Advocacy: Knowing your System

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On my journey to bring more diverse authors, stories and voices to my high school English curriculum, I notched a couple of wins in the last two weeks. (Quick recap, I’m seeking to add Tommy Orange’s 2018 novel There There to the 12th grade English curriculum.)

Win #1: The district Instructional Materials Committee will review my request. Okay, so this one is kind of like putting “Make to-do list” at the top of my to-do list just so I can check it off… I’m a member of this committee and have been talking up this book to anyone who will listen.

Win #2: My building secretary and principal worked some budget magic and found a way to fund two class sets of novels. My building is the smallest of the district’s three high schools, and two class sets will cover every 12th grader in my building over the coming months. (Of the other two buildings, one high school just recently opened and has not fully phased up to 9-12 enrollment and the other has a senior class typically in the 500s… so that’s a heavier lift.)

These two successes have made me think about what teacher leaders… particularly teacher leaders new to navigating systems… might need to be cognizant of in order to successfully advocate:

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What is Social Justice?

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Education, Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Professional Development, Social Issues

Educators are aware of 21st-century skills required for students such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, and social skills. However, what about 21st-century skills educators must possess? 

Often this school of thought is overshadowed by the concentrated focus on student learning.  Current educators need to develop, practice, and implement skills like social justice pedagogy, intersectionality, culturally responsive teaching, and implicit bias.  Developing new skills will take time and mental reconfiguration of what teaching has become in the 21st century, but where to begin? Social justice would be a great starting point.

Social justice can be defined as seeing students for who they are and where they come from, as well as providing each student with an equitable distribution of educational supports or resources that allow the student to feel safe and secure.  At times it may seem easier to emphasize what social justice is not.  

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Critical Literacy in Rural WA

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Education, Literacy, Social Issues | , , ,

I just finished teaching a unit on literacy in my senior English class. I’m loving this class. The kids are amazing, and reading their ideas and listening to them discuss the issues around literacy today has been fascinating- and revealing. One article in particular, “Literacy and the Politics of Education,” by C. H. Knoblauch, really struck a nerve in my small-town classroom.

The article, published nearly thirty years ago, can be found here. For a quick look at the concepts, check out this handy study guide another teacher created and posted. To sum it up rather simplistically, Knoblauch outlines four basic types of literacy: functional literacy, cultural literacy, literacy for personal growth, and critical literacy. In essays and discussions, my students chose the literacies they valued the most and reflected on what their experience in high school had provided them so far. Their perspectives gave me food for thought. Continue reading →

“I Believe in You”: The Teacher’s Role of High Expectations

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Education, Education Policy, Elementary, Life in the Classroom

High expectations. The phrase has been bouncing around the education ether with increasing regularity over the years. As practicing educators, we know the “why” behind high expectations, but it is often easier said than done. Take my story. It is probably not unique, and other teachers may have buried away similar stories in their proverbial shoebox of “not-so-proud” teacher moments.

I share this story not as an omission of guilt or a way to vent, but as a window into the challenges that a multitude of novice (or not so novice) teachers encounter when trying to navigate the new territory of cultural competency in our practice. 

In my first year of teaching 1st grade I did not hold all of my students to high expectations and one of my English Learner students suffered the most.

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Prep for Success?

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Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom

I was a few years into my teaching career when found myself in a line outside of thick conference doors waiting to get into a session entitled, On the Verge of Burnout? I was curious, who were all these people, burning out? Teaching was great!

Finally, after waiting a few minutes, I touched the shoulder of the young woman in front of me and asked if she knew what the hold-up was, why weren’t they opening the doors? She replied that indeed they had opened the doors and this line was the overflow for standing room.  Overflow? I should have seen the writing on the wall then—things were not looking good for teachers’ mental health. That was over a decade ago and it seems things have only gotten worse.

Fast forward fifteen years in my teaching career. Honestly, we are barely a month in and I feel the weight of an entire school year upon my shoulders. There is just too much; too much to teach, too much to manage, to juggle, to collect data on, to make fit. I am feeling the burn of being a candle lit at both ends.

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Institutional Inertia vs. Diverse Literature

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Like any English department across the nation, the English lit programming in my district has its list of essentials.

At the ninth grade level, the anchor works we are required to teach are To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, and Romeo and Juliet. Tenth grade: Lord of the Flies, Into the Wild, and Julius Caesar. Eleventh: Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, The Crucible. Twelfth: The Things They Carried, Hamlet, Catcher in the Rye. These are the published core. The non-negotiables, the must-dos, the anchors.

In summary: One female author. No non-white authors. Only one author still alive.

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The Care and Feeding of the Twice Exceptional Child, Part One

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy

“Twice-Exceptional” (2E) is a term used to describe a student who is both gifted and disabled. These students may also be referred to as having dual exceptionalities or as being gifted with learning disabilities (GT/LD). This designation also applies to students who are gifted with ADHD or gifted with autism.

