and privatizers will capture it and turn it to manufacturing ugly hamster cages. All we'll have to do is find a way to get the machine back and reset it to make pretty handbags.
But that's not what the MoRONS have in mind at all. From Philly to New Orleans to Chicago to LA, they've demonstrated that they no more want to privatize school than a junkyard wants to privatize your car.
What we're seeing is nothing new in the business world. One business often buys out another simply to get at inventory, a brand name, a customer base, or manufacturing capacity. They buy the company, take what they want, and discard the rest.
None of these MoRONS want public schools. In some cases, they want the branding (TFA uses the word "teacher" to help brand itself as some great humanitarian enterprise). In some cases, they want free use of real estate (e.g. the now-very-nervous charter schools of NYC). But mostly they want just one thing-- money.
Money. Government grants. Revenue streams from programs. Income from the Right Students. Money. Money moneymoneymoneymoney money MONEY!
Everything else about the public school system is unimportant to the MoRONS. The parts of the system they care about are the parts that keep the money flowing. Everything else is unimportant. It's a business decision. Anything that keeps the money coming in is good. Anything that costs money without providing ROI is bad.
So MoRONS are about dismantling the system, keeping what makes them money, throwing out the rest. Given the chance, they will gut schools like you scoop the seeds out of a cantaloupe. They are not interested in privatizing. They are interested in dismantling the machine, selling the parts, and scrapping the rest.
Teachers too expensive. Find a way to scrap 'em. Some students provide bad expense-to-income ratio? Get rid of them. Some schools too hard to get ROI from? Abandon them. Make sure that curriculum, programming, materials, and evaluation all work in a perfect circle, each buddy handing money off to the guy next to him, around and around and around. We don't need an education system; we just need a revenue transfer system.
All the MoRONS really need is enough of what looks like a school system to convince government to keep giving them money. And since they generally get to help government write the rules about how money is handed out, they can make that process completely streamlined.
And it's not just an urban fight. The big money is in urban schools, so that's where the MoRONS have focused so far. They may never turn their attention to rural schools (though in PA, cyber-charters are sucking small districts dry already), but even if they don't, they will redirect school tax dollars to the profit centers in big cities, leaving rural schools to sip fruitlessly at ever-drying pools of spare change.
"Privatization" is a seductively dangerous word because it suggests we're in a fight over who runs the public school system. I'm thinking we're actually in a fight over whether that system will continue to exist. We're not talking takeover; we're talking destruction. So let's all stop using the word "privatization." However, if you want to keep using the acronym MoRONS, you have my enthusiastic permission to do so.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
The Hard Part
They never tell you in teacher school, and it's rarely discussed elsewhere. It is never, ever portrayed in movies and tv shows about teaching. Teachers rarely bring it up around non-teachers for fear it will make us look weak or inadequate.
Valerie Strauss in yesterday's Washington Post put together a series of quotes to answer the question "How hard is teaching?" and asked for more in the comments section. My rant didn't entirely fit there, so I'm putting it here, because it is on the list of Top Ten Things They Never Tell You in Teacher School.
The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:
There is never enough.
There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.
As a teacher, you can see what a perfect job in your classroom would look like. You know all the assignments you should be giving. You know all the feedback you should be providing your students. You know all the individual crafting that should provide for each individual's instruction. You know all the material you should be covering. You know all the ways in which, when the teachable moment emerges (unannounced as always), you can greet it with a smile and drop everything to make it grow and blossom.
You know all this, but you can also do the math. 110 papers about the view of death in American Romantic writing times 15 minutes to respond with thoughtful written comments equals-- wait! what?! That CAN'T be right! Plus quizzes to assess where we are in the grammar unit in order to design a new remedial unit before we craft the final test on that unit (five minutes each to grade). And that was before Ethel made that comment about Poe that offered us a perfect chance to talk about the gothic influences. And I know that if my students are really going to get good at writing, they should be composing something at least once a week. And if I am going to prepare my students for life in the real world, I need to have one of my own to be credible.
If you are going to take any control of your professional life, you have to make some hard, conscious decisions. What is it that I know I should be doing that I am not going to do?
Every year you get better. You get faster, you learn tricks, you learn which corners can more safely be cut, you get better at predicting where the student-based bumps in the road will appear. A good administrative team can provide a great deal of help.
But every day is still educational triage. You will pick and choose your battles, and you will always be at best bothered, at worst haunted, by the things you know you should have done but didn't. Show me a teacher who thinks she's got everything all under control and doesn't need to fix a thing for next year, and I will show you a lousy teacher. The best teachers I've ever known can give you a list of exactly what they don't do well enough yet.
Not everybody can deal with this. I had a colleague (high school English) years ago who was a great classroom teacher. But she gave every assignment that she knew she should, and so once a grading period, she took a personal day to sit at home and grade papers for 18 hours straight. She was awesome, but she left teaching, because doing triage broke her heart.
So if you show up at my door saying, "Here's a box from Pearson. Open it up, hand out the materials, read the script, and stick to the daily schedule. Do that, and your classroom will work perfectly," I will look you in your beady eyes and ask, "Are you high? Are you stupid?" Because you have to be one of those. Maybe both.
Here's your simile for the day.
Teaching is like painting a huge Victorian mansion. And you don't actually have enough paint. And when you get to some section of the house it turns out the wood is a little rotten or not ready for the paint. And about every hour some supervisor comes around and asks you get down off the ladder and explain why you aren't making faster progress. And some days the weather is terrible. So it takes all your art and skill and experience to do a job where the house still ends up looking good.
Where are school reformy folks in this metaphor? They're the ones who show up and tell you that having a ladder is making you lazy, and you should work without. They're the ones who take a cup of your paint every day to paint test strips on scrap wood, just to make sure the paint is okay (but now you have less of it). They're the ones who show up after the work is done and tell passerbys, "See that one good-looking part? That turned out good because the painters followed my instructions." And they're most especially the ones who turn up after the job is complete to say, "Hey, you missed a spot right there on that one board under the eaves."
There isn't much discussion of the not-enough problem. Movie and tv teachers never have it (high school teachers on television only ever teach one class a day!). And teachers hate to bring it up because we know it just sounds like whiny complaining.
