Mike's Journey

Nattering nabobs of negativism

2009-10-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

I have been bothered lately by the nattering nabobs of negativism. You know the ones. They are education experts who have never sullied themselves by actually working with students in a classroom. If they did spend a few years teaching, they might actually learn something.

I serve on the State Investment Board, and regularly attend education conferences on institutional investing. I am never shy about what I do, and while at a session this summer, education reform came up as an informal topic of discussion at dinner. I held my own as I pointed out the flaws in the logic my tablemates were using as they attempted to “fix” something they were unfamiliar with. After about 20 minutes into the discussion, a fellow from New York joined the discussion. He related how he wanted to do something to make a difference, so he was granted a sabbatical from his employer and spent two years teaching English in a high school. He said his biggest shock was how dedicated and hard-working the teachers were, how much they really cared, and the lengths they would go to in order to provide the best education possible for the students. He had expected to find dedicated teachers, but assumed they were a minority. Instead, dedication, teamwork and quality were the norm, and the less than stellar teachers — he called them coasters — were a tiny minority. He said maybe two out of 90 teachers at his school fit this category. He agreed with me that the real education world was not what was described in the media and if we really wanted to improve public education, we would provide the resources and leave the task to the teachers.

The sticking point is that people are looking for excuses to avoid paying for what they say they want — a quality education for all students.

That is the real hurdle — the resources, also known as funds, or the money. There is lots of big talk about rewards and bonuses, but never a whisper about how to fund them. The only talk about funding is how much to cut, while at the same time increasing requirements and, as a distraction, criticizing those who give their all for their students. And through it all, dedicated educators, both certificated and classified, continue to do more with less.

Statistics, probability and measurement

2009-09-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow. It gives a history of statistics, probability and measurement, and how they are used currently to inform and how easily they can misinform when used improperly. Also in the book he highlights Washington’s Bill Gates for special mention about the misuse of information when he sought to “fix” public education by deciding that small schools were the solution, the silver bullet, to make all perfect with public education. After disastrous results, he regrouped and is now pushing charter schools and teacher pay tied to test scores as the panacea, even though there is no research which shows this will do any better than what is happening right now. But no fear, facts will not stop this effort; he has the money to burn to push his notion of public education. After all, if you had any good ideas, you would be as rich as he is.

This tied right in with a radio interview I heard recently on NPR with Rep. Lamar Alexander. He was outraged that the U.S. government now had a significant investment in General Motors and “535 members of Congress will be trying to tell auto manufacturers how to make automobiles.” I appreciate his concern; after all, Congress, state Legislatures, and influential, I mean rich, members of the public all want to exclude educators while they tinker with public education, and all the while blaming educators for being less than perfect. As an engineer who became a teacher, I can state with total conviction that it is far easier to design and build a quality automobile than it is to educate a child. And in auto manufacturing, if you repeat your process, you repeat your results. As any parent of multiple children can attest, repeating the process on raising a child can have dramatically different results. As Nobel laureate Max Born once said, “Chance is a more fundamental concept than is causality.”

Mlodinow also dove into the misuse of testing in education. Testing serves a useful purpose in education, but as soon as something is measured, it is subject to misuse by people who not only do not understand what measurement really is, but also that all measurements have a variability, or error. A good example he uses is the SAT scores which have an error of ± 50 points. So if one person scores 20 points higher than another on the SAT, they are really tied because you cannot tell who actually had the higher score. He also described a similar occurrence with the first election of our current governor. The candidates tied because the difference between the two candidates’ vote totals was less than the error of measurement. They could have flipped a coin to determine a winner, but our state has a more complicated system to break the tie. People who don’t understand measurement would be outraged by deciding our governor by flipping a coin, so we have a much more expensive but equally random method for breaking the tie.

Thus we have these real life math problems that don’t go away just because you are a billionaire who doesn’t comprehend the research in a field you know nothing about. Very real problems for someone who, because of a societal lack of understanding regarding randomness, reliability, and measurement, is condemned to a life of lost opportunities and lower earnings due to the denial of a high school diploma because of the misuse of a high-stakes test.

A seven percent solution

2009-06-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

I recently heard someone describe how the Legislature dealt with the revenue shortfall by saying that their solution was to cut education by seven percent.

A seven percent solution. It’s how the legislature dealt with their paramount duty in this economy. It’s also the title of a Sherlock Holmes story, Conan Doyle’s great fictional detective. It turns out that Holmes was addicted to a seven percent solution of cocaine. His drug-addled brain saw only one way to deal with the difficulties in life: a seven percent solution.

A simple solution to a complex problem. Simple solutions are often called silver bullets. They are supposed to kill werewolves and such. You know, complicated problems that defy resolution. In reality they don’t work. Silver bullets exist, they just don’t have any special abilities that a regular old lead bullet doesn’t have. But silver sounds so much better than lead, and costs more too. And the silver bullet seller has such high praise for how it is supposed to work — all the time.

Education, like most endeavors involving a broad cross-section of the community, is very complicated. Most people don’t like our complicated, nuanced answers to problems in education. We recognize that students are individuals with individual needs. Non-education “experts,” using a business model want to use the efficiency expert model to come up with the best curriculum and plug the students into a universal fit assembly line for a great education. Unfortunately for this model, students are not widgets. As H.L. Menken put it, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

In other words, there is no silver bullet. No simple solution, no seven percent solution, nor even a 10 percent solution that really works. When Holmes was forced to overcome his addiction, he saw that rather than helping, the simple solution interfered with real progress toward a solution. If a fictional character can see it, maybe we can too.

Hope or hopelessness?

2009-03-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a lot about leadership recently. I read about a study that found when groups are assigned a task, the people who speak up early and often are thought of as the group leaders whether or not their ideas help the group, or are even factually correct.

