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My Discussion with Matt Barnum Part 3

Gary Rubinstein — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:22 +0100

Dear Gary, I’ve often heard teachers complain about the latest reform “fad.” It’s understandable insofar as veteran teachers have been around for many rounds of “reform,” only to see each and every one swept abashedly into a locked closet in the back of the class (right next to where I surreptitiously put those pre-tests I never got around to grading). I think there’s a lot of truth to that, and I suspect that you agree. Where we’d probably part ways is the takeaway from this insight. You might say that this goes to show how temporal the current regime of reform is; I would say that the faddish nature of past reform shows that we need to stay the course. You write that Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson’s reforms in Washington DC have not worked. (Disclosure: I previously spent a couple months working as an intern at StudentsFirst. And I had one very brief, very pleasant conversation with Michelle Rhee. I have no affiliation with StudentsFirst now, though, and my views are my own.) I think it’s misleading to say that based on a few years of inconclusive data we can determine that a reform has “failed.” There is mixed evidence regarding the results of the changes made in D.C., but as Matt DiCarlo pointed out in a takedown of some of Rhee’s overstatements, it’s inappropriate to draw broad conclusions, pro or con, based on just a few years of observational data. The goal, by the way, of some of these changes – albeit not always articulated well by reformers – is to raise overall teaching quality by attracting some people into the profession who might not otherwise become teachers. It is, to use your baseball analogy, to try to make all hitters bat .300 (or more to my liking, have an on-base percentage of .400). Baseball of course, is a zero-sum game – a batter’s success is a pitcher’s failure – but in education it’s at least theoretically possible for all teachers to be excellent. That’s why many reformers believe in increasing teacher compensation in order to attract top talent, and this is what D.C. is trying to do. This sort of reform, though, will by its nature take time. I know you believe that these new-fangled evaluation systems are doing far more harm than good, but I can’t accept that after a few districts have implemented them for a few years, they can be trashed as complete failures. If we’re not seeing improved results in another couple decades, then I will be the first one to say that these reforms need to go. The completely understandable response is, well, what happens to the students who are (in your view and many others’) getting worse results because of such reforms? I have no glib answer to that. What I can say is that students in D.C. were struggling greatly before Rhee’s reforms. The spending per student sits at $30,000 and the results were among the worst in the country. Gary, I know that you believe that schools can only do so much for their students, but certainly DC schools had and have a lot of room to improve. Was there not space to try something new, even if it didn’t align with many educators’ intuitions about what will work? Isn’t this especially true considering the shaky (though mixed) evidence for more traditional reforms, such as class-size reductions and Head Start? What I feel disillusioned about is that many teachers that I worked with were so negative towards our pay-for-performance system that they sought to tear it down rather than build it up. You’re upset that StudentsFirst spends a great deal of money on elections, rather than trying to improve teacher preparation; well, I hope you’re equally upset that NEA and AFT have spent huge amounts of money backing candidates who oppose teacher evaluations. What if that money were spent on making teacher evaluation systems be as effective as possible? Few alternatives have been suggested. Yet, I don’t think even you would agree with the notion that a decade ago teachers were being fairly and effectively evaluated. As you know, many “evaluations” consisted of an annual pro forma visit by the principal into the teacher’s classroom; meaningful feedback was not consistently given. I know you think the pendulum has swung too far, but perhaps you could acknowledge that reformers were responding to some bad circumstances. Am I wrong? I know that the AFT has backed peer review programs, which I think could be great, but it also seems like a blip on the radar. Perhaps reformers have to account for the failure to work with unions on this – but isn’t always a two-way street? Yours in dialogue, Matt PS I hope you saw Matt DiCarlo’s recent piece on VAM. I agree that it’s not junk science or a “sham.” I also think that some districts have a way to go in using it effectively – hence my comments above about teachers being partners in creating such evaluation systems. My response: Dear Matt, "another couple of decades"? No, I don't think this would be a good idea. I do appreciate your desire to apply the scientific method to education, however. And yes it can be premature to label an experiment as a failure before it has been given time to run its course. But if we're going to act like scientists, we have to do it right. For education, it is a bit like medicine. There is a 'disease' -- poor kids getting low test scores -- which we want to 'cure.' The vital first step is to identify the cause of the disease. If you misdiagnose this, any remedy based on fixing the wrong cause is doomed to fail. Even if 'bad teachers' were a big cause for low student test scores, I'm not confident that corporate reforms strategies would work, but treating the wrong cause is definitely counterproductive. In this case it is like trying to cure a strained knee with chemotherapy. To treat the problem scientifically, the people controlling the experiment should have some idea about what 'success' should look like at various stages of it. Yes, I suppose there could be experimental drugs where they seem to be not working at all and then at the last minute they kick in and cure the disease, but in this case we should be seeing some benefits, particularly in places that have embraced the reforms most like Washington D.C.. Their lack of progress so far suggests to me that I am correct that they are fixated on the wrong root cause. The problem with waiting for a few decades, from my perspective, is that there is too great of a risk that these remedies come with severe side-effects. This may seem non-scientific to you, but my very traumatic first year created in me a keen ability to tell when something in education just isn't going to work. My first year I was very naive and ideas about how to teach or about how to manage a classroom would sound so good to me until I tried them only to learn, the hard way, that they had serious loopholes. So since that first year I've developed an innate sense for these sorts of things. When I hear new ideas about how to teach or about how my school's bell schedule is going to be altered or, at a macro level, how to 'turnaround' certain schools, I just 'know,' even sometimes when I haven't been able to verbalize exactly why, it isn't going to work. In the case of the 'bad teacher' cause I also have some strong first hand evidence that this is not the major issue. For one, I taught at three failing schools that all had what I'd call 'above average' teachers. Also, two of the smartest friends and TFA alum that I know have been principals of un-miraculous schools. I feel like if they weren't able to turn around their schools (at least from a test score perspective) that it can't be done without some kind of cheating. You are correct that many schools and districts, pre-reform movement, were not fulfilling their potential. Though I think there is a limit to what a school can accomplish, I do think it is worthwhile to try to achieve that limit and, yes, schools did have a lot of problems: money being used unwisely, terrible organization where on the first day of school some classes have 50 students and others have 10 students, bad curricula, etc. I'm not surprised that 'reformers' have been given an opportunity to show that they could do things better. My hope is that once this wave of 'reform' is shaken off, a new movement led by people who actually know something about students, teachers, and schools take over and guide us forward. I look forward to the day when I can stop playing defense and participate in that endeavor. I mentioned my 'sixth sense' which I'm sure could invite some ridicule, but here is what I believe will happen as a result of this misguided 'reform' movement. Within five or ten years there will be a massive teacher shortage. Already, I've read that in California the number of new teacher applicants is way down this year. The promise of big bonuses to young superstars will just not be enough to get people to replace all the teachers retiring or otherwise fleeing the profession. Maybe TFA and other alternative certification will be expanded to fill the void and maybe we may even be able to get test scores to the same, or even marginally higher, level with enough focus on that goal. But the other metrics, the more important ones that are so tough to measure, will suffer. Maybe we will drop from the top of the Nobel prize winners category. Or, like we see in New Orleans, we will have more crime. We may win the 'test score' battle, yet lose the war. I know that this might sound extremely speculative, but that is where I see things going, at this rate. As far as the unions spending money to back candidates to go against the 'reformers' I think that is exactly what they should be doing right now. When you're under attack, you have to defend yourself as your first priority. You know, the basic premises of 'reformers' are not crazy to me. Certainly we want schools and teachers to be as effective and efficient as possible. And yes, a good teacher gets kids to learn. It may be tough sometimes to measure that learning, but still, a teacher should be able to present some evidence that students have progressed. But these modern measures of progress for students and schools are being misused. Maybe they are not complete 'junk' but they certainly have a large margin of error so using them as a way to rank teachers is not very fair. Matt Di Carlo does seem determined to keep the possibility that one day these measures will be improved and used appropriately. But the big problem is that the 'reformers' are not as wise as Di Carlo. The whole 'reform' movement is led by people who I really don't admire. I haven't figured out if they are well-meaning but just not wise about things or if they are devious and excellent liars. I can see the case for either argument. As a litmus test, compare some of the writers and bloggers on both sides. A good starting place that will hit home with you is to look at the pieces that you wrote and appeared in The Answer Sheet and in Dropout Nation. I can't think of another person besides you who has had pieces in such different forums. In your Dropout Nation 'Testing is good for teachers and children', editor RiShawn Biddle is so insecure that he constantly interrupts your essay (I counted four such intrusions). Compare to your 'It's time for TFA to fold' where Valerie Strauss, after the introduction, allows you to say what you want without interruption. Anyway, I hope I have not seemed to 'dodge' any of your questions. I'm wondering what you think about the mythical highly-effective teachers and high-performing charter schools. Do you think they prove that 'poverty is not destiny'? Also, what do you think that TFA makes the right decision when they try to convince the new CMs that they are very capable of achieving 'transformational' teaching where they change the life trajectory of their students? Realistically, I don't think that my impact on students, even in my 'teacher of the year' year, was so great that it changed any life trajectories. Do you think that you did? Do you think that the alum who trained you did? If this is unrealistic, is it still OK to train people with that mindset since it will keep them optimistic, like telling someone that a diet and exercise program is likely to work, thus motivating them to stick to it? Or is is more like telling someone that they can climb mount Everest if they just have high expectations for themselves and little practical training? Look forward to continuing the dialogue. Gary

