Off-Topic

Do you not read teaching stories? There is only so much that teachers can do to force students to learn and succeed in school if they have no support and/or emphasis on succeeding at home…

Without family and community support it certainly is an uphill battle.

AS many of you know my son taught in Baltimore for 2 years in teach for America -- they say that which does not kill you only makes you stronger -- well it was very hard for him. He was a kid that was used to making a difference and having everything go right. At some points he just couldn't reach some of the kids -- either they were already so far behind or there was just no support at home.

When there was support at home it seemed like something else terrible would happen. He had one little girl whose mother was likely illiterate -- she would call my son every night for help on the homework so she could keep her daughter current. CHristmas that year her older son came home from Iraq and was murdered in downtown Baltimore. Just an anecdotal story but evidence none the less of how hard things are.

My middle daughter is starting teach for America in Charlotte right now -- she is interviewing with principals and working on getting placed in a school. Yesterday she asked a Principal how was parent involvement at the school -- the principal replied "last year I had 495 students and 6 parents came to back to school night" pretty long odds of long-term success I'd say.

You really have to love Matt -- a very smart and talented person who could be making a lot more money or doing many other things -- yet he is out everyday fighting to better these kids lives. It is really amazing.

One more story on the teaching front that I will share -- my wife's uncle recently passed away he was 69 years old and had been retired from being a teacher in LA for 40 years. A vietnam vet he never married but was everyone's favorite uncle. One of the teachers that he mentored sent us an email telling a story that in her first year she team taught 6th grade with Uncle Matt. The year ended with sex education and at the end of every class they would collect questions from the kids in writing and answer them. Well one boy asked "does size really matter?" to which Uncle Matt turned to the 22 year old rookie teacher and said "Ms. Jones -- I think you are better equiped to answer that one" after she stuttered for about 90 seconds he bailed her out...

Ha. I just took some time and typed out an earnest response, it was a double post, I edited the one, and it erased both.

Anyhow, I don't think the system is a CF. I think schools for poor kids are usually pretty horrible, but schools for poor kids are horrible all over the world. The issues in these schools are issues of poverty, and nobody has a solution.

From a teacher's perspective things are pretty grim right now, as "fixing the schools" is a popular issue, particularly among politicians and well paid liars like Michelle Rhee who are looking for personal gain. The real danger is when people who don't understand complex issues also have poor understandings of math and statistics.

People who think poor kids' issues in school can be "solved" are either naive, stupid, or dishonest.

We can improve things a bit, but that's not what people want to hear.

As usual Diane Ravitch is correct.

I agree with her on education and "education reformers" the vast majority of the time.

That sucks but I think teacher's unions are hardly the main obstacle to open enrollment in public schools.

People make decisions on where to live based largely on the zoned school. So much of what makes a "great" school great are the kids and parents. Less important are the facilities, administration, and teachers. Parents who've paid a real estate premium to send their kids to the "good" school throw fits (understandably so) when this system is changed.

There were nearly soccer mom riots in Crofton when they wanted to send the kids in my neighborhood to Crofton Elementary instead of Crofton Woods. (This was before Crofton Meadows Elementary opened and those parents were going CRAZY that their kids might be sitting next to kids with divorced parents or who God forbid lived in townhouses.) Which is funny, but that's the way things work and I don't think teacher's unions are the main impediment to open enrollment.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, there are tons of wonderful teachers and lower level administrators out there, and most of them are doing a fine job. However, once you get up the food chain to the City/County/District board level, the administrators there are some of the most useless people I have ever met. I have a theory is that is has a lot to do with the truly passionate educators not wanting to get away from the "frontline" (individual school/classroom) while the typical ladder climbing bureaucrats just want to get to the cushy 100K a year for not really doing shit worthwhile level and being a self-important douche.

Not sure how universal that is, but has certainly borne out in several different parts of NC.

Yeah. It's tough. In my experience a lot of those folks are really talented, and a lot...not so much. At the highest levels they are getting paid (relatively) crazy money and I'm not sure what they do other than give interviews.

That said, I've got a kid to feed and I'll be finished with my admin certification a year from now ;)

The idea that priority one in struggling districts is to get rid of more teachers is absurd. They don't stick around long enough as it is.
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Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania estimates that, “nationally, on average, about 20 percent of new public school teachers leave their district to teach in another district or leave teaching altogether within one year, one-third do so within two years, and 55 percent do so within five years.” In DCPS, by contrast, 55 percent of new teachers leave in their first two years, according to an analysis by DCPS budget watchdog Mary Levy. Eighty percent are gone by the end of their sixth year. That means that most of the teachers brought in during the past five years are no longer there. By comparison, in Montgomery County just 11.5 percent leave by the end of their second year, and 30 percent by the end of year five. DCPS has become a teacher turnover factory. It has a hard time keeping teachers who are committed to their school and the community it serves.

Dude, this is the best thing you can do for your son. 3 languages won't confuse him any more than 2 will.

Interesting piece on summer reading.