It took me back to Guyana and Jim Jones. At the time, we were amazed that he could brainwash hundreds of people into drinking poison just because he, as their leader, told them to do it. I think those people got so used to following his leadership, never bothering to critically evaluate whether his decisions were in the best interests of the group, that they were so unsure of what to do that they did the easy thing and followed his direction to drink the poison.

I often hear people say they voted for someone because he or she was willing to speak up. Was there an evaluation to see if the things they spoke up about built something, or just knocked down and destroyed, and made a lot of noise? It is far more work to build something than the reverse. So you can take a wild guess which path most “leaders” take.

Leadership in difficult times is where you see true leaders emerge. Almost anyone can step out front when things are going well. It’s when there are difficult decisions that need to be made that you find real leaders who are able to move people to turn in a new direction.

During difficult times a good leader offers hope and a plan to a better future because a good leader has vision. A less than good leader will have excuses like “there’s nothing we can do,” or “they are doing (fill in your favorite) to us,” without a plan on what we are going to do.

Some find opportunity in people’s pain. Others work to bring us together in order to help each other as we work to build a path toward positive results. Who do you want to be with? It’s your choice. Just listen to who talks about what can be done, and who talks about what can’t be done. Hope or hopelessness.

This IS an emergency

2009-02-11T16:57:00.000-08:00

I fly fairly often, both in state and cross country. On a recent return from Washington, D.C., I had an early morning flight which was delayed for several hours. I was tired and as soon as everyone was aboard the plane, I closed my eyes and tried to relax. The flight attendants began their routine with the seat belts, oxygen masks and flotation devices. I smiled, thinking of a comic I once heard who asked if there really was anyone who does not know how to buckle their seat belt. The routine was developed by government regulators and corporate elites who have never actually done the job they are regulating and with a condescending attitude toward those doing the job. After all, flight attendants just serve you drinks and tell you to buckle up, right? I was on a plane with a landing gear which did not lock and was expected to collapse as we touched down. I saw another side to flight attendants as those professionals coolly moved about the plane preparing people for a crash landing. Heroics were again on display as the flight crew safelyevacuated the passengers from the plane that recently went down in the Hudson River. So be nice to the person serving you on a plane. In an emergency, they will be the one who saves your life.

This penchant of regulators not listening to practitioners is rampant in public education. While I was in Washington, D.C. the Senate was debating the stimulus package passed by the House. Some of the money would go to education. Because of shortfalls in state revenue across the country, educators are being laid off. Many could lose their jobs at the end of this school year due to a lack of funds, not a lack of students. The federal stimulus package was supposed to help. The Senate deadlocked and it looked like they were cutting education funds, which means they would be laying people off while they say they are creating jobs. Ideology trumps peoples’ lives. I don’t recall any flight attendants or classroom teachers being elected to the Senate, or being asked to develop help for the economy, but if there were, peoples’ lives would trump ideology.

At the start of our legislative session, a group of educators and their district administrators gathered across from the capitol building in Olympia urging legislators to listen to them. Calling themselves the Twin Harbors Coalition, they tried to educate the legislators not to “cut the solution” in dealing with the current economic crisis. Speaker after speaker called on legislators to “first, do no harm.”

The response from Olympia? A group of legislators from a committee that was formed for the sole purpose of addressing our education funding problem decided to drop the ball. Ignoring the funding issue and deliberately excluding educators, they introduced a bill that neglects funding and touts education restructuring that amounts to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and would cut funding and teacher pay. We already underfund our schools. Washington is 45th in per pupil spending and we pay our teachers significantly below the national average. There is no fat. Additional cuts are into flesh and down to the bone. If the goal is to increase class size, chase educators out of the profession, and diminish the quality of public education in Washington, they are right on target.

I understand this is an emergency. Who do you trust your children to in an emergency? A professional who dedicates his or her life to them, or …? I trust my children’s education to the professionals.

Evaluations

2008-12-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

Recently, I attended a seminar at Callan College on being a trustee of a pension fund. Part of the training involved evaluating fund managers. Fund managers are the people you hire to invest the money in your trust fund. The instructors stressed how easy it is to be swayed into only looking at how much gain those managers have made over an annual or five-year basis, but that it is a mistake to evaluate only on quantitative measures. The qualitative factors are much more important, even though they are harder to evaluate. Some of the top fund managers have down times which are beyond their control.

It reminded me of people who are so short-sighted they want to evaluate teachers only on student test scores. They count only what is easy to measure and miss the most important factors. I’ve heard lots of people talk about the teacher who made a difference in their lives and I never heard any of them tearfully remember how Mr. Smith raised their test scores.

At the end of the training, there was a final exam. We students were divided into small groups to act as boards of trustees for pension funds. Each “board” was given a scenario which required us to make several decisions using the skills and principles we had acquired during our training. We then orally presented our decisions before a panel of judges consisting of our trainers.

Part of my group’s scenario involved hiring a fund manager and deciding on a fee. One option was a flat fee and the other was a smaller base fee with bonuses dependent on the amount of fund gains above a set minimum growth. Most of my group felt the bonus fees would encourage the fund manager to do better. I forcefully argued that we were hiring a professional and paying him a reasonable fee to do his best. Paying a bonus would end up costing us more without giving us more than a manager should be doing anyway. Upon evaluation, if we felt the manager was not doing what we felt was the professional work expected of him, he should be fired. If we needed to pay a bonus to get him to do what he was supposed to do, then we were not doing a good job of evaluating. As fiduciaries we should not be paying more than we needed for his best results.

Since I argued so forcefully, the group insisted I make the presentation to the judges. I was nervous. I understood that in the current business model, bonus is king, so I braced for the rebuke. But I believe you must stand on your principles, so I presented to the judges the same as I spoke to my group.