StudentsFirst (again) Distorts Numbers

Gary Rubinstein — Sat, 18 May 2013 01:18:23 +0100

StudentsFirst has raised tens of millions of dollars on the lie that they, alone, care about students who need to be defended from all the teachers who only care about themselves. The biggest distortion of their numbers is their claim that they have 1.3 million members. Many of these 'members' are people who are completely opposed to StudentsFirst's agenda, but have accidentally signed up by clicking on a button on a form that said something like "Click here if you think great teachers should be rewarded!" When they held a rally in Connecticut earlier this year, only about ten people showed up despite the thousands of 'members' they claimed they had there. The most recent example of StudentsFirst playing with numbers to advance their own agenda was something bizarre I read on their blog by teacher Bhavini Bhakta called 'A Teacher's Two Cents' in which she begins "I’ve been a teacher for 9 years and I had to go through being laid off for 8 of those years." This seems a little too extreme to be true. I'm not sure what her situation was and why she was, supposedly, laid off so often, but I do know that there must be much more to the story.

[READ] 9-yr, 8-time LIFO'd CA teacher @missbhakta shares her story: "A Teacher's Two Cents" studentsfirst.org/blog/entry/a-t… #edchat #edreform — StudentsFirst (@StudentsFirst) May 15, 2013

So I did a few seconds of research and found that five months ago Bhavini wrote a similar anti-LIFO article in The Los Angeles Times entitled 'California's pink-slip shuffle'. In this one it says at the end, "Bhavini Bhakta lost teaching positions in four schools over eight years because she lacked seniority." So which one is it? Has she been LIFOed eight times or four times? When StudentsFirst lies so much, they really can't be trusted. Incidentally, in case you're wondering, I fully support LIFO layoffs. I believe that layoffs are rarely necessary. There is so much turnover in teaching anyway that just having a hiring freeze would make most layoffs unnecessary. I would, however, support something where an experienced teacher who is in her first year teaching in a new district would somehow get credit for her previous years to avoid LIFO layoffs. Most teachers laid off through LIFO, I think, are true first year teachers and not eight year veterans.

