Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 600

Teachers suck at PR

Before you begin reading this, please know that this post reflects the culmination of twelve years of teaching and does not pertain specifically to anyone who I work with in my profession at this time.  The thoughts and observations contained herein reflect the broad spectrum of my experiences as a teacher and as a parent who interacted with teachers.  It is in no way an indictment of the friends and colleagues with whom I currently share my working life and pertains to no one specifically, past or present. 

It should also be noted that while I am about to proselytize about the public relations of teaching, I am not without fault.  But when it comes to promoting the work that takes place within the walls of my classroom, I like to think that I do an above average job, but I am hardly perfect. 

Could I do better?  Certainly.  And I try like hell to be reflective about the decisions I make. 

I can be pretty tough on myself, as my occasionally frustrated wife can readily attest.  

With all that said:

Teachers suck at public relations.  As public support for teachers and their unions wane, too many teachers have little or no sense of the image that we project onto the public, and more important, the ramifications that this image can have on the future of education. 

And while teachers are to blame for this failing, colleges and universities do little by way of training teachers on how to effectively work with parents and the community at large in order to promote learning that takes place in the classroom and project a positive image of public education.

It makes no sense.

As a result, teachers are often lost when it comes to promoting themselves and the work that they do.  They are often quiet, overly humble and tragically understated when the opposite is needed in today's climate. 

This is why they become easy targets when budgets tighten and cuts are required.

We must become more effective at promoting the important work that we do. 

A few examples:

EXAMPLE #1

A friend of mine in Rhode Island teaches at a school that celebrates the end of standardized testing with Movie Day, a school day in which students spend most of the day watching G-rated films and relaxing.

Movie Day?

In the mind of many taxpayers, this sounds more like Give The Teachers A Day Off Day or Let The Chinese Continue To Surpass Us In Education Day.  Even though I am certain that the teachers in his school are spending their time preparing lessons, grading papers, analyzing assessment data and managing behaviors, Movie Day will never be viewed as an academically meaningful day by the average taxpayer.

Nor should it.  

As a result, Movie Day must go.  Kids go to school for 180 days a year.  The last thing they need to do is spend a day watching movies. They can use the other 182 days in the year to catch up on the latest films.

Even if it's somehow educationally justifiable, it's bad PR.

No, it's immensely stupid PR.

EXAMPLE #2

One of the largest educational initiatives currently in play in Connecticut and around the country centers on a program called SRBI, which stands for Scientific Research Based Interventions.  These are the teaching and assessment strategies and data driven decision making procedures that educators are now using to target struggling learners in our classrooms. 

But did you notice the name of the program?

Scientific Research Based Interventions. 

What the hell were the designers of this program thinking?

Were they trying to imply that everything that educators have done prior to SRBI was fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants guesswork.

What were teachers using prior to SRBI?

MUSASIIW? (Make Up Stuff And See If It Works)

Hardly.

There has been mountains of scientifically-based research conducted in the field of education for decades. 

The last thing we need is an intervention system with a name that implies otherwise.

Do you see Apple implementing a new MAPS program? (Mathematically Accurate Programming Strategies)

Or Aetna implementing PLIP? (Profitable, Legal Insurance Practices)

Or Disney implementing FADS? (Fun Absent Dangerous Scenarios)

Of course not.

Yet our brand new program of learning interventions has a name that unnecessarily emphasizes the fact that some jerk just didn't make it up in his head.

Stupid.

EXAMPLE #3

In my experience as a parent and as a teacher, I have encountered teachers who build enormous walls of faux-professionalism between themselves and parents, thus preventing our most potentially vocal and supportive constituents from gathering the positive information that we should be disseminating out there on a daily basis.

These are the teachers who feel that parents should be seen and not heard. 

You can usually identify these teachers by the following characteristics:

They never learn the first names of the parents of their students.  They make only token attempts (or not attempt at all) to get parent volunteers into the classroom (one of the best ways to promote the good work done by teachers) They dress exceedingly formal for meetings with parents but considerably less formal when interacting with students (as if parents aren't fully aware of the shifty nature of their wardrobes) They assume that they are always right and make no room for the possibility that parents might know more than they do when it comes to education.

