Losing Our Schoolhouses

It seems like only yesterday that I was blogging about the daunting possibilities of a Trump presidency.  Ten months have passed and now those speculations are becoming a reality.  Trump has done a lot of flip flopping since the election but we in the education field will get no such relief.  We are just gonna have to accept that what he has said about education is going to take place in some shape or form with his selection of Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.

I think it is no secret that this nominee has no business in this position.  Several groups, teacher's unions included,  have come out against her selection.  Looking back at the last few days, I remembered being nauseous when I heard Michelle Rhee's name being passed around and now we have a mega donor with no education experience under her belt.  A typical play for a Republican president.

Not to be a Debbie Downer but here is the situation, Republicans have control of Congress and the Whitehouse with our new federal education law in flux and under design.  This is a recipe for a complete right turn in the area of education.  This considering that we didn't even get a sniff this campaign season as an issue.  Trump has called for $20 billion to go towards school choice programs, including private school choice.  I am a little concerned that we are on the road towards losing our schoolhouses.

Lets look at the troubles with the issue of school choice.  Many experts and educators shun the concepts and for good reason.  First, lets pretend that there is a fair metric for measuring schools.  Illinois is getting closer thanks to Vision 20/20 but lets focus on any generic district in any state.  Second, lets pretend that all schools are funded fairly and equitably.  What I am asking you to assume is that there is a level playing field for all schools to start from if we are going to a school choice scenario.  If we were all starting from the same line, we all have the opportunity win a race that seems unwinnable these days. Some schools are running 200 meters to compete in the 100.  We have yet to fix that but lets get back to school choice.

My kids attend public schools in a rural area in Southern Illinois.  If the government deemed our neighborhood school as failing, they would allow their federal dollars to go with my kids to a new new school.  The closest one being six miles away and that is only if they are not failing as well.  But lets pretend that we took that bet and moved our kids to the other school six miles away that was deemed as not failing but has the same characteristics as our old school, just a different mascot.  More and more students also move to the next town over.  Our old neighborhood school is depleted of its students and its staff.  No one wants to stay in a school building that is failing and losing kids so all that is left are sub par teachers and employees.  Who would we hire to lead these ghost town schools?  They would eventually just close leaving our little town with nothing.  Urban areas do no fair any better.  Failing schools typically reside in high poverty areas and families are not able or unwilling to send their students several neighborhoods over to attend a high performing school.

Why all the drooling over school choice?  They say that competition will either make failing schools better or close them down so kids can attend better schools.  This is not what happens.  Competition creates winners and losers.  We should know because as a country we are pretty darn good at it.  I understand in a business setting that you need to compete in your market to make money.  Winners and losers do emerge.  I get it.  What happens when we establish a school choice system that includes charters and additional private schools?  That's easy, a new market to make money in.  The winners become the for-profit schools that will explode onto the scene and the losers become low income and poverty stricken neighborhoods.  Again, typical Republican play at the national level.

Schools were never meant to be a market.  Our schoolhouses serve the people in our neighborhoods and help our kids to become productive community members.  This noble effort has never invited such competition because it does not belong there.  There has to be an effort to use our schools to help communities to encourage social mobility.  A country of for-profit schools will never be able to do what our schoolhouses can do given an even playing field.  Maybe Trump should start there when deciding a direction for our nation's education efforts instead of taking away our schoolhouses.

More links on school choice in rural areas:
http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/03/school-choice-feasible-rural-states/
http://www.youngedprofessionals.org/yep-dc-recess-blog/rural-charter-schools-are-a-bad-idea

Schools on Blast

I know it happens a lot, but this week I am noticing more schools on blast than I am accustomed to noticing.  Maybe its the super moon thing but I wonder if people are just losing their minds or schools just really are terrible.