But all the other hard part of teaching-- the technical issues of instruction and planning and individualization and being our own "administrative assistants" and acquiring materials and designing unit plans and assessment-- all of those issues rest solidly on the foundation of Not Enough.
Trust us. We will suck it up. We will make do. We will Find A Way. We will even do that when the people tasked with helping us do all that on the state and federal level instead try to make it harder. Even though we can't get to perfect, we can steer toward it. But if you ask me what the hard part of teaching is, hands down, this wins.
There's not enough.
Valerie Strauss in yesterday's Washington Post put together a series of quotes to answer the question "How hard is teaching?" and asked for more in the comments section. My rant didn't entirely fit there, so I'm putting it here, because it is on the list of Top Ten Things They Never Tell You in Teacher School.
The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:
There is never enough.
There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.
As a teacher, you can see what a perfect job in your classroom would look like. You know all the assignments you should be giving. You know all the feedback you should be providing your students. You know all the individual crafting that should provide for each individual's instruction. You know all the material you should be covering. You know all the ways in which, when the teachable moment emerges (unannounced as always), you can greet it with a smile and drop everything to make it grow and blossom.
You know all this, but you can also do the math. 110 papers about the view of death in American Romantic writing times 15 minutes to respond with thoughtful written comments equals-- wait! what?! That CAN'T be right! Plus quizzes to assess where we are in the grammar unit in order to design a new remedial unit before we craft the final test on that unit (five minutes each to grade). And that was before Ethel made that comment about Poe that offered us a perfect chance to talk about the gothic influences. And I know that if my students are really going to get good at writing, they should be composing something at least once a week. And if I am going to prepare my students for life in the real world, I need to have one of my own to be credible.
If you are going to take any control of your professional life, you have to make some hard, conscious decisions. What is it that I know I should be doing that I am not going to do?
Every year you get better. You get faster, you learn tricks, you learn which corners can more safely be cut, you get better at predicting where the student-based bumps in the road will appear. A good administrative team can provide a great deal of help.
But every day is still educational triage. You will pick and choose your battles, and you will always be at best bothered, at worst haunted, by the things you know you should have done but didn't. Show me a teacher who thinks she's got everything all under control and doesn't need to fix a thing for next year, and I will show you a lousy teacher. The best teachers I've ever known can give you a list of exactly what they don't do well enough yet.
Not everybody can deal with this. I had a colleague (high school English) years ago who was a great classroom teacher. But she gave every assignment that she knew she should, and so once a grading period, she took a personal day to sit at home and grade papers for 18 hours straight. She was awesome, but she left teaching, because doing triage broke her heart.
So if you show up at my door saying, "Here's a box from Pearson. Open it up, hand out the materials, read the script, and stick to the daily schedule. Do that, and your classroom will work perfectly," I will look you in your beady eyes and ask, "Are you high? Are you stupid?" Because you have to be one of those. Maybe both.
Here's your simile for the day.
Teaching is like painting a huge Victorian mansion. And you don't actually have enough paint. And when you get to some section of the house it turns out the wood is a little rotten or not ready for the paint. And about every hour some supervisor comes around and asks you get down off the ladder and explain why you aren't making faster progress. And some days the weather is terrible. So it takes all your art and skill and experience to do a job where the house still ends up looking good.
Where are school reformy folks in this metaphor? They're the ones who show up and tell you that having a ladder is making you lazy, and you should work without. They're the ones who take a cup of your paint every day to paint test strips on scrap wood, just to make sure the paint is okay (but now you have less of it). They're the ones who show up after the work is done and tell passerbys, "See that one good-looking part? That turned out good because the painters followed my instructions." And they're most especially the ones who turn up after the job is complete to say, "Hey, you missed a spot right there on that one board under the eaves."
There isn't much discussion of the not-enough problem. Movie and tv teachers never have it (high school teachers on television only ever teach one class a day!). And teachers hate to bring it up because we know it just sounds like whiny complaining.
But all the other hard part of teaching-- the technical issues of instruction and planning and individualization and being our own "administrative assistants" and acquiring materials and designing unit plans and assessment-- all of those issues rest solidly on the foundation of Not Enough.
Trust us. We will suck it up. We will make do. We will Find A Way. We will even do that when the people tasked with helping us do all that on the state and federal level instead try to make it harder. Even though we can't get to perfect, we can steer toward it. But if you ask me what the hard part of teaching is, hands down, this wins.
There's not enough.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Why For-Profit Schools Must Stink
There are so many reasons to object to the privatization of public education, but it all comes down to the pie.
It's the financial pie, a pie that can only be cut into so many pieces. There's a reason that we associate top-notch private schools with rich folks-- every time a Philips Academy needs a bigger pie, they just pick up the phone to their rich parents and their rich alumni and before you can say "Summer at the Hamptons," the school is awash in newer, bigger pies.
Not so in public ed. The size of the pie is set by a combination of legislators and taxpayers, and that's all the pie there is. And that means that private operators, whether they're operating a voucher school or a private charter or one of those public-private hybrid charters (public when they want money, private when anybody wants to see what they do with it), your business model has to acknowledge one fundamental fact. (This includes "noon-profits" that are really for the profit of well-paid executives.)
Every piece of pie served to the students is a piece of pie that the operators don't get to eat themselves. Every cent they spend on students is a cent they don't get to pocket.
In privatized public schools, the interests of the operators are in direct conflict with the interests of the clients.
We already have examples in the marketplace of businesses with this same pie problem-- a human service industry where profit depends on providing the least service you can get away with.
Of course there was the health insurance industry. There's a reason that Tom Batiuk made a great joke out of calling an insurance provider "Denialcare." But the rules are in flux there now that ACA has come along to guarantee thatevery insurance executive will have a Lexus and a vacation home every American will have health care coverage.
So instead, let's consider the nursing home industry. Nursing homes have always faced a pie problem-- they have to provide service for human beings while trying to fund it with blood squeezed from stones.
