Tinkerings

I take pictures.  Some days I take a lot of pictures.  Some days nothing.  I am not a photographer.  I’m just a plain ol’ ordinary picture taker.  Some things capture my attention more than others.

I love taking pictures of old things.  Abandoned things.  Lonely things. Solitary things. Black and white things.  You can draw your own Freudian conclusions.  I am learning more and more how to take pictures of people.  Capturing moods at parties.  Oh, and food.  I love to take pictures of food.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with HDR.  I follow some blogs that specialize in this photography type.  My camera has limited capabilities for it, but I’m learning with it before I spend the $6,000 or more on a new camera (yeah, in my dreams).

So, a couple of days ago I drove out to Parksville Lake to take some pictures at sunrise.  I took a few I liked even though I technically missed the sunrise because it didn’t show up over the mountains until long after the weather channel told me sunrise would happen.  Still, I had 5 or 6 pictures of which I was fairly proud.  I posted one on my Posterous site.

On the way back home, I passed an old barn that nearly always catches my eye along this stretch of road.  It sits on the edge of a wheat field.  It is old and run down.  It calls to me for some reason.

And when I passed it on this particular morning it was gorgeous.  There was a thick layer of fog out over the field.  Immediately, I could see the shot in black and white.  Maybe even one of the best pictures I’ve ever taken could come of that scene.  I started to turn around and go back, but….

So I convinced myself I was busy.  I needed coffee.  I was hungry.  After all, the fog would be there again, right?

I got up this morning and drove back out to the spot.  Nothing.  No fog.  Just a barren old barn in the middle of a field. Nothing spectacular.  Interesting, yes.  Eye-popping, no.

How many times has my classroom behavior mirrored my picture taking?  I spot a teachable moment.  I can see it in the kid’s eyes.  She wants to learn.  But what she wants to learn isn’t in my lesson plan and I’m being evaluated.  What she wants to learn isn’t one of the SPIs the state has dictated I spend my time on.  What she wants to learn would mean that I have to get 24 other kids doing something else for 5 minutes while I help her.  What she wants to learn won’t be learned today because I’m busy. I’m overworked. I’m stressed.  I’m…

Now I’m stuck. I will go back to that barn a lot over the next few days.  Earlier.  Later.  Rainy days. Sunny ones. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the perfect fog cover just once more.  I won’t let it slip away from me again.  I’m determined.  I have promised myself.

And I wonder when that longing for learning will show up in the eyes of one of my students again.  Will I be as ready?

What about you?

Its time to bring a brief update about my weight loss.  I know you have all been dying to know how things are going since the shots have stopped.  So here goes…

I spent 2 weeks continuing to eat 500 calories a day as recommended by my weight loss program.  During that time I lost about 2 pounds, which took my total to 35 pounds lost.  After that, they told me to bump my calories up to 1,000 to 1,200 a day in order for my metabolism to start re-adjusting to more food.

Unbelievably, I spent 3 weeks eating 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day with no change whatsoever.  How can you try to so hard, eat so little, and not lose any weight? was the big question in my head.

This is the 4th week I’ve been at 1,000 to 1,200 calories.  It is also my 53rd birthday week.  So, to be honest, I haven’t counted many calories.  I’ve been afraid to!  While I’ve tried to be pretty good at most meals (I eat fish and chicken a lot more than steak and I almost always choose broccoli as my side dish with no fries or baked potatoes!), let me tell you what I know about how I’ve cheated:

• I have no groceries in the house, so I’ve eaten every meal and snack somewhere else
• I’ve had wraps and artisan sandwiches for breakfast at Starbucks.  Not high calories, but more carbs than I’m supposed to have.
• I’ve had a large portion of Chocolate Molten Lava Cake… with ice cream… twice!  And that’s just since Monday!
• Yesterday I had 1 1/2 donuts and two bite sized candy bars during our training sessions
• Let’s not even talk about lunch.

You get the idea.  So, today when I got on the scale I was expecting the worst.  I closed my eyes and stepped on.  I looked down.  Shook my head.  Stepped off.  Got back on.  And then did all that again.