I probably lost some of you with the term "on blast".  Have you ever scrolled through your Facebook feed and found that one person that is complaining about school rules or playing time?  Then there are the subsequent 47 supportive comments from their friends.  I'm sure most of those Likes and comments are from people that really have no connection to the school but they feel good participating anyway.  Typically the poster has not contacted the school, teacher or coach.  They trade support from their online community for actual effort for their child's situation.  That's what it means to be on blast, exposing a situation or information to everyone with the other party's knowledge or consent.

As a school administrator I have a strict rule about my Facebook page.  I do not friend kids, parents or even my own staff.  I simply believe that my personal life and my professional world should not mingle with each other.  It keeps me and others from troubled situations.  I use Twitter as a safe place to interact professionally with my parents, staff and kids.  This arrangement definitely shields me from posts like the one I mentioned above.  That doesn't keep me from hearing about them or seeing my non-school related friends engaging in the practice with their own schools.  Never the less, I get to see this stuff no matter how hard I try.

So here is my advice for those parents that feel putting their school on blast is a reasonable option: grow up, call your school and try to fix what's broken.  Your kids need to see you behave as a functional adult.

To the folks that read it and interact with it, you are part of the problem too.  Please consider the following next time you see one of these posts:

• The person making the post is obviously biased and has not told a complete story or does not know the complete story.
• School employees cannot fight back.  If we release student or staff information to the public, 99.9% of the time it is illegal.  We are basically defenseless.
• For every like or comment you make, you are fueling this unhealthy behavior.
• The parent in question is most likely filling a personal psychological need rather than seeking justice for their child or the situation.

I can't say all school types feel the way I do, but before you vent on Facebook, just call me.  If I cannot remedy your situation to a fair end or if I just fail you totally, I can live with getting knocked around on Facebook.  However, you have to give us a chance.  Often times the national news media casts a dark cloud on all public schools with stories of isolated incidents of poor decision making.  This sets a tone for how all schools are perceived and it is just not fair.  Give us a chance before you put us on blast.

I'm Done with the Negative Ads!

It's election time so that means everyone hates each other.  I'm not a Trump supporter but it amazes me how many of my Facebook friends are so I avoid those posts.  Once its all said and done the internet can be fun again.  Besides, we have the awesome television commercials to depress us every day during every show we watch.  It's like this every election cycle but we power through it and get to the point where the elected officials don't act like they care about us anymore.

I'm numb to this nonsense.  I actually have a good working knowledge of election politics so much of the behavior is expected.  This time around, however, I have a real problem with the local races for the Illinois General Assembly.  The fight is on to unseat incumbent democrats and a whole lot of money is being spent to feed us negative ads with far fetched story lines.  I am not concerned about the incumbents, I am concerned about the newcomers to the scene.  To be fair, the incumbents should be running on their records and accomplishments.  Voters respond to experience and research has shown that negative ads do not motivate people to vote.  Instead everyone went negative with their ads almost immediately.

Despite being a Democrat, I can say that nobody is playing nice or even smart.  The Southern said it appropriately that the negative ads are scare tactics and do personal damage to the candidates.  One negatively ran race in particular has rubbed me the wrong way.  When Terri Bryant originally ran for the State House she was interviewed for an endorsement by the Alliance.  This is a group made up of the education advocacy groups.  I was fortunate enough to get to help interview the candidates and recommend an endorsement.  She did a very nice job on the issues for a newcomer.  Her opponent was not kind to her in his interview and it was quite off putting.  She was given the endorsement and a campaign donation based on her likely support of education issues.

Fast forward two years later.  Rep. Bryant is running against a newcomer with no legislative record, just as she was.  Marsha Griffin is a school teacher new to politics and she has been painted as reckless and unfit to hold the seat.  The newest ad run by Bryant points out that she was teaching on a lapsed teaching license and that she is missing work to campaign.  Maybe Rep. Bryant could be working on the licensing issues teachers have had seems how she has taken money from an education group.  This is the weakest tactic I've seen by incumbents ever.  They should run on their records and challenge their opponents based on their lack of knowledge of the issues or experience handling them.  If you had met Rep. Bryant two years ago, you would have seen the same inexperience.  Another similarity between the candidates, they are both heavily supported by their parties to not lose the seat.  Running out of desperation leads to negative campaign tactics that do nothing to inform voters.  Or maybe Rep. Bryant's record is not worth campaigning on.  Bobcat hunting just doesn't take care of itself you know.

