This came in my private email:
As many of you know, I just retired from teaching, having spent most of my career in first grade. Over the last few years, my teaching had become gradually more restricted. Instead of running a center-based day, I was required to run scheduled periods of Fundations, Writing Workshop, Reading Workshop, and (this year) of Envision math. To encourage me to retire, my district had made a financial offer that was difficult to refuse. Almost simultaneously, my daughter had announced that she was pregnant with twins. The decision became easier and easier. As the pressures in New York State increased, I decided what I wanted to do after retire: support families, fight the tests, tutor children to learn DESPITE the tests. That would mean running workshops for parents about curriculum. But that’s not what I want to write about tonight. I want to tell you about my last few weeks of teaching, and about my last good lesson.
The district isn’t replacing me next year due to shrinking numbers. Once I announced my retirement, the vultures began to circle – teachers seeking furniture, leveled books, left over supplies. (All of a sudden, my hoarding had value!) Gradually, my room became emptier and emptier. You’d have thought that my teaching would have suffered, but — I LOVED IT, AND SO DID THE KIDS!!! Painting, gluing, research, math projects; WE ALL RELISHED THE CHANGE! It was a very special time – though teary, for some. I’m not sure why my retiring should result in so many sad children (since I wouldn’t have been their teacher the following year), but there you have it.
Driving to school on my last full day, I thought about what I could teach that day in my empty classroom. All I had was art paper, scotch tape, and crayons. The kids had already taken home their markers. I thought about how I could say good-bye. I wanted to help them gain some perspective. I wanted them to know they had each other. (I’d already told them they could email.) I thought about how our paths had crossed and come together so arbitrarily, but how being together in this class had changed all our lives. And then I knew what I’d do!
I gave each child one piece of 12″ x18″ paper. I told them that each child was to draw a path across the paper. It could be straight across or curved or jagged – whatever. We agreed that the paths would be about a fist wide, and had to be drawn in purple. The rest of the paper was to be decorated with whatever else they thought might have been on their paths this year.
Everyone did as I requested after a few false starts. Some of the drawings were quite thoughtful and charming. I then told the kids that we were now going to connect our paths together. I was having a small get together that night, and I told the children we needed something on the wall. Immediately, some of the kids became excited, and tried to put their papers together. I suggested that the kids get on the floor and connect their paths like a puzzle, assemble their work on the floor, and that we’d move it to the wall later. I’d never done this activity before, and had no idea how it would turn out. Over the coarse of the next half hour, I kept telling myself: Remember, it’s process over product.
As the kids worked, I gradually stepped back. The children were making decisions about which paths connected, which looked best together, which should be moved to a different spot. There were no arguments, even though there were differences of opinion. I handed the kids scotch tape dispensers as needed. I mentioned to one little boy that it was great that there were no fights. He said to me, “Well, remember when I invented a game for the playground and then we all had a fight because I wanted to make all the rules? Remember how you explained to me how a true leader doesn’t make all the rules, but helps others to join in? Well – maybe that’s what we’ve all been doing.”
I was absolutely floored.
That’s when I knew how much I’d miss teaching. That feeling of molding a group and helping them become better together than singly – that’s amazing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a beautiful story; what a tremendous last day. What a wonderful teacher you are.
God bless you.
Wow! From the mouths of babes. I hope she does become an advocate and activist for education.
Dear Retired Teacher,
Would you add writing a book about your years in the classroom to your things to do list? I teach first grade in Alabama.
This is so powerful. Of course they won’t replace “First Day” because she cannot be replaced. There is barely anyone left who knows how to do what she can do. This speaks directly to standardization as “First Day” is an example of professional standard. It resides within her. We believe in her as a professional standard but we do not support the Standardization of her, her students, their parents, the neighborhood or the future of public schools or democracy within the USA. The wisdom and expertise that comes with professional training and decades-long inquiry and experience cannot be standardized, duplicated, packaged or sold off for corporate profit. It just can’t be done. We can internalize “First Day” and hope to emulate her best qualities in our own unique way and always continue to develop ourselves so we best serve our students. But all of this is exactly what everyone is no longer able to do under the current regime.