I lost another pound.

And here’s what I bring from that.  While I concentrated so hard on losing weight, I didn’t lose anything.  When I concentrated on living moderately, I did.

And here’s my advice to teachers out of this little “life lessons 101″….

Forget about evaluations and rubrics and law changes and observations and…. well, you get the idea.

Just go into your classroom and teach.

I know you’ve got to write up lesson plans, and a lot of you haven’t done that in years.  I know you’ve got a rubric to follow when you are observed.  I know you’ve got umpteen hundred standards to cover.  I know you are judged on test scores.  I know you’ve got to adjust for rigor and relevance.

But the kids in your classes just want to look at you and know that you are connecting with them.  They want to know that you recognize when they are having a bad day.  They want you to talk to them even if they refuse to talk back.  They want you to put your hand on their shoulder as a connection to their soul even if they act like they don’t.  They want to feel that you are looking into them and not just at them.

And mostly, they want to learn.  They do.  Honest.

If all your time is spent stressing over “teaching right” to show gains you are going to be as disappointed as I was trying to lose weight by stressing over calories every meal.

Close your eyes.  Take a deep cleansing breath.  Open your eyes. Let your mind see your classroom as a place of learning more than a place of observing.

You won’t be disappointed.

As an English teacher, even I can get caught up in forgetting that “data” is plural.  We use it interchangeably as both singular and plural all the time.  However, the singular version is “datum.”  But datum doesn’t have quite the sex appeal that data has, so we just overuse the word in an effort to sound more intelligent.  Myself included.

There are two areas, more than any others, where data needs to be recognized as plural.  They are weight loss and education.  Well, OK, they are really important to me right now.

Take a look at this chart:

This is a pretty simple weight loss chart.  I updated just before starting this post.  I have multiple points of data that indicate I am on the right track.  It demonstrates both where I am in relationship to my goal (210 pounds at the end of 30 days).  It also demonstrates my progress along the way from one point to another.  It has multiple assessment indicators.  I can look at it and see that I am on track.  I don’t mind the plateaus or the slight gains on one day or another because overall I am doing what I set out to do at the pace I wanted it done.

As a teacher, I often get frustrated when a parent comes to me and says, “I see Billy Bob made a C on his last quiz.  He’s never made a C before.  What can he do to change that grade?”  This is a concerned parent.  It is the kind of parent I want my students to have.  But the parent is exchanging data for datum.  One point in time.

My guess is that the student has never been a 6th grader before either.  I would also guess that the student has never studied this concept before in earlier grades.  More than likely, I’m already aware that this student made a C when he should have made an A.  How can I know what happened with just one point on a grade chart?

I don’t just need multiple data points.  I need multiple types of data.

I can look at that chart above and know, in my head, that the facts indicate I’m doing exactly what I set out to do.  But it often doesn’t feel like I am.  So I use other measures.

• I have moved up one notch on my belt, so I know Ive lost at least an inch in my waist
• At least one pair of pants that were previously cutting off circulation to my legs are now very loose when I put them on
• Some of the shirts that looked alright while standing now also look OK when I sit down (fat bulges when you sit you know)
• Yesterday I took a picture of myself in the mirror (wearing one of those shirts) and compared it to a picture I had in the same shirt 15 pounds ago.  Its hard to see the day to day changes, but that picture screamed, “Way to go!”

We should be prepared to do the same in the classroom.  Why did Billy Bob make a C on this test?  Well, here are some end of chapter questions we assigned and Billy Bob was struggling with them.  I asked Billy Bob to write his own test question about this topic and it was clear that he didn’t really understand the problem.  After the test was over, I chose three questions Billy Bob missed and asked him to write down for me how he thought this through, step-by-step, so I could see where the disconnect is.

If I have multiple ways of assessing progress, I shouldn’t be backed into a corner of “change the grade or I report you to the principal.”  That test is over.  Billy Bob can’t un-ring the bell.  And yes, that “C” is going to lower his overall GPA at the end of the grading period.  But I’m much more concerned that Billy Bob demonstrate learning than making sure his GPA is inflated to help his self-esteem.

