Virginia Journal of Education: June 2022

VIRGINIA JOURNAL of

EDUCATI N The magazine of the Virginia Education Association June 2022

ADVOCACY: Sometimes You Have to Rock the Boat (and it’s not as hard as you think)

Editor Tom Allen VEA President Dr. James J. Fedderman VEA Executive Director Dr. Brenda Pike Communications Director Kevin J. Rogers Graphic Designer Lisa Sale Editorial Assistant/Advertising Representative Kate O’Grady

COVER STORY

Contributors

8

Helen Pryor

CONTENTS

Advocacy: Stepping up for your students can make a critical difference.

Courtney Cutright

Nate Lawrence Susan N. Graham Chip Jones

UPFRONT

Vol. 115, No. 6

4-7 This month: School libraries, the importance of names, and Touching Base with Norfolk’s Helen Pryor.

The Virginia Journal of Education (ISSN 0270-837X) is published six times a year (October, November, December, February, April and June) by the Virginia Education Association, 116 South Third Street, Richmond, VA 23219.

Copyright © 2022 by the Virginia Education Association

FEATURES

Non-member annual subscription rate: $10 ($15 outside the U.S. and Canada). Rights to reproduce any article or portion thereof may be granted upon request to the editor. Periodicals postage paid in Richmond, VA.

13 Vocabulary that Won’t Be on the Test Some new lingo to consider.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Virginia Journal of Education, 116 South Third Street, Richmond, VA 23219.

14 Great Teachers: Freedom’s First Responders We need them now more than ever.

Article proposals, comments or questions may be sent to the editor at tallen@veanea.org or Tom Allen,116 South Third Street, Richmond, VA 23219, 800-552-9554.

17 VEA Launches New Professional Learning Tool

Check out Teaching and Learning Today!

18 Families, Students, and Educators All Have a Role in Preventing School Violence Some advice from the U.S. Secret Service.

Member: State Education Association Communicators VEA Vision: A great public school for every child in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

DEPARTMENTS 20 Membership Matters In-person convention delegates for the first time since 2019!

24 Insight on Instruction You can be a life-changer.

30 First Person ‘Two Truths’ works, and I’m not lying.

Cover design by Lisa Sale/image by iStock

“Is there something you want to tell me?

Your teacher, the principal, and the Secretary of Education called.”

VEA Mission: The mission of the Virginia Education Association is to unite our members and local communities across the Commonwealth in fulfilling the promise of a high quality public education that successfully prepares every single student to realize his or her full potential. We believe this can be accomplished by advocating for students, education professionals, and support professionals.

UP FRONT

“Just because robots may eventually replace us is no reason you shouldn’t have to learn long division.”

Public education is too important to be left to politicians and ideologues. Public schools still serve about 90 percent of children across red and blue America. Since the common-school movement in the early 19th century, the public school has had an exalted purpose in this country. It’s our core civic institution—not just because, ideally, it brings children of all backgrounds together in a classroom, but because it prepares them for the demands and privileges of democratic citizenship.

Education is a public interest, which explains why parents shouldn’t get to veto any book they think might upset their child, whether it’s To Kill a Mockingbird or Beloved. Public education is meant not to mirror the unexamined values of a particular family or community, but to expose children to ways that other people, some of them long dead, think. In an authoritarian or rigidly meritocratic system, schools select the elites who grow up to make the decisions. A functioning democracy needs citizens who know how to make decisions together.l

Hitting the Wall “We have six buildings in our division. The newest was built in 1974, so it’s 48 years old.

The remaining schools that we have are older than that. We have one school that was built in 1916.

So, 106 years old now.”l — Bristol Superintendent Keith Perrigan, president of the Coalition of Small and Rural Schools of Virginia and a member of the state commission on school construction and modernization, who also pointed out that half the schools in the division are not yet fully accessible to students and staff members with

HELEN PRYOR

disabilities.

EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OF NORFOLK Elementary gifted resource teacher

Spotted on Twitter

— George Packer, author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, writing in The Atlantic.

“Nothing’s changed since I was six. My mom still calls every morning and says, ‘Get up—it’s a school day.’”

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VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

TOUCHING BASE WITH…

What did you enjoy about your job?

It’s my dream job. I grew up in a family where English was a second language, and my teachers were simply amazing—they helped shape my future.

That’s where I got my love for teaching and learning, and I’m so lucky to spend the day with my students and fellow educators, my school family. After 14 years in middle school, I’m now in an elementary school setting, and to see children absorb knowledge and react with excitement when they figure out answers on their own is the true definition of joy.

How is being a VEA member helpful to you?

Being part of my local and VEA has allowed me not only to grow and develop as a professional but as a person, too. I’ve had an opportunity to receive great, essential, professional development and training, but it’s those relationships forged with members across the state that show me that we are truly all in this together. I credit VEA with helping me succeed through these opportunities as well as making me feel safe, especially during these critical times. l

Virginia was recently ranked the 5th most educated state in the U.S. by Scholaroo, a scholarship-finding service. Scholaroo’s analysts used 19 metrics, divided into two key indicators (educational attainment and school quality), including the share of college and master’s graduates, the share of vocational school graduates, and literacy and numeracy rates.l

VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

Illustrations by iStock

‘Our Core Civic Institution’

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UP FRONT

It’s (Often) All in a Name

It’s Not Right

To show your students that you respect and value

“After leaving a teaching job in a

them, it’s very important to

privileged private school to teach

pronounce their names

in an inner-city classroom, I was

correctly. A young person’s

so struck by the difference in what

name is so closely tied

was available to students, and how

to their identity and

the lack of resources was impacting

heritage that you can

educational opportunities. I started

easily alienate one by

researching, paying attention, and

consistently mispro-

reflecting on the great inequity of

nouncing and/or

schools just a few miles apart from each other. It became clear

misspelling it.

to me that if a child of eight is academically behind because of a

“Here you go, Dad. I set the time and date on your phone.”

lack of resources, no matter their intellect, they will always

the importance of proper

struggle to catch up to the children with the resources, even if

pronunciation and how it helps

those children are not ahead of them intellectually.”l

build a respectful, caring culture in your school, check out mynamemyidentity.

— Richmond-based writer Judith Bice, author of Hey, White Girl, a novel set in Virginia’s state capital during a period of court-ordered school busing some 50 years ago.

org, where you’ll find resources including an educator

Students value the school library as a safe space. School librarians provide judgment-free learning spaces, curate resources that nurture student health and well-being, and promote reading for pleasure.

toolkit, information on a back-to-school campaign, and even an online course. You can also take the My Name, My Identity pledge to commit to building respect and modeling caring behavior.

The My Name, My Identity Campaign was created by the Santa Clara County (CA) Office of Education in partnership with the National

New technology introduced by school librarians elevates student learning and enhance teaching methods. Students learn to safely and constructively navigate tools and resources that deepen inquiry, collaboration, and creation.

Association for Bilingual Education.l

Who Foots the Bill?

