Dodge phone calls and e-mails.

The situation: Look, I have seven classes with 25 kids in each one. With over 170 students, I don’t have time to use the restroom, let alone return a call. I get to my e-mail when I get to it. I have papers to grade, lessons to plan, and another class in 15 minutes. Maybe I’ll get to that phone call or e-mail after school. Tomorrow. No, wait. Friday.

The solution: This is a common problem among the busy. We’re juggling so many preps, so many kids, and so many papers that a parent phone call seems like too much. Carve out the first fifteen minutes of every prep period for parent phone calls. Make it a regular part of your routine and it won’t seem like a burden.

Never pick up the phone.

The situation: I’m a young teacher. My students’ parents intimidate me. Heck, my own parents still intimidate me. I worry that the parent might be frustrated or upset and I have no idea what to say to these people on the phone. Maybe it’s a bad time to call. I should probably do it later. Tomorrow. No, wait. Friday.

The solution: Enlist the help of a friend or mentor. Ask that person to play the role of parent and practice the phone call before you dial the number. Write down the key points you’d like to make when you’re on the phone and include some positive things along with any negative things. If you’re still nervous, ask to sit with a colleague while he calls a few parents so you can hear how he does it.

Stay in the power position.

The situation: I sit behind my desk when parents meet with me in my classroom. It’s just easier. I’m more comfortable, I can reach for files, my computer, and my grade book. Parents don’t seem to mind. No one’s complained.

The solution: You don’t realize it, but sitting behind the teachers’ desk is a power position. It tells parents that you and the parents aren’t partners; you’re the one making decisions. As much as it’s easier for you to access papers and grades, it’s better to gather those materials before the meeting and sit alongside the parent at a table. Look at papers together and discuss what’s best for the student as equals.

Stick to a negative message.

The situation: You’re having a parent meeting because Tony isn’t doing well in class, refuses to open his textbook, and either sleeps in class or argues. You have changed Tony’s seat, called home, talked to the guidance counselor, sent him to the office, conferenced with him privately, but nothing has worked and you’re frustrated. The parent enters your room and you show her documentation of every rule infraction Tony has had for the past nine weeks. She leaves angry and frustrated – with you.

The solution: The parent doesn’t think that you like her kid. She thinks that you’re just looking for everything Tony has done wrong while ignoring the fact that Tony is a gifted kid who is bored. It’s important to always look for one good thing every day about students, especially problem students. No one is all good or all bad and recognizing that the student has good behavior, too, will help you and the parent arrive at a solution.

Use as many technical terms as possible.

The situation: You want to appear knowledgeable and competent. So to make your points, you talk to the parent about her daughter’s learning styles, potential discipline plans, and a possible meeting with the BCT. You offer to involve the guidance counselor in meetings so he can explain the student’s affective behavior and adolescent behavior norms in addition to explaining the student’s cognitive behavior on standardized tests.

The solution: Keep talking like this and even you won’t understand yourself. Many parents don’t like to come to school because they remember their own unpleasant experiences with k12 education. They feel inadequate and uncomfortable instead of like the teacher’s partner in learning. Parents who feel this way stay out of the building and don’t answer the phone. Be approachable.

Parent involvement really is important to student success. Even though teens try to exert their independence and push their parents away, studies show that grades improve when fathers are involved in their students’ education. When mothers are involved, students have fewer discipline problems.

The educational aspirations of young African-American males are influenced by the choices that are available to them. With more than one third of African-American children living below the federal poverty line, over 60% living in single parent homes, and a high school graduation rate of only 50% in some states, African-American children, particularly males, face numerous barriers to academic success. However, every Black community, regardless of economic resources, contains shining examples of young Black men who achieve in school, regardless of immeasurable social disadvantages.

Importantly, education policy needs to examine the full scope of the experience of African-American males to improve their school performance. In Breaking Barriers: How Teachers can Help Black Males Achieve in School, I provide strong empirical support for the impact that personal and emotional, family, social and environmental, and school factors play in the ability of young males to perform and successfully participate in an academic setting.

Achievement gaps, racial disparities in learning and school funding, and the growth of punitive measures to address student academic and social behavior are only some of the issues that educators and administrators face in the battle to improve student performance. Not surprisingly, research evidence indicates that the better students felt about their lives, the more positive was their engagement and academic outcome in school. Students who had a less positive outlook had lower academic achievement.

The research also revealed strong evidence that modeling is an important component to academic development among Black adolescent males. Father’s education, but not mother’s education, had a significant impact on Black males’ academic achievement. Generally, parents who helped their children with homework, who were comfortable talking to teachers, who urged their children to do well in school and who maintained high expectations generally had higher-performing children.