Let’s face it.  I could put any weight I want in that graph above.  The scale says I weight 225.2?  That’s not fair.  I stayed within my calorie limits.  I stayed out of the refrigerator.  I went to J. Alexanders for Father’s Day and didn’t have the carrot cake!  I deserve a bigger weight loss than that.

So I change the number.

But it won’t change the outcome.

Or the facts.

I have now completed the first six days of my HCG Hormone Therapy diet.  I have to admit it has been a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Of course, in a perfect world I would have followed the diet to the letter.  However, this world (currently) is far from perfect, and I’ll be the first to admit that I was in situations where I tried to do the best I could, but I knew I wasn’t following the guidelines (or restrictions depending on your point of view) to the letter.

The chart to the left demonstrates how the weight came off over the past week.  The first two days represent those “load” days I through which I struggled to eat everything I could possibly fit in my stomach without throwing up.

After that, I have been on a 500 calorie a day diet.  So I lost 10 pounds in 4 days.  I weighed in at the clinic and got huge congratulations and high fives and fist pumps.

It felt really good.

Then I had to go to a conference Friday night and all day Saturday.  I was having to pick and choose food without being able to weigh it.  I tried really hard to control portions.  I didn’t have access to enough water.  The list could go on and on.  The end result is that I gained 1 to 2 pounds back and stayed there for 2 days.

If I was concentrating on the short term, I would have been greatly discouraged (ok, truth be told I was a little discouraged).  But then I thought, “Tim, 9 pounds in 6 days ain’t bad.”

That’s when I decided it wasn’t enough to write my weight down every day.  I’m a techie after all.  I did what techies do.  I created a chart to help me look at the long term.  My goal at the end of 30 days is to be down 30 pounds.  That’s doable according to the litearture associated with this plan.  That would put me at 210 pounds.  I would be within 20 pounds of my ultimate goal of 190.

Based on the trendline of the first few days, you can see that I would be well beyond my goal.

If I looked solely had one data point, or one small set of data points, I might not know how doable this is.  That might lead to burnout and cause me to give up.  But, looking at the long term tends to still drive me on.  While I am eating one day at a time, I’m not concentrating on one day at a time.  I have to think long term.

I’ve seen this mistake made in school.  Kids (or parents) look at one test score.  They freak out.  They feel bad about themselves.  They think they are stupid.  Immediately, they want to create more work for the teacher by asking for extra credit.  If we could show them the long term effects of all their data points, perhaps they would know that this one hiccup is just that: a hiccup.

TCAP is often viewed that way.  One data point on one day.  And to some extent that’s true.  And like my diet, sometimees external factors enter into the formulation of the end result.  Kids don’t eat breakfast.  They don’t get enough sleep.  They had a fight with a parent or a sibling on the way to school.  They broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend.  Teachers have put so much pressure on them that they choke at clutch time.  This list goes on and on as well.

I’m not saying TCAP is good or bad.  I’ve studied assessment for a long time.  I’m a fan.  Here are the long term things I look at:

• How does this year’s TCAP score for this student compare to last year’s score?
• How does the TCAP score for this student compare to the three benchmark tests he or she took during the year?
• Is there a connection to the TCAP result (Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic) and the child’s GPA?
• If the answer to that last question is no, then we have to ask if the teacher is setting the child up for a feeling of failure because the “A” or the “B” came too easily.
• If the child is Proficient overall, are there areas where he or she is Basic? or Advanced?  And what can I do with that?
• How do the scores of all my students look?  I might not have a done a great job with one, but I may find I did do a great job with 10.

These are just a few of the ways to think about testing in the long term sense.  What questions do you ask?

Since I started on a new diet plan to lose 50 pounds, it seems that all my mind focuses on for this blog are things like food, eating, hunger, starvation… so please indulge me for a bit as I work through the beginnings of a new way of living (again).

