The Irony

The irony is this: I no longer HAVE to blog, and here I am on a Friday morning writing. After all my moaning and resistance, I woke up mentally drafting a blog post. Yesterday I had an experience that had far more impact on me than I expected. I attended the dissertation defense of a colleague and friend.

I expected to come away with some schema of what a defense looks like. I had never attended one and had no idea. That has been the mode throughout this program. Each step is a new adventure. I don't know the lay of the land. But I did not expect to come away as inspired as I was. I knew my colleague would be well-prepared and articulate, but the scope of her study, the depth of her thinking amazed me.

I came away eager to get started on my own research. Up until now, I thought of this as something in the future, closely tied to my schedule of completion. I plan to finish in a year and a half. Eighteen months. Now, this time frame has become the structure to organize my thinking, my independent studies, my application to the coursework I have remaining. I have enough of an idea of my question that I will start today. Everything I do will focus on the end.

Eighteen months from now, I want to be doing whatever a doctoral student does when it is over. Sleeping in. Vegging out on a beach in the sunlight with an umbrella drink. Wondering what to do with all the extra time in a day. Looking out to the next adventure.

There is a quote that I don't have exactly--First you do, then you become. I had to blog before becoming a bolgger, and I will do it on my own terms. I wasn't a doctoral student until I had taken classes for a few years. We grow into what we do. I'm sure it has something to do with cognitive function--we build neuron paths that connect and help us be comfortable with a new behavior. Sometimes we resist. Sometimes it takes a push by a teacher or inspiration from a mentor. It may feel accidental in the beginning, but it becomes more intentional as time goes on.

What next?

"What next?" has been my mantra my entire life. I love the challenges and opportunities inherent in change. New people, new experiences, new things to learn. Thinking about the many positions posted helped me look past this "terminal degree," which has an awful air of finality about it, toward the phase of my career

I do have a tenure track position at MSCD when I am finished and am committed to teaching there two years. I love the teaching, the students, but the element I am least anticipating is being "tenure track". I see the stress and pressures, the political nature of working toward tenure and I simply do not want to go there. It affects the way people interact with each other in a way I never saw--or recognized--in the public schools.

So, University of Guam appealed to me for two reasons: it would be a vastly different setting AND it is a three-year position. When the time is here for me to begin to look seriously, those two factors will heavily weigh in my decisions.

So, what next? Bring me that horizon.

Savoring the Moment

I have been impressed by the level of interest and support I have received from teaching colleagues since I became a doctoral student. After being a mere full-time temporary for two years, it seems I have become "bona fide" by demonstrating my committment to higher education and my undergraduate teaching. I have become a serious member of the community, one of the club. I often have colleagues asking how my coursework is going and when I'll be done. I appreciate their interest and advice.

Today, a colleague asked how it was going. I told her I was about halfway through my program, finishing coursework this fall and just beginning serious contemplation of a dissertation topic. She told me she had her research question when she entered her program, and every course she took she used to contribute to her research and dissertation.

I know we all must approach this in our own way, but I found that a bit sad. For me, the joy of this program has been giving myself time and license to explore topics I have always been interested in without the pressure of quickly determining THE topic. It helps to have an advisor who promotes and validates this philosophy.

I am not on the fast track here, but then I don't have the time constraints many of my fellow-students have. Perhaps this perspective comes from age or the fact that I have already had a wondorous career. I remember a comment made by a seventy-year old gentleman at my "retirement" party. He said, "Your 30-year career seems like your whole life right now, but at some point you will realize it is just one phase of your life." I am discovering what my next steps-my next career might be. Life is very good.

And so, I savor the moment, all the while knowing that soon, the exploration will draw to a close, and it will be time to just do it.

By the way, I have been somewhat open (probably too open) with my blogging struggles. I had help last night when I watched the movie Julie & Julia, where this young lady gave herself one year to cook all 540 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She blogged about it the entire year, and saw both the cooking and the blogging as exercises in mental discipline. OK. That makes sense to me.

