Four Ways Teachers Are Like Celebrities, Only Better

1) We get recognized.

2) We don’t have to worry about going out of fashion; we get new fans every year.

Last day of school                                                            

First day of next year

3) We often perform for a full house, or close to it.

Source

4) Our fans come to us (every hour, on the hour, like cuckoos).

Source

 We hope this made you smile! :-D

Comment below if any of these put a smile on your face or to share any similarities you might have found between teachers and celebrities.

Evidence-Based Urban Legends

Education treats the idea of "evidence-based" a little differently than the rest of the data-using world. We have fallen in love with the idea of a number. That number does not necessarily have to relate to the concept we are trying to support; if it is a number, it is good enough.

http://davidmlane.com/ben/

I learned my favorite evidence-based urban legend in a curriculum training. According to the slide (which was supposed to justify the county's choice in curriculum), 62% of students who took Advanced Placement (AP) courses at the time of the survey went to college.
Let's break this down, shall we? First of all, an AP course is a college level course. Any child who took the course and passed the test earned college credit. If 62% of the students passed the test and NOT ONE ever stepped foot on a college campus, some would still report the statistic the exact same way.
Now let's pretend that 62% of those students actually went to a college campus and even graduated from college. There's still a problem: the students who took the AP classes at the time of the survey were HAND PICKED for their performance and ambition. 100% of them were predicted to go to college. Only 62% of the students the school system designated as college bound actually made it.
Let's follow the extrapolation further. The curriculum publisher was telling us that these numbers meant that the AP courses CAUSED 62% of students to go to college. Therefore, if we put all of our students in AP courses, our college rate would rise substantially, to 62%. Suspiciously, even though the slide data was nearly 20 years old, there have been no progress monitoring reports  or updates since its original publication. I personally schedule each of my home children for 2 AP classes to give them a 124% chance of attending college.

http://davidmlane.com/ben/outlier.gif

Data-Driven Teaching Deserves a Dashboard

I want a teaching dashboard. I want to have access to all my data in a visual, logical, coherent format. I want to be able to select which section of data I view and manipulate those variables with simple, single clicks.

Dashboard Definition

(a sample dashboard from this blog)

"a graphical summary of various pieces of important information, typically used to give an overview of a business" -Google

In other  words, this is a way to measure performance, make conclusions about the results, and adjust accordingly.

 

Example

My dashboard clearly illustrates that blogs with directly related titles attract more readers than do my more creative titular efforts. The most aptly titled blog is earning the most reads. I have concluded that my readers (you, thank you) want to know the topic before they decide whether or not to invest the time. This is fair, and as the blogger, it is my job to be considerate of readers' needs. I will consciously title blogs with key words, and I will monitor the response through my dashboard. (Or you could just comment below to let me know how I'm doing... :-)

Dashboard Data in the Classroom

In education, we tend to act like business is our older sibling. Sometimes we ask to borrow stuff, sometimes we sneak it, and sometimes we buy similar things and pretend we thought of it ourselves. I will not try to establish the boundaries between business and education, but I would like to beg to borrow their dashboards (or steal them when business isn't looking).

I want to see a line graph displaying the attendance trend over time. I want to be able to segregate out by grade, subject, period, or even individual student. Or by day, or week. I want a color-coded pie chart demonstrating where students struggled most on FCAT by strand, and I want to be able to toggle from whole population to course to class to individual student from one menu. I want a place to collect, store, and display data I gather through classroom tests and even observations.

In a fantasy world, I would have one-click options for data-driven decisions. I want access to lesson plans, activities, and instructional materials for a specific Common Core standards based on my students' results.

I should be able to enter decisions as data points and see the response logically, objectively, and visually. If I notice that I have a much larger absenteeism rate on Mondays, I could start playing review games every Monday. I could enter that decision into a data point and track the trend. If attendance began improving on Mondays, I could continue with the planned activities. Conversely, if absenteeism rates increased further, I would know to adjust again in some other way. (For more advanced readers, please note that I am aware of causation vs. correlation and am simplifying for practical purposes. Although, if you wanted to comment about it...)

