By Tracey
One sunny afternoon in the spring, during my third year of teaching, I walked into my classroom to find two strangers. They were smiley and warm, and apologized for startling me. They were also elementary teachers. I could tell this was true, as they wore the uniform – sandals, jumpers, and turtle-neck shirts. They explained that they were attending a conference nearby. They went for a walk and stumbled upon my school and my open door. They were most excited about seeing the word science posted on my schedule for the day. “Wow,” they explained, “You have time to teach science everyday? Where we come from they got rid of that. We’re lucky if we can teach it once a week!” I think they said they were from Idaho, or maybe it was Iowa? In any case, I thought that comment was strange at the time, and then promptly forgot all about it until recently. It was as if these women came from the future, foreshadowing what is yet to come, and warning me of the road ahead. And now here I am, ten years later, remembering their prescient words while feeling lucky to have the chance to teach science once a week.
So, what happened? My experience may not be typical. I was teaching in a school with an active PTA, a high population of middle and upper middle class students, and a principal who shielded us from what was happening at the district level. I remember seeing a copy of the allotted minutes for instruction, which our principal told us to not worry about. The other teachers in my district, however, were not so lucky. They had to restructure their classrooms to be in compliance with the new mandate: 120 minutes of literacy instruction, everyday. Sixty minutes of math instruction. And 45 minutes a day of any of the following subjects: art, health, social studies, and science. When you factor in lunch, recesses, and specialist time; this accounted for practically your entire day. There were slight adjustments over time, math expanded to 75 minutes, writing was allowed to be included in “literacy”- if it had to do with reading, and independent reading could be included in the 120 minutes, if it did not interfere with 90 minutes of learning how to read. Then my principal retired, and the district closed our school. You know the rest of the story.
It was hard to adjust to this. I resisted, trying everything I could to integrate the literacy and math with social studies, science, health, and art. You have to read about something, don’t you? And, you have to write about something, too. But, I was alone on this. The professional development trainings we attended emphasized how you shouldn’t mix up literacy learning objectives with any other content. There were walk-throughs, and coaching cycles, and mandatory grade-level meetings with strict agendas. Primary teachers had an even stricter schedule, with time allotments for blending, read alouds, and oral fluency. And, there were stories of science kits being sent to schools that were never even opened.
It’s easy to blame NCLB on this. It’s true that high stakes testing of reading and math placed unusual emphasis on these subjects. But, in response to the growing concern for the other content areas, science was tested at the fifth grade and social studies, health and art CBA’s (classroom based assessments) were designed. Legislation even mandated a CBA in social studies for either the fourth or fifth grade in every district. Even still, little has changed. I learned last year that I was the only elementary teacher to submit grades for my students’ social studies CBA’s to the district. What pains me most is that this is much more a reality for Title I schools, a.k.a. the poor and minority kids. Middle class white folks wouldn’t stand for this. And now that this has been in effect for so long, have we seen the test scores we hoped to see? Not at my school. We are in our fourth year of not meeting AYP.
I don’t want to sound completely negative. There are some positive things to celebrate. Last year was the first year our school put on a science fair, and it was wildly successful. I still get misty thinking about it. Our superintendent came, along with three board members, two city council members, and the mayor. The students did an amazing job with their projects. They AND my principal are looking forward to doing it again this year. But, it still takes me three times longer to teach a science lesson to my students because they don’t have the experience of hands-on science to draw upon. And, in my grade-level team meetings, I’m not allowed to discuss science with my colleagues. We have a mandate to discuss only literacy and math.
I think change is on the horizon, but I’m impatient. Here’s the irony: I was asked by my district to serve on a STEM committee to look at how our district could become a STEM district, one that promotes the learning of science, technology engineering and mathematics and produces students that become graduates with advanced degrees in these areas. I have an idea, let’s teach science! And let’s not forget the other important subjects that make us well-rounded, educated citizens, ready to contribute to society. But the truth is, that with all these mandates in place, I don’t feel as though I’m teaching any subject very well. And every student, poor or not, deserves the best education we can give.
First Grade Students value Science Instruction. They are engaged in the learning of the process of questioning. Luckily, I teach in a district that provides hands-on kit science. Six-year olds will work very hard at reading, writing, and math in the content of science. The ask questions, the document their findings and they read to learn new information. These are all part of the Essential Learnings for First Grade Students. It sounds like some administrators need to be be educated in the integration of learning, it is not all about skill and drill, if students are expected to retain information, they need to practice reading, writing, and math skills in real life situations that can be created within the four walls of school.
Power standards! That’s exactly what they called them! Ugh! We’ve already spent two grade level meetings and two early dismissal “collaboration” PD times discussing reading and writing “power standards” – 5 hours of lost time I’ll never get back. Yet, I’ve never been granted a single hour to find ways to integrate science and social studies with literacy. That must be done on my own time.
In answer to your comment, Mark, it should be so simple. But some how, it’s not. Maybe the fear is that a teacher might limit him/herself to content related to what they’re studying and not expose students all different types of texts? I’m not sure what it is. But, the emphasis is literacy for learning the mechanics of reading, not for learning about the world. If they learn something, hey, that’s great! But, that isn’t the focus it seems. There’s a push to use our basal readers, and the “guided reading” library, which are groups of about 6 copies of the same book that are at the same reading level. Then there’s picture books for read alouds, for teaching specific reading strategies. It’s not as if you can’t find science related material or other content, but it’s not easy to do. Finding the right reading level is a challenge, and there aren’t multiple copies. When you’re not supported by being given time to find materials and work with your colleagues, it’s difficult to pull off. And we’re left with kids who think we read to make inferences. I wish I was kidding.