I do not know Marsha Griffin and obviously I will always rise to respond to attacks on a teacher.  Thanks to the campaigning that has taken place, I will not get to know her or her platform.  The strategy is now to fight fire with fire leaving only destruction.  The same goes for the other races in this election.  The newcomers have been painted as bad as those who have sent them campaign cash and we are supposed to equate them with their donors.  I say check to see who is donating to who.  You might be surprised.  Thankfully, I will not be voting in the 115th so I am no threat to that election.

Folks, do your homework on your candidates.  No one is playing fair so its up to us to sift through the BS.  I don't have clever advice or any direction with this but hey, it doesn't look like you have to these days.

O'Doyle Rules!

October is Bullying Prevention Month and Principal's Appreciation Month so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone.  One, I would like to clearly define bullying for parents and two, you have to indulge me as I ramble because I happen to be a principal.

I am in no way making light of bullying with this post.  I think students and parents need to be better educated on the true definition of bullying before we start throwing the word around.  Before you call the office and allege bullying against another, I would like you to consider what I call the O'Doyle Rules.

The researched and accepted definition for bullying is aggressive behavior that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power. Most often, it is repeated over time.  The key element here is is the notion of a power imbalance.  I get tons of phone calls from parents asking me to look into bullying and it takes a lot of time to follow up.  Most of these scenarios end up being social conflicts in which the students involved do not have the skills to overcome.  Last week it was two former BFF's fighting over a boy.  The more they argued the worse it got and when it hit social media, the parents got involved.  Both side alleged bullying.  That is the problem.  They can't both be bullies and victims.

Bullies do not have extended, complex relationships with their victims.  Take the O'Doyles for example.  Billy Madison in the clip (and throughout the movie) was targeted by O'Doyle so dominance could be asserted.  They were not best buds goofing off and it got out of hand (I get that one a lot too), there is a clear showing of power.  This makes investigating a bullying situation easy.  If no relationship exists, I do not have to learn every back story and line up conflicting electronic messages that neither side wants the principal to see.  That, my friends, is an argument that needs mediation and the increased frequency of this shows that we just are not teaching our kids how to deal with people.

In the past six years I have been in my current school, we have had four true bullies by definition.  All ended up in alternative school because it is easy to determine that they sought to exploit people and to dominate them.  If I sent every student that a parent convicts as a bully to alternative school, the student body would be cut in half.  It is critical that we understand bullying and stop making victims out of our kids.

Parents and students take a few steps back before you call the principal and use the word bully.  Can you confidently say that this kid is an O'Doyle?  95% of the time the answer will be no.  Collect information from your kids and actually discuss the situation with them.  All too often I get emotional parents that are not thinking of their child's future emotional health.  I also often get parents that want to use me as their avenue for revenge.  This is totally not fair to me or the other family not to mention that it can be bullying behavior by the parents.

Use the O'Doyle Rules for deciding whether or not you have a bullying situation.  Is this a conflict that the kids just need guidance with? Is there a power imbalance?  You should be able to answer those questions before you call the principal.

5 Simple Truths

It didn't take long into this new school year before the same old parent shortcomings have shown up. We have great parents at my school but even well intentioned adults fall short sometimes and it's mostly because there are some simple truths that get over looked. Because I am a parent and a school administrator, there are some observations I've made over the last ten years that could be helpful to parents. No research to cite here. Just a practitioner’s advice and I hope it helps.

