RICHARD FLORES, FIRST GRADER

RICKY: ARMED

Unbelievable though it seems to me now, it’s been nearly 25 years.  And I still lose sleep.  

         I served as a principal of an elementary school.  I’d been doing this long enough to know that if, whenever possible, I could spend time on the yard at recess, I could minimize the number of second-hand disciplinary accounts I needed to wade through after recesses.  Plus, shooting baskets with kids – particularly as poorly as I shot baskets – always served as a positive.

         A new fifth grade boy named Ricky presented a particular uniqueness almost from the moment he walked on campus that fall.  Handsome as a kid could be, but big and intimidating. Intellectually very, very sharp, but, unable – or, perhaps, unwilling – to be a friend.  My goal was to make him mine by interacting, shooting a few hoops and making eye contact whenever possible.  It didn’t work.  I think he knew I was looking but for some reason, he wouldn’t look back.  

         After a string of questionable behaviors – running through jump rope games, being overly physical on the court or while in touch football, ‘getting into the face’ of another student – the kid eclipsed my patience when he approached a fourth grader who was playing basketball, grabbed the ball and kicked it across the yard.  The littler kid puffed out his chest and said, “Go get that!” at which point Ricky put the kid in a headlock and punched his face not once, not twice but three times.  That earned the big boy a three day suspension from school, even though an assault charge and a report to the police might easily have been in order.

 

Suspensions – the very few that I issued – always required a student-parent conference upon reentry to campus.  The conversation at this one was particularly memorable. 

 

Me:            I’m glad you’re back at school.  This place isn’t complete unless all my students are here.

Mother and child both likely viewed this as condescending. Perhaps it was.

Mom:          Ricky has something to ask you.

Me:            Go ahead.

Ricky:        Why are you always picking one me?

 

Flabbergasted, I didn’t know quite how to respond.  I wasn’t going to argue with the child, I wasn’t going to mention the criminal assault I’d witnessed, though should have. Instead, I just sat there with my mouth hanging open until I released him back to class.

         His mom then spent a good five minutes excoriating me for singling out her son. “He comes home and tells me how he’s being bullied all the damned time!  And you, you who’s supposed to be in charge, you turn out to be just another male who lets him down!”  

Quite the tirade, I thought.  The school secretary, having heard the commotion from outside my closed door, agreed.

         

Later that afternoon, I received an unsolicited phone call from Ricky’s grandfather.  He apologized for the behavior of his daughter’s son and for that of his daughter.  “The boy’s had a rough time since his father abandoned him and his brother.  Really left my daughter in the lurch.” I thanked him for his concern, but he continued. “I’ve decided I need to take a stronger hand in teaching him some respect and responsibility so I’ve decided to take him and his brother up to the ranch an learn ‘em both how to work the animals and maybe learn’ em how to fire a rifle.”

         “Fire a rifle?” I don’t think I stammered, but I might have.

         “Yeah.  Target shooting. Cleaning the thing afterward.  I think that’ll help teach ‘em how to be respectful and responsible.  Deep down, I know he’s a really good kid.”

         My heart had always told me that deep down, they’re all really good kids. But in this case, I didn’t understand the logic.  Here was an angry kid, one who had become an expert at posing as the victim when he was the victimizer.  Indeed, he was a bully – but one whose behavior was always accepted by his parent. What the hell was learning him how to use a rifle really going to do for him?

I didn’t respond with that question. Instead, I thanked Grandpa for his concern but as I hung up the phone, a distinct chill coursed through my body.  This kid potentially could bring a firearm to school and, instead of punching someone his junior, he could pull it out and shoot him. Or he could storm into my office and shoot me. 

         That sleepless night, I found myself thinking not so much about my own mortality, but that if I were somehow incapacitated, how would I be able to protect my kids out on the yard or in their classrooms?  The thought didn’t leave me, even when I transferred from that school site position to an administrative slot in the neighboring district office.  Ricky knew where to find me, I was sure.

 

Retired now some fifteen years, that eerie chill revisits every time some kid gains access to a weapon and makes his way onto a school campus. If I were there, I’d throw myself in front of the kid if I thought it might save the life of another. 

