Anyone ever had one of those Mondays when nothing seems to go right, behind every turn you feel blindsided, and wish you could just go back to bed and start the day all over? Welcome to my yesterday.

In the midst of this horrible, rotten day, I was frustrated by the world spinning around me. Once I got home and worked through the day with my husband, I realized the source of my frustration: a lack of communication.

• Decisions were made of which I had no input,
  
• changes were made that directly affected me without warning, unaware that those changes were going to be peppered throughout my entire day,
  
• meetings were cancelled and changed at the last minute,
  
• policy was being decided and defined behind closed doors, and
  
• all I wanted to do was teach kids to the best of my ability – and I felt as if I were being sabotaged.
  

This got me thinking … I wanted to fight back. I didn't want to understand or be tolerant or see the good in everyone. I wanted to fight, blame and complain.

I often find myself experiencing this same frustration with the communication coming from our school district. It isn’t just my day job that lacks efficiency and effectiveness with regard to communication; it exists in my personal and family life, as well. 

Emails from the district, articles written about our schools in local papers, events publicized around town, they all celebrate our district successes – and I love hearing the good news in a world full of bad – but when and where is the real work being done? When are policies being discussed? When are decisions about curriculum and student achievement being made? When is controversial law affecting students being debated before changes are being implemented on our campuses? How do the members of our community have chances to participate in talks about issues that directly affect them when their children have already graduated from the system? How can we ensure equity for all?

These are the issues that ultimately frustrate me and put me in a fighting mood, and I’m assuming these are the same issues that frustrate us all. I know there has to be a better way.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, board meetings are a public meeting and not a meeting for the public. So when does the public have the opportunity to have real discussion with the district leaders?

I would like to see:

• Community Forums started in our district to allow open communication and discussion
  
• More relevant communication with the community that discusses the tough issues and welcomes debate and input
  
• Invitations to information nights about educational law being mandated in the schools
  
• School News sections in all the local neighborhood papers written by school leadership to keep the entire community informed about more than just fundraisers and awards
  

Not every decision being made at the district level is going to make everyone happy. That’s the nature of public education and democracy, but I do know that I, personally, would be much less likely to fight against and more tolerant and supportive of the decisions being made and implemented if I were more informed. An understanding of the issues could make the difference for us all.

Our district has work to do, so let’s get down to business - and talk it out.

I went to an event a few days ago to introduce myself to the community and talk about why I’m running for Los Al school board. I presented my prepared talking points, got a pat on the back from the candidate sitting next to me for “making it look easy” and shook a few hands on my way out once the event was over.

I felt as if the afternoon had been a success. Then on my way out of the room, heading to the parking lot, I ran into two women who asked me a few last questions. One was a retired teacher and the other her guest at the event.

The retired teacher asked me about vertical alignment – literally. She asked, “What is vertical alignment?” I realized at that moment I hadn’t been clear about what this is exactly, especially if someone retired from my own profession isn’t clear what I’m talking about. I mention this concept in my platform, at all speaking opportunities, when talking about the race with friends, throughout my blogs, and during conversations when I get worked up about curriculum. But I’m a teacher, and I have a tendency to speak in educational acronyms and jargon. The time has come for me to present the basics of this topic and give everyone a chance to understand its power … and know why we need to start talking about it in Los Alamitos Unified.

When I first started teaching twenty years ago, I walked into my ninth grade classroom on day one, sat at my desk, and set about planning the year. I worked in isolation on curriculum and standards. I decided what to teach and when to teach it, and did just that. I thought back to my own education, pulled from memory those activities and assignments I found valuable and fun as a kid, and incorporated them into my classroom. I used the CA State Standards as a driving force, but was free to do as I pleased day in and day out.

When I started at Oxford Academy eight years ago, I walked onto a campus whose English department taught philosophically different from my early teaching experiences, using a different approach – an approach called vertical alignment.

And it changed everything about how and what I teach.

In a nutshell, vertical alignment is simply:

• building students’ content knowledge and skills year-over-year, 
  
• avoiding redundancy in sequential courses, 
  
• holding kids accountable for their learning from one year to the next, 
  
• building collaborative curricular teams of teachers focused on a common goal, and 
  
• increasing access to advanced and AP courses for all students.
  

