It is much easier to destroy than to build. Teachers work with young people, and they are fragile works-in-progress. A rash or unfeeling word can undo so much of the trust and growth that we strive for. 

As the year winds down and spring fever kicks in, some of us may be feeling weary. Yet no matter what happens, there are some words so destructive that they should never be uttered by a teacher. 

5. “I know this may seem pointless but we have to get through it…” 

I said this a few times early in my career, always related to standardized test prep. It isn’t psychologically devastating (see #1 and #2 for that), but it helps no one. If you’re forced to follow a less-than-stimulating curriculum, dress it up and sell it however you can in front of the kids. Apologizing for it doesn’t help anyone learn or grow; it only weakens you. 

4. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Many of us feel like frauds at times. We take on enormous responsibility for many young people, and it’s often a Herculean task just to keep things from collapsing. But you can’t say it to kids. They see you as a responsible, professional grown-up, whether you feel like one or not. Honesty is a virtue, but as a teacher, your top priority is building a safe and trustful environment for student learning. Showing your hand as confused or hapless undermines your ability to do that. Kids will remember that you’re the teacher who said that, and it will haunt you. 

3. “The other class did well with this. What’s wrong with you guys?”

People don’t like to be negatively compared to other people. Instead of “the other class,” insert anything: your brother, your cousin, my child…

It gets taken as an insult, not a motivator. Teachers should aim to make the students in front of them feel like— while they are together— they are the most important people in that teacher’s world. When the bell rings and people go their separate ways, things may change, but students don’t like to hear teachers praising absent students at their own expense.

2. “You will never be able to (fill in the blank).”

Whether or not you think this is true, you can’t say it. Actually, you don’t really know if that student will never be able to become a crime scene investigator, pass the AP Calculus exam, or read Ulysses. By making the comment, though, you are actively working against their achievement.

1. THE ABSOLUTE WORST AND MOST FRQUENTLY REMEMBERED WOUNDING, TRUST-SHATTERING WORDS:

“I get paid whether you (fill in the blank) or not.”

Always spoken in moments of frustration, these words are fatal. Whether intended or not, students hear it as “I don’t care about you.” There is no more damaging message a teacher can send.

What other third-rail words should never be said in a classroom?

This week’s release of the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Teachers, Parents, and the Economy illustrates just how fear-plagued our schools have become. The whole report is worth reading, but check out this data (interspersed with my commentary):

In the past five years the number of teachers who feel their jobs are secure dropped from 92% to 64%. I guess accountability hawks would welcome this decline— they want teachers to sweat from year to year over whether their test scores have shown enough value added. I see it as a surge of fear, pushing more and more potentially strong teachers out of the profession.

29% of teachers report being fairly likely or very likely to leave the teaching profession within the next five years to go into a different occupation. That’s up from 17%, nearly doubling the number from just two years ago. When you add the retiring baby boomers to that number, we find ourselves facing unprecedented turnover. Recruiting, training, and supporting strong teachers who stay in the profession must be a priority. But what type of profession will they be entering?

Only 44% of teachers report being very satisfied with their jobs— a fifteen-point drop since 2009 and the lowest in over 20 years. The economic downtown has injected significant stress into an already-struggling school system.

72% of parents and 65% of students worry about their family not having enough money for the things they need. Over 60% of parents worry about losing or not being able to find a job. Interestingly, there is a startling information gap between parents and teachers. 76% of teachers report decreases in their schools’ budgets in the past year. However, only 35% of parents thought their child’s school budget decreased; 32% didn’t know. The report goes further: “Lower income parents are particularly unsure— nearly half (47%) whose household income is less than $50,000 [did not know].”

66% of teachers report that their school has had layoffs in the past year. Layoffs are everywhere, ripping away much-needed teachers and poisoning the atmosphere. The toxic “last in, first out” debates breed generational bitterness in an era when teachers need to unify.

Pessimism and worry are pervasive in American schools. Contending with elimination of services, suffocating poverty, more layoffs, larger classes, and an accountability regime at odds with genuine teaching and learning, America’s teachers are freaked out.

I was looking forward to seeing Detachment, the new teacher film starring Adrien Brody and directed by Tony Kaye. With a very strong supporting cast (Marcia Gay Harden, Tim Blake Nelson, Christina Hendricks, Bryan Cranston, James Caan) and a compelling trailer featuring Brody as a tortured soul struggling to connect with his students, the movie seemed right up my alley. As a 31-year-old teacher and movie fanatic, I am Detachment's target audience; this should have gone well.

