"Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt" Teacher Morale In The 2019 PDK Poll

The title of the 2019 Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools of "Frustration in the Schools," and the focus in much of the coverage has been on the results about teacher morale.

75% of teachers say schools in their community are underfunded.

50% of teachers have considered leaving the profession.

48% of teachers feel less valued by the community. (10% say they are valued "a great deal.")

55% of teachers would not want their child to follow them into the profession.

The breakdown of the teachers who have seriously considered getting out cite reasons that are all inter-related.

Inadequate pay is the marquee reason, and notably regional. Public school teachers are far less likely to feel fairly paid in the South and Midwest. That reason is followed closely by stress and pressure, which is followed by a lack of respect. Lack of support. Teaching no longer enjoyable. Testing requirements. Workload.

These are tied together with the single thread of distrust and disrespect for teachers. This has been evident on the national stage with issues like installing a Secretary of Education who had previously dismissed public education as a "dead end" or a Secretary of Education who asserts that student failure is because of low teacher expectations. Education has also carried the modern burden of the thesis that poor education is the cause of poverty, or even our "greatest national security threat," and so the entire fate of the nation rests on teachers' backs. And yet, teachers are not trusted to handle any of this; instead, we've had decades of federal and state programs meant to force teachers to do a better job. In the classroom, much of these "reforms" have sounded like "You can't do a good job unless you are threatened, micromanaged, and stripped of your autonomy." There is a special kind of stress that comes from working for someone who says, in effect, "You have a big important job to do, and we do not trust you to do it."

Teachers do not experience disrespect only on a national level. Talk to individual teachers about their own work circumstances and you will often hear about district and building administrators who treat teachers like children. When I was entering teaching forty years ago, one of the appealing features of the profession was autonomy, the freedom to pursue excellence in your classroom. There are some excellent school leaders out there who empower their teachers, but there are too many teachers out there who find themselves figuratively bound hand and foot, required to justify every action, treated like they are a source of trouble instead of valuable front-line professionals getting the work done. It is discouraging to work for a boss who does not trust you to behave like a responsible adult and do your job. Are there teachers who have proven not to deserve that trust? Of course--it's a huge profession. But if I had approached my classrooms with an attitude of "I'm going to assume you're all stupid behavior problems," I would have had a rough time. In a classroom, you get respect with respect.

Certainly pay matters. One cannot buy their family food with respect. But for many teachers, the low pay feels like one more act of disrespect, a very literal declaration that "you're just not worth it."

Let's not overstate the problem. According to the PDK poll, 52% of teachers feel respected by their community, and 40% feel they are fairly paid. There are teachers out there who still love what they do, and who are happy to keep doing it. And an excellent principal or superintendent can help support and lift up the staff.

But the effects of the issues covered by the poll have been felt for several years now. We hear regularly about a "teacher shortage," and districts across the country are having real trouble filling positions with qualified people. However, calling the situation a teacher shortage is incorrect. If you can't buy a Porsche for $1.98, that doesn't mean there's an automobile shortage. It means that you haven't made an attractive enough offer to the people with Porsches to sell. You need to make a better offer.

The PDK survey is a snapshot of how much less attractive the teaching profession has become. PDK gave a random sampling of those who considered leaving the profession a chance to explain why. Certain repeated phrases jump out. "Lack of respect," "No respect," "too little pay and respect," "we are treated like trash," and "tired of being treated like dirt."

There is no teacher shortage. The U.S. education system needs to make a better offer.

Originally posted at Forbes.com

CA: The Homeschool Charter Business Behind The Latest Scandal

If you aren't in California, you may have missed this special little variation on the charter school business model-- homeschooling charters. It's a curious note in the recent big money charter scam in California, which we'll get back to in a moment.

This is what you get if vouchers and charters had a baby and it was raised by homeschooling wolves. Homeschoolers "enroll" their students in a "school," and that "school" gives the family a yearly "allowance" that the family directs the "school" to spend on their behalf. It's totally "legal" and not a profitable scam for circumventing California's tissue-like charter "laws" at all. Some folks love it; others, not so much.