“Liking” school and not being “bored” by school appears to be language that is particularly salient to school adaptive patterns for Black males. Two national surveys demonstrated that the more Black males report that they like school, and the less they report being bored by school, the better their educational outcomes. Black males also need to believe that what they are learning is important for their future and that the school work is meaningful. Research findings also revealed that academic failure among young Black males may also be attributed to feeling pressured by school work and feeling that school rules are too strict. Notably, low-achieving Black male students’ sense that they “belong” at school was similar to high-achieving Black male students. “Belonging” might be an initial investment in the learning process for low-achieving Black students that could ultimately foster an interest in school.

Across three national surveys, through the findings, a profile of a teacher that was particularly effective in fostering academic growth among Black males clearly emerged. High-achieving Black male students reported that their teachers were interested in them “as a person,” treated them fairly, encouraged them to express their views and gave extra help when needed. Teachers who were effective also routinely let their students know when they did a good job. Overall, Black male students who were successful perceived their teachers to be respectful people who treated them like they matter and nurturing people who builds up their strengths, instead of making them “feel bad” about their weaknesses.

The findings clearly demonstrated that Black male students perform best in environments that they perceive as safe. Low-achieving Black male students were more likely to carry a weapon to school for self-defense than middle- or high-achieving Black male students. High-achieving Black male students reported more often that they feel safe at school. The findings also revealed that Black students were significantly more likely than white or Hispanic students to feel unsafe at school. Current school safety measures explored in this study did not have a relationship to academic achievement among African-American students. These issues indicate a need for greater mental health services in schools and African-American communities.

For most, the research revealed in this study will remind them of, or provide statistical support for, commonly held truisms in contemporary education. Education is most effective when it promotes positive school-related growth experiences, with particular emphasis on teacher-child relationships, didactic learning and emotional support. Positive parent-child communication, including parents expressing praise, helping with homework, talking about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and cooperative parenting arrangements, promotes academic success among Black males. Providing community resources and academic assistance to children in low-income areas, which build character through civic engagement, volunteerisms and sports, can improve academic functioning. Most importantly, we must advocate for policy that reduces racial disparities in income and increases equity and inclusion in education.

Except, along the way, we’ve forgotten some kids.

We’re doing well at the middle and that’s great, but the demographics have remained almost unchanged for students who excelled in education standards like reading and math.

The Excellence Gap. According to a study from the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy, “As measured by the percentage of students scoring at the advanced level on the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], the excellence gap has been stable or growing for each type of demographic group (gender, ELL, race, and free lunch eligibility).”

But those gains are either statistically very small (less than one percent gains) or the disadvantaged groups’ scores have been stagnant, the study’s authors wrote. While the disadvantaged students’ scores remained the same, those of their advantaged peers rose.

Anecdotally, it seems that the strides we’ve made to decrease the achievement gap among the lower-scoring students would help improve all students’ scores. However, that’s not the case.

The authors wrote that, “[…] the act of helping underrepresented students trying to reach basic competence by itself seems unrelated to the scores of their peers at higher levels of achievement.”

Inequity among G/T Offerings. Part of the problem, the report’s authors wrote, is that gifted education programs are spotty. The federal government doesn’t fund gifted education, so it’s up to the states to budget for the programs. So, there’s no consistency in gifted education from state to state and even from school to school.

Wealthier school districts are able to offer more gifted education programs to their students, but many districts are cutting their offerings, their teaching positions, and gifted programming.

“Poorer districts, which often have greater Black, Hispanic, and ELL populations, would be unable to provide their students with the same opportunities [as affluent districts],” the report’s authors wrote.

Black and White students enter kindergarten with essentially the same reading and math capabilities, the authors wrote. Over the years, Black students fall behind the White students. This gap grows even faster for the Black students who had initially high math and reading scores. Fewer school resources, fewer enrichment activities, and less able teachers in the disadvantaged schools might be the factors that hold these students back.

How Can We Bridge the Excellence Gap? The report’s authors recommend more studies that focus specifically on the excellence gap and not just on the NCLB’s minimal competency requirements.

They also recommend:

• Making the excellence gap a national and state priority.
• Addressing both minimal competency and excellence at the same time.
• Set targets to close the excellence gap.

The excellence gap didn’t begin with NCLB, the authors wrote, but our current focus on minimum competency isn’t the way to grow our country’s scientists, engineers, and other highly skilled workers.