That urgent, weird feeling of regard and disregard returned on a recent Monday when news broke of a 14-year-old who took out two fellow students and two math teachers at a high school in Georgia.  The kid’s dad reportedly bought him an AR as a birthday gift.  

 

I didn’t sleep well that Monday night.  I kept thinking of my boy, Ricky, Even though he could no longer be a threat to me.

About twenty years ago, over a holiday break – several years after Ricky left my elementary school campus – as a junior or senior in high school, his mom found her son hanging from a closet rod in his bedroom with his Sunday-best tie looped around his neck and knotted over the dowel.

         Over the course of my 35-plus years in education, I lost five – maybe six – students to early deaths.  One with a congenital heart defect.  Another slipped over a waterfall.  With each, I found myself burrowing into a quiet room where I could shut the door, turn down the lights and simply cry. 

         Ricky would be no exception.

         But I still lose sleep.

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

COMFORT COOKING

 A brief Church of the Open Road remembrance…

 

Last night, I was preparing spaghetti carbonara and thinking of my late pal Bob.  Bob liked Coors Lite and Rush Limbaugh, but for those indiscretions I could forgive him.  Bob let me help him cook.

 

Working a split shift, Bob’s job was to open up the little school where he was the custodian.  He’d clean classrooms and toilets, mop up spills and the occasional vomit, mow the playing field, trim the trees, shovel the snow, freshen the paint, befriend the dispossessed kid and lock up again at night.  His hours were seven to eleven and two to six.  He rarely went home at lunch, because often times, he’d serve lunch and chat with students as they ate outside under a giant oak.  Sometimes, he’d even cook lunch – not for the kids, for the staff.

 

His Italian roots were not well buried.  On a regular basis, the little electric stove in the break room would bubble with his scratch marinara or buttery garlic sauce.  Occasionally, although I served as the little school’s principal, Bob would haul me in to sous chef for him, directing me in dicing onions or shucking clams. Just as teachers filed in at noon, his pasta achieved al dente and clams or meatballs were ready to be ladled on top.  Garlic bread was there for the sopping.  All that was missing was an appropriate Primitivo or Dolcetto.

 

Bob’s Italian lunches were comfort foods for us all.  As our country entered the Gulf War, Bob cooked.  If a student lost a mom or dad, Bob cooked.  When my tenure was coming to a rather rocky end, Bob cooked. The engaging aromas of a loving Italian kitchen helped pacify the angst brought about by any tumultuous news of the day.  

 

In the aftermath of last week’s insurrection and the assault on the capitol, I prepared this simple spaghetti carbonara, let its fragrance fill the house and reminisced about my late pal Bob.   I’d long ago learned that the difference between a janitor and a custodian is that while a janitor is charged with mopping and cleaning, a custodian, by definition, is one who “cares for.” 

 

As I cooked last night, I wondered if there was – anywhere – a Bob who might serve as the custodian of our democracy.

© 2021

Church of the Open Road Press

REMEMBERING ARMISTICE DAY

…and those who tell us OUR stories…

On November 11, 2002, the following letter, titled “Nov. 11, 1918,” was placed first in the reader comments on the Sacramento Bee’s Opinion page:

Eighty-four years have gone by, but I will never forget that fateful day.  I and my granddad were in the little village of Franklin, Ill.  We were at the blacksmith shop having winter shoes fitted to our faithful old mare, Cricket.  All at once we heard a great commotion down in the town square.

     People were shouting, firing shotguns and the church bells were ringing.  We soon found out the reason.  The war had ended.  The German army lay in total defeat.  Kaiser Bill had fled to Holland and never again would that nation disturb the peace of Europe or the world.  And now the boys would be coming home.

     But sadly, some of them would not come home and those who did were no longer boys.  War is a terrible thing.  Armistice Day, how can I ever forget it?

 - Gil Masters, Grass Valley

His words moved me to want to say thanks, but I didn’t know how to contact him.  So, I penned a note – the content of which I cannot remember, although I must have mentioned something about being a school principal – and sent it to the Bee’s editorial desk asking that it not be published, but rather forwarded to the writer.  In response, I received a phone call from then-Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez telling me he’d honor my request and adding: the letter Mr. Masters sent to us came in really shaking handwriting and “we were all quite touched by it. It took some real deciphering for us to actually put it into print.”

