I made this checklist based off of student comments. It’s ways for me to measure my own practice without Danielson, without the 120 page .pdf rubric the SDP supplies.

Appendix three: Alternative Teacher Evaluation Questions 

• When the class period ends, how many kids linger behind to talk to the teacher about the work? How many kids are checking in?  How badly do I have to go to the bathroom because I lost my five-minute window again?  
• When the class ends, do the students burst to life?  Or are they sad to depart?  
• Do parents report that their students are talking about the class at home?  I had eleven parents say this in the Q2 conferences. That’s a success.    
• Can students easily remember the projects they did in the previous quarters? 
• When kids come to talk to you, are they coming to talk to you about the substance of the class and/or any of the great questions that you’re trying to raise? Are they talking about  the things that they want to understand, or the things they want to correct?  Or are they coming to talk to you about the bathroom or disciplinary matters?  
• If at any point a student is asked what their grade is for the quarter, does it match what the teacher thinks the grade is? How close?  
• At the end of each quarter, how many kids are lawyering the process? Are there any surprising kids?  When students are engaging in straight transactional behavior, are they aware of it?   
• Does the teacher know the student as well as the student thinks they do?  Can you immediately think of two to three stories to tell about each kid?   
• Does the teacher know the student through their work or their behavior?  Both? Neither? 

This is what I have been thinking about while walking to school over the past week.

It is advice. This is just that. Portions of it are stuff you already know. Portions of it might be reminders of things you know but need to learn again and again. Portions of it will seem totally irrelevant. Portions will seem feel grimy as you’re like, oh, right, gotta do that. No matter how clever the SNL writers are, don’t succumb to y’all won. At least not yet.

Fault line one: I’m as tired as my students
“I’m just tired and bored with myself.”

This is the time of the year where all of the rituals you’ve built pay off. The habits and classroom culture that you’ve inculcated and created are humming along and ensuring the successful work within the space.

Others structures have failed and you’re having that dreadful, “damn, I’m still dealing with this” feeling. You know it’s coming.

You’re not going to fix anything right now. I said this to someone yesterday about the culture in my four classes: three are planes that I got to 40,000 feet and if we’re experiencing some turbulence, well, that’s just the way it goes. We’ll be fine and I have lots of margin of error. The other stream is dusting tree-tops and one bad move is going to take us to the ground.

Each year of teaching I get better about the rituals and routines. And each year of teaching, there will be holes that are readily apparent. When the holes are visible in September, I can patch them. In December, it’s that much more work, but I have to do it then, or I’m in for a rough year. In May, I have to breathe through it, because I’m going with what you got.

You know when a team makes an improbable run to the World Cup semis or finals? Alas, by the time they get to the final game, they’re down two or three key players on injuries or cards, and they’re not a deep team anyway? They don’t give up — they play the game and hope for the best. That’s where we are right now. (Wow, in this morning’s edition of “let’s practice our cliches” I’m getting an A.)

Fault line Two: The grade situation

3 Bs —> am I really earning an A?
3 Bs —> am I really going to drop to a C?
3 Fs —> am I really going to pass?

There are more versions of this problem but it boils down to the dilemma of the cumulative grade. Our school has a policy that if you earn three points, you pass for the year, so a kid can earn a B first quarter and do nothing for the rest of the year and still pass. Or a kid can do nothing for the first three quarters and then try to build a case for a D by earning a B. This produces strange bits of stress as kids who have been disengaged all year about the work suddenly turn into Eddie Haskell, making sincere (and insincere) requests about their grades. There’s usually just enough of this that you need to have some mechanisms to contend with it.

Fault line Three: The schedule situation

All manner of garbage gets dumped on schools and teachers at the end of the year: trainings, standardized testing of all sorts, weird schedules. Then there’s the positives — proms of all sorts, inside your building and out, graduation, and general celebrations of one kind or another. And when everyone in the building is doing their own special thing, it makes for wonky scheduling if things aren’t coordinated. Some of this goes back to the “you’re as tired as they are” problem as administrators are every bit as exhausted and have their own ashtrays to drink from. But these aren’t the days of November or March where you have long stretches of five day weeks where you’d give molars for a break; it’s the opposite problem as you keep watching days get picked off in big ways (testing, sorry, nothing today) or small ways (hey, do you mind if I pull eight kids from class with no notice to do something really cool? Yeah, I’m making it so that you have too many kids for a quiet work period but enough are out that you can’t really move forward. Sorry about that.)

