Slices of Stacy

An Open Letter to my Algebra Professor

Dear Professor Stinson:

Now that the semester is over (HOLLA!) and I can breathe, I want to thank you for a terrific class.  I didn't have a chance to talk to you after we handed in the final and frankly, I think that this discussion would have sounded terribly ass-kissy at that point, so here it is -- after final grades are calculated.

(Note:  Plus, I'm way behind on blog postings and what some people call laziness I call multitasking! HA!)

First, I appreciate what you said about the way Mathematics needs to be taught as opposed to the way it used to be taught.  I'm terribly afraid to have to be the one to tell you this, but 'used to be' is 'still.'  I was partnered with a Math teacher for a while this semester and not only does she still teach by skill-and-drill, she refuses to teach more than one method for any mathematical procedure.  She is afraid that a) the parents wouldn't know how to help and b) the kids would just get confused.

Unfortunately, she may be partially correct.

I taught several small group lessons on multiplying by powers of ten.  (Incidental shout-out to Poor Statue at Convince Me for leading me in the direction of the Beyonce lyric:  "To the left, to the left, when you multiply a factor by a fraction move it LEFT, to the left, to the left,"  I love it when you get to see the little light bulbs go off above their heads.)  What I discovered was disheartening: the students have no real number sense.  I wanted to go get the manipulatives and re-teach the basic principles of a base-ten system.

However, I will disagree with that teacher in a couple of important areas.  When I made suggestions about things I might teach or how I might teach them, she blanched at anything that would have involved higher-level math thinking, swearing the students couldn't do it.  Maybe she was right, but if you don't try, how will you know?  How are we ever to prepare these students for classes like yours in this manner?

Gah.  Cannot wait until I have my own classroom.

Another thing you brought up that I really appreciated is the fact that we have to captivate our students where they are and bring them to where we need for them to be.  You are so right.  One of my biggest frustrations as an intern is listening to teacher after teacher bemoan the fact that "Kids these days don't want to work, they just show up, they're not motivated, blah blah blah."  Well, they're right: kids should show up motivated, ready to capture the pearls of wisdom about to fall from our lips, yada, etc. 

But that's not the way it is.  Welcome to the real world.

In my student population, kids show up at school having had no breakfast, some in the same clothes they were wearing the day before.  Their mothers may or may not have come home the previous night.  My fifth graders were probably responsible for getting themselves and at least one younger sibling up and ready to go.  A couple are even homeless.  They have had adults in their lives break promises, lie, hit, cheat, steal and go to prison.  And they're going to walk into school bright-eyed and yearning for higher knowledge?  Yeah RIGHT.

It's all about choices.  Teachers can spend their time focusing on the way things USED to be or the way things SHOULD be or they can use their energy to captivate this generation and motivate them.  I've managed to build relationships with the students that encourage participation and excitement and I'm only there two days a week!

Yes, it's going to require more effort.

No, we're not going to get paid more for it.

Yes, it is reality.  Deal with it or go home.   This isn't a job in a cubicle somewhere, where your disinterest will show up in a less-than-snazzy Powerpoint presentation.  These are children's lives.  We're preparing them for a world we can't even conceive of and, as you said, Professor, we are doing them a disservice if we think for even one minute, "I hate my job."

So there you have it.  Thank you again for reminding me how it feels to struggle cognitively and how rewarding it is to find the answer on my own after that struggle.  Thank you for refusing to answer most questions but knowing when to help, after all.  Thank you for teaching us the way we should be teaching our students.  Have a great summer.

Sincerely,

Stacy

Skool Daze

While I usually go to great pains to maintain some cloak of privacy around this blog so that after I graduate I can, y'know, GET HIRED AND SHIT, I have to tell you that I can no longer hide my disgust at the shenanigans of our local school board.  I was in Athens this weekend and couldn't attend the march demanding the resignation of all nine school board members. 

It's such a long story.  Some school board members and some concerned citizens alerted SACS to possible ethics violations on the part of other school board members.  Irony: the person who reported the others doesn't live in his district, either.  He has an empty apartment in that distract.  His first-grade daughter told someone at school all about it.  After SACS did their investigation (the report for which can be found here) they found that the board was "fatally flawed."  Their recommendation?  that NACS pull their accreditation of the entire county school system on September 1.

