California LiveWire: Teaching in the Golden State

Teaching Meme

2007-07-29T17:38:00.001-07:00

So, wow.. totally forgot I was part of this blog, but I'm glad to find it still intact. I plan on posting more stuff.

So, I saw this meme, and thought it was interesting. so.. here I go.

1. I am a good teacher because... I connect with my students, I listen to them and make them feel respected, I know my subject matter and I really have the drive to teach.

2. If I weren’t a teacher, I would be... an anthropologist or a translator.

3. My teaching style is... sort of laid back, although I hope to get more rigid as time goes on.

4. My classroom is... full of posters and books and full of my own style. I want it to be a place students find comfortable, a place they want to be (which, they have shown me is completely true).

5. My lesson plans are... done two weeks in advance, and neatly arranged in a binder and color coded with handouts present and a post-lesson reflection... Who am I kidding.. That's a goal, not reality! Done on the fly, usually and written down only if I remember.

6. One of my teaching goals is... to focus on writing as whole, and not just as it pertains to literature. To rally teach grammar and not assume the students get it (because they don't sometimes).

7. The toughest part of teaching is... finding collaboration between parents, students and administrators.

8. The thing I love most about teaching is... watching a student who has truly struggled with a concept or an assignment suddenly get it. I love the light in thier eyes when this happens. It brings me true joy.

9. A common misconception about teaching is... that because we work a "6 hour day" that is all the time that is put into to teaching (and even one of those hours is a preparatory period, during which we should get everything done, right?)

10. The most important thing I’ve learned since I started teaching is... all students are different, and I should never stereotype. They will not all learn at the same pace at the same time.

Teaching using REACH - Mid Year Evaluation

2007-02-18T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last summer, I went to a couple of trainings on REACH, a program that extensively uses Direct Instruction. Direct Instruction is a method of teaching in which teachers are given a script to read, students respond to the script (whole class) and the teacher does not move on until the whole class understands the material being taught.

The REACH system is specifically geared for those students who have been identified as struggling learners. At our school site, students were identified using three types of measures: 1.) an oral reading in which errors were recorded; 2.) the CAT-6 scores (state mandated assessment) from the previous two to three school years; 3.) on grade level preassessment literacy test. Using those three measures, students were then placed in three categories: benchmark, strategic and intensive. Benchmark students are at grade level and above. We no longer have GATE classes in our school district. Strategic students may need help in either Mathematics or Language Arts, but don't require the three hour intensive class. Some of these students have two hours of Language Arts or two hours of Mathematics.

Those students identified as intensive are in a three hour block of REACH. The criteria for remaining in the class was to be based on attendance and behavior. The District assured teachers that those students who were behavioral issues would be removed from the program. Furthermore, those students who have chronic attendance issues will fail and again, we were reassured that they would be removed.

My three hour block is set up in this manner: first hour is devoted to decoding; 2nd hour is reasoning/comprehension; 3rd hour is morphographs and writing. Decoding is the ability to read text fluently. As most teachers know (or should know), if a child cannot decode reading material fluently, they will not be able to comprehend the material they are reading. Overall, I've seen some of my students make great strides in decoding. Some have admitted to me that they now enjoy reading, where before they hated it.

At the beginning of the school year, the majority of my students were not able to read 100 words per minute. Some barely made it to 60 or 70 words in a minute with several errors in decoding. Now, I have students reading 150 to 160 words per minute with virtually no errors. They are excited about their progress and I'm excited for them. Two of my students have tested out of the program and have been placed into the strategic block. The hope for them is that next year, they will be able to move into a benchmark placement.

I think that this program works well for those students who are struggling learners, but have the desire to do better. I also think that when placement is correct, then students will be successful and will thus, try to improve. Finally, I believe that if a district promises its teachers that certain criteria would be in place that they need to follow through.

That being said, my criticism of the program has more to do with my district than the program itself. However, my main gripe with this program is the lack of creativity. For instance, right now I'm reading Bridge to Terabithia to my students. This is not in the program and if a district person were to come into my classroom, they would probably question me as this is "not in the script." However, my students love this book and next year, I'm going to seriously consider getting class sets of a few books to read with my REACH students.

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. First, my students are 6th graders and I believe strongly that they should be exposed to literature that their peers have been exposed to. Second, my students are still expected to take the District assessments every quarter and the CAT-6, which tests them are on 6th grade standards, such as conflict, plot, theme, metaphors, and the like. The REACH program does not teach this and I have a problem that my students are being held accountable for something I've not taught them.

The other shortcomings have nothing to do with the REACH program, rather it has to do with my Districts reluctance to abide by the criteria set forth for maximum results. Students who have been behavioral issues have remained in the program because the District does not want any class to be too small. (In fact, one of my students who had tested out of the program was only removed after I fought very hard to have him removed.)

Class size number has also been a factor for those students who placed below the level that we had the most students place in. In REACH, students are placed according to their reading level. So, for instance, the majority of our students placed in B2, which is what we started teaching out of at the beginning of the school year. We had a handful of non-special education students place in A (lowest level) and B1, who were put into a B2 classroom. This has meant that these students have struggled all year. In a program that is built upon rewarding points for achievement based on whole class learning, this can cause great frustration for those students who are placed appropriately, but are being dinged for points due to misplacement of other students. Again, this all came down to class size numbers. The District was unwilling to create a classroom for a small number of students who did not place in the B2 level.

(Right now, a co-worker and I are considering making some changes to help those students who were misplaced by either going ahead and creating a new class or doing something after school to help these students.)

So, overall I've been impressed with the growth I've seen in most of my students. Like I said before, some of them used to hate to read and now, they enjoy it. They understand what they are reading and are able to apply it. Much of my criticism has nothing to do with the program itself; rather it has to do with my District's reluctance to do what they promised to do.

Teaching meme

2006-11-15T21:40:00.000-08:00

1. I am a good teacher because... I am passionate about what I do and I work my ass off.

2. If I weren’t a teacher, I would be... a guidance counselor. Wait, a position outside of the school system? A psychologist or sociologist.

3. My teaching style is... relaxed, fun. I enjoy teaching, and I try to make my classes as interesting and enjoyable as possible for both my students and I, while still doing a good job with teaching.

4. My classroom is... colorful, busy, interactive, creative, and waaay too small for everything I need to do with it.

5. My lesson plans are... ummm... non-existent?? I mean, I do plan, but not really formally--I more just put together an outline and work off of that.

6. One of my teaching goals is... to be a more effective and consistent writing teacher. I've been better in the past, but I'm just not putting as much time into it this year as I need to.

7. The toughest part of teaching is... dealing with teachers and administrators who are consistently negative toward and to the students they are supposed to encourage.

8. The thing I love most about teaching is... seeing students enthusiastic about learning and proud of what they've accomplished academically.

9. A common misconception about teaching is... we get a lot of vacation time. Oooohh, don't EVEN get me started on this one (this coming from someone who spent 13 hours at school today, and put in a 75-hour week *just in time spent at school!* last week.)

10. The most important thing I’ve learned since I started teaching is... patience and love. I thought I had those before, but nothing could ever have prepared me for the depth of my love for my students and my job.

Bribe or no bribe?

2006-10-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

LA Times's School Me today links to an article from the LA-area paper The Daily Breeze, which reports that San Pedro High School is being required by the LAUSD and state educational officials to give up 12 new laptops and projectors given to the social studies department as part of a textbook purchasing deal. The reasoning LAUSD officials and the state gave is that such a technology purpose constitutes a bribe.

Two years ago, we entered into a similar deal with the same textbook publisher, Glencoe, and because I was fortunate enough to have some say with regards to textbook purchasing, I was able to see the other options out there.

While we had the option to get projectors and laptops, we instead chose another option--for every certain number of textbooks we purchased, we were allowed to choose a certain number of hardcover novels from their catalog of novels.

This was an absolutely FANTASTIC option. I'm not much of a textbook person myself--I admit that my own class set of Glencoe textbooks gets opened for about six months out of every school year. But I LOVE novels, and use them frequently in my classes. With this "bribe" from Glencoe, we were able to replace many of our aging novel sets, many of which had been purchased as paperbacks and used continually for over ten years. Trust me when I say that paperbacks were never intended to be continuously subjected to a high schooler's backpack for ten years--we had many novels missing covers and entire chunks of pages, and each time I'd pass out books, I'd also pass around a roll of duct tape so students could do repairs on their books.

Not only were we able to replace many of these books with durably-bound newer versions, but the newer versions also came with many supplementary readings and activities, some of which I use, some of which I don't.

Finally, having this option enabled us to select new novels we hadn't previously used before, and gave us a chance to figure out what students would like and what didn't work with them.

So is the state going to make us give them back to Glencoe? Well, they'll have to show up at my door and physically take them from me if they want them back, and then if they do actually show up, they may just find that all the novels have mysteriously disappeared. Because I'm sure not parting with a single book, at least not to some bureaucrat who tries to protect the children at the expense of the children.

My husband, El Maestro, teaches at a school where the history department just made the same deal as the one at San Pedro High (although, with a much smaller department, the deal at his school involved fewer computers and projectors.) I'm wondering now if that deal is in jeopardy as well.

What a loss.

The price of a pound of cure

2006-10-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow begins the 8th week of school, and I'm glad to say that in many respects, my year has settled down from where it was in my negative post of last month. I'm not really any less stressed, but I'm finally starting to feel the love for my students, and the fiasco that was class scheduling this year has fortunately abated.

However, one thing has been getting increasingly worse this year, worse than any other year I've been here at Small Town High--the violence. Every day in the teachers' lounge has become a sharing game of "who's suspended now?" as we compare notes on the students who disappear for the mandatory five-day suspension for "mutual combat", and we discuss the fights and their causes and what needs to be done to prevent them. Unfortunately, the problems this year seem to only be escalating as the weeks go on.

Much of the fighting this year has been gang-related. The town in which I live and teach is made up of two rival gangs--the Norteños and Sureños, with Surenos predominant. Sometime in the past week or so, there was a stabbing of a couple of students at the continuation high school (located mere yards off of the high school campus) and retaliation was threatened.

Thursday morning I pulled into the school parking lot at 7 AM, my usual time, and there were four police cars sitting at the curb. Since this is the bulk of our town's police force (in fact, it might have been the *entire* force) I was curious to find out what had happened. I soon found out from students about the stabbing and threatened retaliation... Unfortunately, I didn't find out from the administration until about six hours after the students had already filled me in.

At lunchtime on Thursday, there were at least a dozen cops, uniform and plainclothes, standing around campus watching the students. While we occasionally have one or two, it'd been a long time since I'd seen that many, and there was much chatter in the teachers' lounge about what was going on (the admin hadn't yet filled us in, so it was essentially speculation.)

After lunch, an administrator came classroom to classroom and handed each teacher a memo explaining the threat and what we should do if we heard anything or if something happened. It explained that the retaliation was supposed to take place either Thursday or Friday, which wouldn't have surprised me, as Friday was the 13th, and 13 is the number for the Sureños.

On Thursday night, I had several students call me at home and ask me if I thought it was safe to come to school on Friday. One student, an AP student, said that his parents didn't want him to come to school because they didn't feel it was safe, but that he didn't want the absence on his record because it would affect his grade in one of his classes. I was relieved to see him come into my classroom Friday morning before school, but I wondered how many other parents had done what his wanted to do. I was soon to find out.

My attendence in my Friday classes averaged around 50%, with my lowest being my last class, where only six students showed up. I kept my classroom door locked all day, and every time I sent a student to the restroom, I worried. The police presence around campus was even greater than the previous day--we had police from 5 cities and two counties, a weapons-detecting dog, and a mobile command center set up in the parking lot. At lunchtime, some kid thought it'd be a hilarious idea to pull the "blow up a lunchbag and pop it" trick, and the only two of us in the teachers' lounge that didn't jump were the two military veterans.

Towards the end of 7th period, the principal came on the PA system and said that he was dismissing school early due to the threat, and that all students and teachers had to be off campus within five minutes. Throughout everything since the beginning of school--the fights, students getting suspended, te cops on campus, the threats--I'd been more or less patient, but this is when I lost my temper completely.

Why?

Our school has to be one of the last ones in California without a fence around it, and I hate to say it, but I no longer feel safe here without one. There have been plans in the works for at least ten years now to fence in our campus, but there's always some excuse why there isn't one. It's not just because of violence that I want a fence. I've had students go off-campus to lunch and come back drunk or stoned. It's really easy for kids to ditch class, since there are over a dozen places where they can leave campus relatively undetected.

Outside of school hours, this place is not well-secured either. Since we're in California, land of mostly nice weather, all of our hallways are outside, and classroom doors open to the outside. People routinely drive onto our campus, tearing up lawns and cracking concrete. A couple of years ago, I came in early one morning and got chased by a pit bull, one of the many stray dogs that wanders onto campus to empty our trash cans on a fairly regular basis. I yelled at it and waved my arms and threw my keys at it, but it took a few minutes for my heart to stop racing. Taggers and vandalizers are free to wander in at will during the night time, and since the campus security lighting is shut off at 8 PM, the security cameras we have do little good to help to identify them.