Let me just get this out of your way.

Homeschoolers love it. Here's a homeschooling blog plugging the whole set-up as a way to "customize" their child's education to reflect "that reflects our family’s interests, priorities, learning styles, and values." They get $2600 to have spent on their behalf, and they've used that for music lessons, basketball clinics, gymnastics lessons, field trips, sailing lessons, and curriculum (Amazon and Rainbow Resources are two examples of vendors in that biz). There is no state-0mandated curriculum, so families can select whatever they want. This particular blogger notes that he prefers "to use our funds on experiences and activities." Students do have to take the Big Standardized Test, but for these families, it is a no stakes test. This blogger notes that some families don't even open then envelope when the results arrive.

The charter companies love it. You might ask-- what do they actually do? Well, they have to track and spend the money, while providing "oversight" of that spending as well as lining up vendors for the homeschooling families to choose from (although, of course, vendors fight for that privilege). And an actual certified teacher has to visit the families about once a month. The charter still collects the full state per pupil payment, so the schools are lucrative; the CEO of Inspire (more about them in a moment) makes a whopping $380,000 a year. That's a lot of love.

Who doesn't love this model?

Well, there's plenty to not love. Before anybody started paying attention, charter homeschool money was being spent on some interesting "educational" activities. Here a parent in the Valiant Prep system (the other big name in the business) talks about how she spent some of her money

This year, we have used our funds for a few fun field trips. We visited Disney California Adventure, purchased a Chicago City Pass which allowed us to visit the Science Center, Museum and more, and attended a Harlem Globetrotter’s Game. We also have trips planned to Medieval Times which were purchased with Valiant Prep homeschool funds.

Those "homeschool funds" are, of course, taxpayer dollars. The state has clamped down on amusement park spending, but the homeschool charters have also gotten cagier-- Valiant used to have a publicly accessible directory of its approved vendors, but that page has apparently been taken down.

And then there's the authorizing of this business. Dehesa School District has been the authorizer of Inspire and Valiant, and if that rings any bells that's because the district and its superintendent are part of the May 2019 indictment of eleven folks who are charged with defrauding California of $50 million via A3 Charter Schools through fraudulent practices involving several charter schools-- including Valiant. And Dehesa's superintendent Nancy Hauer was also charged with over-billing the charters for the "oversight" provided by the district. Also backing up the scheme was Steve Van Zant, a superintendent and "key figure in San Diego area charter expansion" who has been in trouble before for charter-related shenanigans and so had to hide his involvement this time.

Dehesa's involvement is itself a sign of how this kind of money drives "misbehavior." They're a tiny rural district. They need money. and authorizing charter schools is a way to get it. Meanwhile, a whole lot of students are suddenly without a school at all, and since California lets school districts authorize charters that are grabbing students from other districts, Dehesa doesn't even have to pick up after the mess that it helped make. That's on the public schools serving the areas where the students actually live.

While Valiant has been at least partially shut down, Inspire is still going strong, and attracting attention. It expects to "enroll" 12,000 students this year, despite a growing reputation for financial "irregularities" and really lousy performance on that test its parents don't have to care about. Inspire expects to pull in $285 million in taxpayer dollars this year. 12,000 students at $2,600 per student will cost Inspire $31.2 million of that $285 million. That's a pretty hefty cut of the taxpayer's money.

And Inspire is a fresh face in this business. Nick Nichols started it in 2013 and acquired authorization from Dehesa in 2015. That was the year he left his job as Coordinator, Instructional Expert and Instructional Coach with the Los Angeles Unified School District. He'd been with LAUSD since 2001; the background he brought to that job was a BA in Social Studies from the Master's University. So, another education "expert."

Inspire has drawn plenty of criticism not just from advocates of public education, but from others in the charter biz. Because, I guess, "parental choice" is only an important guiding principle when nobody is using it to entice your customers to leave you.

