Next year I'm taking on something new and intimidating. I and three other teachers (history, algebra, and study skills) are taking most of the students from our feeder middle schools who failed two or more eighth-grade classes. Most of them will be boys, most minority, most who qualify for free or reduced lunch – although except for the gender, those qualifiers describe the majority of the students at my high school. Since passing ninth grade is one of the strongest correlations for staying in school and graduating, this is an important task.
Mostly, I'm excited even though part of me is sad that I had to give up my honors classes to do this and part of me is terrified that I will not be able to get the kids hooked.
I've been looking for more ways to bring kinesthetic activities into an English classroom where basic skills in reading and writing are a top priority, and believe me, there just aren't that many kinesthetic activities when it comes to the actual tasks of reading and writing. Kinesthetic projects and responses to literature I have aplenty. Actually getting them moving when they're reading and writing is pretty difficult – especially at the high school level.
We've also been exploring alternative assessment and trying to figure out how that will fit in. One of our discussions right now is how we will balance responsibility and mastery. We're playing with the idea that student can pass our final exams with a 75% or better, it won't matter whether they turned in assignments or not, as long as the tests prove mastery in skills and content. But if we do this, are we setting them up to fail when they move on to more conventional teachers?
There are still a lot of discussions to be had and decisions to be made, but I'm working with an outstanding group of teachers who are all strong relationship builders, and to me, that is the most important "skill" we need to make this work.
All in all, we are up for this challenge. It's either going to be the most rewarding, exciting year of my career, or it will be the year from H-E-double-toothpicks. But the glass is always half full to me, so I'm counting on the former.
@lightly seasoned: it is good that your building is willing to put the same caliber of teachers in an intervention program as they will in AP classrooms… in the past, I’ve been in a building where that is not the case: the best vie for (and fight over) AP assignments, and the interventions and remediation classes are relegated to those waiting on retirement or who no one wants working with “the kids that are matter” (i.e. have influential parents or who are going on to college). When I first took my present assignment, my dad, a 35 year education veteran asked “are they trying to get rid of you?” If they were, it didn’t work, I love my assignment and it is what has kept me in the business.
This is actually what I do, and have done, for about nine years now, after some experience of honors as well. Congratulations. You are probably about to experience something that will change you immensely as a teacher and human being.
“We’re playing with the idea that student can pass our final exams with a 75% or better, it won’t matter whether they turned in assignments or not, as long as the tests prove mastery in skills and content. But if we do this, are we setting them up to fail when they move on to more conventional teachers?”
Yes, I think you will be. It’s great that you’re asking this question. Conventional teachers are going to expect that students also show mastery of the steps toward completion, and their classes will require daily grades, homework, etc. All of my classes do as well. You might consider that responsibility IS mastery of a certain set of skills – the employable and college-bound kind.
Here are some book recommendations for your team:
“Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling,” by Emily Kissner.
“I Read It, But I Don’t Get It,” by Cris Tovani.
You may also want to get copies of books like “Impact: Fifty Short Stories” which is a collection of very short stories by folks like Bradbury and others. (My students always love “The Dinner Party” by Mona Gardner)
Best of luck to you.
I have the best luck when my remedial babies read lots of plays. They can’t zone out and pretend to read and I can assess them as we go because I hear everybody’s voice every day. This year most of my kiddos jumped from the 800’s to the 1100’s on the SRI (grade level!), and my 500’s jumped up to 800 or 900. The other half of class we did composition work — I use the Kansas University materials for sentence writing and Jane Schaffer as well. Good luck. Be sure to assess early so you can show them progress — it makes so much difference for motivation. My kids also got a ton of mileage out of having “the hard AP teacher!” I trained them in Socratic circles ust like I do my top seniors.
I would love it if you find kinesthetic ways to teach Algebra – and share them.
Kim…I am SO excited for you (and proud)! I had the same trepidation when I took the Sheltered Science position a couple of years ago. It was the greatest challenge I had ever come across as a teacher. It kicked my rear end but was the most rewarding year of my career. It literally changed me as a teacher, and I will never be the same. And bully for you for acknowledging that having relationships with these kids is the most important skill to have.
If I taught science at your school I would be in the fracademy because I would be so excited to work with that group of kids.
A couple of questions I do have: Will you have smaller class sizes? Will you have any mainstream classes, or are you exclusively teaching fracademy kids?
Thank you all for your encouragement and positive stories. You probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that more people accuse me of being insane than anything else in my choice to do this. Mark, I’m a huge fan of Jane Schafer and have been using her ideas for years. In a sense, it’s remediation by another name. Most kids coming to me as ninth graders think that if they have written more than a paragraph about any given topic, then they’ve written an essay. Schafer is a very clear and precise way to help them change that mindset.
Not only do I refuse to lower my expectations, but when people tell me that my kids “can’t” do something, I have this compulsion to prove the nay-sayers wrong. I think that’s one reason that I was asked to consider this new position. We’ll be reading The Odyssey, and we’ll be reading the Fitzgerald translation, not the corny juvenile novelization that some of my peers recommend. They will learn how to diagram sentences, how to read between the lines, and how to laugh a lot in English class.
