Extreme teaching, including home invasion and theft

An article in the Wall Street Journal entitled School Reform, Chicago Style described a school district’s policy of providing habitually tardy and absentee students with a wake-up call each morning. The system has actually led to a significant increase in on-time attendance.

While one might argue the merits of such a program, this type of unusual solution is not new in the educational community. Speak to any teacher who has been on the job for long enough and you will find similar stories of extreme teaching.

When it comes to getting kids to learn, teachers are willing to try almost anything.

One story of extreme teaching from my career:

About ten years ago, I learned that one of my struggling students had a television and three different video game systems in his bedroom. He was not completing homework, was never well rested, was struggling with obesity, and was living with a grandmother who only spoke Spanish and was working two jobs in order to make ends meet.

He basically spent his afternoons and evenings indoors, unmonitored, playing video games and ignoring his schoolwork.

I told the boy that if his effort and work did not improve immediately, I was going to take action.

A month later, after he failed to heed my warning, I did just that.

One day after school, I arrived at the boy’s apartment unannounced, carrying a desk, a chair, a pile of pencils and a stack of paper. Accompanying me was the school’s social worker and my principal.

The boy’s grandmother invited us into the home, and while the social worker remained with the grandmother in the living room, discussing the trouble that her grandson was having in school, my principal and I went to his bedroom and installed the desk and chair in one corner of the room. I explained that this is where he was to do his homework and that if he needed more supplies, he only needed to ask.

Then I removed the power cords from the three video game systems and stuffed them into my pocket. Within fifteen minutes, we had left the apartment, and the boy’s three video game system were no longer functional.

I locked the cords in a file cabinet in my classroom and informed the boy that he could get them back once his effort and work improved.

About two months later, after his consecutive homework streak had hit fifteen days,  I returned one of the cords. He received the final two cords on the last day of school.

Did this make an enormous difference in this boy’s life?

Probably not. He worked harder and learned more as a result of my actions, but I can’t really say that he turned a corner.

But my actions let him know two important things:

1.  Teachers care deeply about their students’ well being.

2.  Teachers are capable of extreme measures when it comes to helping their students learn.

That was a start.

If it’s important and it’s lacking, TEACH IT.

I don’t understand the teacher who complains that his or her students don’t do something that is easy to fix. A good example is the use of the word please.

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have heard a teacher complain about the lack of manners in their students. But the lack of manners is hardly akin to a learning disability or an emotionally troubled child.

Manners, like many things, are an easy fix.

They simply have to be learned.

With the application of instruction, consistent role modeling, practice, and positive feedback, the use of the word please, for example, is not a difficult behavior to foster and reinforce in a student.

And being that the person who is complaining is a teacher, wouldn’t instruction like this in their wheelhouse anyway?

If a teacher is struggling with a student because he is apathetic, angry, effortless, and three years behind his classmates in terms of learning, I understand the occasional complaint. That's a tough situation. It doesn’t mean that the teacher has given up. Sometimes it’s just healthy to express your frustration.

But to complain about a student who isn’t using the word please or doing something else that is simple to fix (memorizing multiplication tables is another good example) has always seemed a little silly to me.

Perhaps some people are more prone to complaint, but I have always believed in avoiding complaining whenever possible.

No one wants to hear it.

So when it comes to easy fixes, I just do my job and keep my mouth shut.

I also suspect that despite the persistent belief that kids these days don’t have the same level of respect for their elders as previous generations, teachers from two centuries ago were undoubtedly complaining about the same kinds of things.

Should schools stop releasing their honor rolls for publication in order to protect the feelings of students not included on the list?

When I first heard that a middle school in Glastonbury, CT was going to stop releasing its honor roll for publication in order to protect the feelings of those students who haven’t earned the honor, I was horrified. Students who have worked hard and made the best use of their talents are going to suffer because everyone can’t make the honor roll?

What’s next? Will newspapers stop reporting on high school basketball games because there are players on both teams who failed to score any points?

Then I read the article in the Hartford Courant and came upon the rationale behind the decision:

"We have a school where 96 percent of students go on to college," (superintendent) Bookman said. "The percentage of students making the honor roll at both schools is tremendously high. … It makes those who don't make it stand out and puts more pressure on the kids who don't make it."

"There is no reason to put additional pressure on kids," he added. "The motivation to do well should not be to see your name in the paper. It should be to do well in school and go to college."

