Lesson Learned: 1 Kid, iMovie, Google and a Transformation

Today was one of the best days of my teaching career. It’s like God screamed, “Girl, I put you in the classroom for a reason.”
I have a special needs child in one of my classes. This child is amazing and wonderful and all year we’ve worked on him learning how to log into the computer and how to make videos. The videos he totally figured out. He can use a handy cam to shoot the video, upload it to the computer and use iMovie to make his own projects. Or he can use photo booth to make music videos of him lip synching and dancing.
If I ask him to remind me of something, he will every time. But he has the hardest time associating letters and words. So, every day, when he comes to class, we walk him through how to start his music on groove shark. He loves Justin Bieber. All of the kids help him out, never complaining. They love him. The end.
Today, class started and he said, “Mrs. lee, Mrs. lee. Come here and let me show you.”
I was going through 90 pages of yearbook proofs and thinking how stressful my job is, so I didn’t have the best frame of mind when I headed to his desk.
But then he started Firefox, opened Google and showed how he’d learned to search for yahoo and start his own music on yahoo music. When his videos were blocked, he browsed to yahooligans on his own to find his music.
Every kids in the class cheered, clapped, gave him high 5s. We almost broke out in a dance party.
It was one of the greatest moments of my teaching career.
It reminded me that what we do in the classroom every day is so very important. That we don’t even know when we’re making a difference. It reminded me that I love my job and moments like these make the 90-page deadlines worth it.

Killing the Profession, One Teacher At a Time

How has the current test driven culture helped public education? The only data driven results I see supporting a test as a solution to our education ills are results gathered and disseminated by testing companies and those with interests in testing companies. Average SAT scores have remained somewhat steady since the 70s. Professors across the board say our students are more unprepared for college than they’ve ever been and business leaders say we need students who understand how to problem solve, work collaboratively and think outside the box. I don’t know when you went to school, but I graduated in the 80s. I didn’t take honor classes. I took the required curriculum, graduated somewhere in the middle of my class and went to my local university, where I started my freshman year with bad grades due to poor decisions but learned through trial and error how to make the grade. I am a successful, productive member of society. I graduated with others who went on to be nuclear engineers, Peace Corps volunteers, CPAs, Cadillac driving Mary Kay Directors. NONE of them took and passed state and federal mandated tests to become successful. Come to think of it, neither did any of the leaders in the US who happened to make their way through public education before tests took over in 1998.

I wrote the above on Facebook today. I’m so tired of hearing how the US has a failing education system, and the test is the only way to see that failure and correct it.
I’m all for using best practices in the classroom: vertical and horizontal alignment, project based learning, portfolios, scaffolding, the list goes on and on and on. Instead of spending so many billions on tests, perhaps public school systems would be better served training teachers to excel on their fields. I learned more from watching master teachers like Sheila Curlin, Anne Patterson, David Knight, Lori Oglesbee and Bobby Hawthorne at work in the classroom than I ever learned from a textbook or a canned lesson courtesy of a textbook supplier. I get more from honest student feedback on evaluations than I do from the 1 or 2-day observation from my admin. Aside: My administration team rocks. They are the BEST ever, but those evaluations aren’t all that helpful. I enjoy their visits to my classroom because I like to hear their thoughts on my lessons. What would be more helpful: visits from master teachers and novice teachers in my school, and then time for us to share observations from those visits.
My district’s Leadership Academy challenged me to be a better teacher, inspired me to do more in the classroom, gave me tons of tools to use on more than teaching to a test.

Back to my original Facebook post: I went to school in the time before the test. To hear a test is the only way to keep teachers accountable is a slap in my teachers’ faces. I remember four teachers from high school who didn’t do much to challenge me in the classroom. A test wouldn’t have fixed that. What I remember more are the amazing teachers who left a lasting legacy at Burkburnett High School. If I had grown up in the testing world, I’m not sure I’d remember those teachers because I’m not sure they would have lasted in the classroom.

A Plea From a Teacher

Dear Texas State Legislators, Governor Perry, SBEC members and TEA officials,

My name is Mary Beth Lee, and I’m an 18-year public education veteran. From the time I was 15, I’ve never wanted to do anything but teach. I love teaching. I love to watch my students engaged in real learning, in problem solving, in learning the tricks to time management. I love watching the light bulb moment when they “get” a new concept. I love how they’ll try and try and try something, failing miserably time and again, until they get it right.

