Burnout

Edwize has a post on teacher burnout and KIPP-like charter schools. I've wanted to write a similar post but I'm no expert on the subject, and my opinion would be little more than conjecture based on hearsay about how these schools operate. I could add my general experience with a number of teachers who come into the system from various special programs (I wouldn't want to single one of them out) with unrealistic work ethics and rather large turnover rates.

The basic problem, before I go to far off topic, is that these schools have a high turnover rate for young and energetic but inexperienced teachers. They are driven, both by personal passion for their work and by the culture of their schools to work excessive hours - on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. This level of work is impossible for most people to sustain given the intangible and often negligible benefits of their efforts - i.e., their personal gain (financial) is not commensurate with the level of effort, and the gains by their students are not much different than their more experienced colleagues working more efficiently. From Edwize:

The school hires energetic and well-meaning, but young and completely novice teachers. It then has to employ ‘teacher proof’ curricula and extend the ‘on time’ into the evening in order to compensate for the lack of teaching skill and experience. Teaching needs to be reinforced by a school culture which leans toward the authoritarian. By the time a teacher would ordinarily have begun to acquire the knowledge and skills that allow her and her students to work smart as well as hard, she has burnt out, and is unable to maintain the intensity of work. It is also impossible to start a family with such a work load.

I'm neither young, nor particularly energetic or bright, and I'm not working at a KIPP school, but I do teach within a school culture with a strong work ethic. And I am a bit overextended as I've mentioned in earlier posts. The pace of work that started the school year has not subsided, the demands of my job still have me working on average about 10-12 hours per day (5 days per week - I'm averaging in weekend hours) and a lot of it is precisely the inefficiency you would expect to find in new teachers - scrounging around for activities and labs, gathering materials for labs, setting up materials, creating quizes and tests that are appropriate for the regents curriculum, helping students make up missing work, etc. I can easily see myself next year chopping an hour or two off the average workday and at the same time being a better teacher.

Blizzard

Second biggest snow storm in NYC history, according to NY1 News.

"The first blizzard of 2006 is only inches away from breaking the record. The city received at least 24 inches of snow, making it the second biggest snow storm in city history."

The good news is that it happened on a weekend with lots of warning, so the city hopes to be up and running by Monday morning. Still, should make for an interesting school day, or week even. I'm scheduled to visit (observe) a fellow living environment teacher at another school on Tuesday. I hope that doesn't get postponed or cancelled- these things don't just happen and my AP has been working on the arrangements for a few weeks now.

As far as teaching goes, we are into the human body systems, working our way toward reproduction and genetics in a couple of weeks. As a review of several concepts, I have the students working on one of those hokey assignments that I usually avoid, but decided to give it a go for this unit. They are writing an "autobiography" of a carbon atom beginning in the atmosphere as part of a CO2 molecule then cycling through plants and animals and back to the atmosphere. Along the way they will have to discuss plant structure & photosynthesis, animal digestion, circulation, cellular respiration, and excretion. Not to mention the implicit review of biochem concepts including chemical bonds and enzymes.

I had this feeling that students simply weren't getting the whole carbon cycle concept - in fact, making sense of a lot of the abstract ideas in biology is a stretch for a lot of my 8th and 9th graders. And honestly, I try to keep it at a level necessary for the regents. I do not feel compelled to turn regents LE into AP Bio. Of course, it's not always easy to read the tea leaves and figure out exactly how much is enough for the regents exam. I'm hoping this will help a little. If I get a chance I'll post a fuller description and a rubric sometime this week.

Dads-to-be pile on the pounds too

I knew there would have to be an evolutionary explanation for all that weight I put on when my wife was pregnant. Of course the study involves monkeys and has not been applied to human fathers-to-be, but now it's my story and I'm sticking with it until proven otherwise!

In studies on two groups of monkeys, marmosets and tamarins, both small, monagomous primates, the father to be gains 10% of his body weight during the mate's pregnancy.

The males' weight gain is probably a result of their producing greater levels of prolactin – the same hormone that encourages milk production in the females. “Our earlier studies showed that prolactin levels increase in males halfway through pregnancy, when the females experience a hike in corticosterone – a hormone involved in sending and receiving pheromones,” she adds.

A couple of caveats regarding the application of these results to humans. First, increased prolactin level alone is not a associated with weight gain in humans. Secondly, prolactin is associated with good fathering practices in some other animal groups but a direct link in humans and other primates has not yet been verified

It would be great to look at hormone levels in good and bad fathers but it’s very hard to get the data on men who abandon their babies...

As for me, I put on about 5% of my weight during the pregnancy and another 10% afterward - something tells me my excuse isn't going to hold up to scrutiny.