This rationale caused me to doubt my initial reaction. In a school district where the number of students who make the honor roll is “tremendously high”, perhaps there is something to be said for keeping the list out of the newspapers. If one or two percent of the students don’t make the list, the honor roll could conceivably become a means of ostracizing lower performing students rather than celebrating student achievement.

After all, if nearly everyone makes the list, is the honor roll even an effective means of celebrating student achievement?

If everyone is special, then no one is special.

Then again, should we remove a means of academic recognition enjoyed by students for decades simply because it might make a few kids feel bad?

Isn’t the purpose of the honor roll to celebrate student achievement and a establish a level that all students can aspire?

I read this story five days ago and have been going back and forth about it ever since, seeing the merits to both sides of the argument.

Late last night I finally settled on an opinion.

In the end, I applied the situation to Clara.

If my daughter was in that middle school and she was one of the few students not making the honor roll, either as a result of her lack of effort or her innate struggles as a learner, I would not want the honor roll to be held back from publication in order to protect her feelings.

Life is not fair, and we are not all equal. Whether her exclusion from the honor roll was the result of effort or inability, it would be my job as a parent to talk to her about this and help her process the reasons behind her exclusion.

If her effort was lacking, a kick in the pants would be in order, and it would be an important lesson learned.

If her ability prevented her from achieving honors, then a more difficult discussion about reasonable expectations and personal limitations might be needed, and an even more important lesson would be learned.

But I would not want the world to conform to my daughter for the sake of her feelings.

The world does not conform to individuals. Nor should it.

It is a lesson best learned at an early age, as cruel as it may seem.

It is perfectly acceptable to question a teacher’s judgment in the case of a serial killer.

During this past school year, my students spent a week reading graphic novels as an introduction to the genre. Among the many graphic novels that I have is a set of non-fiction books that center on famous disasters in American history like the Hindenburg explosion, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the near-tragic Apollo 13 mission.  

The kids love the comic book-like nature of the books, but even better, they loves the stories contained therein. Most of them have heard bits and pieces about these dramatic moments from our nation’s past, but few have ever read full accounts of the events until they read these books.

A parent volunteer (who also happens to be a good friend) was in the classroom one day during the graphic novel unit, volunteering to read with some of my students. After assigning him to a group of kids, I handed out copies of the books and sent them on their way.

My friend looked at me like I was crazy.

“Are you sure you want us reading that book?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “A bunch of kids have read it already. It’s a little gruesome, but it’s fine. It’s American history.”

“Alright,” he said, still sounding uncertain.

About fifteen minutes later I checked in with his group to determine their progress. His look of consternation had been replaced by noticeable relief.

“The Donner party!” he said. “Donner!”

“Yeah, the Donner party,” I repeated. “What did you think I said?”

“I thought you said the Dalmer party. Like Jeffrey Dalmer. I thought you had the kids reading about serial killers.”

“And you were willing to go along with that?” I asked.

“Well, you’re the teacher,” he said. “I figured you knew what you were doing.”

“Really?” I said. “Even if it’s a book about a serial killer?”

“Well, yeah.”

Sometimes there’s a such thing as having too much trust in a teacher.

Teachers need to learn to be publicists, too.

Before you begin reading this, please know that this post reflects the culmination of fifteen years of teaching and does not pertain specifically to anyone who I work with in my profession at this time.  The thoughts and observations contained herein reflect the broad spectrum of my experiences as a teacher and as a parent who has interacted with teachers.  It is in no way an indictment of the friends and colleagues with whom I currently share my working life. It should also be noted that while I am about to proselytize about the public relations of teaching, I am not without fault. But when it comes to promoting the work that takes place within the walls of my classroom, I like to think that I do an above average job, but I am hardly perfect.

Could I do better? Certainly. And I try like hell to be reflective about the decisions I make.

With all that said:

Teachers are rarely adept at public relations. As public support for teachers and their unions wane, too many teachers have little or no sense of the image that we project onto the public, and more important, the ramifications that this image can have on the future of education.

While teachers are partially to blame for this failing, colleges and universities do little by way of training teachers on how to effectively work with parents and the community at large in order to promote learning that takes place in the classroom and project a positive image of public education.

It makes no sense.

As a result, teachers are often ineffective when it comes to promoting themselves and the work that they do. They tend to be quiet, overly humble, and tragically understated when the opposite is needed in today’s climate.

This is why they become easy targets when budgets tighten and cuts are required. We must become more effective at promoting the important work that we do.

