On Thursday, I pissed off a few colleagues

Last week, we received our teacher-effect scores (see post) and I was yippee-skippy about my effectiveness as a teacher. This week, we met (in the always dreaded after school faculty meeting) to discuss our sucky-poor teacher-effect scores as a grade level. The average gain for 4th grade math was negative 7 point zero. That's a little more than 10 points below my average gain for math. A score of 0.0 means that a teacher (or school, if that's what you're looking at), on average, brought students forward one grade level. It's the expected gain. Positive scores show more than a year's gain. Negative scores must mean you walk by and suck brain cells out of the kids. My score meant I brought my students forward more than one grade level. Given all of that, why did I have to sit at this meeting to be chastened with the others? It's not my fault that we're floundering.

The tone of the meeting was ugly--we were shown sucky data and then repeatedly asked, "How can you explain this? What do you believe is the reason for these poor test scores? What are you going to do differently because whatever you are doing isn't working." I finally asked, "What do you want us to say? Do you want me to admit to kicking back, drinking coffee, as my kids ran amok? Let me say--I don't know what everyone else's score is, but my score was a positive number. I know what I'm doing--I know how to teach math." Surprisingly (sarcasm, okay?), no one patted me on the back for my great scores. I was shot a few hate-filled looks from the teachers who must be responsible (and who have negative scores, natch) but not a word was said. Oh, well. Maybe they'll all come to observe me teaching math. And I'll be voted teacher of the new millenium. But I'm not betting it.

(This meeting could have been a positive experience if a let's-all-roll-up-our-sleeves-and-brainstorm-teaching-ideas attitude had been adopted. Instead, it was all about "what are you doing wrong?" It was demeaning. I told my princiPal that a few more meetings like that will drive everyone to cheat on the test. She, pal though she is, was. not. amused. At. all.)