I love the excitement of a job well done and presenting lessons and integrating technology into my classroom. I love the idea of collaborating with fellow educators to make my school the best it can be and providing life-long learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom for my students.

But I’m not writing this letter as a form of praise for a job well-done.

I’m writing because I’m furious. I’m furious at the expense of tests, and I don’t just mean dollars and cents. I spent an hour watching a slide show on how to give a test this week. How to create a seating chart, how to show time, how to actively monitor a classroom. Later this week I attended a session explaining what exactly my students will be required to do to pass this test, and I discovered the answer is take everything you’ve ever learned about successful writing… and toss it out the window.

In the 18 years I’ve been teaching I’ve watched the testing companies take over the education world. They drive our curriculum, they set the bar, they make billions of dollars off the idea of education reform. And yet, for all their billions, and the bars they’ve supposedly raised, there have been no measurable gains in true academic achievement. In fact, Fortune 500 companies and universities across the country complain that we’ve raised a generation of kids with AMAZING self-esteems, who can’t problem solve, think creatively or write in a way that effectively communicates their thoughts. We’ve raised a generation who can bubble in test answers like none other, but when they’re given an assignment without step-by-step instructions, they freak out.

The other day a friend told me her 4^th grade niece cried all night the night before her test last year. She was terrified of failing. I’m sure her teacher cried all night, too.

I don’t understand. I’m all for real education reform. I’m all for saying let’s encourage schools to set up systems for student success and academic achievement. I’m all for measuring data and collaboration. But these tests we spend billions on have done nothing good for education.

I went to school in the era before the test. I had my fair share of lousy teachers, but more often than not, my teachers were dedicated professionals intent on seeing me succeed in the classroom. The test has changed NOTHING. We still have lousy teachers who need to be counseled into new professions, but most of us are constantly seeking to do better, be better, inspire our students to academic achievement.

I realize the testing companies love to tell you how we’re behind the curve when it comes to education. That’s hogwash.

No other country educates every student, no matter what, for free. Quite honestly, I’d put our top students against any other country’s top students any day of the week. No other country says if you’re willing to work hard you can do anything regardless of your mental starting point. No other country can boast the numbers of people we see on a daily basis who’ve built million and billion dollar corporate empires from the ground up. Our spirit of entrepreneurship and our commitment to democracy have always been building blocks of this nation, and that was the case before tests ruled education.

My fear: tests will kill that spirit and commitment because both of those require the ability to problem solve, think critically and embrace creativity.

YOU have the power to change this.

Educators do not.

Please, I’m begging you, do something about this. Don’t let our children continue to suffer the mindless monotony of bubbled in answer documents and No. 2 pencils. Put tests back where they should be: tools to measure but not the be all end all of our public education system.

Sincerely,

 

Mary Beth Lee

Rider Journalism

Scholastic J

It’s a different kind of work today. One I’m excited about. I have no idea what the future holds. I only know that I have something important to share. So often people look at journalism as a career, a vocation, something to be trained in. The end.
But it’s not the end. For while that’s true, journalism is so much more.
It’s the protector of the constitution. Without a strong free press, the US will cease to exist. It’s an amazing time and a frightening time right now.
Everything is changing so fast. iDevices have made citizen journalism a norm. Paper is ceasing to be the medium of choice for news, there’s no such thing as privacy and people post all sorts of wonders and horrors online.
At the same time we see testing companies and defense contractors buy politicians. Creative thought and the ability to question the answers have been stripped from k-12 schools across the nation, and that lack of freedom is creeping its way onto college campuses…the 6th circuit showed that last month, and the SPLC can show case after case of infringement of rights at the university level.
Years ago, when we were in college, my husband called this limiting of freedoms “foot in the door” in a speech he made about parental advisory stickers on albums.
That was in 1989.
Back then we would have never dreamed an entire political party would take a stand against birth control paid by insurance. We would have scoffed at the idea of The Patriot Act or a judicial ruling that allowed the US to hold someone indefinitely without filing charges over the chance that they might be a terrorist.
Now more than ever journalists must do their jobs. They must be the protectors of the constitution. They must be of the people, for the people.
If not, I’m afraid of where we’re headed.