That’s the kind of cogntiton and miracle that can never be captured on a test – not that tests are to be totally thrown out.
But you and your students deserve massive credit and accolades, and the state could not care less.
This is a victory for you, your students, and their parents, even the school culture.
This is also meaningless to people like Merrly Tisch, Obama, and Arne Duncan.
If one thinks there ought to be a balance between the virtuous scenario narrated by this teacher and the reformers who are tipping the education narrative to become imbalanced, real educators were certainly never invited to the round table in any substantial or robust way to help shape that balance.
But we are by no far stretch of the imagination done with the fight and pushback.
History will judge the state with epic harshness, and rightfully so . . . .
That’s a life lesson that Common Core would never, ever, ever, ever teach! When you trust the students, it’s amazing what happens. That is why Albus Dumbledore, although he doesn’t really exist, is my ideal of the perfect school leader.
Being a fellow HP fan, I sometimes I imagine Diane as our Dumbledore.
🙂
Arne = Voldermort
He Linda,
Fun project…lets see if we can cast the whole thing.
I vote Rhee = Delores Umbrage.
Happy Saturday!
PS
He = Hi.
On a sunnier note, I sincerley hope this teacher does run the workshops she says she would like to, and that she does become a parent advocate and really educate the public about what is going on with “choice” in education.
This teacher is another hero . . . .
Indeed.
I would be hard pressed to find the common core standards that align to this project, but what a magnificent learning experience. Sadly the opportunities for these are few and far between. I know of an administrator who wanted to see standards posted at all times starting on day one for every minute of the instructional day. His teachers were flabbergasted. No allowances were made for teaching routines or building community. Good luck in an atmosphere like that. It’s completely unrealistic and absurd.
Thank you for an awesome piece. It simply brought me to tears. As I get ready to go in on Monday to set up my classroom, I too, have doubts about this upcoming year. I’m not sure if I’ll have the strength to endure. But your piece will remind me it’s about the kids and that will carry me through!
Me too Lynda. What a great last day to have.
I’m with you,too, Lynda.
Oh, good grief. Here I am drinking my Saturday coffee and crying. What a wonderful story. Our profession will miss this obviously talented teacher.
Congratulations on your retirement, please do begin those workshops, and good luck.
I know…tears on my iPad. Back to school distress. We’re all going to need a reformy rehab for teachers with post traumatic reform disorder, PTRD.
Finally, an educational acronym to love: PTRD!
As in the “real” world of our illegal wars of aggression which cause so much PTSD for those who have chosen to participate, the real victims in this story are the children and innocent adults who are “collateral damage”. The teachers may suffer from PTRD but it is to the children that the “killing” of learning occurs.
That’s quite obvious to all who read here regularly. Not specifically mentioning the children in this comment is not diminishing the legally sanctioned child abuse that occurs via the non stop testing craze. You should know from reading my comments for well over a year now.
Linda,
I didn’t mean for my thoughts to be a challenge to what you wrote but as a corollary that helped prove the insane course, not only in education, that this country has been on for way too many years. And I know you know that also by your writings. I meant to put that I liked your new acronym but hit the send button too soon.
Thank you….my goal is to subvert as much as possible while teaching the humans in front of me, not the data on a spreadsheet.
Teaching as a subversive activity, eh!! Or pedagogy of the heart?? Try to do so myself (oh if the administrators could read some of the sayings on the walls of my class, I’d be called into the office in a heart beat. Good thing they can’t read Spanish).
You have certainly done your job and beyond. Your district will truly miss you!!! Not the politicians but the parents and the community. I wish you the best!! You should feel good about what you have contributed.
weeping. speechless and weeping.