A Delicate Balance

I have noticed a trend lately in my undergraduate teacher education classes: increasing numbers of students coming in with documented disabilities that require class accomodations. Many of these are minimal, but more and more I am seeing extensive accomodations needed. I believe I have always been supportive of students at all levels of schooling and I support a student's desire to graduate from college. I also believe, however, that the teaching profession is far more complex than rocket science. Not only does a teacher need the technical knowledge of content and the skill to make those concepts understandable and accessible to the learner, but the human side of teaching requires strong communication, interpersonal skills, and decision-making abilities.

Every child deserves an expert teacher every year of their schooling. In a twenty-year career in the elementary classroom, a teacher impacts around 500 children. When I had a principal justifying to me why they were keeping a ineffective, probationary teacher that they had worked extensively with because they were "going through personal tough times for the last few years", I always had them picture those five hundred children outside their window. I had them tell those children that they knowingly decided to give them a poor teacher. We cannot just think of the teacher--it always must be about the children.

So, back to my undergraduates. The professor side of me wants to support student success. The principal side of me knows the rigors of teaching and wants to support those hundreds of unborn little human beings. I wonder sometimes how a student would react in the moment-to-moment challenges of the classroom. Not everyone has the disposition to be the decision-making teacher in the classroom.

I realize that I usually see these undergraduates in my foundations class, the first education class many students take. They have two more years of coursework at this point. I realize I am one piece of the puzzle in which this student works with many professors, cooperating teachers and student teachers. All of us have a responsibility to support and to counsel appropriately. It is a delicate balance--the rights of the prospective teachers and the rights of their future students.

Is anyone asking teachers?

In the March 15, 2010 front-page article, "Class masters", The Sunday Denver Post focused on teacher-effectiveness, recognizing that the teacher is the single-most important factor in the classroom. The article goes on to say, though, that we don't know what makes a "great" teacher "great", and districts don't know how to "impart the skills." to every teacher who needs them.

My first difficulty here is notion that we have no idea what makes an effective teacher. We have a great body of research on teacher effectiveness, including literacy effective studies such as Learning to Read: Lessons from exemplary first grade classrooms, (Pressley and Allington, 2001) and Reading to Learn: Lessons from exemplary fourth-grade classrooms (Allington and Johnston, 2002), and Ruddell's work with characterizing the influential teacher, those identified by former students as having had a profound impact on their academic and personal literacy lives (Researching the Influential Literacy Teacher: Characteristics, Beliefs, Strategies, and New Research Directions, 1997). These studies summarized other studies and added to the body of knowledge, resulting in comprehensive lists of characteristics, attitudes, and instructional strategies of exemplary teachers. We have many lists with much commonality.

Legislation that would create "career ladders" for teachers and provide additional pay for them to share their practices reflects the notion that excellent teaching consists of a set of skills that if "imparted" to teachers will result in excellence. Excellent teaching has been characterized as complicated, personal, passionate act, much like a surgeon who modifies a surgical procedure during a planned operation to successfully solve a medical emergency. No two patients are exactly alike, so no procedure will work exactly the same in every circumstance. No two children in any classroom are alike, responding to every learning situation differently. The highly effective teacher understands this and is able to make countless decisions daily that respond to the personal and academic needs of each student.

By comparing great teaching to "hard-core ponography", hard to define but you know it when you see it, this article depicts exemplary teaching as mysterious and rare, feeding the perception that most teachers are simple-minded slackers who need explicit, scripted instrution. Instead, fifty years of research have demonstrated relative ineffectiveness of such methods. The complicated part of teaching is the selection, organizing and planning instruction that meets the needs of increasingly diverse learners.

The fact that a "Council on Teacher Effectiveness" has a deadline of December to have this evaluation system done for the State of Colorado makes me fear that focus on performance pay, racing to the top, and the desire for a common evaluation system will result in a simplistic, one-size-fits-all, easy to measure definition of "great" teaching that will continue to minimize truly professional teaching.