Last year, at the end of the school year, I overheard one of my mothers talking to other parents, telling them how hard it had been to get her child admitted into the Highly Capable (HC) program at our district because “no one in the district understands twice exceptional children.”

I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the time or place. But her child was not the first 2E child I’ve had in my class. He certainly won’t be the last.

Yet I am sure every parent of a 2E child feels the same frustration she felt.

First of all, it can be hard to identify 2E children for any of their needs. They are intellectually advanced enough to devise coping mechanisms to help overcome some of their disabilities. At the same time, those disabilities are like anchors that weigh them down, not letting their intellectual giftedness shine. They can look bright but unmotivated, advanced but lazy. They can look too high to qualify for special ed services but too low to qualify for HC services.

In truth, they may need both.

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Gifted Ed—Elimination or Equity

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Current Affairs

At the end of August Mayor Bill de Blasio got the recommendation from his School Diversity Advisory Group: desegregate New York City schools by eliminating most gifted programs.

I teach a self-contained class in our district’s highly-capable (HC) program. The news from NYC certainly caught my attention.

“The panel recommended that the city replace gifted and screened schools with new magnet schools — which have been used in other cities to attract a diverse group of students interested in a particular subject matter — along with enrichment programs that are open to students with varying academic abilities.”

Understand, NYC has the biggest school district in the country. They also occupy a reasonably small geographic area with absolutely amazing public transportation running all day long. (When I lived in upstate New York, students could attend any school in the area and ride public transportation for free.) Moving to magnet schools all across their district is more feasible for them than in many districts.

However, both of the New York panel’s recommendations, for magnet schools and enrichment programs, are just vague outlines thrown out there. They are lacking in any details. (Gut what exists. Replace with something. Eventually. Design details to follow.)

First, I want to point out how NYC schools operate differently from what the Washington State Coalition for Gifted recommends and what our state requires. In New York City, they test kindergarten students using a standardized admission exam. “At the elementary school level, students can qualify for the Department of Education’s gifted and talented programs by taking a single standardized exam, starting in Kindergarten.” Students can be in the gifted program permanently based on that one test!

Parents who can afford it pay tutors to prepare their preschool students for the test. Of course, many parents can’t afford tutoring. And thus, the segregation begins.

Also, New York City parents nominate their child for testing. “Savvy parents” are more likely to do the work of filling out the nomination forms for testing their child for gifted programs, paving the way for their child to have opportunities that other children might miss.

In Washington the Gifted Coalition has fought long and hard for universal testing “by the end of second grade” when the test results are far more likely to be valid. And our state law now requires an identification process that uses multiple data points. Our districts aren’t allowed to rely on a single test. By the way, the Coalition also got the state to change the law so we no long talk about “nominations” in Washington. We talk about “referrals”—just like referrals to Special Ed or any other student support. Parent or teacher referrals might be considered as one of the multiple data points in the identification process in our state, but they are not the gatekeeper, allowing or denying entrance.

Best case scenario? Each district in Washington observes and monitors K-1 students, identifying truly high-fliers (not just early readers). By the end of second grade, the district does a universal screening (at school and during the school day) so every student in the district is reviewed by the Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT). Then the MDT looks at additional data from every child who scores high on that initial screening, including (potentially) referrals from parents and/or teachers, before making decisions about placement in Highly Capable programs. Finally, the MDT should also review data of students entering middle school to see if there is anyone who might have been missed at a younger age.

Second, let’s just take a moment to acknowledge the vast difference between meeting the needs of exceptional students and providing enrichment. The first and most important need for truly gifted students is quality time with their intellectual peers. Second, they need increased depth and complexity. Third, they need a faster pace.

Here is what is being suggested as on alternative to that type of holistic gifted classroom in NYC:  “For younger children, that could mean setting up small groups of students who are pulled out of their classrooms to learn the basics of photography.”

I wholeheartedly support enrichment options—like photography—being offered to all elementary students. Who wouldn’t love that? But don’t confuse that with a rigorous program of advanced academics.

My fifth graders have to complete a Classroom-Based Assessment in social studies, just like any other fifth grade students. But I model their projects on a 7th grade CBA and on National History Day projects (NHD is open to students in 6-12th grades). They learn to follow MLA format guidelines for their written work, including their “List of Works Consulted” for their CBA. (You might have used the MLA handbook in high school or college.) My goal is to start preparing them for the kind of writing they will do in high school and college.

Enrichment class? Not quite.

The goal of the School Diversity Advisory Group was desegregation. May I suggest, a better goal would be equity. By that, I mean every student gets the education they need.

Some fifth-grade students need extra help in learning how to read. Some fifth-grade students need extra help in answering specific questions about integers or even quadratic equations.

Some students need small group work on phonics.

Some need large group discussions on topics like geopolitics in the American colonies or economic theories in the 20th century.

