One Week to Go

So here we are in the latter half of August with September bearing down on us with all speed.  It's been lovely having the last few weeks off.  I've been able to visit family and friends in Chicago, do some sightseeing, a lot of cooking, cleaning, and spending time with the dog.  I've also been able to see friends in the area and read for pleasure.  Of course there have been wasted hours of watching dumb movies and playing games, but we're all human, right?

I made my triumphant return to Wrigley Field to see my Cubs beat the Reds, cheered heartily at the return of the NFL season and learned to run the dog ragged with a frisbee.  I haven't had too many good photo shoots, but some new software gave me the long awaited opportunity to turn a bunch of old shots into good panoramas.  If you'd like to see the results, I've added the album here.



But, as I mentioned at the start, September is just around the corner, and with it, the return of graduate coursework.  This fall I am enrolled in four classes: Pedagogy of History, Fundamentals of Teaching, American Legal History, and British Medieval History.  Although I am admittedly less than thrilled to be returning to homework, it will be good to be making forward process again.  In particular I am excited about the British course because I have not studied that period at all, neither formally nor independently.  I'm equally excited by the Pedagogy of History course, because, let's be honest, that's the primary skill set I hope to improve through this Master's program.

Before those courses even begin I embark on an even more exciting journey, the beginning of my student-teaching.  That's right, next week I begin heading down the street to the high school and observing the local history department.  Typically I will be spending two days a week in the high school observing, and likely helping out here and there, but next week I will be observing almost the whole week to get a good grasp on how the school year starts from a faculty perspective and start to establish my role with the students.

I am unbelievably excited for that to get underway.  Finally, after years of thinking about it, thinking about what I'll do and who I'll be, I will start acting.  It is worth reflecting that the point of this blog is to record my mistakes and the lessons learned through them.  That means that in just one week, I'll be in position to start filling it up.  Yep, one week til the mistakes inevitably start.  Let's all just hope and pray that the lessons are learned and acted on shortly thereafter.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Vacation Reading

Well, I've managed to once again not write here for long enough that I feel a bit guilty about it.  Job well done Greg...

For the last month and a half I have been positively swamped by my courses and am finally enjoying some time to breath upon their completion.  It was great to get a chance to spend five weeks meeting my colleagues, discussing, studying and debating concepts of education, and building the first tools for use in classrooms come this fall.  Still, I'm happy it is vacation time.

I am actually currently in Chicago with my wife visiting my old stomping grounds, friends, and even playing tourist in the city for a while.  It is wonderful to get back here and see so many friendly faces, not to mention all of the excellent food and fun.  Had lunch at Lou Malnati's yesterday, and I'm still experiencing that warm, happy, full feeling that only the best Chicago deep dish can provide.  Good times.

Perhaps the best part of all this free time, though, is the opportunity to read for my own pleasure.  Most recently I read David Egger's Zeitoun and am now making my way through David McCullough's extraordinary biography, John Adams.  For those of you who have not read either book, I strongly recommend them both.  Although they are both non-fiction, they are both written with a strong narrative voice and are eminently readable.  Just yesterday I was struck by a common thread in the two books.  Zeitoun follows the story of a Muslim American family in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.  It is a phenomenal depiction of the possibilities inherent in America and the problems that arise in a crisis for which nobody has prepared.  Sadly, one of the main themes of the book is the overlap between America's post-9/11 institutionalized racial paranoia and the FEMA-organized response to maintaining law and order in the flooded city.

As a counterpoint to this story of panic and unchecked law "enforcement" I was struck by a quotation from John Adams during his famous defense of the British soldiers who had fired upon the crowd in Boston in the incident immortalized as the Boston Massacre.  Adams posited that, "it's of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished."  This statement rang true to me on every level and raises so many questions that I was immediately swept into a revery of how I could teach from it.

Of course, as I've alluded, my immediate tie was to the panic response in New Orleans that led to so many wrongful arrests.  But to draw out the string farther, Adams' quote can be seen as an argument against shadowy military tribunals in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the reactionary policies in the Patriot Act and the historical Alien and Sedition Acts, and even debates over such topics as civil rights and the death penalty.  What a wonderful debate could be had over whether the prime goal of the judicial system is to punish the potentially guilty or protect the potentially innocent!  What lessons could be learned by considering the same question in the light of the court of public opinion, especially the junk media.