A few examples:

EXAMPLE #1

A friend of mine in Rhode Island teaches at a school that celebrates the end of standardized testing with Movie Day, a school day in which students spend most of the day watching G-rated films and relaxing.

Movie Day?

In the mind of many taxpayers, this sounds more like Give The Teachers A Day Off Day or Let The Chinese Continue To Surpass Us In Education Day. Even though I am certain that the teachers in his school are spending their time preparing lessons, grading papers, analyzing assessment data, and managing behaviors, Movie Day will never be viewed as an academically meaningful day by the average taxpayer.

Nor should it.

Movie Day must go. Kids go to school for 180 days a year. The last thing they need to do is spend a day watching movies. They can use the other 182 days in the year to catch up on the latest films.

Even if it’s somehow educationally justifiable, it’s bad PR.

No, it’s immensely stupid PR.

EXAMPLE #2

One of the largest educational initiatives currently in play in Connecticut and around the country centers on a program called SRBI, an acronym which stands for Scientific Research-Based Interventions. These are the teaching and assessment strategies and data driven decision making processes that educators are now using to target struggling learners in our classrooms.

But did you notice the name of the program?

Scientific Research-Based Interventions.

What the hell were the designers of this program thinking?

Were they trying to imply that everything that educators have done prior to SRBI was fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants guesswork.

What were teachers using prior to SRBI?

MUSASIIW? (Make Up Stuff And See If It Works)

Hardly.

There has been mountains of scientifically-based research conducted in the field of education for decades. Centuries, even. The last thing we need is an intervention system with a name that implies otherwise.

Do you see Apple implementing a new MAPS program? (Mathematically Accurate Programming Strategies)

Or Aetna implementing PLIP? (Profitable, Legal Insurance Practices)

Or Disneyworld implementing FADS? (Fun Absent Dangerous Scenarios)

Of course not.

Yet our brand new program of learning interventions has a name that unnecessarily emphasizes the fact that some jerk just didn’t make it up in his head.

Stupid.

EXAMPLE #3

In my experience as a parent and as a teacher, I have encountered teachers who build enormous walls of faux-professionalism between themselves and parents, thus preventing our most potentially vocal and supportive constituents from gathering the positive information that we should be disseminating out there on a daily basis.

These are the teachers who feel that parents should be seen and not heard.

You can usually identify these teachers by the following characteristics:

1. They never learn the first names of the parents of their students.
2. They make only token attempts (or not attempt at all) to get parent volunteers into the classroom (one of the best ways to promote the good work done by teachers)
3. They dress exceedingly formal for meetings with parents but considerably less formal when interacting with students (as if parents aren’t fully aware of the shifty nature of their wardrobes)
4. They assume that they are always right and make no room for the possibility that parents might know more than they do when it comes to education.

For years I was told by parents that I would become an even better teacher once I had children of my own, and that not having children caused me to have a blind spot in terms of the parent-teacher-student dynamic. I always assumed that this was not true, but I left room for the possibility and told these parents as much.

It turns out that I was wrong and the parents were right.  I am a much better teacher now that I am a parent, and I would venture to guess that this applies to almost everyone in the education field.

Having a child of your own provides you with an indescribable perspective that is incredibly useful as a teacher.

But until you have kids, it’s almost impossible to see.

As a teacher, you need to be smart enough to account for this possibility, and more importantly, for the possibility that the untrained parent of one of your students might know more than you do and can be exceedingly helpful in the education of their child.

Some teachers understand this. Others prefer to assume that they are the experts and should assume the position of ultimate authority.

This is foolish, and it projects an image of a profession filled with close-minded, unapproachable people.

Colleges, universities and school systems would be wise to begin instructing teachers on how to promote the work that they do. The same public relations and publicity professionals who work to enhance the image of businesses, corporations, entertainers, and even authors must also be utilized in enhancing the image of the teaching profession.

We must learn how to reach out and engage the public in the work we do everyday. So many remarkably skilled educations work tirelessly in order to help children learn, and yet so much of this good work goes unnoticed by the public at large.

If we want our public schools to be adequately funded and our profession to be respected, we must begin to do the hard work that is required in order to let people know who we are and what we do.

If you are going to perpetrate a fraud, please don’t be stupid about it.

While I don’t support fraud, I can understand engaging in it for profit’s sake. When there is enough reward, the risks can sometimes become reasonable.

But when there is little or no benefit to the fraud, or the risks seriously outweigh the rewards, I have to assume that anyone attempting such a thing is as stupid as they come.