Remedies
In offering remedies, I know I’m doing the old “rub some butter on it” thing. And I know that each of them has a low enough success rate that you have to try all of them. With each of these, I’m trying to think about them as different hats I might wear while knowing that the hit-rate is going to be low, low, low, and that I’m just trying to do the best I can.

Being a motivator and an inspiration
One thing I try and do all year is to complete the same projects the students are doing. I hope that by doing it next to them or near them, I’m modeling the point of the project. I can talk of my own frustrations, how I’m managing roadblocks, and illustrate one annoying bald man’s approach to the work. Doing this also allows me to see how kids might get stuck on various problems.

It’s not in my nature but I try, I try, I try to remain as positive as I can in urging kids towards the finish line. For all of those with negative wiring (cast as Hamlet and asking who writes this shit?), please, please, be aware of it, and censor your commentary. Clapper, I’m talking to you — this is the time of year where your commentary can have a nasty edge on it so keep your remarks to yourself.

Trying to appeal to the nature of the work
(live the life of the mind or don’t)
In a project-based space, underscoring the authentic nature of the project — hey, we’re doing something real, something that scholars and activists would recognize — can serve as a kind of motivation. This will not work in social situations, especially in large group situations, as kids are easing their way into the end of the year process of either golden aging things — remember in first quarter when we were doing real projects — or fouling their nest — this class just sucks — and in each case the larger social setting will generally skew negative. A large portion of students still want to have cool conversations with you alone and have excellent work to talk through and that same student will be publicly declaring they’re going to drop out.

Setting up the work in more of a checklist form, such that if you complete the checklist, you’ll always have something and the kids who want to do more can do more.
If you’re building out projects, you offer multiple pathways to success, and you provide lots of support along the way. And you do your best to create projects that foster engagement, that kids actually want to do, that even the most reluctant learner can see some value in doing it.

However, this is the time of the year where your assignments have to be as clear as possible so that kids can at least try and checklist things, and then you can hope that this will give them momentum to take it somewhere else. For some kids, breaking things down this far allows a kind of relief — ah, I have to work forty minutes and then I’m done — and for other kids it creates a starting point that they will swiftly blow past it once they get started. You’re just hoping that they get started, as if a project is the top of a slippery hill and if they get a little push, the project itself will gain momentum.

Clarity on grades
I don’t like appealing to grades. It doesn’t feel great and it doesn’t usually do much. The kids who are living in transactional world, where they’re just trying to figure out how much they need to do to earn an A or a B, well, most of the time those aren’t particularly enjoyable conversations. I also don’t have much interest in the “you’ve failed all year so let me give lots of my limited energy to you now to try and get you across the finish line” conversation. I hope most schools don’t engage in this sort of thing — hey, you’ve done nothing for three quarters, fog a mirror in the fourth quarter and we’ll give you a D — but I think most do.

There’s a small group where this will work, particularly in the “let’s get you from three Bs to an A” crew. The real point, though, is to remember that it’s worth checking in every other week to make sure that the students are on the same page as you are, i.e., your Canvas grade is an 84%, which is a B, not an A, and not a C.

Get it in writing
For a portion of this year, I was convinced I had long COVID as I couldn’t remember anything. Maybe it’s stress, maybe it’s age, but I cannot keep track of conversations these days. (My children make fun of the fact that I cannot park the car with loud music on.) In September, but especially in April and May, insist on students sending you any and all requests and concerns in writing. If possible, insist that they cc advisors and/or parents.

I know, I know: between emails and Canvas notifications and comments on documents, your inbox is completely overrun and unmanageable. I know. But the alternative is worse, when kids ask you to do things and you simply don’t remember because forty kids asked you to do something that day.

Being as organized as you can knowing that they will not be.