As is often the case when reading the writings of America's Founding Fathers, I am inspired by this one line, this one thought.  I hope that I can hold onto it and challenge my classes to consider its implications through history and their own lives.

Lesson #1: Agenda

Happy Canada Day!

It has been a while since I've written, but I have a decent excuse: I started my program!  My current courses are Adolescent Psychology, Foundation of Education, and Modern American History from a Global Context.  All are interesting, but with the term only lasting five weeks, it is a lot of work in a short amount of time.  So, I've been reading nearly 750 pages a week and have plenty of writing to do as well.  In fact, as soon as I finish this post I'll be going back to reading "Taking Haiti" by Mary Renda.

This is not why I am writing today, though.  I am excited to say that for the first time, I will be using this blog for its original intended purpose!!!  I have made a mistake and learned a lesson.  Huzzah.

This past week I was asked to facilitate part of my Foundations of Education course in cooperation with a couple of my classmates.  We took it very seriously and created a thorough lesson plan that addressed several key aspects from the readings.  We provided a variety of different activities to address the class as a whole, in small groups an individually.  We implemented various methods of teaching to convey messages to different types of learners.  I don't want to hurt my arm patting myself on the back, but I think we did a pretty darn good job for a first attempt.

So, where was my mistake, you say?  Right at the beginning.  At the start of the class we dove right into our first activity.  From there we continued straight through without a hitch.  The problem?  We never gave the students an idea of the plan that we had worked out so carefully.  We did not give a schedule for the day or any sense of our expectation for the flow of the conversation.  Essentially, we gave the students all of the meat, but no skeleton to hang it on.

Henceforth, I will remember to put together a simple slide or write an agenda on the board at the beginning of class.  It should not be so detailed that there is no room for adjustment to flow, but it is beneficial to at the very least demonstrate to the students that you do have a plan.

Definition of Statistics

Environment

1. Budget Factor (BF) - Comparative level of school budget to state average.  This factor is based on an average school budget within the state equaling 1.00 and the percentage difference moving above and below that mark.  For example, a school budget that is 50% higher than the state average will score a 1.50, a school budget that is 27% below the state average will score a 0.73.
2. Professional Development BF (PDBF) - Comparative level of professional development budget within the school to the state average.  The scale for PDBF is identical to BF but reflects only the portion of the budget that is earmarked for the professional development of faculty members.
   
3. Socioeconomic Factor (SEF) - Comparative level of average family income in the district the state average.  This factor is scored on the same scale as BF and PDBF, but the data is drawn from the census data, not the school budget.
   
4. Community Education Factor (CEF) - Comparative level of average highest degree earned in the district the state average.  This factor is a composite of three scales.  The city/district is compared to the state average for highest educational attainment as a percentage of population.  The three measures will be high school diploma, bachelor's degree, and professional degree.  These three will be placed on the 1.00 rating scale and then totaled as such: (2*HS+Bachelors+Professional)/4.  The High School diploma statistic is double to reflect the added importance of having reached that level as a minimum.
5. Staff Ratio (SR) - Ratio of teaching to non-teaching staff members in the school. This measure is intended to show the level of administrative support that may be available within a school.  The assumption is that a high level of non-teaching staff will result in less pressure on the teachers outside the classroom.  As with the rest in the Environment category, it will be measured on a 1.00 scale in comparison to the state average.
   
6. Student - Faculty Ration (SFR) - Ratio of students to teaching staff members in the school.  Measured on the same 1.00 scale as above with the basis as the state average.

 Each of the environmental factors is based on a scale starting at 0.00, with the state average being 1.00.  This means that the majority of numbers will end up somewhere near 1.00 and the sum of each factor would average 6.00.   As the environment is serving as a factor to the total equation, a number below 1.00 (the final sum is divided by 6 to show the overall average environmental factor) will increase the final teacher's score and a number above 1.00 would decrease it.  The goal of this section is to boost the statistics of a teacher working without significant school and/or community resources to assist and slightly deflate the scores of a teacher who has all of the benefits or a full budget and dedicated community.

