Posted on July 24, 2016 by thepjsta

Summer Musings, Part I

Last school year was a particularly taxing year, for a number of reasons, both professionally and otherwise. It left me wiped out and completely fried by the time we reached the last day of school. So I took the first two weeks of my summer to pretty much disconnect from the education world. No blog reading, public ed tweeting, or conversations with Beth Dimino. Outside of fishing with a couple of my PJSTA brothers, I was totally disconnected from my normal work, which is very rare for me.

Two weeks ago, however, I had lunch (Korean BBQ for those of you wondering) with a couple of my friends from MORE, Jia Lee and Mike Schirtzer and it helped to re-energize my passion for the organizing work that we do. Part of the overwhelming feelings that I had at the end of the school year dealt with the feelings that there were battles being waged on so many different fronts and it can become really exhausting. There are the opt-out battles, the battles for democracy within NYSUT, the work to try and build STCaucus into a more member centered caucus, the importance of the November elections on both a state and national level, the work that came with being a member of the PJSTA negotiating team that settled our contract in June, along with the many other issues that we deal with.

So upon arriving at lunch with Jia and Mike, I declared to them that I had given very little thought to public ed and unions over the previous two weeks. Fortunately they are two of the more remarkable unionists and teachers that I know and spending a few hours with them helped to center me and give me an idea of what direction to head in from there. That has become more clear to me in the time since our meeting as I have had time to contemplate some ideas and as I watched the AFT Convention in Minnesota unfold from afar (for a few good reports on that convention check out Norm Scott’s blog over at Ed Notes, along with the other blogs he links to). What I am speaking of is the idea of elevating teacher voice. Giving a louder voice to the actual teachers working in the classrooms.

This entire concept is a very important one for me. One of the largest problems that we have faced in recent years has been the lack of teacher voice when it comes to the decisions that shape our public school system. That shouldn’t be any secret to readers of this blog. While we have made some strides in the pushback against ed deform in recent years, I am not so sure we have made much, if any, progress in terms of raising teacher voice. We have some tremendous allies who have done incredible work alongside us in bettering public education. Still, when it comes to the issues that impact our students and teachers most, the voices that we typically hear from are not those of the teachers who are in the classroom every day. We hear from elected officials, parents, union leaders, authors, caucuses, coalitions, and groups, all of whom have contributed immensely to some real progress over the past few years. But rarely, if ever, do we hear from actual classroom teachers. On the rare occasion it is a teacher who we hear from, it is often because they are first identified as the head of one of the aforementioned groups. There are some very real reasons for this, of course. But ultimately, as long as teachers allow themselves to be regularly pushed to the sidelines when the issues that impact them so greatly are discussed, we, along with the students we serve, will continue to be at the mercy of others.

As I begin to wrap my head around the idea of the 2016-2017 school year, I do so with the question in mind of how do we raise teacher voice across New York State and beyond? How do we empower our members at the very grassroots level? How do we better engage our membership at the local, state, and national levels in a way that allows the members to drive the union agendas? How do we create union cultures that encourage membership participation and what exactly does that participation look like? How do we create times and places to facilitate discussions among the rank and file about what our unions are vs. what they actually should be? How do we build more democratic unions and how do we overcome the obstacles that stand in the path of union democracy? How do we turn our unions from passive unions or unions who simply mobilize around top down mandates into unions who have rank and file organizing at the very heart of their operation?

I’ll be using this blog throughout the remainder of the summer to explore some of these ideas and more. Additionally there will be a few new ideas to present to you before the start of the school year that I believe will help to raise teacher voice. I strongly encourage you, whether you are a member of the PJSTA or any other local for that matter, to use the comment section below to share your feelings on the questions posed above. I honestly have no idea what the best answers to those questions are (though I have plenty of ideas, lol), so I welcome the thoughts of others. You can also reach me via email at pjsta1vp@gmail.com or @Sashammy on Twitter.

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More From McMullan

More from the PJSTA’s Melissa McMullan, who is a participant on the New York State Standard Review Committee. Below are what she wrote up after the third and fourth days on the committee…

Fearless advocates, this is for you!

“Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”

Chinese Proverb

Today was the third day of the New York State Standard Review Committee. It is late. It has been a struggle to determine what to say. I wanted to discuss the tension between going narrow and deep to support learning and going an inch deep and a mile wide to protect students and their teachers from being harmed by state assessment. Additionally, I contemplated the true root of our woes in teaching English Languages Arts – instruction that has been so decimated by ninety-one different “learning strands” and ill-conceived, grossly mismanaged assessments. I began to review the side conversations I had with teachers throughout the day and into the evening. In the hours since I sat down to write, something startling has transpired.

