I Left My Heart ...

Hello! I made it safely back to Chicago. Yesterday (Monday) was one of the hardest days I've had this year; no one, least of all me, was happy to be back at school after the break, and I wasn't even that excited to be back in Chicago (though, helpfully, temperatures have been back in the 50s, nice and warm). It was great to see Patrick again, but ... I guess I just would've wanted a little more time to be with family. But we'll both be in SF for Christmas, and that's a big comfort. Also, today was much better than yesterday, work-wise. Besides remembering something this other teacher told me about loving your students (and realizing that I do really enjoy a lot of them as people), I discovered that several teachers returned from their trips yesterday morning before school, which made me feel like I couldn't complain about having a mere afternoon to get ready.

Photo time. First, the new paint job on a house just up the hill from my parents' place, on Teresita. You can't quite make it out, but there's a silver tinsel Christmas tree in the doorway. I sure do love San Francisco.
The redone De Young Museum was also totally hot. It's covered in copper plates with holes and impressions that make each plate unique. The streetlamps are also gorgeous. I'm looking forward to going inside next time.



Here's a photo from Thanksgiving at Uncle Dennis' house. Avery peers into the camera while his brother, Garrett, displays the action figures that he makes out of twist ties. Watching the latest Harry Potter movie, I found myself wondering when I would see the name of the oldest brother, Chris, on a rolling screen of credits. His just told me that he's thinking about going into film production. Cool!

Oh yeah, also, I got my ears pierced, as Candice's comment mentions. It was really nice to see her. I miss you too, Can!

Last of all, a picture of the quilt (inspired by Auntie Marilyn's projects with Allison's school) that another teacher and I made with our 7th grade students. The 8th graders did one, too. It features a square advertising "Respect, Caring, and Honesty" (done by a teacher, of course) right next to one with a big "50 Cent" (surprisingly, also done by a teacher)(just kidding).

Japan, schools, the New York Times

An editorial appeared in yesterday's New York Times, describing No Child Left Behind and comparing American ideas about education to Japanese ones. The writer, Brent Staples, acknowledges that Japan and the US are very different countries, but his analysis is nonetheless insightful.

It brought to mind something I heard or read by Michael Kirst, who I guess you could describe as an educational economist and the guru of California school finance. Anyway he said that historically, the quality of US schools has been measured by inputs, for example: the number of teachers per student, the number of computers per student, the amount of money spent per student. More recently, with the push for accountability, schools have been measured by their outputs, namely test scores. This seems reasonable enough. But the problem with NCLB and similar legislation of the last two or three decades is that--and I believe I have said this before, so excuse the repetition--it assumes that you can improve the outputs by simply focusing on them more diligently than you have ever focused on them before. It's like when a student is struggling to grasp a concept and the teacher, instead of explaining or asking questions or interacting at all with the intellectual task that the student is facing, simply repeats, "Think about it. Use your brain!" But the kid doesn't know how to solve the problem. Yelling, "Think harder!" won't help her. Similarly, to quote Staples' editorial: "What has become clear ... is that school systems and colleges of education have no idea how to generate changes in teaching that would allow students to learn more effectively."

Staples suggests that we look at what more effective education systems abroad are doing. One aspect of the Japanese system is the assumption that teachers have a lot of learning to do themselves, and that working with other teachers is a good way to accomplish that learning. This seems kind of obvious, but when you contrast it with the typical experience of a novice teacher in the US, you realize that it must not be. At most schools here, you get hired and you start teaching. There is little or no time set aside for you to work with or observe other teachers. There is little or no support for you to attend teacher conferences. Most of the time, professional development consists of a bi-monthly workshop led by an outsider, which has about a 50/50 chance of being relevant to what you're doing.

I do think we need a greater focus on inputs, particularly teachers. This is an important moment for teacher education and school reform! I can't wait to go back to school ... I love theory. Yet I am a horrible reader of non-fiction. That will be my downfall as an academic.

I feel really lucky to have had the experiences that I have as a teacher. STEP took teacher preparation really seriously, and YWLCS takes professional development really seriously. Even so, almost nothing about teaching is coming easily to me.

We're having parent-student-teacher conferences yesterday and today. The girls were very excited that I wore lipstick for them. One of the teachers commented, "That's really nice! You finally look your age." Thanks, I guess.

Shoes, etc.

The weather has finally gotten wintry. It's perfect, according to Patrick; we've gone from 60s and 70s to 20s and 30s in just a few days, bypassing a long dreary transition. There has been a little bit of snow, and I've been wearing down jackets, scarves, and gloves.

I realized that I needed some cold-weather shoes, so I went shopping today. I made the practical choice of above-the-ankle boots made by Khombu, an official supplier of the US Olympic Ski Team, "inspired by sherpas in the Himalayas" or something like that. Great. Anyway they were cheaper than the prettier shoes, more weather-proof, totally warm, and not ugly. I would feel comfortable wearing them to work, and comfortable wearing them out for a weekend tromp in some park. However, they did nothing at all to satisfy my desire to have shoes, so I've been browsing the gigantic shoe store that is the internet in an effort not so much to find shoes I would actually buy as to find shoes that I would really, really want.

This lead me to the Fluevog website. John Fluevog makes silly shoes. They have names like "Mini: Lily Darling," "Minstrel: Vibratto," and "Lip Service: Zig." This seems suitable. But there's also a whole line called "Peacemaker," with styles such as "Dalai," "John Paul," "Mandela," and "Luther King." I find it disturbingly tasteless to have fluffy tan/beige ankle boots with a faux fur cuff and a big buckle named after MLK. "Hey, are those new shoes?" "Yeah, I got them at Fluevog. They're called Luther Kings, which is so awesome. It warms my heart to know that I have a piece of a civil rights leader warming my feet."

And how about Kellogg's Corn Flakes? We were at the co-op yesterday and they had three different sizes: the small standard box with the cartoon rooster, a slightly larger box with the Disney Cinderella, and finally a huge ass box, super family size, with sepia-toned photographs of Cesar Chavez and Celia Cruz. What is that about?? Patrick jokes that they have to market the bigger boxes to Latinos, since everyone knows that Mexicans have big families (and presumably they need more corn flakes?). The box was quite bilingual, in fact, with "Celebrate Hispanic Heritage" or something like that in both English and Spanish. Good job, Kellogg. But seriously, what is this about?? Should we embrace greater inclusion of multicultural figures in the morass of American consumerism? Decry it as sacreligious? Just laugh?

I can't wait for Chairman Mao Captain Crunch. I'm totally going to buy some of that.



C is for Communism!

Ghetto Schooling

There's a book by that title by a woman named Jean Anyon. It's pretty fierce. Anyway she has a new book out, Radical Possibilities. I was just reading a review and it sounds like one of its major theses is that urban education is kind of screwed. That the work of education reformers is going to fail until the policies that create the macroeconomic and socio-political conditions in inner cities change. The review was stimulating; it definitely has me interested in the book. Anyway you can read it (the review, not the book) here.