how to take down a teacher in the ottawa district schhol board (sic)

The title was the search engine term used by one reader who reached my site.

Wolves taking down an elk (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It made me start thinking about my career with this board and the number of teachers in the board I have seen targeted, or I have been told about by a colleague who saw them targeted.

Here is a partial list of those cases in no particular order.  Some were dealt with fairly; some resulted in a teacher suspension or a teacher being charged.

1. A primary student told a supply teacher that he was going to tell the principal that he (the teacher) had taken down his (the student’s) pants.
2.   Parents decided a junior teacher was too fat to teach physical education and were instrumental in getting her dismissed.
3. Some intermediate girls were annoyed with their poor marks and got back at their teacher by falsely claiming that he had sexually assaulted them.
4. Some intermediate students set up a homophobic web site and showed it to one of their teachers on the assumption that he was gay.  The parents of one of them thought the subsequent suspension was unfair.
5. On two different occasions in the same school two different students lied about two different teachers in two consecutive years.  Instead of investigating, the principal turned each one over to the board which chose to believe the children.
6. A teacher on an exchange on the other side of the world was called by a friend to find out if she had a good lawyer.  Unbeknownst to her, she had been charged with sexual assault by a former student and it was all over the news.  The judge eventually threw it out of court but not before she and her family had been through public hell.
7. Thirteen parents got together in a private home to discuss a new teacher’s math program because A) she said math wasn’t her thing so she wouldn’t be running an extracurricular math program, B) she didn’t always teach from the textbook or assign lots of homework (she was an experienced math, English and social studies teacher).  The principal refused to deal with it.
8. A gifted and imaginative grade one teacher was turned on by the parents and her colleagues in the program she taught in because she (successfully) used whole language rather than phonics exercise books to teach reading.  Her students also learned to appreciate art through an appropriately designed unit on Matisse.  One of her colleagues even withdrew her daughter from the class.  Her principal did not defend her or reprimand the colleague.  She left the program.

Unfortunately this desire is not an anomaly.  There are many students and sometimes parents who want to “take down” a teacher.  If  parents support the students or the administration does not support the teacher, the life of the targeted teacher becomes hell.  Every action, every slip, bad call, ambiguous action becomes open to the worst possible interpretation. 

Related articles

• http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/false-accusations-growing-fear-classroom
• PUBLIC EDUCATION: Teacher Evaluation Fail in New York. “Teacher unions would like for virtually al… (pjmedia.com)
• New York’s flawed teacher evaluations are a step towards a ‘choice-based educational system’ (costofcollege.wordpress.com)
• Fundamental Truth of Learning #2 (mikepoliquin.com)
• Calling Teachers from All Nations (sdscaiff.wordpress.com)
• One more letter to the Seattle School Board regarding Teach for America, Inc. (seattleducation2010.wordpress.com)

Welcome to the Teaching Profession

This is what I tell all my student teachers:  teaching is the most rewarding profession there is, if you truly love it.  Don’t do it for the money or July and August or because you don’t know what else to do; if you don’t enjoy teaching there is very little which will adequately compensate your efforts.

Remember that this is a job you can do 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year and still not get every task done, reach every child in the class or please every parent or administrator.  If you allow yourself to be swallowed by the classroom you will shorten your career as a teacher.  Illnesses will plague you and your students will eventually irritate rather than delight you.

Your first duty is to yourself.  Put aside time for fun, exercise, family and friends but most especially yourself.  Make that time sacred.  Cultivate a hobby that will absorb and distract you when you are not teaching.  These are the things that will renew you and make you a better teacher in the long run.

Plan to eat lunch in the staffroom; eating lunch at your desk is counter-productive.  Plan to arrive and leave at the same time every day.  Creating habits for things that can be routine is a way of freeing yourself to spend your time and creativity on the more demanding work.

There are lots of excellent books out there on how to organise your classroom and your time.  What is important is to use a plan that works for you, no matter who recommends what, and create habits that allow you the freedom to put your mind to real problems.  You should be aware that a great deal of paper crosses a teacher’s desk and your sanity depends on you being able to triage.  Ideally get your desk cleared daily into appropriate files.

