Vickie Gill

I’ve been trying to retire for 3 years now, but my school district’s leaders, in particular Dr. Kenneth Parker, keep finding tasks for me to do that I just can’t resist.  The idea of starting a school from scratch was irresistible, and I’m happy to say the charter high school is up and running–wonderful teachers, wonderful students doing good work.  You couldn’t ask for more, well, except for a site that looks like a high school, but we’re working on that.

What snagged me this year was Ken’s request that I facilitate an Introduction to Teaching class for 11th graders.  I’ve been able to design the curriculum, using my common sense and experience to create a seminar for studying the Art of Teaching that includes real-life experiences so the students can apply what is learned.  This excites me to no end.  And it gets even better.  I have seven high school juniors who have chosen to take this class because they would like to become teachers some day.

From the first day, the class has come alive for me–the students and I are exploring research, current trends, and best practices to try to visualize education at its best.  How lucky are we?

I’ve just returned from a remarkable trip to Singapore.  The director of Trainix Corporation read one of my books and contacted me two years ago.  He wanted me to fly to Singapore to conduct two, 8-hour workshops for teachers and school personnel.  When he wrote to me in 2008, I just shook my head and politely refused.  Why in the world would he want to fly me across the world to offer “one-time-only” presentations?  Why would I travel so far to do that when there are opportunities much closer to home?

But Paul Lim, their Business Director, is patient and persistent.  When he contacted me again in 2009, it sounded more like a call to adventure than a crazy idea, so I accepted.  Instinct won out over reason, and even though I tend to think carefully before I make a decision, I’ve learned that I can over-think, taking so much time to weigh the pros and cons that I miss my chance.

When it got down to the hard work of planning the trip and the workshops, I briefly regretted signing the contract; but a more powerful voice was telling me, “If not now, when?”– I am so glad I went.

We built in a week on the beaches of the South China Sea in Indonesia so I could adjust to the time change–a brilliant move.  By the time we returned to Singpore, I was rested, but still filled with the same worry that dominated my thinking as I prepared for the presentations.  My inservices are usually about Classroom Management–how to get those kids to settle down and go along with your program.  But the international students I’ve had the privilege to know over the past 30 years are almost without exception polite, dutiful, and driven–especially the Asian students.  I was sure that I would get up to talk about common discipline problems and how to deal with them, and the Singaporean teachers would smile, nod politely, but walk away thinking “what a waste of time.”  I can’t stand to waste people’s time.

But within 15 minutes of the first workshop, I realized that these teachers were dealing with many of the challenges that we face every day in our classrooms in American.  As they described some difficult students, I breathed a sigh of relief–kids are kids all over the world.  People are people all over the world.  We have have much in common, and after you peel away some cultural differences, we’re just talking about human nature.

So I spent two days sharing with intelligent, sincere, thoughtful educators who care enough about their students to take the day to listen to an American teacher tell what she knows.  It was an exhilarating experience, and I walked away with a renewed sense of conviction.  We can solve these problems that plague countries all over the world.  Peel away the fanaticism, greed, and lust for power and what you’ll find are people who pretty much want the same things:  a safe place to raise their families, meaningful work that pays enough to provide for their families, and a sense of respect for their culture.

And we teachers are in a perfect position to do that.  I don’t care what subject you teach, if you are not incorporating the Big Picture — the answer to “why should I learn this?” — you’re wasting time.  Every skill our students practice should go far, far beyond passing a test or building the perfect college résumé.   Our students should leave our classes with a clear picture of how these skills will prepare them to create safe communities to raise families, develop meaningful work, and embrace cultural diversity worldwide.  We can do this.

In my 61st year, I flew to Singapore.  I’m so glad I did.

I’ve been preparing to travel to Singapore in a couple of weeks to present two days of workshops.  The company offered this opportunity to me last year, but I couldn’t imagine why they’d want to fly me across the world to speak to Asian teachers who work with Asian students–my “shtick” is so American.  One of the sessions is about dealing with the kind of overt behavior problems that most teachers face every day in American classrooms.  The Asian students I’ve worked with in the past came to a boarding school from Taiwan or Korea or Japan, and I can remember only one of them who was rude to a teacher or caused a disruption in the classroom.  But I also remember hours of counseling international students who felt overwhelmed by the pressure to excel–without exception–in all of their classes to the point that they had nervous breakdowns or even resorted to cheating.  I also believe that underneath our cultural biases, most human beings have far more in common than what we see on the surface.  People are people, kids are kids.  So, I said yes to this adventure.