Jeff Rice, founder and director of APlus+, the Association of Personalized Learning Schools and Services, had invited Inspire to join his chartery club, but told NBC7 that he changed his mind and removed them:

"As our relationship with Inspire evolved over time, we found that there were numerous reports of questionable practices,” Rice said. “Primarily it had to do with the use of public funds as well as recruiting practices.”

Inspire has annoyed other charters with its recruiting practices. Terri Schiavone, the head of the Golden Valley Charter School in Ventura said, "They target a school and then try to get as many of their teachers and students as possible." Schiavone also criticized the lack of oversight and the way customers are "enticed" by various incentives like the whole "buy tickets to Disneyland" thing. She's also one more person accusing Inspire of allowing religious curriculum, though the Inspire folks swear up and down that they don't allow that particular law to be broken. Inspire says the other charter schools are just jealous. I expected to find other charter operators saying, "Well, this is just the free market at work with competition that just pushes us to be better," but so far, no.

Of course, Inspire isn't marketing itself as better, because given its test scores, it can't. Instead it has to market itself as a chance to get a government subsidy for homeschooling while still teaching your children whatever you do, or don't, want to teach them, with no particular oversight, but with some extra dollars to make the experience more fun. Meanwhile, the model leaves so much extra unsupervised money floating around that it has attracted all sorts of bad actors and corruption.

As California tightens up its charter school laws, let's hope they take a look at the homeschool "charter" model and shut it down.

FL: Courts Thwart Charter Theft

Last fall, the Palm Beach County schools taxpayers voted to increase their taxes so that they could bring their public schools up to speed, specifically in terms of building security and teacher pay.

And they specifically earmarked the money from this four-year tax for public schools.

Some charter schools in Palm Beach County were upset, believing that the law entitles them to a cut of any tax dollars collected for education purposes. This is, after all, Florida, where the state government is working hard to gut the public system and replace it with a profitable privatized system.

So they sued. In January two (later three) charters took the PBC system to court, declaring that they were absolutely entitled to some of that money, regardless of what the voters said. (Because if there's one thing many charteristas agree on, it's that democracy is stupid.) Newspapers like the Palm Beach Post helped out by calling the money in question a "tax windfall", as if this was money that the public system just stumbled over in a brown paper sack stuffed in a principal's attic, and not "the money that voters  specifically voted to spend on public schools."

A judge issued a ruling this week, and it made the charters sad. As reported by Andrew Marra in the Palm Beach Post:

A judge has rejected an attempt by three charter schools to claim a piece of a new $200 million-a-year property tax that voters approved last year for Palm Beach County’s public schools.

Marra nicely incorporates some of the charter slight-of-language:

The ruling is a stinging defeat for the county’s 52 privately operated charter schools, which have long complained that the school board discriminates against their students by denying them money from special voter-approved taxes.

Well, no, sad Florida charters.  The school board doesn't do anything-- the voters vote for what the voters want to vote for. And then there's this bit of whinging:

“We’re disappointed but disagree with the judge’s ruling,” said Marie Turchiaro, executive director of Palm Beach Maritime Academy. “Charter school people have overcome many obstacles throughout the years and flourished in spite of them.”

Obstacles? Being backed by billionaires? Having most of the state political positions of education oversight in the hands of charter fans? I cannot imagine what obstacles Turchiaro is talking about, but if they are obstacles like this one-- the obstacle of taxpayers being able to  tax themselves while naming the purpose for which that tax is collected-- then, well, yes, we generally favor obstacles to thievery.

ICYMI: SAHD Back To Work Edition (8/25)

Here we go. Time for me to watch my household partner get back to her gig. But while I'm adjusting to a new routine, there's still reading to do. Remember-- sharing makes the word go round.

Why Teachers Are Walking Out 

I'm not so sure about some of the gender discussion in this post on the Known cast, but the basic idea is on point and the discussion is interesting.