As I finished, the room was dead silent. Suddenly one of the judges slapped the table in front of him and exclaimed, “Absolutely correct! Never agree to a performance bonus!” To the nods of his fellow judges, he explained that paying a bonus will entice a fund manager to skew your fund assets toward earning the bonus, and then when the market makes a minor turn, you will end up with massive losses. You want a well-rounded, diverse portfolio. A bonus tends to skew your portfolio narrowly toward maximizing the bonus leaving you, as a trustee, worse off.

I was stunned. As I sat down, all I could think about was where are these people in the debate about tying teacher pay to test scores? We say we want our students to receive a well-rounded education but all we talk about are test scores in reading, writing, math and sometimes science. And the new mantra is to skew things even more by paying a bonus mislabeled as “merit” pay. It should be called what it actually is – child abuse. It denies students a well-rounded education and sets them up for difficulties later in life.

But who am I to criticize those titans of industry who depend on golden parachutes and manipulations to enjoy a bonus based on this quarter’s return? They brought us the financial miracle we see in our 401k accounts. Or, perhaps we need to reconsider…

Uncommon sense required.

2008-11-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

I am a physics teacher. Classical physics is a bit strange. It is not easily isolated as part of our normal life, and so it is not commonly noticed. That is, it is not common sense. It requires uncommon sense to be understood. Galileo found out what it meant to challenge “common” sense and was lucky to be able to spend a good part of his life only under house arrest rather than the usual burning at the stake. Isaac Newton lived in a more enlightened time, but was still careful about how he framed his scientific discoveries. Too different a perspective was threatening and would be crushed. As we entered the 20th Century, sub-atomic particle physics defined a new sense of existence, far beyond weird or strange. In fact, Murray Gell-Mann used the descriptors “strange” and “charmed” to describe properties of quarks, the components of protons and neutrons in atoms. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in physics, so he knew what he was talking about.

I just read his book, The Jaguar and the Quark. One of the stories in the book is about a scientist who is doing research on plants in the Amazon Rainforest. One day the scientist was returning to camp after collecting flora samples when he started thinking what it would be like to come face-to-face with a jaguar. After a bit, he had a funny feeling, turned around, and stared into the face of a jaguar which had been following him. Fortunately, after looking him over, the jaguar turned away and disappeared into the jungle.

The experience changed the man’s life. It was not like seeing a big cat on Wild Kingdom or at the zoo. This was not artificial, it was real. He had a new perspective on life, and many things he had thought important now seemed trivial. And some overlooked things rose in priority.

He was lucky. He experienced a paradigm shift and lived to savor the growth. Many of us are never able to let go of our traditions, our up-bringing, our prejudices. This is the lens through which we view the world and frequently it is used to describe how we view people of another color skin, but it is much broader. What is the proper way to treat the opposite gender? How about the stranger who knocks at your door? Or the person who has the opposite belief about abortion, gay marriage, or gun control? Is there one right answer? Many people believe there is, but if there was only one answer, we would not have the conflicts that currently exist. Rodney King had it right when he said, “Why can’t we all just get along?” But this didn’t come to him until he experienced the LAPD. Is that what it takes to believe in the humanity of all of us? To make it common sense?

Murray Gell-Mann says that what sets us apart from the jaguars or other animals is that we think about thinking. As soon as you deny any perspective but your own, you have stopped thinking and have moved to the level of the jaguar. If you want to know what kind of life that is, read about the life of Galileo.

It takes all of us.

2008-10-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

Recently, I read a book by Karen Zacharias titled Hero Mama. It’s a memoir describing the struggles of Karen’s mother to raise her family after her husband died in Vietnam.

Karen used to write for the Tri-City Herald. I enjoyed her columns for both their wit and colorful descriptions of her siblings and growing up in the South. From her writings, I was aware her dad had died in the war and that she was working on a project to connect with the man who was her father. She wrote about planning to go to Vietnam with a group of survivors of the war, but ran into opposition from her employers who did not see the value in giving her the time off she needed for the trip.

When I read her last column, I wrote to her, told her how much I enjoyed her work and wished her well on her project. To my surprise, her husband Tim wrote back. Karen had already left for Vietnam, but he thanked me for my kind words. It turned out he was a teacher in Oregon and we commiserated over school funding woes.

I finally met Karen on her book tour for Hero Mama. The title came from an experience she had in Vietnam. There were the usual war memorials, but one was different. It was a statue of a woman and was dedicated to the “Hero Mothers” who watched their loved ones go off to war, and then went to extraordinary lengths to maintain their families, community, and culture. Karen realized this described her mother, hence the title of her memoir.

Karen was able to embrace the dysfunction of her family, pull it close, peer into it and see that the dysfunction was imposed by circumstances beyond the control of these basically good people. She could see that while her mother was not perfect, she never gave up and in fact worked extraordinarily hard, doing her best to overcome the obstacles thrown in front of her family.

It scares me to think about the Karens in our schools today. How many are being bulldozed aside by one-size-fits-all curriculum or high-stakes standardized tests? How many are being lost in large classes? How many authors are we losing, or carpenters, or plumbers, or police officers? It’s easy to say we have high standards, but are we providing the resources needed for every student to reach those high standards? It costs a lot less to help someone become a contributing member of our community than to look away and by our inaction push them into despair.

Read the book. It took more than a heroic mother to save the family. It takes all of us.

Every voice and vote matters.

2008-10-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

Just recently, a local leader thanked me for getting her involved in politics. I had pushed her, insisting that her members needed someone to represent them both with current office holders and with those running for office. She said she had no idea how interesting it was, or how much fun.

