Aloha At Risk- Education in Hawaii

I'm a busy busy teacher. Along with finishing the next few drafts of my book, He's the Weird Teacher, excerpts from which I appreciate all of you reading here, I am also editing a collection of essays covering a wide variety of topics and writing styles about teaching and education in Hawaii, including first person stories from teachers about working in their classrooms. We, myself and the publishing group Interstitial Press, have begun circulating the CFP (Call For Papers) I have included below. Essay inclusion will be merit-based, so writers with no previous publishing experience need not worry about being overlooked.
We are already in talks with local booksellers about Hawaii distribution and nationwide and international distribution has already been assured.
The title is a parody of the Regan-era study "A Nation At Risk" which jump-started much of the education reform movement in America.

Below is the CFP. Thank you for reading and I look forward to your submissions.

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ALOHA AT RISK: EDUCATION IN HAWAII CFP

Since the release of “A Nation At Risk” in 1983, public education has been subjected to increased scrutiny from political officials, parents, and concerned citizens. In recent years, such scrutiny has given way to calls for comprehensive education reform. Both the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Race to the Top program, respectively inaugurated under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, focus on increasing standards for public schools throughout the United States, while more local initiatives like private school voucher systems and parent “trigger” laws attempt to increase learning opportunities for children by maximizing parental choice and administrative participation.

Yet, these reforms—or 'deforms' as they're called by opponents—have been condemned for being undemocratic, corporatist, and overly punitive. NCLB, for example, has been said to subsume diverse groups of children under reductionist statistical metrics, failing to account for demographic and developmental variances. RTTT continued this trend, according to critics, and added pressure for local school districts to implement costly teacher evaluation protocols based largely on standardized achievement tests, rather than holistic measures of learning growth and professional practice. In an ironic display of political harmony, small-government 'conservatives' and labor-minded 'liberals' alike have attacked national education reforms, the former for impugning states' rights and the latter for undermining collective bargaining.

Hawaii, considered by some political pundits to be the most labor-friendly state in the nation, has been on the frontlines of the battle over public education. One year after receiving an RTTT grant award in 2010, the state was placed on “high risk” status by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to implement reforms quickly enough and prolonging a regressive contract dispute with the Hawaii State Teachers Association. Education reforms are further complicated by events from Hawaii's historical trajectory, including settler colonialism, imperial overthrow of native governance, suppression of indigenous culture, and plantation economics, each of which inform the state's current sociopolitical structure and discursive condition.

This interdisciplinary essay collection seeks to engage the theme of “education in Hawaii” from a critical vantage point. Submissions will be accepted for each of the book's four sections: “Pedagogy of Aloha” (critical pedagogical studies); “Decolonizing Aloha” (colonialism in/and the classroom); “Re/Deforming Aloha” (general education theory, including social, political, and philosophical analysis); and “Teaching Aloha” (classroom stories). Potential topics might include:

- How do socioeconomic and ethnic inequality affect Hawaii's classrooms and education politics?

- To what extent does money drive education reform in Hawaii? Do reforms (re)produce corporate infrastructure and economic division, rather than quality learning experiences?

- How does Hawaii's history, including settler colonialism and plantation development, impact the present state and future direction of the state's education system?

- In what ways are native or marginalized knowledge(s) suppressed by standards-based education reforms? What pedagogical techniques might be used to advance such knowledge(s)?

- What progressive teaching modalities (i.e. feminist composition, queer- and eco-pedagogy, or ethnomathematics) might be employed to address Hawaii's diverse student populations?

Essays should be approximately 4,000 to 8,000 words in length and employ Chicago Manual of Style formatting (using endnotes). Submissions should be sent to editors@interstitialjournal.com. Initial inquiries are welcome. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2013.

Everyone is Faking It

*from a chapter on making your own rules for teaching*

The thing that made the transition easiest was when I finally internalized the idea that Everyone Is Faking It. No one really knows what is going on. As a child you never suspect that the grown-ups in your life don’t have everything wired. They must, they’re grown-ups. I think the trouble with the puberty part of adolescence is you spend a lot of your time assuming that at some point you’re going to figure everything out. Things are going to become clear. You will hit a certain age and a key will turn in your brain and suddenly life will make sense. I thought maybe when I graduate high school. Maybe when I graduate college. Maybe when I get my first real job. Never happened. Never got the cheat code that illuminated Life and showed me the back doors and the ropes. Never got to peek behind the curtain. Never got the software update.

The only explanation is not that I didn’t get it. It’s that no one gets it. I’m not a solipsist. All you other people exist. You’re walking bags of meat, water, and electricity just like I am. If I didn’t get an instruction manual, if I never got the download of Important Information, then no one did. Everyone is faking it.