life beginning over again

houstonheart — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:27:38 +0100

Time has been weird over the past few weeks. Stretched out til it's raw, then hurriedly knit back together again, except now there are knots and broken parts. Loose threads everywhere. those damn loose threads. My last ten days of college were a mixture of senior events, sentimental goodbyes, rushed thank-you notes, rushed packing, & lots and lots of feelings that are too big and scary and messy to be dealt with in the frenzy leading up to graduation. The title of this post comes from The Great Gatsby, a book I read in ninth grade that made me fall in love with literature and words and ideas. I'm so excited to teach 8th grade English next year because I genuinely love it - so much - and as I look back it is quite apparent the impact my English classes had on me. High school is weird as hell and yet in the midst of it all, there is something so comforting in knowing that words can connect you to a whole generation of people and dreams much like your own. And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. Pretty appropriate for Institute/life in general, I think. My last night at college, the one after graduation but before I headed to the airport (suitcases in tow), I drank champagne and ate raspberries with my friends; we all sat on a balcony twelve stories up and looked at the stars and tried to figure out who in the world decided we were qualified to be college graduates. I have a feeling this is something I'll experience again and again...that "impostor" feeling that comes with being resocialized and putting yourself in a completely different identity than one you've ever experienced. I know that my life next year will be very different. But I guess all I can hope for is that those sorts of moments - with cheap champagne and raspberries that haven't been washed - will still happen, that I will still create a life and space for myself to just laugh surrounded by people I love & respect. I have always considered myself to be awful at goodbyes. I cry a lot, and worry about having the perfect ending, and obsess over whether I can adequately express how much someone means to me. So over time I have realized: the end is not the same as the most important. The beauty and depth and raw material of what a relationship (between friends, mentors, significant others, etc.) means remains the same no matter how perfect or imperfect a goodbye may be. And armed with that I've learned to relax, to try and transition gracefully, to recognize that (barring death) goodbyes are never forever. One of my closest mentors assured me that people are in your life for a reason. And if your paths intersect at one point, chances are, you can make them intersect again at a time when you both really need it. I'd like to believe that's true. And it gives me hope that endings themselves are not something to be sad about as much as they're a time to self-reflect and really take stock of what something/someone means to you. We are who we are because of endings, and so I do my best to accept them gracefully. Maybe I'm getting a little bit better at endings, then? As my life begins to be more in flux, I hope I can get a little bit better with each transition. and maybe get to a point where I don't cry so much. I'm currently in the midst of an odd monthlong limbo between leaving college and heading back to Houston for Institute. Sure, there is some TFA prework that still needs to get done, plus administrative things like dental appointments and apartment leasing stuff and final thank-you notes, but for the most part it's a rare time when there are literally no to-do items hanging over my head. So I'm trying to be intentional about this time and use it to think - deeply think - about what lies ahead of me in the next months and years of my life. Something that's been on my mind - and my heart - a lot lately is a comment I was confronted with a few weeks ago. An individual, in the midst of some very valid criticisms of TFA, threw out this rough one: "Don't think for a second that your kids will be grateful you're there. Don't think you'll be the teacher they'll need." wow. I'd like to think I have pretty tough skin, specifically regarding TFA-related stuff, but ouch. I gave myself a few days to cool down and have decided not to engage with this particular individual, because doing so wouldn't be productive or positive for either of us. But it makes me think. Can I handle this sort of feedback? What if I hear it - or something like it - again? What if it's said to my face instead of said to me via the Internet? I hope that in the coming months I can learn to distinguish between criticisms of TFA-as-a-movement and criticisms of me-as-a-person. I am not TFA, my identity is far more than my employer, yet I still find myself taking things personally. Perhaps as I come into my own as a teacher I'll get better at this; perhaps as the distinctions between my various identities grow clearer I'll learn to more gracefully navigate situations like this.It's certainly something to think about. That's for sure. I know that what really matters in all of this is my students; my feelings as a teacher are pretty irrelevant. But if graduation has taught me anything, it's that feelings are feelings and ignoring them or pretending they don't exist doesn't make them go away. It's best to just feel your feelings. It's scary and messy but at the end, vulnerability is what makes us stronger and draws us closer to one another. So that's where I'm at. In limbo, trying to figure out what in the world just happened (graduation) and what in the world I got myself into (teaching). Limbos are weird and scary and vacuum-seeming but beautiful in their own strange way. So with that, I embrace this weird time in my life; I lean into the unknown and just feel the wind in my hair and marvel ever-thankfully at the fact that experiences like this can happen.

New TFAers read a Top 10 list on Letterman

Gary Rubinstein — Tue, 14 May 2013 03:09:44 +0100

On Letterman the other day, the top 10 category was: Top 10 reasons I've decided to become a teacher. Reading the reasons were ten brand new 2013 corps members. So of course it is pretty ironic that out of all the perspective teachers in the country who could have been chosen from various education programs, they chose to have TFAers who really have not 'decided to become a teacher' but who have decided to teach for two years and, most likely, go onto something else. Statistically speaking, at least one of those ten teachers will not make it through the first year. Some of these ten (I won't say which) will have a lot of work to overcome how young and soft-spoken they seem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi4vLC9VVyw These were the top ten reasons: 10. I hope to live up to the teachers who inspired me, like Ms. What's-her-name 9. It's no fun saying the pledge of allegiance every day by myself. 8. Honestly, I didn't pay much attention the first time through school. 7. Kids need to know the Moon landing was faked. 6. If I could make a difference in just one student's life -- well, that wouldn't be a very good average. 5. The glamour. 4. You work long hours, but at least the pay is bad. 3. Hoping to teach in an all song-and-dance high school, like on 'Glee'. 2. In the summer, I can watch all you losers go to the office. 1. I want to help kids talk good. I don't want to seem like a guy who has lost his sense of humor about things. I started watching Letterman back in the late 1980s and though I haven't really watched him in about ten years, I think he is a great talent. Reasons 8 and 1 do have a bit of teacher bashing in them, the myth that most teachers come from the bottom of their graduating class (those who can't do, teach). Reason number 5 (the glamour) is also somewhat ironic as people do join TFA because of the glamour associated with it and the opportunities it opens up afterwards. Anyway, I'm not overly offended by this, but I thought it would still be worth writing about.

Canada's Legend-ary TED Talk Lie

Gary Rubinstein — Sun, 12 May 2013 02:03:50 +0100

Geoffrey Canada recently did a TED talk entitled 'Our failing schools. Enough is enough.' Canada is the president and CEO of The Harlem Children's Zone and star of 'Waiting For Superman.' http://youtu.be/vY2l2xfDBcE The premise of Harlem Children's Zone is a good one. It serves to provide school and complete wrap-around services (health, mental health, nutrition, etc.) to kids from Harlem beginning at birth and supporting them all the way through college. The program, you might imagine, is very costly -- hundreds of millions of dollars -- and Canada, himself, pulls in about $400,000 a year. During the question and answer section of the talk, Canada called on musician and TFA board member John Legend who asked the very relevant question:

John Legend: So what is the high school dropout rate at Harlem Children's Zone? Geoffrey Canada: Well, you know, John,100 percent of our kids graduated high school last year in my school. A hundred percent of them went to college.This year's seniors will have 100 percent graduating high school.Last I heard we had 93 percent accepted to college.We'd better get that other seven percent.So that's just how this goes. (Applause)

Now I know that generally when a 'reformer' brags about a 100% graduation rate, he means that 100% of the students who made it to senior year also graduated while neglecting to mention what percent of the cohort had not made it to senior year. This is the statistic that is quite easy to find by looking at the New York State report cards. Here are seven consecutive years of enrollment statistics I got from there: So the 62 graduates in 2012 had been the 97 6th graders in 2006. This does not represent a 0% dropout rate, as Canada implied to John Legend, but a 36% dropout rate. But looking at these numbers also reveals two large scandals of which I had only been aware of one before looking into this: First, notice how there are 68 8th graders in 2007 (down from 100 6th graders in 2005) but no 9th graders in 2008. This is because Canada 'fired' the entire group of what would have been their first 9th graders and first graduating class. This story is not a big secret anymore, though Canada doesn't seem to have lost much of his credibility for it. For the second scandal, notice that in the 2007-2008 school year there were 88 6th graders but in 2008-2009 there are no seventh graders. This is because they also rid themselves of an entire class of 6th graders that year. The next year they decided to only take new 5th graders which is why we see they had 12th graders and 11th graders in 2011-2012 but no 9th or 10th graders. Regardless of how poor the performance of those two lost classes were, Harlem Children's Zone could have easily kept those students and have been able to answer critics of their test scores by saying that those two classes of students were students who had started as 6th graders in the school and that HCZ should only be judged by the performance of the classes of 2016 and beyond since those students will have completed their entire schooling through the program. I guess that this could have been construed as an 'excuse' which would have gone against the 'no excuses' ideology. As far a performance goes, the HCZ Promise Academy high school may have decent state test scores, but when it comes to national tests they only had on the ACT a 20 in Math, a 15 in English, a 15 in Reading, and a 17 in Science. Aside from Math, this puts them in under the 20th percentile for those tests. I've spoken to two teachers who have worked at Promise Academy, one is a former elementary school teacher there and another is a current middle school teacher. The middle school teacher said that the school had recently had almost a complete turnover in staff. When a place is supposedly so great, teachers would want to spend some time there, in my experience. The elementary teacher described a horrible abusive working condition where uncertified co-teachers often taught test prep and where there was little support from the administration for teachers and nearly zero interaction with Canada, despite his nearly half a million dollar a year salary. To see Canada get publicly humiliated in a debate with Diane Ravitch from September 2011, watch the live version of Meet The Press from Education Nation here.

