By Rob

For many years the school where I teach has housed a Family Connection Center (FCC).  When a student doesn’t have a coat for the winter or supplies for school I contact the FCC and these items get distributed to students.  The FCC also refers families to community resources provided by civic organizations, for-profit companies, non-profit groups, faith based groups, and organizations like the YMCA, United Way.

I’m grateful for the community resources provided by these non-profit and public agencies.  But even with the help of the FCC many families don’t qualify for services.  Some families can’t arrange reliable transportation outside the neighborhood.  Other families are unavailable during service hours.  Consequently, many of the community’s most valuable resources go underutilized.

Schools have long recognized the importance social and human services.  In communities where these services are lacking the schools suffer.  This was realized by Geoffery Canada.  It led to his establishment of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a non-profit organization that provides family, social, and health service programs.  The brilliance of Geoffery Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone is it brought the services of a supporting community to a convenient but underused site: school.

A Federal grant from the Dept. of Health and Human Services has helped expand a similar program called “Wrap-Around Services” to the school where I teach.  The program is a partnership between the city (which leverages resources), the school district (which provides the facilities), and the United Way (which provides support for early childhood learning programs).   Using schools as the delivery site, this program coordinates resources and aligns the efforts of organizations providing health services, human services, and recreation activities.

Once, the Family Connection Center directed families to outside organizations.  Now, the Wrap-Around Service brings outside organizations to school.  A dental van provides teeth cleaning to students.  Before school child care is offered.  Families can receive food, clothing, furniture, emergency rent assistance or help to keep the lights on.  There are partnerships with KidsQuest, Drama Kids, Mad Science, Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, and others to provide meaningful and engaging after school activities at the school site for students and families.

While I’m not an active participant in this program I can see more community engagement at my school.  I’m seeing families a little more often.  I’m excited about the possibilities.  It benefits children, families, and communities.  If it takes a village to raise a child then it’s wise to bring the village’s resources closer to school.  This is one of the best ideas I’ve seen.

By Tamara

Last week I was notified of my acceptance to participate in the Washington State Policy Symposium discussing Teacher/Principal Evaluation and the Common Core Standards. Then I came across this article in the New York Times describing a teacher evaluation system with promising results in New Haven. The article describes a protocol that “holds teachers accountable without crushing morale and wrongfully dismissing teachers.” It goes on to detail how the New Haven system gives teachers regular, actionable feedback and provides support for those who are struggling.

I have been thinking a lot about teacher evaluation over the last year. Especially since the current system in my district rates the vast majority of us as “satisfactory”. Oh yay. That tells me what? I want an evaluation system that offers me usable feedback so I can improve my craft and grow professionally. I want an evaluation system that offers genuine support to new and struggling teachers so they can build confidence and improve or, if not, be counseled in pursuing a different career path. Such a system would make me feel that my efforts are worth something.

Now there are many aspects of teacher evaluation systems that jerk chains. Like how to include student progress and by what measure.  What about the potential for abusive administrators to have it “out” for certain teachers. All valid concerns.

Personally, I think student progress is non-negotiable. Since it is supposed to be the ultimate result of what we do, it absolutely must be a (not the) factor in our evaluation. After all, if the NBPTS can ask us to demonstrate student learning of stated objectives in every entry, shouldn’t our evaluators? On the subject of evaluators: Just as our evaluation should entail multiple and varied measures, so should our evaluators be multiple and varied. I would like to see my evaluation team consist of my principal, a master teacher or instructional coach, and a fellow teacher who teaches a similar subject and grade. And I would expect each of them to observe me multiple times through the year. Spreading evaluation out this way provides a check on those who could potentially abuse power.

There are plenty of other hot points such as tying evaluations to merit pay or promotions I don’t care to get into now (but will likely address in a future post). No teacher/principal evaluation system is going to be perfect. But I want to see an evaluation system that acknowledges I am an individual with strengths and areas to improve rather than just one more indistinguishable face in a “satisfactory” herd.

By Tom

Wednesday night found me attending my son’s curriculum night. He’s in middle school now, so they had us following our child’s schedule, changing rooms every 10 minutes. As I hustled around the campus, I couldn’t help but notice that the rooms seemed mostly empty, a far cry from the last two years in which we attended the same curriculum night at the same middle school for our older son. Those rooms were packed.

I was trying to figure this out when it suddenly dawned on me my wife pointed out that our older son was in the honors program and our younger son wasn’t. Now, it could be that honors kids have more curious parents. Perhaps. But it’s far more likely that they have parents who care enough about education that they’ll take 90 minutes out of a Wednesday night to find out what their children will be learning in school and how they can help them learn it. And it’s far more likely that these parents have been just as involved since their children were in kindergarten – maybe even earlier – and it was this level of involvement that produced these honors-level middle schoolers in the first place.

I was all set to include this information during my own curriculum presentation the following night. I was going to tell them what a difference it would make for them to take an active role in their child’s education. I was optimistic about the turnout; I had sent home written reminders every night for three weeks and talked it up in class every day, so I was sure the room would be full.

Fifteen people showed up, representing just under half of my 29 students.

