The sub job that has made me doubt my abilities

Here's the problem with people telling you you're good at something--you start to believe them.
And then, perhaps at some point, you're thrown into a situation that makes you doubt that you know what you're doing.
You doubt that you know anything at all.

I was warned about this sub job, but I took it anyway.
Because I need money to recoup the car repair account.
Because I believe that I'm an effective teacher.
Because I know that I try my darndest to be consistent and disciplined as well as fair and forgiving.
Because, if nothing else, I show up when I say I'll show up, and a lot of subs don't even do that.

I subbed four days this week and feel like I've aged 400 years.
The worst part of it is that with my OCD and my tendency to be self-reflective, I am internally reliving every day.
What did I do wrong?
What could I do better?
What could I do to prevent me from having to call the office repeatedly for backup with two particular classes?

Rationally, I know that subbing is not the same as being with kids full-time.
I'm at a disadvantage from the get-go.
I'm not the "real" teacher.
I know that I can do everything I'm supposed to do, but if other things beyond my control are not in place, I'm at the mercy of the situation.

Rationally, I know all these things.

Rationally, I know that a couple kids, who bucked me hard on Monday, refused to follow my instructions, and rolled their eyes so hard at me I thought they'd stick there forever, by Thursday, were sitting up front near me and attempting to do their work, even if they don't complete their work. Even if they play around.
That is progress, and progress for some students is glacier-moving slow.

I've talked vented to a handful of teachers who say they have struggled just as much with these students. Who tell me it's not me.
And rationally, I believe them.

But irrationally, I wonder if maybe I don't actually know what I thought I knew.

Podcasting for idiots

My friend and I are working on a podcast.
Who knew it was so much, like, work.
You can't just wing this sh*t.

At first, there was much watching and rewatching and re-REWATCHING of YouTube videos on how to use GarageBand.
(These young'uns go so fast on the technology and whatnot.)

We've been figuring out music and logos and openers.

It has been really fun.

The best part is that she and I are talking about books and book clubs and reading.

We're going to have a Facebook page so that we can ask questions and use comments as springboards for discussions.

It is a nice reminder that even old(ish) dogs can learn new tricks.

We've learned that even though quality podcasting sounds non-rehearsed, you really have to do some practice and preparing to make it sound that way.

We've dragged a friend into the closet with us. (Yes, we are literally in my friend's closet recording, which is kind of our schtick. Or mine, anyway).

At first, we hoped to have our first one out by mid-April, but we're now thinking June because we need help in the sound editing department. When we contacted and met with a podcaster before jumping into this, he said it took him about 6 months to get up and running, and so June sounds about right.

I really feel like this is not only fun but a good fit for my teaching/blogging/freelancing life of doing interesting stuff. 

Teacher sickout (short-term, long-term, and realities)

I take the teacher sickout in stride for a number of reasons.

Partly, I think about the short-term consequences and the long-term consequences and try to balance those against realities.

I could complain mightily because as a sub, I've lost two days of pay. For me, this doesn't affect my family's ability to eat or pay bills, so I take it in stride, but I understand how subs who do rely on the pay each day would be frustrated.

That is the short-term view, and I know that there are plenty of people who are focused on the short-term because they do not have the luxury of focusing on the long-term.

The short-term view individual may be frustrated that kids are out of school today because it is an inconvenience. Having to wrangle child care is frustrating, although if it were snowing or flooding or too cold, that frustration would still exist. Or if the child was sick. Or if the school was closed due to flu. Being a working parent means having to deal with all kinds of unexpected issues.

The short term view also worries about what kids are missing each day they are out of school and how that will impact them overall for the year.

All of these short-term concerns are valid. I have some of them myself.

But that doesn't mean the long-term doesn't matter.

The long-term view is that the school year will run longer, so subs who are missing pay now can make up for it when the days are extended into June.

The long-term view is that childcare people would have had to figure out for the end of May or early June is a non-issue because children will be going to school then.

The long-term view is that for most kids, losing some educational time is not going to make a dent in their overall education if their parents are doing things like reading with them each day and providing cultural opportunities and talking to their children. And the children whose parents don't do these things and never have are already so behind that missing a few days of school isn't going to make them significantly worse. If a 6th grader can only read at a 4th-grade level, these three (or four or five or however many) sickout days don't mean beans.

I say this from my own 4th-grade experience when my teacher became ill, and we had a series of substitute teachers. If you have a good sub, children can learn. If you have a crap sub, not much happens. (To be fair: if you have a teacher who leaves crap plans and has never had good management of a classroom, not much happens either). I went to a private school, and 4th grade was a bust.

