Month: December 2023

We Got What We Got

A story, in two acts:

All a matter of perspective, right? Although if you are opposed to college athletes being able to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) or being able to switch schools when they want, we probably can’t be friends.

It’s undeniable that Bowl Season isn’t what it used to be. But what is? The modern-day college postseason benefits some groups and there are other folks who are left pining for the old days. Kinda like life in general.

It’s been a long-time habit of mine to spend some time on New Year’s Eve reflecting back on the 12 months just past, and looking forward to the year to come.

The Year of Our Lord 2023 brought some incredible opportunities for me professionally, along with stubborn challenges (can’t seem to have one without the other, of course). But right now folks in my building are struggling with concerns about our contract situation, and rightfully so. And that dominates our thought as the year comes to an end.

It’s been a banner year for labor. My backyard neighbor was amongst the United Auto Workers who went on strike for a fair deal from the Big Three automakers, a move which resulted in a significant pay increase. The State of Nevada budgeted additional dollars for education which allowed my teacher friends in Vegas to negotiate a 20 percent raise over two years.

In my district though, finances are tight. The negotiations are in mediation and the vote on the district’s offer the Friday before Christmas went literally 99.5 percent against the deal. The financial ramifications of the contract (whenever it is approved) are going to result in a lot of family budget committee meetings around a lot of dining room tables, and I’m afraid a lot of free agent teachers come May.

We feel a lot like Charlie Brown these days.

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But contract concerns aside, 2023 was not without its highlights. Mrs. Dull and I snuck away to Michigan to celebrate our 30th anniversary. My oldest completed his hitch in the Army and he was hired on by his chain of command as a Department of the Army Civilian Police officer, fulfilling a long-time career goal of his. We were able to drive to Ft. Leonard Wood (coincidentally enough where he did his OSUT five years ago) for his police academy graduation. My youngest is developing skills in the construction field and has steady, well-paying work.

My role changed at work, as I became one of our building’s instructional coaches. I completed a school year as a mentor for the Indiana Department of Education’s Teacher Leader Bootcamp program, while at the same time serving as an Indiana Teach Plus Policy Fellow. I applied for and was accepted to the Teach Plus National Policy Advisory Board, so in 2024 I will continue to advocate for education policy initiatives, this time at the federal level.

That’s a role that is big enough to scare me a little. My pre-reading is here for our first virtual meeting in early January, and that’s on my agenda for the second week of Winter Break.

It’s a presidential election year, and for my youngest, the first time he’ll be able to cast a vote for the highest office in the land. He is utterly uninterested in politics and I’m not even sure he will register, much less punch a ballot. I’m going to work on that.

I got a clean bill of health last time I visited my provider (and a really positive heart screen), and since I’m not getting younger I’ll continue to work on my nutrition and building in more movement to my day. Ironically enough, one of the results of our family budget meeting was cancelling our YMCA membership (totally counter-intuitive at a time of year when many resolution-driven folks are joining a gym), but for us it was an expensive extra that we literally were not using. Maybe we’ll join the growing number of couples in my neighborhood who walk together daily. Except we’ll walk on the sidewalks like civilized people.

Mrs. Dull is a recruiter and internal trainer for a credit union and she will continue to plan and execute creative employee-engagement programs, as well as keeping her branches and departments well-staffed with quality people. And as a hedge in case we win a giant lottery prize, she will continue to send me Zillow links to our next house. Unlike 10 years ago, we win millions my title will most definitely be “retired teacher”.

Feeling good, Louis. (Source)

Because a decade brings changes in perspective, for real.

The 2024 playlist is here. Actually has been since like last January. I was a little impatient this year I guess. Been making a “New Year’s Playlist” each year ever since stumbling across this Allyson Apsey blog post lo those many chilly Decembers ago.

(Prior years here: 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023)

As always the playlist runs the full range of emotions (my wife hears selections like “Birth, School, Work, Death” and “If We Were Vampires” and she’s like “yeah, this is very definitely one of your playlists”). But also it’s impossible not to nod your head a little bit to “Angelica” or “Birdhouse In Your Soul”.