Experience

1. Years Teaching (YT) – Number of years the teacher has spent actually teaching in the classroom.
2. Years in Related Field (YR) – Number of years the teacher has spent involved in their field outside of direct teaching (research, professional experience, etc.).
3. Courses Taught (CT) – Number of actual courses taught, not just length of time teaching them.
4. Years in Courses Taught (YCT) – YT/CT – Designed to show the amount of career time dedicated to each subject.  The supposition with this statistic is that the greater amount of time spent in each course will reflect a higher level of preparation and experience, specific to that course.

Experience is one of the most important factors for a good teacher.  No course can teach a teacher as much as one year in front of the students.  However, the experience factors are designed to be weighted against the Classroom Engagement and Academic Success areas.  This is intended to try to reflect that experience, while important, is of little importance without results.

Classroom Engagement

1. Course Drops (CD) – Percentage of students in class that drop the course after the first day.  This percentage will be simply converted to a whole number.  For example, if 6% of the students drop the class, the CD will be 6.  While some drops are appropriate, an inordinately high number is a cause for concern and should be addressed.
2. Disciplinary Referrals (DR) – Percentage of class that receives disciplinary referrals (detention, principal’s office, etc.) due to disruptive behavior in the classroom.  It is important that this number be a percentage and not a cumulative of referrals, as one bad apple should not be allowed to spoil the bunch.  However, a teacher who is giving out disciplinary referrals widely is not gaining nor keeping the respect and attention of the students.  As with CD, DR will be a conversion of a percentage to a whole number.

It is unfortunate that these are the only two measures of classroom engagement available and they are both negative.  Yet, without an effective method of calculating exactly how engaged students are with the lessons, these will have to do.  This area leaves the most to be pondered for future improvement and innovation.

Academic Success

1. Standardized Test Results (STR) – The average scores of the teacher’s classes on related standardized testing.  The trickiness with STR is choosing which test to base the results on.  My opinion is to go with the closest approximation available.  Most states are required to test at each grade level in each subject due to the requirements of NCLB.  Regardless of the issues that I, and many others, have with the efficacy of standardized testing, they are the best single method of measuring the amount of relevant knowledge that each student has acquired.  Until someone can design a standard method of measuring critical thinking and problem-solving within various disciplines, the standardized test will reign supreme.  STR will be displayed in the form of the environmental factors (the average test score is 1.00 with variation from the norm reflected above and below that scale).  The teacher's score will reflect his or her's class average.  This does raise the issue of different scores in different classes, and it would be worth building a slightly simplified formula to measure teachers in relation to their efficacy within specific topics.
2. Matriculation Rate (MR) – The success rate at moving students on to the next grade level at the completion of the year.  Aside from testing, the primary bar to measure a teacher's success is how many of their students pass the course.  Therefore a percentage passing rate will be multiplied by 10, making a 100% pass rate a 10.0 and a 78% pass rate a 7.8.
3. Preparation Rate (PR) – Percentage of students who fail the subsequent course.  Unfortunately, MR can be significantly impacted by teachers whose goal is simply to pass along students who have not actually learned the material.  To this end, it is important to measure the success of the students in the next course year.  This will show, in conjunction with the data points, the full preparation that the student received from year to year.  It is risky to measure a teacher on the subsequent teacher's influence, but a school is a community and responsibility for the students' futures must be shared by all.  Like MR, this rate will be measured on a 10.0 scale reflecting the percent matriculating on from the subsequent course.
4. College Enrollment Rate (CER) – Percentage of students who go on to enroll in post-secondary education.  Long term preparation is the ultimate goal of any teacher and any school.  This measure, also on a ten point scale, will show the first half of this academic preparation.
5. College Graduation Rate (CGR) – Percentage of students who obtain a post-secondary degree.  CGR is the second half of the measure of long-term preparation that CER starts.  It will be measured on the same 10.0 scale.

Continuing Education

1. Bachelor’s Degree (BD) – Recognition for holding a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.  Value of 1.
2. Master’s Degree (MD) – Recognition for holding a Master’s degree in a related field.  Value of 1.
3. Doctoral Degree (DD) – Recognition for holding a Doctoral degree in a related field.  Value of 1.
4. Professional Degree (PD) – Recognition for holding a Professional degree in a related field.  Value of 1.
5. Continuing Courses Taken (CCT) – Number of related courses taken, outside of degree requirements.  Value of 1 per full credit course take.