Tracey, thanks for your comments to my comments. My comment on holiday traditions wasn’t necessarily aimed at Christmas, we seem to fly right by Constitution Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day and others without little time to teach the historical significance.
I guess what my bigger beef is – is the fact that most of my planning time in the school day is being eaten up tallying some data, instead of planning for quality instruction that can motivate students and be fun along the way. Yes, I do have some control over the use of my time, but there always seems to be another deadline that pops up overnight that I have to busily gather data for to show at some meeting, which takes me off the focus of doing quality planning and prepared teaching. I know we all suffer from too little planning time, but just this year with all the other district demands, my 4 hours of weekly planning can’t seem to stay ahead of my 30+ hours of instruction time and it is frustrating to me.
Lastily our district calls teaching to specific GLEs – “Power Standards” which is my opinion is just a big waste of time, meetings, and paper. We are professionals who are supposed to be knowledgeable about which GLEs we need to cover for our grade level, so why not have one master document that covers what we teach each year and match them to the GLEs and be done with it?
I teach high school and have no experience with people smaller than 6th grade…but how can literacy be taught without, as you stated, reading “about” something?
To me it sounds like my constant battle with teaching grammar and vocabulary… my experience and everything I read suggests that doing so in context of other texts is the most meaningful way to achieve mastery.
Can’t literacy be taught in the context of science, history, art? Any time you ask a kid to read, that’s literacy instruction, isn’t it? I don’t really know because my context is different, but it seems logical to me. What are they reading when they develop literacy skills?
Eva -I agree with your comment about how we’re all “…so busy assessing them to death.” You’ve heard the expression, “You can’t fatten a pig by weighing it.” But here’s the thing, all that we’ve done at my school isn’t getting the results we wanted. They’re doing ok with reading, not great, and they’re doing embarrassingly awful in math. I just think no one thought this through. Kids, like anyone, need motivation and purpose. And a test score just isn’t enough. Kids are excited about science and social studies and real things that matter. It seems we’re just plowing forward, taking away all that is meaningful and reading just to be reading. And, to be honest, I’m leery about going back to the fun, holiday traditions. I think this can muddy things up. I want Christmas to be celebrated by the people who celebrate it… outside of the school day. I don’t want to be responsible for that. There’s enough fun, excitement, and creativity that can be experienced from actual subjects I am responsible for teaching- subjects we even have GLE’s for! My problem is that I’m discouraged from teaching them. At our recent grade level team meetings, we’ve been asked to identify which GLE’s we’re “really going to teach well” as it was put. What they really meant was which GLE’s we’re agreeing to leave out of our students’ education. I’m deeply uncomfortable with that.
Kristen- I think you’re right about the direction public schools are going… but I don’t think it’s money so much any more. I think it’s class. It’s not because of money that my students aren’t getting art, science, and social studies. We HAVE the materials. Our art supplies could use some replenishing, but that’s really not the issue. It’s that we’re discouraged from teaching it. And, our parents are mostly blue collar, lucky to be working, many of them immigrants, speak very little English, don’t want to rock the boat, don’t know that they can rock the boat, scared when school calls home, and grateful their kids go to school and have teachers that care about them. I think it’s fear that led us to this place. Parents are fearful of asking questions. Administrators are fearful that teachers are teaching their hobbies and fluff they care about and won’t teach what’s essential to get their students to perform well on tests. And teachers are fearful of being put on the long form.
Well done, Tracey. Again and again we see the evidence that limiting resources reduces what can be done in the schools. The gap between the haves and the have-nots widens because the wealthier PTAs fund extra staff and extra programs, but the poor schools can’t. In Seattle there are elementary schools that don’t even have PTAs. The PTA at my daughter’s elementary funds field trips, extra support staff for the classrooms, and all sorts of other things.
As well, the burden of literacy cannot continue to rest solely on the schools unless schools are funded to pick up the life skills families have dropped. If schools are going to be the only reading instruction in a child’s life, then the school day needs to be longer, the class sizes need to be smaller, and teachers need more support.
Pushing literacy and math at the expense of large motor skills, social skills, art, music and science in the elementary grades is going to have lasting effects on the students who depend on schools to expose them to the world because their families can’t afford to. Students whose families can sign them up for zoo school during summer break, or drama / dance / art class, or who have a membership to the aquarium will be just fine. Is that the direction we want our public schools to go? I don’t think so.
I totally agree with your comments. It’s very similar in my district. We are producing students who may be able to read and crunch numbers but they have no “real” life experiences to build upon because we are so busy assessing them to death. Are we producing well-rounded citizens who can think for themselves, wonder about science concepts, appreciate the history of America, produce a work of art either musically, dramatically or visually, or just have common sense and decency? I think not.
As an educator, I don’t like the fact that “mandate, “fidelty, data, and analyze” are the words that run my life these days. What has happened to “fun, holiday traditions, joy of learning, and creativeness”?