Retirement Party . . . and other things.

Retirement Party

My wife, Diana (Charlie) AuBuchon retired after 30+ years of teaching. Most of that time

Charlie's Retirement Party
Diana (Charlie) AuBuchon

was spent as a full-time language arts teacher at McFadden Intermediate School in Santa Ana, California. She also taught in Orange at both Yorba and Portola, middle/junior high schools. She also worked as a substitute at both the junior and senior high school levels.

As a beginning teacher, raised in England, she was assigned an American History class at Yorba and wore a red coat to her open house. As seems to be the habit in the U.S., she was given a half-dozen preps her first years–you know, history, English, French (two levels). Our administrators seem to try and break beginning teachers rather than trying to give them assignments that may encourage them to give their best and stay in the profession.

(As an aside, my first year consisted of a wood shop class and a metal shop class in two different rooms–my principal said they were both industrial arts classes, and, therefore, they were a single prep. Yeah. I also had four ninth grade history classes–two in the library and the other two were in Spanish classrooms during those teachers’ conference periods–after the department chairman had cherry-picked the students he wanted for his six ninth grade history classes.)

Diana (Charlie) AuBuchon and Friends.
Diana (Charlie) AuBuchon and Friends.

In addition to her American history class, Charlie was given the cheerleaders–they don’t have cheerleaders in England. Like I said earlier, give the newbie assignments that will break them. Don’t believe me? Look up how long the average new teacher actually stays in the teaching profession. Also, look up how many people have teaching credentials but are not teaching.

I have never met a more dedicated teacher than my wife. Her dedication really hit me in the face in the two and a half years since my own retirement. In that time I watched her plan and correct and grade student assignments again and again and again. She spent more time on her students than she did on herself, her cats and me combined. In spite of her health issues these last several years, her devotion to her students and her profession never flagged or wavered.

Being forced to retire has hit her hard. Life without teaching has left a void that will be difficult to fill–if that is even possible. But we will try.

We had seventy or more people at Saturday’s party. Charlie and I had a good time, and, so I believe, did everyone else.

Commercial Plug: food, chairs, tables, servers, bartender and etc. were handled by West Coast Event Productions. http://wceventproductions.com/

Photos taken at the party can be found on my Flickr page:

flickr dot com/photos/joe_aubuchon/

 


Handicapped Access

Any of you out there handicapped? Don’t you love it when

Spec. Ed. SAUSD Bus Blocks Access to Ramp.
Spec. Ed. SAUSD Bus Blocks Access to Ramp.
  • someone without a handicapped plate/sticker takes a handicapped parking place,
  • someone with a handicapped plate/sticker takes a handicapped parking place and remains in the car while the non-handicapped driver/passenger goes into the store,
  • someone blocks access to a handicapped ramp or other access.

At McFadden Intermediate School in Santa Ana the Special Education buses block access to the handicapped ramps (and the drivers refuse to move when asked).


Meow

Mist and Smoke on Sunday (Siamese cats)
Mist and Smoke on Sunday
 

The last two weeks

The last two weeks were very eventful for Charlie and I (me, us).

After thirty-some years in junior high, she decided to retire. It was a matter of circumstance rather than preferred choice–she’d rather have retired at the end of the school year in June, but that was not to be.

Mist & Smoke Window (Siamese cats)
Mist & Smoke Window

We’re going to have a retirement party for her at the end of the month.

The best thing about this is no more commuting back and forth to her school everyday. (Yeah, but I still wake up early every morning as though she still goes to work.) We still have to go back to her classroom and bring home the things she wants to keep. (What? You really think the school provides all of the supplies teachers need to teach? When did you fall of the turnip truck?)


I finally finished my first novel (first draft). My goal was to tell my story in about 100,000 words. Yeah!

Mist & Smoke Blanket (Siamese cats)
Mist & Smoke Blanket

When I taught history (and other subjects), I often told stories. I would allot myself five or ten minutes for the story in my lesson plans. Hah! I never did figure out that each story told itself–in however many minutes it decided it needed. Give it five, and it took ten. Give it ten, and it took twenty-five.

Stories have a life of their own. They don’t limit themselves the way we try to limit them. The story tells itself in its own good time.

So it was with this story. I aimed for twenty chapters and 100,000 words. The story decided it needed twenty-six chapters and 120,000 words.

