Balance

 

Photo credit: D Sharon Pruitt, Flickr CC License

 

How do you find balance?

This question was running around my head this evening as I came home from my Ed.D class. I was thinking about how great it is to be surrounded by so many very, very smart people, and how I come away from these classes excited about my professional future.

Then I thought, why am I excited? How much of my day tomorrow will afford me the opportunity to apply what I’ve learned this evening? How much of the next week? Month? Likely not too much, truth be told.

And that struck me as sad.

When we enter the field of school leadership, we don’t do it with the intention of being bogged down in minutia: we go into it hoping to do good things for kids, to move schools forward, and to put our own stamp on the educational process. Yet we spend our days dealing with trivia; student discipline, payroll, work orders, etc. OK, maybe “trivia” is a bit strong, I don’t think it’s the image any of us had when we decided to leave the classroom and enter administration.

So, how do we find a balance between the ideal image we had of being a school leader and the reality of the day-to-day grind? In a couple of years I’ll probably be looking for my first principal’s job, and want to be able to strike the right balance between school management and school leadership. How have you done it?

Wow, this is a lot of work!

OK, I knew it would be challenging.

I believe I came into this with my eyes wide open, no illusions about the level of work that would be required.

But, man, there’s a lot to do!

I’m currently 6 weeks into a 3 year Ed.D. program at California State University, Fullerton, and I’m really enjoying it. I like the intellectual challenges, the exchange of ideas with colleagues in my field, and the high-level discussions of the real issues facing education and school leaders today.

But, whoa, there’s so much to do!

I’m working full time as a middle school AP. My school has needs, in terms of discipline, teacher development, and curricular and cultural change. I’m a parent, with two boys in elementary school with active schedules outside of school including karate and soccer. I’m a husband to a wonderful, patient, understanding woman who also happens to be an elementary school principal at a school with its own needs. I’m a son, a brother, and a friend to others. I have interests beyond education that I’d like to be involved with.  There’s only so much time in the day, only so much time in the week, and all of it seems to be spoken for.

I’m still trying to find the right “groove” to balance all of these disparate demands, the right way to prioritize things on a day-to-day basis, and the right tools to keep myself organized. Do I use Word documents for reading and class notes and save them to Dropbox, or do I use Google Docs? Where do I save pdf copies of articles I come across during research? How do I keep track of what is due when? How do I reconcile my use of newer technologies in this pursuit with the old-fashioned paper copies of things? Can I effectively read cognitively demanding materials online, or do I need to print them out so I can reread, annotate, and underline easily?

I know it can be done, and I’m confident that I’ll eventually find the balance. I’ll figure out how spread myself amongst all the various demands upon my time and attention without getting to thinly spread out, but it’s going to take some time. Which I don’t really have a lot of these days.

Facebook snarky-ness

I had this exchange on Facebook today after I’d posted my answer to the Obama School Address poll:

FB FRIEND: Hey, since channel 7 loves the man so much, how about they give him time at say…6 p.m. Anyone who wants to tune in can do so. Keep it out of the schools during school time. And I resent the idea that kids aren’t hearing the message of persist and work hard and stay in school from their teachers, instructional aides, PE teachers, and yes, even their parents. They are. Every single day. So what, if Obama says it, then it will work? Magic. He’s way too full of himself.

ME: I don’t think this comes close to implying that kids aren’t hearing positive messages at school or at home. It’s a pep talk, pure and simple. Like it or not, like him or not, he’s the President of the United States, and as such has the right to address the people of the United States, even school kids. This whole flap is a distraction from REAL issues facing schools and the country at large, and serves only to perpetuate the mindset that we don’t have to listen to ideas we don’t like.

FB FRIEND: You’re right. There are a WHOLE HOST of other issues that need attention, so now, out of the blue, he feels this incredible obligation to give a pep talk to the kids? Convenient. People are going completely crazy over the health care issue, so he needs to distract people from that issue and create a new one. I listened to his ideas, and I did … Read Morenot vote for him because I didn’t like his plan for our country. So, yes. He is the President of the Country I live in and love. And I happen to HATE what he’s doing to it. Besides, what would some people have thought if Bush had wanted to pipe his mug into the schools with a “message” to the kids, complete with lesson plans that included (although I do admit, they have been altered – because they got busted) writing a letter to yourself explaining how you can help the President? They changed it because people saw through them and their sneaky, sinister plot. I just don’t trust these people.