It got me thinking back to when I first became involved in politics. I was reading about a local election where less than 32 percent of registered voters participated. It hit me that a minority of only 16 percent was making decisions that affected 100 percent of the population. The wacky politicians who make crazy decisions that only benefit a minority are not elected by a majority of the people. They are elected by a majority of the people who show up. When you decide to stay away, you are proclaiming that it is OK with you whatever decision is made. I already voted in every election, but I realized that I wanted to be part of the decision regarding what was placed on the ballot. I became involved in politics.

How about you? Are you one of the hapless hopeless who feels you can’t make a difference and thinks it doesn’t matter who gets elected anyway? Or are you an educator whose life is wrapped around the belief that you can make a difference.

Four years ago, our governor’s race was decided by a record close 133 votes. Every voice and vote mattered. The contrast between the two candidates’ positions on education could not have been starker. One candidate had used his role in the senate to orchestrate over $1 billion in education cuts and has steadfastly refused to discuss education policy with educators, showing no concern for the increasing workload from unfunded mandates. The other candidate pledged to restore the suspended initiatives, honoring the will of the people, and to maintain ongoing discussions with educators on relevant issues. Our governor followed through on her promises. She demonstrated her integrity by her actions.

So it does matter to public education who gets elected and every vote does count. There are things you can do that will make a difference. Most important of all, vote! WEA members have three easy things they can do which will make a big difference. First, join WEA-PAC and find five friends to join with you, and help with the PAC drive. Second, sign up to help on the Gregoire phone banks being coordinated through your council. And third, join the Action Team at www.ourvoicewashingtonea.org.

You do matter and you can make a difference. If your salary, your workload, and your students matter to you, step forward and be part of the solution.

Welcome back!

2008-09-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

Recently Mary and I were coordinating our September calendars. As we finished, she reminded me not to forget the meeting on Monday. “Right, on New Year’s,” I replied. She laughed. And I laughed at the slip of substituting New Year’s for Labor Day, and then the two of us agreed that September is the start of both our fiscal year, and the school year.

This incident stimulated some thinking back to my past school year starts. Getting your classroom (sometimes classrooms) ready. Planning the first several days. Incorporating improvements into lessons. Adjusting strategies. And when I was a council president, writing a Welcome Back article for the newsletter.

This is not a Welcome Back to School article. This is being read by more than our members, and so while my comments are mainly for our members, I am mindful of a wider audience. I have been thinking about the past year, my first as vice president. I’ve been evaluating how I did, and developing ideas on how I can use what I learned to be better this year. I know I won’t be perfect, because no one knows what situations I will face, but if I am well prepared, and flexible with the confidence to adapt to the circumstances that confront me, I will do the best I can.

It’s the same thing I expect from our public schools. As a citizen, as a parent, and as an educator, I want our youth to have a background of what past generations have learned, but I want them to be prepared and flexible enough to adjust to meet the unique challenges they will face in the coming years. I want them at their best when it really counts.

The greatest legacy we can leave our grandchildren is to prepare our children to make the world better than we have. And I think that is a fine way to start the year.

To strike or not to strike.

2008-08-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

Recently a parent wrote to me asking if the Bellevue teachers were going to strike, and if so approximately how long it was going to last. It is a reasonable request. Parents care about their children and want the best for them. That takes planning. If children are not going to be in school, alternative arrangements need to be made.

I would love to be able to tell the Bellevue parents if there will be a strike, but the fact is I will probably find out at the same time they will. The Bellevue teachers have taken a strike vote pending the outcome of the current contract negotiations with the school district. The teachers in Snoqualmie have taken a similar vote. WEA only provides support to a local association. It is the local teachers who decide to strike.

No educator wants a strike. They want what is best for their students, which means working with the students to provide them with the best possible education. If teachers vote to strike it tells you that there are issues they feel will have a significant impact on the role they engage in as educators. The strike itself is a de facto push to get negotiations moving toward a mutually agreeable solution.

How long does that take? It depends on how willing the two teams are to talk to each other in an atmosphere of respect. Around the state this summer, several bargaining crises have been averted by two sides working together to come to an agreement. I congratulate both sides for their efforts on behalf of the students. I hope the Bellevue School District administration offers a fair contract settlement that our BEA members can ratify with pride, soon.

Enjoying summer ... while pondering the upcoming election season.

2008-07-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

I have been travelling a lot this summer. On the menu at one restaurant I read the saying,

For every wound, a balm
For every sorrow, a cheer
For every storm, a calm
For every thirst, a beer.

I chuckled and remembered Ben Franklin’s quote, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

Beer was one way to preserve grain that took up less space and was very popular. Brewers in America were aware of European techniques of brewing, but they realized the immigrants to America were not exactly the same as the people who stayed behind, so they did things differently. Not better or worse, just different, in order to meet different needs, wants, and cultural norms.

They reinvented the wheel.

They didn’t take a wheel designed for a different wagon and force-fit it where it almost assuredly wouldn’t work as well. That would be stupid and only someone who had no idea about how wheels actually work would even consider such a thing.

I just came from an NEA leaders conference and someone made a comment about not wanting to reinvent the wheel. It hit me that often we do need to reinvent the wheel in education. But developing new wheels is time consuming and takes more resources, not less. We have been resource-starved in education for so long. It is the norm. We do not even know how to demand the resources necessary to do the quality educating we want to do, and are expected to do.

Why a lack of resources? We all want our schools to improve and be the best, but the same people who want us to use someone else’s wheel frantically work to divert education resources. They save a little money now, but it will cost our society mightily in the long run. It’s like saying you want to brew quality beer, but divert the resources, the grain, to a side profit, and then complain that the brewer is incompetent. Or that you want a first class wagon but with wheels force-fit from another style wagon, maybe from Singapore. Will it work? Almost certainly not.

