Tinkerings

This morning I got in the car at the Starbucks on Sand Lake Road in Orlando, FL and set my GPS Navigation system to see how well it did to show me the way home.  It was about 6 AM.  By the time I got on the road, it had estimated my arrival time to be 3:15.  Not bad.

As I drove across the Florida Parkway toward Interstate 75, I noticed that the estimated time of arrival kept decreasing.  When I made my first stop some 3 hours after starting, the arrival time was down to 2:20.  I had cut nearly an hour off my expected time!

Immediately my mind made the leap to TVAAS and using the gain in time as a method of evaluating my effectiveness as a driver.  (Who wouldn’t, right?).

In education, Value Added is a statistical attempt to demonstrate the impact a teacher has on a student’s learning over the course of the year.  A number of variables are taken into account in order to compensate for them (age, sex, socio-economic status, last year’s test results, etc).  The idea is, that any improvement demonstrated by TVAAS is directly correlated to the impact of the teacher.  So, if the student does what was “expected” by the model, that scores a ZERO (as a baseline).  If the student does better than the model predicted, the teacher gets a positive number.  Likewise, if the student scores less than predicted the teacher gets a negative number.  And these numbers are part of what is used to determine if the teacher is effective or not.

No pressure, right?

So, I thought that if I arrived BEFORE my predicted time, that should be a positive number directly related to the driver.  If I arrived LATER THAN my predicted time, then that would be a negative for me.

Positive : Effective.  Negative : Ineffective.

But then it hit me.  In order to arrive early, I would have to give up a couple of fun things I planned to do as part of my trip.  I had planned on stopping at High Falls State Park and taking some pictures of the waterfalls.  I also planned on stopping in Atlanta for lunch.  Those things would bump my arrival time later than the prediction.

So I had a choice.  I could concentrate solely on the numbers and making sure I was “effective” as a driver.  This would mean limiting stops to bathroom breaks and pumping gas.  I would have to scout out locations for both that were easily accessible from the highway to limit my downtime away from the car.  Driving from point A to point B would be the only thing I had time to do!

Or… (and this is huge)… I could choose to both drive from point A to point B AND add my own value to the drive.  I needed the rest I would get from walking around at the park.  It was actually better for my own health to do so.  And, I could find a place to eat that would expand my horizons, get me out of my own little world, and make me a more complete person in the process.

Teachers are faced with this choice every day.  Because TCAP is so important for rating schools, students, and now teachers, it is the end-all of education.  We don’t have time for cultural diversity.  We don’t have time for field trips.  We don’t have time for visiting speakers.  We have these standards to cover.  We have to test the kids to see if they are ready for the test.  Point A to Point B.  That’s it.

But what if I chose the second option in my classroom?  What if I chose to be less concerned with TVAAS and more concerned about creating a well-rounded individual who would be prepared to go out into the world upon graduation?  What if I did emphasize those field trips?  What if I did attempt to expand cultural horizons?  Would I be willing to be considered professionally less effective in order to be individually more effective?

These are the thoughts that went through my mind as I wandered through the woods of the state park.  I thought about them again as I enjoyed lunch at one of my favorite places in Atlanta (the OK Cafe, in case you were wondering).  I chose Plan B.

I arrived at home at 3:55.  Some 40 minutes later than the test data should I should have.

I guess I have to be considered an ineffective driver.

But I was able to put joy back into the journey.  And that, as they say, is that.

It has been just over a week since I began the second round of the HCG diet.  I have now officially lost 10 pounds in 10 days.  Yeah, OK, it was 10 pounds in 9 days, too.  And that’s why I’m writing today.

I knew my timing wasn’t too bad for starting again.  I’ll be done with the injections in time for Thanksgiving, and although I can’t just dive in and eat whatever I want, I won’t be too concerned if I over-indulge just a bit.

