Day 4: Am I partly to blame?

Well, hours spent in bed last night left me feeling slightly better and like all good teachers, because it is easier than making sub plans, I staggered in to work.  Mistake!  By the afternoon, I needed my bed but I couldn't leave till 3:30!  I won't be in tomorrow.

However, I did say that I would write every day and so, while the paracetamol is working, here I go.

In a previous post, I noted that I got involved with looking at assessment data because I was concerned about the lexile levels of students at my school.  It's  my theory that students' lexile levels are not increasing year on year at a rate that would allow them to read the text they will encounter at the diploma level (grades 11 and 12) and at university.   I have certainly noticed a drop in circulation. This is particularly noticeable between grade 5 (upper primary) and grade 6.

I have theories on why this has happened over the past 5 years but I have been working toward the thought that perhaps I should also be looking closer to home as well.  Is it possible that
the library and I may have played a role in this.  I don't think that we have but I can't not take the possibility into consideration.

Over the last 4 years, I have concentrated much of my thinking time on developing strategies for teaching information literacy.  I have continued to develop my fiction and non-fiction collections but I haven't had as much time to advertise or to encourage recreational reading.  Having said that, I think I'm being a little hard on myself.  During the last school year,  I had many classes in for book talks and developed new types, such as speed dating a book.

(To be continued...)

The Lurgi has me but I've written nonetheless!

Here I am on day 3 as sick as a dog!  Not fair and it’s definitely going to cramp my style.  I ache in every part of my body and as I type, my fingers hurt.  My brain is definitely not up to writing anything of great value but I did say that I would write regardless of the circumstances!  However, I didn’t factor in illness.  

So I shall attempt to continue on with the question of using assessment data to improve student learning.  Bored yet?  I think I’m beginning to be! I was going to talk about training teachers to analyse data but really that makes me want to go to sleep even more than my lurgi. ( A book prize for anyone who guesses - not googles - the origin of that word and knows the original cure!)

I got onto the assessment committee because I was and am still concerned about the lexile levels of our students.  From my reading of the data it appears that around 50% of our students in each grade level are not where they need to be so that when they get to grade 12 they will be able to read college level books.  We do have a percentage of EAL students but I don’t think that alone accounts for this.  

I have my theories!  We introduced I-pads across the board last year and the library circulation numbers began to drop.  This coincided with a new English department head who, though he pays lip service to having English classes come to the library for book talks or just book borrowing, he in no way encourages his teachers to do so.  This added to very content heavy English courses and et voila, a fall in circulation.  Yes, you are right, students are likely reading on their mobile devices but it is unlikely that their parents are buying the number of books that students used to take out in print format.  

Have you guessed that’s I’m a teacher-librarian, a rare breed, (originally I wrote 'bread' - see I told you I was sick) it seems, in most secondary schools.  My school is fortunate that the administration believes in the value of libraries.  Now all I need to do is learn how to analyse the lexile scores, and also look for other factors and then find away to turn things around.  I am trying not to make assumptions but of course, what I have just written is full of them.  

Enough!  My bed calls.  Well, actually I’m in it already!  But sleep calls!  Bonne nuit!

Day 2: Post 2B

My second inspiration for writing today came from an email I received while riding the bus home from work.  Almost 4 months ago my husband died after a long and debilitating illness, from peritonitis which developed after the insertion of a PEG.  He received varying treatment in the hospital ranging from good to terribly bad.  Today, the head nurse contacted me to say that the investigation into his death had finally finished and that at a meeting last Friday the report had been shared with her.  Now, she needed to share it with me.

I have found it difficult to reconcile myself to the fact that the hospital was probably to blame, for the most part, for Cliff's death.  You always want to think the best of an institution which is there to help make people better and not to kill them.  I don't actually think that the hospital will admit to having made a mistake.  I say 'the hospital' when what I really mean is the people involved with my husband's care. And how likely are their colleagues who investigated the death, to lay the blame on other staff members?

Do I really believe that Cliff's death was anything more than a series of unfortunate events, which might have gone either way?

I am worried too that I might let myself become consumed by anger about what has happened.  Or, am I working so hard not to be angry that I am trying to forget the whole thing?  My goodness this is all so ... I can't even thing of the word!

So, four months after my husband's death, I now have to face what happened, listen to what the hospital has to say and try and make some sense of it and find a way to move forward. Unfortunately, talking with the hospital won't be the end of it.  The Coroner has yet to decide on whatever they decide.  I have an interim death certificate, the autopsy has shown that he died of natural causes but I think that the coroner has yet to decide whether or not things were done as they should have been.

Sigh!

There will be much more to say about this!

Day Two (Surely I can come up with a better title!)

I started today unsure of what I might write about today but as luck would have it two subjects presented themselves, one at the beginning of the day and one at the end.