Would you want the wheels on your child’s educational wagon to be fit by someone trained to fit wheels, or by someone wanting a cheap fit? Do you care? What can you do? There is an election coming up. Which candidates want more for education and are willing to commit the resources? Almost all candidates are pro-education before the election. Which ones are willing to step up and commit the necessary resources?

Make the best choices you can this election season, and look forward to a balm, a cheer, a calm, and if you are so inclined, a beer.

The end of the school year.

2008-06-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

Here we are in June, the end of the school year. It is also the end of my first year as vice president. At the end of each year of teaching I would always review the year and work on how I could make the next year better. I am doing something similar, except instead of trying to focus on how to help the students learn better, I now work on making our organization better, to support educators better, to make public education better.

The best teachers I ever had did not give me the best grades. They taught me how to be a better student. The best evaluators made me a better teacher, not by focusing on my imperfections, but by highlighting what I was doing well. I became a better teacher by trying to do more of the good things rather than becoming mediocre by avoiding the bad things.

When I speak to local leaders, I urge them to think about how they want their association to be better. The goals they set should help move the organization toward improvement. And progress toward the goals needs to be evaluated regularly or your hopes will soon be forgotten as all of your time gets devoured by the constant gnawing of urgent tasks that drain us every day.

So please join me in putting the negatives in their proper place and concentrate on building the positive.

Have a great summer!

In the blink of an eye ...

2008-05-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

A while back, I read a book titled Blink. It is an interesting book about making decisions, especially decisions that have to be made quickly, in the blink of an eye. Police and military decisions are discussed, but also doctors, food tasters, art appraisers, and others. The book explores the qualitative side of decision making, and how often in our quest for perfect decisions, we gather so much data that it obscures critical information, leading to a poor decision.

I was reminded about this recently during a meeting of the State Investment Board when we were discussing the performance of some of our fund managers. One of our in-house experts cautioned us against rigidly using scores to evaluate. He told us we measure those things which are easy to measure, and it is simplistic to say that the things we can measure are the only ones that matter. Some very important things are qualitative and rely on judgment.

Such important things as someone’s love, the beauty of the arts, or teacher quality.

People often make major decisions based on emotions or “gut feelings” and far too often the feeling is the fear of looking foolish or making a mistake. People who allow fear to dominate their decisions are often scared of putting trust in the judgment of others and grasp for a concrete number or score, to place absolute faith in.

The best decisions are made when you let go of the fear and allow it to pass. What you are left with is the courage of your convictions which allows you to do what you know deep down is the right thing. Your decision may not be perfect, but if you are headed in the right direction, the size of your steps isn’t critical.

We find what we are looking for, and if we’re not careful, we miss the treasure that is really there.

Life: The best storybook.

2008-04-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, someone told me they enjoyed reading my blogs and especially the way I used stories to make a point. You can learn a lot from hearing another person’s perspective. I know I like to use analogies when explaining concepts so it was an unconscious choice to talk about my thoughts using stories. After all, our lives are really the best stories. Each one of us should be our own favorite story. As we see it, it’s called our autobiography. As others see us is a biography. And which is more accurate really depends on your point of view. Sometimes people turn ahead in a novel to see how it ends, but I have never heard anyone say they just had to see how a biography ends, that the suspense was too much. And of course, with an autobiography, the book may end but the story goes on.

So how is your story coming along? The end is not critical; it will be as it turns out. The most important part is today. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow does not exist yet. All you have to work with is today. Since it is your story, make it a good one. Notice the details; they are what make a story come alive. Breathe. How does that make you feel? What aromas do you detect? Me? Right now I see the split end of a mustache hair that is poking out into my field of vision.

It is evening, and so I need to rest up for tomorrow. I may live in today but if I want a glorious adventure tomorrow, I need to be prepared. I don’t know exactly what will happen, but I will prepare the best I can and enjoy the journey.

The gift IS the journey.

2008-04-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I was at a celebration where I heard a story I want to share.

A teacher decided he wanted to do something different, so he moved overseas and began teaching in a refugee camp in Africa. The conditions were poor – no electricity, and few supplies for the one-room school, but the refugee children and their parents were excited about learning and the opportunity it provided. The teacher loved their enthusiasm which somewhat compensated for the conditions and he stayed for a number of years. Eventually, it was time for the teacher to retire and return to America. At the end of the year, the students and their parents had a celebration because they loved the teacher and his commitment to them over the years. There was one boy who was sad because he was very poor and did not have enough money for food, let alone for a present. This really bothered the boy and he thought a long time about what he could give his beloved teacher. Finally, he had an inspiration. He borrowed a bucket and walked to the ocean, a three hour journey. When he arrived, he filled the bucket with white sand from the beach and carried the filled bucket the three hours back to the refugee camp, where he proudly presented the bucket of sand to his teacher. The teacher was puzzled, but thanked the boy for the present, and said, “You didn’t have to walk to the ocean, you could have given me sand from here in the camp.” The boy shook his head and explained, “You don’t understand, the gift is not the sand. The gift is the journey.”

So, how about you? Do you miss the journey because you only focus on an end result? You may have missed the best part. The entire testing craze that grips the country focuses only on the bucket of sand and misses the drama and beauty of the education journey.

Like it or not -- change happens.

2008-04-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

During a recent meeting, a teacher spoke about how often she moved in her district. She enjoyed the change of culture from moving to a different building. She felt that it kept her fresh, and prevented her from falling into a rut.

I had a similar discussion with the WEA human resources director. He shared how working for several different companies had broadened his perspective, especially when problem-solving difficult or complicated situations.

I moved around a lot as an engineer, and I experienced how each jobsite had its own culture on the proper way things should be done. I had to quickly learn how people expected things to be done so that I did not make them nervous with unexpected change. But when an “impossible” situation arose, I knew there were several ways of approaching the situation, and perhaps only one of which was impossible. Sometimes people thought I was really smart. I thought I paid attention to details and tried to learn from all my experiences, not that I was really smarter than others.