Bizarre Common Core Ad Campaign on NYC Subway

Gary Rubinstein — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:48:24 +0100

Riding the Subway today I saw this poster about the Common Core tests. I won't analyze it at length here. Just take a look at how far away the basket is from the kid. If he can't make that shot, would it mean that his basketball coach is 'ineffective'?

The Three Biggest TFA Lies

Gary Rubinstein — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 02:35:41 +0100

When I was a kid, around ten years old I guess, my father told me a joke that began with the question "What are the three biggest lies?" I said I didn't know and he proceeded to tell me that the first biggest lie is "The check is in the mail," which as a ten year old I really didn't get. The second biggest lie was, apparently, "Some of my best friends are Black," which also didn't make much sense coming from my father, considering that some of his best friends were, in fact, Black. The third, well, was a bit too X-rated for this blog, and definitely for me as a ten year old. Not everyone is a perfect parent, I know, and I don't hold this against him, though I do try to limit his unsupervised time with my own two kids. As someone who is, I suppose, a big "friendly critic" (an expression TFA coined as the need to describe the growing number of frustrated alumni) of TFA, I think the biggest problem with TFA is all the lying. Though the individual people I've known on staff aren't huge liars, themselves, the sum of all the lies add up to an organization whose lying is pathological. Really, they've elevated the art of lying to new heights, much the way Mozart elevated the concerto. Even people like Bernie Madoff who thought they were great liars can't help but marvel at TFAs techniques. The lies began innocuous enough. They were just part of their PR, part of their advertising and fund raising efforts. Other lies they didn't even realize were lies until they were too embroiled in them and still other lies they still don't seem to realize are untrue. If I could change one thing about the organization, this would be it. Of all the lies, I can easily identify the biggest three. Over the years I've written multiple posts about each of thes lies, but thought it would be useful for people just learning about, or just joining, TFA to get a summary of them in one place: Biggest TFA Lie #1: The training is adequate. This is a lie that I have been trying to expose for the past seventeen years. Back then I felt that by offering too rosy a picture of the first year, new TFAers were overconfident and not able to take their preparation as seriously as they would if they knew how difficult it is to have a good start to the first year and how nearly impossible it is to recover from a bad start. For many years this was my big issue with TFA. By sugar coating the first year they mislead the corps members into a dangerous overconfidence. From 1995 to 2006 I volunteered at the institute presenting a workshop (which you can see here) about the realities of many first years of teaching (using my own as a case study). In the latest incarnation of the TFA pre-institute reading they have a whopping 5 minutes dedicated to this in a reading called "250 minutes." In it the teacher describes a very bad day, but later concludes that: And also: So the only five minutes of thinking about how grueling the first year can be is from a teacher who had at most a bad month. For a more realistic view of the first year, many of the bloggers on this site do a nice job at this. In recent years a new problem emerged in the training model. As the size of the corps grew exponentially (the first few corps were around 500 people, then it was around 1000 for a while, but now it is 6000 a year), TFA did not figure out a way to give all those trainees enough summer school students to practice teaching. Now we routinely see people training for less than 12 hours in front of a class for the entire summer with less than 12 students in each class. In the pre-institute reading that new CMs got this year, they explain why the readings are focused on big ideas surrounding education rather than much about how to teach: If any trainees actually empower their "summer school students to make incredible academic strides," I'm sure that it will have a lot more to do with the tiny class sizes of often single digit numbers of students than any "nuts and bolts" (maybe thumb tacks) that the teachers picked up at institute. Though the corps is twelve times bigger than it used to be twenty years ago, the amount of money TFA has is around 200 times more. With $200 million a year, they need to find a way to get people more classroom experience. I'd also like to see the placement procedure fixed so that the corps members can all practice with the age group that they are going to teach. It seems to me that if principals are so enamored by TFA, as TFA claims, there could be a way for new CMs to replace all the CMs who are leaving their schools. This way they would know the placement way ahead of time and train accordingly. TFA seems to be in denial about their training being 'good enough,' based on how slow they have been to improve it. Maybe they think that since the standardized test scores from teachers who trained with TFA (at least the 91% of TFA teachers who make it through the first year and get a chance to administer those tests) are not all that different than the test scores of 'traditionally certified' (TFA speak for 'dumb') teachers, that this is some kind of proof of the validity of their model. But this seems to go against one of the goals of TFA to have teachers who are 'transformational.' If TFA teachers are about the same (some studies have them, at least in math, a little bit better at raising standardized test scores) as traditionally certified teachers, that must either mean, at least by TFA's logic, that those other teachers are also transformational or that neither truly are. Biggest TFA Lie #2: The magical power of high expectations. If I were to summarize TFA's philosophy to teacher training in a few words I'd say "Students always rise to meet the expectations of their teacher. A large part of the reason that poor kids don't have the same academic achievement as wealthy kids is that the teachers of the poor kids have low expectations." How great it would be if this were true. While I do believe that setting expectations extraordinarily low isn't a good idea either, expectations that are too high are likely to backfire on the naive teacher. I haven't figured out it TFA is purposely lying to new CMs about this or whether TFA, itself, actually believes this. The motivation behind lying would be, I suppose, that it would 'trick' new corps members into getting the confidence they need to take on this responsibility. Having high expectations, after all, is something that new teachers can choose to have, even if they don't have the skills to get students to those expectations. The scary thing to me is that I've talked with different TFA staff members, and my sense is that this is not supposed to be a trick to psyche out the corps members. They seem to really believe that low expectations is a large culprit for the problems in American education. A good demonstration of how TFA leads new corps members to embrace 'high expectations' as the primary weapon for fighting educational inequity is in this corps member produced video last summer. Honestly, if I were to make my list of reasons why poor students struggle to ace standardized tests, low expectations from teachers would not crack my top 10. Yet, the first 35 pages of TFA's guidebook 'Teaching as Leadership" is all about the power of high expectations until they reluctantly admit in one sentence on page 36 (and then never again) “Yet setting a goal that is impossible for students to reach even with extraordinarily hard work might further undermine students’ shaky confidence, cementing their impression that effort does not lead to achievement and that they are ‘not smart’ enough to achieve in school.” Biggest TFA Lie #3: The existence of miracle TFA teachers/schools/districts. As evidence that the training model is good (lie #1) we often get to meet 'miracle' TFA teachers who wield their all powerful high expectations (lie #2) to lead their classes to amazing 'gains' of up to two years. As an example of this, see the latest pre-institute reading where the accomplishments of Jeremy Beard (husband of new TFA co-CEO Elisa Villanueva-Beard) are described: This is about all the proof that a new corps member needs. 100% of the first three graduating classes of his school went to college? Wow. But what they neglect to say, and what I've learned by investigating hundreds of these miracle claims, is that there is always more to the story. When people hear this 100% statistic, they assume that this means that 100% of the students who entered the school in 9th grade eventually graduated and went to college. But all that happened is that 100% of the students who actually made it to graduation got accepted into college. More relevant is what percent of 6th graders eventually graduated and got into college. Fortunately, this is very easy to find out. In Texas they have an excellent public data system called AEIS which you can access here. Within a few minutes of searching for this IDEA college prep in Hidalgo county I learned that the first graduating class of this school was only 27 students in 2007. Six years earlier in 2000-2001, there were 69 sixth graders. What happened to the other students, I'm not sure. For their second graduating class in 2008, 32 student of whom 100% also got into college, well there were 85 sixth graders six years earlier. I encourage readers to double check these numbers for themselves. And my goal is not to take down Jeremy Beard who seems to be a nice enough guy. The point is that TFA just can't resist including some kind of bizarre miracle story in their literature. In this case they could have chosen any success story from their entire 20 year history and the one they chose was so easily revealed as an inflated claim of success. This is not to say that they didn't do good work over there, just that it wasn't enough to prove the unlimited power of enthusiasm, hard work, and high expectations. This type of attrition is true of all the 'high performing' 'no excuses' charters that you hear about, and which I have written about for a few years beginning with my very first investigative post around two years ago. College acceptance rate for graduating seniors is a meaningless statistic that is often thrown around recklessly. This type of lie extends to TFA alumni who have gone on to lead charter networks (like KIPP), cities (like D.C., Newark, and New Orleans) and even states (Tennessee and Louisiana). Under scrutiny I've found that their results are definitely exaggerated. Here is something I wrote about New Orleans and here is a popular blog about what is (and isn't) going on in Washington D.C. I should make it clear to newcomers to this blog that I hope people don't take my realism and exposing of blatant lies and half-truths as my believing that teachers can't make 'a difference.' I've been teaching for fifteen years so I certainly try every day to do my best and some days I'm better than other days. Knowing that teachers are not superheros does not mean that I don't think that they are still heros, but maybe more like an action hero like Indiana Jones than like Superman. We find a way to use the limited power that we have to make as big of a difference as we can. When I taught in Houston for four years, I put in a lot of hours and really got to help my students and to know them very well. Twenty years later, I am still in contact with many of my old students who have friended me on Facebook. I don't know that I was 'transformative' in the sense that TFA claims that many alumni were. I don't know that I was 'the reason' that some of my students that did eventually graduate college did so. I do know that I got many of my students to like and appreciate math, which was really my goal. Likewise, teachers all over make small differences each day. It is tough to know what our individual impact is. I feel confident that I enhanced the lives of many of my students. Others hated my guts, but maybe those students were inspired by a different teacher. Conclusions The new co-CEOs have been going around the country on a 'listening tour' since taking over recently. I continue to wait for my invitation to a private meeting, though I'm not expecting one. If TFA wants to listen, then they can read this, I guess. TFA does not have to lie so much. I know that they mainly do it because if they stop lying they might not be able to get as much public and private money. But there is a lot of truth that they can empathize and be proud of. Like the fact that even if few of the TFA teachers are changing life trajectories, there are some excellent teachers they have trained who are making small differences each day. Some of these teachers (though not as many as they say) teach well past the two year commitment. There are also some great school leaders -- not the ones that we hear about from them -- but honest ones who are also making small but genuine differences each day. Lies will not help America's children. Lies might make some charter operators rich which, I suppose, is good for the charter operators. But these lies are causing, around the country, schools to be shut down, teachers to be fired, and students to be scattered around looking for a new school after knowing that they got their old school shut down -- and all because these schools, teachers, and students were not able to match the things that TFA has been lying about. TFA, to quote Jack Nicholson in 'A Few Good Men', can't handle the truth. They just can't stop lying. And as fast as they lie, I will continue to reveal those lies. (It is tough keeping up, sometimes!) Runners Up Though these are the biggest three TFA lies, there are so many more that deserve honorable mentions. I've already blogged about some of these. Here is a partial list: 2/3 of alumni are still in education, half of them as teachers 90% of principals are very satisfied with their TFA teachers 50,000 people genuinely apply to TFA (You count as an 'applicant' if you complete stage one which only takes about a minute) Charter schools don't have easier to teach kids and more involved parents and don't expel kids who bring down their test scores. (Finally admitted here, but myth still persists) The average career length of a TFA teacher is 8 years 39% of first year TFAers get a year and a half of learning in one year from their students (finally admitted that this was a lie here) Independent studies show that TFAers get between a half year and a year of gains above non-TFA teachers Feel free to add your own ...

