Guess How Many Ways my School Board wants to Contact Me? Nope - more.

I don’t know if our Board is weird/unique or what have you, but there are a disproportionate number of ways they can contact us, as staff. 

To call it redundant would be an insulting, libelous, slander to redundancy. Let me walk you through the 9 (NINE! Are you kidding me!) ways that we can be communicated at:

• Mail: For real. Regular, postal service mail and our in-school mailbox system of paper slips from guidance, the library, the main office, special education and what-have-you. It’s almost quaint in its old-tymey-ness, so I barely even resent it. Don’t get me wrong -I do resent it, but not on the scale of some of these other intrusions.

• Home (landline) Phone Number: Okay, admittedly, this was given when I was first hired. It is still valid, and (I’m guessing here) will only be used in the event of a global communications meltdown to let me know whether or not school was cancelled. It might be used to contact my spouse to let her know I’ve been hurt in a chalky-hands related disaster, but they actually already have…

• My Spouse’s Cell Number: Just in case I cut my thumbs off using a paper chopper and need to be medi-evac’ed by an actual chopper to the hospital.

• My Cell: I’ve gotten voicemail here from work, but I also get texts from other teachers, VPs and the Principal. None of the messages are ever good news. Why in the hell did I give them my real number?

• My Work number: It doesn’t actually ring - it just goes through to a voicemail box with the...slowest… robot… voice… menu… devised. I hate it. On principle (the principle of forgetfulness) I only check my voicemail once a month. Why not more often? Because...

• Our Department/School Phone/Paging me in my class: If there is an honest to goodness emergency (or even some shit that doesn’t live in the same time zone as an emergency) the main office/our department each have their own respective number that can be used to talk to a human who will page my class and interrupt a lesson.

• ‘Work only’ Email. Hosted on Board servers and using the worst donkey-balls-of-a-software web interface to connect. It has extremely limited storage space and the SPAM filter is fooled more often than a senior citizen talking to Nigerian royalty. And, AND! inside this email account there are at least three separate folders/message boards I’m expected to read. I’m going to be a sport and not count those as distinct channels to contact me.

• Student email: Hosted with Google and the only email with any reasonable amount of storage space so I obviously have to have all student work sent to this account for marking purposes. Probably the only one I don’t actively hate AND IT IS FULL OF GRADING TO DO! What does that say about all the other crap communication I receive? Nothing good. 

• REMIND/CREW/Other contact App: I could be using all of them, but again, to be fair, I will lump them together. It was awesome when 100+ staff members all joined CREW this week and my phone twitched like a fentanyl junkie every few minutes with the canned “Mr. TECHMORON has joined CREW and wants to say HI” default test messages. Now I doubly hate my phone and triple-ly hate my coworkers. Great team building!

How many ways can your school contact you? 

Can anyone beat my number?

6 Things that Movies and T.V. get wrong about Teaching

Teaching is one of those professions that ends up in movies and television shows a lot. Sometimes the whole show is about Teachers (Boston Public anyone? I don’t want to hear your fond recollections - that show was nonsense). Sometimes Teachers just figure into the background (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

The one thing they ALL have in common is that they get many fundamental things about teaching horribly wrong.

Let’s run down a list of the worst lies told on film about teaching as a career.

• Class size: Are you kidding me? No wonder Robin Williams was able to change so many damn lives in Dead Poets Society - his class had, like, 18 students. I mean, Private School, I get it, but still - LIES. My smallest class might have that many kids on a Friday, but all that means is a bunch of follow-up note-chasing and calls home because 8-10 kids were skipping. Next time you see a teacher on film - count the students: if there are over 20 in a room, I’ll buy you a beer.

• That A-hole punk Kid is a Secret Genius/Artist/Musician/Tap Dancer/All of the above: Yeah, actually no. Usually if it walks, swims and quacks, it is a duck, not a mathematician. 

