Anne Jolly's Diary Entries 51 - 55

Surviving on a Vision In her "real" life, Anne Jolly is an eighth-grade science teacher at Cranford Burns Middle School. She is taking a year away from the classroom to design and implement a site-based professional development process for middle school teachers. This diary chronicles Anne's ups and downs as she goes through the process of developing this initiative, known as the "Impact Project." As this set of diary entries opens, Anne is reflecting on her latest meetings with Impact Teams.

Diary Entries 51 - 55

Entry 51: I actually did more harm than good today. Poking my head into the room where Impact Team #7 was meeting I asked innocently, "Hi, all! How's it going?"

My unfortunate timing, accompanied by what must have been - in retrospect - an annoyingly cheerful greeting, sparked an "unloading" session. Firmly ticking off each point on her fingers, the team leader clearly intoned: "How are we doing? Well, we are in the process of sending out progress reports for every student, just like we do every four weeks. Report cards went out three weeks ago. Since then, we've met with parents every day. All of us leave weekly updates about assignments on the school telephone hotline. Mr. Morris even puts his students' homework assignments online! School newsletters go home every week. All of us send out a class syllabus every week. We sign students' notebooks on a daily basis so that parents can check to see if students have homework assignments. And still parents complain that they aren't getting enough communication from us! Just take a look at this letter from Tina's father!"

Without putting my brain into gear I dragged up a chair, read the predictably churlish letter, and jumped right into the gripe session. Rather than helping the team refocus around the real purpose of the meeting time, I matched them story-for-story in an entertaining but pointless discussion of outlandish parent requests. Satisfying? Yes. Productive? Absolutely not. Teachers share so many common concerns that focusing solely on instructional issues for a whole planning period proves amazingly difficult. In order to do that, teachers must consciously and deliberately choose NOT to focus on the current crises and brush fires that swirl around them. I was certainly no help today.

In the wake of my faux pas, I've made a New Years resolution three months late. I hereby resolve to use a "check-in-only" policy with Impact Teams. I will not pull up a chair and join the meeting unless there are specific Impact Team issues teachers want to address with me. If the team is off-task, I will ask questions to help redirect their discussion. I will not engage in and/or encourage off-task discussions during Impact Team time. And I can't believe that I have to remind myself of these things.

Entry 52: For a brief time this week, I actually lived in the Land of What Could Be. At a SERVE meeting bringing together instructional teams from districts around the Southeast, I listened in rapt attention as a district superintendent explained why his school system operates with such success. They have (1) a future orientation, (2) the ability to maintain focus, and (3) a strategic action plan. Makes sense to me. And the fact that someone somewhere is actually doing it gives me hope.
I glimpsed our students' future during the meeting. Low skill jobs are disappearing - being replaced by technology and service jobs. New entry-level job skills include teamwork, problem-solving, command of numbers and data, proficiency in using technology, ability to process information, and good oral and written communication skills. I tried to mentally match those skills up with our current middle school curriculum. It's time to change what we're teaching and how we're teaching it.

Today, 17,000,000 people get all or part of their education over the Internet. Seven out of ten of these say it's the best education they've gotten. The implications of that last sentence is the scariest thing I've contemplated in awhile. We obviously are not where we need to be, and schools are not organized to change - another reason that collaborative teacher groups need to become standard practice in schools. Teachers work every day to transform our wonderfully crazy 11-14 year olds into citizens prepared for a new world with a new set of skills. We want desperately to do that well. But to make this happen, we have to work on it together.

Entry 53: My laptop computer has developed an attitude. Back in the hotel room, I was hurriedly putting the final touches on a presentation I'll make on Friday. The screen went blank. With foresight born from experience, I'd saved the presentation on a floppy disk. I could just pop the disk in another computer and print out overhead transparencies to use in case my computer continued its annoying antics.

I located a print shop several blocks away and efficiently commandeered an available computer. My efficiency attack was short lived. No amount of coaxing could convince any computer in the print shop to read my disk - much less to create any overheads.

I drove back to the hotel, grabbed my laptop, and hauled it to the print shop. Once there, I set it up while muttering entreaties and other things under my breath. Then I plugged it in. It worked! Awash with relief, I grabbed the nearest attendant. He graciously loaded the needed print driver on my laptop and hooked it up to their printer. Within moments colorful overheads began emerging. Halfway through, the printer began spitting out half-colored overheads, wrinkled overheads, and finally, no overheads at all. Tossing the ruined overheads in the waste basket, I grabbed the harried attendant again. His luck was even worse than mine. The printer made grim clicking noises and died. As he distractedly apologized, I doggedly dug in the wastebasket and retrieved the ruined overheads, which were looking better by the minute. By this time the laptop screen was blank again. Maybe I'll resort to flash cards. The only problem is, it's a technology conference!

Entry 54: This week has been rough for the teachers and staff. Our system still has a ten million dollar shortfall in school funding. (The past week didn't produce any miracles.) So
what do you do when you're already down to bare bones? Apparently you start scraping the bones.

Unable to decide where else to cut, the system asked the Assistant State Superintendent for ideas. He recommended that we cut back central administration, and eliminate the Model Middle School program. Just go back to the junior high model, which requires fewer teachers. A fine arts teacher sat in my office in tears today, afraid she would have no job next year. It's hard to teach when you're trying to survive in every sense of the word. Teachers are coming to school with their emotional tanks on "empty" at the moment.

I wonder if this Impact Team process will help teachers adjust if we get stuck back in a junior high model - no teaming, more students, and less planning time. Finding time to schedule Impact
Team meetings will be a challenge. Yet the gains teachers make by working together to improve their teaching skills may be the best thing they do for their students in that case.

Entry 55: I spent last week learning wonderful things. I barely repressed a cheer as Education Secretary Richard Riley recommended year round employment for teachers. (Not increased time for students, mind you, but additional time and opportunity for teachers to collaborate, plan, and prepare.) As I listened to other education leaders I saw a vision of the future opening before our students - a glimpse of the world that could be. But back in the heart of our system, back in the schools, there's not enough public support or money to provide our children with the education and skills to live in that world.

At one level the vision is clear and bright. The ideas are visionary. At another level, things look bleak. I thank God for the vision, because at the classroom level those visions will keep us going. Sometimes real teachers survive on a vision and a prayer.

Index of diary entries