For example, for years I was told by parents that I would become an even better teacher once I had children of my own, and that not having children caused me to have a blind spot in terms of the parent-teacher-student dynamic.  I always assumed that this was not true, but I left room for the possibility and told these parents as much.

And it turns out that I was wrong and the parents were right.  I am a much better teacher now that I am a parent, and I would venture to guess that this applies to almost everyone in the education field. 

Having a child of your own provides you with an indescribable perspective that is incredibly useful as a teacher.  

But until you have kids, it's almost impossible to see.

As a teacher, you need to be smart enough to account for this possibility, and more importantly, for the possibility that the  untrained parent of one of your students might know more than you do and can be exceedingly helpful in the education of their child.

Some teachers understand this.  Others prefer to assume that they are the experts and should assume the position of ultimate authority. 

This is foolish, and it projects an image of a profession filled with close-minded, unapproachable people. 

Colleges, universities and school systems would be wise to begin instructing teachers on how to promote the work that they do.  The same public relations and publicity professionals who work to enhance the image of businesses, corporations, entertainers and even authors must also be utilized in enhancing the image of the teaching profession.

We must learn how to reach out and engage the public in the work we do everyday.  So many remarkably skilled educations work tirelessly in order to help children learn, and yet so much of this good work goes unnoticed by the public at large.

If we want our public schools to be adequately funded and our profession to be respected, we must begin to do the hard work that is required in order to let people know who we are and what we do. 

Last nights Moth audience, courtesy of Dan Kennedy

You can actually see me on the far left in a black and white tee-short, looking decidedly less enthusiastic than the rest. 

I won The Moth StorySlam last night, and I still cant believe it.

Yesterday was one of those days that I will never forget.

Last night I had the honor of telling a story at one of The Moth's StorySlams at The Nuyorican Poets Café in the Lower Eat Side.  My goal was to simply be chosen to tell my story, but at the end of the night, I was fortunate enough to be named the winner of the StorySlam!

For those of you who don't know, The Moth is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the art of live storytelling without notes.

More details here.

It's an organization I have supported for a long time and love dearly.  I listen to their weekly podcast and have had the pleasure of attending a couple of their events in the past, and so I made it one of my New Year's resolutions to tell a story onstage at a Moth event sometime this year.

To be completely honest, it was one of those unlikely-to-happen resolutions, but placing it on the list increased the chances of it happening.  

And so as you may know, I pitched a story via their website about a month ago, and so far it has been well received by listeners.  My hope was that this pitch might ultimately land me on a Moth stage.

But last night attended one of their storytelling events with Elysha with hopes of somehow making it to the stage. 

Ten names were chosen randomly from a field of about fifteen storytellers to tell a story, and three teams of judges scored the storytellers based upon quality of their story, how well the story applied to last night's theme (Ego) and how well it conformed to the time limit (5 minutes). 

I was chosen last and told a story about my days as a high school pole vaulter. 

When the scores were tallied, I was the winner.

I couldn't believe it.

Honestly, I still can't believe it. 

It's funny, because people who know The Moth and love The Moth might understand what a big deal this is for me, but if you have never heard of The Moth before, it's incredibly difficult to convey the amazing nature of the organization and the people involved.  There were probably about 200 people in that café last night, lined up two hours before the doors opened, all passionate about storytelling. 

It's a remarkable organization, and to think that I was able to participate was amazing enough.  Winning the event and now having the opportunity to compete at a GrandSlam competition in September alongside other StorySlam winners is more than I could have ever dreamed. 

I got home last night around 1:30, went to bed around 2:00 and woke up around 5:30 to play a round of golf, and I was still walking on air.  

I know it sounds a little silly, but in the grand scheme of things, the birth of my daughter was probably the most important day of my life.  Next comes the marriage to my wife, and then the sale of my first book, and then maybe this.

Perhaps I'll tell more stories in the future, and The Moth will become old hat for me, but on this day, at this moment, I couldn't be more happy.

It was a big night for me, and one I will never forget. 

The stories were recorded, and so there is a chance, albeit slim, that my story may be one day chosen for their podcast, and if so, you will have a chance to hear it as it was told.  But I wrote the story out beforehand, and although what I said onstage did not match what I wrote (there were many additions and deletions to the story as I spoke), I'll clean it up and post a copy of my story as I wrote it sometime this week for anyone who would like to read it.