1. Trust your school staff - Teachers, aides, chaperones and administrators see your kids in a different light than you do. They get to see them in their unguarded moments and in a lot of cases, spend more time in a day with your kids than you do. If you want to know if your child is living the way you raised them to live, reach out to school staff and ask. We are partners, not adversaries.
2. Know what self esteem actually is - your child’s happiness does not equal good self esteem. I can't tell you how many times I hear a parent tell me that punishing their child will ruin their self esteem. These folks don't get it. Here’s the formula: Goal Setting + Guidance + Healthy Risk Taking = High Self Esteem. Setbacks and failures can be a good thing in small doses. Helping your kids through setbacks helps build self esteem and encourages resiliency.
3. We will not help you get vengeance against another - This is not the mission of any school. If your student has been wronged either in perception or reality, we should not be helping you get revenge. This week I had parents asking for help in contacting police and DCFS for a minor scrape involving a kickball game. Now, if we really have encountered a breach of the law you will get all the help you need. Like the times I have notified police about parents that drive their kids around to find a kid to fight after a school argument. (Sounds crazy but it does happen)
4. School Honors and Awards do not define your child - My own kids have been disappointed to not earn recognition and their dad is a Principal in the district. Under no circumstances do I expect special treatment for my kids but I do give one piece of advice when they feel passed over: work towards having the last laugh. As adults we have life experience that tells us that these awards and recognition do not guarantee a good quality of life. While some kids scratch and claw their way to award season, I'm pushing mine to live a life that will help them build towards a great adulthood. Be honest, we know that less than worthy kids earn some of these honors sometimes and it is hard to convince your child that's it's okay, but help them work towards the last laugh. The last laugh should be a healthy life and career that honors your family and community, not a momentary instance of glory.
5. Our kids are just like us - Yes they are. The reality is this, kids haven't changed but the world around them has. If we had all the tools they have to be mean the way they have, we would have made the same mistakes. Except in my case I would get my butt busted, not my phone taken away. It is their job to challenge authority and stretch rules. This helps them find their real boundaries. It is a learning process that is important in a school setting. If your child suffers a consequence at school, they are not being punished, they having a learning experience.  This is a jagged little pill to swallow because parents have to deal with the tears, remember I am a parent too so I've been there.

I really could do this all day. I see a myriad of diverse situations that challenge me each day. Remember, I look to no research for this advice so it's completely unscientific but comes from a good place. I actually care that my families have a good school experience too and I see them as partners, not roadblocks. Parents can make themselves roadblocks by not realizing these simple things. Have a great school year.

100th Blog Post

Well it took me about seven years but I made it to my 100th blog post.  I'm not sure how I have stuck with it so long but it has been more rewarding than I thought it might be when I started.  For the sake of looking back feel free to visit my most notable posts:

First Post (Poorly written with comments I wish I could take back)
Most Visited (17,000 + views)
Least Visited (1 view but a personal favorite)
Most Controversial (Lost some Facebook friends over this one)
My Favorite

If you took the time to look through any of these you can definitely see that this is an evolving endeavor for me.  Blogging is, for me, the exchanging of ideas.  The internet allows me to publish ideas and for others to engage them whether they agree or not.  I actually first was turned on to blogging in 1994.

That last sentence may sound a little weird.  The history of blogging can be traced back a ways but blogging as we know it took off in 2001 or so.  As I said, I am a believer in the exchange of ideas.  The first time I had that light bulb moment was in high school.  My friend's dad, Harry O, wrote a column in a small paper called the Weekly Review.  I couldn't wait to pick a new issue and read what he wrote.  We were not affiliated with the same political party and I often did not always completely  understand the issues he was writing about.  But, by reading his column I wanted to learn more about what was going on in our community.  He was a great writer and very engaging.  That's how blogging was done in those days, in print.  Not everyone had access to be a published columnist back then but now we do.