I do have a few tips that worked for me.  I had two bumf files.  By bumf, I meant the kinds of information and social announcements that are difficult to classify.  One file was labelled Board Bumf and the other was labelled School Bumf. I put the papers in them in chronological order.  This was easy as it just meant putting the latest one at the front of the file.  Before I filed these papers, I noted anything I needed to know such as dates of events in my calendar; I learned to note all dates that had anything to do with the school even if they concerned another section.  However, if I forgot to note important information, it was all easily accessible.  At the end of June, I emptied the files into the recycle bin without needing to sort them.

Secondly, a copy of the class-seating plan with squares large enough to note behaviour, learning progress or questions concerning each student is invaluable.  I always had several copies.   I dated one when I started using it and dated it again when I filed it because it was full and I had to get another one out.  These were extremely useful when I was writing report cards or assessing how a student was progressing.  I also used them to leave notes for occasional teachers.

If organisation is a major problem for you I suggest you take a look at the Fly Lady site.  It includes a system for helping teachers get organised and stay organised as well as a system for organising the home.  I have used some of her tips with students.  One of the best is the fifteen minutes work period.  For specific systems for classrooms, browse the shelves in education libraries; remember that you don’t have to implement everything at once.

One thing that you want to try to implement is smooth transitions in your classroom.  If your students go from one activity to the next quickly and with a minimum of fuss, time is saved for learning.  That time adds up.  It also means a calmer and happier classroom.  It takes time, careful preparation and self-discipline to create these smooth transitions but it is worth the effort.

Communication is very important.  Talk to each student: the good, the bad and the ugly. Too often poor behaviour is rewarded by our attention and we ignore good behaviour.  Casual chat with students before class starts often sets a mood or gives them the confidence to talk to you later when they have difficulties. Talk to the parents, too.  Face to face is best but any form of communication is better than none.  Keep your administrator up to date with life in your classroom.  Principals especially appreciate storm warnings.  Chat with your colleagues, but be careful not to take up too much of their time.   Keep abreast of school news.  Teachers can’t afford to go into their classrooms and shut the door.

Finally, when you find yourself unhappy or grumpy at school, it is a sign that you are in need of a mental health day or two.  Take them and do something you love.  If they happen often, then get help in identifying what is troubling you beyond fatigue or temporary stress.  Remember, you can’t take care of anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself first.

Concerning Comments From Readers

My policy is to post all comments from readers provided that they are not abusive, illegal or fattening.  I do have one other constraint:  I am not comfortable in posting comments which refer to specific teachers, children, parents or schools by name or in a way that makes it easy for the general public to identify any of them.

You may have noticed that my criticism about education has largely been about ineffective systems which either cheat our children of reasonable educational attainment or load their teachers with demands that make them less effective in teaching our children.   I do try to temper my annoyance with leaders in education who buy into these systems because they are more interested in their careers than the education of children.

After twenty years in the system I still believe that almost all teachers have the interests of their students at heart and do their best to act in those interests.  I might disagree with their means but I rarely quarrel with their sincerity.  Some teachers are so tired either because they are overwhelmed by their teaching situation or an extra-curricular problem or illness, that they must reduce their efforts in the classroom if they are to survive.  Few teachers last long in the classroom if they suffer from any serious health problem.

It is tempting sometimes to pillory a teacher who has got up your nose in some way, especially if your child is involved.  Before you throw the first stone, however, ask yourself what stories might be put about if 30 pairs of young eyes watched you at work for six hours a day, every day.  Then imagine the mouths taking home stories about what they had seen and heard you do during the six hours.   Ask yourself if you have ever seen a child slant a story to get out of trouble, to show herself in a good light, to illustrate her personal biases or just for the excitement of making it bigger than it is when she shares it with her friends.

Then pillory the teacher if you can.

Schools can be very small communities so naming a school can make it very easy to identify the people involved.  Since critical comments often involve events which happen quickly in response to an incident, I am reluctant to embarrass people who are doing the best they can with what they know at the time.  When it involves policy, the policy is often dictated by the board or agreed upon by the school council.  It is never as simple as it sounds.