What does this mean?  That my nephew, who has straight A's, will graduate in 2009 and his diploma will have "Non-accredited" stamped across it.  And he'll be ineligible for the HOPE scholarship, which is given to any Georgia graduate with a GPA of 3.0 or higher who is attending a Georgia public university.  There are 52,000 kids in this county's school system.  Pre-K funding would be lost.

The school board is guilty of micromanagement and poor ethical choices.  Six of them are clearly guilty and while I haven't heard anything negative about the other three, I'm afraid that at this point the only way to resolve this is to get rid of the entire board.  The Governor has already appointed several people to start overseeing the changes that SACS has recommended.  In the meantime, one of the most guilty on the board is still refusing to resign.  He was recently arrested for beating up his gay lover in their home.  In Dekalb County. 

The worst problem is the "negative influence" cited in the report that is affecting the entire system.  That person's name will not be mentioned on this blog but he is pretty much the Devil incarnate.  He managed to get some of his cronies elected on the last school board (when SACS investigated our county a few years ago).  Upon getting elected, the previous school board head (who is black) said they were going to recommend that no more white teachers get hired until the amount of black teachers was equal to the proportion of black students.  With the words, "It's our turn now, we're going to get ours," she turned race relations in my county back 40 years.  Even after that board got elected out, That Person managed to get more of his cronies elected.

It's a mess.  And I just wish I had an answer, you know?  If you're local, check out public access channels for tomorrow night's school board meeting.  They just moved it to the local performing arts center and installed metal detectors.  But I bet I could sneak in some rotten tomatoes.

Rookie

So I gave three spelling tests yesterday.  The fifth grade classes rotate so I got to repeat my prattle until it was perfected.

Anyway.

I gave the spelling tests.  Noticed that most of them were actually pretty good.  Then I realized that when I was holding the paperback teacher's edition and looking at the list of spelling words, I had actually wrapped the book around itself, revealing another set of the exact same words to the entire class. 

Rookie.

*****

Sweet Pea has taken to "doing my hair" which generally involves her combing it for hours and putting her elastic doodads in it, then yanking them out and starting all over.  Today she combed it all out and said, "Now isn't that pretty?  You should go look in the mirror and say, Do I look pretty today? Yes, yes I do."

*****

She's using the purple comb instead of the black comb because it's "more delightful."

*****

Conversations I swore I would never have:

While she was sitting on my lap earlier, I absentmindedly brushed her long bangs back.  She immediately yanked herself away and said, "Stop it! What are you doing?"  Channeling every mother and grandmother in history, I replied, "I'm trying to get your hair out of your face."  Channeling every daughter who has ever lived, she answered, "Well, stop.  I LIKE my hair in my face.  It's MY HAIR."

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Tonight I got the chance to hear Ron Clark speak.  He's an educator (or, as he introduces himself, a "schoolteacher" -- how refreshingly straightforward, eh?) whose story was brought to life in a movie starring Matthew Perry.  Perry was nominated for an Emmy for his performance.

Clark's story is amazing.  He never intended to be a teacher.  One small boy reeled him in and the rest is history.  He works exclusively with low-wealth students and is opening a school here in Atlanta.  His technique is simple: create a family in the schoolroom.  He has 55 rules that he makes the students live by in his room.  Some are simple:  make eye contact, etc.  Some are funny/interesting:  NEVER bring Doritos into his classroom.  Support each other.  Lift each other up rather than bring each other down.

It was a message I desperately needed to hear.  Ever since I started this path I've felt instinctively that the way to make a classroom work is to treat the kids with respect.  I've heard too many teachers complaining about the lack of respect for adults and I've noticed that these are usually the teachers who treat the kids with the most DISrespect.  The Kindergarten teacher I was placed with in the spring spoke to the kids in ways I wouldn't even speak to my DOG.  Even now, as much as I adore my cooperating teacher, she tears the kids apart.  When they show her a work product, full of pride for their effort, she publicly humiliates them.  I can't stand it.