This interactive map from 2010 shows ratings for US nursing homes. It doesn't look too bad at first, but if you use the features to knock it down by star ratings, it starts to look pretty awful. Of course there are some great nursing homes in the country, and not just the ones that graduates of Philips Academies go to when they get on in years. But a tremendous portion of that sector is 1, 2, or 3 stars.
Way back in 2001 the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a survey about nursing homes. The breakdown of the info is pretty thorough, but some highlights include: For starters, 80% reported some knowledge of nursing homes. 80% believed the homes are understaffed. 65% believed the staff is undertrained, and 61% believed that there was a problem with waste and fraud in how homes were run.
Right now, polls about education routinely turn up the result, "American schools suck, but my neighborhood school is just fine." In the Kaiser poll, people who were directly familiar with nursing homes were MORE likely to believe some of the worst things about those homes.
But when you only have so much money to split up, your motive is to find ways to spend less. And if you are a service business, spending less means providing less for your clients. Cheaper service providers. Cheaper services. Fewer services. You are never asking, "What's the best possible service we could provide our clients." Instead, you are asking, "What's the cheapest possible service we can get away with? Where is there a corner we can cut?"
The problem with the profit motive in fixed-payment service industries is not JUST that those in charge can only make money by finding ways to spend less on their clients. The more toxic systemic effect is that those in charge are pushed to inevitably see their clients as their biggest obstacle rather than their primary purpose. We know that attitude is lurking just over the horizon anyway-- how many of us deal with a business manager in our district whose attitude is that it would be easy to balance the budget if we didn't have to spend money on all those damn teachers and students.
For-profit schools are powerfully inclined to stink because they must foster an adversarial relationship between the owner-operators, the clients, and the employees. All of that takes place in an atmosphere of scarcity, of "having to do without." Add merit-based pay in which teachers must compete for their piece of the pie, and you get a school "community" that is anything but supportive and collegial.
Can it be done? Sure. The map tells us the nursing home industry here and there is doing it. But entering the business is fighting a powerful tide. If you entered the business because providing the service is powerfully important to you, you will have to fight the tide, but at least you're motivated. But if you entered the business to make a buck or get good ROI, you are already swimming with a tide that is going to sweep away everything good about the schools you are running.
It's the financial pie, a pie that can only be cut into so many pieces. There's a reason that we associate top-notch private schools with rich folks-- every time a Philips Academy needs a bigger pie, they just pick up the phone to their rich parents and their rich alumni and before you can say "Summer at the Hamptons," the school is awash in newer, bigger pies.
Not so in public ed. The size of the pie is set by a combination of legislators and taxpayers, and that's all the pie there is. And that means that private operators, whether they're operating a voucher school or a private charter or one of those public-private hybrid charters (public when they want money, private when anybody wants to see what they do with it), your business model has to acknowledge one fundamental fact. (This includes "noon-profits" that are really for the profit of well-paid executives.)
Every piece of pie served to the students is a piece of pie that the operators don't get to eat themselves. Every cent they spend on students is a cent they don't get to pocket.
In privatized public schools, the interests of the operators are in direct conflict with the interests of the clients.
We already have examples in the marketplace of businesses with this same pie problem-- a human service industry where profit depends on providing the least service you can get away with.
Of course there was the health insurance industry. There's a reason that Tom Batiuk made a great joke out of calling an insurance provider "Denialcare." But the rules are in flux there now that ACA has come along to guarantee that
So instead, let's consider the nursing home industry. Nursing homes have always faced a pie problem-- they have to provide service for human beings while trying to fund it with blood squeezed from stones.
This interactive map from 2010 shows ratings for US nursing homes. It doesn't look too bad at first, but if you use the features to knock it down by star ratings, it starts to look pretty awful. Of course there are some great nursing homes in the country, and not just the ones that graduates of Philips Academies go to when they get on in years. But a tremendous portion of that sector is 1, 2, or 3 stars.
Way back in 2001 the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a survey about nursing homes. The breakdown of the info is pretty thorough, but some highlights include: For starters, 80% reported some knowledge of nursing homes. 80% believed the homes are understaffed. 65% believed the staff is undertrained, and 61% believed that there was a problem with waste and fraud in how homes were run.
Right now, polls about education routinely turn up the result, "American schools suck, but my neighborhood school is just fine." In the Kaiser poll, people who were directly familiar with nursing homes were MORE likely to believe some of the worst things about those homes.
But when you only have so much money to split up, your motive is to find ways to spend less. And if you are a service business, spending less means providing less for your clients. Cheaper service providers. Cheaper services. Fewer services. You are never asking, "What's the best possible service we could provide our clients." Instead, you are asking, "What's the cheapest possible service we can get away with? Where is there a corner we can cut?"
The problem with the profit motive in fixed-payment service industries is not JUST that those in charge can only make money by finding ways to spend less on their clients. The more toxic systemic effect is that those in charge are pushed to inevitably see their clients as their biggest obstacle rather than their primary purpose. We know that attitude is lurking just over the horizon anyway-- how many of us deal with a business manager in our district whose attitude is that it would be easy to balance the budget if we didn't have to spend money on all those damn teachers and students.
For-profit schools are powerfully inclined to stink because they must foster an adversarial relationship between the owner-operators, the clients, and the employees. All of that takes place in an atmosphere of scarcity, of "having to do without." Add merit-based pay in which teachers must compete for their piece of the pie, and you get a school "community" that is anything but supportive and collegial.
Can it be done? Sure. The map tells us the nursing home industry here and there is doing it. But entering the business is fighting a powerful tide. If you entered the business because providing the service is powerfully important to you, you will have to fight the tide, but at least you're motivated. But if you entered the business to make a buck or get good ROI, you are already swimming with a tide that is going to sweep away everything good about the schools you are running.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
The World's Worst Boyfriend
I thought maybe it was just me, but yesterday's piece evoked some familiar feelings for other people as well-- the feeling of being in a toxic relationship.
The familiar feeling was the feeling of self-doubt. Am I crazy? I could swear I see a pile of rabbit poop, but my partner insists that it's a pile of magic beans, and he certainly seems to believe it, and after all, if we don't trust each other then what do we have? So either I can't trust my own judgment, or my partner is trying to pawn a pile of poop off on me. Does that sound like the current deal surrounding reformy stuff in education?