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, this is how

Students find resources appropriate to their needs in a school library. School librarians curate diverse collections that provide mirrors, windows, and doors so that students better understand themselves and the world around them.

public school funding looks nationwide: •

46.9 percent by localities

•

45.3 percent by states

•

7.8 percent by the federal government

In Virginia, the emphasis is shifted a bit more toward local money.

We fund our schools:

“You gotta stay a step ahead of them. That’s why I pay attention to all those teacher blogs.”

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VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

•

51.1 percent by localities

•

42.3 percent by the state

•

6.6 percent by the federal governmentl

Information-literate students are better prepared for college, career, and life. Post-secondary institutions, employers, and civic life demand the ability to find, evaluate, use, and create information in multiple formats. School librarians teach information, digital, and media literacies, as well as digital citizenship.

Photo and illustrations by iStock; Bice photo by Sunday Vibes Photo

To get some help on

Five Reasons to Love School Libraries (and School Librarians)

We Can Handle the Truth “Well, the truth is, learning sometimes has to be uncomfortable so that you are thinking and doing the work to analyze where we’ve been and how we move forward. I don’t think we can be afraid to share the truth in our classrooms.” l Former U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr.

Students achieve more in schools with libraries and librarians. Students with professionally staffed school libraries have higher reading, writing, and information literacy scores, as well as higher graduation rates. Studies show that Title I students and English language learners recognize even greater academic gains with a certified school librarian.l Source: American Library Association VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

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COVER STORY

From Analyst to Advocate How one educator found his voice and spoke up to help protect schools, students, and educators.

W

hen I started teaching in the late 2000s, I prided myself on keeping my opinions to myself. My views were my own, and I thought it best to keep them out of the classroom and remain focused on content.

Before entering the classroom I was an archaeologist, so my goal was always to teach my students to analyze the data and draw their own conclusions.

But over the years, the content I teach and the views I hold have become more intertwined, like a Venn diagram where the circles become more and more overlapping. At times I felt like it put me in a difficult place, because as educators our default mode is often to stay quiet. “Don’t rock the boat.” “Keep your professional and private life separate.” So, I was wary about how the things I did outside of school might make my life inside it more difficult.

For a while I always erred on the side of caution, and even today I keep a pretty thick wall between my home and school lives.

But what about if you get the opportunity to speak out on something that can positively affect your school?

Sometimes rocking the boat can lead to a needed course correction.

I began to speak up about things I felt were important about five years ago, when earnest debate began between Staunton’s City Council and School Board about what should be

done to improve our aging high school, then called Robert E. Lee. The ideas ranged from modest renovations to an entirely new school on a new site. The potential for a new building, in addition to a shorter commute, was one of the main reasons I took a position with Staunton City Schools. But, as I started attending City Council meetings, I worried that the need for a new school was being lost in the conversation.

I heard comments at those meetings like “I went there and I turned out fine” and “The building’s not that bad.” My daily experience, however, was poor ventilation, spotty air conditioning and heat, and tiny hallways. I thought the need for a new building was self-evident to anyone who had stepped into Robert E. Lee, but it became clear that a lot of speakers during these meetings never went beyond the auditorium or gym which, in their defense, were in decent shape. I rarely got members of the general public in my classroom, with its lack of hot water and leaking ceilings.

Someone needed to tell that story, so I decided to speak.

Getting up to the podium to speak during a public meeting is a nerve-wracking experience. It still gives me butterflies. The irony

VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

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Illustration by iStock

By Nate Lawrence

COVER STORY but check ahead of time with your local government, they can probably accommodate you if you’d like to present some form of media. After that I shared the presentation with anyone I could.

I went to work sessions to hear debate and emailed my thoughts directly to Council members

The author doesn’t hestitate to speak out for his students and colleagues.

tangent-filled speaking style. I didn’t just want to read something word for word though, so I developed an outline and practiced getting through my message in the allotted time while also attempting to use my normal speech patterns. I found planning to be key. Some people can get up at meetings and speak off the cuff when they feel moved to, but that’s a little too “seat of your pants” for my taste. So, I spoke at one meeting, then I showed a PowerPoint at the next. Yes, most people only speak during public comments

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when I had something to say I thought wouldn’t fit in the limited time frame available during Matters from the Public.

Did it move the needle?

Honestly, I’ll never know, but in the fall of 2020 we opened the new Staunton High School, where I continue to teach and one day my children will attend.

We didn’t get a new building on a new site. The aforementioned gym and auditorium, because they were in decent enough shape, were saved and the new school was built where the old one was. Today, the new school is

VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

something the whole town can truly be proud of.

In the summer of 2020, like most school divisions in Virginia, Staunton was deciding what to do about returning to school in the age of COVID. Virtual? Hybrid? How many days a week? How best to educate?

Once again, we were changing everything and no one knew exactly how it would work out. But members of the Staunton Education Association worked to gather data and advocate for ourselves and our students. We sent surveys, wrote letters to the editor, met with board members, and when the year started we had a plan in place that most educators felt at least partially comfortable with.

One of the silver linings of COVID was that both as an individual teacher and as an association, we had opportunities to speak and an audience (superintendent, board, community) that was willing to listen. We spent half the year fully virtual teaching on Zoom and the spring in a hybrid model that included both in-person and virtual. Again, there were some successes and some areas that needed work, but by the end of the year we’d made it.

As isolating as teaching has seemed at times over the past two years, I felt we were forging new ways to communicate and strengthening relationships, even if we weren’t always in the same room together.

And now, another school year unlike any other is almost (or already) in the books. Again. Never did I think I would live in such unprecedented times that they would become precedented. “Paradigm shift,” “the new normal,” “sea change”: every few weeks it was a series of extreme events that once again asked

us to accept the fact that the world we went to sleep in the night before no longer exists.

One thing, though, that never seems to change is the lack of adequate school funding. In my 15 years working in the Virginia public school system, I’ve never seen a budget that I wouldn’t consider bare bones or the absolute minimum. This past January, it became clear that in addition to the uncertainty of the state budget, which remained unfinished as I wrote this, the funding Staunton City Schools would be requesting from the city would probably not match the level of funding the city was willing to give. With state level funding not yet determined, the best option to secure the funding students and educators needed in Staunton was to petition the city for the additional requested money. But this time, the voices calling for change wouldn’t just be educators, but families, students, and other community members, as well. Yard signs went up around town, City Council meetings were flooded with parents, educators, and students, and there was even a “bake sale” held one Saturday to raise awareness of the need for increased government funding, rather than forcing schools to fundraise.

It was the best show of community engagement I’ve seen since I’ve lived in Staunton, and it worked. The City Council and the School Board were able to come to a compromise that fully funded the district for fiscal year 2022-23. In addition, I was inspired by the number of community members that realized this wasn’t a “one-and-done” issue. This was clearing a hurdle, but there are several more (getting rid of the state level support cap comes to mind) to go. While that might seem

You (Yes, You) Can Make a Difference!