I’m going to use the English department at Oxford as an example to explain how this works.

At Oxford, we align our 7th – 12th grade classrooms with an eye on preparing all students to feed into AP Composition and Literature in twelfth grade – that’s our only English track. But we only have six years to get 11- and 12-year-old kids ready to perform at a college level for this exam, so it requires that as teachers we focus on the end goal.

Instead of teaching the same concept every year, we teach the concept in an introductory year and build on that concept every year thereafter. Here’s one simple example of how we teach the thesis and argument claim:

• 7th – Introduce a 3-point thesis, including subject and position
  
• 8th – Continue to master the basic thesis and introduce the counter-argument
  
• 9th -  Experiment with phrasing of the thesis and work on clarity of relationships between elements of the thesis
  
• 10th – Work on mastery of the thesis, adding elements of style
  
• 11th – Introduce concept of sophisticated, complex and relevant logical sequence of knowledgeable claims; rhetoric focused and mode differentiated
• 12th – Work on mastery of sophisticated and complex claim statement with expectations of complex ideas, complex argument and clear qualifiers

Again, I know this example is full of teacher jargon, but I’m hoping you see how the sophistication of the instruction and expectations grows year after year. And we include this level of alignment in all aspects of the English curriculum – reading, writing, speaking and listening. We plan from the top, but build vertically from the bottom to be sure all kids are ready when they take that capstone course in twelfth grade. You can walk into any English teacher’s classroom on my campus and hear him or her say something along the lines of: “I know you learned this last year.” There is power in these words … our students know we will hold them accountable for their learning and expect them to be able to apply that knowledge long after it’s been mastered. I believe vertical alignment is the cornerstone of our school's success.

I will agree that not all students are destined for AP capstone courses, but I will argue there is no harm in preparing all kids for the choice, closing the learning gap, holding kids accountable, taking advantage of the precious little time we have to teach and reach each child, and engaging children in their own education. I get more than a little frustrated when my own children come home with activities covering the same material that's been covered multiple previous years. I want to see more rigor, higher expectations,  and increased complexity.

The power in the vertical alignment model of curriculum development lies in its focus, and Los Alamitos has the advantage of being both small enough to be able to tackle vertical alignment with precision and count on our students to step up.

Let’s finally capitalize on our Los Al advantages - and watch our students soar. 

That is the question.

Common Core. What is it? What does it mean for our kids? What does it mean for our schools? Our teachers? The future of our society? Do we really want more federal control of local education? 

The questions are endless, and the answers are convoluted. What’s to believe, and what’s to dismiss?

I visited with a chapter of Republic Women’s Federated this afternoon, and Common Core was a hot topic. The members of the group asked very pointed questions about our feeling with regard to the implementation of Common Core.

Some of the concerns in the room:

• loss of local control
• “fuzzy” math
• untested pedagogy 
• children being used as guinea pigs
• outdated and biased textbooks
  

I get it. I’m a school teacher and have been faced with the looming “Common Core” for the past several years. I’ve been on district Common Core Committees, studied the Common Core State Standards, been asked to implement Common Core strategies in the classroom, and been part of numerous discussions about what Common Core means to the future of America’s children.

You know what I’ve come away with? As simple as it sounds, I have honestly come to understand the Common Core as an opportunity to ensure America’s children are college and career ready. Can they read, write, speak and listen? Common Core means literacy across the curriculum. I truly believe it’s that simple. Get kids reading, writing, speaking and listening in all class, and we will have a generation of kids ready for the 21st century world.

That’s what colleges and Fortune 100 companies (P21) have told us … we need students who are globally aware, critical thinkers, collaborators, creative, and able to communicate effectively. Clearly, what we’ve been doing with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) hasn’t worked and has, ironically, left our children behind. Colleges tell us every new school year with incoming freshman that the children they are being sent aren’t ready for the rigor of college. Companies tell us with every new high school graduating class that the graduates can’t communicate or problem solve. So what are we fighting against exactly? Do we really want what we’ve had the past twelve years? Do we really want another generation of students who are only taught how to pass a standardized test?

Common Core simply offers opportunities for our students to demonstrate mastery through well-structured project-based learning, giving them opportunities to synthesize information to solve problems, create, innovate, explore, and build.