Vandalism at Ed Department

If you missed this crazy tale-- this week a Black person's office was vandalized-- in the US Department of Education.

Judge Nixes Charter School Tax Theft 

Every once in a while somebody in Florida gets it right. A judge has said no to a charter demand to get a cut of tax dollars raised explicitly for public schools. Coverage in the Palm Beach Post-- expect a sequel to this one.

Fighting Back Against The War On Childhood

Rae Pica writing one of those pieces that really shouldn't have to be written, but here we are.

11 Problems Facing Students As They Return To School 

Nancy Bailey takes a look at the special new modern obstacles set up for students.

Flawed Algorithms Grading Essays

This time it's Vice reporting the story that must, apparently, be reported over and over again-- computer programs are still not capable of grading essays. But a frightening number of states are using them anyway. This is a thorough piece of reporting (they even used BABEL), and thre's something new-- the algorithms are not only bad, but they're racially biased, too.
 
Former KIPP CEO Soliciting for Fake Organization? 

It takes the indispensable Mercedes Schneider to unravel this tangle of money and connections.

Money Matters

Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat reminds us, once again, that spending money on education makes a difference, citing four (count 'em, four) studies.

Guards Get Shoddy Training

The South Florida Sun-Sentinal reports that-- surprise!-- the armed guards in some Florida schools are not receiving great, mediocre, or even adequate training!

The Merit Pay Fairy Dies In Newark

Jersey Jazzman looks at the long, sad history of NJ's love of merit pay, and where it has all ended up. After you're read this one, move on to the sequel, Clapping Harder for the Merit Pay Fairy

Not Funding Schools or Paying Teachers? That’s a ‘You Problem’, Right?

Nancy Flanagan and the question of school funding.

Artificial Intelligence and Magical Thinking (HAL Knows How You Feel)

From the moment you read the title, you know this article from Inside Higher Ed by Ray Schroeder is going to be a corker-- Affective Artificial Intelligence: Better Understanding and Responding to Students.

Schroeder opens with "As a longtime professor of communication, I am fascinated with the cognitive characteristics of artificial intelligence as they relate to human communication," and that's  a touch misleading. While he was an associate professor of communication back in the early 80s and a professor in a television  production unit at the  University of Illinois up until the late 90s, I think it might be a little disingenuous of him of him  to skip over his work since then. He ran the University's center for online learning until 2013, when he became the associate  vice chancellor for on learning. 2013 was also the year he became a founding director of the National Council of Online Education, a group that is "dedicated to advancing quality online learning at the institutional level." They are "powered by UPCEA, the association for professional, continuing, and online education."

"Dave, are you sad, or just gassy?"

In short, Schroeder is writing not as a professor with some academic curiosity about AI, but as a guy whose professional life for the past two decades has been centered on promoting and advocating for computer-driven instruction. That would have been appropriate to mention here, but IHE didn't even give Schroeder a bio blurb at the end of his piece.

So here's the set-up:

One of the challenges in person-to-person communication is recognizing and responding to subtle verbal and nonverbal expressions of emotion. Too often, we fail to pick up on the importance of inflections, word choices, word emphases and body language that reveal emotions, depth of feelings and less obvious intent. I have known many of my colleagues who were insensitive to the cues; they often missed nonverbal cues that were obvious to other more perceptive people.

There's even a link to back up the notion that nonverbal communication is complicated. So now we're ready for the pitch:

And that brings me to just how artificial intelligence may soon enhance communication between and among students and instructors. AI in many fields now applies affective communication algorithms that help to respond to humans. Customer service chat bots can sense when a client is angry or upset, advertising research can use AI to measure emotional responses of viewers and a mental health app can measure nuances of voice to identify anxiety and mood changes over the phone.

Sigh. This continues to be a big dream, most often associated with the quest for computerized SEL instruction. Various companies have claimed they can tell how we're feeling, using everything from face-reading software to measuring how long students take to click on an answer. And yes-- Amazon has been training Alexa to read the stress in your voice. None of these has worked particularly well. And maybe I'm on the phone with the wrong service chatbots, but despite Schroeder's claim, they can't understand anything that falls outside a certain range of response, let alone read my emotional state.