Our students, conditioned as they are to their freedom, vehemently protest every time the idea of a fence is brought up. They don't want to go to school in a prison, they say, not realizing that a school where people constantly have to watch their backs isn't exactly Disneyland. Having a fence will limit the number of exit and entry points for people going on and off campus, making the campus easier to secure. I'm not even saying that students should be forbidden from going off-campus for lunch--I just want fewer options for exits. And while I believe that students should be allowed to leave campus for lunch, I think it needs to be a privilege, not a right. Let's base the privilege of leaving campus for lunch on grades, on attendence, on discipline record. These are all things that are tracked anyway, and I really think that we'd see a campuswide improvement in all three areas if we tie it to a privilege students hold as dear as they do their lunch privileges.

It'll be interesting to see if, after this most recent spate of violence and threats of violence, there is any community outcry about campus security and our lack of a fence, or if this will just fade into the collective memory until the next time there's a gang retaliation threatened. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or so the saying goes, and I worry that in this case, that pound of cure might end up costing more than just money.

Yes, "average" students can do AP

2006-09-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

In his column today, Jay Mathews discusses Patrick Welsh's assertion in his September 19th column that "average" students are being pushed into advanced classes (AP and IB) that are too difficult for them, and that they need to be in easier classes where they can succeed.

I agree with Mathews, and disagree with Welsh. What I see Welsh upset about is what I've spent four years trying to do with my AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) students, and in fact, is what the AVID program is geared toward. AVID's purpose is to challenge students academically by placing them in higher-level classes than they would have otherwise been in, and then--the important part--PROVIDING THEM WITH SUPPORT ONCE THEY'RE THERE.

Mathews, while he does an excellent job refuting Welsh's arguments, misses one key necessity--co-curricular support outside of the class itself. The process of moving "average" kids to higher-level classes won't work just by dumping them in AP classes and hoping they hang on. Virtually every student in higher-level classes is there at least in part because of a supportive parent, and this often-overlooked factor is often the determining factor between an "average" student and a "higher-level" one.

The purpose of the AVID program is to be the academic support (and de facto academic parent, when needs be) either for students whose parents are unable to help them at home, or in addition to the parents' support. As long as a student has the individual determination to succeed and a support structure on which to rely, the average student is just as capable of success as a higher-level one.

On a personal note, I'm proud to say that every single one of my AVID seniors this year has been moved up at least one level in English since their freshman year (from remedial to college-prep, college-prep to AP.) Two of them have even moved up two levels. Every single one of them has more than the UC-minimum of two years of lab science. Every single one of them has received credit for at least one AP or junior-college concurrent enrollment class (we have a very meager AP selection, so many students take JC classes to supplement their regular course load.) All but two of my AVID seniors have a UC GPA of a 3.0 or higher, and the two that don't are within spitting distance of it.

These are kids that started out below grade level. Many of them still tested at the basic level in English on the state test at the end of their junior year. They've worked extremely hard to be where they are, and I'm proud of all of them.

I've carried over my AVID philosophies into the pre-AP English classes I teach. Last year I took nine students that scored below grade-level ("basic") on the state tests. All of those kids also scored below grade level on an independently-administered reading exam we give them to determine class placement, so I know the exam results were more or less accurate. At the end of the year, six of those nine were recommended on for sophomore pre-AP. All six of those students scored on grade level this past year on the state tests, and one of them scored advanced (above grade level.)

Bringing so-called "average" students into AP classes is more important than just for looking good with regards to how many minorities are enrolled in higher-level classes. As Mathews stated, it takes an incredible amount of extra work on the part of the teacher and the parents. But this is what we, as professionals, are supposed to be doing anyway.

If we want these students to truly succeed in college, they need to be doing college-level work *now*. Students don't just magically show up to college and suddenly have the skills necessary to succeed--this is a process that must be learned through prior preparation. With programs like AVID, so-called "average" students can be prepared and supported to succeed in rigorous courses in both high school and college, as long as they have the individual determination to do the work.

Mathews, Welsh, and any other interested party can ask any of my honors students if I ever once slowed down my English class just to support students who were struggling. I already know what their answer will be. All of my support methods were either built into the class or conducted outside of school time, and virtually all of the students thrived--it came down essentially to the matter of whether or not they were willing to put in the extra work necessary to succeed.

I have enjoyed Welsh's writing before, but I really think he missed the mark on this one. His is a mindset I see all too often in my school, and it's one thing to beat my head against the same walls locally, but it truly frustrates me to see those same opinions espoused in a more national venue by a person who should really know better.

We need an "Extreme Makeover: School Edition"

2006-09-26T03:57:00.000-07:00

Overheard yesterday while talking about trying to get work orders fulfilled at my school:

"Yeah, it's like the Make-A-Wish Foundation."

Maybe you had to be there, or maybe you just have to work in our district, but I laughed so hard tears were leaking out of my eyes.

Maybe I'm just bitter about the broken desk I still have (why oh why did the Williams Act people skip my classroom when they came last week?) or the projector that STILL isn't ceiling-mounted after 4 years, leaving students to trip over the cord, or the three work orders I've put in since April to get the tagging outside my classroom door painted over... Yeah, probably that.

Our school is painted white, and I'm convinced that only idiots paint a school white. It's like saying, "yeah, here's a nice fresh canvas for you guys to draw/paint/tag on!" I might as well start passing out Sharpies and reward them with extra credit for creativity.

Confronting the Culture of Can't Do

2006-09-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

This week's LA Times's School Me column by Bob Sipchen really struck a chord.

Sipchen discusses the trials of Danny Martinez, just another freshmen beginning his year at just another southern California high school, facing just another battle with the school to be placed in classes befitting his goals and abilities, rather than classes that the school has room in which to put him.

Sipchen finishes his column with his question of the week: "Have your first weeks of school been fun or frustrating?"

Sadly, my first weeks of school have resembled Daniel's, only from the teacher's end rather than the student's.

Although my school is roughly 1/3 the size of Eagle Rock, we have had the exact same scheduling problems--students shelved in classes where they are out of their ability range (either too easy or too difficult), an administration promising to straighten schedules out, an overworked guidance department who tells us daily not to send students to the office because they don't have the resources to deal with them.

Tomorrow begins the fourth week of school, and I'm still trying to get scheduling changes for four students in one of my classes, students who should have never been placed in that class to begin with and who requested the change before school began. On Friday, I was told that, with luck, they'll be out of the class by the end of the month, 5 weeks after the start of school.

Sadly, I have other students who just gave up and accepted their fate--students repeating classes at a lower level that they already passed on a higher one, students who gave up on getting the math or science or history class they need for college admission because they were told too many times the same thing that Daniel and his mother were told: "There's nothing I can do."

This year has been unusually replete with scheduling nightmares, and all of us teachers have become cranky and cynical on a level not normally seen until May, with the onset of state testing. I thought it was just me, and then in the lunchroom on Friday, we all came to the consensus that it feels like the end of the year, instead of just the beginning.

I can deal with my own convoluted schedule--five preps, class sizes of up to 39 students, a classroom that was supposed to undergo modernization beginning at the end of the month, but has now been pushed off three more months. I don't like it, but I don't have a choice, so I deal.

What I can't handle is seeing students, strong and struggling alike, stuck in a system designed to support them, but that instead seems to be failing them this year. I estimate this year that close to half of my students have a study hall or teacher's assistant period, simply because there is no class space in which to put them. We're short teachers. We're short classroom space. We lost one of our computer labs this year. Our library has been turned into the front/counseling office because the office building is undergoing modernization, and that is apparently also running late.

What started as an exasperating and stressful series of events for all of us has turned into an educational farce. While all of us (administrators, office/counseling staff, and teachers) are soldiering on as best as possible, none of us are happy, and it's an attitude that is rubbing off on the students.

There's nowhere to really point the blame for the disaster that this school year has been so far. Hindsight is always 20/20, but in this case, the situation we're in at the moment is so convoluted that I don't think that more prior planning could have even averted the problems we are having.

I'm exhausted, and it's only the beginning of the fourth week. I'm rapidly becoming bitter--bitter with the system, bitter with the students, bitter with public education as a whole.

I hate to lose faith so soon, but I honestly don't think I've ever had a worse start to a school year, either as a teacher or as a student.

Sorry Bob--I doubt that's what you were looking for. I'm generally optimistic and enthusiastic at the start of each new year, but that's just not happening for me right now.

Sage Advice Indeed

2006-09-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

Around last March, I acquired a subscription to Edutopia, a magazine published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation and that is free for teachers.

I picked up this month's issue and was thumbing through while I was making dinner, and my eyes settled upon the Sage Advice column, where the question of the month was "What's the most commonly asked question in the classroom?"

I laughed long and loud at one response:

Most frequently asked question: "Can I go to the bathroom?"
Most frequently heard response: "I don't know? Can you?"
Next most frequently asked question: "May I go to the bathroom?"
Next most frequently heard response: "Yes, you may."

This is a daily exchange in my classroom, and it seems as though every year, just as soon as I get one group of students trained, they move on and I start the new year, training a new group of students.

It was the final response on the page, however, that really made me think:

"What are we doing today?" A large number of middle school students ask this question every day, despite having the day's agenda written on the whiteboard and the weekly calendar printed and handed out on Mondays.

What they are really asking is, "Can I connect with you again today?" and "Please focus on me, because I want some one-on-one time with you." Never underestimate the power of a friendly teacher smile, a listening ear, and a word or two with these students!

While I work with freshmen, they are usually not far from middle-school students in terms of behavior and ability, and this is a question that I hear scores of times in a single day. Usually, I will tell the first student that asks (despite the fact that I too have an agenda on the board) and then, when each successive student asks, I'll point to that first student and say, "I don't know, ask _____."

It never really occured to me until I read the above piece of sage advice what students are really asking, and now I've resolved that, when they ask, I'll instead ask them how their day has been thus far.

I enjoy talking with my students--hearing about their lives and their thoughts and their general outlook on things. For the past four years, however, I always interpreted the "what are we doing today" question as nothing more than kids being too lazy to look on the board, an interpretation that now makes me cringe. I want my students to connect with me, I want to connect with them, and I'm glad that the sage advice opened my eyes.

So, how was your day?

Critical Thinking, Not Standardized Tests

2006-09-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

Well said...

Public Schools Should Teach Kids How to Think, Not How to Master Multiple Choice

By Jeff Lantos

(JEFF LANTOS teaches at Marquez Charter Elementary School in Los Angeles.)

I'M BEGINNING my 20th year of teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and if I've learned anything, it is that good teaching cannot be measured quantitatively.

Every year, we hear administrators crowing or politicians moaning over student test scores as if these numbers were indisputable indicators of teaching excellence, mediocrity or failure.

In fact, test scores (on the annual standardized state test) are like the closing prices on the stock exchange. They fluctuate for any number of reasons. A bad breakfast, a case of the jitters or skipping a line and filling in the wrong bubbles can wreak as much havoc as not knowing the difference between "abjure" and "adjure."

Likewise, teaching to the test can inflate scores but, given no context, all this random information is seldom retained. As a result, evaluating a teacher based solely on student test scores is like evaluating a corporation based solely on just one day's stock price.

If you really want to evaluate a teacher, you have to walk into a classroom, sit down and listen. I'm convinced that when you're listening to good teaching, you hear a familiar refrain. It goes like this: What is the connection between … and … ? So much of good teaching is about taking strands of information and looking for connections and broadening the context.

Endless test preparation has the opposite effect. It shrinks the context. It reduces inquiry. It mitigates against Socratic dialogue and can drain much of the passion from teaching and learning.

If we can get beyond the notion of schools as testing factories, then teachers will have the freedom to strive for a higher standard of excellence. Part of that higher standard would include the teaching of critical thinking. How does a teacher do that? By creating an academic environment in which students can sift through the mass of facts being hurled at them and begin to perceive pathways of interconnectedness.

The irony is that young students begin by making connections. They're taught to check their subtraction by adding. They can see that a rectangle can be divided into two triangles. They know there's some link between the Pledge of Allegiance and the flag hanging from the wall. They connect classroom behavior with a specific code of conduct.

The challenge for teachers is to build on that foundation, to encourage students to seek connections between, say, fractions and percentages, or between lobbying and legislation, or between Copernicus and Darwin, or between the main characters in two different novels.

I like to ask my students why the food in India, Africa and Mexico is so much spicier than the food in Ireland, Iceland and Finland. Typically, lots of theories are advanced and eventually (and perhaps with some guidance) students use their knowledge of geography, chemistry, botany and economics to make the connections that will lead to an explanation. We teachers call this "thinking across the curriculum."

Once students start seeing how and why seemingly disparate topics are related, and more important, once they start looking for and making those connections, then the teacher will have performed that special kind of classroom alchemy — turning passive receivers of knowledge into active participants in the learning process.

The answer to the spice question: First, spices grow in equatorial regions; and, second, in hotter climes, food rots more quickly, so spices were needed to preserve the food and, later, to mask the rancid smell.

Bill Would Limit Hiring of Unwanted Teachers

2006-09-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

If a new measure passed by the California Legislature is signed into law, as expected, principals at low-scoring schools will no longer have to hire bad teachers forced out from other schools, and leaders of higher-scoring schools will have an annual window for hiring whomever they want. One principal who supports the bill says it would allow her to find people who are a "good fit" for her school, but the president of the California Teachers Association said the bill incorrectly implies that all of the teachers in question are poor performers.

No State Education Official Left Behind?