I work at Oxford Academy, a nationally-recognized high school in Cypress. You would be hard-pressed to find a classroom still being instructed using the traditional-rows-of-desks configuration, a teacher still using the same old worksheets of fill-in-the-blanks that have been used for the past ten years, students unable to synthesize primary source documents to construct well-organized arguments in history, politics, literature, science and world languages.

Common Core at Oxford Academy means rigorous curriculums, engaged students responsible for their own learning, well-trained teachers to facilitate learning, an expectation that all students can learn and excel, and an openness to believe that our educational system can only get better.

Do challenges exist with the Common Core? Absolutely. No program, regardless the industry, is flawless, but Common Core is a step in the right direction, and I teach at a campus that allows me to say just that. I’ve seen it in action, and our kids excel.

In a nutshell, a Common Core classroom simply expects students will be able to:

• read and comprehend more complex texts
• write arguments supported by text-based evidence
• synthesize a variety of information to solve complex problems
• engage in a global community and be able to communicate effectively 

Can a student more active in their own education and learning be a bad thing? Isn’t this just the type of person who ends up curing cancer, traveling unchartered missions into space, discovering the Autism link, solving the world’s natural resources challenges?

I believe it really is as simple … and complex as this.

When my husband and I found out I was pregnant with my son, we decided to start researching the schools in the neighborhood where we lived at the time. We are both college graduates and wanted our children to have the type of quality education and experiences we had while growing up. What we found at the neighborhood school was a little disconcerting – we made a decision pretty quickly we wanted to move. We started looking for neighborhoods where the schools were high-performing and the students college-bound. It didn’t take us long to find Los Alamitos, put our first house on the market, and move into Rossmoor with the hope that this small district would provide just what we were looking for.

When we made the decision to move, it was based on quite a few factors. LAUSD offered:

• a small-community feel with large-district course offerings and opportunities for students
  
• intimate elementary schools tucked into the neighborhoods so our kids could walk to school
  
• community pride in school sports and activities
  
• the potential for our kids to make life-long friends because of the tendency for Los Al graduates to return “home” to raise their own families
  
• well-educated parents who prioritize education and college attendance
  
• involved parents and volunteers all working towards a common goal
  

We ended up with two kids, and both of our kids have attended Los Al schools since Kindergarten. What we’ve found in the last seven years is:

• more than 30% of their classrooms year-over-year have been made up of inter-district transfer students
  
• a growing fear of my children being unable to play high school sports because of the sheer number of students trying out for limited spots
  
• my kids are making friends with kids outside of the neighborhood, limiting their ability to simply “go outside to play”
  
• increased traffic inside our intimate neighborhoods, perpetuating even more traffic because neighborhood parents don’t want their children in potential danger from speeding cars
  
• over-crowded schools
  
• increased fundraising requests to help pay for more programs for more children
  

I decided to check out the California Ed Code. What are districts legally able to offer and restrict with regard to inter-district transfers?

“Policies regarding …inter-district/reciprocal agreement transfers are the responsibility of each local district governing board and are not within the jurisdiction of the California Department of Education. Each local district governing board has ultimate authority over general education processes such as district transfers. Parents/guardians shall work with their local school district administration to share their concerns and to determine what local processes their district has in place regarding district transfers.”

Interesting.

I initially believed a school district was required to offer a free and public education to all students. Turns out this is only true of your own in-district kids.

“California law requires school districts to provide an education to any student who resides within the district’s attendance area. Although students have the right under California law to a free, public education, the law does not guarantee that a student can attend the school of his or her choice, or even the neighborhood school.”

Interesting.

Our own district kids may not be able to attend their own neighborhood school? This gets me thinking about the inter-district transfers again. Could it be true that in addition to the challenges I’ve been experiencing the past seven years, we also have been filling seats with transfer students and displacing our own district kids?

I’d like to see our district return to the small-community district I know it has been in the past and can be again. I want to see our local children get first-right-of-refusal for participation in athletics, activities, academic courses, and the arts. I am ready to eliminate the inter-district transfer students.

Will we see financial repercussions?

Possibly.