ME: This issue would never have been a distraction if those who had raised such a ruckus over a simple address to school kids had used some sense in the first place. And a “sneaky, sinister plot”? Really? Is President Obama meeting in some secret lair, planning to take over the world? Is he going to say, “Hey, kids, while I’ve got you here, why don’t you go tell your parents to give all their money to the government so welfare moms and illegal immigrants can have their hard-earned cash?” No, that’s not happening, any more than he’s planning death panels or keeping a list of those who speak out against his policies. He’s a politician with whom you disagree. That’s all. And it’s fine if you disagree! Our system is built on that disagreement- civil, respectful, thoughtful discourse regarding the issues.

But that is what too many of those on the right, and on the left, have forgotten. You hate what you see President Obama doing to the country you love. I respect that, but I hate what I see the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the talking heads on Fox News doing to this country- reducing the level of discourse to shouting at those they don’t agree with, distorting the truth to suit their purposes.

We can disagree on issues and still like, admire, and respect one another.

This particular FB Friend (a middle school principal) is not someone to whom I’m particularly close (I used to work with her husband), but I do like and respect her. It was hard to respond to her statements without sounding like I was attacking her personally, which was not my intent at all.

Without necessarily getting into the issue itself (plenty has been said elsewhere!), what do you think about how the exchange went?

Rodney Dangerfield wasn’t an Educator!

Finally, after everyone else in the Blogosphere, I got around to reading Sarah Fine’s explanation as to why she is leaving the teaching profession. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so now. I’ll wait…………

Ms Fine cites many of the same reasons others leave the profession; an ever-increasing workload without a corresponding increase in compensation, micro-management by administrators, surly and disengaged students, and a general public perception that “Teaching is an admirable and, well, necessary profession, they say, but it’s not for the ambitious.”

I don’t fault Ms Fine’s decision to leave the profession in the least. Once upon a time I felt very similarly and nearly took the same route out. I do question, though, her conclusion that people don’t respect teachers as much as other professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

Certainly there are individuals, very vocal ones at that, who will proclaim, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach!” and who measure an occupation’s value by the average salary one receives in that profession. It’s been my experience, though, that the majority of people hold teachers (at least as individuals) in very high regard.

I assume the majority of readers of this blog are educators, so I’ll ask this question: how many of you have ever been at a bar and, when the subject of what you do for a living comes up, have received a response along the lines of,  “Wow! That’s great! I could never do that!” and then been told a story about a teacher who made a difference in that person’s life? Maybe not a lot of time, but I suspect that it has happened once or twice.

Now, if there are any lawyers out there; how many times has someone in a bar said to you, “Wow! That’s great! I love lawyers!” then proceeded to tell you a story of a lawyer who helped them become the person they are today?

That’s what I thought.

This is not to say that lawyers are not important or helpful or worthy of our respect and admiration; they are. The error we tend to make, though, is that we believe salary is a function of respect, and while, to a certain extent this is true, it’s not the only measure of the value society places on a profession.

As an aside, comparing the legal and education professions, though tempting and very popular, is misleading, at least when it comes to salary. Starting salaries for lawyers vary a great deal, depending upon the organization one goes to work for. Attorneys for non-profits or district attorneys offices don’t make nearly as much as those who work for big, well-established law firms, and those who go into private practice will vary even more in their incomes from year to year. Being a lawyer doesn’t automatically guarantee a large income, big office, and luxury automobile, anymore than becoming a teacher relegates one to a life of ramen noodles, cold coffee, and frequent colds courtesy of little people with snotty noses!

Add to the equation the number of hours worked over the course of an entire calendar year, the late hours required, the all-or-nothing nature of litigation, and I feel the salaries tend to level out somewhat.

Should teachers earn more? Yeah, probably. But small school districts (or even large ones) don’t have the resources to pay teachers like big law firms pay attorneys. [Largely because the people who determine how much school districts receive each year, themselves overwhelmingly attorneys, don't provide school districts that level of funding, but that's a topic for another post!]

What do you think?

Summer Reading

I don’t, as a general rule, spend nearly enough time reading, either professionally or for pleasure. I love reading, but the demands of job and family often make it difficult to dedicate the time.