The recent revelations about the cheating taking place by Atlanta school teachers is a good example of this. For the possible reward of improved test scores, increased job security and satisfied administrators, teachers and principals chose to place their careers, the public trust, and possible prison time on the line by changing answers on standardized tests and facilitating student cheating during testing periods.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

The risk-reward ratio in this scenario is ridiculous.

And I have to wonder:

Hasn’t anyone in the Atlanta school system read Freakonomics or the related literature on school cheating?  Identifying cheating has become a simple examination of the data. From the privacy of their nondescript cubicles, statisticians can look at a set of assessment data and determine which teacher is cheating and which one is not.

It is simply a matter of pressing a few buttons on a calculator.

Making the attempt at fraud even more stupid.

An even more egregious case in point:

The CBS television affiliate in Boston recently falsified the images of the fireworks display from the Fourth of July in order to improve the quality of the footage.

Boston-based executive producer David Dugar admitted that the station had shot well known landmarks such as Fenway Park, Quincy Market, and the State House prior to the fireworks show and then superimposed these images into the video footage before airing it to the public.

Dugar defended his decision by claiming that the show represented entertainment rather than news, thus placing him squarely in the same camp as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann in terms of his ability to admit fault.

Viewers began calling into the Boston Globe on Friday to say it was impossible that the fireworks could have appeared over the famous city landmarks when they were launched in the opposite direction from the Charles River.

Once again making the attempt at fraud even more stupid.

So the CBS affiliate comes across as looking foolish and incompetent, and for what?

Had they not been caught, to what advantage would the falsified video footage have served? Were the producers hoping to create a social media buzz about the remarkable quality of the broadcast in hopes of drawing more viewers next year?

Do they really think that a fireworks display on television is buzz-worthy?

Does the advertising that they sell before and after the fireworks really amount to much in the grand scheme of things?

Was there any money at all to be made had this fraud been successful?

And what did the television station risk?

In addition to the embarrassment that they have experienced on a national level, they have now transformed their fireworks broadcast into the only one that should be avoided next year. In their short-sighted and inexplicable effort to boost ratings for a blip on the programming radar, they have found a way to make their fireworks broadcast the only one in the history of television that cannot be trusted.

In addition, they managed to damage the reputation of their station in the process.

Like I said, I’m not defending fraud, and I don’t recommend that anyone engage in it.

But if you decide to do so, at least be smart about it. Make informed decisions and ensure that the risks are balanced by the potential benefits in the event that your fraud is successful.

Adding immorality to the world is bad enough. Don’t add any more stupidity in the process.

We have plenty of that already.

Should my students be allowed to make fun of me online?

Time magazine asks: Do students have a First Amendment right to make fun of their principals and teachers on Facebook and other social-media sites?  Or can schools discipline them for talking out of school?

This question comes in reaction to two court rulings supporting the right to free speech for students. In both cases, the court said that schools were wrong to suspend students for posting parodies of their principals on MySpace — one in which a boy made fun of his principal's body size and another in which a girl made lewd sexual comments about her principal.

Both actions took place outside of school and failed to "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school," the standard set by the Supreme Court in the 1969 landmark case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, in which students’ right to wear a black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War was upheld by the Court.

I tend to agree with the court in these matters. The First Amendment does not stop at the schoolhouse door, and speech taking place off school grounds that does not significantly impair learning in school should be permitted.

My question is this:

Are these students subject to defamation and libel claims made by principals and teachers whose reputations have been unfairly impugned?

Having been in a similar position at one point in my life at the hands of an anonymous, non-student source, I fully understand the power of purposely manipulated, unmitigated speech, particularly when it originates from a source too cowardly to claim ownership but brazen enough to spread the word far and wide.

I support the First Amendment and a student’s right to speak, but when the speech is blatantly false and results in damage to a teacher’s reputation, I believe that a teacher has a right to legal recourse.

This is why laws relating to defamation of character and libel exist.

Unfortunately, in my case, there was no recourse since the libel was perpetrated by an anonymous source.

But when a students creates a video that falsely claims that his high school principal has made inappropriate sexual advances towards students, shouldn’t that principal be provided with the opportunity for legal recourse if it can be proven that his reputation has been unfairly and irreparably damaged?

Shouldn’t students be held accountable for the damage that they do?

A teacher’s reputation is his most valuable asset. It can mean the key factor in establishing positive, productive relationships with students and parents. When students, parents and the community implicitly trust an educator because of the reputation that he or she has earned, learning is invariably accelerated in the classroom and a teacher’s career outlook is improved considerably.