 The value of an educated teacher is high.  More time spent formally studying the subject matter typically results in higher understanding and more examples to convey knowledge to the students.  However, there is a threshold to useful knowledge.  A Bachelors degree gives the strong base of knowledge needed to be a K-12 teacher, while a Masters can help boost an area of expertise.  However, a doctorate or professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) will likely only provide details that are above the skill level of even the most ambitious of high school classes.  So, these higher degrees are weighted less in the actual formula.  What is most important is that a teacher continue to learn, so each continuing education course completed is awarded a full point.

W.A.S.T. Continued

Well, it certainly has been a while since I last wrote here and it is good to be back at it. I'd like to thank those of you who gave me input on my last entry, it has really helped with my thought process.

I did run into some confusion and think that this would be a good opportunity to explain exactly what I am trying to do.

First, this is an intellectual endeavor. I am not trying to create a tool to be used to identify bad teachers. Rather, I'm hoping to explore and understand the difficulties inherent in trying to differentiate between good and bad teachers with the available tools to do so.

Second, I am attempting to frame this work as a "real world" exercise. In other words, I am only using tools and statistics that are readily available and relatively standardized across the nation. This means that there are some areas that may be very helpful in evaluating teachers (class participation rates, student satisfaction surveys, etc.) that are either unmeasurable or non-standardized to the point that they are not a useful metric. I fully intend to take some time later in the exercise to review what seems to be missing and discuss what could be done to improve upon current metrics.

Third, while my goal is to create a formula, such as the one found below, the exact values can only be determined through lengthy statistical input from a wide variety of sources. As the formula grows and adjusts, I welcome anyone interested to send me the relevant data for teachers in their experience to begin compiling a database that could be used to test the efficacy of the formula. Any current or former teachers who'd like to self-evaluate, please do, your reactions would be priceless.

Moving on, the response to my initial list of statistics was strong. TT (Time as Teacher) seems to be the most contentious as it is the most related to style and so I am omitting it from calculations for now. STR, on the other hand, was universally considered a top priority, but there are some issues with standardization. I have, at this point, decided to simply recommend that STR reflect the results of the most applicable standardized test for that teacher's grade level and subject. To adjust for wildly different scoring scales, STR will itself be a composite reflecting the variation above or below the test average. Definitions of the metrics can be found in the next post.

Finally, I was repeatedly pushed to consider that a teacher cannot be measured independent of their environment. In other words, a good teacher may be hindered by a tough school/community and vice versa. Therefore, I have developed a number of factors that attempt to reflect the environment in which a teacher works. I consider these factors to influence the composite score of each of the previous for areas (Experience, Classroom Engagement, Academic Success, and Continuing Education). The Environmental factors are:

Budget Factor (BF) - Comparative level of school budget to state average.
Professional Development BF (PDBF) - Comparative level of professional development budget within the school to the state average.
Socioeconomic Factor (SEF) - Comparative level of average family income in the district the state average.
Community Education Factor (CEF) - Comparative level of average highest degree earned in the district the state average.
Staff Ratio (SR) - Ratio of teaching to non-teaching staff members in the school.
Student - Faculty Ration (SFR) - Ratio of students to teaching staff members in the school.

Each factor will be based on a calculation that places the state average at 1.0. This will eventually result in a compound formula where the environmental factors will be found as factors to the whole equation, leaving the numerator as a useful tool to consider teacher scores independent of the environment. An example of how the formula may end up looking is this:

The next post will explore how each of these, and the previous list of factors could be mathematically defined.

W.A.R., Part 2, Building a Stats List

In developing WAST (Wins Above Substitute Teacher), it is important to remember that WAR (baseball’s Wins Above Replacement) is a composite statistic. This means that it isn’t a simple matter of measuring one area of performance and calling that the whole picture. Imagine the uproar we could cause in the baseball community if we established that the only viable statistic to judge a player is the number of triples he hit. You’d have an awful lot of slow power hitters chasing you. But, at least you’ve pissed off the slow ones and have a shot at escaping…

Anyways! In order to develop an accurate WAST we need to take the same composite approach. To do this, however, we first have to develop a set of statistics that can be used to show some aspect of teacher performance.