Well, sure. So I decided to see how our relationship as teachers with the leaders of our industry-- the Masters of Reform (e.g. Jeb Bush), our state and federal DOEs (e.g. Arne Duncan), some of our leading administrators (e.g. Steve Perry), and the Big Leading Voices who haven't actually accomplished anything but still have a seat at the table anyway (e.g. Celebrity Spokesmodel Michelle Rhee)-- stacks up against the classic Bad Relationship.
I'm going to use the "15 Warning Signs of an Abusive Relationship" that is distributed by The Women's Center . There are certainly other lists out there, and fine dramatic examples of this kind of abuse. But this one is widely distributed and accepted, so it should serve our purpose.
Are we, as a profession, dating the worst boyfriend ever? Here are the signs.
1) He pushes for quick involvement. Give TFA bodies five weeks of training and put them in a classroom as if they were full-fledged professionals. Institute CCSS and related reformy stuff RIGHT NOW. We can't possibly roll them out gradually or wait to check the validity and usefulness of all these programs.
2) There is jealousy. Are you following other programs? Don't. And that union you've been seeing on the side-- I made it my bestie so that when you cozy up to it, you're really cozying up to me.
3) He is controlling. You think? Look, sweetie-- your autonomy in the classroom is just causing all sorts of problems. Let me tell you what to teach, when to teach it, how to teach it-- oh, heck. Just take this script and read it.
4) He has very unrealistic expectations. Okay, okay. I've learned my lesson from NCLB-- 100% of students cannot be above average. But the effects of poverty and family life and other personal difficulties? You should just go ahead and erase all effects of those. Poverty wouldn't make a difference if you really cared about me.
5) There is isolation. I know I've already co-opted your national union, but if I could just wipe it out on the state and local level, that would be great. You don't need them. Just listen to me.
6) He blames others for his own mistakes. That messed-up evaluation? A computer glitch. Anything wrong with CCSS? That's an implementation hiccup. Despite the fact that I've been running everything my own way for fifteen years or so, everything wrong with public schools is still your fault.
7) He makes everyone else responsible for his feelings. Our first miss. There's no sign that feelings are involved. And as Uber-reformer David Coleman famously observed, nobody gives a shit about your feelings anyway.
8) There is hypersensitivity. Duncan's favorite word for his opponents? "Silly." We don't ever need to talk things over, and there is no room to discuss, because every criticism of reformy stuff is just because you're a big old silly poopy doo-doo HEADED MEANIE!
9) He is cruel to animals and children. Children should not be coddled. Children need to recognize that they are dopes, regardless of what their white suburban mommies told them. They need to be smacked into place with rigor. If they have problems with being poor and all, they just need to suck it up.
10) His "playful" use of force during sex. You know, I'm just going to skip over this one.
11) There is verbal abuse. Teachers have been called so many names at this point that it's hard to keep track. But you're responsible for everything bad in education-- there is literally nothing that is not teachers' fault-- and if we just have to keep mansplaining to you in clear, direct language, it's only because you're too stupid, obstructing and lazy to get it the first time.
12) There are rigid gender roles. Why can't you all be like nice lady teachers who play with the kiddies and then go home. Do what you're told. We'll let you come to the table if you're pretty and cooperative and make us look like we aren't a total boys' club (could you get me a coffee, Michelle), but we totally are.
13) He has sudden mood swings. I'm going to make some really nice speeches about how important teachers are and how we need to pay you well and support you in your work. Then I'm going to implement policies that kick you right in the teeth.
14) He has a past of battering. Strap up. There will be head injuries.
15) There are threats of violence. We are going to evaluate you, judge you, end your career, cut loose the dead wood, whip you into shape, kick your ass, and generally use whatever leverage and coercion we can to make you behave the way we want you to. And if you won't, we are committed to tossing you into the street. You can't make a new educational omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you look like a Humpty to me.
There are other parts of the pattern as well. There's always that sad girl who insists, "You just don't know him like I do. There's really goodness inside." Whether it's "he's only mean when he drinks" or "the CCSS are great as long as we're not testing," there are always sad girlfriends who will make excuses for the abuser. Part of it is not wanting to see how bad things really are. Sometimes part of it is also selfish-- if I'm the only one who can see the good, then I can save him, fix him, and show the world just how special I am.
So we're in a bad relationship. What do we do?
If we were in an actual relationship with another live human that met these standards, there would be only one thing to do-- get out. I want to be very very VERY clear about this. I'm having some fun and making a point but don't imagine for a minute that I want to minimize the awful danger of a truly abusive relationship. If this list is you in real life, get out. Get out now. (And I've kept to traditional genders for this for ease of reading, but if you're a man being abused by a woman, this is all still true). As teachers, we stay for the sake of the kids. If you have kids, get out and take them with you. Take them with you, and get out now. Is that clear enough?
For teachers, it's a slightly different situation. We can't take the kids with us, and we need to stay for them.
Some of us can't. Some of us have stayed as long as we can, and we just can't any more, and we have walked away. I try not to judge those folks. You can't do what you can't do.
Some of us have to adjust expectations. Teachers enter the biz with lots of golden fantasies about what it will be like, and one of those fantasies is a Chips/Holland dream of being loved and revered by the vast community of our students. It's entirely possible that to grow up as teachers we have to recognize that however much we love teaching, it's never really going to love us back.
But this is beyond that. We stay for the kids. We stay for the work. We stay because we are invested in the communities that house our schools. We stay because when times get tough you do what you have to do. And honestly, for some of us, things aren't so bad right where we are.
Beyond all that, we stay because when times are tough, when it's the very hardest to make a difference, that's when it's most importance that a difference be made.
I know some of you have been reading this abuser checklist thinking, "Yes, that's it!" But maybe I've started out with the wrong metaphor, and we should construct a different story. In the new story, we aren't the ones in the abusive relationship. Instead, if you want to be abstract, it's schools and education. If you want to be concrete, it's the students.
