I wish I had a time machine.  I've been teaching a long time.  27 years. I think. Maybe this is my 28th.  It's like birthdays they run together and some days it feels like I'm a brand new chick in this game, other days my dog's so old I can barely muster the strength to drag myself off the porch.
Today, I feel old.  Irritated with their lack of initiative, wayward ways, complete disregard for trying and so many of them embracing the easy, why try attitude.  Not all... I forget that in the moment.  Have to pull my eyes away from the disgruntled student trying with all their might to get my attention away from the real issue, and focus, reward with attention those students really trying.  It's tough when I feel so pushed myself.  It's tough when I lose sight of the true reason I'm there, in that classroom.  I'm there to use my considerable skills and talents to take them from where they are to where they need to go.  Push, pull, entice them to embark on their own journey in the right direction.
Again, I wish I had a time machine.  I could transport back into the classroom with chalkboards! No kidding. No computers! Coolers that blew air so loud and ferociously all the papers would fly off their desks and counter tops. So loud that we would have to turn it off to teach a lesson, and sweat would bead up and drip on their papers then.  One day,  the windows were open (they had to be or we would all have heat stroke) and there were no screens.  I could see out the windows, over the cornfields to the blue Bear Mountain in the distance.  I had turned on the cooler and the students were working away.  Dragonflies, bees and all forms of insects would just fly through the room.  That afternoon, two dragonflies flew through one on top of the other.  Memorable sight.
So surely teaching wasn't easier then.   It was different though.  Better, freer.  Not without many challenges so my thought today is; how do I recapture the joy of teaching and pass that on to my students?
I wish I had a time machine and I could be a bug on the wall.  Wish I could remember it all and truly compare it.

On teaching 9/14/12

My belief is that teaching is a great art. An art not easily taught or learned or judged. Just as a masterpiece can't be created in a paint by numbers kit; so great teaching can't be created or judged just through numbers. This incessant attempt to improve our education system through judging teachers on their student's test scores is only a simplistic solution to a complex problem. To those who have only ever been students in their lives, this simplistic solution may seem viable, yet it holds a falsity within it's very premise. Teaching a CHILD is not teaching a SUBJECT. Within the folds of teaching lie the delicate interactions and threads of human interaction, of trust, of give and take, the lightning quick judgments and decisions which must be made to adjust the learning conditions to help the learner to go further and beyond where they are in their understanding at that moment. No curriculum, computer, program or even an untrained person can take another individual beyond, can push just gently but persistently enough to bring another person to a new threshold of understanding, then beyond again. Day after day, through the beginnings of the new, unknown relationship to the deep knowing of one another as the journey we just traveled together. This journey is then forever within each of us who has had a great teacher and lies within each teacher as a living seed of nourishment for the next trial, and passed on to the next student who will benefit from the experiences the teacher gained.

As we watch a nation of teachers marching for what seems trivial issues; why strike over being evaluated by test scores? Why worry about being let go when your seniority prices you out of your school district? If you're a good teacher you have nothing to worry about. This is completely untrue and in fact exacerbates rather than solves any problems withing our education system. Teachers know that these evaluation techniques and policy mandates hurt our children. Children benefit when bad teachers go through an extensive evaluation process with people working with them to improve their craft then if that fails ending the process with a new career. Children benefit when teachers with the seeds of experience from countless learners within their minds and hearts can use these for the next generation. Teachers supported in using the techniques and skills which work with individual children and allowed the freedom to alter, fashion and REALLY teach students will benefit our future for generations to come.

So what's wrong with testing?

Test analogy #1:
My doctor tells me I'm going to have to undergo a series of physical endurance tests 10 months from today.  His job rating and subsequent job security and pay are linked to the results of these tests.  The tests results will indicate how well he instructed me on the value of eating healthy and doing daily exercise.  He will be assigning me a set of exercises and a diet to follow in order to get ready for these tests.
However, while these are sound wellness strategies the results will have no effect on my life.  I will get a print out of my results 3 months after I leave his care and I will then move on to another physician's care.
Will my test results truly be an accurate reflection of my doctor's knowledge and abilities to diagnose and prescribe their patient's needs?
Nay..
And this is how we propose to judge a teacher's qualifications.
If test results have no impact on a student's life the test results will not matter to that student and they will have no ownership over the outcome.
Yearly Standardized Test results are a farce.

A Tsunami of Technology

Truly,
Every time I sit at a computer I feel like I have to learn something new....and it's exhausting.  New passwords, user names, directions to navigate, AND who are all these people??
So many voices crowding the air, streaming everywhere.  What does this do to us as individuals?  What will this do to our children?  Are our individual voices truly important or are we just another voice in a million, a grain of sand,or yes the proverbial dust in the wind.
In my classroom the effect continues.  Attendance, testing, maintenance, student challenges and research, media and lesson creation, they all require these little tidbits of information, little decision hurdles which snip away at my allotment of decisions for the day.  I must have on hand, in my available storehouse of knowledge,  a huge amount of trivial data to navigate my way through the technology of the day.  AND it's always changing.  AND this has very little to do with the actual work of teaching children.
 The work of teaching children pivots singularly around KNOWING them.  Their strengths, weaknesses, needs.  Where each is in their own development.  It is so easy to find myself lost in the maze of unimportant business.  Assignments which don't meet their needs or grading which doesn't give me new or usable information about them. My daily challenge is how to stay grounded in the important work of the day and how to keep the students there with me.
All of this is just in the small microcosm of my classroom. This doesn't address the incoming pressures to use this designated technique, or that curriculum in a prescribed manner.  Those pressures and decisions are a rant for another day.