It’s All About WHY

Today was one of the best days I’ve had at work in a long time. The yearbook still has a bajillion pages due, and most of those pages have no pictures because of deadline issues, our ad sales are down by $7k and book sales are down around 140 (around $10.5K), I ate THREE cookies–not the diet nasty things that taste like paper but the yummy frosting topped sugary scrumptious melt-in-your-mouth buttery delights–AND still it was one of the best days ever.
One of my kids fell in love with journalism today. She fell in love with the power of writing stories that matter, stories that can change the world. She was in J-1, and she kind of sort of liked what we did and LOVED the first amendment discussions and debates we had, but STORY was an extra add on she had to muddle through to get on staff.
Today I talked to beginning staff about the difference between an assignment and writing stories: Assignments are what you turn in to English teachers. Stories need to say something powerful in a way that resonates with the student body. You search for stories, you talk to people, you feel the words when you’re writing them, and when you’re done, you look at everyone in room and say This IS AWESOME, and you know it is because you did the quality reporting to make it awesome, and then you wrote and revised and wrote some more until the story was there and it made you feel something, something more than the blankness of looking at words on paper that mean nothing even though they follow the news or feature format. Last semester two of our papers were filled with stories. The last one was filled with assignments. We never want a paper of assignments again. Ever.
Back to today:
We’d finished looking at samples of assignments vs. stories, and I told the kids I wanted to see their questions for their first stories by the end of class, and the girl said, “But, Mrs. Lee, I don’t know what to ask. I don’t get it.”
That confusion is normal for cub reporters, but she was really frustrated by it. I gave her some people she needed to talk to and started to give her some question ideas, but I could see her frustration was growing worse than ever, and in that moment, I realized she hadn’t completed step one of writing. She didn’t know WHY she was doing the dating violence story.
So I asked her why.
And she said because it was the story she’d signed up for.
And I said, nah, that’s not why you’re doing the story. I have a paper filled with stories and you picked this one. WHY?
And she said because it’s important.
And I said what does that even mean? Be real here. WHY are you doing this story? It certainly doesn’t have to be done. WHY does it matter. WHY?
And her eyes filled with tears and she said BECAUSE IT DOES. IT MATTERS. And I said “That’s right. It matters. It matters so much. You did the research yesterday. You saw the numbers, and they’re huge. You saw the outcomes, and they’re horrible. You see that there are girls on this campus in violent relationships who feel alone and isolated and desolate and they don’t know where to turn or how to cope or what to do. And you’re going to show them by telling others’ stories that they’re not alone, that there is help out there and that they don’t have to stay in the relationships. You’re going to talk to the people who can help. You’re going to give them HOPE.
Then we talked about how to write the questions. I always start with what I want to know, what interests me, and I build from there.
She left my room on fire to find those stories. She’s bringing her questions tomorrow.

I have no idea if she’ll finish the story. I hope she will. It’s a tough first story to do. But I do know I remembered the power of the high school journalist, the importance of the high school reporter, and the absolute necessity to do something more than fill our pages with assignments.
What we do matters. We just need to remember WHY we do it.

Little Ms. Whiner…yeah, I admit it

If you’ve ever dealt with education, you know about modifications. I’ve been doing them forever. They’ve NEVER bothered me. Until today when I saw I need to read to some students for them to get the content.

For some reason, I just looked at that, said no way and that was that.

Until I walked across the hall to tell my friend, Lynda.

Lynda didn’t tell me I was wrong. Instead, she re-framed the issue. And then she offered a solution for what SHE was going to do. She’s going to record her bookwork.

Suddenly, I saw potential. I mean, hello, I have a Mac lab.

And so, I sat down with two of the last assignments and recorded them on GarageBand and added an audio file to their home on my classroom assignment site.

This isn’t an optimal solution, but it’s doable.

I’m going to try wearing a mic and recording my class at least one day next week. If it works, it could revolutionize my classroom. I already use an assignment area and calendar. If the mic works, my kids won’t have to worry as much if they’re absent.

Of course, the mic thing could be a total disaster. This class keeps me on my toes. We’ll see.

A long time ago I read The Success Principles. In the book Jack Canfield teaches Event + Response = Outcome, ALWAYS.

He’s right.

If I break this moment down here’s what I see:

My bad attitude=me walking across the hall to complain=my friend sharing what she was going to do for HER classes= the ball was back in my court. I chose to try something new. Hopefully it will help.

