By Kristin
1) Educate the parents. Children with educated parents do better in school. Provide adult-education classes, for free, that help uneducated parents earn their GED, AA, or a BA. While they're in class in the evening or on the weekend, provide childcare. That childcare can include the arts, tutoring, or athletic activities to enrich the lives of children and support their own success in school.
By Luann
What would make your classroom a better place for students? I know
what I'd like in mine. Some things cost money; some save money; some
are suggestions for legislators, some for administrators. Some make
money. Some might even interest teachers.
by Brian
1.
I would provide tuition waivers for all public school education
employees for any class taken at a state community college, college, or
university. One of our goals should be to instill a love of life-long
learning in our students, and we can best accomplish this by example.
In addition, the requirement to earn 15 credits or 150 clock hours
every 5 years to maintain our certificate is an unfunded mandate that
puts an disproportionate burden on young teachers, whose salaries are
the lowest.
Tom's Five:
1. Lower class sizes. If there's one way in which teaching is different than most other professions it's this: We work with a lot of other people simultaneously. Doctors, lawyers, accountants and others are also very busy people, but for the most part they only work with one client at a time. Most teachers work with 20 to 30 (or more) students at the same time. I will work just as hard with the 27 students in my classroom as I would with the sixteen that I wish I had. I will get up just as early, work just as late and be just as tired when I go to bed. Doesn't matter to me. But 1/27 of my time and energy is a much smaller fraction than 1/16.
It's August, which means Stories from School: Practice meets Policy is returning! Travis, Tom and Kim are back, along with a great group of new blogger colleagues. Readers can get a sneak preview by reading their bios now, located in the left hand column of this page. Then get ready. Each blogger is set to ready to connect practice and policy with a bold first post, "Five Ways I Would Change Education if Money Was Not An Issue." You'll be surprised about the ways in which they'd transform education funding. Stay tuned!
Somewhere in my 13 years of teaching, I crossed over the hump of being a new teacher to becoming a veteran teacher. I’m not exactly sure when this happened, as each year still feels new and adventurous to me. But as a teacher of more than a decade, I’ve watched how decisions made by others outside the classroom affect my students. Not all of those decisions have ruffled my feathers; many of them have been very positive and have enhanced my instruction and student learning. I’d like to think that I haven’t developed that jaded look I saw in the veteran teachers that helped ease me into the profession. I try always to stay open-minded, thoughtful, and listening. But, sometimes I catch myself. You can help by joining in the dialogue. I hope you do.
Apart from a three-year stint of teaching first graders, I mostly teach the intermediate grades in elementary. Right now, I teach 5th graders in SeaTac, Washington. I came into teaching after being an exchange student in South Africa during Apartheid. At the time I was a senior in high school, applying to colleges and universities, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I wanted to get a degree in international relations and become an important diplomat or, maybe even an ambassador. But, living there for a year made me realize that change starts with your community. I figured that I was not particularly special, or different from anyone else, and if I had grown up in a white South African family, my ideas about racial segregation would mimic theirs. My “enlightened” ideas were merely the result of my environment -my upbringing and my education. This realization led me to think that teachers are very influential people, and if we want to help make our world a better place, we need good teachers.
I didn’t go right into education; this realization took some time and some suggesting from my then boyfriend, now husband of 18 years. He knew I should become a teacher long before I did. In college I double-majored in history and political science from the UW and earned my masters in teaching from Seattle University. I stayed in school as long as I could. I told people that it was because I looked young — when volunteering in an elementary school, I got yelled at by a teacher who thought I was in middle school. I used that as an excuse to stay in school longer before entering the classroom. But, the truth is, I just loved school and loved learning. What I didn’t know was how much that would follow me into the classroom.
Adventure and learning are what keep me inspired as a classroom teacher. Each new class of students brings a new set of challenges and discoveries. Together, we explore the world around us. The marvelous thing about exploring the world from our classroom is that it never looks the same. Each year, with different eyes and different experiences, the content always winds up being different.
My posts to this blog will most likely reflect this deep-held belief of mine that students have to care about what they are learning. They have to feel an eagerness to discover. While learning basics skills is a positive and necessary outcome, my hope is for it to happen serendipitously on the search for something big and meaningful- something that will keep my students hungry for more. If I can do that, I’ll be doing my job.
I teach a reading intervention class at a middle school in Seattle. I’ve taught 7-10th grades, history and LA, honors and standard. I’ve taught in the city, where I live, and in the suburbs. Change is important to me – every few years I get the itch to teach something new or teach a different age or demographic of student. I’m also a mom, and a gardener – two roles that inform the decisions I make in the classroom.
Thanks for visiting Stories from School: Practice meets Policy. We are on hiatus for the month of July so that SFS bloggers can spend time thinking exceptionally big thoughts. Have no fear though, SFS posts are still accessible during this time through the archives or on Twitter. We will return in August, charged up and ready to go. Be ready to read new ruminations from your favorite SFS bloggers, plus get to know a whole new group of accomplished teachers who are ready, willing and able to connect practice and policy.
Thanks SFS community, for a great first year.
Year two is going to be interesting!
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.