Schroeder assures us that computers can analyze lots of data, including vocal inflections and micro-expessions, and so far we're still within the realm of standard tecbno-over-promising. But then stuff gets weird.

Too often we fail to put ourselves in the position of others in order to understand motivations, concerns and responses. Mikko Alasaarela posits that humans are bad at our current emotional intelligence reasonings: “We don’t try to understand their reasoning if it goes against our worldview. We don’t want to challenge our biases or prejudices. Online, the situation is much worse. We draw hasty and often mistaken conclusions from comments by people we don’t know at all and lash [out] at them if we believe their point goes against our biases.”

Well, sure. If, for instance, we're heavily invested in computer tech, we might be inclined to ignore evidence that we've put our faith in some magical thinking. However, some of us are way worse at this than others of us. But for his next leap, Schroeder needs to establish that all humans are bad at understanding other humans. He is, of course, particularly interested in one application of this AI mindreading-- online classes:

Too often, I fear, we miss the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of posts in discussion boards and synchronous voice and video discussions. The ability of AI algorithms to tease out these motivations and meanings could provide a much greater depth of understanding (and misunderstanding) in the communication of learners.

All those misunderstandings on Twitter or message boards and even video will be swept away, because AI will be there to say, "Well, her mood when she posted that was angry and anxious, and what she really meant bto say was..." Schroeder quotes Sophie Kleber quoting Annette Zimmerman saying, "By 2022, your personal device will know more about your emotional state than your own family." He cites the recent Ohio State study that showed computers beating humans at certain types of emotion recognition under lab conditions and using photos instead of live people (he does nod at the nightmare application of this tech--more effective marketing). This is some magical baloney here, but we can still raise the baloney bar. Go back to that last paragraph:

Too often, I fear, we miss the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of posts in discussion boards and synchronous voice and video discussions.

So AI can see past everything, straight to the truth. Schroeder may be missing the more important applications of his still-imaginary AI. It could be used to read Hamlet or Ulyses or that confusing note my one ex-girlfriend left me, and it will be able to tell us all The Truth! When I think of how many students have struggled through "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" and now we can just have the AI tell us what the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of the texts would be.

No, no, no, you say. The AI has to read the face of the source human, and those writers are all dead (well, except for my ex-girlfriend, but she wasn't looked at the webcam when she wrote the note). Okay, fine. We just get authors to compose all future works in front of a computer-linked camera, and there will never be any mystery again. We'll know the true meaning of it all, the true motivation behind the writing. I suppose with singer-songwriters, it would be good enough to let the AI watch a performance. Call up Don McClean and Carly Simon-- we can finally uncover the truth of "American Pie" and "You're So Vain."

Even if we stick to academics, it's hard to know where this could lead. Should a professor write an article or essay in front of a computer cam, and should the article then be accompanied by the AI explication-- or should the AI response to the work be published instead of the article? If the scholar just thinks about  what he wants to write, will the AI write the full article for him? Can we just fire the professor  and replace him just by asking the AI, which knows him so well, "What would Dr. Superfluous say in this situation?"

All right, I'll calm down. But Schroeder's crazy-pants predictions aren't done yet.

With AI mediating our communication, we can look to a future of deeper communication that acknowledges human feelings and emotions. This will be able to enhance our communication in online classes even beyond the quality of face-to-face communication in campus-based classes. Algorithms that enable better “reading” of emotions behind written, auditory and visual communication are already at work in other industries. 

Yes,  with software assistance, our human communication will finally include feelings and emotions! Dang. Maybe Schroeder hangs around with too many geeky flat-affect computer programmers, but as someone who worked with teenagers for thirty-nine years and someone who has a widespread and varied family and someone who is, you know, a human being living on Planet Earth, I would have to say that feelings and emotions are widely involved and acknowledged.