Detachment arrives in theaters on March 16, but it's already available on demand so I ponied up my $9.99. This movie has all of the trappings of an intelligent indie flick--- stellar cast, relevant social issues, and a notoriously egomaniacal director heralded by some as a genius.

It's hard to know where to begin to explain what a mess this film is. With its contrived story, one-dimensional characters, and in-your-face stylized visuals, Detachment takes edu-hand-wringing to new, blood-and-tear-soaked depths.

As a film major at NYU, I watched many crappy student films; in fact I made a few myself. Aside from experimental visuals that don’t pay off, the crappiness was most often epitomized by a lack of authenticity in the script. For example, students made police procedurals without having a clue about detectives’ reality— they took shortcuts by guessing or basing their stories on other inauthentic sources. The results, intended to play as dramatic, came out flat or even silly. Detachment suffers from the same syndrome; the script feels as if the writer (Carl Lund) dreamed up the worst things that could happen in public schools, put them on steroids, populated the scenes with the miserable characters, then let it run wild. In Detachment, suicides (there are 2 in the movie) aren’t “shocking”— they are a naked ploy for manufactured emotion.

Kaye leans on his audience’s vague, negative prejudices against the public school system. There’s no solid story here; just a bunch of lost/evil souls and a sense of decay. Many details will ring false to anyone who has spent time in a classroom. On his first day as a sub, Adrien Brody’s character enters his English 11 class to find all of the students quietly sitting at their desks waiting for him. Then, after he makes a brief introductory speech, the kids suddenly morph into profane hooligans. Two curse him out and one assaults him, chucking his briefcase across the room.

The movie avoids the very real issue of de facto racial segregation in urban schools. In Detachment, classes are racially diverse and pretty much everyone acts like a deadbeat. The movie takes the easy way out of facing any root causes of public education’s struggles other than lambasting absentee parents— and in this community all of the parents are either absent or over-the-top abusive.

As the film’s centerpiece, Adrien Brody emanates handsome ennui. He plays Henry Barthes, a glazed out guy with no friends and trauma in his past who comes to a nameless urban high school as a recommended substitute teacher. He doesn’t get mad when kids curse him out and he says a few things about how everyone is in pain and that literature is needed to defend and preserve our minds. All of that would be fine— Brody’s charisma manages to blunt some of the dialogue’s preachiness— except most of Detachment’s 98-minute running time is eaten by a miscellany of misery that ventures freely into exploitation.

In the world of Detachment, students are mean-spirited, profanity-addicted nihilists. (The one nice girl, played by the director’s daughter, publicly commits suicide.) Teachers are sadsacks or menaces: Tim Blake Nelson plays a teacher who can’t get anyone to listen to him at school or at home, so he hangs daily on the schoolyard chain-link fence in the crucifixion pose, wallowing in his invisibility. As an overwhelmed guidance counselor, Lucy Liu screams at and ejects an obnoxious student from her office— then weeps about it. William Petersen is a scary, borderline nonverbal teacher who in class shows Nazi images and glowers. Marcia Gay Harden, on the verge of losing her job as principal, delivers a public address announcement while curled in the fetal position on the floor of her office.

Outside of school, Barthes engages in various acts of sadness. He cries on a public bus, takes in and rehabilitates a teenage prostitute (a major storyline that reeks of cliches), role-plays with his dementia-addled grandfather, and screams in the face of a night-shift nurse.

The words “in your face” never left my mind during this film. Visually, director Tony Kaye, who regretfully doubles as director of photography, relies enormously on close-ups, often with point-of-view shots awkwardly placing the subject in the center of the frame. The effect is not arresting, but claustrophobic. Mixed in at tense moments are bits of crude chalk-on-blackboard animation that distract from rather than support the narrative. Worst of all, the film is peppered with cutaways to Adrien Brody being interviewed in tight close-up, his hair distractingly much longer than in the action of the film, philosophizing vaguely about lack of fulfillment and generational decline. These seemingly improvised clips carry the intellectual weight of a freshman dorm bull session. (“We’re failing… we’re failing.”) It’s never entirely clear whether Brody is in character as Barthes or if he’s just spitballing.

It all ends with Barthes visiting the teenage prostitute Erica at the “Guardian Angels Foster Care Facility,” a verdant resort-like institution where they share a sunny embrace. Then he goes to school and reads an excerpt from Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher to a classroom that has literally transforms into a ravaged wasteland.