However, one thing I did forget was a dinner party I had agreed to cook for last night.  I love to cook (except when I’m just cooking for me), and that probably explains part of why I have a weight problem.  Basically, I like to eat.  But I digress…

I started preparing food on Monday.  The meal was simple: a small appetizer, salad, chili and cornbread, and cake for dessert.  So Monday night I put the chili together and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator so all the flavors would have time to come together.  And I put the cake together.  Yeah.  That cake.  Nanny Ogle’s North Carolina Raw Apple Cake.

Tuesday I planned my eating around the fact that I was going to go over my calorie intake.  I ate a 1/2 grapefruit for breakfast.  Snacked on an apple later.  A simple side salad for lunch.  So far so good.

I allowed myself a few crackers with cream cheese and red pepper jelly while we were waiting for people to arrive.  Oh. My. Gosh.  The sensation of carbs and fats and sugars and… well, I allowed myself to have a few more.

The salad was a blend of assorted greens, thin Honey Crisp apple slices, blueberries, cranberries, mozzarella shreds, and roasted peppers.  Not too bad for my diet.  I even allowed myself a thin slice of cornbread with my bowl of chili.  It may be the first time in history I stopped myself at just one bowl of chili.  It was tough.

And then, it was time for cake.  Yeah.  That cake again.  Nanny Ogle’s North Carolina Raw Apple Cake.  I doled out squares for those at the table and listened as the “Oh. My. Gosh” moments started to buzz.  Its like mainlining cinnamon and sugar.

As I looked at the last plate (mine) I was faced with a simple choice.  Small piece or large piece?  The next thing I knew I was sitting at the table with an empty plate.  I may have blacked out.  I’m not sure.  I definitely remember not choosing the small piece.

I was totally prepared for the consequences of putting back on 2 or 3 pounds overnight.  But, when I got on the scales this morning I weighed exactly what I weighed yesterday.  After one indulgent meal, I was extremely happy to be holding my own.

And at the end of the day, sometimes that’s all you need to pick up and get back on track.

With few exceptions (Will Ferrell and Darrell Hammond come to mind), Saturday Night Live has never been as funny as when it first started in the ’70s.  I was an instant fan.  Of course, back then I was young enough to stay up late enough to watch it without relying on re-runs on the montage of clips that outline the Best of Saturday Night Live series.

No one made me laugh more than Gilda Radner.  She had such a large cast of characters in her head, and they will all hysterically funny.  One I looked forward to more than most was that of Emily Litella.  Emily Litella was an elderly woman who did opinion pieces on the Weekend Update skit with Chevy Chase.  She would start with a classic question like, “What’s all this fuss about having too many violins on television?”  For the next three or four minutes she would go off on a rant only to be interrupted by Chevy.  “Miss Litella, that’s violence.  It is too much violence on television.  Not violins.”  Radner would look at him in bewilderment and then say, “Oh!  That’s different!”  And then look straight at the camera, smile, and in her crackly old-woman voice give her signature line.  “Never mind!”

This weekend I must have been channeling Emily Litella.  I had spent a couple of days in Nashville listening to and testifying before the House Education Committee about teacher evaluations.  I’ll admit I’ve been pretty worked up over the fact that we have this great evaluation tool from TAP, but our state has decided to use it in such a way that makes it cumbersome, time consuming, and somewhat meaningless.  Teachers and principals alike are frustrated.  Yet we continue to work through the kinks in hopes that we can, over time, morph this tool into something meaningful.

So, when I read an article in the Tennessean that the Tennessee Board of Education had made a change that would allow principals to double up on classroom observations in-between conferences, I definitely had my Emily Litella moment.

I immediately posted the article on Facebook.  I talked to leadership in our district.  I talked to people at the Professional Educators of Tennessee.  I talked and talked and talked.  I even sent out an email to our local members outlining what the paper said and calmly explaining why this was a bad idea.

Thankfully, on Sunday two or three people channeled Chevy Chase to me.  The Tennessean had it wrong.  Like so many others, the paper obviously does not understand the TEAM Model and wrote a story that was totally inaccurate.  It was suggested that I look at the Board of Education’s website and read the policy change for myself.  And I did.  And I blushed with embarrassment.

The Board of Education had approved allowing principals to do a totally separate observation (like that on the Environment rubric) while also doing the Instructional Observation.  This would, indeed, save by principals and teachers time in the model.  It appears to be a win-win for everyone.