2006-09-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote to the editor of the Daily Courier (Prescott, Arizona) to point out an egregious grammatical gaffe . Today I’m going to write to the reporter at my local newspaper who cobbled together this sentence in a story about lack of oversight for California schools that fail to meet No Child Left Behind standards:

But there’s not enough resources available for micromanaging, state officials said, adding that they are starting to work more at the district level as more are deemed failing by the feds.

Single subjects demand singular verbs, and plural subjects demand plural verbs. “Resources,” the subject of the first clause in this complex sentence, is clearly plural. Therefore, the correct verb to use is “are.” The reporter (or the copy editor) should have written: “But there are not enough resources available….”

Unfortunately, my gut instinct tells me that when the reporter called the state education officials, one of them probably did say, “There’s not enough resources available.” In which case, why are these less-than-highly-qualified people in charge of enforcing the mandates of No Child Left Behind?

Why Class Size Does Matter!

2006-09-06T20:09:00.000-07:00

One of the major components of the SRA Reach program that was implemented in my school district is smaller class sizes. The program itself recommends no more than 15 students, but states that the program can still work with a larger class size. Fortunately, my school district as well as our Reform Coordinator has worked hard on keeping the class sizes for students in the SRA Reach program relatively small.

Right now, my 3 hour block class has 20 students. It should come as no shock to those of us in education (or for that matter anyone with a modicum of common sense) what a difference this makes. I've had my 3 hour block students for the same amount of time as I have had my two group of social studies students, about a week and a half, and guess which group of kids I feel I already know better? You got it, my small class size of 20 students.

In a week and a half, I've been able to determine which of my students are struggling because they are second language learners, which ones may have attendance issues, and the few who probably need this intervention due to family issues. This cannot be said for my larger class size of 25 and 30 students respectively. In years past, I've had class sizes reach 33 students, and it often took me well into the first quarter before coming to the realization that more than a few of my students needed extra help. This inevitably left me struck with pangs of guilt thinking I should have caught on sooner.

Even now, I know all the names of my students in my SRA Reach class. That cannot be said for my other two classes, although I am almost there. I can't help of wonder if I will run into the same pitfall as in years past, catching almost too late that a student needs my extra help and guidance. I understand more than ever that class size has profound impact on the building of community in the classroom. When kids don't think the teachers know who they are, they have to wonder if the teacher really cares about how they are.

This is part of the beauty of the SRA Reach program: its emphasis on small class size. With more one to one interaction, I am able to connect with these kids as more than a classroom teacher. Part of knowing who my students are in the SRA Reach class is to instill in them the sense that regardless of their past school experience, they will be successful, perhaps for the first time since they ever entered the doors to their education.

By the way, this emphasis on small class size is also found in AVID, the program that La Maestra mentions in her article What it takes. If programs such as this can deliver on the promise of raising the achievement level of kids who may not have reached success otherwise and one of the main components is smaller class size, wouldn't it behoove those who make policy to try to reduce class sizes across the grade levels?

One of my co-workers helped prove my point today. We were discussing her Math/Math Support class, which consists mostly of the same group of students who are in my SRA Reach class. The behavioral issues I've faced with this group of students has been minor, but in talking to her, she has had numerous behavioral issues since the start of the school year. I couldn't figure it out because I know she is a strong teacher with good classroom management. It was only after she revealed to me that she has 29 students that it all made sense. In addition to 20 students I teach during my block of SRA Reach, she receives those students plus 9 more.

These are students who are struggling across the board academically, therefore, doesn't it make more sense to keep their class size small? The small handful of students she mentioned to me, I can see being disruptive in a larger group. However, because my class size has remained small, those problems have not emerged in my classroom.

What It Takes

2006-09-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

Last week was our first week of school, and as such, I had my head buried in ~~the sand~~ work, and missed Bob Sipchen's fantastic column on the college admissions game, as well as the follies and inanities of the college ranking system.

Not that I don't subscribe to US News, and not that I didn't pop open that issue and puruse it when it hit my mailbox to see the rankings... OK, actually, I didn't, but only because I was in the midst of hectic preparations for school and didn't have time.

However, on the same day it arrived, I had 14 seniors over to my house for a pre-school senior BBQ (yes, things like that are actually permitted in the small town in which I live and teach), and I passed off the issue to the students, who eagerly devoured it, not only for the rankings, but for all of the other articles on college that the issue contains.

In his column, Sipchen mentions a few programs devoted to getting students from low-performing schools into four-year colleges, but it doesn't mention the AVID program, a program I've been involved with since college. In its 26-year history, AVID, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, has managed to gain acceptance for 77% of its graduates into four-year universities, affecting a much larger group of students than programs like Upward Bound or Gear Up. Begun in a single San Diego high-school classroom, AVID can now be found in middle and high schools in 36 states and 15 countries, and since 1990, has graduated over 40,000 students and sent them on to college.

I'm proud this year to have the first cohort of AVID seniors at my school, students I've had in the program since they were freshmen. While there are only the aforementioned 14 of them, it's a new program at a small, rural school, and it's taken all of the energy I've had for the past three years, as well as the work of a number of other wonderful people, to get this group this far. And as the program builds support at my school, the number of AVID seniors graduating and enrolling in four-year universities will only climb. I can look at my 14 seniors and already know that, barring major unforseen circumstances, all of them will be going to a university next year, and I know that they will succeed once they are there.

I can't offer my AVID seniors one trained guidance counselor for every 90 students, as can the Webb School, mentioned in Sipchen's article. I'm not a trained guidance counselor (although I am certified in college-counseling) and the single counselor we have for our 1100-student population is swamped just trying to ensure that students graduate. My school can't offer intensive writing and SAT prep classes and representatives from top colleges. I can only prepare my kids as best as possible by giving them test-prep materials, taking them on yearly college visits, and fighting tooth-and-nail for them to be in every college-prep or college-level class they take.

My work with my AVID students is a constant struggle against a system that is not designed for these kids to succeed, and a constant struggle against the low expectations people have for these students--expectations at home, at school, in the community, and within themselves. While my teaching assignment is English, I spend far more time mentoring, pushing, encouraging, and nagging students to push themselves and believe in themselves than I ever do grading essays.

What does it take? This year alone, it has taken about 30 hours of senior conferences, completed the summer before the students' senior year with the knowledge that once school begins, there won't be the time. It's taken begging and bargaining and sweet-talking and outright bribery (with chocolate and cookies and cinnamon rolls) of various school officals to get the students into the classes they've needed to meet college entrance requirements.

It's taken numerous meetings to ensure that the program is run correctly, so that the students who most need it can benefit from it. It's taken hundreds of pounds of candy, sold bar by bar, and thousands of gallons of water, spent on car after car, to pay for college visits, study materials, and SATs and application fees for kids who don't qualify for fee waivers.

It's taken box upon box of kleenex, used by both male and female students who come to school sick so that they don't miss a second of education, who come into my classroom in tears over challenges in their lives that would make the most stoic adult dissolve into a puddle on the floor, and by me, as I try to make sense of the system and the students and their lives and the fact that nothing is ever fair and that no matter how hard we all work, good kids still will get screwed.

But most of all, it's taken an iron-clad determination that these kids will succeed at whatever the cost, a determination I am stubborn to wear on my sleeve, and one that I push on the kids at every opportunity. Far greater than the challenges of college-prep and AP classes are the challenges that many of my students face at home on a daily basis--kids in the foster care system, kids expected to raise their siblings while their parents work, kids expected to work to support the family, kids who don't have any family at all.

I have students whose motivation comes from watching parents exhausted and physically worn down from field labor. I have kids who get their motivation from alcoholic and physically abusive parents. I have kids whose motivation comes from parents and family members who tell them that they can't and won't make it to college, and that they'll just end up back here in five years with two small children and a job at a packing house and broken dreams. I have kids whose motivation comes from being part of a system that entraps rather than frees people, and a desire to change that system and someday give others the help they were often unable to receive.

The race for college admission isn't all about name-brand schools and esoteric ranking systems, a fact that I try to impress daily upon my students. It's what they do with it when they get there, the opportunities they make for themselves, that will determine what they get out of it. They make the best opportunities for themselves from what they have in high school, but I constantly worry that it's not enough--that they'll still be behind when they get to college. There is only so much I can give them, so much I can do for them in the short time I get with them. And I just don't know if it will be enough.

But the only thing I can do is continue trying, and hope that the skills they learn and the motivation they gain here will propel them through university and earn them their diploma.

I can't wait to see where my kids end up. I'm not a parent, but I honestly can't imagine being any more proud, more anxious, or more excited about my own children than I am for the 14 young adults whose lives I've been privileged to be a part of for the past three years, and for the changes and challenges they will face this year, their senior year.

175 more days.

The Ostrich Awakes

2006-09-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

So... How y'all doing?

Due to more technical woes (I can no longer access any of my old blog notes, posts that I'd begun, as well as my list of words for Jargon Jungle) as well as the insanity that is the first weeks of the school year, I've been doing my best impression of the Struthio camelus found on the right.

What have I been up to?

I have five preps this year, out of a total of six classes that I teach. "Insane" does not even begin to describe this arrangement, an arrangement further complicated by the fact that, in a few short weeks, I will be moved out of my classroom and possibly into more than one classroom, so that ongoing campus renovations may finally reach my room, modernizing it with touches like new carpet, new paint, a new ventilation system (our HVAC system only actually heated--no VAC) and, my personal favorite, a new SmartBoard!

This SmartBoard has actually been sitting in the district warehouse since last Christmas, but due to various bureaucratic issues, has woefully remained in limbo until now. I should be back into my classroom after Christmas, but until then, chaos remains the status quo.

I've been mentoring/conferencing/counseling. Due to our lack of adequate counseling staff (a fact I will discuss in more broad terms in my next post), a number of students come to me for college-counseling advice. This is something I really enjoy, and that I've spent time acquiring training in, through UCLA Online Extension's College Counseling Certificate program--I can't say enough great things about it! However, as much as I enjoy it, it takes a considerable amount of time out of my already hectic schedule.

I'm teaching a new class this year--new not only to me, but to the school. Without going into too much boring detail, it's an upper-division literature seminar elective that meets the UC F-area fine arts requirement. I'm enjoying it immensely, but between the prep time required for new classes, as well as the size of the class itself (about 40 students) it also has taken a large chunk of my time.

In addition to teaching, I have my fingers in a number of different pies--I'm a union rep, on the WASC committee, and I'm advisor for a couple of different student organizations, one of which had an event last night that was part of a larger community function. I'm proud to say that not only did my students do well in their roles, but they excelled, and I received comments from a number of adults on what a great group of kids I had. In fact, while I spent a lot of time preparing for the event, once I got there, my students were so ready to go and so hard-working that I pretty much stood back and watched as the well-oiled machine that those kids have become sprung into action.

Even the freshmen, who have been with the group for only a week now, performed above and beyond what I would have expected of my most dedicated, veteran seniors. There's something about watching them work that made my heart swell and my eyes want to fill... Oh yeah, pride. I am so proud of those kids. What a privilege it is to work with them.

So, to all, I apologize for my extended absence. While I'd anticipated the start of school to be hectic as usual, I'd planned on popping in with my pre-written material (Jargon Jungle as well as a few other things) and when I lost it all, I just didn't have the time to try to recreate most of it.

I will, however, slowly but surely be recreating Jargon Jungle--I anticipate the first one will return next Tuesday. So if any of you have any favorite (or reviled!) educational jargon that you'd like to share, I'd appreciate the assistance in recompiling my list.

And the moral of the story is:

ALWAYS BACK EVERYTHING UP.

Happy Labor Day weekend, y'all. ;-)

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

2006-08-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

I saw this post in another online teaching community and thought to myself, "wow!" This is from 1935, you know, back in the good old days when teaching was supposed to be "easy."

As most of us return to the classroom, it's important to remember why we do what we do and to also remember, teaching has never (nor will it ever) been easy!

This is from The First Year of Teaching: Real World Stories From America's Teachers, paragraphs written by Albert S. Thompson in 1935:

"I guess I don't need to say that teaching is a unique profession. It has its periods of elation and depression. Some days you will wonder how you stand it. Other days you will feel there is nothing so satisfying. Monday, you will be full of enthusiasm and plans for the future. Friday, you will look back and wonder just what you have accomplished. One period you will consider yourself a born teacher. Next period you will bewail the fate that gave you such a job. Wednesday, you will discover that John Jones has finally learned how to divide fractions. Thursday, he will seem to have forgotten everything. One week you will feel that the superintendent thinks you are the best teacher on the faculty. The next week you will be sure he is looking for an excuse to fire you. One month you will decide that at last you have arrived at a satisfactory philosophy of education. The next month you will look at the pupils coming into the room and wonder, What is it all for? Some days will be a month in passing. Some months will be a day in passing.

But, when the end of the year has arrived, the innumerable reports made out, good-byes said to your pupils and fellow teachers, and you are looking forward to an enjoyable summer vacation, you will smile at your mistakes, be amused at your doubts, be content with your appointed task, and once again be full of plans and enthusiasms for the next year."

Week 80 Carnival of Education

2006-08-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

It's that time again! While I'm still a bit dizzy from last week's turn on the Tilt-o-Whirl that is hosting a Carnival, the Carnival has returned home to its native stomping grounds, the EdWonks.

Head on over and check it out!