Last night was a bit of a rough night.  It was the end of the third day of low calorie eating.  I was watching TV and found myself looking longingly at the refrigerator.  I thought about how many nights I have felt the freedom to walk over there and get whatever I wanted to eat.  It didn’t matter if I was hungry or not.  Sometimes flavors get stuck in my head, and no matter how much I eat, I’m not satisfied until that flavor is the one I find.  And to make it even more frustrating, many times I don’t know what the flavor is I’m looking for until I find it.  The refrigerator could be empty by then!

I sat there thinking about my motivation.  Our new school insurance plan had me do a health screening as part of keeping the less expensive of the two policies.  I’m about 50 pounds overweight.  My blood pressure is through the roof. I have no idea what the blood tests have shown yet.  I decided that morning it was time to get my life back in order.  Take a stand.  Hold firm.

For those of you who don’t have a weight problem (either because you burn every single calorie you take in or you simply have the will power to do what’s right), you may not understand what it is like to stand in line at WalMart and look longingly at an Almond Joy bar.  Or how easy it is to cave in to that longing.  Day after day.  Until at some point, you are making excuses to go buy something at WalMart so you can get a candy bar.

So, today I am motivated.  Today.  As Richard Dreyfuss’ character says in What About Bill?, “Baby steps.”

In times past I’ve been motivated because I spent a lot of money on a plan.  I wasn’t going to let that money go to waste.  (OK, the plan I’m on now is not inexpensive, so I’m sure that is part of my dedication at the moment).  Other times it was because I had an appointment with a trainer, and if I hadn’t lost any weight I was going to be in trouble (my Biggest Loser moments).  But every once in a while, like now, my motivation comes from something deep inside that says this is the right thing to do and if I don’t do it my kids and my grandkids are going to miss me long before they should.

Just because I am planning my own funeral doesn’t mean I want it to happen anytime soon.

Motivation is a complicated thing.  Kids have to be motivated to learn.  Here are just some of the different ways kids are motivated to participate in their own education:

• Their teachers guilt them into doing the work
• They don’t want to look stupid to their classmates
• Their parents reward them with money
• Their teachers reward them with parties and recognitions
• They desire to score the highest on every test, or be the first to finish every assignment
• They are task oriented, and school work is the task at hand
• They have a genuine love of learning, and nothing can stop them (not teachers, not parents, not peers)

Out of those motivations, which do you think will develop life-long learning in that student?  Which one will create within them the kernel of character that will make them a great employee?

I would take issue with those who have told me that it is my job to motivate students. That is short-term thinking and it is killing the education of our children.  It is much more important for teachers to take the time to find out what motivates the student, and guide instruction toward that motivation.

I remember an 8th grader I had a few years ago.  He was constantly in trouble.  He spent about as much time in ISS as he did in the classroom.  And when I gave him an assignment about searching for and writing about a career, he was not interested.  He sat and did nothing.  Well, almost nothing.  He loved to do graffiti drawings.  So I gave him the option of using the Glogster website to present his findings rather than the research style paper I was asking everyone else to do.  Suddenly his light came on.  He found that he actually enjoyed the assignment.

I didn’t motivate him.  I allowed him to use what motivates him.

How are you dealing with this problem of motivation?  I would love to read your comments.

Yesterday was not a good day for the relationship between my bank and me.  I understand a little about how technology works, and I had a problem that would require a “live” person to either “check” or “uncheck” a single box on the backend of my online account.  That’s it.

A single mouse click.

After 30 minutes on the phone I was assured that, indeed, the mouse had been clicked.

It started off simple enough.  The young man on the other end of the phone needed to verify who I was before someone in IT could depress the left button on their mouse.  And so I gave him the last 3 digits of my social security number, the day and month of my birthday, and then we hit a roadblock.

“I”m sorry, Mr. Childers, but that is not your current address.”

What?!?

I spent nearly 10 minutes just explaining to him that I truly did know where I live, that it was clearly printed on my checks (from which I read it to make sure I hadn’t actually forgotten it), and that it was the address to which my statements are mailed.

We changed tactics.  I gave him the last three transactions on my account and he was happy.