“[…] continuing to pretend that a nearly complete disregard of high achievement is permissible, especially among underperforming subgroups, is a formula for a mediocre K-12 education system and long-term economic decline,” the authors wrote.

Reference:

Plucker, J.A., Burroughs, N., and Song, R. (2009) Mind the (Other) Gap! The Growing Excellence Gap in K-12 Education.” Center for Evaluation & Education Policy. http://ceep.indiana.edu/mindthegap/ Accessed 2/15/10.

But when the final bell rings, the students exit the double doors and return to the world where they spend two-thirds of their time. If the students are urban Black males, chances are that they won’t graduate from high school (Livingston & Nahimana, 2006). There’s also a good chance that many of them have had a disciplinary referral this year (1 in 4), take remedial reading lessons, are enrolled in special education, have been expelled, score low on standardized tests, and have never seen the inside of a Gifted and Talented classroom (Whiting, 2006).

Although 72 percent of Black males graduate from high school, just 45 percent of Black males in urban schools do. Instead of learning the curriculum, these urban Black males learn the lessons educators didn’t intend to teach: they can’t achieve and school is not for them (Whiting, 2006).

However, the authors of “Problem Child or Problem Context: An Ecological Approach to Young Black Males” have identified two important factors to help Black males achieve. Livingston and Nahimana wrote that educators must understand the structural, social, and psychological challenges that Black males face and they must also identify the expectations that teachers in their school have for young Black males.

Livingston and Nahimana advocate for a multi-pronged approach, or an ecological approach to improving Black males’ academic success. Instead of just focusing on how the school personnel can support these students, they look to all of the influences on the students’ lives and how the family, community, church, or clubs can encourage their success.

For the most part, urban Black male students live in poverty. Their houses are run down, their families are unstable, and their neighborhoods are unsafe. One in three Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 are in prison, so they’re unable to support their families. Black men are twice as likely as White men to be unemployed. In some urban cities, Black male unemployment is between 35 and 55 percent. (Livingston and Nahimana, 2006)

These Black males are discouraged. They feel unsuccessful because they can’t find work and can’t support their families. The men leave their families because they can’t provide for them. The poverty, unemployment, lack of education, unstable families, and unsafe streets feed the cycle of hopelessness that swirls around our urban Black male students.

The situation’s bad, but we have options, the authors write. Most of their suggestions involve introducing positive Black male role models into the students’ lives. These are probably folks they don’t see in their neighborhoods, so it’s good for them to understand that they have options and that an educated Black man can look like them.

Some of the authors’ tips are:

• Encourage Black male professionals to serve as mentors for the students
• Recruit more Black male teachers to serve as role models in the school
• Offer teachers professional development so they understand their students’ backgrounds and barriers to education
• Collaborate with community organizations to create opportunities for students (like job shadowing)

They write that schools need to take a holistic approach to helping urban Black males achieve academic success. We can’t just look within our schools for the answers; we must invite the community to participate as well.

“[…] educators must account for and be mindful of the cultural, social structural, and psychological realities that impact Black male development,” they write. “Our understanding and perceptions of them shape what we teach them and what they believe they can become.”

References:

Livingston, J. and Nahimana, C. (2006.) Problem Child or Problem Context: An Ecological Approach to Young Black Males. Reclaiming Children and Youth. 14:4, 209-214.

Whiting, G. (2006.) From At Risk to At Promise: Developing Scholar Identities Among Black Males. The Journal of Secondary Education. 17:4, 222-229.

Burnout. It’s out there. Somewhere. And like a bad flu, it’s coming to get you.

Or is it?

Actually, no. It’s not coming at you. You might be moving toward it, but burnout isn’t something that lurks in shadows waiting to grab you. It’s really rather passive. It sits in front of you like a potted plant. In fact, it’s not scary at all. It might cast a large shadow over the conversations we have about teaching and educators, but it is quite frankly a rather benign little thing in some ways. Let me explain.

Burnout isn’t a mysterious, undefined thing we hope we don’t catch. It’s a well-defined and studied condition that we can daily and constantly guard against with relatively little effort. It’s simply a hot pan on the stove. Don’t touch it! And if you do, put on some oven mitts. (Not sure how many metaphors to sprinkle in here, but I’m on a roll and I’m not going to stop.)

Here’s how burnout is defined by Herbert Freudenberger, a researcher who coined the term “burnout” in 1974:

Burnout is a state of exhaustion that results from working too intensely and without concern for one’s own needs.

So there. That’s what burnout is. It’s out there, but we can avoid it.

