Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It's Back to Work We Go!

After a couple of months in the civilian world, I returned to the knowledge factory today, one of the places we call public schools. As is usual, the teachers and staff returned from summer vacation tanned and refreshed and full of hope, anxious to meet a new crop of students in need of knowledge and skills development.

As part of an effort to build staff morale and camaraderie, everyone was treated to Dunkin Donuts, juice, and coffee. This was followed by a call for anyone in the room to stand up and shout out something they had to celebrate. No less than 5, maybe 6 teachers were proud to announce that they had completed their Master's Degrees. One teacher proudly announced that she and her husband had purchased a home. One fifty-something teacher then crowed that her son had purchased a condo and was finally moving out of her house, for goodness sakes. Things degenerated from there. A Security Guard stood and loudly proclaimed, "I'm finally off probation." I had to reflect that although this was a joke, sadly a large number of African-American men of his age can say that and mean it.

The Principal welcomed us all back for 30 minutes and we all wondered, "When is this woman going to shut up so we can get on with something meaningful?" Eventually the presentation segued into our plan for the year and this is what I learned. Our former CEO in the Chicago Public Schools is now the Secretary of Education for the U.S.A., so we have a new CEO who wishes to put his stamp on the system. I don't wish to denigrate the man's program, but what it meant to me today was that I have to learn the meaning of a whole new set of acronyms.

Acronyms 101:

1. ILT-Instructional Leadership Team

2. Fresh Start ILT-Instructional Leadership Team as designated by the joint reform effort of the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union.

3. LSC-Local School Council (Principal, teachers, parents, community members, and one student representative.)

4. IDS-Instructional Development System (A reform effort for underperforming schools as decided upon by the central offices of CPS.)

5. AVID-Achievement Via Individual Determination (A school improvement system that can be purchased by struggling schools.)

6. TIA-Targeted Instructional Area (For the record, ours is 'Writing to Learn.')

7. PP-Powerful Practices (Stuff you do to enact TIAs.)

8. TCT-Teacher Collaboration Team (People you interact and collaborate with. Departments, duh! My TCT is the Social Sciences Department.)

9. HQIT-High Quality Instructional Task (Anything that includes the word rigor.)

10. CAO-Chief Area Officer (Formerly AIO or Area Instructional Officer or some dude that supervises all the schools in a particular part of the city.)

All of this being said, life goes on. Efforts at school improvement come and they go. Teachers and students endure. Things come back again cyclically, usually under another name. Bottom line? There are people who can teach and there are those who cannot. Many of those who cannot realize it early on and drop out of education. Sadly there are others who persist in attempting to teach and are a bitch to get rid of. There are administrators who are good at managing schools and motivating people and there are those who suck. See the above statements about teachers and apply here as well. Unfortunately administrators draw much larger salaries than teachers and become much more of a drag on the system monetarily, and impact whole schools full of teachers and students instead of just a few students as is the case with teachers.

Amazingly, there are some good educational experiences out there. I remember having one really good teacher every two or three years and working hard for them and learning a lot and then coasting until I got another. I expect most of our students have similar experiences. So how will our new CEO affect the Chicago Public Schools and education for its students? Who knows? Let me just leave you with a couple of thoughts about this. He was a Chicago Policeman. He was Director of the Office of Emergency Management for the City of Chicago. He was Mayor Daley's Chief of Staff. He was the head of the Chicago Transit Authority. Now he is the CEO of CPS. He apparently knows a lot about management. Don't really have a clue what he knows about education. I can only be sure of what I know and use it to affect the kids they throw at me. Hi ho! Hi ho!.........