But I couldn’t find the hook–whenever I prepare a new unit or transitional lesson for my classes, I wait for the click–an idea that makes all of the pieces fit.  Well, I found one for the workshops thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.  The idea behind Blink is that often our gut reactions–or what Gladwell calls our “adaptive unconscious”–are as accurate as or more accurate than well thought-out decisions where we examine all of the facts and carefully weigh the pros and cons.  That’s exactly what I was trying to get at when I wrote about student archetypes in The Ten Students You’ll Meet in Your Classroom.  Teachers need to develop instincts about how to deal with behavior problems that erupt in the classroom because the wrong move can extend a five-second interaction into a five-minute argument that will do permanent damage to the atmosphere of the class.

In making his case, Gladwell cites a number of studies that support the validity of trusting our instincts; however, in the second half of his book he cautions us to examine preconceptions and misconceptions that can cloud our judgment.  For many, many years I’ve done presentations on Transactional Analysis with both students and teachers to help them see why a simple verbal exchange can morph into an argument in a “blink”–there are trigger points embedded in our subconscious based on past experiences that can cause us to take offense or become frightened by a random comment from a casual acquaintance.  Like the kid who says, “No” when the teacher asks him to sit down.  An experienced teacher with strong instincts can get the boy to sit without disrupting the lesson.  A less perceptive teacher will take the “no” at face value and turn the interaction into a power play that will trigger past reactions to authority in both the teacher and the student.

It all just clicked, so I’m dusting off my passport and thinking about the beaches in Indonesia.  Thank you, Malcolm Gladwell.

“She craves youth because it defines who she is.” 

I read that somewhere a few months ago and remember thinking how sad that would be.  I work with youth every day.  What if our development stopped there?   

What ”she” craves is physical beauty/strength and the sense of endless possibilities.  I love the naiveté, the innocence, the blind courage of my students, but those same qualities add a sense of urgency to the lessons I teach.  I encourage them to trust in their “dreams and be the prisoner of nothing,” to embrace the unfamiliar and to expand the borders of their world.  I want them to take off on their own heroes’ journeys with a sense of wonder and a thirst for adventure, but I don’t want to be Jean Brodie, sending them out to encounter dangers for which they are not prepared.    So when I choose books for us to read and discuss, I search for stories that are inspiring, yet have a cautionary tone–stories about people who, as Nietzsche cautions, gazed into the abyss but averted their eyes before the abyss gazed back. 

Right now we’re reading This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff’s memoir.  I’ve taught this book for the last ten years and it’s rare I find a student who is not hooked by this true story of a boy trapped for years under the control of an abusive stepfather.  The students are united in their hatred of Dwight, but ultimately they come to understand what true power looks like, and how facing and owning up to your worst fears can set you free.  The kids see that Tobias was a victim in danger of morphing into the man he hated.  My students close the book a little less innocent, a little less naive without having to bear the scars.

I want to teach my students to enjoy the power of youth but to crave wisdom, because in truth, that is what defines us.

                Against all odds, the high school I’ve been working with is not only up and running, it is establishing itself as a unique and desirable place for students to prepare for their futures.  They opened the enrollment period last week for the 2010-11 school year, and almost one third of the available spaces are filled already.

                This hasn’t been an easy journey, especially for the staff.  As we are asked to do more with less, plans change and visions are altered while we brace ourselves for further cuts to our bare-bones budget.  The pressure is on, and as always, the stress can produce frustration, short tempers, and blame.  But I’ve also seen resilience, flashes of brilliance, and well-placed humor.  The hard-core professionals among us vent with close friends and trusted colleagues who will help us find solutions and keep our perspective.  The best are able to hide their exhaustion, disappointment, and negativity from the students.  I’ve been criticized for saying that people who work in schools cannot afford the luxury of a bad day.  Teaching is very similar to sales and performance art—the show must go on and the customer is easy to lose.  We are constant role models; our students may forget what we taught them about, let’s say, cell division or a comma splice, but they’ll long remember how we handled ourselves on the job.

