Let's Talk About Johnny

It may be because it is report card season but sometimes I like to read this quote aloud in a metallic, machine like voice;  "Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is crime happening. "  Then I try this in the same voice:  "the student uses a variety of texts with some proficiency."

The first quote is from the classic 1987 film RoboCop and the second is the ever popular comment number 111 from the secondary school report card comment bank.  I know, it's one of my favourites too! Sometimes when it's late at night and I am a little punchy, I like to read the comment bank aloud in a Schwarzenegger accent, circa Terminator One.

There's no shame in it.

RoboCop was the coolest of movies. It came at a time where we were on the cusp of the computer and the Internet.  It was also the year I was at the Faculty of Education.  It seemed like the entire conscious of the society was focused on the tension between human and machine.  You could see that tension in RoboCop as the human heart of the police officer tried to emerge from the technological cage in which it had been trapped.

Teachers and parents and students are trapped in a similar technological cage.  The primary mode of communication between parents and teachers is the report card and the parent interview.  The report card has been co-opted in the name of efficiency by technology, reducing reporting to a list of events or the frequency of a student's performance.  "Sally should make better use of class time to complete homework." (comment #59), setting aside the contradiction of homework being completed in class, the comment doesn't tell us anything about Sally.  Johnny has "some use of features of formal and informal communication." (comment # 734).  Can anyone tell me what Johnny has been doing?

I gave up using the canned comments long ago, choosing to write my own comments to the parents of my students.  Not every teacher is comfortable with this and I am sure many a parent would have preferred that I had hidden my assessment of their child in edu-babble but I think that at least they knew I knew their kid. The idea of all teachers writing their own, hand crafted and original comments, must terrify boards of education.

So we remain trapped by the technological structures that surround reporting.  If this is true, then our last best chance to talk to each other, is the parent interview.  If we are ever to have an honest and important discussion of our children, it takes place in the gyms and classrooms on parent nights but it will require some work on all of our parts.

Parents, you need to go to interviews.  It may shock you, but the majority of parents don't go to interviews. You need to go, listen, question and help the teacher know your child better.  Teachers, close the computer, put away the print out, shut down the screens.   Look across the desk and begin with "I know Johnny and there are some things I want to tell you."

No one is allowed to do this in a Schwarzenegger accent.

When a home becomes a house.

For those of you not in education, you might not know that this week in Ontario, EQAO, (Education Quality Accountability Office), moved its test of grade 10 literacy skills on line.  Grade 10 students across the province logged on to write the test and the entire system crashed leaving students, teachers and administrators frustrated and angry. Setting aside the irony of that organization's title, after all there is no quality nor any accountability coming from it, the whole mess does raise some interesting issues.

Mrs. Pearce had to prepare us for our fire safety drill.  No doubt that is what the system called for.  I was in grade 3 and there was a movie that we had to watch.    I remember the people jumping out of burning buildings.  Then we were told that we would have a fire drill.  "WALK ("DON'T RUN, DON'T RUN") out of the school."  It isn't a bell, the fire drill, it's a buzzing sound; a vibration that throttles in my chest.

My only recurring nightmare is of people jumping out of a burning building.

I love Mrs. Pearce.  She was kind and caring and yes, very pretty.  We did clay models in her class and she had us bring in a small box to store our "favourite words."  Her classroom was kind, it was home.  The last thing she would have wanted to do was cause any one of us anxiety, or stress or nightmares.   She was told to prepare us for the fire drill and the movie came along with that preparation.  She was doing her job, following the rules.

Teachers and particularly administrators, are rule followers.  They are people who have succeeded in systems by doing what they say and doing it well.  A Superintendent of Education didn't get there by questioning a rule.

Richard Jones, the director for assessment at EQAO, didn't arrive there by swimming against the current.

When the EQAO fry up occurred, I was in a class of ESL students and students who had failed the test in their previous attempt.  There was stress in that room.  At one point when we had the students try to log on for a final time, a girl in front of me looked up at me and with a great tremor in her voice cried "It's in French now!"