My thanks to Dan Kennedy, last night's host, as well as all the people who make The Moth happen at venues around the country every week.  You are the best. 

And most especially my thanks to the most supportive, enthusiastic audience that a storyteller could ever ask for.  It is impossible to be nervous about stepping on that stage when the building is filled with people dying to hear your story. 

My most heartfelt appreciation to all.  

See you in September at the GrandSlam!

   

My petty little slice of Facebook hell

Sometimes I Like a friend's status update on Facebook just so I can later Unlike it because it annoys me so much.

Facebook needs a Dislike button very badly.

This would be an amusing anecdote, and perhaps a clever tweet, if it weren't true. 

The fact that I actually take the time to Like two or three sentences of digital text simply so I can Unlike the same two or three sentences immediately thereafter is a little sick.

No?

Desperately seeing an Oceans 11 answer

Ocean's 11 aficionados, I have a question that I desperately want answered. 

Here's the scene:

Danny and Linus have knocked out the guards outside the vault with a smoke grenade.  They bang on the vault door.  Yen is in the vault, and he bangs as well, indicating that he is ready to go.  Yen applies a single explosive charge on his side of the vault and Danny applies a circle of charges on his side.  There is a brief moment of tension when Yen's bandaged hand gets stuck in the vault and the detonator in Danny's hand thankfully fails due to dead batteries, but eventually the door is blown off off and everyone is safe.

Here is what I am missing:

There are floor sensors in the vault.  This is the reason Yen has been hired in the first place.  He can leap from the cash cart to the vault door because he is an acrobat.  But when they blow open the vault door, wouldn't these floor sensors fire off, indicating the intruders? 

How could they not?

Right?

So what am I missing?

This has been bothering me a lot.

Not quite as much as the notion that an EMP would temporarily disable power to the Vegas strip (an EMP permanently destroys any electronic device that it operating at the time of the pulse is released), but it's a close second.

The EMP annoys me because it could have been easily fixed.  There are any number of amusing ways in which Basher could have knocked out power to the casinos, so why would the writers specifically choose exceptionally faulty science to get the job done?

But at least I know that this is a mistake.

I keep feeling like there is an explanation to the floor sensor issue. 

Someone ease my mind and explain what I am missing.  Please?

Bachmanns latest history lesson. This time on slavery.

From a piece in The Daily Beast:

Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum apparently aren't close readers, having signed a pledge from a Christian group in Iowa that said black families were stronger under slavery.

"A child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the U.S.A.'s first African-American President," read the offending passage, which has since been removed.

Bachmann tried to distance herself by saying she supported only the "candidate's vow" section of the pledge, which her spokeswoman says she still supports.

So either she:

A.  Signs things without bothering to read them

B.  Believes that you can sign a document even though parts of it are so offensive that you must eventually demand that they be removed

C.  She just did what her husband told her to do.

It's getting to the point that you can't make this stuff up. 

First she adds a nine-year old to our list of Founding Fathers, and now this.

Honestly, I feel like Bachmann's campaign would be better off if she just stopped talking for at least a month.

Douchebags Make it Douchy For Non-Douchebags to Wear Watches

The New York Times published a piece this weekend on watches entitled Watches Are Rediscovered by the Cellphone Generation

Excerpts from the piece reads:

But after going watch-free for much of the last decade, the three men — all in their 30s and considered style influencers — are turning back time. Mr. Thoreson, 38, is shopping for a vintage gold IWC with a white dial or a Rolex GMT-Master. Mr. Chai, 38, has been wearing a vintage Rolex, loosely dangling around his wrist, "not as a timepiece, but as a piece of jewelry," he said.

And Mr. Williams, 32, splurged on three watches: an IWC Portuguese, a Rolex GMT-Master II and an Omega Speedmaster, also known as the "moon watch," since that is what Apollo astronauts wore.

"The men's-wear set has recently rediscovered the joy of proper mechanical timepieces," Mr. Williams said. "Right now there is no clearer indication of cool than wearing a watch. If it was your grandfather's bubbleback Rolex, even better."

"It's an understated statement about your station in life, your taste level," Mr. Thoreson said.

"In certain circles," Mr. Thoreson said, "if you don't have a substantial timepiece with some pedigree, you feel like you're missing out on something."