And then I made a major mistake.  Yes, I would love for him to change my address to my address.  That required answering 10 multiple choice questions where I had to say “yes” or “no” to every single solitary choice he offered.  No, I did not know what zip code that address is in.  No, none of those domain names had ever been registered to me.  Yes, I did know the month in which my middle daughter was born.  And on and on.

“Now, Mr. Childers, what else can I help you with?” Well, there was still the issue of this pesky mouse click.  “Certainly, Mr. Childers, I think I can help you with that.  Let me just confirm you are who you say you are.  Can you give me the last 3 digits of your social security number….?”

What?!?

Finally, just when I thought we were on the same page, he started giving me instructions on how to create a new account. I reminded him that I already had the account created.  I was looking at the account.  It clearly says “Locked” and I need it to say “Pending.”

“Mr. Childers, are you logged into your account right now?” (Boy, this guy is good.  I had already told him this three separate times).  “Click on such and such link.” (I did).  “Do you see the three steps listed there?”  (I did).  “If you will follow those three steps you can easily set up a new account….”

At this time I could feel my blood pressure rising about 10 feet above my head.  I was reminded of Bill Cosby explaining what a conniption looks like with his wife’s face splitting in two and peeling back away from her skull with fire coming out of her eyes.

Son (I changed my tactice to indicate my superior age)… Son, if I had wanted to create a new account I wouldn’t have wasted the last 30 minutes of my life talking to you.  I don’t want to create a new account.  I want someone to look at the list of accounts in my login and unlock this one named…..

“Sir, we can do that for you (30 second pause). Mr. Childers if you will log out of your account and back in you will find that the account you called about has been unlocked.”

So this morning I logged back in to set up automated transfers to the account.

LOCKED.

How many times have our students felt this way in our classrooms?  As teachers, we often feel we know what question the student is trying to ask, even if it isn’t the question he or she asked.

And then we wonder why their head is turning various shades of purple and a thin line of separation seems to be appearing down the middle of their face…

With all the changes going on in education across the nation, I’ve read, with a large amount of sadness, blog after blog of people who are now regretting that they got into education.  I’ve had a few regrets in my life as well.

One comes back to me from time to time, and no matter how hard I try I can’t shake it.  And with the continual radio ads reminding me that the Harlem Globetrotters are coming to Chattanooga, it just keeps slapping me in the face nearly daily at the moment.

When I was in junior high, I loved the Harlem Globetrotters.  I had seen them on television a couple of times.  No matter how many times I see the gags they played, I still smile at the total, unadulterated fun they bring to a basketball court.  Meadlowlark Lemon was the greatest basketball player (OK, showman) I had ever witnessed.

I remember how excited I was when I learned that my dad… my dad… came home with two tickets to see the Harlem Globetrotters.  My mom and dad grew up during the depression, and they scrimped and saved every dime they could “just in case.”  So for him to spend his hard earned money on two tickets to see the greatest basketball team in the world…well, let’s just say I couldn’t appreciate the magnitude of that sacrifice until much later in life.

I got on the phone and called my best friend in the whole world to tell him how excited I was.  And the longer we talked, the more I wanted to see the Harlem Globetrotters with him.  Yeah, you see where this is going don’t you?

I have this vision in my head of how things played out that day.  I don’t know if they are based in any kind of fact or not.  My mind tells me that my mom and dad were sitting at the kitchen table when I came back from that phone call and asked the question that haunts me to do this day.  My dad didn’t give me the guilt trip I would have (and probably have) given my kids.  I was too young, I’m sure, to see the hurt in his eyes.  He just said ok.

He even drove us to the game and came back to pick us up.

My dad has been in heaven thirty years last month.  One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I never apologized to him for being so selfish and childish.  Or to thank him for being such a great dad to put his own feelings and desires aside for those of his son.

I could name more.  Truth be told, I’m sure I could name many more.

But regret entering education just because things are changing?  Or because it is harder now than it was twenty, or thirty, or fifty years ago? Or because test scores seem to be the end-all-be-all to judge how good I am in a classroom? Or because teaching is one of the top five stressful jobs in the United States?  Or because none of us are paid what we’re worth?