In order to collect, enter, and display the above data in any meaningful way would take dozens of hours away from my planning and preparing, hours that I do not have. I only have three options: postpone intense data analysis, make data-based decisions nearly blindly and hope, or send a fake text message to get business out of the house while I raid the closet.

Do you have any tools or strategies you use for data collection, entry, and management? Please comment below to let us know your process for making and monitoring data-based decisions.

 

 

 

Teacher centered business seeking like for partnership, possibly more

Website landing page...check
Blog...check
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn...check, check, sorta
It is now time to start seeking partnerships. As we are not launching until January, we are not currently charging for these partnerships. We want to find like-minded businesses with whom we can trade links and cross-promote.
We are primarily interested in working with four types of businesses:

1. Businesses that offer teacher discounts
2. Businesses started and/or run by teachers (whose success directly benefits a teacher/s)
3. Not-for-profit organizations that are in some way related to or benefit education and/or educators.
4. Businesses that offer products or services that help teachers (Remember: teachers are people too, so almost any business fits into this category. However, we will give priority placement to businesses that benefit teachers most directly. i.e. the Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union before a consignment clothing store. OR, if the business offered a teacher discount, it would net top priority.)

 If you have a business that fits into one of these categories, contact us through the website landing page (or any of the contact pages, really). Please make "business" the subject, and include up to 50 words (this will be your ad copy) in the body. All listings must include an image, so don't forget that.
If you know someone who may appreciate this opportunity, please share this post with them.
If you would like to suggest a business to us, please do so through the contact form with a subject heading of "suggestion." Or you could simply comment below.

We hope to get this feature up and running by the end of next weekend, but there are no guarantees in life. Please subscribe for updates or follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Thank you for your support!

What a good partnership can look like

Thirty page likes and chocolate nachos, life is sweet

I spent the entire day today pleading for "likes" on Facebook.
It paid off! We hit our goal of 30 "likes". In fact, we made it to 36 and climbing. Yay! Thank you!
Having at least 30 likes grants us access to the insight panel, an fb page dashboard. I have only played with it a little, but it works much like our Google Analytics and the dashboard here at Blogger. In other words, it will really help us to see what is most important to post, which will help to prevent us from wasting your time. Thank you again!
If all of this gratitude makes you uncomfortable because you have not yet "liked" us, feel free to remedy that here. :-)
To celebrate, the boys and I went out for chocolate nachos. Below are two awful photos (sorry). The first shows the nachos as they came, the second is what was left after less than five minutes. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day at least as much as we enjoyed our nachos!

This is what the plate looks like when it arrives.

This is what it looked like 5 minutes later.

Value Add Memories

We, my students and I, had a rough year last year: one that almost ended my teaching career. Yet when I look back, all I remember is the good. Cognitively, I know that I felt frustrated and ineffective, but I do not feel frustrated or ineffective when I review the year.
As I combed carefully through my Value Add scores from last year, I wasn't thinking "darn that brat for earning only one star" or "I wish I'd have had twenty of her, she who earned me three stars."
I was remembering their faces and our experiences together. I was proud of the students who did well, and worried about or upset for those who did not perform as well as expected. I do not even know how I "did" because I was not thinking that way.
This selective memory reminded me of a children's Christmas book that caught my eye because it had "teacher" in the title. Apparently, Santa lost his list, and he went to teachers to determine if students were worthy of gifts or not. I will reluctantly admit that I became a little goose-bumpy and moist-eyed when every teacher proceeded to say good things about every student. It was well done, just on the bearable side of sappy without crossing over to cheesy.


I have personally benefited from selective teacher memory. Now that I am safely ensconced in my former high school, my dream school, I can freely admit that I was a terrible high school student. Running into former teachers terrified me for years into my teaching career.
I would see one of my teachers in a training and feel certain that he or she would call me out. I was afraid to apply at my old high school because some of my former teachers still worked there. I figured they would corner the principal and give him a preventive earful (like my senior year when they refused to work with me if I was in the same class as my best friend).
Instead, my teachers began recruiting me. When I finally worked up the nerve to go for it (it was either that or leave teaching), my teachers were overwhelmingly supportive. They made calls and recommendations and gave me insider knowledge. When I was hired, they introduced me around and sang my praises and thanked me for coming to help.
None of them, not one of my former teachers, shows any sign of remembering what a frustrating student I was. Daily I resist the urge to ask "You do remember me right? The girl who slept or talked and turned in no work and still set the curve anyway? You're not confusing me with a better-performing classmate, are you?"
But I don't think they are confused. I think we teachers are just wired to remember the good. Regardless of stars or politics or pay scales or test results, at the end of the school year, the Value Add is the opportunity to impact the life of a student and the knowledge that each student has positively impacted our lives in turn.

I realize that Value Add measures, the politics around them, and their impact on our lives outside of the classroom via pay and emotional tolls are touchy subjects. Hopefully you understand that your value both to your students specifically and to society in general cannot be measured with tests, graphs, numbers, or graphic aids. How do you measure your value? Please comment below to tell us what you hold dear to remember your value, even without numbers to confirm it.

Collaboration

A teacher approached me about working with her classes on an overlapping interest. In this case, storytelling. She works with students who want to teach in early childhood education, and an important part of their curriculum is modeling fluency through powerful read-alouds.
Many associate storytelling with a peppy young kindergarten teacher reading an oversize book to children seated on carpet squares. This is not entirely accurate. Storytelling is actually a performance art, and I will have the opportunity to show these students how the skills transfer.
Collaborating with another teacher is exciting in and of itself. Collaboration is trending, a hot buzzword in the educational community, and the ideas fly fast and furious. However, theory proves simpler than fact. There are countless obstacles, especially at the middle and high school levels where each child has 6-8 teachers. The logistics of content alone would be a nightmare without allowing for individual teaching deviations.
Despite the inherent complexity, collaboration is necessary. Nothing reinforces information learned in required courses like connection in elective courses. Students need the foundation of a classical education to support the ideas and skills taught in their electives. Finally, teachers need each other. Our complementary skill sets prepare students for college and career readiness.

My boys posing at the 2012 storytelling festival

Effective Affective Domain

I am struggling to get my classroom organized, and consequently my instruction is suffering too.
Before I begin lamenting the lack of space and the awkwardness of what little space is available, let me state unequivocally that I am grateful to have a room. I do not know what the physical situation is in your school, county, district, or state, but around here we have "floaters" in most schools. For those you who have the fortune of ignorant bliss, let me shatter your illusions.
Floaters do not have designated classrooms, which means that floaters move their classroom with them at least once during the school. I floated for the 2011-2012 year. I switched rooms six times a day with no base desk, computer, or preparation area.
Most of the teachers into whose rooms I floated were amazingly amenable to the arrangement, but I just could not get myself together to feel successful.Some teachers love floating, prefer it in fact. I find it excruciatingly difficult to function effectively with that frequency of upheaval.
I am ecstatic to have my own room. Even better, I am kind of insulated so noise from my room is not catastrophic. Probably my favorite thing about my room is the window; I have a room with a view.

The problems start with the addition of twenty-five grown-up sized bodies to this space.
I like to use the walls almost like stations with interactive purposes. In this room, the only space where I have managed any interactivity is the door. Even that is limited to entry and exit.
At a popular education site, I learned that with just $1000, a full three day weekend, 8 professional designers, and forty so volunteers (not to mention the express permission of the principal and district), I can create an ideal learning environment (or at least make a good start).
If it were not for the money, professionals, volunteers, and permission, I could have done it over Labor Day weekend. ;-)
Then, too, there is the question of priorities. If I really did get access to those resources, is classroom design the best first use? With that much money, I could feed all 150 of my students snacks for a month. I could provide all of their school supplies (no more McDonald's napkins for tissues) for the year. Imagine the impact that could be made by 8 professionals each volunteering 3 days for 1 classroom. They could mentor, tutor, entertain, and/or inspire. Along with the other 40 volunteers, they could demonstrate how much our kids and their education mean to the community.
While all those volunteers are effecting social change in the classroom, I could actually get some grading done.
 How do you prioritize to manage your time? Please comment below if you know or use and strategies for time management or creating an effective classroom environment.

Social Media Mayhem

As an entrepreneur chaperoning a website into existence, I need a strong social media presence. Enter Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts in addition to this blog and the website. That's a whole lotta lovin' that needs to go around regularly. I needed a cohesive, coherent chart of accounts for the purpose and mission of each social media outlet. Here is my freshman attempt at such.

Please use this as a guide to determine how you want to interact with iheartteachers.org, and how frequent you want that interaction to be.

This blog:

• Mission: to create a community and facilitate interaction within that community to shape iheartteachers.org and form it into the best possible resource for teachers.
• Frequency: I am striving for at least once daily (ish)
• Why YOU would want to engage with us this way: This is your chance to have a true impact on the mission and be a part of accomplishing goals by simply commenting. This is also a place to establish a relationship with us if you might ever want to contribute content or partner with us in any way.

The website:

• Mission: to improve teachers' lives through content, community, and collaboration. There are many sites that tell teachers what we should do or what we are doing wrong or how messed up education is, but none I've found are based on real, plausible actions to address the issues at the classroom level. Many blogs and sites share an individual teacher's thoughts or successes, but they're not about action. What can I do in my classroom to be even better tomorrow (realistically with the resources I have readily at hand)? What if I am not ready to be better tomorrow? What if today was so bad that I don't want to go back tomorrow? Where is my support and community for all I do for society as a teacher? This is what we are building with iheartteachers.org, curated, peer-reviewed ideas and resources with strong, heavy doses of support and appreciation.
• Frequency: those who register their email via the contact form will get monthly newsletters on all progress and plans as well as invitations to physical and virtual events leading up to and including our launch. The website itself will only get updates to fix glitches until launch in January.
• Why YOU would want to engage with us this way: you either are a teacher or you support and appreciate teachers (or you're a member of the broader educational community) and you want to be a part of the solution through positive action and interaction.

Twitter:

• Mission: primarily to broadcast when other medial outlets have been updated (blogs posted, website changes, Facebook and Pinterest updates) but also to scout for content inspiration and contributors.
• Frequency: at least once a day
• Why YOU would want to engage with us this way: you are either an avid fan of iheartteachers,org and the work we do, or you are a staunch supporter of the founder, Lorien Mattiacci. (Either way, thank you!)

Lorien's biggest supporters :)

Facebook

• Mission: keep interested parties updated on the business end of things (such as completing the logo process and incorporating)
• Frequency: several times a week
• Why YOU would want to engage with us this way: because you want us to have at least 30 page likes so we can use fb analytics (oops...YOU...my bad...let's try that again, shall we?)
• Why YOU would want to engage with us this way: business interests you and you want to come along with us as we start-up, launch, and reach our business milestones or you are a member of our community and you want to celebrate our successes and solve problems with us.

Pinterest:

• Mission: pure fun...and a place where we scout for content inspiration, contributors, resources, and visual stimulation.
• Frequency: aiming for daily to fill our boards
• Why YOU would want to engage with us this way: you like our boards and/or you want to establish a relationship with us

Saturdays are for celebrating

Saturdays are for celebrating here at iheartteachers.org, and we have accomplished much this week.

The first requires a tiny story involving a bathroom trip in an Atlanta mall and a big red button. We were at a publishing conference when we hit the mall for a break. There, in the restroom, was a big red button...in the middle of the wall...away from everything else on the wall...with no label. We were confused, tempted, and finally overwhelmed with curiosity. What would it do?