To allow students to damage that reputation and only suffer a parental punishment seems wrong to me.

While I would not want students suspended for exercising their right to free speech off campus, I would like them to be made aware of the consequences that can result from that speech when it is baseless and purposely destructive.

When actual damage is done to a teacher’s reputation, a teacher should have legal recourse.

While I cannot imagine suing a student or his or her family for a purposely false and intentionally destructive YouTube video, we cannot allow a system to exist in which students are permitted to say whatever they want about a teacher and the teacher is not afforded the same protection that the legal system provides for people outside the schoolhouse.

My worst teaching mistake ever

While I am certain that I have made more mistakes than I can possibly remember, one mistake stands above all others in the pantheon of errors: After promising my third graders a treat for a job well done, I substituted the popsicles that I had promised with what I thought was an equally appetizing alternative:

A box of Sun-Maid raisins.

For reasons that I can no longer fathom, I thought that dried grapes were healthier than popsicles and just as tasty.

Never before have I been more despised by a group of people, and that is saying a lot considering my history.

Some of the kids tossed them into the trash without ever opening the box.

Others publicly traded their raisins for balls of crumpled paper, broken crayons and eraser nubs just to make me feel bad.

I swear that one kid almost cried.

Those kids eventually found their way to loving me again, but they never forgave me.

Death to the elephants

I was teaching my students about idea generation in regards to writing, using a student-friendly version of TIME magazine called TIME for Kids as my source.  I explained that one of the best ways to generate a writing topic is to find a piece that you find objectionable and write the counter-argument. And if you can take a position rarely taken by others, you might really be onto something.

In order to demonstrate, I began flipping through the magazine and seeking counter arguments to the articles and the opinions presented.  Eventually my eyes fell upon a piece about an elephant rescue camp in Africa.

“Here’s something,” I said.  “The people working at this camp are trying to save elephants from extinction.  But could you take the opposing position?  Could you argue that elephants should be allowed to die out? After all, they are at the top of the food chain, with no natural predators, and they are not carnivores, so it’s not as though they serve to control any other animal population.  If elephants went extinct tomorrow, would there really be a problem?”

Now I was on a roll.

“And couldn’t the money being spent keeping elephants alive be better used? Couldn’t we protect an animal more vital to the food chain?  Or to save human lives instead?”

The kids were now staring at me in horror.

“And besides, the dodo bird went extinct. Other than its sentimental value, has the world really suffered from its absence? And what about the passenger pigeon? Or the giant tree sloth? Or perhaps most appropriately, what about the wholly mammoth? Does the world really need the wholly mammoth? And if not, why not get rid of the elephant, too?”

Naturally, I don’t believe anything I said, but I thought it was a good illustration of how a writer can adopt a contrary position for the sake idea generation, and how it is perfectly reasonable for a writer to argue a point that you don’t necessary believe.

And who knows? I may not believe what I had said, but I did find myself legitimately wondering what purpose elephants serve in the food chain and how much money is spent keeping them alive.

Sometimes an academic exercise like this can yield a genuine contrarian viewpoint.

Before I was able to explain to the kids that I did not really want the elephant to go extinct and that this was simply an illustration of idea generation, one of them muttered, “Maybe he should go extinct.”

I train them well.

I couldn’t have said it any better, and that makes me so angry

Damn that Charles Schwab.

In commenting on how to increase employee productivity, he once said:

"The way to get things done is to stimulate competition. I do not mean in a sordid, money-getting way, but in the desire to excel."

These two sentences sum up the essence of my teaching philosophy.

That’s exactly what I do.

And Schwab’s words sound so good, too.  So clear and succinct.

I’m so jealous.

My quest for inclusion into Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations continues, but it will likely not include anything as good as Schwab’s two sentence miracle.

Creative, cruel and clever

One of my students named my bald spot Jerry today. “Hi Mr. Dicks,” she said.  “Hi, Jerry.”

Sometimes their cruelty can be so damn cute.

Significant fringe benefits

Tonight Elysha and I had dinner with Allison, a former student who was in my class for second and third grade. After dinner she helped me choose the date for the next A-Mattzing Race and then assisted Elysha in giving Clara a bath. Then Elysha and I headed out to the Connecticut Forum while Allison stayed behind to babysit. Last week Allison served as one of the judges for my science fair.