I have begun a list of statistics below, but need help. Please suggest whatever statistics you would use to measure a teacher in the comments field. Keep in mind, though, a good statistic must be measurable and replicable. Weighting of various stats will be debated once the list is created.

The list below is a list of ideas, not my personal feelings on what are appropriate statistics or not, that discussion can come later.

Experience
Years Teaching (YT) – Number of years the teacher has spent actually teaching in the classroom.
Years in Related Field (YR) – Number of years the teacher has spent involved in their field outside of direct teaching (research, professional experience, etc.).
Courses Taught (CT) – Number of actual courses taught, not just length of time teaching them.
Years in Courses Taught (YCT) – CT/YT – Designed to show the amount of career time dedicated to each subject.

Classroom Engagement
Course Drops (CD) – Percentage of students in class that drop the course after the first day.
Disciplinary Referrals (DR) – Percentage of class that receives disciplinary referrals (detention, principal’s office, etc.) due to disruptive behavior in the classroom.
Time as Teacher (TT) – Percentage of class days that are spent watching movies, documentaries, or other multimedia that allows the teacher to disengage.

Academic Success
Standardized Test Results (STR) – The average scores of the teacher’s classes on related standardized testing.
Matriculation Rate (MR) – The average success rate at moving students on to the next grade level at the completion of the year.
Preparation Rate (PR) – Percentage of students who fail the subsequent course.
College Enrollment Rate (CER) – Percentage of students who go on to enroll in post-secondary education.
College Graduation Rate (CGR) – Percentage of students who obtain a post-secondary degree.

Continuing Education
Bachelor’s Degree (BD) – Recognition for holding a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Master’s Degree (MD) – Recognition for holding a Master’s degree in a related field.
Doctoral Degree (DD) – Recognition for holding a Doctoral degree in a related field.
Professional Degree (PD) – Recognition for holding a Professional degree in a related field.
Continuing Courses Taken (CCT) – Number of related courses taken, outside of degree requirements.

That is my list so far, I’m sure there’s a lot more to add. Please send me your suggestions and comments!

Wins Above Replacement, Part 1

What makes you the best?

It is incredible how difficult that simple question is.

For many professions, the answer does seem simple. The best businessmen make the most money. The best lawyers win the most cases. The best engineers produce the simplest, most cost-effective solutions. For nearly any profession, the best are rewarded with the best contracts, the best opportunities, the most fame. Of course, there really is no profession that works quite as hard at identifying and rewarding the best than professional sports. In particular, professional baseball.

Baseball is the statistician’s dream. Every little action in baseball is calculated, quantified, accumulated, averaged, and dissected. I guess there’s something to be said for a sport that not only provides sample sizes so huge that margins of error diminish to negligence (who else plays a game almost half of the days of the calendar year?) but also provides so frequent pauses in the action that you literally have nothing better to do than math? Scoring a baseball game during the actual event is a time honored tradition passed down from father to son for generations. When was the last time you saw a young boy at a basketball or football stadium calculating the results of each play? But I digress…

In the world of baseball statistics, there are calculations of nearly every action taken on, and sometimes even off of the field. Yet, the sole point of all of these statistics, all of the innumerable hours of calculating, are designed to answer one simple question: who is the best? ERA (Earned Run Average) tells you which pitcher is able to give up the least runs, certainly a useful skill for the guy holding the ball at the start of each play. But, is a pitcher really that good if he has to rely on amazing defensive plays by those around him to keep everyone from scoring? We look to DICE (Defense-Independent Component ERA) to show how well the pitcher pitches without the help of his teammates. Still, a pitcher that gets a lot of double plays is a pitcher that can get a ground ball in the right situation, and that’s got to be a valuable skill, right? So, why don’t we compare that pitcher to all the other pitchers in the league who’ve benefited or been hindered by the unique dimensions and quirks of a certain ballpark or league? No problem! Just use ERA+. And this is only a few of the stats kept on one of 10 baseball positions (9 in the National League, of course)!

With all this, there is one statistic that stands out to me above all others. WAR. Huh? Yeah. Good god, ya’ll, what is it good for? Well, it is good for trying to measure one player against the imaginary guy who could take his job at any minute. WAR, or Wins Against Replacement, is essentially a statistic that pits your real flesh and blood player’s statistics against a fictitious “replacement.” This statistical chimera is given a set of statistics considered to be slightly below average for a big league player, and then, through the magic of fuzzy math, you find out if your real life player is helping your team to win more games or less than some bum you just pulled out of the minors would.