All this to say, I will not publish comments that name schools, children, their teachers or parents.  School boards and their policies are fair game; they have consultants and lawyers and all sorts of people to help them get things right; when they don’t, it is usually not for lack of knowing what the best choice is: it is usually because the people who are ultimately accountable, the elected trustees, do not have the backbone to make that choice.  Weak spines are contagious and will eventually infect all the administration in a board.

Rethinking “Education for All” Charts: Does Paperwork Improve Teaching?

Having just posted a number of charts based on Education for All, (See For Teachers: Some Charts Based on Education for All) I find myself appalled at the amount of paper work a teacher deals with. These charts add to the already increased load of paper a teacher might find herself dealing with in the course of the year.  If it improves learning in the classroom, I am all for it; the question is does it improve learning?

First let’s review some of the paper a teacher deals with in the course of a normal year:

1.     Set up marking records

2.     Collect tombstone data about students and pass on to the office, recording relevant information for own files beforehand.

3.     Reviewing students’ OSRs  (Ontario Student Records) for information about the children.

4.     Collect and record money – school fees, Scholastic books purchases, milk for lunch, hot dog day fundraisers, school field trips, photographs; it is expected that the teacher add up the money, record who paid what and record the amount of change, dollars, cheques & totals before submitting it to the office.  Often she is expected to hand it in to the office on a daily basis for safekeeping.

5.     Write a detailed description (after researching and reserving activities and possibly buses) to apply to take her class on a field trip.  Her principal and superintendent review this; if either of them wants a change, it must be rewritten and resubmitted.  This means that the teacher does every thing she can to speed the approval process along, as she is anxious to have approval quickly to retain her spot and bus.  Field trips include anything outside the school grounds which means that even a walk around the block must be written up and submitted for approval.

6.     Locate, price and write up an order sheet for textbooks for an application to the principal to purchase on the off chance the money is available.

7.     Record sufficient notes about behaviour and academic performance of each student in the class so she can support her comments in any interview with a parent.

8.     Write up her notes for the next day’s plans in a clear fashion with reference to textbooks etc. so a supply teacher can take over her class in event of illness or accident.

9.     Prepare materials for lesson plans manually in the event suitable textbooks are not available.

10.  Do attendance at least twice a day and see that it is sent down to the office.  No, students may not do the attendance.  A mistake can wreak havoc, either worrying a parent or not alerting the school & parents to a child’s absence.

11.  Notes from parents about children’s absences.

12.  Everyday memos from the board, the union, the parent council, colleagues and the school, catalogues and flyers end up in a teacher’s mail slot; some require action, some request help, some are merely informative.  I have a bumf file and put everything in it in case I need a memo later on.  At the end of the year, I can usually throw the whole lot in the recycling.  Still, some of them are important so each must be scanned and the key ones dealt with, responded to, pinned on the bulletin board, information provided, door decorated, children informed or taught, time allocated or lesson plans changed.

13.  Report cards are largely done on computers these days.  The programs change yearly or every two years, mainly in response to bugs in the previous programs, but each new version requires time spent learning.  In some schools, the teachers print them, in others it is done by the office personnel.

14.  Report cards – sign, fold, put in envelopes, give to children; Make sure all the comments sheet with parental signatures are collected from children the following week, then filed with a copy of report card in the OSRs – every term

15.  Write IEPs for every exceptional student in the class, copy filed in the OSR and a copy is sent to the parents – by the teacher, every term

16.  Record number of hours each child has spent in French class updated on a card in the OSR in June – by the homeroom teacher.

17.  Photographs of each child in the class stuck in place in the OSR and dated

18.  Tidy contents of OSR into a specific order in June

19.  If the students are in a class that is leaving the school in June, bundle the students’ OSRs according to which schools they will attend.

20.  Of course, teachers photocopy their own material, create or buy signs, posters and other decorations for the classroom.  If the equipment is available, they also laminate them.  If they are lucky, money is available for decorating the classroom.  Either way the classroom is empty when they arrive and they are expected to decorate it appropriately.

Now add the documentation from Education for All

So what is all that paperwork for?  The two main reasons are records and accountability.  When you think of it, they overlap in spots: report cards both record and account for student progress and marking records and teacher’s notes support the more formal report cards.  Even recording hours of French is necessary given the number of different programs.  It wouldn’t be sufficient to record the program as students frequently drop out into other programs. (See French as a Second Language is not Taught in a Vacuum; How Do We Teach All the Children?)  Recording hours of French is a form of accountability although it is not related to the teacher recording them.