What a wonderful last day! Reformy hegemons (new word?) could learn a lot. “…a true leader doesn’t make all the rules, but helps others to join in…”
I looked it up. It really is a word: Members of a ruling class!
From Wiki: Gramsci was one of the most important Marxist thinkers in the 20th century. He is a notable figure within modern European thought and his writings analyze culture and political leadership. He is known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how states use cultural institutions to maintain power in a capitalist societies.
Now we wouldn’t want to pay any attention to some Italian (said with a long initial I) commie pinko from a century ago might have had to say about power relations would we? We Amurikans don’t need nothing like that.
Tears on my iPad 2.
These experiences need to be saved in time capsules for future generations. Seriously! In a Teaching Museum to be preserved. Soon extinct.
Reading this teacher’s experience puts me in touch with why I remained in education for 40 years, and still cannot walk away from it, and never will. Pure magic!
Your students learned more from your presence and love than any test could ever measure.
I would go to her workshops just because I know how much fun they would be. I am becoming refascinated with the younger set now that I have a granddaughter. I am intrigued by what interests these little creatures. When I was mothering, I didn’t have the time to sit and stare at an ant, or at least I didn’t think I did. Now, there is nothing more important.
Thank you, everyone, for your kind words and thoughts – and thanks, Diane, for printing this.
Reading the letter (earlier) from the Superintendent of Rockville Center schools clarified for me that the New York State tests are intended to fail the kids. So: why not teach to your own convictions?
Yours,
Beth Forrester
“So: why not teach to your own convictions?
BINGO!!!
Thank you both for sharing this insight which reveals much about the point of education. Children grow in the care of thoughtful teachers (and parents). Educational policies imposed from any distance need to first ensure the “do no harm” credo. This post makes that point eloquently.
This is why a child sitting in front of a computer to “learn” is a fallacy. A stone cold computer could never teach the powerful lesson this wonderful teacher taught. A stone cold computer would not allow the kids to “make a mess” and express their creative talents as well as analytical skills.
God Bless, and please write that book someone else suggested.
What a beautiful story! My five-year-old daughter has just entered Kindergarten and I am hoping she experiences the joy of learning, not being a standardized test taker. I spoke to this issue before our school board here in Palm Beach County Florida, which can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/-Q9LgPoizng.
I really hope she does run workshops, tutor, advocate, and write books. It is going to come down to where, with the union busting, that only retired teachers and the bold ones who have tenure are going to be able to do strong advocacy because the others will be afraid of losing their jobs for exercising their freedom of speech. But once you are a teacher you are always a teacher and if you are ever a “former teacher” you probably never really were. It wasn’t your heart. Go lady. Stand up for the children, real schools and real teachers. Nobody can fire you or give you a bad evaluation now.
Thanks for publishing this and congrats to the retiring teacher. It’s amazing what kids can come up with when you give them a meaningful task and a simple set of rules. We need to hear more success stories of teachers who threw out the prescribed lesson and did something different.
We really should banish the idea of “delivering” instruction. The idea of instructional delivery results in scripted lessons that crowd out meaningful experiences like this one. Instead, let kids participate in their own learning, week in and week out, at all grade levels.
This is one of the predictable tragedies of standardization. Favorite methods of great teachers will be replaced by lists of objectives and teaching protocols that sound academic but are guaranteed to cause stress and boredom. Negative stress interferes with learning. Boredom makes kids wish they were somewhere else.
To make things worse, when schools buy learning systems “aligned with the Common Core,” taxpayers will be paying big bucks for bad materials produced under tough conditions. Although good teachers will be able to work around these problems, millions will be wasted.
As more seasoned teachers and administrators are forced into retirement, it could take a while for their young replacements to figure out they’ve been sold a bunch of nonsense.
“We really should banish the idea of “delivering” instruction.”
No, we shouldn’t. Been re-reading Diane’s Left Back book and that argument has been around for around 100 years.
