Charlotte Danielson is not evil?

(As long as teachers can still use their intuition)

“Learning to trust your instincts, using your intuitive sense of what's best for you, is paramount for any lasting success. I've trusted the still, small voice of intuition my entire life. And the only time I've made mistakes is when I didn't listen.” – Oprah Winfrey

The other day I just happened to catch an NPR Radiolab piece on “Choice” and being “Overcome by Emotion.” Essentially, the hosts were discussing if we were all completely rational beings, like Spock from Star Trek, would we have an easier time making choices throughout our day. In theory, you think of course, but in reality it’s our emotions and intuition that keep us out of a circle of rationality. When you finally remember your favorite cereal from childhood, you are saved from the endless oblivion of choices in the supermarket aisle.

After sharing a series of interesting stories related to emotion and choice, Jad Abumrad came to the conclusion that, “one way to look at a gut feeling is that its kind of a short-hand average of all of this past wisdom.” (Quote is at 12:30)

Teacher Knowledge

I had a light bulb moment. As teachers, so much of our day is piecing gut feelings together. What separates a good teacher from a bad teacher is strong implicit knowledge of what good teaching looks like and how to implement it. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan L. Lytle refer to this as “teacher knowledge” in their work on teacher action research. Listening to the NPR piece on the reality of intuition, I was excited that there was neurological evidence to support the notion that what teachers know is particular to teachers and is important in educating children.

But then I thought, “oh, no!” This does not jive with all these “teacher effectiveness” buzzwords I have been hearing lately.

Or does it?

Teacher Effectiveness Confusion

My first experience with the Danielson framework was while working with a student teacher last spring. She came to me concerned about using “low-inference evidence” to support her work with our students who were emergent communicators with multiple disabilities. I immediately thought, “you want evidence of what my students say, only? Hmm, most of them are non-verbal… how’s this going to work?” The student teacher gave an example of grading student papers without knowing who they were, so that you would not be biased. I thought, “great, my students cannot write and definitely do not independently do worksheets.”

This was what I was thinking of as I combed through the New York City’s Department of Education (DOE)’s website for implementing the new teacher evaluation system based on the Danielson’s Framework for Teaching, also known as Advance. (Because everything needs to have its own name in NYC, can’t just be APPR like the rest of New York State.) I was looking for a better understanding and I cross-referenced the DOE’s info with the Danielson Group website and other web resources.

A Danielson Framework Surprise

I have to admit that I have come to the conclusion that Charlotte Danielson may not be as evil as we have been led to believe. It seems that its our state education departments and local school districts in their rush for accountability that may be corrupting the important work of documenting what good teachers know and do.

Shockingly, I have to say that this particular PowerPoint from the NYC DOE was actually quite helpful. I appreciated that their definition of low-inference included what students say AND do. I also got the impression that this was about improving administrators’ practices, as well as teachers. I went looking for evidence that teachers had to be robots teaching to a strict norm, but I only found it on district websites about “norming,” not in Danielson’s actually work, like here.

Teacher Knowledge and Danielson Working Together?

I started thinking: is Danielson’s work finally what we as teachers have been looking for in order to prove our implicit teacher knowledge? I have always felt good teachers should have nothing to fear about being observed; could this be a tool that could confirm that we are effective teachers?

What Low-Inference Really Means

It turns out low-inference does not just mean grading papers without knowing who the students are, but can be something like using a checklist during your lesson to document that students are meeting specific IEP objectives. Low-inference has come to have two meanings in education: low-inference observations of what our students are doing by teachers and administrators and low-inference observations of what teachers are doing by administrators.

Because I am a special education teacher, I initially thought that everything I do is high-inference, such as observing children’s movements and facial expressions and drawing conclusions, and I became defensive. Actually, everything I do in my teaching is a series of low-inference (ie. evidence-based) actions that over time have formed my intuition. This is exactly why experience counts in teaching. As teachers, we need to think about it as taking evidence-based action, which will provide low-inference evidence for administrators. We need to specifically identify the parts of our practice that causes us to form opinions and determine next steps.

To eliminate confusion though, I wished they would have just used a simple phrase like “objective evidence” instead of “low-inference evidence.” The definition of “inference” inherently means, “a conclusion or opinion that is formed because of known facts or evidence.” (Merrian-Webster Dictionary) Conclusion is in the word, and it is confusing as to whether there is supposed to be low conclusions or low evidence. A low “conclusion from evidence” evidence?

Support for Teacher Intuition

Initially, I associated the Danielson framework and teacher evaluations as an attempt to eliminate teacher intuition. Low-inference was another buzzword for rejecting teacher knowledge. But low-inference is about being specific, which I think we as educators really cannot fight. We can no longer simply say that our teacher knowledge is immeasurable, but we need to be sure that the tools that are being developed accurately reflect the murkiness of teaching young minds. We need to let our implicit teacher knowledge shine, by investing the time to understand the Danielson Framework of Teaching and use it to support our profession.