What a fascinating concept! Could you imagine it being applied to any other field? I have to say that there is a small part of me that would love to slip into Dunder Mifflin and explain to Dwight that his attitude is costing his company six sales per season over the other employee they could’ve hired. Something tells me this wouldn’t sit too well on the Schrute Beet Farm.

Fortunately for us all, there really aren’t those kind of statistics out there. We don’t necessarily have the data to say to a teacher, “Your replacement would have brought three less students all the way to graduation, congrats!” But for discussion’s sake, the question of how we could ever measure that is valid. Shoot, in today’s political climate, it seems to be more important than ever to prove that a teacher is doing their job “above replacement.”

So, this is the beginning of a series of discussions about, essentially, creating a WAR for teachers, and how to stay on the positive end of the results. What statistics could be used? Where can teachers be measured, and what measurement is desirable? Are the best teachers like pornography, or can we actually find a way to define it before we see it? How do you measure the best teacher, and more importantly, how do you live up to those measurements.

A good baseball player will go to his batting coach and take some extra practice swings when he sees his batting average turn south. Is there a tool, or tools out there, that can warn a teacher when they’re off their game? Is there a teaching cage to go to for practice? Is there a coach in the wings?

This is what I want to know: what makes the “best” teacher? How do I get there? How do I stay there once I do? How can I help others along the same path?

First Step Taken!

Well, I am back from my interview, and it went quite well. Upon arriving at the school I met the department chair and was given a brief tour of the facilities. Area High School* has quite nice facilities, I was impressed with the size of the classrooms all around (even though the math and science labs are much larger than the humanities). While we were walking around we had a chance to chat a bit an I was amused to learn that what attracted her to my resume was not what I consider to be the "exciting" parts of my background (international experience, college admissions, etc.) but in fact, the more mundane aspects like the fact that I went to college near where her family was from. It struck me that you never can completely project your own idea of "interesting" onto someone else. More on that to come.

Following the tour, she showed me the Social Studies office. Yep, they have an actual office for the department, complete with cubicles for each teacher and a large table for meetings and lunch. Pretty sweet. There I got the chance to meet with several members of the department and was getting some positive vibes from the group as a whole. They seemed serious about their work, but not overwhelmed. Considering that this is AP exam season, I take that as a good sign of the overall tension level in the office.

It was now time for me to meet with Tom*, the teacher who stood the greatest chance of being my mentor-teacher for the next year. Tom moved to teaching later in his career and has only been in the profession for about five years, but he seems to have hit the ground running and certainly held the respect of his colleagues. He currently teaches American Studies, International Relations, and Current Events. I was thrilled to get the chance to join him for his morning Current Events group and the afternoon IR class.

The Current Events class was just as he had initially described: additional instruction time without strict course mandates. It was actually a bit refreshing to see high school students having the time to delve into the news and gain even a modicum of understanding of whats happening around them. As can be expected from such an open-ended class, there was a variety of interests present and it was nearly a fool's errand to expect every student to pay attention to every word. I was impressed by Tom's ability to allow some inattention from the students without feeling the need to interrupt his own instruction to reprimand what wasn't really that disruptive. By not singling out the students, he left the door open for them to reengage with the class when the topic changed to one more up their alley.

Which brings me to my first real observation. We discussed three topics: the death of Osama bin Laden, the electronic security breach at Sony, and a set of political art pieces taken from an article in the New York Times supplement for teens. I expected students to be very interested in the bin Laden story because of its presence at the top of the news right now, and some certainly were. But some of the students begged out because they were too young to properly grasp the emotions on 9/11. Conversely, the stealing of credit card data from Sony seemed dry and uninteresting to me, but every student was facing forward and participating for the entirety of that discussion. While some of that may be attributed to the nature ebb and flow of teenage attention spans, it is important for me to remember that students may be interested in topics that bore me, and vice versa.