Pray tell, how would you handle a class in which the students are learning Spanish? Where they have no clue as to the pronunciation, writing, hearing, reading of it until they are “delivered instruction”.
Well, on the very first day my kids join in a series of call-&-response songs, through which they immediately learn to introduce themselves, greet each other, ask each other how they’re feeling & make various responses, all done through gesture, modeling/imitation, & visual aids, with virtually no English going on.
You’re right. We shouldn’t banish the idea, just question it. I’m not sure which argument you’re referring to, but my thought is that “delivery of instruction” is a bad metaphor when it comes to learning. It implies that the teacher (or scripted curriculum) has a package to deliver that the learner must receive.
I’m not against direct instruction, but the people selling instructional delivery these days are doing just that. Selling. It’s a convenient concept–transferring a program of knowledge via curriculum material and teacher presentation to a student, either in a classroom or sitting with a tablet or personal computer. These days, schools are encouraged to buy these programs for a hefty price and force teachers to follow them verbatim, crowding out their own instincts and ideas.
It’s easier to package and sell delivery systems than it is to get kids involved in their own learning. My learning history and teaching experience tell me that real learning requires the learner to contribute. In this scenario the learner isn’t just receiving a package–she might even be required to gather materials, build something valuable, wrap it all up with a beautiful bow and decide who to send it to.
I learned grammar and writing by devouring mystery and war novels when I was a kid. That learning wasn’t delivered to me. Unlike most kids, though, I also enjoyed grammar exercises and vocabulary workbooks. As a teacher I found that inductive methods and activities that emphasized the social aspects of learning were more engaging and inspirational for kids than the instruction that was “delivered” to them. An eclectic approach that provided less instruction and more challenge and potentially more fun worked better for me and for most of my students. Lecture and presentation and other forms of delivery were part of the mix, but they weren’t always the first option.
To answer your question, the best way to learn a language is to live for a time in a culture that speaks that language. European kids learn English in school to an extent, but they really start learning when they watch American movies without subtitles and talk online with English speaking kids. So if I were teaching Spanish, assuming I knew how to speak it and write it well, I would try to simulate an immersion in a Spanish speaking locale. I’d set up Skype exchanges with kids from Mexico and Argentina, say, during which they’d take turns teaching other. I’d show a lot of Spanish movies and use them as springboards for discussing in Spanish. I’d have a big classroom library of children’s books written in Spanish or translated from English. I’d have my students write their own kids’ books in Spanish and try to find an audience of Spanish speaking children who could carry out Spanish conversations about the books with my students. I’d bring in guest speakers, including people who worked in the school, and the parents of my students. I’d host dinner parties in class, where the dinner conversation could only be in Spanish, and not just about the food. I’d recruit parent aides or Spanish speaking student interns who could engage in conversation with my students and correct their errors. I’d set up “everyday-life stations” in the classroom: a bank, a convenience store, a restaurant, a market, a police station (any simulated transactional space you might see on the average Simpsons episode) to do role playing and improvise scenes in Spanish, with plenty of cue cards at the ready. (And I’d have students re-enact Simpsons episodes in Spanish.) I’d have Spanish audio books for students to check out, and I’d have the kids memorize Spanish poems. I’d have them do art projects on cultural topics from the Spanish speaking world, and have them do a show-and-tell for their classmates. In short, I’d try to inundate my students with Spanish. I’d use a textbook, too, and give them quizzes from time to time, but I would try to make at least 50% of the activities and assignments experiential and language-dense.
Of course, this is just brainstorming. I really don’t know a lot about teaching a language other than English, but these are some things I might consider. (I’m assuming full cooperation from my department chair and principal, which is assuming a lot.) My ultimate goal would be to solve the age-old problem of… “My kid is taking Spanish 5AP, but he still can’t speak Spanish.” A tough problem, admittedly, but it doesn’t look like it has been solved so far just by “delivering instruction.” And how do you get American kids to pronounce another language? No matter what language I were to teach, I would definitely show the SNL clip with Alec Baldwin teaching French to Chris Farley and Adam Sandler.