Is it worth taking a close look at our options, thinking outside the box, and re-evaluating our district priorities? 

Absolutely.

Who’s with me?

Why are districts facing an epidemic of students who aren’t passing their classes? Why are we struggling to graduate students from high school?

I believe the challenges for struggling students are multi-faceted, hard to pinpoint, and can’t be solved with a one-size-fits-all solution. However, I do believe teachers are oftentimes at fault for perpetuating the problem.

My job as a teacher is to educate. What does that mean, though? I’ve had dozens of conversations over the years – at multiple schools and districts – about what it is we actually teach. Are we, as teachers, responsible for teaching responsibility, time management, consequences for selected behaviors, morality, citizenship, real world realities, fortitude? Or is a teacher’s job to teach a curriculum and ensure children can show proficiency in that subject? Or are teachers responsible for both? Teachers have philosophies that run deep in the core of who they are. I’m not sure an answer exists to meet the needs of every child or every teacher. Nor do I believe we need to create one. What I do know is how I run my own classroom.

Let me go back to my earlier bold statement: teachers are oftentimes at fault for perpetuating the problem.

I’m not suggesting a teacher maliciously targets, fails or sabotages students. I will argue, however, teachers may lose sight of what I feel is our ultimate responsibility as teachers – to help children find success through differentiated instruction, intervention, individual plans for special circumstances, compassion, equity and fairness for all students based on their needs, and a focus on the course content.

Let’s take a look at a sample student to see how this plays out. Let’s call him Bob – because I’ve never had one in class. Bob’s story:

• unstable family life
  
• living in a middle-class neighborhood
  
• mixed race (Caucasian/Hispanic), but speaks English as a first language in the home
  
• performs at Proficiency in standardized tests
  
• struggled to pass English in seventh and eighth grade, ultimately pulling a D all four semesters 
  

Bob is capable, but struggling. As his teacher, unless he opens up to tell me why he struggles, all I can do is manage what happens in the classroom. Approaching the end of the first semester of ninth grade, it appears he won’t pass. This could be devastating for him. Students need to pass four full years of English to graduate high school. Projected out a couple years, he could potentially fail multiple semesters of English before his senior year, leaving him without enough time or summers to make up the credits and graduate high school; hence, he doesn't graduate. That is unless we work with him early to help him find success.

As a school team, we intervene. I re-evaluate his performance. I not suggesting I change his grades; I re-evaluate his performance.

• Does he turn in his homework? No
  
• Does he complete in-class work? Yes
  
• Does he perform at grade-level on quizzes and tests? Yes
  
• Have I been able to assessment him through oral, formative activities? Yes
  

Upon closer look, what I discover is that his homework grade is creating the biggest problem. Then I ask myself, Is he proficient in English and able to demonstrate that proficiency to justify a passing grade?

 Yes.

But it’s hard to imagine passing a student who earns an F in any class. So how do I “re-evaluate”? I look back at his homework grade. Turns out he’s only turned in only 20% of his homework. Not great, but each item turned in was an A. Regardless his performance, with the number of missing homework assignments included in his semester grade, he is earning an F.

So what’s a teacher to do? I had to go back to my philosophy. I want a grade to reflect a student’s proficiency or mastery of the content knowledge. Ultimately, isn’t this what a college wants to know?

I make accommodations for Bob. In the end, he is responsible for passing the semester final with a 70% to show he understands the material. He does, and he passes the first semester of ninth grade English with only a 49% in the gradebook.

Bob is now on track for graduation; he isn’t spending the next year trying to dig himself out of a hole he created for himself when he was only 14. That’s the part I continue to remind myself of … he’s just a kid. I WILL NOT let a 14-year-old child make decisions that will determine his future as an adult. I am the adult. I will cajole, push, encourage, accommodate, nurture and do whatever I can to champion a child.

This year he is in tenth grade and thriving. He is turning in more work, has figured out how to manage his home life, has become more organized, feels capable and is finding success. He’s also on the road to graduation and college. Did I have to change a grade? No. Did I have to lower my standards? No. In the end did I help teach responsibility, time management, consequences, morality, citizenship, real world realities, fortitude? I will argue “Yes.”

But you know the most important thing I taught him?

 Self worth.