Who am I to argue with the story?

There were a couple of stories within the larger story that I thought could stand on their own. I took one of them and re-wrote small sections of it. I submitted it for publication in a sci/fi/fant periodical. Will I get it published? Don’t know, but I’m trying. If I do sell it, it’ll be my first sale–I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Finished my first edit of the novel yesterday and found a number of stupid errors. Corrected most of my errors dealing with punctuation of dialog–NO, I don’t remember learning it in school, but, assuming I did, I forgot an awful lot of it.

I did find some good sites about how to do it, however.

  • http://www.glencoe.com/sec/writerschoice/rws/mslessons/grade6/lesson30/index.shtml
  • http://theeditorsblog.net/2012/02/28/inner-dialogue-writing-character-thoughts/
  • http://theeditorsblog.net/2010/12/08/punctuation-in-dialogue/

Now to print out the five hundred pages and do some real editing.

Hmmm . . . wonder why it’s easier to find errors in printouts than on the screen?

 

Blogging for the (English) Teacher

Blogging

Blogging is the modern response to the pamphlets and soapboxes of previous eras. Anyone with access to a computer, or a computer-like device, with Internet access can blog. S/he can find an audience of from zero to billions.

A blog is a tool to express opinions, to spread ideas, to sell products or ideology. It can also be used to educate. It is one of the “new” tools available to classroom teachers.

I believe that it can be of great value to teachers of English (Language Arts), especially writing teachers and to History (Social Studies) teachers. I’ve taught both subjects and my wife is an English teacher—both of us at the middle school/junior high level.

English teachers: give your kids a prompt and have them respond to it; have them respond to the responses of others; learn how to respond in a professional manner; learn how to defend your own position.

Your class has just finished reading a book: don’t assign a book report—assign a blog post. Don’t have them recap the story; have them give you their opinion of the story, the characters and defend their point of view from the story itself.

If the girls all liked the book and the boys all hated it, or the opposite, you might find you have to re-evaluate your own use of the book.

“But I Don’t Know Anything About Blogging.”

There are plenty of places to learn. As a start try reading the NCTE magazine Voices from the Middle, Volume 22 Number 2, December 2014.

The Classroom Blog: Enhancing critical Thinking, Substantive Discussion, and Appropriate Online Interaction by Shannon Baldino. Don’t let the name of the article scare you; Voices uses title like this for all of its articles, even the good ones.

Baldino gives you both her first hand experiences with this tool and links where you can get further ideas. Including:

Also try: readwritethink.org  In the Keyword Search box type in: blogs

My advice (as though you wanted it):

Give it a try.

Play with it over the upcoming holidays (Christmas/New Years).

You have five or six classes—try it with one.

You have five or six kids way ahead of everyone else—have them try it.

School district, or your principal’s, control is too anal retentive to use EduBlogs? See what the district offers, Blackboard maybe?

– – – – –

Too much trouble and not worth the effort?

Maybe, but if you use it in a classroom of forty kids (like I used to have), think of the audience each kid now has. John posts an opinion and thirty-nine others have “instant” access to it without exchanging papers in class or posting papers on the bulletin board. Use it with five or six classes? Hmmmm . . . A budding writer now has an audience.

Who knows, you might be helping the next Jim Murray, Ring Lardner, Owen Wister, insert name of favorite writer here.

 Leary about trying it? Beats taking home 200-240 two to three page book reports over the Christmas holidays.

Ho, ho, ho . . .

PS: Have an opinion of your own and want to share it with the world? Had a lesson, assignment or project that went over well? Something went horribly wrong and you want ideas from others how to make it go right (but not from the guy who teaches next door)? Start your own blog. Lots of teachers have; add yourself to the mix.

Teacher Layoffs by Senority or Merit

Today both the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register published articles on the PACE/USC poll regarding teacher layoffs. According to this poll a majority of respondents disagreed withe the “last in, first out” policy for teacher layoffs and agreed with the recent Vergara v. California ruling.

As a retired teacher, union member and member of my union’s contract bargaining team I wonder what would replace seniority in deciding layoffs.

First, would teachers be rated as groups: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, etc., or something like ranking all teachers from first to last? And, would this be by Last CV Cardindividual school, district wide, level taught (Primary, Elementary, Secondary)? Would “extra credit” be given to teachers who also coached or served on committees? (Oh yeah, would these ratings be public and updated with each year’s evaluations?)