Following the Current Events course, Tom I returned to the staff room and worked on a simple lesson plan for his International Relations course. I got a bit lucky in that the topic was an introduction to theories of armed aggression, right in my wheelhouse. I was able to put forward a few helpful suggestions and then got the pleasure of watching Tom those into an effective class for some very bright and motivated students. I know that a lot of that image reflects on the teacher's ability to capture and hold the interest of the class, but I can still hope that I find students that willing to engage in the material thoughtfully.

Finally, I parted ways with Area High School and returned home. After sending a thank you note to the department chair, I received a fairly quick response saying that they would love to have me and that Tom like to be my mentor! What luck!

So, it looks like I'll be spending the next academic cycle as a student at Education University and a student-teacher in the Social Studies department of Area High School! Huzzah!

By the way, thanks to everyone who provided their suggestions regarding my last post. I wore a suit and think that it was the right choice. I was certainly more dressed up than the staff, but nobody batted an eye at my formality and if anything I may have scored points for professionalism. Thanks!!!!

*Names changed to protect identities.

Fashion Dilemma

Well, no surprise here, but I've already hit my first quandary. I have been invited to Area High School* for an interview/chance to meet the department this coming Tuesday. They are considering allowing me to serve in their school for the next year as a student-teacher. I'm thrilled that I have interest from such an extraordinary school, not to mention one that is technically within walking distance of my home, but the number one thing running through my head is, what do I wear?!

Now I should probably state that I am not, and never will be, all that concerned about my clothing. Sure, I appreciate dressing sharply, and I fully understand that people will judge you by how you present yourself. But, this primarily translates for me into simple rules like don't wear pajamas to work, and make sure your clothing is clean. I have never in my life spent more than a minute trying to decide if two colors will go together or which tie says what about me.

This question bouncing around my head seems predicated on the previous line "people will judge you..." I simply don't know what is appropriate to wear for this type of occasion. As it is something of an interview, my instinct is to wear a suit. However, I know that schools are traditionally less formal in their attire and I run the risk of looking like a fool walking around in a suit when nobody else is even sporting a tie. So, then, do I run the risk of dressing down a bit and potentially looking less like an aspiring professional? Even though teaching in public schools is often less formally attired, I still want to give the impression that I take the profession seriously. Can I do that in slacks, dress shirt and tie?

I'm all for trying new things, but this worrying about clothing just seems silly.

*Not the real school name.

Where It All Begins

This is not a vanity exercise. This is a record.

I am embarking upon what I expect to be the greatest adventure of my life, and there is logic to me in keeping track of its progress. In just under two months I will begin courses towards a Master of Arts in Teaching degree through Education University* The ultimate goal, of course, is to gain the degree, license, preliminary skills, and confidence to begin a career in teaching social studies to high school students.

Everything that I have read, and every educator who has spoken with me on the subject of becoming a teacher, stressed that it is a continual process. It has been impressed upon me that there is no degree that qualifies one as a teacher, only the slow painful process of learning from mistakes. I’m pretty good at at least half of that. Mistakes are a part of life that I’ve gained a pretty strong background in. But learning from them seems to be the whole key. And while I can write this now, I look back and realize that I have always relied on my memory to keep me from making the same mistake twice.

It should be no surprise that this device has failed. Memory is imperfect. I wouldn’t be much of a history buff if I didn’t know the vast importance of having it all written down on something a touch more secure than memory. Yet a quick search through my past will find no diaries, journals, and only one aborted blog attempt. All in all, I’ve done a pretty poor job of maintaining my own personal history.

So that’s where this blog comes in. This blog is intended to serve as my history. It is my safeguard against the pitfalls of memory. It is my investment in getting it right, or at least, not getting it wrong twice. I want to be the best teacher that I can possibly be, and I’m willing to bet that the best teachers have the best tools. This is the first tool in my kit.

Of course, I know that I have selected a public medium and there’s every chance that I will not be the only person reading this. All’s the better. For you, my reader, thank you for your interest. I hope that you share your own opinions, experiences, stories, and journey. Maybe, someday, this tool for me, will help another aspiring teacher. Or maybe it will just be amusing to watch my inevitable misadventures. There is certainly a bit of schadenfreude in this whole blog idea, so why not welcome it?