I don’t know what I’m even doing here
I was told that there would be free beer
I don’t wanna follow you on the ‘gram
I don’t wanna listen to your band

And then
It all
Comes to an end
We all go again, go again

https://lyrics.lyricfind.com/lyrics/wet-leg-angelica

Kinda sums up the feels here at the end of the year, huh?

We’re coming up on the fourth anniversary of the pandemic shutdown, and in a lot of ways we are still waiting for a return to “normal”, whatever that may be. In the teaching business it feels like each successive year is more abnormal than the year previous. As we first started to navigate Covidtide the common refrain from coaches and teachers and leaders was “control what you can control”.

That advice still holds. Our new contract will result in an effective pay cut (no raise but our insurance costs are increasing). That sucks, but it will be our reality. What it did in my house was cause us to re-commit ourselves to making and keeping a monthly budget. It resulted in trimming some outlays and scouring our resources for less expensive meal options, and delaying some family visits we had hoped to make in 2024.

The new year won’t be the year we want or the year we remember from times past. But it is the year we got and our job is to live it.

Na zdrowie, friends, and Happy New Year.

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Riding The Storm Out

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I honestly did not anticipate the crash would come this hard, this fast.

It’s been a stressful school year, in a long string of stressful school years.

A referendum to fund teacher pay and much needed school repairs was defeated in landslide on Election Day. Not that we didn’t see it coming, but it still hurts when the people of your city are like, “Nah, you guys got enough money. Figure it out.”

Our superintendent tried to soften the blow by reassuring our teaching staff that all contracts run to the end of the school year, and that no one was in danger of losing their job on November 8.

On top of the referendum defeat our contract negotiations reached impasse and went to arbitration and are still not complete even as we approach winter break. Doesn’t matter, because there’s no money for raises, and an insurance premium increase means an effective pay cut, at least for the teachers who are left.

So you could say we have a morale problem in our district right now.

But wait, there’s more.

Friday, literally at noon, a week before Winter Break, a district-wide email.

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Paraphrasing here, but the basic gist was “Remember that email I sent on election night, saying things were bad? It turns out things are way, way worse.”

Total gut punch. You can guess the reaction amongst the teaching staff. Panic ensues.

I stopped by one of my math colleague’s classes during passing time just to guage where he was at. I said “If you can concentrate on teaching geometry these next two hours after that email, you’re a better man than me.”

The wider world will know the reality when the personnel report is published for this week’s school board meeting, but within the buildings the dot-connecting started immediately. The instructional coaches spent most of the afternoon counseling teachers who were concerned about getting RIFfed two weeks before Christmas.

Our superintendent was up front and apologetic in his email. He realized that his election night email may have created a false sense of security, and that the timing of this news, right before the holidays, was devestating.

I’m gutted for my colleagues who will spend the rest of the year (or at least until the state-mandated May 1 window for reduction-in-force announcements) worrying about their job status, and my heart hurts for our administrative staff at the district level. There is a lot of supremely talented people and good human beings who are going to be out of a job. We’re losing a lot of institutional knowledge.

Not to mention our district admin staff just got a lot whiter and more male, in a district that is predominantly serving students of historically marginalized populations.

Many of my colleagues are still hurting from a district downsizing just four years ago. I wrote about it as part of my reflection on the Summer Of E-Learning Conference in my district in 2019.

I spent some time with Mrs. Dull on Friday night sorting out the possibilities. I think there’s a five percent chance I get caught up in the cuts and end up a free agent. My status as a highly-effective teacher probably saves me but I switched districts for a minute and then came back so despite my 15 years in Hammond, my current years of service make me the least senior teacher in my department.

Just looking at the distribution of licensed math teachers in my district, involuntary transfers are a likely reality so there’s maybe a 35% chance I stay in Hammond but switch schools, leaving an instructional coach position to return to the classroom. Again, seniority is not my friend.

There’s about a 55% chance I am no longer an instructional coach and return to the classroom in my current school. Good thing I didn’t really unpack a lot of the stuff I packed up from my classroom last August.

And the other five percent is total pipe dream, we decide we need instructional coaches at the building level and I stay in my current position at my current school.

I love teaching and won’t be heartbroken to take a full schedule of classes next year. Honestly, I’ll be happy to still have my same job in my same building with my same department colleagues. We all will be happy just to still have jobs, if you want the truth.