transitions

houstonheart — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:34:06 +0100

Today I had the fortune and opportunity to visit my new school for an afternoon of in-classroom observations. In addition to meeting some of the teachers with whom I'll eventually teach, I also got to meet the principal and one of the guidance counselors. I want to be very careful when writing about all of this, because my school is pretty unique and would probably be easily recognizable if I described it in detail. So, I will say this: I loved it. To be honest, while driving to the campus, I was pretty nervous and even teared up a bit, just freaking out (as usual) over the fact that this will be my drive every morning and every evening of the next two years. It just made things even more real - which wasn't helped by my discovery a few days ago that the graduation stage has already been set up at my university - and I always feel a little sick when I realize how quickly real life is hurtling at me. All my fears, though, were immediately put at ease. I was welcome warmly by a few teachers in the lobby of the front office (one even said she had Facebook-creeped on me - which of course I loved, because I am a huge Facebook creeper too so I felt right at home). In all of the classrooms I observed, students were engaged, on-task, and doing high-level work. I got to meet with an upper-level administrator who told me the instructional team sometimes goes to area private schools to see what the students are doing there, to ensure that students at my school will be on par with their peers when they get to college. This is just one of the 92358345 things I loved hearing about throughout the course of the afternoon. What I loved most, though, was the school culture. There was a tremendous amount of pride and mutual respect among teachers, students, and administrators. Everyone smiled at each other as they walked through the hallways and the culture seemed orderly without being overly disciplinary. Students weren't only expected to be well-behaved and focused, but they were also expected to go above and beyond, challenging themselves to meet high standards. Something I thought a lot about was emotional fit. I've found that I get easily stressed - and exhausted, really - when I can tell I'm in a situation where I'm just in a different emotional place than the people around me. It's hard to adequately explain but there's a feeling I get when I know I belong someplace. I feel at home. And that was what I felt today. I could tell everyone around me was on the same page; I can't even count the number of times I was told, "We're so excited to have you here! Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help!" I felt like I would never be alone here, that there will always be people alongside me, challenging me to do my best and supporting me through the rough days. And that made me feel so much better. I know I have a huge learning curve ahead of me, and I accept that. I know I will probably be a pretty bad first-year teacher because that's just how these things go. But to have the honor of working alongside such fantastic people, on a mission I so deeply believe in...I feel pretty lucky. The two main pieces of advice I got today: 1. "I can already tell you're a nice person. Don't be too nice with the students. Any misbehavior you tolerate will keep coming back at you, over and over, unless you establish standards." 2. "Ask questions. Ask for help. Never be afraid to try something new." In all, I feel invigorated and excited to be working in this environment. In non-TFA news, I'm struggling through finals period here, trying to find the motivation to write papers when they feel so irrelevant to what I'll be doing next year. I'll be done by Wednesday and then begins the ten days between finals and graduation, when seniors generally complete bucket list items and just enjoy each others' company. I'm trying not to think about "lasts" and instead just enjoy the time I have here. I still have eighteen more thank-you notes to write, to various mentors and mentees and incredible people in my life, so I always appreciate the chance to slow down and be grateful for all the people I've had the fortune to get to know. To wrap it up, I was heartened to hear that today, President Obama called Jason Collins (the NBA player who came out) to express his support. The world really is a beautiful place, and when we have true equality (educational/religious/sexual/racial/etc.) for all, it will be even more beautiful.

My discussion with Matt Barnum Part 2

Gary Rubinstein — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:36:32 +0100