The internet and social media provides the ability to not just make us published authors, but also to read from a diverse group of authors.  I would not consider myself an author mostly because I am a terrible writer, but I can share ideas and engage other people.  My reach has not just been in my local community but across the nation.  Yes, little ole me has engaged people from a far off lands that I will never meet.  They were drawn to the ideas I've shared because we share a common profession and value set.  How awesome is that to know you can have that type of reach?

So what are you waiting on?  It is true that a lot of people will not read what you write.  It is true that people will not always agree with your perspective.  Don't let that hold you back from sharing ideas.  Someone can benefit from what you write and you may just feel liberated for writing it.  Take the leap and start a blog.  You just might make it to 100 and beyond.

Heartbreak is the Quality of a Great Teacher

At EdCamp West Frankfort this year I sat with many gifted and caring educators from all over the region.  In one particular session the conversation shifted to the notion that teacher training does not adequately prepare people to teach in today's climate.  After all, the game has definitely changed in the past few years with RTI, SB7, SB100 and now ESSA.  Yes the acronym machine is still running at full capacity.  My comment to this was that teacher ed programs especially don't prepare you for your first heartbreak.

My first heartbreak took place in my first year of teaching.  I was subbing for a teacher and as I began to carryout the plans for the class, I noticed a student with her head down appearing to be asleep.  We will call her TW.  Because I was a sub I had to be tough and not let the kids take me off the beaten path laid out by the teacher.  I asked her to keep her head up and participate.  She looked at me and then put her head back down.  I got out a referral form and wrote her up.  I laid it on the desk beside her head and she saw it.  She then told me, "Your name must be Mr. Ass because you're an asshole!"  I wrote her up again and sent her out of the room.  I think I may have only wrote four slips my hole first year and she was two of them.  I didn't see much more of TW that year but she found her way on to my World History roster the next year.

TW was a tough kid.  Always looked angry and didn't see the value in anything.  At least that's what I understood of her the six times I saw her the first semester.  I just happened to be on the truancy review team and she landed on the docket for a meeting.  I was prepared.  I was ready to explain how she wasn't attending and was not making up missed work.  I was ready to tell the social worker about her attitude and her lack of drive.  I was a well prepared professional ready to participate in the system of getting this kid to love my World History class and therefore love school all together. (insert sarcasm here)

Instead I got to hear her story.  She had a drug dealer for an older brother.  From what I heard he was a successful one.  She had an addict for a mother that rarely left the house.  No one had any insight on her father but she had three younger siblings.  TW walked them to school everyday and was their caregiver at all times.  She was only 15 and her childhood was being robbed from her.  I felt foolish for not taking the time to understand her but hey, I was just utilizing all the rules and tools we were taught in teacher school.  We were always told that teaching was an art and a science at SIUC, but what was never in any book was the power of the relationship.

My relationship changed with TW.  The way I spoke to her and how I articulated her value all changed.  She noticed the difference and attended more.  She was making up school work, passing my class and even smiled a few times.  When I had lunch room duty she would be my enforcer if a kid didn't listen to me.  She would always ask if I wanted to cut in the lunch line.  It is safe to say she didn't learn anything about world history and I'm okay with that.  She did learn that she had a positive connection with a dedicated adult.  It wasn't until this realization that I considered myself an actual teacher.

Here is the tough love part.  If you are a teacher and have yet to have your own heartbreak or feel incapable of one, go find a new job.  Kids don't need people who get a teaching degree so they will have a "job".  Kids need people who get teaching degrees because they realize the unlimited potential to change lives.  Those are the people who get their hearts broken often.  They care about the outcome, therefore it's personal.  Despite moving out of the classroom and into an office, I still get my heart broken and want to crusade for a student quite often.  But now it's different.  I get to support teachers that get passionate for a student that they can't reach.  I get to help them realize what I did so long ago.  Heartbreak is a quality of a great teacher and if you are doing you were meant to do, you won't just have one and you won't allow yourself to avoid them.