Real Talk Intervention

April is a tough month. The weather is getting beautiful, teachers and students are getting burnt out, and end of the year assessments are looming. We spent the month of April casting a critical eye on education - from teachers to the government - and now we're casting that eye on ourselves. It's time for some Real Talk - why do WE do the things we do in the classroom? We ask each other about some of the questionable practices or mistakes we've seen each other make over the years. We are two very different teachers, in two very different contents, who make very different mistakes. If you're an optimistic innovator in the classroom who finds herself in tears at the end of some days like Stefanie or a grumpy cynic who rolls her eyes during professional development like Sarah you'll hear your voice, and your experiences, in this one! Listen to us here . Music courtesy of The Creative Commons. http://www.bensound.com

Today's special episode was recorded live and on location inside a Senate meeting room as we prepared to give testimony against Texas House Bill 1333, colloquially known as The Teaching Over Testing Act. This bill, which aims to reduce the number of standardized tests given by Texas to the federal minimum while also drastically reducing the emphasis these tests have on school accountability, has been well received by the state anti-testing movement. We, however, stand with the many civil rights groups , the Texas Association of Business , and the many, many nervous and silent teachers who know that the anti-testing, anti-accountability movement's well-intentioned, but misguided, efforts damage the hard work educators are doing to create a more equitable society across Texas. To give a voice to all the educators across Texas who feel as we do, we traveled to the state legislature with the support of a non-profit educational foundation group called Texas Aspires  to...

The human face of the school accountability movement is one no one wants to see. The human face is 18 years old. He has attended school for 90% of his Mondays through Fridays. She has ridden the bus for twelve years. Attended all the classes. And done it all with the entirely reasonable expectation that at the end of this journey lies the cap, the gown, and the high school diploma. And even the hardest of hard liners on the school accountability movement does not want to tell that student that at the end of these last twelve years there will be ... nothing. No one wants to tell anyone they can't achieve dreams. Particularly not politicians.  So things get ... tricky. A little schizophrenic. Requirements for graduation? Or are they more like guidelines really? In this week's podcast we discuss high school graduation requirements, and how Texas politicians are avoiding the public relations nightmare of thousands of students being denied high school...

Let's be real - there can be a LOT of complaining in education. You're sitting in the teacher's lounge, just trying to eat your noodle cup and chat about last night's episode of The Bachelor, when in comes THAT teacher. That guy who's always mad; the lady who yells at her students every day at 2:45 like clock work. And you feel for them. You do. You used to be that teacher. Heck, some days you ARE that teacher. You listen to them sympathetically - because we've all been there- , but you really wish you could just say - "Okay but why are you doing that?" Why are you making life more difficult for yourself with that policy, with that assignment, with that rule? If you would just change your mindset, switch your perspective, bend just a little bit your life would be easier, your students would be happier, and you wouldn't be so stressed out all the time. Well this is Real Talk Intervention - and we. went. there. Are the things you're doin...

Its April, and that means just one thing - less time spent outdoors in the beautiful spring weather, and more time spent inside preparing detailed test reviews before your STAAR exam in May, your class's final exam, or, if you're SUPER lucky - BOTH! Test reviews are that special kind of terrible - not only are they frequently no fun for teachers or students, but they also usually feel extremely ineffective. The kids who need to do them usually don't, and often no matter how much effort we put into them we don't see the fruits of that labor result in increased test scores. Well here it is you guys! We may have fancy district titles on our two-page job description, but we actually do all day, every day is TEST. REVIEW.  On today's very special podcast we're talking about our most successful test review strategies, the research behind them, and how a few tweaks to your test reviews will ignite your test scores right now. Listen to our special epi...

“Test prep” is a bit of a dirty word in public education. Time spent in a classroom doing explicit test preparation work is implied to be time wasted – time spent, not on educational goals, but on hazy “good test-taker” skills. Skills like eliminating the distractor answer choices, using the answers from the previous questions to inform your guesses, getting good sleep the night before – to be honest I’m not sure exactly what behaviors our “good” test takers engage in. I only know that we feel we need to spend time actively teaching our students how to be one. And, the truth is, we do. Your intervention students are not good test takers. You DO need to spend time actively teaching them how to become good test takers. But not by spending class periods doing intensive, specific “test prep” – whatever that might be. A good test-taker is a good test-taker because he or she is able to connect together a wide range of information and apply it to the context of a question. A bad test-ta...

I May Be Certified, But Do I Feel Qualified? If you’re like us, you took your ESL certification test for one inspiring reason  -  your district mandated it. And despite the rigorous preparation provided by taking that test, we still felt unprepared for the actual reality of beginner and intermediate English learners in our classrooms. This year close to a million Texas students are classified as English Language Learners or ELLs, according to PEIMS data released by TEA. Teaching English Language Learners is certainly one of the biggest obstacles we encounter as high school teachers. Districts throughout Texas have been, with varying levels of speed and enthusiasm, accepting this new reality. More and more of our students are actively engaged in the process of learning the English language - even though that may be not be what we are actively engaged in teaching them. The bald fact is that nowhere in the high school standards does it call for us to teach phonics, ve...