This was her fire drill.  This may well be her recurring nightmare.    I followed the rules, just like Mrs. Pearce and my rule following hurt a kid.  I let the personal become the impersonal,  a home become a house. All of us decided the person was not as important as the data.

In March, when EQAO  asks teachers to sacrifice kids one more time for the accuracy of their data points, maybe we should break some rules.

"Hey Teacher..."

Condom.  There, I said it.

In 1987 when I started teaching religion (yes, religion), I was forbidden from uttering that word until a student mentioned it first.  Yes, we were in the middle of a frightening epidemic of AIDS and yes, the single best way to prevent the spread of the disease was ....well... you know.  So what was a young teacher, with fine hair, parted in the middle (stop laughing) to do?  When the time came to discuss ethics and moral decision making around sex, I entered the class, wrote C-O-N-D-O-M on the board and waited for someone to read it aloud.

Teachers need to teach what their students need to know even if it runs counter to power and to culture.

As Canadians, we puzzle over how, even after the reprehensible behaviour of Trump, he manages to maintain a core support somewhere around 40% of the American population.  If you haven't had a chance, check out this site Five Thirty Eight.   Look at states where Donald Trump has over a 90% chance of winning.  Those states are: Arkansas, Kentucky Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia.   Of those states, according to Talk Poverty , only Nebraska has a rate of higher education in the top half of the Union.

Clinton, in one of her weaker moments, called these people  "deplorable" and I will forgive this categorization since she basically has had to spend countless hours with The Donald, and who after having to do that, wouldn't be a little edgy from time to time?  Trump's supporters are not deplorable.  They are in need of quality public education and brave teachers.

Unfortunately, some in these states and a few in our country, argue that education is a form of social engineering or perhaps in the words of Roger Watters "thought control".  You remember the song:  "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control.  Hey Teacher leave those kids alone. " Teachers, quite rightly, cringe at this song. Yes, the double negative is enough but no Roger, we won't leave those kids alone.

It's not thought control or left wing propaganda or political bias when you are introducing concepts such as; critical thinking, basic human rights and human dignity, equality, fairness and most importantly for our current situation, decency.   How did we get to the point where teaching about these ideas can seem revolutionary and counter culture to a segment of the population?  So we beat on, boats against the tide, teaching students that equity, fairness, (safe sex), kindness and human decency are essential.

We teach what our students need to know and I offer this little tip for you.  The next time you hear that Pink Floyd song, insert a little Bruce Cockburn.  It doesn't go with the melody but it will lift your spirits.

Hey Teacher, "kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight."

The Truth About Teachers and their Kids

Greg Puchulski use to call me "All State".  I believe this was his subtle way of telling me I only made the football team in high school because my Dad was the teacher/coach and not because I had "good hands". There's nothing quite like the sophisticated wit of the Oshawa bully.

Now Greg may have had a point.  I did weigh 117 lbs in grade nine and I did drop my fair share of balls but no more so than all the other grade nines who made the team.  I think what made Greg's insights so helpful was the fact that it was my first introduction to the idea that when you are the kid of a teacher or a teacher with kids, there is no absolute truth.

You make the team because of your Dad; you get a good grade because of Mom.  Your child is singled out because "teacher kids should be better".  Your child is victimized because they are perceived to have some inside track.  Of course, none of this is true or helpful. It's just hurtful and it remains hurtful 40 years later.

Thanks Greg.

Having a teacher in the family does have advantages greater than shared holidays.  It is true that you can be part of your child's life in a more intimate way and it is true again that you have the opportunity to understand their lives a little bit more than parents in other walks of life.  I have been able to know my children's friends far more than many parents.  I've been able to share some of their great triumphs and some of their worst defeats because I've been on the court with them when they've happened.