We know the "what" of exemplary teaching; we lack "how" these teachers were supported from the beginning to develop integration of all the complex factors into a cohesive classroom instruction that intentionally responds to all learners. The teacher featured in the article identified the criticial mentoring, collaboration, feedback and idea sharing from teammates in her first three years. It seems to me that if we can identify highly effective, influential teachers that have earned and command the respect of students, parent community, administrators and colleagure, we have an opportunity to find out what they see as key factors in their development. Expertize doesn't happen overnight, and my hunch is that exemplary teachers will have many thoughts about how they got there--who their mentors were, which support was most effective, and how they continue to learn and grow.

I wonder--is anyone asking excellent teachers how they came to be "exemplary"?

Passion or Discipline?

I have been in a blogging slump. I have been mentally rehearsing, but have found no topic I think worthy of the time it would take me to compose it and for my dedicated thoughtful colleagues to respond to it. I have spent more time analyzing my thoughts about why blogging is hard for me than actually blogging.

I reread my last post, and I realized it was a topic I was absolutely passionate about. Nothing I have thought of recently matches that intensity, and I find without a deep connection, writing seems a waste of time to me. Sending it out to the cyber-universe seems ludicrous. WHO would want to read such drivel?

But then, the reason we are asked to blog is to develop the discipline of critical thinking, reading and writing skills. As with physical exercise, this mental exercise should be regular, if routine. I should be able to take any topic at any time and dissect it, analyze it, argue for or against it, and then take the idea further in some way.

So, is this about passion, or discipline? Perhaps my problem is wanting both.

Finding My Inner Politician

I have never considered myself a political person. In fact, I have long held the belief that we can close our classroom doors and teach. No longer do I believe this.

I did some consulting with the Colorado Department of Education in the Colorado Reading First (CRF) department in 2005-2006, my one year of “retirement”, simply because I didn’t know what else I was going to do. It sounded interesting and I saw some names I knew from the reading community on the roster. CRF philosophy is based on the model that was interpreted from the National Reading Panel Report of 2000. During my first training session, my first thought was, “What has happened to reading instruction?” I looked over at one colleague I had known for years and she was watching me. The parameters and restrictions, the basic definition and philosophy of reading were very different from beliefs I held and I knew she held.

Out of curiosity, I went ahead and served as an “advocate” who visited three schools in far corners of Colorado to monitor their implementation of the Reading First grant. To get this grant—big money--these small, rural schools had to use a recommended , very prescriptive CORE program in a 90-minute direct instruction, whole group setting, assess and progress monitor, and have staff development training (in how to use the program and the assessment tools). What I did not realize at this time was that while relatively few schools applied for and got the CRF grant money, many schools across the nation adopted the precepts of Reading First on their own.

I loved being in the schools, of course, and found the administrators and staff truly had children’s best interest at heart. They wanted to increase reading achievement. The administrators felt that some ineffective teachers became better using the programs because they were actually teaching something. And I observed t expert teachers who knew a wide range of instructional strategies were actually able to balance the scripted program and differentiate for the kids who were beyond the scripted instruction or not yet ready for it. One teacher had book clubs at lunch and after school and pulled extra groups throughout the day.

After one year, CRF restructured the advocate program and we were all “RIF’d”. At that time, three years into the CRF grant, schools were showing very little growth on CSAP. They were showing growth on DIBELS, the assessment tool, but that growth did not carry over to comprehension measures.

I applied to teach at Metro, and found their definition of reading was very close to mine. But, I was preparing students to teach in many schools that were being required by district or school policies to implement instruction more reflective of CRF. I was reading everything I could on the National Reading Panel Report and Reading First trying to reconcile this new view of reading with the view I had held for so long.

Here is how I currently express the difference: educators who come from a definition of reading as a set of discrete skills that add up to reading believe in starting with what children do not know. I call this the “glass is half-empty” model, the deficit model. This is the definition of reading as stated by the National Reading Panel.

