I am currently on a plane back to Los Angeles. I am returning from a very long, very exhausting trip.<\/p>\n
I spent four days in DC with twelve other colleagues reviewing and discussing the ELA standards for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. <\/p>\n
It was the first of five meetings over the next six months in which we will be updating and rewriting how we define accomplished teaching for ELA educators. To say that this is daunting work is something of an understatement. Though I was one of a very small minority on this panel that has not gone through the National Board’s certification process, I can say that the ELA standards as they are written now speak strongly to the kinds of robust learning experiences I hope to provide for my students and for the role I see teachers taking within the profession. Other people in the meetings and discussions admitted to a sense that we were tinkering with the Bible as we spent the better part of two days deconstructing the standards as they currently exist and began reorienting our thinking toward the future.<\/p>\n
The document we are working on now, the third major revision of the NBPTS ELA standards, will likely exist for the next 7-10 years and my colleagues and I are working to consider how the field of English and English education will change over this time. For me, as a tech and literacies geek in the group, this has been a process of imagining the increased modes of production and engagement with texts that have been shifting. I have also been thinking significantly about the ways that students are learning; that much of the “stuff” of learning that kids are developing today is outside our classrooms is not lost on me, and something I hope our standards will reflect as we continue to develop and shape them. Finally, as those of you who have helped me think out loud while dissertatin’ know, the civic value of English instruction is also something that is of importance to me. We are at the precipice of significant changes in how we understand viewing and producing and where literature fits into this. <\/p>\n
There is a lot of work left in this process and I honestly cannot yet predict exactly how the ideas my colleagues and I have been developing will be articulated. There will also be a period for public commenting on our proposed standards and I am hopeful that many of you that have had rich discussions about the participation gap, multiliteracies, inequity, and passion for literature will help shape and guide our work. I can say that five days ago I flew into DCA with a foreboding sense about the work to which I had committed. I am thrilled that this sentiment is completely reversed; I feel ecstatic about the community of practice from which these conversations about ELA have sprung. And while things on the Manual Arts front are anything but solid at the moment, I do feel that this is a lasting contribution that can have significant student impacts. <\/p>\n
There is lots of talk about standards these days. Which ones do we use? How do we assess them? How do we punish teachers that aren’t in line with them? It’s difficult, these days\u2013at least in California\u2013to consider the role of standards without thinking about standardized tests, measuring teacher effectiveness, and the entire can of public bashing of the profession that has become an ongoing source of rhetoric. <\/p>\n
One evening, as I was catching up on the current and numerous challenges that my high school is facing, I mentioned why I was not in Los Angeles and unable to attend pressing meetings. The teacher on the other end of the line said, “That’s great, you’re writing standards.” I understand the frustration and genuine anger with which my close friend spoke. It is hard to see the work of standards and the dusty cobwebs they connote as a place from which to advocate for the students that will be with me in room 173 in two months, when we return on track. It is hard to see the value of standards when it has become clear that more than half of the teachers at my school will not be there next year. It is hard to see the value of standards as the profession for which we are writing them is become more and more a transitional profession. That being said, it is hard for me to speak to the value of teachers and our roles as empowering students to change the world if I cannot articulate clearly the ways in which accomplished teaching occurs. I feel like my work that is going into this process of rewriting privileges the students I see each morning. This work is aimed at making the teachers our school so desperately needs and will be losing the most valuable resources and advocates for the students in South Central. For me, this work is aimed at responding to the onslaught of rancor in which we\u2013my colleague on the phone, my fellow Manual Arts High School Toilers, the nearly five thousand laid off teachers in Los Angeles\u2013continue to tolerate as we strive for excellence. <\/p>\n