• Lesson Content: Most writers seem to realize that every trial isn’t the dramatic Law-&-Order-Jack-McCoy closing argument grandstand and that every hospital patient doesn’t have a rare disease that gets diagnosed at the last minute to save them. Police procedurals and Hospital dramas at least make some attempt to strike a balance. But for whatever reason there is an idea in Hollywood that every lesson taught in every classroom is a life-changing, hands-on, immersive, multimedia experience. Some of my lessons flat out suck. Where is the movie where seatwork is assigned so the teacher can finish overdue marking while eating the lunch they skipped for coaching? I want to see that one!

• Field Trips: If I ran Field Trips with the reckless abandon of Ms. Frizzle in Magic School Bus, I would be fired soooo fast. No permission forms from parents, no permission from the principal, no clear educational objectives in her proposal. And did she even call ahead to verify 2 million dollars in liability insurance at the locations she visits? I’m betting that no, she did not. And students having ‘exciting misadventures’ on a field trip makes for a good movie, but it gets real teachers written up, suspended without pay and/or shitcanned.

• School Facilities: For the love of everything, why does every TV or movie high school have natural lighting, tall ceilings, arched doorways and lovely wooden panels? If you ever see graffiti, broken infrastructure or a hint garbage, it means that the school is a ‘slum’ or ‘it’s the last day of class and everybody DGAF’. In my school, if you see graffiti, exposed wiring or trash, that means it’s Tuesday.

• The “Emotional Student-Teacher Bond”: Looks great on screen. Generally creeps out parents and other teachers in real life. See Trips, Field above for details about getting written up, suspended and shitcanned. Also: Jail.

What makes you cringe when watching a movie about Teaching and Schools?

BINGO Game for Staff Meetings and Professional Development Days

I won't claim ownership over this idea. 

I saw a 25 year veteran make a D.I.Y. version during an especially terrible full-morning session of forced professional development. She scribbled one on a sheet of paper, wrote in her own words, and began checking them off as the experts droned on. 

It was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. 

Or it seemed that way at least. I mean, the oxygen was getting pretty recycled and the presenter as boring AF. I was also likely a little hungover from playing cards the night before with some other staff. But in any event, this seemed amazing. 

So, I've pulled together some bingo cards for you to print, copy and distribute among like-minded educators at your next PD day or Staff talking-at. If you play it, please comment and let me know how you yelled BINGO! Did you work out a complicated system of hand gestures or coughing? Or did someone just get all excited and actually yell 'BINGO' out? 

And for the love of everything, make the prize booze-based.

A Eulogy for SCANTRON

Our SCANTRON test marking machine broke recently. This was devastating news for many (read-almost ALL) of us who rely on it to mark the closed-answer questions on tests. We have to mark multiple choice by hand? That's bullshit!

But, it also felt like I lost a friend and colleague. I chose to honor this passing with a eulogy that I delivered in my head, while students were working on seat-work. Sure, it wasn't as touching as an actual memorial, but SCANTRON was such a tireless, hardworking S.O.B., that I feel it was an appropriate tribute.

Without further preamble, I present, 

"A Eulogy for SCANTRON"

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines SCANTRON as “The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above”, but it felt like so much more than that. 

How well did we really know our SCANTRON? I come not to bury our machine, but to praise him/her/it.

When I first met SCANTRON, I was a young teacher, still wet behind the ears. But SCANTRON had already seen it all. It had marked typing tests, East vs West Germany quizzes and ‘There are Nine Planets in the Solar System” still scored a ‘True’ (Or [A], in SCANTRON language) on the answer card. My new approaches to teaching were fine, but SCANTRON always told me to just wait - things are cyclical in education and they always come back around again. I thought this was very wise for a machine that only read the world from right to left (or left to right if a technician switched the settings around). Sure enough, here we are.

It was well worth spending time with SCANNY, as it preferred to be called (only nerds called it TRON) and learn how it saw the world. Race, gender, age, grade - even names - were irrelevant. If you wrote in a number 2 Pencil, that was all that mattered to SCANNY. Objectivity ruled and was an understated beauty in that. I hope I can mark student work with a similar neutrality.

SCANNY saw a lot of technology over the years. Photocopiers changed from boxy, metal behemoths to sleek, molded plastic, well, behemoths. The phones we staff used migrated from the walls to our pockets. Staplers got waaaay crappier. But SCANTRON was constant. SCANTRON was the same. The simple work ethic of getting the job done and not caring that you look like a 1960’s Bond villain computer/nuclear detonator is a lesson we could all learn from. 