Next Week's Carnival midway will be again hosted by The Education Wonks, who apparently like riding the e-ticket rides. Please send contributions to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net, or use this handy submission form. Please send them no later than 8:00 PM (Eastern) 5:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday, August 22nd, and please include the title of your post, as well as its URL, if possible.

My view of "The Ron Clark Story"

2006-08-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

I think I may be in the minority, but teacher movies rarely inspire me. "The Ron Clark Story" was no exception. Do people really expect us to be superhuman? Come on over and tell me what you think!

Where the SAT doesn't matter (as much)

2006-08-13T23:53:00.000-07:00

I could go on and on about how I feel about the SAT and ACT, but I won't. I like to think that I speak from experience, not only doing a lot of college counseling at my school, but also as a paid SAT essay grader for Pearson, the company that scores the SATs. You know, the company that accidentally gave 4400 students an incorrect, lower score last year.

However, I have relatives coming to visit tomorrow, my house is a mess, and I'm really not ready for the impending start of school (14 days and counting... the clock is ticking, and because of the stress level around here, my eyelid is also ticing, albeit in a different way than the clock.) So a rational discussion of the merits of the SAT will have to wait until a later date, when I have more energy to devote to writing and (hopefully) less to class and houseguest preparation.

Anyway, while I'd never advise a student to *not* take the SAT/ACT seriously, it's still reassuring to see lists like this.

I find this especially useful because, in the district in which I teach, many students applying to universities do not speak English as their first language, and our AP Calculus students routinely score 450-550 on the math section of the SAT.

(Note--I'm not at all trying to denigrate the teachers by mentioning this--I believe low test scores are endemic in low-income districts, due more to socio-economic reasons than any lack of intelligence on the part of the students. For example, I, who never got higher than a C in math and only completed math through Algebra 2, scored 120 points higher on the math SAT than my husband, who went through AP Calculus and majored in mechanical engineering in one of the top public engineering undergraduate programs in the nation. The difference is that I was fortunate to attend a high school whose API is currently a 795, vs. my husband's alma mater's API, which is a 626.)

For posterity, here are California's listed schools:
# Academy of Art College, San Francisco, CA
# Alliant International University, San Diego, CA
# American Intercontinental University, Los Angeles, CA
# Armstrong University, Berkeley, CA
# Art Institute of California, Orange County7
# Art Institute of California, San Diego7
# Art Institute of California, San Francisco7
# Art Institute of Southern California, Laguna Beach, CA7
# Bethany College of the Assemblies of God, Scotts Valley, CA1,9
# Bethesda Christian University, Anaheim, CA9
# Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, CA
# Calif. College for Health Sciences, Nat'l City, CA4
# Calif. College of Arts, San Francisco, CA, Email: enroll@cca.edu
# Calif. Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA
# Calif. Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
# Cal. National Univ. for Advanced Studies, Northridge, CA8
# Charles R. Drew Univ.: College of Allied Health, LA, CA
# Coleman College, La Mesa, CA
# Columbia College: Hollywood, Tarzana, CA
# CSU Bakersfield, Bakersfield, CA3
# CSU Chico, Chico, CA3,11
# CSU Dominguez Hills, Dominguez Hills, CA3
# CSU, Fresno, CA3
# CSU Fullerton, Fullerton, CA3
# CSU Hayward, Hayward, CA3
# CSU Long Beach, Long Beach, CA3
# CSU Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA3,11
# CSU Northridge, Northridge, CA3
# CSU Sacramento, Sacramento, CA3
# CSU San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA3
# CSU San Marcos, San Marcos, CA3
# CSU Stanislaus, Stanislaus, CA3,11
# Design Institute of San Diego, CA
# DeVry Pomona College, CA3,7
# DeVry University, Freemont, CA3,7
# DeVry University, Long Beach, CA3,7
# DeVry University, Pomona CA3,7
# DeVry University, West Hills, CA3,7
# Golden Gate University, San Francisco, CA
# Humboldt State University (CSU), Arcata, CA3
# Humphreys College, Stockton, CA
# Institute of Computer Technology, Los Angeles, CA
# Interior Designers Institute, Newport Beach, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, Anaheim, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, San Bernardino, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, Rancho Cordova, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, Lathrop, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, Los Angeles, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, Oxnard, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, Sylmar, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, Torrance, CA
# ITT Technical Institute, West Covina, CA
# The Kings College, Van Nuys, CA9
# La Sierra University, Riverside, CA3
# Life Pacific College, San Dimas, CA5,9
# Lincoln University, Oakland, CA
# Masters College, Santa Clarita, CA1,9
# Mt. Sierra College, Monrovia, CA
# National Hispanic University, San Jose, CA
# National University, La Jolla, CA
# New College of California, San Francisco, CA
# New School of Architecture, San Diego, CA
# Northrop-Rice Aviation Institute of Tech., Inglewood, CA
# Pacific Union College, Angwin, CA
# Patten College, Oakland, CA
# Pitzer College, Claremont, CA
# Remington College, San Diego CA (Education America University)
# San Francisco State Univ. (CSU), San Francisco, CA3,11
# San Jose State University (CSU), San Jose, CA3
# Silicon Valley College, Multiple Campuses, CA
# Sonoma State University (CSU), Rohnert Park, CA3,11
# Southern Calif. International College, Santa Ana, CA1
# Southern California Institute of Technology, Anaheim, CA
# University of West LA, CA
# Vanguard Univ. of Southern CA, Costa Mesa, CA1,3
# Westwood College of Technology, Anaheim, CA
# Westwood College of Technology, Upland, CA
# Westwood College of Technology, Los Angeles, CA
# Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad/West Coast Talmudical Seminary, LA, CA9

Explanation of the numbers:
Key: 1 = SAT I/ACT used only for placement and/or academic advising
2 = SAT I/ACT required only from out-of-state applicants
3 = SAT I/ACT used only when minimum GPA and/or class rank is not met
4 = SAT I/ACT required for some programs
5 = SAT I/ACT not required if submit SAT II series
6 = University of Maryland University College is a separate institution from University of Maryland at College Park
7 = Must submit COMPASS, CPAT, TABE, WAIS, Stanford Achievement Test, ASSET and/or college entrance exam if not submitting SAT I/ACT scores
8= Distance Education School
9= Religious Affiliation
11= Admission/Eligibility Index calculated with 3.5 GPA or lower and SAT I total score of 400.

The Carnival Of Education -- Week 79: Special "Readin', 'Ritin', 'Rithmetic" Edition

2006-08-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 79th edition of the Carnival of Education—my, how time does fly!

In honor of our first shot at hosting this Carnival, and because it's getting to be that time for many of us to go back to school, all of us at LiveWire bring you the special 3 R’s edition of the Carnival of Education: Readin’, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic. For the occasion, I made a special trip on Tuesday 8/8 to Bodie State Historical Park in eastern California, an authentic gold-mining ghost town, to take pictures of their old schoolhouse to include in this Carnival.

OK, not really--I already happened to be going there, but you should all still feel special that I thought of you and this Carnival.

For a look back at past Carnivals, please visit the Carnival of Education archives.

READIN’: Books, programs, and lesson ideas.

Campus Watch discusses summer reading assignments for incoming college freshmen, everything from graphic novels to hiking memoirs to Brave New World.

Our own ms-teacher, fresh from an out-of-state conference to prepare her for the REACH program she will be teaching this year, discusses background and data on direct instruction, and provides links for further exploration.

The HUNBlogger completes a book meme started by Benjamin Meyers over at Faith and Theology, reflecting on the books that have had the most impact in his life. Wisely, he chooses the Norton Anthology of Poetry to keep him company on a desert island, a book that had a big impact on me in college, if for no other reason than it weighed a ton. (OK, bad joke, but between Norton and McMillian, my chiropractor could have gone to Hawaii for a month.)

Andrew Pass at The Current Events in Education suggests asking students to pretend that they are pieces of pollution and to keep a travel diary as they float down the Mighty Mississippi. Really! Conjures up visions of...well, something ~~offal~~ awful. The exercise is part of Pass’s effort to get students to think—and write—ecologically. He also is currently reading Tim Russert's book Big Russ and Me: Father and Son: Lessons of Life, and reminds us why it is important for us to always know the janitor's name.

Realizing that the days of copious amounts of technology funding are long gone, dave over at the eponymous FriendsOfDave.org has decided to start a new website devoted to reviewing educational technology. Bob Sipchen, take note. Oh, and as an added bonus, the educator with the greatest number of approved reviews on the site on September 7, 2006 at 12:01am Pacific time will get a $50 American Express gift card. Sounds good to me!

Joy in the Morning discusses developing children's interests; specifically, how as a homeschooling parent, she has been privileged to help her twins explore and learn more about the world around them in their fifteen years of life.

Trinity Prep School provides very good reasons as to why reading the classics is good for us.

The Scholar discusses House Bill 7087, recently passed in the state of Florida. This piece of legislation puts a new spin on how history should be taught.

Paul of PaulsTips.com gives suggestions on how to develop a more sophisticated taste, beginning with opera and classical music and finishing with philosophy.

Mark Montgomery over at TextbookEvaluator.com discusses New Jersey's online textbook evaulation tool, giving a link to the tool as well as discussing its relative merits.

’RITIN: Rants, letters, lists, and reflections.

With a new school year starting (or for some, has already started), elementaryhistoryteacher shares a wonderful geography lesson which discusses Natural vs. Man-made features.

David gives to us (and to his wife) a much needed link in making our
lives as educators a bit easier. Teachers, recycle your lesson plans! posted at The Good Human.

Coach Brown proposes that as teachers we should focus on teaching every student how to become good academic readers, but that too often, we only focus on English Language Learners. When he suggests something different, the terms racist and white-male comes into the picture.

ChemJerk debates a job offer for a position that would take him out of the classroom and put him in charge instead of supervising science instruction. He shares the thoughts that led to his ultimate decision, thoughts that he hopes will help other teachers facing a similar situation. To find out what he ultimately decides, check out his post.

Over at Right on the Left Coast, Darren’s attention has been caught by school dances, and specifically, why he always requests to babysit the drunks rather than have to watch students have sex on the dance floor. He discusses how the music itself is, in his opinion, part of the problem, as well as societal justification for why such music and dancing are acceptable. My students would call me a prude (if most of them knew what the word meant, anyway) but after spending two years as an activities director, I agree with him.

Carol over at The Median Sib reflects on NOT thinking about the start of school, her new classroom, or anything else that might remind her that she has to go back to work all too soon.

the rain over at ithoughtathink pulls a Colbert and tells you all you need to know about the July 26th issue of Education Week, summarizing the articles on state standards, what isn’t the matter with Kansas, how reading to children even under the age of two can help their reading comprehension later on, parenting, what was the matter with Georgia’s state superintendent, NEA contributions, and a number of other issues. the rain also ponders the results of the annual salary survey, specifically wondering why the average librarian has a higher salary than the average teacher. I’m not a statistician, but I would guess that for a number of reasons, the average librarian is likely older, has more years of experience, and a lower turnover rate than the average teacher, resulting in a higher average salary.

La Maestra offers up a delicious fifth round of her weekly Jargon
Jungle. She also writes about the role of a principal, focusing on how the job has evolved and why it has become so difficult to attract and retain qualified, competent people to the job.

Miss Dennis at Your Mama’s Mad Tedious has ~~a few~~ some "rather complicated and lengthy" words to say to the New York powers in charge of teacher licensing about bureaucratic red tape that is keeping highly qualified teachers out of the classroom. "No qualified teacher should have to put up with such nonsense," says the redoubtable Miss Dennis.

Anonymous Educator plans to “start a fantasy league based on student performance in each of 5 major subject areas: math, science, foreign language, English, and history.”

Thespis Journal gives a mouth-watering review of “The History Boys,” now playing on Broadway: “Any teacher who teaches his pupils with passion, fervor and boundless enthusiasm will find himself reflected, at times, in several of the characters on stage. Thespis Journal also gives a chilling commentary on what seems to be an increasing tendency in some school districts: “to force good teachers from their classrooms for baseless allegations that usually involve age, disability, and a smorgasbord of other tidbits of idle chitchat.”

Mr. Person over at Text Savvy loves analogies, and compares Pink Dot (an L.A.-based home-delivery service) to customizing content in education.

Bob Sipchen's weekly column over at LA Times's School Me! deals with community day schools and other alternative educational placements. After an interesting and insightful look at the operation and student population of community schools, Sipchen poses the question, "Should students be shipped to special schools at the first sign of trouble?"

3 Standard Deviations takes issue with One Big Year's Blog's post entitled The Last Great Tech Generation, which states that as students are using more and more technology, they are in fact understanding it less and less. 3SD points out that while "some technologies are useful to know, some...makes others obsolete." He points out that while he could write the HTML for his blog by hand, he prefers to use Blogger instead, to expedite the process. I don't know about him, but I'm writing this Carnival in Notepad, to copy and paste into Blogger later. Call me old-school.

TriviumPursuit posts a letter they received from CHASK and NATHHAN regarding a request for donations to help provide support mothers who have discovered they are carrying children with severe disabilities. The page gives details as well as an explanation of how to donate.

This Week In Education reviews the term "high stakes" as used in an EdWeek article by Bess Keller, and TWIE's belief that the test results lack enough consequence to qualify.

Matt Johnston discusses a commentary from Joanne Jacobs's sub, Michael Lopez, on technology in the classroom, concluding "White board versus chalk board? Who gives a damn--just teach my kids something."