But the bruises that this intimacy inflicts are deep.   There is no doubt that I have been harder on my own children in games and in school than on any of yours.  Too often lines got blurred and it can be very difficult for both child and parent to separate the roles of coach and father.  Worse, it can be very difficult for the children of teachers to see their accomplishments as purely a result of their hard work.

On this Thanksgiving weekend, I am thankful for my kids and I am thankful for you and yours as well.

Your kids have forced me to remain active and engaged and many of them have given their all to me on the basketball court. Your kids have made me laugh almost everyday and they have kept me awake some nights (not so thankful for that).  Your kids have pushed me to be better and have challenged my thinking and enriched me.

I'm thankful for you because you've done a great job with them and you've been patient and understanding with me and my colleagues.

I am thankful for my kids for all of the reasons you might expect but for this writing, I am thankful for them because they made me a better teacher for your kids.   If you had told me that years ago, before I had them, I would have been rightly offended.   Some of you reading this might say " you don't have to have kids to be a good teacher." You are right but just like my making the football team, it's not the complete truth.  My kids have shown me how even the smallest thing a teacher does can be a very big thing and before I had them, I really didn't appreciate this fully.

We have a conversation in our house where my wife and I mitigate the role of the teacher because we want our kids to be responsible for their own success and those kids of ours, well, they counter that argument pretty well (got those logical minds from their Mom).  They argue that the teacher makes all the difference.

Like everything the truth lies somewhere between.  But without them I wouldn't fully understand just how important a teacher is.  I'm thankful for that.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Treadmillers

This may surprise you but I'm a gifted runner.  Yep, looking at me now you'd be shocked but when I was tested for running in grade 3, I tested gifted.  Well, my Mom says I was gifted at running.  I missed the standard for admittance by a few seconds so I am actually a precocious runner but that doesn't matter. What matters is, I was identified as a gifted runner and got to join the Treadmillers.

I had to switch schools to join.  We were known as Treadmillers because the special room we had at the school was filled with treadmills.  We had a special teacher.  They let us know that they were gifted teachers for gifted Treadmillers.

Our teachers really liked the Treadmillers.  And what wasn’t to like, I mean, we treadmilled without being asked.  They didn’t have to deal with all those other kids who just ran hither and yon, all willy nilly like. They liked the fact there wasn’t a lot of us.  What was even better was that we looked like our teachers and a lot of my fellow Treadmillers grew up in teacher families so it was like we were just one big family.

Ya, that's it, the Treadmillers were like a family.   We sometimes hung out with the other kids at recess and sometimes we even ran against them in the schoolyard and in the later grades, some of those kids beat us but they weren't Treadmillers.   They ran outside and they had an advantage there.

When I went to high school what was really nice was they didn't make us run against anybody.  The school figured the test in grade three was good enough so we were able to keep all the Treadmillers together for four years. We even got special Treadmiller field trips that we didn't have to pay for. You know, when I look back on those days, I can really only remember the Treadmillers.

Those were good times.  The more we treadmilled, the more credit we got.  Everyone was happy and thought it was a good idea for us to treadmill more.  We got twice as much treadmilling as the other kids and my Mom bought me a special treadmill at home so I could be the best of all of the Treadmillers. Some of the Treadmillers started to get rashes.  I was OK though.  The facial ticks went away every summer.

So finally, the big day of graduation came and I sat with all the other Treadmillers.  There were eleven us. We started with forty.  I was so proud. Do you know that we won all the big awards that night?  Now it's true that some of the other kids ran faster times but we Treadmillers had our times reduced by 5% for all of our hard work and dedication.

I found out years later that we weren't the only ones.  Did you know there were others?  Some places actually built schools for Treadmillers.  To this day parents will line up to get into a prestigious Treadmill Academy. And the idea has really caught on.  There are even schools for Abacusers and Paintbrushers and Orchestrators and Basketballers and Dramatizers. Those lucky kids.

My running never really was the same after the Treadmillers.  The other kids made track teams and some Treadmillers did pretty well but I never quite measured up.  I don't run anymore.

But you know I am a gifted runner right?