I’m doing a great job right now with the final deliverables. But I’m day-to-day on the classwork and homework.

Whiny disclaimer — it’s because I try and revise each year.
Appropriate rejoinder: that’s not an excuse, you should be two to three weeks ahead in Canvas.
Enraged response: with what time? When is that happening?

(This is why people cross the street at 7:18AM when they see me on the sidewalk talking to myself.)

Starting next year’s folders
This helps you the teacher, but only helps the students inasmuch as you are not trying to dramatically shift this year’s class, just thinking about a different map for the following year. Who isn’t a great teacher when the year hasn’t yet begun? Doesn’t a clean folder structure make you feel better about the world?

One document I start each year is the “additions to handbook” piece where the guide to a particular class, the expectations, etc., are all laid out. You can’t change this midyear and certainly not at the end of the year, but as schooling and your children evolve, you have to come up with new things. And there are gaps that you’ve realized you need too fill. If you have a running document that you’re adding to, it’s a helpful for the following year, and it helps you avoid the temptation of trying to take that on in the moment, which will certainly not serve you well. Another thing writing in these documents does is help you not to address things that are going wrong when you’re tired and bored with yourself.

Celebrating as much as you can
If you do authentic work, it’s not easy. Point this out as often as possible: we’re not doing busywork, we’re not doing word searches, we’re not memorizing with the intention to forget what we’ve memorized the next day. We’re trying to do real tasks together so let’s get it done.

Last Thoughts
None of this solves how hard the end of the year is for students and teachers. But it’s what I’m thinking about this week on my walks to school.

After my post the other day, The Guardian published this excellent piece by Isabel Manley. I loved Odell’s book. I love this representation of that book and how one teacher tries to make sense of time. And Manley can actually draw.

This last panel got me thinking:

“The kind of time,” I would bet, is accompanied by a notion of the kind of space too. Most teachers want their room to feel like a studio, or an artist’s loft, or a museum office, or a newsroom. (It’s a great exercise to think about what space you want your classroom to look like especially if you make a list of the things that work against it.) But a good portion of those activities aren’t communal, and you also have more than a few minutes where it’s not about the work you’re doing as a group. It’s about the individual.

So you have to do the work to make it so that people want to be in the space but you also have to contend with the fact that your classroom is embedded in a school with thirty, forty, fifty other classrooms. Classrooms. Cells and bells, yo.

Think about when and where humans feel the “ah, let me sit down and create something?” Not in a vaguely-industrial, partially-cleaned space filled with a mix of friends and acquaintances, some of whom are feeling the same and others of whom are focused on where the next bag of Hot Chitoes can be found. And where one noisy person is telling them what to do.

(Student workspace on a Thursday afternoon in 308)

But Manley’s piece is about time, not space. Part of the reason why I’m up well before 5AM each morning is because it’s the only time I have to be creative. To try and write something. To try and be something other than teacher drone, beholden to the clock. Can I write something? Can I put myself in a position where I’m walking away from this life with one or more cool things to show for myself, just as I spend my days trying to put kids in a position where they walk away from our class with one or more cool things to show for themselves?

In the summer between my tenth and eleventh grade year it became apparent that I’d earned a terrible grade in calculus. In order to bump my grade, I had the option of seeing a tutor and then re-taking various elements of the course. My parents did what parents did in the 1970s — pointed at my Schwinn Varsity and told me to start pedaling. Twice a week I rode the bike ten miles up a divided highway and sat with a tutor who gently and effectively carried me through the necessary material. He was great. I remember his patience and I remember how easily the concepts came when it was just the two of us. I don’t remember his name.   

I know that individual instruction is important and I know that it works. Yet everything in schools and society seems to work against this idea. And, from my jaded, late-April teacher eyes, it seems to be getting worse each year: what we ask of teachers, what’s on their plates, makes it more and more difficult. I watched almost every minute of the NCAA tournament this year on the women’s side and I was reminded of this as I watched these super well-coached teams operate.  Here’s a head coach. Here’s three or more paid assistant coaches. Here’s four to six unpaid student supporters.  All these different support staff members make possible lots of one-on-one connections with twelve to fifteen super-motivated individuals.  Lo and behold, success.  