About a week later, I received the following (type-written):

Today I received a most heart-warming message from a lady in the office of the Sacto Bee.

     She enclosed your comments and it is indeed a pleasure to hear from you.  I am told that only five or less we run into even [remember]the end of WWII.

     Yes, my generation or what’s left of it does go back a long way.  I was eight at the time.

     When I was six, I enrolled in the one room country school called Sulphur Springs.  Grades one through eight in one room and only one teacher.  We usually ran about thirty or less students 6 thru 18.  We were required to bring a slate and a lunch bucket.  No computers or cell phones.  We were required to keep our feet on the floor and no caps on backwards.  The rod on the teacher’s desk was not put there as an ornament. I might mention that all my teachers were women.

     By listening to the older students recite before the teacher’s desk, I knew every bone by name and could do square root in my head.

     Hey this has turned into a thesus [sic], please forgive if I do ramble.  I hope to hear from you again.

- Sincerely, Gil

I am sharing this because, as I was thinning out boxes of junk in the garage the other day, I came across the clipping and his letter – again.

I say “again” because I had unburied the clipping and letter perhaps a year after receiving it.  Cursing myself for not being any kind of pen pal, I immediately wrote to Mr. Masters wishing him well and offering that I hoped I could come up and take him to coffee.  Thinking that anytime an elder to slips out the door, a lot of the unwritten slips out the door with ‘em, I wanted to absorb a bit more of his first-person history. (And I always enjoyed the drive up to Grass Valley.)

Within the week, my year-too-late letter was returned to me marked recipient deceased.

© 2019

Church of the Open Road Press

TEACHING IN VIOLENT TIMES

I heard you in my head yesterday.

I taught a lesson yesterday during a lockdown.

I taught in a whisper.

I heard your voice say,

"If we don't teach today, they win."

This morning, Terri, a woman who once taught at a school where I served as the site principal posted the above on my page on a popular social media site.  I was touched deeply by her remembrance. 

(For the record: I’m retired, and a different district employs Terri now.  And “Terri” is her real name.)

September 11, 2001 wasn’t all that long ago.  I recall driving to school, listening to NPR’s Morning Edition and wondering what the hell was going on.  Once at school, I tuned a TV in to discover that hell was indeed going on that day.

At a hastily called staff meeting as we discussed how to address this great unknown with our students, one teacher asked, “Shouldn’t we just send the kids home today?  What could we possibly teach them?” to which I replied: “If we don’t teach today, they win.”

That was a damned fine statement I made, but honestly, it must be the case that I heard it somewhere else that morning.  I don’t think on my feet all that well.

I didn’t glance at my Facebook page this morning until after I’d read the local (Santa Rosa) paper.  A page five story reported that in the midst of an investigation a Sacramento County stolen vehicle task force was fired upon.  An assailant armed with a high-powered weapon injured to CHP officers and fatally wounded a deputy.   A witness reported, “It sounded like a machine gun.  It just kept going and going.”

When I read Terri’s post on my page, I connected some dots concluding that her school was locked down as this incident played out in the neighborhood. 

All the while, she taught.

Walloped by a few moments of introspection, I got to thinking: Maybe I’d lied on that morning of September 11^th.  Maybe they are winning anyway. 

A hit and run on a local highway left a bicyclist dead.  A driver in a white pickup shoots into the passenger compartment of a car he’s passing on 101 then disappears.  A homeless Santa Rosan, know for his writing and story telling bleeds to death on a sidewalk after being knifed by someone unknown. Daily we read about or witness violent demonstrations or mass shootings or assaults on the police or assaults by police somewhere in the country. 

Yep, maybe they are winning.

The moment passes.  I find myself remembering visits to classrooms.  In pretty much all of the classrooms, students are engaged in learning – rich, deep and challenging.  But in a lot of classrooms, more is going on.  Kids’ unique needs are embraced, their differences celebrated, their fears quelled, they feel safe; their smiles glowing, their hearts in tune with the teacher who’s heart is in tune with her students.  Education steeped in nurture.  Good things are happening. 