So I leave you with the two questions I have arrived at today:

1.)   Are the Danielson Frameworks of Teaching an accurate way to demonstrate implicit teacher knowledge?

2.)   How can we be sure that the Danielson Frameworks are used accurately given the complexities of teaching students with special needs?

I hope you can help me by sharing how you answer these questions and I will continue to blog as I shape my own answers.

It is time for all teachers to channel our innermost Captain James T. Kirks, because as rational as Spock was, he and the rest of the ship would have been lost without the gutsy Captain James T. Kirk in command.

Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on. – Captain James T. Kirk

And when the bus strike is all over…

22 days, 22 days, 22 school days. It’s like my students had a summer break in the middle of the school year. Except, their summer break is usually 10 days. They’ve never been out of school for 22 days, unless they had major surgery or a serious illness.

So Wednesday, they will roll into school and I will happily greet the chaos that is our normal. But what have we learned at the expense of them missing 22 school days?

I can only hope that we have started a conversation about why special education students have to be bused all across New York City and beyond to have their educational needs met. I hope we have realized that we must do better.

Of course, I was ecstatic Friday afternoon to hear the possibility of the strike ending and in almost disbelief when I heard it was officially over Friday evening. It’s hard to believe that a letter from 5 Democratic mayoral candidates was all it took. I also like to think that schools being less fearful of the press this past week also hastened the end. When the face of the bus strike became the children with special needs who weren’t getting to school, 1,285 never made it at all, ignoring the strike was no longer an option for at least some politicians.

Even in my excitement that I will be reunited with my students this week, after recharging my batteries over this long weekend, Bloomberg and Walcott continue to exasperate me. With the claim of saving $60 million, Bloomberg and Walcott are calling themselves the victors and saying that they “put children first,” after my students lost almost 5 weeks of school. On Friday after the Democratic mayoral candidates came together to craft a letter that ended the bus strike, Bloomberg and Walcott issued their first official statements in weeks, gloating. And before this, Walcott even made a statement saying that students whose educations were disrupted will still be expected to participate in state testing, which we all know will lead to their scores being held against their teachers.

Now I’m getting asked how will my students make up the lost instruction time. To be honest, they won’t. Most of the students with the most significant special needs had the most difficulties getting to school; they already attend school year round. In addition, there is already a shortage of Occupational, Physical, and Speech Therapist; there is no way they will be able to make up missed therapies during the school day. This leaves it on the parents to find therapists who will come into their homes, which is extremely difficult to do for even the most savvy parents.

So its time to make a plan for what needs to be done going forward.

The DOE’s Office of Pupil transportation needs to be held accountable for creating routes that are efficient.

The bus drivers and matrons’ union, ATU 1181, needs to create a platform that legitimizes their concerns, rather than just fighting for job protections. They now have until the next mayor is elected to do this.

NYC Schools, in particular District 75, needs to do a self-examination. Why are students being bused near and far to receive their educations?

Parents need to push the NYC DOE to provide appropriate educations in their communities, ideally their community schools.

I hope to do my part by continuing this blog and developing a strong community of teachers, teacher educators and advocates who recognize the improvements that need to happen to special education in New York City. Let’s not just be satisfied with getting our kids back to school, let’s make this system better so that this never happens again.

I’m looking forward to giving you an update on Wednesday, our first day back!

Stuff You Can't Makeup: “Trained” drivers and matrons?

I can’t take it, I’ve mostly held back for nearly 4 weeks, but the ATU 1181 and its drivers and matrons have finally made me lose my patience with them. I just can no longer have sympathy for a group that holds children with special needs hostage in order to better themselves. If they had gone about asking for job protections strategically or started by helping reform the entire transportation system, I think the union would look much better to all parties involved. You don’t all of a sudden call a strike and want to be taken seriously as a union by only demanding job protections.

So as someone who interacts with drivers and matrons daily, as well as for a weekly community outing, have I got the dirt for you!

Over and over you hear the ATU cite how they are just trying to make sure children have trained drivers and matrons, especially dealing with children with special needs. This gets parents to support them, although parents don’t see what I see. Clearly, I’ve heard, “its for the children,” one too many times.

I have found that over the course of 5 years at the same school, it’s been a rotating cast of characters of bus drivers and matrons. I’m not sure of the argument that bus drivers want to be on the same route from year to year, we’ve never had that and often drivers change 2 to 3 times a year on a route. I can’t even keep track of the matrons.