TexasEd sympathizes with Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs becoming dumping grounds, but wonders when any student will have time to participate in such programs considering that Texas now requires students to have four years of math and four years of science in order to graduate.

Finally, kderosa explores the new phenomenon of Kid Writing, and how she feels that it is the "educational equivalent of teaching kids how to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool with a sack of lead strapped to their backs."

’RITHMETIC: Statistics, studies, and things that just don't add up.

Right Wing Nation takes issue with students becoming “information artisans”, pointing out the seemingly obvious fact that in order for students to be able to synthesize information, they have to first have information to synthesize.

“You want good test scores? You want a good school?” NYC Educator asks rhetorically (and sardonically). “Just keep the ESL students out.”

Mr. R> at Evolving Education is disgusted with a move in the UK to prevent teachers from calling students “clever.” “I agree,” he says, “that mocking cleverness does not help our society, but how does changing the word itself change what people do or how they feel?” And over at A Shrewness of Apes, Ms. Cornelius ponders the same issue, asking why being smart is negative, and wondering if praising students for being smart actually discourages them from pursuing knowledge.

What does the existing research tell us about the correlation between teacher math knowledge and student math achievement? “Not much,” says Dr. P. over at EduInsights.

Patrick Coffee at TreatmentOnline.com discusses information from two separate studies that examined media's effects on children.

In her blog, Diane Weir discusses her frustration with students being removed from an advanced math program, despite meeting the appropriate requirements to remain in it. She challenges us to consider what we've done lately to effect change at the local level, using her own advocacy for students as an example.

Elias, this week's Down Under blogger, discusses the place and value of rote learning in education, and questions why many educators feel it is a bad thing.

At The Buck Stops Here, Stuart has another view about the recently published DOE report that has flooded the educational blogways.

Is it possible to boost test scores of bilingual students? Polski3
wants to know and provides interesting insight as to why some ELL students, despite our best efforts, may never improve.

The good folks (and our fair Carnival coordinators!) over at EdWonks discuss the frustrations that come from NCLB and The Spellings' decree that a teacher will be considered underperforming if "only" 34 out of their 35 students pass their standardized tests. Those "onlies" will get you every time, won't they?

And last but definitely not least, Robert Teegarden over at Edspresso responds to Andrew Coulson's editorial on why federal school vouchers are a Bad Idea [tm], commenting that while competition is good, "kids are not shackled at the moment by some outside, foreign force and need the intervention and protection of the government to free them from restraint; they are enslaved by the very same state governments and unions; they are enslaved to schooling, conditions, and environments that said governments and unions would not (and do not) tolerate for themselves, let alone their own children."

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Thank you everyone for your submissions! As this was our first time hosting a Carnival, we may have made a couple of errors--please contact us at californialivewire@yahoo.com and we will correct them as soon as possible.

The Education Wonks will host the 80th edition of the Carnival of Education. Submissions are due no later than 8:00 PM (Eastern) 5:00 PM (Pacific) on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006. Contributors may use the submission form at this URL:

http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_5.html

Submissions may also be sent to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net.

All images copyrighted 2006 by La Maestra.

The Role of a Principal

2006-08-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

I admit that, as a teacher, I’m guilty of looking around the school and wondering what all the other people do all day. You know, those people who don’t spend all day in the classroom trying to cram knowledge into young minds as quickly as those same young minds are determined to go home and jettison it all. I often think, “must be nice to have that job” as I lug home yet another set of essays to grade. I think it when I end yet another frustrating conference with the parent of a child who can do no wrong, at least in that parent’s eyes. And I think it every time I fork over another few hundred dollars for classroom supplies, books, and other teaching materials.

In an attempt to understand these people and what it is they do all day, I’ve decided to begin a monthly series exploring the jobs of people who work within the school, but not within the classroom. For my first installment, I would like to focus on the principal--the oft-maligned, overworked figurehead of the school.

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Almost every time I write the word “principal”, my mind flashes back to the grade-school mnemonic about how to remember the difference between “principal” and “principle”—the principal is someone who is supposed to be your pal.

I find this device cute, if somewhat trite, but occasionally I stop and think about it more closely. Is the principal truly someone who teachers can think of as a pal? Or is he or she instead an authoritarian figurehead, uncompromising and unwilling to try and understand issues from a teacher’s point of view, driven by some esoteric and ethereal bottom line that always seems to be out of reach? What drives people to take on a job that looks, at least on the surface, so thankless? And how can the oft-present animosity between teachers and administrators be reduced?

The origin of the word “principal” dates back to the 15th century, and initially denoted a ruler, leader, or foreman. In the mid-1800s, it came into common use to describe a person in charge of a public school. According to researcher Joseph Murphy, in the 19th century, “educational administration was not recognized as a distinct profession. In this "ideological era," school leaders were simply learned authorities whose insights into the truth provided guidance to teachers, students, and the public. Little training was required.” As the educational system in the United States developed, an increasing focus was placed on the training of school administrators, and at the dawn of the 20th century, schools for training school administrators were established. These early schools focused on educational administration using a technical and business model. As these schools evolved, the approach shifted to a theoretical one, and from there, to the current focus on problem-based learning.

In early grammar schools in the United States, teachers often took on many of the roles associated with principals today--student discipline, school-community interaction, management of the school environment, and ordering supplies. As the years passed and schools grew larger and catered to a broader student population, the role of a principal evolved as well. According to a September/October 2000 piece by Millie Pierce in Harvard's EdLetter titled "Portrait of the 'Super Principal'", a principal only 15 years ago worked an average of 40 hours a week with most of the summer off, belonged to a principal's union, and aspired to ascend the career ladder.

Principal's union? Granted, I'm only heading into my 5th year in the classroom, so I'm a young'un yet, but I can't even imagine such a thing existing, especially in a district with as strong a CTA as mine has.

According to the same article, a principal in the year 2000, when Pierce wrote her column, worked 10 hours a day and another 8 on weekends or evenings, and probably will retire by the age of 57, exhausted by the longer hours, greater responsibilities, and increased accountability. Aside from managing the staff and dealing with major discipline problems, principals are now expected to complete state-mandated paperwork, attend IEP meetings, develop and coordinate the master schedule, and attend district- and county-level meetings, school activities, and even community functions. In my district, the principal is even expected to join the local Rotary organization and attend Rotary meetings. Because of all of the other duties, managing the staff and promoting faculty development and support has become almost an auxiliary function of the principal, one to be done when time permits.

In order to handle this wide variety of jobs, California public school principals are required to have at least one bachelor’s degree, a teaching credential in any subject, and a minumum of three years of teaching experience (this can, however, be as a librarian or a school counselor--it doesn't necessarily have to be a classroom placement.) Then they must complete a state-approved educational services credential program, which gives them a five-year preliminary credential (same as any California teaching credential.) Within that five years, they must complete a state-approved program to receive their professional clear credential.

According to the California department of Education, in 2005-2006, approximately 76% of school administrators had a master's degree or greater. It should be noted that this statistic includes *all* people with an active administrative services credential, not just principals. In reality, the number of principals with at least a master's degree is likely much higher, due to the nature of the job.

For all the job entails, the average salary for California principals in 2003-2004 ranged from $78,686 for an elementary school principal in a small (ADA < 1000) school, to $109,001 for a high school principal in a large (ADA > 4000) school.

In the four years I have been with my district, we have gone through seven principals/assistant principals. This is, in my way of thinking, a ridiculously large turnover which benefits no one--staff, faculty, students, or community. Some never wanted the job in the first place--they were transferred in at the whim of district office. Some looked at the job as a stepping stone to a better job elsewhere in county or state educational administration. Some quit to go back into the classroom or to an administrative position at an elementary school, where the demands of the job were less. And some, thankfully, were released by the district for failure to perform. According to a 2003 article in Leadership by Katherine Cushing, Judith A. Kerrins, and Thomas Johnstone, titled "Disappearing Principals", most principals cite low pay, job stress, long hours, and lack of systemic resort as the overwhelming reasons why they leave the profession, or at the very least, transfer schools.

So what can be done to combat this high turnover rate and give all schools and teachers the stable, strong leadership they need? Both "Disappearing Principals" and "Portrait of the 'Super Principal'" cite systemic support as the most important factor in attracting and retaining qualified candidates. While both articles advocate a two-leader approach, in "Portrait", Pierce brings up the idea of having a principal teacher, a person with many years of classroom experience and whose main responsibility would be student and teacher performance, as well as a principal administrator, whose primary focus would be plant management, data collection, and parent relations. A main difference between Pierce's and Cushing's approaches is that with Pierce's model, the principal administrator would be subordinate to the principal teacher, whereas Cushing envisions a co-principal role, where leadership, responsibility, and accountability are equally shared among both partners.

I'm more inclined to lean toward Pierce's model, simply because I like the idea of having an experienced teacher as my primary evaluator. I'm going into my fifth year of teaching, which means, according to the state of California, that I already have one more year of teaching than the minimum required to become an administrator, which also is more classroom experience than three of the seven administrators I've had in the past four years.

I spent my first three years teaching just trying to get my head above water (although, to be fair, I had other duties within the school outside of my classroom that made that a much more difficult process), and it wasn't until last year that I felt like I wasn't struggling on a daily basis with basic planning and management. I can't imagine only spending three years in the classroom and then going into administration, and I don't blame teachers for resenting being evaluated by administrators with less classroom experience than their own. In my (admittedly narrow) view, this is one of the main causes of friction between teachers and administrators--the perceived lack of understanding by administrators regarding classroom management and individual instructional styles of teachers.

This is something that can be combatted in two ways. First, the state needs to increase the number of years a prospective administrator is required to have spent in the classroom, and second, administrators need to spend more time in the classroom--not just as teachers, but watching teachers and getting to know their styles. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen an administrator in my classroom for something besides a formal evaluation, and even when I was being evaluated, it was always scheduled well in advance, started late, and ended early. I've invited many an administrator to drop by, but they rarely ever do. I can hardly blame them, because I know and respect how much work they have to do, but at the same time, I don't believe it benefits anyone to have so little oversight over teachers. Although I'm in my principal's office on a regular basis for feedback and meetings regarding the programs I run, I'd really like more feedback on my teaching methods. Since that's not a possiblity, I rely on peers, students, and parents, and while all of these are definitely beneficial, I would like input from the people responsible for designating my teaching assignment.

Despite not getting my wish to have more administrative input into my teaching methods, I've been fortunate in that I've always had a good rapport with my principals. While I wouldn't say that any of my principals have been my pals, I have felt supported in my teaching and my programs, and have really felt like I've had the ear of all of the principals with whom I've worked.

There are many more things I would like to discuss in this post, such as length and quality of educational administration programs, disparities in administration between wealthier and poorer districts, and novel ways of attracting and retaining administrators that some districts have tried, that would require far more time than I currently have--there's another school year brewing on the horizon, and I have to meet with my own principal regarding... well, everything but my teaching methods.

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In next month's installment in the "what do they do" series, I'll take a look at the role of guidance counselors, and especially at the detrimental effect of the average guidance counselor ratio in California public high schools of 1:966.

Different Kinds of Teachers

2006-08-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

In Southern California we have our Child-Molester Teacher , but in Merry Olde England, ah, well, there they have The Stripper Teacher !

Jargon Jungle Week 5: Special Hyphenated Edition

2006-08-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

Since we're hosting the Carnival of Education for this week, I've decided to post this a day early. So, without further ado, here is the Week 5 Special Hyphenated Edition of The Jargon Jungle.

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At-risk: What your bank account balance is after you buy all of your school supplies for the new year. Synonyms: financially-challenged, broke. Antonyms: independently wealthy, solvent.

Culture-Specific Non-verbal Communication: the odd dialect used by students when instant-messaging that has an annoying habit of creeping into students’ classroom standard English writing. Synonym: net-speak. Antonyms: English.

On-level: what your blood pressure is in the last week before you have to go back to your classroom. Synonyms: summer break, relaxed. Antonyms: hypertension.

Project-based learning: Any classroom assignment or assessment that requires glue sticks, construction paper, glitter, at least one parent note pleading for more time, and is guaranteed to not come out of the carpet until the end of the year. Synonyms: havoc, mayhem. Antonyms: quiet, orderly.

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PLUG: Don't forget, posts for this week's Carnival of Education are due to californialivewire@yahoo.com by tomorrow at 5:00 PM PDT!

Project Follow Through and Direct Instruction

2006-08-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

Finally, I'm writing about the Direct Instruction conference that I attended last week in beautiful Eugene, Oregon.

My first two morning sessions was on the myths and research on Direct Instruction. In this seminar, we were introduced to Project Follow Through, a study that was initiated by President Johnson in order to evaluate the effectiveness of educational programs for disadvantaged children. During the years of 1968 to 1976, Project Follow Through studied up to 10,000 children from 120 communities.

There were nine different programs studied and each program was placed in one of three categories: basic skills, cognitive-conceptual learning, and affective learning. The basic skills category focus is on teaching children fundamental skills in reading, arithmetic, language, and spelling. Cognitive-conceptual learning emphasizes "learning to learn" and problem-solving skills. Finally, affective-cognitive learning primarily focused on building up self-esteem, with a secondary emphasis on "learning to learn" skills.