Such things happen in classrooms across America every day.

Yesterday, I know, they were happening in Terri’s room.

And because of that, I know the bad guys aren’t going to win.

© 2017

Church of the Open Road Press

THIS PLACE I KNOW: a book recommendation

Georgia Heard, Candlewick Press: 2002, 2006, $17.

One of the darkest things a school principal must confront is the death of a student or the death of a student’s parent.  You can’t shake the fact that such tragedies put all that we do on a daily basis into a painful perspective.  Our education, our training – and almost always our words – fail us.

Shortly after the events of September 11^th, 2001, Georgia Heard collected a dozen and a half children’s poems and worked with a similar number of children’s book illustrators to create a delightfully moving little collection called This Place I Know.  Her intent was to provide words of comfort to the children who lost so much on that tragic day.

I somehow stumbled across the book and purchased a personal copy.  Shortly thereafter, I received a call through my superintendent that the father of one of my students needed to see him for an important matter.  Could it wait until recess?  No.  It seems his mother was on a cruise ship vacation and, with handbag or purse missing, her body was found at the foot of a flight of stairs.  Dad needed to deliver the news.  He did so in the parking lot about fifty feet from my office door.  The boy crumpled as I watched helplessly.

That evening, I went home and reread my favorite poem from This Place I Know.  Then I read them all.  Within the week, I dropped by the student’s house and gave him the book.

Over the course of several years, I found myself giving copies to many kids, and in the case of students taken from us, to many classroom libraries.

I’ve been out of the business for six years now, but the import of that tiny volume lingers.

A couple of weeks ago, the headline in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat screamed: “Two children die after truck plunges into river.”  The elder child had just started second grade at a small, coastal school housing about 100 students K through 8. It's nearby.

I thought of the family, the teacher and the school principal and sought my volume of This Place I Know.  I needed to pass it forward. 

© 2016

Church of the Open Road Press

WALKING THE FULL BELLY FARM WITH DR. BENJAMIN BLOOM

I never was too impressed with the term “organic.”  Like “new and improved,” “lite,” “authentic,” “life-time,” “limited,” and now, “gluten free,” the term organic seemed tagged to a product simply as a marketing ploy.  At least that’s the way I saw it.  My spouse would buy organic vegetables and fruits and eggs, paying a little more, but when I went to the store, because of my built in cynicism and the fact at chemicals hadn’t killed me yet, I didn’t.

Recently, we ventured up California’s State Route 16 into the luscious Capay Valley.  It seems the first weekend in spring, or thereabouts, the Full Belly Farm has an open house. Berkeley friends are subscribers to a program called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) wherein Full Belly offers neighborhood delivery of fresh organic produce to customers in the Bay Area and Sacramento.  We plan a rendezvous with our friends at the farm.

Springtime in the Capay Valley is what God must have had in mind when Eden was created.  Rolling green hills are dotted with blue oaks and mantled in poppies and lupine.  Row upon row of blossoming stone fruit trees - almonds, peaches, plums - provide spring's signature fragrance while, against an azure sky, the sun plays hide-n-seek through puffy, fair weather clouds.

The highway twists through farmlands and pastures and into and out of bergs with populations that can be enumerated with merely two digits.  

I’ve ridden the road many times in all seasons of the year, always wanting to linger longer and dig deeper.  This day, I’d get to.

The Full Belly Farm is roughly 400 acres backing up to Cache Creek.  Salvaged from an aging almond orchard in the ‘80s, its four partner/owners employ 60 people year round.  Almost unheard of in agriculture, this employment model is only one of the enlightened possibilities availed by the philosophy of the ownership group: sustainability.   The walking tour with co-owner Paul explains it all.

We stroll past an apple orchard where Fujis are in blossom. “Other apples do better in this heat,” we are told….

…and a strawberry field.  Paul lifts the deer fence to let the children crawl under.  “Grab yourself a strawberry, but please be careful not to step on the plants”…

…on the way to a seven-acre plot of garlic.

