I am glad I am at the end of my career. I don't think I'd become a music teacher if I were starting out now. I don't like what's happening to education in general or music education in particular. I used to work 12+ hour days including weekends and vacations.  I loved every minute of my day.  I loved my students unconditionally.  I loved everything about my job.  Now the joy is slowly seeping out of my day and it's not because of the students.

 We had a faculty meeting the other day that started with an activity in which we were asked to describe our personality in terms of north, south, east or west. They lost me right there. Someone is getting paid to think up these activities that will neither improve my teaching nor add to the value of my classroom. They will, however, add to my scotch bill.

 It was determined fairly quickly into the activity that I was a north personality, as if my Yankee roots weren't already evident. The person who dreamed up this activity read us a description of the four directions. I forgot most of them, but when I heard that opinionated was a characteristic, I knew I was in the right place. My group had the fewest number of teachers. Everyone else gravitated towards the groups with descriptors such as caring or loving. We were told that each group had to list 4 adjectives to describe ourselves. Someone suggested impatient. I agreed wholeheartedly. When we were at a loss for 3 more, I said, "Why not leave it at that? We are impatient and don't need to list anymore." I was overruled, but only because we didn't collectively have the nerve to be that snarky.

 After we all shared our adjective search, we had to then figure out which other directions/personality types we couldn't work with. I was thinking that I wouldn't want to work with the southern care bears, the eastern detail-orientated nitpickers nor the western big picture folk. After all, I'm northern and I'm impatient and I don't have any patience for these types of activities. If you put me on a committee, I'm not about to ferret out which directional personality I'm dealing with. I am there to work and get things accomplished and I will try to keep my snarkiness under wraps (an ongoing battle) and try to be productive. I was relieved when this part of the meeting ended, but then I was in for a real treat. We were taking a FIELD TRIP.

 I was soon disappointed to learn that the purpose of our field trip was to view the data walls in teachers' classrooms, mine included. I teach in a bunker below sea level, so I don't get to go up into teachers' classrooms very often, but when I do, I am always uncomfortable because they remind me of the first floor of Bloomingdale's in NYC--shiny stuff everywhere. When I walk into these classrooms with not a bare spot anywhere, I have to avert my eyes from the visual vortex or risk system overload.

 When I was in first grade there was a large photo of President Dwight D Eisenhower on the wall. That was it. Just his bald, shiny dome and flinty eyes staring at us as we sat in our neat, orderly rows. Now, I will admit that my first grade wall wasn't all that enticing, but at least it wasn't a kaleidoscope of hyperactivity. If a kid has OCD, I bet these hyper decorated rooms trigger all sorts of anxiety.

 Our field trip was supposed to help us get new and fresh ways to put up data walls. In the beginning of the year, one of the admin team, someone in a position whose chief responsibility is to send "hey look at this awesome website" emails, told me that she was trying to figure out a way music could have a data wall. I asked, "Why?" She looked at me the way you look at someone who has just stomped on your foot. "Because," she said, "It's a non-negotiable." I asked, "Why is it non-negotiable?" She said, "Because it's something you have to have." (This interchange was reminding me of this funny bit from the Airplane movie--Rumack: You'd better tell the Captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital. Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it? Rumack: It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.) I said, "Why do you have to have it?" She sighed, looked off into the distance probably thinking about her next website to send out, and said, "Well, I think your recorder karate wall could be a data wall." I said, stifling another Why response, "Ok. If that works for you, it works for me."

So, two things struck me. Why are things non-negotiable? That sounds very paternalistic and intimidating. You WILL have a data wall, young lady, or else no cookies and ice cream for you. This is not the way to treat teachers. It's not even the way to treat a child. It's just plain demeaning.

There are other non-negotiables such as--you MUST post your standards, which I find really silly because 1. They are written in professorial language that our students can not begin to understand and 2. When a kindergartener comes into school the first day, will he really be able to read the standards? Will he even be able to read it by the end of say, 1st grade? Why do we even need standards posted? Show me the research that says posting standards means you are an effective teacher or has any effect on student outcomes.

The other non-negotiable that bugs me is posting the essential question and referring to it at the beginning, middle and end of your lesson, which is contrary to everything a Kodaly and Orff teacher would ever want to do. Besides, even when I ask higher order thinking questions, I have a hard time eliciting more than one word answers. Most of the questions I ask the kids are answered this way, "Beat." "Beat?" I respond. "What do you mean by that? Can you use more words than that?" They will answer, "Because it's the beat." So please tell me how posting my essential question and referring to it will do more than be a bullet point on an administrative check list. I have been known to have one EQ up all year and no one notices (How is music organized for grades 2-5 and How can we move to show steady beat in grades K-1).

 Last year I had my final evaluation the last week of school because my principal had more important teachers to evaluate the rest of the year. She came in while we were doing the cup game and my EQ, which I had thrown up on the boards moments before her arrival said, "How do music games teach us cooperation?" She gave me a great evaluation but noted that I had not written that EQ in my lesson plan. When we met for my summative assessment she asked about the EQ not being in my lesson plan and since she was leaving our school, I said, "To be totally honest, I don't even write lesson plans. I have a curriculum map and I refer to it from time to time, but I don't write lesson plans and i don't give a rat's two front teeth about the EQ. It's only there so you can check it off your list. You're the first person that's even read my curriculum map. But if you think my teaching will be improved by writing lesson plans or posting EQs, then by all means, tell me how. She smiled and we left it at that.

 Back to the data wall. It seems to me that the data wall is a horrid idea, let alone a probable violation of the Federal Privacy Act. I'm sure the kid who does well and has his data posted at the top of the wall feels pretty good, but what about the kid whose data is below desk level? I know it would make me feel stupid if my name was at a cockroach's line of vision. And again, I would like to see the research that shows that this is has a positive effect on student learning.

 I actually did a lot of reading about data walls after my field trip and I was heartened to see that there is a lot of blow back from teachers. For one, I don't think the best way to measure student achievement is by an extensive use of data because the data that is being accrued is mostly gotten from the type of assessments that use short answer or multiple guess questions and then run through a Scantron machine. We need more performance assessments that require students to apply their knowledge or student portfolios but that's harder to post that on a data wall. Data collection doesn't measure more than recall. What about analysis, comparison, inference, and evaluation These are the necessary skills of a literate twenty-first-century citizen.

And what does a data wall o have to do with music, or art or PE for that matter?  How will data collection drive my teaching? I have two eyes and two ears and they tell me what I need to know. Maybe my years as a choral director have impaired me, but I would like to think that I can assess most of what I need to know by what I see and hear. I know who can and can't read notes on the staff; I know who can and can't use head voice; I know who can and can't keep a steady beat.  I don't need data to drive my instruction. I have a zillion and one informal assessments that don't yield any data but I bet I know my kids pretty darn well. I know when they are totally lost and I know when their little light bulbs are turned on.  If there is no research to show me that these latest and greatest educational dog and pony shows benefit student achievement, then I'm all for it,but until then I can only ask, "Why?"