Earlier in the week a student from Allison’s second grade class asked for help on his college essay. He needed a teacher’s opinion on the appropriateness of sex education in elementary school and interviewed me for the assignment.

Another former student, also in college, wrote to me earlier this week and informed me that her second and third grade Shakespearean studies are still paying dividends, even in college. She has more knowledge of Shakespeare than anyone in the class.

Last Monday a former student now in high school finally joined our after-school basketball game after a year of trying to match schedules. He dominated.

On Wednesday I received Teacher Appreciation letters from several former students who are now attending middle school. They were humorous and humbling.

On Thursday afternoon I played golf with the father and mother of a former student.

On Friday I toured the middle school with my current fifth grader students and ran into several of my former students. Later in the day one of them showed up at my classroom door to tell me that she loved me but didn’t want to say it in front of her friends.

When I became a teacher, I never expected that the relationships I forge with students and their parents would continue on long after they had left my classroom.

But they do. Sometimes for years and years later.

More often than not, in fact.

Some of my best friends are the parents of former students.

Clara’s godmother is the parent of former students.

And I see and hear from my former students all the time.

It’s not as tangible nor profitable as a company car or stock options, but by way of fringe benefits, there is truly nothing better.

I have failed as a teacher

The birth of my children have made me a much better teacher. Had you asked me prior to parenthood if this would be the case, I would have said that you were crazy.

It’s just so hard to know what you do not know.

Here’s one way that I have become a better teacher as a result of my daughter:

Clara’s preschool teacher loves her. It is clear through her words and deeds that she loves loves our daughter a great deal.

Perhaps as much as we do.

Her love is a gift to Clara, but it is also a gift to us. The knowledge that the person teaching your daughter is someone who loves her unconditionally is a remarkably powerful and reassuring thing.

It’s one of the best things I know.

It has left me thinking that although I love my students almost as much as I love my own child, I probably haven’t done a good enough job conveying this sentiment to their parents.

I have failed to offer them the gift that Clara’s teacher has given to us.

So now I know.

Now I know how to become a better teacher.

And I think it is a lesson than can only be truly understood by becoming a parent yourself.

Shut up, Teacher Man.

I have often said that the less a teacher speaks, the more a student learns. John Hunter, creator of the World Peace Game and recent TED Talk speaker, said something similar but significantly more profound:

“I don’t have to control every conversation and response in the classroom. The students’ collective wisdom is much greater than mine.”

John Hunter is right. In fact, I believe that this is the hardest but most important lesson that a teacher can learn.

Thankfully, I was able to begin learning this lesson during my first year of teaching, thanks to the honesty and directness of a colleague and friend.

I was teaching second grade, in a time before Smartboards and laptops and much of the technology that dominates a classroom today. I was teaching writing to my students one morning, and I was having a blast.

The lights in the classroom were switched off and I was projecting a student-written poem onto onto a screen using an overhead projector. We were revising and editing the poem together, and the kids were doing great. They were just seven years old but were commenting on line break choices, the effectiveness of similes and metaphors and alternative word choices. I was scribbling their thoughts and ideas all over the poem, making it look like the mess that good revision should be.

I was so proud of them.

And when we finished with the poem, we moved onto another. And another. And another.

I have no idea how long the lights were turned off that day and how long those poems were projected on that screen, but eventually my colleague, my mentor, my role model, and a future character in Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, walked into my room, bent down beside me, and whispered the three words that have echoed throughout my teaching career:

“You’re killing them.”

That was all she said, but that was all that needed to be said. I lifted my head above the warm glow of the overhead projector and looked into the dull, disinterested, sleepy eyes of my students who had been listening to me for entirely too long.

A minute later the lights were back on, the kids were eating snacks, and I was desperately trying to find ways for them to learn without having to listen to me.

Those three words, “You’re killing them,” have guided my career. They eventually became the foundation of my teaching philosophy and the impetus for my core belief that learning should always be fun, independent, and self-directed, regardless of the day or the subject, and that the teacher should do his best to get the hell out of their way.

This is the essence of John Hunter’s TED Talk, and it is clear that he follows these principles much better than I could ever hope to do.

This is what I mean when I say that the effectiveness of a teacher can be determined by the ease in which you can walk into a classroom and have a conversation with the teacher without bringing student learning to a halt.