An extreme example is when I taught anger management classes to aggressors in domestic violence. Often, they became angry with people who did not see the world as they saw it. As we sat around a table, I would put a pop can in the center and ask what they saw. All would agree they saw a pop can, but then I would show them how, if they drew a detailed picture of what they saw, it would be different from mine because I saw the label from a different angle than each of them. In fact, we all saw something different and the only way to know how someone else saw the world was to sit in their position (seat), or take the time to hear how they see the world, not how we think they should see the world.

So why is this important? Some of us are comfortable with differences and can handle the differences that come with change. Some of us resist change because it makes us uneasy. But change happens; it is part of life. The trick is to be calm enough to evaluate which change to embrace, because some change will help us and some will hurt. And no matter what decision you make, it will have a life-long impact on yourself and others. So you can agonize over every decision, or you do the best you can with the information you have. And remember that the people who say you did not make a good decision are just looking at a different side of the pop can.

It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.

2008-03-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, I was forwarded an e-mail that had a number of sayings attached. The e-mail did not include any authors for the sayings, although some sound familiar. I read them periodically and they always get me thinking.

It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.

This got me thinking about a couple of weekends this month. WEA has a program to assist members seeking National Board Certification. The first two weekends in March were Homestretch events — end of year events that bring candidates together with teachers who have already achieved National Board Certification. There were about a thousand WEA members in attendance at the two events, working together to improve the quality of their teaching in order to make public education the best it can be. WEA member dues supported the efforts, so even if an individual member was not there, they chipped in to make the events possible.

And that really is the story. We join together to help each other in order to make public education the best it can be for students, staff, and communities. I have always considered it a privilege to join with you.

We should build, not destroy ...

2008-02-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

This past fall there was devastating flooding in some areas of our state of Washington. One of our members who lives in a rural area described the impact of the flooding on his community and then shared about how he and his neighbors didn’t wait for the government, they just got together and helped each other. Since I come from a rural area, I agreed that it is a good thing for people to help one another. Later, it hit me what he said about not waiting for the government. The government is not some outside group, it is us. The neighbors joining together for the common good is the government. What we usually point to as the government is really elected community representatives who hire specialists to do the things we don’t know how to do (purify water) or don’t have the time to do (pave roads) using shared resources (taxes).

I often hear a similar statement regarding WEA, our union. The WEA is not them, it is us. It is easy to be cynical and throw stones — talk radio thrives on negativity — but as educators we should be building, not destroying. As I moved from position to position in the organization, from building to local, to state to national, I found open doors and welcome embraces. I believe it was because I was willing to work to build something better.

So when you hear someone bashing educators, public schools or government, ask yourself before you join in: is this building something good, or just destroying? I am on the side of the builders. How about you?

Pondering the obvious -- or, better yet, the not-so-obvious

2008-02-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

I just noticed it has been two weeks since my last entry. If you are into keeping score, I try to write something every week and a half, so I am late. I was genuinely shocked because I knew only a week had passed, but when I checked the dates, it was really two. I couldn’t believe how fast the time flew, which started me thinking back on how fast the school year would fly by, and how time always seems to move quickly when we are busy. Then I made the mistake of wondering why.

Why is a difficult question to answer when you are talking about a person. Why did I leave engineering to become a teacher? I have a good answer that I give when asked, that I wanted to do something more important than engineering. I can provide more details, but I have never found the words to accurately describe the emotions I feel when I think about why I became an educator.

It happened again when I was asked why I was running for vice president. I never could come up with the words that would clearly communicate the emotions I felt. I tried, and had an answer to give, but deep down, I know I was not successful. Put another way, why do you love your spouse, partner, or child? You can try to describe the feelings that rise up when you think of them, but words alone just can’t do the job. You can try, but you will be frustrated. Sometimes, you just have to accept things the way they are.

Other times, thinking about why can open new opportunities. Why do you teach a topic the way you do? Why do you drive a particular route to work each day? Honestly answering these types of why questions will lead you to challenge underlying assumptions and may open doors to improve your life. Is it guaranteed? Of course not. But nothing in this world stays the same. You either work to improve things, or they slide into decay.

So, is today the best day of your life, or not? What are you going to do about it? What is important to you? And don’t forget to ask why. You may not have an answer, but you learn a lot more from the questions you can’t answer.

Embrace, protect and plan for retirement

2008-01-18T16:51:00.000-08:00

Mary and I regularly receive e-mails asking about our retirement system, especially regarding the loss of gainsharing and the lawsuit. It is not a happy story.

During the past seven or eight years there has been an increased emphasis on the pension system of school employees in Washington state. Under the last governor and legislature, a lot of games were played with the funding of the retirement trust fund. In an effort to deal with the funding problem in the last legislative session, we lost gainsharing. We tried to trade it for something of equal or greater value to our members, but we were stymied by the needs of the legislature. At the direction of the Representative Assembly, WEA filed a lawsuit.

Understanding a retirement system, and explaining how it works is not at all straight forward, and actuaries joke about how people’s eyes glaze over when retirement calculations are explained. Just recently, I attended a seminar on public sector retirement funds. I found out how different public sector is from private sector. It’s like trying to apply baseball rules to football. They are both sports, but they are different. If you are only familiar with the private sector, you are not aware how the logical rational ideas you embrace are actually ridiculous when applied to the radically different world of the public sector.

I am chair of the WEA committee on retirement issues. As I said, retirement is very complicated and most legislators do not understand the full implications of a public employee retirement system, they only see a pot of money in the trust fund. The beneficiaries of the retiree trust fund also see things very simply, their retirement check. And the irony is that those who have the most to lose, the new young employees, are the least vocal in expressing their needs.