And my immediate response was, “Oh! That’s different!”

And so to those who read my Facebook post, or received an email from me, or sat through rants I must have had over the weekend….

Never mind!

Sometimes blog post ideas just come to me.  I see something at the mall and an idea sparks in my head.  Driving down the road a song sometimes implants itself as a kernel of a future blog flower.  A conversation with an old friend.  Dieting.  Work.  Sometimes these ideas come to me faster than I can remember to write them down, and I am left with that nagging feeling that somewhere in a synapse of my brain is a germ of a thought waiting for expansion into new dendrites.

Not today.  Today I have nothing.  Well, that’s not quite true.  I have some things I need to write for the Bradley County Association of Professional Educators blog.  I have a long list of ideas for the Bradley County Schools Technology Blog.  I’m even considering a new blog at an as yet unpurchased URL at www.CookingForOne.com.

But for this blog?  Nada.  Nothing.  Bupkis.

Oh, I could rehash ideas about my diet and weight loss.  I’m maintaining at 35 pounds lost by the way.  I could talk about the start of school, but so far the only stories I have to tell are humorous examples of technology gone wrong.  Not a positive way to start a year.  Better to just stay quiet on that one.

So, in the spirit of Seinfeld, and in a commitment to write, I decided to  post this blog about nothing.  Maybe next time there will be a nugget of educational wisdom, parental insights, technology goldmines, or just interesting fodder.  But not today.  Today this is a post about nothing.

Thanks for reading.

I am writing my first full-blown blog from my iPad. Not because I want to (I don’t). Not even because I think it would be “cool.”. It certainly isn’t easier. It has become a necessity.

A couple of days ago my Mac started doing some weird things. It was pausing and giving me the psychedelic pinwheel of grief. Then it would start again and be fine. Then, suddenly, I got the Grey Screen of Death. I immediately fired up my iPad and went to Apple Support to see what I should do. I tried several things. I finally got to the “repair disc” section in the event the problem was the hard drive. The repair failed.

Uh oh.

So now the local Mac Authority store has explained that my hard drive is toast and will need to be replaced. No problem. Just copy all my files over to the new drive and we’re ready to roll!

Not so fast.

They can’t see the hard drive. Files cannot be copied. And then the heart wrenching reason for this post…. Have you used Time Machine to create a backup to reload?

I am a technology coach. I should know better. We just had this talk at the end of the school year about teachers backing up lesson plans and ActivInspire Flipcharts and SMART Notebook files and… I should know better. I have a TERABYTE external hard drive for goodness’ sake! Yep, I should know better.

As a result I have lost all Word docs, PDF files, Excel spreadsheets, downloaded emails, video tutorials, and a multitude of programs downloaded and installed over the past 18 months. Not to mention over 100 CDs burned to iTunes. At least I have backups of the nearly 1,200 family photos I scanned I to iPhoto!

I should have known better.

You can bet when I get that thing back with a nice, new, shiny, clean hard drive I will set up Time Machine. I will be ready. Next time.

On a more positive note, I am still clinging to my diet plan. Ordinarily, news like that above would drive me to the refrigerator until it was emptied or i could no longer breathe. I have now officially lost 15 pounds in just 11 days. I feel great. My clothes are fitting better (at least this size is). I have more energy. I am sleeping better. And while I get hungry, it is not that feeling of starvation I feared.

So I’ve learned two important lessons with the same simple answer. Whether it is technology or a visit to the Chinese Buffet, I have only one mantra:

Back up, dude!

Sometimes my mind just wanders to weird things.  Like this thought I had today that just came to me in a flash.  I didn’t dwell on it.  Its like the whole thought came to me in one blinding split-second big bang.  Instant clarity.

What if I went into my class one day and decided I was going to run it like the school systems of our state?  We are a right-to-work state, so naturally that would transfer into every child is allowed to have an education regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, etc.

My class is going along smoothly.  When students are having trouble with work, or understanding rules, they come to me one at a time and we talk through the issues.  But, one day it changes.