The question is, how much paperwork is necessary to provide sufficient record keeping for the sake of accountability?  Just looking at the incomplete list above, you can imagine what proportion of a teacher’s time this requires.  Which of these activities would be better replaced with planning, helping children before and after class and assessing the students’ work?  I can list several items of which all or part are not directly related to teaching:  #2, 4, 6, 11, 13 to 20.  As you can see, much of it involves filing.

When I first started teaching, my principal believed that teachers should have goals for their students written down.  This only came out when some teachers were evaluated and expressed their indignation at what was an unusual expectation.  Most teachers have goals for their students tucked in the back of their mind, goals that change as the child changes, but few think of writing them down any more than they would write down the criteria that determine where they seat a child in the classroom.  Believe me, that can be a long list, including sight, hearing, behavioral and learning factors, friends, distracters, need for cues from the teacher and so on.

As a new teacher, I was also being evaluated, so I quickly jotted down my thoughts on my students and casually stuck the page behind the half a dozen pages that formed my notes supporting my plans for the day and week.  Naturally, when the principal went through my day plan, he found them and I earned brownie points.

The thing is that writing down my goals for my students hadn’t created them; they were there all along, otherwise I couldn’t have hastily written them down before the principal’s visit.   The most that writing them down had done for me (besides improving my evaluation) was to clarify them a little.  Within a week or two, the goals were no longer accurate because the child was changing, showing new strengths or weaknesses or I was gaining greater insights.

Where writing down observations and goals did help was when I had students whose difficulties seemed beyond help in my classroom.  Then, I worked to write them down accurately and clearly because I was going to turn to my colleagues or principal for help.  If they did not know the child, then I was going to be the sole source of information.  At that point, the information garnered through the Education for All Charts would be useful.  Virtually nothing is left out.

Is it necessary to fill out all the charts on literacy and numeracy for every child?  Most teachers are very aware of the basic academic and learning skills of each student in their class by the end of the first term and many have them pegged much earlier than that.  As long as each child is learning well and assessed accurately both formatively and summatively, is a learning profile worth the cost in time?

To explain:  formative assessment is evaluation used to figure out how much the student has understood.  This helps the teacher determine how to teach the next section; it also helps the student understand what needs reviewing.  Summative assessment is used for final evaluation i.e. marks.  In theory, these are separate assessments; in practice, they may cross over as when a teacher allows redoing assignments for mastery or when the most recent, highest marks in a unit are used for final assessment.

Returning to paperwork: time is most effectively spent on learning profiles when a student is struggling.  At that point, a thorough understanding of strengths and weaknesses will be an asset as a starting point in determining the next steps in helping the child.  Time spent observing, reflecting and writing down the points in each part of the learning profile may provide the basis for useful insights.

A learning profile as an aide memoire in preparation for report cards or a guide for planning units may also be helpful.  The danger is that principals who don’t trust their teachers to use their professional judgment may jump on the Education for All bandwagon and ask that all these forms be used.  It will look like accountability, but it will be no more accountability than asking teachers to sign time cards.

Am I saying teachers shouldn’t do any paperwork?  No.  I am saying that before teachers are asked to do any paperwork, the usefulness of the paperwork as records or a measure of accountability should be weighed against the usefulness of the teachers’ time spent teaching or planning or assessing or consulting with colleagues.

For More Information:

Education for All: The Report of the Expert Panel on Literacy and Numeracy Instruction for Students With Special Education Needs, Kindergarten to Grade 6, 2005

What’s in “Education for All” Besides the Concept of Universal Design?

Part 3 of “Education for All”

Education for All was written by a collection of administrators and professors lightly seasoned with a teacher.  It is a collection of good ideas for clarifying the strengths and needs of students and working out ways to teach them well.  Making the best use of it will require taking time to read it carefully and make note of the most useful ideas.  Some teachers may find the ideas too time consuming.  Not every idea is practical in every classroom, especially if there is only one teacher, but in principle, the ideas are promising.  Here is a brief guide.