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By Tracey

When I first saw the headline in the Seattle Times What's the Matter with Teachers Today?, I prepared myself for more teacher bashing.  I was relieved to find an article seeking to provide a historical perspective on the teaching profession, and how American society has perceived it over the years.  From the mid 1800's, when we were more concerned about shaping our youth into moral citizens than skilled workers, to today, when we expect everyone to go to college, Linda Shaw sheds just a little light on how we've come to where we are today — holding teachers' feet to the fire and raking them over the coals.  She even quotes our very own, Tom, and Jeanne Harmon, from CSTP.

While I won't say that the article solves any problems, or settles any arguments, I felt a little better after reading it.  It's reaffirming in the same way that when Ferris Bueller's sister goes home to catch her brother getting away with skipping school and she opens up his bedroom door to discover his fake snoring soundtrack hooked up to a pulley operated mannequin and screams, "I KNEW IT!"  

Knowing this doesn't change anything for me, nor did it for Jennifer Grey's character in the movie.  Maybe it will help others understand just a little more about the teaching profession and the pressures we face.  Towards the end of the article, Shaw alludes to just one more pressure teachers must deal with, poverty.  Yes, it would be nice if people took our profession more seriously; but honestly, I'd much rather see us take poverty more seriously, and not treat it as just another challenge teachers have to work with.  If we're truly serious about competing academically internationally, then we would end poverty today.

By Tamara

Imagine: You are fifteen years old, recently in arrived in the U.S. from Bhutan, just enrolled in the tenth grade at the local high school and HAVE NEVER ATTENDED SCHOOL BEFORE. By the way, the district expects you to meet all requirements to graduate in four years. The state expects you to exit the transitional-bilingual program in three years. Yes, you will get to attend survival English classes and learn how to hold a pencil for a semester. Yes, you will receive sheltered instruction for your English and Social Studies classes. We would love to offer you primary language support in Integrated Math and Physical Science, but we don't have a translator for you language, so you are on your own. But don't worry, if you don't pass you can make up the credit either in summer school or online. In the mean time time your well-meaning math or science teacher finds you a dual language English-Bhutanese dictionary. Oops, you never learned to read in Bhutanese…

Recently the English Language Development program in my district has landed in the hot seat because we have a critical mass of students not passing the HSPE or graduating on time (contributing to an already dismal graduation rate). This wasn't always the case. Ten years ago most of our English Language Learners came from former Soviet Block countries or Bosnia. Most were well educated in their primary language. Many were already bi or tri-lingual. Their acquisition of English mostly consisted of skill transfer between languages. But over the past five years we have had an influx of students from Central and Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Victoria Lakes region and Iraq. Many of these areas are war-torn. All experience profound poverty. School doesn't make it onto Maselow's heirarchy.

Educating adolescents who have experienced the horrors of war and hunger with no opportunity to go to school is a patently different ball game. It often feels like a fool's errand trying to lay the foundation for literacy while simultaneously imparting grade-level content knowledge. Oh, and explaining the weird things Americans do-like Halloween. But my students are hungry for knowledge and desperate to communicate. And they work at it with urgency.

Over the summer there were rumors of talk about developing five and six year graduation plans based on a student's age and literacy level on arrival to the country. I hope it goes beyond talk. These kids (and their family's lives) depend on their being able to navigate a literate English-speaking society. That takes TIME. Well established research holds it takes SEVEN to TEN years to develop cognitive academic language proficiency in a second language. How can we justifiably expect graduation in four years from students who arrive pre-literate at fifteen?

By Tracey

I'm a huge fan of the Moth podcast.  If you haven't heard of it before, it's a collection of true stories told live, without notes.  I was listening recently and heard the story, My Unhurried Legacy, by Kyp Malone.  The story is a good reminder that the children we teach are, often times, small replicas of their own parents, fated, or perhaps doomed, by genetics.  The story is about a man whose daughter begins kindergarten.  Without giving too much away, the teacher has some concerns.  But, the "concerns" were him.  He had the same issues growing up.  He recognizes himself in his daughter, and realizes where this will lead if he keeps her in her current classroom with a teacher who doesn't understand them.  

The story stuck with me for days, as I began the school year and met my new students.  Two and half weeks into the school year, I've started having some "concerns."  As I pick up the phone to talk with parents, I remember Kyp Malone's story.  I might just be speaking to an older and more experienced version of my student; and so I tread carefully.  I should anyway.  I'm OK with that.  But, I wonder if, in today's high stakes testing environment, these "concerns" might be interpreted differently.  Are they intensified by the need for all students to reach standard?  Even for students as young as kindergarten?  

Luckily for Kyp and his daughter, he was able to pull her out of the classroom and send her to a Waldorf school.  For what shouldn't feel like a utopian view on assessment, but does, I recommend reading the Waldorf school's approach, Assessment without Testing.  Just don't look up their tuition rates. 

By Mark

The first week of school as I introduced a vocabulary unit to my seniors, I sparked a conversation that inadvertenly revealed the attitudes toward education we have bred into our students.

I was talking to the students about the upcoming vocabulary unit, and asked them to put themselves in the teacher's shoes: what kind of assessment would be best to prove to the teacher that the students really understood the words.

At first, the answers were disheartening: make us match words with definitions, make us do a multiple choice test where we pick the word to fit the given definition. Then I posed this to them: what good is that kind of test?

Their reply: it shows we've memorized the definition.

And my reply: "What good is that?"

Their return: it shows we know what the word means.

And I asked, "Does it really?"

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