Here are some steps you can take to help you become an effective advocate for public schools, your students, and your colleagues: •

Share information that you receive from the VEA and your local with fellow union members.

•

Know the people who represent you. This includes not only your delegate and senator, but your school board and board of supervisors/city council members.

•

Attend your local school board meetings and bring fellow union members with you. Tell your story during public comment.

•

Do your homework. You need to know what you’re talking about. How well have you researched your concern?

•

You don’t have to go it alone. You’ll probably discover that many of your issues are shared by fellow members.

Reach out to your local leaders, building reps, or UniServ Director about getting more involved in the union.

•

Craft your own message. Consider becoming a VEA online advocate. Share your personal stories and experiences.

You can learn more at vea.link/advocacy.

•

Focus on solutions, not problems. Rather than identifying what’s not working, focus on how additional progress can be made.

•

Communicate face-to-face if you can. It’s easier to write, and a one-way conversation is good, but a dialogue is better. Plan a meeting with an elected official (school board, city council, board of supervisors, House of Delegates, Virginia Senate) and talk to them about your work and what you need.

•

Get involved with the VEA’s Fund for Children and Public Education and be sure to vote!l

Sources: VEA Government Relations; VEA-Retired member Susan N. Graham of Stafford County

VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

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Photo page 10 by George Laase; photo this page by Olivia Geho

that my day job is to get up and speak to groups of people isn’t lost on me. But there’s power in finding out you have something to say, and once you start, people will probably listen.

The time limit for comments was five minutes, so I had to pare down my usual rambling,

discouraging, I look at it as an opportunity to take the lessons we learned this year and carry them into the future.

So, while it might seem daunting, I encourage all VEA members to speak out on the issues that matter to you, be it through an email to an elected official, in person at a government meeting, or in another format that plays to your strengths.

It might be just you at first, but you’ll probably pick up some supporters along the way. I know I did.

Some tips I’ve picked up over the years:

FEATURE STORY •

If you wait until you’re 100 percent comfortable using your voice, you never will.

•

Have faith in yourself. Students listen to you all day; others will too.

•

Use email and social media in a personal capacity. We all have so many accounts these days.

Be conscious of which account you’re logged into when you make that post or send that email. With that said, pretty much any medium these days can be used for effective communication and change.

•

Advocacy is a marathon, not a sprint. Getting your issue over the finish line will probably take more than one email or attendance at one meeting.

•

Don’t reinvent the wheel. If no one in your community outside your local association is doing the work, blaze a trail, but chances are there’s an infrastructure you can already tap into. Team efforts always go further.l

Vocabulary that Won’t Be on the Test…

Here are a few words that you may find useful and may want to make part of your professional lingo, courtesy of GCFL.net: Handoubt: To wonder if the students even looked at the important papers you just passed out to them.

Lawrence, Vice President of the Staunton Education Association, is an ecology and astronomy teacher at Staunton High School.

Hydropendent: Student who requests permission to get a drink of water every 10 minutes.

On Public Advocacy: Teacher Leaders Speak “I just want to get in the room. That’s where the economic equity comes in, just speaking to school boards, city councils, state legislators, even federal legislators, talking about what kids need and making sure that funding in education is equitable.”

— Rodney Robinson of Richmond, the 2019 National Teacher of the Year “Sometimes, we have to leave the classroom to get the things we need for our kids. At the heart of every decision is what our students need. If decisions being made are negatively impacting our kids, we cannot sit idly by…

Because ultimately, if students truly make up the foundation of our arguments about why we are outside the classroom advocating, no one can argue with us.”

— Mandy Manning of Washington State, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year

VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

Bookstache: The facial hair added by students to every portrait in the American history textbook.

Colate: Two students who arrive tardy to class at the same time.

“Our critics love clichés, simplistic slogans and manipulated data. This is how they attack, and the good news is the utter banality of those attacks. Stories are different. There is no defense against a good story…I contend that we advocate best for our students and our profession when we are brave enough to tell our stories.”

— Shanna Peeples of Texas, the 2015 National Teacher of the Year

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Interconversations: The office conversations you overhear when someone forgets to turn off the intercom after an announcement.

Corroborative learning: When all the students in a class agree to stick to the same excuse for why their work is not done.

Digital disorganizers: Fascinating electronic organizers that distract students from paying attention to assignments, instructions, and due dates.

Erasivot: The divot that you get in your paper if you erase too hard.

McDone: Students unable to participate in the afternoon’s learning activities because they consumed large amounts of fast food for lunch.

Meview: A class review of material in which the only one really reviewing is the teacher.

Multiple unintelligences: A variety of ways of not knowing something.

Includes, but is not limited to: resistive unintelligence, disinterested unintelligence, distracted unintelligence, unconscious unintelligence, and absent unintelligence.

Powerpointless: A wonderfully executed, high-tech presentation completely devoid of meaningful content.

Repedementia: Repeatedly telling the same joke to the same class because you can’t remember which of your classes you’ve told it to.

Seatables: The little pieces of school lunch that hide on the seats of school lunchroom chairs waiting to adhere to the next unsuspecting sitter.

Signotsure: The signature that comes back on a midterm report that looks more like the student’s than the parent’s.

Strobed: The feeling you have after spending all day in a classroom with florescent lights that do that flicker thing.

Teacherscreen: The student who stands in front of you to purposefully block your view of the rest of the class as he asks you a question.

Telesubbies: Substitute teachers who only show videos.

Torigami: Assignment papers folded and unfolded so many times that they are turned in as sixteen separate pieces.

Vistamized: A student so fascinated with the view from the classroom window that he has completely lost touch with what’s going on inside the classroom.

Wired classroom: Any classroom in which the teacher has had more than five cups of coffee and each student has had more than two cans of Mountain Dew.l

Plausea: The queasy feeling a teacher gets while trying to figure out if a student’s excuse is believable or not.

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Illustration by iStock

COVER STORY

Great Teachers: Freedom’s First Responders We need them now more than ever.

By Chip Jones

T

hank God for caring, excellent teachers. This thought— maybe even a bit of a prayer—has occurred to me many times over the past year as parents shouted at school board meetings and the governor announced a state-sponsored “tip line” offering the public the chance to report any teacher who dares to discuss “divisive concepts” in Virginia

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classrooms. Some of those concepts include shackling, raping, selling, and enslaving people, or restricting voting rights for Black citizens, as Virginia did in 1902. Or, in the 1957 case of Richard and Mildred Loving, arresting and exiling a married couple of mixed races for the crime of loving each other.

“Divisive concepts,” indeed. It worries me for great teachers, like

VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

two who taught me English when I was in high school. More on them shortly.

As a former journalist and author in Richmond, I’ve watched with both horror and astonishment at how the bad old days can repeat themselves—as if the progress made during the Civil Rights era is being run in reverse. Commenting on Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s execu-

tive order setting up the tip line, Pulitzer-winning columnist Michael Paul Williams commented in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “[Governor] Youngkin seeks to stymie an accurate and comprehensive telling of the story” of Black history “by encouraging people to snitch online against teachers whose lessons stray beyond the boundaries of what students—or their right-wing parents—deem comfortable.”