DH says it would’ve helped him in school since he’s dyslexic. Want to feel bad? Let the person who needs the extra help you’re grumbling about be someone you love. Puts it in a whole new perspective. Lesson learned. This time.

#

Reminder, Honor and Lies & Prodigal by Elizabeth Lee (moi!) are available on kindle or smashwords or wherever ebooks are sold. If you prefer paper, Honor & Lies is available on amazon.com.

Interested in ebook publishing or blogging or using your teacher webpage as a classroom extension and have questions or comments? Feel free to ask here or email me at marybeth   AT  marybethlee  DOT  com.

 

Midweek Mom to the Rescue

In the midst of a whirlwind week, I got to be Mom again.

The call came just as I was about to head to bed at 7:45 on Wednesday. Three days and I was wiped out.

“Mom, I’m sick.”

She didn’t ask me to go riding to the rescue, but there was something in her voice. So, off I went to check this “sick kid” out.

Not sure if it was food poisoning or just a bug, but she was sick, sick, sick. When I got to her place one look and I knew she couldn’t stay there alone, so she came home with me.

When I left the house, I could barely keep my eyes open. But once she was home with me, things changed. For the first time in a long time, my baby girl needed me. So I held her and rocked her and told her it would be okay. And it was.

Today she’s back to normal. I’m glad she’s not sick anymore, but it was kind of nice being that Mom again.

Moving Day

I’m moving rooms. I almost said no. New is tough. It’s hard to let go of a place you’ve been in for over a decade! It’s especially tough since DD spent four years in the old newsroom. But the new space is bigger and better and I can’t believe I almost said no because of nostalgia. I won’t be at Rider forever. Even if I spend the next 13 years as the newspaper and yearbook adviser, someone else will follow. I can’t let my memories and the names written on the wall keep me from moving forward.

Things I’ll miss about the old room:

It’s hard to find if you don’t know where to look.

The courtyard window.

Easy access to the studio.

The names on the wall including DD’s, including my former editors who got engaged this year after dating for years. The started dating when they were sophomores in newspaper together. Their brother and sister are on staff now. When they got engaged, the sister painted a heart between the names. (So sweet!) The random places people signed the walls all over the room. The fact that there’s no room on the walls because they’re covered in design ideas, old posters and quotes kids say throughout the year, the fact that you have to be able to pay attention in complete chaos because the newsroom is tiny and there are usually four classes going on at once, the way I can be at my desk and look out across the room and tell if kids are working at every computer except one, the memories of staffs for years stopping work for random deadline dance parties, the ability to turn off the light and disappear from the school because without lights most people don’t know where we are, the Newsroom Lane hallway with first amendment posters, the phone IN the room so kids answer and make us laugh if I can’t get to it fast enough, the cabinet that used to hold curriculum but now serves as a binder holder for binders that never get used (An AP Stats study guide from five years ago was found there this year! Seriously, never gets used!)

The move is a good thing. The only bad thing is photo camp starts tomorrow. It runs from 9-noon. They turn the air off in our building at noon. It’s going to be 111 the rest of the week. I’m thinking the move might have to wait until all day air next week. Even though that means someone’s going to be moving in while I’m moving out.

Don’t forget Don’t forget Prodigal is on sale now. Click the link to buy or preview. Coupon Code: ZH29T good this week! Use it and the book’s only $0.99! Sisters with secrets.
Eighteen years ago, Cass Deason Myers ran away from home and heartbreak. Now she’s running away again, this time to the home she left behind. A preacher’s wife, Cass finds herself questioning her faith and her marriage. Her sister’s phone call asking for help with their mother provides the perfect opportunity to escape.
Anna Deason-Fite-Turner doesn’t want or need help for herself or her three daughters. But her mother is another story all together. Calling Cass is a last resort. But when Anna finds the bottle of pills in Momma’s dresser drawer, she knows she has to call her sister. Unfortunately, Anna knows when Cass comes home the whispers will start, and once again, everyone in town will compare perfect Cass to her failure of a sister, even though she’s the one who stayed behind.
Prodigal: a story about family, faith and the redemptive power of love.

 

You know you grew up in…

This last week facebook has exploded with “You know you grew up in….” groups. It’s been a fun walk down memory lane.

I’ll never forget the little store down the street from my house. We’d walk down barefoot to spend our allowance (Usually a quarter.)

