Category: Education

Reinventing Me

I’ve recently found out that when I became a teacher my head was filled with a lot of assumptions about the career of teaching.  First was that this path for my life would be more stable than my previous life as a youth minister.  That was quickly debunked when my district began laying off teachers during my second year.  The next was that teaching “gifted kids” is easier than teaching lower kids.  While there are fewer traditional behavior problems, I would say that I have just as much commotion in my classroom now as I ever did before…it’s just a different kind of nonsense.  I’m just now getting to the point where my latest assumption is coming to the surface.  I thought everyone who teaches was in it for the kids.

Let me back up a few steps before I continue.  There are a lot of people in this world who teach and have their kids interests at heart.  I appreciate teachers that genuinely want what is best for their students even if it makes them feel uncomfortable and isn’t what is easy all the time.  Thank you so much if you are one of these people!

This week has felt like a whirlwind to me because people have been having conversations with me that haven’t normally been had.  I’m going to be piloting a new program for our school next year, finishing up a re-evaluation of our G/T program on a district level, been informed that people are excited at the professional development I’ve signed up for this summer, and have been used as an example by multiple people in the district.  I’m not saying all these things to brag about the job I’m doing.  I truly feel that my teaching career is in its infancy and I need to grow into a better teacher on a yearly basis and I think this is where all the situations above stem from.  I feel like most of my peers in the teaching world are fairly set in their ways and would like nothing more than for the district to leave them alone so they could teach in the same tired methods they have in years past.  I understand that not every training (and there are a ton of trainings) that I’m told to go to are the most useable content in the world, but must we always prejudge the content of trainer before listening to what they say?  For so long we’ve seen new ideas, opinions, and research as a means to “evaluate” us as teachers instead of seeing it as valuable feedback that can transform our classrooms into something so much more than what it currently is.  Meanwhile the people in our schools who crave new best practices, evaluate their progress as a teacher, and seek differing opinions of what is good and bad practices are looked at as revolutionaries.  Somehow we’ve gotten to the point where pushing ourselves to be better than we were last year makes us an ‘overachiever’ or ‘pushing the envelope’.

Hopefully I never get too old to learn something new.

Gifted, Prepared, or Well Funded

Being labeled ‘gifted’ is always a desire for students as well as their parents.  Who wouldn’t want to have their child labeled as gifted by their school district?  It’s affirmation by the educated in your community that your child is ‘smarter’ than the rest of the children in their school.  Often people focus on the good aspects of being gifted and not the difficulties, but that will need to be saved for another post.  Is every child labeled ‘gifted’ truly gifted?  And if they are truly ‘gifted’ at one point in their life should they be labeled ‘gifted’ forever, or does our gifted-ness change through time?  By no means do I have answers to all these questions, but I’m starting to see some commonalities.

What is considered ‘gifted’?

There is a ton of debate over what should be considered ‘gifted’ versus ‘good student’ or ‘smart’.  In the state of Texas, “no more than five percent of a district’s average daily attendance are eligible for funding”, but funding does not always equal the total number of students in a program.  Currently I work at a school of approximately 800 kids, and I have 57 gifted kids in my classroom every day.  Simple math tells you that I have seven percent of my school’s daily attendance in my classroom every day, and I teach one subject and one grade level.  Does that mean that mean that there are an abnormally high number of ‘gifted’ students in my district or that we may have set the bar too low?  Or could there be other things at work?

Other possibilities.