A few weeks ago, fellow TFA alum Matt Barnum invited me to a public 'discussion' about education reform. Though Matt seems to consider himself further to whatever direction 'reformers' are in the spectrum, I'm not so sure I'd place him there. Still, based on the massive number of comments (72, though a lot are from Matt, himself) on the initial 'round' of the discussion, many of the people who read and comment on the blog definitely see him as somewhat of an opponent. Matt wrote a second letter and sent it to me over a week ago. What follows is his letter and my response: Gary, Thanks for your response. I hope I didn’t put you on the defensive too much. In fact, the reason I wrote to you is because of how much I respect your writing, as well as the fact that I respect that you’ve chosen a career as a teacher. I did it for just two years – I fully realize the challenges of the job, and some of the insights teachers understand about education policy that non-educators don’t. That being said, I think you miss something fundamental in your response: the goal of teacher evaluation systems is not to make teachers “try harder,” a common straw-man argument. Evaluations systems are designed to reward and retain effective teachers, and support and dismiss ineffective teachers. That’s the theory; practice of it is much more difficult, of course. The recent Times article, I think, should be a wake-up call to reformers that they must pair teacher evaluations with efforts to sustainably improve the teacher talent pool. It’s not particularly helpful to think about getting rid of ‘bad’ teachers in the abstract. At my school, at least, there were perhaps one or two teachers who I thought were probably awful and should not be in a classroom with children. Likely, you would agree that they should be fired. And likely we’d both agree that firing those one or two teachers would not dramatically improve education quality. (Though I do think the gains would be meaningful and important, and while reformers surely overstate this value at times, traditionalists also understate how difficult it is to dismiss a bad teacher.) A much larger group of teachers at my school, perhaps a quarter or a third, were truly fantastic. They were exactly what many imagine of a great teacher: dedicated, hard-working, inspiring, and life-changing for some students. These were teachers who I would love to have teaching my own (hypothetical) child. The final group of teachers – which I counted myself as a part of – could neither be classified as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Almost all of us were hard-working, and cared about children, but weren’t so good that I think most parents would actively want to send their kids into our classrooms. (A note: Obviously my assessment of the proportion of awful, ‘good enough,’ and great teachers is purely anecdotal. I’d be curious your thoughts on this, Gary.) This is why I say that we can’t think of such teachers as ‘bad’ in a metaphysical sense. We need some point of comparison, some better option. That, I think, explains why so few teachers are being rated as ineffective – because principals may realize that they can’t get a better teacher, so they go ahead and rank a good-enough teacher as effective. (Another potential explanation – and one that I saw play out at my school – is an observer effect: teachers and students changed how they acted when a principal was in the classroom, sometimes leaving the evaluator with a mistaken impression of how effective the teacher was.) I’m disappointed that reformers are not doing a better job focusing on increasing the number of teachers who are great rather than just good enough. Many really want to address this problem, but I don’t think there has been enough energy around creating a sustainable pipeline of excellent teachers. This is understandable, insofar, as this goal is difficult, and might only lead to results far down the line. It’s easier to focus on the small number of truly awful teachers than to address the larger, more important goal of supporting and attracting exceptional career teachers. I guess my question for you, Gary, is whether you think it’s possible to recruit a teaching force that includes a larger number of great teachers? Do you believe, as I do, that great teachers can ameliorate poverty and change students’ lives? Do you accept my distinction between excellent teachers and ‘good enough’ ones? Before I end, I want to briefly address a few other points. o No, the Chetty study has not been ‘debunked.’ Reasonable people can of course disagree about what the policy implications of the study are and can raise some legitimate methodological question (though of course an ideal methodology is likely impossible in such context). Consider Bruce Baker’s reaction and Matt DiCarlo’s reaction – both raise some interesting questions but neither suggests that the study is patently invalid. o I do not think a 1% increase in salary for a given year is small at all. Let’s say a teacher has 20 students in a class and those students, over a 40 year working career would average a salary of $30,000/year. If that teacher increases the average salary by 1% to an average of $30,300, that means the teacher has added a monetary value of $240,000 for each year teaching. o There’s now very strong psychological evidence that testing doesn’t just assess learning – it promotes learning. Though reasonable people can disagree about whether this logic applies to standardized tests, this phenomenon is certainly something that those who oppose high-stake test should engage with a bit more. o I believe that you’re making a false dichotomy in suggesting that a teacher can do well on standardized tests by avoiding critical thinking exercises. Indeed, I think critical thinking exercises will likely improve high-stakes test results o I absolutely agree with your point about ‘bubble’ kids. My school was obsessed with proficiency rates rather than overall averages, and I always argued against this view. However, I don’t believe this serves as an indictment of high-stakes tests; instead, it’s an important implementation issue that should be considered and can be overcome. o I think I have to point out that one of my chief complaints was how rarely research is cited in opposition to standardized testing…and then you didn’t cite a shred of research for any of your opinions regarding testing. You say, ‘In my research I’ve found that often there is not much of a difference between the two schools.’ I know you have a lot of experience in schools, but I hope you can understand why I don’t simply trust your intuitions and experience. o I myself do not see school closing as some panacea, and I realize that many students will just end up going to an equally bad, but farther away school. I do hope and believe that some may end up in a better school, and I don’t think that, here in Chicago, the city can sustain paying for a huge number of schools that under-enrolled. (I do realize that closing schools will not save money in the short-term, but will in the long term – to its credit CPS has been upfront about this. Another interesting note is that CPS says that it is not using test data to determine school closing, and is only looking at utilization.) Alright. I think that’s more than enough for one letter. I’m definitely enjoying having a dialogue rather than a monologue. Thanks, and I look forward to reading your thoughts. ~Matt Dear Matt, No, you don't ever have to worry about putting me on the defensive. Some of my thoughts are tough for me to explain, sometimes, so I might tend to over-explain so they can't be misinterpreted, but other than that I'm completely comfortable answering any questions, no matter how tough. I agree with your percentages about how many teachers are average, below average, and above average. You seem to say that about a third are truly excellent, two thirds are just 'average,' and there are a small number, perhaps two or three percent, who are 'bad.' But this does depend on how exactly these categories are defined. I think we'd agree on what constitutes one of those 'bad' teachers (and also agree that there are so few of those that a