I loved the feel of hot asphalt on my feet.

Once I found what I thought was four quarters in the road outside my house. I brought my friends with me to the store to buy us all candy. Turned out I had four Susan B. Anthony dollars! The store owner tried to convince me to save them. No way! We bought TONS of junk and shared it.

Back then we took off out the door as soon as possible on summer mornings and wouldn’t come home until dark. We’d play in the park, run around in the cow pastures, walk all over the place, but we made sure that when the sun went down we were home. If we weren’t TROUBLE followed.

Dark didn’t stop the fun, though. Dark brought ghost stories, and light as a feather, and Bloody Mary, and TV…sometimes.

I remember childhood in small town USA and I smile.

But one of the girls added to the group didn’t smile.

Her first post was “I didn’t really know you people and you made my life hell, why would I want to be in this group?”

The responses were fast: That was 20 years ago, get over it, and I’m sorry, and if you feel that way get off the group, and you’re right, and facebook allows people to apologize and give you peace over those times.

The girl did take herself off our hometown group, but I couldn’t help but think about how intense her emotions were 20 years later. She made sure people knew this wasn’t something she spent time thinking about, she’d moved on, was a success in life now, but that reminder of school years put her right back in that place she’d been when she lived in our town.

We talk about bullying today as if it’s something new. It’s not. Kids can be mean. They can be brutal. And adults have often turned away and let it happen.

I’m going to enjoy looking back on the memories of days gone by as I look at the facebook group, but I’m going to take a lesson from it, too. Our schools can be a place of fun and family, but they can also be a place that hurts. I want to make my class one where hurt is rare.

Not a Victim: YA Saves

Dear Meghan Cox Gurdon,

I get you. I don’t agree with you, but that doesn’t matter. I get your fear. I get your horror. I get that trembling in the dark, looking up at the ceiling and praying to God almighty that your kid doesn’t go through the beyond belief nightmares in so much of today’s YA.

I get you because every year I see parents realize the truth of the world we live in through the eyes of their children.

Drug abuse, incest, rape, suicide, cutting, eating disorders, bullying, dating violence, pregnancy, abortion, adoption, gangs. They’re all there in the halls of the high school. Sometimes hidden, sometimes in your face, but there. Always.

They were there when I was a teenager, and that was a million years ago. They were there when my mom was a teenager a few years before that. They’ve been there forever, but the further we get from the age, the more we forget, the more we wax poetic about the “wonder years.”

The truth is the world is a dark place, but thank GOD, we’re  talking about it instead of hiding it away and pretending we’re all Little Women. Thank God we get to read about people who win against the evil out there, who find inner strength they never knew existed, who triumph and say I Am Not A Victim.

I get you because I’m a mom and my daughter just made it through to the other side of the teen trauma years. That time scared me, it scarred her, but in the end, we know those scars are what make all the difference. She claims them. She holds them to the light and says she can make it through anything, and she’s so right. YA encourages that mindset.

Are you right to want to protect kids and their innocence? Yes. My God, yes. That’s part of motherhood. Will keeping them from the darkness of The Hunger Games, et al do so? No.

I still get you. Do you have the right to determine what your kids are reading? Yes. Will you know for sure? No. I can’t tell you how many of  my students “weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter” but knew the books inside and out. Should you be aware one way or the other? Absolutely.

Dark YA serves a purpose. Sometimes that purpose isn’t so life changing. One of my students read a book about cutting and was able to cry for hours over her parents’ divorce. She’s not a cutter, never will be, but she connected with the emotional desolation of the character. Other times, the society changing purpose might not have been the intent of the work, but it’s still the outcome. Words like rape and incest don’t have to be whispered any more.

So yeah, I get you. I don’t agree, but I understand.

Find Gurdon’s article here.

NPR segment with YA author Maureen Johnson and Gurdon

#yasaves

P.S. Years ago we ran a package in The Chronicle about teen pregnancy. A reporter shadowed a new mom for two days. Another wrote a story about a girl who gave her baby up for adoption. Another wrote a story about a girl who chose abortion. Over half the faculty signed a copy of the paper and a note letting me know I was encouraging teen pregnancy by allowing my students to write the stories. One teacher came back with an apology and a card with this quote inside: “I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to my death your right to say it.” The quote applies here.