As I noted in a previous post, the writers failed to make their point about Universal Design but they did a nice job of demonstrating differentiation in the second chapter.  They go on to make lots of useful suggestions for basic approaches to teaching.  Unfortunately, as you will find throughout the book, the suggestions are general; to get something specific and especially concrete that can go from book to classroom, you will have to turn to other books.  Some are mentioned in the bibliography, but they are not distinguished from the purely academic.  This may seem a trivial point but for a teacher hoarding every minute, the time involved in sieving a bibliography for nuggets of usefulness can be too much.

The writers do refer to a great teaching method, but one I wouldn’t normally recommend for K to 6 students.  The Expert Panel calls it Problem Based Approach (p. 17).  They haven’t quite grasped the concept of Ill-Structured-Problem-Based Solving they are actually trying to describe.  It is effective but needs careful design, firmness and support in order to work.  There is a reason it started with Harvard and the innovative McMaster medical school and not in someone’s grade 4 class.

The chapter on Assessment and Evaluation of students with Special Education Needs is useful for both the new teacher who is unfamiliar with the steps required in getting help outside the classroom for students and any teacher who has been confused by the red tape involved.  I have tried to create some charts to help teachers track steps and required information, but referring to this section would also prove useful.  For the charts, please see the post EDUCATION FOR ALL:  Stuff to Help Teachers in the next post.

Developing Learning Profiles: Know your Students

There are lots more charts in the next chapter to help teachers develop learning profiles of their students and the classroom.  I have adapted them somewhat to make them easier to download and use.  In the next post I will explain and offer the charts.  The one thing the ministry does not provide but strongly suggests is questionnaires for parents and children.  These are things teachers have not been trained to create.  I am working on some and will make them available but I strongly suggest teachers sit down with their own divisions and create their own.  My designs might be useful as a starting or discussion point.  The parent questionnaires might stay the same for all grades but student questionnaires will need modification for most grades.  Students may need some explanations about the questionnaires; doing it as part of a unit on data gathering as an authentic activity to demonstrate real life applications might be an effective way of killing two birds with one stone..

And Then We Get to the Part about Teaching in the Inclusive Classroom

Education for All spends three chapters outlining potential challenges for students in acquiring literacy and numeracy skills and ways of anticipating those difficulties.  This is probably the most useful part of the book.    A chart identifies these challenges and strategies for meeting the challenges.  The suggestions are excellent but abstract; busy teachers need concrete suggestions that can be applied immediately.  On the other hand, it is a good starting point for thinking about meeting these challenges.

Teachers would undoubtedly have been grateful for a list of books which had concrete methods, blackline masters and even lesson plans relevant to specific grades and subjects which met Education for All’s criteria.  For example, I have found the following three books invaluable: When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12 by Kylene Beers; I Read It, But I Don’t Get It by Cris Tovani and Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom by Susan Winebrenner. In today’s inclusive classroom, I would add Teaching Kids with Learning Difficulties in the Regular Classroom, also by Susan Winebrenner.  I don’t know what books I would add for numeracy, but the teachers guides to many recent textbooks do offer excellent suggestions for accommodations.  These books, however, are favourites of this intermediate elementary teacher.  Primary teachers would have others.

Accommodations and Modifications: What’s the Difference?

A good explanation of the differences between accommodations and modifications and a detailed chart of many accommodations a teacher might make is provided in Chapter Nine.  A teacher might find it worthwhile to photocopy the chart and put it with the materials used to create lesson plans; it is a good general source of ideas.  A word of caution to teachers: if you are accommodating four students and modifying lessons for three more in addition to being a good (not a walk on water) teacher you may find yourself putting in extra hours every day.

You Say Syllabus, I Say Curriculum; Either Way There is a Lot of Work to Do!

For each subject, Ontario’s Ministry of Education sets out in broad strokes an outline of expected knowledge and skills outcomes.  They do not provide a detailed syllabus (or curriculum, depending on which side of the Atlantic you reside) with texts to use in order to reach those goals.  As a result, teachers end up reinventing the wheel.  In the primary and junior grades there are usually math texts with good to excellent teacher guides that the inexperienced teacher can follow.