Give students what they need. Including robust gifted education programs.

Rethinking What I’ve Always Done

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Books, Education

It started with a Facebook conversation last winter.

Someone posted a New Yorker article from December 2018 questioning the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and the character Atticus Finch’s place in literary and cultural history. It sparked quite a conversation about this fictional character who I have so enjoyed exploring with my 9th graders for the last 16 years.

[Quick recap: Mockingbird is narrated by Scout Finch, who recounts her early childhood as she and her brother Jem are faced with the dark realities of race in 1930s Alabama when their lawyer father, Atticus, chooses to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.]

The social media conversation wandered into the why and how behind our teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I casually commented that “TKAM is much more about Jem’s coming of age rather than Scout’s… I feel like Jem is really the main character even though Scout is the narrator.”

A reply from a fellow English teacher opened my eyes to a new perspective:

“That’s exactly the problem!” She wrote, “Even when we teach books with girls as narrators they are still focused on the lives and experiences of boys!”

Ten years ago, I would have probably brushed off this comment…or worse, leapt to argument: So what if Jem (a boy) is the main character? What’s the big deal?

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The Equity of Alternatives

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Uncategorized

Offering alternatives to students is, ostensibly, a great thing to do. We can all agree that individualized learning that inspires every student to meet their own potential is ideal. However, it is wrong to assume that we can legislate such alternatives and extra options into existence, especially in small, rural schools.

As an educator in a rural district, I have spent many years observing how our students often have less access to the options that are readily available in larger and urban districts. For instance, in addition to fewer electives, we offer few opportunities for students to take AP or dual credit courses, forcing many of our best scholars to travel forty miles to a community college as Running Start students. Additionally, where other districts had classes to support students who failed the state assessments in math or language arts, we did not have the resources or staff to offer such dedicated courses. Instead, because we are committed to our kids, our staff has worked outside of the regular schedule to support them and create Collections of Evidence or prep for test retakes.

The fact is, in small schools, it is most likely that everyone gets the same offerings, and individualization can be difficult, because it is expensive. Granted, many small schools have gotten very creative to offer programs to their students that go above and beyond the core offerings. There are online programs that support individuals as they explore their interests, and many great educators in small schools offer outstanding and creative programs that would be the envy of the larger districts. Such enhancements in rural schools depend on administrators and teachers with extra energy and creativity to spare.

So, now we have the ultimate in alternatives- an alternative to passing the Smarter Balanced Assessment. New legislation rather vaguely outlines how the state assessment is no longer directly tied to high school graduation. Almost everyone is celebrating this change and hailing the final victory against high stakes testing. I am less enthusiastic.

You see, what happens next is still a mystery. House Bill 1599 (summary on page 31) effectively delinked the statewide assessment from graduation requirements, BUT it did not let anyone off the hook for proving mastery in language arts and math. Students will still take the test, and passing it is the easiest and clearest way to prove mastery. The bill also added a lot more to the High School and Beyond Plans that students must have. Districts will all have to determine what is meant by “graduation pathway options,” and they will have  to adopt academic acceleration policies for high school students. It sounds like we will have more requirements, but not more money.

In small rural districts, that means figuring out how do the most with the least support. And who misses out? Students do.

When the state steps back and puts more on the districts, it can be a benefit. However, look at it through the lens of a small district educator. I predict that determining mastery of core subjects will become the responsibility of local entities. In large districts, that will still require a level of accountability. It is possible that the people in charge of determining the students’ mastery of a subject in a larger district could be both qualified in the subject and not the direct instructors of the students in question. In a small district, when a department has so few people in it, who makes that call? Who has the expertise? Who is accountable for the instruction received by the student? Is it the same person?

So, what if we are allowed/expected to offer courses that replace the assessment? We implement the instruction. We score the work. We make the determination. It sounds great, if you are ethical, equitable, and without bias. But, are you? And that doesn’t even address the issue of how small districts will have the funds to offer such a class for a small handful of kids.

I know, I know… the test has problems with equity and bias, too. I’m just saying that these are ongoing issues, delinking the test or not. And, more importantly, solutions to these problems are very different in small districts, and small districts have very little pull on the legislature.

Having common requirements for students can be limiting, but, in many ways, it ensures that all students get the education our public schools promise to provide. All districts have their challenges, and small, rural districts have some extreme challenges when it comes to offering a variety of courses. When we loosen up the requirements for schools and give way to local control, we are going to see problems with equity. Where is the oversight for this? How do we pay to support it and monitor it? How can we ensure that students in every district in Washington are still getting the skills they need to be successful?

I know that the one thing a small district does have is the opportunity for all players to sit at the same small table and come up with common solutions. Our staff will do what’s best for our kids, and I imagine it is the same all over Washington. I sincerely hope that it is.

I would love to hear some other views on the subject. Are you seeing only positive outcomes from the change? Does anyone else worry about the consequences? Let’s talk about it.