In my class of 30 students, 16 decide they want to bind together to form a collective bargaining unit.  (That’s 50% plus 1 in case you have trouble with math the way I do).  So we meet together to hammer out a contract for “all” the students in the class.  When I ask about the other 14 kids, the response of the student union is that if they want to be represented they can pay a percentage of their lunch money to join the collective bargaining unit.  Otherwise, they can live the decisions made by the 16.

But then, 16 students talking to me at one time is unmanageable, so they elect 3 to sit at the table.  When the contract is over, I am only allowed to talk to the 16 students about any changes I may want to make in the rules regarding how my class will be run.  I only have so many homework assignments I can make in a given grading period.  And I can’t give a grade lower than a 70.  After all, the idea of a failing student is incomprehensible.

In addition, I can only post work examples on my wall of one of those 16 students.  The other 14 are not allowed to use the walls to display their work.  The student union gets to decide the seating arrangement for their group. The others get what’s left over.  And the union members get first dibs on the computers in the back of my class.  If I am going to call home, or send a letter to parents, I have to get it approved by the committee of 3 beforehand.

In this model of a classroom, two things are certain.  First, learning would stop.  Second, I would be fired.

When I was in school, I was (for all intents and purposes) one of those 14.  I wasn’t the popular kid in school.  I didn’t play sports.  I didn’t run for SGA. In junior high I hung out with the misfits and left-outs.  As a result, as an adult I root for the underdog.  And as a teacher I pull for those that are under represented, both student groups and teacher groups.

No doubt many of you reading this post looked at my class as a collective bargaining unit and thought, “This is NOT the way to run a class.”  And yet, it is the way we run our education system.

Hopefully, with the current legislation under review in Nashville, we will change things from a monopolistic bargaining model to a collaborative bargaining model.

And those 14 students will breathe a huge sigh of relief.

(Cross posted to www.bcape.org)

I have to wonder sometimes about the decisions made concerning education.  No, I’m not talking about the current onslaught of things happening in Wisconsin or Ohio or Indiana.  I’m talking about the disconnect between mandating 21st century skills and creating regulations that keep our students (and teachers) away from 21st century tools.

It has always amazed me that the site which hosts my domain name, Netfirms, is blocked by Tennessee filters.  I can see my site (and the others they host) just fine.  But if I have a problem with my site, I cannot contact Netfirms to let them know about it unless I leave campus.

Now the same is true for Posterous.  I have been recommending Posterous to teachers who want to blog and need something incredibly easy.  You just send your account an email and your blog is updated.  Now Posterous is blocked as well.  My blog is not, but the site used to set up the blog is.

Here is the answer I got from ENA when I asked them open Posterous back up so teachers can blog easily:

I’m not really sure who wrote the Tennessee Schools K12 Cooperative contract, but it couldn’t have been anyone familiar with 21st century tools.  After all, technically Google is a web hosting site as well since it allows you to create webpages.

This kind of thinking is the same that made some people in England think the fork would never catch on as an eating utensil.  It made others in the U.S. think that the train could never compete against the horse.  And still others to think that computers or the Internet would never catch on.

Don’t get me wrong.  I can still use Posterous and Skype.  There are work arounds that make these decisions null and void.  And that is the very reason the rule needs to change.

The footsteps you hear are me climbing down off my soapbox.

When I led a Christian Servicemen’s Center in England, within an hour’s drive of London and just twenty minutes from Cambridge, I used to tell people that was “suffering for Jesus.”  Today, I’m suffering for Bradley County Schools at ATIA in balmy Orlando, FL.  ATIA is an Assistive Technoogies conference for people with special needs.

This is my first time to attend this conference and my first time to stay at the beautiful Caribe Royale hotel and convention center.  Even though the first session has not started yet (but will in about 10 minutes), I am already very impressed.  The people who are “working” the conference have been extremely nice and helpful.  I’m sitting here the room for my first session and listening to some ladies up front talking to the speaker.  They are all laughing and having a good time, as are nearly everyone I’ve run across in the hallways.