Come on, people.  Take a deep breath and find the eyes of that student who is waiting for you to say the first (maybe only) nice thing to them today.  Look up from your laptop and find the student who just had the A-Ha moment near the front of the class.  Turn around from your Interactive White Board and listen to that student who says, “You’re the best teacher at this school…maybe ever!” as he or she walks out the door.

Regrets? I’ve had a few.  Teaching isn’t one of them.

Yesterday I got to put a check in the box of my to-do list that said, “Go see The King’s Speech.”  I knew it would be good.  I just didn’t know it would be that good.  Finally, once again we have a film that earned the Best Picture nod from Oscar night.

In case you don’t know, The King’s Speech is about King George VI coming to the throne of England after his brother abdicated in favor of marrying a divorcee, Wallace Simpson.  I had read numerous stories about this love affair, but never anything about his younger brother, Bertie (the family nickname), who suffered so terribly from a stuttering problem.

There is a certain jarring effect to a conversation when a person stutters badly.  That effect was both heard and seen in the movie.  Colin Firth did an outstanding job in this role.  It was painful to watch him struggle so valiantly.  You could see the jarring effect in the way his family lost patience with him (all but his wife and children, of course).

But the director had a different way of showing the jarring effect.  He created it visually in some shots.  And he did this by totally destroying one of the basic rules of photography.

One of the rules of photography is that people need a space in which to move.  In the picture on the left, there is a larger space on the side of the picture into which Colin Firth is looking.  Watch closely the next time you are watching marathon reruns of NCIS or attending the next big movie release.  There is a “pleasing-ness” to this view that makes us feel comfortable with the image.

However, there are many, many scenes in The King’s Speech where this rule is broken.  You can see an example of the way I have edited the picture below.  The open space is on the wrong side of the screen.

As I sat in the theater admiring the work of the director for choosing to illustrate this point, I had to wonder how many people felt uncomfortable watching these scenes, but had no idea why.  I could appreciate the effort of the director to make me feel what the King’s stuttering was causing others around him to feel.  But how many were confronted with this jarring effect with no idea why they were struggling.

Sensing this uneasiness also made me wonder about using the jarring effect in the classroom.  No, not the one where the teacher throws the eraser at a student to get his attention.  But the one where things in the classroom change and the kids are thrown slightly off kilter.

Kids become familiar with our classrooms all too quickly.  They don’t even notice the bulletin boards or the beautiful posters or even the layout of our PowerPoint slides anymore.

We need the WalMart scheme.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone blindly into WalMart, walked to the aisle where what I wanted was supposed to be, and then suddenly jarred alert by the fact that gremlins had been at work in the night re-arranging the entire store.  That is the jarring effect at work.

As a shopper, the jarring effect serves to help us notice products to which we had become blind before.  As a movie goer, the jarring effect helped me  experience the pain and suffering of the character who was in such a deep personal struggle that his speech was impaired.

As a student, it might just open my eyes to the new thing my teacher to which my teacher is trying to get me to notice.

As I was driving into the parking lot at Starbucks this morning I was met, as I am on many mornings, with the scene of the Flav-O-Rich milk truck taking up 1/3 of the parking lot.  For some reason, the stacks of milk crates dotting the space at the back of the truck struck a new chord in me.

I don’t often think about the milk at Starbucks.  I buy a Tall Pike Place.  I want coffee.  But I want a small cup of coffee because I drink it slowly, and I want don’t want cold coffee.  Those that have been around me long have probably heard me go through the main points of my “Coffee Sermon.”  So, with great apologies to those I used to blast for adding cream and sugar to their coffee, I must admit that at Starbucks I cut the coffee just a little with some half-n-half to take some of the bitter bite out of this dark blend of caffeine and water.

Today, it dawned on me that the vast majority of coffee drinks sold by Starbucks are probably made up of much more milk than coffee.  And that, dear friends, is why they are so expensive.  Milk costs much more per gallon than does any bag of coffee beans.  In addition, it adds greatly to the square footage needed for raw materials.