Educators who come from a definition of reading as a complex process believe that readers use all the information available to them in different ways to construct meaning from the text. The skills are tools used to access meaning. In this model, the “glass is half-full” model, teachers begin with what the child knows and builds upon that knowledge to teach what the child does not know. The intervention with the most solid success rate is Reading Recovery, which is based on this model.

I was asked to remain on the CRF “Leadership Team” and have attended meetings for the last few years. Often, I am the only person with a “reading is meaning” philosophy in the room. Over these years, and with my growing base of knowledge, I have begun to speak out. I can no longer not speak out. My favorite moment was once when the group was lamenting that in CRF schools, students were actually reading less. My comment was, "Perhaps we are teaching children to read, but not teaching them to want to read." You could of heard a pin dropped as they all looked at me.

Last Friday, I attended the second-to-last CRF meeting. Federal funding for Reading First was discontinued in 2008 after an independent study found that Reading First money, nationwide, had very little impact on tests of comprehension achievement. RF schools made gains on the assessments they used such as DIBELS, but not on state tests. Six million dollars over 6 years. And no growth. In Colorado, schools have dropped out or been dropped, and the final carryover money is being used for a small number of schools until September when it is all gone.

I sat next to a state senator at this meeting, as congressional representatives are always invited and frequently come. This was her first meeting and when she asked why the funding had been cut, the answer given by the director was that the program had been sabotaged for political reasons by the a national report. I turned and said to the senator, and reiterated, “Six million dollars nationwide and it did not improve scores on a test of reading comprehension.” I stated that if we had one-size-fits-all children than a one-size fits-all program might work, but kids are not cookie cutter versions of a child. They do not need to be taught the same way. The senator asked if there were other ways to teach reading, and I said, oh yes, there are many ways, and the expert teachers are those that know and use all of them depending on the needs and strengths of their students.

There is a growing body of research and writing that responds to the mandates. Elaine Garan (2002) says, “The NRP is not just some pesky little mosquito buzzing in our ears. It is Godzilla and it has its foot on our heads. Like it or not, we must deal with the findings of the National Reading Panel.” (Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph with the Truth, Heinemann, p. 5.) She goes on to say that this is no longer a “pendulum” that reflects different philosophies. She has reluctantly “come to the realization that the true motives behind the current state and federal mandates for education are blatantly political and shamelessly financial.” (p. 87).

Can I do anything? Perhaps not, but I must try. I remain an optimist and believe that reason will out at some point. I want to do everything I can to make a difference. I have started a follow-up letter to the senator letting her know that there is a very active group reading community in this state and invite her to our conference. I am going to restate the need for looking at a wide body of research on what works in reading instruction. I am going to offer to sit down with her at any time and bring some of the leaders in the field. I plan on using the information in this letter as I write other congressman. I have gotten a spot on the CCIRA Legislative Committee. I have joined a group of district literacy leaders and college educators. For the children and their teachers, I have found my inner political side.

Death by NCLB

DEATH BY NCLB
I witnessed a death last week. The heart of an expert teacher was damaged beyond repair by No Child Left Behind. Sweeping over the literacy classroom, NCLB and the resulting mandates have been called a tsunami that has left in its wake a “one-size-fits all, children all learn the same way ideology, THE one best teaching method, and the belief that if all teachers would simply follow a script perceived to be scientific, all children would learn” devastation.

This is not a burnt-out, just-limping-to-retirement teacher. This teacher is considered an expert in literacy and science instruction, and has spent years honing her teaching craft, adding to her strategies, pursuing knowledge from many perspectives. She understands that children are not cookie cutter replicas of some idealized child. Each is a complex human being with unique experiences, lives, strengths and interests. She knows that nothing works for every child, but that something works for every child. She seeks to have many “somethings” in her classroom in order to meet the needs of increasingly diverse students.