Since we are suing the state about retirement, I do not anticipate any movement in the legislature regarding any aspect of retirement. That could leave our retirement committee with little to do. However, I don’t want to wait for the legislature to act

There are lots we can do, not only to anticipate further attacks on retirement, but to be pro-active, to be stronger. A key piece is to start educating our members on retirement issues, and what they can do. We can also educate the legislators on what retirement means to us, and its positive impact on the economy of the state.

A lack of information creates a void which is quickly filled by the paranoid vapors of conspiracies. We need to get information out. By we, I am talking about myself, the committee, and every member of WEA. It will be at least a couple of years before the courts give us a decision, but we should not wait until then to be better informed and to act in areas that will yield results. Remember, retirement is an important issue, but it is not the only issue.

If you have questions or things you would like to know more about on retirement, send them to me and I will bring them to the committee. I have asked our legal department to prepare a summary of the effects of the legislation which repealed gainsharing and I will make that available to members. What can you do? E-mail House Speaker Chopp and all your legislators. Tell them to restore the “Dino cuts” in our COLA. Any increase in our salaries now will eventually help your pension. And let them know you are angry about losing ground in your pension. Be polite, but be firm. In addition send your comments on our pension to the Select Committee on Pension Policy.

Daily challenges build character?

2008-01-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

Back when I was getting my masters degree in counseling, one of my professors revealed the results of a study on the effectiveness of counselors in helping people solve their problems. The conclusion of the study was that, on average, people solved their problems equally well whether or not they used a counselor. Talk about having the wind taken out of our sails. Our group of budding counselors was dumb-founded and someone finally asked, “Why are we in this program if we aren’t going to make any difference?” Our instructor smiled and explained. “Many people are able to solve their problems on their own. You never see them. And the ones you do meet with need you, and the difference is that you give people hope.”

I was reminded of this when I was thinking about a conference I attended on the achievement gap (or opportunity gap). One panelist spoke about how good failure was for students, how it built character and made them stronger. He stated that we shouldn’t worry if students fail the WASL, it will make them stronger, better students, but he didn’t provide any empirical data to back up his conclusions. My experience as an educator is somewhat different. Some students respond to setbacks by working harder. Others give up after failure and fall into despair. They have no hope that things could get better.

Over the holidays I read about a man who wanted to make a difference in Washington, D.C. schools. After volunteering a while in the schools, he realized that was not enough, so he convinced a wealthy man to promise a 6th grade class that he would pay whatever it took for each of them to go to college. In 1996, the man made the offer to sixty 3rd graders. The results of his efforts were staggering. In a school system that graduates fewer than 60 percent of its students, 90 percent of the promised students graduated high school on time and 70 percent are in college or trade school. He didn’t just write a check and vanish, he spent time monitoring the students, helping them through the rough times. The adopted students said they felt special, and they tried harder.

Why do these students do so much better than students with equivalent backgrounds? Even if they think the system works against them, they are aware of how to beat the system, how to win if they work hard. It is under their control. They have hope.

Hope is something that comes from within. You choose to look for the possibilities that can result in success, no matter how you define success. Usually it takes maturity, and the confidence that comes from success to realize there is always hope. And sometimes you need help to see hope.

How about you? Do you always see the hope in a situation, or do you usually despair? Or somewhere in between? And what do you share with others? It is your choice — despair or hope.

I choose hope.

Tax savvy? Frugal? Full of it?

2007-12-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

Back when I was an engineer, one of the projects I worked on was a tertiary treatment facility for the city of Stockton in California. In case you don’t know, a tertiary treatment facility is an advanced sewage treatment plant. The water coming out of the plant was so clean; it was purer than the water in most city drinking water systems. Logically, it should have been piped directly into the drinking water system of the city of Stockton. It was logical and made a lot of sense to me, but the general public refused to even consider drinking the output of a sewage plant. Instead, we dumped the clean water into the dirty Stockton River, and then several yards upstream was the intake pipe for the city water treatment plant where they purified the river water to make it suitable to drink. To me, it was a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.

Most people I have met do not like paying taxes, but almost all enjoy the benefits of our civilization and realize that we have to pay for them. Those who do not mind paying taxes acknowledge that they enjoy clean water out of the faucet, paved roads, and yes, public education.

Surveys show there is about a third of the population who will always vote against any tax, regardless how much they personally benefit from the services the tax pays for. It is the same logic that played out in Stockton. It is not logic at all, just the same strained reasoning that complains about the waste in government while continuing to reelect the same “wastrels,” and refusing to actually get involved to find out what is really happening and who, if anyone, is wasting what.

We just had a special session of the legislature, called in response to the purveyors of the delusion that we are overtaxed in Washington state. So we spent extra money to appease the fear mongers who insist we are spending too much money.

Hopefully, we will soon get to the point where we will elect reasonable people who we trust to do the best they can. Then we need to decide what kind of state we want to live in, and provide the revenue, yes, called taxes, to do a quality job.

I have been a resident of Washington for 30 years. I have also lived in two other countries and several states where the taxes were higher, the state government less responsive, and the quality of life lower. Recently, I have observed the emergence of prophets of fear, who make their living preying on peoples’ concerns about being taken advantage of and spreading misinformation and rumor to support their business of personal greed. These professional cynics don’t care if they destroy the communities’ quality of life, because they are personally getting richer. If you believe the merchants of fear, who want to destroy our state by starving our government of revenue and if you think there is a lot of waste here, I will be happy to forward you this e-mail I received about $48 million sitting in an unclaimed bank account in South Africa. All you have to do is …

Being thankful ...

2007-11-28T15:39:00.000-08:00

For some strange reason, I started thinking about Thanksgiving this past weekend.