Either way-- we're not the ones dating the worst boyfriend in the world. We're the best friend of the person in the abusive relationship. We're the ones who are there to protect, to intervene, to say, "If you raise a hand to her again, I will put such a hurt on you that you won't see straight for a year." We're the ones who step in to take care of the abusee, assure her that she's not crazy, it's not her fault, she's okay, it gets better-- all those things.
We got into teaching because we knew there were people who needed our help. We had no way of knowing what kind of help they would need-- heck, we made a commitment to students who weren't even born yet-- but whatever it was they were going to need, we made a commitment to help them. We may not have expected that they would need help dealing with the very institutions that were supposed to be watching out for them, but that's one of the worst parts of abuse-- it's a betrayal of trust. Whatever. That's the help they need, and even though we didn't always expect it, it's the help we signed up to provide. We can do that. We're teachers, dammit. We're teachers.
The familiar feeling was the feeling of self-doubt. Am I crazy? I could swear I see a pile of rabbit poop, but my partner insists that it's a pile of magic beans, and he certainly seems to believe it, and after all, if we don't trust each other then what do we have? So either I can't trust my own judgment, or my partner is trying to pawn a pile of poop off on me. Does that sound like the current deal surrounding reformy stuff in education?
Well, sure. So I decided to see how our relationship as teachers with the leaders of our industry-- the Masters of Reform (e.g. Jeb Bush), our state and federal DOEs (e.g. Arne Duncan), some of our leading administrators (e.g. Steve Perry), and the Big Leading Voices who haven't actually accomplished anything but still have a seat at the table anyway (e.g. Celebrity Spokesmodel Michelle Rhee)-- stacks up against the classic Bad Relationship.
I'm going to use the "15 Warning Signs of an Abusive Relationship" that is distributed by The Women's Center . There are certainly other lists out there, and fine dramatic examples of this kind of abuse. But this one is widely distributed and accepted, so it should serve our purpose.
Are we, as a profession, dating the worst boyfriend ever? Here are the signs.
1) He pushes for quick involvement. Give TFA bodies five weeks of training and put them in a classroom as if they were full-fledged professionals. Institute CCSS and related reformy stuff RIGHT NOW. We can't possibly roll them out gradually or wait to check the validity and usefulness of all these programs.
2) There is jealousy. Are you following other programs? Don't. And that union you've been seeing on the side-- I made it my bestie so that when you cozy up to it, you're really cozying up to me.
3) He is controlling. You think? Look, sweetie-- your autonomy in the classroom is just causing all sorts of problems. Let me tell you what to teach, when to teach it, how to teach it-- oh, heck. Just take this script and read it.
4) He has very unrealistic expectations. Okay, okay. I've learned my lesson from NCLB-- 100% of students cannot be above average. But the effects of poverty and family life and other personal difficulties? You should just go ahead and erase all effects of those. Poverty wouldn't make a difference if you really cared about me.
5) There is isolation. I know I've already co-opted your national union, but if I could just wipe it out on the state and local level, that would be great. You don't need them. Just listen to me.
6) He blames others for his own mistakes. That messed-up evaluation? A computer glitch. Anything wrong with CCSS? That's an implementation hiccup. Despite the fact that I've been running everything my own way for fifteen years or so, everything wrong with public schools is still your fault.
7) He makes everyone else responsible for his feelings. Our first miss. There's no sign that feelings are involved. And as Uber-reformer David Coleman famously observed, nobody gives a shit about your feelings anyway.
8) There is hypersensitivity. Duncan's favorite word for his opponents? "Silly." We don't ever need to talk things over, and there is no room to discuss, because every criticism of reformy stuff is just because you're a big old silly poopy doo-doo HEADED MEANIE!
9) He is cruel to animals and children. Children should not be coddled. Children need to recognize that they are dopes, regardless of what their white suburban mommies told them. They need to be smacked into place with rigor. If they have problems with being poor and all, they just need to suck it up.
10) His "playful" use of force during sex. You know, I'm just going to skip over this one.
11) There is verbal abuse. Teachers have been called so many names at this point that it's hard to keep track. But you're responsible for everything bad in education-- there is literally nothing that is not teachers' fault-- and if we just have to keep mansplaining to you in clear, direct language, it's only because you're too stupid, obstructing and lazy to get it the first time.
12) There are rigid gender roles. Why can't you all be like nice lady teachers who play with the kiddies and then go home. Do what you're told. We'll let you come to the table if you're pretty and cooperative and make us look like we aren't a total boys' club (could you get me a coffee, Michelle), but we totally are.
13) He has sudden mood swings. I'm going to make some really nice speeches about how important teachers are and how we need to pay you well and support you in your work. Then I'm going to implement policies that kick you right in the teeth.
14) He has a past of battering. Strap up. There will be head injuries.
15) There are threats of violence. We are going to evaluate you, judge you, end your career, cut loose the dead wood, whip you into shape, kick your ass, and generally use whatever leverage and coercion we can to make you behave the way we want you to. And if you won't, we are committed to tossing you into the street. You can't make a new educational omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you look like a Humpty to me.
There are other parts of the pattern as well. There's always that sad girl who insists, "You just don't know him like I do. There's really goodness inside." Whether it's "he's only mean when he drinks" or "the CCSS are great as long as we're not testing," there are always sad girlfriends who will make excuses for the abuser. Part of it is not wanting to see how bad things really are. Sometimes part of it is also selfish-- if I'm the only one who can see the good, then I can save him, fix him, and show the world just how special I am.
So we're in a bad relationship. What do we do?
If we were in an actual relationship with another live human that met these standards, there would be only one thing to do-- get out. I want to be very very VERY clear about this. I'm having some fun and making a point but don't imagine for a minute that I want to minimize the awful danger of a truly abusive relationship. If this list is you in real life, get out. Get out now. (And I've kept to traditional genders for this for ease of reading, but if you're a man being abused by a woman, this is all still true). As teachers, we stay for the sake of the kids. If you have kids, get out and take them with you. Take them with you, and get out now. Is that clear enough?
For teachers, it's a slightly different situation. We can't take the kids with us, and we need to stay for them.
Some of us can't. Some of us have stayed as long as we can, and we just can't any more, and we have walked away. I try not to judge those folks. You can't do what you can't do.