Second, would layoffs be decided on a district level or by individual schools or by the level affected?

Third, would this system be imposed state-wide or be left to each individual school district to decide (local control)?

Fourth, would any of this be subject to collective bargaining?

Fifth, would there be any parental input regarding layoffs? For example, parent likes a low-rated teacher and wants to keep him or parent dislikes a high-rated teacher and wants her gone?

I am inclined to believe that this won’t be solved very soon.

HEY! I just had a thought. If we’re going to be rating teachers objectively, we can rate them from first to last for the whole state and, maybe, for the entire country. And, maybe, we can find an objective way to rate politicians, reporters, clerks, waiters, parents, pastors, etc. Then we can publish those statistics.

Or not.

 

Teachers, Evaluations and Tenure

Teachers

There is an old saying about teachers that goes: Those who can do; those who can’t teach. It is pure unadulterated b——t; hateful, hurtful and untrue. There are more than a quarter million teachers in California educating more than six million students. Most of them are honest, hardworking, competent people dedicated to their profession and students. Many of them are truly outstanding.

Earlier this week Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu, in Vergara v. California, threw out California’s teacher tenure process and seniority rules. What he and others fail to understand is that this will not help our educational system. Tenure is not the problem. The problems are inherent in our socio-economic-political system.

That Judge Treu does not understand this can be seen with his comment about a bad teacher making twenty-eight children suffer. Twenty-eight students in a class? Where has Judge Treu been? How many classes in California public schools are limited to just twenty-eight students? Ask a California public school teacher how many students are in his or her classroom. In most cases you will get numbers from thirty to forty or more students. In middle school, junior high and high school most teachers will simply stare at you in disbelief when you suggest that they have classrooms of twenty-eight students. Twenty-eight is a scheduling accident quickly “corrected” by the administration.

Go on a visit to your nearest public middle or high school. Walk into each of the classrooms. Twenty-eight desks with twenty-eight students? In your dreams. For elementary school walk by the classrooms and count the backpacks outside each room.

In grades 7 through 12 most teachers teach one or two subjects and teach five or six classes per day. Now, do the math.

5 classes/day times 28 students/class = 140 student contacts/day

6 classes/day times 28 students/class = 168 student contacts/day

More realistic numbers would be:

5 classes/day times 36 students/class = 180 student contacts/day

6 classes/day times 36 students/class = 216 student contacts/day

Of course there are classes of forty or more students; think of the poor math teacher in an Orange USD middle school teaching six classes of forty students/day – that’s 240 student contacts/day. (I still shudder at the thought of music and PE classes of fifty and more students in each class.) Now think of lesson plans, grading student work and disciplining groups of teenagers this size.

Judge Treu needs to go look at the real world.

Evaluations

Teachers in California have college degrees and teaching credentials – this equates to four years of traditional college and an added year for the credential, which includes student teaching – yes, actual classroom teaching before you get a credential. Many, if not most, California teachers go on to get advanced degrees and take classes to improve their teaching. School districts provide additional professional development opportunities, some of which might actually be useful, for teachers.

If these programs do their jobs properly only competent and qualified people become teachers. If there are unqualified people teaching in California public schools we need to look at the system that produces and hires them.

A teacher needs a college degree in the subject he or she teaches. If a teacher does not have subject matter knowledge sufficient to teach that subject where should we look to correct the problem – how about the college that granted that degree?

A teacher needs a credential certifying that he or she is competent to teach. If a teacher is not competent to teach where should we look to correct the problem – how about the college that ran the credentialing program?

A teacher needs to be hired by a school district in order to teach. If a teacher is not competent to teach where should we look to correct the problem – how about the personnel director, principal or other designated administrator who hired that teacher?

Maybe there are some teachers who go through the above educational and hiring process and we only find out later that they are not suited to the job – what then? Well, most of them drop out of teaching within the first five years. The actual on-going process of teaching weeds them out. What about other “incompetent” teachers? What is the actual problem and what is its solution?

How about the “too powerful” teachers’ unions? Teachers’ unions do not want to incompetent teachers to be in our classrooms teaching. Teachers’ unions want all teachers to have due process. What does this mean? It means that in order to fire an “incompetent” teacher the school district must prove that the teacher is indeed incompetent.