My fear is that non-educator audiences will be tricked by the gravitas of Brody (“I’m a hollow man. You see me, but I’m not here.”) and the overall grimness of the story into thinking that this is a valuable portrait of American education.  One viewer from the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival probably cribbed Detachment’s PR copy by describing it a “gritty, edgy, shocking, and ultimately important film.” Hollywood.com praised its “unflinching realism.” Don’t believe the hype. This is a meandering mosaic of unfocused bitterness, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Last week the Brookings Institution released a report by Tom Loveless declaring the Common Core standards to be big waste— two years before they even go into effect. The top highlight listed on the report’s website lays it bare:

“Predicting the Effect of the Common Core State Standards on Student Achievement: The Common Core will have little to no effect on student achievement.”

Bummer.

Loveless lays out three “theorized effects” of how proponents believe the Common Core will improve education. They are:

• Quality theory: “The Common Core will raise the quality of education nationally by defining a higher-quality curriculum in English-language-arts and mathematics than is currently taught.”

• Rigorous performance standards theory: “A new Common Core test will presumably end such discrepancies [between state tests] by evaluating the same standards for every state, and these standards are to be more rigorous than those currently used.”

• Standardization theory: “One high-quality textbook— or perhaps a few that are aligned with the same content standards— used by all American students attending the same grade would be an improvement over the status quo.”

Sounds pretty good to all of use doe-eyed educators who have been baffled by the patchwork system out there. But then Loveless shreds those “theorized effects,” wielding NAEP score data with idol-smashing fervor. He writes:

“…[D]o not expect much from the Common Core. Education leaders often talk about standards as if they are a system of weights and measures— the word “benchmarks” is used promiscuously as a synonym for standards. But the term is misleading by inferring that there is a real, known standards for measurement. Standards in education are best understood as aspirational, and like a strict diet or prudent plans to save money for the future, they represent good intentions that are not often realized.”

Sure, standards alone will not lift public education.  But better curriculum and better trained teachers will.  The transition to Common Core standards is a golden opportunity for high-quality professional development centered on improving instruction and better (though unfortunately not fewer) tests. It’s an alarm clock moment for teachers to share expertise around crafting quality curricula.

The standards themselves provide just the spark— they won’t move mountains alone.

I’ve had two full days of PD on “unwrapping” (great edu-jargon) Common Core standards and it looks good to me. I think these guideposts/standards/benchmarks/aspirations will make classrooms better. I’ve pasted at the bottom of this blog (it’s rather long) the ten College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for writing, as well as the first writing standards, tracked from grade 6 to 12.

It’s smart, noncontroversial stuff. I look forward to my two-year-old daughter Sadie building these skills in her schooling. Declaring the Common Core standards useless or counterproductive at this point doesn’t make sense to me.

The will and the funds seem to be in place for an unprecedented influx of quality professional development. In 2014 we should have good standards, better-prepared teachers, and better curriculum. Why quit before we’ve begun?

Here are the ten CCR anchor standards for writing:

Text Types and Purposes

• 1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
• 2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
• 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

Production and Distribution of Writing

• 4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• 5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
• 6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge

• 7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
• 8. Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.
• 9. Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Range of Writing

• 10. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

And here is the first ELA standard for writing, tracked from 6th through 12th grade. To my eyes, it builds with logical, appropriate rigor:

W.6.1. Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

• Introduce claim(s) and organize the reasons and evidence clearly.
• Support claim(s) with clear reasons and relevant evidence, using credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.
• Use words, phrases, and clauses to clarify the relationships among claim(s) and reasons.
• Establish and maintain a formal style.
• Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from the argument presented.

W.7.1. Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

• Introduce claim(s), acknowledge alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.
• Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, using accurate, credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.
• Use words, phrases, and clauses to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among claim(s), reasons, and evidence.
• Establish and maintain a formal style.
• Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.

W.8.1. Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

• Introduce claim(s), acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.
• Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, using accurate, credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.
• Use words, phrases, and clauses to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
• Establish and maintain a formal style.
• Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.

W.9-10.1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

• Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
• Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly, supplying evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level and concerns.
• Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims.
• Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.
• Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.

W.11-12.1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

• Introduce precise, knowledgeable claim(s), establish the significance of the claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that logically sequences claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
• Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly and thoroughly, supplying the most relevant evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases.
• Use words, phrases, and clauses as well as varied syntax to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims.
• Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.
• Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.

Another teacher movie hits American cineplexes next month and this one looks to be worth seeing. (I still haven’t bothered with last summer’s Bad Teacher.)

Detachment, starring Adrien Brody and a strong supporting cast and directed by eccentric Tony Kate, arrives March 16. Consider me curious. Here’s the trailer: