Recognizing Excellence in Education

This week, I received a surprising letter from my graduate alma mater, Monmouth University.  The Vice President of Academic Affairs sent me a letter asking me to evaluate a professor as part of his tenure review.  A random sample of this professor’s former and current students are being asked to complete a very short survey.

Well, a short survey is an understatement.  There are six indicators with rankings from excellent down to poor:

1. Quality of instruction presented
2. Skill in bringing about class discussion/participation
3. Level of preparedness for class
4. Availability for advice, guidance, consultation/discussion
5. Level that examinations tested material presented
6. Overall rating of instructor

That’s it?  Really?

Since the professor was truly excellent, I gave him all well-deserved “excellents.”  But I didn’t think that this gave enough information.  So I wrote a letter of endorsement for him.  I don’t know if it will do anything, but I want the administration at Monmouth to know that not only do they have a brilliant content specialist, but an excellent educator.  He knows how to teach.  Unfortunately, this is a rarity on the undergraduate and graduate levels.

In the spirit of recognizing excellence wherever we find it, I am reprinting my letter and ask you do to the same:  how can you publicly recognize excellence in education?

____________________________________

Dear Dr. Pearson,

It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that I write to you about Dr. Jason Barr.  I know there is no need to write a letter of support for his tenure evaluation, but Dr. Barr deserves just that.   He is truly an excellent educator.

In the Spring 2008 semester, Jason taught EDL 606, a requirement for my Masters in Educational Leadership program.  As an English teacher, statistics and data analysis are not my strong suit.  Nor is it at all interesting to me.  I approached this class with a sense of dread.  However, I was glad to be proven wrong.  It became evident very early on that not only was Dr. Barr an expert in his field and his grasp of the material, but even more importantly, he knew how to teach the content.

I cannot tell you how many college professors do not know how to teach.  Obviously, they are masters in their specific content area, but when required to instruct others in the nuances of their field, they fail.  As a high school teacher in the second decade of her career, I consider myself not a content area specialist, but rather an instructional specialist.  I know how to teach and how to differentiate my instruction for the varied ability levels in my classroom.  Dr. Barr knows how to do this exceptionally well.  When the students in his class did not “get it,” he knew how to modify his instruction in order for us to understand and master the material.

In my humble opinion, Dr. Barr is a gem.  Not only is he brilliant and an excellent instructor, but he is warm, inviting, and approachable.  Unfortunately, I did not encounter this often in my five years of graduate study at Monmouth.  Dr. Barr is an extremely valuable asset that you should not pass up on.  Please feel free to contact me should the need arise:  732-***-**** or ********@***.com.

Freshmen = Puppies

Aren’t they adorable?

Although I am certified 9-12,  I really consider myself a freshman teacher.  Since my first year in 1999-2000, I have taught at least two ninth-grade classes a year.  Freshmen are my favorite.  It’s not just the curriculum; it’s really the kids.

But this year, with 5 classes of 140 freshmen (!!!!!), I had an epiphany: freshmen are no different from puppies.

Freshmen, like puppies, are absolutely adorable.

How could you resist this face?  Freshmen are tiny.  They don’t quite yet fit into their growing bodies.  Their feet are huge.  Sometimes they drool, but you always want to give them a hug.

Freshmen/puppies are playful and energetic.

Think about freshman orientation day.  Those puppies have enough juice to solve the world’s energy problems.  If we could only tap into whatever it is that fuels them, my electric bill would be much more manageable.  But I digress.  Compare your first period seniors (zzzzzz…..snore…..) to your freshmen first period class.  They’re bouncing off the walls like pinballs in an arcade.

Freshmen and puppies are easily scared.

Yes, they are adorable balls of kinetic energy, but they know they are young and tiny.  Have you seen the size of some of the senior boys?  Sometimes we’re dealing with a good 12-inch difference in height or 100-pound difference in weight.  Fresh-puppies are easily scared of being stuffed into lockers, garbage canned, and  book-checked.  Do I ever see my fresh-puppies bullied like this?  No.  But they are still afraid.  (And for the record:  if any upperclassman ever mess with my fresh-puppies, they’ll have to deal with mamma-bear.  I know I’m mixing metaphors, but don’t mess with my kids.)

Freshmen, like puppies, don’t want to leave your side.

Once fresh-puppies get attached to you, they don’t ever want to leave.  With just a few warm smiles, a few sincere words, and a generous dose of compassion (and maybe a belly rub or two) fresh-puppies are yours forever.

Freshmen, more than puppies, need a good deal of training.

Swatting a freshman on the nose and saying “NO NO” is just not an option.  Most of the mistakes they make are completely unintentional.  They don’t know the rules yet.  They aren’t familiar with your expectations or routines.  Hell, they are still figuring out how to spell your name.  So when they drop off their papers into the wrong folder or use the wrong heading, you can’t get too mad.  They’re still learning.  Eventually routines will become rote and they’ll stop eating their own homework.

Twenty Truths Your Child’s Teacher Won’t Tell You

A colleague and friend of mine posted his on his blog, History the Nesi Way.  (He is one of the most passionate educators I know; if anyone knows of an available  Social Studies position, please let me know.  His job was a victim of these current budget cuts.)   It is just so accurate and amusing, I had to repost it.  Teachers, parents, students:  enjoy.

Courtesy: Reader’s Digest

1. My rule for hormonal middle-schoolers: Keep your hands where I can see them.

2. My first year of teaching, a fifth-grader actually threw a chair at me. I saw him recently, and he told me he just graduated from college. That’s what makes it all worthwhile.

3. I have parents who are CEOs of their own companies come in and tell me how to run my classroom. I would never think to go to their office and tell them how to do their jobs.

4. We don’t arrive at school 10 minutes before your child does. And we don’t leave the minute they get back on the bus. Many of us put in extra hours before and after school.

5. We are not the enemy. Parents and teachers really are on the same side.

6. The truth is simple: Your kid will lie to get out of trouble.

7. Encourage your child to keep reading. That’s key to success in the classroom at any age.

8. We can tell the difference between a parent helping their child with homework and doing it for them (especially when they’re clueless in class the next day).

9. Teaching is a calling. There’s not a teacher alive who will say she went into this for the money.

10. Just because your child says he did his homework doesn’t mean it’s true. You must check. Every night.

11. Teaching is not as joyful as it once was for many of us; we get jaded too. Disrespectful students and belligerent parents take a toll on us.

12. Parents give their kids the pricey gadgets and labels, but what kids really crave is for you to talk to them. They want to know you are interested in their lives.

13. We spend money out of our own pockets to buy things our students need, such as school supplies and even shoes.

14. Supportive, involved parents are crucial. But some are “helicopter parents”–they hover too much.

15. Having the summer off is great, but many of us have to take on extra jobs–teaching summer school, tutoring–to make ends meet.

16. Success is not achieved by just making kids memorize flash cards and prepping them for an Ivy League school. Sensible parents know there is a college for every kid, and that responsibility and good citizenship are what really drive success.

17. Nobody says “the dog ate my homework” anymore, but we hear a lot of “I left it on the kitchen table.” And then Mom will send in a note to back up the story.

18. We wish parents would make their kids own up to their actions instead of pressuring us to bend the rules.

19. Please stop doing everything for your child and allow them to make mistakes. How else will they learn? Kids are not motivated to succeed because they feel their parents will bail them out every time.

20. There are days when I just want to quit, but then that one smile from that one kid, changes it all

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Where’s the champagne, confetti, fireworks, and Dick Clark?

December 31 and its counterpart, January 1, have very little meaning for me.  The change over from December 31 to January 1 is no more important than the turn-over from May 31 to June 1.  Nothing in my life changes on New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day.

September 1?  Now that’s an important day.  The beginning of the school year means the end of carefree days on the beach, the end of midday naps, and the end of lazy Sundays.  But it is the beginning of a new school year.  New students, new courses, new teachers.  Personally, I love the beginning of a new school year.  It is a chance to start over with a clean slate.  It is full of hope and new possibilities.

So in the vein of New Year’s Eve Resolutions, here are my New Year’s Resolutions:

1. I resolve to stay positive and not be influenced by those who are jaded, negative, or overly critical.
2. I resolve to not only teach my students about my content area, but also how to learn.
3. I resolve to make my students work harder than before and make them feel proud of their achievements.
4. I resolve to work out at LEAST twice a week before school.
5. I resolve to challenge myself and not accept mediocrity from myself.

What about you, my fellow teachers?  What are your New Year’s Resolutions?

Can I End A Sentence with a Preposition?

Oddly enough, this has been the topic of conversation among certain friends of mine recently.  I admit, I try to never end a sentence with a preposition.  But I do have to laugh at myself.  Sometimes grammar rules make no sense.

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

Diction Addiction: Family

My friend, fellow educator (high school media specialist), and photographer Kate Nesi is running a Fabulous Family Photo Contest wherein participants submit a photograph of their family (not taken by a professional photographer).  The photograph with the most votes wins a photo session with Kate.  Since she is my friend and I want her photography business to flourish and I want a photo session for my husband (@arosey) and myself, I entered this picture of us:

Cute, right?

After submitting our photo, I took a look at the other submissions.  Immediately, I noticed something similar:  all of the other photos are of children or children with their parents.  There were no other couples.

Aren’t Alex and I a family?  We’ve been happily married for four years and plan on many, many more years to come.  But do we need to have children in order to be classified as a family?

According to Google, a family is

• a social unit living together;
• primary social group; parents and children;
• class: a collection of things sharing a common attribute;
• people descended from a common ancestor;
• kin: a person having kinship with another or others;
• an association of people who share common beliefs or activities.

Alex and I are a social unit living together, we have kinship with each other, and we share common beliefs and activities. We’ve promised to love, honor, and cherish one another.  Why do so many people only think of heterosexual couples with children a family?

This definition is too parochial.  To me, when two consenting adults promise to spend their lives committed to one another (regardless of whether or not the government recognizes this union), they become a family.  If they choose to add children to this family, then so be it.  It shouldn’t be a requirement.

Now I throw it out to you:  what’s your definition of a family?

Diction Addiction: A New Feature

Obviously, I love words.  I love the sound of them, the look of them, the feel as they tumble out of your tongue.  Galway Kinnell’s “Blackberry Eating” beautifully communicates the relationship between a writer and his words:

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry — eating in late September.

Like Kinnell, I like to squeeze, squinch, and splurge words; find just the right one to express what I mean.  Sometimes I do this quite well; other times, not so much.

Often I get teased for this.  Friends (and non-friends) tell me I shouldn’t be so concerned with words and grammar.  That I should leave that in the classroom and not worry about it when I’m not teaching.  Yeah right.  It’s like telling me to not crave chocolate or root for Team Edward (James Olmos, that is).

Words are the foundation of our interpersonal communication.  It’s how we express love, confusion, anger, or fear.  It’s the difference between being happy (Ooohh!  My Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 DVD arrived in the mail today!) versus overjoyed (Will you marry me?).  Think of how many misunderstandings or arguments you’ve had over a misused word.  (Like 11 year-old-me calling my brother a bastard in front of my mother.  I didn’t really understand the full connotations of the word.  She did.)

Similarly, grammar acts as the road signs that direct our use of words.  Grammar tells us when to slow down, speed up, or stop.  (I cannot take credit for this metaphor, as I am not that clever.  Credit must be given to Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves.) Can you imagine driving along your local roads without stop signs, yield signs, traffic lights, or yellow lines?  It would be an absolute mess.  Same with language. Let’s try a few examples:

There is a difference between a man eating shark (man is the subject, eating is the verb)

and a man-eating shark (man-eating is the adjective describing the shark):

(On a side note, everyone tweet @arosey that this should be his Halloween costume.)

So yes, it matters whether you use the correct form of your or you’re.  It matters if you use a dash, comma, or semi-colon.  It matters is you use “loose” when you really mean “lose.”  So in my crusade to defend the English language, I will be adding a new feature to the blog:  Diction Addiction.  Here I will explore the nuances and connotations of words that intrigue me.  Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it.

Rush the Iceberg: Letter from a High School Teacher to a Middle School Student

Continuing Stephen Davis’s Bridging the Gap series, I’ve written a guest post on Rush the Iceberg:  Letter from a High School Teacher to a Middle School Student.  Follow the yellow brick road, read and comment!