policy focused on identifying and terminating them isn't going to 'fix' education), I think that the 'average' teacher is doing an admirable job and would have no problem having my two actual kids being taught by one of those. Sure, I'd like them to have a few that I would consider 'great' from time to time, but I'm fine with the fact that most of my children's teachers will fall into that 'average' category. Like in Baseball where a 'great' hitter bats 300 and an 'average' hitter bats about 260, I think that great teachers are not as different from average ones as the reformer crowd claims. When discussion about the importance of class size comes up, reformers often talk about how they'd rather have a great teacher with 40 kids in a class than an average teacher with 20. Knowing what I do about how difficult teaching is, I'd put my kids in the small class with the average teacher over the 'great' teacher with the 40. This is not to say that I don't try to be a 'great' teacher each day that I go to work. I've won various awards and written various books and articles about teaching, yet too often I'm up in front of my class, generally when I'm trying out a new lesson idea for the first time, and humming to myself to the tune of "We Are The Champions" something like "I am a failure, my friends, and I'll keep on sucking till the end ..." My hope is that I have more 'great' days than 'bad' days that on average I'm considered 'good.' When I was younger I suppose I would have agreed with your belief that "great teachers can ameliorate poverty and change students’ lives." I don't know that 'great' teachers (at least the mythical ones we hear about from TFA) are that much better at ameliorating poverty and changing students' lives than 'average' teachers. Maybe the difference is that I think 'average' teachers are better than you do, or that I don't think that 'great' teachers are as good as you do. Part of my belief has been shaped by my experience during my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years of teaching when I was in TFA and at E. L. Furr High School in Houston. This was the school that was recently on the front page of the New York Times in an article about how the school has finally curbed some of their gang related violence problems. During the three years I worked there, I found the staff to be very impressive. Yes, there were a few clunkers. One was a man who was a year away from retirement and was, I felt, going senile. Another was a woman who was an extremely hard working science teacher, but who had never really learned classroom management so all her hard work was wasted as students did not take her seriously. But there were a lot of excellent teachers including the best English teacher I've ever seen. I taught many eleventh and twelfth graders there and these were the top students in the school as many students never made it out of ninth grade. Many of these upper classmen were, to use a TFA term, on or near a 'trajectory' to college. If great teaching is supposed to help nudge them onto that college track, I was certainly in an excellent position to be someone who could have done that last push. And despite my efforts and those of my co-workers I've come to learn, by keeping in touch with, or by recently reaching out to, my best students that few of them truly 'overcame poverty' or graduated college. I don't think that this means that we were not good teachers, or even great teachers. And just because I don't think that teachers have the power to do all that reformers think they do, this does not mean that I don't think that teaching is a noble profession or that it is a very important one. I guess a good analogy would be that I see teaching math not unlike teaching someone how to play a musical instrument. The music teacher is not a failure if the student never becomes a professional musician. Hopefully the music teacher will encourage the student to enjoy music and to want to practice and get better. Also there's the very important relationship that the teacher has with the students in which other life lessons can be taught, aside from music. I was fortunate to have such a music teacher who I took private trumpet lessons with from 4th to 12th grade. But if you want me to say it more directly, yes, 'great' teachers are better than 'average' ones who are, in turn, better than 'bad' ones. Everyone knows that. The issue, though, is how this should drive policy in such a way that we maximize whatever the purpose of schooling is? Of course this 'purpose' would have to be defined first and though my definition might be a lot more holistic than yours, I would imagine that you are opposed to one that relies too much on standardized test score gains. Then again, everyone nowadays claims to agree with this which is why they always stress 'multiple measures' in teacher evaluation. But when I hear numbers being thrown around like 50% for value added or even 30% (no reformer I've read about dares to suggest a number less than 30%) I get very uncomfortable. I do not think that putting this much weight on very inaccurate metrics will make schools better. My belief is that if this pattern continues, it will make education actually worse, which is why I spend so much time reading and writing about this. It hasn't worked in D.C. because it is based on a false premise. It seems like reformers are banking on the idea mentioned in Waiting For Superman that if we could just fire the bottom 5% of teachers each year, achievement would soar. The only way that this would work is if there were a significant number of other teachers who need to fear for their jobs in order to get motivated to do their best teaching. I just don't think that this is the case. Treating the wrong disease can be very dangerous. It would be like a doctor prescribing chemotherapy for the flu. It is misguided, painful, and will likely make the patient sicker. I very much agree with your point that more effort should be dedicated to making the vast number of 'average' and even 'great' teachers even better. This is where organizations like StudentsFirst have completely missed an opportunity to use all that money to truly improve education. Teachers can definitely benefit from having more resources, professional development, truly usable lesson plans and activities online. I personally just attended the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) conference where I attended workshops that I hope will make me a better teacher. There were 20,000 math teachers there, which is a small percent of the math teachers in the country. Most people paid over $1,000 to go to the conference, but maybe if there were more much cheaper opportunities to get good professional development, more people would participate. Teachers want to improve. I do not see 'teacher evaluation' reform, in the direction that it is currently going, as a way, as you describe, of helping teachers improve. In New York teachers don't even get to see the tests so how is that supposed to help them improve. I personally have learned very little about how I can improve by analyzing the results of my own students on standardized tests. Generally what I learn is that when someone else writes a very bad question about some topics, then even students who understand that topic quite well could get the question wrong. These tests are just not good enough and to make them good enough, I think, would not be an efficient use of scarce resources. As newspapers gush about the common core standards and assessments, all I see is hundreds of millions of dollars going to Dell and Apple to get the schools tech up to date to administer these tests. As you wrote about the lavish cost of TFA and how this is not a good use of funds, I feel that way about the trend to keep teachers honest by making them 'accountable' for their standardized test 'gains.' Yes, teachers can learn to teach better. I certainly don't think all teachers (myself included) are perfect. But the witch hunt for teachers 'bad' teachers is, in the long run, going to dissuade people from becoming teachers. This will, in time, lower the quality of education in this country. That's what I'm afraid of. Gary