I have been reading an study called Achieving with Data: How High-performing School Systems Use Data to Improve Instruction for Elementary Students for the Assessment Group I belong to. I have set myself the task of writing notes for the rest of the group. I got chatting with our academic dean this morning about the notes to date and this post comes out of that.  

The study identifies 6 key strategies for success as noted in 4 school districts: 1. Building a foundation for data driven decision making; 2. Establishing a culture of data use and continuous improvement; 3. Investing in an information management system; 4. Selecting the right data; 5. Building school capacity for data-driven decision making; and finally, 6. Analysing and acting on data to improve performance .

From my reading I had come to the conclusion over the weekend that we were setting ourselves up for failure, or even more worrying yet, we were being set up for failure by our board. To be successful, we would need to have an information management system (which we don't at the moment and won't due to financial constraints) to assist us in analysing our data. Furthermore, we would need to be using the 'right' data. Unfortunately we have been required to take on board, as one of our assessment tools, MAP, which does not coincide with parts of our IB curriculum. This leads to two problems. Firstly, some teachers disregard the entire test because part of it is not relevant to our curriculum. If teachers don't believe in the validity of the test, they will never take the results seriously. Secondly, we lay ourselves open for the suggestion that we change our curriculum to align with the test. (It has also been suggested that we spend time teaching students to write the tests. We all know where that is going to lead!) Finally, we need to find the time to train teachers in analysing the data available to them about their students and then, teachers would need to find time in their schedules to work with the data. I don't know about other schools but at ours, teachers are already stretched to the limit. Furthermore, we have so many new initiatives each year that training time is at a premium.

The most worrying aspect of all, is that next year there is a plan afoot to judge teachers by student results. If our students are taking a test for which they are not prepared (due to the differences in curriculum), then it will appear that the teacher is failing to deliver the curriculum. Now, our administration knows the problems with the test but the other two schools in our group are using a curriculum which aligns more closely to MAP. When the board looks at the results across the three schools, they may perceive our school to be failing.

Another Beginning

So here I am back again having written very little about the grieving process and I wonder if I ever will.  Instead I have committed myself to getting back to writing again on a consistent basis and so  over the next 28 days I will be writing something and adding it to this blog.  Hopefully, I will have established the habit by the end of the month and will continue on.  Once upon a time, I would write a 1000 or more words a day but alas, no more.  Well, not to this point!  When I had a break before and wanted to get back to writing, around the start of this blog, I decided that I would simply write, about anything that came to mind.  If it were fiction, I wouldn’t plot, though it wasn’t entirely stream of consciousness.  My non-fiction was mostly ramblings about whatever came to mind or was of interest at that moment.  I think I might go the same route again.  We’ll see.

At the moment I am working on summarising the research I’ve been doing for a committee I’m on at work…the Assessment Committee, for want of a better name.  Though I taught in the classroom for many year as a French and drama teacher, I am now back to my first love, the library and so have had very little need to grapple with ins and outs of assessment and assessment data and how to use it.  Much of what is spoken about at our meetings has left me wondering if I am out of my depth and what I could possible add of relevance to our discussions.  In the end I came to the conclusion that I should do what librarians do, and research the topic.  I hope to learn more about the question of using data to improve teaching and learning, find out what is happening elsewhere, and perhaps be able to pass on something of what I have learned to my colleagues.  I hope this doesn’t turn out to be too ambitious a project.

At the same time, I have a number of fiction projects on the go.  It would be good to take the plunge into at least on of them and explore the characters on the page instead of in my head.  I would also like to start pulling together the ‘blog novel’ I started in 2006, back when I was having cancer treatment.  Strangely, chemotherapy led to a very creative period in my life and that year I must have written 100,000 words or more on various projects.  My problem is finishing my fiction projects!

I will eventually have to focus on one of these but I’m not sure which and so I hope that a month of pursuing different threads may help me to decide.  Perhaps, I will go in a totally different direction!  Who knows?  This could be exciting!

Things that make you cry!

It's strange the things that can set you off crying.  Tonight I was just about to add cheese to the mashed potatoes when I remembered that I should put some aside for Cliff without cheese.  Then I burst into tears.

Guilt

I didn't realize that I would be feeling so much guilt related to Cliff's death.  In his final days I decided to check online and see what I could find out about post-operative deaths in patients who had the PEG procedure.  What I discovered, shocked me and led me to question why we had ever agreed to Cliff having this operation.  I know that I am beating myself up a bit more than I should but I am a research librarian.  Why didn't I research this procedure sooner, before it it took place in fact?  If I had, I would never have allowed it to take place!  I knew that we couldn't trust the NHS to do the right thing based on on their past history with Cliff.  Why would I think that this was any different?  I do feel as if I have failed him and I think it is going to take we quite a while to work through that. And I am left with the question whether he would still be alive if I had done my research sooner.