Researchers have gone on to define three primary traits of burnout. They are as follows:
Emotional exhaustion: Teachers feel that they can no longer give of themselves to students as they did earlier in their careers.

Depersonalization: Teachers develop negative, cynical, and sometimes callous attitudes towards students, parents, and/or colleagues.

Diminished Personal Accomplishment: Teachers perceive themselves as ineffective in helping students learn, and unmotivated in fulfilling their other school responsibilities.

So there you have it. Burnout defined, broken down, and explained. Once we name something and identify it, it sort of loses its mystique. Notice that the traits of burnout are almost entirely within our control. No federal mandate or district policy or misguided legislation has control over these traits. You do. We do together as colleagues. While mandates and policies might tell us what we have to do, they rarely dictate how we do the work. That’s our decision.

Then that leaves the big question: “How do I, as an individual and a colleague, help to avoid burnout?” There is no simple answer, but the keys to success rely on how we set our priorities, both as individuals and organizations. Remember in the definition of burnout, Freudenberger notes that at the core of burnout is a failure to recognize adequately our own needs. Pause on that idea for a moment. Rewind your life about six months into the middle of summer. What were you doing? Exercising? Reading for pleasure? Pursuing an interest? Spending time with family and friends? Getting enough sleep?

And how about now as the school year nears the midway point? Are you still mindful daily about your own needs, expectations, and boundaries? Or has something occurred in the past few months where that is no longer the case?

Looking back at the traits that define burnout, here are the three strands you need to address to remain that better version of yourself that maybe existed just a few short months back:

1. Purposeful and high-priority care of yourself so that you’re able to give of yourself to teaching in a sustainable and healthy manner.
2. Positive relationships with students, parents, and peers so that your best self shows up to work.
3. Finding daily opportunities to do what you do best so that each day has an air of success.

To these ends, here are 10 steps you can take to make this come true:

1. Keep exercising!
   Chances are good you spent time working out in the summer. You had the time to do it, the days were beautiful, and you weren’t squeezing a run or walk or swim in amongst 50 other things you had to get done. Now that school has started, the time might be a little tighter, but those good feelings will feel just as good! Schedule it. Find a partner. Go for department meeting walks!
2. Read for pleasure.
   It’s wonderful to sit outside with a good book and devour some literature for pleasure. But once school starts, that time might get eaten away. Don’t let it. Find time to read for pleasure, giving your brain that wonderful escape it needs to stay fresh. Even better yet: start a book club with colleagues. You’ll build camaraderie while you read!
3. Keep going outside.
   Even for those of you who live in fluctuating weather patterns like I do (I live in Minnesota), keep getting that fresh air you need. In fact, do it during the workday. Go for a walk during part of your planning hour. Take your classes outside on warm days. And don’t forget to breathe!
4. Keep learning.
   Whether it was a trip to a museum or reading some interesting book, summers are a great time for you play the part of a student and do some wonderful learning. That doesn’t need to stop when the school year starts. Learn alongside your students. Share your newfound interests with them and colleagues. Just don’t stop learning!
5. Spend time with your family.
   Just because you might not be up at the lake or sitting around the backyard doesn’t mean you can’t slow down and relax with your family. Sometimes it takes work to not work. Work hard at creating space and time with your family so that you can rejuvenate with those you love the most.
6. Spend time with your friends.
   Friends of teachers probably say, “See you in June!” when the school year starts. Nonsense! Keep etching out time to hang out with your friends and try really hard to not talk about work!
7. Get plenty of sleep.
   Commit to it. You know you’re your best when you’ve had enough sleep. That shouldn’t be seasonal!
8. Keep exploring your hobbies and interests.
   Summer might be your time for knitting or woodworking or gardening. These activities bring you pleasure, focus, relaxation, and escape. These are the very things you need more of during the school year. Don’t let them fade.
9. Reflect on your work.
   During the summer and vacations, you have time to think about your work, your life, your students, and the BIG questions that might surround you. Don’t let the intensity and chaos of a school year take away your time to reflect about your life as a teacher. Pause often. Remain mindful of yourself.
10. Check in on your goals.
    Chances are good you started a new year with goals and hopes that came from reflection and learning. Check in on your personal progress towards these goals often. If you’re not being the teacher you wanted to be or there are things you want to improve, then do it! There’s nothing in your way but a little effort.

There’s nothing mythical or mysterious then about burnout. Don’t worry. It’s not coming to get you, but it does exist. It’s up to you and your colleagues whether or not you experience it.

As for me, I’m going to go for a run.