“Small, diversified croplands,” he says.  “We can produce so much more and care for the land so much better.”

A flock of hens is penned by a temporary fence.  Inside the enclosure is a rolling hen house.  The hens scratch at the land by day repairing to the henhouse at night.  At regular intervals the fence and henhouse is moved to a new plot leaving behind the natural fertilizer than chickens produce.

In another area, sheep graze down tall grasses using their natural digestive processes to return nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil.

Beyond the rows of garlic, a field of lettuce varieties grows uniformly.  Seeds are planted between furrows.  When weeds sprout, “we smother them with dirt keeping the non-favored plant from getting sunlight.”

Natural oils are used to discourage some pest insects, but swaths of land with lush growth are reserved as insect havens.  “If you stop and look, you’ll soon see a lot of movement, hear a lot of sound. 

“Too many in agriculture treat honey bees like farm workers – and we shouldn’t treat our farm workers this way.  Traditionally we’d use the bees in the almonds, then put ‘em in a box and ship ‘em to the next job."

Paul points to a section of tousled, knee-high weeds and grasses.  “Here, we don’t have honey bee hives, but honey bees and other pollinators live here because we’ve set up environments in which they thrive.”

Among the mixed tangle of weed-like plants grows a variety with blue flowers.  “Flax,” we are told.  “We are experimenting with growing the plant for its fiber.”

And about that year-round employment?  “Because of how we do things - planting, harvesting and planting again, spring summer and fall, we have to have people here all the time.”  Then he adds: "Bees, too."

As we walk along, I begin to think of Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999) a preeminent educational thinker of the mid-twentieth century.  His taxonomy of learning processes is something we all studied as teachers. 

But finding examples of his theory actually put into practice are elusive.  Alongside farmer Paul, I suddenly realize I am walking alongside a real, live Benjamin Bloom. 

The success of this organic endeavor rests squarely in the farmer knowing how to employ Bloom’s hierarchy of thought.  Here’s what I saw:

Recall (or knowledge): The farmer knows the soil.  He knows the seed, the water, the exposure to sun, the heat, the cold, the seasons.  And the market.

Grasp (or understanding): The farmer understands what crops will be successful in which corner of the property.  He understands the strengths and weaknesses of a plant or variety.

Application: The farmer makes decisions about what goes where in concert with that grasp.

Analysis: The farmer gathers data, which may be as simple as measuring the yield of a particular product on a particular plot.

Synthesis:  The farmer marries what he’s learned about yields with what he’s learned about the natural benefits of sheep grazing and chicken scratching or reserving space for insects or allowing weed cover to mature in order to conserve moisture to enhance the chances for greater results in subsequent efforts.

Judge or conclude:  Experimenting with new combinations of exposure, water retention, micro-climates and poop, the farmer allows less productive practices to slip away to be replaced by those practices he judges to be more successful.

Perfunctory Old Truck Picture

Walking back to the farmhouse, I tell Paul he should be a teacher “…you know, if this farming thing doesn’t work out.”  Clearly there’s educational practice stuff he gets, I’m thinking. 

He chuckles, offering a very modest reply and then says something to this effect: It’s relatively simple to engage in all of those levels of thinking when you’re working with your hands in the soil day by day.  Our livelihood depends on it.  “Schools, I suppose, can’t do this too effectively because of cost, logistics…”

He’s right, of course.  Our students could receive a much more hands on – much better grounded – experience if schools could somehow be more like farms.  They would graduate with a less sterile but far more heightened sense of how things work and how those things work together.

It’d be organic.

o0o

Full Belly Farm is located just on County Road 43, off Highway 16 about a mile and a half north of Guinda.  They are open to the public on select days (see their website) and offer organic produce and fiber through farmer’s markets and their Community Supported Agriculture program.

Internships are available, school field trips are encouraged and there’s a summer camp for kids.

Check out their website for coming events and to learn more: http://fullbellyfarm.com/

© 2015

Church of the Open Road Press

ON OUR ACCEPTANCE OF LOUSY GRAMMAR

The Church received the following grammar related question from a correspondent:

I have a question that would not bother many people, but it is this: “Those” and “These.” It seems that in the past, people would say something like “I will take three of those.” Now it is “I will take three of those ones.” These ones, those ones, would anyone but I wonder?