The work we have done over the last several years is beginning to pay off. Those of you who have given hours, weeks, months and quite possibly years of your time to fight the harmful reforms to public education need to rest assured. Your work is getting noticed. Teachers all around me here are speaking up. Teachers working on this committee are deeply passionate about teaching, and the children they teach. The vast majority I have spoken with fall into one of two camps: teachers who are fiercely advocating for their students in the open, and those who are fiercely fighting behind the scenes because they have been silenced.

To protect teachers, I do not want to get into specifics. But teachers are rising — from beginning to ask why we are doing what we are doing, saying no to administrators when what the state “wants the school to do” is on opposition with what the student needs, to advocating for their entire schools to opt out of state tests for years. It is extremely evident to many teachers that the standards and the assessments to measure student progress have nothing to do with learning. It is clear, that this understanding resonates with a great number of people.

Those of us who can speak candidly need to keep doing so with whoever will listen. We have made tremendous headway. We have a large army of teachers who are fighting every day in a myriad of ways to advocate for their students. These teachers are supported by a growing body of families who realize something is terribly wrong. Many more are open to join this fight knowing that they are not alone.

Thank you so much for standing for our children in any way you can. This is a monumental task where every piece matters.

The Elephant in the Room

“When there is an elephant in the room introduce him.”

~Randy Pausch

Elephant

Today was the fourth day of the New York State Standard Review Committee. I began the day, with a little tap on the knee from a fellow teacher deeply committed to ensuring her entire school refuses state assessments so her students can keep learning all year. “We don’t have time in our curriculum to stop for those” she said.

I am still not permitted to share any specifics about the committee’s work this week. What we have are incomplete recommendations that will have to be reviewed by the public, modified where necessary and approved by the Board of Regents. It has has been directed to us that we can’t get rid of the current standards. I can be honest and say that every minute has been spent contemplating how to modify the standards we have, in ways that support learning and protect children and their teachers on state assessments – the elephant in the room.

The elephant in the room is the state assessments’ impact on our children. It absolutely cannot be ignored. Each of us here, in a variety of ways, has made it very clear that state assessments have had a monumental, detrimental impact on children.

How? These are experiences teachers and parents have described this week:

State assessment scores used by the state to threaten school teams, causing all instruction to be test-driven not student driven.
Multiple episodes where a teacher has to sneak a developmentally appropriate text into a child’s hands because the test driven culture in his school demands that all students read texts that are deemed “at or above grade level.”
A parent who is told that her son cannot read more complex books because he has maxed out at his grade level.
Schools that no longer teach narrative writing because “it is not on the assessment.”
Children with special needs who have worked hard the entire year, only to be “broken” when they have to take an assessment that contains passages whose text complexity is nowhere near where these children are in motivation, knowledge and experience.
Situations where English Language Learners (ELL’s), in their first year in the United States, speaking no English, are required to work with grade level texts that they can make no meaning of.

We must remain steadfast in our mission. We will not rest until teaching serves children not publishers, financiers nor politicians. It is time to show the elephant where the door is and get back to teaching…

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Posted on July 14, 2016 by thepjsta

McMullan Reports on Standard Review Committee

PJSTA member Melissa McMullan reports on her experience on the New York State Standard Review Committee…

The Cycle of Standards, Instruction and Assessment

“Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.”

~Jonathon Kozol

Today was the second day of the New York State Standard Review Committee. In total, sixty-eight people responded to my survey. This feedback is combined with a letter Stronger Together Caucus (ST Caucus) sent to the Board of Regents and the New York State Department of Education regarding the need for clear concise standards that included assessment limits for students and teachers. Once again, I sat with this feedback before me, as my grade level band and sub-group looked at specific standards.

We have been asked to refrain from sharing specific details of our work because right now it is all a work in progress. Ultimately, our recommendations will be made public for comment before these recommendations are brought to the Board of Regents (BOR) for review.

There are big ideas that are swirling around in my mind. I am eager for feedback from parents and colleagues.

First, as a society, what do we want the standards to do? I am genuinely curious about what people think of standards. What do they mean to people? What do we expect standards to accomplish?

Second, how do we ensure that assessment of progress toward reaching those standards remains directly connected with instruction? Do we seek a narrowing of standards that will streamline assessment? Do we maintain more holistic standards that leave more room for instructional freedom?

Finally, and most importantly, how much do we trust the teachers in our children’s classrooms? If we agree that standards, instruction and assessment are parts of a continuous cycle through which all learning takes place, then who do we trust to craft and implement these pieces?

After BOE Approval, New PJSTA Contract is official

Following last night’s Comsewogue graduation, the Comsewogue school board voted to approve the MOA that was ratified by the PJSTA membership earlier in the day. The new contract, a four year deal, takes effect July 1st and will expire on June 30, 2020.