Citing “a war on educators,” Williams shared a text from a worried teacher who said she was “bracing myself” for attacks by self-appointed classroom censors. Even though the cynical efforts at censorship didn’t gain much traction in the 2022 General Assembly, the entire episode remains alarming—yet also instructive for Virginia’s educators. Indeed, the whole misguided campaign to censor teachers provides more than its share of lesson plans, especially in light of the censorship and propaganda used by Vladimir Putin to try to hide the invasion of Ukraine from his own people.

Other timely lessons can be drawn from what happened in east Tennessee early this year when a school board banned Maus, the critically-acclaimed graphic novel

by Art Spiegelman. The two-volume work details his family’s Holocaust history through a series of conversations between Spiegelman and his estranged father, according to The Washington Post. It also delves into the painful death of Spiegelman’s mother, a death camp survivor who died by suicide when her son was 20.

Maus allowed Spiegelman to connect with his painful past while also explaining the Holocaust in a creative way to a new generation of readers. And like Orwell’s other cautionary tale about totalitarianism, Animal Farm, it used animals as characters.

Given the current toxic atmosphere of technology, politics, racism, homophobia and misogyny, 2022 brings to mind yet another

“I can see how they managed to prepare me to confront many of the challenges of today’s polarized and agitated age. Along the way, they managed to leave an amazing legacy of lifelong learning.”

cautionary tale about the dangers of censorship: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

He imagines a dystopian future when society grows so lazy and media-drenched that the government enforces its will by turning firemen into book burners. Thus its title -based on the temperature at which paper bursts into flames.

Are you getting a whiff of today’s headlines?

In our common struggles against censorship, I was struck by how Bradbury’s protagonist, Guy Montag, has his mind changed

not by an adult, but by a teenager.

Clarisse McClellan’s intellectual freedom inspires him to flee his fellow book-burners. The student, in other words, becomes the teacher!

Bradbury penned Fahrenheit 451 at the height of the McCarthy hearings, when the paranoid, alcoholic Sen. Joe McCarthy set up his own “tip lines” in order destroy lives and ruin reputations.

Near the end of the book, Bradbury invokes the Book of Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes, all that.”

Given today’s attempts to weaponize reading and teaching, Bradbury’s clarion call rings as loud and clear as ever. Thinking back on my own education, I have found one silver lining in these stormy times: they’ve allowed me to reconnect with two of my own English teachers who gave me the priceless gift of a lifelong love of reading and writing.

Kathy McConahey and Suzanne Hannay taught English at Fort Hunt High School in Fairfax County in the late 1960s and 1970s. In those days before soul-crushing testing regimens, they rotated classes—with new books—every six weeks.

So, for example, in one unit, we read Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which served as both a scathing critique of America’s treatment of mental illness and a dramatic allegory about conformity. In another, we laughed at Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut’s clever, but deeply worrisome, tale of environmental doom.

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Illustration elements by iStock

FEATURE STORY

FEATURE STORY

rooted in the joy of reading.

Smart and witty, Mrs. McConahey and Miss Hannay managed to pry open our sheltered suburban minds. Isn’t that what we want from our public schools, the key laboratories of this ongoing experiment called America?

One day in the middle of my senior year, Mrs. McConahey played a vital role in my life. This happened after I got into a heated argument with my basketball coach in the locker room after a crushing The author’s former high loss. I wound up school teachers Suzanne quitting the team a Hannay (top) and Kathy McConahey, in 1970s nanosecond before yearbook photos. he threw me off.

The next day in English class, Mrs. McConahey noticed something was bugging me. Sitting behind her desk, she seemed to look right through me.

“Are you OK?” she asked. reading Heller’s satirical masterAfter more than 50 years, I’m piece felt slightly subversive. That’s not sure how I replied. But I do because, my father, a highly-decremember how her simple, yet orated officer in World War II and sincere, query opened my emotionKorea, was commanding thousands al floodgates. Out spilled the story of Marines still fighting for their of losing my lifelong hoop dreams lives near the DMZ between North … then came the tensions about and South Vietnam. having my father over in Vietnam I don’t think my young English and how this worried my mother… teachers were being intentionally Then something deeper poured subversive. But by offering such a out: The pain of losing my brother wide range of titles, I can now see in a car crash several years before. how they managed to prepare me One by one, I shared my to confront many of the challenges doubts and pains. Afterward, Mrs. of today’s polarized and agitated McConahey managed to fill the age. Along the way, they managed void left by my deflated sports to leave an amazing legacy of lifecareer. Now I was reading outside long learning, one that was firmly As a military brat, one particularly mind-bending literary experience was Joseph Heller’s antiwar novel, Catch 22. Though I wasn’t actively opposing the exhausting, deadly war in Vietnam, the act of

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VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION | JUNE 2022

of class – not for extra credit, but because I wanted to—or rather, because I had to! It was like my brain had been simmering on a pilot light for most of my 17 years. All it took was a smart, sympathetic teacher to light its fire.

Many of the books I recall reading during my personal awakening a few months before graduation dealt with the experiences of Black authors in America –such as Native Son, by Richard Wright, Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown, and Soul On Ice, by Eldridge Cleaver.

Today, one passage from Cleaver’s essays rings especially true: “If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.”

Hope. What a divisive concept!

But if Mrs. McConahey were teaching in Northern Virginia today, would someone dial the governor’s tip line to complain? Would some parents scream for her removal?

Maybe.

If they do, though, I hope today’s Mrs. McConaheys and Miss Hannays – and their principals and school board members – keep fighting for open minds and caring hearts.

Just like my teachers did.l Jones is the author of The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South. It won the Library of Virginia’s 2021 Literary Award for Nonfiction and has been chosen by Virginia Commonwealth University as the Common Book for 2022. He can be reached at chipjonesbooks.com.

FEATURE STORY

VEA Teaching and Learning Launches New Professional Learning Tool for Members

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hat happens in the classroom between students and teachers has an enormous impact on the future of just about everything around us:

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An opening message from the Director of Teaching and Learning, Melinda Bright, to let you know that we’ve been listening to your feedback.

but to all educators who support students with disabilities.

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A “Nugget of Knowledge” section highlighting one “nugget” of research or data to better assist in your understanding of a highlighted topic.

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Introductions to Teaching and Learning staff and committee members.

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And, to finish, a quote to inspire you until next month’s issue.

There are several ways to find Teaching and Learning Today: our communities, our families, our schools, and our economy. That’s an incredibly heavy responsibility—and why VEA Teaching and Learning is reimagining ways to help our members hone their instructional skills.

One of those ways is our brandnew electronic monthly newsletter, Teaching and Learning Today, which will be an ongoing source not only of information, but also of new and varied opportunities for professional learning. TLT has been carefully developed by collaborating with members and VEA field staff, and our aim is to provide top-notch assistance to both classroom teachers and education support professionals.