But I’m really not looking forward to walking back in my building tomorrow. I don’t think the weekend away will have assuaged anyone’s fears about what’s to come the next five months. If anything folks will be more concerned about the future, not less.

Gonna put my counseling hat on as I walk in the G door.

We’re going to have to ride this one out together.

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Uncharted Waters

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Announced Evaluation Season is wrapping up in my building. I sat with my principal for our pre-conference the week after Thanksgiving, and I was upfront with him that I was in uncharted waters – I knew what I had planned but I had no idea what he would see the next day.

We are in Year Three of a conversion to a project-based learning school, and though I have plenty of experience with problem-based learning through Three-Act Math, I hadn’t taken the plunge on a full-on project until this year. In fact I was scheduled to be observed during Day Three of the project. No not a “traditional” class session by any stretch.

I’ve got a stack of second-semester projects from a previous go-round with Algebra II but I was searching earlier this year for something I could roll out earlier. I stumbled across a timely topic that peaked my interest and I hoped would make sense to my students as well: a debate project from Next Gen Personal Finance titled “Should Municipal Bonds Fund Stadiums?“

The Chicago Bears are pondering a move to the suburbs and presumably would be seeking some level of public support for a new stadium on the former Arlington Park property, although there is a late push for a stadium site in the city. And the state of Nevada recently approved $380 million in funding for a new stadium on the Las Vegas Strip for the former Oakland A’s. The ballpark is facing stiff opposition from teachers’ unions who say the state can’t afford to give away millions to an out-of-state billionaire while the schools in Nevada go underfunded.

So there’s plenty of current coverage of the stadium public-funding issue to go along with multiple links in the source document, which I edited a bit for our class purposes.

I opened the intro day with a quick piece of video:

We talked a little bit about what kind of things cities pay for with tax dollars (student replies included public safety like police and fire; parks and recreation, health care, and education). Then they dug into a few of the links provided in the document to get a basic understanding of the issue. They took notes on articles that opposed using public funds for pro sports stadiums.

By Day Three, my observation day, they were ready to generate supports for the argument in favor of public funding. It’s a tougher ask. There are fewer articles out there in favor. But I had hinted at the Bears and A’s stadium discussions, so they were not fumbling around completely in the dark.

I had an ace up my sleeve. With my principal sitting in the back of the room, I asked them to come up with reasons they would be opposed to our district’s new “no cell phone” policy. They were a bit reluctant to speak out with an administrator in the room but eventually opened up.

  • “We concentrate better when we can listen to music during math”.
  • “It’s how we communicate with family and friends”.
  • “Some of us have health or productivity apps on our phones.”

Not bad. Then I asked them for reasons folks might be in favor of a ban. Three students replied in unison “distraction”!

I explained that they just recreated a simple version of the debate that took place amongst our board of school trustees last spring before the ban was implemented, and that was the process that adults often used to work through contentious issues.

I had tipped my administrator that rather than assessing a content standard, this project was based on a standard of mathematical practice, SMP 3 (“construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others”) and he just saw me hook my kids in with a relevant example in real time.

And they were hooked. Over the next few days of the project they dug deeper for additional supports on both sides. They split into two teams of five students each to organize and rank their top five supports, and also to anticipate their opponents points, and to decide how to counter those supports. I selected two students to act as judges.

Come debate day, they were ready to go.

Many of my students leaned into the opportunity cost of stadium funding, coming at the expense of education and other needs. It’s kind of a touchy subject in our district right now. They did a fantastic job researching and building arguments, and were able to insert their supports at appropriate moments in the debate. The following day was set aside for reflection, and they all felt that they were well-prepared for the debate and that they helped their team’s side with their efforts.

They also prepared to present their findings to the community at our New Tech Winter Showcase this week.

This debate project was a new experience for my kids, and for me. I’m not new to risk-taking in the classroom, but I think we all get a little twinge of nerves on observation day. I haven’t seen the outcome of my evaluation yet, but I feel like we both exceeded expectations this week.

And I’m already planning our next project. Gonna talk school enrollment trends and school funding. They’ll crush it like a belt-high fastball.