Introducing Mrs. Gradgrind

Dear Reader, welcome to my humble blog! I’m your host, your tour guide to the madness that engulfs NYC schools, and the little devil sitting on your shoulder, urging you to engage in some badthink of your own. First, let us establish some ground rules using the ever-popular question and answer format.

What is this blog about, Mrs. Gradgrind?

It’s about most things (but not everything) that affect or happen inside of NYC schools. That means it’s about teaching and occasional learning, it’s about teachers and administrators, it’s about students, and it’s about the sometimes-delusional and even outright sadistic policies that affect us all.

What is this blog not about, Mrs. Gradgrind?

It’s not about the minutiae of curriculum or varying pedagogical approaches. It’s not about raising students’ test scores in any direct or concrete sense. It’s sure as hell not about decorating your classroom with multi-colored poster and cutesy charts.

There are so many education blogs, Mrs. Gradgrind. Why should I read yours? Don’t you know I have 97 essays to grade by tomorrow?

I do know that, dear reader. I also know that you are sick unto death of reading essays with little structure, ‘creative’ punctuation, and a total lack of anything resembling an idea. This is going to be way more fun. Come and procrastinate with me!

You still haven’t told me what makes this blog different, Mrs. Gradgrind.

I was kind of hoping you’d have inferred it by now. What makes this blog different is that it is going to take a more broadly theoretical approach than is usual in the education world. I am not going to talking about backwards design, or differentiation, or ‘fun activities to keep your kids engaged at the end of the year!!!!’. I am frankly uninterested in the nuts-and-bolts of your classroom (or mine…) and I have solemnly vowed to stop blogging forever if I ever use the words ‘exit ticket’.

I am terribly interested in figuring out why the NYC schools (and so many others) are such a God-awful mess. Am I not contradicting myself there? If I want to know why the schools are dysfunctional, shouldn’t I be fascinated by every single comma and pre-scripted question in a lesson plan? No, I’m not and I shouldn’t. One of my favorite writers, GK Chesterton, said it best when discussing the commonly-held but wildly erroneous belief that concrete and practical problems require a concrete and practical solution: “A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning, but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning” (116). NYC schools are burning and we will not, therefore, spend our time dwelling on mere daily practice. We will attempt to establish and communicate some doctrine of how learning happens and what learning actually is, of who our students are and who we are, and who we would wish to be. We will be wildly and unashamedly theoretical; since teaching is a supremely human endeavour, we may even wade into such wild waters as the nature of man.

Got it–sort of. But, Mrs. Gradgrind, I still don’t know what badthink means.

Yes, you do. You may not be able to define it, but you absolutely know it when you see it. Badthink refers to all of the ideas that the education establishment has informally (and in some cases formally) banned, so that speaking of them can get you into formal or informal trouble. Badthink includes IQ. It includes the scandalous proposition that not everyone can or should go to college. It includes the sneaking suspicion that some students behave badly because they have free will and make choices. You know what badthink is; you just try not to think about it.

Who are you anyway, Mrs. Gradgrind?

I’m you. I’m the teacher down the hall, the cranky one who drinks too much coffee, or the tired one who cries in the ladies’ room, or the obnoxiously perfect one who only complains after a drink or two. I’m not about to tell you more than that, and I think you can understand why.

After all of that reading, Mrs. Gradgrind, I’m feeling disengaged! I demand that you amuse me! Learning should be fun!

Ok, fine. Try this on for size: a sketch that I wrote while bored out of my mind at today’s interminable professional development.

‘A dialogue between a new principal and an old teacher’

Teacher: Good morning! Welcome to our school. My name is…

Principal: What are you doing wrong? Test scores went down. It’s your fault.

Teacher: Good morning! I’d like to talk about a behavior issue I’m having. You see, one of my students….

Principal: Suspensions are inequitable! Children don’t learn from people they don’t like. Build a relationship!

Teacher: Good morning! I have a couple of questions about this new curriculum…

Principal: We gave you the books, do what they say! You have to modify, you can’t just use the lesson plans from the books!

Teacher: Good morning! I’d like to talk about test prep. I was thinking that after school….

Principal: You can’t teach to the test, you have to engage students with authentic learning activities. And you have to get test scores up!

Teacher: Good morning! Can we talk about that last observation? There were a couple of comments….

Principal: Ineffective, Ineffective, Ineffective!

Teacher: I quit.

Principal: Good riddance!