In the end, ask yourself … are students really failing or are we failing our students? 

Two summers ago I decided to bring some culture into my kids’ lives. This was my plan: once a week the three of us were going to visit one important site in Los Angeles for the day. Southern California is an amazing place, and I was determined to have my kids experience a big chunk of it in three short months. My list of sites was ambitious: The Getty Museum, Griffith Park Observatory, Santa Monica Pier, LA County Museum of Art, Catalina Island, Hollywood, Venice Beach Boardwalk, The Rose Bowl, Downtown Pasadena, La Brea Tar Pits. You get my point. We had lots of sites to explore in a short amount of time.

We began our summer adventure with a trip to the La Brea Tar Pits and Original Farmer’s Market. We had a nice time, learned quite a bit, and decided the summer was going to be quite an adventure. Then we got in the car to head home. This is when everything changed.

The 35-mile drive home took 3 hours and 10 minutes.

By the time we arrived at our house, everyone was done. We were all grumpy, angry, tired, and sufficiently frustrated to forget the great time we’d have that day. The only saving grace was driving into the neighborhood. We found our calm and sanity pulling into Rossmoor. The neighborhood was quiet this afternoon, a light breeze welcomed us home and we found respite and safety inside this small corner of the world we call home. Needless to say, our Summer O’ Adventure only lasted one week; no one could stomach the thought of braving the LA traffic again.

Which is why I find myself so frustrated by the debilitating morning school traffic around Los Alamitos. Regardless the school – elementary, middle or high – the traffic congestion has gotten out of control. The challenges may not be as severe as the 405 freeway on a Wednesday afternoon, but just in my small corner of Rossmoor by Lee Elementary, cars speed down Silverwood, Donovan and Loch Lomand to avoid the congestion on Foster. Cars are lined up to Rossmoor Park from the light at Wallingsford, waiting to exit the neighborhood. Everyone is in a hurry, and every student’s safety is at risk – too many cars, not enough cross walks, frayed nerves for working parents, and a speed limit left ignored. And I know this is happening all around our district schools.

Why has the traffic gotten so bad? What happened to our quiet neighborhoods with neighborhood kids that brought me and my husband here almost twelve years ago? How can we go about restoring the community and quality of life in Los Alamitos, Rossmoor and Seal Beach?

I think it’s time to discuss this problem. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some ideas about what issues we can discuss to try to solve this challenge:

• staggered start times for each school
  
• designated drop-offs at busing locations outside of Rossmoor
  
• elimination of inter-district transfers
  
• equal distribution of inter-district transfers among schools
  
• more crosswalks
  
• more sheriff presence
  

I want to see more neighborhood kids walking, biking, skateboarding to school with friends. I want to see our neighborhoods become the safe-haven we all remember. I want to see safety become a priority.

I want a lot … but don’t we all?

Of all the teachers I’ve ever encountered, I can pinpoint only a handful of them who stick with me today.

• Mr. Didier taught middle school French, and he had us engaged in the language by listening, speaking, writing, and reading on day one in seventh grade. By the end of eighth grade, I could carry on a pretty decent conversation in French.
  
  
• Mr. Bickel was my Geometry teacher. Every day we took notes and dissected triangles without fail. He was tough, but he had a way of engaging each of us. We were responsible for mastering the strategy, maintaining our knowledge, and performing every skill with precision. 
  
  
• Mr. Howard taught science. I can still remember some of the content we explored that year, and I’m sure it’s because the science class was taught through experimentation and questioning. In fact, he had a bulletin board on his wall all year with one simple quote: “Always wonder why.” I’m convinced that bulletin board influences my life every day.
  

I could mention a few others, but I think you get my point. We all have these: the teachers who inspire us to be better, teach us ideas and concepts that stay with us for a lifetime, and make us believe we are invincible.

But were these classes rigorous? Or do I just remember hilarity, style, personality, classmates? As a teacher, I think about this all the time. What exactly do I want my own students to walk away remembering? That I was the “cool” teacher? Or that I was the teacher from whom they learned more than they thought possible?

I will argue the later without question. And I'm convinced my own experiences with Mr. Didier, Mr. Bickel and Mr. Howard prove just that. But how is something like this accomplished?

Rigor.