                Conducting ourselves as professionals has a far greater importance than mere job security; we need to be mindful of the powerful impact that we have on our students as they develop their impressions of appropriate adult behavior.  A few years ago I read a description of a multimedia presentation titled uBung, written by Josse de Pauw.  The audience faces a large movie screen that covers the entire back wall of the stage.  On it runs a film of a group of adults at a party—laughing, joking, flirting, drinking, and later on, fighting.  Standing in front of the screen on stage is a group of ten-year-olds who mimic the adults’ actions in an eerily realistic manner.  In Flemish, uBung means “practice,” and de Pauw is making the point that children are observers of the adult world—watching, mimicking, and learning.  This is the joy and the burden of the teacher.  Many of us will be remembered as some of the most influential people in our students’ lives, and attention must be paid to what we do and what we say.

I had the oddest experience the other day.  I was walking from my office to my next class and passed the open door of a fourth grade classroom.  I saw a room full of children busily engaged in a task and their teacher leaning over a student’s desk offering words of encouragement.  As I hurried to meet my students, I was filled with a sense of love for this woman who was a stranger to me–my heart actually “swelled” like it used to when I would check on my sleeping children.

I have spent most of my life in schools–for me it was like one of those bad romantic comedies where two people start out hating each other, then the relationship turns into the love of their lives.  As a kid, I hated school; as a teacher, it morphed into a 30-year love affair.  Throughout my career, I have known teachers who I admire and tried to emulate, but other than a few close friends, it hasn’t felt like love–until the other day.

This has been the toughest opening of a school year I can remember.  The budget crisis has forced everyone working in schools and universities across the country to do more for less.  The tension over who would be retained and who would be let go has divided colleagues, and caused resentment and guilt to seep into faculty meetings and lunchtime conversations.  Yesterday I read in a newspaper that the federal government was awarding a local law enforcement agency a million dollar grant to work with men and women on probation.  Of course it’s important to help these people transition into a productive lifestyle, but why don’t we realize that shortchanging the schools will always result in an increase in the needs of those who cannot find their way?

I can imagine many educators have been ready to throw it in and find a less stressful way to make a living that allows for little things like regular bathroom breaks and more than 20-minutes to eat lunch.  We are held responsible for the test scores of children we didn’t raise, and in most cases, instruct for only a year.  School districts are forced to grab as much ADA money as possible just to pay the bills, so kindergarten classes have increased from 20 to 30 5-year-olds, and high school classes jam 40 teenagers in a room, forcing teachers to spend more time on crowd control than academic instruction.

But there’s that teacher who has managed to engage her students as she takes the time to patiently help a child who doesn’t understand.  I am filled with love for the experienced teachers who stay and for the brand new teachers who have taken on this wonderful, difficult work.  I walked to my classroom inspired and ready to give my best–one more time.

School will start in a few weeks–there’s always that mixture of excitement and dread, the known and the unknown.  I’m concerned this year because when we left in June, we were shocked by the cuts to the budget but we also had a sense that the worst was over.  Not so.  No one is sure exactly what will happen when we open.

I worked most of the summer–many people forget that teachers are not on vacation in the summer, they’re unemployed for a few months.  I talked with teachers at every grade level, and the gist of our conversations was that people are sick of feeling paranoid and tired of having to do more with less.  One thing that hasn’t changed–never changes–is that most teachers love their students and want to create the best learning experience possible for them.

Just like a bad marriage or a bad investment, there comes a point where you give up on the old and try something new.  If we’re lucky, that will be the response to this crisis.  In trying to make that point in one of my workshops, I asked the teachers when we first present the concept of subject/verb agreement to our students.  Most agreed it was in second grade.  I pointed out that when I work with 9th grader who still makes blatant errors when they write, I’m aware that I have to teach grammar and usage in a very different way.  Why do the same thing, year after year, workbook after workbook, when it doesn’t work?  Do something different.