What a powerful and touching story. I am reminded of Vivian Paley, and Julie Diamond, and the stories of early childhood practice that inspire me from the schools of Reggio Emilia, in Italy. This reveals that despite the dark side of the current climate in schools, teachers can still be agents of democracy, developing important life skills and imparting moral lessons about how to collaborate instead of compete. I am also happy to read that once again art making was a vehicle to deepened understanding and reflection on a year’s worth of learning.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This thread is a wonderful contribution, and thanks.
I was (to use my wife Sharon’s phrase, quoting MacBeth) “ripped untimely” from my teaching after Substance published Paul Vallas’s ridiculous CASE tests and made fun of them in our January 1999 edition. A year and a half later, by a unanimous vote, the Chicago Board of Education (at its August 2000 meeting) fired me after 28 years of teaching. This was despite the fact that the hearing officer had said that Chicago’s kids clearly needed more teachers like me.
Within a couple of years, I realized that the Chicago blacklist was effective across the region, and after some futile attempts to return to the classroom, stopped sending out those annual resumes (and learning how those new computerized job application thingies worked).
But one thing always happens, right up to this week.
Every year, as the opening of school draws near, I dream classroom dreams. Some are unpleasant (the usual anxieties) but most are just about being with “the kids.” I’ve asked others who have left the classroom about this, and it’s the experience of many of us. Since 2010, many of Chicago’s best teachers have had to leave the classroom to work for the Chicago Teachers Union — including the four people we just elected to their second terms as CTU officers.
While I enjoy the dreams (usually) there is one thing I regret. And it’s not losing my job to Paul Vallas, Gery Chico and the idiocies of corporate “school reform.”
I regret that I didn’t spend more time photographing and “journaling” my classes. Although I did a lot of lesson preparation, there was never time (or so it seemed) to get the pictures with all those “kids” year after year, and to save some of their stuff.
A bit of advice as school begins in September 2013 for every reading this: Take a little time, now and then, to have your “kids” write or map or draw or depict, or whatever… Something. And save it.
As we always say this time of year:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The start of the school year is always full of excitement and apprehension, and I thank the first grade teacher for this wonderful story of her last day (even though it had me very close to tears).
One thing I have noticed as a parent of children in a district that is being “reformed” and “turned around” is that my children bring home much less art work, fewer stories–not even those cards and letters teachers dutifully have their students write to their mothers (especially) for holidays. The impoverishment of the curriculum is obvious–just as this retired teacher mentions, noting how circle time and centers are now given over to academic standards and data generation.
My sister left me a small safe the last time she moved. While she is prepared for every disaster, I barely know what tomorrow’s weather is and therefore I would never think of buying a fire- and water-proof safe. So naturally I have no idea what I should put in there. Valuables. The last time I checked, the safe had a book my daughter made in pre-school–they even made the paper! It is a work of art. Some of those cards and letters written in school, and any book or pamphlet any of my children has ever made in school.
As I said, they don’t do this so much, but at least I have a few examples of what a wonderful teacher, like the retired first-grade teacher, had the students do before school reform erased the joy of learning and replaced it with a graph that tells me how adequate my children are–or should be.
Beautiful. The memory of this remarkable “last day” is just, I hope, the first piece you write about your years in the classroom.
Thank you so very much for sharing this. I am crying because of this powerful reminder of why we all teach – regardless of our grade level.
And how is this measured on a standardized test??
________________________________
Thank you. What a lovely story.
You made an impact on your students’ lives over your 28 years of teaching. They will remember your lessons on life long after they’ve forgotten the Dailey drivel of teaching for the tests. This is the true essence of education, the value of teaching beyond the curriculum to the true “common core” of learning how to be good citizens in this crazy world.