Over a glass of wine and with tears in her eyes, this teacher remembered and mourned teaching that made a difference. She recalled her rainforest unit that converted a classroom into a rainforest so realistic it inspired deep, higher level thinking and understanding. She recalled the student from that year who went on to become a scientist in the Amazon rainforest. In her district now, instruction is so closely scripted that at a certain time on any given day, the teacher must be saying what is written, using the recommended overhead, and staying vigilant for surprise visits from district personnel to monitor the “fidelity” of the implementation. Pressure to make adequate yearly progress has moved many districts to seek the quick-fix, at any cost.

Now, children who are less experienced in reading receive more intervention instead of more authentic reading experiences. There is no time for science. More skills. More drill, often from a different person using a different program outside of the classroom. In the name of intervention, the most fragmented children are given more fragmentation. Tests and texts are mandated, enforcement has created an atmosphere of fear and coercion, no one dares deviate from the materials or raise questions, and staff development is more rehearsal on how to use the program.

How did this nightmarish state of imbalance become common? Based on a very small percentage of the total educational research done in the last century (some estimates say 5%), the National Reading Panel in 1998 made the decision not to consider the nature of the reading process or the complexities of teaching children to read. Instead, the make-up of the panel was designed to exclude a wide range of literacy authorities and organized to establish explicit, systematic phonics as scientific. While the panel’s data review showed phonics only to influence performance on tests where children pronounced words on a list, not on tests of reading comprehension, through interpretation and implementation, systematic and explicit phonics instruction have become the only approved model of instruction for all learners. No one can debate that phonics instruction is necessary for learning to read. But it has been taken to an extreme of diminishing other aspects of reading as a meaning-getting process.

Teachers are now asked to forget what they have learned about how children learn and develop, about reading as a transaction between text and reader, about the metacognitive process, about the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing, about the critical importance of classroom environment and social interactions, about learning as authentic problem solving, and about motivation and engagement. Instead, teachers are asked to implement a curriculum sliced and diced into five simple areas with a medical precision that can be diagnosed and remediated. Teach these five “pillars” and children will learn to read. We are also asked to ignore the large body of research that points to the teacher, not the program, as the key to student success. Teachers are encouraged not to make decisions, but to trust the “experts” who have no knowledge of their students and their needs, but with incomprehensible omnipotence feel qualified to say what is best for all children.

Based on a flawed report, even by its own “scientifically-based” standards, the NRP Report launched the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. NCLB requires Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), and if any subgroup fails, the whole district fails. Failure to meet AYP results in punishment and penalty. The resulting Reading First interpretations and initiatives have been adopted without review or question, resulting in implications for instruction that were never endorsed by the original NRP report. Many instructional designs are not based on research at all, but are touted as “scientifically-based reading”. Scripted core programs delivered through whole-class instruction are the norm. All children are required to be in grade level materials, even though for some these would be frustratingly difficult and some immensely boring. Children are tested on piecemeal skills and for the first time can be labeled “failing” in the first week of kindergarten. Children no longer are allowed to “drop everything and read” and there is no time during the day for the teacher to read aloud books that bring to life the common humanity, the joy, the purpose and reason to read. There is no color in these classrooms, only black and white. Only drill, meaningless exercises, and constant testing.

Ironically, on May 1, 2008, the report of an independent governmental agency, the Institute of Educational Science, was published. The effectiveness of the Reading First program mandates—use of explicit, systematic phonics-based approved core program, progress monitoring and intervention, staff development and increased time spent on reading program--showed in fact there was no benefit when compared to a control group on a test of reading comprehension. One billion dollars spent each year for six years. A major scandal that revealed flagrant conflicts of interest, including RF grants only approved when programs adopted materials of which reviewers had financial interests. And none of it made any difference.

Still, the mandates of Reading First stay with us. On January 20, 2010, President Obama asked Congress to begin a review and reauthorization of NCLB. Secretary of Education Duncan called for a replacement of Adequate Yearly Progress with a growth model. Reading First has received no new funding, but a final decision has not been made. Bureaucracy is slow to change, and we must consider the human cost.