I think the most important aspect of this study is that it was done independent of any of the proponents of these programs. Remember, the study was implemented by the federal government, data was gathered by the Stanford Research Institute and analyzed by Abt Associates of Cambridge, Massachusetts. This data was "derived from a battery of five tests administered to "cohorts" (followed from either kindergarten through third grade or first through third grade) of more than 9,000 Follow Through students matched with a control group of 6,500 students from non-Follow Through school sites."(see Project Follow Through
…A Billion Dollar Government Study That Education Bureaucrats Keep Trying To Bury).

The results of this study were that of all the instructional models, Direct Instruction out-performed them all. Perhaps more importantly, those models whose emphasis was on cognitive learning and affective learning and which one would think would out perform Direct Instruction in those areas, failed to do so. Following is a graph that shows the results from Project Follow Through. (Please note: the first three are considered basic skills models, the second three are considered cognitive learning models, and the final three are affective learning models.)

So, where does this lead us as educators today and why is so little known about Project Follow Through?

To answer the first question, I still strongly feel that as educators it's important to use a variety of strategies to reach all students. However, I also know that in the school that I've worked in for the past five years, I continue to see students coming into 6th grade reading years below grade level. I haven't taught using the REACH program (a Direct Instruction curriculum) but at its core is the belief that using the strategies from this program, students can make incredible gains in a year and a half.

In the upcoming school year, the students in who will be in my REACH classes (a block of three hours) are reading at the 2nd/3rd grade level. The 6th grade Language Arts text that I have taught from in the past is written for those students whose reading level is no more than a year below grade level. As a teacher, I've always had students who were struggling readers manage to be successful because they never gave up. I worry, however, about those students who struggled, despite my best efforts to make the text accessible to them, who at some point in the school year, simply gave up. It is my hope that REACH will help these students by closing gaps in reading (i.e., decoding and comprehension) so that when they are ready to transition into a "regular" classroom, they can be successful.

One of the major criticisms of the Direct Instruction program is the scripts that teachers are required to read. The scripts have been devised to get the most bang for their buck. At this point, I'm holding off on making any comments about the scripts until I've actually taught the program.

So, why do we know so little about Project Follow Through? According to many of the facilitators at the Direct Instruction conference, those in the Department of Education (DOE) refused to to choose any one model over the other. Instead, the DOE sought to publish information about all the models and let districts decide for themselves what curriculum model to choose for their students. Many at the Direct Instruction conference (and also articles online) are very critical of teacher preparation programs offered at colleges and universities because so many of these programs embrace cognitive learning and affective learning models, while brushing aside basic skills models and more specifically Direct Instruction.

Okay, so now I'll leave you with some reading on Direct Instruction so that you can form your own opinion. As for me, school starts in a couple of weeks and I will be using REACH (a direct instruction/basic skills) program. Until I actually use the program, my own opinions will be held in check, but I will be writing on my own experience on this blog.

Follow Through: Why Didn't We?

An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform

Direct Instruction

Direct Instruction: Making Waves

The 10 Most Annoying People on Staff

2006-08-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

From California to Connecticut, from Alaska to Alabama, every teacher knows The Ten Most Annoying People on Staff. Check 'em out here !

A Special Ferris Wheel Edition for Carnival of Education #78

2006-08-02T01:29:00.000-07:00

This week's Carnival of Education is over at, appropriately enough, This Week in Education. Alexander and Margaret have put together not only a wonderful Carnival, but also have included links to the history of the Ferris Wheel. This leads to another fun coincidence, because since I use a ferris wheel picture for Carnival posts, and we host next week's Carnival.

All entries for next week's Carnival are due to californialivewire@yahoo.com no later than 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time. Thanks everyone, and I can't wait for next week! :-)

(Oh, and thanks to ms-cornelius for pointing out that last week's number was not, in fact, prime. I feel quite sheepish.) ;-)

Jargon Jungle Week 4: Special Aloha Edition

2006-08-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

(I wrote part of this while sitting near crashing waves and sipping a pina colada on a Hawaiian beach somewhere. Try not to hate me.)

Coming to you live from a real jungle (complete with mosquitos!) and proving, once again, that I have no life, here is this week’s edition of the Jargon Jungle.

Bloom's Taxonomy: [n] when a student (generally female) shows up with so many bouquets of flowers and balloons given to her by her parents and friends for her birthday that you want to charge her for the real estate they take up in your classroom. Synonyms: hay fever, balloon debt Antonym: attention span

Modeling: [n] When a lesson always looks better in the book than tried on in the classroom Synonym: mirage Antonym: ready-to-wear

Special-needs learners: [n] Children of other teachers, administrators, school board officials, or major donors to the school; need special sensitivity because of who their parents are. Synonyms: resume-builder, hornet's next Antonyms: low maintenence

Stakeholders: [n] people lurking in dark corners with sharp objects, waiting to poke holes in your teaching methodology . Synonyms: parents, administrators Antonym: support

Wouldn't ya know it?

2006-07-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

Just so everybody knows, I had every intention of blogging from Eugene. I guess it was silly of me to assume that a hotel like the Hilton would have wireless access in their rooms.

I will have an update sometime this week-end.

FYI, to all my California Folks, it is much cooler up here :)

edited to change my embarrassing grammatically incorrect sentence.

It's a prime day for a prime Carnival!

2006-07-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Come on out to the prime numbered 77th edition of the Carnival of Education, hosted by TextSavvy.

Next week's Carnival will be hosted by the apparently delicious folks at This Week in Education, so please send your submissions to thisweekineducation@gmail.com by Tuesday, August 1, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

Jargon Jungle, Week 3 - The Heatwave Continues Unabated

2006-07-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

I'm out of jokes about how hot it is--I've ceased to be amused and now I'm just cranky. So, to get my mind off of the heat and onto more fun things (like my impending trip to Hawaii--a honeymoon five years overdue!) here's another installment of The Jargon Jungle. :-)

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Accountability-based learning: &-"kaun-t&-'bi-l&-tE 'bAsd 'l&rni[ng] [n] when teachers are blamed for poor student performance, but involved parents are lauded for outstanding student performance.

Achievement gap: &-'chEv-m&nt 'gap [n] the area between the teacher's planned student acheivement and what students actually learned.

De-centered classrooms: dE-'sen-t&rd 'klas-"rüm [n] [1] when you are notified a week before school starts that the classroom you planned to have is no longer available, leaving you to scrounge and replan [2] misguided policies by administrators in an attempt to save money, in which teachers are required to change classrooms multiple times in a day.

K-W-L: [n] Abbreviation for the term “Know-Want-Learn”; denotes a strategy used to determine what students don't know yet, won't want to learn, and will not be able to tell you that they learned anything about.

Pedagogy: 'pe-d&-"gO-jE [n] derived from the Latin roots for “foot” and “study”, pedagogy is the realization that no matter how good the shoes looked in the store, you should have thought twice before wearing them to work and having to stand in them all day.

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I hope next week's Jungle will be slightly less hot and steamy for all of you. I'll be posting from the tropical clime of Hawaii, but at least it's never gotten above 100F there.

Blogging to you from Eugene, OR

2006-07-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I leave for Oregon to attend a week long conference on "Direct Instruction." I plan on taking my laptop in order to blog about my daily experiences and overall impressions on this method of "teaching."

It is with some skepticism that I approach this conference because this is about scripted teaching and implies that teachers cannot teach effectively unless they are given exact words to say to their students. Nonetheless, I will try to approach it with an open mind because afterall, my principal has entrusted me and a few other fellow teachers to take this training in order to share it with staff at our school site.

Even looking for information on what direct instruction is, I was brought to Jeff Lindsay's web site, which proclaims that direct instruction is the solution to underperforming schools. One of the quotes that stands out to me is if the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught, which is attributed to Dr. Siegfried Engelmann, the pioneer of Direct Instruction. Of course, I take issue with this quote because it lays all the blame on the feet of teachers. Kids learn and don't learn for a variety of reasons, one of which may be because of the teacher they have before them in the classroom. However, there are many contributing factors to the success or failure of kids in public schools.

One of my most problematic studens last year was truant over 2/3rds of the school year. Is his lack of success due to my not teaching him? Mind you, this wasn't some hardened high schooler, rather it was a 6th grader who looked up to his gang-banger peers and seemed intent on following in the foot steps of an older brother serving time in jail. The amount of time that I and my fellow team-teachers invested in him shows that we did everything in our power to get him in school so that he could get the education he deserves. There is only so much that one can do in a school system that has done away with counselors at the middle schools and has one VP responsible for disciplinary and truancy of over 900 students.

Overall, I just get tired of cookie cutter solutions that those on the outside of education want to throw at teachers. I think many teachers strive hard to reach all of their students through a variety of teaching methodologies because we recognize that kids have unique learning styles. Perhaps even more than that, teachers do not become teachers to fail kids, for when that happens, we question: what more could I have done?

Laugh for the day: In my e-mail today, I received confirmation for this conference. In the e-mail it states to bring cool clothing because the weather has been warmer and its predicted to be in the mid to upper 80's. G U F F A W! It's been hitting in the high 90's up to 107 in my neck of the woods.

2006-07-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

Due to a severe PEBMAK error[*], the california.livewire@yahoo.com email address no longer works. I'm hoping this is temporary, but for the time being, please direct all email to californialivewire@yahoo.com (it's different because there is no period between the two words.)

Sorry about that, folks! :-)

[*] PEBMAK: Problem Exists Between Monitor And Keyboard

Come One, Come All!

2006-07-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

Come one, come all, come in out of the miserably hot weather! Come to the comfortably air-conditioned 76th edition of the Carnival of Education, hosted this week by Education in Texas, where it's hotter than a snake's... well, if you've seen Good Morning, Vietnam, you'll know the rest of the quote.

(With minor apologies to Ms. Cornelius, the movie quote queen--I could never outdo you!)

Next week's Carnival will be hosted by Mr. Person of Text Savvy. Submissions should be sent to mr(dot)obelus(at)gmail.com no later than 10 P.M. CST. Mike doesn't specify a date, but I'm assuming he means next Tuesday, July 25th.

A Lesson in Contrasts

2006-07-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Because of the rapidly escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Beirut is no longer a safe place, and many foreign nationals are attempting to flee. But, says Reuters, “Unlike the US, the British government is not charging its citizens for the evacuation. Americans in Beirut are complaining that they have been asked to sign forms agreeing in advance to pay unspecified sums to cover the cost of their evacuation. Some said they had been told they will not be allowed to use their passports again until they pay.”

On the one hand, we have thousands of U.S. citizens in grave danger on foreign soil, and the federal government says, “We’ll get you to safety—and we’ll send you the bill.”

On the other hand, we have thousands of illegal immigrants sneaking across our California border and the government says, “Come on in, and we’ll pay for your kids to go to school; if you need medical care, we’ll take care of that bill too.”

Clearly the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

Jargon Jungle: Edition 2

2006-07-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

Somehow two weeks have passed by in a span of time that normally fits only one, and I'm left shaking my head that anyone believes I have the summer off.

So a bit tardy but better late than never, here's the next installment of The Jargon Jungle, now with Free Bonus Definitions[tm]!

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Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): (ad-kw&t 'yir-lE 'prä-gr&s) [n] a carved-in-granite, absolute, objective measure of school quality whose standards and measurements change more often than an 8th grader's social circle. Synonym: subjectivity. Antonym: effectiveness.

Best Practices: ('best /'prak-t&s/) [n] 1. Teaching methods only those outside of education want used. 2. A list of teaching methods handed down by politicians, administrators, and schools of education, all of whom seem to labor under the delusion that teachers prefer to use their worst practices in their classrooms and that one size fits all when it comes to teaching and learning styles. Synonyms: boring, redundant. Antonyms: logical.

Data-driven: ('dA-t& 'dri-v&n) [adj] 1. Phenomenon in which effectiveness is measured solely by numbers, many of which are preceded by the "$" symbol. Larger numbers always signify a better education, unless the term is applied to teacher salaries. 2. An overnight phenomenon in which a previously effective classroom instruction program will suddenly cease to function unless a team of experts is brought in with thousands of dollars worth of computer software that no one but them knows how to use and binders full of reports that no one bothers to read. The more costly a data-driven progam, the more effective those not involved in education perceive it to be. Synonyms: NCLB, costly. Antonym: student-oriented.

Research-driven: (ri-'s&rch 'dri-v&n) [adj] Educational programs implemented by people who have never taught in a K-12 school, but are good at using Microsoft Excel. Similar to data-driven programs, they can usually be identified by adults wearing suits that cost more than your first teaching paycheck, carrying briefcases and binders full of numbers that make sense to no one but themselves. Synonyms: pedantic, didactic. Antonym: useful.

Teachable moment: ('tE-ch&-b&l 'mO-m&nt) [n] 1. the brief period of time teachers get to actually teach their subject matter when they've gotten ahead of their scripted test-preparation activities. 2. The moment when a student realizes that severe punishment is imminent if he/she doesn't stop trying to stick a pencil in the ear of the person in front of them and pay attention to the lesson. Synonyms: satori, nirvana. Antonyms: scripted lesson, text messaging.

Zone of Proximal Development: ('zOn 'äv 'präk-s&-m&l di-'ve-l&p-m&nt) [n] 1. When the school places new portable classrooms on top of valuable playground real estate. 2. The distance a teacher gets when walking away from a student's desk after confirming that yes, the student understands the assignment and doesn't have any more questions, and before that student raises his or her hand with a question. Synonym: aggravation. Antonym: patience.