The first two TLT issue are on VEA’s website, and they feature a wide range of information, including:

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Updates on workshops, such as the coming regional ones on trauma-informed instruction, information from NEA, and other opportunities relevant to your professional practice.

VEA’s VirtualED, focused on all things electronic, from micro-credentials to updates of information found on the VEA website.

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Support for members interested in National Board Certification.

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An Aspiring Educator section with information for pre-service educators, whether you’re a traditional or non-traditional student.

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A Special Education section highlighting information relevant not just to sped teachers,

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Social media: We’ll post about each issue on VEA’s Facebook page.

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Email: We’ll send out an email announcement for each issue.

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Website: o

Go to veanea.org

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Click NEWS & EVENTS

o Select The Latest from VEA o Click BLOG and select Teaching and Learning Today At any point, if you have a question about anything found in the newsletter, feel free to reach out to the Teaching and Learning team at 1-800-552-9554, x327. We look forward to sharing with you in the future!l

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FEATURE STORY

Educators All Have a Role in Preventing School Violence Here’s some advice from the U.S. Secret Service.

In our last issue, we reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) issued a joint statement calling the situation with American children’s mental health a “national emergency.”

Given that climate, and as educators get ready to wrap up this school year and take a breather before beginning the next one, we thought it was an excellent time to offer some reminders and tips from the U.S. Secret Service on school violence prevention. Specifically, we’d like to share some findings from its recent study, “Averting Targeted School Violence: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Plots Against Schools,” which examined 67 disrupted plots against U.S. K-12 schools from 2006-18.

The Secret Service has long advocated a threat assessment approach as the most effective against preventing violence.

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he Secret Service’s study found that students who plotted the averted attacks had a lot in common with students who have actually perpetrated attacks, and that t here are almost always intervention points available before violence occurs. Both groups included students who: •

Had histories of school discipline and contact with law enforcement.

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Experienced bullying or had mental health issues, frequently involving depression and suicidality.

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Intended or committed suicide as part of a school attack.

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Used drugs or alcohol.

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Had been affected by adverse childhood experiences, including substance abuse in the home, violence or abuse, parental incarceration, or parental mental health issues.

Based on its study and on longtime research by the National Threat Assessment Center, the Secret Service urges schools to keep items like these in mind when developing policies and/or threat assessment teams: Targeted school violence is preventable when communities identify warning signs and intervene. In every case, tragedy was averted by members of the community coming forward when they observed concerning behaviors.

Schools should seek to intervene with students before their behavior warrants legal consequences. The primary function of a threat assessment is

not criminal investigation or conviction—it’s to identify and intervene with students in distress before their behavior escalates to criminal actions.

Students were most often motivated to plan a school attack because of a grievance with classmates. Like students who perpetrated school attacks, the plotters in the Secret Service study were most frequently motivated by interpersonal conflicts with classmates, highlighting a need for student interventions and de-escalation programs targeting such issues.

Students are best positioned to identify and report concerning behaviors displayed by their classmates. In this study, communications made about the attack plot were most often observed by the plotter’s friends, classmates, and peers. Schools and communities must take tangible steps to facilitate student reporting when classmates observe threatening or concerning behaviors. Unfortunately, many cases also involved students observing concerning behaviors and communications without reporting them, highlighting the ongoing need for further resources and training for students.

The role of parents and families in recognizing concerning behavior is critical to prevention.

Eight plots in this study were reported by family members, illustrating the crucial role families can play in addressing a student’s risk of causing harm. In some cases, other parents in the school community received concerning reports about a classmate from their children, then passed the information on to the school or law enforcement. When identifying and assessing concerning student

behavior, a collaborative process involving parents or guardians is ideal. Families should be educated on recognizing the warning signs and the supports and resources available to address their concerns, whether in the school or the greater community.

School resource officers (SROs) play an important role in school violence prevention.

In nearly one-third of the cases, an SRO played a role in either reporting the plot or responding to a report made by someone else.

In eight cases, it was the SRO who received the initial report of an attack plot from students or others, highlighting their role as a trusted adult in the school community.

Removing a student from school does not eliminate the risk they might pose to themselves or others. Five plotters in this study were recently former students who had left school within one academic year of the plot, as they had been expelled, enrolled in other schools, graduated, or stopped attending classes.

This indicates that simply removing a student from the school, without appropriate supports, may not necessarily remove the risk of harm they pose to themselves or others.

Students displaying an interest in violent or hate-filled topics should elicit immediate assessment and intervention.

Consistent with prior NTAC research studying school attackers, many of the plotters in this study displayed such interest, particularly in the Columbine High School attack. Nearly one-third of the plotters conducted research into

prior mass attackers as part of their planning. Nine also displayed interest in Hitler, Nazism, and/or white supremacy.

Many school attack plots were associated with certain dates, particularly in the month of April.

Some plotters selected dates to emulate notorious people or events, such as the anniversary of the Columbine attack on April 20th, while others chose their dates to coincide with the beginning or end of the school year.

School and security professionals should approach these dates with extra consideration.

Many of the student plotters had access to weapons, including unimpeded access to firearms. Threat assessments must examine a student’s access to weapons, particularly those in the home. Similar to school attackers, in most of the cases where plotters intended to use firearms, they had unimpeded access to them (e.g., they owned them or their parents allowed access). In seven cases, the plotters acquired secured firearms because they were given access to a safe containing them, pried the safe open, found the key, or stole them when they were left out.

Some other words of advice from the study: It should be noted clearly in any school threat assessment policy that the primary objective is not to administer discipline or introduce students into the criminal justice system. While those responses may be necessary at times, especially in situations involving explicit threats, violence or weapons, the primary objective of a student threat assessment should be providing a student with help and working to ensure positive outcomes for the student and the community.l

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Photo by iStock

Families, Students, and

MEMBERSHIP MATTERS

In Person and Online, Convention Delegates Got it Done

The Votes are in and It’s Official in Richmond!

In April, the Richmond Education Association handily won the first election of its kind in Virginia in more than a generation, winning 99 percent of the vote to be named the exclusive representative in negotiations with Richmond Public Schools under Virginia’s new collective bargaining law. REA will now negotiate contracts for licensed personnel, instructional assistants, food service workers, and security and safety employees, the first VEA local to earn that right since the 1970s.

Elsewhere in the state, the Charlottesville Education Association (lower right) notified its city school board that it had obtained the required number of educator signatures on authorization cards and then officially petitioned the board for collective bargaining rights. The board now has 120 days to decide whether it will pass a resolution agreeing to those rights, which would trigger a representative election like the one held in Richmond.l

UPDATE

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or the first time since the 2019, VEA members were able to get together in person for the Union’s annual convention—well, almost. Lingering COVID cautions made the 2022 event Delegate Assembly a hybrid event, with 100-plus delegates at the Richmond Convention Center and more than 200 others attending virtually.