Highly effective teachers have the skill, but are losing the will to continue to teach in ways they believe hurt their students. The lucky ones are close enough to retire early, but their years of expertise are devalued and lost. Who will replace these teachers? Who will fight the good fight?

Young teachers who know nothing else. They want to teach, they need a job. They have the will if not the skill. They have been drawn to teaching and will do the best they can to implement the programs asked of them. Fifty percent of the teachers in the district this teacher works in are in their first or second year. Burn out rate in the first few years of teaching is high anyway. How long can these teacher last before they become disillusioned by boredom and pressure, lack of challenge, student resistance, the lack of joy? In an age of “highly-qualified teachers”, can we say the trade off of expertise for compliance is justified?

Ultimately, what of the children? They are only in kindergarten, or second grade or fifth grade once. What are the long term effects of this pressure cooker? How long will we wonder why they may have the skill to read, but no desire to do so?

This teacher, my friend and colleague, implemented the mandated literacy curriculum, using every ounce of her expertise to buffer her students for as long as possible from the negative impacts by infusing balance whenever possible into the daily routines and activities. But she has found in the last weeks that she can no longer do that. She is walking away from teaching, not in celebration of a career filled with success, but with the down-trodden conviction that she can no longer teach without hurting children. And she will not hurt children. Her teaching heart aches, and she has lost the will to go on.

Thoughts on Writing (a BLOG)

I have been struggling in recent days to write a blog about myself as a writer. How do I write? What are my strengths and weaknesses as a writer? What makes the writer in me tick?

I have drafted this in my head for a while, constantly rehearsing "thoughtful articulations." So, there is my first realization. When I am working on a writing project, I play it in my head waiting for the Light Rail train, as I wake in the morning, as I drive. Logically, this reflects the fact that I tend to take a long time processing before I speak. I have always admired people who seem able to quickly figure it out, make the point, express the situation.

I am a slow, laborious kind of writer except when I write poetry or personal journal entries. There, a phrase or an emotion is often spontaneous, simply flowing onto paper.

Most of the writing I do is expository. Throughout my schooling and my professional career I have written to inform, share and explain. Usually, this writing is meant for a specific audience and to address a specific need. Purpose and audience are key here, as they are with all writing. In school, my audience was my teacher, professionally, the audience is usually teachers, parents, colleagues who may need or benefit or learn from the text. Only the occasional poem or journal entry is written for purely personal expression. I am the audience.

But why is blogging so difficult for me? Today as I completed a blog that took me way longer than I thought it should have and then somehow it moved to a draft status and I couldn't unlock it to edit it again. My frustration led me to an exercise break when I realized the problem.

I came to realize today it is because the purpose and the audience do not match in my brain. My purpose is to reflect my thinking in an articulate, doctoral level way. But the audience is vast. OK, probably the only ones who read this are my colleagues, but I struggle with the notion that I am laying my thoughts out there to such a broad and undefined audience. Part of this is because I have never blogged and don't read blogs. I don't Facebook or Twitter or Tweet. and to me blogs seem an informal way to express formal thinking. I view blogs as stream-of-consciousness writing, not focused articulation.

I realize part of this is because I am an immigrant in the land of technology, having been born a few years before 1985. While I am learning the tools (slowly) and understanding the challenges of digital texts begause of the books I'm reading on literacy in the informational age, but I just at my core do not get it.

Bucket Thoughts

I believe that our interests, what intrigues and challenges us, is that which feeds, restores and replenishes our souls. That which fills up our bucket. A wise colleague shared his thoughts about each person's bucket once during a particularly stressful time. I realized my bucket was getting pretty empty and that I needed to do whatever it was I did to refill that bucket. Unless my personal bucket was full, I had little to give to others. In a giving profession such as teaching, a full bucket is essential.