This-n-That: A Sunday Smorgasbord of Six

2006-07-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

Elementary History Teacher is grieving the loss of her mother, who died early Saturday morning: “She no longer hurts, she no longer fights for her next breath, and she no longer has to suffer the indignities her illness had brought her.” You might want to stop by and offer your condolences.

Ms. Cornelius over at A Shrewdness of Apes has generated a lively discussion about her “mixed experiences with homeschooled youngsters” because she knows “families who let their kids run wild and call it homeschooling.” Join in with your two cents’ worth!

NYC Educator writes about every teacher’s nightmare, when "The Principal Observes a Class.” (Maybe the details will sound disturbingly familiar!)

Dick at The Life That Chose Me muses about pay for paras. “Much of what we’re required to do as teachers could not be done without the support of these individuals,” he writes.

Bluebird’s Classroom is the site of some ruminations about knots, wiping noses and independence. See how Mrs. Bluebird weaves them all together here.

The Reflective Teacher meditates on the fact that many of us answered the call to teach because of the profound influence of one teacher in our lives. He remembers that Mrs. Hall and her “insistence for thorough work confounded me in a world of mediocre teachers who only sought minimal work.”

What I did during my summer vacation . . .

2006-07-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Prior to becoming a teacher, I remember thinking to myself how luxurious it must be for teachers to have three months off every summer. Afterall, there are not many jobs out there in which you get that amount of vacation time, even if you've worked for the same company for a long time. In my previous professional life, I worked mostly as office staff for large companies. At most of these jobs, I got ten days of vacation leave after a year of employment. The game was trying to get vacation time off around federal holidays to maximize the amount of days away from work. So, at the thought of becoming a teacher, I couldn't help but think gleefully to myself about summer vacation.

HA!

Most teachers I know, myself included, do a lot of prepping for the upcoming school year. This summer I'm prepping for a new program, SRA Reach, an intervention program which I'll be teaching to my incoming 6th graders. Anytime there is a change in curriculum means that teachers need to familiarize themselves to this change. This will be a third change in curriculum since I began teaching five years ago. The good news is that it keeps me on my toes!

I also spend time on reflecting my previous year of teaching and contemplate the changes I want to make in the upcoming year. I'm never completely satisfied with my performance as a teacher and am always striving for ways to make me and my classroom experience better. This means that I spend time reading online teacher magazines such as Edutopia and blogs written by (and for) teachers.

Teachers usually do have some downtime during our summer time off, but it's nothing like what people imagine. A week after my school year was over, I went to a week worth of training for SRA Reach. Then at the end of July, I'll go to another week worth of training. At the beginning of August, I'll attend some meetings having to do with our union and working with a teacher that I'm mentoring. Oh yeah, did I mention that I'm changing classrooms? That means 2 to 3 days in my old classroom packing up and (hopefully) 2 to 3 days unpacking in my new classroom.

Of course, if I'm truthful with myself, I probably wouldn't have it any other way. I've come to realize that as much as I look forward to summer vacation, after some serious down-time that I need very much, come August I'm looking forward to getting back into the classroom. I remember that anxious feeling I used to get when I was a student the night before the first day of school, wondering about my teachers and the other kids, curious about what I would be learning in the upcoming school year. Even as an adult, I get that same feeling. I usually have a hard time going to sleep because I'm thinking about my students and what challenges we all face in the upcoming school year.

So, my fellow teachers, what did you do during your summer vacation?

Throw some music on the Jukebox Carnival!

2006-07-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the week again! Head on over to the demisesquicentennial edition of the Carnival of Education, hosted this week by the LA Times's School Me!.

Next week's carnival is at Education in Texas, so send off your entries over to Mike at mikea3_98 AT yahoo DOT com by Tuesday, July 18.

In the name of "intervention"

2006-07-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

I am entering my 6th year of teaching with somewhat mixed emotions. For the past three years, I have taught 6th grade Language Arts and History and have enjoyed the experience very much. While at times the paperwork has been overwhelming, I have seen my students make tremendous strides from the beginning of the school year to the end. This upcoming year brings about a new challenge. Our school district is implementing a new reading intervention program for those students who are two to three years below grade level in reading. This program is called SRA REACH. It is a "direct instruction" program, which means for a big part of my teaching, I will be reading from a script.

You read it right - I'll be reading from a script and my students will be "trained" to respond in the way the program wants them to respond. According to those who are implementing this program, students who are in these types of interventions can make tremendous progress in a year, sometimes increasing their reading level by "up to two years." Those who may be thinking this is tracking - students test out at various times of the year and move up to the next intervention level. The hope is that for my 6th graders by the time they reach 8th grade, they will be on grade level. The theory is that when these kids reach high school, there will be no need for this type of intervention.

However, my 6th graders will be in my class for a three hour block of SRA Reach and a two hour block of intensive Math. This leaves them with one hour which will be in P.E. I worry that they will become even more disillusioned with school. Some kids actually like Science and History. If my incoming 6th graders are lucky, some of them will be able to experience those courses sometime in their 7th grade year, but probably more of them won't be able to experience it until 8th graders. Many of them will miss out on learning about the ancient Mesopotamians who invented the wheel and were responsible for creating the first real writing system. They will miss out on the wonders of Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, those two societies who worshipped their pharoahs and emperors like gods. Many will miss out on how our Founders came to look to the Greeks and Romans for a system of government which would come to be called "democracy."

While I understand the need for intervention, I wonder at what cost to my students and to myself. Is it fair to deprive them of half of their education in the name of catching them up to their peers? Will I be able to look them in the eye years down the road knowing that I was duplicitous in this educational deprivation? I guess time will tell or when the next tide turns in education reform, perhaps we will not let history repeat itself.

Tiny orange laptops: the global importance of technology in education

2006-07-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, I desperately wanted a graphing calculator, even though I detested math, and struggled just to finish Algebra 2 and meet college entrance requirements. I didn't want a graphing calculator because I thought it would help me understand math more or get higher scores on the tests, I wanted one because a friend of mine had somehow loaded the video game "Tetris" onto his, and as my parents would not allow me to own any sort of video game, I was eager to get a TI-82 of my very own and join the ranks of the calculator gamers. However, in dumb teenage fashion, as I was making a pitch to my mother as to why I needed this expensive device, I let it slip that not only would this calculator help me bring up my math grade, but that I could also hook it up to other students' calculators and get things like games from them.

Thus ended any chance I had of getting a graphing calculator. Perhaps if I'd been a halfway motivated math student, she might have taken my request more seriously, but as I was more interested in Faulkner than in factoring, I let it drop.

Los Angeles Times educational columnist Bob Sipchen returned this week from the International Society for Technology in Education's annual national conference in San Diego, and in this week's column, he had much to discuss regarding the place of technology in education today not just in the US, but globally. At the end of the column, he posed his weekly question for his readers: Is the global technology revolution good or bad for American students?

I thought about his question this morning as I assembled my weekly powerpoint presentation for the remedial reading class I am teaching this summer. I pondered my own extensive use of technology both in and out of the classroom, how I came to incorporate it in my teaching, and how very different my teaching style would be without it.

One point that Sipchen brings up is a 2000 US Department of Education survey that states that 21% of 12th graders find school "quite or very interesting." He plays off of this statistic to discuss why students today are increasingly disengaged from traditional educational methods, preferring a world of light and sound rather than of paper and ink. I believe the reason that only 21% of students profess to find school engaging or interesting is not because of a lack of technological bells and whistles on the teacher's end, but a lack of intrinsic motivation on the part of the student. Some of this is the educational system, with its increasing emphasis on standardized tests and scripted learning at an early age, some of it is a societal lack of emphasis on education, and some of it is lack parental pressure--parents who tell their children that school is important, but they don't model it at home. Most children are innately extrinsicly motivated, and with enough extrinsic motivation (both positive and negative) as well as adults who model the proper attitudes and behaviors, they develop their own intrinsic motivation and become engaged in school and learning.

I went into teaching to educate and mentor, not to entertain, and when my students whine that something is boring, my standard response (as any of my students can attest) is "waaah." I'm not astoundingly sympathetic to kids who are given everything and then complain that they're bored--of course they're bored! I constantly tell them that I wouldn't give them the material if it weren't interesting or relevant in some way (which is only a lie about 5% of the time, really!) and, if they think it's boring, I challenge them to find something important and interesting about what we're learning. Most of the time, it works to some extent, and it works best with the kids who are willing to work for something rather than those who expect things to be given to them.

That said, I believe that the global technology revolution will be good for American students, as long as they realize the importance of keeping up with it! Too many of our students define "technology" as MySpace or text messaging or high speed internet access, without thinking about the underpinnings of those technologies--who and what it took to create them.

I'm a big Thomas Friedman fan as well. Around the time of the 2004 presidental elections, MTV showed a series of 30-minute documentaries geared toward getting their viewership more interested in voting. One of them, titled "Choose or Lose: Work It", dealt with the job outlook in the US, and the fact that not only are jobs being outsourced, but more and more foreign workers with strong backgrounds in science and technology are coming here to work because there aren't enough Americans to fill the positions.

I was fortunate enough to catch a rerun on my DVR, which I then hooked up to my computer and burned to DVD to show my students on the LCD projector in my classroom, as part of a unit on the importance of being politically and socially aware (what better time for that than election season?) My English classes also watched the same documentary, as part of a unit on argumentation and persuasion. My students, mostly freshmen and sophomores at the time, got into the unit and were surprised by a lot of what they saw on the documentary. We live in a small farming town, and they have missed a lot of the diversity global exposure I took for granted growing up in southern California, so the issues presented in the documentary were more or less new to them.

I don't know how much they retained, but there was a lively and fascinating discussion on the class blog the following week.

All of the technology I use in my classroom is technology I have actively sought out--my webpage, my class blogs for homework and discussion, my classroom computer, which I bought because the ones the school supplied for the teachers were 6 years old, the LCD projector I "borrowed" from the library five years ago and never returned, not that anyone has come looking for it in that time.

We can either use technology or be run over by it. However, just as the MIT computer project is student-driven, classroom technology should be instructor-driven, and the instructors need to take their cues from the students as to what is valuable and what is a waste of time and money. I started to make a list of all the so-called technological innovations that sit in cabinets and storage rooms at my school because the decision to purchase them belonged to an administrator who went to an educational technology conference, rather than sending a teacher who might see the practical applications of such equipment. However, as I didn't want to fill up your comment section, I opted to leave the list out.

I'm a technogeek by nature, but in watching my students and seeing what technology they use and how they use it, I have been able to better adapt my own educationally-related technology usage to help streamline my classes and better assist and enage the students. While I don't believe that every student needs a laptop at school, and while I feel that much of today's oft-touted educational technology is just hype, I believe that many teachers need to stop thinking of technology as something to be taught separately and start thinking of it as just effective of a tool as chalk and a blackboard. It should be up to each teacher to decide what tools and to what extent they should utilize technology, but if we don't stop treating it as secondary and start not only using it but showing students what goes into that technology and the implications it has on their futures, they are going to get left behind, not just with regards to test scores, but with regards to the flat world in which we now live.

The Jargon Jungle: Edition 1

2006-07-08T17:33:00.000-07:00

As summer marches inexorably on, thousands of new teachers around the state are preparing for their first classroom assignments. While I can't offer any better suggestions than those so thoughtfully compiled by the most excellent Ms. Cornelius, I can help out by offering more relevant definitions to the many educational buzzwords that new teachers are forced to learn and veteran teachers try desperately to ignore.

I'm always looking for suggestions for more buzzwords--feel free to leave your "favorites" in a comment, and look for them to appear in future editions of The Jargon Jungle, a repository for busted buzzwords, idiotic idioms, and necrotic neologisms.

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Highly-qualified teacher: ('hI-lE 'kwä-l&-"fId 'tE-ch&r) [n] a teacher who naively believes he/she has all of the classes necessary for his/her certification.

Transmitter of knowledge: (tran(t)s-'mi-t&r 'äv 'nä-lij) [n] a small electronic device implanted into a student's brain that shocks them every time they even THINK about text-messaging during class.

Collaborative decision-making: (k&-'la-b&-"rA-tiv di-'si-zh&n 'mA ki[ng]) [v(t)] the process by which a person within a group ends up doing all of the work because everyone else makes the decision not to.

Block-of-time schedule: ('bläk 'äv 'tIm 'ske-(")jül) [n] not to be confused with "amoeba of time schedule", the block of time schedule is a rigidly structured period of time that must be kept frozen at 32F or below, or else it will melt into an unrecognizable puddle of unstructured activity.

****

This concludes the inagural installment of The Jargon Jungle. Tune in next week for the second edition, and feel free to leave suggestions for words you would like to see in future installments.

Let the party begin!

2006-07-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

It's LiveWire's first mention in the Carnival of Education, the 74th weekly edition. Look for us in coming weeks! Next week's Carnival will be held at La Times's School Me! blog--see you there!

(And yes, I did take this picture--cell-phone cam, local fair. Photography is not one of my many talents, but I think this turned out neat.)

Dobbs: No summer vacation for our failing schools

2006-07-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy it when people who have never taught in a K-12 school comment on how teachers should do their jobs, and last Wednesday's Lou Dobbs column No summer vacation for our failing schools gave me a good belly laugh.