Then there’s a teacher, alone, with no support staff, in a position where no one is coming to help, and, even in the best schools on the best days, they are tending to twenty to thirty percent of the kids who are only there because they have to be.  Reformers and folks who care about school talk a great deal about individualizing instruction and I don’t disagree with their emphasis.  But it’s worth exploring the nature of individual instruction in 2024 through the eyes of a teacher. 

If you want to maintain any kind of creative pedagogy, this level of individual attention, at least on the public school scale, can feel nearly impossible. Even as my teaching improves, even as I’m aware of the different ways that kids can go right or wrong when we grapple with a topic, there’s too many humans in the room for me to be able to adequately individualize my instruction. There are different ways I try to address this — scheduling mini-conferences, individual emails, comments on Canvas, comments on documents, conversations with kids in passing, before or after class — but they are never enough. And even though I work hard to make sure that I have a community and a diverse and differentiated pedagogy that works to take care of the many students in the room, I still miss kids, and I have moments where the amount of energy I burn trying to keep groups of thirty-three kids on track for four to six hours a day leaves me empty.  

It’s not just the everyday teaching process, though. The rise of IEPs and 504 plans has had a big impact. I am not doubting the need for these plans nor am I shirking the legal mandate they create for me as a classroom teacher. However, you cannot have a class of thirty-three kids where somewhere between a sixth and a third of the class have IEPs and 504 plans.  The paperwork alone is enough to make that impossible before you even begin to think about differentiating your instruction across multiple axes.  

I also know that mental health issues are being identified among teenagers at astoundingly high rates. We can debate whether the rates are increasing or whether the level of awareness is increasing, but there’s certainly more language being used by students to take this on and more students who will come to me discussing their anxiety, their depression, their ADD, their ADHD, their OCD.  And there is not yet a middle ground between the 1970s “stop being lazy” and the current day vision of mental health issues as a “get out of jail free” card. I know that sounds harsh but I’m having too many conversations with parents and students that begin with “because of my ___, I can’t do ___.”  These conversations rarely seem to include “hey, I’m struggling with X, which leads to the following symptoms and struggles, so I’ve tried the following strategies and none of them have worked, so I need additional support.”  And I could work with kids to start having that conversation if I had any time at all.  

Now remember the fifteen months that COVID chomped out of all of our lives, which created an illusion or a delusion that individual instruction might be possible.  For the first time, owing to the reorganization of the schedule, you could check-in with kids on a one-to-one basis.   Sometimes this happened. Sometimes it didn’t. The COVID months certainly underscored that we spend too many hours in school; it made more than a few people think that one day a week of conferences, office hours, and tutorials might serve kids well.  Alas, for every three kids I have who could manage an independent day once a week where they went to office hours and worked to a plan of their own devising, I have at least one who could not (or would not) benefit from that. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah — you’re constantly compromising. Nothing new about that and teaching. But I think there’s a conflict brewing, one that’s yet another reason that teaching is increasingly untenable:  you can’t meet all of these individual needs. You can pretend. You can create accommodations and modifications that may or may not work. You can sort through your 180 days with kids and seek to develop as varied a curriculum as possible.  But on the scale of most public schools — four to five classes of thirty or more students — it’s like the fifty-five year old man with cheese steak juice dribbling down his chin declaring he’s going to finally run a marathon of six-minute miles. It ain’t happening, old man. Run your nine-minute miles and try not to get beat by the man in the purple-velour suit.  

Without finding time for individual conversations, though, I’m never going to win the “hey, this work is worth doing for the life of your mind and the health of your soul” argument. If a portion of teaching is inspiring students, you need to have time to actually connect, to see how they’re making sense of the class, the readings, and the discussions.  I have five minutes between classes to tend to my middle-aged bladder but more often than not, these are some of the most effective moments of teaching I have. Kids come with a legit question that’s not bound up in the social energy of the classroom and I can ask multiple follow-ups to see what they’re after; most of the time they leave feeling seen and understood and I get a little bump of satisfaction that I reached someone that day.  But then the next class has arrived and I still haven’t done my business.     