I’m sure that’s listed somewhere in some business model–”Think Small”–”Think outside the Box”–”Think”.  We don’t need profit margins running our schools–like standardized test scores–but we do need to adopt the best of the business practices, which brings me to tenure.  It’s time to let it go.  I’ve always done things differently in my classrooms; I gave up teaching in fear long ago.  I’m not sure whether I’d have been fired somewhere along the line without tenure protecting me, but I know I would have felt confident that someone would value my services.  Last year was the first time in 30 years of teaching that I did not work with a burned-out, ineffective teacher whose job was protected by tenure.  That’s because we had a staff of six core teachers and a few part-timers in a brand new school. 

The teachers’ union was created to protect teachers’ rights–to lobby for benefits and shield teachers from being unfairly attacked and fired.  Teaching is not a competitive job–sure, we compete for leadership positions, prime classroom space, and a cushier duty schedule, but overall, we are paid by our years on the job and you can’t underestimate the value of experience.  I walk into a classroom on the first day with a sense of confidence that has been earned through years of hard work–my students benefit from my decades on the job.  However, we can’t mix up experience with expertise. 

I firmly believe that 99% of all teachers enter the profession with a sincere desire to do the best job they can.  I also know that those who misjudged the challenges inherent in working with kids or those who did not receive support from their colleagues sometimes just give up.  Or worse, just get bitter.  After a few months, it’s easy to spot the gifted teachers; it’s just as easy to spot those who are not suited to the profession.  If they slip under the radar for three years, it takes extraordinary measures to remove them from the job.  That makes no sense.  A committee elected by their peers can fairly judge whether a teacher should be retained or let go. 

This year talented teachers received pink slips because they lacked tenure or seniority.  Teachers who do more harm than good retained their jobs and were protected by their unions.  In talking to the young teachers at the end of last year, most were dismayed by the budget cuts, but all said, “I’m just happy to have a job.”  They know they have to work for their position and pay more attention to their students’ needs than the back-biting going on in the teachers’ lounge.  They need to stay competitive, they need to hone their teaching skills, they need to find a way to get along.  In any community, teachers have always been among the leaders.  We need to use our common sense and talent for evaluating work to create a system of teacher evaluation that will protect the growth and prune the dead weight.

My friend Cynthia asked me to do a presentation in her SCWriP workshop for teachers who work with students on their writing.  I knew none of the participants but they were all familiar–over the years I’ve taught with every one of them.  There was the enthusiastic English teacher who loves to write and is hungry for ways to pass that love along to her students.  There was the kindergarten teacher who is completely open trying out material that she could never use with her students; she’s smart enough to realize that she, too, is a writer and needs to tend to her craft.  And as always, there was the long-time teacher who had nothing to learn and worked on other things–he just wasn’t ready for anything new.   All of them were lucky enough to spend three days with Cynthia, a gifted writer who uses her love of words to help her students discover that they have something to say, and that writing is an essential and powerful tool.

After my presentation, I asked if there were any questions.  There were–frustrated inquiries about how to foster a love for creative and personal writing when our classrooms have been taken over by standardized tests and curriculum guides put together by people who have never met the kids who sit in front of us.  It’s easy for me to stand before these teachers and encourage them not to work in fear–I’m at the end of my career, and if push comes to shove, I’ll figure out how to get by.  But I encouraged them to teach from their passion, to pass on their love for learning to their students–to model the joy.  Attention must be paid to the requirements of the job, but teaching is too difficult to do day after day without a sense of excitement about what you’ll be sharing with your kids.  I know my students face a barrage of standardized tests, some of which will help them open doors to colleges and increase their opportunities later on.  I know that if my students fail these tests, my administrators and some of the parents will lose faith in me.  But I also know that the surest way to kill ideas and creativity is to shove them in boxes:  A, B, C, D, or all of the above.

So when a standardized test is on the horizon (and lately they just loom), I get my students to approach it like a battle.  We gear up for the fight and we will take no prisoners.  In my experience, kids’ test scores will go up automatically if they are motivated when they sit down to fill in the bubbles and the blanks.  My presentation started with a fun activity I share with my kids that generates journal writing, which can lead to creative writing, which can lead to a college-type personal statement, and can produce a thoughtful academic essay.  I teach my students “tricks” to jump-starting a timed essay, and I encourage them to concentrate on form rather than content for certain tests; for others, content matters far more than form.  Mostly, I tell my students that they need to become flexible writers–like the gears in a car–shift to the format that will get you where you want to go.  Same for us teachers.