“It was comforting to see the familiar faces of those who have so diligently served and it was exciting to see new, energized faces, whether in person or on the screens,” says Kristina Childress of the Bedford County Education Association. “This year’s hybrid convention was also an unexpected opportunity to ease new delegates into participating.”

Her BCEA colleague Kathy Sev-

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ers, one of those newbies, agrees. “I enjoyed the learning and having my vote count,” she says, “and look forward to attending the next one. It was an amazing first-time experience!”

Working together from locations around the state in a new format that was made more difficult by a first-day tornado warning interruption, delegates managed to conduct VEA’s business, approving new business items to, among other things, research improvements to the Virginia Retirement System, better equip members to help special education students, and seek legislation to fight mold problems in our school buildings. Delegates also approved a budget for the next Association year and heard analysis of the 2022 General Assembly session and its

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impact on public education in the commonwealth.

In his annual address to convention delegates, VEA President James Fedderman applauded educators for their outstanding dedication and extra effort during the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrated the progress being made in achieving collective bargaining, and discussed the pressures educators have been under as schools have returned to something close to normalcy.

“Educators are not the enemy,” he said. “We must use our collective voice to say stop. We will not quit.

We will teach the truth. We will continue to speak up and show up.”l

VEA-Retired Spotlight

Clark has Seen the Power of Political Involvement

By Kathy Davis “People need to be more educated about what it means to live in a democracy,” says VEA-Retired member Marjorie Clark (left) of Chesterfield County, especially in a time when educators seem to be under nearly constant attack. Clark, who began her Association involvement as a high school English teacher and later as a librarian, believes our members need to be alert, informed, and active politically.

As an active member, she set an excellent example of what that kind of involvement looks like. In addition to attending VEA conventions, she was a faithful participant at Lobby Day and worked to raise money for the VEA Fund for Children and Public Education.She continued those efforts when she retired, serving as Fund representative for VEA-Retired at conventions and as a member of its Executive Council. She’s also served several terms on the VEA-Retired Council.

Beyond VEA, Marjorie was elected chair of the Congressional District 7 Democratic Committee and also served as a delegate to five Democratic National Conventions, beginning in 1992. At national conventions, members who are delegates become part of a special NEA Caucus, as they are there not just to support their party but also to support education.l

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Photos page 20 by Lisa Sale and Olivia Geho

Convention delegates gather in person for the first time since 2019: Educators from around Virginia were on site in Richmond for VEA’s 2022 hybrid Delegate Assembly, with proper COVID precautions in place. VEA President Dr. James J. Fedderman (lower left) thanked them for being there and celebrated VEA’s progress on collective bargaining.

MEMBERSHIP MATTERS

Education Advocates Feted with VEA Awards at Convention Dinner

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EA holds an Awards Dinner at each convention to honor individuals and organizations that have done outstanding work on behalf of our public schools and those who learn and work in them.

The 2022 awards and honorees are:

Dr. Jessica Jones of the Pittsylvania Education Association spoke after accepting VEA’s 2022 Award for Teaching Excellence.

Friend of Education Award. This is VEA’s highest honor, and there were two recipients this year: Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Dr. James Lane and former Spotsylvania County Superintendent Dr. Scott Baker. Both were recognized for their student-first approach and courageous leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Award for Teaching Excellence.

Dr. Jessica Jones, a Pittsylvania Education Association member and high school agricultural education teacher, was honored for, among other things, the way she encourages her students in regional, state, and national FFA competitions and her tireless advocacy for PEA members.

Education Support Professional (ESP) of the Year. Arthur Anderson is a high school instructional assistant and vice president of the Chesapeake Education Association member known his outreach to students, including running a mentoring program, and for his fierce advocacy before the city’s school board.

Fitz Turner Award for Outstanding Contributions in Intergroup

New Leadership for VEA-Retired VEA-R members elected new officers and Council members earlier this year, all to new two-year terms beginning August The officers are: Lola McDowell, President Malia Huddle, Vice President Kathy Davis, Secretary-Treasurer Dot Walton, Retired Member at Large Members of the VEA-R Council, chosen by Congressional district, are Holly Jackson-Conrad, CD 1; Shirley George, CD 2; Sid Neighbours, CD 3; Vashti Mallory, CD 4; Connie Coates, CD 5; Barbara Wilson, CD 7; Karen Beasley, CD 8; R. Edward Fifer, CD 9; and Allison Batty, CD 11.

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Relations. SERV (Standing for Equity in the Roanoke Valley) is this year’s honoree for becoming a major player in the fight for racial and social justice, despite being in existence for less than five years.

Robley S. Jones Political Activist Award. The honorees this year are UniServ Directors who took time away from their work to represent members as lobbyists at the 2022 General Assembly: Donald Cash, Jay Deck, Vickie Kitts, Bekah Saxon, Lisa Staib, and Boaz Young-El. Martha Wood Distinguished Service Award. Dorothy “Dot” Walton of Charlottesville is this year’s winner, in recognition of her many years of Association leadership at the local and state level and her avid involvement in political action.

A+ Awards for Membership Growth. The Albemarle Education Association and the Blue Ridge UniServ Council were honored for membership growth.l

Hill Takes HQ Position Pat Hill, for the last seven years a UniServ Director for the Prince William Education Association, has been promoted to VEA’s Assistant Director of Organizing and Field Support and is based at the Richmond headquarters office. As a UD, she served as co-chair of VEA’s Membership Cadre and led staff and member trainings on topics such as collective bargaining, membership recruitment, and new employee orientations.l

KUD

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Two VEA Members In Running for Top National Honor

COVID, Politics: Our Students Need Us More Than Ever

By Dr. James J. Fedderman

For more than two years, COVID, pervasive and omnipresent, has driven what’s happened in our schools. Many educators were ready to throw in the towel, but didn’t. I want to thank you for not giving up.

The pandemic did something else, too: While we knew our communities weren’t perfect before COVID, it reminded us just how fractured a society we really are.

Now, we’re seeing that fracturing in the actions of a governor seeking to undo years of progress in public education, seemingly overnight.

To all of that I say: I’ve had enough.

Our budget reflects our values, showing what and who we decide to invest in. While these decisions are made at both the state and local level, our most vulnerable are almost always relegated to the role of spectators. We must use our voice, our power, and our union to say STOP: Stop playing games about the environments we are expected to teach in. Stop misrepresenting the facts. There is too much at stake.

So, how do we change with the times?

One obvious way is that, for the first time in more than a generation, we are poised to collectively bargain contracts in Virginia! This long-denied right wasn’t given to us. Our union fought hard, using our voice to demonstrate our power.

Done right, bargaining will be a huge

win for students, educators, and communities. We must fight for the ability to negotiate in all our school divisions.

Let’s remain unafraid to speak truth to power. Educators are not the enemy.

We are the alarm for our students—and for our democracy and our profession.