This is the lesson that I try to pass down to new teachers, student teachers and even veteran teachers who have become what my mentor and friend calls "The Sage on Stage." These are teachers who have forgotten that their voice should be heard the least in a classroom. These are teachers whose students are not engaged in interesting, student-directed work during the majority of their school day. These are teachers who do not believe that every educator has the responsibility to make school fun for their students, because when they are having fun, they are learning best.

I constantly ask myself if I am killing them.

And sometimes I am.

Sometimes I fall back into those bad habits of too much talk and not enough work. But thankfully my friend’s words have never stopped ringing in my ears.

Thankfully I know enough to look up from time to time to see if my kids are smiling, reading, writing, calculating and talking to one another.

Are they laughing? Or are they just listening?

It's a question every teacher should ask as often as possible.

Assigning my students new (and sometimes permanent) names

As a teacher, I assign a lot of nicknames to students, a practice that my friends and I often did as a kids. Growing up, everyone I knew had a nickname.

I also refer to students by their last names quite a bit, and these last names often become a student’s primary name as long as they are in my class, and sometimes beyond.

It can be quite surprising the first time you walk into my classroom and hear students casually call one another by their last name, but it makes me smile every time.

Today I spoke to a parent whose son is now a junior in high school. Back when he was in my third grade class, I gave him a nickname that stuck so hard that everyone in his life, including his parents, still refer to him by this name to this day.

His original name has all but disappeared.

I can’t tell you how much this makes me smile.

Hug a teacher. Or at least send a note of thanks.

Yesterday a former student stopped by my class to say hello. He stood awkwardly in front of me for a second until his friend told me that he wanted a hug. Nothing was wrong. He just hadn't seen me in a long time and missed me.  And he had told his friend as much on the drive over.

Later in the day, I received an email from the same boy’s brother, a student who I once taught in second grade. He is in college now and wanted help on a paper that he was writing for English class.

Some students drift in and out of your class like ships in the night, never to be seen again, and others bless you with their continued presence in your life.

I was feeling very fortunate yesterday.

And it makes me sad to think that as a student, I was often one of those ships in the night. I didn’t love all my teachers, but I loved quite a few and never bothered to let them know.

I’ll make it a point of finding one this week and letting him or her know.

We never got to the war part of the Civil War

The problem with American History class was that never got to the good stuff. Take the Civil War. I recall with blinding acuity the days and weeks that we spent studying the causes of the Civil War, many of which are now being debunked by modern day historians who now claim that the war was mostly about slavery.

Hour upon hour dedicated to the study of the economic disparity between the North and the South, the debate over state’s rights, the difference in cultures, and more. I remember sitting in my seat, listening to the lecture, praying that we would turn the page and finally see cannons firing, soldiers marching and battles erupting.

And then it did.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on the federal troops at Fort Sumter. An artist’s rendering of the beginning of the battle was splashed across the page of my history book. I can still see it in my mind’s eye.

Three classes later, the war was over.

Three days.

Since high school, I have read entire books about the Battle of Gettysburg, the use of naval power in the war, Sherman’s march to the sea, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Chickamauga, the changes in military leadership during the war and more.

All this and much, much more was covered in my high school history class in just three days.

I realize that there is a limit on the amount of time that a teacher has to teach the content, but if you want your students to be interested in history, you can’t strip out the best parts.

Yes, the causes of the Civil War are important, and yes, Reconstruction was an important time in our country’s history and in many way still impacts our nation today. These things must be learned.

But for a student, and especially a boy, to study the Civil War and not spend a day or two learning about the weapons used at the time and the tactics that led to the Union’s victory at the Battle of Gettysburg and the hunt for John Wilkes Booth following Lincoln’s assassination is doing a disservice to the student and to the study of history in general.

It’s conflict that makes history so compelling, and sometimes this conflict occurs on the battlefield. Not every student is going to spend his adult life reading about the intricacies of the war on his own, and especially not if the war has been sanitized and abbreviated in high school.

Leaving the guns and swords and blood out of history class is a mistake, and it’s one that I hope does not happen as often as I fear it might.

Exclamation points say so much about a person

Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes. —F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is a hard lesson to teach to ten-year old writers, who seem to want to shout at the world at every turn, but I agree with Fitzgerald’s assertion on exclamation points. They are almost always unnecessary and should be avoided like the plague.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I used a total of five exclamation points in my first two books. That’s a 230,000 word/5 exclamation point ratio.

I’m still sort of embarrassed by it.

Then there is the dreaded multiple exclamation points.

Ten-year old kids are also quite fond of the use of multiple exclamation points, and while part of me is happy to see any mark of punctuation at the end of their sentences, I tell my students that if they leave my classroom having learned to hate the multiple exclamation point as much as me, I will have done my job.