This bucket is a simple analogy, perhaps, for self-actualization, a place of psychological health where we can accept and express ourselves and respond to others openly, creatively, and humanely. This bucket never stays full; the more we learn, experience, appreciate, the more we seek. What saps my bucket are things that at first feel overwhelming. One-size-fits all educational solutions, punitive accountability measures, instruction that reduces reading to skill and drill, and mean people are a few things that take from my bucket. While I cannot solve everything, I can do something. But each act pulls from the resources in my bucket.

Among my interests--cooking (and eating!) wonderful food, my family, children, being on a sailboat on a crystal summer day--I realize that a major support of my interests for me is what I choose to read. Through books I can go anywhere, learn many things, laugh (and cry), understand others and myself. I express, define, and pursue my personal interests through my reading.

This is why my passion is to help students become readers--through reading they can become whatever they wish to become in life. Author Pat Mora calls this "bookjoy", the experience of getting lost in the pages of a book. It is freedom.

Leadership Thrust Upon Us?

"Some are born leaders; some have leadership thrust upon them." The quote(or facsimile) kept going through my head this week as I completed a review of the reading courses for the Colorado Department of Education for Metro. When I began at Metro, ALL I wanted to do was teach, thank you. I shunned any hint of leadership. Been there, done that. Except for the Sunshine Committe, which I considered the least of many evils. Really, how hard is to collect "social" dues, buy paper plates, provide coffee and a snack schedule for meetings, and recognize birthdays? I enjoyed meeting everyone and being, essentially, the smiling Cruise Director. Easy stuff for a former personal chef. Everyone was glad to have someone take it over, and it fulfilled my "committee" obligations. So, while I was totally dedicated to my teaching, I resisted any real type of "leadership".

But then, during a Reauthorization Review, we find out the Elementary Education Department must meet the review requirements formally required only of new programs under the "Reading Directorate". Which courses are essential to every elementary education program? Reading!! Who is the only one who knows the two reading courses? Jackie!!

So here I am, working to revise syllabi and curriculum (curriculi?) that are ten years old. A lot has happened in ten years, and both syllabi are somewhat dusty. The week before Christmas was manic as we all worked together to make the proposal. I found myself newly appreciating my colleagues in Early Childhood and Special Education as we worked to coordinate all of our programs.

Then, in January, the review came back and we had revisions to make. And the due date always seems just this side of yesterday. So today everything went in. I find myself exhausted in leadership. But the quote?

The closest Google Quote comes from Shakespeare: "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." I may be thinking of what Dumbledore said to Harry Potter: "Some are born to leadership, and some have leadership thrust upon them." Anyway, it appears to me that when we pursue the course of doing the best we know how to do, leadership often is thrust upon us, and in reality we accept it without thought because it is the only possible course of action.

It seems to me that being an educator implies leadership on some scale,from classroom to school to district to college classroom. And while we may not relish that obligation, it is part of the package. We stand up for what is meaningful in the face of the red tape that always exists. A superintendent once said to those of us in a meeting for principals, "Follow all Federal and state laws, district policies, and do good things for kids."

My "kids" are just a little bigger now.

75,000 Readers Encourage Me

My first year at Metro, I suffered from a serious "short-timer attitude". I kept thinking that while this was a really good gig, I would finish out the year and be gone.

I tried very hard to implement the curriculum exactly as it was presented to me, but mid-semester, I realized that while the content was fine, I could not follow the thinking behind someone else's schedule. I began to make changes. In December the professor retired, and I became THE only professor teaching that class. By my second semester, I knew the content and totally changed the schedule. I was asked to attend a conference on Learning and the Brain. My interest in reading research grew as I read sample textbooks and all the professional resources I had inherited. I continued to reconcile what I knew about how children learn to read with the accountability requirements my students were expereincing in their field placements.