Curriculum guides, Standards, workbooks are fine for beginning teachers or those who don’t really have a grasp on their subject.  But if you’re lucky enough to teach what you love, demonstrate to the students why you’ve given your life to this work.  Less is definitely more when creating teaching units.  Figure out those big ideas that will help the kids have choices and reach their goals.  Keep focusing on the fact that you’re teaching people, not subjects, so make the curriculum match their needs.  Some will need help with standardized tests.  Some will need help staying in school.  Some will need help seeing the point of what you teach.   All will need help to become life-long writers.

As I said goodbye to the teachers in Cynthia’s workshop, I encouraged them to trust their instincts and begged them not to give up.  We need teachers like these who care enough to work on their craft so they can inspire their students.  I’m honored to call them my colleagues.

Last week I endured what had to be one of the worst professional experiences of my life, and that’s saying something since I’ve been a teacher for over 30 years now.  I live in a state that is bankrupt–services have been slashed, jobs have been lost, paranoia abounds.  I lost a great deal of faith in politicians and their ability to solve problems a long time ago, so mostly I concentrate on local issues and on helping my students make the best choices they can.  I taught in public schools in California and Tennessee for 21 years, but worked for a number of years outside of that system when I took a job at a private school that offered me housing and a way to move back to California.  Last year I accepted a position as a consultant to help a small district start up a K-12 charter school and was happy to find myself back in the public school system.  I love the fact that one of our country’s goals is to educate everyone, regardless of income, neighborhood, or readiness.  We teachers embrace every child that enters our classroom and do the best we can to help them advance towards their goals.  Particularly now, I so appreciate anyone who is willing to take up this challenge because I know how difficult this job can be.

In working with the administrators of the charter school–an idealistic, inspirational group–I agreed to teach one class to help gain credibility with the teachers for whom I was a mentor.  I was happy to do this because I love the time I spend with my students.  However, mid-year I was told that I could not teach the following year unless I brought my credential up-to-date by taking a test to prove that I was competent to work with students whose primary language was not English.  This made me roll my eyes a bit since I have worked with ELL (English Language Learners)  in my classes since my student teaching days in San Jose, but the California Department of Education had determined that passing a six-hour test would reveal my qualifications far more accurately than my experience, degrees, and honors.  We teachers are used to the yearly mandates that require X-amount of in-service hours listening to presentations on whichever topic has been embraced as the quick-fix of the season.  I expected this CTEL exam to be more of the same.

I was wrong.  In a year when my little school district had to figure out how to slash millions from their bare-bone budget, they were required to cough up $10,000 for a 50-hour workshop for 16 experienced teachers who lacked the proper credential saying they were qualified to work with ELL students.  Each teacher needed to pay out-of-pocket $300 to register for the test, $55 to apply for the credential, and $45 to be finger-printed to prove we were who we said we were.  We missed a total of four days of school to attend the Thursday-Sunday sessions that were scheduled for two consecutive weeks, making an exhausting 14 straight days of work for the full-time teachers (plus they needed to prepare lesson plans for their substitutes and study for the upcoming test).  The test was scheduled for the day after our last day of school and the nearest testing centers were 200 miles away, requiring us to either car pool at 5 a.m. to make the 8:00 start time or pay for a hotel room.  On the day of the test, approximately 300 of us were herded into a high school in the Los Angeles area; it’s important to remember that this was one of thirteen test centers in the state.  I could go on about the prison-like atmosphere, over-the-top security measures, and stress-inducing testing conditions, but in truth, our students are required to study in classrooms like this every day.  I’m actually a pretty good test-taker, but after three separate test modules consisting of 150 multiple choice questions and four essays, I gave up in the fifth hour and just walked out.  I had no idea if I passed or not, and at the time, I didn’t really care.

Some good has come of this.  I have a greater sympathy for my high school students who face high-stakes testing several times a year.  I have been reminded that a portfolio which contains a body of work is a far more useful assessment than a one-time test.  I have been reenergized to work to reform education, something I haven’t felt for a long-time.  The system is out of whack–it doesn’t take a scan-sheet to figure that out.  Decisions that impact the classroom should be made on the local level.  Educators, not accountants looking for numbers on a spread sheet, should determine what is needed to help our students achieve.  Teachers should be treated like professionals, and to do this, we have to support changes in the tenure system that allows incompetent teachers to keep their jobs.  When I sat in the workshop and the test for the CLAD credential, I felt like I was being punished.  It occurred to me later on that this was a lame attempt to get rid of the dead weight under the assumption that a good teacher should also be a good test taker.