I want to find what makes each child tick.  I want the kids to come in and be happy to be at school.  I think the best way to get the kids to respect me is not through fear and intimidation but by modelling for them what respect looks like.  This takes longer, admittedly.  It's a lot easier to just yell and move clips to yellow or red.  But there has to be a better way.  I want to get them to work harder by encouraging their effort (and please note, this isn't the blanket praise thing -- I praise their effort and their improvement) and teaching them the next step.  One little boy came to show me his "story" today.  This is a child who, when he went into Special Ed five weeks ago, could only write the letters 't', 'a' and 'l', all of which he would repeated over an entire paper.  Today he wrote a 'story' (okay, more like a few words, but STILL) where he actually sounded out and properly wrote words like 'crawl' and 'door'.  There was even a period in there!  I was so proud of him!  He's come so far!  And all the teacher did was say, "You're supposed to write a story.  This is just a bunch of words.  Boy, get back to that desk and do it again."  Needless to say, when he went back to his desk he didn't work.  He just laid his head down on  his desk, after kicking the girl next to him.

Isn't respect a two-way street?  Don't children deserve to be treated with dignity? 

There has to be a better way.

The wrong response

I went to my first faculty meeting.  Good?  SNACKS!  Bad?  A new policy called 'Response to Intervention' or RTI or possibly, in Georgia, POI.

These days if a teacher has a student she is concerned about, she does a certain amount of accommodation and differentiation herself before referring that student to something called the 'Student Support Team'.  That team offers other suggestions on handling the issue before simply passing the kid on the Special Ed.  Ultimately there is testing involved, etc. before deciding how much help the child needs.

Statistically, boys are way overrepresented in the SpEd/LD world.  I believe that there are a lot of teachers who, when they see the slightest bit of noncompliance, immediately assume the kid needs Ritalin and try to get him to the resource room for at least part of the day so they don't have to deal with him.  However, the new 'Response to Intervention' program may have overshot the mark.  Previously there was about a 6-12 week lead time (including testing) before the child could start receiving services.  That timeframe just doubled.

Let me break this down for you.

You and your child arrive at a new school at the beginning of the year.  For the first four weeks, all children stay at 'Level 1' instruction (not its real name, I'm changing it to protect the innocent) for the first four weeks.  This means that everyone gets the same curriculum and the same treatment.  Okay.  Fine. 

If, after four weeks and some initial reading level testing, your child's teacher sees that your child is well below grade reading level or has documented a particular behavior problem that is damaging/dangerous/disruptive, she must then come up with a plan to address the deficits.  She will then spend six weeks trying to implement the plan, including such differentiation techniques as fewer spelling words, less homework, one-on-one reading time, etc.  If it's a behavior, she is to track exactly how often it occurs, what precipitates it, and how the new plan affects it.  She may carry around a small clipboard or wear a necklace with paperclips on it, moving one clip to the other side of the middle when she sees that behavior.  This is known as Level 2 and she may have several students she is tracking at the same time.  At the end of that six weeks, if the behavior and/or deficits have not cleared up, she may then proceed with the Student Support Team.  Testing and evaluation may take another few weeks but the child is then available for special services.

Now the time frame has changed.  Level 1 is still four weeks.  Level 2 is still six weeks.  Now there's a Level 3.  Did Level 2 sound like a pain in the ass?  At Level 3 the teacher has to go to the SST and get more suggestions, then continue to meet with them every three weeks to evaluate the deficit/behavior for TWELVE MORE WEEKS, all the while coming up with more creative interventions.

This means that it will be 22 weeks from the first week of school before your child can even be considered for special services.  You will be advised of all the meetings and invited to attend them.  But if you are the kind of parent who refuses to see the problem, whose fragile ego is more important than your child's well-being, you might just switch schools the next year.

And the process will start all over.  And the most likely people to change schools are those who are already at a socioeconomic disadvantage.  If the parents don't speak up, don't demand help sooner, don't advise the school of the services the child was already receiving...