Starbucks bills itself as a coffee house.  But in reality, it sells hot milk to most of its patrons.  Coffee is a mere flavoring as a shot of espresso (pronounced with an “s” and not an “x” by the way…sorry, I’m an English teacher).

Starbucks advertises itself as a place to get coffee.  And, a few of us actually do.  But in reality, coffee is just window dressing to what is really going on.

In education, we call this the “hidden curriculum,” and I have written about it before.  But I’ve never really thought about it in this way.

For those not in education, the hidden curriculum is what is really taught even though it is not what you set out to teach.  For instance, my first year in the classroom I put a little note above the pencil sharpener that read “Please Sharpen Your Pencil Before Class Begins.”  I was trying to teach responsibility and planning ahead.  But, nearly every day within the first five minutes of class hands would begin to go up asking if they could sharpen their pencil. And, since they needed their pencil, I always said yes.  So what I really taught was, “Hey kids! I have this rule that I think is really cool, but it isn’t important for you to follow it, so just ignore it.”

And I had a hard time with classroom management.  The hidden curriculum had taught them that no rule was really important, not just that one.

And this is the lesson from Starbucks.  The hidden curriculum (in this case selling milk rather than coffee) is much more expensive and is so bloated that it impacts every square inch of your classroom.

What are you teaching?  I mean really?  When you look behind the curtain to find the man talking into the microphone (as in the Wizard of Oz’s statement, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”), what is really going on in your classroom?  And how much real estate is eating up?  How many minutes of true instruction are you losing every hour?

If you could pare it down (we never really eliminate hidden curriculum, folks), what would that do to your TCAP scores?  Your effectiveness score? Your student relationships? Your parent meetings? The amount of planning you do from 6 PM to 11:59 PM?

Yesterday I trained some teachers on a few basic techniques for making their Interactive White Boards more interactive in the classroom.  We focused on ways to use the boards with direct instruction by the teacher.  (Next week we move to student interactions).  All-in-all, it was a good day.  I enjoy working with teachers.  And, I enjoy working with teachers of all skill levels an abilities.

Nearly any group you work with can be broken down into various sub-groups.  You know what I mean. You go to a restaurant and you immediately see singles, couples, and groups.  You go to the gym and you see those who are overweight and trying to regain control of their lives in some sort of….oh wait, that’s me.  And then there are those who are die-hard fitness trainers.

Immediately, yesterday, it became clear I had two major groups of teachers, but they were not the groups I was expecting.

The first group I have worked with any times.  This group was made up of older teachers (again, I include myself here) who are not comfortable with technology.  I spent most of my time helping them find their way around the toolbar.  When you are unfamiliar with something, many times you can look right at what you want and still not see it.  As part of the training I do for the Discovery Educator Network, I run into this group more than any other.

The second group surprised me.  This group was made up of younger teachers (OK, I’ll put myself in this group, too).  It was difficult to get these teachers to follow my lead in creating new content.  I would draw a rectangle on the board and then add a small star just to the right of it.  We would add color to the shapes and then group together to move around as one object.  Simple.  Or so I thought.

Then I would walk around the room.  Some had chosen the square tool instead of the rectangle tool to draw their shape.  And no matter how many times you try, or how many different directions you tug at the corners, that shape is always going to be a square.  Some had their rectangle in the  middle of the screen, but the star was in an upper corner far away from the other object.

And yet, because these were adults I knew were unfamiliar with the program we were using, I did not get upset or frustrated or short-tempered or…..

Wait a minute!

OK, you got me. Yes, teacher training is a metaphor for all classroom instruction.  Sometimes, the brains of other people just don’t work exactly the way the brain of the instructor is working.  Sometimes it isn’t that kids “don’t get it.”  Rather, it is just that they aren’t seeing it in their own head the way you think it should be done.  Does that make it wrong?

On a standardized test, yes, its wrong.

In real life, not everything has to be “just like I said it should be.”  There’s room for differences.

Toward the end of the day, I had a teacher ask me, “I’ve had a training like this before, and I learned to do this a different way.  Is it ok with you if I do it the way I learned before?”

You betcha.