The Church would opine that “these ones” and “those ones” are symptoms of an individual suffering from LGS – Lazy Grammar Syndrome.  Adding “ones” to these or those seems like a redundancy.  Further, unless one is talking about place value in the realm of mathematics – “what number is in the ones column?” or is playing the card game “Go Fish,” there is no use for the word “ones.”  [Outside of a card game, “Hmmm… Looks like Wild Bill Hickok drew some Aces and some Eights,” I’m not sure when you’d put an “s” after a word representing a numeral.  Someone correct me please.]

“These” and “those” imply a gesture or the requirement of an additional clue in the context of the text or conversation.  “I’d like these apples (perhaps closer in physical proximity to the speaker) and those oranges (perhaps across the aisle)” might serve as an example.  Wouldn’t it be clearer to express, “I’ll take these apples and those three oranges.”?

There are many examples of LGS in modern speech.  Reversal of I (the personal pronoun) and me (the object of a preposition) bugs the Church no little bit.  This one grates: “Charley is walking to the store with Max and I.”  The same goes for “we” and “us.”  Other gripes?  Fragments masquerading as sentences.  And sentences beginning in “and.”

LGS should not be confused with LDS (Lazy Diction Syndrome) a spoken language issue – not LDS, the religious affiliation – wherein people mispronounce words.  Walter Cronkite was death on this practice and used the second month as his prime example: “It’s Feb-RU-ary, not Feb-EWE-ary.”  How may of us get that one wrong?  Although the late Norm Crosby made a career out of “misrenouncing” words, the rest of us would sound much more intelligent were we to avoid such malapropisms. 

What the Church finds most irritating however is LFS – please employ context clues to figure this one out – which involves the overuse of a certain profanity.  Most everyone knows that the “f-word” can be used in all seven parts of speech, but, sadly, some folks set out to prove that within about every three minutes of conversation.  Folks suffering from LFS, because it is such a preventable condition, routinely dishearten the Church.

People will argue that if the communication takes place, then the proper use of grammar is not important.  I would disagree even to the extent of suggesting that these ones (oops!) suffer from a little bit different but equally virulent strain of LFS.

Years ago, an aging (and pretty cranky) junior high English teacher complained to me, her site administrator, that the practice of decent English is lost upon our young people.  I told her I would address this within the hour.  She returned to class and I set to creating a poster with Tempera paints.  Allowing only a few minutes for it to dry, I entered her room with an eight-foot ladder, a staple gun and the fresh poster.  Amid her lecture, I set of the ladder in the front of her room climbed it high, and stapled the poster where she could not bring it down. 

The text of the poster? 

“If it sounds right, it ARE right.”

I’m not sure if that solved her problem.  I didn’t get to work there much longer.

© 2014

Church of the Open Road Press

“Lincoln on Leadership” – A Review

 Our cause must be entrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted friends – whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work – who care for the result.

- Remarks from “House Divided” Speech 1858

Educators, in many surveys, are described as people who are non-risk takers, who seek to please; compliant and sensitive to others.  Collectively, these and other common traits serve the purpose of moving most kids through their educational years with some balance of empathy and rigor.  It is often assumed that educational leaders, mainly coming from the ranks of educators in general, possess those same characteristics.  Arguably then, tough decisions that arise for all leaders appear tougher when viewed through the complex lenses of the teacher-turned-leader.

As a by-product of a recent visit to Lincoln’s boyhood home, I picked up and read “Lincoln on Leadership,” by Donald T. Phillips subtitled “Executive Strategies for Tough Times.” If ever a leader were ever confronted with monumental crises, it would be our sixteenth president.

Phillips discusses the circumstances from which many of Lincoln’s most time-honored writings grew and concludes chapters with principles Lincoln employed as he brought the nation back from its most critical hours and days:

·      If subordinates can stand it, so can you.  Set the example.

·      Invest time and money in better understanding the ins and outs of human nature.

·      When you extinguish hope, you create desperation.

·      The organization will take on the personality of its top leader.