This summer, though, I’ve made a commitment to spending some time with the old-fashioned printed word, and so far I’ve managed to get through 2 books. The first is one I’m reading in preparation for the Ed.D. program I’m starting in the fall, Reading Educational Research; How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered. The author, Gerald W. Bracey, dissects research and statistics and discloses how the latter may be twisted to make the former conform with a specific political agenda. He also discusses some of the misuses of educational data and the mistaken comparisons the media, the public, and politicians make using that data between American schools and those around the world. Bracey clearly is not without an opinion of his own (he obviously has no great love for the high-stakes testing components of NCLB, for example), but I don’t feel like that gets in the way of his analysis of much of what is being presented to the American people regarding the relative quality of their public schools. His ultimate argument seems to be one of, “Make sure the research/statistics you are reading are really telling you what they say they are telling you; be an informed consumer of information!”
Bracey’s language is not bogged down with statistical technicality- it’s very readable and even entertaining (to a certain subset of geeky educators, like myself!) and I would recommend this book to those with an interest in public education and the way the quality of public schools is related to the public.

The second book I’ve read so far this summer is An Intimate Understanding of America’s Teenagers; Shaking Hands with Aliens by Bruce Gevirtzman. Gevirtzman is a high school English teacher with 30+ years of experience as a teacher, baseball coach, debate coach, and theater director/author.

I am of 2 minds regarding this book. On one side, Gevirtzman certainly has had a great deal of opportunity to observe teens, and I get the impression that he’s probably an excellent teacher, one who truly cares about his students, who makes himself available to them and has a genuine respect and affection for them. On the other side, he is clearly of the opinion that his experience has made him an expert on the American teenager, and there is a certain arrogance that permeates the pages of this book as a result. While he has some very good insights into the ways teens think (and often don’t think), he tends to moralize in many of his “Mr. G’s Homegrown Advice” sections.
Given the book I read immediately before Gevirtzman’s addressed specifically the comparison of American students’ performance on international comparisons of math and science proficiency, there was one statment that particulary bothered me:

“…One recent international study reported that students in the United States were ranked 14th in the industrial world in math and 11th in science. However–ta-da–American high school students did sit on the very top when it came to their levels of self-esteem. Translated: “American teenagers are among the dumbest in the world, but they feel really good about themselves!”

Mr. Gevirtzman did not include any reference to a specific  “international study” so the reader is unable to independently confirm the statement, and the “translation” is hardly supported by the preceding statement, as there is no indication of how many other industrialized nations were surveyed in the “international study” or how far from the nation that ranked #1 we were.

Overall, though, I like the Gevirtzman book, and think it poses some valuable recommendations for parents of teens (or pre-teens; better to be prepared!)

I’m looking forward to the rest of my summer reading (as yet to be identified), and will try to keep you posted.

My day- no, my year!- has been made!

I received this email from a coworker/friend from my last school today, and I’m all a-glow about it! The students referenced, twin boys, were certainly a handful when I worked with them last year, but a big part of their issues were beyond their control; they’d been abused and had a host of emotional issues as a result, but were good kids overall.

Here’s what my friend sent me (the names have been changed for privacy):

“I received a wonderful compliment for you yesterday that I wanted to share with you.  I’ve been working with the ‘Smith’ twins all year and we have had our ups and downs.  They’ve both been suspended for assault and cited by the SRO at some point in the year.  At other times, they’ve been fine.  Anyway, for the past month ‘Jerry’ has made two different plans to commit suicide.  However, through therapy, he has sort of come out of it.  I met with ‘Jane’ (the grandmother) yesterday for about 2 hours.  ‘Jerry’ won’t graduate because he’s failed many many classes here, but she wanted to share with me how great these two years have been for the boys.  She told me that YOU were a turning point in their lives.  You were the first male that the boys really trusted and that they just think the world of you.  They have come to like me too, but you are the man.”
I’ve had some dark moments this year, when I’ve questioned if I’m doing the right thing. This email is going up on my wall for the next time I feel those doubts.

Now what the hell are we supposed to do?

I’m irritated. No, I’m pissed!

Our esteemed governor just announced that he’s proposing another $650 billion cut from schools, on top of already-huge cuts imposed earlier.

This annoys me, but it’s not really why I’m pissed. What I’m really pissed about is the ignorant, bigoted a**bags that immediately jump on the “it’s all the illegal aliens’ fault!” bandwagon whenever the issue of the state budget comes up.

(These are not researched conclusions, admittedly. I’m going on gut instinct here. But this is my blog, and I get to do that. If you have hard numbers to support an alternative point of view, please share them. If you’re going on gut instinct, too, post to your own blog, please. This is my space to say what I want.)