Twenty-two weeks.  January.  Half the school year spent in a general education class receiving whatever attention the teacher can give him.  Being permitted to work below grade level. 

We have one in our class right now.  It's October and he still hasn't been evaluated.  He can't even read two-letter words and he's in second grade.  Not having his previous school's records, the school put him in the most age-appropriate class.

I want to help this boy.  I spend time with him every day I'm in the classroom but the teacher doesn't have the kind of time I do.  I am so frustrated.  He can't keep up with the work and, as a result, disrupts the class to get attention.  He has severe behavior problems and needs help.  HE NEEDS HELP. 

And under the new system our hands are tied.

Something is very broken.

One small boy

His shoulders were shaking with suppressed sobs when I picked the kids up from Art.  His eyes were filled with tears he was trying desperately not to let his friends see, but it was too late.  The other boys were quick to tell me that he was crying.  I asked him what was wrong and he said that he'd forgotten to clean his room and when he got home he was going to get a whipping.  He meant it.

I'd already been warned about his grandmother.  Former military, she'd been forced to take him in when her daughter flaked on her parental responsibilities.  At the orientation she'd been quick to tell the teacher that she believed in corporal punishment and that if her grandson didn't perform up to standards he'd "get his butt whupped but good" at home.  In Georgia it is legal to use a belt to punish your children as long as you don't leave a bruise or a 'significant welt.'

My first week in the classroom, he was the class's 'Soaring Eagle.'  I marveled at his work ethic and good behavior.  The teacher advised me that he was afraid to be anything other than perfect.  She related the story of the orientation meeting and told me that the one time she had made the boy move his clip to yellow (green-yellow-red behavior system) he'd reacted the same way he was reacting today: he was actually afraid to go home.

Now we were standing in the hall outside the Art room.  The Art teacher, not aware of the background, was giving him strategies on how to tackle his room.  I put my arm around the boy's shoulders as we walked back toward our classroom.  His shoulders heaved under my arm and I tried to figure out what to say.  He looked up at me helplessly and I leaned down to speak softly into his ear. 

I said, "I think you are a terrific kid.  Whatever happens tonight, I want you to know that I am thinking about you, okay?  I know that you're smart and special and I care about you just the way you are."

He nodded, still looking miserable.  My words weren't enough and we both knew it.  And then he got his book bag and, when the bell rang, he got in line to get on the bus.  And I got my things together and I went home. 

And I haven't stopped thinking about him since.

School vs. School

Once again this semester, we're faced with the dichotomy between what we're learning about how to teach and what we're seeing in the schools.

I spend two days a week at the university being confronted and challenged with new ideas in education.  There is definitely a strong constructivism wave coming through.  I leave my classes exhausted and thrilled at the thoughts racing through my brain, ideas on how to engage my students and make them love to learn.  I am overwhelmed by the thought of all the planning and forethought that goes into this type of teaching and I wonder if I'm in the right field.

Then I spend two days in the public schools.

The school I'm at right now is considered the best elementary school in our county, based on their test scores.  I understand why the scores are so high: everything is scripted.  Everything.  Every single program is preplanned with endless worksheets for the kids to fill out.  I've been there for four days and have yet to see an original lesson.  They have made 'teaching to the test' an art form.

It's paying off for them, too: the kids are doing very well on the standardized tests, which is how the school is judged.  The school gets all sorts of mad props and the kids can read and write.  They just don't know how to ask questions, or wonder.  There's no room here for intellectual curiosity.  Fill out this worksheet, sit still, no talking, when you're finished read your AR books silently.  When you're finished with your AR book, take the computerized test and when it tells me you're ready, I'll let you start getting books from the library that have a different color dot on the spine.

My challenge, then, will be to figure out how to blend the two.  How do I help my school reach their AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) that it needs to keep its funding while also teaching my students to keep reaching for more, to keep wondering, to keep pushing?  How do I reconcile the constructivist "unbolt the chairs from the floor" viewpoint that would actually engage the kids' interest and stimulate the curiosity (possibly even of those "low performers") with the monstrous system of checks and balances that's already in place?