Rigor is more than content and standards. Rigor is the why, the how and the “so what” – the ability to take the strategies, knowledge and skills and apply them in areas outside of one in-class assignment.

Let me give you an example near and dear to my heart – grammar.

Grammar worksheets make me crazy! I don’t use them in the English classroom, and I go ballistic when I see or hear of my own children doing them. Our educational system has decided that the eight parts of speech need to be taught, reviewed and practiced every year from kindergarten through twelfth grade. But many adults who lived through these painful worksheets themselves will argue they struggle with writing today. Businesses and hiring managers of the 21st century will argue that high school graduates don’t know how to write a memo, business proposal, marketing brochure or simple email. So do grammar worksheets equate to good writing?

No.

However, is it important to know how to write a complex sentence? Is it important to use introductory phrases for style? Can short and long sentences used in combination make a point more effectively than a report written without?

Absolutely.

Grammar plays a role in voice, style and fluency. However, grammar worksheets take grammar and teach it in isolation. Rather, a teacher who wants to teach an element of grammar needs to do so in conjunction with a rigorous writing curriculum. Let's take a look at one simple example. Instead of grammar worksheets to combine pairs of 40 simple sentences to create compound sentences, how about that same teacher:

• give students a writing model about a page long that includes sentence variety,
• ask the students to identify the compound sentences based on samples,
• give students a few minutes to discuss in pairs to identify the components of a compound sentence,
• require the students to annotate on the model the effect of each sentence type,
• tell them to take out the draft of a paper or essay they've started previously,
• require them to now color-code their paper based on sentence type and annotate for effect,
• require them to revise their piece for sentence variety, and then
• ask the students, in a formative assessment Exit Ticket from class, to give one example of a compound sentence as could be written for an argument paper in history and explain how using sentence variety can be more effective than not.
  

This is just a simple example, but in it you’ll see that the student will have had to learn parallelism, coordinating conjunctions, sentence types, audience and purpose.

Rigor requires not only content mastery as listed above, but also the ability to engage in that content, apply the strategies and skills, transfer the knowledge and show accountability for learning.

Rigor is a shift in teaching philosophy. It doesn't mean more. It means different. And I see no excuse for rigor not being the standard in all classrooms. No longer can we be content with seeing the same worksheets and projects year-after-year.

It’s time for a change. 

The summer before my freshman year of high school, I was required to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) and Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I remember sitting on my parent’s bed struggling to finish just the number of pages I was expected to get through, but enjoying the process of tackling the story and feeling confident upon completion that I’d done it on my own. As hard as it is for anyone to believe me, today Great Expectations is one of my favorite novels. I argue this is the case because I was expected to read it on my own.

However, that’s not the end of the story. I also argue it’s one of my favorites because my teacher introduced me to Pip and Miss Havisham and Estella in her unique and talented way once we started school that year. My only job that summer was to get through the texts. Upon our return to class, my teacher spent the first months of school helping us unpack them.

What I wasn’t expected to do upon my return to class in September was take a comprehension exam, a vocabulary test, and a character quiz that either set me up for success or failure within the first days of school. While reading the novels over the summer, I wasn’t stressed to the point of needing expensive private tutors, Cliffs Notes, Spark Notes, Wikipedia (if it’d existed) just to be “prepared” to be tested on day 1 of the new school year.

I’m sure my teachers must have been aware of the summer loss that we hear so much about today. They knew a summer reading assignment was a good idea. They must also have been aware of the importance of their role in teaching. Yes, my teacher challenged me with complex text, but knew that I was going to need her for:

• strategies for how to maneuver the subtleties of the themes
  
• background for how to glean context from character’s names
  
• approaches on how to read 19th century literature with all its language challenges
  
• help in understanding the power of the cliff hanger, audience and figurative language in relationship to the author’s staying power
  
• assistance in synthesizing the symbols from both novels to make an argument about classic, canonical literature
  

I am not opposed to summer homework, but I’d like to see it approached in a way that celebrates teaching and teachers while giving kids opportunities to enjoy their summers, challenge their minds, and kick start their curriculum work load in September.

Because I’ll argue any day that testing isn’t the point of education; rather, it’s the learning and love of the process that allows success.

Don’t you agree?