I don't think I ever did any assigned summer reading. To be honest, I don't remember any being assigned.
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Some Books Are More Equal Than Others
By CLAIRE NEEDELL HOLLANDER

BECAUSE I am a middle school reading enrichment teacher, parents and colleagues often ask my advice about summer assignments. My automatic reply echoes a hit song from the ’70s, “any love is good lovin’.” I tell them blithely that any reading is good reading, while I think to myself, we’ll take whatever we can get.

The data, however, show that my mantra holds true only for the least experienced readers, who attain knowledge every time they read. This age group is fast acquiring verbal knowledge (an increase in word recognition) and world knowledge (an increase in understanding about the world around them), even when they’re reading comic books or relatively simple narratives. For newly fluent readers, usually age 8 or 9, any reading is indeed good reading.

But for students in middle school and high school, reading selection does matter. Students attain more knowledge of both kinds reading Stephen Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage” than they do reading the “Hunger Games” series. When the protagonist of “Red Badge” reflects on his pride in having “donned blue,” it requires both verbal and world knowledge to comprehend that he is proud of having enlisted as a Union soldier.

While “The Hunger Games” may entrance readers, what does a 13-year-old gain in verbal and world knowledge from the series? A student may encounter a handful of unfamiliar words, while contemplating human dynamics that are cartoonish, with violent revolution serving as the backdrop for teen romance.

Reading literature should be intentional. The problem with much summer reading is that the intention is unclear. Increasingly, students are asked to choose their own summer reading from Web sites like ReadKiddoRead, where the same advanced Real World Fiction category includes “The Catcher in the Rye” and “Flipped,” by Wendelin Van Draanen, which centers on divorce and kissing. Both books can be enjoyed by middle schoolers, but how will the seventh grader determine which one to pick?

The issue is further compounded when summer assignments require students to write about what they read. The problem is that the tasks assigned are at once too open and too circumscribed to be of use. What summer reading needs to be is purposeful. But how do we ensure purposeful independent reading given the low accountability of summer assignments?

Some students will happily read off a recommended-reading list (which should include a companion list of resources to support understanding). They will head to the park with Dickens or Austen under their arms, so long as they can leave the Post-it notes at home. They should be permitted this luxury, to have their teachers treat them as independent learners capable of a first dip into a classic, with no destined-to-be-unread written responses required. Doing this allows the student who chooses tougher books to say, “I didn’t understand half of it.” What better time to allow students to struggle than summer, when no one is calling on them to interpret or explain?

So what should students be asked to do? I propose focusing on accessible nonfiction guaranteed to increase world and verbal knowledge. I recommend the following books. For middle schoolers: “Facing the Lion,” by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton with Herman Viola; “A Long Way Gone,” by Ishmael Beah; and “Iqbal,” by Francesco D’Adamo and Ann Leonori (which is a novel about a real kid). For upper middle school and high school students: “Hiroshima,” by John Hersey; “Night,” by Elie Wiesel; “Fast Food Nation,” by Eric Schlosser; “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” by Michael Pollan; “Girls Like Us,” by Rachel Lloyd; and “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” by Katherine Boo.

These nonfiction books provoke students to desire an expanded world knowledge, to consider the flawed moral decision making of the past and the imperiled morality of the future. They all contain high-level vocabulary, but not so much that a typical student might fail to grasp major points.

As we rounded the corner into the tail end of eighth grade, I set out a number of these books for students to choose from for an informal reading class. One student chose to read “Hiroshima” during her last two weeks of school. After a day or so, I checked in with her. Although the eighth grade covered the dropping of the bomb in social studies, I wanted to be certain she could handle the material. I asked, as a casual conversation opener: “It’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it?” She replied, “I feel more sympathy than disgust for these people, Ms. Hollander.”

As the kids say, my bad.

Another student, a struggling reader, chose “A Long Way Gone,” about a child soldier. When I checked in with him, he opened his laptop, pointing out his home country on a map that showed places in which young men, including his father, had been forced into armed service. He reminded me that I cannot always anticipate what a book will say to a reader.

While reading classic literature with students is my passion, I prefer that students explore literature in the summer as a pleasure and return to school curious about the world around them, not weary from having written about books they could not fully understand, or smug from having earned credit for an essay on a book they could have easily comprehended in fourth grade.

Summer assignments should be about why we need to learn and why we need to talk about what we think. We have to move students away from disgust at the unknown, at the horrors visited on other human beings, and toward sympathy. Students who have immersed themselves in real-world problems become excited by current events and history as well as literature. They can make connections between academic areas that are ordinarily divided. They will understand Dickens better for having read “Iqbal,” which tells the story of a boy who is sold into slavery at a carpet factory.

Reading serious nonfiction in the summer is an immersion in the world of necessary ideas. So let’s try that instead of the late August nagging and the relentless complaints from parents about their child’s stubborn refusal to enjoy, say, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” To those parents who wish ardently to re-experience their first literary love, I say, reread it yourself. Perhaps you will recall that the real horrors in that novel happen offstage, to characters who remain peripheral to the narrative. Perhaps your children need to confront some hard truths this summer that will make it easier for them to want to learn about the world.

you need any elementary school teachers in Bmore?