new beginnings

houstonheart — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:33:58 +0100

In the days since my "panic" post, so many life changes have been happening. some are intentional, deliberate things I've done to make myself more prepared for what lies ahead. other things have just kind of fallen into my lap. together they have combined to give me more peace and calm as I approach the final few weeks of college. First and foremost, the big news...I have a job! I received a phone call from a principal over the weekend who offered me a job teaching English! I will likely be teaching either 8th or 9th grade and am still in shock that this is all actually happening. I love words, I love writing, and I could not be more excited to share that love with my students. I'm also excited for the chance to work with people I know, some 2012 CMs from my university, and some 2013 CMs (who I met through college or through TFA Preview Weekend, when a bunch of Houston corps members came here to interview). I don't think all of this has really sunk in yet. I had to stop myself from happy-crying while on the phone with the principal as I jumped around my room. And the second big news...I have roommates! Yes. Finally. I'm so excited. I was actually incredibly concerned about this, because though I'm pretty introverted, if I don't have people to talk to I just kind of sink into my own head. Plus I always get sad in the evenings if I don't have at least one person to eat dinner with - my family ate dinner together every single night and it was a huge part of my upbringing. One of my roommates is also a senior at my university who will be staying here in Houston for next year. She's doing a program similar to TFA but not actually TFA. The other roommate is also a TFA corps member so we will all be on the same schedule and dealing with similar challenges. I feel so fortunate to be living with them and now our main action item is apartment-hunting. Searching for an apartment has been a new but exciting experience...there's a very strong on-campus culture here, so I've actually lived on campus in the dorms for all four years of college. It's scary but thrilling to know I'm taking the next step towards finally becoming a "real person." Having a job and roommates has removed a lot of the unsettling uncertainty that sent me into such a panic last weekend. To further calm myself down, I've been pretty intentional about reaching out to all the mentors and friends I can. Current corps members, TFA alumni who went to my university, current teachers at the school I interviewed at last week, professors here at college, my closest friends. I've been gathering opinions and sifting through them, taking a little bit of everything as I make my way through the next few weeks. In many ways, I am deeply fortunate to have such people in my life. I kind of "collect" them as I go, reaching out to people who I can tell are truly good people. And from all of this advice I've discovered a few things. I'll write them down here so I don't forget any of it: 1. Missing something is not the same thing as wanting to go back. Sure, I will probably miss college, and miss all these uniquely college experiences, but that doesn't mean I'd want to go back and re-experience everything all over again. 2. Intentionality is important. Planning in fun time, purposefully scheduling time for coffee with friends, intentionally creating situations where I can have deep intellectual conversations that don't solely revolve around teaching/TFA. 3. I need to have a life outside of TFA, but if it doesn't fall into place immediately, that's okay. It make take me several months to understand how to manage my time and do what I need to do in order to have a fulfilling life outside of the classroom. My first months with TFA will not be how the rest of my time with TFA goes. I'm not necessarily creating new traditions or setting anything into stone. I'll likely just be trying to survive. So if I look around in October, and my work-life balance is awful and I'm constantly overwhelmed, it's okay. It won't be forever. 4. The nature of friendships change in the real world. You have to be really purposeful about making time, and if you know you're headed into a hard few months, just let your friends know. It's all about setting expectations and making sure everyone's on the same page. In college you just sort of fall into friendships and they thrive off their own momentum...and you can still have incredibly rewarding friendships after college, it's just a different style of friendship. I know there was more, and I think I wrote about it in my journal, but for now, just some food for thought. I've been trying to be very intentional about just living in the moment here and not constantly thinking about how many "lasts" I've been experiencing over the past few weeks. I've so far had two goodbye dinners, two final midterms, one senior toast, and three invitations to other goodbye receptions. I successfully defended my senior honors thesis and was fortunate to win the top sociology prize for graduating seniors. Over the weekend I went to the annual toga party, a uniquely college experience that I have a strong suspicion will not be happening in my life after I graduate. But that's okay. We all have to grow up sometimes. And speaking of growing up, I took my TEXES exam today! I can check my scores in three days to see if I passed or not. It was definitely pretty tough to take the exam having essentially no teaching experience under my belt...it just reiterated for me how much I have yet to learn, how much I have no idea about - lots of respect and humility (to quote TFA's core values) over the next few months and years of my life. In trying to make the most of these last few weeks, I'm really making an effort to stop and be quietly grateful for all the little joys of college, grateful in a way that is just happy and not necessarily wistful. For me there's a huge difference between thinking "I am so lucky I get to be in this moment, with these people" vs. "I am so lucky to be here but I know it'll end soon and I'll be sad." Sometimes my brain defaults to the second sentiment, but I'm trying to constantly pivot around to the first. I don't want the constant all-of-this-will-soon-be-over to cloud all the wonderful things that accompany the end of senior year. For instance, I got to celebrate with my roommate as she got her first job offer - though she'll likely be leaving Houston, our friendship is certainly not conditional on living in the same place. We drank wine and watched a classic Houston thunderstorm and ate hummus and just talked about life. She's a forever-friend and for that I am grateful. I'm heading to Happy Hour with some friends on Friday to celebrate the last day of classes, and I've already scheduled a trip to Schlitterbahn, a water park that's a classic Texas attraction, for the time in between finals and graduation. I'll be going with some great friends and I'm excited for us to share our last few days of senior year together. I delivered the meditation before dinner at one of the farewell dinners at the end of last week (have I mentioned I am strongly considering becoming a rabbi someday?) and it was the first time I'd ever done anything like that before. New experiences are beautiful. I know that so many new experiences lie in store for me next year. I'm excited to greet them, though the uncertainty and unknown aspect is always a bit unnerving. So I suppose if I had to sum everything up, it would be to say that I've gotten more comfortable with the idea of graduation and embracing my new life. I think that before, I was feeling lots of pressure to recreate the exact same sort of life and community I had in college, and I panicked about all the ways that feels seemingly impossible. But I'm just going to let things happen as they happen; life will take me where it takes me and as long as I maintain a strong sense of who I am, everything will be okay. I want to conclude by sharing a quote that has really helped me over the past two weeks, as I see so many changes on the horizon, as I see my old life slipping through my grasp. "Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them, that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like." Over the past two weeks I've spent a lot of time resisting change. And there was a lot of sorrow involved with that. So my hope for the next month until graduation is that I can embrace change as I would an old friend, and that when the time comes, I will move gracefully into wherever my life may take me.