So what do I do about it, as one teacher with finite resources of time and energy?  The same thing I do with pretty much everything related to teaching: I keep trying. I design as many moments as I can where I have individual contact with students and I hope that in those moments I can actually be present.  I anticipate the way a large bureaucracy and a city full of surprises will offer new obstacles to my teaching.  I remember that choosing these individual connections relies on a larger culture within the class and school to allow me to do this, i.e., I can’t just say it’s individual meetings today because there are thirty-three people in the room and meeting with one kid relies on the rest of the students being able to remain productive or at least not destructive; so I do what I can to create the right sort of classroom culture.  Most importantly, I keep my eyes on the fact that the students want and need this individual attention and connection too.   

It was the long day — done teaching at 1 but conferences from 4-7.

I am gearing up to start my next unit. I’ll read The Great Gatsby. The kids will write and produce podcasts about their experiences reading the novel. I’ll build around three different themes — self-invention, authenticity, and the American Dream.

I came up with these articles and was proud of myself for keeping track of things and having some good ideas.

Waking up from the American Dream 

Self-invention/Authenticity 

Self-invention: Doing the Work 

The Rise of Therapy Speak 

College Single Mother (Land Excerpt)

So let’s see what the AI came up with:

If I were teaching The Great Gatsby and needed articles to accompany the unit, articles that focused on authenticity, self-improvement, and the American Dream, what articles would you suggest? I would want them to come from reputable media outlets and/or published texts.

So the AI comes back with this and I’m thrilled — one of my favorite non-fiction writers!

Authenticity:

• Article: “The Age of Authenticity” by Adam Gopnik
• Source: The New Yorker
• Link: The Age of Authenticity

This article delves into the concept of authenticity in contemporary culture and explores its implications on personal identity and societal values.

I poke and I can’t find it. So I ask the AI for an exact citation. Here’s the response:

I apologize for any confusion, but the specific details I provided, including the article title, author, and link, were fictional examples created for illustrative purposes.

So what’s happening here? The AI is guessing that there’s a high likelihood that Adam Gopnik might have been writing about this idea at that time? That someone in the New Yorker was doing so? The other responses were equally non-existent but led to me a few places that might be helpful.

Considering the number of experts that have said things like “hey, it’s great for kids looking to find sources!” I’m a little puzzled.

Each year I have my English Three students write a letter, in essay form, to their descendants. Patterned on Ta-Nehesi Coates’s book, Between the World and Me, students compose a shorter version. They must also use section breaks that they’ve selected from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.

I write the essay too. I send it to my descendants. I think they read it.

Today I used Chat GPT to get feedback.

The good news: it is solid, helpful feedback that would help me improve my essay. It took the thing less then three seconds:

This is a brief essay I wrote for my children. Please read it and make suggestions on how I can be clearer, if I am convincing or not, and if the essay is coherent.

Your essay is heartfelt and contains valuable advice for your children as they approach adulthood. Here are some suggestions to enhance clarity, coherence, and convincingness:

1. Introduction:
   • Consider adding a sentence that explicitly states the purpose of the letter. For example, you could mention that you want to share some life advice with them as they prepare to leave the nest.
2. Use of Quotations:
   • The lines “Backward I see in my own days…” might be a bit challenging for readers. Consider providing a brief context or explanation for these lines to make them more accessible.
3. Consistency in Tone:
   • Ensure consistency in the tone throughout the essay. For example, in the paragraph that begins with “But a little bit at a time? It’s boring…”, you may want to maintain a balance between the serious tone and a touch of humor. This will make the advice more relatable.
4. Analogies:
   • Analogies are effective in conveying your message. When using the examples of boxers, writers, and gardeners, consider expanding on each analogy to help your children better relate to the concepts of drudgery and perseverance.
5. Transition Phrases:
   • Incorporate transition phrases between paragraphs to ensure a smooth flow of ideas. For instance, between the paragraph about drudgery and the one about neighborhood trees, you could use a phrase like “Speaking of perseverance…”
6. Clarity in Imagery:
   • In the paragraph about planting seeds, consider simplifying the language to enhance clarity. Instead of “the nature of much of existence,” you might say something like “that’s how life often works.”
7. Repetition for Emphasis:
   • Emphasize key points by repeating them strategically throughout the essay. For instance, reinforce the idea of doing things “a bit at a time” to highlight its importance.
8. Closing:
   • Strengthen the closing by reiterating your love for them and expressing confidence in their ability to navigate the challenges of adulthood. Encourage an open line of communication by emphasizing your availability for support.
9. Proofreading:
   • Perform a thorough proofread for grammatical errors and typos to ensure a polished final version.
10. Encourage Reflection:
    • Consider adding a brief section that encourages your children to reflect on their own dreams, goals, and the ways they plan to approach them. This can make the advice more personal and actionable.