Red buttons incite action.

We were dreamers/English majors, and we hoped to grow up (or at least graduate) and create a publishing company that incited action. What happened when we pushed the red button? The Red Button Press was born.

The website iheartteachers.org is actually the first project of the Red Button Press, and this week we received official confirmation of incorporation in the state of Florida. YAY!!!

We have finished (sorta) the redesign of the landing page for iheartteachers.org. At least it's functioning now. Feel free to leave constructive and appropriate advice if you spot any problems. We launch officially on January 1st 2014 at 12:01 am.

We also have our official logo, which means we can start buying marketing materials.

Oh, and we now know how to upload and display images. ;-)

Getting setup allows more time for marketing and interaction, so now is the time to join our community. Whether you have knowledge, resources, or suggestions that can improve the lives of teachers or just want to passively watch us work, keep in touch. Follow us on this blog, Facebook, and/or Twitter, and join our community for monthly (ish) newsletters about our progress.

Excuses, excuses...

I am sorry that I did not write yesterday. I have an excuse and photographic evidence. I hope that your shock and awe at the fact that I have learned to post an image will mitigate any crushing disappointment you might have experienced. (My thirteen-year-old just finished giving me the promised tutorial on how to transfer images from my phone to the computer.)

Here goes: I was at school until late grading (and seriously rethinking my policy of collecting notebooks to grade on Fridays).

Now...(insert drum roll here) for the pictures:

Forgiven? May I please have extra credit for the fact that these are actually three different piles and not photographic sensationalism?

In the comment box below, please write to tell me how you manage grading. How do you balance teaching with living?

Shhh...

I talk too much.
I have been told that this is a hazard of the profession, but I think I am beyond that. This is my first time teaching this subject, and I do not know any games or activities (other than the usual cooperative learning strategies) to break up the routine. I cannot get my technology working, so I have a board...and my voice.
Clues that I might be talking too much:
1) I had laryngitis by the second week of school.
2) My voice still has a sultry, deep, raspy layer under it (another week later).
3) I am thoroughly sick of hearing my own voice.
4) When I do hear my own voice, I automatically begin scanning for sleepers (even when I'm just greeting my dog).
5) I asked my students, who are lovely, loving, and respectful, if I talked too much, and they unanimously agreed.
Now what?
Do you know any activities for teaching the incident-response-reflection structure in a personal narrative? Fun games to teach syntax and how it impacts voice?
I am not looking to be more popular or well-liked. I want to engage my students so that they can connect with the material. If you are not an expert in the subject of English, could you share some sources with me? In the comment box below,please write to give me any tips or advice or tell me about resources (websites etc.) that I could visit to learn more.

Just a Little Patience

When I was a young mother, I read an article about tolerance levels. The article claimed that there is a simple litmus test for a caregiver's ability to cope with...well, care-giving. According to this piece of media, an adult should expect children to act like children. When this expectation is met through means fair or foul --wanting to be held or drawing on the newly decorated formal dining room wall with mom's newest (and most expensive) lipstick-- the adult reaction would be to laugh. If the adult cries or screams or yells, the adult's expectations did not match the situation, and the grownup is clearly not taking care of herself or himself.
My gut response was "hogwash". Children cannot walk around randomly vandalizing living spaces (or violating mom's personal space). Any sane, rational, caring person would morph into a screaming meemie under those circumstances.
And then there came a day when my preschool child painted the bathtub (and toilet and bathroom walls and my BRAND NEW ROBE) with my sparkly, RED nail polish.
I am not entirely sure what factor pushed me into reasonableness, but reasonable I was. Maybe I had eaten well or slept enough. Maybe I had time to myself. Whatever the reason, I did not yell. I did NOT laugh either, but at least I did not feel murderous or like a maternal failure or as though this episode proved my son's lack of humanity. I calmly explained to him that these were not appropriate uses for nail polish. I made him help me clean.
I felt far from happy, but I was in complete control of my reaction.
Fast forward to teaching.
During my first year, I did not lose my patience. No matter what my students did, I felt calm, collected, and in control. I saw a low homework turn in rate as an opportunity to work on communicating, collecting, and calling. I saw too much talking as an opportunity to tighten up my procedures. All I saw was opportunity.
This patience has waned over the years. Often I find my vision of opportunity blocked by disappointment in student choices. Why can't they just listen? What is so hard about just working? Isn't learning a choice?
It felt better to see the opportunity. Even though I was less experienced at the time, I felt more effective. I was giving more of myself, but I felt less used and less depleted.
Have you felt a shift during your career? Is it natural, or is there something I can do to increase my patience? Please write the tips and tricks you use for coping in the comment box below.