I’m intrigued by the possibility of using voice recognition software – unfortunately, our technology is not up to that challenge. The kids will be in a science class, but for that class and one elective, they will be out of the “fracademy” – our nickname for this new freshman academy. There wasn’t a science teacher who wants to work exclusively with “those kids,” so they will be dispersed among four different science teachers.
My expectation is that we will have the same success that Travis describes – the students will learn to love school, do well on whatever replaces the WASL, and continue on to graduate.
I agree with much of what Mark Gardner stated about not reducing your expectations. However, knowing you, Kim, I know that this will not be what happens. Like you and Mark, I have taught in a similar situation (similar, not exactly so the comparison is impossible, but the knowledge of what you are undertaking is solid).
I noticed that there was a difficulty with a portion of our incoming 7th graders were having difficulty transitioning from 6th to 7th grade (going from a elementary, self contained model) to a 7th grade (secondary, several classes and teachers). These students were almost without exception the same students who had difficulty with study skills, knowing how to “do” school, loathe to write, reading was not even an idea, homework was not possible…..
However, they are, like all students, great people in need. So another teacher and I, along with an aide, who was worth any teacher with whom I have worked (and often more), created a program where the 7th graders went between the three of us, changing classes, or not depending on what we needed. This allowed the smaller, more individual attention (provide the necessary resources for students who are not making standard with the provided resources) to achieve (growth in knowledge and skill that increases over time, making up time when possible).
In many ways, They had me twice, the other teacher twice, and then two electives. In this way, we cut down the number of “difference settings”. The other teach and I coordinated and teamed as well as knew each child as we had them for extended periods of the day. The sad stories and sad lives were present. School, for many of these students, was the only place where a caring adult lived. Sometimes the only place where they could get food or brush their teeth.
I like challenges. I do not see students as challenges, but I see what life gives some students as a challenge. These students did well in our program; learned to love school more than could be expected from someone in “their” shoes; and did well in the state test–but MORE IMPORTANTLY continued to do well in 8th grade and in high school.
To see students go from not-part-of-a-school to being part-of-a-school was great. To see them be independent and come back years later telling stories of books they are reading in class or who their favorite teacher in high school is, is great.
Impacting students.
Sounds great. I look forward to reading more about what happens during the year.
Have you considered using voice recognition software for part of the writing tasks? It might help your students get words ‘on paper’, which many people find the hardest part, and because the software almost always makes mistakes, it might help you convince them that spelling does actually make a difference…
(Are they taking a science class, too?)
Kim: this is a great opportunity. I have taught in a very similar team setting for almost six years now and it, despite its challenges, is what has kept me in the profession. One thing to consider: I’ve found that contrary to what I expected early on, when it comes to writing, offering more structure, not more freedom has actually netted my students great results. I stole the Jane Schaeffer stuff from the AP folks and gave it to my kids in my program, and they’re writing like all-stars, blowing the regular kids out of the water. They all had stories to tell, but needed help with a concrete foundation. Telling them “write a paragraph with a topic sentence and some details” wasn’t good enough for them, so the concrete (albeit formulaic) nature of Schaeffer and similar models has worked wonders. I strongly encourage you also to not lower standards or expectations… in designing our program I discovered much research which has shown that when these kinds of interventions are attempted, one of the worst things that can be done is universal remediation; a key common factor in programs which have been successful was the maintenance of academic rigor to help these kids develop an identity as a “student.” In a lit class, make sure they get the challenging lit their peers would be getting, don’t soften it with mid-level YA books but throw the Odyssey or Mockingbird at them if that’s what their peers are getting…but teach them how to cope with those challenges (since it is probably a repertoire lacking in how-to-cope-with-academic-challenges which has helped get them where they are now).
My further thoughts: if the goal is transition, your concern about what will happen when they move on to return to traditional classrooms must remain at the forefront of your mind. Consider not what will make them successful in YOUR classroom, but what will make them successful in future classrooms as well as future workplaces (organization, time management, how to read their science book, authentic writing, test-taking skills…) It would be easy to tailor instruction to make each kid feel like a success in your classroom, but it sounds like they are coming to you because they have not developed the skills to cope well in a traditional classroom…square peg stuff. Life, though, is a series of round holes we all must force our squareness into if we want to make a living, provide for a family, stay clean, stay out of trouble with the law, own a house someday, etc. At the 8th-9th grade cusp, that involves teaching and modeling a hugely valuable set of coping skills where kids can learn to diagnose what makes them check-out in school and then have a toolkit of strategies for checking back in…metacognition with a little DBT thrown in. I believe that the reason that kids end up in programs like yours or mine is that their brains and dispositions are simply not well served by the school system. Is the school system going to change? Maybe someday, but not next year when they move out of your program into a new (old) setting, so I think it is worthwhile to make sure any intervention program is focused on next year’s reality, not the someday-it-should-be-this-way ideals.
I wish you luck, and if you’ve assembled a good team this may very well be the best experience of your professional career. I am part of an interdisciplinary team exactly like you describe above (substitute science in for history) and it has been beyond wonderful not only for me personally but also for the kids who have passed through our program. Sorry for the long response! The work you are taking on this year is critical work, which when done well will transform those kids academic and personal lives.
Kim, read the post. Sounds great. I am most pleased that you see this as an opportunity, not a set back. Your enthusiasm is clear. I just wanted to put this comment up and think more about your situation over the evening and then get back. Cheers.