These a**bags claim that the state’s fortunes are being drained by the welfare-sucking, public-services-draining, non-tax-paying illegal aliens who’ve invaded our fine state. Well, a**bags, think about this:

- if we allow the children of illegal aliens to attend schools, the next generation, whether they arrived legally or not, will be educated. If we don’t, they won’t. What will uneducated people contribute to our state? Much less than educated people. Worried about crime? People who can’t get jobs because they aren’t educated are more likely to commit crimes than those with jobs.
- people aren’t coming to this country illegally because they want food stamps. They come, legally and illegally, for the same reasons every immigrant has come here; to build a life for themselves and their families better than they would have had in their country of origin. If we want to stop illegal immigration, we need to 1) make legal immigration easier, and 2) spend the money we would have spent on barbed wire fences and border agents on supporting economic growth and development and political stability in the source countries for our illegal immigration. Get rid of the reasons they’re moving here, and no more illegal immigration problem!
- you are disguising a racist argument as an economic one. You don’t care about how much money the state spends on illegal immigrants; you care that you are no longer in the racial majority, and that scares you, because the new majority might just try to treat you like you treated them.
- you think illegal immigrants commit more crimes than US citizens and illegal immigrants? Back that one up with data. I believe most people who come here illegally do the best they can to make it here following majority of our rules (except for the immigration ones, that is). Hardworking people of any origin should be welcomed here. It’s human nature to look for a scapegoat when things are tough. What I hope people keep in mind is that it was this very nature that allowed people like Adolf Hitler to come to power- he offered the people a convenient target to blame for all the country’s woes.

Does all this mean that I believe illegal immigration is not a problem, that I think we should open the state’s coffers to them simply because “it’s tough where they came from?” No, not at all. I think immigration should be regulated for the safety and security of the US. But building walls, digging trenches, and training guard dogs won’t stop the flow of illegal immigrants if the factors that are pushing them here are not resolved; people will continue to take risks to increase their odds of survival.

I don’t think it’s in the interest of our state, or our country, to point the finger of blame for our problems on those who have come here illegally. The vast majority of immigrants come for all the right reasons, the same reasons that drove our European ancestors here, and have the same intentions: to build a life, and to contribute to society.

This week was something out of the ordinary.

Highs, lows, missed lunches, it had it all.

Of course, in middle school, it really wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. Out of the ordinary is ordinary in middle school.

Summary of the week? I made some people really happy, some people really angry. Had a teacher do something really stupid. Had a student hit by a car (he’s ok!). Had some other students do some stupid things. Saw a fun play by the drama club and a great concert by the band, and saw a bunch of kids have a good time at a dance.

Now I’m tired, but still want to go back next week. Despite all the work that’ll be waiting for me.

Not a great day…

We all have dark days, days when the weight of the world seems to be weighing on our shoulders. Days when we doubt ourselves, our abilities, our choice of career.

I had one of those today.

It wasn’t so much events of today that made it one of “those” days, but rather news of those events. Heard about a couple of grumpy parents, was gently scolded by an assistant principal, and basically felt the oppression of my to-do list, all the while sitting in a conference 90 miles from school.

I’ve worked through most of the self-doubt now, and I’m feeling better about myself, but really need a good night’s sleep to solidify this positivity.

Mortality

As many of you are aware, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels was killed yesterday in a traffic accident. The driver attempted to run afterwards but was soon captured by police and has now been charged with 3 counts of murder (there were two others killed in the accident, one person is in critical condition but expected to survive), drunk driving, driving with a suspended license, hit and run, and probably some other offences.

The player, Nick Adenhart, was all of 22 years old. The accident that took his life happened 5 miles from my house, in an intersection I’ve many, many times.

I don’t believe it’s any more tragic when a famous person is killed than when an average person meets the same fate, and this post really isn’t about Adenhart or the young man who’s decision to drive after drinking (and with a suspended license) took the lives of 3 innocent people. It’s more about my own reaction to the incident, and the reminder that the end of one’s life can come at any time.

An even like this causes one to reflect on one’s own life, and ask the question, “If I was to die tomorrow, what would I leave behind?”

I have a wife and two wonderful sons, two nieces and two nephews, close and extended family members, a few friends and many friendly acquaintences. I’ve been an educator for 12 years, and like to believe that I’ve touch the lives of a few students along the way.

Our lives are fleeting, and the true measure of our worth is the memories we leave in the hearts and minds of those we leave behind.