We stand for, and work for, bold and unapologetic change, the kind of change that promotes love, inclusiveness, and the equity we need to dismantle racism and injustice. No one is in a better position to do this essential work!

For anyone requiring remediation: •

When our students needed motivation and reassurance, who gave it? We did.

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When the commonwealth and localities were not paying a living wage, who showed up every day?

We did.

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When the pandemic hit and no one knew how to be innovative, we did.

Here’s what I know about us, VEA. We will not quit. We will not stop. We will teach the truth. We will show up, and we will speak up. I’ve seen the fire in your eyes. I’ve heard the passion in your voices. We will continue to use our voice, our power, and our presence, to sustain our students, our state, and our union this year, and for many, many years to come.l

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Two VEA members have been named as Virginia finalists for the 2022 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching: Sarah Flippen of the Caroline Education Association, a kindergarten teacher at Madison Elementary School, and Marie Peaches of the Education Association of Alexandria, a fifth grade teacher at James K. Polk Elementary School.

The National Science Foundation administers the Presidential Award, regarded by many as the nation’s top honor for math and science teachers, on behalf of the White House. The award alternates annually between teachers in grades K-6 and teachers in grades 7-12.

Pamela Rockenbach Plahs of the Chesterfield Education Association and Swift Creek Middle School, and Dan Paris of the Arlington Education Association and the H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program, are Virginia’s nominees for the Patricia Behring Teacher of the Year Award. Rockenbach Plahs is a nominee in the junior division of the Award, which is part of an annual National History Day contest; Paris is in the senior division.

National History Day is a nonprofit organization based in Maryland and each of its affiliates can nominate one middle school and one high school teacher for the $10,000 award. To be considered, a teacher must demonstrate a commitment to engaging students in historical learning through the innovative use of primary sources and use active learning strategies to foster historical thinking skills.

Russell County Education Association member Tiny Shortridge, the school nurse at Honaker High School, was featured recently by a local television station as part of its “Community Heroes” program. She was cited for “going above and beyond her responsibilities” during COVID and even through some significant health challenges of her own.l

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INSIGHT ON INSTRUCTION

You Have the Power to be a Life-Changer!

Here are some ways you can use that power. students who arrive each day with different emotional needs, and learn at wildly different speeds. Remarkably, life-changing teachers find a way to stay calm amid the chaos and play the long game, giving their students the time and support they need to learn.

Life-changing teachers know when to be tough.

If life-changing teachers are patient, they also know when to change gears and get tough. They’re the teachers who challenge us to be better students and better humans—and then up the ante and demand that of us.

Life-changing teachers believe in their students (and help them believe in themselves). Most of us have had some sort of self-doubt, but many students are crippled by it. Life-changing teachers have the gift of seeing potential in kids when others don’t, and then have the perseverance to help the children find it within themselves.

Life-changing teachers love their students.

Respondents used the word love a whopping 187 times (and that’s not counting an additional 157 heart emojis). Showing love for students—through small but meaningful gestures of kindness—is far and away the most impactful thing life-changing teachers do.l

“I pretend to pay attention by putting my face in screensaver mode.”

Closing the Digital Divide: It Can Be Done!

The Mismatch Continues While very close to half of U.S. K-12 public school students are young people of color, only about 20 percent of teachers are, according to The Education Trust. In addition, in 40 percent of our public schools, there is not a single teacher of color on staff.l

Check out what the city of Oakland, CA has accomplished!

At the start of the COVID pandemic, only 12 percent of the city’s low-income students, and 25 percent of all its public school students, had appropriate computer or telephone devices at home and a strong internet connection.

Two years later, Oakland has connected 98 percent of its students. As of February, the city had provided nearly 36,000 laptops and more than 11,500 hot spots to low-income students.

“We were using the crisis as an opportunity to address a moral wrong that needs to be changed forever, not just during the pandemic,” says Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. “We can’t afford not to.”

To learn more about how this was done, visit oaklandundivided.org/.l Source: The Hechinger Report

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Photos by iStock

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hen people reminisce about their days in school, the talk doesn’t often turn to the tests they took, or the curriculum and standards set by the state—it usually goes back to teachers they had. So, Betty Ray, a former staffer at education nonprofit Edutopia and founder of the Center for Ritual Design, decided to find out what made certain teachers become life-changers.

She asked Edutopia’s Facebook community, and these are the top answers she got back from the over 700 respondents, courtesy of Edutopia: Life-changing teachers make their students feel safe. The research is unequivocal: People can’t learn if they’re anxious, frightened, or in trauma. Safety is part of the education starter kit. Unsurprisingly, many recalled that the best teachers establish a culture of safety and support in their classrooms, whether it’s physical, emotional, or intellectual.

Life-changing teachers possess a contagious passion. A passion for education is in the blood of the best teachers and the best teachers pass it on to students.

Life-changing teachers model patience. Learning can be slow and messy. Classrooms are filled with

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INSIGHT ON INSTRUCTION

“It made me feel, for the very first time, in my life that I was useful. I wasn’t doing something just for me. And not just for another person, but for my community.

I realized that that feeling was wonderful…

Talk to students about their power.”

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking to the annual conference of the National Council for the Social Studies. She told educators in attendance that it wasn’t until she was in college that she experienced the power of helping others, after organizing an effort to have Spanish-speaking students help hospital patients who struggled with English.l

Your Opinion Must be Valued

“It is…advisable that the teacher should understand, and even be able to criticize, the general principles upon which the whole educational system is formed and administered. He is not like a private soldier in an army, expected merely to obey, or like a cog in a wheel, expected merely to respond and transmit external energy; he must be an intelligent medium of action.”l — John Dewey, in 1895

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Educator Groups Say an Unequivocal and United ‘No’ to Book-Banning An excerpt from a joint statement entitled “Freedom to Teach: Statement Against Banning Books,” issued by the National Council for the Social Studies, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of English, National Science Teaching Association, and National Coalition Against Censorship: School districts, the most active battlefield in the American culture wars today, are facing an unprecedented number of calls to remove books from schools and libraries, amid false claims about “obscenity” invading classrooms, the elimination of teaching about evolution and climate change, challenges to the need for making sense of and critiquing our world in mathematics classrooms, and legislation redlining teaching about racism in American history. These actions are putting excessive and undue pressure on teachers, who are caught in the crossfire of larger political conflict, motivated by cultural shifts, and stoked for political gain.

Teachers are being maligned as “harming” children and are subjected to constant scrutiny (and even direct surveillance) by many parents, school administrators, and activist groups. Some are afraid to offer their students award-winning books that may violate vaguely stated laws about teaching the history of racism or that may be misleadingly labeled as pornographic. As a result, teachers’ very ability to do their job is under threat.

In their zeal, activists of the current culture wars unfortunately treat teachers as if they are enemies. The truth is that teachers are uniquely important leaders who, in educating current and new generations of students, bear responsibility for this country’s future. They are trained professionals with one of the hardest and most demanding jobs, a job that requires deep commitment.

