Balancing the fear of ALL with the pursuit of ALL

Sara Van Der Werf

Teacher, Minneapolis South High School

MCTM President

 

I had dinner with a 5^th year teacher last week who entered teaching in a program that supported new teachers with weekly support and professional development. This teacher recounted a story from her first year in which a group of teachers, including her mentors, were discussing preparing for state testing. This teacher taught at a high poverty school. Nearly 100% of her students ‘did not meet standards’. The group of new teachers was being challenged to do everything possible so ALL students would be proficient on the upcoming tests. My friend spoke up and said “It is unrealistic to believe ALL my students will be ‘proficient’. They are so far away from this standard.” Before she could go on to say “I will work hard to make sure ALL my students grow” she was chastised by her mentors for not believing that ALL students can be successful. She felt singled out to the point of tears. Five years later my friend’s memories of this event are clouded in the tears shed and the pressure of the word ALL and the fear of speaking up to express what she felt was possible in her classroom.

This article is part 6 of an 8 article series highlighting 8 words in the MCTM Mission Statement highlighting the word ‘ALL‘.   (Here are links to part 1: ‘PROFESSIONALS’; part 2: ‘PROMOTING’;, part 3: ‘TEACHING’; part4: LEARNING; part 5: MEANINGFUL )   In my series of articles I hope to give insight into 8 of the words it contains and how they inform our practice. Please take a moment to reread our mission statement.

After hearing my friend’s story, I inwardly screamed ‘UGH!’.   It is so hard to keep math teachers in our profession. So many teachers leave our profession feeling inadequate and overwhelmed. Most of us enter the profession without great mentors. We slowly fall apart in the isolation that exists within teaching. We get through our days doing the best we can and avoiding thinking too hard about our results because the impossibility of our job will overwhelm us if we let it.

This story exemplifies the huge pressure all educators are under as we work to improve the educational outcomes for ALL of Minnesota’s students. Math teachers, in my opinion, are under much more pressure than the average teacher due to the high stakes testing in mathematics and widely reported data. We are often called upon to comment upon what we are going to do to address the gaps that exist for almost every group of students in our state except for middle class and wealthy white students. Because the solutions to these gaps are complicated and politically charged many math teacher say little of what they truly believe. Many of us secretly live in fear and put on a mask and teach our classes. Some of us get defensive about how mathematics should be taught.   We get defensive of why our students are not succeeding. If we are honest, we are acting out of fear. In this article I’d like to address our fear of the word ‘ALL’.

I’ve interviewed over 500 people for jobs in education. In almost every job interview the interviewee says something to the effect of “I believe ALL students can learn”. This phrase has become an unspoken, mandatory mantra that all of us educators feel like we must say to assure the politically charged environment around us that ALL students are seen and that ALL students will succeed. This mantra is said loud and often. We talk about our beliefs of students over and over again to cover up our fears of not knowing how to or the time to address these needs of ALL our students.   The mantra of “I believe ALL students can learn” has given us something to say in place of the real conversations that are much more difficult and complex. The mantra makes is seem we are doing something. But often we are just saying the words and doing the same things we’ve always done.

As a teacher in my 24^th year I finally feel safe to say that ‘ALL’ scares me. I enter every school year and every school day pursuing this goal of ALL students being successful in my classroom. I know it is my job to make this happen. I don’t waste time blaming my student’s struggles on other things. I focus on what I can control. I work LOTS of hours – way more than I am supposed to so I can figure out how to make every one of my students experience success in math. At the end of the week I am exhausted from my efforts. I feel great about the successes of the week but feel haunted by the students who are struggling. In the quietest regions of my heart I know that I do not have enough time and resources to reach the goal of ALL. I have been afraid to say this out load in the past for fear of being labeled an uncaring teacher. No longer. I know I will never solve the pursuit of ‘ALL’ being silent. Thankfully I have been surrounded by peers I feel safe with. We talk and figure out more ways every day to get more and more students successful with more and more mathematics.