If Thanksgiving Day is really about giving thanks for our blessings and we are truly thankful, why only do it on that day?

My son will be coming home from the navy soon. It always bothered him when people would thank him for serving in the military. He didn’t do it for them, he did it for himself. And while he is serving his country, he is doing the best job he can. If others happen to benefit from his efforts, that is OK with him.

I did not get involved with the union for gratitude. I did it because I saw injustice and could not stand on the side. I am still surprised when I am thanked for my hard work on behalf of educators. I don’t do it for the thanks. I do it for me, because I must if I want to live with myself. I believe it is the right thing to do. How about you? Are you an educator to get thanks or because you believe in the greater good of public education? If there are any educators who entered the profession for riches or adulation, I have never met them. The ones I’ve met believe in the importance of educating our youth, and public education.

Still it is a moving experience to receive a thank you from a student.

It is a nice surprise to be thanked for doing what you believe in. And don’t forget to thank others for what they do. It makes every day thanksgiving day. Thank you.

Fall back.

2007-11-05T15:48:00.001-08:00

This past weekend we experienced the switch back to standard time. We became time travelers, falling back an hour and getting to use it all over again. As I was thinking about this, several things arose in my mind. When you “spring ahead” you lose an hour. When you “fall back” you gain an hour. However, moving ahead too quickly can be intemperate, and while stepping back can give you time to think, get a better handle on things, and a fresh perspective, you have lost ground. No matter what you do, it comes at a price that needs to be considered.

As I was jotting down some thoughts this past weekend, a group of people walked by, laughing and having a happy time. I chuckled at something one of the people said, and then they noticed I was writing and became concerned that I was recording them. After I explained what I was doing, they moved on, much more quietly, and it got me thinking. Why do we not want to be noticed? Why do we not think we are important enough to have our deeds recorded like the heroes of old? Why has it become something to be scared of? Has our behavior changed so that we are no longer heroic? Or is it that we only record non-heroic deeds to humiliate and embarrass? Is it our priority to knock down or is it to build up? What is our focus?

When I was still in the classroom, I noticed that when I praised good behavior, it was generally repeated. I don’t want to pretend that I never wrote referrals, but the power of the positive was astounding. It even works on yourself. Be positive. Be prepared for things to be less than perfect, but proceed and base your outlook as if things will work out for the best, and they will. You almost always find what you are looking for.

And next spring, you are not losing an hour, smile as you leap an hour closer to summer.

An individual struggle

2007-10-30T11:04:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading So Sad to Fall in Battle, which was the basis for the film Letters from Iwo Jima. I recommend both book and film. They are very touching stories about individuals experiencing a horrific event told from a perspective we don't often see.

In Japan during World War II, the high command developed the grand strategic plan and general tactics to be used. The soldiers in the field had to figure out how to implement the plan which did not take into consideration the actual conditions they faced. And neither group could talk to each other because of the rigid class structure in Japan at that time. ...

Lieutenant General Kuribayashi Tadamichi, the commander of the defense of Iwo Jima was able to look beyond the way things had always been done. He analyzed how Japanese island defenses had fared and wanted to do better. Using reason and his knowledge of other cultures, he defied the norms and mounted a defense that is etched forever in American military history.

How about us? It's easy to say that the WEA should be doing such and such, just as it is easy to say that the Japanese army and the American marines did certain things. But the real story is that it is individuals who do things. If you read the book, you will see that Kuribayashi did not just do what he was supposed to do. As an individual, he did his best to do what he believed was the right thing to do. What about you? Do you blame the system and wait for "someone" to do something. The real story is about the individuals. It is about each one of us. Doing the best we can. And joining with others, each doing their best, for the power that comes from uniting.

Right now, we in public education are in a struggle for a simple majority for levy elections. There is no organized opposition, only our own inertia. All of us, as educators, need to vote. We also need to encourage other pro-education voters to vote. This is a grassroots campaign using phone banks to get out the vote. As with any struggle, even the battle of Iwo Jima, it is the story of individuals. Individuals are making the calls, and individuals are voting. I sent in my ballot and I joined a phone bank in calling. Now, I am asking you to do the same, for public education, for the students.

Welcome to my Blog!

2007-10-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

I have never written for a blog so I hope you enjoy starting this adventure with me. Some of you may have read articles I wrote for newsletters or other periodicals and know that I like to tell stories.

Life is a story and I find it easier to make a point that people can relate to if I tell it as a story. However, life plays by its own rules, so while I will often tell stories, my writing will express how I feel at that moment, story or not.

A while back, I read a short essay which compared two types of people in a community: those who see themselves as taxpayers, and those who see themselves as citizens.

A taxpayer has a narrow focus on himself. "They" are stealing his money (taxes) and wasting it. "They" are always passing laws that take away his rights, and there is nothing "we" can do about it. He withdraws from any involvement in his community. Instead he joins with like-minded to share resentment, paranoia, and despair. In his world, there is no hope and the future will always be worse.

Citizens utilize a different perspective. They have a sense of ownership. This is 'our" country. A citizen works for the common good and contributes resources (taxes) to build a better community and country. She participates in government by voting and contacting elected representatives. She also joins with other community members to share and learn from their diverse ideas. For a citizen there is always hope and the future will always be better. Helping others less fortunate is the right thing to do and will result in a better life for all of us.

This comparison struck me as very similar to the contrast I see between members and dues-payers. When I became a teacher and signed my membership form, I decided to become a member. It takes more work than just paying dues, but it is also more rewarding because I am working to build a better association. Just as when I left engineering to become an educator. It takes more work, but instead of building a power plant, I am building a better world for the next generation through public education.

I hope it is clear that I feel strongly about joining together for the common good. When we work together, the result is greater than the sum of the parts.