Teachers do not want the incompetent in their profession. They want the best for their students and their profession. Just ask a teacher how much he or she likes teaching next to the classroom of someone who can’t keep order or who shows movies a bit too often. Just ask a teacher about getting students from someone who has not adequately prepared those student for next class. (For example, an Algebra 2 teacher whose new students only got through half the Algebra 1 curriculum.)

How does one determine that a teacher is incompetent? Evaluate the teacher. How? What constitutes and evaluation?

How about a survey of parents? Johnny got an “A” from Mr. B – he’s a great teacher. Johnny got an “F” from Mr. C – he should be fired.

How about a survey of students? Ms. H gave homework every night – she should be fired. Ms. Q showed videos twice a week and let us use our phones in class – I learned a lot; she was great.

Do you really think you won’t see any of those two examples above? What a nightmare!

How about we have other teachers evaluate the teachers? You want an incompetent teacher to evaluate another teacher? Oh, wait, only competent teachers get to evaluate other teachers. Huh?

Assuming the above is not a problem, where does a teacher find the time to evaluate another teacher? You teach a full day and you still have lessons to plan and work to grade, oh, and you’d like to spend some time with your family. Wait, the district will give you release days to do the evaluations. Huh? I still have to do lesson plans and grade student work, contact parents and “maybe” re-teach some stuff because the substitute wasn’t a math (or science or French, etc.) teacher.

Evaluation is the job of the administration. Administrators have been, or should be, trained in evaluating teachers. They should be able to discern whether or not a teacher is doing a good job. But administrators must actually do the job. An administrator must actually observe the teacher teaching and not just once or twice a year for half an hour. An administrator should be in teacher classrooms everyday. Every. Single. Day. The administrator must see how the teacher performs day in and day out under all kinds of conditions.

The administration needs to know how a teacher performs under both good and bad conditions. How does the teacher present new material; how does the teacher guide student work; how does the teacher review with the students; how does the teacher evaluate (grade) a student; how does a teacher handle discipline, contact parents and relate to colleagues? Done properly, this requires a great deal of time. Think of evaluating teachers on a middle school campus of sixteen hundred students, eighty teachers, a principal, and two assistant principals. How many hours of administration time would be devoted to adequately evaluate each and every teacher?

And, how much money would this time equate to? A great deal more than is spent now. But, if you weed out the problems early, or later on as they develop, you would actually save money, time and aggravation.

Tenure

Tenure was not put in place to keep incompetent teachers from being fired. It was put in place to give teachers the protection of due process. If school administrators adequately evaluated teachers you would not get to the point of, as the Orange County Register put it, “it can cost $450,000 or more in legal costs and take as long as 10 years to dismiss a bad teacher.”

Have you ever been fired, demoted or transferred because you didn’t get along with your boss or a new boss? Of course not, we all realize that does not happen in the private sector. Could it happen in our public schools? Of course not, the administration always has the best interests of their teachers and students foremost in their minds.

Just ask the young teacher hired on temporary contract and let go after a year so he cannot build up seniority.

Just ask the teacher who has fifteen years of good evaluations but got a bad one this year about her relationship with the new principal.

Just ask the teacher who got moved from teaching algebra to low level math after telling the principal he wouldn’t volunteer for unpaid lunch duty next year.

Uh huh. Yeah, it happens. Teachers and administrators are both human with a human’s virtues and faults.

That’s why we have tenure.

Furthermore

Add to all of the above, inadequate funding, non-uniform funding, barrios, ghettos, aging school facilities, immigration, language, etc.

Judge Treu just does not get it. Of course, neither do the administrators, politicians and ivory tower types who’ve never taught in the K-12 trenches; and, all the other adults who’ve never seen a working classroom from any perspective other than as a student – who didn’t want to be their either.

Summer 2014 is almost here. In my old district – Orange Unified – today is the last student day. My wife’s district finishes the academic year next week. Have a great summer folks, and for those of you retiring, a great retirement. Those of you who will return to the classroom next year have all of my admiration and sympathy. My admiration for the job you do and the dedication you bring to it; my sympathy for the conditions under which you work.

Those who can – do.

Those who can’t – criticize.

Those who understand – teach.

Those who become enlightened – retire.