Now that I have welcomed you, babbled about my goal, and nearly lost the whole way, let me introduce myself. I grew up mainly north of Chicago, Illinois in a pretty typical upper-middle class suburban family. Like many in this position, I had a family that demanded involvement and commitment. I was expected to become and remain involved in myriad activities, including, but certainly not limited to: soccer, baseball, basketball, track, gymnastics, martial arts, violin, French horn, acting, writing, community service, church involvement, and singing.

At the end of the day, there were two activities that won my heart: reading and military training. I have always been a voracious reader and have thoroughly enjoyed always having an adventure on the next page. The military, though, offered me the chance to have real adventures. It gave me minute to minute opportunities to test myself and see what I could handle next. I threw myself into various para-military activities and eventually seized the opportunity to attend a military high school, and then on to the U.S. Naval Academy. Oddly, the further I continued with the military, the more I realized that I had no taste for it. I became a qualified expert with various small arms, but knew that I had no interest in ever using them. I became adept at military drill and structure, but could no longer separate the means from the ends. Fortuitously, I was confronted with medical complications, discharged honorably, and given the opportunity to try life in civilian clothing.

I attended Miami University in Ohio and learned a lot about myself. At Miami, I found passion for politics, history, culture, debate, and international relations. Simultaneously I discovered dispassion wild parties, mindless cliques, and the reign of fashion. I fell in love with the history and culture of Arabia and grabbed the opportunity to study in the Sultanate of Oman during my junior year. This experience, coupled with the frustrations of watching politics under the second Bush administration, steered me away from my conceived career in the Foreign Service. Instead, I began to look more closely at education.

To be fair, I have always harbored an interest in education, particularly teaching. But, it was always later. First, I wanted to change the world. I wanted to shape nations and engage with peoples. I wanted to alter minds and effect ideas. I guess it took a while before I realized that that is what teachers do every day.

Still, I knew that I did not want to be the type of teacher who could speak only from what they’d seen in books. Classrooms should be a window to the world, and a teacher who’s never been on the other side of the window often has a tough time describing what’s out there. This is not to say that teaching can only be done by those with non-teaching experience. I simply mean that there seems to be a direct relationship between those who have ventured beyond the school halls and the teachers who can capture the topics best for their students. With this thought in mind, I decided to see some of the world first.

Shortly after graduating from Miami, I moved to the small country of Qatar to work for Carnegie Mellon’s young campus in Education City. I will never regret the experience I gained there, living alone in a foreign land, learning to be a professional, leading and guiding students in Doha. However, I was in love, and a year away from my girlfriend was enough to convince me that I wanted to be with her and needed to see if our relationship was ready for the next step. So, I moved to Boston, where she had just begun a graduate program in Library Science and took a job at Northeastern University.

That was three years ago. During that time, I’ve certainly accomplished my goal of experiencing more of the world. In fact, as an international admissions officer for Northeastern, I’ve managed to visit 32 countries on five continents, read more than 5,000 college applications from over a hundred different countries, learn to thrive in a complicated office environment, and written dozens of policies and procedures for the university. Meanwhile, I successfully proposed marriage to my girlfriend and married her in a beautiful ceremony in Maine. We moved to Brookline, experienced enough of city life to know that we’re more of country mice, and moved out to beautiful Acton, Massachusetts. Not a bad use of three years, in my opinion. Yet, all along, I knew that admissions was not my goal. Each step along the road has only served to reinforce my desire to teach. And a year ago, it was obvious that it was time to stop waiting on my dream.

I knew that a teaching license would require about a year of schooling, so I looked into programs that combined the license and a master’s degree. Why not? I certainly have no formal background in teaching, why not give myself an academic foot to stand on? Of course, accelerated programs like the 13-month one I’ll be undertaking at Education University made the decision easier.

There was an amusing moment last fall when I found myself staring at a computer screen in Kinshasa, D.R. of Congo, editing my college essay about an hour before I taught a seminar on college essay writing. But, I guess it worked, because I was accepted to the MAT program and have yet to look back.

I am now one month from my final day as an admissions officer for Northeastern. One month to pack my office, finish the manual I’m writing, pass on what I’ve learned, and wrap up my career outside the classroom. I know that I’ll always be an adventurer, but beginning in June, my adventures will likely be strictly scheduled around the academic calendar. That’s ok. I’m ready to start. I’m excited. Here it goes…

*Names changed for privacy concerns.