Some of us have to adjust expectations. Teachers enter the biz with lots of golden fantasies about what it will be like, and one of those fantasies is a Chips/Holland dream of being loved and revered by the vast community of our students. It's entirely possible that to grow up as teachers we have to recognize that however much we love teaching, it's never really going to love us back.
But this is beyond that. We stay for the kids. We stay for the work. We stay because we are invested in the communities that house our schools. We stay because when times get tough you do what you have to do. And honestly, for some of us, things aren't so bad right where we are.
Beyond all that, we stay because when times are tough, when it's the very hardest to make a difference, that's when it's most importance that a difference be made.
I know some of you have been reading this abuser checklist thinking, "Yes, that's it!" But maybe I've started out with the wrong metaphor, and we should construct a different story. In the new story, we aren't the ones in the abusive relationship. Instead, if you want to be abstract, it's schools and education. If you want to be concrete, it's the students.
Either way-- we're not the ones dating the worst boyfriend in the world. We're the best friend of the person in the abusive relationship. We're the ones who are there to protect, to intervene, to say, "If you raise a hand to her again, I will put such a hurt on you that you won't see straight for a year." We're the ones who step in to take care of the abusee, assure her that she's not crazy, it's not her fault, she's okay, it gets better-- all those things.
We got into teaching because we knew there were people who needed our help. We had no way of knowing what kind of help they would need-- heck, we made a commitment to students who weren't even born yet-- but whatever it was they were going to need, we made a commitment to help them. We may not have expected that they would need help dealing with the very institutions that were supposed to be watching out for them, but that's one of the worst parts of abuse-- it's a betrayal of trust. Whatever. That's the help they need, and even though we didn't always expect it, it's the help we signed up to provide. We can do that. We're teachers, dammit. We're teachers.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Trust Yourself
In 1841, the great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson published "Self-Reliance," an essay which includes the line "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." Right now seems a good time for teachers to grab the iron in their hearts.
Teachers are, for the most part, good team players. We follow rules. We respect authority. And when people who are in positions of authority make rules, we try to behave.
If the teacher's manual gives an answer that doesn't sound right to us, we'll give it the benefit of the doubt until we double check. If district or building administration tells us to handle lunch money or attendance according to Procedure X, we'll go ahead and try to do that even if it doesn't seem like a very wise choice to us. We trust the people in charge, the responsible people. Sometimes, particularly early in our careers, we trust them more than we trust ourselves.
We're not suckers for just anybody. If some stranger walked in off the street and into the classroom declaiming, "Hey, I know exactly what your problem is. Here's what you should do," we would not imagine for a minute that this is advice we should take.
But of course that's exactly where we are. Except that the strangers have walked in off the street with bags full of money or previous success in some line of work or a note from our boss's boss saying, "I think this guy is swelleroonies!"
And these rich, powerful, well-connected amateurs are everywhere. They are running book companies, writing materials, running school districts. And of course they've engineered the biggest bloodless coup ever, a complete power grab for the entire American public education system.
Now teachers don't know who can be trusted. We want to be good soldiers, but now we don't know whose orders we're following. This is not scary because we are the subject of some evil conspiracy intended to suck our brains dry or make off with the family silverware. It's scary because, more than anything else, we want to do right by our students. In many cases we are the last, best advocate those students have. It's a tough fight, and traditionally we took strength from knowing that we were part of a large, committed army. Nowadays, we don't know who is watching our back and who is getting ready to stab it.
Imagine you're a surgeon, operating on somebody's brain. Your trusted supervisor is there, and her instructions begin, "First, get this chain saw started up..." That's teaching today.
Our unions, the textbook publishers, the state and federal ed departments, even in some cases our own district administrators-- all of them are telling us this chainsaw idea sounds pretty good. What do we do?
Trust yourself.
Emerson's point was simple-- the wise men of ancient times, today's captains of industry, the people who kibbitz from the back seat-- none of them stand where you are, see what you see, know what you know. Trust yourself.
There's been a bunch of kerflufflation over who actually created the Common Core. Shills have assured us that teachers were totally involved, in hopes that would shut people up. But they've missed the point. No critic that I've read or spoken to has said, "I think the CCSS standards are near-perfect, but since they weren't written by teachers, I shall hate them." No, the story was more like this:
1) Teacher looks at CCSS. Teacher says, "Hmm. These look like they were cobbled together by some amateur who knows nothing about teaching."
2) Teacher does some research.
3) Teacher says, "Well, that explains why these look like an amateur hack job. They were done by amateur hacks."
"The CCSS were not written by teachers" is not an excuse for not liking them. It's an explanation for why they are so unlikeable.
Lots of teachers were and are unable to trust themselves. But the further we wade into the Big Muddy, the more teachers are looking at the chainsaw they've been told to pick up and wondering if it's such a good idea. "This program I'm supposed to implement," they're saying quietly. "I'm not sure it's such a good idea." But they're saying it quietly because, you know, surely the book publishers and program designers and USDOE and all these smart, successful, powerful people-- surely they wouldn't be pushing actions that are bad for students.
Trust yourself.
When the directives you're looking at seem to go against all your teaching knowledge and instincts, trust yourself. When it seems like the directives for an English class seem to have been written by someone with far less expertise than you have, trust yourself. And if you are a newbie with limited experience to draw on, you can still trust yourself when it comes to deciding whom to trust. When it seems as if your directions are coming from people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, no matter how rich, powerful, important they may be-- trust yourself.
You are the one in the classroom. You are the one who knows your students. With years of teaching and training behind you, you are the one who knows how this stuff works. I'm not saying go Full Cowboy-- you should also be the one who knows when to get help from the right place when you need it. But you are a professional. You are an expert-- in fact, when it comes to the specific class you are teaching this year, you are THE expert.
Don't let yourself be ground down. Don't believe the message that you are a toady, a mere content delivery system, the source of all education problems. You are a trained, experienced professional. You're a teacher.
Trust yourself.
Teachers are, for the most part, good team players. We follow rules. We respect authority. And when people who are in positions of authority make rules, we try to behave.