I can count on one hand the number of times I remember SCANTRON breaking. A tireless, consistent workhorse that took in unmarked student work and spit out time on a summer deck is all I ever saw when I looked at it. If I have a career half as long and diligent, I will count myself lucky. You will be missed by all of us, old friend - peace be with you

Reading this still chokes me up a bit. If you have any happy memories of SCANTRON or other similar marking machines in your school, please share below.

Classroom Learning Activities I use but personally Hate

There are certain things I use as a classroom teacher that I totally detest when I have to do them at staff meetings, conferences and other 'real life' situations. Like any good sociopath, I compartmentalize my feelings and forge on with all of these great Learning Opportunities for my students!

Gather and Share around Flip Chart paper: 
When I walk into a conference or staff meeting and there are sheets of flip chart paper spread around, I throw up in my mouth a little bit. That shit is the worst. Do I ever think twice about making students do THE EXACT SAME THING? No, I do not. It is good practice for them to learn to hate this activity early in life.

Multiple Choice questions: 
The only reason to use Multiple Choice is because you want test takers to get better at Multiple Choice. Other than test taking, fast food menu combos and radio call-in contests, there is virtually no real-life scenario where someone presents you with limited information on 4 options and demands you choose one RIGHT NOW!

Group Work: 
Like many (somewhat) productive people, I prefer to work at my own pace and not be disappointed by the other humans around me when they inevitably flake on some key part of a task. This is likely one of the reasons I chose teaching as a profession. Again, because learning that ‘work partners you rely on will invariably fail you” is crucial, I assign group work like a sonuvabitch. Side Benefit: less marking!

Peer Evaluation:
Ever had to do this in a workplace? It is like being handed a club and told to beat one of your co-workers. I worry that even the compliments/positive things I say will be misinterpreted and used to shit-can my friends. But do we concern ourselves with asking young people at the peak of emotional fragility/peer approval neediness to rate and critique each other? No. No, we do not.

Citation/Reference sheets:
If someone tells me an interesting thing they heard and I’d like to either A) read more about it or B) Fact Check it because I think they’re full of shit - I’ll ask them to email me a link to the article. I would never hassle them if it isn’t in MLA or APA  format. No other grown adult would. Except in school, where a reference isn’t a reference if you don’t format it properly. HAAHAHAAA (Evil teacher voice).

What do you do in class that you either hate or never use in the real world?

Report Card Comments - What do they really mean?

I've learned over the years to sugar coat, obfuscate, or otherwise lie about certain behaviours.

It's not that I won't tell you the truth about your kid. I will. I just won't put it in writing. And I sure as hell won't put it in writing on a official report card.

What I will put in writing are the canned comments that our database allows. And in my head, these canned comments take on all sorts of additional meanings. So if you're a parent wondering what half the shit on your kid's report actually means - or if you're a teacher looking for weasel words to get around saying what you really feel, allow me to present:

 Report Card Euphemism Translation Guide

• “Very Independent” = A real jackass who won’t do what he/she is told.
• “Is distracted at times” = Kill count on Fortnite is inversely related to mark in course.
• “Comes ready to learn” = Usually has clothes on.
• “Shows Leadership Potential” = Was a ringleader in the theft of field trip money from my desk.
• “Shares in Class” = Won’t shut the F**k up
• “Creative, Lateral Thinker” = comes up with an original, B.S. excuse for each late project handed in.
• “Has a unique point of view” = Is a horrible racist
• “Seems to get along well with peers” = Is a drug dealer
• “Struggles with attendance” = I have literally never seen this child. 
• “Works quietly with focus” = is usually asleep
• “Pays attention in Class” = Can text one-handed without looking at the screen
• “A pleasant student” = Dumb. Just super dumb.

So, I hope I didn't break too many hearts with this. And okay, sometimes they actually mean what the words say. But sometimes they don't.  Any other teachers who want to translate euphemisms from your comment bank - the comments section is you playground.