Somehow, though, I ended up with a master's degree plus credits (which has more to do with my parents being educated and on my ass about my education and in a stable marriage and financially sound).

The long-term view is also why the sickouts are occurring. If charter schools are funded, this is going to have a long-term impact on public schools that will affect subs, parents, and students in ways that few people fully understand.

Myself included.

I don't KNOW what charter schools would mean. But I have CONCERNS about what they would look like and how they would impact public education.

When I'm feeling particularly fatalistic, I just want charter schools to come around and let the chips fall where they may. Let's see whether they are as wonderfully redemptive as some people make them out to be. A recent news story out of Nashville, TN suggests that they may not be as fantastic as they seem.
And this one out of Buffalo, NY.
And in New Orleans, LA.
These are just three news stories.
But that's a lot of potential disruption to a child's education, and I would venture to say schools closing their doors forever seems far more disruptive than three or four sickout days.

(Let me say that I don't always or necessarily agree with the funding decisions by public school districts. I think money is sometimes spent wastefully. But there is a certain amount of transparency that may not happen with private/charter schools).

So what concerns do I have about charter schools?

1. Skill?

Teachers in public education have to meet certain pretty stringent qualifications, which charter school teachers do not have to have. Just because a teacher has an advanced degree does not mean he/she is amazing, but it means they have had instruction in child development and the content they teach.

Just as I wouldn't want a plumber to do my sinus surgery, I wouldn't want someone without a teaching degree to teach my kids for any great length of time. I wouldn't want someone who has never taken a woodworking class or apprenticed to take a whack at my hardwood flooring.

2. What happens to the remaining public schools and their students?

If charter schools come along and siphon students, then the students who are left in public schools may be the toughest kids to teach, the kids who have the lowest opportunities and structure outside of school.  What happens if all the charter schools are full of the "wonderful" kids, and my kid or YOUR kid has to attend the public school where a large portion of the well-behaved, highly motivated kids no longer attend. What is going to happen to your child's education if this situation occurs? Because not every kid will be guaranteed a spot in charter schools. Your kid, whom you think might make it into a charter school, might not.

If this is the situation, what kinds of teachers are the public schools going to be able to hire? If your kid doesn't get into the charter school, then you may be left with the coffee dregs, not only in terms of the student population but also teacher qualifications.

(I don't know this for certain, but it is a question I have.)

3. Closings

If a charter school your child attends shuts down, what rights do their parents have to their children's transcripts, and what rights to students have to their credits?

What happens if a child's charter high school closes down, and the child goes to another private charter school? Is it possible that the charter school makes them jump through extra hoops or payments in the form of summer classes? I don't know, but I have this question.

What happens if a charter school closes down, and the owners/operators simply vanish? How does a parent get a record of credits and classes to give to the new charter school? While this news story out of Michigan is from 2016, I find the situation troubling.

And a general thing that perturbs me:

Our district provides a school calendar, and on this calendar, it shows the absolute last day that students could possibly have school if school is called off for whatever reason. That date for this year is June 11. The days when school could be extended to beyond what we "hope" is the last day are always highlighted in a color, typically yellow.

With these sickout days, I have seen many parents complaining about their summer plans being ruined. Something as simple as a calendar is either misread or actively ignored by parents. Parents plan their vacations for these "yellow--potential to be school days if school has to be canceled." So either parents misunderstand the calendar, or they did what they wanted to do and hoped that school would be done in accordance with their vacation wishes.

Parents have every right to decide to pull their kids out early if they are going on vacation, but it drives me nuts that they bellyache about it. The district tells parents the dates when school MAY happen due to unforeseen circumstances. Usually, those circumstances are weather, but sometimes they are not. If you don't want to feel bad about pulling your kids out of school, then don't plan your vacation until after those dates have passed.

Today's rant/lecture is over. 

Teacher sickouts, pensions, and school choice

Today is another sick out for our district's teachers.
I am not complaining. I am doing a 12-day (now 11-day) sub job with 7th graders, and I'd be lying if I said it bothered me to sleep until 9 am today.

There are many things that teachers are protesting; some of which I agree with, and some of which I don't.

I am finishing up a book called Nudge about libertarian paternalism, which I think describes what I believe in a lot of ways. Not every way, of course. That would be too easy. Given the sickouts, I have been metacognating on various public education issues.