The ministry is also creating Targeted Implementation and Planning Supports for Revised Mathematics (TIPS) that is available to grades 7 to 10 teacher at the moment. It is worth taking the time to figure out. The grade 7 and 8 teachers whose contracts are negotiated by the Elementary Teachers Federation will have to look under the Secondary section of the Education web site.  Nothing similar has been done for the elementary grades.

Aside from math, textbooks are rare in the primary and junior grades.  English textbooks don’t exist in grade 7 or 8.  It used to be that curriculum consultants created a model curriculum that reflected the goals of the ministry.  I still treasure my history binder from the board that I have interleaved with my notes, overheads and photocopied pictures.  However, budget cuts have put an end to curriculum consultants who have the time to do more than workshops on changes to the curriculum.

That being the case, the Ontario teacher is now expected to create the course that will result in the proposed outcomes, and the accommodations and modifications. At the same time she is dealing with more duties and has less help because there are fewer specialists such as teacher librarians.  Teachers in schools where there is another teacher with the same grade would be smart to team up with each other.  With careful co-operation, teachers may reduce their workload to half the planning, half the returning items to the literacy and numeracy resource room, half the time spent photocopying and a better chance of getting home in time for a game of Ultimate Frisbee or to chill with a good book.

Who Does the Work?

The principal is listed under people who will share responsibility with the teacher for inclusive education.  While a teacher may hope for the ideal principal on page 113, the reality is more likely to be a politician who has to watch her back; with tact and diplomacy teachers may get the facilitation needed to implement inclusive education. Principals who come close to that supportive, collegial ideal should be cherished. Teachers such as the Special Education teachers (the name changes regularly) who provide support in the classroom are not likely to be there for times other than language skills or math.  Classroom teachers might consider switching subjects (such as history, geography and science) which make use of literacy or numeracy skills occasionally with language arts or math time slots.  It would be an effective way to support these skills across the curriculum.

Notice that the principal shares responsibility and the special education teacher will provide support but the burden of work and responsibility rests on the shoulders of the classroom teacher.

Computer Assisted Technology

The document addresses computer assisted technology.  While it has useful things to say about it, the most important things are not said.  First, a child will frequently have to wait until the next school year to receive any technology he or she needs.   In the meantime it will be the parents and teacher who will be improvising and trying to keep the child’s spirits up.

Secondly, all technology requires a learning period; initially the student will learn quickly but then start to slow.  Although this is normal, it is discouraging; a student will get frustrated and want to quit.  The teacher should check to make sure everything is working properly and then work with the parents to encourage the student to keep going.  The assistive technology won’t prove really useful until it becomes a tool to do something else, not an end in itself. If you have read Outliers, you will know that mastery of any skill takes many hours of conscious practice.  Parents and teachers will have to resist pressure from the student to let them give up the new aid.  Things Take Time.

Tools for Implementing Inclusive Classrooms

It is fashionable in the educational world to talk about Professional Learning Communities and this document is not any different.  When I picked myself off the floor where I was rolling around laughing at the concept of having the time for a professional learning community, I indulged myself with the fantasy.  I think that the only thing better for a teacher than a professional learning community is personal time.  One of the difficulties (besides time) is that a professional community involving a principal who will eventually assess a teacher might inhibit frank discussions.  That being said, teachers who do have the time and opportunity for a real PLC should go for it.

The writers take five pages to suggest that Professional Development is a Good Thing.  All levels of education, including universities, should be involved and teachers should have plenty of opportunity to learn the skills needed for the inclusive classroom.  Unfortunately, they didn’t mention where the money is coming from.

Finally, the writers make 12 recommendations that should be read and considered by those who have the power to make them happen.  Parents should read them and trustees should read them and administrators should read them.  If inclusive education has any hope of working, these recommendations, practical professional development and, yes, professional learning communities need to happen.  Successful change does not happen by saying, “make it so”.

For More Information:

Education for All: The Report of the Expert Panel on Literacy and Numeracy Instruction for Students With Special Education Needs, Kindergarten to Grade 6, 2005

NEXT POST: Giftedness & Education for All August 21

FINAL POST: Help for Teachers: Charts taken from, modified and created from Education for All August 26