...

Those two thoughts sprung a trap in my Teacher Brain than can never be unsprung. Everyone is faking it and there are no rules. This changed everything. I had that realization at around the same time I was really getting good at the basic mechanics of teaching- Various types of classroom discipline, how different instructional theories played in the classroom, what worked for me and what didn’t. I was ready to start making my own choices right at the moment I was freed by my twin realizations. No one knows what they are doing and there are no rules.

Parents, Be Wrong And Admit It To Your Kids

*This is from a chapter directed at parents*

Oh! That’s a scary thing, isn’t it? What if they ask you a question you don’t know the answer to? New teachers have this same fear. I’m supposed to be the smartest one in the room. I’m the Teacher. I’m the Parent. I’m the Adult. I should have all the answers.

No. No you shouldn’t. Be wrong. Be unsure. That tells your child that being wrong is ok. I tell my students weekly that I want them to get things wrong. My job is to teach them, but if they know everything I have nothing to teach them. Them being wrong keeps me employed. I will never ever yell at someone for being wrong. I’ll get on their case for not trying, that’s a huge problem, but being wrong? Nope. Be wrong. Humans are wrong with startling regularity. You can’t learn unless you’re wrong first. I tell my kids I’m wrong all the time. When I make a mistake in class they point it out. Oh, there is nothing more fun than pointing out your teacher’s mistake. “Mr. Robertson! The answer is 52! You wrote 55!” “Why so I did. Thank you.” “Mr. Robertson, you misspelled ceiling! Again.” Ceiling, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the most frustrating words in the English language. It never looks right. Being wrong is learning.

The best part of telling your child that you don’t know is it means you get to learn something together! We now live in a world where all the knowledge is quite literally at our fingertips. The Google Knows All. Take advantage of your smart phone. Show your child how you find out something when you don’t know. They learn from you. If you’re brave enough to be wrong, your son will come to my class and he’ll be brave enough to be wrong.

When the Stomach Betrays a Student

*from a chapter on bodily functions* 

The other caveat to Thou Shalt Stay In Thy Seat is if you are about to be sick. Any kind of sick, I don’t care what end it is about to come spraying out of, get out of my room. Go, run RUN to the bathroom. Even if you don’t make it all the way there it is still better than doing it in the classroom.

Mostly, I’m talking about puke. Vomit. Spew. Throw up. Sick. Some children throw up more than frat boys determined to convince themselves they are having a good time. The trick is getting that moment of warning before it happens. They know it is about to happen. But how much time to do you have? How far are they from the door? Some students feel it coming far enough in advance. “Mr. Robertson...I don’t feel good...” A child about to lose it has a look. A pale, sickly pallor. An experienced teacher has seen it before.

“Go. Go to the bathroom. Go!”

This might seem harsh. Maybe you think I should ask very nicely what is wrong and what they had to eat. Nope, now is not the time for that. Vesuvius is bubbling and you don’t know when it is going to blow. Urgency prevents a fare-thee-well. Yes, throwing up will probably ruin that student’s day. But throwing up in the classroom will ruin the entire class’s day. That is a smell that does not come out. Sympathetic puking becomes a real concern. Not just for the students either. I’m ok around a lot of fluids, but those smells...I struggle to keep it together. I’m not above taking a class outside for the day. You, of course, do your best not to embarrass the sick child. I remind the class that this happens, sometimes people get sick, and I praise the ill one for getting out of the classroom in time. Even if they only make it to the grass outside the room that is still better than doing it in class. May you never experience a bus sick child. Trapped in a warm, enclosed can... *bjork*