Pensions

Personally, I don't like pensions, but I suspect much of that is because I didn't go into teaching until after I'd held a job in the private sector. I had a 401(k) for five years prior to teaching. That was what I was used to.

I like being in control of my retirement; saving as much or as little as I want and determining where it goes. Given what has happened with pensions in our state, I certainly trust the market and myself more than I trust legislators to not tap into retirement savings for public workers.

When I left full-time teaching, I rolled my pension contributions into an IRA. Now that I am back subbing, I am once again enrolled in the pension, although I will never retire from it with full years of service. Whatever I will get will be a pittance. I could buy back my 15 years, but I have no desire or intention to do so, especially given that lack of trust I mentioned.

I'm not sure if a pension system works as well as it used to when people expected to work for the same employer their entire careers. Teaching is so hard, I think it's a miracle that people do it for 27 years and stay sane.

Still, I think that if individuals go into teaching expecting a pension and being told that they will get defined benefits, the state needs to follow through on promises.

School choice

Everyone likes choice, and everyone thinks they like lots of choices. But the ice cream section of the grocery tells me that people cannot handle too many choices. In reality, our brains can only handle a small selection of choices in most things.

What I find maddening in the local district's situation is how many people say they want choice and then in equal measure condemn our district because the choices are too confusing.

G will be attending our "neighborhood" middle school. He could have applied to at least two other schools and likely would have gotten into both based on his gifted/talented scores. But he would have had to apply, write essays, and it would mean longer bus rides and being further away from home each day (which might interfere with his involvement in afterschool activities). He opted to go the easy route, which was fine by me, considering I've been driving N to and from "choice" schools for four years.

Due to G's OCD issues, I am fully prepared to have to make changes to his educational program in the coming years, which could mean homeschooling him or putting him into a different school. Neither of these would be my preference, and both would involve sacrifice, both financial and psychological.

I am a product of private education, and while I think I received a good education, I was a motivated student without behavior problems. My concern with the desire to siphon money from public education to private education (i.e. "school choice") is the kids who will never, ever, ever be able to get into a charter school.

My kids are bright, have good executive functioning skills, and are well-behaved. Personally, if our state went to private schools, my kids would be totally fine. My kids will get a good education wherever they go because D and I educate our kids. We are involved, and we are financially stable.

Yesterday, I subbed with a group of 7th-grade kids. Many of them have special needs and lack parent support (either because their own parents are hot messes or because they are simply unable to be more involved due to jobs, other kids, etc). These are kids who, if they were accepted into a charter school, would likely be tossed out on their heads within minutes. Their parents, who likely work in low-paying retail, fast food or nursing home jobs, don't make enough to pay for any kind of tuition. Someone making $18,000 a year with multiple kids cannot afford a private choice school.

I say this as someone who works for a private educational institution when she's not working in the public schools. The cottage school I work for is very good because the directors strive to hire people who have backgrounds in education and who have taught before. But there is a certain amount of instability that comes with the cottage school because we rent space each year. Parents who are committed to homeschooling and love our program would hate to see it disappear, but they won't be "left in a complete bind" if we did close down. A parent whose child attends a 5-day-a-week charter school would not have this flexibility.

While I feel like the oversight on public education and chronic standardized testing is a pain and mind-numbing, I worry about the lack of oversight on charter schools, especially for vulnerable populations of people.

Until or unless you are in public schools working regularly with these students, you do not have any CLUE what I'm talking about. If our governor came to some of the schools I've subbed in and tried to get anything done, I feel 95% certain he would be eaten alive. Some of these hard-to-reach students would take his pious, patronizing tone and destroy him with it.

Yesterday, a 7th grader came to school reeking of pot; I'm not certain if he still had some on him or not. Suffice it to say, he is not a student with straight As who is highly motivated to be at school. Some students are dropped off at school by parents who open their car doors and a plume of pot scent follows the student as they exit the vehicle.

I'm not sure why anyone thinks a choice of schools is going to make this kid's life miraculously better.

My funeral music

I am not a fan of religious music; never have been. I don't know why.
I'm one of those people who stands and stares while other people sing at church.

I'm more interested in finding the spirit in the secular. It's there; I firmly believe that.

After writing about what I would want to say in my eulogy, I thought it might be nice to think about meaningful songs. Songs that sum up my beliefs about life and love.

Play these at my funeral.


Do You Realize by The Flaming Lips

Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley

Have I Told You Lately by Van Morrison

Glorious by Macklemore