Remember that your personal touch and sincerity are the strengths of the essay. Adjustments can be made based on your preferences and your children’s personalities.

MC: This is solid feedback. Too general? Maybe it’s applicable to every essay but it doesn’t mean it’s not helpful.

---

Then I asked it to come up with additional quotes from Song of Myself that match what I’m trying to say. Sigh. It nailed it:

“I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content,
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.”

---

Then I thought about one of my favorite essays — Politics and the English Language — and asked the AI to compare it:

I am going to paste in my essay. How does my essay compare to George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language? What could I learn from his prose? What could he learn from mine?

Comparing your essay with George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” reveals both commonalities and differences in style and content. Here’s an analysis:

Similarities:

1. Clarity of Language:
   • Like Orwell, your writing is generally clear and straightforward. You convey your thoughts in a manner that is easily understandable.
2. Personal Tone:
   • Both essays adopt a personal tone. Orwell’s essay reflects his personal views on language, while your essay is a letter from a parent to children, creating an intimate connection with the reader.
3. Concrete Imagery:
   • Both essays employ concrete imagery to illustrate points. Orwell uses vivid examples to criticize vague and inflated language, while you use metaphors like “Boxers running four slow miles in the cold” to depict the concept of drudgery.

Differences:

1. Purpose and Focus:
   • Orwell’s essay primarily critiques political language and its manipulation, aiming to promote clear and honest expression. Your essay, on the other hand, focuses on life advice and the importance of perseverance, especially when faced with challenges.
2. Use of Literary Devices:
   • Orwell emphasizes the misuse of language in politics and the degradation of communication. In contrast, your essay employs literary devices like metaphors and analogies to convey life lessons.
3. Narrative Style:
   • Your essay takes on a narrative style as a letter from a father to children, whereas Orwell’s essay is more of an analytical and critical commentary.

What You Could Learn from Orwell:

1. Precision and Economy:
   • Orwell emphasizes the importance of choosing words carefully and avoiding unnecessary words. Consider revisiting your essay to ensure every word serves a clear purpose.
2. Elimination of Clichés:
   • Orwell advises against using overused phrases. While your essay doesn’t heavily rely on clichés, ensuring freshness in expression could strengthen your writing further.
3. Avoiding Dying Metaphors:
   • Orwell warns against using metaphors that have lost their original impact. Evaluate your metaphors to ensure they resonate effectively with your audience.

What Orwell Could Learn from You:

1. Emotional Connection:
   • Your personal and emotive approach establishes a strong emotional connection. Orwell’s essay, being more analytical, lacks the emotional depth that your letter to your children provides.
2. Positive Reinforcement:
   • Orwell’s essay is critical in nature, whereas yours is more positive and encouraging. Balancing critique with positive reinforcement can create a well-rounded message.
3. Application of Advice:
   • Orwell’s essay focuses on language use in a broader sense, while your essay provides practical advice for personal and professional growth. Incorporating real-life examples could make Orwell’s critique more tangible.

In summary, both essays excel in their respective styles and purposes. Learning from each other involves incorporating the strengths of each approach to create a more well-rounded and impactful piece.

---

MC: I know I’m not George Orwell and never will be. And he was writing for a different purpose. The feedback made me feel better about the world, though, and reminded me of nuggets from that essay I need to keep in mind whenever I write.

Worth keeping in mind. Door removed from bathroom and placed in closet.

Here. May take this on as part of end of quarter project.