Let’s take it a step further.  Studies have shown that a student’s grades (or to put it another way, track record) in high school are the best predictor of how that student will fare in college–the UC system has tried to eliminate SAT scores from its admission process.  Last year my students took a total of four standardized tests–I found one, taken in both the fall and spring, to be useful.  The NWEA test is online, relatively inexpensive, and can be administered in 50 minutes per subject area.  Teachers can access the results in a week.  On the other hand, the STAR tests, which ate up a week of instructional time, require a mountain of test booklets–3 per student–that cannot be used again.  The teachers can access the students’ scores only after the kids have moved on from their classes.  The more I thought about this, getting rid of all but the NWEA would save millions and millions of dollars.  If we dumped the state-mandated workshops and provided professional development on the local level based on the needs of the teachers, well, we could balance the state budget, rehire the pink-slipped teachers and staff, and focus our time, money, and effort on educating our children.  If a teacher is struggling, we should have the resources available in that teacher’s district to offer help.  If the teacher is not cut out for the profession, we should have an effective, efficient and fair way of replacing him or her.

It’s getting harder and harder to entice people to become teachers–we set up hoop after hoop for them to jump through.  I spent part of my time in the workshop and at the test site trying to encourage people to hang in there and not leave the profession.  I can think of no more difficult and no more rewarding job than teaching.  To attract the best, we must treat teachers like trusted, respected professionals.  We don’t need more one-size-fits-all tests.  We need competent administrators who have the time and the means to provide their teachers with the tools they need to excel in the classroom.  Teachers need to be accountable, but it should be a local accountability—the students, their parents, and fellow teachers know who is doing a good job in the classroom and who should be replaced.  We should radically simplify the system for funding schools so superintendents do not have to wait breathlessly for the legislature to decide what to do each year.  America has fallen behind the rest of the world in standardized test scores, but it leads the world in our desire that all of our citizens have the right to a free, quality education.  We can do this without leaving any children or teachers behind.

Every once in a while I will read about something that happens in the world that either makes me feel helpless in the face of such sorrow or disgusted.  Lately I decided that if I had the power to reprogram human nature, the one trait I would delete would be greed.  I used to focus on eliminating war, poverty, senseless violence, but if you think about it, these all stem from greed.  I can think of little that is positive emerging from our country’s current financial free fall, but I woke up this morning like Pandora peeking into the box.  I saw a glimmer of hope.

At the beginning of every school year, I ask my students to tell me what career they would like to pursue later in their lives, then I make big posters that group my students’ names by profession and post those at the front of the room.  I refer to them often as I teach to help the students focus on the fact that the reading, writing, and thinking we do in our class will be, not just useful, but essential to their future success.  When I’m working on the posters, I have to make sure to leave a lot of room for “Pro Sports” because I know many of my students will declare that as their dream job.  However, in the last 10 years, “Business” has challenged sports as the number one goal.  I always ask, “What kind of business?”  It rarely matters.  “Just business, I want to make as much money as possible.”  I tell them that money, like fame, is never the goal, it’s the byproduct–then I pause dramatically–”like sludge.”  I make sure that when we talk about the Hero’s Journey, the students understand that one of the ways you know you’re on the right path is that your “fulfillment”–that which you seek–improves your life, but also improves the lives of others.  If your guides are mentors, they will offer insights that lead you to your authentic self.  If your guides are demons, you will lose your way.

The idea that comforted me this morning is that the people who have based their lives on greed and the belief that money will provide the respect and power they lack in their personal lives are now the villains.  My students see this when they turn on the television, listen to the radio, and glance at the headlines.  Maybe, just maybe, this group of teenagers will choose careers that will allow them to support themselves and their families, but will also bring out the best in them–the best in human nature.  It will not make up for the devastation that has occurred in their parents’ and grandparents’ lives, but it could help them choose a path worth taking.