What frightens me the most, however, is the use of a space followed by a exclamation point at the end of the sentence, like the one I saw at the gym last week:

Congratulations, Jim. We think you look great, too !

See the space between the word "too" and the exclamation point? It’s as if the writer believes the exclamation point is too good to be attached to the sentence, and that by detaching it from the unworthy string of words with a space, it is both emphasized, glorified and sanitized in one simple keystroke.

Who does something like this?

Insane people.

That’s who.

Certifiable lunatics. Only the craziest of the crazy.

I’d warn the staff at the gym that a crazy person is on the loose, but what if the person who I am warning is the person responsible for the sentence?

I’m a father, now. I just can’t take that kind of chance anymore.

Despite my even greater hatred for the anonymous letter, an anonymous tip might be the only way to warn the staff that a potentially dangerous lunatic is amongst them.

Should decisions made twenty years ago impact employment today? I’m undecided.

I’m torn. I want to support this teacher and her right to teach.

I believe in giving people a second chance.

I believe that decisions made twenty years ago rarely reflect the people we are today.

I believe that personal circumstances should always be considered when judging a person’s decision-making process, and in this case, circumstances were dire at the time of her indiscretion.

I believe that if this teacher’s previous indiscretion had been drug use, larceny or vandalism, she might still have her job. I believe that the decision to terminate her employment has more to do with our Puritanical views on sex than anything else.

Having said all this, I also think that this teacher would have an equally difficult time finding and keeping a job in the private sector if information regarding her past was uncovered by an employer, and I believe that a company would have every right to deny her employment on this basis.

If, for example, a friend owned a software company and discovered that one of his employees had an illicit past that could potentially alienate customers if it were ever made public, I would fully support his decision to terminate her employment.

He would have the right to choose who he employs and how long they remain employed.

Also, as much as I may believe that she has the right to teach, I fail to see how this teacher could continue teaching in a school after her past indiscretions have been so thoroughly exposed.

So I’m torn.

I think this teacher has every right to keep her job, and I also think the school district has every right to terminate her employment based upon what has happened.

These two beliefs cannot exist concurrently.

This is why I am torn.

I also worry about where a decision like this might lead to in the future.

What if a teacher writes a novel that describes a sex scene?

What if a teacher directs or appears in an R-rated film that contains a sex scene?

What is a teacher creates art that depicts sexual imagery?

Where do we draw the line on a teacher’s right to a private life and his or her ability to create?

I’m also deeply concerned that students in both 2006 and 2011 managed to uncover this teacher’s past, meaning that these students are such frequent purveyors of pornography that they managed to stumble upon an almost twenty year old film starring their teacher in two separate incidents.

That’s two different school districts in a five period.

What are the odds?

Astronomically low, I would assume, unless the viewing of pornography by teenage boys is more prevalent and more frequent than I had ever imagined.

Talk to your kids

There is a lot of fascinating information in this ten-minute TED Talk related to speech development and the way in which babies acquire language, but the piece that I thought was most compelling (and glossed over to a certain extent) was the evidence supporting the importance of talking to your child. The research demonstrates that speech development and language acquisition does not happen when a baby watches a television or listens to a recording of speech.  Language acquisition is a social skill learned only by listening to another person speak in real life.

Any kindergarten teacher can describe the extreme disparity between students entering school and how, regardless of the relentless efforts of teachers, that disparity can often persist throughout the student’s educational career.

Closing a gap that has had five years to grow is exceptionally difficult.

Some of these differences can be attributed to factors such as IQ, but many teachers (including me) will tell you that the predominant indicator of success in a child’s academic career is the child’s level of effort and the effort and participation of his or her parents.

That effort and participation begins as soon as the child is born.

Inherent intelligence is great, but effort crushes IQ every time.

So please, turn off the goddamn television and talk to your baby. Sesame Street is great, but save it for when your child is two years old, and then administer it in small doses and only after you’ve spent enormous amounts of time talking to your child.

Talk to your kid. Please.

Think of it was an investment. Spend the time now when your child is a language sponge, or spend the time and money later when your child is a young adult, living at home, unable to support him or herself.

I promise you that it’s a hell of a lot more rewarding to work with a two-year old than a thirty-two year old.

My apologies for the sermon. Every once in a while my dander gets up when it comes to issues such as these.

Especially when it comes to the goddamn television.