Second Draft Done- Plans for Forward Motion

I've finished the second draft of He's The Weird Teacher- and other things students whisper about me. Somehow during the edit I added around 8,000 words, bringing the current total to about 73, 500 words. I added at least one chapter, maybe two between drafts because I remembered stories that I wanted to tell. I also found places where I wasn't clear and I needed to extrapolate more. Every writing class I've ever had tells me when you edit you're supposed to lose text, and I tried. I really did. I cut a bunch of things. I'm trying not to be precious with my words. But right now, at this moment, I've very happy with the product I have. I think it says everything that I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it. I feel like it conveys my voice rather nicely. I've got the file shared with a couple of readers, who are in various places through the book. So far I'm getting good feedback. Lots of positive comments, and helpful edits. I'm asking my readers to to double duty as line editors and content checkers. They are asked to both make sure the words are spelled correctly and punctuation isn't bad, and also be sure the ideas therein aren't insane. It's been very helpful.
I don't have a completion timeline yet. I think I need to put the text to the side for a few days, let the readers read, and let the words cook before I go back in for another pass. I have decided to go the self publishing route. The company who helped my friend Vanessa get her excellent ultrarunning book, The Summit Seeker, published and for sale looks like the place for me. The price is right, they do all the work from converting the file into an e-pub to getting it on amazon to getting paperbacks out, leaving me with little to do but promote promote promote.
That's where you come in, dear readers. I'm going to be asking for lots of help when the book is finally real. Please share it with your teacher friends, your student-teachers friends, your friends who like teachers. Post in on Twitter and Facebook and Google+. All I'm going to have for promotion is word of mouth. I don't expect to make a ton of money on this, that's not why I wrote it. But it would be nice to sell a couple to people who don't know me personally. I'd be lying if I didn't secretly hope that somehow Jon Stewart's booking people got copies of it and they decided Jon would love to talk to me. That isn't a fake interview I've conducted in my head on long bike rides as far as you know. But Jon would really like the book. That's all I'm saying.
Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. I'd appreciate anyone who likes what they've read so far linking to this blog on their stuff, especially if your circles mix with circles of people who would probably enjoy the book. Every new person is a potential ripple. If you're on the twitters I'm hashtagging tweets about the book with #HesTheWeirdTeacher.
Thanks for reading. Monday I'll post another excerpt.

Flip Them the Bird!

*from a chapter on distractions*

Schools are placed where the unpredictable happens all the time. That is the result of having a large number of children of various levels and backgrounds collected in one place. A place where nature also exists. Nothing ruins a lesson like nature.

I have had birds fly through my classroom and perch on a stack of books. You could be Jaime Escalante, you are not getting anyone to focus on fractions with a bird in the room. That bird will be the center of attention until you can get it to fly away. How does one get a bird to fly out of a room? This wasn’t a class in college. It wasn’t a lesson. I took no Avian Distractions 101. I don’t want to chase it around the room with a yardstick. What if I hit it on accident? Do you want to murder or cripple a bird in front of your class? I don’t want to run at it wildly waving my arms and making hooting noises. What do birds, and most other animals, do when they are startled? Yeah, I don’t need to be cleaning that up, adding to the already ruined lesson. The best thing to do, it turns out, it to shut all the windows, turn off the lights, and open one door. The bird should fly to the light. Should. Otherwise I’m taking my class outside. I’m giving up the room to the bird. He wins. We yield.

First Draft Complete & Now Thinking On Next Steps

I finished the first draft of the book over the weekend. It came out to just over 65,000 words as it stands right now, which is perfectly fine for me. The whole idea going into it was that the book would be as long as the book would take. Most novels are suggested to be between 50-75k words minimum. Once I broke the 50k mark I was fine.
Now comes the hard part- editing. I've never been a great editor of my own work. I'm lucky in that I have a bunch of friends who are reading the book for me and who will hopefully help me find all the stupid mistakes. I'm going to have to read it too and fix all the words and sentences that got gobbeldy-gooked up going from my brain to my fingers to the page.
There's also the matter of publishing. I didn't write the book so that it sits on my computer, never to be seen by human eyes. I'm investigating different ways of getting it out there into the world. I've got a friend who self-published her own book and it seems to be doing very well. I'm looking into literary agents too. Right now I'm leaning towards the self-publishing route. I don't know. I'm torn between wanting to get it out there as soon as possible and wanting to feel like a real author, with an agent and an actual publisher and all that jazz. The punk rock DIY side of me is strongly pulled towards self-publishing.
Much like getting into teaching, I didn't write the book for the money. I wrote it to get my ideas into the world. I wrote it because I believe I've got things to say about teaching that can help people. I say it in the book, I don't think my way is The Best Way, but I do think it's a Damn Good Way. So I want to get it out there in a way that gets to the most people possible.
The thing is, I get the feeling book publishing is going to go the way of music distribution soon. It's getting very easy to release something as an e-book, market it yourself, put it on amazon, and sell that thing. I don't want He's the Weird Teacher to exist solely as an e-book, I want pages to hold and smell and sign and mail, but there's way to do that too. Kindle, Nook, and the like are going to revolutionize book sales much like mp3 players destroyed/are destroying the music industry.
I'll probably end up polishing a few chapters up real nice and emailing them out to an agent or two with a query letter. Couldn't hurt, right? What will actually end up happening is still up in the air.
As it stands, the editing is going to be the hard, painful part. I'm not great at it, but also not willing to pay a bunch of money to an editor. Counting on my skills and the skills of the wonderful readers I've enlisted. On the plus side, I've thought of cover art. No, you can't know about it yet. That's gotta have a big reveal! Drama!
Anyone know an agent or a publisher looking for a non-fiction book about teaching?