I have finally found a balance in my career. I have figured out that it is imperative that I pursue the goal of ‘ALL’. I have also figured out that I need to let it go at the end of each day if I do not reach this goal. I have figured out that I need to keep learning and tweaking what I do in the classroom. I have changed my focus from ‘all student proficient’ to ‘all students growing’. I have changed how I grade to reflect this.

What I would like to ask ALL educators, leaders, parents and community members is to allow all of us to have open conversations about the phrase ‘ALL students’. I believe our fear of admitting that we not every student we teach is successful has led to us not changing things that might help at least some. I feel like the pressure to assure ALL will be successful has putting our energies into defending why we haven’t done this yet instead of celebrating the successes we are having that get us closer to this goal. Recently there was a lovely post by Meg Craig posted online titled “A Gentle Reminder that we are all doing our best.”  Read it.

In closure, I want to live in a world without fear of the word ‘ALL’. Perhaps this is my issue alone and you all don’t secretly fear admitting that you are not sure you can reach this goal. My guess is that I am not alone. Join me in the pursuit of ALL and balance this with permission to spend time with your family and friends at the end of the day even if that goal is not met. Keep yourself emotionally healthy so you can wake up the next day to keep working to change what you do pursuing ‘ALL’.   If you need some action items to get started, see below.

P.S. I toyed with the idea of this month’s article talking about making sure we ALL teach ALL grade level standards to ALL students using tasks that give students access to grow at grade level and beyond. If you would have preferred this article to the one I wrote above, please check out a post I wrote on my blog this week on what are actions are saying to students. Enjoy.

I love connecting with math teachers, especially those of you from Minnesota. You can find me on Twitter @saravdwerf or Email me at sarav@mpls.k12.mn.us or check out my Math Teaching blog at saravanderwerf.com I look forward to hearing from you.

ACTION ITEMS:

• You must set time limits for yourself. You can’t work 16 hours a day and all weekend. This job is impossible. You will burn out. You need to spend time with your family and friends.
• Conversely, you cannot meet the needs of ALL students in a 7.75 hour work day. Just sayin. If you believe all can learn and you believe it is your job to make this happen, you will most likely need to work some extra hours.
• Work on efficiency in your job. You don’t need to correct every single Getting all students to be successful in math may happen quicker with phone calls to a social worker or learning how to meet the needs of your ELL students. There will never be time to do everything. Figure out what things you do get you the biggest bang for your buck.
• You must surround yourself with at least 2 or more educators with whom you can be bluntly honest about what is happening in your classroom. You have to be allowed to say out loud “I don’t know if I assure ALL will be successful in my math classroom”.   This group of educators needs to listen, but as a group you need to be action oriented. There is space for complaining but only if it there is an equal space for solutions. You must make space for these conversations. There will NEVER be enough time to have these conversations (papers to grade, lessons to plan) but you must do this every day (or at minimum every week). If you can’t find these people in your school, invite teachers from other schools out for coffee or join the online #MTBoS community via twitter. There are lots of people out there just like you.
• Stop talking about what others (home, leaders….) should do so that your students are successful. We can’t control others and we have no control of our student’s time outside of the school day. All we can control is the 55 minutes we see students each day. Spend your time on working on things that impact the mathematics class we teach.
• You must to do something so that you SEE ALL students in your classroom. One way I do this as a secondary teacher is to make a calendar and write the name of 2 students each day I am going to make myself ‘see’ and have a meaningful interaction with. This simple tweak to my classroom has been revolutionary for addressing the needs of my students. I started seeing students I had never really seen before. When I intentionally work to see ALL students I often see small things I can do to assure everyone is successful.
• Read the grade level Minnesota Math Standards you teach at least 4 times a year. You can find my copies of the standards HERE (scroll down to bottom to find K-12 downloads). Print them out. Hang them by your desk. Read them.
• Read the grade level Achievement Level Descriptors. Ask yourself “are ALL students receiving access to teaching at a ‘proficient’ or ‘exceeds’ level?” If not, do something to change this.