Here’s the first paragraph:

Dear My Soon-To-Be-Freshmen,

Welcome to high school. You’re not in Kansas anymore.  But don’t worry:  contrary to popular belief, there are no flying monkeys, evil witches, or fruit-throwing trees.  High school is a whole new land that will be your home for the next four years.  During this time, you will grow and develop as much as you did in your first two years of life.  High school is a time of tremendous change and I love being a piece in this part of your life…

Click here to keep reading.

Guest Post: Letter to a High School Teacher

Stephen Davis, author of Rush the Iceburg, was the Featured Blog of the Week for The Next Step.  He contacted me and suggested that we collaborate on two posts:  advice from an eighth grader to his high school teachers and advice from a high school teacher to her incoming freshmen.  This continue his Bridging the Gap posts (Elementary School and Middle School) begun with the collaboration between What Ed Said and Stephen.  This post is from a Middle School student to their future High School teacher.

Have you seen that movie “American Pie”? You know how Jim thinks he knows “things”, but only knows apple pie?
Remember that when I walk into your class for the first time around the first of September. I will likely have what my social studies teacher calls my “bravado mask” on much of the first quarter. Whatever that is…I don’t get it. We watched a lot of movies.

I had an English teacher that talked about how he didn’t expect us to be professional writers because, well, none of us were. That gave me confidence to take risks in my writing (he always told us to do so!). Please don’t expect me to write like Lois Lowry or Jordan Sonnenblick. But, they’re cool.
Oh, here are a few things I’d like you to know before I get into your class.
I still care a lot about what people think of me. My school counselor says that is my most adult-like trait. I don’t get it.

I still have to move around a lot in class. I’m addicted to teachers allowing us to work in groups. I kind of get why. I see the workers at Target always talking (my math teacher said he likes to dress up in khaki pants and a red polo on weekends and walk around at Target answering people’s questions).

My PE and computer teachers used sarcasm and, for the most part, I understood what was going on. However, I did get in trouble a few times when I was trying to be sarcastic but it came across as me being a jerk. I’m still learning how to use sarcasm.

I understand that you are trying to treat me like I’m an adult. But, I’m not yet. Point to the older students for me to look up to. Especially if they are cute.

In all honesty, I’m not too afraid of the school work and homework because my middle school teachers have trained me to only think about that lame test we take every spring. Seriously, that is all they talk about. The only thing I have mastered is how to bubble in circles. I think that is sarcasm.
I’m still immature and my parents say I will be until I get a real job other than handing out flyers for the local ice cream shop. You should try their mint-n-chip…it’s a party in your mouth!  Especially if you put rainbow sprinkles on top of the ice cream! Now that’s sarcasm! Right?

The only remaining curiosity I have is related to my social life: both my real and made up one in my mind.  Sometimes I get the two mixed up. I want friends, but I want to be left alone – both make life easier.

Even though I may look annoyed when you talk to me, I am listening to what you are saying just like Jason Biggs’ character in “American Pie” is outwardly annoyed with his dad giving him advice on “things”, but inside is intently listening.

Oh, I secretly like Justin Bieber.

EdBlog of the Week!

(I know I haven’t posted in awhile, but I took a sabbatical.  Kind of.  Not really.  I was busy preparing for and then having a blast at Gen Con Indy, the biggest four days in gaming.)

EdBlog of the Week?  Me?

Humbled and honored.  Through the wonder that is my Twitter PLN, I was nominated for The Next Step’s EdBlog of the week, high school English teacher blogs.  Not only was I nominated along with two other amazing blogs – Teacher Et cetera and The English Teacher’s Companion – but I actually earned the most votes. Check out the other two nominees; their blogs are fantastic and I read them regularly.

Never did I think when I came up for the idea of this little blog of mine in March 2010, nor when I actually launched it in June 2010 that this blog would gain much attention.  I simply wanted to share good ideas, relate funny teaching moments, and revel in my English teacher geekiness.  Obviously, I am doing something right.

To all of you who followed me, thank you.  I am extremely honored and humbled.  And I promise to challenge myself to post more frequently and with the highest quality possible.