Repeatedly, I have matrons and even drivers who do not know how to use the tie down systems on their buses to properly secure wheelchairs. They then sometimes take over a half hour to tie down an average of 5 wheelchairs, that’s six minutes per chair. Sometimes they arrive without enough tie downs for the number of students who are going on the trips. On my last outing, a small wheelchair bus that should accommodate at least 3 wheelchairs had tie downs for only one chair. I then had to teach the matron how to slide the tie downs into the tracks and that the chair will tip over if you do not use 4 tie downs on the floor, not on the wall of the bus. (Lucky for them, I used to secure and drive my entire class in a wheelchair van at my old school.)

The DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation (OPT) will fine these companies only if the school repeatedly follows up. But why as a union do they not fight for better training for their members?

On these community outing days, I've been told I have too many wheelchairs. I've been told that on a bus with room for 8 chairs, they would only take 4. That I need to split the kids up so they didn't have to tire themselves out to tie them down, even though I didn't have a teacher for a second bus. I've seen matrons that are injured and can't do tie-downs for a wheelchair sit on a bus while the driver did all the work.

On our regular routes, I have seen drivers quick to say that a wheelchair's brake does not work to avoid having to pick up a student. They will repeatedly harass the families about the brakes, without even checking them again, even after the physical therapist has fixed them. I am the one who fields the phone calls from families trying to get the bus drivers and matrons to stop complaining to them.

They seem to pick the rules they want to follow that are convenient for them. I've seen a driver who refused to transport a walker device along with a wheelchair, but gets off the loaded school bus every morning in back of the school to smoke a cigarette. I also repeatedly see matrons, who have been off all day, get off a loaded bus of students to use the restroom. I've heard drivers and matrons who have made parents feel extremely bad about their children's special needs that cause them to scream during the bus ride. They’ll tell parents that they need to talk to their child, even though their child is non-verbal and doesn’t understand.

Is this where their special training comes in?

Today, I found out that 2 porters, who would carry a student out of a public housing building with no elevator, have been paid to sit on a bus all year for a student who’s home has an elevator. Why didn’t the driver tell the school and the company when he noticed? (And of course it’s the smoking, rule obeying bus driver’s route!)

I mean listen to this WNYC report, they’re not even outside picketing all day! One even has a doctor’s note! What a joke.

I will say that the entire system between the DOE's OPT (Office of Pupil Transportation) and the bus companies and the actual drivers and matrons is a mess. I wish the Amalgamated Transportation Union 1181 would be shedding light on overcrowded buses, which the parents would support, and professionalizing their unions, rather than all of a sudden making a fight for employment protections. 

So parents, this is what I see and I know you have experienced a lot of this as well. Let’s not let them continue to use your children for their own agenda. It’s time to call them out and end this strike. 

Its time to think about who this bus strike is really hurting…

Today I had four students, after averaging just one over the past week. As I taught reading and math, I could not help but think of the eight other students who have now missed out on nine days of instruction. Following Hurricane Sandy, there was public outrage over students missing 5 days of instruction, but my students who use wheelchairs can miss 9 days with no end in sight and then its hardly covered in the press. All we see are the workers, but what about my students?

My students don’t do worksheets, they need to be in school to learn and receive therapy. One NY Daily News article described the pain not receiving regular physical therapy causes for students (1/17/13). Routine is essential to my students learning important life skills that give them the ability to communicate and be independent. You may think I am a babysitter, but every skill I teach reduces the cost of my students’ care later on in life, and your future tax burden.

As a teacher, I am the one fielding the sad phone calls from the families in broken English asking what can they do, they live in a different borough, it would take two buses and a train, they work nights. I hear them tell me how their children wake up every morning hoping that this will be the day they can finally go back to school. The children feel like they are being punished and don’t understand why.

The past two days my phone has been ringing off the hook about the new voucher system for car service. The Department of Ed’s Office of Pupil Transportation took the time to call all families with students who use wheelchairs to tell them that the city would pay for their cabs. But they didn’t actually have any cab company numbers for the families and directed the families to call the school. In turn, the school could only offer paperwork for the cabs, if the families could find one on their own who would wait two weeks to be paid. Here is the DOE website that offers a 70-page list which does not specify which would take vouchers. Helpful? Try also not being able to read English.

Now in Albany during budget hearings, when asked how attendance has been affected during the bus strike, Chancellor Walcott replies, “not at all.” Really, not at all? How about we ask the families? ( https://twitter.com/yasmeenkhan ) Would you consider attendance only reaching 73% in District 75 (NYC’s Special Ed district) today just fine? ( Gothamschools.org )

This bus strike is slowly draining me, as if it’s not hard enough to work in NYC schools and quietly observe the inequities. Now the inequities are glaringly obvious. It is the families that are financially secure that can foot the bill to get their children to school, because its not only car fare, but also lost wages to spend an hour each way to bring your child to school and an hour each way to pickup your child up from school, if you only have one child that is.

It is time to have a real conversation about the real problems behind busing special needs students out of their communities for their educations. It is time to get these students back to school.