As to the assertion that online classes will actually have better quality communication than real live classes-- well, if I made my living pushing the online stuff, I might want to believe that, too. But I don't. Sure, higher education is a slightly different animal than K-12, but in the classroom, human relationships matter. Otherwise we would just ship each student a crate of books and say, "Go learn this stuff."

The working world has always included people who are bad at the interacting with and understanding of other carbon based life forms. But the kind of crutches and tools developed to help seem, because of the very problem, hard for them to use well. Like the guy who went to a training where they told him that when he was talking to someone he should insert their name in the sentence to connect better-- he just ends up seeming like a creepy bot. The idea that a professor could communicate better with students if he had software to explain the students to him--even if the software could actually do it--seems equally fraught.

Schroeder does end the piece with a sentence that acknowledges the huge privacy concerns of such a system. He doesn't acknowledge the oddness of his central thesis-- that we need computers to  explain humans to other humans. Here's hoping the readers of IHE ignored him.

EnrichED, the National Charter Substitute (Sort Of) Service

You've had to miss a day of school, so you cross your fingers and put in for a sub. You prepare a whole lesson, run off materials, tag everything, put them in neat piles and arrange them on your desk. The day after your absence, you walk through your door and get a sinking feeling--the stacks of planned materials have been pushed to one side on your desk, but are otherwise untouched. "Oh, yeah," says a student in your first period class. "He said he didn't really get what you wanted us to do, so he just spent the period talking about his samurai sword replica collection instead."

Now. Imagine that someone built an entire business using that as a model. Not a but, not even a feature, but the feature.

Meet EnrichED.  

Founded in 2012 as one teacher’s day dream, Enriched has grown to become a national movement of educators, creatives and community leaders united on a mission to reimagine substitute teaching.

We believe that every day matters for kids and our communities are full of amazing people with skills and talents to share.

We’re on a mission to enrich lives, one classroom at a time.

She seems nice. I'll bet she dances well.

The founder is Andre Feigler, who began the company as a start-up in New Orleans, sharing office space with Uber and mSchool, teaming up with the 4.0 Schools group. The company puts its "guest teachers" through a "multi-step vetting process" (more about that in a bit) then gives them some "personalized classroom management lessons and workshops." The basic idea of the company was laid out in this 2014 profile:

EnrichED gathers diverse professionals – from public health workers to poets – and invites them to serve as guest teachers on substitute days. Students then spend the day learning about music, improv comedy or entrepreneurship from a first-hand source.

The business was scaled up to cities around the country, earning Feigler a spot on Forbes' 2015 30 under 30 for education.

Feigler had also launched Youth Run NOLA (YRNOLA) when she was fresh out of Barnard College, Columbia University, where she graduated with a double major in English and French and minored in Dance. Though she talks about having been a teacher (as well as "dancer, entrepreneur, yoga doer"), you will be unsurprised to learn that Feigler is a Teach for America alum, with two whole years in the classroom (spending the summer between them in France).

Their team of "doers, musicians, and advocates" reveals a bit of a pattern. EnrichED's "talent intake coordinator" Lynda Surajbali used to work in communications at CBS. The director of finance and operations has a marketing degree. The "head of community" is a Fishman Prize winner (that's a TNTP thing) and used to be band director at one of the Noble charters in Chicago. DC regional manager has a degree in criminal justice and worked with AmeriCorps. The "community care specialist" says she "hopes to revolutionize the education system." She has a degree in anthropology and used to work in Montessori school as a transitional teacher and administrative assistant for two years. And so on-- you get the idea. The whole leadership team includes a couple of people with an actual teaching background, a whole lot of TFA alums, and a bunch of sparky young folks with no education background at all. Each has a perky photo and a profile that is cute and breezy (the leadership team page also includes a profile for the office dog (who is empirically cute) Their mission--

Our mission is to maximize student success by connecting great people to great schools when they need it most.