The second semester, another reading professor announced her retirement in June. I was encouraged to apply for my same position again. I figured if they found a reading professor that met their criteria, I'd just become an adjunct. Not to happen. Full-time again in the fall, I now was the lead teacher in both of the reading classes. Noone in had ever taught both, and I took the opportunity to coordinate the curriculums. After all, students only took 6 hours of reading. I wanted it to count. I coordinated meeetings between all of the adjuncts and we did some cross-analysis and adjustments. As you can see, I was slowly getting sucked into the challenges here.

My second year, three things happened. I seriously bonded with my students. I was advising, which brought me to a very personal level, and I appreciated the challenges many of these urban students were facing just to be pursuing a college degree. I began having students from the first class taking the second class with me. I found myself wanting more than ever to be the most effective teacher possible.

My personal children's book library was growing again (I had given away all but the most special books)and I shared my favorites--new and old--with my students. How could they not know Don and Audrey Woods? Cris Van Alsburg? Mem Fox? I began to read and bring new authors, like Rick Riordan with The Lightening Thief. I began to value what I could do to change the attitudes about teaching reading that I was seeing students exhibit when they came into my class. Many were dreading, seriously dreading, roung-robin reading and workbook pages.

Then one day, I had a student in class comment on how I was really passionate about teaching reading. Well, I replied, what we do in this class is critical. I turned to the board and began to write figures. There are generally 25 students in an elementary classroom. A 30-year career can be figured as the norm for teachers. So over that 30 years, a teacher could plan to have around 750 students. There were 25students in this college classroom. So, what we did in this college classroom had the potential to impact (I had to quit talking here while I did the math) 18,750 students. I asked students to picture all of them standing outside the window, and to promise them to do everything possible to support them in learning to read and loving to read. Yes, I was passionate about books and reading, always had been and always will be.

Later that day, I thought about the four classes I was teaching. At that rate, what I did had the potential to impact 75,000 readers every semester. I was hooked big time, determined again to make a difference for as many years as I could. Soon after that, I made a visit to UNC, and when I reapplied for my position again, I was offered full-time with a reduced class load (three classes) for five years IF I were to pursue a doctorate. Sounded good to me. So much for short-timer!

Bring me that horizon.

Never, before a few years ago, did I ever consider getting a doctoral degree. I was accepted once into a program as I finished my administrative licensure, but I was tired of going to school, eager to be an elementary school principal, and really could not see any reason to continue.

As I look back on 35 years in education, I realize that I have always thrived on the challenges that are inherent in change. I loved learning about and teaching a different age group or content, but after a few years, my thoughts were always looking to what other expereinces were out there. That mind-set drew me to mentors who showed me the doors that could open.

So how did I get here--in a doctoral program at this stage of my career? When I "retired" from the public schools system, people asked me what I was going to do. I remember thinking, as Captain Jack Sparrow did at the end of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, "Bring me that horizon." I didn't know what was out there, but I was ready for it.

I remember regret that my knowledge, broad experience, perspectives, and passion for teaching and learning were coming to an end. At a retirement reception a gentleman in his seventies said to me, "Jackie, right now these 30 years seem like your entire life. But you will come to realize that this is just one stage of your life. You invent the next stages." I had always loved cooking and thought I might go in that direction with a personal chef business. My retired friends encouraged me to take time, at least a year, to find out where my true passions would lead me. This freedom is the finest aspect of retirement!

It took me almost three years to invent the next stages. It started the first year--what would I do? A friend encouraged me to become a consultant with CDE. As an advocate for the Reading First, I visited three schools throughout the state to monitor their implementation of the Reading First grant. I was familiar with NCLB, but not the grant money behind it. As I visited classrooms, I was astounded at the parameters around teaching reading which were is such contrast to literature-based, whole language approaches I was used to in a non-Reading First district. What had happened? This experience rekindled my curiosity for effective teaching, so much so, that when CDE restructured the grant money and RIF'd all of us, I began thinking of teaching a college course.

Metro had a posting for adjunct reading instructors, but I walked out of the interview with a full-time temorary position that would eventually lead me to UNC.