In light of these comments and the rest of the story in general. I would like to propose some alternative titles that are perhaps a little more fitting. 

Douchbaggery Reaches the Wrist Bowling for Soup Was Right:  High School Never Ends Apologies in Advance for Making You Throw Up in Your Own Mouth Newly Un-datable Men Find Materialistic Joy in Watches Social Suicide in The New York Times Style Section Men With Small Penises Get Nostalgic In Search For Menial Attention Old-School Accessories for Men Who Can't Strap their Mercedes or their Penises to their Wrists Little Boys with Fancy Toys New York Douchebags Seek to Recreate Victorian England for No Discernable Purpose Douchebags Make it Douchy For Non-Douchebags to Wear Watches

An archeological moment in the making

This is how it happens.

My daughter creates an elaborate scene involving her little people, like the one most recently posted, and then she turns around and finds something else interesting, leaving behind the evidence of her play for archeologists to later unearth.  

Sort of a Pompeii of the toy world.

And my wife managed to capture this phenomenon on film for our viewing pleasure. 

Dance party or deadly ambush?

Here is my daughter's latest little people scene.

My wife believes that the human beings are dancing on stage while the dragons watch.

I believe that the dragons are preparing to ambush and devour a party of travelers who are attempting to cross hostile territory in their stage coach.

They are dragons, after all.

Opinions?

     

If you are going to perpetrate a fraud, please dont be stupid about it.

While I don't support fraud, I can understand engaging in it for profit's sake. 

When there is enough reward, the risks can sometimes become reasonable.

But when there is little or no benefit to the fraud, or the risks seriously outweigh the rewards, I have to assume that anyone attempting such a thing is as stupid as they come.

The recent revelations about the cheating taking place by Atlanta school teachers is a good example of this.  For the possible reward of improved test scores, increased job security and satisfied administrators, teachers and principals chose to place their careers, the public trust and possible prison time on the line by changing answers on standardized tests and facilitating student cheating during testing periods.   

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.  

The risk-reward ratio in this scenario is ridiculous.   

And I have to wonder:

Hasn't anyone in the Atlanta school system read FREAKONOMICS or the related literature on school cheating?  Identifying cheating has become a simple examination of the data.  From the privacy of their nondescript cubicles, statisticians can look at a set of assessment data and determine which teacher is cheating and which one is not.

It is simply a matter of pressing a few buttons on a calculator. 

Making the attempt at fraud even more stupid. 

An even more egregious case in point:

The CBS television affiliate in Boston recently falsified the images of the fireworks display from the Fourth of July in order to improve the quality of the footage. 

Boston-based executive producer David Dugar admitted that the station had shot well known landmarks such as Fenway Park, Quincy Market, and the State House prior to the fireworks show and then superimposed these images into the video footage before airing it to the public.

Dugar defended his decision by claiming that the show represented entertainment rather than news, thus placing him squarely in the same camp as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann in terms of his ability to admit fault. 

Viewers began calling into the Boston Globe on Friday to say it was impossible that the fireworks could have appeared over the famous city landmarks when they were launched in the opposite direction from the Charles River.

Once again making the attempt at fraud even more stupid.

So the CBS affiliate comes across as looking foolish and incompetent, and for what?

Had they not been caught, to what advantage would the falsified video footage have served?  Were the producers hoping to create a social media buzz about the remarkable quality of the broadcast in hopes of drawing more viewers next year?

Do they really think that a fireworks display on television is buzz-worthy?

Does the advertising that they sell before and after the fireworks really amount to much in the grand scheme of things?

Was there any money at all to be made had this fraud been successful?

And what did the television station risk?

In addition to the embarrassment that they have experienced on a national level, they have now transformed their fireworks broadcast into the only one that should be avoided next year.  In their short-sighted and inexplicable effort to boost ratings for a blip on the programming radar, they have found a way to make their fireworks broadcast the only one in the history of television that cannot be trusted. 

In addition, they managed to damage the reputation of their station in the process.

Like I said, I'm not defending fraud, and I don't recommend that anyone engage in it.

But if you decide to do so, at least be smart about it.  Make informed decisions and ensure that the risks are balanced by the potential benefits in the event that your fraud is successful.

Adding immorality to the world is bad enough.  Don't add any more stupidity in the process. 

We have plenty of that already.