A Dream Deferred

A student realized that I have a gymnastics background, and she expressed her love for the sport. She was enthusiastic, but neither very knowledgeable nor experienced. She soon revealed that she is teaching herself. She went so far as to make an illustrated dictionary of what she knows and what she is working on (as "homework" on her own time). Gymnastics, at her level of interest, is not really a diy type of sport. Upon further conversation, I discovered that it is a resource issue.
I know of  a gym --my previous gym-- that is very reasonable in price and AMAZING at serving children interested in gymnastics and dance. I cannot say enough good things about this place, the people who work there, and what they do for children and the community.
I referred the student to this gym and passed on the contact information. I will probably cross the line and contact her family to see about collaborating to get her into a gym. With my contacts, I might be able to help her pursue her dream.
But what about the students whose dreams I have no experience pursuing? I have worked exclusively in Title 1 schools, and I see this often: a dream deferred for funds. Gymnastics is not an activity that can hold until she earns her own success. If her family finds me meddlesome or needs her income or help around the house, I can do no more.
I have not met many coworkers or training-mates in the field of education who would not do more for their students if they could. The driving goal of iheartteachers.org is to help teachers, and if helping students provides ease to their teachers, we are on it. We are the oxygen mask on the airplane. We are where teachers go for air first, where they can take care of themselves. However, teachers are often those special people who derive genuine pleasure from helping our students.
What do you wish you could do for your students? There is no judging here. Is there something unrelated to students that you wish for to help you rejuvenate or prepare? In the comment box below, write to tell us about your wishes. What dreams do you defer from lack of funds?

Celebrating

If you think you noticed a pattern in my blogs, you might be right. Monday through Thursday, I like to write about teaching. On Fridays, I focus on family. Saturdays are for celebrating milestones in my business (iheartteachers.org), and on Sundays I like to call for support.
We had a lot to celebrate this holiday weekend (personally and professionally), but I did not stop to write about it. ;)
The big personal notable is my baby's upcoming birthday. He turns ten (TEN!) tomorrow, but due to work schedules and the general chaos of life, we celebrated today. We drove out to Orlando to eat at CiCi's Pizza and check out Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.
The CiCi's the hubby found for us shared real estate with an awesome (and reasonably priced) adventure mini golf course. We took a 45 minute detour to let the kids play a round (pun cheerfully intended).
My baby is sure (and has been since he started speaking) that he will be a zookeeper, specifically the man in charge of the giraffe habitat. Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge has an animal reserve on site so that certain rooms have animal views. Zebras, antelopes, and ostriches live on this reserve, along with our favorite attraction: giraffes. There are windows in the hallways that offer animal views, and there are balconies and paths where animal fans can get even closer. While the giraffes did not cooperate with our plans today, the one zebra who rolled repeatedly in the mud was entertaining enough to make up for long-distance giraffe sightings.
I am feeling a little panicked about my BABY turning TEN. I do not think I am ready for all of my children to be in their double digits. Do any of you experience your youngest child's milestone birthdays similarly to how you experience your own? What did/do you do to cope? Write in the comments to tell me stories about your coping mechanisms or just about the personal impact of your children growing up.

P.S. The professional celebration is a teaser because I want to see the official paperwork before I make the announcement. Stay tuned!