They are in thirteen cities, and the list is recognizable as a list of reformster-friendly, charter-rich locations (DC, Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville...) They count 1200 guest educators "mobilizxed" and 700,000 hours "enriched." They reportedly pay about $17 an hour for their guests. They have 160 partners, and while the Enriched website doesn't say so, everyone who writes about Enriched characterizes them as a sub provider for charter schools.

They also have a new owners-- in July of this year, they were bought up by Education Solutions Services LLC (ESS) "leaders in the education staffing space since 2000." Feigler says the deal will "enable Enriched to streamline its operations and innovate," which sounds like bad news for some of the team. I hope they keep the dog.

What they apparently can't afford to streamline is their vetting process. The story that brought Enriched to my attention in the first place comes from a Nashville charter school, where a pair of fourteen year old twins found themselves in a classroom with a substitute teacher who is also the woman who shot and killed their older brother a month ago. While selling him weed in a parking lot. The substitute was placed in the charter school by Enriched. The CEO (sigh) of the charter, along with several teachers, had sent Enriched clippings about the fatal shooting, because the sub had worked in this school previously, and this just seemed like a bit of a red flag moment. But somebody at EnrichED messed up.

Look. The EnrichED idea is not the worst one ever, and given the choice between a sub who's going to give everyone a study hall while he takes a nap and a sub who's going to try to teach my students about dance or music, I would have picked the latter. But what I really wanted was someone who would just use the lesson plans that I left. 

I even believe these guys mean well, but it's more of the same stuff we've suffered from for two decades now. In 2014, Feigler told the interviewer that she hoped to redefine the role of teachers. "Many people care about students and should teach them. Bankers, entrepreneurs and artists alike can all lend their wisdom to the next generation, because any number of situations can spark a student’s imagination." This is the worst kind of amateur-hour baloney, the debasing of teaching to a job that just requires you to care a bunch and then just follow your bliss, and those poor Lesser children will just be elevated. It is Teach for America's educational expertise based on unicorn breath and fairy poop supplying yet another piece of the parallel school system where nobody really needs to know what they're doing as long as the have noble feelings and a desire to share their own awesomeness with Those Poor Kids. When the English teacher for a bunch of poor kids has to miss a day, why shouldn't those students still get a day of English class? We can do better than this same old "anybody can be a teacher if they just feel teachery," an argument we wouldn't accept from our doctor, nurse, lawyer, or plumber. Are we having trouble recruiting qualified subs? Sure. But the best answer is not, ever, to simply redefine the job.

The Thirteen Presenters Who Will Ruin Your First Day Back

It's been a great summer. You've had a chance to recharge and reflect. You've developed some new ideas, units, and materials, and most importantly, away from the dailiness of the job, you have gotten back in touch with all the reasons you love the work. You cannot wait to get back to it., take a couple of in service days to get fully up to speed, and then-- bring on the students!

Unfortunately, your administration thinks that your very first day(s) back should be spent sitting in some professional development sessions. In some lucky few school districts, these sessions will actually be useful and even  inspiring. But if you are really unfortunate, you'll spend those sessions with one of these soul-crushing people:

The Defense Specialist

"I'm here to remind you that at any moment this year, someone might burst into your room and kill you and your students. I'm going to talk about how you should react when someone is about to shoot you, presenting a variety of scenarios and details of previous shootings that will all be so vivid that for the rest of this week you won't be able to concentrate on teaching material because you're too busy looking for hiding places in the room, peering into your own soul to consider whether or not you are the kind of person who would die for your students, and just generally staring into the abyss of human mortality and brutality."

The Social Issues Specialist

"I'd like to talk to you about some issue that affects your students-- something like hunger or poverty or gang violence or homelessness or whatever drug is currently out of control. I will remind you that many of your students are being slowly crushed by forces outside of your control and you will need to be sensitive to that, which is the classroom equivalent of sending thoughts and prayers. I represent a group that is trying to address the issue, but we are desperately short of both time and money, and you will end up being depressed that the two things we need are the two things that you don't have enough of to contribute anything helpful."