·      Truth is the best vindication against slander.

·      When you are in deep distress and cannot restrain some expression of it, sit down, and write out a harsh letter venting your anger.  But don’t send it.

Whether a leader finds him or herself in the role of turning around General Motors, crafting a plan for intervention in Syria or Iraq, or achieving consensus with a group of primary teachers, the issue always gets down to people hearing, understanding, assisting and clearing the way for other people.  Too frequently, we find ourselves learning techniques about leadership only from a small wedge of individuals who come from our own field, thus missing out on the wisdom afforded by those with a perspective of greater, or at least, different challenges.

Reflecting on my own career, I suppose I inherently got some of Lincoln’s teachings right, but there are a hell of a lot I wish I’d have understood at critical moments.  Phillips's book, at times, provided a less than comfortable mirror for me.

Teacher/leader buddies: this nicely proportioned volume comes highly recommended.  This is published by an imprint of Hachette Book Group, so don’t expect to find it on Amazon.  Instead, see your local bookseller.

o0o

“Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times.”  Donald T. Phillips.  Business Plus.  1992.  $15.

© 2014

Church of the Open Road Press

ASSESSING SCHOOLS, STUDENTS AND THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS

Nearly five years into a blissful retirement, I’ve been tapped to serve as in interim principal for the final eight weeks of the current school year.  So much to catch up on!  Working from home – because I’m not officially on site yet – I spent a day reviewing administration instructions for the trial test of the new Common Core Standards which will be given to my students later in April and May.  Recall that the Common Core curriculum was a result of several governors and state superintendents of schools efforts to ensure that kids in Mississippi moving to Oregon would not miss a beat in the transition. 

No Tea Party folks: it is NOT an initiative of the current presidential administration.  But even if it were, it’d still be a good thing.

My take?  The new assessment gets an undeserved black eye probably because it tries to accomplish too much.  Many of the test items are far better than the old fill in the bubble assessments of my day.  The new ones are an honest effort to measure student learning at a level on Blooms Taxonomy above simple knowledge.  After all, if we are to produce citizens capable of problem solving and creative thinking, we have to focus on understanding, application, analysis – all those higher-level cognitive skills.

The test is an attempt to measure those.  But it is probably asking too much, too soon for a couple of reasons: 

1) While many public schools have made major strides toward equipping all students with higher cognitive skills, until just the other day, we assessed kids (and ourselves) using the old spit-back-the-info assessment, largely because it is easy to score.  The sheer difference in the new assessment’s protocols is daunting, and

2) The use of computers to gather student responses may make the assimilation of performance data more efficient, but the means by which students interact with the assessment on line will be a stumbling block.  A teacher could take hours just to train kids how to take the test – and that’s time taken away from providing experience and exercise with the curriculum.  Add to that the fallibility of many school’s tech systems and we come to understand staff trepidation about the whole process.

So while we’re moving in the right direction, a meaningful assessment will take time to arrive.  We will have to endure the pain of this new model, hopefully only for as long as it takes for the education community to hone a revised one.

How might that revised assessment look?  How about fewer questions?  How about having questions be project-based in nature where students would have to access their knowledge-based learning and apply it to a scenario or circumstance?  How about an examination limited to ten (yep, only 10) in-depth questions or problems – five in English language arts/fine arts and five in math/science and allowing the student pick only three (at least one from ELA/FA and one from M/S – the third one being from either area)? How about providing the student with a time block to read about or research the problem (reading comprehension) and a time block to compose or construct a solution (written language)?  The quality of response would inherently indicate the student’s success with knowledge-based factoids like spelling, grammar, and computation.  By the way: Let’s allow kids access to the same tools they’d use in the real world: calculators, maps, charts, graphs, dictionaries…

While the results of such an assessment might be more difficult to get one’s political arms about – especially if one is bent on exposing the failure of the schools to teach students things like “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” – they’d certainly give a clearer picture of how students are progressing toward productive, thoughtful, creative citizenship.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to an improved test rests with many of our political decision makers who may lack the skills upon which we’d hope to assess our kids using such a test.  Just perhaps…

© 2014

Church of the Open Road Press