I wish there were a photo of that last project. Any chances?
[…] Ravitch gets much better e-mail than I do; Ravitch said (images added […]
Creative!!!!!
Love this post!!
This again is where the High Stakes Testing has overshadowed the teacher’s creativity.
Thinking of 1000 things you can do on your way to work…but you have to follow the testing pacing guide and teach a test….so sad…
NOW THIS is GOOD TEACHING! BRAVO! I know this TEACHER. She is an amazing teacher and has been fighting this insanity forever.
So glad I sent this to Dr. Ravitch from one of my fabulous collegaues.
Thank you, Diane. This is indeed a GREAT teacher. Too bad she felt she had to leave. She could no longer “hurt” kids with the mandates. This teachers has found so many things to do to buck the system and her students have flourished. I feel sorry that she decided to leave, but cannot blame her one bit. I quit in Aug. 2001…couldn’t stand the nonsense or the forner governor writing to all the deans o colleges of education in the state of CO telling them what literacy books were on his approved and unapproved list. Decided that I cannot do nonsense and from a governor no less.
Neanderthal100 said:
Constant fights with the administration over this. As presented, I’ll wager most raters would say “good teaching,” though more than a few would say “it was after the tests.”
Reality is that a good education requires not only that a student understand the methods, but (in history, my subject) also that the student have a good mastery of some of the facts, so to make it possible to make a cogent argument in favor or against a future proposed action (we call it “citizenship,” but in Texas the right wing calls that “indoctrination” and they’re agin’ it).
Never failed to have a lesson plan approved by the raters and Dallas district go awry because the lesson plan assumed students had mastered some skill and/or set of facts they had never been introduced to. At that point a good teacher may make a decision to take a few steps back and catch up the students on what they need to know to make the next achievement (“scaffolding” when the raters approve, “remedial reteaching” when the raters want to make it look like the teacher didn’t get something right, even though it wasn’t the teacher’s responsibility, or “off track” when the raters want to ding the teacher).
Teachers are the people who tailor education to the student and class in front of them at the moment. “No size fits any” is a urination-impoverished way of educating the people who will run our nation (not into the ground, we hope), and pick our nursing home facilities.
But just try to get a school board in Texas to see that.
What an inspiring teacher! I want to share this with soon to be teachers at our teaching college.
I read this while sitting on the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and soon was sobbing uncontrollably. My husband returned from the deck, saw me reading on my phone and asked if someone died. It’s been one year since I retired after 34 years of teaching. Last Day’s letter rekindled all the powerful mixed emotions I felt on my last day- tremendous relief that I could leave just before the CC and its testing arrived in full force, and heartache at leaving my middle schoolers and the magic that happened in the classroom. And there is grieving and loss. So, yes, I told my husband- something is dying. Teachers and students connected in the joy and intensity of learning together will be a dying art if the scripted, robotic factories take over. Like First Day, I’m now retired but still a teacher. My new job is to fight against the machines.
I still have many years left. But after 28 years, I too find myself experiencing grief and loss – especially when I get overwhelmed by the attacks being orchestrated across the nation. These words resonated with me, and I am sure with many of us.
I retired at the end of 2010 after 35 years, but haven’t stopped teaching.
I volunteer at a local elementary school tutoring first and third graders (the two grades where I spent most of my career), and I’ve joined a local public education advocacy group (http://neifpe.blogspot.com/) to help “fight against the machines.”
We’ve networked with others in our state (Indiana) to support public education and fight the privatization efforts by our governor and super-majority legislature. We make sure our voices are heard and have great hope that we can convince enough people to change the makeup of the legislature in the next election.
I also have my own blog where I can rant and rave, vent and complain to my heart’s content.
I miss my students…a lot…but I’m hopeful that, in my own small way, I’m still contributing to their success!
Now that’s EDUCATION!!!!!!