If the teacher's manual gives an answer that doesn't sound right to us, we'll give it the benefit of the doubt until we double check. If district or building administration tells us to handle lunch money or attendance according to Procedure X, we'll go ahead and try to do that even if it doesn't seem like a very wise choice to us. We trust the people in charge, the responsible people. Sometimes, particularly early in our careers, we trust them more than we trust ourselves.
We're not suckers for just anybody. If some stranger walked in off the street and into the classroom declaiming, "Hey, I know exactly what your problem is. Here's what you should do," we would not imagine for a minute that this is advice we should take.
But of course that's exactly where we are. Except that the strangers have walked in off the street with bags full of money or previous success in some line of work or a note from our boss's boss saying, "I think this guy is swelleroonies!"
And these rich, powerful, well-connected amateurs are everywhere. They are running book companies, writing materials, running school districts. And of course they've engineered the biggest bloodless coup ever, a complete power grab for the entire American public education system.
Now teachers don't know who can be trusted. We want to be good soldiers, but now we don't know whose orders we're following. This is not scary because we are the subject of some evil conspiracy intended to suck our brains dry or make off with the family silverware. It's scary because, more than anything else, we want to do right by our students. In many cases we are the last, best advocate those students have. It's a tough fight, and traditionally we took strength from knowing that we were part of a large, committed army. Nowadays, we don't know who is watching our back and who is getting ready to stab it.
Imagine you're a surgeon, operating on somebody's brain. Your trusted supervisor is there, and her instructions begin, "First, get this chain saw started up..." That's teaching today.
Our unions, the textbook publishers, the state and federal ed departments, even in some cases our own district administrators-- all of them are telling us this chainsaw idea sounds pretty good. What do we do?
Trust yourself.
Emerson's point was simple-- the wise men of ancient times, today's captains of industry, the people who kibbitz from the back seat-- none of them stand where you are, see what you see, know what you know. Trust yourself.
There's been a bunch of kerflufflation over who actually created the Common Core. Shills have assured us that teachers were totally involved, in hopes that would shut people up. But they've missed the point. No critic that I've read or spoken to has said, "I think the CCSS standards are near-perfect, but since they weren't written by teachers, I shall hate them." No, the story was more like this:
1) Teacher looks at CCSS. Teacher says, "Hmm. These look like they were cobbled together by some amateur who knows nothing about teaching."
2) Teacher does some research.
3) Teacher says, "Well, that explains why these look like an amateur hack job. They were done by amateur hacks."
"The CCSS were not written by teachers" is not an excuse for not liking them. It's an explanation for why they are so unlikeable.
Lots of teachers were and are unable to trust themselves. But the further we wade into the Big Muddy, the more teachers are looking at the chainsaw they've been told to pick up and wondering if it's such a good idea. "This program I'm supposed to implement," they're saying quietly. "I'm not sure it's such a good idea." But they're saying it quietly because, you know, surely the book publishers and program designers and USDOE and all these smart, successful, powerful people-- surely they wouldn't be pushing actions that are bad for students.
Trust yourself.
When the directives you're looking at seem to go against all your teaching knowledge and instincts, trust yourself. When it seems like the directives for an English class seem to have been written by someone with far less expertise than you have, trust yourself. And if you are a newbie with limited experience to draw on, you can still trust yourself when it comes to deciding whom to trust. When it seems as if your directions are coming from people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, no matter how rich, powerful, important they may be-- trust yourself.
You are the one in the classroom. You are the one who knows your students. With years of teaching and training behind you, you are the one who knows how this stuff works. I'm not saying go Full Cowboy-- you should also be the one who knows when to get help from the right place when you need it. But you are a professional. You are an expert-- in fact, when it comes to the specific class you are teaching this year, you are THE expert.
Don't let yourself be ground down. Don't believe the message that you are a toady, a mere content delivery system, the source of all education problems. You are a trained, experienced professional. You're a teacher.
Trust yourself.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Amplifying the Noise
Again, today, the disappointment of looking at Huff Post and finding one more bogus article by one more bogus source pretending to represent teachers. (I'm not linking to it here, and the rest of this post will make clear why). This is not a new occurrence-- from the bogus education voices of astroturf education groups to the highly-unlikely results of polls touted by the alleged leaders of what used to be a national teacher's union, teachers are finding their voices squeezed out of the way by people who pretend to speak for and about the current state of reformy stuff and education's future.
It's particularly frustrating because at this point there are many teachers with something to say who are in fact saying it, and still crowds are gathered around some snake oil salesman. How does this happen? How do we fix it?
It helps to remember some basics about how the internet and "news gathering" work today. Just remember two things:
1) Every click is a vote for whatever you just clicked on.
2) Nothing gets attention more than something that is already getting attention.
In the meat world, attention is a hard commodity quantify. The folks at Nielsen and the executives who depend their work have gone to tremendous lengths to attempt to quantify attention, and it's still an inexact science. The ad for widgets ran, but was anyone in the room? Were they paying attention to the carefully crafted depiction of the widget's many fin qualities, or were they picking corndog remnants out of their teeth?
But on the interwebs, attention is totally quantifiable. There are dozens of sites that will tell me how many people are looking at other sites. And if I'm somebody trying to find out what's hot in education, I can go to a site the Teach100 and just read today's ratings. If I'm a lazy fake journalist with a lazy aggregator, my work is already done for me-- I just have to look it up.
And that means that we all have the power to promote our favorite bloggy voices.
If I read something I like, I forward it. I put it on my facebook page. I tweet it. I link to it.
Diane Ravitch is a great example of how this works. She is extraordinarily generous in using her own clout to direct her audience to other writers. Remember-- if you like the writer that she has excerpted or quoted, follow the link to the source. It's a vote for that writer's web presence to grow. It does more than that, too-- it allows the conversation that we're all having to grow and spread.
Follow the other links you find. I'm trying to get a blogroll put together here (look over to your right and scroll) and many other bloggers are doing the same. If it hasn't happened yet, somebody is going to make a big current edublogger list. Use it and follow the links. Read what's there. If you agree with it, pass it on.