Teachers need our support; they need our trust; they need to have the freedom to exercise their professional judgment. And that freedom includes the freedom to decide what materials best suit their students in meeting the demands of the curriculum.l You can read the entire statement here: ncte.org/freedom-teach-banning-books.

Six End-of-School-Year Teacher Tips Here are some end-of-the-year strategies and tips for teachers, from NEA Member Benefits: 1.

COUNT IT DOWN. Give students something to look forward to each day when they come to school by doing an activity that lets them count down the days until summer break, something like a balloon pop to find out each day how many days are left, or a countdown bulletin board.

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TRY SOMETHING NEW! You know that one lesson plan or activity that you’ve wanted to try, but just never had the time to do? The end of the year can and should still be for useful learning! If you have gaps in your lesson plans, it’s the perfect time to test new strategies you’ve had in mind and would like to incorporate into your classroom plans for next year.

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STAY IN YOUR ROUTINE AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. Any experienced teacher will tell you that maintaining your routine is one of the best ways to navigate all the end-of-year craziness. That said, it doesn’t hurt to add some fun games to your classroom routine!

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GET ORGANIZED. Among all the finals, overdue homework, grading, and lessons you’re still completing, your desk can pile up pretty quickly at the end of the year. Staying organized and tracking progress on work tasks are key to finishing the year strong and getting final grades in on time.

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CARVE OUT SOME TIME FOR YOURSELF. Although you want to stay on top of your work, try not to spend every night hunkered down in your classroom attempting to get everything done all at once. Finding some time for self-care is important, especially during the end of the year when you feel like your to-do list is a mile long. Allow time to go home and relax, take a walk outside, play with your children, read, take a bath, etc. This may seem counter-intuitive, but you will be able to release your stress and have more energy for the final push as the last day of school gets closer.

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REFLECT ON THE SUCCESSES OF YOUR YEAR. Take some time, with or without your students, to reflect on the past school year--what they’ve learned, what their favorite lessons were, the friendships that were built, and the strong bond you all have formed as a class. Celebrate student successes, laugh at funny moments, and don’t forget to give yourself credit for all you have accomplished as an educator, as well.

Lastly, accept that your last few days of school are going to be filled with emotion and require your full attention. But the end is near. It may get a little rocky and you may become overwhelmed, but soon you’ll be packing up your classroom and all your memories from this school year with it. Remember to enjoy your last days and moments with your students.l

Putting the Kibosh on Online Cheating Kids today know how to use technology for just about everything— unfortunately, that includes for cheating on tests and assignments. Here are some ways you can prevent online cheating: •

Mix it up, with tests having a variety of multiple-choice, true/false and open-ended questions. It’s more difficult for students to share answers when they must explain concepts.

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Have every student start the exam at the same time and set a time limit. The key is having enough time for students who know the information to respond, but not enough time for students who don’t know the material to search online for answers.

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Only show one question at a time, so students can’t be searching ahead on Google.

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Change test question sequence, so all students do not have the same question at one time, to avoid screen sharing.

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Give students different versions of the same test to thwart screen sharing.

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Give students their scores all at the same time, so that students who finish early don’t confirm answers for those still working.

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Increase points for class participation.

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Talk about integrity, and have students sign an “academic integrity” agreement.l

Source: California Teachers Association

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Photo and photo illustration by iStock

‘Talk to Students about Their Power’

FIRST PERSON: NARRATIVES FROM THE CLASSROOM

‘Two Truths’ Works, and I’m not Lying…

Photo by iStock

— Courtney Cutright

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The Sunday evening blues—most educators know the feeling or have seen the memes. The weekend is winding down and you’re thinking about the week ahead. Are lesson plans completed? Are assignments posted? What else needs to be done to ensure a smooth Monday morning?

Sunday evenings can be a rough time for me, especially when I allow myself to feel the pressures and demands of the coming week. I usually have good intentions of making most of my lesson plans the week before, but that doesn’t always happen—and it certainly didn’t happen the week before spring break.

So, the Sunday evening following spring break, I was brainstorming quick, low- or no-prep ways to reset the classroom atmosphere following the much-needed respite. I knew I would need to ease my 12- and 13-year-old students, many of whom still were recovering from the switch to Daylight Savings Time, back into the groove of the school routine because I was feeling the struggle myself.

I opted for an activity that can be used as an icebreaker and to boost relationships while also incorporating writing and grammar instruction.

Two Truths and a Lie is an easy warmup game my students have enjoyed this year. To play, students receive a blank index card on which they write two true statements about themselves and one that’s a lie. I read the statements aloud, and students guess which of their classmates’ statements are untrue. The goal is to make it difficult for guessers to detect the lie.

Since students were familiar with this game, I added a twist requiring students to recall pre-spring break content on independent and dependent clauses. For this round of Two Truths and a Lie, students were asked to write one of

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each sentence type we had studied: simple, compound, and complex.

The fun get-to-know-you exercise provided an informal snapshot assessment of skill mastery, which was useful, but I was more interested in reconnecting with my students before resuming lessons.

The most alarming truth was from a girl who wrote she pulled all-nighters with her boyfriend for the whole week.

Fortunately, she elaborated that this occurred over video chat and not actually in person. Lots of the students’ truths had to do with their disrupted sleep schedules: • “I slept a lot.”

• “I stayed up late, and I didn’t sleep some nights.”

• “I walked every morning before 6 a.m.” (I learned this was because he had not been to bed.)

• “I never really woke till like 2 p.m.”

Some of the responses were funny, including the one from the quirky oversharer whose meal from Taco Bell left him with some (ahem) digestive issues. That was a truth, and let’s just say you will thank me for paraphrasing his response instead of quoting it directly.

One boy’s lie was that he “participated in Easter.” Even he laughed heartily when we told him it wouldn’t be Easter for another two weeks.

Some tried to trick their beloved English teacher (me) with lies about reading. The most outlandish: “I read 5,000 books.” A little more believable: “I read a long book, but I didn’t like it.” And there was a reading-related truth that was just plain hurtful: “I finished a book because I had to.”

A couple of kids took trips to Washington, D.C., and a few others visited beaches. Some stayed in town for sports practices, others to play video games. Instead of a “How I Spent My Break” essay, this was a quick way to reacquaint ourselves.

The activity allowed me some follow-up questions on the spot, which sometimes prompted further class discussion, and had the bonus effect of building community among the students. This also helped set the tone in the classroom as we entered the final stretch of the academic year and the taxing season of standardized testing.

Despite classes beginning in a relaxed mode the day after the break, there were a few moans and groans when it was time to transition to silent reading. Those sounds likely were emitted from the handful of students who dozed off and needed a nudge during the quiet period—not exactly surprising given the interruptions to their circadian rhythms.

Two Truths and a Lie provided the context to help me to be a bit more understanding. It pays to spend a little time getting to know students.l Cutright (courtcut@gmail.com), a member of the Roanoke County Education Association, teaches English at Northside Middle School.

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