Perhaps it is because, as special education teachers and vendors, they understand the need to reach out to those around them.  To offer kinder words.  A gentler touch.  A more compassionate spirit.

Oh, I know what some special education teachers are like behind closed doors.  They experience the same frustrations every teacher faces.  But when they get around those kids, there is a halo of light that surrounds them.  Special Education teachers are truly special.

And so, while it is 30 degrees with a light snowfall on the ground at home, I am here in 60 degree, sunny Florida.  Stay tuned for the travails of one who has agreed to suffer for the good of his school system.

I’m a teacher.  I’m used to kids being kids.  Some days I play along.  Some days I try to get them to act more like adults.  Its the dance we do every day.  Sometimes when I’ve had enough, my calming….er….planning period helps me focus back to some of the reasons why some children act like…well…children.

Some of these kids get absolutely no attention at home.  They act out in school because it feeds a deep seated longing for connection.  I have to remind myself that loving these children is far better than scolding them, even when scolding is easier.

Some kids are simply immature.  We get a lot of 6th and 7th grade students that have trouble in middle school simply because they started really early in kindergarten.  It wasn’t much of a problem in elementary school, but in middle school we are expecting a slightly higher maturity level.  Some kids struggle with this.  In fact, a new study out says we may have misdiagnosed over 1 million kids as ADHD who are really just immature for their age group.

Some kids act like their parents.  Their behavior just doesn’t fall far from the tree.  Like yesterday.  Another teacher and I were dealing with a student after school who refused to follow our instructions. She had a smirk on her face and just kept walking in the direction she wanted.  When I saw her mom pull up to get her, I decided to talk to her and see if she would help us get her daughter to be less antagonistic and sarcastic toward her teachers.  Yep.  You guessed it.  The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Teachers can usually help the first two types if students.  The third is much more difficult.  More difficult.  Not impossible.

But it sure feels that way sometimes.

Have you ever just had one of “those” days?  Yeah, me too.  I don’t like them much.  But they seem to sneak up on you at times, and before you know it, you’re smack dab in the middle of one of them!

Today was that day.

It started just fine.  I slept well last night (first night in a long while).  I woke up easily at 4:20 to get busy with exercise.  I even got to work early and managed to get all of the computers (those that are working at least) in my classroom set up so they no longer go into sleep mode after twenty minutes.

Then the hecticness started to kick in.  I was asked to attend a meeting at our district office at 9:30, so I got someone to cover the last part of my first class and others to cover my next two classes.  The meeting went well, and I even had time to get a large Diet Coke from Mrs. Winner’s.  (Although I would have preferred to drive a wee bit further to get one from Bojangles, but 2nd best is better than nothing).

I arrived back at school in time to get my classroom ready for the photographer from the Times Free Press to come in and get some “action shots” of me with my kids.  Well, I say my room, but truthfully I was borrowing the room next to mine.  All her computers work, and I didn’t want the photographer to get shots of a room full of computer-less monitors.  That period even went pretty well.  The kids were behaved and very photogenic.

Then came my planning period.  I think that’s the time my energy levels started to drain.  I began to feel like the walking dead.  I turned on my favorite jazz station on Slacker.com and tried to find my happy place.  But by the time 7th period rolled around I was just in one of those I-just-want-to-go-home moods.

I’ll tell you how I know.  Sometime in the middle of 8th period it dawned on me that I had done the 7th grade starter with my 6th grade class.  I’ve been doing short paper slide videos for starters in the 6th grade.  But I had the PPT slide up on the screen from the last 7th grade class, and I just went with it.

No one said, “Mr. Childers, uh, I think that’s the wrong starter,” or “Mr. Childers, what happened to our video?” or “Hey, you! What are you doing to us?”  Nope.  Like little lemmings they lurked lovingly behind the Pied Piper and did what I had on the screen.

Wow.  In 8 years of teaching I’ve never made that mistake before.  Now, at 5 PM, I am languishing at Starbucks feeling guilty for letting the little ones down.

I won’t even talk about 8th period, except to say, that’s when someone discovered my last nerve.

What a day!