According to Dobbs,

Our elected representatives and educational administrators all but refuse to acknowledge that high school graduation rates for American public schools were higher nearly 40 years ago than today. And while one-quarter of white high school students drop out of high school, the problem is magnified for blacks and Latinos, about half of whom drop out of high school, according to the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and the Urban Institute.

Really? They ignore this? Funny, it seems like every time I turn around, another ~~blowhard~~ politician or political commentator is citing these facts.

Those numbers indicate the critical need to mount a national attack on the crisis that is far worse than administrators and educators have reported. Whether schools and their administrators are lying or cheating, or they're simply incompetent, matters little. Without independent educational studies, we would have no idea as to the depth of the crisis that faces our public school students in this country.

Well, thank goodness for those independent studies, because for years, teachers have been trying to draw attention to this, and for years, they've been patted on the head and told to go back into their classrooms. It's a good thing that the independent studies have brought this to light, because those teachers were obviously just crying wolf.

These so-called educators and administrators may be trying to keep the graduation numbers high so that they can meet the high standards of the No Child Left Behind initiative. While that initiative has not shown nearly as much success as its proponents and advocates had promised, it's done better than most of its critics and opponents would have you believe. In any event, the program offers far too little and lacks urgency in dealing with this crisis.

This "so-called educator" would like to point out that statistics can be manipulated both ways: just as we allegedly are manipulating our graduation numbers, proponents of NCLB are also manipulating its results.

Ironically, the United States spends a larger percentage of its total GDP on educating its students than just about any other country in the world.

As any good English teacher will tell you (anyone know one of those? Apparently I'm only a "so-called educator", so I guess I don't qualify), statements like "just about any" are vague, weak, and should be avoided. In an attempt to clarify Dobbs's statement, I went searching for his original data. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whom he cites in the next line, the US is 10th in educational spending, with 4.8% of its GDP going toward education. This puts it behind such countries as Saudi Arabia (#1, 9.5%), Norway, Malaysia, France, and South Africa.

Yes, you may say, but there are ~~191~~ ~~192~~ ~~202~~ ~~243~~ 254 countries in the world (a number defined only by one's definition of the word "country"), so isn't 10th still pretty high? Look more closely at the study. There are only 29 countries included: 7 from the Americas, 10 from Europe, 8 from Asia and 4 from the Middle East and Africa. This isn't exactly all of the countries in the world.

Additionally, (heh heh, no pun intended) numbers can be played multiple ways. The study Dobbs cites looks at education as a percentage of a country's GDP. However, perhaps a more telling number is the percentage of a nation's budget that is spent on education. According to the National School Board Association, "voters believe that 20 percent of the federal budget is currently spent on K-12 education." In reality, the US spends 1.5% of the federal budget on education. Compare this with Singapore, ranked above the US at spending roughly 7.5% of its GDP on education, a number that translates to almost 22% of its national budget. [PDF, pops]

Granted, Singapore is more heavily taxed and regulated than the US is or ought to be, but given the level of government subsidy in every sector of society, this is still a huge number.

Finally, Dobbs ~~addresses his novel, step-by-step plan of how schools can be fixed~~ reiterates everything teachers have been saying for years now:

# It is time to restore absolute discipline to our public schools and classrooms to eliminate every extraneous program in kindergarten through eighth grade that does not focus on reading, literature, writing, American history and civics, mathematics and natural sciences.

No art? Music? PE? It's not all about the academic classes, something almost any student will attest to when you ask them their favorite class is and they reply, "recess." Children are sponges for knowledge, yes, but that's not all they should be doing with their day. The more we pressure them to focus on core materials without giving them a larger context in which to fit that knowledge, the earlier we are going to burn them out on education. Some things you just can't quantify with a test, but that doesn't mean they should be limited in the classroom.

# We should begin to redress the compensation of all public school teachers to ensure that we have the very best and brightest educating our next generation. For me, that means paying teachers far more and demanding far more of them.

Speaking purely for myself here, I really can't work much harder than I already am. Heck, it's summertime right now and it STILL took me four days to finish this post. I'm just that busy with schoolwork--summer school, and keeping tabs on the students I mentor. Not that I don't know teachers who don't pull their weight, because I do, but if you pay professional wages, you're going to attract teachers capable of pulling their own weight, leaving the ones who don't to find jobs elsewhere. Teaching needs to pay enough to be one of the top choices of our college grads, not something some people go into because of the great benefits or vacation time or because they don't know what else to be.

# The role of the federal government should be to provide, no matter what the cost, a scholarship program that provides a family stipend to economically disadvantaged students who demonstrate exceptional intellect and talent.

Again, this has been said before, and is a no-brainer. However, I believe scholarship models like Michigan's, as well as Georgia's HOPE program, which is publicly funded, are more the way to go--students know from a young age that money will be less of a barrier with regards to college, so I believe they are more likely to see it as part of their future. Not all students are going to be the most exceptional, the best and brightest, but there are many hard-working, motivated students who might not qualify for other scholarships but would benefit greatly from tuition assistance at a state school.

# All graduating seniors in the top 10 percent of their class should be assured federally funded national scholarships to pursue university educations in mathematics, science and English. And stipend programs should be instituted, conditional on an educational commitment to teach in our public schools after their college graduation.

Excellent idea. And these scholarships need to not be for a limited amount, but ones that will cover unmet need, such as the Millenium Scholars scholarships offered by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. These scholarships ensure that top students will be able to attend top schools without having to worry about financial aid--they cover the gap between the free financial aid that the schools offer (grants and scholarships) and the total cost of attendence, so that the students and their families won't have to take out loans. Since the inception of the Gates Millenium Scholars program, over 10,000 academically talented, underprivileged students have been able to attend the university of their choice free of the financial barriers that might otherwise restrict them. While I realize that this is an infinitesimal number compared to the number of graduating seniors each year, it still is a good model to consider.

To sum up, I agree with Dobbs that the current paradigm isn't effective for the needs of our students. However, I believe the change needs to come from more than just the local school systems--what is needed is a national change, and a societal change. Until people realize that teachers should receive a salary commensurate with other professionals, until politicians quit trying to quantify the sometimes unquantifiable, and until some of the societal ills that underlie many of our educational problems are remedied, Dobbs's advice will just be another noise in the cacophony of voices clamoring for change in a system they really know nothing about.

Teachers have it easy

2006-07-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

Recently in our local paper, there was yet another article about how teachers get paid a ridiculous sum of money for the amount they actually work.

I'll dispense with my usual invitation to come and follow me around for an entire day and see how hard I work because then you'd actually have to find me, and I prefer to stay anonymous in the great, nebulous realm of cyberspace. However, when discussing the article with several non-teachers, I made the following point that I feel bears repeating here.

If you don't think we work hard enough, then make us work harder. How do you do that? It’s easy-—send your children to school prepared.

My workload would easily double if all of my students did all of their homework every single night. In the honors classes I teach, I estimate that about 95% of my students do their homework on a regular basis. This number falls off to about 60% in my college-prep classes, and 30% in the basic-level classes. As a result, I spend less time outside of work grading for those classes, and more time during the class period reviewing the material, since most of the class didn’t do the assignments designed to help students review at home so that we can move on in the material during class.

If all of my classes were honors classes, there would be no way that I would be able to keep up the workload.

Fortunately for me, not all of my students are so motivated, and I'm able to have an occasional foray out into the "real world" unaccompanied by a stack of papers to correct; but while an occasional grading-free night is welcome, the reality is that I would prefer that more of my students put in more effort.

So make sure your students come with the proper supplies, the proper attitude, fed, well-rested, free of electronic distractions, and ready to learn, and then I’d have to waste less class time on making sure everyone is ready to go and more time actually teaching. If you already send your child to school prepared and ready to learn, thank you.

If you don’t currently have children in high school, feel free to come by and see what your tax dollars are paying for. Go to school plays, concerts, awards nights, back-to-school night in September. Talk to the teachers and ask them what they are doing in their classrooms.

Ask them if their students are coming prepared and ready to learn, and how it affects their ability to teach when the students haven’t done their homework or eaten breakfast or gone to sleep at a reasonable hour the previous night.

The more students that come prepared to learn, the more time teachers will have to spend outside of school hours correcting assignments and preparing material.

Personally, I don't know where I'd get more time--Señor Esposo (my husband) already thinks I spend too much time grading as is. But if the students work harder, I'll find a way to keep up with them.

Teaching summer school

2006-06-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

Many of the teachers at my school look at summer school as sort of a school for the damned, as a purgatory in which teachers bide their time until the "real" summer begins. I happen to like summer school, and in some ways, I enjoy it more than the regular school year.

The rural high school at which I teach offers only remedial courses in summer school, geared toward getting failing students credits they need to graduate. Since summer school is outside of our regular teaching contract, normal contractual niceties like class size don't apply. At the beginning of the summer, it is not uncommon to have 55 students in a single class, crammed into classrooms designed for a bit over half that number. Because students frequently drop out, we aren't allowed to check out textbooks, and making copies is discouraged because when a student drops a class, we end up with extra copies, wasting copy funding.

To make the job even more entertaining, all classes are mixed-level. In one reading class, I have students ranging in grade from rising 9th graders to seniors who didn't quite fulfill their graduation requirements. Within this grade range, I have ESL students, special education students, and just plain lazy students.

Teaching two 2.5 hour class periods per day under these conditions requires creativity, at least if you want to actually try to educate the students and hold their attention. If you don't care about either goal, you can do what another one of our other summer school teachers does. A retired PE teacher in his early 70s, he gives his students a newspaper every single day. For the first 45 minutes of class, the students read the newspaper; for the second 45 minutes, they write summaries of articles in the paper. It doesn't matter that this man teaches science one period and composition the next--this activity remains unchanged.

Despite the challenges, there are benefits to summer school. Because the five weeks of summer school count for an entire semester of class, students are allowed only three absences (regardless of excuse.) On the fourth absence, they are dropped without exception. With regards to discipline, it's up to each teacher to decide how to enforce this in his or her classroom, but if a student earns an office referral, they are immediately dropped from the class. Although this may sound unfair, out of 110 or so students that I begin each summer with, I only ever have to drop 2-4 due to discipline issues--the rest know that they need to make up the class or face reclassification (retention), and those who stick it out buckle down and do their work.

Also, because summer school is relatively free of the frequent classroom distractions that plague the school year (discipline issues, phone calls from the office, athletic events, early dismissals, school assemblies, the inevitable fire drill) students are able to focus more fully on learning the subject matter. I have more time to grade, more time for group work, and more time to work one-on-one with students who need extra attention.

While all of these are perks, the main reason I enjoy summer school is because I enjoy the curriculum, or rather, lack thereof. While I have the latitude to choose most of my content and pacing with my honors classes during the regular school year, the college-prep and remedial classes have more strictures, with the remedial English classes being a completely scripted "open-the-box-and-teach" program. I recognize that these programs have their place, but I find them confining because I have to move on in the material, whether or not the students have the skills to continue.

However, during the summer, I am free to choose my course content and pacing, and it gives me more time to tie everything together and make sure students grasp it. During the school year, students have vocabulary assignments and spelling assignments and reading assignments and writing assignments, and if two of the four components are integrated, it's considered a successful lesson. There just isn't time in a single, 45-minute class period to try to incorporate all four aspects and teach them to understanding, or, dare I even say the word, mastery! With the length of the average summer school class period, we have time to integrate and cover all of the major content strands and still have time left over for review and discussion.

When we teachers discuss our summer plans in the faculty lounge and I reveal that I am sticking around for five extra weeks, I get a number of askance looks, as well as the question, "why are you teaching summer school?" Sometimes I’ll even get my favorite question, "Do you *have* to?" as if I was there for the same reason that the students were--because I'd somehow failed as a teacher.

To these queries, I have a variety of stock responses, ranging from the snarky, "well, I flunked English this year..." to the puzzled, "well, what else is there to do?" I'll spin a story about some exotic place I'd like to travel, sermonize on the impossibility of two teachers in California being able to afford housing without some sort of salary supplementation, or leave people wondering when I say, "my house doesn't have air conditioning, but my classroom does, so I'd rather hang out there and at least get paid for it."

Why do I really do it? Yes, the money is nice. Yes, I would like to travel. Yes, the condo my husband and I own has us mortgaged to the hilt. Yes, I am easily bored, and it gives me something to do with my time besides stay home and become a couch potato. And yes, it is nice to have an air-conditioned room to sit in when it’s 105F outside.

But what really keeps me coming back, summer after summer? My real reason, my secret reason, is that I actually enjoy it. I enjoy connecting with students who are normally turned off to reading, and helping them find enjoyment in literature. I enjoy not having to herd them like cattle, marching through the literature book page by page, relentlessly driving them on to the next lesson, the next box on the curriculum map, the next item on the list of state standards we are expected to cover in ten short months.

I wouldn't quite call it heaven, but it's definitely not purgatory. Besides, it's air-conditioned.

Welcome to LiveWire

2006-06-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to LiveWire, the voice of California teachers. LiveWire teachers vary in age, grade level taught, location, and political persuasion, but we are all united in one common goal: to educate the public on the changing nature of American education by giving a day-to-day picture of what life is like in a K-12 public school classroom.

Although the phrase "in the trenches" has become somewhat cliche, it is nonetheless where you will find us every day, working to educate the next generation for a higher purpose than filling in bubbles on a state test.

If you would like to join LiveWire's staff, please email us at california.livewire@yahoo.com.