The Data Dumper

"Here's a bunch of test score data. Some of it's on this website with lots of cool color-coded graphics. Here are some spreadsheets. Here's some disaggregated data on students that you won't actually meet for a few days. Of course, you can't see the test or the questions, and you'll just have to take our word for it that these numbers mean what we say they mean. None of this will actually be useful in planning your courses, but it will serve as a gut-kicking reminder that no matter how  awesome you  are in the classroom this year, all your bosses really care about is the results of this damned useless invalid test. Those of you who don't even teach English or Math can go ahead and get extra depressed and angry about this."

The Education Entrepreneur

"I was plodding along in a classroom just like yours until I had the bright idea of taking something that's a widely known teaching technique and giving it a small superficial tweak and a snappy piece of branding. I copyrighted that puppy and now-- ka-ching! You will spend the next hour looking at my nice clothes, thinking about my cool car, and questioning your life choices."

The Ballsy Tourist

"Every one of you has more training, experience and knowledge about teaching than I do. Sit back and get comfortable while I tell you how to do your job. I thank God that teachers are too professional and polite to charge the lectern, no matter how much rage I generate."

The Sacrificial Lamb

"I'm a teacher in this district. You all know me. The fact that administration voluntold me out here to present this program/policy/initiative tells you everything you need to know. It sucks, and they don't want to have to look you in the eyes or take your questions when you realize just how much it sucks. They're hoping that I have enough social capital earned with the rest of the staff that there will at least not be immediate open revolt."

The Lawyer

"I'm going to scare the crap out of you with a list of all the possible ways that things you do innocently every single day could destroy your career and ruin your life. Have a great year."

The Edu-Celebrity

"I'm chirpy and internet famous, which makes sense because I mostly talk in Tweets. I'm going to say obvious platitudes like 'attitude is important' and 'we teach students, not subjects.' The biggest damage I will do is the permanent loss of respect you're about to feel for your colleagues who think I'm a freakin' genius."

The Flavor of the Month

"Let me tell you about the Hot New Idea in education that your administration got excited about at some conference, or maybe they read an article.  Whatever. Yeah, you might recognize me from last year when I was making the rounds to talk about grit. Never mind.  That's over. You're probably thinking that you can ignore me and keep your head down until this trendy new storm passes, and you're probably right. That's okay. I'm still getting paid."

The Angel Of Slow Death

"What am I talking about? You have no idea, because I am the most boring speaker in the history of the world. Watch as all the oxygen in the room spontaneously self-deports."

The Bringer of Bad News

"I am a person in a position of authority, so you can't just openly howl in anguish as I detail a piece of educational malpractice that you will be required to perpetrate this year. 'This is not why I became a teacher' will play over and over in your head as I outline the kinds of actions that ought to be denounced by any ethical professional. Ten years ago I used to try to get you to buy in on this stuff, but now my message is do this or else.  What the hell do you know? You're just a freakin' teacher."

The Unfortunate Administrator

"Hey, there! Remember me? Chances are you kind of put me out of your mind over the summer, but I wanted to grab some of this in service day for myself so that I could remind you of all the ways I'm a giant pain to work for. Here's some cool new paperwork and procedures I've concocted; we'll go over those in a few minutes, because I would rather force you to look at and listen to me than just handle this with a simple e-mail, but first, let me say some things I don't really mean, like 'this is a team' and 'you guys do the most important work in the district' and 'my office door is always open.' Now I'll tell a bad joke laced with a crippling lack of self-awareness. Watch who laughs! Dance, puppets!"

The Camp Counselor

"Let's start with a fun ice breaker! Then we'll pair and share over some question you'll ignore while you pair and share about how much you wish you were getting work done in your room. If you're good, I might even let you play some games that you would never use with your own students, but some of you will play along anyway because I have some fast food gift certificates to give away as prizes."