Most of us of a certain age are trained to be somewhat passive as readers. We sit silently, read, move on. But when we simply read something and then move on, we are not making the most of the powers we have here in webland. In the world of print, you acquire a wide audience because whoever runs the operation that publishes you decides you'll have a wide audience. To be a successful print writer, you need somebody's permission. Here on the web, you just need the active support of people who think you have something important to say.
I am not a heavy hitter in this conversation. I'm just a teacher from a small town high school in a mostly-rural area with a couple hundred regular readers across the country. But hey-- I'm just a teacher from a small town high school in a mostly-rural area, and I have a couple hundred regular readers across the country. That's the kind of amazing thing that couldn't have happened even a few years ago.
You don't have to be a voice to have a voice. If we push and forward and click and link, we can reach the point where people who are thinking of important voices in education automatically think of Mercedes Schneider or Jersey Jazzman or @the chalkface or any of the dozens of strong, articulate voices that are saying things that need to be said.
Follow people on twitter. Sign on as a follower of their blog. Leave comments on pieces you like (leave comments on pieces you hate, too) to let other readers see the imp[act of the blogs you support. Boost their numbers and their profiles. There is such a broad range of voices-- you can select the ones that most reflect your own priorities and attitudes. But each time you follow or like, you show the world that those writers have your attention.
And that attention leads to more attention. HuffPost and other sites like it may have ideologies, but their main ideology will always be "We like money." If you're going to draw a crowd for them, they will call on you instead of some stupid astroturf group.
Right now there are a little over 35,000 members of BadAss Teachers Association. That's not peanuts, but in a world in which the Justin Bieber fan page has sixty million likes, it's not really earthshattering. But BATS have become a nationally recognized brand that is sometimes turned to for quotes from their side of education issues because members have relentlessly pushed and tweeted and posted and retweeted and amplified the noise. Nothing gets attention better than already getting attention. With 35,000 BAT members on facebook, there are only 6,000 followers on Twitter. As much noise as the BATS have made, they could make far more. And if we added all the non-BAT people who are passionate about the state of educational reformy stuff...?
So-- you don't have to say something profound or clever or feisty. But you can amplify the reach of your favorite purveyor of profound clever feistiness. You can make education blogs from the right side of the issues climb up the charts so that when people go looking for voices in education, they find the ones we love.
It's particularly frustrating because at this point there are many teachers with something to say who are in fact saying it, and still crowds are gathered around some snake oil salesman. How does this happen? How do we fix it?
It helps to remember some basics about how the internet and "news gathering" work today. Just remember two things:
1) Every click is a vote for whatever you just clicked on.
2) Nothing gets attention more than something that is already getting attention.
In the meat world, attention is a hard commodity quantify. The folks at Nielsen and the executives who depend their work have gone to tremendous lengths to attempt to quantify attention, and it's still an inexact science. The ad for widgets ran, but was anyone in the room? Were they paying attention to the carefully crafted depiction of the widget's many fin qualities, or were they picking corndog remnants out of their teeth?
But on the interwebs, attention is totally quantifiable. There are dozens of sites that will tell me how many people are looking at other sites. And if I'm somebody trying to find out what's hot in education, I can go to a site the Teach100 and just read today's ratings. If I'm a lazy fake journalist with a lazy aggregator, my work is already done for me-- I just have to look it up.
And that means that we all have the power to promote our favorite bloggy voices.
If I read something I like, I forward it. I put it on my facebook page. I tweet it. I link to it.
Diane Ravitch is a great example of how this works. She is extraordinarily generous in using her own clout to direct her audience to other writers. Remember-- if you like the writer that she has excerpted or quoted, follow the link to the source. It's a vote for that writer's web presence to grow. It does more than that, too-- it allows the conversation that we're all having to grow and spread.
Follow the other links you find. I'm trying to get a blogroll put together here (look over to your right and scroll) and many other bloggers are doing the same. If it hasn't happened yet, somebody is going to make a big current edublogger list. Use it and follow the links. Read what's there. If you agree with it, pass it on.
Most of us of a certain age are trained to be somewhat passive as readers. We sit silently, read, move on. But when we simply read something and then move on, we are not making the most of the powers we have here in webland. In the world of print, you acquire a wide audience because whoever runs the operation that publishes you decides you'll have a wide audience. To be a successful print writer, you need somebody's permission. Here on the web, you just need the active support of people who think you have something important to say.
I am not a heavy hitter in this conversation. I'm just a teacher from a small town high school in a mostly-rural area with a couple hundred regular readers across the country. But hey-- I'm just a teacher from a small town high school in a mostly-rural area, and I have a couple hundred regular readers across the country. That's the kind of amazing thing that couldn't have happened even a few years ago.
You don't have to be a voice to have a voice. If we push and forward and click and link, we can reach the point where people who are thinking of important voices in education automatically think of Mercedes Schneider or Jersey Jazzman or @the chalkface or any of the dozens of strong, articulate voices that are saying things that need to be said.
Follow people on twitter. Sign on as a follower of their blog. Leave comments on pieces you like (leave comments on pieces you hate, too) to let other readers see the imp[act of the blogs you support. Boost their numbers and their profiles. There is such a broad range of voices-- you can select the ones that most reflect your own priorities and attitudes. But each time you follow or like, you show the world that those writers have your attention.
And that attention leads to more attention. HuffPost and other sites like it may have ideologies, but their main ideology will always be "We like money." If you're going to draw a crowd for them, they will call on you instead of some stupid astroturf group.
Right now there are a little over 35,000 members of BadAss Teachers Association. That's not peanuts, but in a world in which the Justin Bieber fan page has sixty million likes, it's not really earthshattering. But BATS have become a nationally recognized brand that is sometimes turned to for quotes from their side of education issues because members have relentlessly pushed and tweeted and posted and retweeted and amplified the noise. Nothing gets attention better than already getting attention. With 35,000 BAT members on facebook, there are only 6,000 followers on Twitter. As much noise as the BATS have made, they could make far more. And if we added all the non-BAT people who are passionate about the state of educational reformy stuff...?
So-- you don't have to say something profound or clever or feisty. But you can amplify the reach of your favorite purveyor of profound clever feistiness. You can make education blogs from the right side of the issues climb up the charts so that when people go looking for voices in education, they find the ones we love.
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