Is it possible that what we consider a test that measures the gifted-ness of our students is actually just another test that we can teach to?  I would say yes.  Teachers, by nature, are a breed of humans that strive to have their children succeed. We want our students to do the best they possibly can.  We do this by researching both the tendencies of our students as well as the tendencies of the test.  We know our students from getting to know them and by both formative as well as summative assessments throughout the year.  The test will take us a little while to figure out, but sooner than later we figure out the heart of a test and better equip our students to conquer it.  People call this various things like “teaching to the test” but who wouldn’t if your job was on the line?  But while teachers are out for the best interest of their students, there are others that take advantage of the desire to see children succeed.  In this case people are making serious money off the ability to teach to the test.  In some cases, the same company who is producing the tests is also supplying the textbooks to teach the students as well as private study materials (see here).  In essence these companies are making money three different ways and one of them is by teaching kids strategies to test as gifted!  I’m in favor of gifted education and having tests that can measure giftedness, but I doubt the spirit of giftedness is being taught how to beat the test by the makers of the test.  The other problem with this is that it caters to wealthier children.  Only those who have disposable income can afford to have their children how to do well on tests or buy supplemental books or classes.  While I would concede that your home life is the biggest contributor to success in school, is it possible that the size of your family’s check book is a contributor as well?

Summary

In the end this mini-rant is not going to change the process of how we label students as gifted.  What it will take to have something like this happen is a generation of people who want what’s best for kids…all kids.  We need to realize that just because our children are not labeled ‘gifted’ does not mean that we have failed them as parents.  Is it possible that a kid can go through their life in regular education and live a happy, fulfilled life?  Absolutely.  Somewhere along the way we have misunderstood happiness and success as what level of classes my student is taking in high school.  Hopefully, we can better understand our own kids well enough as well as the big business world looking to make a buck off of their situation in life and take a couple of deep breaths.  Is being gifted an indicator or success, maybe on some small level, but there are a billion other indicators that matter just as much or more.

Historically Significant Weekend

Most people I know talk about this weekend because it’s a three day weekend.  I work as a teacher and my fellow teachers see this as one of the last school holidays we have before the dreaded month of February, feared the world over because of its lack of school holidays.  In reality, this weekend is huge for two reasons.  The most obvious reason is because of MLK Day.  It is also the weekend where we remember the 40th anniversary of the famous Supreme Court Ruling of Roe vs. Wade.  These two landmark dates as well as President Obama’s inauguration gave me time to pause and reflect on the weight of these events, so I thought I’d reflect on them.

MLK Day – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a huge figure in the world of a social studies teacher.  Not only was he well spoken, but he was also putting into action the beliefs he held so dear.  He was willing to put his life on the line for what he believed in and it’s a shame he was plucked from this earth in such a tragic way.  My pastor at church talked a bit about the civil rights movement and he talked about how his grandparents were terribly insensitive to social justice when Dr. King was alive.  He went on to wonder if people in that situation ever looked back on the outcome of everything and wish that they’d changed sides.  I wonder if there’s an issue in modern day that I could be on the right side or the wrong side of.  I’m sure there’s something revolutionary going on right now that I can’t see, but I wonder if I’m on the right side.  My prayer this weekend is that I’m following God’s will and trusting that he will use me to aid in this change, whatever it may be.

Roe vs. Wade – The bottom line for this is that this landmark Supreme Court decision paved the way for legalized abortion in the United States.  It’s hard for me to understand this decision for a number of reasons, but as I reflect on the topic, I’m wondering if this could be the pivotal issue of my generation.  I’m wondering how this issue will effect people’s lives from here on and I wonder how opinions of what is right or wrong have changed since 1973 when the decision was made.  My church spent the weekend talking about abortion and used both the Bible as well as statistics to outline it’s stance.  It was for sure an uncomfortable sermon, but one that caused me to think long and hard about my beliefs on such a hard topic.

Obama’s 2nd Inauguration – I’ve grown up in a time where politicians have been fairly moderate.  My recollection of both Bush’s presidencies as well as the Clinton administration is that they were fairly moderate in general.  Their oppositions would rather have had their constituency in the presidency, but there was not outright hatred.  I feel like with President Obama there is such polar opposites in opinions of him.  You either love him or you hate him.  I’m not used to this, so I’m still internalizing how I feel about it.  I will say that I kept changing news channels today while watching the coverage of the inauguration and both sides seemed to be courteous toward the event, which I guess is all you can ask for.